Pres. Obama Announces Jobs Summit...No More Rhetoric! Just Hire People!

Obama announces Job Summit. President Obama says the White House is organizing a wide-ranging jobs summit to tackle Unemployment.

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Pres. Obama talks specifics on Job Creation. Action! Where's the Action on this issue?? Has the Obama Administration waited too late?

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What will a Job Summit accomplish for America's Unemployed citizens? Is this just more Rhetoric?

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Sources: MSNBC, Google Maps

Pres. Obama Appoints Health Care Policy Czar (Health Care Industry "Watch Dog")

MSNBC, Whitehouse.gov----

Despite all the hoopla and criticism about her Health Care Industry connections, who is better equipped to become the Obama Administration's Health Care Policy "watch dog" than someone extremely knowledgeable of how Health Care Providers rob consumers and violate regulations for profit.

Or.... should I say Health Care Providers who appear to violate regulations for profit.

(For ex: By intentionally refusing to accept members who have Pre-existing conditions, intentionally denying members' medical claims for no good reason, overcharging to process Medicare claims, canceling members' services or Prescription Drug Cards without explanation or prior warning, keeping money contributed by members for Health Care Flex Benefits, refusing to send out COBRA packages in a timely manner, Overcharging for COBRA, outsourcing their member services division to companies who help participate in Health Care Industry scams/ fraudulent activity, etc.,)

In fact I'd be so bold to say that no one is more suited for that role than Nancy DeParle, a former Health Care Industry Insider. Wouldn't you agree?

Eat your heart out NC Blue Cross, Blue Shield.

Smart move Mr. President. Smart move!

(On the video clip below Nancy-Ann DeParle of the White House and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom discuss with Dr. Nancy Snyderman the options for Health Care Reform.)

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(From Whitehouse.gov)


Nancy-Ann DeParle is Counselor to the President and Director of the White House Office of Health Reform. As an official in Tennessee state government, the White House, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, DeParle has worked to extend health care coverage for millions of children, improve quality for seniors and Americans with disabilities, and raise standards for program performance and integrity. She also brings a unique industry perspective from her work in the private sector.

From 1997-2000, DeParle served in the Clinton Administration as Administrator of the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA, now called the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services or CMS). A key health policy advisor to President Clinton, she ran Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP, which provide health insurance for 74 million Americans at an annual cost of more than $600 billion. Before joining HHS, she served as Associate Director for Health & Personnel at the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

After leaving government in 2000, DeParle has been a fellow at the Institute of Politics at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, a Senior Adviser to JP Morgan Partners LLC, a Commissioner of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC), a Senior Fellow at the Wharton School of Business of the University of Pennsylvania, a trustee of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and a member of the U.S. Government Accountability Office’s Comptroller General’s Advisory Council. She also served as a director of corporate and not-for-profit boards. From 2006-2008, she was a Managing Director at CCMP Capital, a private equity firm.

Earlier in her career, DeParle served in the Cabinet of Tennessee Governor Ned McWherter as Commissioner of Human Services. She has also worked as a lawyer in private practice. In 1994, Time selected her one of "America’s 50 Most Promising Leaders Age 40 and Under."

DeParle received a B.A. from the University of Tennessee, where she was Student Body President, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. She also received a B.A. and M.A. from Balliol College of Oxford University, where she was a Rhodes Scholar.



(From MSNBC)


Nancy-Ann DeParle, President Barack Obama’s Health Policy Czar, served as a director of corporations that faced scores of federal investigations, whistleblower lawsuits and other regulatory actions, according to government records reviewed by the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University.

Several of the companies were investigated for alleged kickbacks or engaging in other illegal billing schemes, while others were accused of serious violations of federal quality standards, including one company that failed to warn patients of deadly problems with an implanted heart defibrillator. Several of the cases ended with substantial fines paid to the federal government, even though the companies admitted no wrongdoing.

Since leaving her government job running Medicare for the Clinton administration, DeParle built a lucrative private-sector career. Records show she earned more than $6.6 million since early 2001, according to a tally by the Investigative Reporting Workshop.

Much of that corporate career was built at companies that have frequently had to defend themselves against federal investigations. After leaving government, DeParle accepted director positions at half a dozen companies suspected of violating the very laws and regulations she had enforced for Medicare. Those companies got into further trouble on her watch as a director.

Now she’s back in government as a leading voice in deciding the shape of health care reform. Named by Obama in March as director of the White House Office of Health Reform, making $158,000 a year, DeParle is the point person in pushing for the administration's plans for changing health care and the ways Americans pay for it — changes in which her former companies have a great deal at stake.

Critics see DeParle’s re-emergence as a classic case of Washington “revolving door” syndrome, despite Obama’s suggestions that he would shut that door.

The administration faces a “balancing act,” said Steve Ellis of the nonpartisan Taxpayers for Common Sense. Obama must find leaders with the proper expertise, but who are “not so conflicted that they cannot engage in all facets of the debate.”

Advocates of a “single-payer” coverage plan say that DeParle may be indebted to the companies she served, and more broadly to the health care industry.

“This woman owes her fortune to the corporations that she is making decisions about,” said Dr. David Himmelstein, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard University and a co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program.

“She cashed in really big on her previous role in government and made millions and millions of dollars. Then she divests and all of a sudden she’s Snow White. It’s ridiculous.”

Among DeParle’s corporate connections:

* DaVita Inc., which owns and operates kidney dialysis centers, has been the subject of several government probes into its billing and drug-prescribing practices, most recently in December by Justice Department investigators in Georgia. DeParle joined the DaVita board in May 2001 and resigned in July 2008 “to devote more time to her other business activities,” according to the company. She earned more than $2 million in compensation and stock sales, according to records at the Securities and Exchange Commission.

* Boston Scientific Corp. reported to the SEC that it received five state or federal subpoenas during 2008, including ones from the Justice Department and Health and Human Services, which oversees the Medicare agency. In addition, Defense Department criminal investigators are looking into the company’s “marketing interactions” with doctors at a U.S. Army hospital in Tacoma, Wash. DeParle joined the Boston Scientific board in April 2006 and resigned on March 4 of this year, two days after she was appointed to the White House post. She earned more than $1.4 million in compensation and stock sales from her years at Boston Scientific and a company it bought, the Guidant Corp.

* Guidant, which already was in legal trouble for failing to disclose 12 patient deaths when DeParle joined the board in 2001, has since then faced new problems. After a college student died in 2005 when his implanted defibrillator failed on a biking trip, his doctor told Congress that Guidant officials had known of similar problems for three years, but failed to tell the public.

Five of the corporations whose boards DeParle served on have paid a total of $566 million since 2003 to settle fraud or product liability cases, often involving tax dollars paid by Medicare.

Four signed “corporate integrity agreements” in which they promised to tighten oversight of their billing practices in exchange for the government agreeing not to take legal action to kick them out of the Medicare program.

“These raise eyebrows,” said Ellis, of Taxpayers for Common Sense. “These are things that have to be considered and evaluated.”

The White House did not make DeParle available for an interview about her corporate ties. Her spokeswoman, Linda Douglass, said the White House would not have time to answer questions about DeParle’s actions as a director. DeParle also declined interview requests from msnbc.com, which is co-publishing this article with the Investigative Reporting Workshop.

A Director's responsibility:

There is no reason to think that DeParle was directly involved in any of the actions that led to the investigations and sanctions. DeParle was a member of the board of directors of these companies, not the chief executive officer managing day-to-day operations. It is rare for directors to be held legally accountable for illegal dealings by management.

However, the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley law, passed by Congress after the scandals at Enron and other companies, requires directors to be more aware of what is happening inside companies. Federal guidelines tell directors they should exercise even more oversight in health care firms.

Michael W. Peregrine, a corporate compliance lawyer in Chicago, said that while board members aren’t obligated to “ferret out wrongdoing,” they need to question management once they learn of regulatory problems and to “make sure something is being done about it. The board has to ask, ‘What the hell’s going on here?’”

At three companies — Guidant, DaVita and Specialty Laboratories — DeParle was not only a director but also served on board committees responsible for monitoring the companies' compliance with laws and regulations.

Publicly traded companies must disclose to shareholders the existence of investigations, enforcement actions or lawsuits that could affect their earnings. These filings, made with the Securities and Exchange Commission, often are short on specifics, including when the conduct that’s under investigation allegedly occurred. These investigations typically drag on for years.

It's therefore difficult to say in some cases whether DeParle's board service coincided with the company's suspicious conduct, or whether some of the conduct preceded her service but only came to light during her service.

In a few additional cases, DeParle joined companies that had already gotten into trouble.

For example, DeParle agreed to join the board of Guidant just days after it acknowledged it had covered up the deaths of 12 patients and more than 2,000 injuries caused by a faulty surgical device. She was on the board when the company pleaded guilty to 10 felony charges in the case, and paid $92 million in fines. The apparent cover-up in the separate case involving the implanted defibrillator came to light when DeParle had been on the board for two years.

And she joined the board of Boston Scientific about a year after it had paid $74 million to settle a federal criminal investigation into the company's delay in recalling a faulty heart device. No charges were brought, and the company no longer sells the product, called a stent. It also denied wrongdoing as part of the settlement with prosecutors.

Peregrine, the regulatory compliance lawyer, said potential directors should be “cautious” about joining the boards of companies with a history of clashing with regulators. Board members need to satisfy themselves that the organization has developed “a culture of compliance” with laws, he said.

A dedicated public servant:

DeParle resigned her corporate board positions upon taking the White House position, according to a financial disclosure form dated May 13 but only released by the White House on June 12. A handwritten note on the first page says that, as of June 4, “all conflicting assets have been divested.”

Her spokeswoman said DeParle has recused herself from any matters that might affect these companies, and has sold her stock in them at a “fairly substantial financial loss to herself and her family.” DeParle has “come into government with the understanding it would require a financial sacrifice. She is in complete compliance with all ethical requirements of the administration," Douglass said.

“She gave it all up to come and work in a tiny cramped office on one of the most important issues the country is dealing with,” Douglass said. “She’s working seven days a week, not seeing her children and working incredibly long hours. She’s doing this because she is a dedicated public servant.”

Update: Douglass told The Washington Post that, if an investigation arose during DeParle's tenure on a board, she pressed executives to fully comply. No details were given. And before joining any board, Douglass said, DeParle "did extensive due diligence, talking with other board members, lawyers and others familiar with the company,"

The public may never get a full accounting of her actions on corporate boards. Although DeParle is the point person on Obama's effort to overhaul health care for all Americans, she didn’t have to face questions at a Senate confirmation hearing, because she's a White House staffer, not a Cabinet official.

DeParle, 52, was the first woman to be president of the student body at the University of Tennessee, a Rhodes Scholar, and graduated from Harvard Law School. She ran the Medicaid program in Tennessee before going to Washington. Since leaving the Clinton administration, in addition to serving on corporate boards she was a managing director of a private equity firm that invested in health care companies, a trustee of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and held fellowships at two universities.

Makes you more valuable:

Growing concern over fraud in the health care industry has led federal officials in recent years to warn directors that they must make “good faith” inquiries into business practices, particularly when there’s reason to suspect wrongdoing. Federal officials are requiring more rigorous oversight by board members of the effectiveness of a company’s formal plan for complying with federal laws and regulations.

“Having government experience is a plus. It is one of the things that make you more valuable,” said Lynn Shapiro Snyder, a Washington lawyer and corporate defense counsel.

In DeParle’s case, four corporations paid her a total of $533,189 last year for serving as a director, according to SEC filings. The year before, she made $549,322 from three board positions. Of the $6.6 million she made from 2001 to 2009, about $2.2 million came from directors’ fees, and $4.4 million from stock options and trades. Her DaVita shares made her at least $1.8 million, and she made $1 million when Triad Hospitals Inc., a Texas company, was sold in 2007.

DeParle’s White House financial disclosure form shows that in 2008 she received $1 million in salary and bonus from CCMP Capital Advisors, LLC, a private equity firm she joined in August 2006 as a managing director helping oversee health care investments. Those interests included a Medicare managed care plan and a start-up hospital chain. She resigned from the firm in March.

Her White House biography mentions that she had served on corporate boards, but doesn’t name any of them. Though it dwells on her government career, it states that she “also brings a unique industry perspective from her work in the private sector.”

The investigations and lawsuits are at odds with DeParle’s reputation in Washington as a progressive, highly respected health policy analyst. During the late 1990s, when she ran Medicare, she pushed hard to raise medical quality standards and to clamp down on fraud and waste in the massive federal health plan for the elderly.

“In my experience, she’s the one administrator who really was tuned into the fraud issue,” said William J. Mahon, a former director of the National Health Care Anti-Fraud Association. “She distinguished herself in putting fraud on the agenda.”

Other companies with much to gain:

Whether DeParle’s time in the private sector will influence the shape of health care reform remains to be seen. But there’s no doubt that the decisions will have significant impact on the corporations she formerly served. The Obama administration’s decision to spend billions of dollars promoting the use of electronic medical records offers an example.

In an April 15 media briefing in Washington, DeParle mentioned electronic medical records twice, first saying that an electronic system will help prevent medical errors and ensure that patients get “the right treatments.”

In response to a question, she added: “We want to incentivize physicians to use electronic medical records in a meaningful way for better treatment, better care, more convenience, better administration in their offices.”

Nobody mentioned her lengthy relationship with the Cerner Corporation, a major manufacturer of electronic medical records software based in Kansas City. From May 2001 until the day after her White House appointment, DeParle served on the board at Cerner, which has not reported any investigations into its finances or business dealings in recent years.

DeParle earned at least $680,000 from director’s compensation and stock options while she was on the Cerner board.


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Sources: MSNBC, Whitehouse.gov, Google Maps

White House East Wing Is Michelle Obama's New Sanctuary

(First Lady Michelle Obama gives NBC's Brian Williams a tour of the White House's East Wing.)

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US News & World Report----

After her husband's historic victory, it emerged that Michelle Obama saw her role as first lady as being a wife and mother first. In terms of visions, it was traditional, nonthreatening, and practically ho-hum. But it has proved a whopping understatement for the world's newest A-lister, a woman whose debut has been punctuated with exclamation points.

The 45-year-old Ivy League lawyer and product of Chicago's working class has captured many hearts by hewing to that deceptively quaint ethos while displaying other sides: fearless fashionista, fun-loving hostess, protocol-stretching diplomat, amateur organic gardener, cost-savvy decorator, West Wing surrogate, and, in particular, inspirer-in-chief.

"My first lady and yours" is how Barack Obama now introduces his wife of 16 years as she has skyrocketed in polls, surpassing him in favorable ratings while silencing old chatter about whether she was helping or hurting him. A recent poll by Gallup found 72 percent had a positive view of her, up from 43 percent in June 2008. It was low then in part because of campaign missteps. She once said, "For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country," leaving critics to question her patriotism.

When the Obamas moved daughters Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7, and Michelle's mother, 71, into the White House, the first spouse set the bar low, cannily so. She said she wanted to get the girls settled, get to know the city, and build her own team. Practically overnight, the confident, 5-foot, 11-inch daughter of a Chicago water department pump operator attracted new admirers, not to mention making cameras swoon as she draped herself in look-at-me shades like celadon and fuchsia and bared enviably buff biceps.

White House makeover. While she's followed the traditional avenues by visiting inner-city school kids, paying homage to the troops, wining and dining members of Congress
, and wooing foreign dignitaries, she's done it her way. At the White House, protocol is looser, parties are hipper (and more frequent), and pop artists from Stevie Wonder to Fergie are paying calls. In a nod to the country's worst economic crisis in 80 years, the first lady turned away a stipend of $100,000 to redo the family's private quarters, saying the Obamas will dig into their own bank account.

It's said that she hasn't loosened house rules for the girls, who attend the exclusive Sidwell Friends School, make their own beds, and turn in at 8 p.m., a lights-out that is relaxed when friends visit 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for sleepovers.

She is by no means universally admired. Forty-two-year-old Terrilynne Butler of Gaithersburg, Md., isn't crazy about Obama's "out there, outspoken" ways. "I kind of prefer Laura Bush—the supportive, gentle, wind-beneath-my-wings-type person I prefer a first lady to be," Butler says. The mother of six was one of many who criticized the White House for changing the way tickets for the annual Easter Egg Roll were distributed. After getting tickets in past years by waiting in line for hours, Butler and others blame the online system for foiling their bids to attend this year.

The role of first ladies evolves and enlarges over time as they find their comfort zone and zero in on their interests. Already, though, a practiced observer and self-described Republican, Letitia Baldrige, who was Jacqueline Kennedy's top aide, is gushing over the East Wing's latest occupant. Talking about Obama, Baldrige says: "She's attractive, she's well educated, she's charming, she's good-looking and all of that, plus she's the first African-American first lady. I mean, that's a socko combination. She's the hottest story in the world. She really is."

Baldrige approves of Obama's opening act, which has seen her "spread out in all directions," since inevitably "she's going to find out one of those directions is par-ticularly important to her. It's going to get her heart."

As Obama's aides tell it, she's already had an early epiphany. It happened April 2 at an inner-city, all-girls school in London, the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Language School, a largely minority facility where about 1 in 5 students was born to refugees. There, Obama described her humble beginnings on Chicago's South Side and pointed out that neither of her parents went to college. She spoke of her late father, who persisted at work despite multiple sclerosis and "never complained" even after it got hard for him to dress himself and to walk. And she said she thrived because she was loved, nurtured, and educated. "I never cut class," she told the girls, who were moved to tears. "I loved getting A's. I liked being smart. I liked being on time. I liked getting my work done. I thought being smart was cooler than anything in the world."

Dee Dee Myers, press secretary for President Bill Clinton, laughs at the little-known Fergie moment, although she missed it. Based on what she has seen, she calls Obama's early months "pitch perfect" and remarks: "The country is totally enamored with her." Myers can't think of a single gaffe but adds that "the president has said a few things he wishes he hadn't, mostly minor."

Myers credits the Obamas with restoring glamour to the White House, comparing them to the Roosevelts, Kennedys, and Reagans. (Her old boss, Clinton, and his wife don't make the cut.) "People like those kinds of presidents. They're iconic," Myers says. "They were living interesting and exciting lives and were larger than life. People don't want presidents to be Joe the Plumber."

Few know first ladies better than Los Angeles author Carl Sferrazza Anthony, who has interviewed every one since Jackie Kennedy. Noting the public fascination with first ladies among women and men, young and old, and people of all races, he suspects twin ironies are behind it: Were it not for their husbands, we would not know these wives. And were it not for these wives, we would not know their husbands. He hasn't met Obama yet but finds her a "highly, highly, highly conscientious person" and adds: "The heart and soul of this person is someone who has always striven for the best that she could deliver."

Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to the president, says the first lady's approval ratings have shot up because only now is the world getting to know her. "To know Michelle is to love Michelle," Jarrett adds, calling her longtime friend grounded, down-to-earth, and real.


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Sources: US News, MSNBC, Huffington Post, Vogue, Design By Cathleen, Day Life, Google Maps

White House Addresses Rape, Sexual Assault Torture Photos....Denounces British Media

Huffington Post, Politico, Salon.com-------

White House reporters received an unusual email on Saturday, with a subject line stating, "Important Please Read: From White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs."

In the email body, Gibbs wrote:

A number of you have asked about or reported on a recent article in the Telegraph that inaccurately described photos which are the subject of an ongoing lawsuit. Both the Department of Defense and the White House have said the article was wrong, and now the individual who was purported to be the source of the article has said it's inaccurate. Given that this false report has been repeated around the world, and given the impact these negative reports have on our troops, I felt it was important for you to see this correction.

Gibbs included the full text of a story by Salon.com's Mark Benjamin, which features retired Army Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba denying reports that he has seen the photos of prisoner abuse that the Obama administration is trying to keep secret.

The Telegraph reported on Friday:

Maj Gen Taguba, who retired in January 2007, said he supported the President's decision, adding: "These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency.

"I am not sure what purpose their release would serve other than a legal one and the consequence would be to imperil our troops, the only protectors of our foreign policy, when we most need them, and British troops who are trying to build security in Afghanistan.

But Taguba told Salon that his quotes were taken out of context, and were not about the photos that Obama does not want released.

"The photographs in that lawsuit, I have not seen," Taguba told Salon Friday night. The actual quote in the Telegraph was accurate, Taguba said -- but he was referring to the hundreds of images he reviewed as an investigator of the abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq -- not the photos of abuse that Obama is seeking to suppress.

During Friday's press conference, before Taguba's interview was published, Gibbs was adamant that the Telegraph piece was false, and ripped into the British press for consistently printing false information.

"I want to speak generally about some reports I've witnessed over the past few years in the British media. And in some ways, I'm surprised it filtered down," Gibbs began. "Let's just say if I wanted to look up -- if I wanted to read a writeup today of how Manchester United fared last night in the Champion's League cup, I might open up a British newspaper. If I was looking for something that bordered on truthful news, I'm not entirely sure it'd be in the first pack of clips I'd pick up."

"You're not going to find very many of these newspapers and truth within 25 words of each other," Gibbs continued.

A Telegraph columnist, Nile Gardiner, responded with a diatribe calling Gibbs' "unwarranted rant against the British press" an "absolute disgrace, and the President should disown his views."

I cannot recall an instance like this where the President's official spokesman has blasted the press of a key ally - in this case America's closest friend, Great Britain. [...]

Can you imagine Gibbs making these remarks about The New York Times or The Washington Post, or NBC, ABC or CBS? This would never happen.

The British press, especially the Telegraph, has been singled out because they frequently publish articles critical of the Obama administration and are not afraid to take on the status quo in Washington. Increasingly, millions of Americans are turning to online UK news websites for cutting edge reports on American politics and U.S. foreign policy that the mainstream media refuses to cover in the States, especially if it is unflattering to the Obama White House.

(White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs recently denounces the British Media.)




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Sources: Huffington Post, Politico, Day Life, Salon.com, Telegraph.co.uk, Google Maps

Michelle Obama Wore Michael Kors @ 2009 White House Correspondents Dinner

In case your wondering who designed First Lady Michelle Obama's lovely, hot pink dress worn to the recent 2009 White House Correspondents Dinner, it was Michael Kors.

Check out her jewelry. The right dress must be accentuated by the right accessories to make the outfit pop.

Michelle Obama not only popped, as usual she was stunning!

Apparently Rush Limbaugh was on Mrs. Obama's hit list too. Check out what she said about him:

"Michael for the last time, the Republican Party does not qualify for a bailout. Rush Limbaugh does not count as a troubled asset, I’m sorry."

Sources: Glamour, Slaves to Fashion, Daylife, Nevadaappeal.com

Celebs, Politicians, Journalists & More Celebs @ 2009 White House Correspondents Dinner

Celebs, Politicians, Journalists and more Celebs. Recognize anyone you know??

Sources: Huffington Post, Politico