Bush Inc. Sued Over Medicare Drug Benefit - Poor People Left Out

The Bush administration was accused in a lawsuit Wednesday of failing to ensure that poor people were enrolled properly in Medicare's new prescription drug benefit.

As a result, these beneficiaries cannot get the medicine they need, according to the suit by a group of older people and advocacy groups.

They charge that Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt failed to make sure that many of the poorest people eligible for the benefit signed up for private insurance plans as Congress had required.

A spokesman for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said the problems cited occurred when the program got under way in January.

"From everything we've seen, those problems are in the past," Peter Ashkenaz said.

The suit also claims that some poor beneficiaries did enroll but the government failed to notify insurers quickly enough.

The suit filed in U.S. District Court in northern California asks a federal judge to order those involved in the case receive the full benefits of the Medicare Part D program.

Click to read more ...

Senate Panel Recommends Abolishing FEMA after Katrina disaster

A US Senate panel conducting an investigation into the federal response to Hurricane Katrina concluded that the Federal Emergency Management Agency [official website] should be abolished and replaced with a new federal agency [recommendations, PDF] with more authority over emergency preparedness. The bipartisan panel recommended 86 changes, including the creation of the National Preparedness and Response Authority, which would be part of the Department of Homeland Security, but with increased congressional oversight over funding and staffing. Some members of the Department of Homeland Security and former FEMA chief Michael Brown , forced to step down over his handling of Katrina, were critical of the suggested change as merely bureaucratic reshuffling. [MORE]

Florida Juvenile Boot Camp System Shut Down

Florida lawmakers agreed Wednesday to scrap the state's military-style juvenile boot camp system after a three-month beating from opponents angered by the death of a teenage inmate.

The furor following the Jan. 6 death of 14-year-old Martin Lee Anderson (pictured above) had already resulted in the resignation of the state's top law enforcement official, a protest march on the Capitol and a second autopsy authorized by his family in an effort to disprove a medical examiner's finding he died from sickle cell trait, a normally benign blood condition.

In finalizing their agreement, House and Senate negotiators tacked on another $32.6 million at the last minute to fund the new program, increasing juvenile justice spending to nearly $699.5 million for the fiscal budget year beginning July 1 if approved by the full Legislature.

Click to read more ...

Not Players, They Just Whore a Lot: Bush Inc. Helped Exxon Mobil Make $1 Billion a Day and $36 Billion in Profit in 2005

 
Oil Pimps When Bush came into office in January 2001, the average price of a regular gallon of gas was $1.46. Today, the price is $2.91, a 100 percent increase over the course of the Bush presidency. In just the last year alone, gas prices have increased more than 30 percent. Lawmakers have repeatedly called on Bush over the past year to investigate and punish price gouging. But because Bush has been resistant to those calls for so long, it is doubtful whether his recent pledges to act on price manipulation are merely political overtures or sincere efforts that will be carried through.

The Largest Profit of any Company in History: Last year Exxon Mobil earned one billion dollars a day and amassed 36 billion dollars in profits, a 42.6 percent increase from 2004. This was due largely to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita [MORE]. This is the highest profit of any company in history. Retiring Exxon chairman, Lee Raymond, is collecting "one of the most generous retirement packages in history," nearly $400 million. Royal Dutch Shell collected $23 billion in profits last year, a record amount for a British company. [MORE]  Exxon Mobil  has already made $8.4 billion in profits for in the first  quarter of 2006, up more than seven percent from last year.

BUSH ADMINISTRATION LOOKS THE OTHER WAY ON PRICE GOUGING: Ninety percent of Americans, including members of Congress from both parties, say they believe price gouging is occurring at the pumps. Last week, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) called for a federal investigation. On Monday, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) and House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) followed Schumer by sending a letter to the White House "asking Bush to direct the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate possible price gouging by oil companies." Bush will instead ask the Justice Department and the FTC to send a letter to all 50 state attorneys general asking them to "stay on top of the issue." Under the Bush administration, the FTC has had a record of disregarding claims of price manipulation by gas retailers. Despite evidence in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina that retail gas prices were rising unnecessarily faster than crude oil prices, the FTC investigation into price gouging "found no evidence of collusion among oil companies in the 2005 gas price surge. It said the culprits were high crude oil prices, record world demand and government regulations." The FTC Chair, Deborah Majoras, represented Chevron-Texaco and "other major oil and gas interests" prior to joining the administration.

BUSH HAS PASSED UP OPPORTUNITIES TO ACT: For over a year, the administration and the leadership in Congress have disregarded numerous opportunities to act on price gouging, but have failed to do so. In September 2005, during the aftermath of Katrina (when the average price of gas was at the same level it is today), Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) offered legislation to improve the FTC's ability to protect consumers from price gouging. Cantwell tried to pass the legislation again in November but failed to attract sufficient bipartisan support, and has recently tried again to solicit Bush's support. Rep. Heather Wilson (R-NM) has led a similar effort in the House. Also last September, Sens. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) and Bill Nelson (D-FL) introduced a bill that would have given federal authorities power to prosecute oil and gasoline suppliers who overcharge for motor fuels in a declared disaster area. Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI) has introduced similar legislation in the House. The leadership in Congress refused to endorse or improve upon these recommendations until recently. "Feeling the political heat," Frist and Hastert have finally decided to take some action by sending a letter to Bush. From the American Progress Report

Brother Salim Adofo: Sisters in the Struggle

 

The month of March is set aside to recognize the contributions of women to the betterment of the world.  As usual, the contributions of people of African heritage have been over looked by the mainstream media of America.  Therefore it is necessary to acknowledge some of the bold beautiful and courageous women of African decent that have struggled to make the world a better place.

Women of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. Sisters such as Erika Huggins, Afeni Shakur, Assata Shakur (pictured right) and Akua Njeri (pictured left) were all instrumental in helping to change and shape the Civil Rights, Black Power and Black Consciousness movements throught the world.  These sisters helped in organizing, facilitating and maintaining food and clothing drives for children.  They helped to establish health clinics and liberation schools.  What must be mentioned is that they also defended many brothers in the community against police brutality with their own lives.  All of this was done with many of them only being 19 and 20 years old and still trying to take care of their own house hold.

Click to read more ...

Gary Revel: The Deadly Business of a King's Murder

 
Leutrell "Mike" Osborne, 26 year veteran CIA Case Officer and Counter Intelligence expert like many African-Americans are somewhat familiar with the now deceased Director of Domestic Intelligence for the FBI, William Sullivan. Most of those who know of him also know that he was killed a week before he was to testify before the House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1977. What can be learned of his career comes from his autobiography (that was completed and published after his untimely death), FBI files, news articles, and press accounts. One thing that rises out of the fog is that Mr. Sullivan directed the 'Destroy King Squad' This was a Covert Action Intelligence Operation whose mission was to destroy the effectiveness of Martin Luther King Jr. If assassination was an authorized tool in their tool-belt then they surely completed their assignment. This squad was part of a larger operation acronymed COINTEL PRO for Counter Intelligence Program.

Click to read more ...

Puerto Rico May Shut Down Government Without Loan

Puerto Rico may shut down its government next week unless the legislature approves a loan needed to cover a $738 million deficit, Standard & Poor's said today, citing government officials.

 The loan from the U.S. commonwealth's Government Development Bank includes provisions to cover government employee salaries through the end of the fiscal year on June 30, S&P said. A shutdown would affect all nonessential government departments including the 1,562 schools and 75,000 employees in Puerto Rico's education system as well as an estimated 200,000 government employees, the credit-rating company said.

 ``It remains uncertain whether there will be enough consensus in Congress to approve the amount requested,'' said S&P analyst Horacio Aldrete in a statement.

 The Caribbean island -- whose per-capita debt burden is $5,758, 61 percent more than Connecticut, the U.S. state with highest tax-supported per-capita debt -- has repeatedly borrowed money from the development bank to balance its budget. The latest fiscal crisis has been exacerbated by a political stalemate between Governor Anibal Acevedo Vila and lawmakers over tax increases and spending cuts the governor says are necessary to keep Puerto Rico solvent.

Click to read more ...

Jesse Jackson: Big Easy Voting Was Much Too Hard

Against the odds, New Orleans and Katrina survivors went to the polls last week to elect the mayor and other officials who will guide the reconstruction of the city.

 The current mayor, Ray Nagin, placed first, and will face a runoff against leading challenger Mitch Landrieu on May 20. Newspapers hailed the election as demonstrating the grit of the people of New Orleans. But this election was marked by voting wrongs, not voting rights.

 This election was held under protest in flagrant violation of the Voting Rights Act. The votes that were tallied were less significant than the voters who were disenfranchised. Voter turnout was 20 percent lower than the mayoral election of four years ago. Just 106,000 out of 296,000 eligible voters voted.

 The reason isn't that the residents don't care. People in neighborhoods across New Orleans enthusiastically surged to the polls and demonstrated their deep concern for the future of their city. But two-thirds of New Orleanians are scattered around the nation, in more than 45 states. These people did not choose to leave New Orleans. They were rendered homeless by Katrina and displaced by FEMA, which arranged for them to find temporary shelter in different states.

 Having relocated the survivors of Katrina, FEMA and the Bush administration were responsible for protecting the voting rights of the displaced -- and for ensuring that they could participate in choosing the leaders who will have such a large say in their futures. Instead, FEMA and the administration failed Katrina's survivors once more -- as did state officials.

Click to read more ...

Human Rights Group Wants Lethal Injections Suspended

Human Rights Watch is urging states to suspend execution by injection, saying the widely used procedure puts condemned inmates "at needless risk of excruciating pain."

In a 65-page report issued Monday, the private watchdog group argues that there are records and eyewitness testimony of "botched executions" in which prisoners might have been insufficiently anesthetized, experiencing pain but unable to signal their distress as the lethal drugs took effect.

Lethal injections are used by the federal government and 37 of the 38 states that have the death penalty. Nebraska still uses the electric chair.

Under the most commonly used procedure, the condemned prisoner is injected with a series of drugs: an anesthetic; a drug to paralyze the prisoner's muscles; and finally potassium chloride, which stops the heart.

In its report, Human Rights Watch said that veterinary guidelines prohibit the use of potassium chloride to put down cats and dogs because it can cause intense pain unless the animal is deeply unconscious.

Click to read more ...

Former CIA Chief Says Bush was Informed Prior to War that Iraq had No WMD

 
Tyler Drumheller, the former chief of the CIA's Europe division, revealed on CBS's 60 Minutes last night that former Iraqi foreign minister Naji Sabri made a deal with the CIA prior to the war to reveal Iraq's military secrets. Drumheller, who was in charge of the operation, said CIA Director George Tenet delivered the news about the Iraqi foreign minister at a high-level White House meeting in the fall of 2002 that included Bush, Cheney, and Condoleezza Rice. Tenet informed the White House that the high-level informant said Iraq "had no active weapons of mass destruction program." After hearing the news, the White House group that was preparing for war with Iraq said it was no longer interested in information from Sabri. "We said, 'Well, what about the intel?'" Drumheller reports. "And they said, 'Well, this isn't about intel anymore. This is about regime change.'" Drumheller said the decision to invade Iraq would be remembered as a grave mistake. "It just sticks in my craw every time I hear them say it's an intelligence failure. ... This was a policy failure. ... I think, over time, people will look back on this and see this is going to be one of the great, I think, policy mistakes of all time." [MORE]

Republican Candidate for State Senate Involved in Racial Attack on Black Man in 2001

 
A GOP state Senate candidate from Nantucket was involved in a racial-slur-laced fight in which he and three other men beat up a black man who took exception to being called a racial epithet in front of his 5-year-old son, according to police. Douglas L. Bennett, a selectmen and county commissioner in Nantucket, is identified in police records as a participant in the beating of William G. Lawrence during a nasty altercation July 4, 2001. “Witnesses said the white males (Jamie McCullough, Samuel King and Douglas Bennett) were punching and kicking Lawrence as he tried to fend them off with (an) angle iron,” according to a Nantucket police report that said a fourth white male later joined in the attack. The report stated the confrontation began when occupants of the pickup truck Bennett was riding in started shouting racial slurs and giving Lawrence the finger in front of his young son, Michael. Bennett, 30, said yesterday he did not shout any racial slurs and that an assault and battery charge filed against him was dismissed eventually. “I tried to break it up and stop it because I didn’t want anybody to get hurt,” Bennett said. “My opponents are getting desperate because they know I’m going to win the election and they’re trying to dig up as much dirt on me as they can.” Bennett is running against Ricardo Barros in the Republican primary and, if successful in that contest, would face Democratic incumbent Robert O’Leary in the general election. Bennett said he fully expects to be victorious. [MORE]

Lawsuit Against Super Steel Claims Racial Abuse; Black workers Seek $175 Million in Damages

GLENVILLE -- Nine current and former employees of Super Steel Inc. are seeking $175 million in a federal discrimination lawsuit filed against the Glenville manufacturing company.

The men, who are all black, say racial harassment and intimidation at the company included a segregated break room, a white colleague openly threatening a black worker with a "nigger whipping," anonymous threats of racial violence and racist, pro-Ku Klux Klan graffiti in a restroom.

The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Albany, also cites a widely publicized incident in January in which an employee reported finding a threatening, racist message and stuffed monkey hanging from a noose inside his locker.

Officials at Super Steel, which makes train locomotives and is based in Milwaukee, said they have not yet seen the complaint. The company said it takes all allegations of harassment and violence seriously.

Click to read more ...

The Other White Meat. Nooses. Threats. KKK Cartoons. Black Man Sues the Swift Pork Company for Racial Discrimination

In November of 2004, one of the workers called him an "ignorant son of a bitch." Lowe responded, "My name is Tory Lowe," and reported the comment to his supervisor. When some of the workers took to calling him "boy," he repeated, "My name is Tory Lowe," and again reported it. Another co-worker said, "How's it goin', nigger?" and some started calling him an "Afroniggercan."

Lowe says the company's non-responses were variations on a theme: "[They] just shrugged it off and said, 'Just give 'em some time. They just need to get used to you.' I did what they told me. They told me to keep telling them what was going on and keep them updated, but it got worse.

"After that [lunchroom incident], it was a nightmare. I was telling them what was going on, and nothing happened. Thinking back on it now, I think they were trying to do something to me. One day this guy who did a lot of stuff—he's a noted redneck—came in and said he was going to bring some Ku Klux Klan members over by my house and rub me out. And that some black guy in the '70s came to town and he ran that guy out. He said, 'That fucker was lucky he got out alive.'

Click to read more ...

Bush Inc. Wants $90 Billion More for Iraq

The Never-Ending Emergency
More than three years after the invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration refuses to budget for ongoing costs, instead insisting on funding the war through "emergency" supplemental spending bills. The tactic, which is under attack by members of Congress on both sides of the aisle, makes fiscal responsibility all but impossible. None of the "emergency" money for Iraq expected to be requested is "counted in the budget deficit estimates that the administration routinely releases." Also, the funding is not "counted against any budget caps that Congress has set for itself to abide by throughout the year." Since March 2003, "Congress has approved about $250 billion in supplemental spending for the mission." Now, the administration wants more than $90 billion more to pay for operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and rebuilding on the Gulf Coast. The Senate is set to consider an even more bloated version of the request this week. In March, Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH), the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, lamented, "The administration is running two sets of books here. ... There are two sets of books, and one is not subject to the budget controls." Rep. David Obey (D-WI), the ranking member on the House Appropriations Committee, echoed Gregg's concerns, arguing that emergency spending measures are "a good idea if you want to hide the cost of the war. It's a bad idea if you want to be able to offer an accounting of what our war costs are."

WAR COSTS SKYROCKET, EXCEED YEARLY COSTS OF VIETNAM: The massive cost of the supplemental spending bill reflects the escalating cost of the Iraq war. The yearly costs of operations in Iraq have risen steadily "from $48 billion in 2003 to $59 billion in 2004 to $81 billion in 2005 to an anticipated $94 billion in 2006." The costs of the Iraq war "are easily outpacing the $61 billion a year that the United States spent in Vietnam between 1964 and 1972, in today's dollars." According to the Congressional Research Service, "total assistance to Iraq thus far is roughly equivalent to the total assistance (adjusted for inflation) to Germany – and almost double that provided to Japan – from 1946 to 1952." (The Iraq war already exceeds the total cost of World War I in today's dollars.) One key factor driving the increase is the cost of "repairing and replacing equipment and developing new war-fighting material." In 2003, replacing worn equipment cost $2.4 billion. This year, it's expected to approach $30 billion.

FUNDING POLITICAL EMERGENCIES: Although it's billed as an "emergency" measure, the massive spending bill ignores critical short-term needs in favor of large, long-range projects favored by defense contractors. For example, the Senate version of the bill "would chop money for troops' night vision equipment and new battle vehicles." Meanwhile, the Senate added "$230 million for a tilt-rotor aircraft that has already cost $18 billion and is still facing safety questions." The aircraft, called the V-22 Osprey, has "been in development since the 1980s" and has "suffered numerous setbacks." Many believe the Osprey "will never be useful in combat." The Senate bill also includes "$228 million to procure seven C-17 Air Force cargo planes that can't be completed until 2008." That money is just a down payment; completing the planes "would take at least another $1.6 billion." [MORE from the American Progress Report]

Border Guardians Leader Calls for Violence Against Immigrants

 
MONTGOMERY, AL (By Susy Buchanan and David Holthouse, Southern Poverty Law Center) April 24, 2006 — A prominent anti-immigration leader has secretly urged the nation’s largest neo-Nazi group to launch a campaign of violence and harassment against undocumented workers in the United States.

Laine Lawless, who started a group called Border Guardians last year, sent an April 3 e-mail to Mark Martin (Pictured above), "SS commander" of the Western Ohio unit of the National Socialist Movement, which has 59 chapters in 30 states. It was titled, "How to GET RID OF THEM!

The e-mail from Lawless, who was also an original member of Chris Simcox’s vigilante militia before it morphed into the Minuteman Project in early 2005, detailed 11 suggestions for ways to harass and terrorize undocumented immigrants, including robbery and "beating up illegals" as they leave their workplace.

"Maybe some of your warriors for the race would be the kind of people willing to implement some of these ideas," Lawless wrote. "I’m not ready to come out on this. ... Please don’t use my name. THANKS."

At the request of Lawless, who declined to respond to questions from the Intelligence Report, Martin posted her suggestions to a number of neo-Nazi bulletin boards. Those suggestions included:

• "Steal the money from any illegal walking into a bank or check cashing place."
   
• "Make every illegal alien feel the heat of being a person without status. ... I hear the rednecks in the South are beating up illegals as the textile mills have closed. Use your imagination."
   
• "Discourage Spanish-speaking children from going to school. Be creative."
   
• "Create an anonymous propaganda campaign warning that any further illegal immigrants will be shot, maimed or seriously messed-up upon crossing the border. This should be fairly easy to do, considering the hysteria of the Spanish language press, and how they view the Minutemen as ‘racists & vigilantes.’"

Click to read more ...