Wisconsin's SeniorCare saves $65 million from negotiating drug prices. So naturally, the feds want seniors on Part D, which doesn't negotiate drug prices. They say they're concerned that the program may not be "cost-neutral."

Wisconsin State Journal:

Gov. Jim Doyle's administration is reviewing how best to maintain prescription drug services to the elderly after the federal government rejected the state's request to extend the popular SeniorCare program, the governor said Wednesday.
Regardless, Doyle said at a news conference that the decision likely kills the program, forcing the 104,000 people on SeniorCare to use the Medicare Part D drug plan.[..]

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I wonder if they're doing this to avoid the scrutiny of Henry Waxman. They do have a long track record ripping off American taxpayers at the expense of the troops.

MSNBC:

U.S. oil services firm Halliburton Co. is moving its headquarters and chief executive to Dubai in a move that immediately sparked criticism from some U.S. politicians.

Texas-based Halliburton, which was led by Vice President Dick Cheney from 1995-2000, did not specify what, if any, tax implications the move might entail. It plans to list on a stock exchange in the Middle East once it moves to Dubai — a booming commercial center in the Gulf. The company said it was making the moves to position itself better to gain contracts in the oil-rich Middle East.

“This is an insult to the U.S. soldiers and taxpayers who paid the tab for their no-bid contracts and endured their overcharges for all these years,” said judiciary committee chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat.

NY Times (reg. req'd.) The question for the Supreme Court on Wednesday was a jurisdictional one: whether taxpayers who object to the way the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives spends its money can get into federal court to make their case.

Whether the office or its programs actually run afoul of the Constitution was not before the justices.

But any notion that this jurisdictional question was the sort of arcane, technical issue that only a law professor could love was quickly dispelled by the intensity of the argument, one of the liveliest of the term.

The fast-paced hour ended with the clear impression that the Roberts court will soon put its own stamp on the law of taxpayer standing, with potentially significant implications for the relationship between government and religion.

The real question by the end of the argument was whether a majority would be content simply to scale back a Warren court precedent that allows taxpayers to challenge the use of public money for religious purposes or whether the court would disavow the precedent altogether and keep such suits out of federal court.

Sadly, I don't hold a lot of faith that the Supreme Court not making some narrow, esoteric decision that deprives citizens from challenging the White House's actions from the Office of Faith-based Initiatives.

I don't think this got nearly the notice it deserved. We're quick to condemn our elected officials for not working the way we think they should, let's give them props for doing a good thing here.

HuffPo :

We are so used to being in the opposition that our minds bend when we can support those in power. While little noticed by the blogs or the main stream media, real leadership shined through Thursday morning in Washington when Senator Byron Dorgan, Chair of the Democratic Policy Committee, backed by Senators John Kerry and Patrick Leahy, followed through on his commitment to rein in contracting fraud and abuse that has been the hallmark of the Bush/Cheney/Halliburton outsourcing of their private war in Iraq.
At Thursday's press conference, Senator Dorgan announced introduction of the Honest Leadership and Accountability in Contracting Act of 2006.
The bill follows months of hearings led by the DPC when the Republican controlled Senate patently refused even to hear that Halliburton, Blackwater, CACI, Titan and others were raping the taxpayers of this country while making an ill-planned invasion into a full-fledged disaster, assuring that the only real winners in Iraq would be those companies that had sufficiently close ties to the White House to earn them a free ride in a war that leads us daily closer to the brink.
In introducing the bill, Senators Dorgan and Kerry each referred to Brave New Films' "Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers," as one of the key elements in demonstrating the outrageous abuses that these and other firms committed in Iraq.

National Review Online: Deep thinking righties are asked to name their favorite president. The roster, with the exception of George Washington (was he a Republican?) and TR, is underwhelming...one name is conspicuously absent.

Mad Kane’s Political Madness: Everyone must read the WaPo's two-part expose of the horrific treatment of our severely wounded Iraq and Afghanistan veterans being dumped on the grounds of Walter Reed Hospital. This unbelievable ass tries to deflect the focus from the negligence of BUSHCO and the rest of the GOPranos

The Next Hurrah: If you defrauded American taxpayers through the cut-out of the Coalition Provisional Authority -- and let's face it, just about everyone did -- you're off the hook!

Whiskey Fire: The current ground rules for elite discourse make it OK to accuse someone of high treason...as long as you don't say "f*ck" and don't mention religion

The Galloping Beaver: You knew it had to happen. Why should Halliburton be the only ones making money from the War on "Terra"?  From the Shurat HaDin (Israel Law Center) comes a new form of extreme tourism.

Angry Bear: Is debate insulting to our troops?  KLo v. Condi Smackdown. The ongoing rhetoric of "treasonous terror-aiding Democrats" is part of the assault on Democracy

American Footprints: A former interrogator working with the US government in Iraq, Eric Fair, shares some of his disturbing memories of the torture still being carried out in our name.

AlterNet: American taxpayers are now spending more than a billion dollars per year to incarcerate its citizens for pot.  Nearly 800,000 people were arrested on marijuana charges in 2005.  When will the insanity stop?

Fables of the reconstruction: When you start using religious doctrine as the basis for policy arguments, then I am perfectly entitled to make fun of your religion.

American Prospect Online: Even when Congress was in Republican hands, Justice Department officials advised other government departments on how to stonewall congressional review. These efforts now appear to be ramping up.

King of Zembla: The Pentagon has been calling Harvard to complain about a new paper which, using the Pentagon's own figures, argues that the ultimate cost of war in Iraq has been underestimated by at least a third of a trillion dollars.

HOLY CRAP: DefCon has launched an action urging media to acknowledge the bold bigotry and hypocrisy of William Donohue before they let him criticize others on the same grounds...Some at the Living Word Christian Center are living too well...When left to our own ideas of limitation, all hell can break loose but our "friends" might just might pay us to leave town...James Dobson distorts more research...Pat Robertson better take another look at the Ninth Commandment...Creationists claim the existence of God hinges on their "proving" that the Grand Canyon was not the result of gradual geologic processes, but of Noah's flood...These people do not believe have a right to life or liberty unless you are one of them...Were Democrats brainwashed by a Muslim clergyman's invocation?

YahooNews :

Wisconsin's revenue agency said Friday that it sent as many as 170,000 forms to taxpayers with mailing labels mistakenly printed with their Social Security numbers.

The state Department of Revenue was scrambling to alert taxpayers to be on the lookout for the mailings.

"We want to prevent any chance identity theft might occur," department spokeswoman Meredith Helgerson said. An agency news release included an apology to taxpayers and a statement that steps were being taken "to make sure that this will never happen again."

The misprinted labels, blamed on a computer error while they were being prepared, went to taxpayers who have used the basic Form 1, a long paper form for individuals, according to the department.

As someone who has been a victim of identity theft, I don't find this kind of mistake very humorous, and I hope this doesn't result in too much damage for the taxpayers involved. I am intrigued by the framing of this as a little "computer error". I've done mailing labels. Computers generally don't make errors like this, that's an operator error. Is it that hard in this day and age to just accept responsibility for a screw up?

It would be nice if every Secretary of State could speak with such confidence on their voting system. I thought this tied in nicely with my earlier post about Dianne Feinstein.

WaPo :

This month, as controversies emerged in other parts of the country over polling place problems and malfunctioning touch-screen machines, we here in Oregon prepared to swear in a new crop of elected officials with nary a question about the legitimacy of the count or the functioning of our electoral process. We accomplished this with a turnout on Nov. 7 that was, once again, among the highest in the nation. How?

With Vote by Mail.

One episode that highlights its success occurred in Tillamook County, where 13 inches of rain on Election Day sent many citizens scrambling to the safety of shelters under a declared state of emergency. Despite the fact that many roads were impassable and parts of the county were inaccessible -- conditions that would have crippled turnout in a state that relied on conventional polling places -- 70 percent of the voters cast ballots. Only voting by mail could have led to this outcome.

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I'm sure you all feel MUCH better now that they've isolated the problem...

WaPo

The maker of Maryland's electronic voting system replaced a flawed electronic component in several thousand touch-screen voting machines in 2005, state election officials acknowledged this week.

To eliminate unpredictable "screen freezes" that have occurred since the machines were first used in Maryland in 2002, Diebold Election Systems installed new system boards in about 4,700 voting machines from four Maryland counties: Allegany, Dorchester, Montgomery and Prince George's.

The screen freezes do not cause votes to be lost, officials said, but they confuse voters and election judges who sometimes wonder whether votes cast on a frozen machine will be counted.

The acknowledgment of the repairs came in response to queries from The Washington Post and sheds further light on Maryland's troubled transition to electronic voting. Critics said it raises concerns about whether the state and company officials have kept the public adequately informed about problems with a system that cost taxpayers $106 million. Read on...

Mike's Blog Round Up

Iran Body Count: The Oxford Research Group has a comprehensive look at the Military Consequences of going to war with Iran. Attacking Iranwould be only the beginning of a long struggle and will have many unexpected and unwelcome side effects.

Super Frenchie: When was it again that the stated goal of the Bush administration’s foreign policy was the promotion of democracy in the world? And that they would stop considering dictators as friends? And why are US taxpayers still footing the bill for that finishing school for future torturers and dictators, the School of the Americas?

The Brad Blog: The approaching 2006 E-voting trainwreck continues on course

Pandagon: Father/daughter "purity balls"? Arghhh!

Democracy Now! Retired Colonel Sam Gardiner says "the issue is not whether the military option would be used, but who approved the start of operations already."

Unqualified Offerings: Civil War re-enactment?...NO, Marvel Superheros Secret War re-enactors!