U.S. Politics

[Rick Plant]

Florida Republican Sen. Rick Scott wants to gut Social Security and Medicare with his bogus 11 point tax scam. He already perpetrated the largest Medicare fraud in history. He left the company with a $5 million severance, $300 million in stock, and a $950,000/yr consulting contract for 5 years.


Gov. Rick Scott took responsibility? No, he took $300 million

Oct 02, 2018



When the federal investigation of Rick Scott’s former hospital company became public in 1997, the board of Columbia/HCA forced him out. Scott left with $300 million in stock, a $5.1 million severance and a $950,000-per-year consulting contract for five years.

What does Scott call that? Taking responsibility.

The governor’s new Senate campaign ad again seeks to rewrite the history of Columbia/HCA, which Scott founded in 1987 and led as CEO. Indeed, the ad is titled “responsibility” and compares Scott’s actions to those of “strong leaders.”

In its settlement with the government, the company admitted to 14 felonies related to fraudulent billing and practices. Most happened under Scott’s leadership.

Columbia/HCA gave kickbacks to doctors so they would refer patients. Columbia/HCA made patients look sicker than they were, so Medicare would pay more. Columbia/HCA kept two sets of books.

The settlement required Columbia/HCA to pay $1.7 billion in fines, then the largest health care fraud case in the country. Scott departed a year after Time magazine named him one of America’s 25 most influential people for “transforming how American hospitals do business” through a company that “consolidates operations and imposes cost controls.”

Apparently, however, Scott’s business model depended on cheating. Despite that record, Scott narrowly won two terms as governor. With Scott in a tight race against Bill Nelson, the issue has arisen again. The new ad tries to make the governor the responsible guy on Medicare, not Nelson.

The ad continues Scott’s effort to portray Nelson – who is 76 – as old and dotty. Nelson, the ad said, is “confused” in his criticism of Scott and Columbia/HCA.

The company, the ad says, “paid every penny.” Well, sure. The settlement required payment, which came long after Scott was gone. The ad says Scott “took responsibility” without specifying how he did so.

That’s because Scott never did. He blamed the investigation on the Clinton administration, which supposedly sought revenge after Scott opposed health care reform. He claimed that Columbia/HCA was no worse than other companies. He noted that the government didn’t charge him with a crime.

And, of course, Scott claimed not to have known anything. He was a genius who deserved his megabucks severance, but he had no idea about company operations.

During his first campaign, Scott wrote: “I learned very hard lessons from what happened and those lessons have helped me become a better businessman and leader.”

Or not.

After moving to Florida, Scott started Solantic, a chain of walk-in clinics that also faced lawsuits. Just before Scott announced for governor, Solantic settled one of those lawsuits. The confidentiality agreement kept secret a deposition by Scott that he has refused to release. In a deposition related to Columbia/HCA, Scott took so much responsibility that he invoked the Fifth Amendment 75 times.

Seeking to shift attention from Scott’s business record, the new ad accuses Nelson of cutting $716 billion from Medicare and using it for “more government spending.” The charge is as phony as the idea that Scott owned up to the fraud at his company.

The Affordable Care Act sought to cut wasteful Medicare spending. One target was Medicare Advantage plans, which got a boost in 2003 from the Republicans’ Medicare drug plan.

Ample evidence showed that Medicare Advantage plans cost more than traditional Medicare and weren’t as efficient. So the Affordable Care Act, which Nelson supported, shifted that $716 billion – now closer to $800 billion – away from private insurers.

Though the Scott ad accuses doddering ol’ Bill of being “too weak” to “stand up” for Florida’s seniors, the shift bolstered Medicare. Republicans have used similar ads in other states. Credible fact-checking services have debunked them.

His habit of ducking responsibility in business foretold how Scott would behave as governor. He is the most secretive governor in at least half a century. He keeps his schedule private as long as possible. He can do that because he owns the jet on which he travels.

Scott has had to duck the public a lot during this campaign. He blew off algae protesters in Martin County. He did the same thing in the Panhandle to Floridians angry that he had signed a bill restricting public beach access.

The governor built his political career with a fortune based on fraud. Perhaps people are starting to hold him responsible.

https://www.sun-sentinel.com/opinion/fl-op-col-rick-scott-medicare-fraud-20181002-story.html

[Rick Plant]

Biden promotes US biotech, cancer fight in new 'Moonshot'



President Joe Biden issued an executive order Monday boosting the US biotech sector as part of his Cancer Moonshot initiative, which invokes the national effort to land a man on the Moon 60 years ago.

The Democrat was in Boston for an address deliberately set to echo John F. Kennedy's famous 1962 "Moonshot speech" in which he called for landing an American on the lunar surface -- something achieved in 1969.

This time, Biden is pushing for government-backed efforts to coordinate and fund a multilayered fight against cancer, with the goal of halving cancer death rates in the next 25 years.

As he set off from Washington, Biden issued an order meant to bolster the trailblazing US biotech sector's efforts to take on growing commercial rivals in China.

The order brings federal support for "areas that will define US biotechnology leadership and our economic competitiveness in the coming decades," a senior Biden administration official told reporters.

The official said that while US biotech research leads the world, the industrial applications are increasingly in the hands of other countries.

"Unless we translate biotechnology innovation into economic and societal benefits for all Americans, other countries, including and especially China, are aggressively investing in this sector," posing a "risk," the official said.

The White House says the US biotech industry is on the cutting edge of medical advances -- recently seen in the rapid development of vaccines, tests and therapeutics to help manage the Covid-19 pandemic -- but that the potential scope goes much further.

The official speaking to reporters cited studies suggesting that "before the end of the decade, engineering biology holds the potential to be used in manufacturing industry that accounts for more than one third of global output. That's equivalent to almost $30 trillion in terms of value."

Growing areas for biotech industry include new plastics and rubbers, jet fuel, and environmentally friendly fertilizers.

Personal issue for Biden

The battle against cancer is personal for Biden: his son Beau died of brain cancer in 2015 when Biden was vice president to Barack Obama.

In his speech at the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum in Boston, Biden will lay out how his administration is seeking to slash cancer rates through a systemic revamp of government funding and support for everything from medical research to improving access to healthcare and better environmental conditions.

The linkage to the Moon program will seek to raise public awareness and support ahead of midterm congressional elections where the Democrats face the possibility of a Republican sweep in Congress, something which would severely complicate the next two years of Biden's first term.

Caroline Kennedy, the US ambassador to Australia and daughter of the assassinated JFK, told CNN she approved of the parallels drawn by Biden in the struggle to conquer the deadly disease.

"Sixty years after my father challenged Americans to land on the moon, President Biden is welcoming great challenges as new opportunities by setting us on a bold course to end cancer as we know it," she said.

Biden's focus on the cancer fight comes as NASA is once again looking to return to the Moon.

Agence France-Presse

[Rick Plant]

Fox News polling (A-rated by 538) now predicts the GOP will only gain one House seat -- meaning Democrats would retain control of the House.

[Rick Plant]

"A big win for America": Biden announces tentative deal to avert national rail strike



President Biden announced early Thursday morning that days of negotiations at the U.S. Department of Labor to avert a national rail strike, with potentially major implications for the economy, had yielded a deal.

In a statement, Mr. Biden said the "tentative agreement" between the railroads and rail workers' unions was "an important win for our economy and the American people" and "a win for tens of thousands of rail workers who worked tirelessly through the pandemic to ensure that America's families and communities got deliveries of what have kept us going during these difficult years."

Mr. Biden said U.S. rail workers would "get better pay, improved working conditions, and peace of mind around their health care costs: all hard-earned," thanks to the agreement, which he said was "also a victory for railway companies who will be able to retain and recruit more workers for an industry that will continue to be part of the backbone of the American economy for decades to come."

The president met with negotiators in the Oval Office later Thursday morning, calling the rail system "the backbone of the nation" in brief comments, before delivering formal remarks on the agreement.

"This agreement is a big win for America and for both, in my view," he said during his Rose Garden speech, adding that the tentative labor deal is "validation of what I've always believed: Union and management can work together."

"To the American people," Mr. Biden continued, "this agreement can avert the significant damage that any shutdown would have brought. Our nation's rail system is the backbone of our supply chain, everything you rely on."

The deal will now go to the unions for a vote to finalize the agreement. The presidents of the unions representing rail workers said the breakthrough provides for "the highest general wage increases over the life of the agreement in over 45 years."

Workers will get an immediate 14% raise, with a total raise of 24% over the course of the five-year deal, the unions said. They will also get annual bonuses of $5,000 and keep their health care copays and deductibles unchanged.

Significantly, all workers will get an extra paid day off and have the ability to take time off for medical reasons, one of the key demands the unions made over the course of negotiations.

"For the first time, our unions were able to obtain negotiated contract language exempting time off for certain medical events from carrier attendance policies," the union chiefs said.

A source familiar with the labor talks told CBS News that the negotiating parties had agreed to a "post-ratification cooling off period" of several weeks, to make sure that there isn't an immediate rail shutdown if a vote doesn't succeed for any reason.

Labor Secretary Marty Walsh oversaw a marathon negotiation session Wednesday at the Labor Department that led to the agreement, and CBS News learned that Mr. Biden made what one source described as a "crucial call" into the negotiations around 9 p.m. local time on Wednesday evening.

Walsh said in a tweet that "following more than 20 consecutive hours of negotiations" at the Labor Department, "the rail companies and union negotiators came to a tentative agreement that balances the needs of workers, businesses, and our nation's economy."

The announcement came hours after Amtrak said it was canceling all long-distance trips from Thursday amid the threat of a strike, which could have disrupted not only passenger and freight services, but the U.S. economy. Rail companies had warned the strike could result in lost productivity of $2 billion a day.

In light of the agreement announced on Thursday morning, Amtrak said it was "working to quickly restore" the cancelled trains "and reaching out to impacted customers to accommodate on first available departures."

The root of the problem was a labor dispute between railroad companies and their unionized workforces. If the two sides hadn't come to an agreement, the strike was set to have begun just after midnight on Friday.

A Labor Department spokesperson told CBS News on Wednesday evening that dinner was ordered and the talks in Washington among federal officials, railroad executives and railroad worker union leaders were ongoing. Mr. Biden's statement about the agreement came at about 5 a.m. on Thursday.

Without the deal, the strike would have begun Friday at the end a 30-day "cooling-off" period mandated under terms of the Railway Labor Act, which governs contract talks in the railroad and airline industries. 

It was the Association of American Railroads that had warned halting freight trains could cost the U.S. economy more than $2 billion per day. If a shutdown were to last more than a few days, the impact would likely be felt by millions of consumers, as it would disrupt shipping of virtually all retail products, coal, other fuels and manufacturing components.

Commuters would also be out of luck, as many passenger trains run on the freight tracks that would be idled in a strike, experts say.

In the past, most recently in 1986, Congress has acted to end railroad strikes. If no agreement had been reached this week, both houses could have passed a joint resolution — that the president would have had to sign — effectively forcing the rail workers to keep working under terms laid out by an emergency board established by the White House earlier this year. The U.S. Chamber of Congress had urged Congress to stand by and be ready to intervene before Thursday morning's agreement was announced.

In a statement lauding Mr. Biden and the labor secretary for their roles in the negotiations, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi confirmed that Congress had "stood ready to take action... to ensure the uninterrupted operation of essential transportation services."

"Led by the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, the House prepared and had reviewed legislation, so that we would be ready to act, pursuant to Section 10 of the Railway Labor Act," said Pelosi. "Thankfully this action may not be necessary."

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/freight-rail-strike-biden-announces-agreement-to-avert-railway-strike/

Watch:

[Rick Plant]

Nearly 700,000 new manufacturing jobs have been created in the past two years under President Biden - the strongest manufacturing job growth since the 1950s!

[Rick Plant]

Thanks to President Biden’s economic plan, 18 states have unemployment rates at or below 3%. And, nine states are at their lowest unemployment rates on record.

This is a sign of America’s very strong labor market.

[Rick Plant]

The White House @WhiteHouse

Today marks 95 days of dropping gas prices across the U.S.

Americans are getting some breathing room at the pump as we continue on the fastest decline in gas prices in over a decade.



https://twitter.com/WhiteHouse/status/1571196068343287809