ED SCHULTZ INSISTS OBAMA PLAY CHICAGO POLITICS ON PUBLIC OPTION

"I don't know if I can support Obama in the next election if he caves in on public option."

"I cannot support President Obama if he does not play Chicago politics."
{{{Call the White House, say no to White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel's trigger option. No to giving the health insurance industry seven to ten years to clean up their act. Go back to President Barack Obama's original public option idea. 202-456-1111 --as Jack and Jill politics says and Daily Kos says}}}

WE GOT ED!

Ed Schultz, the Rush Limbaugh-sound-alike on Air America Radio drew the line in the sand on public option, Friday, July 10, 2009. (Also on MSNBC .)

A snippet from a recent Huffington Post piece on Big Ed last month (June 24, 2009), Bill Mann, " 'Big Ed' Schultz Is Keeping Dem Senators' Feet to The Fire":

Big Ed's moved from being a publicity-hungry blowhard (remember "John McCain is a warmonger" last fall?) to expressing daily the kind of much-needed real passion for this critical legislation far too many Democrats (and, some might argue, the President) are lacking. Ed's gone on the attack. Someone has to do it.

The one-time pro football player is running interference for the Democrats who are actually doing something to move the ball toward the goal of meaningful national health care by calling out those playing footsie with HMO's and big pharma.

GET INVOLVED: MOVEON.ORG IS ORGANIZING ON THE YES ON PUBLIC OPTION ISSUE, AGAINST EMANUEL'S CAVING IN.

TALKING POINTS ON PUBLIC OPTION
Last December from Paul Waldman of Media Matters, writing in American Prospect:
The basics:

Although the public option wasn't the topic of a great deal of discussion during the campaign, for many progressives it amounts to a beautiful jewel hidden amidst a pile of compromise and disappointment. Ask average progressives what they think ought to be done about health care, and many will reply, "Well, a single-payer system would obviously be the best thing. But since that's politically impossible…" At the end of 2008, some things seem a little more possible than they used to.

That isn't to say a public option is just a modified single-payer system. It would be one option among many for individuals and businesses, and would leave the private insurance system in place (you can read more on the benefits of the public option here). But it does crack the door open for expanding the number of Americans who get their health insurance through the government. And this is what terrifies the insurance companies and conservatives. Their fear is that it will actually work. If the program operates well, more and more people will make the rational decision to choose it over private insurance (what we're supposed to do in a market, after all) and the insurance companies will lose customers.

For all their paeans to the power of private enterprise, we know that private insurers simply can't compete with the government, because they offer an inferior service at higher prices. We know this because of the example of Medicare, which operates more efficiently than private insurance (Medicare spends only around 2 percent of its costs on overhead, a fraction of what private plans do) and gets higher satisfaction ratings. We also know this because the government set up a program to allow private companies to compete directly with Medicare.

It's called Medicare Advantage, and the "advantage" was supposed to be that by allowing private companies to handle insurance for Medicare enrollees, costs could be reduced. Using their free-market mojo, the private firms would naturally bring in the coverage at a lower cost than having the big, bureaucratic government do it.

EXISTING SITUATION ESSENTIALLY MONOPOLY CONDITIONS IN CERTAIN GEOGRAPHIC MARKETS
From: "Health-Care Market Characterized By Consolidation, Not Competition"
By Zachary Roth - June 29, 2009:
Key excerpt:

But the notion that most American consumers enjoy anything like a competitive marketplace for health care is flatly false. And a study issued last month by a pro-reform group makes that strikingly clear.

The report, released by Health Care for America Now (HCAN), uses data compiled by the American Medical Association to show that 94 percent of the country's insurance markets are defined as "highly concentrated," according to Justice Department guidelines. Predictably, that's led to skyrocketing costs for patients, and monster profits for the big health insurers. Premiums have gone up over the past six years by more than 87 percent, on average, while profits at ten of the largest publicly traded health insurance companies rose 428 percent from 2000 to 2007.

Far from healthy market competition, HCAN describes the situation as "a market failure where a small number of large companies use their concentrated power to control premium levels, benefit packages, and provider payments in the markets they dominate."

So extreme is the level of consolidation, in fact, that one former top Federal Trade Commission official working with HCAN has sent a letter to the Justice Department's Antitrust Division, asking for an investigation into the health insurance marketplace.

The problem is most acute in small rural states, according to the report. In Shelby's own state of Alabama, the biggest insurer, Blue Cross Blue Shield, controls 83 percent of the statewide market. There, and in nine other states -- Hawaii, Rhode Island, Alaska, Vermont, Maine, Montana, Wyoming, Arkansas and Iowa -- the two largest health insurers control at least 80 percent of the market. So much for Shelby's "marketplace for health care."

The report doesn't consider how this reality stands to affect the forthcoming congressional battle for reform. But extreme consolidation may actually be making it harder, not easier, to win support from lawmakers for a public option.

That's because insurers who control large swathes of a given market stand to see their bottom lines particularly threatened by the introduction of a lower-cost public option. So, in turn, they'll be particularly aggressive in pulling out all the stops to pressure lawmakers to oppose the plan. Given the healthy amount of campaign dollars that some wavering members take in from the major insurers, that's hardly encouraging.

OPPOSITION TO PUBLIC OPTION COMING FROM PROPAGANDA POINTS FROM INSURANCE COMPANIES
Note that the right wing buzz via Hannity, O'Reilly, Limbaugh feeds into voters/listeners; and that IT COMES FROM THE INSURANCE COMPANIES that fear loss of profits.
Josh Marshall, "Bottom Line on Public Option" in TalkingPoints Memo noted this, June 29, 2009:

This won't come as the slightest surprise to those versed in health care policy issues. But I fear it's only barely permeated the health care reform debate in the country, certainly in Washington. And that's this: the opposition to a so-called 'public option' comes almost entirely from insurance companies who have developed monopolies or near monopolies in particular geographic areas. And they don't want competition.

Jackson's 2002 will cuts out Joe Jackson & Deborah Rowe; dermatologist the donor for Jackson's children?

The Michael Jackson controversies just keep on going.

First, his parents are hard-set that he died intestate.

But, then, a lawyer associate appeared, and said that the actual will is in the safe of attorney John Branca. The buzz is from today's "Daily Mail" (London), that the will cut out Joe Jackson, because the father beat and otherwise abused Michael Jackson during Michael's childhood years. ("Entertainment Weekly" reports that John Branca and John McClain --no, not Janet Jackson-- will be the estate's executors.)

Remember, as the Chicago Tribune reminded us, June 28, 2009, Michael publicly said that he'd have to vomit when he saw his father.
And Deborah Jeanne Rowe has been cut out of the will also, the Associated Press reports today.

Americans who have used Health Canada implicitly debunk media's lies about Health Canada.

Bill Mann, "Americans Who've Used Canada's Health-Care System Respond to Current Big-Lie Media Campaign"

The scare ads and op-ed pieces featuring Canadians telling us American how terrible their government health-care systems have arrived - predictably.

There's another, factual view - by those of us Americans who've lived in Canada and used their system.

My wife and I did for years, and we've been incensed by the lies we've heard back here in the U.S. about Canada's supposedly broken system.

It's not broken - and what's more, Canadians like and fiercely defend it.

Example: Our son was born at Montreal's Royal Victoria Hospital. My wife got excellent care. The total bill for three days in a semi-private room? $21.

My friend Art Finley is a West Virginia native who lives in Vancouver.

"I'm 82, and in excellent health," he told me this week. "It costs me all of $57 a month for health care, and it's excellent. I'm so tired of all the lies and bullshit I hear about the system up here in the U.S. media."

Finley, a well-known TV and radio host for years in San Francisco, adds,

"I now have 20/20 vision thanks to Canadian eye doctors. And I haven't had to wait for my surgeries, either."

A Canadian-born doctor wrote a hit piece for Wingnut Central (the Wall Street Journal op-ed page) this week David Gratzer claimed:

"Everyone in Canada is covered by a single payer -- the government. But Canadians wait for practically any procedure or diagnostic test or specialist consultation in the public system."

Vancouverite Finley: "That's sheer b.s."


I heard Gratzer say the same thing on Seattle radio station KIRO this week. Trouble is, it's nonsense.

We were always seen promptly by our doctors in Montreal, many of whom spoke both French and English.

Today, we live within sight of the Canadian border in Washington state, and still spend lots of time in Canada.

Five years ago, while we were on vacation in lovely Nova Scotia, the Canadian government released a long-awaited major report from a federal commission studying the Canadian single-payer system. We were listening to CBC Radio the day the big study came out.

The study's conclusion: While the system had flaws, none was so serious it couldn't be fixed.

Then the CBC opened the lines to callers across Canada.

Here it comes, I thought. The usual talk-show torrent of complaints and anger about the report's findings.

I wish Americans could have heard this revealing show.

For the next two hours, scores of Canadians called from across that vast country, from Newfoundland to British Columbia.

Not one said he or she would change the system. Every single one defended it vigorously.

The Greatest Canadian Ever

Further proof:

Not long ago, the CBC asked Canadians (in 2004) to nominate and then vote for The Greatest Canadian in history Thousands responded.

The winner? Not Wayne Gretzky, as I expected (although the hockey great DID make the Top 10). Not even Alexander Graham Bell, another finalist.

The greatest Canadian ever?

Tommy Douglas.

Who? Tommy Douglas was a Canadian politician - and the father of Canadian universal health care.

Busting myths of Canadian national health care

The U.S. media, mainly the corporate media, but also the non-profit media (suckered in by dominant myths about the Canadian health care), undercut public support for a national health care system in the U.S., with cynical, distorting myths about the nature and quality of Health Canada.
See this site, " 'Mythbusters' by the Canadian Health Services Research Foundation" at Physicians for a National Health Program (an American organization, by the way).
Canada Health Services Research Foundation's "competent and scholarly analyses of health policy and financing provide a counterpoint to the dishonest and mendacious “research” produced by corporate and ideologue-funded institutions such as the Fraser Institute. In this series of briefs, CHSRF researchers refute many of the myths about the Canadian health system and publicly-financed health care in general."
Click to access these reports (in PDF) on the facts, to debunk the lies of Fox News and company:
* The myth that: User fees (i.e., copays) would stop waste and ensure better use of the health care system
* The myth that: For-profit ownership of facilities would lead to a more efficient health care system
* The myth that: A parallel private system would reduce waiting times in the public system
* The myth that: Canada has a communist-style healthcare system
* The myth that: Canadian doctors are leaving for the United States in droves

Arm yourselves with these facts, to counter the arguments that Canada's health system is a disaster. Polls show that Americans actually do support a national, government-initiated health care system. The only things that are standing in the way of this: (a) Americans are deceived of the facts by the corporate media, (b) America's congressional representatives are beholden to the health care and pharmaceutical companies from whom they receive campaign contributions.

WorldFocus exposes low administration costs of Canadian health care compared to the US

PBS' WORLD FOCUS EXPOSES SUPER-LOW ADMINISTRATION COSTS OF CANADIAN HEALTH, COMPARED TO U.S.

PBS'
WorldFocus broadcast a report, June 15, 2009, cut through the media's anti-single payer propaganda blizzard machine, and gave attention to how low the health care administration costs are in Canada (Health Canada). It showed a medium sized room of about 24 cubicles, housing the administrative section of a large urban hospital. The reporter interviewed a Princeton professor (Uwe Reinhardt) that specializes on this topic. He said that a United States hospital of comparable size would have a staff of 900 to handle the administrative paperwork.

"Canada’s hospitals cut the paperwork, emphasize care"

Prior to his election, President Barack Obama spoke about the money being spent on paperwork and other administrative costs attached to medical care, hundreds of billions of dollars which he said could be redirected to the care itself.

Those savings are already being realized in Canada, where basic health care is universal and, in most parts of that country, free — and where remarkably little paperwork is involved.

Each hospital in Canada gets a global budget, a set amount which is all they have to spend for the year. They don’t price things like bandages, drugs or even overnight stays individually. The cost for these things and for doctor service is negotiated in advance.

Worldfocus special correspondent Edie Magnus, producer Rebecca Haggerty and shooter Megan Thompson report from Montreal.
*AND THE PRINCETON PROFESSOR (Uwe Reinhardt) ADDRESSED THE NATURE OF HEALTH CARE ADMINISTRATIVE COSTS*:
"How the U.S. measures up to Canada's health care system"

Edie Magnus: What do you think of Canada’s national health care system?

Uwe Reinhardt: I think it’s a high performer in the following sense: Canadians spend half as much per capita on health care as we do in the U.S., and yet if you go up there, sure you have to wait for some MRI image or for some heart procedures, but overall the system produces very good health outcomes. People are more satisfied there with their care than Americans are with theirs. So if you diagnosed it like a physician, you’d give that system an A and you’d have a hard time giving more than a B to ours.

Edie Magnus: Why do you think it is that most Americans don’t see it that way?

Uwe Reinhardt: Most Americans, first of all, are bombarded with propaganda. You don’t know how many think tanks are paid by certain industry — insurance, drug, organized medicine — to feed out negative stories about the Canadian health system. They do of course have mishaps, as do we, but there is a whole industry collecting them and beaming them out here. That is one.

Secondly, people are always more comfortable culturally with whatever they have than with some other system.

Third, people imagine having the worst illness, and if you are really very sick in the U.S., you generally do have more hope than in any other country if you are very sick, particularly if you are well insured. But if you sort of live the average life of Americans and have a Canadian system, they have better primary care, easier access to it. They would never go bankrupt over health care, because they don’t do that up there. They would realize what they are missing here.

Edie Magnus: We were in a hospital that was affiliated with McGill University, and it was a regional system that had six hospitals that were affiliated with one another, and they annually have some 39,000 inpatients, and they do about 34,000 surgeries and they deliver about 3,000 babies. And managing all of this is a staff of 12 people doing the billing, the administration. What would an equivalent hospital in the U.S. take to run administratively?

Uwe Reinhardt: You’d be talking 800, 900 people, just for the billing, with that many hospitals and being an academic health center. We were recently at a conference at Duke University and the president of Duke University, Bill Brody, said they are dealing with 700 distinct managed care contracts. Now think about this. When you deal with that many insurers you have to negotiate rates with each of them. In Baltimore, they are lucky. They have rate regulations, so they don’t have to do it. But take Duke University, for example, has more than 500,000 and I believe it’s 900 billing clerks for their system.

Edie Magnus: What are 800, 900 people doing?

Uwe Reinhardt: Well first of all there’s a contract. With each different managed care contract you have different rates. You have different things that need pre-authorization, not depending on the contract. You haggle over every bill. You submit the bill, the insurer rejects it, you haggle, and it may take 90 days to settle one bill. They don’t have that in Canada. You see, we spend in this country an enormous amount of money just administering claims. It’s a huge wrestling match over the payment.

Edie Magnus: When we pay a medical bill, how much of that bill goes to these kinds of administrative costs?

Uwe Reinhardt: Well, in general what you’ll find in our official statistics, we’re spending 7 percent on administration, but that only accounts for the insurers’ administrative costs and that includes Medicaid, which burns only two percent of its money throughput on administration. On the other hand, Medicare and Medicaid both cost the hospitals administrative costs that are booked as medical care, but it’s really administrative costs.

Steffie Woolhandler and David Himmelstein of Harvard did a study comparing Canada and the U.S. looking at what it costs employers, providers, doctors and hospitals and the insurance mechanism and compared Canada and the US, and they found that we in 1999, spent $300 billion on administration for all these three functions, and that was about 24 percent of national health spending there, but they say it was actually 31 percent because of the fraction of spending that they could actually identify and link to administrative costs. So they came to 31. So it’s somewhere between 25 and 30 percent that goes for administration and it doesn’t even include the patients’ time of billing. Anyone who has had anyone really sick in their family knows how much time you spend haggling over the bills and they have none of that in these systems.

Edie Magnus: I know that there’s some dispute about all those numbers, about what percentage of our spending the administrative costs represent, but you have said that with what America could be saving in administrative costs, that it could completely fund universal health care for all Americans.

Uwe Reinhardt: Oh yes, I’m totally convinced of that.

Edie Magnus: How is that possible?

Uwe Reinhardt: Well for one, many insurance companies have a nomenclature that when they issue a bill, when the hospital issues a bill, the insurance company can’t understand it. So there are entities, enterprises that translate that from the insurance companies’ nomenclature into the hospitals’ nomenclature and vice versa.

Edie Magnus: Alright, but tell us, I’m not sure my mother would understand this explanation…

Well I mean, just imagine a hospital sees a horse and it says I code that as H-O-R-S-E, and the insurance company uses French for that, C-H-E-V-A-L, and now the computers, they can’t mesh this unless there is a translator in between who says “Oh, horse for that insurance company means cheval.”

Edie Magnus: And this goes on every day between hospitals and insurers?

Uwe Reinhardt: This goes on every day. They don’t understand the way that they “code” things. So I hope Obama will come and say, “You guys had 30 years to figure it out and obviously you couldn’t. I’ll figure it out for you. Here’s a nomenclature. You must use it, and if you don’t, you don’t get paid, period.”

Edie Magnus: Can you talk about that and how it contributes to our administrative headaches?

Uwe Reinhardt: Well, I once did a dumb thing: I asked an insurance executive “What do you pay in New Jersey for a colonoscopy?”

And he just laughed at me and said, “What a silly question. There is no price for a colonoscopy. We have a different price for every hospital. And for the same hospital, we might have six prices depending on the insurance product, is it an HMO, etc.”

So I said, “This is mad. How many could there be?”

He says, “There could be 30, 40 for us, but then with Aetna, they could have another 30, and everyone has a different contract, so a hospital might receive 60, 80,100 different prices for a colonoscopy, depending on which insurance company and what contract it is. So when you say ‘What are the private market prices?’ there is no price.”

And I said, “Well how, when you have consumer-directed health care, where people are supposed to shop around, what are you going to tell them?”

And he said, “We can’t, really. What would you tell them?”

There is no real price, and every price has been negotiated and haggled over. So imagine what it costs compared to a system where a government negotiates with a physician association. Here’s the fee schedule, and that’s it, and everyone uses the same fee schedule. You can put that into a computer. You have a little card like an American Express card. The price list is already there. You swipe it through, the doctor keys what he or she did and here’s your bill. Well here you have to look at what contract was it and the coding turns out to be wrong, and the bill isn’t clean.

I know an entrepreneur who is a multi-zillionaire, and I said, “What did you do before to be so rich?”

And he said, “I can write clean bills for doctors.”

And I said, “What is your product?”

He said, “My computer knows every managed care contract in this area, hundreds and hundreds of them, and if the doctor tells me the product, the insurance contract, and I know what the doctor did, my machine can type a bill that the doctor never could get right, and submit it to insurance, and we get paid 30, 40 days faster and more accurately, and we split – the doctor doesn’t pay me – we just split the extra money and make the doctor.

I have another friend in Princeton. He gets all of these bills, his wife was ill and he says, “I don’t do the claiming, there is a company that specializes in claiming for you. You just turn over all your stuff and they submit the bills.” So you now have companies that help doctors bill, and then you have companies that help patients pay these bills.

There was a company, I think it was a subsidiary of United, that wrote software to help hospitals bill better and get every dime they could from insurance companies and sold other software to help insurance companies that helps them defend themselves against the doctors’ billing. It’s laughable. It’s hard to explain it without laughing, but we do.

I tell you, if you gave a keg or two of beer to six Princeton undergraduates and said “Drink till you fall over, and then design something really mischievous,” they couldn’t come up with what we adults have come up with being sober, or seeming to be sober. This is a totally insane system.

Edie Magnus: And if we could save those administrative dollars, is there an amount that you think we would save?

Uwe Reinhardt: I think we should be able to cut it in half, what we spend. That would still be more than most other nations spend, but we should use other nations as a benchmark and say, “They can do it for this, so let’s at least cut ours in half.” We would still be spending more than these other nations, but Obama should simply set a goal. Like Kennedy said we’ll go to the moon in so many years, Obama said in so many years we’re going to save that much on administration and I’m going to put someone in charge of it and we’re going to keep books.

Edie Magnus: And to the person who hears that and thinks, “Yeah, but you know, sometime I’m going to be in a jam, I’m going to want some care, and if we go to this other system it might not be available to me…“

Uwe Reinhardt: Mind you, I’m not advocating the Canadian system. It works well for them. I’m not saying we need to have this, but I’m saying whatever we have, if you have government saying there is going to be one computer system, that doesn’t mean one manufacturer, but whatever they make has to interoperable. Whatever language they use has to be the same. We’re going to speak English, so to speak. One nomenclature. You have to call this operation by one code, no matter who it is. There have to be common billing forms. Not every company has its own incomprehensible explanation of benefits, you know. Every hospital bill is just a living insult, when you actually get one as a patient. There has to be something people understand.

And it turns out that after giving it to the industry for 30 years to straighten out and they didn’t, it will have to be the Obama government that says, “Guys we’re going to rig this for you. You can have all the machines you want, all the software. You can buy it from whomever, but it has to obey these rules.”

Just like electric plugs. No matter who makes the stuff, there has to be one plug. But for some reason, the electric industry has been able to settle on one plug. The Cell phone industry has still not settled on one charger. You have to have chargers that vary by thing. The earplugs for the cell phones are different depending on the model. This is nonsense. You give the industry time and if you can’t figure it out, kids, we’ll figure it out for you.

Edie Magnus: Why do you think it is that Canadians are, in large percentages, so much more satisfied with their health care system?

Uwe Reinhardt: I think, for one, you don’t have this constant fear when you go to bed, if whether tomorrow you have health insurance. You know you will. You almost feel it when you go to the airport and you ask these people. That’s not something they worry about. Here you ask any waitress “Are you insured?” Half the time they’re not even insured. If they have it, they don’t know if they have it tomorrow.

One of the interesting things is 250 finance people have been laid off. That industry is going to be small in the future. They’re not going to have health insurance. I think a lot of those people who hated the Canadian system and socialized medicine and so on will discover it might not be a bad idea to have a safety net for some things — education for your kids, health care when you get sick, justice when you are in the courts — and for some reason to think that rugged individualism can cope with this is nonsense.

Edie Magnus: Would national health care work in the United States?

Uwe Reinhardt: Yes.

Edie Magnus: Would Canada’s plan work in the United States?

Uwe Reinhardt: Well, it works. We have a Canadian health plan in America. It’s called Medicare. It works. Don’t tell me medicare doesn’t work. Tell that to the elderly. One way to test it is to say “Let’s take it away.”

Edie Magnus: But it is running out of money.

Uwe Reinhardt: No, it’s not, no way. It’s not running out of money. I mean we still have a surplus in that account. At some point in the future it will run out of money unless we raise premiums, that is, payroll contributions. We’ll have to do this. But the idea that that it runs out of money and General Motors, which is almost bankrupt, doesn’t, tell me about who is running out of money. GM is living on taxpayers’ blood transfusions. Why? Over health care. They ran out of money, not Medicare. I think this is a myth.

Of course, if you keep payroll tax where it is, it will run out money. But the elderly could contribute more to it and they will. Payroll taxes can be raised a little bit. Higher income recipients probably have to contribute more to it. These are really solvable problems, but Medicare is a Canadian style heath care system.


Edie Magnus: If it seems such long odds that we will ever have a single payer system for all of the United States, what’s the point of comparing us to Canada?

Uwe Reinhardt: You have to have benchmarks. You can’t just say, “We’re unique therefore we can simply spend the whole GDP on health care.” You do have to ask how does Canada do it. How does Germany do it? How does Taiwan do it? How do other nations do it? And if you think you are way out of line, if you’re spending twice as much as the people who are culturally similar to us — their income is somewhat lower but not that much lower than ours, we’re really one North America — you’d really have to ask yourself. Now mind you, you could also look within the US. Utah and Oregon are much, much cheaper than Massachusetts or Miami. So you could look at Canada, but you could also look within the U.S. where you have these variations. But why should you not be able to learn from other countries, particularly when you run a huge single payer system, and Obama is going to put in another single payer system, this public “Medicare light” plan for people under 65? So yeah, we can learn something from Canada. They can learn a lot from us.


Edie Magnus: If you don’t have all the free market forces in health care, would you have as much competition, innovation?

Uwe Reinhardt: Innovation, in the pharmaceutical products and devices, maybe not, because the money wouldn’t be as generous. I mean, we’ve had an unbelievable generous… I mean, if you spend twice as much, you will fund a lot of innovation with it and you’ll fund a lot of waste with it, both. We’ve had both, waste galore and innovation galore. You might have less innovation, but I think a good science policy could contravene that.

In other words, you could fund and support drug companies, not through the price of the drugs, but by giving them grants, government grants. We need a drug for Alzheimer’s, and like the defense contractors — we need a jet that can do these missions -– we need a drug that does Alzheimers. And the government is going to lend research contracts to the pharma. industry, and you get your cost reimbursed, but the winner who has the best product — you have a fly by like you do with jets — and the winner gets the contract. So there are other ways of funding devices and of funding drugs and other innovations than just through the price, you know? We have to think of other ways to do this. There is no reason why we couldn’t have a flourishing innovative high tech industry, even if we stepped down on prices, which the private sector will too.

You look at what the Bush administration has done with drugs, turning the Medicare Part D to private industry, and what did they do? They persuaded millions of the elderly to switch out of brand name drugs into generics, totally devastating the drug industry. This wasn’t done by the government. It was done by private enterprise, by private, competitive enterprise.

Edie Magnus: You’ve sort of alluded to this, but are you optimistic that America, starting today with a new president, can get it right with health care?

Uwe Reinhardt: Well, “get it right…” that’s partly an ideological thing, but get it done in this sense… You could say there are certain requirements we have of our health system. An American family where a member is stricken with cancer shouldn’t go broke. That’s easy to achieve. Do you have to do it the Canadian way? No. We can do it our way, even if it’s a little pricier.

A requirement that when somebody thinks they have major illness they should able to get access and not have to worry about whether they can pay the bill. There are certain things you can write down that health systems should achieve, and you say “We’re going to go there our own way. We’re not going to copy Germany, we’re not going to copy Canada, but we want to end at the same point,” and that is that you can go to bed and not worry about losing your health insurance when you lose your job. And those things are achievable, and the Obama plan, if you look at it, has all that in it. It says we keep the system we have, but we put some new things in, like this government program for the people under 65 such that when you lose your job, you don’t lose your family’s insurance, and we can do this. I’m optimistic.

Now a year ago I would have said we’ll never do it, because we’re a bunch of spoiled children.

Edie Magnus: Now we’ve been slapped upside the head…

Uwe Reinhardt: We’ve been slapped upside the head, and in fact people are talking about it, T-shirts, “Grow up America.” I’ve always told my wife “I never understood Americans till our kids became teenagers, and then I understood this whole culture.” It’s a teenage culture. That’s all I really know about Americans, people who want the best health care, they don’t want to pay high premiums, don’t want to pay taxes – this is juvenile. And I think Obama’s inauguration speech was basically very serious, saying, “You know, we have to grow up. We now have to grow up.” I’m much more hopeful now that children in distress will rediscover the virtue of mothers.

In fact I wrote a piece, “I hate Mom and the Government Too,” and I say that it’s amazing, given how teenagers curse mothers, that mothers somehow, that evolution didn’t do away with them, that the reason evolution kept them there is that when the kids get in trouble they run to Mom. And look at what happens now. GM driving overnight, begging mom, that is, government, to help them. The bankers of New York, you know, who used to sit in their golf carts cursing government regulation, running to Washington, to Mom, “Please help us.” And I think, like teenagers at some point discover the virtue of moms who can give them help, the American people will discover, “You know what, there are good things about government, like there are about moms. When you get in trouble they’re really cool to have around.” And I think we’re at that moment, and that is why I believe health reform has a hope. We could literally get this done this year.

Edie Magnus: And just to be clear, Obama’s plan is not national health care, right? It’s not a single payer system…

Uwe Reinhardt: If you mean a nationalized health care with a single…

Edie Magnus: Yes. Government funded, government run, the taxpayers pay, everyone gets it…

Uwe Reinhardt: No. It’s not that. It says you keep whatever you have as long as they’ll give it to you, but if they don’t give it to you anymore, Mom is here for you. You can go out there. You can ride your bike, but if you get hurt you can come here. If the private sector has not sold you a private health insurance policy, we will.

I can’t see what could be fairer that to say to everyone you can play all these games, but there are certain rules. You have to, in the end, cover people. And if you, the private health insurance agency, are not able to do it, we can do it. The government can do it.

And we’ll discover this more and more. Our banking system, you’d be surprised what that’ll look like. It will be highly regulated, like a utility. It’ll be small. It’ll do what it was supposed to do rather than being a gambling casino, which is what it became. You know, they too behaved like teenagers. In fact, this piece I just wrote, it’s actually only for the student newspaper, “I Hate Mom and the Government Too,” the Financial Times printed it, the German Zeit printed it, because everyone understood that that’s what it really was. We had all become teenagers, irresponsible, naughty, and so on, and I think we will become a much better nation because of this calamity.

HALLIBURTON HIDES BEHIND ARBITRATION RULE IN BRUTAL RAPE OF EMPLOYEE IN IRAQ

V.P. CHENEY'S HALLIBURTON IS HIDING BEHIND ARBITRATION LAW

IN BRUTAL, DISFIGURING RAPE OF EMPLOYEE IN IRAQ

DETAILS OF STORY INDICATE THAT ARBITRATORS HAVE OBLIGATION TO CAVE INTO THE CORPORATION, OR ELSE THEY'LL LOSE OPPORTUNITIES TO ARBITRATE DISPUTES --NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO REPORT, JUNE 9, 2008

HALLIBURTON SHIELDED BY ARBITRATION LAW IN CASE OF RAPE OF EMPLOYEE
"Rape Victim's Case Shows Failings Of Arbitration" --NPR, June 9, 2008
http://www.npr.org/templates/player/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=105153315&m=105173854
After she was raped in Iraq, allegedly by her co-workers, Jamie Lee Jones sought justice from her employer, Halliburton. But a mandatory arbitration policy prevents her from seeking recourse through courts. Without knowing it, many consumers and workers have signed away similar rights.

THE ABC NEWS STORY WHEN JAMIE LEIGH JONES UNSUCCESSFULLY TRIED TO SUE HALLIBURTON:
"Halliburton Now Facing Rape Lawsuit Trial" May 11, 2008.

Dodd needs to go; it's a Republican opening, but will a liberal Democrat challenge Dodd?

DODD IS PLUMMETING . . . GREENWICH SELECTMAN PIERSON PONDERING CHALLENGE vs. "BANKS' SENATOR . . . REPUBLICAN SIMMONS AHEAD OF DODD

Conn. Senator Chris Dodd 's poll numbers are sliding. His job approval rating is 38 percent, and his job disapproval rating of 53 percent.
Why?
a) He has been too close to the financial services industry.
b) He has had some questionable financial doings.

Former Greenwich First Selectman Roger Pierson laid out some key points on both areas.
From the Litchfield County Times:
a) "He [Pierson] recalled that when the Congress revised the Glass-Steagall legislation of 1933, Senator Dorgan was quoted as saying, "You might as well call these financial services institutions casinos."
"In 10 years, 2009, you will rue the day you did this," Mr. Pearson quoted Mr. Dorgan as saying. "This is a harbinger of bad things to come."
He said that Mr. Dodd, who is now the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, and other lawmakers made a poor decision in approving the revision, which he believes led to the crisis of last fall in the financial services sector.
The 1999 legislation was sponsored by U.S. Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Tex.), and U.S. Reps. James Leach (R-Iowa) and Thomas Bliley (R-Va.)
Mr. Pearson said in a recent interview that Glass-Steagall, which was established during the Great Depression, "created silos" for banks, insurance companies and brokerage houses.
"Human nature didn't change over the decades," he said. "What worked its way into the system again was greed."
Mr. Pearson said that 5 percent of the mortgages were subprime in 1999, and by July 2007, when the real estate market crashed, the figure had escalated to 30 percent.
. . . .
"He's become the banks' senator," said Mr. Pearson, who has a law practice in Stamford and represented some major tennis players years ago, including former Greenwich resident Ivan Lendl, who captured eight grand slam titles.
"He had a legislative record for the first 20 years that was distinguished," he said of Mr. Dodd. "The last 10 years was not so distinguished." "
b) "Mr. Dodd, who has been easily elected five times to the U.S. Senate, the longest career any Connecticut resident has had in the upper body, has, according to Washington Post political columnist Chris Cillizza, been in a "free fall" for more than a year as he has had to answer questions about the refinancing of two mortgages, a transaction on a home in Ireland and conflicting answers regarding his role in bonuses for executives at AIG, which has received federal funding during the financial crisis."
Alas Pierson, a decent critic of Dodd, is not what we need in the senate. He is a Jimmy Carter-style economic moderate. As we saw with the Ned /Lamont primary challenger to Joe Lieberman, the Connecticut electorate is not in the mood for a moderate.
REPUBLICAN OPPORTUNITY
Dodd's plummeting poll numbers suggest a fine opportunity for Republicans to launch a viable challenge. Rob Simmons is currently the news-making Republican 2010 challenger to Dodd. (He is a former U.S. House Representative from eastern Connecticut.)
Simmons is leading Dodd by 45 percent against 39 percent, according to the Quinnipiac Poll of May 25. (An April Quinnipiac poll put Simmons 16 points ahead of Dodd.)

Scotus blog on cases in which Souter to Sotomayor change would count

KEN RUSSELL ON SCOTUS BLOG NOTES WHERE CHANGE TO SOTOMAYOR WOULD MATTER

Ken Russell at scotusblog.com sought to provide some nuance to the usual interpretation that a liberal Sonia Sotomayor would not bring much change in contrast to a liberal David Souter.
He noted the following in considering instances in which the change of justice could result a change in the Supreme Court ruling.

The universe of possible cases in which Souter’s replacement might make a difference to the outcome is necessarily limited to cases decided by 5-4 margins with Justice Souter in the majority. This rules out the fair number of cases with traditional conservative-liberal 5-4 splits, in which Justice Souter was in the dissent - even if his replacement voted more conservatively than he did, that would just widen the margin, not change the result.

That leaves two other kinds of cases. The first are cases in which the liberals (including Justice Souter) attract a fifth vote, and it is possible that Judge Sotomayor would vote with the conservatives when Justice Souter voted with the liberals. One would predicate that - at least on hot-button issues, like abortion and affirmative action - the President would not have nominated Judge Sotomayor unless he were fairly confident that she would vote consistently with Justice Souter’s liberal-leaning record. But there may be less high-profile cases in which that would not hold true, perhaps in the criminal context where Judge Sotomayor has often sided with prosecutors and Justice Souter sometimes has not (although he has been far from a sure vote for either defendants or the Government in criminal cases). We will look for such cases in a subsequent post.

The second category of cases in which the change in Court personnel might make a difference, and the one we will review first, is in the relatively rare, but nonetheless recurrent, cases in which the Court splits 5-4 along non-traditional lines, with Justice Souter in the majority.

One example of such a case was United States v. Booker, 543 U.S. 220 (2005), in which a majority of the Court, including Justice Souter, declared the federal sentencing guidelines unconstitutional in part. The majority included liberal Justices Souter, Stevens, and Ginsburg, joined by conservative Justices Scalia and Thomas. Dissenting were Justices Rehnquist, O’Connor, Kennedy, and Breyer. If Judge Sotomayor had been on the bench at the time, and voted differently than Justice Souter, the case would have come out the opposite way.

While it is unlikely that the Court will revisit Booker anytime soon, the case continues to give rise to subsidiary questions. For example, this term in Oregon v. Ice, No. 07-907, the Court divided 5-4 over whether the principles animating Booker require that juries, rather than judges, find the facts necessary to the imposition of consecutive, rather than concurrent sentences of multiple offenses. If she is confirmed, Judge Sotomayor thus may play a critical role in the future development of this line of cases.

Thus far, there have been two “quirky lineup” cases decided this term in which Justice Souter was in the majority.

The first was Arizona v. Gant, in which a bare majority of the Court, including Justice Souter, voted to overturn (or at least narrowly cabin) a prior precedent that allowed the police to search a vehicle incident to the arrest of its driver without any showing of particular suspicion or need. The majority included Justices Stevens, Scalia, Souter, Thomas, and Ginsburg. Justice Breyer agreed that the old case was wrongly decided, but declined to vote to depart from it, on stare decisis grounds. Had Judge Sotomayor been on the Court, and agreed with Justice Breyer’s position or the position of the dissenters, the case would have come out differently.

The second such case was Vaden v. Discover Bank. This case involved a question about federal courts’ jurisdiction to here claims asking to compel arbitration under the Federal Arbitration Act. As a matter of statutory interpretation, Justices Ginsburg, Scalia, Kennedy, Souter, and Thomas, held that the federal court has jurisdiction to compel arbitration only if it would have jurisdiction to resolve the underlying dispute between the parties, looking at the type of claims asserted in the original complaint.

This will all be interesting to watch, after the Republicans bury themselves with their obstinacy in this summer's confirmation hearings.

Ron Kuby, & his slim chances of returning to Air America

RON KUBY'S CLIENTS, THE 2009 NEW YORK CITY BOMB PLOT AND DOING TIME WITH RON KUBY

For whatever reason, Air America Radio moved "Doing Time with Ron Kuby" from 3 PM - 6 PM to 12 PM - 3PM on May 19, 2009. The new time is hurting him, since Air America affiliates run either Ed Schultz or Thom Hartmann at that time slot.

For the reasons of his business dealings after that date, it is likely that Air America will want less to do with him. For on May 20, 2009 James Cromitie and three other bomb plotters arrived at a Riverdale synagogue, bent on exploding it. A few days later Kuby's face appears along with his defendants in photos in New York City's daily tabloids.
So, as homegrown religious extremists turn their war to our cities, it would be hard for Air America to get advertisers to support programming with Ron Kuby's name.

... Replacing Ron Kuby is former television talk show host, Montel Williams in "Montel Across America."

Republicans, Sotomayor, ethnic voters and the long reach of political memory

REPUBLICANS PROJECTED TO ALIENATE HISPANIC VOTING BLOC FOR A GENERATION WITH OPPOSITION TO SOTOMAYOR
Just minutes after President Barack Obama's nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to be the first Latina justice and the third woman on the Supreme Court, the Republican right was assembling the bandwagon with ideological vitriol against her.

Republicans to be mindful of how their rhetoric and conduct will resonate for many Latino voters. Diversity rings differently for different voters. For many voters in the white majority it sounds like quotas, of lowered expectations. But for many voters in groups that have been long excluded, it means that they (the excluded group) are no longer excluded, that America is including them, that the American government is finally representing them, that the American government is no longer a white government, but a government for the range of various communities that compose the country.
Simon Rosenberg, of the New Democrat Network:

"The movement of our nation from a majority white to a more racially complex society is perhaps the single greatest societal change taking place in our great nation today,'' he suggests.
"And if the Supreme Court is to have the societal legitimacy required to do its work, its justices must reflect and speak to the people of America of the 21st Century,'' he says.

And here, politicians and pundits are on board with sharing the belief that Republicans will have to tread very carefully in how they treat Sotomayor: Sam Youngman, "Senate GOP risks alienating Hispanics over court pick," May 26, 2009 from "The Hill":

Democratic strategist Guillermo Meneses said Republicans will stay in the minority for years to come if they try to bruise Sotomayor.

“If Republicans unleash the attack dogs on Sotomayor, they will be looking at becoming a regional, minority party for the next couple of decades,” Meneses said. “They really have written the playbook on how to antagonize Latinos, the fastest-growing political power in our nation.”

Former Republican Rep. Henry Bonilla (Texas), an ally of President George W. Bush's, told The Hill on Tuesday that Senate Republicans will have to be mindful of how they treat Sotomayor.
“That is the political reality,” Bonilla said. “In an ideal world, you would decide on a Supreme Court justice based on their qualifications. But in the real world, this is something Senate Republicans are going to have to deal with, and that's her ethnicity.”

So, we will have conservative Republicans blathering on about "dubious qualifications," "unqualified," "token." They will speak to the choir with their scathing rejection of her fitness for the high court. And how will many (yes, not all) Latinos will hear racism (or at least suspect racism) in the Republicans' opposition to her.
(Already, Latina.com reports that Rush Limbaugh has said that he wishes Sotomayor fails, and Mike Huckabee called her "Maria.")
Many activists in the Party of No believe that the best route is to cast the center aside and go with the faithful core. Yet as they play to the Fox News crowd, they need to consider how their tone and words resonate for viewers of the Univision, Telemundo and Telefutura television networks.
True, there are plenty of conservative Latino voters that will stick with the Grand Obstructionist Party, on issues such as personal libertarianism or conservative social values. But more broadly, we can envision the Republicans losing hefty enough numbers of Hispanic voters in marginal states, such as Nevada, Arizona, Florida, and maybe even Colorado. The buzzword in the context of this appointment is "Hispanic legitimacy." The Republicans of the Party of No will giver further reason for voters to see them as intolerant, if not old fashioned and exclusionary.
A recent poll said that 68 percent of voters did not see it remarkable that a Latina judge was selected.(Mark Silva at Chicago Tribune's "Swamp Politics, May 26, 2009.) While that might be true, the Republicans did poorly, broadly, in so many regions. The Republicans need to worry about the partisan fence sitters in that remaining 32 percent.
COOPERATIVE PLAYERS NOW BITTER PARTISANS, WITH EGG ON THEIR FACES?
Here's another interesting nugget: the Republicans will scream about how a) she is too political in her rulings or b) dubiously qualified. But they have to remember that not only did Bill Clinton appoint her to federal court positions, but Bush I (George H.W. Bush) gave her an earlier boost in 1992 to the federal judiciary. If she is so disreputable, key Republicans with judiciary assignments will have to explain why they supported --with their votes Clinton's 1998 promotion of Sotomayor. Also from Youngman's piece in "The Hill":

When former President Bill Clinton nominated Sotomayor to the U.S. Circuit Court, 25 Republican senators voted to confirm her. Seven of those 25 — Sens. Bob Bennett (Utah), Orrin Hatch (Utah), Susan Collins (Maine), Olympia Snowe (Maine), Thad Cochran (Miss.), Richard Lugar (Ind.) and Judd Gregg (N.H.) — still serve in the upper chamber. An eighth, Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.), was a Republican at the time but switched to the Democratic Party earlier this year.

These Republicans will have to explain their sudden "realization" that Sotomayor is extreme or unqualified.

Manhattan Institute pundit vouches for Sotomayor's position on appeals courts

MANHATTAN INSTITUTE CONSULTANT VOUCHES FOR CONTEXT IN SOTOMAYOR'S STATEMENT ON PBS NEWS HOUR, May 26, 2009

Perhaps the leading talking point that the right wing pundits are using against Judge Sonia Sotomayor, is the charge that her statement on federal appeals courts and policy. The right, whom we can suspect will include Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and Fox News in general, have been calling attention to a YouTube video in which Judge Sotomayor, at an academic conference, says that appeals courts are where "policy is made."

Yet, James Copland of the conservative, economic libertarian-minded New York City-based think tank, the Manhattan Institute, demonstrated intellectual integrity in properly putting the appeal court role in perspective.
From PBS News Hour, May 26, 2009:

JAMES COPLAND: Well, I'm largely satisfied with the answer on the sort of the Second Circuit or the Circuit Courts make policy answer. I think it was a bit of a misstatement, but I do think that it's, in fact, the case that the law of the land is largely determined by the appellate courts.

The Supreme Court takes a very small number of cases, and the Circuit Courts actually sort of set the law out there that's followed by all the trial court judges in the country. So I don't find that particularly objectionable.

Another point that Copland made, as well as the readily-posed to strike conservative opinion molders on cable TV and talk radio is the charge that President Barack Obama nominated her for justice, on the basis of her gender and her ethnicity.

Copland said that this nomination was "demographic selection." But Judge Sotomayor has a stellar resume. She had high honors in college and in law school. While studying at Yale Law School she was the editor of the Yale Law Journal.
In addition to serving in federal court she has recently also served as a part-time law lecturer and Columbia Law School since 1999. She has also performed similar law instruction work at New York University Law School.

Think of the numerous white male nominees that have successfully made their way into the Supreme Court. --nominees that often had less stellar credentials than Sotomayor. Where was the outcry when the Court was entirely white male (save for Marshall, O'Connor or Thomas)? When we have a top notch nominee, why not have a nominee whose selection is a corrective measure, diluting the dominance of males? Women are half of society; so shouldn't it be fitting that the Court have women as at least two of its nine members? Latinos are the second largest minority. Where is the outrage in choosing a highly qualified judge that happens to be a Latina?

Justices Scalia and Alito have Italian-American heritage and are Roman Catholic in their religious orientation. Thus they come from two groups that are heavily sought after group by the two political parties. If people are going to have outrage over Sotomayor and her Latina background, they are being disingenuous if they do not express the same outrage in Republican presidents' selecting two Italian-American Catholics for justice.

Bronx terror plot on synagogues and rethinking Gitmo prisoner reassignment

GIVEN THE BRONX TERROR PLOT, IS PLACING GITMO PRISONERS IN US PRISONS A WISE IDEA?

President Barack Obama is facing his first serious challenge and rebuff with Congress' rejection last week of his plan to shut down the Guantanamo Bay prison (or Gitmo).
Congress' rejection of his plans to shut the facility by January 2010 came at a crucial moment. The vote came within days of an attempt by US-born Islamic radicals to bomb synagogues in Riverdale, the Bronx, New York City and to fire a Stinger missile at airborne aircraft at the Stewart Air Base in Newburgh, in Orange County, New York.
The fact that the terror plotters were jail-house converts to radical Islam should Obama the impulse to rethink his decision to ship detainees out of Guantanamo Bay.

The prisoners should not be housed in the general population in the prisons. Placing these prisoners in the general prison population runs the serious risk of spreading radical ideas among the general inmate population. The only circumstance whereby Obama could reasonably place these prisoners in the general population, would be if he had the prisoners placed in an isolated wing or corridor of the prison away from the prison population at large. It would be absolutely reckless to place possible religious radicals in with the general prison population. This could serve to facilitate an expanding base for violent religious extremism.

It is disappointing that conservatives are so far the voices out front on this perspective. (For the denial-ville approach: Witness this contribution to the Daily Kos blog: "Prisons, Islam and American Bantustans.") Contrasted with this conservative columnist: Michelle Malkin, May 22, 2009 "Breeding Jihad in U.S. Prisons."
Liberals and leftists should also counsel against anything that could assist the expansion of religious radicalism. We should remain consistent with our principals. The ultimate reason why we are against hate groups is that we oppose the worst thing that these groups could do: act towards the murder of people. Mass killing is exactly what these homegrown terrorists, James Cromitie and company, had planned for Riverdale last week. We liberals and leftists cannot cherry pick the instances in which we want to oppose hate groups.

* * *
Eric Gorski and Rachel Zoll, Associated Press, Friday, May 22, 2009,
Bronx bombing plot renews fears of radical Islam in prison

Wil Cruz, Joe Kemp and Patrice O'Shaughnessy May 22, 2009 DAILY NEWS STAFF, "http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2009/05/22/2009-05-22_radicals_often_born_in_state_prison.html."

Elisabeth Bumiller's New York Times article on US terror suspect recidivism rate, "Later Terror Link Cited for 1 in 7 Freed Detainees" May 20, 2009.

The New York Times' report on named recidivist individuals, active in terror, "The Recidivism Docket."

Upstate NY men arrested in Jihad terror plot in Bronx

FOUR UPSTATE NEW YORK MEN ARRESTED WEDNESDAY NIGHT IN JIHAD TERROR PLOT AGAINST SYNAGOGUES IN THE BRONX

From MSNBC news, Wednesday, May 20:

Four men have been arrested in a plot to attack several targets in the New York City area, including synagogues, federal and local authorities told NBC News Wednesday.

Authorities said the four men have long been under investigation and there was little danger they could actually have carried out their plan, NBC's Pete Williams reported.

Investigators say the four, described as Black Muslims from the Bronx, had planned to place bombs at various targets. But New York city police and federal agents got wind of the plot and kept the men under careful surveillance.
In fact, officials say, the men recently bought what they thought were explosives, which they put in storage lockers outside the city. But what the men did not know is that the material they bought was actually harmless, sold to them by informants posing as explosives dealers.

Officials emphasize that the men never had actual bombs and could not have pulled off any attack.

According to court documents, an informant met the apparent ringleader of the group, James Cromitie, in a Newburgh mosque last June. He told the informant that his parents lived in Afghanistan before he was born that that he was "upset about the war." If he died a martyr, Cromitie told the informant, he would go to paradise.

For the past year, the informant has followed Cromitie and three others, David and Onta Williams and Laguerre Payen, as they bought a camera, photographed potential synagogues to attack, and scouted out a place from which to shoot at planes at the Stewart Air National Guard Base in Newburgh.

Two weeks ago, three of them met the informant at a Connecticut warehouse to inspect what they thought was a Stinger surface-to-air missile obtained from a terrorist group and plastic explosives. All the materials were actually provided by the FBI and were harmless.

The four are expected to face the charges in federal court Thursday.

Two years ago, two Muslims pleaded guilty to plotting to attack synagogues in Los Angeles. But officials said that they knew of no connection between those arrests and this latest plot in New York.

Few analysts or pundits have addressed factor of ethnic divisions in Pakistan

DRAFT

Analysts have not addressed the ethnic-social division in modern Pakistan.

(Actually, increasing number of leaders have been from non-Sindh, non-Punjab gorups.)

The overwhelming majority of industry, agriculture and commerce lies in the two eastern provinces adjacent to India, Punjab and Sindh.
The Indus River and the river valley forms a western border for these two provinces.
Here is a link to a 2004 online academic paper on Pakistan's political shakiness and social division, Hussain Haqqani, "The Role of Islam in Pakistan's future," "The Washington Quarterly," 28:1, Winter 2004-2005, 85-96: http://www.twq.com/05winter/docs/05winter_haqqani.pdf

In a larger context, Pakistan suffers from low development in social infrastructure, in contrast to its neighbor to the east. Namely, in the period from 1947 and [2000?] India tackled literacy. Literacy is 35% in Pakistan and 67% in India.

In a historical context, the rootedness of the cultures in the regions west of Punjab and Sindh to Pakistan is not as strong. Numerous maps from the 1600s to the 1800s indicate that the western regions were under the control of Afghanistan, Iran (nee Persia), an independent Baluchistan, or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qalat_(princely_state) in Baluchistan.
Reference to ethnic maps.

Terrible fate from British acquisition of western territories. Most of the alienated provinces came after Britain's earlier 1850s acquisitions:
Balouchistan, acquired 1876; Northwest tribal provinces (capture finalized in Durand line, 1893. (Durand Line of 1893.) These areas remained for centuries OUTSIDE of the Indian/ South Asian politaical tradition. The Kasmir princely state sidd withBrits in 1857 rebellion theres after went w Brit rule. (see keay maps.)

Jinnah's tragic legacy

The bitter feeling from the saga of India and Pakistan of several years of the recent decades has cast a shadow over Muhammad Ali Jinnah's partition vision. He envisioned partition of India into a Muslim nation and India proper, motivated by concern for justice for Muslims. He feared that their concerns would be ignored by a Hindu-dominated India.

Instead, we have on-going military spats between the two nations;
and now the two rivals are nuclear-armed.

An idealist supporting partition at the time might argue: partition will spare the respective nations of communal violence. Hardly. It has been keen feature in India.

A PAKISTANI QUEST FOR UNION WITH INDIA?
One can just envision how things might progress, if the current Islamist destabilization continues. Imagine the following:
Talibanists further penetrate Pakistani society, not merely militarily, but inserting their presence in popular thought and allegiances; and they eventually control more of the country.
Pakistanis realize the danger and in a desperate move to stanch the Talibanist drive and ultimate takeover of Pakistan,
seek union of the remaining non-Taliban regions of the country with India.

Imagine the alternate gloom scenario:
Talibanists take over all of the country: not just rural regions, tribal regions and secure not just allegiances of a few corrupt security force members,
but also take over the commercial and governmental cores of Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi. Securing the military apparata, they also secure nuclear weapons.
Pakistani government statement, cited in "Pakistan Times."

Are Plains and Southern sections heading into scientific irrelevance on stem cell research bans?

Are some states, some sections of the country, casting themselves into scientific irrelevance, in their rejection of stem cell research?
This is the case in legislative initiatives in Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina and Texas in the Southeast and in Montana and North Dakota in the Plains/Mountains West. (To be sure, this list of states also includes Maryland in the Mid-Atlantic section.) Click to this March 11, 2009 article in "USA Today," "Some states push back against stem cell research." Here, a March 31, 2009 "Houston Chronicle" reference to stem cell research resistance in Texas.

Bucking the above cited southeastern trend is North Carolina. Major efforts have been underway at Wake Forest University in the state's Research Triangle. Click to this archived 2006 installment of Terri Gross' "Fresh Air" on public radio, "Stem Cell Research: Science and the Future."