Unbelievable

(Editorial cartoon by Jim Morin/Miami Herald published 7/2/13 and featured at McClatchy DC.)

Attorney General Eric Holder is writing all sorts of checks with his mouth that his backside can't and won't cash.  For Edward Snowden's sake, I hope the Russians realize this

Edward Snowden will not face the death penalty or torture if he is returned to the United States to face espionage charges, U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. has assured his Russian counterpart in an effort to dissuade Moscow from granting asylum to the American fugitive.

In a letter made public Friday, Holder told Russian Justice Minister Alexander Konovalov that the former National Security Agency contractor’s professed fears of facing abuse and possible execution are "entirely without merit."

"The charges he faces do not carry that possibility, and the United States would not seek the death penalty even if Mr. Snowden were charged with additional, death penalty-eligible crimes," Holder wrote in the letter dated Tuesday. "Second, Mr. Snowden will not be tortured. Torture is unlawful in the United States."   [Emphasis added]

Oh, please.  Not all of us are as dumb as you obviously think we are, Mr. Holder.  Nor are our memories as short as you think they should be.

I mean, do you speak for the CIA?  Can you or anyone in the administration guarantee that an agent won't off Mr. Snowden at the first opportunity?

And as to torture ...

Guantanamo Bay and water boarding.

Abu Ghraib and dogs and water boarding

"Black Hole" prisons and dogs and water boarding and electric wires on testicles.

Bradley Manning and solitary confinement for months on end.

No, Mr. Holder.  I don't believe you and I'm reasonably certain neither does Russia.  Hopefully that country will treat your "assertions" with the seriousness they deserve.

Granny Bird Award: Doctors Who Write Questionable Prescriptions

This edition of the Granny Bird Award, given from time to time by those who adversely affect the rights and benefits of elders, goes to those doctors identified in a recent report as issuing prescriptions for questionable drugs or over-prescribing medications as identified in a recent report noted in the Washington Post.

More than 700 doctors nationwide wrote prescriptions for elderly and disabled patients in highly questionable and potentially harmful ways, according to a report of Medicare’s drug program released Thursday.

The review by the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services flags those doctors as “very extreme” in their prescribing and says Medicare should do more to investigate or stop them. ...

The inspector general’s report focused on the prescribing by nearly 87,000 general-care physicians, such as family practitioners and internists, in urban and suburban areas in 2009. These doctors accounted for about half of all the prescribing in the program that year.

The review found more than 2,200 doctors whose records stood out in one of several areas: prescriptions per patient, brand-name drugs, painkillers and other addictive drugs, or the number of pharmacies that dispensed their orders.

Of those, 736 were flagged as “extreme outliers.” Their patterns, the report says, raised questions about whether the prescriptions were “legitimate or necessary.” ...

The cost to the government was enormous in some instances. Medicare paid $9.7 million for the prescriptions of one California doctor alone — that is 151 times more than the cost of an average doctor’s tally, the report says.

Most of this physician’s drugs were supplied by two pharmacies, both of which the inspector general had identified previously as having questionable billing practices.   [Emphasis added]

Whether for fraudulent purposes or because of just plain sloppy medical management, these doctors cost Medicare/Medicaid a ton of money.  At a time when this very important program for elders and the disabled is under attack by all parts of the federal government, such behavior is extremely angry-making and needs to be stopped in its tracks now.  Hopefully CMS and the DOJ will come down hard on the miscreants.

Granny Bird Award: Medicare Fraudsters

This edition of the Granny Bird Award, an award issued from time to time to those who harm the interests and benefits of the elders, goes to those who are fraudulently collecting money from Medicare.

From McClatchy DC:

Doctors, nurses and other licensed medical professionals were among 89 people recently arrested in nine cities, accused of scheming to defraud the Medicare program of nearly $223 million in false billings, the Obama administration announced Tuesday.

The defendants face charges of conspiracy to commit health care fraud, money laundering and violating federal anti-kickback statutes for submitting claims to Medicare for purchases, treatments and services that, according to federal officials, either were medically unnecessary or never provided.

In many cases, patient recruiters, Medicare recipients and others were paid cash to supply beneficiary information that later was used in billing scams, federal law enforcement officials said. Most of the alleged fraud involved home health care services, but the charges included mental health services, psychotherapy, physical and occupational therapy, durable medical equipment and ambulance services. ...

Over the past three fiscal years, every dollar spent fighting health care fraud has returned an average of nearly $8 to the U.S. Treasury and the Medicare Trust Fund, Holder said. But that success is threatened by the across-the-line federal budget cuts known as sequestration, which cut $1.6 billion from the Justice Department’s budget for the current fiscal year, he said.   [Emphasis added]

The illegal conduct was spotted by the Center for Medicare/Medicaid Services (CMS) primarily by a sophisticated computer program, but also by elders who checked the report from CMS each receives regularly and noted charges for goods and services they did not receive.  In other words, CMS is doing its job, but needs elders to do theirs as well.

While I am not Eric Holder's biggest fan, I do think the DOJ has been doing its job well in prosecuting Medicare fraud.  I hope the sequester is lifted soon so that we can continue to nail the sleazes who would rob the system so vital to elders.

Obama's Plan B

(Editorial cartoon by Joel Pett and featured at McClatchy DC.  Click on image to enlarge and then return.)

I've gotten used to the war on women being waged by the GOP.  That said, I wasn't quite prepared for the same battle being waged by a Democrat, especially the one occupying the White House.

Women's rights groups have expressed disappointment with the Obama administration's decision to maintain age restrictions on the drug.

"While the President has been a champion for women, he's behind the curve when it comes to Plan B," read a statement from Nita Chaudhary, of the organization Ultraviolet. "We need him to catch up. Plan B should be available over-the-counter to women of all ages. It's the right thing to do."

Plan B One-Step is just one brand of emergency birth control that uses the synthetic hormone levonorgestrel to prevent pregnancy by blocking ovulation and impeding the mobility of sperm. It does not cause an abortion in women who are already pregnant, nor does it harm a developing fetus.

Reproductive rights groups have urged the Food and Drug Administration for more than a decade to make the drug available to all consumers without a prescription. As a result of litigation, U.S. District Judge Edward Korman of New York ordered that all levonorgestrel-based emergency birth control drugs be made available to all consumers over the counter by Monday.

In a harshly worded ruling, Korman said the decision to maintain age restrictions on the drug was "arbitrary, capricious and unreasonable," and placed blame on Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, as well as pressure from two White House administrations.

The Department of Justice announced Wednesday that it was seeking to overturn Korman's order in the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals. U.S. attorneys have also asked that the judge's order be stayed, pending resolution of the appeal.    [Emphasis added]

The FDA had recommended the drug be made available over the counter without restriction as safe and effective.  It was the HHS Secretary, presumably with at least the approval of President Obama, perhaps at his direction, who added the age limit of 15.  Since then, President Obama has continued to maintain that he is quite comfortable with the age limit.  That's why his Department of Justice is appealing the District Court ruling.

The fact of the matter is that the age limit is indeed "arbitrary, capricious and unreasonable."  Girls can become pregnant before 15.  Some girls as young as 11 are fertile and are targets for pedophiles.  Some perhaps not clear on sexual intimacy are already experimenting before age 15.  What about them?  They should be forced to bear children they cannot possibly raise adequately?

Why is it that President Obama's DOJ has the money and the staffing to attack such things as unrestricted Plan B and medical marijuana, but can't find the time or need for attacking such things as bank fraud?  Quite a tell, don't you think?

Morons.  Evil, evil morons.

Shiny Keys

I guess there are some weekends I should just stay in bed, covers pulled up over my head. This past weekend was one of those in many respects. David Horsey, in his recent cartoon and commentary, gives one of the chief reasons why. Congressidiot Issa (Stooge, CA) is gunning for Attorney General Eric Holder, hoping to nail him with contempt charges for not cooperating with Congress in spilling his guts on the issue of "Fast and Furious" and the nefarious White House plan on taking away our Second Amendment Rights.

The brouhaha over Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. and the contempt of Congress charge brought by U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista) are providing new evidence that the lunatics are running the Republican asylum.

Issa, the Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee, would have us believe President Obama’s assertion of executive privilege in the dispute -- “an eleventh-hour stunt,” he called it on Fox News -- is part of a White House cover up of something much more sinister. ...

Just what is being covered up is not so apparent, at least to objective observers. But less-than-objective right-wing conspiracy theorists have a ready answer: Operation Fast and Furious was part of an elaborate plot to undermine the 2nd Amendment and take away citizens’ guns.

Yup. That's it. They want my guns and your guns and the late Charlton Heston's guns, and everyone else's guns so they can hand the nation over to Islamic Jihadists.

Here's the problem I have, however. I am damned sick and tired of this White House and the White House before it raising the issue of executive privilege whenever there's been a screw-up. I would feel far more comfortable with an executive branch saying that the plan was flawed, was executed poorly with lousy oversight, and we will be doing some serious review with Congress to make sure it never happens again. Instead, the Obama folks, like the Bush folks before them, are taking the position of "Nanny, nanny boo-boo, certainly sucks to be you."

But wait, there's more. Horsey's column appeared on Friday. Issa got to bloviate on Sunday with the bobbleheads. He backed down a little, but not much.

House oversight committee chairman Darrell Issa said Sunday that he has no evidence the White House was involved in what could be a Justice Department "cover up” to contain fallout from the botched “Fast and Furious” operation.

In a series of interviews on the political talk shows, the California Republican repeatedly accused Justice Department officials of lying to Congress about the gun-trafficking sting operation and withholding documents from congressional investigators.

But Issa acknowledged his committee has seen no evidence the White House was involved.

“And I hope that they don’t get involved,” Issa said, speaking on “Fox News Sunday.” “I hope that this stays at Justice, and I hope that Justice cooperates because, ultimately, Justice lied to the American people on Feb. 4, and they didn’t make it right for 10 months.” [Emphasis added]

So, what's going on?

While I admit it's hard to tell when you're dealing with inarticulate illiterates like Darrell Issa, I think Nancy Pelosi just might have it right, even if Horsey somewhat downplays her assessment:

As an answer, House Democratic Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has her own conspiracy theory. She asserted in her weekly press briefing that the Republicans are gunning for Holder with the clear aim “to undermine the person who is assigned to stop the voter suppression in our country. I’m telling you, this is connected. It is no accident.”

To be honest, I think Pelosi has nailed it in one. Issa and his owners needed some shiny keys as Holder and the DOJ actually filed suit against the Florida voter-list purge ordered by the governor. The contempt citation is the "shiny keys" we are expected to fall for.

Hey! But what do I know. I'm just an old woman sucking on the teat of Social Security. I'll go back to bed now.

A Breath of Sanity

It's been an interesting news weekend on several fronts. George Zimmerman is back in jail, his bond revoked for misleading the judge on his financial status. Governor Scott Walker has now transferred $100,000 from his campaign funds to his legal defense funds, apparently out of concern that he will be indicted shortly after the election. And in the best news of all, Florida state elections commissioners, have decided to hold off on any further purging of the official voter eligibility lists.

From Think Progress:

On Thursday, the Justice Department demanded Florida Governor Rick Scott end his extensive purge of registered voters from the rolls because it was in violation of federal law. Scott still hasn’t formally responded but his county election supervisors have already taken action.

The Palm Beach Post reports:

Florida elections supervisors said Friday they will discontinue a state-directed effort to remove names from county voter rolls because they believe the state data is flawed and because the U.S. Department of Justice has said the process violates federal voting laws...

The Justice Department letter and mistakes that the 67 county elections supervisors have found in the state list make the scrub undoable, said Martin County Elections Supervisor Vicki Davis, president of the Florida State Association of Supervisors of Elections…

Ron Labasky, the association’s general counsel, sent a memo to the 67 supervisors Friday telling them to stop processing the list.

“I recommend that Supervisors of Elections cease any further action until the issues raised by the Department of Justice are resolved between the parties or by a Court,” Labasky wrote.

Previously, the State of Florida indicated they intended to accelerate the purge. Florida has until June 6 to respond to the Justice Department.

Like many states with a Republican governor or Republican majority in the legislature, Florida wants to suppress voter turn-out by making it difficult to impossible for elders, the poor, and people of color from voting. Most other states are doing it by requiring state issued identification cards which can only be obtained with a birth certificate or proof of naturalization. Florida Governor Rick Scott, however, found a trashier way: he'll just declare those voters ineligible unless they can prove otherwise within thirty days of receiving the state notice.

When the Department of Justice threatened the law suit, Scott responded by ordering the purge ramped up. Even state employees involved in the process admit that the lists they were working from were so error-ridden that they really couldn't do the job properly, much less expeditiously.

It will be interesting to see what happens this Wednesday when Florida has to respond to the DOJ notice.

Some More Good News

After three plus years of threatening to cut/privatize/end Medicare from the GOP and, in a somewhat muted fashion, the White House, we finally are getting some news that might suggest to those idiots a better way to cut the costs of this program which is so vital to the elders in our country.

Federal law enforcement officials announced charges in the largest healthcare fraud scam in the nation's history, indicting a Dallas-area physician for purportedly bilking Medicare of nearly $375 million after he reportedly sent out "recruiters" to round up patients and get them to sign for treatments he never provided. [Emphasis added]

Go read the story to see how this doctor set up his scheme (a nifty graphic shows the 'companies' he set up to keep under the radar). The raid on his home picked up records from a Cayman Islands bank, a passport along with several different passport photos, and the like. This guy way ready to leave at a moment's notice, but he wasn't given the time by the DOJ.

Here's what I considered to be the important part of the story:

Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr., in testimony Tuesday before a House Appropriations subcommittee, said federal prosecutors were fighting back. In the last fiscal year they recovered nearly $4.1 billion in funds "stolen or taken improperly from federal healthcare programs," he said. "This represents the highest amount ever recovered in a single year."

At the same time, Holder said, the Justice Department opened 1,100 new criminal healthcare fraud investigations, won more than 700 convictions, and initiated 1,000 civil healthcare fraud investigations.

In all, he said, for every dollar spent fighting healthcare fraud, "we've been able to return an average of $7 to the U.S. Treasury, the Medicare Trust Fund" and other government entities.

That's not a bad return on the investment, and if the DOJ succeeds in reclaiming that $375 million in this case from the Cayman bank account and gets a hefty fine, the figure should be even higher this year.

Yes, the investigations are long and costly, but this proves it's worth it. And, yes, the laws and regulations currently in place for Medicare and other health programs are complex. Then clean both parts up. These programs and this country's elders and other vulnerable citizens deserve it.

And Attorney General Holder: more like this please.

Papers, Please

It was fairly predictable at Watching America yesterday. There were lots of articles on the withdrawal of troops from Iraq and lots of articles on the Iowa caucus and the sorry state of the GOP's candidates. Meh. One article landed outside those two and turned out to be quite interesting. It was an essay on vote suppression written by Amy Goodman for the "Comment Is Free" section of the UK's The Guardian. She examines the real story behind the elections coming up this year.

All eyes are on Iowa this week, as the hodgepodge field of Republican contenders gallivants across that farm state seeking a win, or at least "momentum," in the campaign for the party's presidential nomination. But behind the scenes, a battle is being waged by Republicans – not against each other, but against American voters. Across the country, state legislatures and governors are pushing laws that seek to restrict access to the voting booth, laws that will disproportionately harm people of color, low-income people, and young and elderly voters. ...

By some estimates, the overall population who may be disenfranchised by this wave of legislation is upward of 5 million voters, most of whom would be expected to vote with the Democratic party. The efforts to quash voter participation are not genuine, grassroots movements. Rather, they rely on funding from people like the Koch brothers, David and Charles. That is why thousands of people, led by the NAACP, marched on the New York headquarters of Koch Industries two weeks ago en route to a rally for voting rights at the United Nations.

Despite the media attention showered on the Iowa caucuses, the real election outcomes in 2012 will likely hinge more on the contest between billionaire political funders like the Kochs and the thousands of people in the streets, demanding one person, one vote. [Emphasis added]

Contrary to the publicity handouts faxed by the GOP minions, voter fraud is really not much of a problem in this country. It's minuscule, hovering at less than 1%. The Republicans, however, know they have a problem given their current candidates for the presidency, and that means they will have a problem in terms of the down-ballot candidates for the House and Senate and for state offices. What better way to ensure victory than to shut out those people who would vote for Democratic candidates. Five million is a lot of voters.

Now that the various state laws are on the books, there's only eleven months to do something about them. The Department of Justice recently successfully defeated portions of a South Carolina law, prompting Newt Gingrich (in a shot right out of Karl Rove's handbook on projecting one's own weakness on the opposition) to accuse Attorney General Eric Holder of attempting to steal the election.

I think we can expect appeals on that holding, all the way up to the Supreme Court which may or may not get around to hearing the case before the election, if it hears it at all. And that case involved just one state, one which falls under closer federal review because of its past voters' rights violations. States like Wisconsin don't fit into that category and I haven't seen any push by the DOJ towards examining that state's recent law on the issue.

It's going to be a rough nine months for democracy in this country.

Happy New Year.

WTF?

I've been hit with some kind of fell winter bug. My head hurts, my chest hurts, I have a dry cough so my ribs hurt, plus I'm running a low grade fever. I am, therefore, justifiably cranky, which makes it a bad time for me to read a Los Angeles Times editorial. I am now absolutely enraged, not by the editorial stance (the center-left editorial board got it so right than I am staggered and would be pleased with them if I felt better), but by the information contained in that editorial.

When Congress enacted the Prison Rape Elimination Act, it did so in the hope of curbing sexual assaults in facilities across the country. But today, with new rules to protect prisoners being finalized, the Department of Homeland Security is demanding that immigrants held in detention centers be exempted. ...

...the Department of Homeland Security is now squabbling over whether it or the Department of Justice has the authority to write rules that protect immigrants.

Isn't it obvious that protecting detainees is more important than who is the boss of whom? Detained immigrants are just as vulnerable to assault as any other prisoners, yet they're especially reluctant to report it. Unlike criminal defendants, detainees have no right to a court-appointed lawyer; that means they're often left with no advocate they can turn to. They are held in remote facilities, often far from legal clinics and family. And language creates an additional barrier to reporting abuse. [Emphasis added]

Homeland Security and Justice are in a freaking turf war over this issue? And their boss, the President of the United States is letting this happen? Is there no one in charge over there? Are there no adults present at that end of town?

Outfuckingrageous.

Here's the editorial's conclusion:

Rape is a crime. To apply the new regulations to some and not others would create a two-tier system of justice. That's not acceptable. Immigrants who are detained while they fight deportation (and who, by the way, have not generally been charged with, much less convicted of, a crime) deserve the same protections provided to criminals sentenced to maximum-security prisons.

Exactly.

Now, somebody needs to take Janet Napolitano and Eric Holder to the woodshed and read them the editorial, after which they should apply a mackerel to both of their heads and shoulders with great force.

Morons.

Curb Your Enthusiasm

Roger Warner had an interesting opinion column in yesterday's Sacramento Bee having to do with a "terrorism" trial here in California. In it he skewers the Justice Department and federal officials for going forward on a case in which the prosecution is even more inept than the defendants.

The U.S. Justice Department made a breakthrough of sorts when it launched a terrorism court case in Sacramento three years ago. Until then, terrorism had been a scary business. Now, we're looking at farce.

The court case, known as USA v. Harrison U. Jack et. al., accuses a military veteran named Harrison Jack and U.S. citizens of Hmong tribal descent of planning to overthrow the government of the Hmong's original home country, Laos, in Southeast Asia. ...

The joke is that the more information that has emerged about this case, the more it looks as though the government should be on trial instead of the defendants. The naive defendants, who are staunchly pro-American, never shot off anything more dangerous than their mouths. According to wiretap transcripts, they talked and talked – initially, about bringing democracy and free elections to one of the last communist regimes in the world.

They got in trouble when a government undercover agent entered the picture, lied to them about non-existent CIA connections, and tried to talk them into buying Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, mines, anti-tank weapons and more. He also offered them mercenaries who had been trained in the U.S. special operations forces. Forget free elections! With his help, he said, the defendants could take over Laos, a country the size of California. To "prove" his sincerity, the undercover man rented an RV, stocked it with real and phony weapons and took the defendants through it one by one – filmed by hidden video cameras.

It looks to be a fine case of entrapment, one that should never have been brought once the facts were looked at by a savvy prosecutor, yet here we are, three years later, and the case continues to proceed. The patience of the federal judge hearing the case is wearing thin, so much so that he has taken to needling the latest prosecutor assigned to the case (number three) by asking which specific laws the defendants are alleged to have violated. That's a question no lawyer wants to hear because it signals the judge's assessment of the case. The prosecutor couldn't immediately answer the judge, which sends an even worse signal.

The case is complicated, unnecessarily so. The prosecution has released 85,000 pieces of "evidence", which means that the defense attorneys, their paralegals and staff have spent hours going through all of this material trying to determine just what the prosecution has, if anything. The kicker, as Mr. Warner points out, is that these are public defenders, which means that we are paying for not only the prosecution but also the defense. At this point, the costs of the case have to be hundreds of thousands of tax payer dollars.

Why this madness?

The case of Harrison Jack is a pure government boondoogle. It is also an example of a post-9/11 terrorism genre based on what are called pre-emptive arrests. In pre-emptive cases, defendants can get indicted for talking about, or conspiring to commit, terrorist acts, even if they never lifted a finger to hurt anyone. The targets of these cases can be hostile to America, like al-Qaida, or ethnic groups who are loyal to America, as the Hmong proved during the Vietnam War era.

The biggest problem with pre-emptive cases, it turns out, is that everyone involved in the law enforcement community has powerful incentives to bring them. Investigators get promotions for the indictments they bring, not for the convictions. Federal prosecutors get credit from their superiors in Washington for having "A" level or national security cases, even if the cases are weak. The incentives have created an institutional enthusiasm for creating these cases – and a reluctance to give them up, even if they are flawed. [Emphasis added]

If this didn't involve the lives of citizens being ruined and if it weren't costing us an arm and both legs, this would indeed be funny. Instead, it's just unforgivably outrageous.

Meanwhile, Back In The Voting Booth

Election 2010 is just around the corner, less than six months away. It's bound to be a contentious one if yesterday's healthcare summit at the White House is any indication, contentious and quite possibly close. That's why this NY Times editorial is a timely one. The very last thing we need right now is a reprise of Election 2000.

It was bad news for the voting public when Election Systems and Software, the nation’s largest voting machine company, announced last fall that it was acquiring the elections division of Diebold, the nation’s second-largest voting machine company.

The combination could mean that nearly 70 percent of the nation’s precincts would use machines made by a single company. If the deal is allowed to go through, it would make it harder for jurisdictions to bargain effectively on price and quality. The Justice Department should reject it as a violation of antitrust rules that is clearly not in the public’s interest.

In the elections since 2000, Diebold has been excoriated for machines that were easily manipulated and hackable and for its refusal to make public its code. The bad press was sufficient to nudge the company into making some concessions, but only grudgingly and only at a glacial pace. That's bad enough, but Election Systems and Software has an even worse record.

A group of election administrators, fair-voting advocates and computer experts wrote to Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. recently to warn of the dangers if the deal closes. They warned that Election Systems and Software already has a bad record on open competition, including contract clauses that prevent jurisdictions that buy their machines from hiring other vendors to service them.

The Justice Department, as the editorial points out, does have some antitrust powers. This is clearly the time to use it.

Of course, it also would help if Congress stepped in and revisited the various bills proposed in the past which would have at least required a paper trail to back up the electronic tallying, but that might be asking too much from our congresscritters who are too busy whining on other issues to consider actually protecting this integral part of our democracy.

Blow Those Whistles!

Blackwater/Xe is in the news again, and not in a nice way. Two former employees have filed a "whistle blower" suit against the company claiming the government contractor found all sorts of ways to screw the American taxpayers.

Two former employees of Blackwater Worldwide have accused the private security contractor of defrauding the government for years through phony billing, including charging taxpayers for alcohol-filled parties, spa trips and a prostitute.

In court records unsealed this week, a husband and wife who worked for Blackwater said they have firsthand knowledge of the company falsifying invoices, double-billing federal agencies and improperly charging the government for personal expenses. They said they witnessed "systematic" fraud in the company's security contracts with the State Department in Iraq and Afghanistan, and with the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina. ...

Brad Davis, a former Marine, served as a Blackwater team leader and security guard, including in Iraq. His wife, Melan Davis, worked as a finance and payroll employee, starting in Louisiana. Their lawsuit was filed under the False Claims Act, which allows whistle-blowers to win a portion of any money the government recovers as a result of the information. However, the Justice Department has chosen not to join them in pursuing their lawsuit, a decision that led to the suit being unsealed this week.

The company changed its name to Xe Services LLC last year. Xe spokeswoman Stacy DeLuke said Thursday that the Davises' allegations are false. "The allegations are without merit and the company will vigorously defend against this lawsuit," she said. "It is noteworthy that the government has declined to intervene in this action."

The Washington Post article, written in collaboration with the Center For Public Integrity details some of the allegations made by the Brad and Melan Davis. It sounds like a typical laundry list for private contractors feeding at the government trough. If even a few of those allegations are borne out at trial, those who believe in shrinking government by outsourcing to those private contractors will be faced with the fact that their plans inevitably cost the taxpayers more than it would have cost to have the government perform those same services. Relying on the corporate mentality of doing it on the cheap almost inevitably does cost more because there is no incentive to keep costs down when Uncle Sugar is paying the bills.

Unfortunately, the federal government has declined to intervene in the lawsuit, depriving the Davis's law team of a well-funded discovery partner. There are all sorts of reasons for the DOJ's decision: the allegations didn't appear to be well-founded; the DOJ has its own investigation going on and didn't want to tip the defendant as to what they've found in a bigger case; or the Davis couple are just "disgruntled former employees." The article is silent on the reasons, probably because the Department of Justice was silent when asked by the Center for Public Integrity.

Maybe DOJ will be more forthcoming if asked by a congressional committee. That might prove interesting.

Not Exactly News

A new report by the Government Accountability Office auditing the activities of the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice from 2001 to 2007 has issued, and it confirms what we all suspected: the Bush administration played fast and loose in politicizing this division. From the NY Times, which obtained a copy of the report:

The 180-page report, obtained by The New York Times, is densely packed with statistics about civil rights enforcement by the division’s sections. The accountability office also examined a sampling of matters that were closed without further action, finding several cases — including the curtailed voter intimidation inquiry — in which supervisors rejected the recommendations of career lawyers to go forward.

The report represents a comprehensive review of the division’s litigation activity in the Bush administration. When compared with the Clinton administration, its findings show a significant drop in the enforcement of several major antidiscrimination and voting rights laws. For example, lawsuits brought by the division to enforce laws prohibiting race or sex discrimination in employment fell from about 11 per year under President Bill Clinton to about 6 per year under President George W. Bush.

The study also found a sharp decline in enforcement of a section of the Voting Rights Act that prohibits electoral rules with discriminatory effects, from more than four cases a year under Mr. Clinton to fewer than two cases a year under Mr. Bush. [Emphasis added]

This is hardly surprising, but having the hard facts at hand will certainly help in establishing just how far the last administration was willing to go to control elections and to keep the GOP in power. The plan didn't work, but it might have. To ensure that such dangerous and corrosive meddling with civil rights isn't repeated, the House of Representatives will release the report as it takes up its first oversight hearing of the Civil Rights Division under the Obama administration.

Sometimes looking backward is necessary to prevent such egregious behavior from ever happening again. What would be even more helpful is a full investigation by the current Justice Department into the issue with prosecutions as warranted, although I suspect that would be expecting too much.

Red Herrings Are Not Kipper Snacks

I've discovered something interesting: some of the most rational analysis on health care reform can be found in the business pages of the Los Angeles Times. Two columnists in particular, Davis Lazarus and Michael Hiltzik, have done a fine job in pointing out just how we got to where we are in this health care cost morass and why some of the provisions suggested by Congress just aren't going to help Americans one bit. Michael Hiltzik's latest column is just one more piece of evidence for what I mean.

His subject is the suggestion of some in Congress that the exemption from anti-trust laws be stripped from insurance companies. Now, I have to admit I was a little leery of Hiltzik's thesis that the exemption is not what has enabled insurance companies to drive up premiums and to drive down payments to providers. However, as I read the article, I saw what he was driving at, and I pretty much agree with him.

Here are some of the facts Mr. Hiltzik was working with:

Health economist James Robinson found in 2003 that three large firms controlled more than 50% of enrollment in almost every state -- and that was before the biggest insurers launched a huge effort to snarf up their chief competitors, a trend exemplified by the 2004 mega-merger of WellPoint Health Networks Inc. and Anthem Inc. By 2008, according to the American Medical Assn., in nearly 90% of the metropolitan areas of the country, a single insurer controlled 30% or more of the market.

Is it merely a coincidence that health premiums have soared over the last decade -- up by 131% for family coverage from 1999 to 2009, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation?

"Competition in the health insurance industry is insufficient," Leemore S. Dafny, a health economist at Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management, told me last week. "It's becoming less competitive over time and it's causing higher premiums than we otherwise would see." [Emphasis added]

So, isn't this why the anti-trust exemption should be lifted? Not exactly, suggests Mr. Hiltzig. In fact, that exemption is just a red herring. Lifting the exemption won't change things a whit while all of this merging is going on. The real culprit can be found elsewhere:

There's plenty of guilt to go around. But the McCarran-Ferguson Act has done almost nothing to foster the consolidation of the health insurance industry. For one thing, health insurers don't typically share data in the manner that the exemption allows. Moreover, the courts have interpreted the law so narrowly that it doesn't exempt insurance mergers from federal scrutiny.

The real culprits are federal antitrust authorities, whose approach to health insurance mergers can best be described as supine. In other words, the truly effective antitrust immunity the industry has received has come not from lawmakers but from federal regulators.

As David Balto, an antitrust attorney working for the liberal Center for American Progress, told Congress in 2008, over the previous 10 years there had been more than 400 health insurance mergers. Only two drew challenges from antitrust regulators at the Department of Justice.

Federal officials had also failed to bring cases alleging other anti-competitive behavior by health insurers, Balto said. [Emphasis added]

If Anthem is the only insurer in town, lifting that megacorporation's anti-trust exemption won't do a thing because it doesn't have a competitor to collude with. Stopping the mergers that led to Anthem controlling the market in cities and states would have been far more effective. It's no coincidence that those mergers took place over the last ten years: the Department of Justice and its antitrust regulators weren't really too interested in examining business enterprises and their ways of scamming the public under George W. Bush and the Republicans.

While lifting the exemption might enable some congress critters to puff out their chests and wave their only slightly bloodied swords, all that will have been accomplished is that a few windmills got tilted slightly, and only for a moment.

Another Vacation Piece

This is a post I wanted to repeat.

Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Prosecution Got a Conviction in Holy Land Foundation Trial
The prosecution succeeded, and that is the only way I can lead off on this embarrassing report. A jury of twelve Dallas residents believed a prosecution that I also witnessed, and handed down a conviction on all counts - of Muslim charities being directly supportive of Hamas after that group was declared a terrorist operation. I cannot say the defendants, including the Holy Land Foundation itself, were found guilty.

As I have reported, the courtroom procedure included allowing witnesses to testify without being identified because they were Israeli agents, allowing hearsay testimony in addition to both testimony and redirect that ranged into the territory of phantasmagorical, and a prosecution wrap-up that told jurors that they should rely on their memories instead of testimony and evidence, and that freedom of speech wasn't allowed if that speech showed bad feelings. Demonstrations against Israeli occupation were the main focus of the U.S. prosecution.

There will be an appeal, and recent overturning of a similar case in which the prosecution was allowed tactics that also ran into the unconstitutional range makes the prospects somewhat promising.

As I have previously reported, the local reports often gave prosecution contentions without balancing defense arguments, so I will give the al Jazeera report which contains both sides.

There is more of course, at the original post.

Watching Americans

It was another interesting trip to Watching America. President Obama's decisions to not release the torture pictures but to continue the military commission trials got a lot of international coverage. So did the sorry state of the Republican Party in the US. The article that I found most interesting, however, had to do with the Department of Homeland Security.

Written by Matthew Harwood for the Comment Is Free section of the Guardian, the article points to the recent flap over reports prepared by DHS which seemed to be aimed directly at conservative groups, reports that got those groups' knickers in such a twist that DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano immediately withdrew the reports.

The 11-page "Domestic Extremism Lexicon" defines potential domestic terrorism threats facing the United States. Produced by DHS's office of intelligence and analysis, it's purpose was to define key terms and extremist groups. Conservative websites were apoplectic about how "rightwing extremism" was described:

"A movement of rightwing groups or individual who can be broadly divided into those who are primarily hate-oriented, and those who are mainly antigovernment and reject federal authority in favour of state or local authority. This term also may refer to rightwing extremist movements that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration."

Though retracted within hours of its release and recalled from state and local law enforcement partners, the lexicon has nevertheless drawn the ire of rightwing groups, who see it as yet another example of the Obama administration equating anti-immigration and anti-abortion groups with terrorism. ...

It's true that the DHS lexicon does include anti-abortion activists who use violence against abortion doctors and clinics in its list of extremists. But the lexicon also includes typically leftwing movements associated with animal rights, the environment and anarchism, among others. The truth is that both the left and the right have reason to be suspicious of the US government's surveillance programmes. [Emphasis added]

One of the basic truths about government is that once it has assumed powers, it is damned near impossible to wrest those powers back, no matter which party is in control. The Bush administration rolled back all sorts of constitutional guarantees, among them the right to be secure in one's home, and the right to free speech and assembly. Spying on US citizens at home and abroad was expanded. That was the status quo when President Obama entered office, and the fact that the DHS and other government agencies continue those practices, with or without the explicit approval of the White House, is not only shameful, it is profoundly worrisome as Mr. Harwood points out:

DHS has become an albatross of surveillance choking American necks. Internal documents such as the lexicon and the rightwing extremism report, combined with previous examples of DHS helping state fusion centres watch over antiwar protesters under the Bush administration, show that DHS is not only actively undermining American civil liberties but is also politicised by whichever party is running the country. This isn't a left-right issue, it's an American issue. [Emphasis added]

Retracting those reports is not going to solve anything as long as the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice continue their open disregard for the Constitution when it comes to the basic freedoms under which this democracy has operated. It's time to rein in the domestic spying.

A Sordid Tale

When the "center-left" Los Angeles Times editorial board gets its collective knickers in a twist, you just know something is terribly, terribly wrong. In this case it's the "circus" surrounding the Ted Stevens trial, and the editorial board is correct: the whole thing stinks.

For that matter, we're still trying to figure out which of the clowns in the courthouse circus presented by Stevens' corruption trial is the biggest disgrace: the prominent Republican senator himself, who is loudly trumpeting his vindication despite ample evidence that he accepted expensive gifts without disclosing them as required by law; the federal prosecutors who botched the case against him and committed serious ethical breaches, if not outright crimes, by failing to give evidence to the defense; or one of our least favorite Alaska politicians (and that's saying something), Gov. Sarah Palin, whose disingenuous calls for a new senatorial election are a transparent ploy to further her own political ambitions.

That's amazingly strong language for the Los Angeles Times, but it's fitting. The case against the corrupt senator from Alaska should have been a slam dunk. The evidence was there and was overwhelming. The prosecutors, however, got cute and withheld some evidence from the defense in a bizarre game known in legal circles as "hiding the salami" even after they were ordered to deliver it to the defense attorneys by the judge.

Why? It's not likely that even with the criminal investigation ordered by the same judge the reasons will emerge as clear-cut, although I sure would like to be wrong in this instance. There are several possibilities currently circulating.

First, the prosecutorial misconduct might have been intentional as a cagey way to save Mr. Stevens' bacon. By behaving so egregiously, the case against the senator would be thrown out and he would walk away without any penalties.

Second, and the obverse of the first possibility, the misconduct was encouraged by the White House as a way to punish Mr. Stevens who had annoyed or exasperated one of the powers running the executive branch.

Third, and much more likely in my opinion, the prosecutors engaged in that kind of misconduct because they could. After eight years of Ashcroft and Gonzales as Attorneys General, the Justice Department lawyers came to believe that legal protections were a farce and that cases were to be won at any cost. Playing by the rules, including such constitutional guarantees as Due Process, just didn't apply to them. They had no rules.

Whatever the reasons, however, Eric Holder, the current AG, really had no choice: he had to move to dismiss the charges against Ted Stevens. He had an angry Federal Court judge breathing heavily down his back. He also had to get the word out to the rest of the Justice Department that the days of "no rules for prosecutors" were gone. I would have preferred that Mr. Holder move against the prosecutors in the Don Siegelman case, which smells even worse, but the timing just wasn't right for that move.

I just hope that the new Attorney General is looking at Gov. Siegelman's case and all of the other high profile cases that smell as bad. I also hope he follows through on cleaning up his department and returning it to one that operates within the guidelines of the US Constitution. That would be change we all could welcome.

Freedom Of Speech Denied

The reading over of some of the released memos from the Department of Justice under control of the war criminals gave me a sense of deja vu. The argument that Froomkin was brought up short by, I heard before in federal court.

The war on terror was more important than freedom of speech, and occasioned denying it to U.S. citizens.

That was part of the government's closing argument in the trial of the Holy Land Foundation.

Ari Shapiro reports for NPR: "About a month ago, the American Civil Liberties Union sent the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel a letter and a chart. The chart listed 55 classified Bush administration legal memos on national security issues. The letter basically said, 'release these memos.'

"Some of the memos that the Justice Department declassified Monday were not even on the ACLU's list.

"'So there are dozens of memos that are still secret,' said Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU's national security project. They include 'memos that provided the basis for the national security agency's warrantless wiretapping program and memos that provided the basis for the CIA's torture program.'...

"One reason there's a lot of interest in these documents is that they could contain some surprises. For example, one memo declassified Monday is dated Oct. 23, 2001. It asserts that the military can ignore Americans' Fourth Amendment privacy rights and conduct searches against suspected terrorists without a warrant. It's a controversial claim, but the public learned about the assertion years ago in a footnote to another Justice Department document. The public did not know about a line in the same memo that said: 'First Amendment speech and press rights may also be subordinated to the overriding need to wage war successfully.'" (Emphasis added.)

The administration just past has been a treacherous eight years for the U.S. It should be prosecuted, and I am particularly hoping that Speaker Nancy Pelosi's insistence on coming prosecutions, rather than mere investigations, will help to preserve witnesses from being given immunity.

In an interview last week with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared that she “absolutely” supports the criminal investigation and potential prosecution of Bush officials, stating: “We have to have the facts. . . . We are unhappy about certain things; we anecdotally know about certain things. We will have the documentation of it, and we can go forward.”

The country was betrayed, its institutions used against it, and the use of our funds to bankrupt us was nothing short of theft and fraud.

Criminal action is in order.

Civil and Human Rights Reborn At DOJ

The term that begins for new Attorney General Holder follows a long dearth of real justice in the Justice Department. My hopes are particularly high for his access to the records withheld from congress of work for torture, on the grounds that it would threaten national security. An end is near for the threat to national security provoked by torture, at last.

The diversion of Justice Department work to fight the GWOT, from its purpose of actually bringing Justice to the U.S., is well known. The "Civil Rights division showed disregard for minorities, and not only was diminished in "number of cases it sought to solve, but also in its tone, over the past eight years of catering to the base.

"The most important thing is that we have a person who gets it," said Benjamin Jealous, president of the NAACP. "He understands that the purpose of incarceration is not just punishment and protection but it is also redemption. He understands that people shouldn't be targeted because of what they look like but because of what they do. He understands that enforcing civil rights serves the interest of law enforcement. It's not about what he looks like, it's about what he believes."
(snip)
For criminal justice activists, a pressing concern has been sentencing disparities for convicts caught with crack cocaine versus powder cocaine. Possession of crack carries longer criminal penalties, and 80 percent of people prosecuted for crack offenses have been African American, according to the Sentencing Project. Obama has said repeatedly that he wants to end the sentencing disparity.

But when Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Md.) asked Holder at his confirmation hearing to work with Congress to promote more fairness in sentencing laws, he responded with the cool of a longtime judge and prosecutor: "We have to be tough. We have to be smart. And we have to be fair. Our criminal justice system has to be fair. It has to be viewed as being fair."

Sorry, I don't understand the word "but" in that paragraph. Being fair, or just, is very much to the point in the matter of prosecution of drug cases. (Of course, under the editorship of Hiatt, the standards for writing in WaPo do not include accuracy or vocabulary - this morning we have a Hiatt editorial calling on President Obama to be bipartisan, instead of solving the economic crisis the voters expect him to. But I digress.)

So much that this country was proud of has been destroyed by the executive branch just kicked out, that it is intimidating. The Department of Justice needs to be shaken down and its large faction of those opposed to human rights and civil rights expelled. Then we can begin the real business of returning to the Rule of Law.

**********************************************

Wishing all the best to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, just operated on for a very early stage pancreatic cancer.

Corporate Pleadings

The weakening of many institutions such as our constitution has gone on for eight years, ending two weeks ago Tuesday. Some of the results are just now coming into view. One is the outbreak of salmonella resulting from voluntary compliance in food safety issues.

Another has of course been the corporate welfare of tax cuts and incentives to cheat the public. There have also been easing of laws that have been broken, turning to deferred prosecutions from actual law enforcement.

Prosecutors won a conviction against accounting giant Arthur Andersen for shredding Enron auditing documents, but within a few months, the disgraced firm surrendered its accounting licenses, laid off more than 20,000 American employees, and ceased to exist.

Whether Arthur Andersen's collapse was caused or merely hastened by its felony conviction is debatable. But the subsequent economic carnage led U.S. attorneys to seek a gentler way to snuff out corporate wrongdoing. Deferred prosecutions provided exactly that.

Internal Justice Department guidance encouraged prosecutors to use the agreements to leverage their authority. In a 2003 memo to U.S. attorneys, Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson suggested that prosecutors could demand that a company waive its attorney-client privileges and cut off payment of its employees' legal fees. The policy didn't last: Thompson's successor declared the tactics off-limits after a federal judge found that prosecutors violated defendants' right to due process.

But that didn't address all the criticism of the use of deferrals. Business watchdogs like the Washington-based Corporate Crime Reporter have warned that treating companies as "too big to indict" makes them less respectful of the law. Corporate white-collar attorneys like Spivack argue, on the other hand, that it's sometimes the other way around—the threat of prosecution can result in fines and conditions beyond what a court would ever impose on a company if it were convicted. "Companies will go to great lengths to avoid the symbolic process of prosecution," says John Coffee, a securities-and-white-collar criminal-law professor at Columbia University.
(snip)
In 1999, then-Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder issued a memo to U.S. attorneys suggesting that a company's cooperation and the well-being of its employees and shareholders were legitimate factors to consider when deciding whether to press charges. While it didn't make waves at the time, it provided a legal foundation for the Thompson memo and the subsequent boom in deferred prosecutions.

Even if the Obama Justice Department were inclined to end that boom, Coffee points out, the parlous state of the economy would prevent prosecutors from seeking convictions against companies snared by the financial crisis. No U.S. attorney wants to be remembered as the prosecutor who pushed an already ailing company off a cliff.

The FDA will soon receive a new director, and already there is talk of punishment for the Peanut Growers for releasing salmonella tainted products knowingly. That is a good beginning, but I have no doubt we will be hearing from the wingnuts that President Obama is ruining the business climate and stifling innovation. The kind of innovation that gave us bundles of toxic mortgages and AAA ratings for the worthless assets is something our Eat The Poor advocates think must exist for businesses to feel cozy enough to stay in the U.S.

When criminals are prosecuted, the public gains. Perhaps it's time for a renewed Department of Justice to put the public first, and not business climate building.

The entire government has been dedicated to snuffing out the public interest for eight years. Time for change has come, and the change received a majority of the public vote. That public is ready to be served.