United States News Digest
Kerik Pulls Nomination; Bails Out of Bush's Sinking Ship
Former New York City Police Commissioner and Rudy Giuliani protégé Bernard Kerik asked the White House to withdraw his nomination as Secretary of Homeland Security Dec. 11, ostensibly his failure to pay taxes on the salary of a nanny, and over the possibility that she was in the United States illegally. Newsweek of Dec. 11, after a few days of background research on Kerik, who briefly headed an Iraqi police training program for Bush, found that there was also once an arrest warrant on Kerik in New Jersey, stemming from a civil case over $5,000 in unpaid bills. Much to the White House's embarrassment, none of this information came out in the vetting of Kerik for the DHS post, and now the White House is trashing Kerik for having lied to the White House lawyers who were doing the background checks, prior to his announced appointment. (Given that the vetting was the responsibility of Alberto Gonzales, some people are puzzled that they didn't just torture Kerik, to worm the truth out of him.) The bottom line is that Kerik himself informed the White House about the nanny problem, and it is not hard to imagine that Kerik decided this Administration is a sinking ship, not worth boarding. That is the word circulating widely among sane Republican Party circles these days.
According to the Dec. 12 Washington Post, one of the names on the short list of replacement candidates for Kerik could be Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn), who is definitely being courted by Bush to take a Cabinet post.
Army Short of Surgeons for Iraq
Aside from the medical challenges of dealing with the horrendous kinds of injuries that soldiers are suffering in Iraq, the Army's medical system is also suffering from a lack of resources, reports an article in the December New England Journal of Medicine. It is estimated that the Army has only about 120 general surgeons on active duty and a similar number in the reserves. Secondly, a war that was supposed to be lightning quick, and with medical assets designed and outfitted accordingly, has turned into a slow-moving, protracted grind, where the number of wounded has continued to grow, increasing further, the pressure on the medical system. This means that surgeons and other medical personnel are facing second and third tours in the combat zone. As a result, recruiting surgeons into the military has become far more difficult, in spite of financial incentives, and interest in joining the Reserves has dropped precipitously.
The NEJM provides further evidence that the casualty figure for this war1,282 American deaths as of Dec. 10is deceptively small. The medical system plays just as much a role in whether battle-wounded troops survive as does the enemy. With Vietnam-era medicine, the U.S. death toll would be in the neighborhood of 2,760. The military-surgical teams in Iraq are saving an unprecedented 90% of the war wounded. In Vietnam, it was 76%, and in World War II it was 70%. The unasked question raised by the NEJM article is that, while the surgeons in Iraq have done a heroic job saving lives, how long can they function under such strain before the system collapses?
Senior CIA Officer Alleges Retaliation
A senior CIA officer, who identity has not been made public, is alleging retaliation for his refusal to falsify intelligence on weapons of mass destruction, according to the Washington Post Dec. 9. The undercover operative has filed a lawsuit against the CIA for his firing in August 2004; he has been informed that there was an investigation by the inspector general's office involving financial transactions, and allegations of sexual misconduct.
His lawyer, Roy Krieger, said that this lawsuit is the first public instance in which a CIA employee has charged directly that Agency officials pressured him to produce intelligence to support the administration in power.
Political Operator Named To Head Veterans Administration
President Bush announced on Dec. 9 that he had nominated Jim Nicholson, currently U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican, to replace Anthony Principi as Secretary of Veterans Affairs. Principi announced his resignation the day before. Nicholson's last job before taking up residence at the Vatican was as chairman of the Republican National Committee. What that means for the couple of hundred thousand veterans of Bush's war in Iraq, and for veterans in general has yet to be evaluated.
Medicare, Medicaid Are 'Juicy Targets' for Cuts
Together, the Medicare and Medicaid programs make up about one-fourth of Federal spending, which makes them juicy targets for budget cuts. Since President Bush wants to make his tax cuts permanent, and since Social Security privatization, if passed, will ultimately cost trillions of dollars, it appears that Bush will include cuts to the Medicaid program in his upcoming budget.
Medicaid is the nation's largest public-health insurance program, providing health- and long-term-care coverage to 52 million low-income people, elderly, and disabled people in FY2004 (about one in nine Americans). It pays for nearly half of all nursing-home care, and 18% of prescription drugs. Medicaid is jointly funded by the state and Federal governments. The Federal government matches state spending (from 50% to 77%) on all medical services that Medicaid covers and that patients needit is an open-ended entitlement.
President Bush wants to shift Medicaid from this open-ended entitlement to having the government give the states a block grant or a flat amount of funding to use as they see fit. The administration is also keen on ripping up the foundations of the 40-year-old Federal law by providing "super-waivers" and more "flexibility" to the states to decide who is eligible for Medicaid, and who gets what services, in what part of the state, and for how long. Already several state governors, including Florida's Jeb Bush (R) and Tennessee's Gov. Bredesen (D), among others, are pushing for such super-waivers and block grants to cap state Medicaid costs. (This was compiled from the Wall Street Journal of Dec. 4; Families USA; and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.)
'Patriot II' Police-State Measures in Intelligence Bill
The 'Patriot II' police-state measures inserted into the intelligence reform bill are only now coming to light, after the bill has been sent to President Bush for his signature. The Washington Post and other sources take note that some of the police-state provisions in the bill were originally part of the draft "Patriot II" act written by Justice Department prosecutors in 2002, and that many of them were written to overcome problems that the Justice Department got into, over its attempts to prosecute alleged terrorists. This includes a provision tightening the definition of "material support to terrorist groups" after a Federal court in California found the existing statute unconstitutionally vague.
Some Democrats, and the American Civil Liberties Union see the bill as an unwarranted expansion of law enforcement authorities. Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wisc) said that, "The Justice Department has a record of abusing its detention powers post 9/11 and of making terrorism allegations that turn out to have no merit." Charlie Mitchell, legislative counsel for the ACLU, said that the law enforcement measures are "most troubling in terms of the trend they represent." He added that "they keep pushing and pushing without any attempt to review what they've done."
Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) charged that the bill sets up a national ID card system, leading to a system of internal passports. "A national identification card, in whatever form it may take, will allow the Federal government to inappropriately monitor the movements and transactions of every American," Paul said on Dec. 7. The bill does that by requiring national standards for drivers licences, and Social Security ID cards. "Nationalizing standards for drivers licenses and birth certificates and linking them together via a national database, creates a national ID system pure and simple.... Those who allow the government to establish a Soviet-style internal passport system because they think it will make us safer are terribly mistaken," he said. "Subjecting every citizen to surveillance and screening points actually will make us less safe," because of the history of governments abusing such authorities and because it'll divert the resources needed to pursue real terrorists.
FDA Relying on Funding from Pharmaceutical Industry
Since 1992, the Food and Drug Administration has become increasingly reliant on direct pharmaceutical firm fundingcalled "user fees"under new 1992 statutes under which the FDA was mandated to keep up a specified level of new drug review, and the drug companies would continue their payment of "user fees" for such reviews.
Recent Congressional testimony on the flu fiasco and the Vioxx disaster, has featured the colossal and deadly failures at the Food and Drug Administration. Many critics have pointed to a 1992 agreement, crafted by the Bush 41 Administration, in which the pharmaceutical companies would pay, in effect, users fees to the FDA in order to speed up new drug reviews. According to the New York Times Dec. 6, the 1992 agreement, bringing in millions of dollars to the agency, came "with strings" attached. Indeed, the drug makers' proviso was that spending levels on new drug reviews, adjusted for inflation, could never fall below a certain level.
During the Newt Gingrich "Contract on America" years of budget-cutting, appropriations for the FDA were decreased, making the agency more dependent on money from the pharmaceuticalsthe user fees. The Times reports that in 1992, the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research spent 53% of its budget on new drug reviews and the rest went to survey programs, labs, and other efforts to ensure safety of drugs already on the market. By 2003, 79% of the agency's drug center budget went to new drug reviews and "everything else has gotten squeezed."
FDA director of executive programs told Harris, "We get increased user funds and not increased appropriated dollars." So, to keep those funds coming, "We have stolen from the labs and other parts of the non-user fee program." A former FDA commissioner, Dr. David Kessler, said the financing agreements with industry "increasingly micromanage the FDA."
Over the next weeks, outgoing Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson is expected to propose "reforms" of the FDA. Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), and others have proposed setting up an independent drug-safety center to separate the new drug approval reviews from the drug-safety reviews once a drug has been approved. Of course, such a scheme would have to be funded by Congress, a highly unlikely proposition. But more crucial is the overall question of privatizing the FDA, which the 1992 agreement assisted, along with the deregulation fanaticism of the Bush Administration, which in large part led, to the flu fiasco at the Chiron Liverpool facility.
Supreme Court Hears Texas Death-Row AppealAgain
On Dec. 7, the Supreme Court heard the Texas death-penalty case of Thomas Miller-El for the second time. The same Justices heard the same two lawyers who argued the case before the Court in February of 2003. Miller-El was convicted of the murder of a clerk at a Holiday Inn in Dallas in 1985, and his appeal was based on the fact that, during jury selection for the trial, the prosecution had deliberately excluded blacks from his jury.
The first time around, the Court ruled 8-1 that Miller-El's evidence of discrimination in the composition of his jury was enough to entitle him to a hearing before the appeals court, in the Fifth Circuit. When the appeal went back to the Fifth Circuit, they repeated what they did the first time: They dismissed it without a hearing, adopting, not the majority opinion, but the sole dissent of Justice Clarence Thomas. During the Dec. 7 hearing, several of the Justices indicated that the concerns they expressed the first time had not been allayed, and those concerns apparently extend to the implementation of the death penalty in Texas and the conduct of the Fifth Circuit appeals court, as well.
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