Senator Ben Nelson and His Connections to the Health Care Industry | Public Campaign Action Fund

Senator Ben Nelson and His Connections to the Health Care Industry | Public Campaign Action Fund

On May 1, 2009 Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson came out against including a public health insurance plan option as part of this year’s health care reform legislation. Sen. Nelson called the inclusion of a public plan a “deal-breaker,” according to Congressional Quarterly.1
...

Before entering politics, Ben Nelson spent his career as an insurance executive, insurance company lawyer and, early in his career, Nebraska’s state insurance regulator. He was chief executive officer of an insurance company and has sided with and received political support from business groups opposed to a public health plan as part of health reform.

• “Nelson enjoyed a successful career in insurance law,” says his Senate website. “He has served as CEO of the Central National Insurance Group, as chief of staff and executive vice president of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, and as director of the Nebraska Department of Insurance.”3
  
  
• In his 2006 re-election campaign, Nelson received endorsements from the National Federation of Independent Business, the Business-Industry Political Action Committee, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. According to the Lincoln Journal Star, “NFIB jointed BIPAC (Business-Industry Political Action Committee) and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in handing the Democratic senator strong business support.”4 These lobbies are either publicly opposed to a public insurance option, or are expected to be.
  

CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS

Sen. Nelson has depended on the insurance and health care industries to pay for his campaigns for public office.5

• According to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, Sen. Nelson has raised more than $2 million from insurance and health care interests in his three campaigns for federal office.
  
  
• Sen. Nelson has received $1,195,299 from insurance interests, $399,345 from health professionals, $258,483 from the pharmaceutical industry, and $195,138 from hospital and nursing home interests.
  
  
• Of Sen. Nelson’s campaign contributions from the insurance and health care industries, 83.4% have come from out of state sources, according to our analysis of data downloaded from the Center for Responsive Politics.
• 
  

Lehman, Bear Stearns Execs Cashed In As Their Firms Failed: Study

Lehman, Bear Stearns Execs Cashed In As Their Firms Failed: Study

If you thought that the executives at Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns paid dearly in when their firms famously imploded last year, think again.

A new study by three professors at the Program for Corporate Governance at Harvard Law School reexamines the "standard narrative" of the loss of wealth suffered by top leaders at Bear and Lehman. The top five executives at Bear and Lehman were able to sell billions in stock holdings from 200-2008, the study notes, while most shareholders saw their investments in the two firms decimated.

During the same period, the study notes, "the shareholder payoffs these teams produced were indisputably poor." From the study:

Overall, we estimate that the top executive teams of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers derived cash flows of about $1.4 billion and $1 billion respectively from cash bonuses and equity sales during 2000-2008. These cash flows substantially exceeded the value of the executives' initial holdings in the beginning of the period, and the executives' net payoffs for the period were thus decidedly positive. The divergence between how the top executives and their shareholders fared implies that it is not possible to rule out, as standard narratives suggest, that the executives' pay arrangements provided them with excessive risk-taking incentives.

...

The study arrives a conclusion long-held by critics of the financial industry. In short, Wall Street pay was specifically structured to encourage short-term gains:

"...the executives were the able to obtain large amounts of bonus compensation based on high earnings in the years preceding the financial crisis, but did not have to return any of those bonuses when the earnings subsequently evaporated and turned into massive losses. Such a design of bonus compensation provides executives with incentives to seek improvements in short-term earnings figures even at the cost of maintaining an excessively high risk of large losses down the road."

Interestingly, the study suggests that Wall Street's bonus culture may not be the largest cause of the excessive risks taken by the industry. Fixing compensation isn't merely an issue of increasing stock awards and limiting bonuses; in fact, the study steers clear of suggestions that pay should be capped. Instead, the study argues that the failure of Bear and Lehman suggest that compensation clawbacks should be considered.

READ the report here: ...

BCS-Wages-of-Failure-Nov09 -

Sanford Faces 37 Charges by State Ethics Board - NYTimes.com

Sanford Faces 37 Charges by State Ethics Board - NYTimes.com

Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina will face formal ethics charges on 37 counts of using his office for personal financial gain, according to a list of allegations issued by the state ethics commission on Monday.

The charges on the list include spending state money on business-class plane tickets, instead of flying coach; using state aircraft to attend political and personal events, like the birthday party of a campaign contributor; and using his campaign fund for noncampaign expenses, like a ticket to President Obama’s inauguration.

The list provides the first details of the accusations that the ethics commission will pursue after a wide-ranging review of Mr. Sanford’s travel and financial records, citing incidents from September 2005 to April 2009. ...

Judge: Hurricane Katrina Flooding Was Caused By Army Corps Of Engineers' Negligence

Judge: Hurricane Katrina Flooding Was Caused By Army Corps Of Engineers' Negligence

NEW ORLEANS — A federal judge ruled Wednesday that the Army Corps of Engineers' failure to properly maintain a navigation channel led to massive flooding in Hurricane Katrina, a decision that could make the federal government vulnerable to billions of dollars in claims.

U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval sided with six residents and one business who argued the Army Corps' shoddy oversight of the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet led to the flooding of New Orleans' Lower 9th Ward and neighboring St. Bernard Parish. He said, however, the corps couldn't be held liable for the flooding of eastern New Orleans, where two of the plaintiffs lived.

Duval awarded the plaintiffs $720,000, but the government could eventually be forced to pay much more in damages. The ruling should give more than 100,000 other individuals, businesses and government entities a better shot at claiming billions of dollars in damages.

The ruling is also emotionally resonant for south Louisiana. Many in New Orleans have argued that Katrina, which struck the region Aug. 29, 2005, was a manmade disaster caused by the Army Corps' failure to maintain the levee system protecting the city.

"Total devastation could possibly have been avoided if something had been done," said Tanya Smith, one of the plaintiffs. "A lot of this stuff was preventable and they turned a deaf ear to it."

...
Duval referred to the corps' approach to maintaining the channel as "monumental negligence."
...

In his 156-page ruling, Duval said he was "utterly convinced" that the corps' failure to shore up the channel "doomed the channel to grow to two to three times its design width" and that "created a more forceful frontal wave attack on the levee" that protected St. Bernard and the Lower 9th Ward.

"The Corps had an opportunity to take a myriad of actions to alleviate this deterioration or rehabilitate this deterioration and failed to do so," Duval said. "Clearly the expression 'talk is cheap' applies here." ...

Gretchen Morgenson: Lobbyists Win Again In Securing Tax Break For Home Builders

Gretchen Morgenson: Lobbyists Win Again In Securing Tax Break For Home Builders

The New York Times's Gretchen Morgensonpoints out that lobbyists have won another victory that will lead to billions in taxpayer dollars being handed over to firms that helped spur the economic crisis.

The Worker, Homeownership and Business Assistance Act of 2009, which President Obama just signed into law, contains "a tax break that lets big companies offset losses incurred in 2008 and 2009 against profits booked as far back as 2004," Morgenson reports. (Read the full storyhere.)

The administration estimates that the tax breaks will be worth some $33 billion, and home builders -- who analysts say were key players in the financial crisis by building and financing too many homes -- stand to benefit enormously.

One of the more shocking elements of Morgenson's piece is just how large a rate of return these home builders got for the money they spent on lobbying for this tax break:

Securing this tax break was a top priority for home builders, lobbying records show. The Center for Responsive Politics reports that through Oct. 26 of this year, home builders paid $6 million to their lobbyists. Last year, the industry spent $8.2 million lobbying...

...Among individual companies, Lennar spent $240,000 lobbying while companies affiliated with Hovnanian Enterprises spent $222,000. Pulte Homes spent $210,000 this year.

That's some return on investment. After spending its $210,000, Pulte will receive $450 million in refunds. And Hovnanian, after spending its $222,000, will get as much as $275 million.

Even as unemployment continues to rise and the Obama administration's foreclosure plan appears to be failing, Congress and the White House are signing off on tax breaks that reward those who are partly responsible for our financial predicament.

To follow more lobbying shenanigans, check out HuffPost's LobbyBlog.

The Board Of The ‘Voice Of Business’ Is A Republican Money Machine ... [best government money can buy]

Think Progress � The Board Of The ‘Voice Of Business’ Is A Republican Money Machine

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which purports to be “the voice of business,” is run by a Republican money machine. As the nation’s largest lobbying shop, the Chamber is spending millions of dollars from its corporate members against President Obama’s progressive agenda of health care, energy, and financial reform. The Chamber claims that the “board’s membership is as diverse as the nation’s business community itself,” but this is false. A ThinkProgress analysis of federal election contribution data compiled by the LittleSis project has found that the Chamber’s 116-member board of directorshas given more than six times as much money to Republican candidates and committees ($4,741,747) as it has to Democrats ($778,282), with $1,074,697 flowing to corporate political action committees:

Source: Center for American Progress Action Fund, from Federal Election Commission data compiled by the LittleSis project of the Public Accountability Initiative.

The top beneficiary of this outpouring of conservative cash is the Republican National Committee, which has received over ten times as much money from the Chamber’s board as the Democratic National Committee — $1,257,201 versus $102,950. Contributions went 4.5 to 1 for John McCain ($373,150) versus Barack Obama ($82,150).

Source: Center for American Progress Action Fund, from Federal Election Commission data compiled by the LittleSis project of the Public Accountability Initiative.

Of the board’s 116 members, 96 have made major political contributions. Sixty-eight directly contributed to the campaigns of George W. Bush or John McCain. In contrast, only 27 gave to the campaigns of Al Gore, John Kerry, or Barack Obama. Forty-seven board members, including Chamber of Commerce president Tom Donohue, have contributed more than 90 percent to Republicans, averaging $74,634 in GOP contributions. Only seven members have contributed more than 90 percent to Democrats, averaging $3,529 to Democrats. ...

Conflicts of interest? Dr. Mehmet Oz owns 150,000 option shares in vaccine technology company

Conflicts of interest? Dr. Mehmet Oz owns 150,000 option shares in vaccine technology company

Dr. Mehmet Oz is a huge promoter of vaccines. He's been on television reinforcing fear about H1N1 swine flu and telling everyone to get vaccinated. But what he didn't tell his viewing audience is that he holds 150,000 option shares in a vaccine company that could earn him millions of dollars in profits as the stock price rises. It is in Dr. Oz's own financial interest, in other words, to hype up vaccines and get more people taking them so that his own financial investments rise in value.

Evidence describing these facts was delivered to NaturalNews by a private investigator named Joseph Culligan (http://webofdeception.com/oprah.html#oz). That evidence includes an SEC document detailing how Dr. Oz. bought options on stocks for SIGA Technologies in 2005, 2007, 2008 and 2009. SIGA Technologies (stock symbol SIGA) is a vaccine technology company with many advanced developments whose success depends on the widespread adoption of vaccines. According to SEC documents, Dr. Mehmet Oz. currently holds 150,000 option shares on SIGA Technologies, purchased for as little as $1.35 back in 2005. ...