We don’t need no stinkin’ principles

I think pieces like this, which analyze the incoherent, inconsistent public positions of candidates, in this case Newt Gingrich (with an honorable mention to Mitt Romney's "ever-changing stripes"), while valuable in calling bullshit in very specific terms on bullshit artists masquerading as public servants, miss the larger point.

If politicians' words and deeds seem to be connected more to the prevailing political winds than to the deeply held beliefs of the speaker, maybe there's a reason for that. Maybe it's time to abandon the notion that these politicians apply their deeply held principles and values to their public utterances and policy positions, or that such deeply held principles and values even exist. Rather than respond with shock and outrage every time a politician does or says something that contradicts what they have done and said in the past, we should look for a metric that more consistently explains (and could predict) what we see. Maybe the only underlying political philosophy at work here is winning, and the only relevant deeply held values are those of the wealthy individuals and institutions that can make or break the political ambitions of these aspiring lapdogs.

If the trainwreck George W. Bush administration was good for anything, it was for the development of a powerful sense of political cynicism. That administration's polices were widely criticized as being dumb because they did nothing to help the vast majority of Americans (99 percent, according to some estimates), let alone mankind. But those policies appear dumb only if one assumes they are actually designed to help the vast majority of Americans and/or mankind. If one assumes that those same policies were designed to move vast amounts of money into the hands of the wealthiest humans on earth, then one can't possibly argue with the ruthless effectiveness of those policies.

Here's a handy rule of thumb: If politicians have to stop to think before discussing one of their "deeply held values," it ain't all that deeply held. Peoples' principles don't have to be written on note cards (or their palms) to be remembered. And unless you are very rich, stop assuming that politicians care about you. Their individual utterances might change, but the class of people that benefits from their actions doesn't.

And those stories that call bullshit would be more valuable if they focused less on the bullshit and more on who benefits.

Cross-posted at Suburban Guerilla.

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The angry rich

Remember what I've said over and over in this space? That Republicans (and Blue Dogs) don't give a shit about you unless you're rich? Krugman:

The spectacle of high-income Americans, the world’s luckiest people, wallowing in self-pity and self-righteousness would be funny, except for one thing: they may well get their way. Never mind the $700 billion price tag for extending the high-end tax breaks: virtually all Republicans and some Democrats are rushing to the aid of the oppressed affluent.

You see, the rich are different from you and me: they have more influence. It’s partly a matter of campaign contributions, but it’s also a matter of social pressure, since politicians spend a lot of time hanging out with the wealthy. So when the rich face the prospect of paying an extra 3 or 4 percent of their income in taxes, politicians feel their pain — feel it much more acutely, it’s clear, than they feel the pain of families who are losing their jobs, their houses, and their hopes.

And when the tax fight is over, one way or another, you can be sure that the people currently defending the incomes of the elite will go back to demanding cuts in Social Security and aid to the unemployed. America must make hard choices, they’ll say; we all have to be willing to make sacrifices.

But when they say “we,” they mean “you.” Sacrifice is for the little people.

This column brings to mind a post by Athenae that's linked to at Susie's place:

In the second place, in the second paragraph, really. You're really going to tell starving children to go blow because you're mad about your taxes. That's a thing you're going to do. The starving children, natch, having all kinds of influence in Congress, given how everybody's falling all over themselves to help THEM. Those are the people who can do exactly dick about your tax sitch, so I'm sure your brave moral stand will SO TOTALLY get noticed by our decision makers. Shit, stop giving money to politicians if you don't like how they behave, but Toys for Tots did nothing to you to deserve your contempt, and you're doing plenty to earn mine.

Of course, the starving children have no influence on Congress because the only thing congresspeople care about is getting re-elected, that is to say, their own asses. Republican Rep. Steve King of Iowa, for example, would rather shut down the federal government than alienate what he sees as a bumper crop of new potential supporters in the tea baggers.

“We must not blink,” he said, noting that money cannot be spent without the House voting to pass it. “If the House says no, it’s no.”

Their new tea party backers won’t tolerate anything less than a full repeal of the health care law, he said.

“They will leave us if we go wobbly,” he said. “I am worried about that, but that’s why I think it’s got to be a blood oath.”

No word from King about what might happen if the entire nation goes "wobbly" because the House forces a shutdown of the government. But apparently Republican Rep. Steve King of Iowa is not "worried about that." Apparently Republican Rep. Steve King of Iowa is more "worried about" getting Republican Rep. Steve King of Iowa re-elected.

Country first, y'all.

How they voted

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
I Give Up - 9/11 Responders Bill
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on HR 847 to provide health care to 9/11 rescue workers.

Because not everyone will click through to see the shameful list of assholes, here are the 159 no voters. Of these, 155 are Republicans and four are Democrats (the Democrats are in bold).

Aderholt, Alexander, Austria, Bachmann, Bachus, Barrett (SC), Bartlett, Barton (TX), Bean, Berry, Biggert, Bilbray, Bilirakis, Bishop (UT), Blackburn, Blunt, Boehner, Bonner, Bono Mack, Boozman, Boustany, Brady (TX), Bright, Broun (GA), Brown (SC), Brown-Waite Ginny, Buchanan, Burgess, Burton (IN), Buyer, Calvert, Camp, Campbell, Cantor, Capito, Carter, Cassidy, Castle, Chaffetz, Coble, Coffman (CO), Cole, Conaway, Cooper, Crenshaw, Culberson, Davis (KY), Diaz-Balart L., Diaz-Balart M., Djou, Dreier, Duncan, Ehlers, Emerson, Fallin, Flake, Fleming, Forbes, Fortenberry, Foxx, Franks (AZ), Gallegly, Garrett (NJ), Gerlach, Gingrey (GA), Gohmert, Goodlatte, Granger, Graves (GA), Graves (MO), Hall (TX), Harper, Hastings (WA), Heller, Hensarling, Herger, Hunter, Inglis, Issa, Jenkins, Johnson (IL), Johnson Sam, Jordan (OH), King (IA), Kingston, Kline (MN), Lamborn, Latham, LaTourette, Latta, Lee (NY), Lewis (CA),Linder, Lucas, Luetkemeyer, Lummis, Lungren Daniel E., Mack, Manzullo, Marchant, McCaul, McClintock, McCotter, McHenry, McKeon, McMorris Rodgers, Mica, Miller (FL), Miller Gary, Myrick, Neugebauer, Nunes, Olson, Paul, Paulsen, Pence, Petri, Pitts, Platts, Poe (TX), Posey, Price (GA), Putnam, Rehberg, Reichert, Roe (TN), Rogers (AL), Rogers (KY), Rogers (MI), Rohrabacher, Rooney, Ros-Lehtinen, Roskam, Royce, Ryan (WI), Scalise, Schmidt, Schock, Sensenbrenner, Sessions, Shimkus, Shuster, Simpson, Smith (NE), Smith (TX), Stearns, Sullivan, Terry, Thompson (PA), Thornberry, Tiberi, Turner, Upton, Walden, Westmoreland, Whitfield, Wilson (SC), Wittman, Wolf.

The Democrats used a procedural tactic that prevented Republicans from adding all kinds of bullshit, pro-wealthy amendments to the very popular bill, which would have made it all but impossible for Democrats to vote against said amendments. But that tactic also requires a 2/3 vote for the bill to pass. So even though the vote was 255-159 in favor, the bill required 285 votes to pass. Sure, the tactic made it harder to get the bill passed, but getting Republicans to do the right thing shouldn't be so hard. This bill was a slam-dunk, but without amendments giving away what's left of the national treasury to the already super-rich, this bill just didn't seem like a good idea to Republicans. It's just more evidence that, unless you have obscene amounts of money, Republicans don't give a shit about you.

The procedural tactic isn't the reason the bill didn't pass. The 159 assholes who voted against it are the reason it didn't pass.

Financial reform

Rolling Stone examines the legislative process that produced the financial reform that the Obama administration is so proud of.

“The bill Congress just passed doesn't go after the criminals where they live, or even make what they're doing a crime; all it does is put a baseball bat under the bed and add an extra lock or two on the doors. It's a hack job, a C-minus effort. See you at the next financial crisis.”

It’s not a C-minus effort. Congress didn’t pass meaningful reform because they weren’t trying to pass meaningful reform. They were trying to pass some bullshit that looked like reform to a public that doesn’t really understand what’s going on and is barely paying attention anyway. They accomplished what they set out to do.

The law does exactly what it is designed to do: It causes no serious threat to the profits of our representatives' biggest financial sponsors, and it gave Democrats something, anything, they can take back to the voters and say, "Look, we reined in Wall Street, we passed financial reform!" In that regard, it's no different than George Bush's Medicare "reform" -- it improves nothing, but allows for lots of self-congratulation.

Of course, it also gives Republicans something they can point to were they to argue that "Democrat" leadership is ineffective. And they'd be right. But, for Republicans, even this Band-Aid on a bullet wound is too much fettering of financial markets. Rather than argue -- correctly -- that this law will do nothing to prevent future financial meltdowns that taxpayers will have to clean up, the GOP will argue that this Marxist-style takeover of our uniquely American free-enterprise system must be repealed, along with healthcare reform, Social Security and, perhaps, the right to vote and own property.

I had a post label that I used for so many Bush-era efforts, "It Just Looks Like Results," that I used when describing the many, many photo-ops and half-assed efforts that replaced actual governing in this country from 2001-2008. Looks like it's time to dust off that label, because the change we were promised during the campaign just ain't coming. Sure, the Obama administration is light years better than the alternative that Republicans half-heartedly threw out there ("OK, the election is unwinnable but, hey, we gotta run somebody, and we're not about to waste a real candidate" [think Bob Dole in 1996 and Lynn Swann's running for the PA governor's seat in 2006]), but the real power in this country doesn't change every four years or even every eight years. It's an entrenched aristocracy whose only interest is maintaining its wealth and power. And it never faces re-election. If Obama were the threat to the status quo that he appeared to be during the campaign, he never would have gotten out of the primaries. Ask Hillary Clinton and John Edwards how the media covered their candidacy.

If you still think real change is possible working within the system, click the link above and see what the system did to the financial reform bill.

ACORN cleared

Just so you know.

When a duo of right-wing provocateurs posing as a pimp and prostitute released selectively-edited videos trying to impugn the community activist group ACORN, both Democrats and Republicans condemned the organization.

Congress then voted to cut off federal funding for the group (a decision that was later ruled unconstitutional). Following negative press and Congress' vote, ACORN effectively disbanded Apr. 1 and reorganized under new names.

But a just-issued report by the Government Accountability Office that reviewed ACORN's federal funding at the behest of Congress found little grist for the mill for politicians or right-wing bloggers looking to bash the now-defunct advocacy group for the poor.

The 38-page report surveyed over 31 federal agencies, probing how ACORN used federal funds and whether adequate controls on spending existed.

The report found no evidence of fraud, lax oversight or misuse of federal funds.

In fact, the report discovered that ACORN had adequately accounted for spending $40 million worth of major and minor grants awarded by the federal government to the group since 2005 to combat a variety of problems afflicting poor Americans, including lead poisoning, housing discrimination and lack of adequate job training.

The preliminary report on the group’s funding also found that of the grants that warranted audits no irregularities in spending were found. Smaller grantees said that oversight was adequate as well.

Of eight major grants awarded ACORN by the federal government the report found fault with one, a grant by Neighbor Works.

“Neighbor Works determined that ACORN Housing Corporation had not provided a description of what it planned to accomplish under the grant, as required. After Neighbor Works brought this to the attention of ACORN Housing Corporation officials, these officials subsequently provided the documentation. Oversight of sub-awards is generally delegated to grantees,” the report states.

Of fifteen sub-grants awarded ACORN by a variety of federal agencies, the report did not find any irregularities.

Along with the preliminary finding, the federal agency did a comprehensive review of all criminal investigations by the Department of Justice and federal Inspector General’s since 2005. [...]

The agency also found the Federal Election Commission had closed all investigations into voter fraud by the group.

Of corurse, that still leaves open the question about the motives of the "right-wing provocateurs posing as a pimp and prostitute" and their financial backers. Do they hate poor people, programs that work to help poor people, or the effective use of federal funding?

The best healthcare in the world

This nauseating affront to basic human decency is brought to you by the free-market, for-profit healthcare system.

Kyler Van Nocker’s story shows that even 5-year-old kids are not exempt from this insurance company abuse. Van Nocker has neuroblastoma, which is a very rare form of childhood cancer that targets the nervous system and creates tumors throughout the body.

Due to successful treatment in 2007, Van Nocker’s cancer went into remission, giving him 12 months of pain-free life. Unfortunately, in Sept. 2008, the cancer returned, and Van Nocker was once again in need of treatment. Unfortunately, his health insurer, HealthAmerica, refused to pay for one form of treatment doctors believe could save his life (MIBG treatment) because they consider it “investigational/experimental” since it has yet to be approved by the FDA.

Yet in April 2008, the insurer approved cheaper treatment for Van Nocker that was also “experimental,” prompting Philadelphia Daily News columnist Ronnie Polaneczky to ask, “So why, pray tell, is HealthAmerica playing the ‘experimental therapy’ card in the case of the MIBG treatment Kyler now needs? Gee, money couldn’t have anything to do with the decision, could it?”

And remember: this child has health insurance. But in 21st century America, there is little difference between having and needing to use health insurance and having no coverage at all.

I have a feeling the revolution just got moved up a day, and that Kyler Van Nocker’s family and friends have just been "radicalized."

Cadmium

Corporations manufacture items in China and then ship them to the United States to sell rather than just make and sell them here for a reason: It's cheaper. They can pay the kind of exploitive wages that would get them thrown in prison here, and they can use whatever cheap shit they want in their products. Sure, the American public finally caught on to lead and now manufacturers are being forced to phase it out, but they were selling their lead-laced shit for years. They had a great, extremely profitable run.

Now they've turned to some shit that's so fucking toxic that we may one day look back fondly on the days when they were poisoing us with something as relatively benign as lead. Say hello to cadmium.

Barred from using lead in children's jewelry because of its toxicity, some Chinese manufacturers have been substituting the more dangerous heavy metal cadmium in sparkling charm bracelets and shiny pendants being sold throughout the United States, an Associated Press investigation shows.

The most contaminated piece analyzed in lab testing performed for the AP contained a startling 91 percent cadmium by weight. The cadmium content of other contaminated trinkets, all purchased at national and regional chains or franchises, tested at 89 percent, 86 percent and 84 percent by weight. The testing also showed that some items easily shed the heavy metal, raising additional concerns about the levels of exposure to children.

Cadmium is a known carcinogen. Like lead, it can hinder brain development in the very young, according to recent research. [...]

Some of the most troubling test results were for bracelet charms sold at Walmart, at the jewelry chain Claire's and at a dollar store. High amounts of cadmium also were detected in "The Princess and The Frog" movie-themed pendants.

"There's nothing positive that you can say about this metal. It's a poison," said Bruce A. Fowler, a cadmium specialist and toxicologist with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. On the CDC's priority list of 275 most hazardous substances in the environment, cadmium ranks No. 7.

Jewelry industry veterans in China say cadmium has been used in domestic products there for years. Zinc, the metal most cited as a replacement for lead in imported jewelry being sold in the United States, is a much safer and nontoxic alternative. But the jewelry tests conducted for AP, along with test findings showing a growing presence of cadmium in other children's products, demonstrate that the safety threat from cadmium is being exported.

A patchwork of federal consumer protection regulations does nothing to keep these nuggets of cadmium from U.S. store shelves. If the products were painted toys, they would face a recall. If they were industrial garbage, they could qualify as hazardous waste. But since there are no cadmium restrictions on jewelry, such items are sold legally.

While the agency in charge of regulating children's products, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, has cracked down on the dangers posed by lead and products known to have killed children, such as cribs, it has never recalled an item for cadmium — even though it has received scattered complaints based on private test results for at least the past two years.

There is no definitive explanation for why children's jewelry manufacturers, virtually all from China in the items tested, are turning to cadmium. But a reasonable double whammy looms: Cadmium prices have plummeted as factories grasp for substitutes now that lead is heavily regulated under the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008.

Nope, no definitive explantion. But do you think that "it's cheaper" reason I mentioned above might have something to do with it?

But it looks like federal regulators have taken notice.

Federal and state watchdogs opened a new front Monday in the campaign to
keep poisons out of Chinese imports, warning Asian manufacturers not to
substitute other toxins for lead in children's jewelry and beginning an inquiry
into cadmium found in the products around the United States.

Regulators reacted swiftly to an Associated Press investigation reporting that some Chinese manufacturers have been using cadmium in place of lead in children's charm bracelets and pendants, sometimes at extraordinarily high levels. Congress clamped down on lead in those products in 2008, but cadmium is even more harmful.

I just hope they plan to do more than warn.

Their real goal

with programs like NCLB, "issues" like gay marriage, networks like Fox News and amendments like this is to try to keep us ignorant. The less informed and more distracted from the real issues we are, the more crimes they can get away with.

Just a reminder

Of what kind of amoral, thieving shitbags we are up against in the healthcare fight.

This committee has concluded an investigation into the practice of health insurance rescission, and results are alarming. Over the past five years, almost 20,000 individuals, insurance policyholders have had their policies rescinded by three insurance companies who will testify today; Assurant, UnitedHealth Group, and WellPoint.

From a review of case files, the committee has identified a variety of abuses by insurance companies, including conducting investigation with an eye toward rescission in every case in which a policyholder submits a claim relating to leukemia, breast cancer, or any of a list of 1,400 serious or costly medical conditions. Rescinding policies based on alleged failure to disclose a health condition entirely unrelated to the policyholder's current medical problem.

Rescinding policies based on policyholders' failure to disclose a medical condition that their doctors never told them about. Rescinding policies based on innocent mistakes by policyholders in their applications. And rescinding coverage for all families for -- excuse me, rescinding coverage for all members of a family based on a failure to disclose medical condition of one family member.

The investigation has also found that at least one insurance company, WellPoint, evaluated employee performance based in part on the amount of money its employees saved the company through retroactive rescissions of health insurance policies. According to documents obtained by the committee, one WellPoint official was awarded a perfect score of five for exceptional performance based on having saved the company nearly $10 million through rescissions.

These practices reveal that when an insurance company receives a claim for an expensive, life-saving treatment, some of them will look for a way, any way, to avoid having to pay for it. This is eerily similar to what we found last year in our investigation of long term care health insurance policies where unscrupulous sales people would sell policies to seniors, then change or revoke the policies once the enrollee was locked into a plan and making payments.

The companies who engage in these rescission practices argue that they are entirely legal, and to an extent they are. But that goes against the whole point of insurance. When times are good, the insurance company is happy to sign you up and take your money in the form of premiums. But when times are bad, and you are afflicted with cancer or some other life-threatening disease, it is supposed to honor its commitment and stand with you in your time of need.

Instead, some of these companies use a technicality to justify breaking its promise, at a time when patients are too weak to fight back.

Some people offer firsthand accounts of their dealings with their insurance companies:

In its rescission letter, Blue Cross said it would have never accepted me for coverage if it had known that I had polycystic ovaries. This letter was the first time I had ever heard about this condition.

I later learned that polycystic ovaries, or PCOS, as it is known, is a diagnosis of exclusion and very difficult to prove. Doctors often proceed on suspicions of a person having it without actually having proven it.

This is what happened in my case. My doctor suspected I might have PCOS, wrote it down in her notes, then told me she was prescribing glucophage for weight management. I never knew what she wrote down in her notes because she never told me.

After I was rescinded, I had two of my doctors write letters to Blue Cross telling them this, but they didn't care. They just wrote back that they were upholding their decision to rescind.

After being rescinded, I showed my original application to my sister and her husband, both radiologists, to ask them what I could have possibly done wrong in filling out the application. They felt that the application was worded in such a way as to be purposefully confusing and that it asked the same question in multiple ways to trip people up. I'm a college graduate, and no dummy, and I still couldn't make sense of Blue Cross' tricky application.

The worst part about my rescission is that I have been unable to get insurance anywhere else. I applied for individual insurance through Blue Shield. But on their application, they ask if the applicant has ever had insurance rescinded. When they learned that I had, they informed me that they would not accept me for coverage.

Every insurance company asks if you've ever had health care coverage rescinded. For the rest of my life I will never be able to get individual coverage again because of Blue Cross.

And

Can you imagine having to walk around with cancer growing in your body with no insurance? It's the most terrible thing in the world to not have anybody to turn to, not have anywhere to go. So I just can't even say how bad it was.

The sad thing is Blue Cross and Blue Shield took my high premiums the very first time I ever had a claim, the very first time, and was suspected of cancer. They took action against me searching high and low. They turned over every single thing they could in my medical history to pull out anything that would cause any suspicion on me, so they didn't have to pay for my cancer.

Contact your representatives and tell them you aren't going to accept snake oil disguised as meaningful healthcare reform.

Water

Hey all you stupid small-government idiots: Check out the results of relieving polluters of the heavy burden of government regulation.

Jennifer Hall-Massey knows not to drink the tap water in her home near Charleston, W.Va.

In fact, her entire family tries to avoid any contact with the water. Her youngest son has scabs on his arms, legs and chest where the bathwater — polluted with lead, nickel and other heavy metals — caused painful rashes. Many of his brother’s teeth were capped to replace enamel that was eaten away.

Neighbors apply special lotions after showering because their skin burns. Tests show that their tap water contains arsenic, barium, lead, manganese and other chemicals at concentrations federal regulators say could contribute to cancer and damage the kidneys and nervous system.

“How can we get digital cable and Internet in our homes, but not clean water?” said Mrs. Hall-Massey, a senior accountant at one of the state’s largest banks.

She and her husband, Charles, do not live in some remote corner of Appalachia. Charleston, the state capital, is less than 17 miles from her home.

“How is this still happening today?” she asked.

When Mrs. Hall-Massey and 264 neighbors sued nine nearby coal companies, accusing them of putting dangerous waste into local water supplies, their lawyer did not have to look far for evidence. As required by state law, some of the companies had disclosed in reports to regulators that they were pumping into the ground illegal concentrations of chemicals — the same pollutants that flowed from residents’ taps.

But state regulators never fined or punished those companies for breaking those pollution laws.

This pattern is not limited to West Virginia. Almost four decades ago, Congress passed the Clean Water Act to force polluters to disclose the toxins they dump into waterways and to give regulators the power to fine or jail offenders. States have passed pollution statutes of their own. But in recent years, violations of the Clean Water Act have risen steadily across the nation, an extensive review of water pollution records by The New York Times found.

In the last five years alone, chemical factories, manufacturing plants and other workplaces have violated water pollution laws more than half a million times. The violations range from failing to report emissions to dumping toxins at concentrations regulators say might contribute to cancer, birth defects and other illnesses.

However, the vast majority of those polluters have escaped punishment. State officials have repeatedly ignored obvious illegal dumping, and the Environmental Protection Agency, which can prosecute polluters when states fail to act, has often declined to intervene.

But at least those more than half a million violations of the Clean Water Act have led to cost savings that have created thousands of jobs and stimulated the shit out of the economy.

Oh, right.

For a list of the polluters near you and the number of times they have violated the Clean Water Act without having to worry about the burden of fines, prison or any penalties whatsoever because government has wised up and gotten out of the way of free enterprise, click here. And I'm glad that the same government that looks the other way while corporations pollute our water is working hard to deny affordable healthcare to people sickened by filthy, toxic water. And to everyone else, for that matter.

And, in what I'm sure is a completely unrelated story:

Dangerous staph bacteria have been found in sand and water for the first time at five public beaches along the coast of Washington, and scientists think the state is not the only one with this problem.

The germ is MRSA, or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus — a hard-to-treat bug once rarely seen outside of hospitals but that increasingly is spreading in ordinary community settings such as schools, locker rooms and gyms.

I read the news yesterday and came away so depressed by the boundless greed in this country that is completely untempered by even the slightest grain of human decency and compassion. The health insurance industry is spending millions and working tirelessly to deny Americans access to affordable health insurance that won't be canceled the moment they need it, the Supreme Court is about to make it even easier for corporations to tighten their grip on elected officials, and polluters are poisioning our fucking water to save a few bucks while regulators yawn.

With everything that's going on, I am starting to think that raising a family in these conditions is simply irresponsible. And it pisses me off that I might have to leave my fucking country -- MY country -- in order to raise my family in a secure, healthful environment. People who used to say, "If that happens, I'm moving to Canada" used to sound like crackpots. Now they sound like pragmatists.

With all due respect to the late President Kennedy, when is it OK to ask what your country can do for you?

Palin punts

Sarah Palin has decided to mark the Independence Day weekend by reducing the amount of ignorant public officials concerned more about special interests and their own net worth and electability than the welfare of their constituents. She accomplished this by resigning as governor of Alaska.

I imagine this is a dark day for stand-up comics everywhere.

But seriously folks, the speculation that she's resigning in order to run for president in 2012 doesn't hold water. She ran for VP last year while being governor. And the senior citizen she ran with last year kept his day job while running for president (granted he neglected the shit out of said day job), so why couldn't she? Why wouldn't a candidate want to bring the prestige of a governorship to a presidential campaign? I have to think some serious shit is about to hit the fan. Her complaint about investigations of “all sorts of frivolous ethics violations” is telling. Maybe the latest ethics violation isn't so frivolous (Perhaps she meant to say that the investigations, not the ethics violations, were frivolous, but perhaps not).

It's not easy for a governor and former vice presidential candidate's sudden resignation under mysterious circumstances to fly "under the radar," but Palin's announcement at the beginning of a three-day weekend marking a national holiday looks like that's what she was trying to do. Between the long weekend and the memorial service for Michael Jackson, the media may never get around to this story.

And while she is probably pissed off about the recent Vanity Fair article about her and her conduct during the 2008 presidential campaign, it's unlikely she would resign over something like that. You don't emerge from a vice presidential campaign with such thin skin.

The bottom line is that the American people are better off without a public official who apparently considers some ethics violations frivolous. And we are better off without an ignorant blank slate who will say anything, and support anything, to get elected.

UPDATE: The "frivolous" ethics violation in question.

Outgoing Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is facing yet another ethics complaint — the 18th against her and the very thing that helped to prompt her resignation.

The latest complaint alleges she abused her office by accepting a salary and using state staff while campaigning outside Alaska for the vice presidency. It's the third complaint filed against the Republican since she announced July 3 that she was stepping down.

50 games

off for Manny Ramirez, who has tested positive for HCG, AKA human chorionic gonadotropin. The drug is often used by people using human growth hormone (HGH) or testosterone, because when the body recognizes that it has excess testosterone, it shuts down its own natural production of the hormone.

HGH and testosterone, of course, often are used by athletes looking to artifically improve their performance because they enhance strength and muscle growth.

Like Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, this is another case of a probable Hall of Famer who now might not get in. But I don't suppose many of these players think that far ahead. For them, it's often about the next huge contract, which is ironic because why would someone who is already rich jeapordize their health and legacy for just more money? Would Bonds have had to take a job bagging grocieries if he had retired in 1997? Of course, given the way that baseball, the media and fans treated Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa in 1998, there was little reason for Bonds to think he would be tarnishing his image by using. The health effects he presumably knew about and disregarded.

Bonds has never tested positive (which, given the way the cheaters are always ahead of the testers and the weak-ass program baseball had previously, means nothing) and never admitted "knowingly" using, not even to the BALCO grand jury. Yet he has become the poster boy for baseball's steroid era (I'm not saying that's undeserved), and many Hall of Fame voters will refuse to vote to induct him. How then could these voters elect Clemens, McGwire, Jason Giambi, Gary Sheffield, Alex Rodriguez and now Manny?

What Manny's suspension tells us, along with the fact that MLB is finally, reluctantly serious about getting performance-enhancing drugs out of the game, is that the so-called "steroid era" is not over. What might help would be to get someone in the commissioner's office who is not an employee of the owners and free to act in the best interest of the game instead of his employers.

Stewart to Stanford: 'F you'

Starts at 7:05, after Stewart gets done ripping Rick Santelli and CNBC new ones.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

CNBC Gives Financial Advice

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Joke of the Day

UPDATE: Santelli claims in a blog post that his moronic rant was spontaneous, but he declined to be interviewed by the New York Times and CNBC canceled his appearance on The Daily Show.

'I was completely destroyed'

But what are the lives of children compared with sweet, sweet money?

For years, the juvenile court system in Wilkes-Barre operated like a conveyor belt: Youngsters were brought before judges without a lawyer, given hearings that lasted only a minute or two, and then sent off to juvenile prison for months for minor offenses.

The explanation, prosecutors say, was corruption on the bench.

In one of the most shocking cases of courtroom graft on record, two Pennsylvania judges have been charged with taking millions of dollars in kickbacks to send teenagers to two privately run youth detention centers.

“I’ve never encountered, and I don’t think that we will in our lifetimes, a case where literally thousands of kids’ lives were just tossed aside in order for a couple of judges to make some money,” said Marsha Levick, an attorney with the Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center, which is representing hundreds of youths sentenced in Wilkes-Barre.

Prosecutors say Luzerne County Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan took $2.6 million in payoffs to put juvenile offenders in lockups run by PA Child Care LLC and a sister company, Western PA Child Care LLC. The judges were charged on Jan. 26 and removed from the bench by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court shortly afterward.

No company officials have been charged, but the investigation is still going on.

The high court, meanwhile, is looking into whether hundreds or even thousands of sentences should be overturned and the juveniles’ records expunged.

Among the offenders were teenagers who were locked up for months for stealing loose change from cars, writing a prank note and possessing drug paraphernalia. Many had never been in trouble before. Some were imprisoned even after probation officers recommended against it.

Many appeared without lawyers, despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 1967 ruling that children have a constitutional right to counsel.

[...]

Many Pennsylvania counties contract with privately run juvenile detention centers, paying them either a fixed overall fee or a certain amount per youth, per day.

In Luzerne County, prosecutors say, Conahan shut down the county-run juvenile prison in 2002 and helped the two companies secure rich contracts worth tens of millions of dollars, at least some of that dependent on how many juveniles were locked up.

One of the contracts — a 20-year agreement with PA Child Care worth an estimated $58 million — was later canceled by the county as exorbitant.

The judges are accused of taking payoffs between 2003 and 2006.

But it's not like privatizing government functions leads to corruption of the system or anything.

Supporting the troops

Privatization and cronyism in action.

A Georgia man has filed a lawsuit against contractor KBR and its former parent company, Halliburton, saying the companies exposed everyone at Joint Base Balad in Iraq to unsafe water, food and hazardous fumes from the burn pit there.

[...]

“Plaintiff witnessed the open air burn pit in operation at Balad Air Force Base,” the lawsuit states. “On one occasion, he witnessed a wild dog running around base with a human arm in its mouth. The human arm had been dumped on the open air burn pit by KBR.”

[...]

The lawsuit states that KBR was required to comply with military standards for clean water, and monitor it. Eller accused KBR of not performing water quality tests and of not properly treating or chlorinating water, and said an audit by the Defense Department backs up his claim.

A report from Wil Granger, KBR’s water quality manager for Iraq, states that non-potable water used for showering was not disinfected. “This caused an unknown population to be exposed to potentially harmful water for an undetermined amount of time,” according to the report. The report also stated the problems occurred all across Iraq and were not confined to Balad.

The lawsuit states there was no formalized training for KBR employees in proper water operations, and the company maintained insufficient documentation about water safety. The suit notes that former KBR employees Ben Carter and Ken May testified at a congressional hearing in January 2006 that KBR used contaminated water from the Euphrates and Tigris rivers. Carter testified that he found the water polluted with sewage and that KBR did not chlorinate it.

The lawsuit states the swimming pools at Balad were also filled with unsafe water.

Eller also accused KBR of serving spoiled, expired and rotten food to the troops, as well as dishes that may have been contaminated with shrapnel.

“Defendants knowingly and intentionally supplied and served food that was well past its expiration date, in some cases over a year past its expiration date,” the lawsuit states. “Even when it was called to the attention of the KBR food service managers that the food was expired, KBR still served the food to U.S. forces.”

The food included chicken, beef, fish, eggs and dairy products, which caused cases of salmonella poisoning, according to the lawsuit.

“KBR prevented their employees from speaking with government auditors and hid employees from auditors by moving them from bases when an audit was scheduled,” the lawsuit states. “Any employees that spoke with auditors were sent to more dangerous locations in Iraq as punishment.”

The lawsuit also accuses KBR of shipping ice in mortuary trucks that “still had traces of body fluids and putrefied remains in them when they were loaded with ice. This ice was served to U.S. forces.”

Eller also accuses KBR of failing to maintain a medical incinerator at Joint Base Balad, which has been confirmed by two surgeons in interviews with Military Times about the Balad burn pit. Instead, according to the lawsuit and the physicians, medical waste, such as needles, amputated body parts and bloody bandages were burned in the open-air pit.

“Wild dogs in the area raided the burn pit and carried off human remains,” the lawsuit states. “The wild dogs could be seen roaming the base with body parts in their mouths, to the great distress of the U.S. forces.”

According to military regulations, medical waste must be burned in an incinerator to prevent anyone from breathing hazardous fumes.

“On at least one occasion, defendants were attempting to improperly dispose of medical waste at an open-air burn pit by backing a truck full of medical waste up to the pit and emptying the contents onto the fire,” the lawsuit states. “The truck caught fire. Defendants’ fraudulent actions were thereby discovered by the military.”

The lawsuit also states that the contractors burned old lithium batteries in the pits, “causing noxious and unsafe blue smoke to drift over the base.”

Military Times has received more than 100 letters from troops saying they were sickened by fumes from the burn pits, which burned plastics, petroleum products, rubber, dining-facility waste and batteries.

This is just more of the same from the administration that sent troops into combat with inadequate body armor and inadequately armored vehicles, and opposed Sen. Jim Webb's 21st Century GI Bill -- that is, before recognizing that opposition was politically damaging and a lost cause, and then took credit for passing the bill.

Indicted

Five-deferment Dick and Fredo.

A Willacy County grand jury under District Attorney Juan Angel Guerra returned multi-count indictments Monday against Vice President Dick Cheney, former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, plus several other public officials.

The indictment accuses Cheney and Gonzales of engaging in organized criminal activity. It criticizes Cheney's investment in the Vanguard Group, which holds interests in the private prison companies running the federal detention centers. It accuses Cheney of a conflict of interest and "at least misdemeanor assaults" on detainees by working through the prison companies.

Gonzales is accused of using his position while in office to stop an investigation into abuses at the federal detention centers.

Another indictment charges state Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr. with profiting from his public office by accepting honoraria from prison management companies.

Also indicted are state District Judges Janet Leal, state District Judge Migdalia Lopez, The GEO Group (formerly Wackenhut Corporation), former U.S. Attorney Mervyn Mosbacher, Gus Garza and Gilberto Lozano.

They all face a stream of criminal charges including abuse of office, profiting from office, and murder.

Stay tuned, this could get much more interesting.

UPDATE: Here's more, about immunity and jursidictional issues.

Personnel board?

You mean the personnel board that Palin had been trying for months to get to investigate the "troopergate" matter while refusing to cooperate with the state legislature's investigation, even going so far as to file an ethics complaint against herself, thus giving her the ability to end the investigation by withdrawing the complaint or simply refusing to cooperate? That personnel board?

Big fucking deal.

Voter fraud

For those Republicans looking for cases of voter fraud in battleground states, the chairman of the Penn Hills (Pa.) School Board believes he has found one.

Former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum's right to vote in Penn Hills has been challenged -- and election officials will not count his absentee ballot (or that of his wife) until the matter is resolved, Allegheny County Elections Department director Mark Wolosik confirmed.

Erin Vecchio, chairman of the Penn Hills School Board and chair of the Penn Hills Democratic Party, says she challenged the Santorums' right to vote in Pennsylvania this morning because they really live in Virginia.

Vecchio, who has had a long-running dispute with Santorum over his residency, says the former senator and his family live in "an undisclosed location" in northern Virginia and that his attempt to vote here is "voter fraud."

This stems from a dispute over whether the Penn Hills School District should foot the bill for Santorum's children to attend a cyber charter school while the family lived in Virginia. Read all about it, and about Ricky's efforts to mischaracterize the controversy in the run-up to the ass kicking he took in the '06 election, here.

Enemies of democracy

The people responsible for this, and the people who benefit from it.

A phony State Board of Elections flier advising Republicans to vote on Nov. 4 and Democrats on Nov. 5 is being circulated in several Hampton Roads localities, according to state elections officials.

In fact, Election Day, for voters of all political stripes, remains Nov. 4.

The somewhat official-looking flier - it features the state board logo and the state seal - is dated Oct. 24 and indicates that "an emergency session of the General Assembly has adopted the follwing (sic) emergency regulations to ease the load on local electorial (sic) precincts and ensure a fair electorial process."

The four-paragraph flier concludes with: "We are sorry for any inconvenience this may cause but felt this was the only way to ensure fairness to the complete electorial process."

No emergency action has been taken by the General Assembly. It is not in session and lacks the authority to change the date of a federal election.

State Board of Election officials today said they are aware of the flier but disavowed any connection to it.

"It's not even on our letterhead; they just copied the logo from our Web site," said agency staffer Ryan Enright, noting the flier has been forwarded to State Police for investigation as a possible incident of voter intimidation.

This tactic isn't new, but every time it happens, it reveals Republicans as the enemies of Democracy that they are. Republicans do things like this for the same reason they vilify organizations like ACORN: They have no interest in the will of the people or in seeing that all Americans have a voice in the democratic process. They would rather suppress the voices of people who don't support them in order to protect their own positions of wealth, power and privilege.

And that folks, is fascism.