Category: regulation

More of This

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Elizabeth Warren has announced that she is opposing the nomination of Antonio Weiss as Treasury undersecretary, because he is a creature of the corrupt Wall Street establishment who arranged a huge “inversion” deal to avoid US taxes:

Sen. Elizabeth Warren plans to oppose President Barack Obama’s nomination of Antonio Weiss, a Wall Street investment banker, to be Treasury Undersecretary for Domestic Finance, another sharp-elbowed move by the progressive movement’s most prominent leader.

Weiss, head of global investment banking at Lazard, is widely respected on Wall Street. But he advised on Burger King’s acquisition of Canadian doughnut chain Tim Horton’s, a so-called “tax inversion deal.” Defenders say the deals are commonplace across Wall Street and Weiss did not advise on the tax portion. Such arguments have not swayed the Massachusetts Democratic senator, a persistent Wall Street critic who appears headed to a leadership role in the next Congress.

A Warren adviser told POLITICO: “She is a no on Antonio Weiss. She was a Treasury official herself, she cares a lot about who is in the domestic finance role. It oversees Dodd-Frank implementation and other core economic policy-making.”

The adviser added that Warren “agrees with Senator Grassley that his past work with corporate inversions is a major issue, and she’s had growing concerns with the Administration being loaded with so many appointees from Wall Street rather than more people who would bring different perspectives.”

The adviser also argued that Weiss’ mergers and acquisitions background on Wall Street was not a good fit for the domestic finance post. “She also doesn’t believe that his investment banking background – which focuses almost entirely on Europe and on international mergers and acquisitions – puts him in a good position to oversee domestic issues like consumer protection and US financial regulation,” the adviser said.

The fact that Obama has nominated is a Wall Street type who is unsuited, and probably disinclined, to protect consumers from the banksters is not an unintentional oversight.

Neither it is Obama practicing eleventy dimensional chess.

If the past 6 years have shown anything, it is that Barack Obama and Eric “Place” Holder have put the wealth and impunity of the financial sector above all other policy concerns.

When AT&T Has Even the FCC Calling Bullsh%$………

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You know how it goes.

The FCC is increasingly aware of massive public opposition to the broadband monopolists attempts to rape the consumers and internet businesses, what John Oliver rightly called “Cable company F%$#ery”, and so the former cable company lobbyist who is currently running the FCC is making noises about making it a touch more difficult for the last mile providers.

In response to this, AT&T tries blackmail, suggesting that any pro-consumer and pro-competition regulation will result in their curtailing their plans for a significant expansion of their fiber build-out.

The FCC called bullsh%$ on AT&T’s claims, and have demanded to see their detailed plans for expansion of broadband capability:

Two days after AT&T claimed it has to “pause” a 100-city fiber build because of uncertainty over network neutrality rules, the Federal Communications Commission today asked the company to finally detail its vague plans for fiber construction.

 Despite making all sorts of bold promises about bringing fiber to customers and claiming its fiber construction is contingent on the government giving it what it wants, AT&T has never detailed its exact fiber plans. For one thing, AT&T never promised to build in all of the 100 cities and towns it named as potential fiber spots. The company would only build in cities and towns where local leaders gave AT&T whatever it wanted. In all likelihood, only a small portion of the 100 municipalities were likely to get fiber, and nobody knows which ones.

………

Today, the FCC challenged AT&T to finally reveal some facts about its fiber plans in a letter to AT&T Senior VP Robert Quinn. Jamillia Ferris, a former Justice Department antitrust lawyer who joined the FCC to review the AT&T/DirecTV merger, began the letter by describing Stephenson’s statement that “the Company would limit its fiber deployment to the ‘2 million additional homes’ that are ‘commitments to the DirecTV announcement’ and that any other fiber deployment would depend on the outcome of the Commission’s Open Internet Proceeding.” Ferris then asked Quinn for:

(a) Data regarding the Company’s current plans for fiber deployment, specifically: (1) the current number of households to which fiber is deployed and the breakdown by technology (i.e., FTTP [fiber-to-the-premises] or FTTN [fiber-to-the-node]) and geographic area of deployment; (2) the total number of households to which the Company planned to deploy fiber prior to the Company’s decision to limit deployment to the 2 million households and the breakdown by technology and geographic area of deployment; and (3) the total number of households to which the Company currently plans to deploy fiber, including the 2 million households, and the breakdown by technology and geographic area of deployment;

(b) A description of (1) whether the AT&T FTTP Investment Model demonstrates that fiber deployment is now unprofitable; and (2) whether the fiber to the 2 million homes following acquisition of DirecTV would be unprofitable; and

(c) All documents relating to the Company’s decision to limit AT&T’s deployment of fiber to 2 million homes following the acquisition of DirecTV.

Of course, AT&T never intended to put all that fiber in the ground, but it is nice that the FCC is saying that the emperor has not clothes.

This is all very simple, really: 

  • Businesses are in the business of making money.
  • When a business has a strangle hold on a market, like the Telcos and Cable companies do, the most profitable actions that they can take are those taken to reinforce their monopoly statusand those taken to extract monopoly enforced rents.
  • Thus businesses have no incentive to improve services.
  • Cable company f%$#ery.  QED.

These companies are the most loathed companies in America for a reason.

To quote Lily Tomlin, “We don’t care. We don’t have to. We’re the Phone Company.”

And the Other Shoe Drops on Net Neutrality

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Former Cable TV Lobbyist, and Barack Obama’s FCC chairman, just told Barack Obama to go Cheney himself on net neutrality:

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler is not convinced that the FCC should treat consumer broadband service as a utility despite President Obama urging him to do so.

A report last night in The Washington Post says Wheeler met Monday with Web companies including Google, Yahoo, and Etsy and told them that he wants to find a compromise that addresses the concerns of Internet service providers such as Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and AT&T. Wheeler was formerly a lobbyist for the cable and wireless industries.

“What you want is what everyone wants: an open Internet that doesn’t affect your business,” Wheeler told attendees of the meeting, according to the Post’s sources. “What I’ve got to figure out is how to split the baby.”

Obama argued that reclassifying consumer broadband service as a utility is the best way to implement net neutrality rules that prevent ISPs from blocking or throttling Web services or prioritizing traffic in exchange for payment. Obama noted that the FCC is an independent agency that can vote however it wants, a message Wheeler apparently has taken to heart.

“I am an independent agency,” Wheeler said repeatedly during the meeting, according to the Post’s sources.

While the Post story said Wheeler is “moving in a different direction” from the president’s plan, it did not provide any details as to what that direction is. Before Obama’s call for a full reclassification of broadband as a utility, Wheeler was reportedly close to settling on a hybrid approach in which the service ISPs offer to content providers would be treated as a utility while the service ISPs offer to consumers would remain a lightly regulated information service.

“Wheeler worries that the president’s more drastic approach is too simplistic, according to people familiar with his thinking,” the Post wrote. “With his long experience in the telecommunications industry, Wheeler is well aware of concerns that ill-considered regulations could stifle innovation and slow the growth of the country’s broadband infrastructure, those people said. And he worries that the White House is being naive about the ripple effects of changing how a major piece of national infrastructure is governed.”

I guarantee you that Wheeler got a heads up before Obama made the statement.

In fact it was probably more than just a heads up.  I think that Obama knew what Wheeler’s response would be before he made his statement.

When I doubted Obama’s sincerity, and worried that he would, “find a way to f%$# the ordinary guy and benefit the big corporations again,” it appears that I was right.

He gets to pretend to be on our side, while siding with the oligarchs.

This is Kind of a Big Deal

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The National Institute of Mental Health has withdrawn its support for the DSM-5, the 5th edition Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the massive update of the American Psychological Association’s encyclopedic, and controversial, diagnostic manual:

Just two weeks before DSM-5 is due to appear, the National Institute of Mental Health, the world’s largest funding agency for research into mental health, has indicated that it is withdrawing support for the manual.

In a humiliating blow to the American Psychiatric Association, Thomas R. Insel, M.D., Director of the NIMH, made clear the agency would no longer fund research projects that rely exclusively on DSM criteria. Henceforth, the NIMH, which had thrown its weight and funding behind earlier editions of the manual, would be “re-orienting its research away from DSM categories.” “The weakness” of the manual, he explained in a sharply worded statement, “is its lack of validity.” “Unlike our definitions of ischemic heart disease, lymphoma, or AIDS, the DSM diagnoses are based on a consensus about clusters of clinical symptoms, not any objective laboratory measure.”

That consensus is now clearly missing. Whether it ever really existed remains in doubt. As one consultant for DSM-III conceded to the New Yorker magazine about the amount of horsetrading that drove that supposedly “evidenced-based” edition from 1980: “There was very little systematic research, and much of the research that existed was really a hodgepodge—scattered, inconsistent, ambiguous.”

According to Insel, too much of that problem remains. As he cautioned of a manual whose precision and reliability has been overstated for decades, “While DSM has been described as a ‘Bible’ for the field, it is, at best, a dictionary, creating a set of labels and defining each.” And not even a particularly good dictionary, apparently. Of the decision to steer research in mental health away from the manual and its parameters, Insel states: “Patients with mental disorders deserve better.”

I’m wondering how much of this is a generational thing.

The people who have been in charge of the DSM since at least the late 1970s are all roughly of the same age, being in their 40s back then, and being in their ate 1970s now, and as such, advances in genetics, neurochemistry, and imaging allow for a far more quantitative approach to the discipline.

Barry, Why the F%$# Did you wait Until After the Election

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Barack Obama just came out in favor of Title 2 regulation of broadband providers:

U.S. President Barack Obama on Monday said Internet service providers should be regulated more like public utilities to make sure they grant equal access to all content providers, touching off intense protests from cable and telecoms companies and Republican lawmakers.

 Obama’s detailed statement on the issue of “net neutrality,” a platform in his 2008 presidential campaign, was a rare intervention by the White House into the policy setting of an independent agency.

 Shares of major Internet service providers Comcast Corp and Time Warner Cable Inc fell sharply after Obama said ISPs should be reclassified to face stricter regulations and banned from striking paid “fast lane” deals with content companies.

 The president also said the Federal Communications Commission’s new rules should apply equally to mobile and wired ISPs, with a recognition of special challenges that come with managing wireless networks.

 “Simply put: No service should be stuck in a ‘slow lane’ because it does not pay a fee,” Obama, currently in Asia, said in a statement released by the White House. “That kind of gate keeping would undermine the level playing field essential to the Internet’s growth.”

It’s a remarkably strong statement, and he included mobile providers in it.

that being said, it’s mind-bogglingly stupid timing, as Charlie Pierce so aptly observed:

Where in the name of god was this before a midterm election when, because the kidz stayed home, the average age of the voter was approximately half-past the Hallmark Channel? Yeesh.

He’s right.

The average Fox News viewer barely understands email, and would not understand, nor would Fox be able to work them into a frenzy, over network neutrality.

Meanwhile, the younger Democratic voters are disgusted and dispirited, and were expecting to get f%$#ed like a drunk sorority girl by Obama’s former cable lobbyist FCC chairman.

A statement like Obama’s would have driven a more turnout.

Seriously, both Barack Obama, and the Democratic political establishment seem to be paralyzed by fear of offending people who go to Sally Quinn’s cocktail parties.

BTW, I still expect Obama to find a way to f%$# the ordinary guy and benefit the big corporations again, just like he did with Wall Street.

I hope to be wrong about this, but I fear that I won’t.

Text of White House Statement follows:

Statement by the President on Net Neutrality

An open Internet is essential to the American economy, and increasingly to our very way of life.  By lowering the cost of launching a new idea, igniting new political movements, and bringing communities closer together, it has been one of the most significant democratizing influences the world has ever known.

“Net neutrality” has been built into the fabric of the Internet since its creation — but it is also a principle that we cannot take for granted.  We cannot allow Internet service providers (ISPs) to restrict the best access or to pick winners and losers in the online marketplace for services and ideas.  That is why today, I am asking the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to answer the call of almost 4 million public comments, and implement the strongest possible rules to protect net neutrality.

When I was a candidate for this office, I made clear my commitment to a free and open Internet, and my commitment remains as strong as ever.  Four years ago, the FCC tried to implement rules that would protect net neutrality with little to no impact on the telecommunications companies that make important investments in our economy.  After the rules were challenged, the court reviewing the rules agreed with the FCC that net neutrality was essential for preserving an environment that encourages new investment in the network, new online services and content, and everything else that makes up the Internet as we now know it.  Unfortunately, the court ultimately struck down the rules — not because it disagreed with the need to protect net neutrality, but because it believed the FCC had taken the wrong legal approach. 

The FCC is an independent agency, and ultimately this decision is theirs alone.  I believe the FCC should create a new set of rules protecting net neutrality and ensuring that neither the cable company nor the phone company will be able to act as a gatekeeper, restricting what you can do or see online.  The rules I am asking for are simple, common-sense steps that reflect the Internet you and I use every day, and that some ISPs already observe.  These bright-line rules include:

  • No blocking.  If a consumer requests access to a website or service, and the content is legal, your ISP should not be permitted to block it.  That way, every player — not just those commercially affiliated with an ISP — gets a fair shot at your business.
  • No throttling.  Nor should ISPs be able to intentionally slow down some content or speed up others — through a process often called “throttling” — based on the type of service or your ISP’s preferences.
  • Increased transparency.  The connection between consumers and ISPs — the so-called “last mile” — is not the only place some sites might get special treatment.  So, I am also asking the FCC to make full use of the transparency authorities the court recently upheld, and if necessary to apply net neutrality rules to points of interconnection between the ISP and the rest of the Internet.
  • No paid prioritization.  Simply put: No service should be stuck in a “slow lane” because it does not pay a fee.  That kind of gatekeeping would undermine the level playing field essential to the Internet’s growth.  So, as I have before, I am asking for an explicit ban on paid prioritization and any other restriction that has a similar effect.

If carefully designed, these rules should not create any undue burden for ISPs, and can have clear, monitored exceptions for reasonable network management and for specialized services such as dedicated, mission-critical networks serving a hospital.  But combined, these rules mean everything for preserving the Internet’s openness.

The rules also have to reflect the way people use the Internet today, which increasingly means on a mobile device.  I believe the FCC should make these rules fully applicable to mobile broadband as well, while recognizing the special challenges that come with managing wireless networks. 
To be current, these rules must also build on the lessons of the past.  For almost a century, our law has recognized that companies who connect you to the world have special obligations not to exploit the monopoly they enjoy over access in and out of your home or business.  That is why a phone call from a customer of one phone company can reliably reach a customer of a different one, and why you will not be penalized solely for calling someone who is using another provider.  It is common sense that the same philosophy should guide any service that is based on the transmission of information — whether a phone call, or a packet of data.

So the time has come for the FCC to recognize that broadband service is of the same importance and must carry the same obligations as so many of the other vital services do.  To do that, I believe the FCC should reclassify consumer broadband service under Title II of the Telecommunications Act — while at the same time forbearing from rate regulation and other provisions less relevant to broadband services.  This is a basic acknowledgment of the services ISPs provide to American homes and businesses, and the straightforward obligations necessary to ensure the network works for everyone — not just one or two companies.

Investment in wired and wireless networks has supported jobs and made America the center of a vibrant ecosystem of digital devices, apps, and platforms that fuel growth and expand opportunity. Importantly, network investment remained strong under the previous net neutrality regime, before it was struck down by the court; in fact, the court agreed that protecting net neutrality helps foster more investment and innovation.  If the FCC appropriately forbears from the Title II regulations that are not needed to implement the principles above — principles that most ISPs have followed for years — it will help ensure new rules are consistent with incentives for further investment in the infrastructure of the Internet.

The Internet has been one of the greatest gifts our economy — and our society — has ever known.  The FCC was chartered to promote competition, innovation, and investment in our networks.  In service of that mission, there is no higher calling than protecting an open, accessible, and free Internet.  I thank the Commissioners for having served this cause with distinction and integrity, and I respectfully ask them to adopt the policies I have outlined here, to preserve this technology’s promise for today, and future generations to come.

I Have to Give an A for Inventiveness

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The European Union has classified spyware as a restricted item requiring an export license, much like weapons:

Companies which make spyware will have to apply for permission to export the software once new EU regulations come into effect in late December.

Officially referred to as “intrusion software”, the software will now be included on the EU’s list of “dual use” items, defined as “goods, software and technology normally used for civilian purposes but which might have military applications or contribute to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.”

The restriction means that companies will have to apply for a licence to export spyware, although it doesn’t affect the sale of the software within the UK. Inclusion on the dual-use list places the technology alongside nuclear reactors, ultra-high-resolution cameras, and rocket fuel.

While the regulation is implemented by the European commission, the British government supports the restriction of spyware. “The UK has made it clear over the last two years that we believe that while these kind of technologies do have legitimate uses, they also pose threats to national security and to human rights and should be subject to export controls,” said a spokesperson for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.

Hopefully, this the export of such software to repressive regimes, as FinFisher did with its FinFish spyware, which it probably exported to Egypt, Bahrain, Ethiopia, etc.

Additionally, I hope that it will serve to also restrict the use of such programs by commercial entities.

Things like tracking cookies, and Verizon’s new “super cookies”, should be included in this category.

If This is True, We Made Them Do It

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It has been reported that the FCC will be reclassifying ISPs as common carriers, which will allow for real regulations to protect consumers and establish a competitive market:

The head of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is reportedly close to proposing a “hybrid approach” to network neutrality in which Internet service providers would be partially reclassified as common carriers, letting the commission take a harder stance against Internet fast lane deals.

However, the proposal would not completely outlaw deals in which Web services pay for faster access to consumers.

As reported Thursday by The Wall Street Journal, the broadband service that ISPs offer to consumers would be maintained as a lightly regulated information service. But the FCC would reclassify the service that ISPs offer at the other end of the network to content providers who deliver data over Internet providers’ pipes. This would be a common carrier service subject to utility-style regulation under Title II of the Communications Act.

“People close to the chairman” say that Chairman Tom Wheeler is “close to settling on a hybrid approach,” the Journal wrote, continuing:

The plan now under consideration would separate broadband into two distinct services: a retail one, in which consumers would pay broadband providers for Internet access; and a back-end one, in which broadband providers serve as the conduit for websites to distribute content. The FCC would then classify the back-end service as a common carrier, giving the agency the ability to police any deals between content companies and broadband providers.

 The emerging plan reflects proposals submitted by the Mozilla Foundation and the Center for Democracy and Technology, though it departs from both in parts. The main advantage of the hybrid proposal, as opposed to full reclassification, is that it wouldn’t require the FCC to reverse earlier decisions to deregulate broadband providers, which were made in the hopes of encouraging the adoption and deployment of high-speed broadband. The authors of the new proposal believe that not having to justify reversing itself would put the FCC on firmer legal ground.

Let’s be clear about this: The FCC did not want to do this.

They were dragged into this kicking and screaming by the avalanche of public input, and unless I miss my guess, there will be some huge loopholes in this “hybrid” approach.

Remember, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler got his start as a cable lobbyist, so I am expecting a poison pill in all of this.

What a Surprise, the No Fly Zone over Ferguson was About Restricting Press Access

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It was patently obvious at the time, but now we have evidence on tape:

The federal government agreed in August to a request by the police to restrict about 37 square miles of airspace over Ferguson, Mo., for 12 days for what they said were safety concerns, but audio recordings show that the local authorities privately acknowledged that the purpose was to keep away news helicopters during violent street protests.

On Aug. 12, the morning after the Federal Aviation Administration imposed the first flight restriction, the agency’s air traffic managers struggled to redefine the flight ban to allow commercial flights to operate at nearby Lambert-St. Louis International Airport and for police helicopters to fly through the area — while still prohibiting flights.

“They finally admitted it really was to keep the media out,” one administration manager said about the St. Louis County Police Department in a series of recorded telephone conversations obtained by The Associated Press. “But they were a little concerned of, obviously, anything else that could be going on.”

At another point, referring to the temporary flight restriction, a manager at the administration’s center in Kansas City, Mo., said the police “did not care if you ran commercial traffic through this T.F.R. all day long. They didn’t want media in there.”

Seriously, this is America, and this is not acceptable.

Not only do we need to disband the Ferguson PD, we probably need to do it for the St. Louis County PD as well.

These are ineluctably corrupt organizations.

They cannot be fixed.  They need to be shut down.

Another Bank Failure

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This Friday was another bank failure Friday.

We’ve had the 16th bank failure of the year, The National Republic Bank of Chicago, in Chicago, Illinois. (Full FDIC list)

Wouldn’t you know it, I comment on how commercial bank failures were low relative to Credit Unions on October 10, and there are failures in each of the following weeks.

Go figure.

Here is the graph pr0n with last few years numbers for comparison (FDIC only):

This is a Huge and Well Deserved F%$# You to the CIA and the NSA

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It’s well deserved too.

You see the Federal Trade (FTC) commission has hired hired Ashkan Soltan as their new Chief Technical Officer.

The reason that this is a giant f%$# you to the US state security apparatus is because (wait for it) he helped the Washington Post do its news stories on the Snowden affair:

The Federal Trade Commission has hired privacy and technology expert Ashkan Soltani to serve as the commission’s chief technology officer. But security experts and former senior U.S. intelligence officials are questioning the FTC’s decision, given Soltani’s very public role as a consultant for The Washington Post, where he co-authored multiple articles based on classified documents stolen from the National Security Agency by former contractor Edward Snowden.

 The FTC said in a press release that Soltani will join FTC in November and will replace Latanya Sweeney, who is returning to Harvard University, where she founded and directs the school’s Data Privacy Lab. His job will be to advise the commission on evolving technology and policy issues, a role similar to one he held previously at the FTC before leaving government to become an independent consultant.

Needless to say, Michael Hayden and His Evil Minions™ heads are exploding:

The news has elicited wails from NSA’s mail mouthpieces, Stewart Baker and Michael Hayden.

“I’m not trying to demonize this fella, but he’s been working through criminally exposed documents and making decisions about making those documents public,” said Michael Hayden, a former NSA director who also served as CIA director from 2006 to 2009. In a telephone interview with FedScoop, Hayden said he wasn’t surprised by the lack of concern about Soltani’s participation in the Post’s Snowden stories. “I have no good answer for that.”

[snip]

Stewart Baker, a former NSA general counsel, said, while he’s not familiar with the role Soltani would play at the FTC, there are still problems with his appointment. “I don’t think anyone who justified or exploited Snowden’s breach of confidentiality obligations should be trusted to serve in government,” Baker said.


I find Hayden’s wails especially disgusting, given the way — it is now clear — the government spent so much effort covering up how he extended the illegal wiretap program in March 2004. I mean, I’m not trying to demonize the fella, but he’s a criminal, and yet he’s complaining about the press reporting on abuses?

………

At FTC, Soltani will be in a role where he can directly influence the kind of regulatory pressure placed on data collectors to protect user privacy. He understands — probably far more than we know from the WaPo stories — how NSA is capitalizing on already collected data. Which means he may be able to influence how much remains available to the spooks.

I do not expect Soltani to actually get the job.

It’s clear that Obama is very much in the pocket of the US state security apparatus, and he will find a way to stop this.

But still, it is very well deserved push-back against the what can only be described as the forces of evil in America’s shadow government.

Get Ready to Eat Tainted Meat from China

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The WTO has just ruled that country of origin labels on meat are a violation of trade agreements:

Today’s ruling by a World Trade Organization (WTO) compliance panel against U.S. country-of-origin meat labeling (COOL) policies sets up a no-win dynamic, and the Obama administration should appeal the ruling, Public Citizen said.

If the administration were to weaken COOL, U.S. consumers would lose access to critical information about where their meat comes from at a time when consumer interest in such information is at an all-time high and opposition would only grow to the administration’s beleaguered trade agenda. If the administration again were to seek to comply with the WTO by strengthening COOL, then Mexico and Canada – the two countries that challenged the policy – likely would continue their case, even though cattle imports from Canada have increased since the 2013 strengthening of the policy.

The ruling further complicates the Obama administration’s stalled efforts to obtain Fast Track trade authority for two major agreements, the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Trans-Atlantic Free Trade Agreement. Both of these pacts would expose the United States to more such challenges against U.S. consumer, environmental and other policies.

What Public Citizen does not get is that, “More such challenges against U.S. consumer, environmental and other policies,” is a feature, not a bug.

It is a goal of the neoliberal policy makers who create such deals to create a regulation free world.

They see it as leading to the Garden of Eden.

Me, I think that it’s more likely to lead to Lord of the Flies.

This is the Best Idea that I have Heard all Day

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The canvassing board in Michigan has just certified the language for a petition to prevent hospitals to overcharge the uninsured:

The Board of State Canvassers on Monday unanimously approved the form a statewide ballot initiative petition that aims to prohibit a health care provider from charging a higher price to some for medical goods or services.

A group called Stop Overcharging is backing the “citizen initiated” legislation, which would limit a hospital or provider to charging somebody any more than 150 percent of the lowest amount the provider had accepted as payment in full.

The example they give is if somebody was charged $2,000 for an MRI but the provider accepted $600 as payment in full, the provider couldn’t force an uninsured person or auto accident victim to pay more than $900.

It’s something that has come up in the discussion of no-fault reforms. The petition is designed to incite action from the state legislature on that topic.

“We would hope that they would, we would wish that they would, but we’re preparing if they wouldn’t,” said Rocky Raczkowski, a former state lawmaker who is heading up the petition drive.

………

The Board of State Canvassers unanimously approved the petition as to form, meaning it meets state guidelines and can be circulated.

The group can start collecting signatures after the Nov. 4 election, and Raczkowski said they plan to move quickly. Asked if paid circulators would be circulating the petitions, he said the group was still examining its options.

There is some political baggage along with this, it seems to be associated with insurance “Reforms” that favor the auto insurance industry, but the idea that part of the healthcare delivery problem in the USA is the price of healthcare appears to be gaining currency, and this is a good thing.

The idea that, for example, the cost of an identical service can vary by over an order of magnitude at the same hospital in the is much, if not most of the problem here.

The New York Times revealed something very similar recently, when it discovered that many hospitals employed ER physicians who were out of network, who then price gouged patients, since they were not covered by any agreement with insurance carriers:

When Jennifer Hopper raced to the emergency room after her husband, Craig, took a baseball in the face, she made sure they went to a hospital in their insurance network in Texas. So when they got a $937 bill from the emergency room doctor, she called the insurer, assuming it was in error.

But the bill was correct: UnitedHealthcare, the insurance company, had paid its customary fee of $151.02 and expected the Hoppers to pay the remaining $785.98, because the doctor at Seton Northwest Hospital in Austin did not participate in their network.

“It never occurred to me that the first line of defense, the person you have to see in an in-network emergency room, could be out of the network,” said Ms. Hopper, who has spent months fighting the bill. “In-network means we just get the building? I thought the doctor came with the E.R.”

Patients have no choice about which physician they see when they go to an emergency room, even if they have the presence of mind to visit a hospital that is in their insurance network. In the piles of forms that patients sign in those chaotic first moments is often an acknowledgment that they understand some providers may be out of network.

Note that this sort of shenanigans is why ER doctors income has gone up in recent years.

ER’s are going Wall Street, and the only people who win in this game are the worst among us.

Why to Make Pot Legal, Part Gazillion

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Growing marijuana is illegal, so the growers tend not to be particularly solicitous of EPA regulations, and as a result the Fisher may be placed on the endangered species list:

A rare west coast mammal is up for Endangered Species protection thanks to the threat posed by California’s illegal marijuana industry.

The fisher, a carnivorous cousin of the weasel found in the old-growth forests in California, Oregon and Washington is already rare, its numbers reduced by fur trappers and loggers going back to the 1800s, as well as by urban development. Only two naturally occurring wild populations exist, according to the Center for Biological Diversity: one is in the southern Sierra, and the other is in southern Oregon and Northern California. A third was reintroduced into Washington’s Olympic National Park in 2008. But the motivation for the new level of protection, according to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials, comes from the use of rat poison on marijuana plantations. Of 58 carcasses tested by one 2012 study, nearly 80 percent tested positive for traces of rodenticide.

“It is an illegal activity so it’s not like we know a lot yet,” explained Paul Henson, state supervisor for the FWS in Oregon. “But we know it’s fairly widespread within the range of the fisher, because that’s also where a certain amount of the illegal cultivation occurring on public lands.”

Make pot legal now.

Shorter Court Filing: Socialize Our Losses, and Privatize Our Gains

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Various players in companies rescued by the US Treasury have taken to filing lawsuits in an attempt to get a share of the profits after the bailouts:

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (FMCC) plunged in New York trading after investors including Bruce Berkowitz’s Fairholme Capital Management LLC lost a legal bid yesterday to force the bailed-out companies to share profits with private shareholders.

Fannie Mae fell 29 percent to $1.92 at 11:10 a.m. Freddie Mac dropped 26 percent. Their preferred shares, which drew investments from private-equity and hedge funds, also tumbled, with one series plummeting 54 percent. The mortgage giants had surged for more than two years on speculation that shareholder rights to the earnings could be restored.

The investors sued for breach of contract over allegedly promised dividends and liquidation preferences, and what they called an illegal “taking” under the U.S. Constitution. U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth rejected their claims, finding that the government is allowed under a 2012 amendment to the companies’ bailout agreements to sweep “nearly all” profits from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to the U.S. Treasury.

Here is the crux of what they were looking for:

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac each surged more than 1,000 percent in 2013 on speculation that courts or lawmakers would allow private investors to share in the companies’ profits, which have rebounded along with the housing recovery. The mortgage-finance firms extended their rally through July, then lost their gains for the year in September, when they each fell more than 30 percent.

There you have it.

The vultures figured that they could buy worthless shares, and convince the Congress of the courts to give them free money at the taxpayer’s expense.

Lamberth just told them to go pound sand.

BTW, it ain’t just these parasites trying to do this.

Like a bad penny, Maurice “Hank” Greenberg is back:

The government today entered its third day of trial defending its $182 billion rescue of American International Group Inc. in another Washington federal court. Maurice “Hank” Greenberg’s Starr International Co., the insurer’s biggest shareholder when the financial crisis struck, claims the assumption of 80 percent of AIG stock by the U.S. in September 2008 in exchange for an $85 billion loan amounted to an unconstitutional taking of private property.

The timeline here is pretty clear:

  • Hank Greenberg runs AIG.
  • Hank Greenberg is kicked out of AIG for dodgy accounting.
  • AIG implodes, in large part as a result of the sh%$ Greenberg did.
  • AIG is bailed out. (More accurately, the counter-parties are bailed out, but that’s another story)
  • Greenberg files a lawsuit to get money for the company that he had a hand in destroying.

Seriously.  This sort of sh%$ is why Eric “Place” Holder will be remembered by history for his refusal to prosecute the banksters.

This will happen, because the people who wrecked the world still don’t feel that they have done anything wrong.