Obama Embraces 'Death Panel' Concept in Medicare Rule

During the stormy debate over his healthcare plan, President Barack Obama promised his program would not "pull the plug on grandma," and Congress dropped plans for death panels and "end of life" counseling that would encourage aged patients from partaking in costly medical procedures.


Opponents of Obama's plan, including former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, dubbed such efforts as "death panels" that would encourage euthanasia.

But on Dec. 3, the Obama administration seemingly flouted the will of Congress by issuing a new Medicare regulation detailing "voluntary advance care planning" that is to be included during patients' annual checkups. The regulation aimed at the aged "may include advance directives to forgo aggressive life-sustaining treatment," The New York Times reported.

The new provision, which goes into effect Jan. 1, allows Medicare to pay for voluntary counseling to help beneficiaries deal with the complex decisions families face when a loved one is approaching death. Critics say it is another attempt to limit healthcare options for the elderly as they face serious illness.

Incoming House Speaker John Boehner said during the healthcare debate: “This provision may start us down a treacherous path toward government-encouraged euthanasia.”

Specifically, the measure was known as Section 1233 of the bill the House passed in November 2009. It was not included in the final legislation, however. It allowed Medicare to pay for consultations about advance care planning every five years. In contrast, the new rule allows annual discussions as part of wellness visits.

Elizabeth D. Wickham, executive director of LifeTree, a pro-life Christian educational ministry, told the Times that she is concerned that end-of-life counseling would encourage patients to forgo or curtail care, thus hastening death.

“The infamous Section 1233 is still alive and kicking,” Wickham said. “Patients will lose the ability to control treatments at the end of life.”

The rule was issued by Dr. Donald Berwick, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, according to the Times. He is a longtime advocate for rationing medical procedures for the elderly.

Before Obama tapped Berwick for the Medicare post, Berwick had long applauded Britain's National Health Service, which uses an algorithm to determine whether the aged are worthy of additional expenditures for medical care and advanced treatments.

Berwick has argued that rationing will have to be implemented eventually, stating, “The decision is not whether or not we will ration care. The decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open.”

Seniors appear to be a major target for precious resources under the Obama healthcare plan. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the Obama plan cuts nearly $500 billion in Medicare benefits to seniors as the federal government adds 30 million uninsured Americans to private and public healthcare systems.

The cost of caring for the elderly has not been lost on Berwick.

“The chronically ill and those towards the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care bill out here . . . there is going to have to be a very difficult democratic conversation that takes place,” he said.

During the heated healthcare debate, supporters of the Obama plan vigorously denied that rationing for seniors would take place and scoffed at "death panel" critics such as Palin.

Last month, however, economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman told ABC News that rising Medicare costs could be dealt with only by "death panels and sales taxes."

He added: "Medicare is going to have to decide what it's going to pay for. 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, it should have endorsed the [death] panel that was part of the healthcare reform.’"

A former Justice Department lawyer hired during the Bush administration alleged on Tuesday that the department scaled down a voter-intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party last year because his former colleagues do not want to protect white people’s civil rights.


In testimony before the Commission on Civil Rights, J. Christian Adams, who recently resigned from a voting rights position in the Justice Department’s civil rights division, decried the decision by department superiors in May 2009.

“We abetted wrongdoing and abandoned law-abiding citizens,” Mr. Adams said of the decision to reduce the scope of the New Black Panthers case, which he had helped to develop.

The testimony by Mr. Adams brought new attention to a case that has been used as political ammunition against the Obama administration by some conservative media outlets seeking to flip the script on portrayals of the Bush administration as having “politicized” the Justice Department.

The case arose after two members of the New Black Panther Party stood outside a polling place in a majority-black precinct in Philadelphia on Election Day in 2008. A video of the men, posted online, showed them dressed in paramilitary clothing, and one carried a billy club.












In January 2009, less than two weeks before the Bush administration left office, the civil rights division invoked a rarely used section of the Voting Rights Act to file a civil lawsuit alleging voter intimidation by both men, the party chairman and the party.

In April 2009, the division seemed to win the case by default because the New Black Panthers failed to show up in court. But the following month, a longtime Justice official, Loretta King — who was then the acting head of the division — decided to reduce the scope of the case.

The department dropped the charges against the party, its chairman and the man who was not carrying a club. It pressed forward with the lawsuit against the man with the club, obtaining an injunction that forbids him from carrying a weapon near an open polling place in Philadelphia through 2012.

The case became a cause célèbre in the conservative media world, and the Civil Rights Commission opened an investigation. The eight-member panel, which has the power to issue subpoenas and issue reports, is controlled by a six-member conservative bloc appointed during the Bush administration.

In testimony before the panel in May, Tom Perez, who became the assistant attorney general for the civil rights division in October 2009, said that “reasonable minds can differ” about the case, but that the acting supervisors had concluded that the case had been over-charged.

Mr. Perez said there was insufficient evidence that the party was responsible for the incident. He also noted that the voter intimidation provision is rarely used, and pointed to similar incidents during the Bush years in which minorities were the alleged victims but the division did not file such a lawsuit.

“Although none of the defendants responded to the complaint, the department had a continuing legal and ethical obligation to ensure that any relief sought was consistent with the law and supported by the evidence,” Mr. Perez said.

On Tuesday, Mr. Adams argued that the New Black Panther Party case was solid. He also portrayed the civil rights division as a place where many officials are hostile to the idea of using civil rights laws to go after black perpetrators with white victims.

Tracy Schmaler, a Justice Department spokeswoman, said the department enforces voter intimidation laws “based on the merits, not the race, gender or ethnicity of any party involved.”

The Obama administration took office amid widespread allegations that the Bush administration had politicized the civil rights division. Reports by the Government Accountability Office and the Justice Department’s inspector general found that enforcement of certain anti-discrimination laws dropped significantly, and that political appointees systematically steered career jobs to conservatives in violation of civil service laws.

Mr. Adams, a Republican who had previously worked for South Carolina’s secretary of state, was hired in 2005. But he insisted on Tuesday that his political beliefs had had no bearing on his work.

The investigation has divided the commission. In a statement on Tuesday, one of its two Democratic members, Michael Yaki, called it “incredibly shallow, expensive, and partisan” and a “one-sided farce.”

And one of its six conservatives, Abigail Thernstrom, wrote an article published Tuesday in National Review dismissing the New Black Panthers incident as “small potatoes” and warning that the commission’s “overblown attack threatens to undermine the credibility” of conservative criticism of the Justice Department, led by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.

But Commissioner Todd Gaziano, who is a fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, signaled that the other five members of the conservative bloc intend to press forward. And Mr. Adams offered to identify other former officials whom the commission could subpoena.

How the Internet Destroyed American Politics

Two years ago, the road to 2012 seemed like a cakewalk for Obama and an unreachable mountain for the Republicans. The roles haven't quite reversed yet, but they are evening out. And like in the old Hope-Crosby movies like "Road to Morocco" or "Road to Singapore", the road to 2012 has turned into an absurdist journey. Not a traditional political journey, but a silly parody of it with very serious stakes.

American politics has changed so dramatically over the last several years that anyone who had been in a coma would have trouble adjusting to this new world, in which the occupant of the Oval Office spends half his time abroad and the other half appearing on TV shows, and his likely opponent is doing her press releases via Facebook and has her own TV show. Most of the old taboos have been broken. From the dignity of the office to foreign money to the press corps, very little remains intact anymore. And a lot of this is collateral damage from the impact of the internet on our political institutions.

The internet has done two things. First, it undermined the existing system by creating faster and cheaper communication and organizational alternatives. Had the institutions adapted to it, the change would have been much less drastic. But that's not what happened. The media is the most obvious casualty of that failure to adapt, but the political institutions are next. Obama vs. Palin is not a matchup that could have existed in the pre-internet America. But the internet has made grassroots organizing easier, and is tearing down the wall between the inner and outer circles of political parties. Obama and Palin are both beneficiaries of that.

The old tiered political structures are becoming irrelevant. Internet guerrilla politics when properly funded by willing billionaires can dramatically change elections in ways that even William Randolph Hearst with his media empire could never have managed to do in his own time. Populism was always limited by access through a tiered system. But those tiers are being bypassed like old toll roads suddenly confronted by airplanes. The internet doesn't just go through them or around them; often it goes right over them. The internet adds another dimension to every system through direct access.

Palin's Facebook postings are an example of that. Rather than do interviews with accredited reporters in order to reach a large audience, she speaks to that audience directly. And that forces the media to report non-interactively on her Facebook posts. Obama has similarly bypassed the White House press corps, instead doling out televised interviews and keeping himself in the public eye through international travel and guest appearances on everything from American Idol to Myth busters. The end result is the same, substituting direct access and reflective coverage for the interrogatory process of the press, which was a traditional tier of the establishment's old guard.

This would not have been possible under the media as it was. But the internet shifted the media from developing stories to repeating in their own words what was already in the public eye. Stories are rarely investigated or broken anymore. Instead trending topics are seized on and developed, or tweaked slightly and then sent out. The internet has dramatically cut into the available time to reach readers. If reporters used to hurriedly phone in a scoop, today they blackberry stories directly. Every extra minute for a major news outlet is money lost in the constant race to jump on a topic first and rack up the eyeballs that count in online ad sales.

In such an environment, stories that take time to get right are more and more of a luxury. And if Time or the New York Times can profit more by creating their own blogs where someone like Joe Klein makes snap judgments about a breaking news story, than by spending a month in Africa covering the horrors of Sudan, then guess which one you'll see a lot more of. That attitude bleeds into standard news coverage which is a lot more shallow and flippant than it used to be. And also mostly redundant. Instead of doing research, reporters frequently rely on Wikipedia and unsourced talking points. One wire story sounds very much like another because they're duplicating each other's work and don't care who knows it.

When McCain chose Palin as his VP, after the media recovered from their initial confusion over how to cover her, they began complaining that she hadn't been vetted. And they 'vetted' her by recycling talking points from Anti-Palin blogs and passing them off as 'investigative pieces'. Some on Journalist actually tried to develop their own talking points. Mostly though they took the other side's talking points and pretended they were reporting on the story. The truth is that neither Obama nor Palin were vetted. Because the media doesn't do that anymore. If you toss something in their lap to use against a candidate they already don't like, they'll use it. Without asking questions or even thinking about what they're covering.

The media's own degeneracy makes it childishly easy for Obama or Palin to manipulate them and keep them in their place. Or for Matt Drudge to ram through TSA coverage by holding out the lure of traffic and using it as incentive to get the media to report on it. There was a time when that couldn't have happened, but that time is long gone now. And so are the institutional standards and safeguards that now exist in name only. The media will cover anything that is 'happening' in the loosest sense of the word or brings traffic to their sites. They will cover it from their own narrow ideological angle, but they will cover it.

In that environment, the difference between politics and pop culture has vanished. The View or The Daily Show or Saturday Night Live provide political coverage as much as the evening news. Warped and biased political coverage, dumbed down for an audience that can't follow anything unless there's a joke halfway through, but political coverage nonetheless. And more influential than the evening news. And the distinction between the two has vanished. Pop culture is front page headlines. Dancing with the Stars is a political event.

The common denominator is the end of standards. The only goal is access. For the media that means getting traffic and viewers by doing anything. For politicians that means reshaping media coverage by using direct access and entertainment outlets to reach the public without the political interface. And so we have both a politicized culture, in which every movie and TV show are judged on diversity and political messaging, and pop culture politics where politicians also have to be entertainers.

Politicians have realized that by lowering the barriers to political involvement they can attract people who otherwise wouldn't care. And so we have an entire class of people who are involved in politics because they think Obama's posters look cool or because they're angry that Sarah Palin's daughter almost won Dancing with the Stars. Call them the Alvin Greene vote. They don't understand a single issue, not even the dimmest populist ones, but they are emotionally involved with the image that the candidates project. They vote based on Saturday Night Live skits or what they hear on The View. Often young and dumb, for politicians they're an important target group. And they make up an increasingly large share of media consumers.

Access also means bringing them into the process, not as informed voters, but as cheerleaders who treat a politician no differently than they do the cast of the Jersey Shore. Politicians have always tried to market their 'story' and their 'journey', but here there is nothing left but the story and the journey. The personality and the attendant drama completely outweighs the politics. It's a more accessible approach, and one that completely undermines a system of representation in which voters cast ballots based on what they want done, rather than whom they want to have a beer with.

We have been on this road throughout the 20th century. Every revolution in communications also dumbed down the political process as candidates had to become performers, first on radio, then on television and finally on the internet. Long speeches gave way to buzzwords. Every statement had to be formulaic to avoid the risk of a candidate saying something off the cuff. A candidate's look was more important than what he had to say. Branding had always been part of American politics, but it had never so thoroughly and completely overwhelmed the candidate, as it has today. Style has almost completely defeated substance. And the Obama era is the best testament to that.

As the speed of communications has accelerated, its substance has diminished. The faster the message goes out, the less considered it can be. The failure of political and cultural institutions to grow with the internet, means that they have instead been overwhelmed by it. And rather than shaping it, it has shaped them. A decade from now, the process of transformation will be complete, and we will be living with a media and a political process completely transformed by the internet. That will have its good sides and its bad.

Obama and Palin were born in the early 60's and began their political careers in the 90's, during the early days of the internet. The next generation of politicians will have grown up with the internet, and they will be even more savvy about how to use it as a platform. The old media will exist online more than offline, and will mainly serve as a platform not so much for generic wire story coverage, but for personalities who will use social media to act as provocateurs, delivering controversial opinions on trending issues and thereby becoming the story. (Jeffrey Goldberg's recent call not to donate to Israeli fire relief is a classic example both of how this is done and why even formerly respected publications are now worse than useless.) Politicians will follow suit, and the lines between media and political personalities will blur. (Allan Grayson is an early example of that.)

American politics will become more Latin American in that regard. Political parties will routinely solicit celebrities not just for campaigns, but for public office. Celebrities who have worn out their careers will step into politics and then the media. And the process will also go the other way with media personalities going into politics and then becoming celebrities. This will not be an aberration, but the norm. Local campaigning will decline in favor of social media organizing. The ability to build a following online will be a prerequisite for running for political office. Anyone who fails to do this will not be considered a serious candidate. The idea of Twitter being a test for public office is not a pleasant one, but that is where we're headed unless we can reverse the outflow of content and context.

Second, the internet has eroded the firewall between the American political process and the rest of the world. The damage that Soros and Assange have been able to do to America should be a wake-up call in that regard.

Distance and custom used to be natural insulants between American politics and the rest of the world. That is no longer the case. Obama was the first candidate to aggressively market himself overseas. But the trend began with Howard Dean who as DNC head had already begun soliciting international support for a Democratic takeover. America plays a major role in the world economy, on everything from imports to exchange rates to terrorism. A lot of the world feels it should have a say in American elections, and 2008 was the first time they got a say. It will probably not be the last.

We don't know how much foreign money Obama received in 2008, but it's safe to say that this will continue to be a problem, and without rigid legal accountability, this will become a pattern in future elections. With every candidate soliciting online donations, it becomes all too easy for money to trickle in from abroad. Accountability may close that door part of the way, but not all the way, because too many 501c's also have an impact on the political process. As do many groups that are not directly involved in elections, but do play a part and can legally receive money from overseas. It will take hard work to insulate the American political process from foreign donations. And with the rise of foreign exchange trading and online gambling interests based overseas who work through American front companies, that may no longer be possible.

And foreign money is the least of the problem. With social media playing such a major role, foreign campaigners will become ubiquitous. The Obama campaign benefited from a social media network that was often very "international". In the age of the internet, it becomes all too easy to run phone banks out of Gaza, raise money in Moscow and have stories that shake up the campaign appear in The Guardian. When enough of the campaign is being outsourced, it becomes impossible to regulate or track who does or says what on the internet. And that means anti-American candidates for public office now have a base of support that they can rely on. It worked for Obama. But it won't end there.

The only thing that could avert this would be if such conduct were viewed as scandalous, but the media is unlikely to treat the outsourcing of a campaign as scandalous, unless it's done by a candidate they don't like. Which means punishing a politician for his politics, rather than his actions, another reminder of why the media cannot be trusted to vet candidates or do anything but act as cheerleaders for their man or woman.

The internet is international and it is internationalizing American elections. We are now told which candidate has international approval. We have campaign rallies overseas. We have money coming in from abroad and unofficial campaign volunteers operating abroad. And that is only the beginning.

Technology has erased distance, and that means the end of all forms of isolation, privacy and integrity. It has also erased standards and barriers. It is up to us to try and create new standards in the age of the internet. If we fail to do this, then the medium will go on dictating the messag

Muslim call to prayer

This may surprise some. In my neighborhood in New York City (not in Brooklyn) the local mosque also broadcasts their calls to prayer over a loud speaker. I can hear it, and so can many of the Christians who live around me.


I can’t really say why, but I’ve never been offended or worried. I guess it’s just always seemed to me as part of their service. I would hope that if someone who walks by my church and hears our Christian music when we have the door open wouldn’t be upset. I know it’s not exactly the same — we’re not broadcasting our music on a loud speaker — but it will do for now.

And to Meredith’s question about carols being broadcast in the neighborhood: believe it or not, a neighborhood/shopping district near me actually does this. I meant to take a video and post it earlier, and I still may, but I was absolutely floored when I heard it. And they aren’t just “holiday” carols — they are full blown “Jesus is born” carols, belted over loud speakers attached to telephone polls.

Just thought I’d share my experience in a different New York neighborhood.

This is a blog by aperson that is ever so slowly accepting Islam. The Christians in that neighborhood are not allowed to show any relious symbols of any kind accept those of Islam. This is SUBVERSION, no matter how one may spell it. http://http://www.creepingshariah.com/

A Hand Up, Not a Handout

Whose job is it to help those in need? Some say it’s the governments. That’s certainly the view of Ebenezer Scrooge. When asked to contribute to the poor, he responds: “Are there no prisons? And the Union workhouses? Are they still in operation?” Substitute “welfare checks” and “food stamps,” and you find the same attitude prevails today: Let Uncle Sam handle the problem.

But is government assistance the best way to help the poor?

Mary Kay Baker would disagree -- gently but firmly. Baker is director of the Interfaith Hospitality Network in Grand Rapids, Mich. IHN works with more than a dozen local churches to provide food, shelter and other assistance to homeless families.

Why not just leave that up to the government? “We cannot break dangerous patterns of behavior and cycles of poverty unless we get personally involved,” Baker says. “They need cheerleaders who listen to them and give them encouragement.”

That personal approach makes a huge difference to the people being helped. It ensures that they receive the dignity and respect they need to help get over the tough times they’re enduring. A government check can’t look you in the eye and offer advice about how you can turn your life around. A food stamp won’t find you a job.

Ryan Messmore, the William E. Simon Fellow in Religion and a Free Society at The Heritage Foundation, visited IHN for a first-hand look at its work. He writes: “Mary Kay Baker and her colleagues live this personal approach. They refer to the people they serve not as ‘clients’ or ‘cases’ but as ‘guests’ ... Church members volunteer to house these ‘guests’ in their church buildings, cook and eat dinner with them and play games with their children or help them with homework.”

Plenty of other churches and civil groups across the country take a similar approach. Consider the work of the First Baptist Church of Leesburg, Fla. FBC has built a ministry village on its campus to help serve the needy. Volunteers and staff step in to assist people who are down and out, from homeless men and pregnant women to abandoned children and drug addicts.

Again, why? “They love Christ, and Christ loved broken people, so they are moved by their love of Christ to serve those he served,” says Pastor Emeritus Charles Roesel.

Is it any wonder that groups such as IHN and FBC wind up serving the poor more effectively and efficiently than a waste-filled and impersonal government program? It’s not just a job to the men and women who voluntarily pitch in to help their less fortunate neighbors. They’re motivated by religious faith, or simply by basic human decency and compassion. And in so doing, they make their country a better place.

Yes, there are dedicated public servants. Many government people care deeply about their “client populations.” But by its very nature, any government program for the poor is removed from the people it serves. The people who collect the checks routinely become a name and a number, not a face and a personality. They’re a mouth and an outstretched hand, not a mind and a soul.

Take Bob, an alcoholic that FBC helped. Abandoned by his mother as a child, he later learned she adopted two girls. “Since then I never felt I was worthy of anybody’s love,” he said. He turned to substance abuse in a vain effort to fill “a huge hole in my heart.” FBC didn’t just feed him and give him a bed. They worked with him, emotionally and spiritually, to help heal this poor man.

Upon graduating from FBC’s program, Bob remarked, “Now I feel worthy of God’s love, and that makes me able to love others for the first time.”

A government program can’t do that. Only people can.

Whose job is it to help? It’s ours.

Hope And Change We Can Believe In 2010

Government Liabilities Rose $2 Trillion in 2010

      The U.S. government fell deeper into the red in fiscal 2010 with net liabilities swelling more than $2 trillion as commitments on government debt and federal benefits rose, a U.S. Treasury report showed on Tuesday.

     The Financial Report of the United States, which applies corporate-style accrual accounting methods to Washington, showed the government's liabilities exceeded assets by $13.473 trillion. That compared with an $11.456 trillion gap a year earlier.


      Unlike the normal measurement of government intake of receipts against cash outlays, accrual accounting measures costs such as interest on the debt and federal benefits payable when they are incurred, not when funds are actually disbursed.
       The report was instituted under former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, the first Treasury secretary in the George W. Bush administration, to illustrate the mounting liabilities of government entitlement programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.



      The government's net operating cost, or deficit, in the report grew to $2.080 trillion for the year ended September 30 from $1.253 trillion the prior year as spending and liabilities increased for social programs. Actual and anticipated revenues were roughly unchanged.



      The cash budget deficit narrowed in fiscal 2010 to $1.294 trillion from $1.417 trillion in 2009. But the $858 billion tax cut extension package enacted last week is expected to keep the deficit well above the $1 trillion mark for another year.


BUDGET CUT DEBATE


      The latest Treasury report should fuel debate in Congress over spending cuts next year as a new Republican majority in the House of Representatives takes office.


      The U.S. Senate on Tuesday approved a compromise bill to fund the government until March 4, 2011. After that, Republicans will have the chance to push through dramatic budget cuts.


      "Today, we must balance our efforts to accelerate economic recovery and job growth in the near term with continued efforts to address the challenges posed by the long-term deficit outlook," Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said in a letter accompanying the report. "The administration's top priority remains restoring good jobs to American workers and accelerating the pace of economic recovery."


      Among key differences between the operating deficit and the cash deficit were sharp increases in costs accrued for veterans' compensation, government and military employee benefits and anticipated losses at mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.


      The biggest increase in net liabilities in fiscal 2010 stemmed from a $1.477 trillion increase in federal debt repayment and interest obligations, largely to finance programs to stabilize the economy and pull it out of recession.


      The federal balance sheet liabilities do not include long-term projections for social programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, but these showed a positive improvement.


      The report said the present value of future net expenditures for those now eligible to participate in these programs over the next 75 years declined to $43.058 trillion from $52.145 trillion a year ago -- a change attributed to the enactment of health-care reform legislation aimed at boosting coverage and limiting long-term cost growth.


      The overall projection, including for those under 15 years of age and not yet born, is much rosier, with the 75-year projected cost falling to $30.857 trillion from last year's projection of $43.878 trillion.


      The report noted, however, that there was "uncertainty about whether the projected reductions in health care cost growth will be fully achieved."

So Long To Ya, 2010

 I will for the nest two weeks offer a look back at some of the stories I published in 2010 which so occupied your attention. What an eventful year! It’s a cliché, of course; but that makes it no less true. During 2010, the crisis of joblessness loomed ever larger; as did the fury that conservatives expressed for President Obama. Glenn Beck and the Tea Party tried to smother the memory of the iconic March on Washington, but succeeded only in underscoring the earlier event’s unmatchable power. Shirley Sherrod, a woman with deep roots in the black freedom struggle, proved that sometimes the truth can be suppressed for only a moment. The death of Percy Sutton, the legendary New York-based entrepreneur and activist, illuminated anew his extraordinary life. President Obama’s Democratic Party took a “shellacking” in the midterm elections; but, against all expectation, he has shown a renewed political vigor since to close the year on a more positive note. Through it all, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund has continued its work safeguarding the rights won and pursuing the rights still to be won to, as the poet Langston Hughes wrote, make America be America. 2011 You're up.