Members of the press were dismayed to find out that they were banned from Bill O’Reilly’s speech at the Values Voter Summit tonight. The Washington Independent’s Dave Weigel snapped a picture of the sign letting them know that they couldn’t get in:
Liberal blogger-activist Mike Stark was kicked out of O’Reilly’s speech. The crowd loudly booed him when he began protesting O’Reilly, and then cheered when security took him out. Watch it:
Yesterday, the Subcommittee on Domestic Policy held “the second session of a two-part hearing entitled, ‘Between You and Your Doctor: the Bureaucracy of Private Health Insurance.’” During the hearing, Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) asked executives of the nation’s largest health insurance companies if they were aware of medical bankruptcies.
“Ever hear of that,” Conyers asked, starring down at the silent executives before him. “Nobody’s heard of that, okay,” Coyers observed, somewhat incredulously after a moment of silence, before asking, “if you heard and learned about that, would that cast some concerns on the problems individuals are going through that the largest cause of individual bankruptcies in the United States are due to medical bills that people couldn’t afford, you’d be concerned?”
Four executives nodded in agreement. Watch it:
On June 16th, during a now-infamous hearing of the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, insurance executives from UnitedHealth Group, Assurant, and WellPoint specifically refused to “commit” to ending the controversial practice of rescinding coverage after an applicant files a medical claim.
At first, Watters tried to walk away from us, but we were able to chat with him as he waited for the elevator. When we said we were from ThinkProgress.org, he replied, “I don’t know that organization.” But as soon as we mentioned the ambush of Amanda, he turned to his cameraman and said, “Oh, shoot this. Shoot this. Shoot this.”
We pointed out to Watters that O’Reilly has said he always contacts people to give them a chance to respond before ambushing them. Watters attempted to stall several times before answering the question, but eventually responded:
WATTERS: We called her office.
Q: She said she got no call.
WATTERS: Yeah, no — I called her office twice.
Q: Who in the office did you call?
WATTERS: I called the main number.
Q: The main number?
WATTERS: Yeah, I called the main number and asked if Amanda Terkel was there.
Watters then began to say that he contacted Amanda Terkel “before we went after –” but stopped himself before finishing the sentence and instead said, “Yeah, before we went there.”
Watters is lying, just like he did when he claimed he contacted Hendrick Hertzberg before accosting him in New York City. No one at the Center for American Progress ever received a call from Jesse Watters or anyone else at Fox News about having Amanda appear on the show. (Of course, O’Reilly’s producers had no trouble finding CAP’s media booker a few days later when they then wanted John Podesta to appear on the show.)
Watters also tried to play off staking out Amanda’s apartment, following her on vacation, and ambushing her on the street as a friendly interview. “Amanda Terkel is a very nice person, and she sat down with me, and we did an interview. She was very gracious to take my questions and I really appreciate that. … Tell her I said hello.” He then looked into the camera and said, “Hey Amanda, how are you doing?” (As we pointed out to him, Amanda never “sat down” with Watters; she had to stop on the street while on vacation and talk to Watters because he and his cameraman had followed her for two hours.)
As Watters walked away from us into the elevator, we asked Watters why he refused to comment to the New York Times about his ambush tactics. “I didn’t refuse to comment to the New York Times,” he replied. “Don’t believe everything you read in the New York Times.” Watch it:
Update
New York Times reporter Brian Stelter, who wrote the story on Watters’ ambush tactics, responds on Twitter: “I called Mr. Watters repeatedly at his office #, and he referred my calls to Fox’s PR people. He refused to comment.”
Update
,Watters posted the interview from the Fox News point of view on the Fox Nation.
Here’s wishing a Happy New Year to all the Jews in the house. Meanwhile, I’m leaving town for about three weeks:
First I’m going to be in Germany courtesy of the Atlantik-Bruecke visiting Dresden, Frankfurt, Hamburg, and Berlin and meeting with various folks from the public and private sectors. Then I’ll be in Stockholm for some vacationing. Then I’ll be in Denmark on a trip arranged by the government for some journalists to help understand their very successful policies around efficiency and clean energy. Finally I should back in the U.S. on October 10. I’m going to keep the blog up throughout the duration of the trip and will try to stick to a (somewhat reduced) Eastern Standard Time publication schedule. But obviously with all the travel and the time difference it’s possible that things will go a bit awry here and there.
I’ve been paying a lot of attention to congressional Republicans lately, so I’m expecting to find that all three countries—but especially Sweden and Denmark, the highest-tax nations on earth—are basically impoverished hell-holes full of starving people and death panels.
This weekend, President Obama will be appearing on five Sunday morning talk shows, including CBS’s Face the Nation, NBC’s Meet the Press, CNN’s State of the Union, and ABC’s This Week. However, he is passing over Fox News Sunday in favor of Univision’s Al Punto. While other presidents have appeared on Univision, Marcy Wheeler notes that this is the first time a president will be on Al Punto:
As such, it seems to me, it ought to focus some attention on Al Punto’s role in the Sunday line-up. And, as it turns out, the White House can justify blowing off Fox for Univision not just to reach out to Latinos rather than white racists. According to Univision’s corporate communications, Al Punto (531,000) does better than FNS (417,000) in the all-important 18-49 demographic (and has done so for the last 10 months), and it often beats CBS’ Face the Nation in that demo as well.
Montana has a large Native American population, and Max Baucus seems to be looking out for them in his draft legislation. The exciting Title G, Part X of his bill offers American Indians and Alaska Natives a number of juicy benefits. For example
— “The Chairman‘s Mark would prohibit cost-sharing (including premiums, deductibles, copayments, co-insurance, etc.) for all American Indians and Alaska Natives (AI/ANs) with incomes at or below 300 percent of FPL for state exchange plans and public programs.”
— For individuals who are eligible for multiple kinds of public programs, Baucus would switch it away from Medicaid being “the payer of last resort” to a scenario in which “Indian tribes, tribal organizations, and urban Indian organizations (I/T/Us) are the payers of last resort.”
— What’s more “Indian tribes, tribal organizations, and urban Indian organizations would be added to the definition of an Express Lane Agency” for the purposes of determining CHIP and Medicaid eligibility, making it easier for Native Americans to claim benefits.
— One of the concessions Baucus got out of the Bush administration in exchange for backing the 2003 Medicare bill was that he “instituted a five-year expansion of the items and services covered under Medicare Part B when furnished in Indian hospitals and ambulatory care clinics, applying to items and services on or after January 1, 2005.” The new law would make sure that doesn’t sunset.
— Last, “The Chairman‘s Mark would subject AI/ANs to the responsibility to obtain insurance, but exempt them from the penalty for failing to do so.
Not the sort of thing likely to get much attention, but interesting nonetheless.
Today, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Federal Reserve is crafting a proposal to significantly step-up its regulation of Wall Street compensation practices. According to the Journal, the proposal would allow the Fed to “reject any compensation policies” it believes encourage bankers to take too much risk. The Fed “wouldn’t set the pay of individuals, but would review and, if necessary, amend each bank’s salary and bonus policies to make sure they don’t create harmful incentives.”
Though the Fed’s proposal is still weeks away from being finalized, it has already provoked quite the reaction from the right-wing. Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL), the ranking member on the House Financial Services Committee, was asked about the policy shift on CNBC today, and claimed that the very notion of regulating Wall Street pay means “abandoning a model that’s worked for America”:
We all know there were compensation practices that created incentives for executives to take outsized risk. Having said that, why are we abandoning a model that’s worked for America? We’ve got the largest economy in the world, it’s over three times larger than the Japanese economy and we didn’t get that by government micromanaging companies and setting compensation.
Watch it:
The notion that Wall Street’s reckless compensation structures, which incentivized short-term risk taking over long term financial viability, worked well is ridiculous. And even Bachus couldn’t really bring himself to defend Wall Street, spinning off into a defense of capitalism itself, as opposed to “so-called utopian society.” But James Hamilton at Econbrowser laid out exactly how Wall Street’s perverse pay structures cause systemic problems:
Suppose that in 2005, the individuals who were putting together securities derived from subprime and alt-A mortgage loans could have known, with perfect foresight, events that were going to unfold in 2008. Would they have still done the same things they did in 2005? My concern is that, for many individuals, the answer might be “yes”, insofar as they were richly rewarded personally in 2005 for making exactly the decisions they did. It was other parties (namely you and me) who later down the road were forced to absorb the downside of their gambles
As for this particular proposal from the Fed, I think it’s yet another instance of the Fed promising far too little, far too late, and expecting the last crisis to be water under the bridge so long as it vows to do better next time. As Yves Smith put it, “the ideas on the table suggest any moves will [be] directed at the most extreme practices, simply to curry the image that the Fed is Doing Something.” The Fed has already shown that many of its regulatory responsibilities get shunted down the list of priorities — or outright ignored — when times are good, so I’d prefer that something other than Fed promises be the basis for regulating Wall Street’s compensation.
Over at main TP the boss has an intriguing suggestion. Instead of just giving the temporary MA Senate gig to placeholder, why not give it to someone who could really be a high-impact player in the health care debate? Someone like Atul Gawande:
Dr. Gawande is a surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health and Harvard Medical School, and has written extensively on medicine for The New Yorker. An articulate and eloquent speaker on health matters, Dr. Gawande is a former Rhodes Scholar, a MacArthur Fellow, and unquestionably one of the nation’s leading health policy experts.
“I want to be a good doctor,” he says, but in the same breath adds: “But I’ve never been able to stay disengaged from the political process and policy for very long.”
Someone holding a Senate seat during a critical period but with no future political ambitions would have a pretty unique opportunity to play a kind of bold leadership role if the Senator in question were someone with the knowledge and credibility to really contribute to the debate.
Next week, the Massachusetts state senate is expected to pass legislation giving Gov. Deval Patrick the authority to appoint a temporary successor to the late Sen. Ted Kennedy. The interim appointee would serve until the Jan. 19 special election.
Clearly, whomever Gov. Patrick decides to appoint will have a significant role to play in the health care debate over the coming months. It is for that reason we at the Center for American Progress Action Fund believe that Dr. Atul Gawande would be best choice for the job.
Dr. Gawande is a surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health and Harvard Medical School, and has written extensively on medicine for The New Yorker. An articulate and eloquent speaker on health matters, Dr. Gawande is a former Rhodes Scholar, a MacArthur Fellow, and unquestionably one of the nation’s leading health policy experts.
Gov. Patrick has a unique opportunity to advance and energize the health care debate by giving the Senate a powerful voice for change who understands what’s needed to fix our broken health care system. On the day he would step foot in the Senate, Dr. Gawande would be the most knowledgeable health policy expert in the chamber, an incredible resource for his fellow Senate colleagues, and a champion for reform.
We believe that in the course of the next four months, Dr. Gawande can be an influential voice to deliver health care for all Americans. And then, he can retire honorably and go back to his day job.
Update
Matt Yglesias offers this endorsement of Gawande: “Someone holding a Senate seat during a critical period but with no future political ambitions would have a pretty unique opportunity to play a kind of bold leadership role if the Senator in question were someone with the knowledge and credibility to really contribute to the debate.”
Next week, the Massachusetts state senate is 
