Jammin' With The Banned - adampayne's Blog - Bakersfield.com

The All Powerful Decider's Big Sell

Tonight boys and girls the all powerful Decider made an appearance, and a small speech. The Decider told us those Threatened Throngs of Wall Street, and the Poor Saps from Main Street who borrowed beyond their means, have us in a pickle. That is a baseball term that means the runner, which is really the American Taxpayer, is caught in a run down between a safe base. A safe base would be financial security, job security, family security, health care security, oh well, I'm sure you get the picture. We are going to be tagged out and will never get back in the game!

Yikes!!!!

When the all powerful Decider delivers a speech we know we are in deep doo-doo. We have seen not that long ago the Decider become very stern, and warn that the Wicked Witches of Jihadism would destroy our beautiful land and everyone that believed in Jesus. You may remember we went bonkers and gave the Decider nearly all of our money, and even more powers than the mighty ones he already possessed to stop those evil Wicked Witches of Jihadism.

We asked why we sent our fine and splendid army to a place close by the Wicked Witches of Jihad ism that had not threatened us, but the Decider said this evil empire might destroy us if we didn't follow his word to the letter. We did ask why we were so broke all of the time while big palaces were being erected in the center of the Wicked Witches of Jihadism's big empire. The Decider told us this was democracy building, whatever that means. We let the Decider make our decisions.

Tonight the Decider made the decision to let us know a great panic will sweep the land if we do not save the Threatened Throng on Wall Street. The Poor Saps on Main Street do not need to be saved. The Poor Saps on Main Street have no money and no power, and therefore do not need our help. The Decider has directed us to focus our minds and energy on just saving the Threatened Throng on Wall Street.

When the Decider decides, the people of America follow. The Threatened Throng of Wall Street will be saved to build more big buildings in far away places like Dubai in the center of the Wicked Witches of Jihadism's empire to build more democracy.

Thank you, All Powerful Decider.

Do You Want This Practice to Continue?

Here is just the most recent example of how the healthcare business fails the public today. The Republican plan to create a health savings account doesn't do squat for this type of practice. And little slaps on the wrist by overmatched and underfunded government agencies has done little to stop this practice that has been reported on for years now. Democratic candidates are the only ones arguing for real healthcare reform.

This article is from an AP wire story.

"One of the state's largest health care insurers has reached a $25 million agreement with regulators, an effort to right the wrong of dropping coverage for nearly a thousand patients when they tried to make use of their policies.

Woodland Hills, Calif.-based Health Net, Inc. has agreed to offer new coverage to 926 customers who were dropped from individual or family policies in the years since 2004.

In a settlement with the California Department of Insurance, the company pledges to repay up to $14.2 million in outstanding medical expenses and waive up to $7.2 million in insurance premiums. The company will also pay a $3.6 million fine.

Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner praised the health insurance company, saying their broad changes "to underwriting and rescission practices will serve as a model and example to other health insurers."

Rescission is the industry's term for dropping patients from coverage when they try to make claims on their health insurance policies.

In lawsuit filings and previous action from regulators, Health Net, Inc. has been rebuked for allegedly awarding bonuses to analysts in charge of cancellations. Health Net contended that policies were pulled because policyholders failed to properly disclose pre-existing conditions.

Jason Kimbrough, spokesman for the state's department of insurance, said the agreement binds Health Net, Inc. to do a better job of gathering medical information before issuing policies. The insurer has also pledged to notify consumers when the information on their applications is being investigated and provide third-party review for future rescission decisions.

Consumers who suspect they may have been affected by the settlement can contact Health Net at (866)458-2130."

US Interior Department- Sex, Drugs & Rock 'n Oil

Do you want change from how our government conducts business as usual? Do you want someone who is an adversary to the oil business as it is conducted today, or do you support your tax dollars going to scam Americans out of oil royalties while allowing the energy industry to dole out drugs and kickbacks to Republican appointees in the Interior Department? Here is another story of Republican cronyism at its finest.

Gov't officials investigated for sex, gifts

By DINA CAPPIELLO – 1 hour ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — Government officials handling billions of dollars in oil royalties partied, had sex with and accepted golf and ski outings from employees of energy companies they were dealing with, federal investigators said Wednesday.

The alleged transgressions involve 13 former and current Interior Department employees in Denver and Washington. Their alleged improprieties include rigging contracts, working part-time as private oil consultants, and having sexual relationships with — and accepting golf and ski trips and dinners from — oil company employees, according to three reports released Wednesday by the Interior Department's inspector general.

The investigations reveal a "culture of substance abuse and promiscuity" by a small group of individuals "wholly lacking in acceptance of or adherence to government ethical standards," wrote Inspector General Earl E. Devaney, whose office spent more than two years and $5.3 million on the investigation.

"Sexual relationships with prohibited sources cannot, by definition, be arms-length," Devaney said.

The reports describe a fraternity house atmosphere inside the Denver Minerals Management Service office responsible for marketing oil and natural gas that energy companies barter to the government in lieu of cash royalty payments for drilling on federal lands. The government received $4.3 billion in such royalty-in-kind payments last year. The oil and gas is then resold to energy companies or put in the nation's emergency stockpile.

"During the course of our investigation, we learned that some RIK employees frequently consumed alcohol at industry functions, had used cocaine and marijuana, and had sexual relationships with oil and gas company representatives," the report said. Two government employees who had to spend the night after a daytime industry function because they were too intoxicated to drive home were commonly referred to by energy traders as the "MMS Chicks."

Between 2002 and 2006, nearly a third of the 55-person staff in the Denver office received gifts and gratuities from oil and gas companies, including Chevron Corp., Shell, Hess Corp. and Denver-based Gary-Williams Energy Corp., the investigators found. Two oil marketers received gifts and gratuities on at least 135 occasions. One admitted having a one-night-stand with a Shell employee. That same individual allegedly passed out business cards for her sex toy business at work, bragging that her income from that business exceeded her salary at the Interior Department.

Devaney said the investigations took so long because Chevron refused to cooperate. An Interior Department official said Chevron would not allow investigators to interview its employees.

Don Campbell, a Chevron spokesman, said Wednesday that the company "produced all of the documents that the government requested months ago." A Shell spokeswoman said it would be premature for the company to comment on the report until it had time to review it.

The reports also said former head of the Denver royalty-in-kind office, Gregory W. Smith, used cocaine and had sex with subordinates. The report said Smith also steered government contracts to a consulting business that paid him $30,000 for his work from April 2002 through June 2003. Smith retired from the office in May 2007.

Smith's attorney, Steve Peters, called the claims "sheer fantasy."

"Greg Smith was a loyal, dedicated employee of the federal government for more than 28 years," Peters said Wednesday. "His efforts in running the royalty-in-kind program resulted in one of the most profitable government programs in American history."

MMS Director Randall Luthi, in an interview, said the agency was taking the report "extremely seriously" and would review the allegations and weigh taking appropriate action in coming months. The inspector general is recommending that current employees implicated be fired and be barred for life from working within the royalty program.

House Natural Resources Chairman Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., said "this whole IG report reads like a script from a television miniseries and one that cannot air during family viewing time. It is no wonder that the office was doing such a lousy job of overseeing the RIK program; clearly the employees had 'other' priorities in that office."

One of the employees named in the investigation, Jimmy Mayberry, already has pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Washington to violations of conflict-of-interest laws. The Justice Department declined to prosecute Smith and former Associate Director of the Minerals Revenue Management program Lucy Querques Denett, who the report says manipulated contracts to ensure they were awarded to former Interior employees.

The findings are the latest sign of trouble at the Minerals Management Service, which already has been accused of mismanaging the collection of fees from oil companies and writing faulty contracts for drilling on government land and offshore. The charges also come as Congress and both presidential candidates are debating whether to open up more federal offshore waters to oil and natural gas drilling.

"This all shows the oil industry holds shocking sway over the administration and even key federal employees," said Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla. "This is why we must not allow Big Oil's agenda to be jammed through Congress."

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., urged Democrats to reopen a House investigation of the Minerals Management Service that was initiated in 2006 by House Republicans. "Looking into and fixing these problems would have meant highlighting the enormous revenues that domestic oil and natural gas production contributes to our treasury. This just didn't fit into their anti-drilling campaign," he said.

While most government royalties for drilling on federal lands are paid in cash, the government in recent years has been receiving a greater share of its oil and gas royalties in the actual product. More of that oil is also being sold on the open market, versus being deposited in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the nation's emergency oil stockpile. Congress earlier this year passed a law halting deposits of oil to the reserve to help alleviate high gasoline prices.

The investigation was prompted by a 2006 phone call from an employee in the Denver office who reported ethical lapses.

Associated Press writers H. Josef Hebert in Washington and Ivan Moreno in Denver contributed to this report.

Sara Palin The Wolf Bounty Hunter

In 1972 Congress passed a law, the Federal Airborne Hunting Act, that made shooting animals from the air illegal. In that same year Alaska ended its cash bounty system of killing wolves, not out of humane reasons, but because the high value for wolf pelts were encouragement enough. The federal law has a loophole. What federal law doesn't have a loophole? This loophole allows for aerial hunting of predators threatening "land, water, wildlife, livestock, domesticated animals, human life, or crops." Slate.com has an interesting story on the issue, which details Sarah Palin's introduction of legislation last year to allow for more airborne hunting of wolves in Alaska. The caribou and moose must be protected for hunters, not wolves.

I have a very hard time understanding the need to go out and kill living creatures for sport, whatever the rationalization is given for the undertaking. Man has pretty well thinned out the herds, the flocks, the gaggles, the schools of most creatures on this planet to profit a few multi-national corporations in the process. If you think wolves are the problem for caribou and moose you would be mistaken. Man is the problem for the caribou, the wolf, the moose and the squirrel.

This is barbarism by any name and reprehensible policy making that flies in the face of legislation designed to protect the slaughter and maiming of wildlife. Know who you are voting for. You call this pro-life?

Kern County Animal Control

Just another day of failing to provide any service for the community. I no longer have any sympathy left for Kern County Animal Control. When you cannot even go and make a humane drop off at the Mount Vernon facility for an injured stray dog on your own dime and time you know this county department is a joke. Do stray dogs and cats have office hours from 8Am to 5PM four days a week with a late arrival and departure time thrown in on a fifth day for fun? Do strays take Fridays and Sundays off every week?

KCAC might not be as big a joke as the Kern County Board of Supervisors, who have failed to take one recommendation and run with it to improve, if only slightly, the terrible performance the community has put up with for so long by this department. The Animal Control Commission has worked for two years with community input and involvement to suggest policy changes that might make a big difference in the way this department operated. The Board does not even listen to the Animal Control Commission, or the department head who oversees this underfunded huge target of local scorn and derision.

You have to ask yourself what it actually would take for this Board to hire enough officers and staff to comply with a modicum of humanity for the growing tide of discarded animals. Shame obviously does not work, because a lawsuit and followup inspection of the Animal Control facility by a U.C. Davis auditing group was an intense indictment of the conditions at the Mount Vernon pound. The five befuddled guys on the Board acted like this was good news and immediately dismissed any implications of continued failure by them and management in place to run the joint.

I've heard this Board already has one moniker being bandied about by dedicated followers of local politics: The Babble-on Five. All talk and absolutely no action is a fitting description of a group which calls for study after study, and then when a real vote or decision gets close postpones action to wait for yet another group of reports to delay and deny all hope of remedy.

The Babble-on Five think hiring a career county employee with 29 years in other county trenches, but no experience with animals, law enforcement or medicine and boarding qualifies as a smart hire. I think it reflects accurately how inept and out of it these five guys are. Why won't anyone from outside this county even apply for a challenging and good paying job at the government level here? Animal Control cannot even get a veterinarian to stay longer than a few days, which is about as long as it takes to figure out what a wasteland the entire organization is, and that any place even without good benefits and little security is better than working for this crew.

What a joke.

McCain and the Earmark State

John McCain has been very vocal for the past year about earmarks. The OMB defines earmarks as follows:

-At the broadest level, unrequested funding is any additional funding provided by the Congress -- in either bill or report language -- for activities/projects/programs not requested by the Administration. Earmarks are a subset of unrequested funding. The distinction between earmarks and unrequested funding is programmatic control or lack thereof of in the allocation process.-

John McCain, who just last week announced that Sarah Palin would be his running mate on the Republican ticket, has also been a vocal critic for many years of Senator Ted Stevens from Alaska, who is now under investigation for corruption. Citizens Against Government Waste, a government watchdog organization based in Washington reports that the state of Alaska receives almost $300 per person in federal government earmarks for this year, which is almost ten times what the average state receives on a per person basis for these federal bill attachments. In Sarah Palin's first year on the job as Governor of Alaska the state received nearly $800 per person in earmarks. Here is the AP story as reported by the San Francisco Chronicle .

Is there nothing that candidate John McCain will not repudiate that were convictions of Senator John McCain?

For Better Or For Worse

I'm not sure how many of the bloggers on this site actually subscribe to TBC. I've kept the subscription to help keep informed some, and fulfill old habits that die painfully slow. Today I am glad I'm still a subscriber. I got to pick up the paper and browse through the various sections until coming to that section in the paper holding the comics.

What an amazing section today, in a very quiet and shocking way all rolled into one. First was the picture of Mark Chesnutt, looking for all the world as close a copy of Bono circa 1987 that there could be. I did a double take on that photo because it is an amazing likeness.

Next I was wowed by local columnist Valerie Schultz. Her thoughtful and heartfelt column on why "We can't vote against our humanity" was an inspired piece of prose that hopefully everyone reads. Whether you agree, or not, the premise of embracing the ideals this nation truly represents, human equality and the opportunity to pursue happiness under the law, are worth our time and work to preserve and protect. No legislation should compromise those ideals.

Finally, in a breathtakingly quiet and beautifully rendered work of art, Lynn Johnston finished her epic comic strip run with words that brought tears and closed the circle on the family so many have come to cherish over two decades, For Better Or For Worse.

It might be tough getting to that comics section this coming week, but old habits are painfully hard to break.

HealthCare Woes Continue for Too Many Americans

I don't know anyone these days not worried about their health care coverage. The latest snapshot on our uninsured is out today and the numbers are revealing. America still has 15.3% of its citizens without health care. The following is an excerpt from a very recent report from the Commonwealth Fund, a private foundation that monitors the health industry,

-Analysis of the 2007 Commonwealth Fund Biennial Health Insurance Survey finds the proportion of working-age Americans who struggled to pay medical bills and accumulated medical debt climbed from 34 percent to 41 percent, or 72 million people, between 2005 and 2007. In addition, 7 million adults age 65 and older had these problems, bringing the total to 79 million adults with medical debt or bill problems. All income groups reported an increase. Families with low or moderate incomes were particularly hard hit, as were adults who had gaps in health coverage or those underinsured. Because of medical bills or accumulated medical debt, an estimated 28 million adults reported they used up all their savings, 21 million incurred large credit card debt, and another 21 million were unable to pay for basic necessities. Sixty-one percent of those with medical debt or bill problems were insured at the time care was provided.-

Another excerpt from this report:

Key findings of the survey include:

Rising Numbers of Adults Go Without Health Insurance Coverage

In 2007, more than one-quarter (28%) of U.S. adults, or an estimated 50 million people, were uninsured for some time during the past year. This is up from 24 percent of adults, or 38 million people, who were uninsured for part of 2001.
Families with incomes under $20,000 report the highest uninsured rates: half went without insurance for a time during 2007.
The coverage gap between low-income and moderate-income families is narrowing. In 2007, 41 percent of adults in families earning between $20,000 and $40,000 reported a time uninsured, up from 28 percent of those in families earning between $20,000 and $35,000 in 2001.

We had a very modest improvement in the number of uninsured from 2006 to 2007, which meant that the 1.3 million people now insured matched exactly the increased number of people receiving Medicaid. Employment based coverage declined more than half a point.

If you are interested in learning more about our current health care situation you can access the Commonwealth Fund at http://www.commonwealthfund.org/

What Does Libertarian Mean?

A philosophical term that gets used a whole bunch these days is Libertarian. It reappeared on the cultural scene following World War II, after years of neglect from the left, and was appropriated by the right to promote capitalism under the guise of personal liberty. This was in response to the gains socialists had achieved during the first half of the 20th century

What does the word Libertarian mean today? How do people define this term? Is it a political movement, and if so what does the political movement stand for? Can there be Libertarian Democrats and Libertarian Republicans? Or do Libertarians fully reject the platforms found in the two dominant political parties?

I have always been confused by the term Libertarian. I know the term was an outgrowth of the anarchist movement during the 19th century. I know it crops up in a lot of socialist and communist thinking at the beginning of the 20th century. I know Ayn Rand is usually considered the foremost Libertarian thinker of the past sixty years. I know Alan Greenspan was disciple of Ayn Rand's on unfettered and totally free market capitalism. I know Ayn Rand argued convincingly against public schools and most forms of state control and services.

What is a Libertarian today?

Concert Night -Steve Miller Band & Joe Cocker-

I have some great tix for tonight's concert. Can't say when I've been more excited to see a show. It might have been to see Paul McCartney or Bob Dylan about six years ago, or maybe the Pink Floyd tour in the late 1980s that made a memorable stop at Hughes Stadium in Sacramento. The flying pig was great theater that evening amid lasers and spacious Floyd sound textures. An Eric Clapton show many years ago was cause for excitement, but for some odd reason this Steve Miller Band and Joe Cocker concert ranks right near the top of the heap heading into it.

I've been watching a series of VH1 shows this summer. Seven Generations of Rock and a host of documentaries on bands and pop idols that range from Elton John, The Who to lost originals like Syd Barrett. What has struck me is how enduring so many of the original breakthrough artists from the 1960s have been. Bakersfield is great place to be today, and hosts two of the all time greats of popular music who burst on the scene four decades ago.

Both Steve Miller and Joe Cocker deserve a heap more praise from the critics and the general public than they have really gotten over the years. They are two truly original shapers of sound, whose distinctive styles cross all time-lines and cultural barriers enabling diverse folks to get together and have fun. Steve Miller and Joe Cocker still defy time and category, which is way cool.

Hope you have your tickets, and your ears.