How to swindle soldiers. They're young and financially naive and they're willing to sacrifice their lives for our country. So let's take their money (NYT):

The chairman of a House subcommittee that is investigating the sale of life insurance and mutual funds to young soldiers and other military members unleashed a scathing attack on Thursday on financial companies active on military bases. The chairman, Representative Richard H. Baker, Republican of Louisiana, challenged not only the sales practices of their agents but also the fundamental merits of their products.

Mr. Baker led a four-hour hearing through a review of how life insurance and mutual funds are sold on military bases, opening with testimony from Specialist Brandon Conger, a soldier who said he was misled into buying an expensive insurance policy he did not want or understand, and ending with promises of swift, bipartisan action to address the problems.

Mr. Baker questioned whether the life insurance industry had done enough to root out agents who prey on young soldiers and indicated that the Pentagon might have a future date with Congress to explain its failure to adequately police the agents it allows on bases.

But Mr. Baker's fiercest criticisms fell on the companies that package and sell the high-commission products. He singled out the complex form of insurance sold to Specialist Conger by the American Amicable Life Insurance Company in Waco, Tex., and a type of mutual fund marketed by First Command Financial Services, in Fort Worth.

The product combines an expensive insurance policy that provides a low death benefit with an interest-earning savings fund that can accumulate cash value over 20 years. The mutual fund, called a contractual plan, imposes sales charges that consume half of an investor's first-year contributions.

Because they protect both Democrats and Republicans, protecting the financial safety of soldiers really ought to be a bipartisan action. Fleecing soldiers with shady mutual funds and rigged life insurance cannot be construed as patriotic no matter how twisted your worldview.

It comes as no wonder that the two companies singled out for censure both hail from the cesspool of fraud and mendacity that we are currently trying to flush from federal influence... the state of Texas.

For more on First Command (and its CEO's campaign contributions to the 2004 campaign of a certain George W Bush), check this out as well as the links at the top of this page. See also Stars and Stripes.

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How do we know Ohio is a battleground state? Because of all the casualties.

{ 2:19 PM }

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Death by Lariam. Uncharacteristically and perhaps involuntarily, six Special Forces soldiers recently took their own lives. Not with guns or poison but with Lariam, the anti-malaria drug given to US soldiers:

WASHINGTON, Sept. 7 (UPI) -- A startling pattern of violence and suicide by America's most elite soldiers has followed their use of a controversial anti-malaria drug, an investigation by United Press International and CNN has found.

The government already warns that the drug, called Lariam, might cause long-term mental problems -- including aggression and suicide.

Six Special Forces soldiers who took their lives are all believed to have taken the drug, according to the UPI-CNN investigation. The cable news network broadcast a segment on the joint investigation Tuesday.

[...]

The psychotic behavior and suicides are particularly jarring because Special Forces soldiers are highly trained and psychologically vetted. An Army study in 2000 showed Special Forces soldiers produce more of a chemical in the brain that helps them cope with and recover from extreme duress.

"It's just antithetical to their whole practice of their craft to suddenly lose control, become depressed, paranoid, hallucinate and become suicidal," said Dr. Paul Ragan, associate professor of psychiatry at Vanderbilt University and a former military psychiatrist. "You have to look for some exogenous factor, some outside factor, something new in the mix that will change how they've otherwise been able to operate."

Those deaths then raise concerns about the tens of thousands of soldiers who have taken Lariam during the war on terrorism -- and about dozens of suicides and a handful of murders among troops while overseas or after returning home.

The pattern also suggests that the Army might have missed the cause of three murder-suicides involving Special Forces soldiers at Fort Bragg, N.C., in the summer of 2002. A report by the Army surgeon general's office blamed marital problems for all the deaths and called Lariam an unlikely factor. But the report did not consider physical or mental problems among the three Special Forces soldiers, described by family and friends, that fit side effects from Lariam.

The UPI/CNN investigation found three more suicides by Special Forces soldiers -- all of them Green Berets believed to have taken Lariam. None appears to have had acute marital problems, combat stress or other personal issues that would help explain their sudden plunge into violence.

Are we creating a new pharmcological underclass of soldiers driven to murder or suicide?

I wrote about Lariam and the Fort Bragg murder-suicides before, due to my personal experience with the drug that completely supports "exogenous factor" theories of profound drug-induced psychological disturbance.

In other words, Lariam makes you crazy. And we're giving it to tens of thousands our troops. And they have weapons. And that's not good.

{ 1:32 PM }

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W is for wimp, wuss, weak-kneed weakling.... Accountability is a bitch, so Dubya wants out of one of the debates:

President Bush may skip one of the three debates that have been proposed by the Commission on Presidential Debates and accepted by Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), Republican officials said yesterday.

The officials said Bush's negotiating team plans to resist the middle debate, which was to be Oct. 8 in a town meeting format in the crucial state of Missouri.

The Bush-Cheney campaign announced that its debate negotiation team will be led by James A. Baker III, who was secretary of state under President George H.W. Bush. Baker headed the Bush campaign's Florida recount response in 2000 and is the current president's personal envoy on Iraqi debt resolution.

Baker negotiated debates in 1980, 1984, 1988 and 1992. As chief of staff to Bush's father in 1992, he took a cautious stance with the view that a sitting president has little to gain and much to lose in debates, according to accounts at the time.

Bush aides refused to discuss their opening position. Officials familiar with the issue said he plans to accept the commission's first debate, which is to focus on domestic policy, and the third one, which is to focus on foreign policy.

The audience for the second debate, to be at Washington University in St. Louis, was to be picked by the Gallup Organization. The commission said participants should be undecided voters from the St. Louis area.

A presidential adviser said campaign officials were concerned that people could pose as undecided when they actually are partisans.

You can hear Rove thinking: Actual citizens in our midst! That is so unRepublican!

And, once again, the water boy for Team Bush is there to do the family's janitorial work. James A. Baker III, the Florida recount mechanic, is back on the scene to do his lackey best in the Bush dynasty's meticulous disassembly of American democracy.

{ 9:15 AM }

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Fuck Grandma, we're campaigning. Compassionate conservatives focus more on media manipulation than compassion (WSJ):

The Bush administration announced a record increase in next year's Medicare premium for doctor visits -- ahead of a holiday weekend and six weeks earlier than it is typically released.

The increase of $11.60 a month was the largest ever and, at 17.4%, was the biggest percentage rise since 1989*, when an earlier drug-coverage bill was passed and then repealed.

Much of next year's premium increase reflects changes made in the Medicare drug-benefit bill that passed with Mr. Bush's backing. The premium rose 13.5% this year and 8.7% last year.

[...]

In past years, premiums were announced in mid-October, along with changes in Social Security payments to the elderly and disabled. If the administration kept to that schedule this year, the increase would have been announced just ahead of the November election.

The elderly, the working poor, Enron employees, the environment, the Guard and the Reserves, Iraqi civilians, underfinanced schools... is there anybody that Republicans won't fuck over to remain in power?

*Bonus quiz: Who was president in 1989, when the last record Medicare increase took place?

{ 10:57 AM }

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Neil Bush's war on poverty. Every profiteer wants to pay the big bucks to a brand-name presidential relative with no other discernible talents or skills. After all, that's how Dubya got his start (ABC News):

The "war lobby," as it has been described, counts a number of important connections, including President Bush's brother Neil, who plays a little-known role at Houston-based Crest Investments. Crest is a financial partner with Newbridge Strategies, a group of former officials from both [!] Bush administrations who help U.S. companies seeking contracts in Iraq.

This week in New York, Neil Bush would not answer questions about his ties to Crest. "It's not my company," he said.

But in a videotaped deposition last year, obtained by ABC News, Neil Bush said he is paid $60,000 a year for the three to four hours of work he puts in weekly as co-chairman of Crest.

"Whether he does anything active or whether they just trade on his name, having the president's brother involved has got to be a huge asset," said William Hartung, a senior fellow at World Policy Institute, a policy research group at New School University.

Even for the runt of the Bush dynasty, there's plenty of profiteering to be had. Here's more about Crest and Newbridge and Neilsie's Hong Kong call girls.

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