Last Night's News Wednesday 3/4/09

 

Everybody led with the the Obama Administration’s Housing plan.  It's intended to help 9 million people with their home ownership problems. For details it’s best to go to the government website, because the news show mostly garbled it.

 

The pigs owned the airwaves Wednesday night. The bill that keeps the government going also contained money for 9,000 private projects that Senators and Congressmen inserted. Sen. Tom Harkin was forced to stand before the Senate and contend pig odor control was a legitimate expenditure. Everybody had lovely pictures of pigs oinking and chewing on their wire fences. They were suspiciously clean, however. NBC showed only Democrats in its report on the bill even though 40% of the earmarks, as they’re called, were the work of Republicans. That major opponent of taxation and the burgeoning national debt, Mitch McConnell, put in $51,000,000 in projects for his state of Kentucky.  In contrast, pig odor control only added 1.7 million to the budget.

 

John McCain is all upset because President Obama had promised to do something about earmarks.  This bill was put together under the watchful eyes of the previous administration. ”Last year’s business” says Obama’s budget director.

 

NBC Nightly had some advice for policymakers meeting Thursday at the White House. Look to Kaiser Permanente as a model in the health reform debate.  Preventive medicine, salaried doctors and electronic data keeping have reduced costs. There wasn’t mention of the HMO dumping patients to cut costs (documented on AP here and on Dateline). Or charges that Kaiser call center employees who spent the least time talking to patients got prizes.

 

Some drug companies have tried to argue that because their products had FDA approval, they couldn’t be sued for package warnings that violate of state laws. The nets interviewed the music teacher who lost part of her arm after an injection of a migraine drug. The Supreme Court found for the victim. She had been awarded $6,744,000 by a jury but that’s a different problem.

 

Apparently worthy of note:

  • A board of education gave bus drivers free health club memberships because they were getting fat. (ABC)
  • A survivor of the depression named Clara is a hit on YouTube with her low budget meals. Day-old bread with olive oil anyone? (CBS)
  • And Hispanics are sending less money home as jobs dry up. (NBC)  Surprise.

 

Posted by Jon Ward at 3/6/2009 3:34 PM
Categories: uncategorized
 

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