THE OTHER SHOE DROPS: Updates To Previous Posts
† There’s Many A Slip ‘Twixt The Cup And Lip: Now that President Barack Hussein Obama signed the healthcare “reform” bill into law, Senate Repubs in the Senate are trying to undo a 150-page addendum to their bill added by House Dems on Sunday by introducing amendment after amendment in the hopes that one of them will survive the "vote-a-rama" to force the bill back into the House for another vote.
The amendments include prohibiting coverage of Viagra and other erectile dysfunction medications to convicted child molesters, rapists, and sex offenders; requiring that the $529 billion in projected Medicare savings be spent to shore up that program instead of being used expand coverage for the uninsured; to require President Obama, his senior staff, members of Congress and other high-ranking government officials to buy their health insurance via state-run insurance exchanges; and rescinding tax increases on people who earn less than $200,000 a year.
As of this posting, Senate Parliamentarian Alan Frumin has not proved an obstacle to Dems swatting away the amendments one by one, most notably rejecting Sen. Judd Gregg’s (R-NH) point of order contending that some provisions of the legislation adversely impact the Social Security trust fund, which violates budget reconciliation rules. On the other hand, Dems are voting down amendments that seem reasonable and desirable – which will come back to haunt them in the mid-term elections.
But Repubs have a Plan B, and have launched a "repeal and replace" campaign, reports The Washington Post:
"You're going to see this become, I think, one of the signature issues in the November 2010 election," said Sen. John Cornyn (Tex.), who is leading the drive to elect more GOP senators as chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. …
After a year in which the GOP presented seemingly every conceivable obstacle to passing a health-care bill, the pledge to "replace" the law is a new twist -- and a political assessment that voters may not be content with the status quo.
"No one that I know in the Republican conference in the Senate believes that no action is appropriate," said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). "We all think there are things that should be done."
In reality, even if they take back Congress in November, they’d have to win enough seats to override Obama’s veto of a bill to repeal his bill – which requires a two-thirds majority in each house. Not likely. But they can win enough seats to slow or deny funding to several key provisions to minimize the impact of the law on the budgets of voters and state governments.
Meanwhile, VA Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli made good on his pledge to file a suit to prevent the measure from taking effect in his state, reports The WaPo:
Thirteen other state attorneys general also sought to stop the health-care law Tuesday, jointly suing in Florida. But Cuccinelli (R) went his own way, arguing that a Virginia law enacted this month that prohibits the government from requiring people to buy health insurance creates an "immediate, actual controversy" between state and federal law that gives the state unique standing on which to sue. …
In his suit to stop the health-care law, Cuccinelli says the legislation's requirement that individuals buy health insurance exceeds the federal government's power to regulate interstate commerce under the U.S. Constitution.
Attorneys David Rivkin Jr. and Lee Casey, who have written numerous op-eds about the unconstitutionality of the Dems’ healthcare legislation, have offered their services at a "substantially reduced" rate to other state Attorneys General who plan court challenges of specific provisions of the legislation, reports The National Law Journal:
"We're talking about constitutional dialogue at the highest level," Rivkin said. …
Rivkin said Florida will be the lead plaintiff, with Baker Hostetler serving as outside counsel to the state's attorney general, Bill McCollum, and to any other state attorneys general that sign on to the lawsuit. About 12, including those from South Carolina and Utah, are expected to do so.
And the conservative public interest law firm Thomas More Law Center has filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of four MI residents who do not have private health care insurance and object to being forced to purchase it. The lawsuit states, "There is no enumerated power in the Constitution that permits the federal government to mandate that every American citizen purchase or obtain health care coverage or face a penalty."
Update: Dems defeated 29 Repub amendments between 5:30 p.m. Wednesday and 2:30 a.m. today. But while they couldn’t kill or even alter the bill, Repubs did succeed in forcing it back to the House for another vote after the Parliamentarian allowed two provisions that violate Congress' budget rules to be killed.
Editorial Note: For a tutorial on what the Senate Parliamentarian does, watch this video package from Newsy:
† For The Good Of The Children?: Secretary of Education Arne Duncan maintained a list of dozens of Chicago’s elites wanting his help to get their kids into the city’s most selective public schools during his tenure running the school system there, reports The New York Times:
[T]hose who sought such help included 25 aldermen, Mayor Richard M. Daley’s office, the State House speaker, the state attorney general, the former White House social secretary and a former United States senator.
Admission to top Chicago schools has long been a competitive and murky process, with longstanding rumors of abuse. Mr. Duncan created a formal appeals process in 2008, and when he left to join the Obama administration, his successor, Ron Huberman, created a system to stop the gaming of the system. …
In July, Mr. Huberman announced an internal investigation of the city’s 52 application-based elementary and high schools. The president of the Chicago school board, Michael Scott, who had been subpoenaed in the federal investigation, committed suicide in November.
A Duncan spokesman insisted that his boss never twisted a principal’s arm to get a privileged child into a specific school.
† Your Bonus: $0. Continued Employment: Priceless.: Trimming the pay and bonuses of investment banking and auto execs did not create a flood of ex-execs who left for the greener pastures of competing firms, reports The New York Times:
Of the 104 senior executives whose pay was set by the federal pay regulator in the last two years, 88 executives, or nearly 85 percent, are still with the companies even though their pay was drastically cut back, according to people briefed on the government data.
The relative stability, at least within the executive suite, suggests that a soft job market, corporate loyalty and personal pride helped deter the feared management exodus at the companies hardest hit by the pay rules.
Kenneth R. Feinberg, the special master for executive compensation, is expected to release those findings on Tuesday when he formally approves the 2010 pay packages for last year’s 25 highest earners at five companies that received multiple bailouts. By the end of next month, he is expected to complete the formula that those companies will use to set the pay of the next 75 highest paid employees.
Pay for top earners at those companies, on average, is expected to fall by 11 percent from 2009, to $1.62 million, according to people briefed on the situation. Compensation is down nearly 77 percent from 2008. And this year, more than 70 percent of all approved compensation is expected to be given in the form of stock instead of cash. …
Citigroup and Bank of America, whose pay packages needed Mr. Feinberg’s approval last year, are no longer subject to the scrutiny because they repaid their bailout money in December.
† Living In These Mad, Mad, Madoff Times: Housing developments that cater to the 55-plus crowd (AKA “active adult”) are now welcoming younger homebuyers, “the latest consequence of the recession and housing collapse,” reports USA Today:
New Jersey, with a 16-year supply of age-restricted housing, is at the forefront of this movement. The state's towns and counties welcomed no-kids housing with gusto because the developments created revenues without putting a strain on local school budgets. …
Last year, New Jersey passed a law that allows developers to ask municipalities to do away with age limits on projects that have already been approved. More affordable housing would be built in return.
Struggling developers see non-restricted building as a way to tap in to a larger market, including first-time homebuyers. Residents accept it because they would rather live in a built community than be surrounded by dirt lots. …
Large retirement communities are still thriving, says Dan Owens of the National Active Retirement Association, a trade group involved in marketing and building for people older than 50. He predicts that when the economy improves, the market will get a big boost because of pent-up demand.
"Even though some communities are drifting away from age restrictions, you can't ignore the demographics," he says.
† Updates To Previous Posts (Life Imitates “A Law Abiding Citizen”): “Fiscal reality, coupled with a court-ordered reduction in the prison population” is forcing CA to release some prisoners early and without supervision from parole officers, reports The New York Times:
The state has begun in recent weeks the most significant changes since the 1970s to reduce overcrowding - and chip away at an astonishing 70 percent recidivism rate, the highest in the country - as the prison population becomes a major drag on the state’s crippled finances. …
About 11 percent of the state budget, or roughly $8 billion, goes to the penal system, putting it ahead of expenditures like higher education. …
The new effort this year is intended to remove from prisons criminals who are considered less threatening and divide them into two categories: those who pose little or no risk outside the prison walls, and those who need regular supervision. …
To slow the return of former inmates to prison for technical violations of their parole, hundreds of low-level offenders will be released without close supervision from parole officers. Those officers will focus instead on tracking serious, violent offenders. …
Public safety concerns have other states rethinking their decisions to save prisons costs by releasing inmates early and expanding parole.
The same red flags are being raised here, but the overcrowding problem dwarfs that of any other state and the budget deficit - $20 billion and climbing - has left lawmakers with virtually no choice but to move ahead.
† Updates To Previous Posts (BAM To DOJ: KSM In NYC Is DOA): Gus P. Coldebella, acting general counsel of the Department of Homeland Security from February 2007 to January 2009, challenges the Obama administration’s assertion that it can control or neutralize all the risks of prosecuting Khalid Sheik Mohammed and other terrorists in U.S. civilian courts in a National Law Journal op-ed:
The administration still hasn't acknowledged - let alone provided a plan to deal with - one of the greatest hazards: that terrorists found not guilty or sentenced to a term less than life imprisonment will be released, not to Saudi Arabia or Yemen, but onto the streets of the United States. Because of immigration law and international obligations, hardened jihadists currently at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, shipped to the United States for trial might be here to stay.
Suppose a judge imposes a sentence of five years, or 10. When the doors of the "supermax" swing open, the former Guantánamo detainee will be in the United States: an alien without a visa or other authorization to be here, but in the United States nonetheless. And existing law could stymie the ability of the president - whoever he or she may then be - to deport or continue detaining the terrorist, forcing the government to free him. …
Release is more likely if the government loses the criminal case. Imagine the uproar from Obama's political base if his administration were to say - after a judge dismisses a terrorism prosecution or a jury finds the defendant not guilty of terrorism - "we're going to hold him as a terrorist anyway." (Not to mention the legerdemain required to jail someone under a statute designed to detain terrorists, after a court has ruled he's not one.)
† Updates To Previous Posts (last item, “Stop Us Before We Steal Again!”): Matthew and Nora Eaton, who famously bragged to Dr. Phil about their money-making scheme selling shoplifted toys on the Internet, pleaded guilty on a charge of conspiracy to transport stolen property and have been
sentenced to prison, reports The San Diego Union-Tribune:
District Judge Irma Gonzalez sentenced Matthew Eaton, 34, to 27 months in prison - one year more than prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney’s Office thought was sufficient punishment.
Nora Eaton, 27, was sentenced to one year and one day in custody.
Dr. Phil McGraw also got the sharp end of the judge’s tongue. She called him “a charlatan,” a “terrible, terrible man” and, noting that the couple had originally appeared on his show because they wanted him to help them stop shoplifting, she pointedly told Matthew Eaton that “he obviously didn’t help you.”
† Updates To Previous Posts (second item, There Are No Good Guys In This Story): Texas' Fourth Court of Appeals has upheld the conviction of San Antonio attorney Mary Roberts, who slept with four men whom her then-husband Ted Roberts, also an attorney, threatened with litigation unless they compensated him for his emotional distress, reports Texas Lawyer:
In December 2007, a Bexar County jury convicted Mary Roberts of five counts of theft by deception or coercion for her role in extracting $115,000 from the four men with whom she had affairs. Judge Sid Harle of San Antonio's 226th District Court assessed her punishment at 10 years of probation.
In affirming the conviction, San Antonio's 4th Court found no merit in Mary Roberts' arguments that the evidence is legally and factually insufficient to support the verdict against her. The 4th Court also disagreed with her argument that her conviction should be reversed because the evidence proved she did not believe her conduct was illegal. …
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals refused Ted Roberts' petition for review in October 2009. …
Mary Roberts faces disbarment once her conviction becomes final. … Ted Roberts also is on suspension and faces disbarment.
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