I sent this Fax to the White House today. I like him, I believe that he means well, but this issue of deregulation and corporate welfare is wrecking the country. We can't ignore it. Claims that Salazar has been cleaning house are laughable.
FAX to President Obama
202-456-2461
Our country is in big trouble. You have a tough job- Republicans hollowed out government regulation; now they criticize you as socialist whatever you do, and want taxpayers to pay for corporate crime. That will continue.
- Your Healthcare reform has given us a start. Stopping rescission is definitely positive, but we have a tiny beachhead. American healthcare is a crazy mixture of the good, the bad and overtreatment. Without more reform, your work will be swept away. Coordination of care for Medicaid patients hospitalized at different facilities remains atrocious. Provisions for electronic health records in the HCR law are a joke. Every week, I have problems getting records from other hospitals, ending up with two pages and a list of diagnoses (totally inadequate)- those hospitals can't get EHR funding under the existing bill. Medicare payment is not fixed and must begin to move away from fee for service. Don Berwick is a good man; if you don't support him, he will fail.
- The financial meltdown, the Massey mining disaster and the Deepwater Horizon blowout were predictable.
a. The common thread was inept clock-watching regulators and corporations focused on short term profit. The financial sector is too big and has too much influence in Congress and in your administration. Wall Street is a crooked casino- families like ours must let the crooks handle our retirement money; we no longer have pensions.
b. The Federal Reserve has stumbled for years. They should have foreseen the crisis, instead of fueling speculation.
c. Even Conservatives holler about the disgraceful Minerals Management Service. BP got special treatment from MMS on Salazar's watch. Cleaning house? - No way.
d. The BP blowout was a teachable moment, but your people performed poorly. Salazar talked tough; BP stayed in control of data and access to spill areas. The Coast Guard fudged the facts, even the Admiral. Lubchenco disappointed- the question of undersea oil is quantitative- it can’t be settled by 3 or even 50 samples. She's a professor- why couldn't she give a big picture chalk talk like Ross Perot did?
e. You should have used the bully pulpit to tell Americans that the cost of oil & gas must increase if we want responsible drilling. We don't oppose all drilling. Blowout preventers can be improved, but they will cost more. We want you and our country to climb up to Norway's standard.
- You may regret Senator Lincoln's primary victory and the White House celebration. You and Bill (Bond market) Clinton stuck your fingers into labor's eye. Don't bow to labor; just treat them with respect like the Republican Party treats the Chamber of Commerce. True unemployment is close to 20%; people are suffering. You greatly increased the chances that the next Senator from Arkansas will be Republican John Boozman. He'll run against the insiders, including you.
Herbert Hoover was a decent man. However, he bowed to the bond market. Pushed by Andrew Mellon to avoid dangerous deficits, Hoover said that "Nothing is more important than balancing the budget" in 1931; most Democrats agreed. That was disastrous. Bill Clinton put the bond market first. There is a time for centrist policies and a time for change. You talked a lot about change in the campaign. The bond market doesn't worry about people or deflation; it hates change. Put people first. If you don't make changes now, you will take a licking this fall and may be a one term President.
Blanche Lincoln has a good derivative control plan. The bond market and your treasury department don't like it. If you want to do good, insist that the finance bill retains Lincoln's derivative controls. That will help little people and her chances of re-election. I don't like Lincoln, but she's better than Boozman. I prefer you to any Republican President, but if you let us down on financial reform and offshore drilling regulation, shallow and deep, I'm out.
- We are angry with Wall Street, Big Oil and their control of Congress. If you put the banks and the bond market first, I'll work against the party of Baucus, Landrieu and SC Democratic primary winner, convicted felon Alvin Greene. You didn't choose Greene, but you are responsible for your party and for idiots like Salazar- he should never have given BP a categorical exemption. BP cut corners on safety at Texas City (2005) and the Alaska pipeline (2006). Their 2009 application & spill response plan should NEVER have been approved. It's obvious that neither you nor Salazar ever read their 583-page plan. It mentions blowouts and a worst case scenario (Highest capacity well uncontrolled blowout volume associated with exploration well = 250,000 barrels, page 509). Page 444 lists contractors for firefighting and blowout, but doesn't say what the contractors would or could do. After the well blew out, BP executives repeatedly said that there are no proven methods for dealing with blowouts at this depth. Page 249 of the BP plan for the Gulf of Mexico mentions walruses and sea lions. This is a bad joke. The cat is out of the bag. Salazar says that deepwater drilling can resume "soon". There is still NO solution to blowouts even at 200 feet- as happened with IXTOC 1. You can't continue this charade. Every day we see that leaking well on TV, every day we hear new nonsense from Interior about "getting the facts from BP".
- It's not too late. Stand up against deregulation craziness and corporate control of Washington. You can't stand pat; your winning hand is gone, thanks to advisers like Emmanuel, Geithner and Salazar. Time is short
Sincerely, your early supporter, precinct captain and donor,