Buck Naked Politics

More Law-Enforcement Crimes: Jail Workers Plead Guilty to Detainee Abuse

by Deb Cupples |  Some people are addicted to crime shows, like CSI or Law and Order.  Me, I'm a Justice Department junkie. 

Cases involving physical abuse and dishonesty by law-enforcement officials are most chilling to me, because anyone could have one-too-many glasses of wine, put on a seat belt, and end up in jail.  Anyone's curious teenager could end up in a police pat-down while the kid is carrying a zip-loc baggie stuffed with marijuana.

I understand that jail time isn't supposed to resemble a week at Disney World.  At the same time, the human beings who get arrested or occupy our nation's jails have constitutional rights: I suspect that freedom from being slapped or punched or sodomized are among those rights.

If the three jail guards discussed below end up on the other side of the jail bars, they'll likely gain a new appreciation for constitutional rights.  The Justice Department reported:

CIA Says Pelosi Lied, Which May be True -- Then Again, Pots and Kettles

by Deb Cupples |  As Damozel more than adequately covered last week, Republicans accused current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of having been briefed (six or seven years back) on the CIA's use of torture -- torture being a federal crime (see 18 US Code 2340), and crimes being things that the folks working in government agencies are not allowed to commit. 

Speaker Pelosi denied that she'd been briefed in detail about torture (or specifically waterboarding).

This is interesting, given that in 2003 the CIA briefed congressional leaders, including Rep. Jane Harman, and included details about the use of the apparently criminal activity known as waterboarding. We know that, because Rep. Harman wrote a letter to a top CIA lawyer days after the briefing, expressing concern over the agency's apparent torture-related crimes.

I suppose it's possible that -- at the precise moment that CIA officials were telling Jane Harman about the waterboarding -- Speaker Pelosi was on a ladies-room break. 

Oops: I got the timing wrong.  It turns out that Pelosi and Harman were briefed on different days.  

TPMtv's "The Day in 100 Seconds" (May 14, 2009 Video)

The Talking Heads and their Memes O' Subliminal Power versus Nancy Pelosi: Tragic!....Tragic!....Firestorm!...Firestorm!...A hole she can't get out of!....Fairy dust and unicorns!

They really want you to see it their way and they're prepared to repeat the folksy cliches until you do. Talk about torture....  See it all, after the jump..

The Daily Show: "This Time Things Will be Different." Obama Blocks the Release of Detainee Abuse Photos, & Won't Intervene in the Military's Dismissal of Crucial Arabic Translator Who Has Admitted He is Gay

"In the war on terror, it was okay to waterboard a guy over 80 times to get him to talk, but God forbid that we keep the guy around who can understand what he was saying...if he has a boyfriend." After the jump.....

Health Care Industry Responds to Obama's Assurances: "Um...Reduce the Growth of Health Care Costs? Not So Much."

 A couple of days ago, Obama was full of enthusiasm about the "promise" of leaders of the health care industry to cut the rate of health care spending.

“These groups are voluntarily coming together to make an unprecedented commitment,” Mr. Obama said. “Over the next 10 years, from 2010 to 2019, they are pledging to cut the rate of growth of national health care spending by 1.5 percentage points each year — an amount that’s equal to over $2 trillion.” [New York Times]

People like my co-blogger, Deb Cupples, who've actually been watching the health care industry over a number of years weren't quite as excited as Obama about the industry's "commitment."  "Instead of simply reducing how high health-care costs rise, companies should be outright reversing the price gouging they've engaged in over the past eight or ten years," Deb grimly pointed out, going on to demonstrate just how right she is.

Anyway:  Obama said they'd made a "commitment" not to gouge us any worse, and to start right away cutting costs every year, and many applauded.  Watch now as the industry leaders who attended the meeting with Obama walk that one back!

The Thickening Plot: Sen. Bob Graham Says the CIA Gave Him False Information

by Damozel | Amidst all the excitement over Pelosi's "extraordinary accusation that the Bush administration lied to Congress about the use of harsh interrogation techniques" that the CIA is misleading Congress about her knowledge of the Bush administration's interrogation procedures,  Sen. Bob Graham has given HuffPost an interview that seems to support Pelosi's argument.

In testimony that could bolster Speaker Nancy Pelosi's claim that the CIA misled her during briefings on detainee interrogations, former Senator Bob Graham insisted on Thursday that he too was kept in the dark about the use of waterboarding, and called the agency's records on these briefings "suspect."

In an interview with the Huffington Post, the former Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman said that approximately a month ago, the CIA provided him with false information about how many times and when he was briefed on enhanced interrogations.

Col. Lawrence B. Wilkerson, Former Chief of Staff at State Dept: The Truth About "Sith Lord" Richard Bruce Cheney

by Damozel | Whoa.  As in "Wow."  This is from Col. Lawrence B. Wilkerson, former chief of staff of the Department of State during the term of Secretary of State Colin Powell and -- yes -- a Republican.  Who badly wants Cheney to shut up "as we try to repair the extensive damage you've done--to the country and to its Republican Party."  [Washington Note]

First, more Americans were killed by terrorists on Cheney's watch than on any other leader's watch in US history. So his constant claim that no Americans were killed in the "seven and a half years" after 9/11 of his vice presidency takes on a new texture when one considers that fact. And it is a fact.

TPMtv's "The Day in 100 Seconds" (May 14, 2009 Video)

"White hot" on Capitol Hill, as various and sundry talking heads react to Pelosi's accusations against the CIA." After the jump...

TPMtv: Pelosi Accuses the CIA of Lying to Congress About Her Knowledge of Waterboarding

by Teh Nutroots | She kinds of kicks ass here, trying to cover her own.  Doesn't really explain her own previous statements, of course.

See Memeorandum for blogger reactions.

Geithner on the Medicare Crisis: Two Possible Solutions Worth Mentioning

by Deb Cupples |  As my co-blogger Damozel discussed yesterday, Treasury Secretary Tim Geihtner says that Medicare is in crisis, partly because health care costs are expected to rise (yet again).

One thing troubles me: the lack of attention to what drives up health care costs.  It's not some magical effect of physics: our nation's health care costs have skyrocketed because of choices made by major government and health-industry players -- choices that, coincidentally enough, were quite personally lucrative for those players.

If U.S. government officials really want to solve Medicare's cost-related problems (at least partly), I suggest that they address at least the following two contributing factors:

Police Brutality: Another Head Kicking and More

by Deb Cupples | According to an NBC piece entitled "Cop Punts Suspect's Head; High Five Ensues," a Los Angeles police officer kicked the head of a suspect who had already laid on the ground after a car chase had ended.  And it's on video (after the jump). 

Three officers and a dog ended up on the suspect, and the video clip ends with the head-kicking cop high-fiving one of his colleagues.

Police say that the suspect is a known gang member -- which doesn't seem relevant, given most police departments' policies against excessive force.  Admittedly, the U.S. Constitution doesn't expressly prohibit head kicking, but I suspect that such brutality against a surrendered suspect might violate due process rights in some way or another.

This story reminds me of a similar but unrelated story I read some weeks back, about which the Justice Department reported:

TPMtv's "The Day in 100 Seconds" (May 13, 2009 Video)

Detail from painting, The Triumph of Death, by Pieter Breugel the Elder, via  via Olga's Gallery

In which SC's  Lindsey Graham thinks every principle on which our nation was founded should give way before cowardice and fear for one's own skin.  Meanwhile, our country's moral standing is shown to be damaged and our security not enhanced by the administration's use of torture....after the jump.

FBI Agent to Testify About Amateur Torture 'Experts' Today

by Bill Kavanagh:  Look for Ali Soufan, who was the FBI’s agent in charge of debriefing Abu Zubaydah until he discovered a coffin had been brought to Zubaydah’s cell by the CIA, to testify today before Congress about the torture techniques that CIA “experts” employed with high-value Al Qaeda prisoners. 

Soufan claims that Zubaydah confided to him that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, once his “rapport building” technique had begun to pay off—and before the CIA’s own outsourced amateur consultants arrived in Thailand to take over with their torturous methods.  Der Spiegel’s article on the CIA's outsourcing of interrogation and torture to civilian psychologists is available at the link.  Many thanks to David Martin, who pulled this article from the internets.

Obama Administration Wants to Regulate Executive Pay

by Damozel | According to The Wall Street Journal:

The Obama administration has begun serious talks about how it can change compensation practices across the financial-services industry, including at companies that did not receive federal bailout money, according to people familiar with the matter.

The initiative, which is in its early stages, is part of an ambitious and likely controversial effort to broadly address the way financial companies pay employees and executives, including an attempt to more closely align pay with long-term performance.

Administration and regulatory officials are looking at various options, including using the Federal Reserve's supervisory powers, the power of the Securities and Exchange Commission and moral suasion. Officials are also looking at what could be done legislatively.

The Daily Show on Waterboarding, USA: The Parsing of Nancy Pelosi

"Nancy Pelosi denies knowledge of harsh interrogation techniques before slowly parsing her unequivocal denial of never being told."

After the jump!

Latest Fake Crisis -- Geithner's Message to the Public: Social Security & Medicare Now in Dire Straits!!!

by Damozel | Geithner's message:  Will it surprise you to learn that Social Security may run out of money sooner than expected, maybe as soon as 2037? Or that  Medicare's in dire trouble and may run out of money in 2017?

Ezra Klein discusses the findings:

[B]oth programs face challenges. What probably won't make it into many stories, however, is the relative severity of the problems. The crude fix for Social Security actually sounds quite manageable: "Social Security could be brought into actuarial balance over the next 75 years with changes equivalent to an immediate 16 percent increase in the payroll tax (from a rate of 12.4 percent to 14.4 percent) or an immediate reduction in benefits of 13 percent or some combination of the two."

Annnnd Former Gov. (& SEAL) Jesse Ventura Says: "Give Me a Waterboard, Dick Cheney, and One Hour and I'll Have Him Confess to the Sharon Tate Murders"

Teh Nutroots | | Heather at C&L Video Cafe says:

On Larry King Live Jesse Ventura takes on the Bush administration chickenhawks and Rush Limbaugh, and defends Colin Powell. After being waterboarded himself in the SERE program, Ventura makes no bones about it. Waterboarding is torture. I'd like to see Hannity have Ventura on his show to debate the issue.

Ventura says he'd prosecute everyone who was involved in torture, right down the line.  He also points out that if waterboarding isn't done correctly, the recipient could actually drown. 

Finally, he defends Colin Powell against chickenhawk Cheney and calls for legalization of drugs!  Are we more offended by drugs or murder?  he asks.  Awesome.

Snark on Toast: Venal Politicians, Crappy Taste; Shorter All the Defenders of Dick Cheney's Lies; the Omnipotence of Obama & His Childlike Faith in Insurance Companies; Following the Money

by Teh Nutroots | British libertarian Vindico isn't only disgusted by British MPs who divert taxpayer money to their own ends; he also objects to their taste in taxpayer-funded gewgaws:

Not only are our MPs up to their receding hairlines in the Parliamentary trough, but they also appear to have no taste whatsover...

John Reid claimed for a pouffe and a glittery loo seat on MPs' expenses...

TPMtv's "The Day in 100 Seconds" (May 12, 2009 Video)

detail from painting, "The Fight Between Carnival and Lent" by Pieter Breugel the Elder,  via Olga's Gallery

After the jump....

Smoke & Mirrors: Health Care Industry Offers to "Stem" Price Increases?

  by Deb Cupples |   Yesterday, the Washington Post reported that representatives of the health care industry sent a letter to Obama Administration officials, pledging to "stem" increasing health care costs by about $2 trillion over the next 10 years.  The Obama Administration seems to be eating it up. 

Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman commented:  

"Are there reasons to be suspicious about this gift? You bet — and I’ll get to that in a bit. But first things first: on the face of it, this is tremendously good news.

"The signatories of the letter say that they’re developing proposals to help the administration achieve its goal of shaving 1.5 percentage points off the growth rate of health care spending. That may not sound like much, but it’s actually huge: achieving that goal would save $2 trillion over the next decade."

I adore Dr. Krugman, and I agree that slowing the rate of cost increases would be a good thing -- better than not slowing it.

Big BUT coming: the health care industry's efforts are far shy of what they should be.

Instead of simply reducing how high health-care costs rise, companies should be outright reversing the price gouging they've engaged in over the past eight or ten years. 

The tables after the jump illustrate that the folks running health-care-related companies have been raping us consumers sort of like the oil companies have.