Buck Naked Politics

More About Right Wing Hate Speech and the Census Taker Lynching

Yesterday, my co-blogger Bartleby did a post about Bill Sparkman, the murdered census worker and substitute teacher whose body was found hanging from a tree in Clay County, Kentucky (Time Magazine).  The word "Fed" was written on Mr. Sparkman's chest.

Naturally, people are wondering whether anti-government hate speech from certain media had whipped some Kentucky residents into a frenzy.  Right Wing Watch posted a video containing examples of such frenzy stirring (below):

It's not just media folks.  As Bartleby points out, even some taxpayer-paid politicians got in on the game:

Interviewing Obama: Saturday Night Live Does Glenn Beck & Other Media Types

Obama Kisses First Lady Following 9-21 Health Care Address to Joint Session of Congress

Another official White House photograph (and U.S. Government Work) from official White House photographer Pete Souza. 

Bail-Out Watchdog & TARP Inspector Neil Barofsky Warns that We Are Now in a "Far More Dangerous Place"

by bartleby the scrivener | From Huffington Post:

"During an interview with the Huffington Post Investigative Fund, Barofsky made some striking observations. Among them were:

1. He found hundreds of banks capable of tracking their use of the TARP money - despite claims by the U.S. Treasury that the task was impossible.
2. If the purpose of the TARP rescue was to increase lending, it has failed.
3. The U.S. financial system, now dependent on bigger and fewer banks, is shakier than ever."  (More; emphasis added)

More Indicia that the Hanged Census Worker was Victim of Lynching; "Think Progress" Recaps Anti-Census Right-wing Hate Speech

by bartleby the scrivener | I say "lynching" because it is incredibly difficult for one person to hang another.  But that's just my theory.  Apparently one theory is that his death had some relationship to the local drug culture. Whatever.  Whoever killed him used his body to make a political statement.   From today's New York Times:

"[The] part-time census worker found hanging in a rural Kentucky cemetery was naked, gagged and had his hands and feet bound with duct tape, said an Ohio man who discovered the body two weeks ago....

"Jerry Weaver of Fairfield, Ohio [who discovered the body], told The Associated Press on Friday that he was certain from the gruesome scene that someone killed Sparkman....

"Weaver said he was in the rural Kentucky county for a family reunion and was visiting some family graves at the cemetery on Sept. 12 along with his wife and daughter when they saw the body.

"''The only thing he had on was a pair of socks,'' Weaver said. ''And they had duct-taped his hands, his wrists. He had duct tape over his eyes, and they gagged him with a red rag or something.''...

''And they even had duct tape around his neck,'' Weaver said. ''And they had like his identification tag on his neck. They had it duct-taped to the side of his neck, on the right side, almost on his right shoulder.''...

"Both of the people briefed on the investigation confirmed Sparkman's Census Bureau ID was found taped to his head and shoulder area. Weaver said he couldn't tell if the tag was a Census ID because he didn't get close enough to read it. He could see writing on Sparkman's chest, and could read that it said ''fed.''"

Republicans (Hypocritically) Argue FOR Waste and Abuse re: Medicare

Ezra Klein has an interesting post, which includes the following:

"But is it true? Sort of. At issue are payments to the Medicare Advantage program. Medicare Advantage is a Medicare carve-out that allows private insurers to offer plans for seniors. The original vision for the program was simple enough: Private competition will drive costs down. The private market, as you may have heard, is more efficient and effective and adaptable. No reason seniors shouldn't benefit from that ingenuity. So Medicare would give private insurers the money it would spend on a beneficiary, and the private insurers could try to do a better job with it.

"Medicare Advantage, however, failed in its mission: prices shot up. Private insurers complained that they couldn't compete with Medicare for the same amount of money Medicare spends. So Republicans systematically increased reimbursement rates, and now Medicare has to pay the average private plan 114 percent what it would've spent to cover that beneficiary itself. That's helped the private plans provide better service (as you would expect), and now 23 percent of seniors are in an Advantage plan.

"Democrats don't want to eliminate the Medicare Advantage program. But they want it to live within the same budget that Medicare uses. Republicans argue that pulling back these payments will force some Medicare Advantage plans to trim their benefits. That may well be true. But it is an argument against ever eliminating government overpayments to any program. It is an argument, in other words, for waste and abuse."

Yes, that is rather hypocritical -- given the lip service that most Republican politicans pay to "smaller government."

And the situation is even worse when you consider the widespread waste, fraud or abuse committed by private health-care contractors generally.

Sen. Kennedy's Replacement

The Boston Globe tells us that Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick has chosen Paul G. Kirk Jr. to serve as interim US senator in the late Ted Kennedy's place.  Kirk is reportedly a long-time friend of the Kennedy family.

The Globe also tells us that Mr. Kirk was an assistant to Sen. Kennedy in the '60s and '70s; in the '90s, Mr. Kirk was a registered lobbyist for a drug company on at least one matter.

TheHill reports that there is a bit of a snag in the process: it could take 90 days for the appointment to go through.  See the story here.

Was the Hanging of the Census Worker Politically Motivated?

by Damozel | The AP reporter interviewed by Rachel Maddow (below) seems to think there is some ground for concern.

"I don't think federal law enforcement would still be involved a week and a half after the body was found if there wasn't still that very serious concern," he responded. "And they don't have all the answers yet. And some of the things they know they're not going to tell us because they're concerned that there may be perpetrators out there that they would very much like to catch. But ... part of the process we're in now is proving all the other alternate explanations."

Barrett added that "in the county where this death occurred, they have instructed their workers not to go door to door while this investigation continues. Clearly there's a great deal of concern within this census worker community in that area. (More at HuffPost.)

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

The Daily Show: Jon Stewart Interviews Former Secretary of Homeland Security & Advisor to Bush, Tom Ridge

Tom Ridge says reaching out to the Muslim world will make us safer -- and other stuff as well.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Tom Ridge
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Healthcare Protests

Obama Says the "T Word" in Front of UN International Assembly

... because somebody had to do it. Via TPMtv:

Arianna Huffington, Author of "Pigs at the Trough," Discusses Wall Street's Great Fall & the Lessons It Didn't Learn from It

What would have happened if all the king's horses and all the king's men COULD have put Humpty Dumpty together again?

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

The Daily Show: 'Values Voters,' teh Gays, and the Unbelievably Flamboyant Dancing of Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay

In which "values voters" are asked to model their social mores on those of 11 year old boys while Tom DeLay dances with the stars.  

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Moral Kombat
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Healthcare Protests

PSA: Jon "Don Draper" Hamm, Will Ferrell, and Other Celebrities Speak Up on Behalf of Victimized Insurance Co. Executives

by Damozel | "Something terrible is happening," intones Jon Hamm in somberest "Madmen" mode. From "Funny or Die." Is it wrong that I keep rewinding to watch him say it?

Protect Insurance Companies PSA from Will Ferrell

Hacker Stole Credit and Debit Card info, Partly via Retailers' Wireless Networks

by Deb Cupples |  I've always been a bit leery of wireless internet: not always, but at least since the technology hit the mainstream.

A couple weeks ago, according to the Justice Department, Albert Gonzales of Miami pleaded guilty to "19 counts of conspiracy, computer fraud, wire fraud, access device fraud and aggravated identity theft relating to hacks into numerous major U.S. retailers including TJX Companies, BJ’s Wholesale Club, OfficeMax, Boston Market, Barnes & Noble and Sports Authority."

One of the techniques that Mr. Gonzales and his co-conspirators relied on is called "wardriving," which the Justice Department describes as "driving around in a car with a laptop computer looking for accessible wireless computer networks of retailers."

I've never understood how any big corporate retailer with big corporate resources could fail to protect their customers' credit- and debit-card information.  Apparently, current data coding and scrambling techniques aren't working so well.

It might cost the retailers more money, but isn't there a way to truly protect customers? 

And what about the super-techy folks working for big corporations that run ISPs or design networks and software?  God knows, they make enough money from their corporate and individual customers. 

If the tech-companies can trace people who look at kiddy porn and help the government mine data from ordinary Americans, surely those companies have the technology to better safeguard their customers.

Banks to Start Bailing Out Government?

 by Deb Cupples |  I don't understand the details, but I'm as wary as a Golden Retriever in a Florida swamp filled with hungry alligators.  The New York Times reports:

"Tired of the government bailing out banks? Get ready for this: officials may soon ask banks to bail out the government.

"Senior regulators say they are seriously considering a plan to have the nation’s healthy banks lend billions of dollars to rescue the insurance fund that protects bank depositors. That would enable the fund, which is rapidly running out of money because of a wave of bank failures, to continue to rescue the sickest banks.

"The plan, strongly supported by bankers and their lobbyists, would be a major reversal of fortune."

See the rest of the story here.  See Memeorandum for commentary.

Why Should Corporations Have All the Rights that Humans Have?

by Deb Cupples |  The corporate-personhood debate is raging, and it's silly.   Like most third-year law students, all U.S. Supreme Court Justices know better.  Apparently, they cannot resist grabbing some spotlight while engaging in bizarre verbal gymnastics.

Corporations don't even exist on the physical plane, which is why law professors call corporations a "legal fiction."  Corporations can't even physically do anything, like drive a car or eat a sandwich.  The only thing a corporation can do is what human beings do in a corporation's name.

Corporations exist only because some legal documents say that they do -- kind of like Santa Clause's existing because parents say that he does. 

Robots are closer to human beings than corporations are.  Should robots have all the same constitutional rights that human beings have?

Fact: the people who own, run or work for corporations already have their (personal) Constitutional rights, precisely because they are people.  Giving extra rights to corporations would be grossly unfair, as it would give the people who own, run, and work for corporations access to more rights than the rest of us have.

For example, most adult American people have a constitutional right to vote.  If corporations are given the right to vote, then some of the people who own, run, or work for corporations (i.e., the ones who would cast a corporations' ballots) would get to vote more than once.

A New York Times editorial states:

The Obama Health Care Plan in Four Minutes...

From Media Matters: Glenn Beck & the New McCarthyism

At Commentary, conservative Peter Wehner talks about how Glenn Beck is harming "the conservative movement."

Our Unreformed Financial System

by bartleby the scrivener | When the economic crisis hit last year, Paul Krugman and other progressives were hopeful that some good might be wrung out of the market's collapse.  What price such gossamer hopes now?   "The end of the world has been postponed," Krugman said at an economic seminar in Helsinki.   

Meanwhile, in an op-ed at NYT, Krugman points out that for the guys who brought about the collapse of Wall Street, it's now pretty much business as before:

"Even as the rest of the nation continues to suffer from rising unemployment and severe hardship, Wall Street paychecks are heading back to pre-crisis levels. And the industry is deploying its political clout to block even the most minimal reforms.

"The good news is that senior officials in the Obama administration and at the Federal Reserve seem to be losing patience with the industry’s selfishness. The bad news is that it’s not clear whether President Obama himself is ready, even now, to take on the bankers."

Obama's a smart guy, so why is he unable to understand the connection between the way the system rewards the financial industry movers and shakers and the need of banks for a massive bailout by American taxpayers?  Even I understand it.

Bill Maher Talks With Whistleblower & Ex-Cigna Exec Wendel Potter: "If There's Not a Public Option, then the Insurance Industry Wins Hands Down"

by bartleby the scrivener | After the jump, more from industry insider/whistleblower Wendel Potter.  Potter discusses Cigna's tricks and manners from his own first-hand experience and his own transformative experience (people who couldn't afford their co-payments).  He repeats his unfavorable opinion of the Baucus bill and agrees with Bill Maher that it is "a blowjob to the insurance industry" and discusses the role of lobbyists and propagandists from the insurance industry.  "I recognize some of the language."  He explains GOP opposition to the Baucus bill:  "It makes some things illegal that ought to have been illegal a long time ago."   He says:  "If there's not a public option, then the insurance industry wins, hands down."