Citizens' Daily Lobby

InArkansas has a nice report this week tracking the green portion of Arkansas’ stimulus money.   Arkansas received $110 million for energy projects last year.  Here’s a rough breakdown of the major recipients of this money and what it will do for the state:

Arkansas Department of Human Services $48.1 million to help low-income families become more energy efficient.  Low-income individuals often live in the least efficient homes, and they pay a disproportionate amount of their income for energy needs. The stimulus funds are expected to help weatherize 6,500 homes by 2012.

Arkansas Energy Office: $39.4 million to fund 13 environmental energy projects.  Most of the money will be used for energy efficiency improvements in public and private buildings.

Local goverments:  $16 million for various projects, largely for energy efficiency.  Kudos to Conway, for its plan to implement a synchronized traffic light system that will save gas, time, and frustration for local motorists.

This doesn’t quite total $110 million.  A table would have been helpful in the article.   I’m sure I could find the missing $7 million in the article if I took the time to sort through all the figures.

Blue Cross  is raising individual insurance premiums in California by up to 39% effective immediately, even though its parent company boasted profits of  $4.7 billion last year.   Health Secretary Sebelius is publicly calling for an explanation, and Congress has announced plans to investigate the matter.

MoveOn has created a petition to bring public attention to this issue and demand corporate accountability.

The petition says: “Anthem Blue Cross must provide a detailed explanation for their exorbitant rate increases, or else roll them back immediately.”

These latest rate increases in California—reportedly the largest ever by Blue Cross for individual policyholders in the state—are yet another powerful example of how badly broken our health care system is and how desperately we need to hold Big Insurance accountable for exploiting their customers.

Anthem Blue Cross’s parent company made record profits last year despite losing 1.4 million customers—increasing their profit margins by cherrypicking the healthiest people to insure.³

Then they can turn around and dramatically increase the rates they charge to the customers they’ve kept, because there’s almost no rules governing rate increases. In fact, the company doesn’t even have to publicly reveal how many customers’ rates they’ve increased, or by how much.

The good news is that Kathleen Sebelius, President Obama’s Secretary of Health and Human Services, is already publicly demanding answers from the company. And the House Energy and Commerce Committee has announced plans to hold hearings to investigate.

But to get Anthem to clean up their act—and show politicians and the media that we can’t afford any more abuses by Big Insurance—we all need to lend our voices. Clicking here will your name to the petition:

http://pol.moveon.org/bluecross/o.pl?id=18911-17217716-fS_Edmx&t=4

UPDATE: Public attention and outcry is already getting results.  Blue Cross has announced that it will delay the rate increases for two months.  That’s a step in the right direction, but it’s not enough.  The company still needs to justify the rate increases.

Today, the Senate voted on an amendment to the Transportation, Housing, and Urban Development Appropriations bill (HR3288) that would prohibit stimulus funds from being spent on signage giving credit for improvements to stimulus funding.  The amendment, S Amendment 2361, was rejected.  Blanche Lincoln voted for this amendment, and Mark Pryor voted against.    American taxpayers probably spent more for Senate salaries during the time spent in consideration of this amendment than they would have saved had it passed (it didn’t).  Trivia.  Petty politics by Republicans who don’t want the Democratic Congress and President Obama getting credit for any positive, tangible results of the stimulus package.

More meaningful were several amendments proposed by Senator McCain to block funding for mass transit projects nationwide.

The address to Wall Street given by Pres. Obama today is a breath of fresh air for battle-weary and discouraged Progressives.    The message was terse, but strong, as Mr. Obama chided some Wall Street execs for their quick return to the risky behaviors that brought on the current financial crisis:  Wall Street will be more tightly regulated again.  Finally.

We will not go back to the days of reckless behavior and unchecked excess that was at the heart of this crisis, where too many were motivated only by the appetite for quick kills and bloated bonuses.  Those on Wall Street cannot resume taking risks without regard for consequences, and expect that next time, American taxpayers will be there to break their fall.

Mr. Obama emphasized that the Administration is looking to work with the financial industry to ensure that regulations do not stifle the economy, but he made it perfectly clear that regulation to promote “transparency and accountability”  would come with or without the support of  Wall Street.

And taken together, we’re proposing the most ambitious overhaul of the financial regulatory system since the Great Depression.  But I want to emphasize that these reforms are rooted in a simple principle:  We ought to set clear rules of the road that promote transparency and accountability.  That’s how we’ll make certain that markets foster responsibility, not recklessness.  That’s how we’ll make certain that markets reward those who compete honestly and vigorously within the system, instead of those who are trying to game the system.

What is the plan, specifically?

1) New rules to protect consumers and a new agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Agency to provide oversight.  -There is currently no single agency in our government charged with protecting us from financial fraud, and that needs to change.

2) Closure of the legal loopholes that allowed the financial crisis to occur.   President Obama listed a few examples:

Under existing rules, some companies can actually shop for the regulator of their choice — and others, like hedge funds, can operate outside of the regulatory system altogether.  We’ve seen the development of financial instruments — like derivatives and credit default swaps — without anyone examining the risks, or regulating all of the players.  And we’ve seen lenders profit by providing loans to borrowers who they knew would never repay, because the lender offloaded the loan and the consequences to somebody else.  Those who refused to game the system are at a disadvantage.

…And that’s why we’ll create clear accountability and responsibility for regulating large financial firms that pose a systemic risk.  While holding the Federal Reserve fully accountable for regulation of the largest, most interconnected firms, we’ll create an oversight council to bring together regulators from across markets to share information, to identify gaps in regulation, and to tackle issues that don’t fit neatly into an organizational chart.  We’ll also require these financial firms to meet stronger capital and liquidity requirements and observe greater constraints on their risky behavior.

3) Creation of  “resolution authority” (aka ending the idea that some firms are “too big to fail”).

With so much at stake, we should not be forced to choose between allowing a company to fail into a rapid and chaotic dissolution that threatens the economy and innocent people, or, alternatively, forcing taxpayers to foot the bill.  So our plan would put the cost of a firm’s failures on those who own its stock and loaned it money.  And if taxpayers ever have to step in again to prevent a second Great Depression, the financial industry will have to pay the taxpayer back — every cent.

4)  Work with world leaders to ensure global financial stability.

For this President, and for our country, “normalcy will not lead to complacency.”   Someone must stand between the consumer/taxpayer and those whose only motive is profit.