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Mother Jones
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Carol Leonnig has a piece in the Washington Post today about a botched Secret Service response to a 2011 shooting at the White House:
The suspect was able to park his car on a public street, take several shots and then speed off without being detected. It was sheer luck that the shooter was identified, the result of Ortega, a troubled and jobless 21-year-old, wrecking his car seven blocks away and leaving his gun inside.
The response infuriated the president and the first lady, according to people with direct knowledge of their reaction. Michelle Obama has spoken publicly about fearing for her family’s safety since her husband became the nation’s first black president.
Her concerns are well founded — President Obama has faced three times as many threats as his predecessors, according to people briefed on the Secret Service’s threat assessment.
Gee, I wonder why?
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Mother Jones
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Plenty of people think Congress should be called back into session to conduct a vote on the bombing campaign in Syria. John Boehner disagrees:
Boehner’s office deferred to the White House when asked about the issue.
“As the Speaker has said, he thinks it would be good for the country to have a new authorization for the use of military force covering our actions against ISIL, but traditionally such an authorization is requested and written by the commander-in-chief — and President Obama has not done that,” Boehner spokesman Michael Steel said via email.
One of these days Boehner is going to have to make up his mind whether President Obama does too much or too little. It’s getting a little hard to keep up with him.
But this raises a question. Has Congress ever turned down a president who asked for authorization to use military force? Sure, there was Ford’s last-ditch aid request for Vietnam in 1975, but that was for the end of a war, not the start of one. Anything else? Do the fights over funding for the contras count? I feel like I’m going to be embarrassed when someone points out some famous congressional refusal that I’ve forgotten about, but I sure can’t dredge anything up.
Obviously Obama has philosophical reasons for insisting that he can go to war on his own, and he also has political reasons for not forcing fellow Democrats to take a tough vote. But does he have even the slightest chance of Congress actually turning him down?
UPDATE: OK, I’m already embarrassed. I guess you could count the non-vote on Syria last year, couldn’t you? After all, Obama did ask for permission to bomb Syria, and Congress did let it die without any real debate. On the other hand, I’d say that Obama mostly asked for authorization in the hopes of being turned down. He didn’t exactly put on a full-court press, did he?
Any other examples?
UPDATE 2: There have been a few other suggestions. (1) Congressional hindrance of FDR before Pearl Harbor. That was a mixed bag, and anyway, I guess I was thinking of more recent (postwar) history. (2) Kosovo and Libya. Interesting cases, but more of a muddle than an outright loss for the president. Congress approved some funding bills and denied others.
Still, there’s enough here to suggest that presidents often have to fight with Congress over military action. Especially Democratic presidents.
Link:
Mother Jones
Over the weekend, Elizabeth Rosenthal gave us the latest installment in her series of rage-inducing stories about the American health care system. Like all the others in the series, it was all but ignored by the rest of the world. I guess everyone was too busy panicking over the White House fence jumper or figuring out ways to one-up each other in their withering scorn for Roger Goodell.
Or, like me, they’ve just given up even hoping that anyone will ever do anything about it. Saturday’s installment was about a medical practice that infuriates me more than almost any other: the routine practice of creating artificial and insanely high “list prices” for procedures that bear no relation to reality and exist for only one reason: to occasionally take advantage of the people who are most vulnerable to abusive pricing. That includes the uninsured, who can least afford it, and those who are already on the gurney going into surgery, who are barely in any condition to fight back.
Rosenthal’s latest piece is about the increasingly common practice of calling in “assistants” during surgical procedures who aren’t covered by the patient’s insurance and are therefore not subject to rates negotiated with the insurance company. This allows them to charge as much as they feel like, and then to harass patients with bill collectors forever unless they pay up. Here’s a graphic that accompanied the article:
The stomach-turning part of this is that it’s so obvious what’s going on. Clearly, the muscle and skin graft in the first example can be done for about $2,000, which produces a decent income for the doctor. So what’s the reason for list price topping $150,000? There isn’t one. It’s solely so doctors can scam the occasional patient and make a fast buck. As long as it’s not a Medicare or Medicaid procedure, and it’s out-of-network, there are no rules. So why not?
Are these assistants pals of the primary surgeon who get called in occasionally as a wink-wink-nudge-nudge buck-raking favor for a friend? Does it happen more randomly than that? Who knows. But there’s a limit to what patients can do. They’re in prep for surgery, there are tubes in their arms, and they get handed a bunch of papers to sign. Who knows what they say? Are they going to check? Are they going to read all the fine print? No and no, even if they’re aware that this kind of stuff can happen. Which most patients aren’t. A few weeks later they get the bill and their jaw drops to the floor. It’s the same thing that happens to uninsured patients who don’t have the benefit of insurer-negotiated rates when they land in the ER.
And there’s virtually no way to negotiate anyway. Have you ever tried to mark up a consent form? Have you ever tried to get a hospital to agree to an out-of-pocket max before an operation? Are you laughing hard enough yet? Insurance companies can do this, but ordinary schlubs like you and me can’t.
This is a scam, plain and simple. So why does it continue? Let’s allow James J. Donelon, the Republican insurance commissioner of Louisiana, to explain:
This has gotten really bad, and it’s wrong. But when you try to address it as a policy maker, you run into a hornet’s nest of financial interests.
And there you have it. It’s a great racket that allows doctors to extort loads of money from those in the most pain and with the least ability to fight back. None of them want the gravy train to end, and that’s your “financial interests” right there. It’s shameless and venal and there’s no excuse for it. And that’s America’s health care system.
In good conscience, I’m not even sure I can recommend that you read the whole piece. It will probably send your blood pressure skyrocketing and possibly send you to the ER, where you’ll be pauperized by the very practice the article is about. You have been warned.
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The Great “Out-0f-Network” Scam Is Eating Patients Alive. And It’s Supposed To.
Mother Jones
Of all the countries doing battle with Ebola, Liberia has been dealt the gravest blow. According to the World Health Organization, the impoverished West African nation now accounts for about half of all documented cases. And more than 1,200 residents are known or suspected to have died from the disease. In late August, the government quarantined an entire neighborhood for twelve days to prevent the outbreak from spreading.
Now the virus is forcing Liberian lawmakers to put their own work on hold.
More MoJo coverage of the Ebola crisis.
Why the World Health Organization Doesn’t Have Enough Funds to Fight Ebola
This Map Shows Why People Are Freaking Out About Ebola’s Arrival in Senegal
New Drugs and Vaccines Can’t Stop This Ebola Outbreak
5 Diseases That Are Scarier Than Ebola
We Are Making Ebola Outbreaks Worse by Cutting Down Forests
On Monday, Liberia’s legislature announced that the House of Representatives had canceled an “extraordinary sitting” to discuss the outbreak because its own chamber had been tainted by “a probable case of Ebola” and was being sprayed down with chlorine. The statement didn’t specify the source of the infection, but it noted that one of the chamber’s doormen had recently died after a “short illness.”
Liberia is ill-equipped to fight off the Ebola outbreak. Its entire national budget for 2013-2014 was $553 million, with only $11 million allotted for health care—about what Kanye West and Kim Kardashian are estimated to have spent on their Bel Air mansion in 2012.
Despite its meager resources, last month Liberia’s legislature allocated $20 million to battle the virus. But the nation had already burned through a quarter of that money by the first week of September. On Tuesday, United Nations officials pleaded with the international community to step up assistance to Liberia and neighboring countries, saying it will take $1 billion in aid to keep the number of cases in the region confined to the “tens of thousands.”
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Even Liberia’s Legislature Can’t Escape the Ravages of Ebola
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In his speech Wednesday night, President Barack Obama said he would “welcome congressional support” for his expanded-but-limited plan to destroy ISIS, the terror organization wreaking havoc in Iraq and Syria. But Obama conspicuously did not say he would ask lawmakers to vote on whether to approve this military action. The White House insists that a previous congressional authorization approving military action against Al Qaeda and its affiliates allows Obama to go forward without seeking another explicit green light from Capitol Hill. And once again, the nation is witnessing another round in the decades-long tussle between the legislative branch and 1600 Pennsylvania over the limits of the president’s war-making power. Many lawmakers seem happy to give the president a pass because they’d rather not vote on the matter—especially in an election year. (As GOP Rep. Jack Kingston of Georgia candidly said, “A lot of people would like to stay on the sideline and say, ‘Just bomb the place and tell us about it later.’ It’s an election year. A lot of Democrats don’t know how it would play in their party, and Republicans don’t want to change anything. We like the path we’re on now. We can denounce it if it goes bad, and praise it if it goes well and ask what took him so long.”) But an odd-couple coalition is developing within Congress: liberal Dems and conservative Republicans who are demanding that the president seek a congressional okay before escalating attacks against ISIS.
“Congress must weigh in when it comes to confronting ISIL through military action,” Reps. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.) and Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), the chairs of the 70-member Congressional Progressive Caucus, said in a statement after Obama’s speech. “The voices of the American people must be heard during a full and robust debate in Congress on the use of military force.”
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Liberals and Conservatives Join Together To Slam Obama For Sidestepping Congress on ISIS Fight
Mother Jones
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One of the most famous anecdotes from the Reagan years comes from Lesley Stahl, then a reporter for the CBS Evening News. After airing a long, critical piece during the 1984 campaign, she got a cheerful call from Dick Darman at the White House. “We really loved it,” he said. “Five minutes of free media.” Dan Schill tells the rest of the story:
Stahl asked, “Why are you so happy? Didn’t you hear what I said?” Giving the punch line of the parable, Darman said to Stahl, “You guys in Televisionland haven’t figured it out, have you? When the pictures are powerful and emotional, they override if not completely drown out the sound. I mean it, Lesley. Nobody heard you.”
Stahl said she examined her piece again, this time with the sound off, and found that the Reagan official was right—her story had accepted the Reagan frame and was practically an unpaid political commercial—a brilliant montage of Reagan surrounded with flags, children, balloons, and cheering supporters.
Asked if this experience changed the way she produces her stories, Stahl said, “Not really. I’m still trapped, because my pieces are written to the pictures we have.”
I was reminded of this story once again yesterday when TMZ released elevator video of Ray Rice slugging his then fiancée and knocking her unconscious. It was a brutal attack and reaction was swift and uncompromising. Rice was released by the Baltimore Ravens, the NFL suspended him indefinitely, and his sponsors began abandoning him almost immediately.
And yet, that video told us nothing. We already knew what had happened. Based on previous video, we knew that Rice had punched Janay Palmer hard enough to knock her out. We just didn’t have it on tape.
And it’s not only the NFL that reacted differently after the new video was released. Even the folks who criticized the league’s anemic response back in February are now far more outraged. The video affected everyone’s reaction.
Why? Is it the visceral effect of images? Does it have something to do with an instinct to avoid drawing the most damning conclusions until an image makes it impossible to evade the truth any longer? Or is it all a charade, and lots of people are just pretending to be more outraged because they know it’s now expected of them?
I don’t know. But the internet is now the domain of LOLcats, BuzzFeed listicles, and charts of the day—the latter for those of us who like images but also like to believe we’re too smart to be manipulated by them. The fastest growing social media sites are Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest, and others like it. Blogs are often so stuffed with YouTube videos that you can refill your coffee cup while you wait for them to load. Millions of formerly peaceable people—people who already knew perfectly well that ISIS was a barbarous bunch of thugs—suddenly want to go to war because we now have pictures of that barbarism. Images rule everywhere. It’s not just Lesley Stahl who’s trapped in Lesley Stahl’s world anymore. We all are.
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In late March, Richard Tisei, a Republican candidate for Congress in Massachusetts, took an unusual step for a politician in a close race: He boycotted his own party’s convention.
The state GOP had added language to its platform opposing same-sex marriage, which has been legal in Massachusetts for a decade. The party’s decision put Tisei in a tricky spot: He’s a married, openly gay man. “I thought it was important for somebody to stand up and say the party is heading in the wrong direction,” Tisei told Mother Jones. “At a time when progress is being made, it wasn’t a good idea for Massachusetts to take a step backwards.”
Tisei, a former state senator, is one of three openly gay Republicans challenging incumbent US House members this year. He’s running unopposed in Tuesday’s GOP primary in Massachusetts’ 6th District. Dan Innis, a former dean of the business school at the University of New Hampshire, is running in New Hampshire’s 1st District; his primary is also Tuesday. And Carl DeMaio, a former member of the San Diego city council, won the Republican primary in California’s 52nd District in June.
Each of the three challengers has a decent chance of becoming the first openly gay Republican to be elected to Congress. The nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report ranks DeMaio’s race against freshman Democrat Scott Peters as a “pure toss-up.” Innis’ race, against Dem Carol Shea Porter, is listed as “toss-up/tilt Democrat.” So is Tisei’s race—although Tisei’s chances could fall Tuesday if his presumptive opponent, scandal-plagued incumbent John Tierney, loses in the Democratic primary.
There are currently just six LGBT members of the House—all Democrats. Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin, a Democrat who was elected in 2012, is the first and, so far, only openly gay senator. Arizona Rep. Jim Kolbe—who came out after he’d initially been elected—was the last out GOP member of Congress, but decided not to seek reelection in 2006. “Opinions do evolve,” Tisei says. “What I could do is be a catalyst to help bring about a change within the Republican caucus. Sure, it isn’t going to happen over night, but when you’re working with somebody closely on tax reform or economic issues and you get to know people as colleagues, it changes the dynamic in a lot of ways. Having a gay member of the caucus will open people’s eyes and change their perceptions, and hopefully change their minds on a lot of the issues.”
The three men are the first federal candidates—Democrat or Republican—to feature their same-sex spouses in campaign ads and literature. The Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, a nonpartisan group that boosts openly gay candidates for office, has endorsed Innis and Tisei. Two endorsements for Republicans seeking federal office marks a new record in the organization’s 23-year history, says Jason Burns, the Victory Fund’s political director. (DeMaio hasn’t applied for the group’s endorsement this cycle, but they turned him down when he ran for mayor in 2012 and he has a shaky history with other LGBT groups.)
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