Corporations

Reform Already Saving Lives of Many Americans

CMD Senior Fellow Wendell Potter Is the health care reform law a good deal for Americans, or is it so badly flawed that Congress should repeal it? Now that the measure is one year old -- President Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act to law on March 23, 2010 -- I humbly suggest we attempt an unbiased assessment of what the law really means to us, and where we need to go from here.

To do that in a meaningful way, we must remind ourselves why reform was necessary in the first place. I believe the heated rhetoric we've been exposed to since the reform debate began has obscured the harsh realities of a health care system that failed to meet the needs of an ever-growing number of Americans.

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Will “Bitches” and “Turds” Decide the Fate of Wisconsin?

The reign of lawlessness continues in Wisconsin.

Last week, a local court issued a stay temporarily blocking the implementation of Governor Scott Walker's radical proposal to do away with most collective bargaining rights for public workers and cripple labor's ability to collect union dues. The court put a halt to the publication of the bill (an act performed by the Secretary of State), so there could be a hearing on whether or not the Wisconsin Senate violated the state's strong open meetings law in its rush to ram the bill through.

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Corporate Interests Try to Split American Workers

Teachers are not the enemy On March 18, 2011, the Cleveland Leader reported that Charles and David Koch -- billionaire owners of Koch Industries, an energy conglomerate that also makes a list of familiar household products like Brawny paper towels, Dixie cups, Lycra and StainMaster carpet -- are funneling $5.6 million to the corporate astroturf group FreedomWorks to run a television ad campaign in Ohio that scapegoats public workers. The ad depicts public workers and their unions as enemies and blames them for budget deficits in Wisconsin and Ohio. It features a discredited and deceptive Fox News video clip of protesters taken in a different state to try and depict Ohio's public-sector union workers as being mean and aggressive.

Similarly, the Koch-funded group Americans for Prosperity has been airing ads on TV and radio in Wisconsin smearing the union workers who were rallying to protect their unions from destruction.

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Death Panels: Fact and Fiction

Insurance industry insider Wendell Potter "Death panels" are back in the news and Congress is turning its attention to them once again. The problem is, lawmakers are looking in all the wrong places.

The proposed provision would have allowed Medicare to pay doctors to counsel patients about their end-of-life medical wishes. That idea originally had bipartisan support, but when the provision was brought to Sarah Palin's attention, she accused Democrats of wanting to create "death panels" that would decide when to pull the plug on granny and grandpa. The House Energy and Commerce Committee, now headed by Republicans, sent a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius last week demanding to know how a controversial provision that was excised from last year's health reform bill wound up -- briefly -- in a government "rule" on physician reimbursement.

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Kochs Fund $5.6 Million Ad Campaign in Ohio

Submitted by Anne Landman on March 21, 2011 - 12:40pm

Billionaires Charles and David Koch of Koch Industries are funneling $5.6 million through the astroturf group FreedomWorks for an Ohio TV ad campaign starting March 18, 2011 that continues the attack on labor unions that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker started in February. FreedomWorks, a non-profit group heavily involved with organizing the Tea Party, does not disclose its corporate donors. The 30-second TV ad focuses on Ohio, but features discredited Fox News footage taken of an out-of-state protest, inserted in the ad order to depict Wisconsin union protesters as being aggressive. The ad blames unions for what it claims is a debt "crisis" in Ohio. It says, "We won in Wisconsin, but the fight must go on," and urges viewers to call a phone number to "Thank Governor Kasich for leading the fight against Union corruption in Ohio."The ad doesn't mention that a Wisconsin judge temporarily blocked implementation of Governor Walker's anti-union bill over a potential violation of open meetings laws incurred in the way the highly-contentious bill was pushed through Wisconsin's legislature.

Main Source:

The Cleveland Leader, March 18, 2011

Topics:

Wisconsin Judge Halts Union-Busting Bill

A second judge has castigated Wisconsin Republicans for excluding the public from the legislative process. Dane County Judge Maryann Sumi has issued a temporary restraining order blocking implementation of Governor Walker's union-busting bill on grounds that the conference committee's rushed passage of the bill on March 9 likely violated state Open Meeting laws.

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You Can Run But You Can't Hide: Protests Follow WI Senators to DC

Protesters flooded The Homer Building in Washington, D.C., where BGR Group, an enormous and infamously right-wing lobbyist group has its offices.

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M&I Bank in Madison Sees Throngs of Protesters Tuesday Evening

"Where did our money go? Down the Walker rat hole!"

Such was the popular chant Tuesday evening outside the downtown Madison Marshall and Ilsley Bank branch. Protesters rallied outside the small bank front on the Capitol Square.

Protesters at M&I Bank, Madison, Wisconsin M&I Bank, founded and based in Milwaukee, and its executives were top contributors to Governor Scott Walker's campaign fund in 2010. After Walker passed the controversial "budget repair" bill, eliminating collective bargaining rights for many Wisconsin public workers, M&I Bank found itself smack-dab at the top of two boycott lists.

"Who funds Walker? M&I Bank!"

The crowd of about 100 people gained steam as the protesting continued. At one point, a burly bald man with "M&I Security" emblazoned on his suit came out and told protester Miles Kristan he could not sit against the door of the bank because "it is private property."

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Reframing the Debate to Make Health Insurers Look Poor

In 2010, the U.S. Census Bureau delivered the troubling but hardly shocking news that almost 51 million Americans -- nearly one out of every six of us -- had fallen into the ranks of the uninsured.

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Companies Move to Block Fast Food Toy Bans in Arizona

Submitted by Anne Landman on March 14, 2011 - 11:14pm

McDonald's Bee Movie toys A little-known bill making its way through Arizona's legislature would make it illegal for local governments to restrict the use of toy giveaways to promote fast-food, like McDonalds' Happy Meals. Fast-food companies are behind the measure, HB 2490, which was approved in Arizona's House Commerce Committee by a vote of 6-2. Now it is headed for a full vote in the House. The Arizona Restaurant Association, which lobbies for fast food interests, is backing the bill. San Francisco recently passed a measure restricing such toy giveaways, but the law doesn't ban "Happy Meals." Rather, it prevents restaurants from using toys to attract children to meals that have particularly low nutritional value and excessive amounts of fat or sugar. Arizona recently ranked among the top "10 States with the Deadliest Eating Habits", and the state has the second-fewest grocery stores per person, which results in more people buying fast food. As a result, Arizona ranks fourth in per capita expenditures on fast food. The effort by fast-food companies to pass the measure comes on the heels of studies that show fast food chains have been significantly [p://www.prwatch.org/node/9587 increasing] their marketing targeted at children in the last few years.