Krugman Endorses Death Panels

Health Reform: The left's favorite economist, who condemned others for saying ObamaCare would require death panels, now admits they are real and necessary. The way to control costs, he says, is death and taxes.
Paul Krugman has long extolled the virtues of Britain's National Health Service and its National Institute for Clinical Excellence with the Orwellian acronym of NICE. Krugman has been anything but nice to NHS critics and those who've said that what have been called its "death panels" would be brought to America via ObamaCare.

In a roundtable discussion on ABC's "This Week," the New York Times columnist said of what recently came out of the president's deficit commission: "Some years down the pike, we're going to get the real solution, which is going to be a combination of death panels and sales taxes.

"Medicare is going to have to decide what it's going to pay for," Krugman said. "And at least for starters, it's going to have to decide which medical procedures are not effective at all and should not be paid for at all. In other words, (the deficit commission) should have endorsed the panel that was part of the health care reform."

Krugman went right to his blog Sunday afternoon to "clarify" his comments. He explained, and we are willing to accept, that he was being derisive of the term and sarcastic. "I said something deliberately provocative on This Week," Krugman wrote, "so I think I'd better clarify what I meant," which is something he regularly denies to others.

He explained that "health care costs will have to be controlled, which will surely require having Medicare and Medicaid decide what they're willing to pay for — not really death panels, of course, but consideration of medical effectiveness and, at some point, how much we're willing to spend for extreme care."

Whatever his intended use of the phrase "death panels," what he describes are in fact "death panels." A group of people will sit on a, er, panel, deciding what treatments are cost-effective and should be available and who should get them. That is called rationing and in cases of the "extreme care" he mentions, a life-and-death decision.

That's a death panel.

We recall how Krugman savaged Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin for warning what Krugman now says should happen might happen. Palin said: "The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's 'death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their 'level of productivity in society,' whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil."

Sharing Krugman's belief that such a system is just fine is Dr. Donald Berwick, President Obama's choice to head the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services. Berwick has said: "NICE is extremely effective and a conscientious, valuable and — importantly — knowledge-building system." No, NICE is a system of rationing through a bureaucratic formula defining "cost-effectiveness" that has rushed untold numbers of Britons to an early grave.

"The decision is not whether or not we will ration care — the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open," is what Dr. Berwick told a National Institutes of Health publication when he was just president and CEO of the Institute for Health Care Improvement.

The Obama administration's health care reform is all about cost and little about care. Dr. Berwick has opined: "We can make a sensible social decision and say, 'Well, at this point, to have access to a particular additional benefit (new drug or medical intervention) is so expensive that our taxpayers have better use for those funds.' " In other words, the government will decide whether treating you and extending your life is worth it.

By any other name, that's still a death panel.

Phillies' Roy Halladay a unanimous winner of NL Cy Young

Even in the so-called Year of the Pitcher, when everyone was throwing no-hitters and a sub-3.00 ERA was the new sub-4.00, Roy Halladay stood out.

Mystery surrounds killing of Hollywood publicist

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) — It was a scene befitting a Hollywood true crime drama: A prominent Beverly Hills publicist was gunned down in her Mercedes-Benz after attending a movie premiere, sending the luxury car careening into a light post near Sunset Boulevard.

Police said Ronni Chasen was shot in the chest several times and killed early Tuesday in an attack that stunned Hollywood, where she was a revered figure after promoting the Oscar-winning film "Driving Miss Daisy" and other major movies and stars over the years.

Police had no motive or suspects and said no threats had been reported against the 64-year-old Chasen. The mystery deepened later in the day when police seized computers from her firm, Chasen and Co.
Fellow publicist Howard Bragman called the killing bizarre.

"She wasn't a shady character," he said. "It's a small community and she was one of the fixtures in it."
Calls and e-mails to representatives of Chasen and Co. were not immediately returned.
Witnesses said they heard gunshots in the serene Beverly Hills neighborhood and called 911 before going outside to help.

Nahid Shekarchain told the Los Angeles Times she heard at least three gunshots sometime after midnight then found Chasen in the car with blood on her chest and gushing from her nose. The front passenger's window had been shattered.

Read More

U.S. marshals improperly retained scanner images

Gizmodo filed a freedom of information request to force U.S. Marshals to give up images improperly retained from security checkpoint scanners. These machines were from a courthouse in Florida and show lower-res pictures than those produced by the Transportation Security Administration's newer machines. Nevertheless, this is a hundred people who didn't expect to be "naked" on the internet today.

At the heart of the controversy over "body scanners" is a promise: The images of our naked bodies will never be public. U.S. Marshals in a Florida Federal courthouse saved 35,000 images on their scanner. These are those images.

A Gizmodo investigation has revealed 100 of the photographs saved by the Gen 2 millimeter wave scanner from Brijot Imaging Systems, Inc., obtained by a FOIA request after it was recently revealed that U.S. Marshals operating the machine in the Orlando, Florida courthouse had improperly-perhaps illegally-saved images of the scans of public servants and private citizens.

Beyond the usual issues of authoritarianism, tiresome security theater and illegal searches, it's also creepy how government intrusion can simply make the private public.

Rob Beschizza

House ethics panel: Rep. Rangel violated rules

WASHINGTON (AP) — A House ethics panel has found Democratic Rep. Charles Rangel of New York guilty on 11 counts of breaking House rules.

The full ethics committee will next conduct a hearing on the appropriate punishment for the former chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. The committee will then make a recommendation to the House.

Possible punishments include a House vote deploring Rangel's conduct, a fine and denial of privileges.

The eight-member ethics panel had sat as a jury to judge Rangel's conduct. The 80-year-old congressman from Harlem was charged with 13 counts of financial and fundraising wrongdoing.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

An eight-member House ethics panel has resumed closed-door deliberations in the ethics trial of Democratic Rep. Charles Rangel of New York, accused in 13 counts of engaging in financial and fundraising misconduct.

The jury of Rangel's congressional peers met behind closed doors Tuesday. They're deciding whether the former Ways and Means Committee chairman violated House rules.

If the panel determines that even one count has been proved, the full ethics committee would consider an appropriate punishment.

The 20-term New York Democrat walked out of the trial on Monday, pleading unsuccessfully for time to hire new lawyers. He said his former lawyers abandoned him after he paid them some $2 million, but that he could no longer afford them.

Gunmen kill two Christians in Northern Iraq

Still reeling from an al-Qaeda assault on a Baghdad Catholic church that killed 68 people, Iraq’s Christians received further reason to grieve after gunmen killed two Christians in Iraq’s northern city of Mosul, officials said Tuesday.

Days after the church slaughter, militants attacked houses of Christians across Baghdad, killing five people. The same al-Qaeda front group took responsibility for those assaults, saying both were in line with Islamic extremists’ resolve to strike Christians in Iraq and wherever they can be found.

In Tuesday’s attack, gunmen broke into the house of two Christian men and shot them, a police officer said, bringing the death toll among members of Iraq’s Christian community, who have fled en masse in the face of persecution after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, to 75 people this month.

The home of another Christian family in a different neighborhood of eastern Mosul was also bombed overnight. No one was killed, but the attack wounded a bystander.

Also Monday morning in Mosul, twin car bombs detonated outside a residential complex housing prison guards and staff killed a prison commander and his bodyguard.

Hundreds of terrified Christian families have fled Mosul to escape extremist attacks and sectarian violence between Sunni and Shiite militias unleashed by the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

Mosul is Iraq’s third largest city. Christians have lived there for some 1,800 years and a number of centuries-old churches and monasteries still stand.

The city is also a former Sunni insurgents stronghold where Iraqi Christians have been subjected to abductions and a killing campaign since 2007 when al-Qaeda militants controlled many parts of the city.

BY WorldMagBlog 

Include Comments

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Democrats promote “the black guy” from number two to number three. Huh?

We don't wish to be the bearers of bad news, Rep. Clyburn, but you just got screwed

There was a time when black Americans were routinely told to move to the back of the bus. But things are different under the Democrats. Now they’re thrown under the bus.
For some unknown reason, James Clyburn, the top ranking black Democrat in the House, seems to be taking the fall for the party’s failure in the midterm elections. How else can you explain his “promotion” from the number two position to the number three position?

Politico.com has the demotion details:

House Democrats have reached a deal to keep both Reps. Steny Hoyer and James Clyburn in the leadership, with Hoyer (D-Md.) serving as minority whip and Clyburn (D-S.C) taking a new, as-yet-still-undefined number three position.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calf.) who is seeking the minority leader’s job in the next Congress, reached an agreement with Clyburn on late Friday night, and Democratic leaders quickly announced the deal.

Clyburn’s title and responsibilities were not specified in the announcement from Pelosi’s office, and Democratic leadership aides scrambled to explain the deal to reporters.

No shit they announced it quickly. They had to do it while Clyburn was still basking in the warm glow of the party’s press release and before he figured out that he’d been screwed.
Source: Politico.com

Who’s More ‘Jersey,’ the Governor or the Boss?

By Richard A. Lee

How do people react when they learn that I am from New Jersey?

Back in 1978 when Bruce Springsteen released Darkness on the Edge of Town, the reaction often was: “New Jersey? That’s where Bruce Springsteen is from.”

By that time, Bruce already was well-known nationally. He was not the first rock star to come out of New Jersey, nor was he the first New Jerseyan to make it big in the entertainment field. But because his music was so closely entwined with his New Jersey roots, he came to symbolize the Garden State and its people for many of those who lived outside of the state.

This month, as Springsteen releases a box set chronicling the making of Darkness on the Edge of Town, he no longer has a monopoly on symbolizing his home state. For better or for worse, New Jersey now conjures up a myriad of images that range from “Jersey Boys” and the music of the Four Seasons to popular television programs, such as “The Sopranos” and “Jersey Shore”.

But these days our Governor is trumping them all. As I travel and tell people I am from New Jersey, the response often is something like: “New Jersey? That’s where Chris Christie is Governor.” I even had people asking me about Christie when I was in Europe this summer.

So could it be possible that the “Jersey Guy” prototype now is more Chris Christie than Bruce Springsteen?

The truth is, despite their ideological and political differences, there is a lot of Jersey in both the Governor and the Boss. That is why, in the hope of finding some data to illuminate the situation, I searched for references to “Chris Christie” and “Bruce Springsteen” in Access World News, a database that includes about 2,000 U.S. newspapers.

Since Springsteen has been a public figure for nearly 40 years, it was not surprising that his name has appeared in the press far more often the Governor – 149,989 Springsteen references in the nation’s newspapers to 24,893 for Christie. Even after Christie became U.S. Attorney in 2002 and maintained a high profile fighting corruption, he lagged far behind the Boss. Between 2002 and 2008, Springsteen received more than 7,000 mentions in U.S. newspapers per year while Christie had less than 200 in all but 2007 and 2008, when received 333 and 461 mentions, respectively.

The most interesting numbers are from 2009 and 2010. Not surprisingly, references to Christie in the nation’s newspapers skyrocketed to 7,789 in 2009 when he ran successfully for Governor. But that still was far less than Springsteen. With a new album and national appearances at the Super Bowl and the Obama Inaugural Celebration, he was mentioned more than twice as often as normal – 17,233 times – in 2009.

# # #

Richard A. Lee is Communications Director of the Hall Institute of Public Policy – New Jersey.  A former journalist and rock music critic, Lee also was Deputy Communications Director for Governor James E. McGreevey. In addition to his work at the Hall Institute, he teaches courses in media and government at Rutgers University, where he is completing work on a Ph.D. in media studies.

Forty-five years after he was killed by an Alabama State Trooper Jimmie Lee Jackson (pictured above), whose death lead to the first civil rights march on Selma, is finally getting a small measure of justice.

James Bonard Fowler (pictured right), 77, the former state trooper in question, pled guilty to shooting Jackson and will serve six months in prison. He also apologized for his actions but still claimed the shooting was in self-defense:

"I was coming over here to save lives," said Fowler. "I didn't mean to take lives. I wish I could redo it."



It is the conclusion of a court case that has lingered since the 1960s, but the conclusion still seems to not value Jackson's life.

Albert Turner Jr., Perry County commissioner, called the verdict "a slap in the face of the people of this county."
I understand District Attorney Michael Jackson's reasoning as to why he accepted Fowler's plea of misdemeanor manslaughter:

"Time was starting to run out," Mr. Jackson said. "We wanted to make sure justice was done before he died."

Fowler is 77 and allowing the case to drag out longer will not benefit anyone.

Fowler finally confessed to an Anniston Star newspaper reporter in 2004, saying he fired the gun:

"Jimmie Lee Jackson was not murdered," he said in the interview. "He was trying to kill me, and I have no doubt in my mind that under the emotional situation at the time, that if he would have gotten complete control of my pistol, that he would have killed me or shot me. That's why my conscience is clear."

If that is the case, Fowler should have stepped up years ago to handle this situation. Why did he not make that admission in the 1970s, the 1980s or the 1990s? If he truly felt he did nothing wrong, he would have stepped up and defended himself long ago.

Jackson's family says he was unarmed and killed while trying to protect his mother (pictured above is Jackson's daughter, Cordelia Billingsley.)

These are the vestiges of our country's ugly past that still reverberate today.

But the bright side is that this marks the 24th "unpunished civil rights–era killings that have been reprosecuted since 1994, when a Mississippi jury convicted Byron De La Beckwith for the 1963 assassination of Medgar Evers in Jackson.The conviction also marks the first time that someone serving in law enforcement at the time of the crime has been convicted in these unpunished cases," the AP reports.

"Any conviction in these kinds of cases is significant," former U.S. Attorney Doug Jones of Birmingham, who successfully prosecuted two former Klansmen in 2001 and 2002 for their involvement in the 1963 Birmingham church bombing that killed four girls, told the AP.

Jimmie Lee Jackson's family can also take solace that his death was not in vain. The protests and movement that it helped to spark has changed the world.

I think the reason this verdict may be so unsatisfying to many is that the full truth about the way blacks were treated in the South has never been exposed. So many people's murders remain unsolved.

John Fleming, the Anniston Star reporter to whom Mr. Fowler confessed, told the New York Times that Fowler's admission was similiar to what may have happened in a truth and reconciliation commission:

"One thing we've never experienced in the South is anything close to a truth and reconciliation commission," he said. "What happened today was a moment of that experience."

Maybe this country still needs a truth and reconciliation commission.

By Jeff Mays

Michael Vick's Record-Breaking Performance: Welcome Back Mike

Last night, Michael Vick was the man. Vick became the first quarterback in NFL history to record more than 300 passing yards, over 50 rushing yards, four or more passing touchdowns and two or more rushing touchdowns, all in one game. Not only did he give what some are arguing to be the greatest quarterback performance in the history of the NFL, he did it on Monday Night Football, one of the biggest NFL stages other than the Super Bowl. Vick led the Eagles to franchise records for total yardage (592) and points in a half (45). They were leading 28-0 at half-time, which is the most for any road team since 1950. It was amazing.

Vick's burst of greatness couldn't have come at a better time. It seems like a million years ago when his entire life was in shambles over dog fighting charges. Since that time, he's been to prison, gotten a pathetically small new contract with another team, and worked his way back up the NFL hierarchy. Last night's performance made Vick into an instant legend, revealing a degree of depth, promise and development that surprised nearly everyone. Similar to the day that Michael Jordan learned how to shoot a basketball (rather than simply dunk over everyone), Michael Vick became one of the most dangerous passing quarterbacks in the NFL.


Vick's shocking performance has implications that even go beyond the fact that he was in prison a little more than a year ago. There's also the fact that Vick's team, the Philadelphia Eagles, was playing against the Washington Redskins, home for their old quarterback, Donovan McNabb. Secondly, it's always interesting to watch two of the greatest black quarterbacks in NFL history go at it on the big stage; black quarterbacks have come a long way. Third, there's the fact that McNabb just signed a massive $78 million contract extension with the Redskins. Vick's timely and dominant performance over McNabb last night makes a clear case, to some, that Michael should get a contract just as large. So, while Eagles ownership was happy to see Vick emerge as a superstar, they were likely checking their bank accounts to see if they can still afford to pay him.

I doubt that Michael Vick will earn a McNabb-like contract anytime soon. While this might sound crazy, the reason that Michael Vick, in spite of his talent, is not yet worth the money being paid to McNabb is that Vick's past makes him a much higher business risk. Throughout his career, Donovan McNabb has been as consistent as a brick in an old building. He doesn't get arrested in night club fights, he isn't likely to get shot by his baby mama's ex-boyfriend, he isn't likely to end up on the six o'clock news in handcuffs, and he sure as heck isn't stupid enough to get involved in dog fighting. Given that professional athletes are assets to their teams, McNabb's consistency as a human being makes him worth a princely investment, even if he isn't quite as good as Michael Vick. Just for the record, I say all this as one of the few people on CNN defending Michael Vick three years ago. I didn't think he was innocent, but I felt that the lynch mob mentality that Americans used against him was reflective of exactly the kind of racism that has been thrust toward African American athletes for a very long time. In fact, it was despicable.

I still have a great deal of hope for Michael Vick. He sealed part of his fate three years ago in the dog fighting scandal, and he also sealed his fate with last night's performance. By instantly making his team into a Super Bowl contender, Vick has guaranteed himself a handsome financial future. I do pray, however, that he doesn't allow the demon of arrogance of poison his soul. He has learned up close that you are never too big to fall and a black man must always be determined to make good decisions.

Dr. Boyce Watkins is the founder of the Your Black World Coalition and the Athlete Liberation and Academic Reform Movement (ALARM). To have Dr. Boyce commentary delivered to your email, please click here.