Former first lady Barbara Bush was hospitalized in Houston for tests after not feeling well for several weeks, NBC News reported Saturday night.
Former President George H.W. Bush took Mrs. Bush to Methodist Hospital on Saturday morning for routine testing, said Jean Becker, spokeswoman for the former president in Houston.
Sources told NBC that the problem was not believed to be related to her heart or the aortic valve operation that she underwent in March 2009.
Doctors hoped to let her go home Sunday or Monday, Becker said.
Mrs. Bush underwent surgery a year ago to have her aortic valve replaced by a valve from a pig. That surgery was performed because she was suffering from a severe narrowing of the main valve.
Mrs. Bush underwent surgery in November 2008 for a perforated ulcer. When she lived at the White House, she disclosed she was suffering from an overactive thyroid ailment known as Graves' disease. The disease causes teary eyes and double vision, according to her doctors.
A Washington couple who gate-crashed a state dinner at the White House in November will be featured in a new series of the Bravo cable channel's popular reality TV franchise "Real Housewives," The Daily Beast news website reported on Friday.
Michaele and Tareq Salahi caused an embarrassing security flap at the White House when they finessed their way into a state dinner for Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh without a formal invitation and were photographed shaking hands with President Barack Obama.
The Virginia couple were auditioning for a part in "The Real Housewives of D.C." and had been followed by a camera crew earlier in the day.
The Daily Beast, citing sources close to the TV series, said Bravo has now decided to go ahead with the show premiering in July. Bravo could not immediately be reached for comment.
"The Real Housewives of D.C" would be the latest in the hit reality franchise which has profiled the lives of wealthy society women in New York, Atlanta, Orange County and New Jersey, turning many of them into minor celebrities.
President Obama will soon name Dr. Donald M. Berwick, an iconoclastic scholar of health policy, to run Medicare and Medicaid, the programs that serve nearly one-third of all Americans, administration officials said Saturday.
Dr. Berwick, a Pediatrician, is president of the Institute for Health Care Improvement in Cambridge, Mass. He has repeatedly challenged doctors and hospitals to provide better care at a lower cost. He says the government and insurers can increase the quality and efficiency of care by basing payments on the value of services, not the volume.
Mr. Obama plans to nominate Dr. Berwick to be administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a unit of the Department of Health and Human Services that has been without a permanent chief since October 2006, when Dr. Mark B. McClellan stepped down.
If confirmed by the Senate, Dr. Berwick would have a huge plate of responsibilities under the new health care law.
The law, signed Tuesday by Mr. Obama, will expand Medicaid to cover 16 million more people, squeeze nearly a half-trillion dollars out of Medicare in the next 10 years and establish many demonstration projects to test innovative ways of delivering health care.
Dr. Berwick’s nomination would be subject to Senate confirmation. Senators would almost surely use a confirmation hearing as a forum to debate the merits of the new health care law and to investigate how the administration plans to carry it out.
Steven D. Findlay, a health policy analyst at Consumers Union, said: “This would be a spectacular appointment. Don has been an intellectual force in health care for decades. He helped forge many ideas incorporated in the new health care law.”
As examples, Mr. Findlay cited provisions of the law intended to reduce readmissions to hospitals, prevent hospital-acquired infections and hold doctors and hospitals more accountable.
Dr. Elliott S. Fisher, director of the Center for Health Policy Research at Dartmouth Medical School, said Dr. Berwick was “a visionary leader who can motivate people to change.”
However, he does not appear to have experience managing a large bureaucracy.
The Medicare and Medicaid agency has about 4,400 employees and spends more than $800 billion a year, making it the largest purchaser of health care in the country. As administrator, Dr. Berwick would spend much of his time defending the health care overhaul, writing regulations to carry it out and fielding calls from members of Congress.
Dr. Berwick has denounced “the insanity of health care that costs too much and achieves too little.” But at the same time, he celebrates the work of hospitals that have reduced medical errors and deaths by the systematic application of proven techniques. And he wants to disseminate the secrets of communities that provide high-quality care at low cost.
Dr. Berwick could help shield the White House from Republican charges that Mr. Obama’s policies would lead to the rationing of care or even a government takeover.
At his institute’s annual conference in December, Dr. Berwick issued this challenge to health care providers: “Over the next three years, reduce the total resource consumption of your health care system, no matter where you start, by 10 percent. Do that without a single instance of harm, without rationing effective care, without excluding needed services for any population you serve.”
He said he had learned from his own medical problems, which include osteoarthritis in his right knee. “It comes from medical error, botched surgery when I was a medical student, aggravated by years of jogging,” he said.
Doctors urged him to have a knee replacement operation several years ago, but he decided instead to have just a “steroid injection,” and the outcome has been fine, he said.
In 1998, Dr. Berwick was a member of an advisory commission appointed by President Bill Clinton that recommended a patients’ bill of rights and steps to reduce medical mistakes.
He was also a member of a blue-ribbon panel that focused national attention on medical errors and patient safety in 1999. The panel, created by the Institute of Medicine, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, said that medical errors caused tens of thousands of deaths in hospitals each year.
From 1996 to 1999, Dr. Berwick was the first independent member of the board of trustees of the American Hospital Association.
Sarah Palin told thousands of Tea Party activists gathered in the Nevada desert that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will have to explain his votes when he comes back to his hometown.
The wind whipped U.S. and Alabama flags behind Palin as she stood on the makeshift stage, holding a microphone and her notes as she spoke to the crowd.
Palin says the big government, big debt spending spree of Reid, President Barack Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is over, and "you're fired." She told the crowd that Reid is "gambling away our future."
"Someone needs to tell him, this is not a crapshoot," Palin said.
She says those protesting the health care overhaul aren't inciting violence, but says they shouldn't sit down and shut up.
Palin was the main attraction at the rally about 60 miles south of Las Vegas. It kicks off a 42-city bus tour that ends in Washington on April 15.
Reid responded Saturday through a statement released by his Senate campaign.
"I'm happy so many people came to see my hometown of Searchlight and spend their out-of-state money, especially in these tough economic times," Reid said. "This election will be decided by Nevadans, not people from other states who parachuted in for one day to have a tea party."
Thousands gathered on a dirt lot in Reid's hometown for what organizers are calling the "Showdown in Searchlight."
The Tea Party Express had expected between 5,000 and 10,000 people. About 8,000 people were at the event as of 2 p.m., according to an estimate from Metro Police spokesman Jay Rivera. Traffic at one time was backed up about five miles from Searchlight.
Police said there were no arrests at the event, but police did briefly detain one person who had a gun in an open holster. Police also said they responded to one medical call for an person having a seizure at the event.
Cars and RVs filled the area as people set up lawn chairs and braced against a stiff wind whipping up dust clouds and blowing dozens of flags straight out.
The rally is targeting Reid and comes on the heels of the passage of the landmark health care reform legislation, which progressives are billing as the most important piece of social legislation since the mid-1960s passage of Medicare, the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. Passed on a party-line vote, Democrats say the bill expands coverage to the uninsured and cuts the exploding increase in health care costs.
But to the small-government Tea Party movement, the legislation represents an unconstitutional infringement of liberty and a further extension of the welfare state.
The movement is now a year old, having been formed in the early days of the Obama administration when it introduced plans to buck up a cratering economy with government spending, tax cuts and bailouts for the collapsing banking and auto industries. The movement continued to gather strength as the administration revealed ambitious plans to reform health care and curb carbon emissions.
The Republican Party has harnessed the energy of the movement and banked much of its near-term prospects on the movement's ability to turn enthusiasm into electoral victories, like that of the newly-elected governors of New Jersey and Virginia.
Republicans seemed to be on the upswing with the election of Scott Brown, taking the seat of the late Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy and breaking the Democrats' 60-seat supermajority.
As the Senate majority leader who has shepherded much of the administration's agenda through Congress, Reid is the Tea Party movement's biggest target. He suffers from low approval ratings among Republicans and independents and has yet to secure his base. Roughly a dozen Republicans have lined up in a GOP primary to face him in November.
Republican Gov. Jim Gibbons, also trailing in his own primary and trying to tap into the conservative grassroots, was to welcome today's speakers.
Traffic was backed up onto U.S. 95 as crowds filed in this morning. The site has taken on the look of an RV city with a festival atmosphere.
Police don't expect problems at Saturday's rally, but Metro Police are sending dozens of uniformed and plainclothes officers to patrol the crowd.
Ketha Verzani, 60, said she's a Republican, and came to the rally from Las Vegas "to stand with those who want to clean house."
She opposes the health care bill and worries Americans are losing their rights, including parental rights and gun rights.
"It seems like every day more and more of our rights are being taken away," Verzani said, sporting a Palin 2012 button to show support for the former Alaska governor who "doesn't beat around the bush."
Palin, the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee, appeared in Searchlight after spending Friday and Saturday morning campaigning for Sen. John McCain, the Arizona Republican who led the 2008 ticket.
A string of polls has shown Reid is vulnerable in Nevada after pushing President Barack Obama's agenda in Congress. His standing has also been hurt by Nevada's double-digit unemployment and record foreclosure and bankruptcy rates.
Reid supporters planned their own rally Saturday about a mile from the tea party event.
Luis Salvador, 55, an unemployed fire sprinkler fitter, drove up from Las Vegas to support Reid, who he said has done a lot for the state and doesn't deserve the protest brought to his hometown.
"You don't come to a man's house and start creating a ruckus," said Salvador, a registered independent. He and several others taped signs saying "Nevada Needs Harry Reid" to the side of a truck near the highway that runs through town.
Another Reid supporter, Judy Hill, 62, said she doesn't understand the hatred of Reid. The longtime Democrat from Searchlight, a town of about 1,000, said she thinks people just don't know the man she calls a friend.
"They listen to the rhetoric. I think he's very misunderstood and under-appreciated," she said.
Climaxing months of hard negotiations, President Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev agreed on Friday to sharp cuts in the nuclear arsenals of both nations in the most comprehensive arms control treaty in two decades. "We have turned words into action," Obama declared.
Obama said the pact, to be signed April 8 in Prague, was part of his effort to "reset" relations with Russia and a step toward "the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons."
The agreement would require both sides to reduce their arsenals of long-range nuclear weapons by about a third, from 2,200 now to 1,550 each. The pact, replacing and expanding the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty of 1991, which expired in December, was a significant gesture toward improved U.S.-Russian relations that have been badly frayed.
The reductions would still leave both sides with immense arsenals -- and the ability to easily annihilate each other.
"In many ways, nuclear weapons represent both the darkest days of the Cold War, and the most troubling threats of our time," Obama said at the White House. "Today, we have taken another step forward in leaving behind the legacy of the 20th century while building a more secure future for our children."
In Russia, Medvedev's spokeswoman Natalya Timakova told the Interfax news agency, "This treaty reflects the balance of interests of both nations."
A Kremlin statement said, "The new treaty stipulates that strategic arms will be based exclusively on the territories of each of the nations."
Both sides would have seven years after the treaty's ratification to carry out the approximately 30 percent reduction in long-range nuclear warheads. The agreement also calls for cutting by about half the missiles and bombers that carry the weapons to their targets.
"We have turned words into action. We have made progress that is clear and concrete. And we have demonstrated the importance of American leadership -- and American partnership -- on behalf of our own security, and the world's," Obama said.
Though the agreement must still be ratified by the Senate and both houses of the Russian Parliament before it takes effect, Obama and Medvedev plan to sign it next month in Prague, the city where last April, Obama delivered his signature speech on arms control.
For his administration, a major value of the treaty is in setting the stage for potential further successes.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, standing with Defense Secretary Robert Gates alongside Obama, noted next month's international meeting of leaders on nuclear proliferation being hosted by the president in Washington, focused on preventing the spread of nuclear weapons to terrorists and rogue states.
"We come with more credibility, Russia comes with more credibility, having negotiated this treaty," she said.
Ratification in the Senate will require 67 votes, two thirds of the Senate, meaning Obama will need support from Republicans. Some GOP senators had previously expressed concerns about concessions being made by U.S. negotiators.
Clinton, asked whether approval could be achieved given the recent fierce partisan battles and close votes over health care, said it could.
"National security has always produced large bipartisan majorities, and I see no reason why this should be any different," she said. "I believe that a vast majority of the Senate, at the end of the day, will see that this is in America's interest. And it goes way beyond politics."
In Russia, the treaty goes first to the State Duma, the lower house, and then to the Federation Council.
Speaking in the White House briefing room, Obama said the treaty by the globe's two largest nuclear powers would "send a clear signal that we intend to lead" the rest of the world in reducing the nuclear threat.
Clinton noted that the U.S. and Russia still possess more than 90 percent of the world's nuclear weapons. "We do not need such large arsenals to protect our nation," she said.
She emphasized the verification mechanism in the treaty, a key demand of the U.S. that was resisted by Russia and was one of the sticking points that delayed completion of the deal. It will "reduce the chance for misunderstandings and miscalculations," she told reporters.
Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that by helping to build trust "this treaty enhances our ability to do that which we have been charged to do -- protect and defend the citizens of the United States."
He said U.S. commanders around the world "stand solidly behind the treaty."
Gates cautioned the treaty -- and an accompanying review of nuclear posture -- will require more spending to modernize America's nuclear arsenal. At the same time, the defense secretary called it an "important milestone" in consigning Cold War nightmares to the past.
Gates recalled serving as an Air Force officer supervising Minuteman missiles at Wightman Air Force Base. The new treaty, he said, "is testimony to just how much the world has changed."
The deal ended nearly a year of tense and tumultuous negotiations between the two countries.
Despite intense Republican objections, President Obama on Saturday used recess appointments to fill 15 administration posts without Senate confirmation, including Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board.
By filling the jobs while Congress is in recess, Obama gets around Senate confirmation. Obama justified the move by charging Republicans with playing politics with his administration nominees.
"The United States Senate has the responsibility to approve or disapprove of my nominees. But if, in the interest of scoring political points, Republicans in the Senate refuse to exercise that responsibility, I must act in the interest of the American people and exercise my authority to fill these positions on an interim basis," he said in a written statement.
All 41 Senate Republicans wrote Obama this week urging him not to use a recess appointment for Becker, a former top lawyer with Service Employees International Union and the AFL-CIO, whose nomination was rejected by the Senate last month, 52-43.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce also wrote Obama on behalf of 20 business groups that opposed Becker's nomination and decried the recess appointment.
"This recess appointment disregards the Senate's bipartisan rejection of Craig Becker's nomination to the NLRB," Chamber Vice President Randel Johnson said in a written statement.
"Overriding the will of the Senate and providing this special interest payback contradicts the president's claim to change the tone in Washington," he said. "The business community should be on red alert for radical changes that could significantly impair the ability of America's job creators to compete."
But White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki cast the opposition of Becker's nomination as part of an "unprecedented level of obstruction in the Senate" that had left "key economic positions unfilled, especially at time when our country is recovering from the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression."
Psaki said the five-member labor board had been trying to operate with only two members.
The Senate's top Democrat, Harry Reid, welcomed Obama's move. "Regrettably, Senate Republicans have dedicated themselves to a failed strategy to cripple President Obama's economic initiatives by stalling key administration nominees at every turn," said Reid, the majority leader from Nevada.
But Republicans say Becker isn't working for all Americans.
"Craig Becker stands far outside the mainstream of NLRB nominees," Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said in a written statement Thursday. "Given the bipartisan opposition to his nomination, the administration would be wise to not circumvent the will of the Senate by recess appointing him to the NLRB.
"There is no place on this powerful board for someone who believes that card check legislation -- getting rid of the secret union ballot -- can be enacted surreptitiously through regulation."
Sen. John McCain said the Senate has already delivered its verdict on Becker's ability to serve impartially on the labor board.
"If this administration chooses to recess appoint Mr. Becker, it would be just another example of putting the will of one special interest group over the will of the American people," he said.
Republicans wanted Obama to scrap Becker's nomination and appoint one Democrat, Mark Pearce, and one Republican, Brian Lewis, to the other vacant seats. Pearce was one of the 15 nominees appointed Saturday.
Democratic groups, such as the AFL-CIO, have said Becker's an experienced advocate for worker rights and have decried GOP "obstructionism."
But Obama didn't specifically address the controversy over Becker in his statement Saturday. Instead, he focused on the nominees still awaiting a vote in the Senate.
"At a time of economic emergency, two top appointees to the Department of Treasury have been held up for nearly six months," he said. "I simply cannot allow partisan politics to stand in the way of the basic functioning of government."
Obama noted that former President George W. Bush made 15 recess appointments by this point in his presidency, "but he was not facing the same level of obstruction."
According to the White House, Bush had five nominees pending on the Senate floor by the same point in his first term compared with Obama's 77 nominees.
Sarah Palin exhorted thousands of conservative tea party activists assembled in the Nevada desert Saturday to "fire" Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and other Democrats from Congress in the upcoming national election.
The wind whipped U.S. flags behind the former Alaska governor as she stood on a makeshift stage, holding a microphone and her notes as she spoke to the cheering crowd in Reid's hometown. She told them Reid, fighting for re-election, is "gambling away our future."
"Someone needs to tell him, this is not a crapshoot," Palin said.
About 7,000 people streamed into tiny Searchlight, a former mining town 60 miles south of Las Vegas, bringing American flags, "Don't Tread on Me" signs and outspoken anger toward Reid, President Barack Obama and the health care overhaul.
Palin told them the big-government, big-debt spending spree of the Senate majority leader, Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is over.
"You're fired!" Palin said.
A string of polls has shown Reid is vulnerable in politically moderate Nevada after pushing Obama's agenda in Congress. His standing has also been hurt by Nevada's double-digit unemployment and record foreclosure and bankruptcy rates.
The Searchlight native responded with sarcasm to the large crowd gathered in the hardscrabble town of about 1,000 he grew up in.
"I'm happy so many people came to see my hometown of Searchlight and spend their out-of-state money, especially in these tough economic times," Reid said Saturday in a statement released through his Senate campaign. "This election will be decided by Nevadans, not people from other states who parachuted in for one day to have a tea party."
Traffc jam Traffic on a highway leading into the town was backed up more than two miles Saturday afternoon as people gathered for the rally, which kicks off a 42-city bus tour that ends in Washington on April 15, tax day.
It's been called a conservative Woodstock, and takes place just days after the historic health care vote that ushered in near-universal medical coverage and divided Congress and the nation. The vote was followed by reports of threats and vandalism aimed at some Washington lawmakers, mostly Democrats who supported the new law.
Conservative columnist Andrew Breitbart disputed accounts that tea party activists in Washington shouted racial epithets at black members of Congress amid the health care debate, although he didn't provide any evidence.
"I know you're not a racist group," he told the crowd.
Palin, the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee, appeared after spending Friday and Saturday morning campaigning for Sen. John McCain, the Arizona Republican who led the 2008 ticket. McCain is seeking re-election but faces a Republican primary challenge from the right by former congressman and radio talk show host JD Hayworth.
At a campaign stop Saturday morning in Mesa, Palin urged McCain supporters to help put government "back on the side of the people" and praised McCain as a hero "who can lead us to a brighter future."
Her speech was disrupted twice by hecklers who were forcibly removed from the room. "Young man, stick around and listen to what we’re going to say. Maybe you’ll learn something," she told the first heckler.
Now a Fox News analyst and potential 2012 presidential candidate, Palin faced criticism after posting a map on her Facebook page that had circles and cross hairs over 20 Democratic districts. She also sent a tweet saying, "Don't Retreat, Instead - RELOAD!"
She said Saturday she wasn't inciting violence, just trying to inspire people to get involved.
"We're not going to sit down and shut up. Thank you for standing up," Palin said.
Peaceful Rally
Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department sent officers to patrol the crowd, but aside from a report of fistfight that officers didn't see, the event appeared peaceful. Officer Jay Rivera said there had been no arrests.
The tea party movement is a far-flung coalition of conservative groups angered by Washington spending, rising taxes and the growth and reach of government. It takes its name from the Boston Tea Party in 1773, when colonists dumped tea off English ships to protest what they considered unfair taxation by the British crown.
"Some of you are registered Republicans. Some of you are ... what we used to call Reagan Democrats," Palin said. "And some of you are like so many of my friends and my family, including my own husband, just independent, not registered in any party.
The rally was a festival of all things conservative, as well as a political call-to-arms. Protesters dressed as Colonial soldiers with three-corner hats and marched through the crowd beating drums. There were Ronald Reagan masks, plenty of camouflage, and American flags fashioned into every manner of dress. Placards danced in the wind: "Stop the Obama Nation"; "Change It Back"; "No Taxation Without Representation."
Silent Majority
Donna and Jim McGeachy, both 63 and Republicans, held a "Don't Tread on Me Flag," and said the government has stopped listening.
"We are talking to you, but you turned a deaf ear," Donna McGeachy said.
"We're kind of what you call the silent majority," her husband said. "I think it's about time to change."
Organizers had said up to 10,000 people might come; around 1 p.m., police estimated the crowd was about 7,000.
Leonard Grimes, a 70-year-old retired logger, said the nation is drifting toward socialism, and he's not convinced Obama is eligible to be president.
"I'd like him to prove he's an American citizen," said Grimes, a registered independent who is originally from Michigan but now lives in Golden Valley, Ariz.
He called the health care bill "a joke, just another way to enslave the American public."
Reid supporters set up a hospitality tent Saturday in the parking lot of a Searchlight casino, about a mile from the tea party rally. The Senate leader planned to spend part of the day at a new shooting range in Las Vegas with National Rifle Association Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre.
Luis Salvador, 55, an unemployed fire sprinkler fitter, drove down from Las Vegas to support Reid, who he said has done a lot for the state and doesn't deserve the protest brought to his hometown.
"You don't come to a man's house and start creating a ruckus," said Salvador, a registered independent. He and several others taped signs saying "Nevada Needs Harry Reid" to the side of a truck near the highway that runs through town.
Another Reid supporter, Judy Hill, 62, said she doesn't understand the hatred of Reid. The longtime Democrat from Searchlight said she thinks people just don't know the man she calls a friend.
"They listen to the rhetoric. I think he's very misunderstood and under-appreciated," she said.
A Greenville state Senate candidate who has made an issue of the state's overpayment of mental health claims is himself on the hook for $4.2 million in Medicaid overcharges for services provided by his family's company.
Frankie Bordeaux and his wife, Hattie Faye Hardy Bordeaux, signed a settlement with the state in February that included a two-year repayment plan for money improperly collected by Cambridge Behavioral Health Services in Greenville. The first monthly payment, $241,296, was due this month.
An investigation of Cambridge by the state Medicaid office found hundreds of cases of incomplete patient records, "several instances of potential fraud," duplicate or "canned" notes, and unqualified staff delivering care, according to the settlement.
Of 476 records reviewed, the office found 428 cases in which patients were served at unauthorized sites, 366 instances in which the staff was not qualified to provide the service offered, and hundreds of other discrepancies with their records. The review found problems with nearly 95 percent of the company's claims.
Groups under scrutiny
For the last several years, the state has been cracking down on providers of a mental health service called community support.
Companies came under scrutiny when government auditors found they were treating people who did not need help and were billing for work they didn't do. Legislators last year decided to phase out most of that program.
The $4.2 million deal with Cambridge is the second-highest settlement with a mental health company in the last four years, according to the Medicaid office.
The case was sent to the Medicaid Investigations Unit in the state attorney general's office. An investigation is under way.
Bordeaux said he is not an example of the mess he has pledged to clean up.
"I am not part of the problem," Bordeaux said. "While my name is associated, tied to it, it has nothing to do with me running for this seat."
Bordeaux, who incorporated the company that became Cambridge with his wife, is not an owner, his lawyer said. Bordeaux said he is now the administrative director, in charge of human resources and the business office.
Fighting NC Corruption
Bordeaux, a Democrat, is challenging incumbent Sen. Clark Jenkins in a primary in the district covering Edgecombe, Martin and Pitt counties.
He has made fighting government corruption a cornerstone of his campaign, even criticizing the state Department of Health and Human Services for its overpayments to companies such as his that offer community mental health services.
"Like most citizens, I am growing weary of news headlines documenting public corruption and scandal in our state government," says a statement on his campaign Web site.
"Graft, corruption and scandal are not acceptable and politicians and bureaucrats who personally benefit from their service - need to be prosecuted and punished," the statement continues. "Furthermore, we must do more to hold bureaucrats and government officials accountable for their actions."
Jenkins, who is seeking a fifth term, has always faced a Democratic primary opponent.
Bordeaux has tried to paint Jenkins, a longtime friend of Senate leader Marc Basnight and a former state Department of Transportation member, as out of touch with the district.
The wrong location
Bordeaux said most of Cambridge's problems resulted from the company's serving clients in unauthorized offices.
Cambridge was serving patients from offices in Rocky Mount before the company discovered it needed clearance from the local mental health office to operate from those locations, Bordeaux said.
Local mental health offices must endorse providers and their locations.
Each location gets a separate billing number, so that local offices can track which providers are working in their regions.
In October 2008, a local mental health office in Rocky Mount reviewed Cambridge's records and directed the company to stop taking new patients from its area. But Cambridge continued to do so through December 2009, according to a letter from the local office.
The legal settlement says that Cambridge presented bills for the patients as though they were being treated from the Greenville office, rather than from Rocky Mount.
Not the owner
James Jorgensen, a Raleigh lawyer representing Cambridge, said situation was the result of poor communication between the company and the local mental health office, which is called the Beacon Center. "I think Cambridge misunderstood what the Beacon Center requested of them," he said.
Jorgensen wanted to make it clear that Frankie Bordeaux does not own the company.
Only Bordeaux's wife is listed on the most recent business incorporation papers. She holds the title of manager. Bordeaux signed earlier versions of the business filings and was an incorporator, with his wife, of Cambridge Behavioral Health's precursor, Child & Adolescent Counseling Services Inc.
Cambridge denied in the settlement that it committed abuse or fraud.
"If we had litigated, we could have shown a lot of things that could have been rebutted," Jorgensen said.
Brad Crone, head of the Raleigh campaign firm Bordeaux hired, said Jenkins tried use the settlement to push Bordeaux out of the race.
Jenkins said he never used the settlement to pressure Bordeaux not to run.
"I do not intend to get in the mud with that," Jenkins said. "I did not do it."
Sarah Palin and thousands of tea party activists were gathering at Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's small hometown in the Nevada desert Saturday to call for the ouster of Democrats who supported the health care overhaul.
Organizers predicted as many as 10,000 people would attend the so-called "Showdown in Searchlight," the hardscrabble former mining town where the Senate Democratic leader grew up and owns a home. Searchlight's population is 798, according to the travelnevada.com Web site.
Since the health care vote, "Everyone is waiting to see if the tea party movement is reinvigorated or if we've resigned ourselves to defeat," Joe Wierzbicki, a spokesman for event sponsor Tea Party Express, said in an e-mail.
The rally that's been called a conservative Woodstock takes place just days after the historic health care vote that ushered in near-universal medical coverage and divided Congress and the nation.
The vote was followed by reports of threats and vandalism aimed at some Washington lawmakers, mostly Democrats who supported the new law. Bricks have been hurled through Democrats' windows and at least 10 members of Congress who voted for the bill have received threats.
In the run-up to the health care vote, racial epithets aimed at black members of Congress were heard at protests attended by at least some tea party members.
Police don't expect problems but the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department is sending dozens of uniformed and plainclothes officers to patrol the crowd.
"Don't Retreat... Reload"
Palin, the former Alaska governor and 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee, was scheduled to appear at the gathering after spending Friday and Saturday morning campaigning for Sen. John McCain, the Arizona Republican who led the 2008 ticket.
At a campaign event Saturday morning in Mesa, Palin urged McCain supporters to help put government "back on the side of the people" and praised McCain as a hero "who can lead us to a brighter future."
Her speech was disrupted twice by hecklers who were forcibly removed from the room.
"Young man, stick around and listen to what we’re going to say. Maybe you’ll learn something," she told the first heckler.
Now a Fox News analyst and potential 2012 presidential candidate, Palin faced criticism after posting a map on her Facebook page that had circles and cross hairs over 20 Democratic districts. She also sent a tweet saying, "Don't Retreat, Instead - RELOAD!"
She said Friday she was alluding to votes, not guns.
"The tea party has one big challenge between now and November and that is policing itself," said Bill Whalen, a fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution and a speechwriter for President George H.W. Bush's 1992 campaign. "There is a lot of bitterness in politics today, and unfortunately it's much too close to the surface. You can plan a rally for 5,000 people, and if one person does something horrible, the rally was not successful."
Some rallies have featured protesters carrying holstered handguns, legal in some states. No violence has been reported.
"I'm confident we are going to have an orderly group," said Debbie Landis, whose tea party group is holding a candidate forum before the rally. "This is going to be attended by people interested in the future of their state and country, not rabble-rousers."
Organizers are aware of the visibility of the event.
"The whole world is watching," Tea Party Express spokesman Joe Wierzbicki said in an e-mail. "If you can get in your car and drive up, or hop on a plane, or take your motorhome or motorcycle, please, please, please join this historic effort."
Eric Odom, an organizer for the Patriot Caucus and other tea party groups, said in an e-mail Thursday that he had received "hundreds of hateful messages and phone calls" he attributed to "leftists" and supporters of the overhaul.
"Welcome to the real America," Norman Halfpenny, retired Marine Corps master gunnery sergeant told The Las Vegas Review-Journal, as he and other volunteer valets greeted hundreds of overnight campers. "We're Republican by registration, but I'd even vote for a communist right now if they would start to change the way we're running the country. We need to get our Constitution back."
Halfpenny's friend, Jeff Gerod, 62, and Gerod's wife, Cindy, from Lake Havasu, told the newspaper: "We need to go back to the government of the people, by the people and for the people — I think that's how it goes."
A string of polls has shown Reid is vulnerable in politically moderate Nevada after pushing President Barack Obama's agenda in Congress.
His standing has also been hurt by Nevada's double-digit unemployment and record foreclosure and bankruptcy rates.
Democrats and Reid's campaign plan to set up a hospitality tent in the parking lot of a Searchlight casino that will serve tea and doughnut holes. In a counterpoint to the conservative protest, the Senate leader will spend part of the day at a new shooting range in Las Vegas with National Rifle Association Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre.
"Searchlight doesn't get many tourists, so I'm glad they are choosing to bring all their out-of-state money to my hometown," Reid said in a statement.
The tea party movement is a far-flung coalition of conservative groups angered by Washington spending, rising taxes and the growth and reach of government.
It takes its name from the Boston Tea Party in 1773, when colonists dumped tea off English ships to protest what they considered unfair taxation by the British crown.
The rally kicks off a 42-city bus tour that ends in Washington on April 15, tax day.
Three years after the housing bust sent foreclosures rates soaring, the White House has gone back to the drawing board to try to keep another 8 million homeowners in their homes.
But a series of enhancements to the Obama administration's year-old foreclosure relief plan announced Friday does little to attack the fundamental logjams that have plagued a program designed to modify loans to create more affordable payments.
As a result, the latest changes likely will help relatively few borrowers, according to those briefed on the program.
“We continue to tinker around the edges of foreclosure prevention,” said John Taylor, president of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, who testified Thursday on Capitol Hill about the program’s failings.
“We rush to give banks tax breaks, but we dawdle to help homeowners who through no fault of their own lost their jobs because of the economic crisis or bought defective loans that caused the economic crisis.”
When the pace of U.S. foreclosures began rising in 2007, the hardest hit were borrowers who had been sold subprime loans that reset to unaffordable levels. As the housing market cratered and the recession deepened, the problem spread to other groups, including those who lost their jobs or saw the value of their homes fall below what they owed on their mortgage.
The changes announced Friday are intended to help those groups. Lenders and mortgage servicers will be required to offer three to six months of temporary relief for borrowers who have lost their jobs.
Mortgage companies participating in the existing Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP), also will be required to consider cutting the amount borrowers owe, for which they would be paid an incentive from the $75 billion set aside to fund the HAMP program. "They’re trying,” said Helen Raynaud, vice president of national grants for the National Foundation for Credit Counseling. “But a lot of the aspects are still voluntary for the servicers to participate."
Additional incentives are being offered to lenders and servicers that cut payments or eliminate second mortgages — a key roadblock in many loan modifications. But unless lenders and servicers suddenly increase the pace of loan modifications, the cost of those incentives will likely remain small. So far, the government has paid out only about $50 million under the HAMP program.
After the Bush administration’s first foreclosure relief plan, Hope Now, failed to make a dent in the rising foreclosure rate, the Obama administration a year ago announced the HAMP program to try to head off the widening crisis. The plan originally was expected to save between 3 million and 4 million homes. So far, of 1.1 million homeowners who have signed up, only 170,000 have won permanent loan modifications.
To be sure, the latest changes will help boost that number. But those who have looked at the new guidelines say the numbers helped likely will still be counted in the hundreds of thousands. As many as 8 million homeowners are at risk of losing their homes in the next two years.
"We remain dubious about government mortgage modification efforts," wrote Jaret Seiberg, an analyst with Concept Capital's Washington Research Group. "So far none have lived up to expectations, and we see little reason to believe the latest effort will turn out any different."
Part of the problem lies with the scope of the crisis. Three years after the housing bubble burst, the number of homeowners falling behind on their mortgages continues to rise. On Thursday, U.S. banking regulators reported that the number of seriously delinquent mortgages jumped in the fourth quarter, led by a sharp increase among the most creditworthy borrowers.
Some 13.6 percent of all homeowners with mortgages — more than one in seven — are behind in their payments, according to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. It was the seventh consecutive quarterly rise.
Meanwhile, millions of homeowners who were sold “pay-option” adjustable mortgages during the housing boom face the prospect of big jumps in monthly payments this year and next. Millions more are “underwater,” owing more than their home is worth.
The mortgage mess remains mired in the complex financial innovation that created the hundreds of billions of dollars of mortgage-backed bonds that financed the housing bubble. That has created an equally complex quagmire of multiple investors holding pieces of an individual homeowner's mortgage. Disagreements over how to value those investments, and how and when to book losses, have stymied the process from the beginning.
“We have to do a real reality check,” said David Berenbaum, chief program officer at the NCRC. “Until we address the underlying problems with this paper — who holds it, how it was originated, how people are accountable and how we can correct this epidemic of foreclosures — our communities' tax base, as well as the economic climate of the nation, is at risk.”
Rising unemployment has also expanded the crisis to a pool of borrowers who were once among the most creditworthy. But one of the nasty side effects of the loan modification has been that homeowners who see their payments reduced below the original amount can see their credit scores lowered.
“That can hurt them when they go looking for a job,” said Raynaud. “When you get a job offer, employers are looking at credit scores.”
It’s not clear whether Friday’s announcement addresses that problem, said Raynaud.
Homeowners who have applied for help with their mortgages report a blizzard of red tape when trying to deal with lenders and servicers. Many servicers have acknowledged the problem, but argue that they were never set up to deal with the historic wave of defaults and foreclosures.
But three years after the housing bust began, homeowners and housing counselors report that the process involves endless delays on hold, repeated redirection from one department to another, delayed or no response, lost paperwork and little or no explanations when applications are denied.
“These problems have not really been addressed yet,” said Raynaud “I have not heard from any counselors that it’s getting better.”
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