Again the "magic of the market" proves elusive - this time in the case of privatized Medicare programs versus traditional Medicare.

And while on the subject of pensions and retirement, [see prior post] GAO has a new report out about conflicts of interest by pension consultants who, as a group, have "$4.5 trillion in U.S. assets under advisement." Could that affect how well those pensions perform?

But not executives when it comes to their own retirement benefits and not when they are leaving their workers to face poverty in their old age or to be condemned to working till they drop.

Andrew Oh-Willeke at Colorado Confidential reports on the Colorado Court of Appeals’ refusal to waive the parental notification requirement for a pregnant 16-year-old who wants to get an abortion (via RH Reality Check). He lays out the situation:

If you want proof that the drug war is inhumane, our laws unconstitutional, and our justice system unjust, you need look no further than the case of Richard Paey. A disabled father of three, Paey is now about three years into a 25-year sentence for narcotics possession and drug trafficking.

Paey's crime was being in pain and taking prescription medicine. He had no illegal drugs. He never sold any drugs. There was no real evidence of any fraud or wrongdoing, yet his conviction was perfectly legal in the state of Florida. And perfectly unjust.

Paey's appeals are done and his last chance of getting out of prison is if he's granted clemency by Governor Charlie Crist. His clemency petition was recommended by the Florida Parole Commission and the governor has made a statement that indicates he may be sympathetic. Paey's wife and lawyer are asking for public support.

There's a good chance that our support could make a difference to correct this gross injustice. Not only would it help Richard Paey, but it gives us a chance to express our concerns about mandatory minimums and the drug war.

Please continue over the jump for the contact information and details about the case...

The news has not been good about and for the student loan industry in recent months. But now the good people in the student loan industry are mad as hell and they're not going to put up with it. The gloves are off.

On Sunday I pointed to evidence suggesting that the Washington Post series on Dick Cheney was researched and perhaps more or less completed long before it ever saw print. In the comments section of that post, on Monday, I added some further evidence. In particular, one of the two authors of the series, Jo Becker, suddenly showed up writing for the NY Times that very day. Now I've discovered something equally mysterious about her disappearance from the Post.

Remember after Katrina, Bush's response was to suspend Davis Bacon. I guess the guys from KBR never heard that the suspension was suspended. Now they are on the hook for backpay.

This is a quick heads up on the new report issued Monday by the Centers for Disease Control on health insurance coverage.

Almost unnoticed (as Karen Tumulty also recognized), what with so many political stories breaking this week, the former head of the FISA court lambasted the Bush administration's warrantless wiretap program in a speech on Saturday. Judge Royce Lamberth views the program as deeply threatening: "We still have to preserve our civil liberties," he said.

More remarkably still, Lamberth points out that Bush has lied about his reasons for circumventing the FISA court. Bush has claimed that he needed a new way to respond more quickly to breaking leads in terrorist investigations. But Lamberth states that the FISA court under his leadership did adopt new methods on Sept. 11, 2001 that permitted the issue of warrants extremely rapidly. So what was the real reason for ignoring the law, Mr. Bush?

On Sunday I argued that Cheney's Scarlet Pimpernel theory of the vice presidency had done more profound and lasting damage to his political standing in the salons of DC than perhaps any other scandal of his these last six years. The evidence just keeps rolling in that by making himself a laughingstock at the center of power, Cheney pulled back the curtain on his own childish delusions.

More women over 55 are working, while the rates for men over 55 are flat, according to a new report. What's the news behind those figures?

I really would like to be able to like John Edwards. He more than any presidential candidate carries the banner of economic populism and speaks to the issues I care most about. But he also seems just a tad too slick about making excuses. That's been very much on display after a recent NY Times investigation of a DC-based non-profit he created in 2005. Rather than just explain the financial dealings that had been brought into question, Edwards rallied his supporters to denigrate the reporter's integrity. He has erected such ridiculous straw-men that you'd think you were listening to a Fox News commentator.

I haven't been buying Edwards' huffing and puffing. In fact, I had a strong hunch from the outset that Edwards tried and failed to play a cheesy game of bait-and-switch with the Times...and he was using that failed stunt to rally his supporters. This evening, I discovered that my original hunch was exactly right. It doesn't exactly redound to Edwards' credit.

On June 8, the Canadian Supreme Court held that collective bargaining is a fundamental aspect of Canadian society and recognizing that right reaffirms the values of dignity, personal autonomy, equality and democracy that are inherent in the Charter. link.

But the Missouri Supreme Court showed them. It beat the Canadian decision by two weeks.

The Washington Post this week will have a series of reports on Dick Cheney's secretive role in shaping George Bush's policies and in reshaping the Executive Branch. The first installment today has some important revelations, which I'll comment on later. But the most basic question goes unasked: Why is the Post reporting about this only now?

The damage that Cheney has done to the rule of law, to the credibility of the Bush administration, to an extensive array of its policies, and to the nation's standing in the world, was accomplished and widely noted already by 2004 at the latest. This week's reporting, though useful, comes a tad late for the public to demand answers or set things right. It's a bit like getting a diagram in the mail of exits and escape routes for a barn that burned down fully three years ago.

In a speech given to CIA employees on May 29 but was released on June 11, General Michael Hayden announced the results of a study on the CIA's use of contractors.

A privatization storm is brewing in your mailbox. And if you live in New Jersey or Florida, that storm will hit you on June 27 in the form of pickets at post offices or neighborhoods where mail is being delivered by non-postal employees.

Talk about justice delayed. How about being delayed for 14 years? How about justice delayed when those harmed are people with disabilities, waiting and waiting for justice?

As Republicans rushed forward to defend Guantanamo and decry those who would close it, a quieter but more authoritative voice also spoke up. For the first time, we heard directly from a military lawyer about the nature of the tribunals he witnessed at the gulag. He is Lt. Col. Stephen Abraham (Army Reserve). What he has to say about the integrity of the proceedings, in an affidavit filed in federal court today, is devastating.

By a round about path I discovered that today is the fourth anniversary since George Bush began dissimulating to us about the chaos and violence in Iraq. In fact, by comparing the news reports from the first months of the occupation against the statements coming from the White House, I found that Bush said not one word to the American public about the burgeoning disaster in Iraq until the fighting was thoroughly out of control. When he did finally find his voice, on June 21, 2003, Bush offered up palaver about "progress in Iraq"...the same as he's been peddling to the public ever since.

It's high time to pose again Reagan's famous question: Are we better off now than we were four years ago?

This evening the Associated Press produced a report suggesting that the White House was planning to hold a meeting soon, perhaps as soon as Friday, to discuss again whether to close the gulag at Guantanamo Bay. However the report is anonymously sourced and, once the news leaked, it evoked several incoherent denials from White House officials. These denials are reported more clearly in a longer version of the AP story, which can be found at CNN.

The current debate over immigration is a tinkering around the edges that masks the real issue we must address if this problem is ever to be resolved. But it is just too hot to handle.

Jeff Lucey hung himself with a garden hose in his parents' basement just eight months after returning home from a five-month tour of duty in Iraq.

Despite herculean efforts to get psychiatric help for their son through the Veterans Administration (VA), the Marine Lance Corporal succumbed to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) on June 22, 2004. Lucey told friends and family of a nightmarish stint as a war-zone heavy truck driver in which he was frequently fired upon and ordered by his superiors to run over anything, or anybody, that got in the way of the convoy.

In an exclusive interview, Colorado Confidential talks with Ilona Meagher, author of Moving a Nation to Care: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and America's Returning Troops about the effect of the billion dollar shortfall in the VA's 2007 health care budget and the tragic stories of the hidden costs of the War on Terror.

It's one of higher education's perennial scandals. The U.S. News & World Report annual rankings of colleges are the object of ridicule by nearly everybody inside academia. The various bases for the rankings include some silly and nearly meaningless "measures" of quality. But every year colleges hold their collective breath when the annual issue appears, eager to have climbed in rank. The rest of the year, college planning may well be measured by whether it helps or hinders that scramble up the U.S. News charts, even if it's counterproductive to sound educational or administrative policies.

In other words, colleges have allowed themselves to become enthralled to a cheesy sales gimmick. Now several dozen prominent colleges have declared their independence from U.S. News.

No doubt, there will be all sorts of claims that a Colorado jury was out of control when it found Qwest should pay $39.5 million to a 25 year old lineman - $21.5 million in compensatory damages and $18 million in punitive damages. They will go on and on with distortions about the McDonald's Coffee case and how juries need to be reined in. So here is why they will be wrong.

Almost exactly four years ago, in June 2003, the White House began to make excuses for the occupation of Iraq. On June 21st, 2003 we first heard Bush defensively use the rhetorical phrase "progress in Iraq" to deflect criticism of his failure to end the insurgency. These were the first echoes of the rhetoric of quagmire, which haunt us still.

Have you ever had the sneaking suspicion that television networks, pundits, politicians, and sundry public personalities tend to treat large-scale disasters as if they were abstractions, really little more than occasions for self-promotion, rather than the stuff of personal tragedy? The thought has occurred to me from time to time, I'll confess.

Take the Virginia Tech shootings in April. From the moment the news broke, there was a rancid taste of the Big Carnival about it.

On June 5, an important and surprising hearing took place over legislation to protect collective bargaining rights for state employees who are first responders. Here is a link where you can find links to the written and visual testimony before the Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions Subcommittee Hearing on "Ensuring Collective Bargaining Rights for First Responders: H.R. 980, The Public Safety Employer-Employee Cooperation Act of 2007"

What is the impact - the real impact - of privatization? OK, I see a lot of hands out there. But honestly, I've studied privatization for many years, and even then I have to admit, I do not know the full impact. The only agency in the US capable of doing this sort of analysis is the Government Accountability Office.

It's not just about the War in Iraq. Or corruption. It's about everything we need to know in order to make informed decisions. It's about no compassion for the least among us, the poor, the disenfranchised. If we don't know, the "thinking" goes, there is no problem.

Next Saturday the respected British Channel 4 will air a television documentary on the pre-war planning for Iraq that will present a "devastating account of the chaotic preparations for the war", according to a preview in today's Observer. Blair told many colleagues (including, we now learn, the former Labour leader Neil Kinnock) that all was well with the planning before the invasion.

According to many officials interviewed for the documentary, however, Blair actually was extremely worried that the US was failing to prepare for the occupation. Blair also thought there was nothing he could do to make Bush & Co. take the problem seriously.

In the upcoming New Yorker, Seymour Hersh portrays the outright hostility with which Rumsfeld's Pentagon greeted the exacting and judicious report about Abu Ghraib written by Major General Antonio Taguba (h/t to Welcome to Pottersville). Even if you thought you knew how low down and rotten so much of the military leadership had become under that despicable man, you'll find elements in this story that will surprise you.

If you've been reading Unbossed for long, you'll recall that shirah has been writing for years about the Bush administration's reckless and often outlandishly illegal campaign to privatize as many federal jobs as possible. The old and new media finally started to pay attention in March when we highlighted the role that unbridled privatization played in creating the miserable conditions for patients at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Through a series of infamously corrupt bids, the politically well-connected IAP World Services was awarded a contract for support operations at WRAMC. The bad will generated by IAP's manipulation of the "process" led directly to the rapid decline of services—as experienced workers fled WRAMC even before IAP took over!

Today we learned of another, similar scandal. This one involves a private contractor who over many months simply neglected to deliver a mountain of mail to patients at the Medical Center. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Israel, which during the start of the second Intifada in 2000 was blinded with hatred for Yassir Arafat, made a huge strategic error in weakening the secular and more moderate Fatah (a faction of the Palestinian Liberation Organization). Today, we are seeing the effects of this anti-PLO policy. Now that Hamas has taken over Gaza, where its roots and power-base lie, there is an opportunity for Israel to finally help strengthen Fatah, without preconditions, and without fear of a strong, unified Palestinian Authority.

The United States government is now apparently interested in helping women and low-skilled workers get and keep jobs. Why?

The evil, at its core, is that Guantanamo exists not to punish the guilty, to extract useful information by means of torture, or to immobilize dangerous terrorists. No, Gitmo exists to demonstrate that the power of the US government...rather, of George Bush and Dick Cheney...knows no bounds. Nobody, whether innocent or not, whether citizen or not, has recourse or appeal from mistreatment at their hands, no matter how arbitrary. To drive that point home to the world is the reason why Guantanamo exists.

The case of Jamil el-Banna makes that clearer than ever.

They refused to treat the woman and ignored her, even when she was in agony and couldn't walk. They ignored her husband's pleas, even while she was collapsed on the floor from the pain. When she vomited up her own blood, the janitor came out and mopped around her as though she were a piece of furniture.

Edith Isabel Rodriguez was a 43-year-old mother and grandmother. She died May 9 of a perforated bowel at the emergency room of King-Harbor Hospital in Los Angeles. But let's face it -- people die all the time, and her medical condition, while serious, is not uncommon. What's more unusual in this case is the seeming callous disregard with which the hospital treated her. Or didn't treat her.

Desperate, her boyfriend called 911 from the pay phone outside the ER. Eight minutes later, another patient called 911 begging for someone, anyone, to help Edith Rodriguez. Finally her boyfriend found someone interested in Edith -- the police. They arrested the dying woman on a warrant, assuring her boyfriend they'd give her medical treatment.

There's no doubt Edith Rodriguez died of her condition as she was being wheeled from the ER to the police car, but she did not have to die. Edith Rodriguez was killed by something else.

Two years ago the Supreme Court ruling in Kelo v. New London set off intense controversy about municipal over-reaching in eminent domain seizures. Because SCOTUS couldn't be bothered to determine the meaning of "public use" in the Fifth Amendment, it produced a monstrous judgment that gave communities the power to transfer ownership of almost any property to anybody who coveted it.

Yesterday in another eminent domain suit, a NJ Court struck a blow for common sense by reaching for a dictionary.

On Wednesday the Pentagon released another quarterly report on 'progress' in Iraq during the period February through May. All the evidence of consequence in it indicates what most of us had already surmised, that things continue to get worse in Iraq. Yet, in contrast to earlier quarterly reports, this one avoids discussing even the possibility of all-out civil war.

Lurita Doan, embattled head of the General Services Administration, demonstrated today that, yes, she can bring even greater ridicule upon herself. At a House hearing, Doan tried to convince the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform that she was neither maligning employees who've criticized her own violation of the Hatch Act, nor threatening them. Instead, Doan said, "I thought I was using like a hortatory subjunctive right there."

Joe Lieberman just doesn’t quit. I remember watching CNN on September 11, 2001, and Lieberman’s answer to the al-Qaeda attacks seemed out of place at the time: “we need to get rid of Saddam Hussein.” Now, over four years into a bungled military effort in Iraq, Lieberman wants to invade another pillar of the “axis of evil”: Iran.

On CBS’ Face the Nation, Lieberman said he wouldn’t support an all-out invasion of the country, but rather, “aggressive military action” in the form of air strikes over the border. But that is an invasion. It is a violation of Iran’s sovereignty and it will not be taken lightly.

Republicans smitten with the candidate-presumptive, Fred Thompson, may have second thoughts when they learn that he was a high-paid lobbyist for foreign interests both before and after his term as a Senator. Americans as a whole may be appalled to discover that Thompson earned more than three-quarters of a million dollars lobbying for a British firm that desperately wanted to alter or kill the Fairness in Asbestos Injury Resolution Act. This bill would have created a fund to settle all mesothelioma claims in the US, but in 2005 it died when Thompson's Republican friends in the Senate abandoned the bill. Ka-ching!

In testimony to the House in February the head of Veterans Affairs, James Nicholson, painted a rosy picture of the speed with which VA hospitals schedule appointments for patients. The senior VA doctor, General Michael Kussman, repeated these assertions less than a month ago: "there are 39 million appointments a year, of which 37 million are achieved within 30 days... That’s about 95 percent." The same picture was given in the 2006 VA Annual Report published last November.

As almost any VA patient or staffer could have told Kussman, that can't be right. Now a draft report by the VA Inspector General, obtained by McClatchy, shows that appointments are filled less quickly, and that the VA statistics have been manipulated for public consumption.

Think of it as illegal immigration meets identity theft meets national security meets privacy meets . . . That was the issue at a June 7 hearing before the Subcommittee on Social Security.

The Court of Appeals in Virginia handed down another devastating rebuke of the Bush administration's lawless treatment of terrorism-suspects. It's not too grandiose to say that this ruling also demonstrates why due process is inextricably linked to the presumption of innocence.

In 2003, Jon Oberg, then a researcher at the U.S. Department of Education, was trying to alert the agency to misdoings related to student loans. Those warnings went unheeded, resulting in the cancerous student loan scandal that has metastisized among our institutions of higher education.

More than two weeks ago, This World (BBC) aired a documentary on the CIA "ghost" flights that carry prisoners around the world-wide torture network. It's very impressive reporting and I think you'll want to watch it; certainly if you live in the US, you may never see programming like this. Fortunately, the video now has been posted on-line.

From one of my favorite political blogs, Desert Beacon, comes this excellent discussion of an important Senate bill, S. 453. It seeks to eliminate the myriad vote-suppression tactics that have proliferated in recent decades. These tactics are a national scandal.

I'm pleased that Desert Beacon has agreed to let me crosspost here his discussion of the Senate bill intended to put a stop to some of the worst abuses.

The Independent reveals that the head of the British Navy in 2003 sought private legal advice about whether it would be a crime under international law to take part in invading Iraq.

For 20 years, the Canadian Supreme Court has held that the right to freedom of association in the Charter of Rights did not protect the right to collective bargaining. On June 8, the Court rejected that precedent and ruled 6-1 that the guarantee of freedom of association in section 2(d) of the Charter of Rights protects the right of Canadian workers to bargain collectively.

The Observer posted a story moments ago that you might find rather frightening. The question, I think, is whether you are supposed to be frightened. Is this fact, fiction, or something in between?

The Islamic Republic of Iran is not what it seems on television. But you probably already had a feeling about that. Iran is much more developed, moderate and progressive than images on the mainstream media would like to portray.

Some stunning new poll numbers out today from AP-Ipsos (a tip of the hat to Scott Horton at Harper's). Support for George Bush and the Republican Party has plummeted just during the last month. Of course, Bush's poll numbers have been crumbling slowly for a long time. But the drop since May has been precipitous and nearly unprecedented during his presidency.

If you want a good, long laugh, head on over and read some of the friend-of-the-court letters received by Judge Reggie Walton before he sentenced Lewis "Scooter" Libby to 30 months in jail for obstruction of justice. Many movers and shakers in DC, as well as some wannabees, wrote in piously to declare their unquenchable faith in the fine, upstanding felon.

Spend a few minutes perusing this maudlin tripe and you'll understand why Libby's lawyers pleaded with Judge Walton not to release the amicus letters. They feared, they said, that the authors would be mocked by the public—especially (and worst of all) by bloggers. Gosh.

Given the extraordinary media scrutiny here, if any case presents the possibility that these letters, once released, would be published on the internet and their authors discussed, even mocked, by bloggers, it is this case.

In his 2002 State of the Union address, George Bush had recourse to some inspiring rhetoric about upholding human dignity. A newly released human-rights report about Bush's policy of having people around the world kidnapped and "disappeared", however, puts matters in a different light.

Casino workers have been voting union in Las Vegas and Atlantic City the past couple months - and the streak continues.

The Deputy secretary of the US department of Homeland Security, Michael Jackson, has declared at an airline industry convention that some good has come from the terrorist attacks on September 11. I kid you not.

And his brutal and stupid statement is far from the most troubling aspect of the DHS positions and policies highlighted at the meeting. Jackson repeatedly played the Bush administration's fear card, and how! He firmly predicted future 9/11s. In other words: Be very afraid.

In addition, DHS appears to be intent on driving home the thin edge of a wedge into the very heart of America's civil liberties. For DHS is determined to expand the fingerprinting of travelers.

Cross-posted from The Pump Handle

In a commentary in the latest issue of JAMA, Sheldon Krimsky (a member of the planning committee for the Project on Scientific Knowledge and Public Policy, and a contributor to this blog) and Tania Simoncelli examine the EPA’s guidelines for testing pesticides on humans and find that the agency is making “a fundamental shift in moral thinking – and a striking departure from the moral codes that have provided the guidance for human experiments.”

Protest Rally Against Privatization - Department of Labor Employees Rally to Protect Jobs. Wednesday, June 6, 2007, 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm Capitol Reflecting Pool Across from Frances Perkins Building, 200 Constitution Ave., NW, Washington, DC 20210

Legislation signed by George Bush June 4, forbids contracting out Mine Safety and Health work and the work of Federal employees at the National Energy Technology Laboratory.

Ah! Webpages we find on the way to looking for other stuff. Alberto Gonzales on "Tools for Success" Transcript below. Unfortunately, I couldn't get the video to run.

So sayeth the Government Accountability Office in a report out today - The Nation's Long-Term Fiscal Outlook April 2007 Update: The Bottom Line: Federal Fiscal Policy Remains Unsustainable GAO-07-983R, June 4, 2007.

Ronald Meisburg, the current NLRB General Counsel, is taking the strongest actions any General Counsel has taken ever. Ever. Bar none. For months there have been interesting changes at the NLRB starting about the time Ronald Meisburg became General Counsel. I have heard through the grapevine that he took his job as enforcer of the National Labor Relations Act seriously, and his actions last week suggest that this is true.

The globe-trotting TB guy all over the news is driving me crazy. I'm sitting here right now with the flu. I woke up this morning, only the second day of it, with that tight feeling in my chest. And something else I can't describe, but it's as real and oppressive as the air right before a thunderstorm.

I know this feeling like I know my own face. I've had it more times than I can count -- it's bronchitis on its way and I get it most times I get sick, if I'm not really careful.

So I'm sitting up typing, trying to distract myself when all I want is to be laying down. But I shouldn't lie down, so I thought I'd tell you about when I had tuberculosis, which is why I'm worried right now. Which is why I get bronchitis at the drop of a hat. Which is why I hate TB guy.

The latest immigration reform bill winding its way through Congress has sent the media into a tizzy again. Talking heads spout "nonpartisan" data and sadly uninformed journalists gobble up these so-called facts as established truths.

Short of having a Nobel Prize-winning researcher on speed dial, what’s the average person to do to confirm or refute data about illegal immigration?