Ad connecting Romney to company in Medicare fraud case “mostly true”
Last week a public workers union launched a television ad that raised an old question about presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s connection to Damon Corp, a company that defrauded Medicare by the millions while under the watch of Romney’s private equity firm Bain Capital. Thursday, the Super PAC Winning Our Future, which supports Romney’s Republican rival Newt Gingrich released the trailer for a campaign video titled “Blood Money” that echoes the same criticism.
The ad created by AFSCME equates Romney with Florida Governor Rick Scott whose approval rating is one of the lowest in the country. Scott is the former CEO of the hospital chain Columbia/HCA that became embroiled in a Medicare fraud case in the late 1990s.
A narrator speaking over black and white photos of Romney says he was director of Damon Corp, which was later fined $100 million for medicare fraud. Romney’s image morphs into that of Rick Scott as the narrator asks, “Corporate greed … Medicare fraud. Sound familiar?”
PolitiFact, a fact-checking site run by the Tampa Bay Times, called the ad “Mostly True.” Although it is true Romney was head of Damon Corporation, which did defraud Medicare by the millions, Romney was never personally implicated, the site says.
See the video from AFSCME here, from PolitiFact’s site:
See the trailer for Winning Our Future’s campaign video (much more dramatic) here, from their Youtube page:
Reuters Washington Extra – Panetta’s pain
Leon Panetta, famous here in Washington for being a “budget guy”, has a budget challenge at the Pentagon that few would relish. He probably doesn’t relish it either, but it could be the crowning achievement in a remarkable career if he pulls it off.
Today he fired the opening salvo in what is expected to be a long budget fight in Congress for the American military of the future – a much leaner one at that. He’s trying to wear both hats, that of the budget guy (and historic deficit hawk) and that of a custodian of a strong military.
He will be hit with accusations of not cutting enough from a Defense Department that accounts for 20 percent of federal spending. But many on Capitol Hill are already blasting him for going too far, leading America toward irreparable decline.
Normally cool and collected, there is one type of cut that clearly makes Panetta uncomfortable – base closures – something he opened the door to doing today. As a former congressman, he knows the toll they take on a community, its jobs and its income. He called the process “a son of a bitch” in November. Today, there was no such tough language, but a clear acknowledgement that pain was on the way.
Here are our top stories from Washington…
Ron Paul is all action
Republican some-time folk hero Ron Paul has been mostly missing in action in Florida, a winner-take-all primary state that votes next Tuesday. Currently pulling down only about 10 percent support in the Sunshine State, the Texas Congressman has opted to seek out more fruitful pastures in his quest to assemble delegates for the 2012 convention. Paul’s yard sign elves remain busy, though, and Paulite insurgents have shown up at a number of other events, sometimes jostling with supporters of, for example, Rick Santorum.
But fear not, fans in Florida or elsewhere. A new, virtual version is only a few clicks away, thanks to the pro-Paul RevolutionPAC.
Two talking action figures — the “Commander in Chief” Paul and the “Super Hero” Paul — are now available at ronpaulactionfigures.com. They don’t come cheap, at $94.95 plus shipping and handling. The “Super Hero” version, in standard super-hero bodysuit ensemble with white cape (or is it really an obstetrician’s coat?), is 12 inches tall, speaks a message when a button is pushed, has moveable limbs, and comes equipped with a mini U.S. Constitution. All proceeds go to support efforts to elect Ron Paul, although the figurines are not endorsed by the candidate.
The sunshine and warm temperatures make Florida a perfect place for a late-January political campaign. Especially for reporters. But in keeping with Paul’s unorthodox style, where better to spend the next few days than…Maine?
Ron Paul will make six stops in the Pine Tree State Friday and Saturday, kicking his campaign off in Bangor, where the forecast is for freezing rain in the morning, changing to rain, with significant icing possible and a winter weather advisory in place. A world away from, say, Orlando, Florida, currently reporting in at 81 degrees and sunny. Perhaps the candidate needs to pick up some gear at the L. L. Bean flagship store…
Photo credit: Ron Paul waves at he arrives at his Iowa Caucus night rally in Ankeny, Iowa, January 3, 2012. REUTERS/Joshua
Bush recipe for wooing Hispanic voters
Republicans need to think of immigration as an economic issue — not just a border security issue, former Florida governor Jeb Bush wrote in a Washington Post opinion article on Wednesday, laying out a strategy for wooing Hispanic voters.
Bush, whose op-ed comes ahead of next Tuesday’s Florida primary, calls Hispanics “the most powerful swing voters,” predicting they’ll represent the margin of victory in the fifteen states likely to decide the 2012 presidential race.
“Although Democrats hold the edge, Republicans have an opportunity” to regain the momentum, Bush says.
“First, we need to recognize this is not a monochromatic community but rather, a deeply diverse one,” he writes. “The traditional Republican emphasis on the importance of the individual has never been more relevant.”
Moreover, Republicans should highlight the aspirations of Hispanic voters by talking up the American immigrant experience and press for real and broad education reform, Bush argues.
Finally he notes numerous polls show Hispanics agree with Republicans on the need to secure the border, urging Republicans to try a new tact on immigration.
Jeb…its a day late and dollar short. If the GOP really wanted to woo Hispanics they would have done it a long time ago. This same story was going around 2008 with the GOP and Hispanics. What happened inbetween 2008 and 2012? Hispanic bashing at every turn. Be honest the GOP is never ever going to really accept Hispanics or anyone of color for that matter.
Washington Extra – Easy money
Some great news for all you borrowers today from the Fed. Interest rates are likely to remain around zero until at least late 2014. That’s later than previously expected, and to put things in perspective, it’s nearly two years into the term of the president who will be elected in November.
What it tells us is that the economy is still very vulnerable. Ben Bernanke said as much today: “I don’t think we’re ready to declare that we’ve entered a new, stronger phase at this point.” He left the door wide open to further Fed stimulus via bond purchases.
And Bernanke was almost apologetic about what this interest rate outlook means for another large swathe of the population: the savers. Take Maggie Smith, not the actress but a 74-year-old from New Jersey who watches her interest income on savings stagnate while home and car costs go up. After more than five years of rock-bottom rates, it’s no wonder she feels like she’s “being punished” for being prudent.
Here are our top stories from Washington…
The bigger picture I have in my mind shows that a underground transit system would be far more capable of supporting the highest speeds possible and perhaps without any rails at all depending in the turbulent nature of the air space between the moving object and the wall of the tunnel, the faster it goes the more stable it becomes. At a relative speed of 100 overdrive kicks in and the turbo nature of plasma thrusters enables a unrecordable speed as this would be the Ultimate for transit systems far better than a High-Speed Rail. If the world ever decides that monitoring the ocean for debris movement is feasible then there will be a project that can launch the Ultimate from its underground tunnel into the ocean depth and become the first sub rail-less system between continents, Only a tamed undercurrent would allow this to occur without any debris collision – you can call it a ninth sense of knowing the moment that our migration travel can occur while large ships would become less depended upon and faster shipments would occur. This is a future of opportunity not choice and not simply a change because the fuel of design is Methane Pellets for the Plasma Engines, not Oil, not Natural Gas, not CNG or LPG. The molecular bond of H20 slows down a object because of the friction and collective adhesion to the object without those two factors the object is a separate body within the water. Its not a Supersonic DeLorean car since it is a train that can travel on land, in the ground tunnel or under water without a tunnel at ultrasonic speed. Hull pressure is the navigation tool to harness a vast computer field for travel between continents. Pressure produces an electrical charge, the more pressure the more the electrical charge, so its the body of the train that is superimposed with an electrical charge that causes the vibration of the water and ultimately producing a micron gap between the body and the water like a envelope while plasma engines are the only exposed portion that is providing thrust then there is no friction. Maintaining a constant hull pressure on the exterior body of the train surface is accomplished via electrical charge so the ocean current has little effect on the mobility. Scientific advancement in modes of travel, not a ‘Time Machine’, would be introduced beyond those which are governed capitalistic commercial operations such that the High-Speed Rail has become to the states that cannot afford to build it and will depend on private contractors to fund the project Obama laid out instead of the Keystone XL Pipeline. I reconcile the rejection based on my ideology that pipelines should be regulated to a depth ordinance throughout their layout and not be different in anyway or circumstance with a slight variable of one foot minimum to a maximum of two feet for depth evaluation when the pipeline is sub-surface so there is no excuse for the terrain being unlevel to have thirty foot depth at a hill and one foot depth in a valley. That is my first observation, the second observation is that terrain is being consumed so let’s suppose for a minute that we could create a train that travels without tracks where we have a pipeline buried we have less a chance to use that terrain for a train to travel, regulated throughways are yet proposed for any mode of travel much less a train and I would prefer to keep a train below surface as that eliminates so many obstacles and enhances safety. Why spend America’s money on a train that has a short distance to travel High-Speed when a different mode of travel at High-Speed is more possible? Objects that can fly are a better objective for travel that objects that have to have a rail to travel on which is subjected to the climate change for many years that require either renewal or entire replacement of sections miles long because of the warping. Massive & expensive highway construction is another reason that railway was destined to be better but the atmosphere if not kept clean because of development one day creates a toxic network that cannot maintain its bottled up nature and treks between cities and states because of a mode of travel. It creates a environmental disaster years later requiring reconstituting the entire rail system every six to ten years, when do we begin to replace the cloud or make the air quality we need on earth. Congress is off topic, shaken by to many distractions to realize what future lies ahead we must begin to consider instead of tossing money into the wind and hoping that the jobs created will make up the difference. What is suppose to be gained, a new Congress maybe then bring it on now.
Candidates run Hispanic media gauntlet in Miami
The leading GOP presidential candidates, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, walked into the lion’s den today when they agreed – after much back and forth – to participate separately in a ‘Meet the Candidates’ event co-hosted by Univision Network, the nation’s largest Spanish-language broadcast news outfit.
Univision is considered Public Enemy No. 1 by many in the GOP for its strong pro-immigrant advocacy on issues such as the DREAM Act and the deportation of undocumented immigrants.
The network is owned by a consortium led by Haim Saban, the billionaire head of New York private equity firm Saban Capital Group, who is reportedly a close friend of Bill and Hillary Clinton and a major Democratic Party donor. GOP strategists describe him as the liberal media’s answer to Wall Street Journal owner and fellow billionaire Rupert Murdoch.
The candidates had agreed to boycott the network early in the campaign after Univision News ran an embarrassing story last summer about the past misdeeds of the brother-in-law of Florida Senator Marco Rubio, a rising star in the GOP who is a Miami Cuban.
Rubio’s staff did not question the accuracy of the story, which detailed how his brother-in-law, Orlando Cicilia, was sentenced in 1989 to 25 years in prison for cocaine trafficking and released early, in 2000. The senator, who was only a teen at the time, was not implicated in the case.
But Rubio’s staff say the story was an inappropriate and irrelevant intrusion into the senator’s personal life, accusing the network of dredging it up for political purposes. The network responded that the story was legitimate given that Cicilia remains close to the Rubio family and has been invited to accompany the senator at public events.
Obama’s State of the Union in a word cloud
Obama uttered the words “tax” or “taxes” 34 times as he called for higher taxes on the rich, echoing a recent partisan theme of Democrats accusing Republicans in Congress of favoring tax breaks that favor the wealthy.
The Democratic president, who faces reelection in November, emphasized a fair tax code just a day after Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney, his potential rival, released tax returns that showed he pays a lower effective tax rate than many top wage-earners.
“We need to change our tax code so that people like me, and an awful lot of Members of Congress, pay our fair share of taxes,” Obama said.
Obama, who faces reelection amid a stubbornly high unemployment rate of 8.5 percent, also said the word “jobs” 32 times.
Why is it that it felt like Obama was the only adult in the room surrounded by obstinate children?
Americans’ expectations low ahead of Obama’s State of the Union
U.S. voters are looking to President Barack Obama to talk about jobs and the economy in his State of the Union address tonight, but doubt his ability to follow through on his proposals, two recent polls showed.
A survey done for the group Public Notice found that 62 percent of 805 likely voters said they were extremely or very interested in Obama’s speech tonight. The group describes itself as an independent non-profit focused on the economy and the role of government. Obama faces reelection in November amid a slowly improving U.S. economy.
Twenty-three percent said that jobs were the most important topic the president could talk about in his speech, while another 20 percent said the economy was the most important. Fourteen percent of respondents said government spending should be addressed, according to the poll.
A USA TODAY/Gallup Poll taken last week found a similar trend. The survey of 1,005 adults across the country showed more than half of those polled said they believed jobs and the economy were the most important topics for Obama to discuss.
The polls showed that though U.S. voters will watch the president’s speech carefully, they are skeptical of his ability to present and enact new solutions.
According to the Public Notice survey, 52 percent said Obama was likely to propose the same type of proposals as he has in the past. In the USA TODAY/Gallup poll, almost 70 percent predicted that few or none of his proposals could become law.
The survey conducted by Public Notice gave participants a list of topics from which to choose. Only 2 percent chose taxes as the most important issue, 6 percent said health care costs, and 5 percent said government reform. In the USA TODAY/Gallup poll, 4 percent of participants chose national security.
Presidential candidates take on Castro in Florida
Republican White House contenders took the race to win their party’s nomination to Florida this week, where they tried to outdo each other on topics important to Floridians–including what to do about Cuba, the small, Communist, Spanish-speaking island that has long frustrated U.S. foreign policy.
In a debate on Monday in Tampa, the candidates took turns lambasting Castro and current U.S policy toward Cuba, striving to curry favor with conservative Cuban Americans who make up the majority of Florida’s 400,000-some Hispanic Republican voters.
Florida votes next in a primary race that has already had three different winners and is home to the country’s largest Cuban-American community–many of them former refugees who escaped the communist dictatorship under Fidel Castro. A 2011 poll by the University of Florida showed that 80 percent of Cuban Americans believe a decades-long U.S. trade embargo on the country has been ineffective.
Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney said that if the Cuban dictator died he would, “Thank heavens that Fidel Castro has returned to his maker and will be sent to another land.”
He criticized Obama’s efforts to relax relations by opening up travel to the country for Cuban Americans to visit relatives. “This is the wrong time for that, with this kind of heroics going on,” he said. “We want to stand with the people of Cuba that want freedom. We want to move that effort forward not by giving in and saying we lost, but by saying we will fight for democracy.”
In his turn to answer, Gingrich made the point of one-upping Romney. “First of all…I don’t think that Fidel is going to meet his maker. I think he’s going to go to the other place.”
Gingrich said that as president he would try “aggressively to overthrow the regime,” using covert operations to bring about a “Cuban Spring” more exciting than the Arab Spring.
Bet a cask that Newt winds up being a cellie with Fidel in the afterlife, LOL! Vote pandering at it’s finest (facepalm)
To a lot of the younger generation in Miami and South Florida, they think of that as a thing of “abuelitos”. The reality is they are more interested in work than whether Mr. Castro breaths or not.
Y’all will miss the old man when he’s gone, he gave you a lot of political capital over the years.
Washington Extra – Timed release
Right before Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich tangle in tonight’s debate, we are supposed to get details of Gingrich’s work for troubled mortgage giant Freddie Mac from his former consulting firm.
The disclosure could shed light on what work Gingrich did in exchange for $ 1.6 million in consulting fees. What it for his historical acumen, as he has claimed, or his influence in Washington, as rivals for the Republican presidential nomination charge?
It could be interesting fodder for the debate if it comes out by 9 pm EST. Or it might just disappear in the heavy news flowing from the debate, which suggests the former consulting firm is doing Gingrich a favor by coming out at this strategic time.
Speaking of strategic timing, isn’t that what Romney is doing by releasing his taxes on Tuesday, the same day that President Obama delivers the State of the Union?
Here are our top stories from Washington…
Romney puts Gingrich on defensive before debate
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney sharpened his attacks on rival Newt Gingrich’s business past and character ahead of a crucial debate. Romney blasted Gingrich as an erratic politician who has switched positions “almost like a pinball machine,” in a toughening of rhetoric to try to halt his rival’s surprising momentum. After losing the South Carolina primary badly, Romney challenged Gingrich to return $1.6 million in consulting fees from Freddie Mac and detail the work he performed for the troubled mortgage giant.
