Raise your hand if you’re surprised about this….

Posted: February 1, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Barack Obama, Team Obama, The Media SUCKS, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , | 12 Comments

Jay Carney with Joe Biden and Robert Gibbs

Lloyd Grove has a veeeerrrry interesting post up at The Daily Beast on Obama’s new press secretary Jay Carney. Unlike Robert Gibbs, who had easy access to the president, Carney doesn’t even report directly to Obama. According to Grove Carney

is expected to be far more responsive to the needs of his erstwhile colleagues than the sometimes flippant Gibbs. The 39-year-old Gibbs, a trusted Obama confidant since the latter’s 2004 Senate race, has experienced occasionally tense relations with press room regulars and is notorious for not returning phone calls.

Carney is a champ at returning phone calls.

But he’s not an Obama insider—hardly an advantage when toiling for an insular politician who is naturally wary of newcomers and relies on a tight circle of advisers and intimates. Some White House veterans, including at least one former presidential press secretary, worry that Carney won’t receive the necessary access to Obama, and other policymakers at key meetings, to speak from the podium with the authority that Gibbs unquestionably enjoyed.

Carney will report “to White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer, who in turn reports to senior presidential adviser David Plouffe,” according to this story in the Washington Post

With Carney’s appointment comes a major structural shift: All of the operations of the press and communications shops will move under the control of communications director Dan Pfeiffer. Previously, the press shop had reported to the press secretary. Carney will technically report to Pfeiffer, something of a downgrading of that role, although they are expected to function as equals.

Grove talked to Ron Nessen, Gerald Ford’s press secretary about the Carney appointment.

“If the press secretary is not reporting directly to the president, his boss, I think it’s going to be a disaster,” Nessen told me, adding that he made sure to meet with Ford every day at 11 a.m. for half an hour before briefing the press. “How can you accurately reflect the president’s thinking if you have to go through two layers? That was one of the conditions I made with Ford when I took the job—that I would have direct access to him, and that I could attend any meeting I wanted.”

Anne Compton, WH correspondant for ABC news also expressed doubts about the access Carney will have to Obama.

“I became suspicious when the president didn’t announce [Carney’s elevation]; Bill Daley did,” Compton told me, referring to the new chief of staff. “When Tony Snow came on, Bush announced it. When Scott McClellan left, Bush announced it. I think this time, it was stunning, and it was stunningly clear when the president did not make this announcement that the new press secretary will not be duplicating what Robert Gibbs has done for the past two years.”

Just exactly whom does President Obama deal with directly? I assume Axelrod was also a confidante, along with Gibbs, but they are leaving the WH. I know Valerie Jarrett is very close to Obama.

Anne Compton told the Daily Beast’s Grove that David Plouffe is the one who will be in meetings with Obama. So he’ll be briefing Dan Pfeiffer and then Carney will get everything from him?

It looks like Obama has decided to find a new way to give the press as little real information as possible. With Gibbs, it was dismissive, snarky treatment of press questions and refusal to return phone calls; with Carney, it will be friendly, responsive behavior, but little firsthand knowledge to share with the media.

Late Night Drifts

Posted: January 27, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Barack Obama, Team Obama, the villagers, U.S. Politics, Wikileaks | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 12 Comments

Snowdrifts in a shopping center parking lot South of Boston

I thought I put up a little news for your late night reading pleasure.

I hope all you East Coast folks have finished shoveling your driveways and sidewalks. The drifts in my driveway are almost as high as my car roof, and my sidewalk is just a narrow strip cutting through waist-high snow. When will it end?

You’ve probably heard by now that President Obama has announced his choice for Press Secretary. Jay Carney, formerly of Time Magazine and for the past two years Joe Biden’s communications director, got the nod to replace Robert Gibbs. Frankly, I always thought Carney was a Republican. Oh wait–that makes him perfect for Obama. Also, Carney is married to ABC news correspondent Claire Shipman–isn’t that a bit of a conflict?

Jay Carney and Claire Shipman

Anyway, a few bloggers have been dishing about Carney’s past history.

At FDL, David Dayen reminisced about a Yearly Kos panel that Carney was on in 2007, and also linked to this anecdote by Jay Rosen

Jay Carney is Time magazine’s Washington bureau chief. Andrew Golis interviewed him too, on the sidewalk outside the party that Time threw on Friday night to promote its political blog, Swampland. (I read Swampland and I was there: good party.) “The blogosphere’s critique of the mainstream media has been overwhelmingly healthy and it’s made the mainstream media pay a lot of attention to details it should have been paying attention to,” he said, echoing Scherer and Fournier.

He then added something unintentionally revealing of how political journalists got themselves into the very trouble that’s forcing at least some of them to look inward. “Karen Tumulty and I— we’re not advocates, we’re not columnists.” (Tumulty, a contributor to Swampland, is Time’s national political correspondent.) “It’s our responsibility not to be labeled left or right.”

Is it now?

“That is just so wrong,” said a commenter (Lee) at Swampland, who had watched the interview. “Your job is to tell the truth.” (Regardless of how it gets you categorized.)

He sounds perfect for our post-partisan POTUS.

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Late Saturday Night Drifts

Posted: January 23, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Big Pharma, Health care reform, Team Obama | Tags: , , , | 12 Comments

Some where in another world (Minneapolis to be precise), I did work for a managed pharmacy benefits plan that was owned by United Health Care but was sold off to SmithKline Beecham  (now GlaxoSmithKline).  This was during the “Hillarycare” debates.  I know a lot about this because one of our VPs was on her panel and one of the hearings was held there.  I honestly thought that the DOJ would call the merger thing off because it was an appalling example of a vertical monopoly.  That didn’t happen.

During the mid nineties,  Big Pharma wanted their hands on the ability to call the plan formularies for defined benefit plans and stack them with their drugs.   All of them were scrambling to buy managed drug plans from Insurance Companies at the time.  Managed pharmacy benefit plans basically meant a windfall for any drug listed on the formulary.    Big Pharma  had a plan and I was privy to the business deal which was to  just tweak some chemical formula enough to call something a new drug, get it subject to a new patent, stick it on a formulary, and watch the profits roll in.

Don’t even get me started on how erectile dysfunction drugs made their way to formularies.  The race for profits is frequently a race to a place with nonexistent ethics.  So, based on the short amount of time I witnessed that situation, I took my fees and ran to New Orleans.  I couldn’t say much then because I was at a level where I was silenced by the merger negotiations and the SEC.

So, why do I mention that now?  Because, this doesn’t surprise me at all. Drug development is a business model and any one who thinks otherwise is sadly mistaken and most likely sadly at the bottom of the food chain and uninformed. Important drugs are not discovered because there is basically no money in it and there will never be any corporate money invested in it.

Public Health is part and parcel of the Public Interest.  The parable of Erectile Dysfunction Drugs may have a different ending if this policy actually sees the light of day.  Fortunately, it’s not completely up to the whims of creationists who hate science.  This move recognizes that the profit motive doesn’t always drive the correct priorities for society.  It only drives the correct money flows for something in high demand at particular time.  Rich people with a flaccid penis and a fear of wrinkles are driving the market.  So, what about Public Health?

The Obama administration has become so concerned about the slowing pace of new drugs coming out of the pharmaceutical industry that officials have decided to start a billion-dollar government drug development center to help create medicines.

The new effort comes as many large drug makers, unable to find enough new drugs, are paring back research. Promising discoveries in illnesses like depression and Parkinson’s that once would have led to clinical trials are instead going unexplored because companies have neither the will nor the resources to undertake the effort.

The initial financing of the government’s new drug center is relatively small compared with the $45.8 billion that the industry estimates it invested in research in 2009. The cost of bringing a single drug to market can exceed $1 billion, according to some estimates, and drug companies have typically spent twice as much on marketing as on research, a business model that is increasingly suspect.

The National Institutes of Health has traditionally focused on basic research, such as describing the structure of proteins, leaving industry to create drugs using those compounds. But the drug industry’s research productivity has been declining for 15 years, “and it certainly doesn’t show any signs of turning upward,” said Dr. Francis S. Collins, director of the institutes.

There’s another idea worth considering.  There are many drugs that are in the public domain.  There are many folks on medicare and medicaid plans.  There are also veterans.  Why not have the government offer to help start up small firms around the country that will produce those drugs at a minimal cost and reasonable profit with big time orders from all these government plans?  The idea is just to save money on drugs going to those covered by public health programs and create manufacturing jobs in places that need them. Many old drugs are just as effective as their minimally tweaked but patented counterparts that are advertised and marketed into a high profit set up per the nifty Big Pharma Business model.   Why pay for maximum profits to a market filled with a few greedy oligopolies when you can promote some nice little business all over Main Streets of American instead and Public Health instead and stir up a few jobs in the process?

Let the competition for government contracts really begin!

So, it’s an Open Thread, but that’s an article and a policy worth some discussion.

What Next?

Posted: January 21, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Team Obama, U.S. Economy | Tags: , , | 37 Comments

The more I read the news, the more I’m convinced that the powers that be are purposefully trying NOT to get it.  I don’t think they realize that the Great Recession was not just the normal little business adjustment that comes from a hiccup in markets.  It wasn’t just some short run misalignment of Aggregate Demand and Aggregate Supply.  There are serious systemic problems in the financial system and the way we do things.  Politicians in the United States are hellbent on repeating the same damned mistakes.  We’re seeing massive presidential appointments of the people that created the problems to positions that recommend future policy. Companies like General Electric have been part and parcel of our problem, and yet, who does the President want to ‘reboot’ jobs and competitiveness?

Signaling a shift to a new phase of the administration’s response to the nation’s economic woes, President Barack Obama will sign an executive order Friday establishing a new Council on Jobs and Competitiveness that will be led by General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt. The signing coincides with a visit to a GE branch in Schenectady, N.Y., the birthplace of the company.

The new panel will replace the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, and will have a new mission: to find “new ways to promote growth by investing in American business to encourage hiring, to educate and train our workers to compete globally, and to attract the best jobs and businesses to the United States,” according to the White House.

You don’t promote competitiveness by hiring  the head of a monopoly that feeds on no bid contracts and promotion of military adventurism.  It’s like putting Count Dracula in charge of your blood banks.  Again and again, I see this President do something I would expect a mainstream Republican to do while the current crop of Republicans are hammering out which crazed creationist will lead the country back to the third century.  What fresh hell is this?

There’s people asking those questions over at Project Syndicate.  Brit economist and member of the House of Lords Robert Skidelsky who wrote the book ‘Life after Communism’ has written a new article.  It’s called ‘Life after Capitalism’. I guess I’m not the only one thinking that this current house of cards is about to collapse.  While the running dog congressional lackeys of multinational corporate interests here are trying to keep the mess afloat, a few folks realize that there are economies out there in the greater world about ready to clean our clock. They are not all doing it by selling their souls to multinational corporations, believe me.

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Tuesday Reads

Posted: January 18, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads, Social Security, Team Obama, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics, Women's Rights | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 52 Comments

Good Morning!!!

It’s the end of a long weekend that celebrates the life of an American with vision, purpose, and fortitude in the pursuit of principle.   The news at the moment is as glum as the weather.  I will try to end the morning reads on higher and lighter ground.  I promise.

With that, I start with Glenn Greenwald at Salon and ‘The U.S. role in Gulet Mohamed’s detention’.  Thought we were done torturing people and denying them due process?  Dream on!  This is the story of a young American held in extraordinary conditions in the extraordinary country of Kuwait that basically still owes us their oil fields and freedom from the occupation by Saddam Hussein.  Gulet’s been held in some horrible situations that beg the question of who is responsible?  Is it some Sultan or President Obama?  Yes, this is change you can believe in if you’re Dick Cheney. Gulet and his family were led to believe that he would be released and sent home.  Home is the U.S. because he is a US citizen.  He deserves a lawyer and due process.  Now, he’s on the no-fly list and you know what that means.

As an American citizen, Gulet has the absolute right to return to and re-enter his country.  But by secretly placing him on the no-fly list while he was halfway around the world — and providing no information about why he was so placed — the U.S. Government is denying him his right to return.  Worse, they know that this action is not only preventing him from returning, but is keeping the 19-year-old in a state of absolute legal limbo, where’s he imprisoned by a country that admits it has no cause for holding him and does not want to hold him, yet which cannot release him.  The U.S. government has the obligation to assist its citizens when they end up detained without cause; here, they are doing the opposite:  they’re deliberately ensuring it continues.

If there’s any evidence that he has has done anything wrong, he should be charged, indicted, and brought back to the U.S. for trial.  What the Obama administration is doing instead is accomplishing what they could not do if he were in the U.S.:  holding him without a shred of due process, interrogating him without a lawyer present, and — if his credible claims are to believed — using beatings and torture to get the information it wants (or false information:  Gulet told me he was very tempted to falsely confess to make the beatings stop).  This abuse of the no-fly list is a common tactic used by the U.S. Government to circumvent all legal and constitutional constraints when it comes to its own citizens; this case just happens to be extra viscerally repellent.

Let’s see what our Secretary of State can do about this.

Not too long ago, our intrepid frontpager BostonBoomer took us down memory lane in pursuit of the vast criminal background that fills the resume of our head Inquisitor, Darrell Issa.  Now, it appears The New Yorker does the same. Just remember, your read it here first.  Skip the first two pages, those read like some blah blah blah  American Fairy Tale.  When you hit the rest, look for the pattern of insurance scams, crime, and a fortune that appears to be based in car theft.  The justice system is likely the force behind young Issa going into the military.   The unraveling of the Fairy Tale begins in 1998–like so many do–with a political tall tale that reflects the spin and not the facts.  Some one fact checked Issa’s campaign material.

In May of 1998, Lance Williams, of the San Francisco Examiner, reported that Issa had not always received the “highest possible” ratings in the Army. In fact, at one point he “received unsatisfactory conduct and efficiency ratings and was transferred to a supply depot.” Williams also discovered that Issa didn’t provide security for Nixon at the 1971 World Series, because Nixon didn’t attend any of the games.

A member of Issa’s Army unit, Jay Bergey, told Williams that his most vivid recollection of the young Issa was that in December, 1971, Issa stole his car, a yellow Dodge Charger. “I confronted Issa,” Bergey said in 1998. “I got in his face and threatened to kill him, and magically my car reappeared the next day, abandoned on the turnpike.”

Bergey died of lung cancer in 2002, but his widow, Joyce, recently said to me that she remembered her husband telling the story of the stolen Dodge Charger. She laughed when she heard that Issa is now a prominent member of Congress. “Well, he probably figured he was borrowing it from a friend,” she said. “But now we’re discussing politicians, so we all know how honest they are. When I meet a good one, I’ll let you know.”

Issa was transferred to a supply depot in the military.  That explains a lot.  For example, how does a guy coming out of the army find the funds for a really expensive sports car?   Only in America can this sort’ve  fractured fairy tale occur and play out in success.  Issa is bad news.   This is the second time I’ve linked to BB’s expose and it will not be the last.  We can muckrake with the best of them here and we intend to keep it up.

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