Thursday, January 15, 2004
Panel recommends universal health care
The United States must find a way to provide health care coverage to all Americans by 2010 to prevent more unnecessary suffering, death and economic costs to society, the National Academy of Sciences concluded yesterday.
Culminating the most detailed, authoritative examination of the impact of leaving millions of Americans without health insurance, a committee of the academy's prestigious Institute of Medicine (IOM) for the first time formally recommended that the United States guarantee health insurance for every citizen.
"The lack of health insurance for tens of millions of Americans has serious negative consequences and economic costs not only for the uninsured themselves but also for their families, the communities they live in, and the whole country," the 16-member committee concluded, after more than three years of research that produced six reports. "The situation is dire and expected to worsen. The Committee urges Congress and the Administration to act immediately to eliminate this longstanding problem."
The panel sidestepped recommending a specific approach for achieving the highly complex, politically volatile goal. Instead, it issued a "checklist" of five principles it said should guide federal officials, politicians and policymakers in tackling the problem -- and voters in assessing candidates for elected office.
Story.
posted by chris at 1:40 PM
Halliburton, Mars Division
New polls show that at a time of record deficits, the public is against spending billions on a Mars mission while cutting domestic priorities. Nonetheless, there is one company that has supported a Mars mission for years: Halliburton. The company, which was headed by Vice President Dick Cheney and is a major financial backer of the Administration, has long supported funding a Mars plan because it is good for its drilling technology business (it was also Cheney who spearheaded the Mars plan inside the White House). According to an 8/20/01 Kiplinger's Business publication, "several companies and university labs will stand to benefit from new projects" in a Mars mission - including Halliburton. And the payoff could be big: Citizens Against Government Waste notes that, despite the White House's initial lowballing, legitimate "cost estimates for the new program range from $550 billion to $1 trillion."
In the 4/24/00 edition of Oil & Gas Journal, Halliburton scientist Steve Streich pointed out why a Mars program would be so lucrative for Halliburton. He says a "Mars exploration program presents an unprecedented opportunity" for the industry and that it "warrants the support of both government and industry leaders." He says "one area of great importance is finding out of what the inside of Mars consists. That's where the petroleum industry comes in." Specifically, benefits for "the oil and gas industry may lie in technology that NASA will use for drilling into the surface of Mars." He says there is "great potential for a happy synergy between space researchers" on a Mars project and "the oil and gas industry."
The 4/24/00 edition of Oil & Gas Journal also reported that Halliburton is already involved in a preliminary consortium of industry and academia "organized to support the development of new technology required for the Mars mission." A 2/28/01 report in Petroleum News confirmed that "NASA has been working with Halliburton and others to identify drilling technologies that might work on Mars."
Happy synergy.
posted by chris at 12:08 PM
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Tuesday, January 13, 2004
Work! No time to eat!
An internal audit now under court seal warned top executives at Wal-Mart Stores three years ago that employee records at 128 stores pointed to extensive violations of child-labor laws and state regulations requiring time for breaks and meals.
The audit of one week's time-clock records for roughly 25,000 employees found 1,371 instances in which minors apparently worked too late at night, worked during school hours or worked too many hours in a day. It also found 60,767 apparent instances of workers not taking breaks, and 15,705 apparent instances of employees working through meal times.
Officials at Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, employing 1.2 million people at its 3,500 stores in the United States, insisted that the audit was meaningless, since what looked like violations could simply reflect employees' failure to punch in and out for breaks and meals they took.
Story.
posted by chris at 12:24 PM
And the winner is . . .
Last night, MoveOn.org presented the winners of their "Bush in 30 Seconds" contest. Watch for the big winner during Bush's State of the Union address later this month.
posted by chris at 9:58 AM
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Monday, January 12, 2004
Quote of the day
On the topic of electronic voting machines:
“People complain that they can't find an honest car mechanic and that their lawyer is ripping them off and their butcher has his thumb on the scale, but they somehow put their faith in politicians, who are the biggest crooks in America, thinking 'Oh no, these big Washington power brokers would never rig an election.’”-- Jim Collier, the author of Votescam, on WXYT's Mark Scott show
posted by chris at 4:53 PM
The depths of greed
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has settled a lawsuit over its practice of taking out life insurance on employees and making itself the beneficiary.
The settlement with families of employees who died was reached hours before a federal appeals court ruled against the giant retailer. Terms of the deal, reached earlier this week, were not disclosed.
Wal-Mart officials said the settlement could benefit relatives of 150 to 500 employees although only about six families were part of the lawsuit.
The families who sued alleged that Wal-Mart never told workers about the life insurance policies - Wal-Mart disputes that claim - and said they were enraged that the company profited but they received nothing from the proceeds.
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Wal-Mart is one of many large U.S. companies in recent years that have taken out policies on the lives of employees, ranging from executives to workers on the bottom rungs of the pay ladder, with the goal of collecting benefits when the employees die. Companies term the policies corporate-owned life insurance, or COLIs. Critics call them dead-peasant policies.
Wal-Mart set up a trust in 1993 and named itself as beneficiary on policies for 355,000 employees.
What?!?
posted by chris at 4:34 PM
While we were looking the other way
On December 13, when U.S. forces captured Saddam Hussein, President George W. Bush not only celebrated with his national security team, but also pulled out his pen and signed into law a bill that grants the FBI sweeping new powers. A White House spokesperson explained the curious timing of the signing - on a Saturday - as "the President signs bills seven days a week." But the last time Bush signed a bill into law on a Saturday happened more than a year ago - on a spending bill that the President needed to sign, to prevent shutting down the federal government the following Monday.
By signing the bill on the day of Hussein's capture, Bush effectively consigned a dramatic expansion of the USA Patriot Act to a mere footnote. Consequently, while most Americans watched as Hussein was probed for head lice, few were aware that the FBI had just obtained the power to probe their financial records, even if the feds don't suspect their involvement in crime or terrorism.
The Bush Administration and its Congressional allies tucked away these new executive powers in the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2004, a legislative behemoth that funds all the intelligence activities of the federal government. The Act included a simple, yet insidious, redefinition of "financial institution," which previously referred to banks, but now includes stockbrokers, car dealerships, casinos, credit card companies, insurance agencies, jewelers, airlines, the U.S. Post Office, and any other business "whose cash transactions have a high degree of usefulness in criminal, tax, or regulatory matters."
Congress passed the legislation around Thanksgiving . . . . with a voice vote to avoid individual accountability. While broadening the definition of "financial institution," the Bush administration is ramping up provisions within the 2001 USA Patriot Act, which granted the FBI the authority to obtain client records from banks by merely requesting the records in a "National Security Letter." To get the records, the FBI doesn't have to appear before a judge, nor demonstrate "probable cause" - reason to believe that the targeted client is involved in criminal or terrorist activity. Moreover, the National Security Letters are attached with a gag order, preventing any financial institution from informing its clients that their records have been surrendered to the FBI. If a financial institution breaches the gag order, it faces criminal penalties. And finally, the FBI will no longer be required to report to Congress how often they have used the National Security Letters.
More.
posted by chris at 3:45 PM
Flying the suspicious skies
Despite stiff resistance from airlines and privacy advocates, the U.S. government plans to push ahead this year with a vast computerized system to probe the backgrounds of all passengers boarding flights in the United States.
The government will compel airlines and airline reservations companies to hand over all passenger records for scrutiny by U.S. officials, after failing to win cooperation in the program's testing phase. The order could be issued as soon as next month. Under the system, all travelers passing through a U.S. airport are to be scored with a number and a color that ranks their perceived threat to the aircraft.
Another program that is to be introduced this year that seeks to speed frequent fliers through security lines in exchange for volunteering personal information to the government.
Story.
posted by chris at 12:27 PM
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