Tag: Whitewashing

Health Insurance Whistleblower: Medicare Advantage Is “Heist” by Private Firms to Defraud the Public

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Many of the nation’s largest health insurance companies have made billions of dollars in profits by overbilling the U.S. government’s Medicare Advantage program. A New York Times investigation has revealed that under the Advantage program, health insurance companies are incentivized to make patients appear more ill than they actually are. Some estimates find it has cost the government between $12 billion and $25 billion in 2020 alone. We speak with former healthcare insurance executive Wendell Potter, now president of the Center for Health and Democracy, who says Medicare Advantage will be recognized in years to come as the “biggest transfer of wealth” from taxpayers to corporate shareholders, and blames the lack of regulation over the program on the “revolving door between private industry and government.”

Health Insurance Whistleblower: Medicare Advantage Is “Heist” by Private Firms to Defraud the Public

Related:

‘The Cash Monster Was Insatiable’: How Insurers Exploited Medicare for Billions (archived)

US officials gave Ukraine public green light to bomb Kerch bridge

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)1 Comment

US officials gave Ukraine public green light to bomb Kerch bridge

Completely excluded from any account in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal was the fact that senior US officials not only publicly authorized, but a former US official publicly encouraged, the attack to take place.

“Bomb Russia’s bridge to Crimea, Ukraine urged,” read the headline in the Times of London on July 7, reporting the statements of US General Philip Breedlove, NATO’s former Supreme Allied Commander Europe.

…

The next day, July 8, clearly referencing Breedlove’s comments, a reporter identified only as “Howard” asked at a Pentagon background briefing, “can you talk about any preclusions? Would the — would the Kerch Bridge be not precluded as a potential target?”*

The defense official replied, “As I said, there aren’t any preclusions that I’m aware of about the Ukrainians fighting on their sovereign territory against Russia.”

Related:

* [07-08-2022] U.S. Says Russia’s Prized Kerch Bridge Is A Fair Target For Ukrainian Forces

At a press briefing held this morning, The War Zone asked a senior U.S. official whether or not there were any preclusions about the use of High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, in Ukraine against certain targets. Speaking to reporters on the condition of anonymity, the official responded by saying that they couldn’t reveal any further information about specific targets, but that “Russian forces’ capabilities and logistics nodes within Ukraine are absolutely fantastic” targets. The War Zone followed up, asking if there were any hesitations about using the HIMARs against the Kerch Bridge. The official responded as follows.

“As I said, there aren’t any preclusions that I’m aware of on Ukrainians fighting on their sovereign territory against Russia.”

NPR is Not Your Friend

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

NPR is a problem. Good and proper leftists who read Current Affairs may already realize this. “Of course. NPR (Neoliberal Propaganda Radio) is a bastion of establishment groupthink and orthodoxy that gives cover to imperialism and corporate capitalism.” By contrast, readers on the Right who find themselves consuming Current Affairs may have an equally disdainful but entirely different critique. “Of course. NPR is an elitist liberal propaganda cult that serves as a mouthpiece for the Democratic Party, is openly hostile to any conservative voices, and ought to be defunded!”

NPR is Not Your Friend

Katie Halper: I Was Canceled for Criticizing Israel

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

On Monday, September 26, I delivered a video monologue as part of my job as a rotating co-host for The Hill TV’s political commentary show, Rising. I’d been a weekly guest on the show for three years, and this was my first “Radar”—an op-ed delivered straight to the camera. It was also my last. On September 28, I was fired.

I Was Canceled for Criticizing Israel

Previously:

Hill TV Segment on Rashida Tlaib and Israel Is Censored

Some More Updates: Ukrainian army shells Donetsk centre with French guns, killing four civilians and wounding eight

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)1 Comment

Ukrainian army shells Donetsk centre with French guns, killing four civilians and wounding eight

Other shells hit the Post building, as well as the Voroshilovsky district administration building, the Oplot TV studios, and the monument to Pushkin, the Russian author, located behind the theatre, a few meters from Lenin Square. There, three civilians were killed, including a woman who was walking right next to a children’s park that is usually crowded when the weather is nice like today. The initial toll of three injured civilians was eventually raised to eight, including a TeleSur journalist.

And the toll on journalists could have been much worse. As they arrived on the scene quickly after the bombing, War Gonzo journalists witnessed the second strike live, which again targeted Lenin Square, hitting the already burning van a second time. Fortunately their car was behind another vehicle and they were able to get out safely.

But this second strike, shortly after the first, shows that Ukraine continues to carry out terrorist bombings, the aim of which is to kill or maim as many rescue workers and journalists as possible when they arrive in an already bombed area.

…

But after submitting the photos of the shrapnel I found on the spot to Adrien Bocquet*, who is now a NATO weapons expert for the DPR’s representation in the JCCC (Joint Monitoring and Co-ordination Centre on Ukraine’s War Crimes), he confirmed that they were American 155mm shells, some fired from Caesar guns and others from TRF1 guns.

The famous TRF1 guns that can fire (banned) 155 mm cluster munitions, which I had mentioned in June, and which the Western press had assured that France had not supplied to Ukraine! Before learning at the beginning of September that Paris had indeed sold them to Kiev!

Previously:

Updated: Four killed in Ukrainian shelling attack on downtown Donetsk

* A French Volunteer Described How He Witnessed Dramatisations in Bucha

*French Medical Volunteer in Ukraine Opens Up About Azov Regiment’s ‘War Crimes’