The latest from The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com
- Tom Gregory: Michael Jackson, The Neighborhood Association, and me (VIDEO)
- Steven Pearlstein Rebuts Warren Buffett: Now Is The Time To Buy Newspapers
- Earl Ofari Hutchinson: The Other Farrah Story
- Chris Weigant: Friday Talking Points [77] -- There's Always Next Week...
| Tom Gregory: Michael Jackson, The Neighborhood Association, and me (VIDEO) | Top |
| As I get older time is moving faster -- much faster. At James A. Garfield elementary school , class ended at 3:15. Everyday I'd watch as the red minute hand would crawl around the dial click after click, until finally that Seth Thomas set me free. 180 annual school days dragged their feet across my freedom, until finally June sparked into a romping, rolling, fishing, biking, camping, childhood summer. September's fast start towards the first day of school, and slow end into a crawling October, meant my next June reprieve was another life sentence away. As a child -- when all you want to do is grow up, time moves far too slowly. I was lucky. I remember every smell, taste, scrape and scratch of an exhilarating and sweaty east coast summer. Mom and Dad just had two demands: practice your Lowrey organ, feed the dog, and mow the lawn. Not bad. I was a kid. My summers were smooth. Michael Jackson, by all accounts and speculation, must have had a roller coaster childhood. His electrifying performances have energized our lives with the magic of his immense talent, but even when he was young, Jackson's ballads pulled with the tug of someone who had fought tough battles. Time for Michael Jackson probably never moved slow enough as his youth was corralled into some else's cash cow. When Jackson moved three doors away from me last December, I was thrilled. I still am. Still the neighborhood has its rules. I sauntered up the street for the third time,( one , two ) to see if maybe, just maybe - my idea at the last association meeting would mitigate a problem that my neighborhood is fortunate enough to call an issue of concern. | |
| Steven Pearlstein Rebuts Warren Buffett: Now Is The Time To Buy Newspapers | Top |
| I don't make a habit of corresponding with directors of The Washington Post Co. -- it's not normally a great career move. However, your recent comments about the folly of investing in newspapers received much attention and hit close to home. I hope you won't mind my offering a different view. More on Newspapers | |
| Earl Ofari Hutchinson: The Other Farrah Story | Top |
| Farrah Fawcett watched her personal, moving and life affirming story on ABC-TV. Millions applauded her for her valiant fight against cancer and her inspirational message to fight on to many others who wage their own private medical battle against the dread disease. Lawanda Jackson was not one of them who applauded Fawcett. The former UCLA Medical Center administrative assistant didn't see Farrah's Story. And while millions applauded Fawcett, Jackson has been vilified. She drew public and legal wrath for leaking Fawcett's medical records in 2006 and 2007 in an alleged scam deal with the National Enquirer. The leak stirred howls and demands for a government crackdown on UCLA Medical and other medical facilities that leak medical records. Jackson died of breast cancer in March and didn't serve a day of her federal sentence. Despite the pain Jackson's thievery caused, a gracious Fawcett forgave her. Fawcett accurately called her a pawn in the system. Jackson's thievery was just that and it gave another ugly look at the big and at times profitable racket of medical snooping and theft. It's a racket that's driven by a mix of celebrity and personal gossip, maliciousness, voyeurism and greed. The medical theft racket poses an increasingly serious public peril. Thanks to Jackson's legal bust, Fawcett's victimization is well known, and so is that of other celebrity victims such as Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, and George Clooney. But thousands of others who are not celebrity name patients not treated at a celebrity catered treatment center such as UCLA Medical Center have also been victimized; and most of them don't know it. In March, Dartmouth College researchers conducted a two week landmark study in which they found that the social security numbers, insurance records, and diagnosis information on hundreds of patients at various hospitals and medical facilities were in full display online. Many of the patients were treated for AIDS, cancer, and mental illnesses. While thousands more were afflicted with various other diseases. It also found a document nearly 2000 pages in length that contained the Social Security numbers, date of birth, insurance information and treatment codes for approximately 9,000 patients. Some of the patient's information was leaked. Information on others was obtained through sharing files that were either intentionally or accidentally downloaded. In addition, the Government Accountability Office estimates that nearly 10 percent of Medicare claims are filed by identity thieves and fraudulent health-care providers. Thousands of other patient medical records have been leaked, or openly publicized through medical ID theft. A high profile athlete, entertainer, political figure admitted to a hospital for treatment and care, is instantly known. Hospital administrators and staff generally take greater care to protect their records. Though as the Fawcett, and other celebrity's medical records breach showed, that's hardly foolproof. However, with ordinary patients the same pains may not be taken to guarantee that their privacy is protected. According to ID Theft Security.com, many hospitals are grossly lax when it comes to confirming the identity of patients. The laxity in identity checks opens the gate wide for thieves, snoopers, and sloppy or indifferent medical staff persons to peak at, sell, or botch medical records. A much touted provision in President Obama's stimulus bill is aimed at better securing the privacy of patient medical records. It included a federal notification requirement for health-related records breaches. It mandated that all health care providers and administrators must notify patients in writing if their medical information is compromised and report the breach to the Health and Human Services Department. Health providers and third-party agencies or companies that handle medical records for health-care providers must submit an annual report to Congress on any medical patient breaches and tell whose records were breached. There are two self-defeating flaws in this timely and much needed safeguard. One is that the health care provider or company that collects patient records and information must know about the breach. The Dartmouth study showed that much of the medical record theft and leakage slips way under the radar of hospitals and health providers. The other flaw is compliance with the provision even enforcement rests on the inherent assumption that hospital administrators and agencies keep accurate, up-to-date and honest records of all patient medical data. Jackson's gross medical record invasion of Fawcett stirred rage and indignation that a popular and admired celebrity could be doubly victimized by a dread disease and by a snooping, prying medical worker. Unfortunately, untold thousands of others suffer the same fate. And their story is not known. Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His weekly radio show, "The Hutchinson Report" can be heard on weekly in Los Angeles on KTYM Radio 1460 AM and nationally on blogtalkradio.com | |
| Chris Weigant: Friday Talking Points [77] -- There's Always Next Week... | Top |
| I have to start by saying that in all honesty, President Obama and the Democrats didn't have a great week. Obama started the week out by cracking a few jokes at the White House Correspondent's Dinner, which was actually pretty funny (as even just reading the transcript of his remarks shows). Then, early in the week, Obama held a photo op with the heads of the health care industry, where there were smiles all around as they announced the industry would be voluntarily cutting back their growth (not their absolute size, mind you, just their growth ) over the next ten years by one-and-a-half percent. This would lead to a savings of a whopping two trillion dollars. But by week's end, the industry was walking back this commitment -- which never had any hint of accountability or oversight in the first place. It took them four days to go back on their promise. This doesn't exactly bode well for sweeping health care reform being embraced by the industry. Nancy Pelosi tried to help, by making a commitment to holding a House vote on health care before they all take off on their month-long summer vacation. But then Pelosi fell into two traps laid for her by the Republicans. The first was to get snarled into somehow becoming the poster girl for torture approval, which she should have avoided. And the second was to be forced into circling the wagons around Jack Murtha, who was a lefty favorite for speaking out against Bush's wars, but who is in reality the King of Pork among Democrats. Republican House member Jeff Flake forced a vote on an ethics complaint against Murtha, a political maneuver that largely went unnoticed, but will doubtlessly be recycled in a few ads next election season. Amid the distractions over Nancy Pelosi, there was some interesting real news concerning torture this week. Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi just "committed suicide" in a Libyan prison. Libi was the main source of information on the non-existent "Saddam Hussein/Al Qaeda" link, which Bush and Cheney were positive existed. This story is finally getting a little bit of attention, after being exposed years and years ago. I wrote about it in November of 2007, for instance: Before we invaded Iraq, we held such a terrorist . His name was Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi. Now, if I was a conspiracy theorist, I would wonder about whether that was a real name or not (al-Libi? alibi?), but let's put that aside for the moment. We sent al-Libi to Egypt , one of our favorite countries for outsourcing torture. They tortured him, with the full knowledge of the CIA. He talked. His story was that Saddam Hussein was in cahoots with Al Qaeda. Conveniently, this is exactly what the Bush White House wanted to hear in the run up to war with Iraq. So off we went on our grand adventure to root out Saddam and his WMDs before he could hand them over to Al Qaeda. The only problem was, it was a lie. Not the WMD part, that was a separate lie. The "in bed with Al Qaeda" lie is what I refer to here. This was the most important intelligence source we had for this claim, but unfortunately the source (once we stopped torturing him) recanted his story and said that there was no connection. Which turned out to be true. What this means is that one of the strongest reasons for starting this war turned out to be a lie. A lie which came about as a direct result of us torturing someone. This is the danger of torture that Bush and Cheney and all their apologists refuse to face: torture doesn't work because the person being tortured will say absolutely anything to make it stop. In other words, the information or intelligence you gain through torturing someone is highly suspect, and should not be believed. So, again, why isn't this being addressed in the debate on waterboarding? Why is nobody standing up and saying "We tried torture, and it got us into a disastrous war. Torture does not work, and does not help us gather intelligence."? Joe Conason of Salon writes an update on this story this week which is worth reading. In one report after another, from journalists, former administration officials and Senate investigators, the same theme continues to emerge: Whenever a prisoner believed to possess any knowledge of al-Qaida's operations or Iraqi intelligence came into American custody, CIA interrogators felt intense pressure from the Bush White House to produce evidence of an Iraq-Qaida relationship (which contradicted everything that U.S. intelligence and other experts knew about the enmity between Saddam's Baath Party and Osama bin Laden's jihadists). Indeed, the futile quest for proof of that connection is the common thread running through the gruesome stories of torture from the Guantanamo detainee camp to Egyptian prisons to the CIA's black sites in Thailand and elsewhere. Perhaps the sharpest rebuke to Cheney's assertions has come from Lawrence Wilkerson, the retired Army colonel and former senior State Department aide to Colin Powell, who says bluntly that when the administration first authorized "harsh interrogation" during the spring of 2002, "its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qaida." In an essay that first appeared on the Washington Note blog , Wilkerson says that even when the interrogators of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, the Libyan al-Qaida operative, reported that he had become "compliant" -- in other words, cooperative after sufficient abuse -- the vice-president's office ordered further torture of the Libyan by his hosts at an Egyptian prison because he had not yet implicated Saddam with al-Qaida. So his interrogators put al-Libi into a tiny coffin until he said what Cheney wanted to hear. Nobody in the U.S. intelligence community actually believed this nonsense. But now, al-Libi has reportedly and very conveniently "committed suicide" in a prison cell in Libya, where he was dispatched to the tender mercies of the Bush administration's newfound friends in the Qaddafi regime several years ago. So the deceased man won't be able to discuss what actually happened to him and why. How convenient. Not that there were hordes of journalists following the story anyway, but still.... Anyway, like I said, it hasn't been the best of weeks for the president or his cohorts in Congress. Let's hand out a few awards, and then get on to a rather disjointed Friday Talking Points. Senator Bernie Sanders is not technically a Democrat. But I'm not going to let that stop me from handing out an award to him. So, this week only, we strike a special "Most Impressive Senator Of The Week" award (in place of the usual MIDOTW statuette) in Sanders' honor. Because Senator Sanders led the fight this week to really give credit card users a break -- a 15 percent rate cap on all credit cards. He did not mince words, either. Here he is on Vermont Public Radio: "I think we need a national usury rate and what we are proposing is to do for the private financial institutions what has existed for credit unions for some 30 years, and that is 15 percent max, under certain circumstances it can go higher. And in fact credit unions have done pretty well living under those regulations." Unfortunately for us all, he could only get 32 other Senators to vote with him, and the bill died 33-60. Here is Sanders, after the vote : "When banks are charging 30 percent interest rates, they are not making credit available. They are engaged in loan-sharking." For such plain language, and for his efforts for us all, Bernie Sanders wins a very special Most Impressive Senator Of The Week award. [ Congratulate Senator Bernie Sanders on his Senate contact page to let him know you appreciate his efforts. ] While the Democratic Senators who voted with the Republicans against Sanders' bill each deserve their own Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week award, there are (sadly) too many of them to adequately and individually shame here. Instead, President Barack Obama is awarded the MDDOTW award this week, for his continuing failure to live up to his own rhetoric on a few key issues. The torture photo reversal was bad enough, because it went completely against Obama's stated goal of transparency in government. His explanation for his reversal laid out a morally inconsistent rationale . And, to top it off, he announced he would be continuing the Bush policy of trying Guantanamo detainees via military commissions. This had the combined effect of making Obama look like he was being pushed around by (take your pick) Dick Cheney or Secretary Gates. Obama could have avoided some of this bad press by talking to Gates before he made up his mind on the photos. This disconnect between campaign promise and governing continues a worrisome trend. Obama's new "drug czar" announces the retirement of the phrase "the war on drugs," and Obama's Attorney General announces an end to raids on medical marijuana clinics in states that approve them -- but then very quietly another raid is conducted in California, and Obama just punts on his campaign promise to allow needle exchange programs in his budget (Arianna Huffington has a great wrapup of this whole issue). The more times Obama does this sort of thing, without a clear explanation of why he is changing his mind, the more it will eat away at the confidence people had in him when they voted for him. This is not a good thing for Obama, and it's not a good thing for anyone who wants him to keep his promises in the future. I understand that campaigning and governing are two different things. And I understand that presidents should be able to change their minds (instead of being pigheaded and refusing to face new realities). But I think Obama owes us all a better explanation when he has changed his mind. Changing the text on the White House web site (as happened with his Don't Ask/Don't Tell stance, and as happened with needle exchange), and hoping nobody notices does not inspire confidence. Saying "everyone has a seat at the table" on things like the health care debate, and then excluding anyone in favor of single-payer health care does not look like "change we can believe in." All "outsider" politicians (from both parties) ride into Washington on their high horse, ready to "change Washington." Most of them wind up "being changed by Washington" instead. I can't help but wonder if this is the beginning of that process for Obama. Which is why Obama gets the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week award. Not for any one action, but for the trend. Obama keeps talking about how "changing the course" of the ship of state (which he likens to an aircraft carrier at times) is tough and takes some time, because they can't "turn on a dime" like a speedboat. But in several respects, Obama seems not to be changing course of this ship of state, but rather throwing it in reverse. And "Full speed astern!" was not what we voted for. [ Contact President Barack Obama on the White House contact page to let him know what you think of his actions. ] Volume 77 (5/15/09) There is no big theme to the talking points this week, just odds and ends. As always, these are optimistically provided for Democrats everywhere to use in media interviews (if you're a politician) or around the coffee shop and water cooler (for everyone else). Pelosi perspective (part 1) According to the right (and their media enablers), Nancy Pelosi is the person whom torturing prisoners should be blamed on. Now, I have always said that if torture is investigated, we need to let the chips fall where they may, even if that means taking to task the Democrats who were briefed about it. But Pelosi's role needs to be put in a little perspective, which has sadly been lacking in the media's breathless "reporting" on the issue. "To the people asking 'What did Pelosi know and when did she know it?' my response is: 'We can answer your question, right after we answer the same question for George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Condi Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, and anyone else in Bush's cabinet who was briefed about it.' What Pelosi knew was that the Bush administration had already abused prisoners, and when she knew it was long after it had started . But Bush and the rest of them simply cannot say this. So while Republican partisans want everyone to focus on Pelosi, because she's a Democrat, I am much more interested in finding out the answers to those questions from the people who were responsible for the policy in the first place. When we get those answers, I will personally ask Nancy Pelosi for her answers, how's that?" Pelosi perspective (part 2) Once again, to put things in perspective, Republican questions about Pelosi's role in torture need to be put firmly in perspective. Because even her critics haven't answered a very basic question. "OK, let's assume you're right and Nancy Pelosi was briefed about everything when you say she was. What, exactly, was she supposed to do about it? At the time, she was Minority Leader in a Republican House. She was briefed in a secret briefing by the CIA. If she had gone public, not only would Republicans have called her 'treasonous' and a 'traitor' for doing so, but she could have been sent to jail as a result. It is illegal to disclose what is said in these briefings. Even if she didn't go to jail, she would most certainly have lost her clearance to hear such top secret briefings from that point on. I suppose she could have leaked it to the press, but that is also illegal. She could have written a letter to President Bush, but that would have done precisely nothing. So, if you are second-guessing Pelosi's actions now, exactly what would you suggest she should have done, at the time?" Dick Cheney's 183rd appearance on television Torture is not a | |
CREATE MORE ALERTS:
Auctions - Find out when new auctions are posted
Horoscopes - Receive your daily horoscope
Music - Get the newest Album Releases, Playlists and more
News - Only the news you want, delivered!
Stocks - Stay connected to the market with price quotes and more
Weather - Get today's weather conditions
| You received this email because you subscribed to Yahoo! Alerts. Use this link to unsubscribe from this alert. To change your communications preferences for other Yahoo! business lines, please visit your Marketing Preferences. To learn more about Yahoo!'s use of personal information, including the use of web beacons in HTML-based email, please read our Privacy Policy. Yahoo! is located at 701 First Avenue, Sunnyvale, CA 94089. |
No comments:
Post a Comment