By Dan Eggen and Kimberly Kindy Washington Post Staff Writers Monday, July 6, 2009
The nation's largest insurers, hospitals and medical groups have hired more than 350 former government staff members and retired members of Congress in hopes of influencing their old bosses and colleagues, according to an analysis of lobbying disclosures and other records.
The tactic is so widespread that three of every four major health-care firms have at least one former insider on their lobbying payrolls, according to The Washington Post's analysis.
Nearly half of the insiders previously worked for the key committees and lawmakers, including Sens. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), debating whether to adopt a public insurance option opposed by major industry groups. At least 10 others have been members of Congress, such as former House majority leaders Richard K. Armey (R-Tex.) and Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.), both of whom represent a New Jersey pharmaceutical firm.
The hirings are part of a record-breaking influence campaign by the health-care industry, which is spending more than $1.4 million a day on lobbying in the current fight, according to disclosure records. And even in a city where lobbying is a part of life, the scale of the effort has drawn attention. For example, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) doubled its spending to nearly $7 million in the first quarter of 2009, followed by Pfizer, with more than $6 million.
The push has reunited many who worked together in government on health-care reform, but are now employed as advocates for pharmaceutical and insurance companies.
A June 10 meeting between aides to Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and health-care lobbyists included two former Baucus chiefs of staff: David Castagnetti, whose clients include PhRMA and America's Health Insurance Plans, and Jeffrey A. Forbes, who represents PhRMA, Amgen, Genentech, Merck and others. Castagnetti did not return a telephone call; Forbes declined to comment.
Also inside the closed committee hearing room that day was Richard Tarplin, a veteran of both the Department of Health and Human Services and the Senate, where he worked for Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), one of the leaders in fashioning reform legislation this year. Tarplin now represents the American Medical Association as head of his own lobbying firm, Tarplin Strategies.
"For people like me who are on the outside and used to be on the inside, this is great, because there is a level of trust in these relationships, and I know the policy rationale that is required," Tarplin said in explaining the benefits of having government experience.
But public interest groups and reform advocates complain that the concentration of former government aides on K Street has distorted the health-care debate, and that it further illustrates the problem posed by the "revolving door" between government and private firms.
"The revolving door offers a short cut to a member of Congress to the highest bidder," said Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, which compiled some of the data used in The Post's analysis. "It's a small cost of doing business relative to the profits they can garner."
Aides to Baucus and other lawmakers bristle at any suggestion of special treatment for former staff members. Baucus spokesman Scott Mulhauser said the senator "remains committed to working with a variety of stakeholders" as the Finance Committee attempts to come up with a bill this summer.
"The senator and his staff meet daily with individuals, nonprofits and interests from across the health-care spectrum, and are proud that all interests are treated equally and that no one receives special treatment of any kind," Mulhauser said. "As a result, the Finance Committee has been praised by members of Congress and the media for its uniquely inclusive and transparent health-care reform process."
The Post examined federally required disclosure reports submitted by health-care firms that spent more than $100,000 lobbying in the first quarter of this year. It used current and past filings to identify former lawmakers, congressional staff members and executive branch officials.
The analysis identified more than 350 former government aides, each representing an average of four firms or trade groups. That tally does not include lobbyists who did not report their earlier government experience, such as PhRMA President W.J. "Billy" Tauzin, a former Republican congressman from Louisiana. Federal law does not require providing such detail.
Overall, health-care companies and their representatives spent more than $126 million on lobbying in the first quarter, leading all other industries, according to CRP and Senate data. PhRMA led the pack in spending and employs 49 former government staff members among its 136 lobbyists, according to The Post's analysis. Dozens of other former insiders are employed as lobbyists by Pfizer, Eli Lilly, the AMA and the American Hospital Association, each of which spent at least $3.5 million on lobbying from January through March.
The aim of the lobbying blitz is simple: to minimize the damage to insurers, hospitals and other major sectors while maximizing the potential of up to 46 million uninsured Americans as new customers. Although many firms have vowed to help cut costs, major players such as PhRMA, America's Health Insurance Plans and others remain opposed to the public-insurance option, a key proposal that President Obama has endorsed.
Several major Democratic bills include such a plan, but Baucus's committee -- which is acting as the central broker in the debate -- has not committed to the idea. Instead, the Finance Committee has focused recently on private-insurance cooperatives and other proposals seen as more palatable to the insurance industry and centrist Democrats. More than 50 former employees of the committee or its members lobby on behalf of the health-care industry, records show.
Deploying former government officials is a key strategy for pressing such positions on Capitol Hill, according to industry lobbyists, many of whom discussed the issue on the condition of anonymity. They say that legislative or administration experience helps ensure that policies considered by Congress do not imperil health-care interests, which account for about one-sixth of the U.S. economy.
At the same time, these lobbyists say, a personal connection to lawmakers and their staffs does not guarantee success.
"If anyone thinks hiring a former staffer for Baucus or [Charles] Schumer or Blanche Lincoln is going to get them what they want, they are crazy," said one health-care lobbyist who used to work on the Finance Committee, referring to several key Democratic senators. "If we were being judged on that, a lot of us should be fired."
William K. "Billy" Wynne, a former Baucus health counsel who now works for the Health Policy Source lobbying firm, said that "there's nothing insidious" about medical companies and groups hiring former legislative staff members. He also notes that he is subject to a two-year limit on contacts with Baucus's office.
"The technical processes of the House and Senate are not intuitive or widely known," Wynne said. "Like with any service, people who have experience are going to be valuable to people who don't."
Some trade groups and companies appear to emphasize hiring lobbyists with legislative or executive experience. Wellpoint, one of the world's largest insurance conglomerates, employs 11 lobbyists with government experience and three with none. One of its veterans is Stephen Northrup, who worked for several years for Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), including a year as his health policy director on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.
"I think the experience on Capitol Hill gives you a better appreciation of the challenges that members and staff face," said Northrup, who began his Washington career as a lobbyist before entering government. "Every institution has its own rhythm. You need to understand when people need information."
The personal and professional ties between lawmakers, their staffs and lobbyists are often complex. Consider the case of Tarplin and his wife, Republican lobbyist Linda Tarplin. The two worked on opposite sides of the Family Medical Leave Act debate in the 1990s, and each has held high-ranking HHS positions -- he for Bill Clinton and she for George H.W. Bush.
Now they run their own health-care lobbying firms, drawing on their connections. Last year, Richard Tarplin's firm reported $650,000 in lobbying income and his wife's firm -- Tarplin, Downs and Young -- reported $3.5 million.
"We have been in situations that are much more combative than this," Linda Tarplin said of the health-care fight. "Both Democrats and Republicans want health-care reform. The rub has always been they tend to get there in different ways."
At least eight former HHS appointees have also crossed over into health-care lobbying, representing more than 25 companies with a stake in the reform legislation. Most were presidential appointees with high-ranking positions, such as the Tarplins.
A few have also cycled back into government. Jack Charles Ebeler, a former Clinton HHS official, left his job as president and chief executive of the Alliance of Community Health Plans a few months ago to become senior adviser for health policy on the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
Financial disclosure statements show that Ebeler received consulting fees over the past two years from UnitedHealth Group, Academy Health, the Medicare Rights Center, the Center for Health Care Strategies and the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans. Ebeler declined interview requests by The Post.
One of the most prominent examples of Washington's revolving door is Tauzin, who took the $2.5 million-a-year job as head of PhRMA in 2005 after shepherding a Medicare prescription drug plan through Congress.
Uproar over the appointment led Congress in 2007 to pass a bill barring former members from bringing clients onto the House and Senate floors and from lobbying their friends in members-only gyms. The legislation also forbade direct lobbying contacts with former colleagues for a year in the House and two years in the Senate; efforts to enact a wider ban went nowhere.
Tauzin and other lobbyists rebuff critics, arguing that it is unsurprising that those with experience on Capitol Hill should then draw on that background.
"Is it a distortion of baseball to hire coaches who have played baseball? Is it a distortion of universities to hire from academia?" Tauzin asked rhetorically. "The bottom line is that people work in the fields in which they have experience. Somehow there are people who think that's unusual for politics, but I think it's pretty normal."
Now that we’re full-on into silly season, where the policy is getting buried under the politics of the moment, it’s more important than ever to focus of these two essentials. One, reform that does not change the game for private, for-profit insurance is not real reform. Two, insurers will not police themselves, even when the business practice in question is morally indefensible. Such it was that yesterday at a hearing in the House of Representatives, CEOs from UnitedHealth, Assurant Health, and WellPoint point-blank refused to limit cancellations of insurance policies for sick patients.
This is a process known as rescission, and it’s the flip side of the pre-existing condition dilemma. For pre-existing conditions, you’re denied a plan or care at the beginning. For rescissions, you’re denied after you’re already sick. The policy exists to fight intentional abuse of the system. If you intentionally leave something off when you’re applying for insurance and sign a statement saying you haven’t, that’s a pretty clear breach of contract. But, as Bob Laszewski, a former COO of an insurance company himself, writes, “It would be an inadvertent and non-material misstatement to sign your health insurance application having promised you told all but left something, that in the end did not matter, off of it. It is always important to be thorough and honest in filling out a health insurance application but sometimes we forget things.” In Robin’s case, she didn’t even forget anything – it was a mistake on a medical record. Regardless, Laszewki asks the pertinent question: “How could you sleep at night knowing you retroactively canceled (or rescinded) a sick person’s health insurance because of something that really didn’t matter?”
And yet, when given the opportunity point blank to say their companies would cease rescissions except when in reaction to “intentional fraud,” all three CEOs refused.
We hear a lot from Karen Ignani of AHIP about how private insurance knows it must earn a seat at the table. We hear from Joe Lieberman that the private insurance market is plenty competitive and doesn’t require the competition on quality from a public health insurance option. Insurance is fine. Yet these companies haven’t just refused to limit rescissions. They’ve made money off of it: $300 million in California alone. As the L.A. Times reports, “It also found that policyholders with breast cancer, lymphoma and more than 1,000 other conditions were targeted for rescission and that employees were praised in performance reviews for terminating the policies of customers with expensive illnesses.”
Let’s say that again. These companies praised employees for terminating the policies of sick patients with expensive illnesses.
Forget the politics and the theater and the supposed evils of government. This is health insurance as it’s practiced in this country. That’s the game. We need to change it.
Friday 12 June 2009
by: David Swanson, t r u t h o u t | Report
Health care reform plans are being drafted and passed around on both sides of Capitol Hill, but the plan with the greatest number of Congress members behind it was first introduced as a bill six years ago. With two new co-sponsors having just signed on, Congressman John Conyers's single-payer health care plan, HR 676, now has 80 Congress members supporting it.
A House committee held a hearing on single-payer health coverage on Wednesday, and a Senate committee included single payer in a hearing on Thursday. Many opponents of single payer, including President Barack Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, say it would be the ideal solution if it were possible.
A single-payer or "Medicare for all" system that eliminates for-profit health insurance and simply pays for everyone's treatment by private doctors and hospitals of their choosing is also the only solution consistently favored by a majority of Americans in polls. The proposal, already in place in most of the world's wealthy nations, is raised at every health care town-hall forum that Congress members or President Obama speak at, including the one Obama held on Thursday in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
The president always rejects single payer on the grounds that some Americans are too fond of their health insurance companies to part with them. A report by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting last week found that the corporate media still virtually bans coverage of single payer. A Senate bill being championed by Sen. Chris Dodd in place of ailing Sen. Edward Kennedy, does not include single payer (which is supported by only one US senator, Bernie Sanders). The Kennedy-Dodd bill, at least in its initial draft, does not even include a "public option," that is a Medicare-like program to exist alongside the private insurance companies. The House bill is being drafted by one current and two former co-sponsors of HR 676, Congressmen George Miller, Henry Waxman and Charles Rangel, but it avoids single payer, championing a public option instead. Other competing Senate bills are expected to complicate things further.
The approach taken by the Kennedy-Dodd bill and considered for the House bill is, rather than eliminating health insurance companies, expanding them by making insurance mandatory and subsidizing its purchase. While this approach is favored by the insurance companies, which have been among the primary participants in White House and Congressional health care forums this year, it is not supported by other corporations that would rather not be required to provide health insurance to employees. If anything has emerged on Capitol Hill this week, it is a chaotic lack of consensus except around the idea that something must be done to address a health care system that is damaging Americans' health and economy. Whether the growing chaos opens the door to single payer remains to be seen, and that possibility appears much more real in the House than in the Senate.
In the House, the progressive Caucus has declared that, while it would prefer single payer, it will back no bill without a public option; the Black, Hispanic and Asian caucuses have also backed a public option; and Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said that no bill without a public option will pass. This should mean that, as the debate advances, the House will be more likely to back single payer than any other solution. Or, rather, it would be if it could create laws without having to get them through the Senate as well.
Sen. Max Baucus has taken the lead in Kennedy's absence and chaired hearings last month to which he refused to invite any supporters of single payer. Baucus had 13 people arrested for speaking up at his hearings uninvited, an action that generated more media coverage of single payer than any poll or study ever could have. One of those arrested, Dr. Margaret Flowers, is the Maryland co-chair of Physicians for a National Health Program. She was interviewed by Ed Schultz on "MSNBC," who began covering single payer in a major way. "Bill Moyer's Journal" on PBS also focused on single payer and aired interviews with three leading advocates, including Donna Smith of the California Nurses Association (CNA). Tim Carpenter of Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) was interviewed on Fox News. Even the Washington Post took note.
Over the past few weeks, the relatively serious media attention has inspired more activism and vice versa. Senator Baucus has been surrounded by demands for single payer at town-hall forums in Montana and questioned by activists with video cameras in Washington, DC, as have health insurance executives and lobbyists.
Congress members John Conyers, Raul Grijalva, Donna Edwards, Steve Cohen and Emanuel Cleaver, along with Carpenter of PDA and Smith and Michael Lighty of CNA met with Majority Leader Steny Hoyer to lobby for single payer. Conyers has become increasingly outspoken, and on Wednesday evening, complained of being shut out by the president and by Waxman and Rangel, promising not to let up. On June 3, Senator Baucus met with advocates of single payer and told them he was wrong to have excluded them. But he said he would continue to do so.
However, on Wednesday, the Health, Employment, Labor and Pensions Subcommittee in the House, Chaired by Congressman Robert Andrews, held a serious hearing on the topic of single payer, with four of the five witnesses favoring a single-payer system, and Conyers was one of the four.
After the hearing and a briefing, Stephen Spitz of PDA told me, "Some of us met with Congressman Conyers in his office when he suddenly said: 'Let's go to Nancy Pelosi's office.' Off we went and, after talking to an aide of the speaker, we talked with Speaker Pelosi in her office in the US Capitol. She said she is for single payer and encouraged us to keep on doing what we were doing. She said that single payer cannot pass this year in the Congress. She said she was fighting to get a meaningful public option. Congressman Conyers asked her to let him (and experts he would bring) conduct a briefing before the entire House Democratic caucus on HR 676."
The next day, on Thursday, the Senate provided a stark contrast. The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions held a hearing with possibly a record number of panelists, one of whom, Dr. Flowers, favored single payer. Senator Dodd, chairing in place of the absent Kennedy, opened by remarking that he'd never seen a panel so large and that he at first thought the panel was the audience. While hearings often include as many as six witnesses, this one included two panels with a total of 24 speakers. The first panel, with 15 speakers, began with Flowers's very brief statement, followed by 14 other prepared statements, none of them responding to Flowers.
Flowers began by indicating that she spoke for a majority of Americans. No one ever challenged that claim. Flowers criticized the idea of a uniquely American market solution as a delusion that has failed for 40 years. She said that health care in the United States is rationed right now ("rationing" being one of the dangers of "government health care" warned about by the sole witness against single payer on Wednesday). Congressman Dennis Kucinich had made the same point on Wednesday. The threats of wait time and denial of care are here under the current system. In what other industrialized nation, Flowers asked, do people hold bake sales to pay for their health care? In what other industrialized nation do millions of people go bankrupt because of medical bills? None of the following 14 speakers or any of the senators in the room answered these questions. In fact, they directed more criticism at the Kennedy-Dodd bill.
Randel Johnson, vice president of the US Chamber of Commerce, warned that employer mandates could force companies to go out of business. William Dennis of the National Federation of Independent Business claimed to be concerned that employer mandates would hurt low-wage employees. There were no low-wage employees on the panel.
Dr. Samantha Rosman of the American Medical Association (AMA) spoke against any public option. She did not provide arguments against it so much as announce that the AMA would not accept it. President Obama has said that a public option must be included. He is scheduled to speak to the AMA on Monday.
Other panelists included right-wing think tankers and the CEO of a supermarket chain, who advocated urging employees to take better care of themselves. Two panelists other than Flowers were not from the usual crowd. They were Gerald Shea of the AFL-CIO and Dennis Rivera of SEIU, both leaders of labor unions that have backed HR 676 in the past and whose members overwhelmingly favor single payer. The AFL-CIO does not have a clear position now. Rose Ann DeMoro, vice president of the AFL-CIO, was part of the meeting with Baucus and advocates single payer. Shea mentioned that unions have always favored single payer, but he moved immediately to discussing the details of Dodd's plan, favoring a public option and employer mandates, but opposing taxing employees for health insurance payments made by employers. Rivera, too, favored a public option.
The panel was followed by a lengthy question-and-answer period. For a long time no senators asked Flowers any questions. Finally, she grabbed a microphone and asked to speak. She responded to a discussion of preventive care by pointing out that when the goal of health coverage is not profit, an incentive is created to keep people healthy since doing so saves the public money.
Sen. Barbara Mikulski later asked Flowers why a public option isn't good enough. Flowers said that one problem is that insurance companies will cherry-pick the healthiest patients and leave the sickest to the public program. More importantly, Flowers argued, much of the waste in the current arrangement is due to the fragmentation of the coverage system into 1,300 different companies, requiring hospitals to employ staff to interface with them. Adding a public option would only make this worse, Flowers said, not fix it.
Sen. Jeff Bingaman tried to claim he had found a consensus among most of the panelists on various points, acknowledging that he was excluding Flowers. The fact that 14 of the 15 panelists represented a smaller portion of the public than the one panelist alone did not seem to matter.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, who supports single payer, asked Flowers to expand on why single payer is the best plan and then proceeded to criticize another panelist, the CEO of Aetna, for denying people health care.
While the Senate has a long way to go, even just to measure up to the House, single-payer advocates are encouraged by the progress this week. Katie Robbins of Healthcare-NOW! called Wednesday's and Thursday's hearings "measurable successes of the groundswell of support for a just, equitable system based on single-payer financing."
"However," said Robbins, "the conversation is just beginning. We demand full hearings on single payer in the Senate, the House Ways and Means Committee, and the Energy and Commerce Committee. In addition, a fair scoring of single-payer legislation must be included in the Congressional Budget Office's report on health care reform."
Kevin Zeese of Prosperity Agenda emailed me from Thursday's Senate hearing: "The multi-player advocates are divided. Bitterly so over mandates, paying for their plans and whether to have a public plan to compete. The senate is trying to fix the equivalent of a broken egg. It cannot be done. But they all have their heads in the sand and their hand in the till. Single payer is making progress. More people know single payer is right than admit it. It will win the day but they will pursue the wrong paths until they run into the dead end."
A single-payer rally is planned for Friday, June 26, at 6:00 PM in front of Union Station in Washington, DC. Those likely to show up often speak about their struggle as one for basic human rights. Those who imagine the single-payer movement might go away often speak about health care reform in terms of "political feasibility" and "focus group message testing." Perhaps the growing success of the push for single payer is not so surprising.
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David Swanson is the author of the upcoming book "Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union," by Seven Stories Press. You can preorder it at http://tinyurl.com/daybreakbook.
I know we had a slammin' victory in 2008 and we had an amazing Inauguration. We are still basking in the glow of our victory. But the Whitehouse is moving at 150 miles an hour with a 100 tons of garbage on their plate that they have to deal with every day.
We have to help them.
We got them there, NOW we have to support them.
THEY CAN NOT DO THIS ON THEIR OWN.
We have to be somewhat incessant in getting the message across to the folks out there that its not just COOL to have President Obama, Vice President Biden, Sec. of State, Hillary Clinton, David Axelrod, Rahm Immanuel, Press Sec Gibbs. and all the pretty faces (and David Plouff helping on the outside too of course), its EFFECTIVE.
I mean look, this country is in the doghouse. The ball of yarn is so tangled up they are just now finding the end and starting to detangle..and they have a long way to go. OK?
So what's up? What do they need all of us for next?
HEALTH CARE REFORM!!!!! HEALTH CARE REFORM!!!! Health Care Reform.
We have to get just as bolstered up and just as caffeinenated for this fight as any. BELIEVE ME, there is a TON of money on the other end of this battle and they are going to fight like the SWIFTBOATERS. They are mean, greedy, manipulating and they will twist and lie and do anything they can to put out the most grossly disgusting propaganda against Pres. Obama's Health Care Policies you can imagine. Just look up this guy "Dick Morris". He's a knucklehead, but you might as well get your feet wet and check him out. He's the kind of nightmare you're going to see.
WE HAVE TO GET ORGANIZED TO FIGHT THESE GUYS. WE CAN'T GO BACK INTO LAZY SLACKERDOM NOW THAT OUR MAN WON. ALL THAT WE FOUGHT FOR AND WORKED FOR WILL BE GONE DUE TO OUR BEING LAZY. WE ARE NOT LAZY. WE ARE SO STRONG WHEN WE WAKE UP AND GET ORGANIZED. WE ARE UNSTOPPABLE!!!!
Come on!!! It was fun getting involved wasn't it? It was fun getting passionate over something bigger than yourself. Let's do it again. Lets get Health Care Reformed so our parents don't have to pay thousands of dollars in premiums when they are in their 80s. Heck, so WE don't have to pay thousands of dollars in our eighties. So we CAN GET the CARE WE NEED WHEN WE ARE SICK instead of some letter that says we are declined due to pre-existing conditions -( so just go die somewhere away from us please.)
Let's not let just any Health Care Reform pass either. A good one. One like what Congress has. Seriously.
YES!!!!! WE CAN!!!! YOU'RE BRIGHT!!! YOU'RE STRONG!!! YOU'RE OH-SO-SMART! HOW ABOUT HEALTHY TOO!!!!!!! DO IT FOR YOU, YOUR KIDS, YOUR PARENTS, YOUR NEIGHBORS, YOUR FRIENDS. GO TO BARACKOBAMA.COM AND THEN ORGANIZING AMERICA AND CALL FOLKS LIKE LAST TIME. WRITE BLOGS, GET BACK IN TOUCH WITH YOUR OLD BUDDIES FROM THE PAST 2 YEARS.
THE TIME IS NOW!!! YES! WE CAN!!! :-D
I think lobbyists are ruling our Democratic reps and senators, as there is no push in either house to support Obama's budget proposal for cap-and-trade and as of now, it's beaten, it's out, so, if you're as p-o'd as I am about it, don't wait for a call to action - just write the DNC now: http://www.democrats.org/page/s/contactissues
Choose "Energy Independence", and tell them you want it reinstated. If we sit back, we can kiss it goodbye. Obama is having a lunch with the Dems on Wednesday to push for it - let's all help him, and our poor arctic-ice-melting planet!
The sudden firing of millions right before President Obama signed the new federal equal pay law were no coincidence. Companies were trying to shut off old liabilities before the new law made them actionable.
Background: Previously, the Supreme Court had ruled that an individual had to sue for pay discrimination within 180 days of when the discrimination commenced, rather than within 180 days of the date, years later, when they finally found out about it. As in, the courts completely gutted the law by allowing corporations to brazenly violate it in secret, knowing they could get away with murder. If the woman didn't sue within 180 days of the first time her employer secretly paid the paid her less than a male for the same job, they were free to continue secretly screwing the female employee out of equal pay for her entire career.
The new law signed by President Obama today corrects that travesty. Now, the 180 day period attaches to each new paycheck that is less than that of a man with the same job. So, a woman who is kept in the dark about this pay disparity for years before finally becoming aware of it now has a legal claim at the time she becomes aware of it still happening currently.
The Preemptive Firings: My cynical mind tells me that the 70,000 people suddenly fired from their jobs this week, as well as the millions dumped last week, were all fired in anticipation of this act becoming signed into law. Suddenly, dirt they had pulled on their female employees for years and years would become actionable. So, I think they dumped all the women presenting this potential pay liability, and wrapped the package with enough male firings to try and cover up the true reason for their precipitous decision.
Why This Works - Severance Pay Releases: Employers are permitted to structure severance pay plans as not a right, but an extra goodie for employees if and only if the employees sign a release of liability in return for receiving severance pay. Virtually all employees will sign them in return for the money. But these releases are solid gold for employers, because they whitewash employers for liability for anything whatsoever related to that past employment, whether known now or only discovered in the future. Ahem!
So now, having quickly ditched all that liability for unequal pay, employers will start hiring again free of any past liability for their dirty deeds. AND, they will hire at lower pay for all, knowing that people will be damn grateful just to get back into the workforce. Plus, if there is any tax benefit to making new hires contained in the final economic stimulus bill, the employers will actually be PAID to take these people back at lesser pay! If the employer doesn't want its own employees back, out of work employees can all take one step to the left and get each other's jobs.
So, it's my cynical view that employers did massive firings to avoid the liability imposed by this new law, and my optomistic view that they will now proceed to hire everybody right back.
After a brief period when the employers all celebrate and pat each other on the back for being so clever, of course.
One of the signal changes leading up to President Obama's election was the stunning rise of the baby boomers once more. We're the generation that felt had, lied to, and abandoned by a government and corporate bureauocracy that that stifled us, tried to control the way we thought, and illegally sent our brothers and classmates to be killed in Vietnam. We were an entire generation of alienated individuals, too cynical about government to think our efforts made any difference at all.
Obama's candidacy represented all the ideals we had back then going mainstream now. What I saw in this campaign was an ARMY of people in their fifties and sixties once again hopeful that government would be responsive to their ideas and needs. While Obama effectively harnessed the enthusiasm of youth, I hope he appreciates the tide of emotion and strong feelings that he unleashed in older Americans as well. For once, our idealism had a place, and we could act on it. We felt renewed, worthwhile. And we got involved in droves. The result was that Obama actually had the combined power of generations behind his back.
This stunning reality was brought home to me especially in the last days before the Presidential election. Who were those busloads of people pouring over the border from New York to Pennsylvania with single-minded dedication to securing it for Obama? Baby boomers! Buses and buses and buses of them, as far as the eye could see. And who poured into Obama offices all over the tri-state area with the simple plea "I want to help" during the last two months of the campaign? Baby boomers!
Not that they weren't involved in primaries -- they were. Big time. But as their cynicism finally took a back seat to hope, more and more suddenly jumped into the fray and worked tirelessly for Obama.
We stand now, an army of revitalized people, ready to help President Obama dust off all our old ideals and make them come alive. I would ask that he appreciate this fact, appreciate us as a group, and ask more of us in the shaping of our nation and the continuation of his administration's efforts in the days of years head.
We're good for it. The sleeping lions have awakened, and they're VERY hungry for change.
Congrats Joe!
Ok, sportsfans. Bill Clinton has promised to cooperate fully with vetting, scale back his relationship with his foundation, disclose his clients, and other limits, "anything they want," to help Hillary land the Secretary of State position. So what could possibly go wrong?
The Constitution, that's what.
Specifically, Article I, Section 6, Clause 2, which provides that "No Senator or Representative shall, during the Time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil Office under the Authority of the United States, which shall have been created, or the Emoluments whereof shall have been increased during such time; ...."
Emoluments? Yep. Pay raises, among other things. And, wouldn't you just know it, Congress approved a pay raise for for cabinet posts during Hillary's current senate term. The Huffington Post quotes the Washington post for this tidbit:
"In Clinton's case, during her current term in the Senate, which began in January 2007, cabinet salaries were increased from $186,600 to $191,300."
As Keith Olbermann would say, "Oops."
There is another solution, however, successfully employed once before in the "Saxbe Fix," which evidently involved repealing the pay raise for the duration of an unexpired Senate term so that Sen. Saxbe could be appointed attorney general in the Nixon Administration, even though he was a Senator when the Attorney General's salary had been raised. This little end-run dates back to the Taft administration, and U.S. Attorney Generals have sometimes allowed it and other times declared it not constitutionally permissible.
For more fun reading, see the full Huffpost article and a nifty online exerpt from The Heritage Guide to the Constitution:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/13/hillary-clinton-secretary_n_143735.html?page=29&show_comment_id=18149463#comment_18149463
http://books.google.com/books?id=-_8N3UeXeesC&pg=PA83&lpg=PA83&dq=Saxbe+Fix&source=web&ots=kYTyZxZMRN&sig=mQGRqI7568yqqURydEIExjExhtY&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=2&ct=result
The defeat of Alaska Sen. Stevens is cause for a sigh of relief. The U.S. Senate won't be forced to throw him out and Sarah Palin won't be able to shove herself through the back door to the Senate by getting herself appointed or elected to serve out his Senate term.
Remember Palin with her "if a door opens before me, I'm going to go right through it" campaign this last week? This was basically the "ME, ME, I'LL TAKE IT, I'LL TAKE IT, IT'S MINE, MINE, DO YOU HEAR ME? MIIIIIINNNNNE" tour, in case anybody missed her embarrassing total lack of subtlety.
Thank God that avenue is closed to her. This is one woman who should be denied a podium entirely until she has something useful to contribute to society, if ever.
I'm not the only one annoyed that Palin is grabbing for more than her 15 minutes of fame. Here's the ultimate retort to her efforts to hog the spotlight when the nation's business has long since moved on:
I'm dismayed by the number of newscasters who are counting down the days until Obama "rules" the nation. Were they not paying attention when a "ruling" GWB overran and trashed this country's laws, economy, and future? I want to see a president who RUNS this country, not rules it.
RUNS it. Like a well-oiled machine. Like people can actually speak up and talk back to him, and air their views without fear of retribution.
Despite all of GWB's actions notwithstanding, this isn't a monarchy. The press should be more careful in how it characterizes our government and the people who will be running it.
Alan Keyes is now suing to prove that Obama isn't a United States citizen. In my opinion, he's just a vindictive sore loser. Hawaii has already provided a certified birth certificate.
What, exactly, does it take to convince these loonies, and why should anybody else have to bear the litigation cost of their obsessions? What a total waste of everybody's time and money.
Guys, it's not whether Hillary has foreign affairs experience. She might block Obama's health care plan in the Senate in retribution for him beating her in the primaries and doing her out of the presidency that she considered hers. This removes her and gives her something entirely different to focus on. Also, once she takes it, not likely she can go back to being a senator, so the problem is dealt with permanently.
The conversation has moved on, and it doesn't include Sarah Palin. Despite many talking heads giving her the widest possible berth on her recent behavior, just in case she again emerges on the national scene to create delicious fodder for their shows, they're peddling fraud.
Palin has to learn a hard political truth. If you blow an inverview or a campaign, there are no re-dos. You can't claim that an interviewer was mean and try to correct it weeks later. You can't claim you weren't found in violation of the law in the face of a government report that says you were. You can't take shots at President-elect Obama as if you could still win and he can still be brought down, when the campaign is actually done. You have to have the correct political instincts, actions and answers the FIRST TIME. Right then and there. Like national officials are required to have.
There are no re-dos weeks later when you are deciding to bomb a country.
There are no re-dos weeks later when facing a hostage situation or a national emergency.
There are no re-dos later when you decide and people act irrevocably on your decision.
Lives and livelihoods hang on your capacity to know, understand, analyze, evaluate and decide, IMMEDIATELY.
Good government depends on your ability to govern well, not whine about how everybody else is at fault for all your missteps.
This current campaign of Palin's to raise public opinion of her is so childish and immature that it's cringeworthy. The woman has no shame, in addition to having no judgment.
In the short time she was in the public eye, we learned heaps of horrifying stuff about her personal life - that she kicked her daughter out of the house when she first found out about the teenage pregnancy. And that Palin used private email for public business. And slept with her husband's business partner. And used the power of her office illegally. That she "cancelled" the Bridge to Nowhere but KEPT all that juicy, porky Federal money. And submitted thousands of dollars in questionable per diem expenses to Alaska. And shamelessly and selfishly blew a stunning amount of the GOP's money on clothes for herself and her family.
Who knows what other skeletons she is now burying . . . or ontinuing to create.
As far as politics goes, we learned that she can't think on her feet if her entire career and future depended on it. And doesn't know a thing about foreign affairs. And somehow missed some core concepts in elementary school geography. Oh, yes, and that she's a race-baiter, slanderer, and liar.
Palin thinks she can come back from all THIS? She sees Hillary is too old to make another run for the presidency and is determined to jump into the vacuum?
Whom, exactly, did she think she has managed to impress? Whom, exactly does she think would support her after all her shameless and nasty flailing around on the public stage?
Noooooooooooo, honey, you only get one try.
And BOY did you ever blow it.
Politico.com today references a little-known Clinton-era law that would allow a new president to overturn any new federal regulations adopted within 60 days of Congressional adjournment. This means that not only could the Obama administration overturn regulations passed within 60 days of his inauguration, but within 60 days after Congress adjourned - Oct. 3.
So as long as Congress stays OUT of session, Obama can repeal any damaging regulations finalized on or after October 4, 2008.
I see danger here. Pelosi is about to reconvene the House to start working on Pres.-Elect Obama's agenda. That would blow this opportunity, right?
A recent article darkly implied fraud as more votes magically appeared for Al Franken after Nov. 4th. I have another explanation - well-meaning people trying the best they can, sometimes hilariously so.
This year was the first time I accompanied the chairman of our local Democratic party to several polling places to check the percentage of voter turnout on November 4th -- election day. This task was both permitted and easy. The book that had to be signed by each voter for signature verification helpfully had the total number of registered voters assigned to that machine printed right on the cover page. And then the voter had to sign a separate sheet that numbered each voter. So we could quickly and easily check turnout against actual registered voters to see how high the activity had been. It was high - 60 to 80%, even though New York was a slam dunk for Obama. The president of the local Democratic party was pleased. He believed that a lot of interest in the election and high turnout was good for the country, however the elections might turn out.
We were at one of the polling places, a grade school cafeteria, when when the polls closed. "What time is it?" "Nine oh one," I said, pointing up to the huge clock on the wall. One woman clecked her watch. "I have five minutes of nine." "I have two minutes before." "Too bad we don't have a cell phone. That would be accurate." I whip out my cell phone. "Two minutes after nine." "Two minutes after nine," one woman repeats several times to the others. The group begins to start the closing process. The crew manning this particular location was a group of seventy- and eighty-year-olds who obviously had done this together for some forty years.
What transpired next was was like a series of comedy routines from old movies.
First, the curtains had to be folded in and the front of the machines closed. The front part folded up somewhat like an upright sleeper couch, and it wouldn't go all the way in if the curtains stuck out. The men were hapless, and the women came over and directed that they be folded in just so in order to get the fronts of the machines folded in and the doors closed.
Then, one elderly gentleman started to read off a medallian serial number from each voting machine. "I can't make it out." 'Here, let me," says another. Puts nose right up to the machine, and laboriously reads out the digits. "What?" says the hard of hearing lady twenty feet away who is writing it down. He starts over again. The lady interrupts,"Was that last digit seven?" "Which digit?" "What?" "I'll start again." I volunteer to read the number off the machine because I have excellent eyesight. They all pounce on me. "You can't. You're not authorized. Only people authorized by the Board of Elections can do this." It takes several tries to get that number recorded.
Then, they open up the back of the machine. There were rows of rectangular blocks that held the votes for each total, broken down by party and candidate, but displaying ONLY the number, not whose it was. Somebody points this out. "How will we know whose is whose?" "That's the way it always is. There are only numbers, not names. We just read them off and write them on the form."
The woman whose responsibility it was started reading them off. "A-1. Wait, I can't make it out. (The ceiling lights in this cafegeria were dim.) Does anybody have a flashlight?" "Oh, dear." She puts her face close up, draws back, goes close in again, but gets frustrated because she can't make out the writing. Two elderly, paunchy men look over her shoulders and start reading the number. "No, that's not it. The first digit is a six, not a nine." "No, it's a nine." "I can't make it out. I wish I had my reading glasses with me." The woman then pulls her glasses down her nose, peers over them, puts her face two inches away from the machine and laboriously reads out the number as the men check her over her shoulder when she pulls away. "A-1, ninety six votes. Is that right?" Two more sets of eyeballs pressed toward the machine. "Yes, ninety six." "A-2, thirty, uh, um, what is that second number?"
"WAIT," somebody cries out. "What do we write the totals on?"
Seven people now crowded around the voting machine look at each other. Everybody starts speaking at once. "I don't know, do you?" Nobody had a clue. "Where's the form? There's supposed to be an official form, isn't there?" "We don't have a form." "There's supposed to be an official form." "Do you have it?" "No, check over on that table." "There's supposed to be a form." "This is all I was given. I don't have anything like that." "Does anybody remember what the form looks like?" Nobody did. Everybody checked all their materials for each machine's station. Bound book to be signed by voter and signature then verified. Check. Separate sheet that everybody signed, that kept a running tally of people voting on each machine. Check. Sample ballots. Check. Form to record the final vote counts? None. Nobody had gotten one.
"We'll have to call somebody." "We can't." "What about the Board of Elections?" "I think the office where we got the materials from is closed." "Who can we call?" "I dunno." "What do we do?" "I dunno. Jeanne, what should we do?" "I don't know. Everybody look again."
Nobody had the form. And nobody was going to leave the machines without taking down the vote totals. It seemed to be out of the question. This group, which had been doing the same thing together for years, seemed determined to follow their normal routine and not to leave until the vote totals were taken off the machines. The janitor comes in, straightens the chairs around the cafeteria tables, and sweeps up a bit, frowning pointedly at this group staying so late and disrupting his building-closing routine.
This group had been here all day and was exhausted. The men had stood for hours, and the women had sat behind the tables for hours. Everybody's joints were achy and they all just wanted to leave. "We could just write down the numbers." "But they don't have names and parties on these boxes. How will we know whose is whose?" "You don't know. You just write the numbers on the form." "But we don't have the form!" "What do we do now?" "I dunno. George, what should we do?" "I dunno." "Somebody get a sheet of paper." "There isn't any paper." "None?" "No." Everybody searches the cafeteria. All anybody can find is two paper plates. Paper plates? No. The group rejects the notion of writing the numbers on the paper plates. Nor does anybody want to take down the student artwork so earnestly produced and proudly displayed on the wall in order to use the back. Little kids' art, it seemed, was sacrosanct.
One determined woman picks up a large sample ballot and says, "Here. Use this. Just write the totals in the boxes and we'll figure it out later." This was a genious move. The sample ballot had the line and column numbers on it, so they could actually put the numbers in the right place. Of course, folks could then see what candidates got how many votes in each of the elections going on, but this really didn't matter, since the Democrats were a slam dunk for the entire ticket, anyway.
"But what are we suppoed to record it on?" "We don't KNOW. Nobody TOLD us what to do in this situation. We've never not gotten the form before. Just use this for now. Make sure you write the totals in the correct spaces." She hands the sample ballot to a middle-aged woman. "We'll take this to the Board of Elections and explain what happened. Then it's their problem."
Nobody has any better idea, and all agree that this seemed to be a reasonable solution. The janitor had already set the doors to lock behind us and had left the building. We were all alone in the building, and on this group rested the fate of the precinct's numbers. "Ok, you read the numbers and she'll write them in the boxes on this sample ballot."
"You'll have to start over," said the scribe.
Three heads again lean over and peer at the machine. "A-1, ninety six. That's right, isn't it?" "Hmmm. Yes, nine, six." The third says, "Let me see. Ok." "A-2, thirty...."
"WAIT. I'm sorry, where is A-1 on this form? I don't understand what I'm supposed to do." Another two elderly ladies rush in to help the scribe, who apparently is a bit of a dim bulb, but somebody important enough that nobody dares suggest handing over the scribe duty to somebody else. One woman leans over and points to a box on the form. "There, there's A-1. Write the number there." "What's the number again?" "Ninety six." Three heads check the machine again. "Yes, that's correct. A-2, thirty nine. A-3 sixty seven. A-4, what is that? I can't make it out." "Here, let me look."
"WAIT. Where is A-2 on the form?" Then followed a short discussion between the ladies as the older one VERY patiently explained to the scribe what was happening and how to follow down the lines and write the totals in. Finally, they get to the last number in column A. "A-15, one."
"WAIT," says the scribe, now almost in tears. "There is no A-15. Column A only goes to seven." A confab follows. Our chairman of the Democratic Party, observing this spectacle with amusement and barely concealed eye rolls, helpfully volunteers, "You have to record all the votes by law. Just put it at the bottom and somebody will figure out what to do with it later." "Good idea," chime in about four voices. "Where?" An elderly woman leans over the scribe's shoulder and points to a blank spot on the bottom of the sample ballot. "Just put it there for now." "I don't understand." "Somebody pulled a wrong lever and we have to record that vote anyway. We're required to even though it's clearly a mistake. Just write it down here for now." "What was that number?" At this point, the elderly woman realized what a dim bulb the scribe was and took control. She put her finger on the blank spot and directed her, "Write 'A-15, one vote' right here." Others watched to make sure the scribe writes it in correctly.
From that point on, the group get into a routine. The three eyeballing the machine each look at the number, occasionally squabbling about one of the digits until they are dead certain and all three are in agreement. Several people would pass on the number. Then the elderly lady would repeat the number to the scribe and point to exactly where she should record it on the sheet, as she and two others watched over the scribe's shoulder to make sure she put down the correct amount. Occasionally she would fail to point, and the scribe would be clueless. "WAIT. What was C-5? I didn't get that one." "C-5, eleven. D-1, eighty five."
It became like a long line of people passing information to one another, except they were only inches apart. "D-2, seventy two." The first turns to the next. "D-2, seventy two." Each one turned to the next, standing only inches away, passing the information down the line as if nobody had heard it (which, in this case, could well have been the case). "D-2, seventy two." "What are we on, D-2?" "Yes, D-2. That was seventy two." The elderly woman would turn to the scribe, repeating "D-2, seventy two." Then, the scribe hunts all over the form for it, until the elderly lady patiently sticks out a well-manicured fingernail and taps on the correct box.
"D-11, one." "WAIT. There is no D-11. What do I do?" "Put it on the bottom for now." "Where?" "Down here." The well manicured finger reaches out and points to the blank bottom of the form, where other outliers had already been recorded. "But I don't understand. There's not a box for it." "Somebody pulled a wrong lever, but we still have to report it." "But I'm writing all these numbers down here where there are no boxes." She was getting hysterical, clearly not following along. "It's okay. There IS no box for that. We didn't have that many candidates. But we're required to write it down anyway. Just put it here, and when these numbers are transferrd to the official form, somebody will figure out what to do with it then." "Ok. What was that number again?"
It took almost forty-five minutes for this group to complete the process. Clucking like chickens, checking and re-checking each other because their eyes aren't what they used to be and repeating themselves constantly because their hearing isn't that great any more, either. What was amazing to me is that this group of highly dedicated citizens went at their own pace, fully understanding each other's visual and hearing frailties, and checking each other carefully and repeatedly without any judgmentalism, as if this was how everybody did it. These volunteer citizens tried to do their duty to the best of their ability -- earnestly, carefully, and completely.
And although I watched to make sure they didn't record the votes wrong, it's clear that this hilarious scene was probably played out countless other times across the nation that night. No doubt very well-meaning and completely honest people made mistakes.
That occasional polling place mistakes seem to always be darkly attributed to fraud is, after observing this hilarious spectacle, offensive. The elderly people who man many of the voting places across the nation do so with a fierce sense of responsibility and pride. Even if they unintentionally make a few mistakes, they do so in the clear belief that they are reporting the vote with scrupulous honesty.
They do the very best they can. And I for one celebrate their efforts.
