Health Care vs. the Profit Principle

It’s always nice to see the President take a principled stand on something. The man formerly known as “43,” and now perhaps better named “29″ for his record-breaking approval rating, is promising to battle any expansion of government health insurance for children — and not because he hates children or refuses to cough up the funds. No, this is a battle over principle: private health care vs. government-provided health care. Speaking in Cleveland this week, Bush boldly asserted:

• I strongly object to the government providing incentives for people to leave private medicine, private health care to the public sector. And I think it’s wrong and I think it’s a mistake. And therefore, I will resist Congress’s attempt … to federalize medicine…In my judgment that would be — it would lead to not better medicine, but worse medicine. It would lead to not more innovation, but less innovation.

Now you don’t have to have seen “Sicko” to know that if there is one area of human endeavor where private enterprise doesn’t work, it’s health care. Consider the private, profit-making, insurance industry that Bush is so determined to defend. What “innovations” has it produced? The deductible, the co-pay, and the pre-existing condition are the only ones that leap to mind. In general, the great accomplishment of the private health insurance industry has been to overturn the very meaning of “insurance,” which is risk-sharing: We all put in some money, though only some of us will need to draw on the common pool by using expensive health care. And the insurance companies have overturned it by refusing to insure the people who need care the most – those who are already, or are likely to become, sick.

Read the full story AlterNet 

Military Contributions Supports Ron Paul

It’s interesting that the GOP continues to tell us that the withdrawal from Iraq is a slap in the face of the troops. Surprise the military isn’t contributing to the hawks.

In the recent 2nd Quarter report, Ron Paul, the staunchly anti-war GOP candidate is getting the most contributions from employees of the military. Spin that Bush.

H/T to The Spin Factor for digging through the reports to pull out this jewel.

NAME: TOTAL [ARMY] [NAVY] [AIRFORCE] [VETERAN] [USMC**]

RON PAUL: 24,965 [6,975] [6,765] [4,650] [5,075] [1,500]
McCain: 17,475 [6925] [6305] [1795] [800] [1600]
Romney: 3,551 [2,051] [0] [1500] [0]
Giuliani: 2,320 [1,450] [370] [250] [250]
Hunter: 1000 [0] [1000] [0]
Huckabee: 750 [250] [0] [500]
Tancredo: 350 [350] [0] [0]
Brownback: 71 [71] [0] [0]
Thompson: 0 [0] [0] [0]

Units are contributions in dollars by employees of the respective military organizations.

Source: Finance Reports for the 2007 July Quarterly.

Percentages**:

49.5% Ron Paul
34.6% McCain
7.0% Romney
4.6% Giuliani
2.0% Hunter
2.3% Others

*Note: These statistics include the contributions of employees who recorded or indicated their military branch. Contributions where no employer was specified were naturally not included.

**Edit: McCain and Ron Paul have USMC contributions which were overlooked. Their totals have been corrected. (6/17/07)

Miers Rejects Subpoena Compliance

Former White House Counsel Harriet Miers has again rejected calls from the House Judiciary Committee to comply with a subpoena for her testimony on the firing of 9 US Attorneys in 2006 and 2007. The Committee had set a deadline of 5 PM for Miers to explain how she would comply with the subpoena.

“In light of the continuing directives to Ms. Miers and as previously indicated to your Committee, I must respectfully inform you that, directed as she has been to honor the Executive privileges and immunities asserted in this matter, Ms. Miers will not appear before the Committee or otherwise produce documents or provide testimony as set forth in the Committee’s subpoena,” wrote Miers’ attorney, George Manning, in a letter delivered Tuesday to Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), Chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

In his letter, Manning suggested that the prohibition on Miers’ subpoena compliance was ‘unequivocal.’

“The correspondence communicating these unequivocal directives has been previously provided to the Committee,” he wrote. “The Subcommittee has demanded that Ms. Miers do precisely what the President has prohibited her from doing.”

Conyers had set 5 PM, July 17, as the deadline for Miers to make her intentions known about complying with the committee’s subpoena. The Judiciary Committee had warned last week that it would contemplate other actions, including criminal contempt proceedings, if Miers failed to comply with the subpoena.

In a statement released late on Tuesday afternoon, Rep. Conyers said the committee’s next move was being planned.

“The subcommittee has overruled Ms. Miers’ claims of immunity and privilege,” he said. “Her failure to comply with our subpoena is a serious affront to this committee and our constitutional system of checks and balances. We are carefully planning our next steps.”

But even if contempt charges were being planned, Miers appeared ready to stand up to the possibility.

“In fact, the cases cited in your letter confirm that the contempt statute is inapplicable to Ms. Miers,” Manning wrote in the letter to Conyers. “None of these cases involves an assertion of Executive privilege and immunities at issue here. More importantly, as your letter acknowledged, these cases hold that the contempt statute does not apply where a witness has an ‘adequate excuse.’”

Manning argued that Miers did in fact have such an ‘adequate excuse’ against complying with the subpoena, and that she also was not acting ‘willfully’ in contempt of Congress.

Manning’s letter to Conyers can be downloaded at The Raw Story