Levi Johnston Allegations

It looks like Levi Johnston, former boyfriend of Bristol Palin has written a tell-all for Vanity Fair, due out on newsstands next month. Here’s a snippet of him observing Sarah after she lost the election:

“Sarah was sad for a while. She walked around the house pouting. I had assumed she was going to go back to her job as governor, but a week or two after she got back she started talking about how nice it would be to quit and write a book or do a show and make “triple the money.” It was, to her, “not as hard.” She would blatantly say, “I want to just take this money and quit being governor.” She started to say it frequently, but she didn’t know how to do it. When she came home from work, it seemed like she was more and more stressed out.”

And a preview.

As much as I loathe Ms. Palin, I can’t help but dislike this guy for dragging her through the mud in a feeble attempt to be famous.  Although I guess there aren’t a lot of job opportunities in Alaska. Being an actor and model must look pretty appealing when your only skill is being able to impregnate a former VP candidate’s daughter.

Conflict of Interest between shareholders and patients?

This is a great video showing in a simple-to-understand way why a public option is needed in the healthcare reform. It also brings up the legal question of whether the duty publicly traded health insurance companies have to their shareholders inherently conflicts with the duty of care required towards patients.

As the video points out, it is clear that public traded health insurers have a duty to their investors to maximize corporate profits. How do insurance companies realize a profit? By taking in more in insurance premiums while simultaneously lowering payouts to plan participants for medical care. It logically follows that health insurers are required to deny as much coverage as possible in order to satisfy their fiduciary duty to their investors. On the other hand, by denying medical coverage to post huge profits, does this violate the duty of care towards the patient?

It’s an interesting thought, which is why I believe that either a government option should be provided (a provider that doesn’t need to use money that could be funding coverage to issue profit for shareholders) OR all health insurers should be required to be non profit corporations. Either of these options would prevent the inherent conflict between the duties to patients and the fiduciary duties to shareholders.

Yes, Torture is Counterproductive….and a Stain on America’s Reputation

There has been a massive uproar in the past few weeks regarding the release of Justice Department memos detailing the means used for interrogations of terrorist suspects.  This is a touchy subject for all, primarily because of the constant balancing test we need to strike in this country between pragmatic security concerns and the morals, ideals and civil liberties our country was built upon.  Too often this country has in the past ignored its founding principles; this is the true essence of being un-American.  Often these principles are discarded in a time of threat, however looking back they have always been an overreaction to current events, ultimately to be regretted by future generations.  Notable past examples of this include the imprisonment of Japanese-Americans during WW2, jailing of protesters during the First World War (Socialists/Anarchists) all the way back to the Alien & Sedition Acts.  This current period of torture in the post 9/11 landscape has once again set us against our morals and founding principles.  I don’t care what anybody says – if you are tying someone to a board and simulating drowning — then there is no doubt this is torture, even if it leaves no physical marks on the victim.  It’s time America puts this behind us, as President Obama has indicated he will.  The people who wrote the legal opinions who contorted the law into supporting these actions should be prosecuted.  What people don’t realize is how often the law is used to justify the unjustifiable.  The genocide perpetrated by the Nazi Reich was orchestrated through the legal justifications of lawyers.  So was the Bosnian genocide. Today’s attorneys have a moral and professional duty to prevent the legal system from being used to justify such actions.  As such, the Congress should establish a panel to investigate these attorneys for violations of the Professional Responsibility Code.

But what about our security?  Doesn’t that override these petty concerns of civil liberties?  This is the speech often being preached by people such as Karl Rove, Dick Cheney and Rush Limbaugh.  These arguments are inherently flawed.  In fact, this type of torture is likely to be counterproductive.  Torture is painful.  When people are being tortured they will tell you anything you want to hear in order to get you to stop.  As such the information is not particularly reliable.  A much more reliable route is using leverage (such as protecting the person’s family from repercussions).

A few months ago, I met a friend of a friend who was an Army interrogator in Iraq.  He worked for military intelligence, and actually was based at Abu Ghraib (apparently way after the incidents there)  I had to know if these tactics were really necessary, and produced vital information, so I asked him about them.  He told me what worked best was being friendly with informants, treating them as an equal and guaranteeing protection for their family.  He said that most informants would then be willing to cooperate after these sessions.

Now i’m not arguing that terrorist suspects are necessarily going to bend to kindness, that’s not very likely.  I am however arguing that violating our country’s 300 year old moral values is a lot more damaging long term than any short term gains achieved by using these techniques.  I wasn’t totally sure of this.. perhaps this interrogation method had prevented imminent terrorist attacks, Jack Bauer/24 style.  However this new article in the NY Times today clearly contradicts that belief and argument. Ali Soufan, an FBI agent, was intimately involved in the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, who I believe is one of the individuals that Cheney and Rove indicated had provided valuable information regarding terrorist attacks due to the new torture tactics.  Soufan debunks the unknown here, by pointing out how these tactics had the possibility of backfiring on the United States, along with the loss of our mantle as the world’s guardian of Human Rights. Soufan further claims that this information that extracted from Zubaydah could have been achieved in other ways.

Due to these revelations on the part of Soufan and other interrogators (most of whom appear to be against the tactics) I am glad the Obama administration has brought this stain on America’s reputation to light.  Release of these memos will allow the new administration, and the American people to regain their rightful role as a moral leader in the world once again.  That is, as long as we take action against the lawyers authorizing these gross breaches of human rights.

National Health Care

Just saw a great Frontline documentary on the crisis of healthcare in this country.  It amazes me how the Republicans can essentially ignore this as an issue in this country.  Frontline compares the 4 main types of systems that we could have here. Unfortunately 15% of the American population enjoys a healthcare system similar to people in Cambodia, or rural India.  Strange when you consider America spends the most out of any other country on healthcare, yet fails to take care of 15% of the population.  One upside of the economic downturn will be the increased clamor among the electorate for government to take some action on this issue, and dismiss those ridiculous rants about socialized medicine.

Concentrating on the REAL war on terrorism

Well here it is folks… Obama has decided to make the Afghanistan conflict, a sideshow during the Bush administration,  the focal point of his War on Terror.  Politico points this out here. This is the correct approach.  Contrary to some liberals (and libertarians) I believe that we need to pursue the fight in Afghanistan vigorously, which is what should have been done initially in 2001.  Over the past 6 years since we have invaded Iraq (unnecessarily I would argue), Afghanistan has been ignored.  We have not done enough to create economic opportunity for Afghans, nor to provide enough safe areas for the Karzai government to rebuild the country’s infrastructure.  The Karzai government itself is a mess, mired in corruption and failing to properly expand the government beyond the capital in Kabul.  For too long the past administration left Afghanistan behind to our NATO allies in the ISAF coalition, while concentrating on pacifying Iraq.  For some reason we forgot that the TERRORISTS CAME FROM AFGHANISTAN…. not IRAQ.  So if the main goal of our “War on Terror” was to get the people who carried out the attacks on 9/11 and Osama Bin Laden, why were we invading Iraq… and letting these same people get away by hiding out on the Afghanistan/Pakistan border.

More attention needs to be given to the region.  Pakistan is in civil and political strife, and cannot effectively police the rural areas on the Afghan border (nor does it really want to do this).  Our NATO allies are stretched (if they even fight at all), and our supply routes for our military are weak.  We are forced to rely on the unstable Pakistan regime (where our convoys have been repeatedly attacked) or, take favors from Russia (someone we probably don’t want to be in hock to).  However, the only way to fix this situation in the long term is to invest in infrastructure and economic development in Afghanistan itself.

The Obama plan takes a step in the right direction.  By concentrating on sending additional troops, first these 17k that were sent recently, this will give more stability to the country, and enhance our ability to prevent the Taliban/Al Qaeda from resurging.  The new troop increase concentrates on trainers for the Afghan army, an essential component to ensure stability over the long term.  Furthermore, the administration has finally concentrated on sending civilian experts.  These experts will train the Afghans in the building of infrastructure, irrigation, and ways to fight the corruption endemic in the government.  This is an essential force in helping to create a sustainable Afghan government (hopefully one that has a change of candidates to someone not related to the Karzai’s).  This increased focus on Afghanistan should prove essential in order to allow the administration to change course and try other things if the current plans are not effective.

The money and dialogue with Pakistan is also an important component towards securing the Taliban sympathizers on the Pakistan side of the border.  This is a good step to provide funding for Pakistan to assist them in supporting our goals in Afghanistan from their side of the border.

All in All this looks like a good step towards refocusing our efforts on actually catching the people who carried out 9/11, which is what should have been done over six years ago.

Financial Stimulus? What’s this going to Stimulate?

Okay, we can all agree that the economy is broken.  Consumers can’t spend (or won’t spend), businesses are laying off people by the tens of thousands and also aren’t investing or spending money.. who else can prop up the economy?  Government needs to pick up the slack.  We have reached the last resort here.  Government needs to step in with massive fiscal stimulus, and the current package is just not accomplishing this.  While Republicans are hemming and hawing about spending TOO much on fiscal stimulus (probably at least until they lose THEIR own jobs) and congressional Democrats are pushing a package full of pork.  I thought this package was supposed to be about infrastructure spending?  What happened to that. How many roads and rail networks are going to get built with 50 billion dollars (nationwide)?  This is clearly not enough investment.  For example, since I’m from Boston, I’ll reference the “Big Dig” project.  That project had a total price-tag of over $22 Billion!  And that project was for ONE city.  How much is 50 billion going to build nationwide, when our roads are falling apart and we need a large expansion in public transit development?  An increase in support for infrastructure spending is the right play here.  It will provide construction workers good paying jobs that are sorely needed in that industry (since they aren’t building homes anymore) where the work cannot be outsourced to some other country.  And, as a bonus, these buildings, roads and public transit will last another 50 years from now.  The downside is you are going to have a massive spike in debt (which maybe we wouldn’t be adding to if we hadn’t had tax cuts and two huge wars to pay for), but an overwhelming majority of economists agree that there is really no other option here.  The problem is that within the package, the infrastructure spending portion is way too small to stimulate the economy nationally.  We need a package at least over a trillion dollars, with at least 600 billion being dedicated to infrastructure spending alone.

However, I’m not going to knock some of the other things in the package.  Aid to states is essential.  Long term, if we want to make our economy strong again we need to fund education and health care; both of these areas will be drastically cut if money is not transferred to the states soon.  Clearly more funding needs to be dedicated to strengthen the minimal social safety net we have (which unfortunately does not include national health care coverage —yet).  People are losing their jobs, and are increasingly relying on unemployment insurance to make ends meet in hard times.  Furthermore, the money given to the poor will be spent NOW, rather than later.  People surviving on food stamps are not going to be socking this money away in the bank; they will be out there spending it as soon as they get it on daily needs.  This will further help stimulate the economy.  Finally, the energy infrastructure spending is sorely needed.  Our electricity grid is vulnerable to attack and inefficient at bringing new green energy where its needed.  The smart grid is something that will need to happen if we are going to move into the next phase of energy generation.  It’s about time this has been put on the national agenda.

All these things are worth doing; it’s just the infrastructure spending in the package needs to be increased.  I hope in the Senate the congressional delegations come to their senses and increase the spending on this aspect of the package.  However, this will be a difficult sell to Republicans, who would rather watch the economy collapse then have the government take on more debt.  Suddenly the party of excess for the past 8 years is now the penny pinching party of fiscal restraint.   That’s a bit ironic.

… Don’t even get me started on the continuing bank/TARP bailout.  We are now on the verge of nationalizing our country’s largest banks.  I could explain what I think, but Paul Krugman puts it very nicely in his opinion piece for the NY times.

A Great Analysis of the 2 Candidates’ Policies

Check it out here…

I thought it was fairly impartial.

A little background on Paulson’s Plan

Check it out here..

770 Point Drop in the Dow

Well here we go; this is what happens when politicians don’t act.  The market fell 770 points after the failure of the bailout bill in congress.  The bailout bill failure, which would have authorized 700 billion in money to buy distressed mortgage securities, resulted in a loss of 1.4 trillion today.  So by not authorizing the bill, we actually already spent the 700 billion.  The market is down 4.2 Trillion for the year in fact.  While there were issues with the bill (notably the lack of a provision allowing bankruptcy judges to rewrite mortgages), the longer we wait, the more risk of financial meltdown we incur.

Instead a bunch of libertarians on the Republican side are stuck in some laissez faire 1800’s mindset, with the belief that government should not intervene in the markets.  Socialism, they scream.. its unamerican!  Well, i’m pretty sure in the next month or so that this meltdown will start to affect the constituents in middle america.  Then people won’t be complaining about using government largesse to save the economy, protect jobs and allow us to continue the American way of life.  Let me paint a little picture… Banks are currently hoarding cash, as they need liquidity to cover losses in the mortgage securities.  This is filtering down into the greater economy as they no longer want to lend money to businesses as well as for home and car loans.  What short term loans they do make will be at very high interest rates. This is already occurring as we speak.  Once businesses cannot get short term credit, they will be unable to take out loans to pay payroll, or invest in their business.  This will force them to begin laying off employees – directly hitting the average American.

The contagion has now spread globally, with Asian and European markets taking a nosedive.  We began to see the effects in Europe as Fortis (a large Belgian institution) was partially nationalized, and a B&B a British bank collapsed and was taken over by the FSA.  It’s going to be a long road ahead; Congress MUST act.

Looking to our Nordic Friends… for economic help?

One thing I think I can never understand is the reluctance of our government to look at foreign models that would be applicable to our internal problems.  I would think it would make only perfect sense to look to a country (or countries) who had gone through a similar situation, applied a solution and had concrete results.  In all manner of disciplines from scientific research, corporation R&D and architecture; professionals apply their own twist on the ideas of others. Why not do the same in government?

Americans seem unable to force themselves to look to the achievements of others, applying the successful aspects, while learning from the mistakes that were made.  For example, in regard to healthcare, I’m sure there are many countries we could learn from when determining the most effective way to implement an all encompassing healthcare plan for our citizens.  We could look at the successful elements, implement those, and seek solutions to the elements that have not worked so well.  This same approach is also applicable to the current economic crisis in our country.  I’m not sure people understand the severity of what we face here.  Without a bailout of these rotten mortgage assets by the government, the financial system worldwide would steadily slide, financial firms falling like dominoes into bankruptcy and failure.  The government has stepped up quickly (although arguably they could have moved more quickly) to stop a collapse of our economy which would be on the level of the Great Depression.

Now, since we’ve established the necessity of having the government bail out these assets from the banks, we also need to make sure the taxpayers suffer as little loss, and take as little of the risk as possible.  Hmm, where could we look to a model in this situation?  Surely something similar has not happened before?  Obviously we should just make up a plan from scratch, maybe throw in some clauses in the bill that will attempt to limit some CEO from receiving a golden parachute.  Well, the answer is there is a model, a similar western country (albeit with a functioning comprehensive healthcare system for all, and one of the happiest populations in the world).  That country is Sweden!

Yes, Sweden, one of our Nordic friends, has previously undergone a similar financial crisis (although admittedly on a smaller scale) in the early 1990s.  Their banks became insolvent after rampant property investment… sound familiar?  The country did not just bail out the bad debts of the bank, they forced the banks to give them equity in the bank, which made the government an owner.  As a result this may have hurt the shareholders, but this gave the government and hence the taxpayers, a better chance of getting paid off.  Shareholders took the risk of investing, and should pay the price, not the taxpayers.  After the takeover, as the distressed assets were sold, the taxpayers were paid with the profits.  Additionally, the government received further income from the sale of its shares on the market later on.  As a result, the bailout ended up costing the government almost 0% of its GDP.

Just another example where the Congress should not be so shortsighted, and beholden to financial companies.  These companies made the mistake, they should pay the price for the taxpayers to bail them out.  Throwing in some barriers to golden parachutes wouldn’t hurt either.  Hopefully, the Congress will look to our Swedish friends to help protect the American taxpayer.

More Gov’t Regulation – isn’t this against conservative principles?

I find it quite hard to believe how McCain can rail against the status quo in Washington, when he is effectively part of the establishment. He rails about the lack of financial regulation… yet he has been one of the biggest proponents of deregulation in Congress. here. First he proposed the deregulation of the S&L’s in the 1980s, leading to a massive government bailout in the early 1990s (one in which McCain was himself implicated in in the Keating Five Investigation). Then he helped push the deregulation of the energy industry, which directly led to the Enron debacle and the California Energy Crisis.  I don’t see how one can simply reverse all their positions on the subject, and call for more regulation. here. Sounds like a flip flop to me.  In fact McCain has blatantly made clear that he is unable to master economic principles, and that the “fundamentals of the economy” are strong.  I think its time for people to realize that the Republicans are not the party of market prosperity and fiscal restraint anymore.  The present administration has certainly made this clear.  The largest expansion in entitlements and government spending in many years, and the creation of one of the largest bureaucracies (the DHS).  Economic Republicans (which make up the majority in SD) seem to want to ignore the economic damage the present administration has inflicted on the country. ( when you have an 80 billion dollar war to fund, you probably don’t want to cut taxes and pay for it on a credit card).. this is simple economics.. even a high school student could understand it.   The same situation occurred in the 1980s under Reagan (culminating in the recession in the early 1990s).  While things might have been roaring in the 1980s, this was all financed through defense deficit spending. ( Maybe if we are going to spend money on government programs, they should actually help its citizenry and the economy – such as through education and health spending).  This massive deficit caused the economy to collapse into recession in the early 1990s, just as it has today.

Clearly more regulation in the markets is necessary.  Time and time again when the government reverts to a laissez faire attitude to business and the markets over speculation and corporate irresponsibility results.  This has happened throughout history, from the panics of the 1800s through the Great Depression and still holds true today.  Perhaps if we had had more government oversight earlier, then the taxpayers would not have to fund the massive bailouts that have been occurring on a daily basis in the past week.  Give the SEC and the Fed the tools necessary to carry out their jobs, and the economy will flourish again.