January 24th, 2006
General Hayden, officer in charge of NSA warrentless spying program:
The standard laid out by General Hayden - a “reasonable basis to believe” - is lower than “probably cause,” [sic] the standard used by the special court created by Congress to handle surveillance involving foreign intelligence.
The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
The Bush Administration has just admitted that this program does not meet Constitutional requirements. To argue that this program is Constitutional, the Bush Administration must now argue that the President’s authority supersedes even the explicit text of the Constitution. They must argue that they can not only override the law but the also Constitution itself.
That is an argument that inevitably leads to a President with the powers of a dictator.
Categories: Legal Issues, Politics |
6 Comments
January 24th, 2006
There is no other way to describe this:
At a time when energy prices and industry profits are soaring, the federal government collected little more money last year than it did five years ago from the companies that extracted more than $60 billion in oil and gas from publicly owned lands and coastal waters.
Shifting Numbers on Price Reports (January 23, 2006)
If royalty payments in fiscal 2005 for natural gas had risen in step with market prices, the government would have received about $700 million more than it actually did, a three-month investigation by The New York Times has found.
… As a result, the nation’s taxpayers, collectively, the biggest owner of American oil and gas reserves, have missed much of the recent energy bonanza.
The disparities in gas prices parallel those uncovered just five years ago in a wave of scandals involving royalty payments for oil. From 1998 to 2001, a dozen major companies, while admitting no wrongdoing, paid a total of $438 million to settle charges that they had fraudulently understated their sale prices for oil.
Since then, the government has tightened its rules for oil payments. But with natural gas, the Bush administration recently loosened the rules and eased its audits intended to uncover cheating.
700 million would buy a lot of body armor. The Bush Administration made a conscious decision to weaken auditing of companies leasing natural resources rights from the American people. As a direct result of this policy, oil and gas companies are paying less to the American people than they actually should. This is happening during a time when natural resource companies are experiencing record or near record profits and at a time when the US government is fighting an expensive war and running record or near record deficits.
But this is the Bush Administration in a nutshell: always, always, always put the pocketbook of its corporate and ultra-rich backers ahead of the good of the country. The Medicare bill is a disaster because it bows to corporate pressure and prevents the government form buying drugs in bulk and forces participants to choose a private plan to belong to. Despite the higher than expected costs of the Iraq war, Bush and the House GOP are intent on making permanent the tax cuts that disproportionately benefit corporations and the wealthiest Americans. And now we find out that the Bush Administration has deliberately created a situation in which it is easy to cheat the American people. There is no excuse for such behavior.
And, apparently, there is no limit to the Bush Administration’s appetite for it.
Categories: Economics, Politics |
5 Comments
January 24th, 2006
Ezra points to this contest where you can try to save the US Healthcare system in 250 words or less. Nothing like reasoned debate, eh? Fortunately, though, he also links to what should be the winning entry, even if it doesn’t know it yet: VA for everyone.
Inpatient care received a rating of 83 on a 100-point scale; outpatient care got a rating of 80. In comparison, a similar survey of patients receiving private care found they rated their satisfaction at 73 for inpatient care and 75 for outpatient care.
Nicholson attributed the high ratings to the changes in the system, such as implementation of electronic records to reduce the risk of errors.
“Our system has become not only much more efficient, but safer,” Nicholson said.
The VA is a completely government run system, existing almost entirely outside of the fractured American medical system. The VA is also very cost effective:
The system runs circles around Medicare in both cost and quality. Unlike Medicare, it’s allowed by law to negotiate for deep drug discounts, and does. Unlike Medicare, it provides long-term nursing home care. And it demonstrably delivers some of the best, if not the best, quality health care in the United States with amazing efficiency. Between 1999 and 2003, the number of patients enrolled in the VHA system increased by 70 percent, yet funding (not adjusted for inflation) increased by only 41 percent. So the VHA has not only become the health care industry’s best quality performer, it has done so while spending less and less on each patient. Decreasing cost and improving quality go hand and hand in industries like autos and computers—but in health care, such a relationship virtually unheard of. The more people we can get into the VHA, the more efficient and effective the American health-care system will be.
The VA is more cost effective than private health care and out performs private hospitals in terms of effectiveness and customer satisfaction. It is a superior system in every conceivable way. Want to fix health care in the United States? The VA system is the answer.
On a side note, Ezra is building quite the little blog empire …
Categories: Health, Politics |
3 Comments
