This reminds me of that old joke about the guy who killed both his parents and then threw himself on the mercy of the court because he's an orphan...

Lindsay Beyerstein did some great reporting on this. Don't miss the hypocritical Republican punchline!*

One of the featured corporate sponsors of the Tea Party Express had to pay millions of dollars to settle lawsuits for its role in a bus fire that killed 23 elderly nursing home residents fleeing Hurricane Rita in 2005.

The BusBank, a Chicago-based charter company, a "Tour Partner" of the Tea Party Express, a rolling protest sponsored by the Our Country Deserves Better PAC under the supervision of former Republican state legislator Howard Kaloogian, now a PR exec for the GOP-linked firm Russo, Marsh & Rogers.

BusBank is also arranging to ferry Tea Baggers to their 9/12 march on Washington to voice their demands for unfettered capitalism. (Update: Commenter Casual Observer asks if there's a Dick Armey connection here. There is. Dick Armey's FreedomWorks Foundation is the premiere sponsor of the 9/12 march; and Kaloogian's OCDB PAC is a "Gold Co-Sponsor.")

In 2005, a bus carrying seniors fleeing Hurricane Rita burst into flame outside of Dallas, immolating 23 nursing home residents. Investigators later found that the bus was: driven by an undocumented migrant without a valid U.S. driver's license, lacking adequate fire extinguishers, and not registered to operate in Texas. When the bus had mechanical problems before the crash, the driver took it to an unqualified mechanic who failed to notice the critical fault--an unlubricated axle that eventually melted and caught fire.

BusBank (aka Global Charters) hired the subcontractor, Global Limo. BusBank boasted on its website that it had a "rigorous operator certification process" to ensure the safety of contracted bus drivers. BusBank used Global even though the subcontractor had a long record of federal and state safety violations, had entered bankruptcy, and was being sued.

BusBank's association with Global appears to have been more than a one-off, Global Limo's owner Jim Maples even listed Global Charters as his employer when he gave $5000 to the RNC in 2004.

*BusBank CEO Bill Maulsby blamed insufficient federal oversight, "We're not safety experts," he said. "We clearly need to depend on the federal government."

In November 2006, a federal court convicted Maples and sentenced him to five years' probation for failure to maintain his buses. Investigators found 168 violations in Maples' four-bus fleet.

The following month, US Fed News reported that BusBank had been awarded a Homeland Security contract worth up to $55 million.

In June, BusBank and Global Limo settled out of court for a total of $11 million, a pittance when split between the families of the 23 victims and the patients who survived the crash. BusBank's legal troubles are far from over. According to one report, more lawsuits are getting underway this month.

The firm filed for bankruptcy in Delaware in August.

by Jamie Court, President, Consumer Watchdog

During my two decades battling in California's ballot initiative process never before have large corporations been poised to gain so much so cleverly as in next Tuesday's election.

Industries have long tried to lard ballots with outright power grabs and voters have sent them packing. What Tuesday's ballot represents is new stealth strikes by corporations going at it alone for discrete rights and privileges that legislatures, courts and voters have denied them before.

These new "smart initiatives" cloak their corporate sponsors and target a single change to their business model, at the expense of the general public, so they don't risk incurring the collateral damage of hurting another special interest with the money to fight back. If the smart initiative strategy succeeds, spending tens of millions of dollars on deceptive television advertising could be enough to buy public policy in California. You can bet companies across America will be watching closely to see what happens.

Propositions 16 and 17 are the model for the smart initiatives. Pacific Gas and Electric has spent more than $40 million on Proposition 16 to create a nearly insurmountable two-thirds vote hurdle before a municipality can create a public utility to challenge the company. Listening to the advertising PG&E is buying, the average voter would think the issue is taxpayer waste, preserving local police departments and taxpayers' right to vote, not a big utility wanting to stifle competition through a political power play.

You need to have strong eyesight or powerful glasses to read about PG&E's funding in the fine print of the disclosure at the end of the television advertisement. Since there's not sufficient moneyed opposition to the proposal to run advertising against Proposition 16, PG&E is able to create its own narrative. The cutbacks in newspaper, television and radio newsrooms over the last few years have created even less chance that honest reporting can hold the sponsor of Prop 16 accountable for its true motives.

Prop 17 is an almost identical case. One insurance company, Mercury Insurance, has spent $15 million to allow it to raise or lower rates based on a factor that voters ruled illegal in 1988: whether or not you had insurance previously. Courts and regulators have told the company 'no' repeatedly, but hidden behind a paper tiger coalition of nice sound groups, which largely only exist around election time, the insurance company is going to voters under the pretense of offering "discounts" for continuous coverage. Every major editorial board in the state has weighed in against Proposition 17 under the grounds it's deceptive, hurts those who don't drive during domestic military service and will raise rates for those least able to afford it. A group of consumer advocates, including myself, have raised about $1 million for television advertising to warn the public an insurance company is behind Prop 17. All we can really say in the 15 second television ads we can afford is this: when has an insurance company spent millions of dollars on a ballot measure to save you money? Will it be enough?

Corporate corruption of the ballot initiative process is nothing new, but what is unique in this primary is companies taking the offensive and exploiting the demise of a vital free media sector to buy all the paid media they need to overcome the few opinion leaders that help the public see past their advertising. The Federal Communications Commission once had a "Fairness Doctrine," which required equal time for both sides on electoral issues, regardless of who paid for advertising, but it fell prey to legal and lobbyist attacks. Now we have conditions where a powerful corporation with a story to tell may be able buy its own laws from an unsuspecting public.

Most initiative battles come down to finger pointing. The details of ballot initiatives are usually way beyond the public's attention span, so what matters in the end is who stands on which side of an issue. Consumer groups vs. insurance companies. Cops vs. marijuana dispensaries. The governor vs. public employee unions. Voters will have a hard time knowing whose interests are being served by the key ballot measures Tuesday.

More than six out of 10 ballot initiatives fail because voters are rightly suspicious of proponents and their snake oil. Getting a "no" vote is a lot easier than winning a "yes." Until now, the real power of an influential interest group rested in its ability to frighten voters and defeat populist ballot initiatives that threatened business as usual. The pro-active smart initiatives on Tuesday's ballot will have their own policy ramifications but they are also trial balloons for a new wave of corporate comeuppance. Let's hope voters again prove that they are smarter than corporations think they are.

Conservatives are desperate. They understand that health care reform is going to pass, perhaps even this week. To that end, their corporate sponsors are ramping up the pressure and trying to whip enthusiasm to oppose it.

Tonight, Americans for Prosperity sponsored a tele-town hall meeting with concerned conservatives looking to defeat the House vote on health care reform tonight. Their special guest was Indiana Representative Mike Pence, who called on listeners to "pray for the battle", to call their Congressman and remind them that "no one wants this monstrosity to pass."

Americans for Prosperity, you might remember, is the astroturf non-profit lobbying arm of the Scaife empire and Koch Industries. Director Art Pope is a champion of oil and tobacco interests. They partner with organizations like the 912 Project to defeat anything that might resemble the will of the people. Rachel Maddow did a terrific takedown of their operation and the bankruptcy of their campaign against health care last summer.

Some highlights:

Tearful caller Pam is frustrated because her representative, Brad Ellsworth (D-Indiana), sent her a response indicating that he had decided how he would vote. Frustrated that her representative doesn't listen to her, she appeals to Rep. Pence for ideas. His response: "Write a letter to the editor."

Beverly in Nevada wanted to know "what it is this President does not understand? The American people do NOT want this health care bill." Hmm. Beverly might want to read this AP-GfK poll, where only 4% oppose any health care reform, and the largest number of respondents believe the system needs drastic changes.

The best moment might have been toward the end, when Pence rallied the troops for what he knows is a lost cause, and used this talking point:

"Once the American public becomes dependent on the federal government during that most vulnerable moment of illness of a loved one, a spouse, a parent, a child, a grandchild, those on the elite leadership of the left know...they’ll never let it [public healthcare] go."

Damn right.

As a final note, he calls for women to pray for the battle, those in the battle, wisdom for the Democrats. If the bill passes, will they see it as a sign from God?

I somehow doubt it.

An audio clip of the call's end is below. The full audio is here.

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Again and again, these issues arise that could have been solved by a straightforward push for a single-payer, government-run system. But that, of course, would have required a political system that didn't have corporate sponsors. It's painful to watch them tie themselves in knots, trying to rationalize the death-for-profit system:

Any health-care overhaul that Congress and President Obama enact is likely to have as its centerpiece a fundamental reform: Insurers would not be allowed to reject individuals or charge them higher premiums based on their medical history.

But simply banning medical discrimination would not necessarily remove it from the equation, economists and health-care analysts say.

If insurers are prohibited from openly rejecting people with preexisting conditions, they could try to cherry-pick through more subtle means. For example, offering free health club memberships tends to attract people who can use the equipment, says Paul Precht, director of policy at the Medicare Rights Center.

Being uncooperative on insurance claims can chase away the chronically ill. For people who have few medical bills, it is less of a factor, said Karen Pollitz, research professor at the Georgetown University Health Policy Institute.

And to avoid patients with costly, complicated medical conditions, health plans could include in their networks relatively few doctors who specialize in treating those conditions, said Mark V. Pauly, professor of health-care management at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School.

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