March 27 and 28, 2017


News and Views


ANOTHER TRUMP ATTEMPT TO BLOCK UNFLATTERING INFORMATION?

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/former-acting-ag-sally-yates-asked-doj-if-she-could-testify-at-russia-hearing/
Former acting AG Sally Yates asked DOJ if she could testify at Russia hearing
By PAULA REID CBS NEWS March 28, 2017, 1:01 PM

Play Video of CBS News reports
Play VIDEO -- Top Democrat: House Intel members "in the dark" on Russia investigation
Photograph -- Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates speaks during a news conference at the Justice Department in Washington June 28, 2016. J. DAVID AKE, AP
Photograph -- Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates speaks during a news conference at the Justice Department in Washington June 28, 2016. J. DAVID AKE, AP


CBS News has obtained a March 24th letter from the Justice Department to Sally Yates that says that DOJ lacks the authority to give Yates permission to testify before Congress about links between Russian officials and Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign.

Yates had informed the Justice Department that she had intended to testify about the non-classified information related to her concerns “about the conduct of a senior official,” thought to be then-National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.

In its letter to her attorney, DOJ says that most of her testimony would “likely [be] covered by the presidential communications privilege and possibly the deliberative process privilege.” Deputy Associate Attorney General Scott Schools, who wrote the letter, goes on to say, “The President owns those privileges,” so therefore, she “needs to consult with the White House” if she wants to testify. The Washington Post first reported the correspondence between Yates’ attorney and the Justice Department in a story with a headline reading, “Trump Administration sought to block Sally Yates from testifying to Congress on Russia.

“The Washington Post story is entirely false. The White House has taken no action to prevent Sally Yates from testifying and the Department of Justice specifically told her that it would not stop her and to suggest otherwise is completely irresponsible,” White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said in a statement.

She did consult the White House, a source close to Yates said, but she didn’t receive a response before she learned the hearing had been canceled. Yates disagrees with DOJ’s claim that her conversations with the White House would be protected by Presidential Communications Privilege. She had planned to testify about things the White House had publicly discussed at length and therefore, she believed any alleged privilege had been waived. The source said her testimony would have contradicted statements by the White House about these events.

During the White House briefing, Spicer expanded on the White House response, confirming that Yates’ lawyer had written to the White House for permission to testify. He said that a line in that letter said that if the White House didn’t respond before the hearing date, Yates would interpret the administration’s silence as approval. “We didn’t respond -- we encouraged them to go ahead,” Spicer said.

“I hope she testifies. I look forward to it,” Spicer declared.

In January, when she was the acting attorney general, Yates told White House Counsel Don McGahn that U.S. intelligence had intercepted Flynn’s calls and had proof that his public denials about the nature of his conversations with Russian Envoy Sergey Kislyak during the transition period were false. Flynn had told Trump officials, including Mike Pence, that he had not talked to Kislyak about U.S. sanctions against Russia -- as the Obama administration was implementing those sanctions. The Justice Department, Yates told McGahn, was concerned that his deception opened him up to possible blackmail.

Top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said in a statement that that “we do not know” whether the White House’s “desire to avoid a public claim of executive privilege” played a role in keeping her from “providing the full truth on what happened.”

The committee was originally to have met Tuesday to hear from Yates, former DNI James Clapper and former CIA Director John Brennan, but the hearing was canceled by Intelligence Chairman Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif.

Schiff’s statement also went on to call for a new date for the hearing.

“[W]e would urge that the open hearing be rescheduled without further delay and that Ms. Yates be permitted to testify freely and openly so that the public may understand, among other matters, when the President was informed that his national security advisor had misled the Vice President and through him, the country,” he wrote, “and why the President waited as long as he did to fire Mr. Flynn.”



NUNES ON BRIEFING OF TRUMP BEFORE HE TOLD HIS OWN OFFICIAL INVESTIGATIVE COMMITTEE -- UNFORTUNATELY THE "WHY" OF THE MATTER APPEARS OBVIOUS, BUT PERHAPS NUNES DOESN'T KNOW HOW THE INVESTIGATION IS SUPPOSED TO BE CONDUCTED, LIKE SOME OTHERS OF THE TRUMP FOLLOWERS AND APPOINTEES.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/house-intel-chair-white-house-grounds-day-briefing/story?id=46401121
House intel chair was on White House grounds day before briefing Trump on alleged surveillance
By KATHERINE FAULDERS Mar 27, 2017, 12:41 PM ET

WATCH -- Top House intel Democrat weighs in on Nunes' Russia probe comments
RELATED: Intel chair Devin Nunes unsure if Trump associates were directly surveilled
House intel chair says Trump transition team 'incidentally' surveilled, president feels 'somewhat' vindicated


House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes, R-California, who is leading a congressional investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 campaign and alleged contacts with the Trump campaign, went to White House grounds last week to meet a source at a secure location to view information regarding possible "incidental" surveillance of Trump associates by the U.S. intelligence community, his office confirmed to ABC News.

The visit came one day before Nunes made a surprise public announcement about the documents before sharing them with other members of the House Intelligence Committee and then proceeded to the White House to brief President Donald Trump in person.

"Chairman Nunes met with his source at the White House grounds in order to have proximity to a secure location where he could view the information provided by the source. The chairman is extremely concerned by the possible improper unmasking of names of U.S. citizens, and he began looking into this issue even before President Trump tweeted his assertion that Trump Tower had been wiretapped," Nunes' spokesperson Jack Langer said in a statement provided to ABC News.

The committee Nunes chairs is conducting one of two ongoing congressional investigations into Russia's interference in the 2016 U.S. election and alleged links between Trump's campaign and the Russian government. The committee's ranking member Rep. Adam Schiff, D-California, had no comment.

On Friday, Nunes backtracked on some of the claims he said earlier in the week regarding the documents he reviewed.

When asked if he could clarify whether Trump or his associates were monitored or simply mentioned in the intelligence reports, Nunes said he won't know until he receives all the documentation.

The National Security Agency was supposed to deliver documents to the intelligence committee on Friday, but it's unclear whether that has happened yet.

It's also not clear why Nunes chose to go to White House grounds when there is a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) on Capitol Hill to review sensitive information.

Nunes has not disclosed where he got the information from, not even to other members on the House Intelligence Committee.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer on Friday would not rule out that it came from the White House.



KUSHNER AND TWO RUSSIAN CONTACTS

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/white-house-adviser-jared-kushner-testify-senate-intel/story?id=46397807&cid=clicksource_4380645_1_hero_headlines_bsq_related
White House adviser Jared Kushner to speak with Senate Intelligence Committee
By KATHERINE FAULDERS Mar 27, 2017, 8:55 AM ET

RELATED: Jared Kushner, Mike Flynn met with Russian ambassador during transition, White House says
Senate Intelligence Committee finds 'no indications' of wiretapping, wider surveillance at Trump Tower


A senior administration official confirmed to ABC News that White House senior adviser Jared Kushner has volunteered to speak with the Senate Intelligence Committee as part of its inquiry into ties between Trump associates and Russia.

"Throughout the campaign and transition, Jared Kushner served as the official primary point of contact with foreign governments and officials," a senior administration official told ABC News. "Given this role, he has volunteered to speak with Chairman [Richard] Burr's committee but has not yet received confirmation."

The news was first reported by The New York Times.

As ABC News has reported, Kushner and now-former national security adviser Mike Flynn met with Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak in Trump Tower in New York in December.

"They generally discussed the relationship, and it made sense to establish a line of communication," White House spokeswoman Hope Hicks said in a statement earlier this month about the meeting. "Jared has had meetings with many other foreign countries and representatives — as many as two dozen other foreign countries' leaders and representatives."

ABC News also confirmed that a meeting occurred, at Kislyak's request, between Kushner and Sergey N. Gorkov, the chief of Vnesheconombank, one of the Russian businesses affected by sanctions imposed by the Obama administration in the wake of Russian President Vladimir Putin's illegal annexation of Crimea.



SANDERS SINGLE PAYER WITH PUBLIC OPTION

http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/27/politics/bernie-sanders-single-payer-health-care-cnntv/
In wake of GOP failure on health care, Sanders to push single-payer option
By Eleanor Mueller, CNN
Updated 4:08 PM ET, Mon March 27, 2017

Washington (CNN)Now that Republicans' efforts to pass sweeping health care legislation have failed, Sen. Bernie Sanders plans to propose a health care system funded entirely by taxpayers.

Speaking on "State of the Union" Sunday, Sanders told CNN's Dana Bash that he intends to introduce legislation outlining a "Medicare-for-all, single-payer" health care plan -- and he will reach out to President Donald Trump to help advance it.

"Ideally, where we should be going is to join the rest of the industrialized world and guarantee health care to all people as a right," Sanders said. "That's why I'm going to introduce a Medicare-for-all, single-payer program."

Such a plan would likely face certain defeat in Congress. But calling the GOP health care bill "a disastrous piece of legislation" that "should have been defeated," Sanders acknowledged that "Obamacare has serious problems."

RELATED: How Trump's health care loss will shape his presidency

"Deductibles are too high," Sanders said. "Premiums are too high. The cost of health care is going up at a much faster rate than it should."

When Bash asked if Sanders would reach across the aisle and "pick up the phone and call the White House" to promote the legislation, Sanders emphatically replied: "Absolutely."

"President Trump, come on board," Sanders said. "Let's work together. Let's end the absurdity of Americans paying by far the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs."

Sanders has long advocated for such a program, including when he was a presidential candidate.

His plans come in the wake of calls for bipartisanship following the implosion of GOP efforts to repeal Obamacare last week.

On Monday, Minnesota Democrat Rep. Keith Ellison, deputy chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said on CNN's "New Day" that members of his party "stand ready" to work alongside Republicans on health care, including on issues such as lower prescription drug prices.

Across the country, California Democrats (aided by grassroots organization Our Revolution, a by-product of Sanders' campaign) are advocating for a similar bill that would launch a statewide single-payer health care system.



http://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/03/27/thunderous-applause-welcomes-sanders-call-medicare-all
"Thunderous Applause" Welcomes Sanders' Call for Medicare-for-All
'We have got to end the international disgrace of being the only major country on earth not to guarantee healthcare to all people as a right not a privilege'
byDeirdre Fulton, staff writer
Published on Monday, March 27, 2017
By Common Dreams

Photograph -- Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) speaks Saturday at a town hall meeting in Hardwick, Vermont. (Photo: VPR)

A cheering crowd gave a rousing endorsement to Sen. Bernie Sanders' plan to introduce Medicare-for-All, or single-payer, legislation to Congress in the coming weeks, announced this weekend at a Vermont town hall meeting.

"We have got to end the international disgrace of being the only major country on earth not to guarantee healthcare to all people as a right not a privilege," Sanders (I-Vt.) told the 1,000-strong audience in Hardwick, Vermont, where he appeared alongside the other members of the state's congressional delegation. "Within a couple of weeks I am going to be introducing legislation calling for a Medicare-for-All, single-payer program."

Vermont Public Radio said the announcement "drew thunderous applause" from the crowd at Hazen Union High School.

As Common Dreams reported, last week's defeat of TrumpCare (also known as the American Healthcare Act or AHCA) left an opening for such a push. Multiple analyses have shown that replacing the Affordable Care Act (ACA or Obamacare) with a universal, single-payer health system is in fact the only way to increase coverage and fulfill President Donald Trump's campaign promises on healthcare. And as Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) co-founders David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler asserted in an editorial on Wednesday, "Democratic politicians are feeling pressed and emboldened to embrace progressive policies" as the resistance shows its strength.

That call will only grow louder. The Huffington Post reported Saturday that a broad array of progressive groups—including the Working Families Party, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, Credo, Social Security Works, and the National Nurses United (NNU)—is coalescing behind the single-payer goal in the wake of last week's political wrangling.

"The problem is the insurance companies, Big Pharma—they're gonna come back and use the chaos to their advantage," Social Security Works executive director Alex Lawson said to HuffPo. "If Democrats go with a half-a-loaf policy, Republicans are going to blame them for the failures of Big Pharma. They have to immediately pivot to expanding Medicare."

Meanwhile, Sanders' Democratic colleague in the House, Rep. Peter Welch, said that once Sanders' measure is introduced in the Senate, he'd put forth a companion bill in his chamber.

"It's a goal," Welch told Vermont Public Radio after the Hardwick town hall meeting. "In this Congress, we won't pass it. But I think we have to keep the goal out there, because we need in this country, like any industrialized country, a healthcare system that's affordable, accessible, and universal."

VPR reported:

Sanders told the audience that the defeat of the Republican healthcare bill demonstrates widespread dissatisfaction among Americans with GOP healthcare policies. And he says he thinks his "Medicare-for-All" bill will have strong appeal even among the red-state voters that put President Donald Trump in the White House.

Indeed, at a televised town hall forum in West Virginia earlier this month, that appeal was on display as a roomful of Trump voters cheered loudly for Sanders' assertion that universal healthcare is a right.

Sanders reiterated his plan on CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday, telling anchor Dana Bash: "Ideally, where we should be going is to join the rest of the industrialized the world and guarantee healthcare to all people as a right. And that's why I'm going to introduce a Medicare-for-All, single-payer program."

Sanders also spoke of shorter-term goals in his interview on CNN: "Let us do, among other things, a public option*. Let us give people in every state in this country a public option from which they can choose. Let's talk about lowering the age of Medicare eligibility from 65 to 55. Let's deal with the greed of the pharmaceutical industry."

The senator from Vermont also tweeted on Saturday, "Right now we need to improve the Affordable Care Act and that means a public option."

But corporate crime watchdog and single-payer advocate Russell Mokhiber warned against embracing the public option as a stand-in or even a stepping stone for Medicare for All.

In a piece published Sunday, Mokhiber quoted pediatrician and PNHP member Margaret Flowers, who co-directs the group Health Over Profit for Everyone. She said:

Introducing a public option will divide and confuse supporters of Medicare-for-All. Senators who should co-sponsor Medicare-for-All will be divided. Sanders seems to be urging a public option to please the Democratic Party, but Sanders cannot serve two masters—Wall Street's Chuck Schumer and the people. Sanders must decide whom he is working for.

While it might seem politically pragmatic to support a public option, it is not realistically pragmatic because a public option will not work. Senator Sanders knows that and he knows that the smallest step toward solving the healthcare crisis is National Improved Medicare for All. This would fundamentally change our health system that currently treats health as a commodity so that people only have access to what they can afford to a system that treats health as a public necessity so that people have access to what they need. Medicare-for-All achieves the savings needed to provide comprehensive coverage to everyone.

"We look to Senator Sanders to act on what he promised during his presidential campaign, a national improved Medicare-for-All now, not tomorrow," Flowers said. "Tomorrow never comes. It is not up to him to decide if single-payer can pass in Congress. That task is for the people to decide."

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License


TERMINOLOGY – PUBLIC OPTION VS ONE PAYER

* http://www.factcheck.org/2009/12/public-option-vs-single-payer/
Public Option Vs. Single Payer
By Lori Robertson Posted on December 18, 2009

Q: What is the difference between a "public option" and a single-payer plan?
A: Single-payer is a complete government-run health insurance system under which everyone is covered, e.g., Canada’s system. The "public option" is a single federal insurance plan that would compete with private insurance companies.

FULL QUESTION

Please explain to me in very simple terms what "public option v. single payer plan" regarding health insurance means. I am completely lost on this issue and am having a difficult time trying to get the fact straight from all sources. Your help is greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance for your help and understanding.

FULL ANSWER

The so-called "public option" has taken several forms in several different health care bills this year in Congress. All of the proposals, however, would create a federal health care plan, something like Medicare, but for persons under age 65. Individuals and small businesses would be able to buy such a plan just as they would purchase a health care plan from a private insurance company.

Proponents of a public option say it would create more competition for the private companies, holding prices down for everyone. Opponents say that private insurance companies would have a hard time competing against the public option, which they say would be less expensive and would eventually drive private companies out of business.

In theory, a public plan could be unfair competition if granted the power to force doctors, hospitals and other providers to accept payments that are far below what private insurance plans pay. But analyses of the leading bills that have emerged predict that only a small percentage of Americans would actually take up the public health insurance plan.

The Senate has now ditched a public option completely, and the House bill structures its version of a public option in such a way that its premiums would likely be "somewhat higher" than those of private companies, according to an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office. The plan would pay health care providers at negotiated rates, not at substantially lower Medicare rates. Plus, the CBO predicts that the plan would attract less healthy individuals. Furthermore, the public option wouldn’t be available to everyone, at least not at first. By the third year of implementation of the bill, the public plan would be available only to individuals who buy coverage on their own and to small businesses with 100 or fewer employees. Those businesses and individuals would be eligible to buy coverage through the "insurance exchange," which would include several private plans and the public option. Larger employers could become eligible to buy plans through the exchange at the discretion of a "health choices commissioner."

If this type of public option were open to everyone, health care experts at the Lewin Group estimated that it would attract 20.6 million people, 12.5 million of them moving off of private insurance. (The Lewin Group, whose studies have been cited by both political parties, is a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group but says it operates with "editorial independence.") The CBO analyzed the latest House bill specifically and predicted that only 6 million would join the public option. For more on the impact of the House bill’s public option, see our earlier report.

The public option is drastically different from a single-payer health care system. Under a single-payer system, everyone in the country would have health coverage provided by the government, and private insurance largely would cease to exist. Like Medicare, the government would act as the insurer; doctors and hospitals would operate privately, receiving payments from public funds under such a nationalized health insurance system. (The group Physicians for a National Health Program provides details on how it believes such a system would operate in the U.S.)

Advocates of a single-payer system have complained that they (and their views) have been largely excluded from the health care debate in Congress and in the White House.
–Lori Robertson

Sources

U.S. Congress. H.R. 3962, as passed by the House. 10 Nov 2009, accessed 17 Dec 2009.

Sheils, John and Randy Haught. “The Cost and Coverage Impacts of a Public Plan: Alternative Design Options.” Lewin Group, 6 Apr 2009.
Letter to Rep. Charles Rangel. Congressional Budget Office. 29 Oct 2009.

"Single-payer National Health Insurance." Physicians for a National Health Program. accessed 17 Dec 2009.



WHAT THE HECK IS CAR SURFING? WHERE ARE THE PARENTS?

https://video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?fr=yset_ie_syc_oracle&p=car+surfing+youtube#id=1&vid=1f38fda9490454366240bd7d049cca1c&action=click
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/car-surfing-daredevil-california-15-freeway-corona/
California police search for dangerous "car surfing" daredevil on freeway
CBS NEWS March 28, 2017, 4:33 PM

WATCH Video -- A man was caught on video performing an “unbelievably dangerous” stunt on a freeway in Corona, Calif. JENNIFER DRISCOLL FRERICHS

CORONA, Calif -- It only lasted a few seconds, but now the California Highway Patrol wants to speak to a person who risked his life and put others in danger when he was performing a dangerous stunt clinging to the side of a pickup truck.

Jennifer Driscoll Frerichs shared her video online with city leaders, reports CBS Los Angeles.

“One little slip and he could’ve hurt himself and other people,” Frerichs said.

On Saturday, she saw a man climb out of the passenger-side window of a pickup and dance while hanging on with one arm as a sweater around his waist flapped in the wind on the 15 Freeway in Corona.

“My only thought I got when I posted that to the City of Corona is possibly the mom or someone who knew them would see and be like: ‘Are you kidding me? Like, really?’” Frerichs said.


Other people spoke up online saying they’d seen this type of activity on the freeways recently.

“If he fell off of there, someone would swerve to avoid him and crash into someone else. He could have hurt a lot of people, more than just himself,” a man said when shown the video. “It’s gotta be illegal. It’s just incredibly stupid.”

A CHP spokesperson called this stunt “unbelievably dangerous.”