Putting the 'foxette' in charge of the Medicare hen house? (See 1 below.)---
According to Gaffney, Obama is making a huge gaff with his Middle East missteps. (See 2 below.)
---
Amity Shlaes on Gingrich. Will we keep allowing the 'agenda pundits' to determine our presidents? Baggage and all, knowledge still counts for more than something! (See 3 below.)
---
Has the bear returned? Did he ever leave? And I am not talking about the legendary Coach Bryant! (See 4 below.)
---
Dick
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1)Obama's Problematic New Nominee for Top Medicare/Medicaid Post
By M. Catharine Evans
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) chief Donald Berwick will step down on December 2, three weeks before his recess appointment expires on December 31. Fortunately, Dr. Berwick left a voluminous paper trail, leaving little doubt about his affinity for socialized medicine. His controversial views on "redistributional" healthcare and rationing prompted 42 senators to vehemently oppose his nomination last spring.
Not wishing to have another fight on his hands, President Obama has nominated Berwick's second-in-command, Marilyn Tavenner, to head the agency. Tavenner will act as CMS director until her own confirmation hearings sometime next year.
As principal deputy administrator and chief operating officer of CMS since 2010, Tavenner has stayed under the radar. Unlike Berwick, the former nurse graduated from a state school, worked her way up in the private sector, and ended up as Governor Tim Kaine (D-VA)'s secretary of Health and Human Services for the Commonwealth of Virginia from 2006-2010.
Tavenner's quiet, bipartisan rise to the top makes her a strategically smart choice, but at a time when most Americans' tolerance for self-serving politicians has reached an all-time low, the Virginia native might not fare any better than Berwick.
Last March, Tavenner told the Nashville Health Care Council that if she were nominated to lead CMS, the agency would follow the five-year plan outlined in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. "Whether I'm nominated or not, we would not have a different approach." She assured the council that in the future, "the agency's priorities would not change."
In August 2010, Tavenner toed the party line, chastising critics of ObamaCare for "stoking fears" and targeting seniors with "misinformation" regarding their Medicare benefits.
The NASCAR fan from Martinsville may appeal to Republican sensibilities, but by her own admission, there is little doubt that she will be more of the same -- red flags and all.
While she was Virginia's HHS secretary in 2009, Tavenner and the governor conspired to delete certain details from a report on two state children's hospitals which Kaine wanted to close.
Psychiatric Solutions, Inc. (PSI), a private hospital group based in Tennessee with a "well-above-average numbers of founded complaints of abuse -- in one case, roughly 20 times the average of other licensed residential facilities," was interested in purchasing the facilities. PSI was a major donor to Kaine's political action committee at the time.
E-mails obtained by the Richmond Times-Dispatch in 2010 revealed communication among the governor's office, Tavenner, and the Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services even before the panel's report was complete. One e-mail indicates that Tavenner personally escorted PSI officials on a tour of one of the state hospitals, where the latter displayed an interest in "treating the young people there." In another e-mail regarding the tour, Tavenner wrote that she was "trying not to make a big deal of it for obvious reasons."
Then-Gov. Timothy M. Kaine's office was involved in discussions that led to the suppression of findings that a state children's hospital he wanted to close provided an essential service.
The state Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services said a series of e-mails from Nov. 5 to Dec. 16, 2009, between the governor's office, then- Secretary of Health Marilyn Tavenner and the department discussed revisions to an expert panel's report on the care for children with severe mental illness.
The revision removed from the report a finding that no other hospitals in Virginia could care for the 800 children with serious mental illnesses treated every year at the state's Commonwealth Center for Children and Adolescents in Staunton and a smaller facility in Marion.
When contacted about the e-mails in March 2010, Tavenner, the newly appointed CMS deputy director told the Times-Dispatch that she no longer worked as Virginia's HHS secretary and would not comment. Kaine, who went on to become chairman of the DNC, has also refused to talk about his part in the quashed findings.
Prior to her tenure as Virginia's HHS Secretary, Ms. Tavenner worked for the Hospital Corporation of America (HCA), founded by former Senator Bill Frist's father. Her career spanned 25 years, from nurse manager to president of Outpatient Services Group.
Tavenner's private-sector experience has already proved controversial for some in the health care field. In April 2011, Suzanne Gordon, editor of the "Culture and Politics of Health Care Work" series at Cornell University Press, sized up the potential CMS director for the Boston Globe, citing her affiliation with HCA.
While Tavenner worked for HCA, the company was busily enhancing its profit margin by defrauding the Medicare, Medicaid, and TRICARE systems. In 2000, for example, HCA paid fines of $840 million for improperly billing the government and in 2003 HCA had to fork over another $631 million.
Although Tavenner may not have been personally involved in these scandals, it hardly seems wise to put her in charge of the government system her company helped defraud. The job of CMS administrator is to protect patient safety and quality, something that federal officials with close ties to the industries they are supposedly regulating and monitoring seem to have a hard time doing.
Tavenner has been called "tough," "a pragmatic moderate," a "skilled operator," and "a person who makes things work and has patients at heart."
Mira Signer, executive director of the National Alliance on Mentally Illness (NAMI) in Virginia, might disagree with that last description. She stated that her organization "was caught off guard" by Kaine's and Tavenner's attempt to shut down a state facility that would leave 800 children without adequate care in favor of a scandal-ridden PSI.
So far Tavenner has managed to avoid a serious vetting. Her down-home, non-elitist background contrasts nicely with most of Obama's nominees. With the First Lady's recent visit to the Homestead-Miami Speedway, the president may be trying to win over the "bitter Bible-clinging gun owners" with his choice of Tavenner.
Read more M. Catharine Evans at Potter Williams Report.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2)Obama Policies Endanger World, Could Propel Mideast War, Gaffney Tells Newsmax
By Amy Woods and Kathleen Walter
Three years of President Barack Obama’s policies have made the world a more perilous place, aggravating a Mideast situation that could result in an all-out war with a nuclear-armed Iran, Frank Gaffney tells Newsmax.TV.
“The world will become substantially more dangerous” if the evisceration of the U.S. military, the undermining of American allies — notably Israel — and the emboldening of its enemies continues under the Obama administration, said Gaffney, the founder and president of the Center for Security Policy.
“All of these things really are adding inexorably to the dynamic that . . . war can be taken safely with the United States standing on the sidelines rather than being the reliable ally of Israel that has helped deter such conflicts in the past,” Gaffney said in the exclusive Newsmax interview.
“There’s been a further, if you will, gathering of the storm clouds . . . that only further reinforces my concern that, probably before the next election, you may see this break out in way that results in a regional cataclysm,” Gaffney said. “The next year may prove even more problematic. Were the president to be completely unrestrained by the necessity of being re-elected, I feel that far more damage might be done in several different areas.”
Among his concerns are the establishment of Shariah in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, and Syria; the rise of Hezbollah in Lebanon; and the strengthening of Hamas in Gaza.
“Whether we’re likely to see a caliphate emerge any time soon, I don’t know,” Gaffney said. “We’re certainly seeing people who aspire to that goal, believing more and more and more that they will accomplish it.”
His primary concern remains the Iranian nuclear weapons program.
“I don’t think anything will dissuade the Iranians from fulfilling their longstanding objective of obtaining nuclear weapons,” he said. “They’ll have to be stopped.”
There is a strong likelihood that Iran will develop a nuclear weapon before the next election, he said.
“My guess is that, if it’s not matter of weeks off, it may be months at most, and the trouble is, we don’t know, and we may not know until either there’s a nuclear test or there’s a nuclear explosion,” he said.
Gaffney offered two strategies to thwart nuclear Iran:
• The United States could help the Iranian people succeed in overthrowing “a regime that they detest and that has ruinously misruled them for so long.”
• Another country could use military force to disrupt or destroy the nuclear program.
“Sanctions, I don’t think, are going to help in either of those respects,” he said. “They certainly haven’t to date.”
When asked whether Israel would be the first to strike Iran, Gaffney replied: “Whether Israel will do it remains to be seen. There’s talk, and my experience tells me that when there’s talk, that usually means there’s not going to be action. But I think there’s no doubt that the Israelis increasingly recognize that what is happening with ineffective sanctions, with an America that is not taking the lead or, worse, is actually trying to engage the mullahs of Iran is that an existential threat to the Jewish state is becoming ever more of an imminent peril.”
When asked whether the United States would support Israel if the country struck first, Gaffney answered, “Under the Obama administration, it seems exceedingly unlikely that there will be any kind of support for the Israelis should they decide, actually, to go for it with Iran. My guess is the Israelis are going to be very leery of sharing with us information about what we’re doing out of a concern that the Obama administration would, at a minimum, feel constrained to discourage them from doing so and may actually take more direct steps to prevent them from being able to execute such a strike.”
© Newsmax. All rights reserved.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3)Gingrich Bounce Shows Geek Love Can Still Blossom: Amity Shlaes
By Amity Shlaes
Whether his recent rise in the polls is lasting or not, Newt Gingrich has already shifted Campaign 2012 for the better. The feisty former speaker of the House has reminded us through his debate performances that knowledge is an important part of a president’s work.
That a president must know something seems obvious. But our nation’s opinion writers (myself included) have often ranked knowledge behind a candidate’s character, electability or even, simply, novelty. And in the past voters have often done the same.
Ronald Reagan’s victory in 1980 was all about character -- his biographer, Peggy Noonan, even titled her book “When Character Was King.” Reagan was supposed to be a good executive precisely because he didn’t waste his time on details; he sized up a situation and did what he thought was moral. In every campaign, character is a recurring theme. James Fallows of the Atlantic argued in 2004 that “presidential debates always put more importance on projecting character than on being right.”
Electability also mattered in the past, and we prized candidates with established constituencies. It was good to be (R., Ohio) but there was little value in being (R., Knowledge). The circularity of the pundits’ argument -- “you must elect Mr. X because he is electable” -- wearied everyone, but was routinely reinforced by marketing professors who taught that “perception is reality.”
Novel candidates were traditionally appealing because, being outsiders, they were likely to have more character than those corrupt insiders of Washington. Or so the received wisdom went. Hence the Sarah Palin craze in 2008, when pollsters such as Rasmussen published headlines like: “Palin Power: Fresh Face Now More Popular Than Obama, McCain.”
The Insider’s Insider
Gingrich doesn’t project electability or character in the sense we usually mean. “Character” is what you want your daughter to marry. You don’t want your daughter to marry Newt. Nor does he have the purity of inexperience -- Gingrich isn’t like Palin or Herman Cain. He’s an insider’s insider, with all the dirt and baggage that connotes.
But Gingrich does project a terrifying authority of policy knowledge. Voters have been warming to Gingrich because he’s right -- about the budget, about Social Security reform, about plenty of other substantive themes he’s elaborated on since the debates began.
Gingrich’s responses are filled with fresh ideas and concrete examples. In a recent debate in Texas, Gingrich and Cain each showed some fluency in talking about Medicare. But when Cain was asked whether he preferred a defined-benefit plan or premium supports for Medicare, he smiled and passed the ball. Gingrich clarified what a defined benefit was -- a mandate for government to pay for health care -- and then highlighted the kind of triage that happens when government gets involved in the medical system, focusing on the danger that those with aggressive prostate cancers would be fatally undertreated.
In debate after debate, Gingrich has displayed commensurate expertise. And voters value that so much that Gingrich now stands, with 22 percent support, on the top of the Gallup poll among registered Republicans, even above Mitt Romney.
What happened? Not long ago, everyone was sure that Gingrich’s geekiness and personal baggage were fatal. That was how Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, the only candidate who could compete with Gingrich on the budget details, went down. Daniels withdrew after it became clear that a) he was probably too wonkish and b) he was deemed to have “baggage” because his wife had once left him, even though she came back. (Daniels officially cited family reasons for declining to run.)
Novel candidates were traditionally appealing because, being outsiders, they were likely to have more character than those corrupt insiders of Washington. Or so the received wisdom went. Hence the Sarah Palin craze in 2008, when pollsters such as Rasmussen published headlines like: “Palin Power: Fresh Face Now More Popular Than Obama, McCain.”
The Insider’s Insider
Gingrich doesn’t project electability or character in the sense we usually mean. “Character” is what you want your daughter to marry. You don’t want your daughter to marry Newt. Nor does he have the purity of inexperience -- Gingrich isn’t like Palin or Herman Cain. He’s an insider’s insider, with all the dirt and baggage that connotes.
But Gingrich does project a terrifying authority of policy knowledge. Voters have been warming to Gingrich because he’s right -- about the budget, about Social Security reform, about plenty of other substantive themes he’s elaborated on since the debates began.
Gingrich’s responses are filled with fresh ideas and concrete examples. In a recent debate in Texas, Gingrich and Cain each showed some fluency in talking about Medicare. But when Cain was asked whether he preferred a defined-benefit plan or premium supports for Medicare, he smiled and passed the ball. Gingrich clarified what a defined benefit was -- a mandate for government to pay for health care -- and then highlighted the kind of triage that happens when government gets involved in the medical system, focusing on the danger that those with aggressive prostate cancers would be fatally undertreated.
In debate after debate, Gingrich has displayed commensurate expertise. And voters value that so much that Gingrich now stands, with 22 percent support, on the top of the Gallup poll among registered Republicans, even above Mitt Romney.
What happened? Not long ago, everyone was sure that Gingrich’s geekiness and personal baggage were fatal. That was how Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, the only candidate who could compete with Gingrich on the budget details, went down. Daniels withdrew after it became clear that a) he was probably too wonkish and b) he was deemed to have “baggage” because his wife had once left him, even though she came back. (Daniels officially cited family reasons for declining to run.)
Times Changed
What happened was that times changed -- and in ways that “the establishment,” as Gingrich calls it, reviving an old label, hasn’t yet absorbed. The policy stakes are higher now than they were in the last election. If we don’t sort through our fiscal troubles fast, the U.S. will look like Greece. If we don’t figure China out fast, it may become our next great enemy. And the paralysis in Washington is only intensifying.
Voters’ support of Gingrich is their way of talking back to the opinion-makers. They’re tired of being told by pundits what to think.
What happened was that times changed -- and in ways that “the establishment,” as Gingrich calls it, reviving an old label, hasn’t yet absorbed. The policy stakes are higher now than they were in the last election. If we don’t sort through our fiscal troubles fast, the U.S. will look like Greece. If we don’t figure China out fast, it may become our next great enemy. And the paralysis in Washington is only intensifying.
Voters’ support of Gingrich is their way of talking back to the opinion-makers. They’re tired of being told by pundits what to think.
“This time voters want someone who can work the solutions to the intractable problems,” Douglas Schoen, the author and pollster, told me. “This time they also like that someone is taking on the media, precisely because taking on the prognosticators means you can take on Washington.”
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Of course, in coming weeks, the word “electability” may still drown out Newt’s candidacy. Nonetheless, Gingrich’s prominence has changed the terms of debate. If he’s viable, why not someone like Daniels? Why not Representative Paul Ryan, the Republican from Wisconsin who has produced the most thorough reform plans in the party? Both Daniels and Ryan have said they won’t run, but one suspects that they’re hesitating because consultants told them they weren’t electable. The pollsters and opinion writers need to start reframing their questions.
If the pundits insist that geeks are unelectable, and continue to drive them from the race, voters should start asking: Who elected the pundits?
(Amity Shlaes is a Bloomberg View columnist, the director of the Four Percent Growth Project at the Bush Institute and a senior fellow in economic history at the Council on Foreign Relations. She is the author of the best-sellers "The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression" and "The Greedy Hand: Why Taxes Drive Americans Crazy." The opinions expressed are her own.)
©2011 BLOOMBERG L.P. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4)HAS THE BEAR RETURNED?
The recent market action has me wondering if the next leg down in the cyclical bear market has begun.
I always expected that we would see a very convincing rally out of the October yearly cycle low. I thought it even possible that we would test the 200 day moving average. Most bear markets do rally out of the initial leg down and test the 200 day moving average.
As a matter fact every index, except the utilities, is now trading below its declining 200 day moving average, and that includes all the major European and Asian markets.
At the moment my concern is that the market is now moving into the timing band for a major daily cycle low (due in the next 5 to 10 days). The current daily cycle is left translated (topped in less than 20 days). That is relevant because most of the time left translated cycles move below their prior cycle bottom. The last cycle low occurred in October at 1075.
Now I'm not suggesting that the stock market is going to crash below 1075 in the next 5 to 7 days. However the S&P has broken below the 1220 support zone. When support was broken in July it led to a seven-day 17% crash.
I don't know if breaking of support this time will lead to another climax selling event or not. I do know that the market is now in the timing band for some serious selling. And, this is beginning to look like a counter trend rally in a bear market that is in the process of topping. If that's true then we are in the period of time when the next leg down should begin.
Confirming this is the fact that the dollar index has rallied back above its 200 day moving average and completed an intermediate cycle bottom. The dollar index is currently on only the third week of this new intermediate cycle. Those cycles tend to run about 20 weeks, so there is potentially many more weeks of upside left before the dollar moves down into another significant correction, which presumably would drive the next bear market rally in stocks.
Of course, in coming weeks, the word “electability” may still drown out Newt’s candidacy. Nonetheless, Gingrich’s prominence has changed the terms of debate. If he’s viable, why not someone like Daniels? Why not Representative Paul Ryan, the Republican from Wisconsin who has produced the most thorough reform plans in the party? Both Daniels and Ryan have said they won’t run, but one suspects that they’re hesitating because consultants told them they weren’t electable. The pollsters and opinion writers need to start reframing their questions.
If the pundits insist that geeks are unelectable, and continue to drive them from the race, voters should start asking: Who elected the pundits?
(Amity Shlaes is a Bloomberg View columnist, the director of the Four Percent Growth Project at the Bush Institute and a senior fellow in economic history at the Council on Foreign Relations. She is the author of the best-sellers "The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression" and "The Greedy Hand: Why Taxes Drive Americans Crazy." The opinions expressed are her own.)
©2011 BLOOMBERG L.P. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4)HAS THE BEAR RETURNED?
The recent market action has me wondering if the next leg down in the cyclical bear market has begun.
I always expected that we would see a very convincing rally out of the October yearly cycle low. I thought it even possible that we would test the 200 day moving average. Most bear markets do rally out of the initial leg down and test the 200 day moving average.
As a matter fact every index, except the utilities, is now trading below its declining 200 day moving average, and that includes all the major European and Asian markets.
At the moment my concern is that the market is now moving into the timing band for a major daily cycle low (due in the next 5 to 10 days). The current daily cycle is left translated (topped in less than 20 days). That is relevant because most of the time left translated cycles move below their prior cycle bottom. The last cycle low occurred in October at 1075.
Now I'm not suggesting that the stock market is going to crash below 1075 in the next 5 to 7 days. However the S&P has broken below the 1220 support zone. When support was broken in July it led to a seven-day 17% crash.
I don't know if breaking of support this time will lead to another climax selling event or not. I do know that the market is now in the timing band for some serious selling. And, this is beginning to look like a counter trend rally in a bear market that is in the process of topping. If that's true then we are in the period of time when the next leg down should begin.
Confirming this is the fact that the dollar index has rallied back above its 200 day moving average and completed an intermediate cycle bottom. The dollar index is currently on only the third week of this new intermediate cycle. Those cycles tend to run about 20 weeks, so there is potentially many more weeks of upside left before the dollar moves down into another significant correction, which presumably would drive the next bear market rally in stocks.
No comments:
Post a Comment