The American Conservative Union gets busted on a pay-for-play scandal. Time to close up shop, gang. There’s really no coming back from this. Also, good for FedEx, who I’m assuming leaked the story.
My colleague Michael Moynihan says Sy Hersh was still wrong on the CIA assassination scandal.
Julius Schulman, RIP. The man brilliantly combined two of my interests, photography and architecture.
John Yoo gets Punk’d.
Congressional Budget Office states the obvious: The Dems’ health care bill will raise health costs, not lower them. Not sure why anyone thought the entity that pays $436 for a hammer would be able to magically lower the cost of an MRI.
Pentagon considering a ban on smoking in the military?
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on Friday, July 17th, 2009 at 1:04 pm by Radley Balko
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TheAgitator.com
LOL! Who are you trying to kid, Radley? Their supporters will brush it over and it’ll be forgotten in a month.
Anyway, what’s the difference between this and people like George Michael having to pony up to the Rainbow Coalition?
These sorts of groups are so transparent that little would surprise me anymore.
“Congressional Budget Office states the obvious: The Dems’ health care bill will raise health costs, not lower them. Not sure why anyone thought the entity that pays $436 for a hammer would be able to magically lower the cost of an MRI.”
Wait a second — Chet, I thought you had explained how this was not going to be the case? Could you please explain again?
Just in–Schumer says the CBO’s numbers are “wacky” because they don’t take into accout savings from “efficiencies” in the system and from “preventive care.” Since when has any government program been more efficient that the private sector??
If I hear any more crap about “preventive” care I think my head will explode. Preventive care doesn’t cut costs, it increases them. If people lose weight, quit smoking, etc and live longer they just consume more Social Security and Medicare over their lifetimes. (What’s cheaper, a fat diabetic having a fatal heart attack in their 60’s or 70’s, or having them live to 90 and spend the last decade in a nursing home wasting away from some horrible disease like Alzheimers?) I mean come on, we’ve all got to die of something. And if we test everyone for every disease they might get, medicate them if they are “at risk” for (fill in the blanks), medicate them for the side effects of said medications, that costs a buttload. The whole statin hoax is a good example.
A Smoking Ban in the Military.
So basically, the government wants teens and 20-somethings to VOLUNTEER to go halfway across the world to a land where they can’t drink booze or fuck the local women, to be pawns in a massive political clusterfuck, to be shot at by a uniform-less enemy for reasons that were long ago shown to be bullshit… and now they want to take away one of the only ways these guys have to relieve stress.
No wonder they can only get skinheads and convicts.
Well, it’s really very simple for the government to lower health care costs once they’re paying all the bills. They’ll simply pay whatever they feel like paying, and it that doesn’t match what the producer says they owe, what’re they gonna do? Scrape together a few hundred grand to try and sue the government in it’s own courts?
Notice in the report of the $436 hammer, there’s actually a line item for the hammer itself of $7. They probably negotiated the hammer supplier down from 9 or 10 bucks to 7 and then patted themselves on the back for lowering the cost of hammers.
How is what the ACU did/does any different that the Jessie Jacksons and Sharptons of the race hustler movement did and still do? It looks to me they are still in business and it is booming.
If the CIA is doing half of the things that Hersh is claiming, what is he doing still breathing? With him blowing the cover on Project Jennifer in the 70’s, he ought to rank pretty high on the list of people that the cia would like to see stop breathing. Unless of course he is acting as a smokescreen for the Agency.
Re #1: “George Michael” – what was I typing? I meant “Michael Richards”.
@Reggie Hubbard: Yeah how messed up is that? Smoking is a huge part of military culture for a lot of reasons — chief among them probably being that you don’t worry too much about lung cancer when the possibility that your legs will be blown of tomorrow is a realistic one.
But apparently that is a risk worth taking, while the same cannot be said for burning a heater.
If soldiers are going to be fighting for our Right to eat at smoke-free restaurants and enjoy live music at smoke-free bars, it only makes sense that they shouldn’t get to smoke, too.
There shouldn’t be any trans fats in MREs, either.
I actually just read in the Washinton Post Express yesterday that the military smoking ban was only a suggestion from an advisory board and the top decision makers have already made a statement that they aren’t considering the smoking ban. Doesn’t mean they won’t change their minds in the future, but for now, it’s not happening.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/15/AR2009071502761.html
Of course, the article states that they won’t ban war-zone smoking. Presumably, bases might still be subject to a ban.
Hell, as soon as I see Sy Hersh’s name at this point I just assume that the opposite of what he is “reporting” is true.
@MDGuy: Yeah from what I understand, they are not going to implement an actual ban (as recommended), but they have agreed to “work toward a tobacco-free military” in the future or some such nonsense. They are open to discouraging smoking, refusing admittance to “users”, crap like that in an effort to be smoke-free in 20 years or something.
Why is pay for play a scandal again?
I don’t see the problem, it’s done every day.
@#14 | Tomcatshanger |
Why is pay for play a scandal again?
Standard libertarian disclaimers aside…it’s a problem because the people who support the ACU do so with the belief their donations, efforts, and signatures are going to promote conservative causes. The ACU not only does advocacy work, but are very closely linked to a lot of the press. The ACU pretends to represent conservatives and their values. Apparently, they just use that image and devotion to sell advertising. If I was a member, I would feel very used.
Also, this story gets the “doublebad” stamp because the ACU weren’t just corrupted by dangling money; they sought payment out.
The hammer myth again. Only problem – it never really happened:
http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/1298/120798t1.htm
From the hammer myth article:
“The new moral is that numbers, taken as self-explanatory truths by the public and the press, can in fact be the woefully distorted products of a broken accounting system.”
So basically, we don’t have a government that spends $600 on a hammer, we have a government with a broken accounting system that doesn’t even know how much it spent. What a model of efficiency…
Something tells me that the military will give a giant fuck you to the pentagon. Good luck enforcing the no smoking rule.
“So basically, we don’t have a government that spends $600 on a hammer, we have a government with a broken accounting system that doesn’t even know how much it spent. What a model of efficiency…”
A completely legitimate criticism. With so many real abuses in government, it’s silly for stupid myths to continue to be spread.
Well, it’s really very simple for the government to lower health care costs once they’re paying all the bills. They’ll simply pay whatever they feel like paying, and it that doesn’t match what the producer says they owe, what’re they gonna do? Scrape together a few hundred grand to try and sue the government in it’s own courts?
Of course not. The producers will simply attempt to recover the difference from the individual patient, and if they don’t pay up, well then that’s more work for the collection agencies.
Any business that deals with the public never takes a loss, they just pass it on to the consumer.
John Yoo gets PWNED, and–surprise–it’s by a Brit.
Jesus. Do we have ANYONE with balls left in the US?
What really got me (on the extended version) was one of the students saying “Get out of here!” and then some lady grabs the guy and drags him out of the classroom. Here’s the longer version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EwTPQjT0hA&feature=related
Actually, they’re Aussies. Figures. They have even more balls than the Brits.
Good on you, lads!
On smoking in the military:
On my first day at Lackland AFB for Air Force basic training, our Training Instructor “parked” the 50 of us as we waited to march to the next stop (shots?) for the day. We had to stand there quietly, hands behind our backs, at parade rest UNLESS you really had to have a smoke, in which case you could stand over there in a painted box with your other smoker buddies, milling about and chatting (and smoking) until the TI got back.
How long did it take me to buy a pack of cigarettes at the Base Exchange so I could join in? Just as soon as I possibly could. Once I was on the flightline fixing jets I switched to chewing tobacco (no smoking around jets), but the smoking habit was definitely pushed as part of being a military man (along with drinking gallons of coffee during the day and gallons of beer at night).
I don’t agree with a ban on smoking in the military. ‘Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em’ is fine by me, but don’t actively discourage OR encourage it, and definitely don’t subsidize it.
“Since when has any government program been more efficient that the private sector??”
Medicare. And Tricare (DoD). Oh, and Canadian Medicare and the British NHS (where people complain only because it’s *too* efficient at denying worthless tests and treatments — not because it’s “less efficient”!).
Run the stats, it’s awesome how ineffcient private sector medical insurance is. There are good economic reasons for this; medicine has very unusual economic properties, and you can ask a serious health care economist about it.
But outside medicine, fire protection has similar economic properties, and is simply run more efficiently by the government. So does policing; although there are many problems with government police, they are certainly more efficient than private police (who incidentally seem to have all the same problems).
In another arena, government is also more efficient at provision of sewer and water systems, and electric systems, according to nationwide comparative studies.
These all have distinctive economic properties. Most if not all are natural monopolies.
“If the CIA is doing half of the things that Hersh is claiming, what is he doing still breathing? ”
They don’t care, because they believe (quite accurately) that nobody, not even the President, and least of all the newspapers, can stop them or bring them to justice.
Seriously, we now know about an significant number of CIA illegal and murderous activities *for sure*, but has anyone gone to prison for *any* of them?