Unconventional Wisdom

Ynet News:

The State Prosecutor’s Office filed official corruption charges against former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert Sunday. This is the first time in Israel’s history that a former PM will face a criminal indictment.

The indictment includes charges of fraud, breach of trust, falsifying corporate records and tax evasion, as well as a charge of fraudulently obtaining benefits to which the State attributes aggravated circumstances.

The indictment spans three of the scandals the former prime minister was entangled in: The Talansky case, the Rishontours double billing case and the Investment Center case. The indictment does not include bribery charges, despite police recommendations in the matter.

I understand that most of these charges does not revolve around his time in office as PM. I saw that in another article on this case. It seems political corruption is everywhere. I just so happen to live in a state where it’s certainly expected.

Boston Globe:

Massachusetts has the most expensive family health insurance premiums in the country, according to a new analysis that highlights the state’s challenge in trying to rein in medical costs after passage of a landmark 2006 law that mandated coverage for nearly everyone.

The report by the Commonwealth Fund, a nonprofit health care foundation, showed that the average family premium for plans offered by employers in Massachusetts was $13,788 in 2008, 40 percent higher than in 2003. Over the same period, premiums nationwide rose an average of 33 percent.

The report did not break out how much premiums have increased in Massachusetts since the 2006 changes went into effect, so it does not show whether the law affected the rate of price increases. Still, with the state’s law often cited as a model for a national health care overhaul, advocates on various sides of the issue said the report underscores the urgency of including cost controls in any large-scale federal or state overhaul.

“While expanding coverage was the logical first step in Massachusetts, cost control is equally as important,’’ said Andrew Dreyfus, an executive vice president at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, the state’s largest private insurer with 3 million members. “And if you don’t face the cost issue directly, then you can jeopardize the progress you’ve made in expanding coverage.’’

Via Newsalert!

NY Times:

Central bankers from around the world expressed growing confidence on Friday that the worst of the financial crisis was over and that a global economic recovery was beginning to take shape.

“The prospects for a return to growth in the near term appear good,” declared Ben S. Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, offering optimism both about the United States and the worldwide outlook.

Though the Fed chairman repeated his warning that the economic recovery here was likely to be slow and arduous and that unemployment would remain high for another year, he went beyond the central bank’s most recent statement that economic activity was “leveling out.” Speaking to central bankers and economists at the Fed’s annual retreat here in the Grand Tetons, Mr. Bernanke echoed the growing relief among European and Asian central bankers that their own economies had already started to rebound.

Politico:

Former Republican House Majority Leader Tom DeLay said Wednesday that he loves watching the White House and Democrats in Congress struggle to control the health care debate.

“I love their arrogance. They just keep digging the hole deeper and deeper and deeper,” DeLay said of Democratic leaders during an interview on conservative host Sean Hannity’s radio show.

“I love what the American people are doing to the Democrats,” he said in reference to the recent raucous town halls. “I’m sitting back and watching, and it’s just amazing.”

DeLay insisted that Republicans are winning the health care debate and urged GOP leaders to use momentum on the issue to make a broader appeal on conservative values.

NY Times:

Senator Max Baucus can be hard to decipher at times, and not just because he talks fast and is prone to mumbling. He was trying to discuss health care in an interview, but kept having to compete with a loud TV set over his left shoulder in a hotel coffee shop — two Fox News anchors speaking about (what else) health care.

“I wonder if they could turn that down,” Mr. Baucus said, exposed to exactly the kind of noise he was hoping to escape in Big Sky Country after a claustrophobic Washington summer.

As he traverses the state he has represented in the Senate for 31 years, Mr. Baucus, the Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, never seems far from being buried under some rhetorical avalanche.

After speaking at a preventive-care conference here last week, he was swarmed by protesters. Or, in Mr. Baucus’s words, “agitators, whose sole goal was to intimidate, disrupt and not let any meaningful conversation go on.” There were a couple of people in the crowd “with YouTubes,” Mr. Baucus added (meaning cameras), and he posited that the agitators were paid and probably from out of state. (“I could just sense it,” he said.)

Montana has become an unlikely center of the donnybrook over health care. The proportion of its residents who are uninsured — 16.4 percent — exceeds the national average of 15.5 percent, and health care is one of the state’s biggest industries. But it is Mr. Baucus, 67, a fifth-generation Montanan who comes from a rich ranching family, who has made the state a mountainous magnet for protester and president alike — most recently at a town meeting that Barack Obama held Friday in nearby Belgrade.

NY Times:

The White House, facing increasing skepticism over President Obama’s call for a public insurance plan to compete with the private sector, signaled Sunday that it was willing to compromise and would consider a proposal for a nonprofit health cooperative being developed in the Senate.

The “public option,” a new government insurance program akin to Medicare, has been a central component of Mr. Obama’s agenda for overhauling the health care system, but it has also emerged as a flashpoint for anger and opposition. Kathleen Sebelius, the health and human services secretary, said the public option was “not the essential element” for reform and raised the idea of the co-op during an interview on CNN.

Mr. Obama himself sought to play down the significance of the public option at a town-hall-style meeting on Saturday in Grand Junction, Colo., when a university student challenged him on how private insurers could compete with the government.

After strongly defending the public plan, the president suggested that he, too, viewed it as only a small piece of a broader initiative intended to control costs, expand coverage, protect consumers and make the delivery of health care more efficient.

Does anyone have any ideas? I feel like I’m using a trademark name anyway. I see that Real Clear Politics, who’s site I have been perusing often has a site called Unconventional Wisdom. So expect a name change soon!