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Scoop
14-07-2025
- Health
- Scoop
Who Benefits From Outsourcing Planned Surgery: Follow The Funding
I still remember metaphorically sitting at the knee of legendary union leader Bill Andersen while listening to him opine pearls of wisdom. The most important question, when assessing a particular proposal or initiative, was 'who benefits?' This was the opening paragraph of my column published in Newsroom on 13 June: Who benefits? Follow the money. Levering off the expression 'follow the money' popularised by the film 'All the President's Men' about the Watergate scandal which brought down United States President Richard Nixon in 1974, and in the context of Aotearoa New Zealand's health system, I argued that: It is becoming increasingly clear that Government funding decisions are strongly oriented towards the for-profit private health sector rather than addressing the critical needs of our health system. I discussed this with specific reference to outsourcing (privatising) elective or planned (non-acute) surgery, public private partnerships, and funding urgent care facilities. My conclusion was: Following the funding will confirm whether or not the Government changes direction for the good of the public and their health system. The answer lies with who benefits. Benefitting private health insurers and telehealth providers Since my column was published further reporting has reinforced my conclusion that the Government's health focus is on benefiting the for-profit private health sector and enhancing privatisation. On 19 June Radio New Zealand health reporter Ruth Hill revealed on Morning Report that from 1 July taxpayers would foot the bill for cancer drugs administered in private facilities for private patients: Private health insurers benefit from publicly funding cancer drugs for private patients. This amounts to a 12-month subsidy to private health insurers while at the same time leaving the vast majority of New Zealanders who don't have private health insurance missing out. The decision is a conscious government action to benefit the for-profit private health sector instead of investing in the public hospital oncology workforce (specialists and nurses) with the objective of enabling people can get free care there. Meanwhile, NZ Doctor journalist Steve Forbes in a paywalled article (3 July) reported concerns over how 'extravagant' funding gives telehealth providers a huge advantage over general practices in the Government's new Online GP Care service. This service provides telehealth for casual patients who are not enrolled in a general practice. The rate paid to telehealth providers for casual unenrolled patients is similar to the funding rate paid to general practices for their enrolled patients through capitation. The General Practice Owners Association (GenPro) convincingly argues that telehealth providers should be paid the same (much lower) casual rate that is paid to general practices for casual unenrolled patients. GenPro Chair Dr Angus Chambers succinctly explains the differential this way: A [telehealth] provider offering the new online medical service would receive $65 for a consultation with a 14-year-old casual non-enrolled patient whose caregiver holds a Community Services Card. In contrast, a general practice would only receive $20.45. The Government's favouritism towards private telehealth providers has reinforced the view among many general practices that instead of seeing telehealth as an aid or enabler for GPs, it is seen as an alternative. Privatising planned (non-acute) surgery Back on 13 May Radio New Zealand investigative reporter Anusha Bradley had covered on Morning Report Health New Zealand's (Te Whatu Ora) intention to privatise planned surgery waitlists by outsourcing them to private hospitals on two to three-year contracts, along with extending the working hours of doctors in public hospitals: Privatising planned (non-acute) surgery. Expecting public hospital specialists (and nurses) to work longer hours in evenings and on weekends and public holidays on more complex planned cases enables private hospitals to 'cherry pick' the less complex high volume (ie, revenue generating) cases. Bradley reported Nelson Hospital based surgeon Ros Pochin, Chair of the New Zealand Committee of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons questioning what surgeons might be able to do this extended hours' work. In her words: Most surgeons already work long hours, including evenings and weekends. There are some surgeons who work purely privately, but most work privately and publicly so there isn't a cache of private surgeons sitting there twiddling their thumbs in the evenings and weekends who can suddenly call in. She added that most surgeons were already working long hours, including after-hours: There's only 800 of us in the country. We already work out-of-hours, as we all do on call. I'm about to start a week of continuous on-call myself, which I'll do 81 hours straight day and night. And so we get very little time off as it is. Outsourcing is essentially an admission that we have not got an adequately funded and resourced health system. Interestingly Health Minister Simeon Brown chose to ignore Health New Zealand advice that outsourcing to private hospitals was more expensive than expanding public hospital. Health New Zealand also advised the health minister that outsourced operations could only be delivered if there were senior clinical staff available, 'whilst ensuring Health NZ remains able to safely manage the clinical workload of our public hospitals'. Further, he was warned of the risk that private hospital capacity would be 'insufficient' due to workforce availability. Particularly important is the advice Brown received from the Chair of his Health Workforce and System Efficiencies Committee, Middlemore Hospital general surgeon Andrew Connolly: It is vital those establishing contracts recognise there are clinical obligations and responsibilities in the public sector that must not be weakened by outsourcing. Health New Zealand must consider such risks in the contracting process. Connolly is now the deputy chair of the newly appointed board of Health New Zealand. This will be interesting. His advice to the health minister became even more imperative following Brown's subsequent decision discussed below. Privatising planned surgery morphs into public-private partnerships The above-mentioned outsourcing reported by Anusha Bradley, including the warnings ignored by Simeon Brown, was trumped by the Minister's subsequent decision that private hospital contracts would be almost permanent – 10 year contracts which are longer than the terms for public service chief executive appointments. These 10-year contracts for cherry-picked surgery has rightly been called Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) by economist Brian Easton in a column published by Pundit on 4 July: PPPs based in private hospitals. PPPs enable in varying ways for private partners to maximise profit opportunities in the design, construction and operation of health facilities. These PPP opportunities have been quickly recognised by private investors as reported by Hamish McNeilly in The Post (5 July): PPPs encourage private investors change plans. The investors undisclosed company had resource consent granted to build private student accommodation in Dunedin. Now they have changed their plans by seeking to build a new private hospital instead. The only way these PPPs by another name can maximise private profits will be for the crisis-ridden rundown public hospitals to be even further rundown. This includes growing the private hospital specialist workforce at the expense of the public hospital specialist workforce. Non-evidence based decision-making On 17 June Treasury received the following request under the Official Information Act: I would appreciate any Treasury papers on the proposal that HNZ should outsource treatment to private hospitals on ten year contracts. I am especially interested in how they will impact on the government's fiscal position. On 9 July Treasury responded: I am refusing your request under section 18(e) of the Official Information Act as the information requested does not exist or, despite reasonable efforts to locate it, cannot be found. Given that the information requested would have been recent, not historical, it is obvious that Treasury's advice was neither sought nor provided. The only information received by the health minister from his official advisers (Health New Zealand and his expert committee) was apprehensive at best. Responsibility for this poor and risky decision-making rests solely and squarely on Health Minister Simeon Brown and his government colleagues. Ideology, not evidence based, has prevailed – again! Ian Powell Otaihanga Second Opinion is a regular health systems blog in New Zealand. Ian Powell is the editor of the health systems blog 'Otaihanga Second Opinion.' He is also a columnist for New Zealand Doctor, occasional columnist for the Sunday Star Times, and contributor to the Victoria University hosted Democracy Project. For over 30 years , until December 2019, he was the Executive Director of Association of Salaried Medical Specialists, the union representing senior doctors and dentists in New Zealand.
Yahoo
08-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Trump takes another bite out of congressional power with TikTok, beautiful bill
Having the Air Force fly a B-2 bomber overhead during a signing ceremony for a budget bill would have in a different time seemed like overkill. But in our time of both public spectacle and congressional sclerosis, it seems about right. After months of debate, Congress delivered a tax and spending package that is loved by none, which is usually a good sign. Budgets aren't supposed to be popular. But this is an unusually ambitious budget — or, to be more precise, pseudo-budget. First, some context. In 1974, when Congress was up on its hind legs about the many abuses of executive power by Richard Nixon, lawmakers passed the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act. Nixon, who was trying to fend off impeachment in the summer of that year and looking to appease Republicans in Congress, signed the bill in July — in between the publication of 'All the President's Men' and the Supreme Court decision ordering him to release his Oval Office tapes. Future presidents would always hate the impoundment part of the law, which forbids them from withholding money appropriated by Congress, but they would learn to love the budget part, which created the process we all now know as reconciliation. That was not how it started. The idea of reconciliation was to increase congressional power by making it easier to produce budgets. Congress passes a nonbinding budget blueprint and can add a line allowing for reconciliation at a later time, as the current Congress did in May. Originally, that reconciliation was to do what the name suggests: reconcile the actual budget with the final congressional priorities in an expedited manner, basically a golden ticket for legislation about the budget — a place of privilege on the calendar and, most importantly, an exemption from the 60-vote threshold in the Senate. It worked as designed at first. The first-ever reconciliation package came in 1980 as lawmakers teamed up to address the scandalously large budget deficit. It might have gone as high as $80 billion, nearly 3 percent of the entire national economy, and action was needed. This sounds quaint in a time where we are rolling toward another $2 trillion deficit this year, more than 6 percent of the economy as a whole. But in those days, it was considered politically important in both parties to at least appear concerned about the debt. Former President Jimmy Carter signed the package of spending cuts and tax tweaks in the lame-duck session after his defeat, an act of magnanimity and responsible governance equally as foreign to our own time as being concerned about federal borrowing being just 3 percent of the gross domestic product. That was mostly how it worked for the next decade: reconciliation being used to streamline the passage of limited but still politically unpopular cuts to spending or increases to taxes with the goal of keeping the deficit in check. Then, in 1993, that changed. During the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, Republicans had never enjoyed unified control of Washington. But with Bill Clinton's victory in 1992, uniparty control returned to the federal government for the first time since reconciliation had been in use. Without a supermajority in the Senate, Democrats would have had to win over at least a few Republicans to advance the new president's agenda. Instead, we got the 1993 Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act, which was a funny name since it wasn't reconciling anything but rather a substitute for a budget. Instead of increasing the power of the legislative branch by making it easier to win spending fights with the executive branch, reconciliation became a tool to enhance the power of the presidency when his party had narrow majorities in Congress. Republicans, of course, returned fire when George W. Bush became president and used the tool to push through Bush's tax cuts to reverse Clinton's tax cuts. Then, in his first term, Barack Obama oversaw another innovation in the degradation of congressional power, using reconciliation to not change tax rates, but to invent a whole new health insurance system for the United States. The journey from congressional empowerment to partisan cudgel was complete. Presidents don't like the Senate filibuster because it usually demands some kind of bipartisan consensus to enact big legislation, but this relic from the summer of 1974 when Richard Nixon was feeling the heat had turned out to be very useful. Fifteen years after ObamaCare, we live in a world where Congress seldom even tries to pass real legislation and just waits for uniparty control to jam the president's agenda through the reconciliation loophole. We went all the way from empowering Congress for deficit reduction to flying a bomber over the White House to celebrate trillions in new debt. Obama's other major advance in reducing congressional power came in his second term when, after steadily maintaining that he did not have the power to change immigration law unilaterally, he did exactly that. Not long after his innovation in reconciliation, Obama was asked why he didn't just exempt immigrants who illegally came to or were brought to the United States as children from deportation. In a campaign event for Latino voters ahead of the 2010 midterms, Obama famously said, 'I am not king. I can't do these things just by myself.' His party lost that election, badly. Rather than disappoint Latino voters again in 2012 when he was running for reelection, Obama just went for it. In June of that year he gave us Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, an executive action that spelled out how Obama would refuse to enforce the immigration rules duly passed and signed into law before him. What he discovered was that the power to grant immunity from the law is greater than the power to enforce the law. There had always been the idea of 'prosecutorial discretion,' by which the executive branch had the authority to set priorities for the enforcement of laws in order to make the best use of limited resources. Obama took the next step and explicitly said that he was refusing to enforce the law in accordance with his own policy aims. He was making new law for his own political advantage and to the benefit of a preferred group of people. But the change was mostly popular, and since the beneficiaries were sympathetic figures, Obama correctly concluded that, like the diminution of congressional power for his health insurance law, members of his party would vigorously defend his decision to violate the spirit of the Constitution. So it could have been to no one's surprise that his successors would build on the achievement and that a supine Congress would go along with new abuses and even more executive action, provided the partisanship lined up. That's not to say that Congress stopped passing real legislation altogether after 2012. Joe Biden's presidency provided two notable examples of the kind of bipartisan lawmaking that our system envisions. First, an infrastructure spending package. The administration mostly followed that law but put up lots of regulatory barriers to actually spending the money. The second big bipartisan action of Biden's four years came in April of 2024, when with 79 votes in the Senate, Congress decreed that the Chinese tech firm ByteDance would have to sell its wildly popular social media app, TikTok, to an American firm by Jan. 19 of this year or else companies such as Apple and Google would be forbidden from selling the app to American users. At the time, Republicans offered the loudest voices about the need and the urgency for disrupting what they described as a river of Chinese propaganda flowing into the mobile devices of America's youth and a dire national security risk. But when a Republican president took office the day after the law was supposed to take effect, he promptly waved it away and instructed his Justice Department to make it clear to those American tech companies that the law would not be enforced. What was assumed at the time to be a bit of a wink in the old spirit of prosecutorial discretion was actually something quite bigger, as we now know that the administration told the companies that it was 'irrevocably relinquishing' its claim on enforcing the law for as long as President Trump held that following the law undermined his 'core presidential national security and foreign affairs powers.' Unlike Obama, who held that he was deprioritizing the enforcement of the law in some circumstances, Trump holds that because he believes the law does not align with his other priorities, it is simply not the law. Instead of trying to work around the law, Trump just nullified it. Obama's tricky tactics have been replaced by Trump's blunt force. But Trump's bet is similar to Obama's. He knows that the people who are most sensitive to constitutional arguments about the separation of powers, like Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), were also the opponents of the original law on the grounds that it violated free speech and property rights concerns. Will they sue to demand the enforcement of a law they don't think was constitutional in the first place? Trump will probably get his way and kick the door open wider still for the next president to discover new ways to abuse Congress. It's been a long way down for the Article 1 branch from making Richard Nixon sign off on limits to presidential power to Trump's celebration of a servile Congress, and one suspects we're just getting warmed up. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Hill
08-07-2025
- Business
- The Hill
Trump takes another bite out of congressional power with TikTok, beautiful bill
Having the Air Force fly a B-2 bomber overhead during a signing ceremony for a budget bill would have in a different time seemed like overkill. But in our time of both public spectacle and congressional sclerosis, it seems about right. After months of debate, Congress delivered a tax and spending package that is loved by none, which is usually a good sign. Budgets aren't supposed to be popular. But this is an unusually ambitious budget — or, to be more precise, pseudo-budget. First, some context. In 1974, when Congress was up on its hind legs about the many abuses of executive power by Richard Nixon, lawmakers passed the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act. Nixon, who was trying to fend off impeachment in the summer of that year and looking to appease Republicans in Congress, signed the bill in July — in between the publication of 'All the President's Men' and the Supreme Court decision ordering him to release his Oval Office tapes. Future presidents would always hate the impoundment part of the law, which forbids them from withholding money appropriated by Congress, but they would learn to love the budget part, which created the process we all now know as reconciliation. That was not how it started. The idea of reconciliation was to increase congressional power by making it easier to produce budgets. Congress passes a nonbinding budget blueprint and can add a line allowing for reconciliation at a later time, as the current Congress did in May. Originally, that reconciliation was to do what the name suggests: reconcile the actual budget with the final congressional priorities in an expedited manner, basically a golden ticket for legislation about the budget — a place of privilege on the calendar and, most importantly, an exemption from the 60-vote threshold in the Senate. It worked as designed at first. The first-ever reconciliation package came in 1980 as lawmakers teamed up to address the scandalously large budget deficit. It might have gone as high as $80 billion, nearly 3 percent of the entire national economy, and action was needed. This sounds quaint in a time where we are rolling toward another $2 trillion deficit this year, more than 6 percent of the economy as a whole. But in those days, it was considered politically important in both parties to at least appear concerned about the debt. Former President Jimmy Carter signed the package of spending cuts and tax tweaks in the lame-duck session after his defeat, an act of magnanimity and responsible governance equally as foreign to our own time as being concerned about federal borrowing being just 3 percent of the gross domestic product. That was mostly how it worked for the next decade: reconciliation being used to streamline the passage of limited but still politically unpopular cuts to spending or increases to taxes with the goal of keeping the deficit in check. Then, in 1993, that changed. During the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, Republicans had never enjoyed unified control of Washington. But with Bill Clinton's victory in 1992, uniparty control returned to the federal government for the first time since reconciliation had been in use. Without a supermajority in the Senate, Democrats would have had to win over at least a few Republicans to advance the new president's agenda. Instead, we got the 1993 Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act, which was a funny name since it wasn't reconciling anything but rather a substitute for a budget. Instead of increasing the power of the legislative branch by making it easier to win spending fights with the executive branch, reconciliation became a tool to enhance the power of the presidency when his party had narrow majorities in Congress. Republicans, of course, returned fire when George W. Bush became president and used the tool to push through Bush's tax cuts to reverse Clinton's tax cuts. Then, in his first term, Barack Obama oversaw another innovation in the degradation of congressional power, using reconciliation to not change tax rates, but to invent a whole new health insurance system for the United States. The journey from congressional empowerment to partisan cudgel was complete. Presidents don't like the Senate filibuster because it usually demands some kind of bipartisan consensus to enact big legislation, but this relic from the summer of 1974 when Richard Nixon was feeling the heat had turned out to be very useful. Fifteen years after ObamaCare, we live in a world where Congress seldom even tries to pass real legislation and just waits for uniparty control to jam the president's agenda through the reconciliation loophole. We went all the way from empowering Congress for deficit reduction to flying a bomber over the White House to celebrate trillions in new debt. Obama's other major advance in reducing congressional power came in his second term when, after steadily maintaining that he did not have the power to change immigration law unilaterally, he did exactly that. Not long after his innovation in reconciliation, Obama was asked why he didn't just exempt immigrants who illegally came to or were brought to the United States as children from deportation. In a campaign event for Latino voters ahead of the 2010 midterms, Obama famously said, 'I am not king. I can't do these things just by myself.' His party lost that election, badly. Rather than disappoint Latino voters again in 2012 when he was running for reelection, Obama just went for it. In June of that year he gave us Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, an executive action that spelled out how Obama would refuse to enforce the immigration rules duly passed and signed into law before him. What he discovered was that the power to grant immunity from the law is greater than the power to enforce the law. There had always been the idea of 'prosecutorial discretion,' by which the executive branch had the authority to set priorities for the enforcement of laws in order to make the best use of limited resources. Obama took the next step and explicitly said that he was refusing to enforce the law in accordance with his own policy aims. He was making new law for his own political advantage and to the benefit of a preferred group of people. But the change was mostly popular, and since the beneficiaries were sympathetic figures, Obama correctly concluded that, like the diminution of congressional power for his health insurance law, members of his party would vigorously defend his decision to violate the spirit of the Constitution. So it could have been to no one's surprise that his successors would build on the achievement and that a supine Congress would go along with new abuses and even more executive action, provided the partisanship lined up. That's not to say that Congress stopped passing real legislation altogether after 2012. Joe Biden's presidency provided two notable examples of the kind of bipartisan lawmaking that our system envisions. First, an infrastructure spending package. The administration mostly followed that law but put up lots of regulatory barriers to actually spending the money. The second big bipartisan action of Biden's four years came in April of 2024, when with 79 votes in the Senate, Congress decreed that the Chinese tech firm ByteDance would have to sell its wildly popular social media app, TikTok, to an American firm by Jan. 19 of this year or else companies such as Apple and Google would be forbidden from selling the app to American users. At the time, Republicans offered the loudest voices about the need and the urgency for disrupting what they described as a river of Chinese propaganda flowing into the mobile devices of America's youth and a dire national security risk. But when a Republican president took office the day after the law was supposed to take effect, he promptly waved it away and instructed his Justice Department to make it clear to those American tech companies that the law would not be enforced. What was assumed at the time to be a bit of a wink in the old spirit of prosecutorial discretion was actually something quite bigger, as we now know that the administration told the companies that it was 'irrevocably relinquishing' its claim on enforcing the law for as long as President Trump held that following the law undermined his 'core presidential national security and foreign affairs powers.' Unlike Obama, who held that he was deprioritizing the enforcement of the law in some circumstances, Trump holds that because he believes the law does not align with his other priorities, it is simply not the law. Instead of trying to work around the law, Trump just nullified it. Obama's tricky tactics have been replaced by Trump's blunt force. But Trump's bet is similar to Obama's. He knows that the people who are most sensitive to constitutional arguments about the separation of powers, like Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), were also the opponents of the original law on the grounds that it violated free speech and property rights concerns. Will they sue to demand the enforcement of a law they don't think was constitutional in the first place? Trump will probably get his way and kick the door open wider still for the next president to discover new ways to abuse Congress. It's been a long way down for the Article 1 branch from making Richard Nixon sign off on limits to presidential power to Trump's celebration of a servile Congress, and one suspects we're just getting warmed up.
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First Post
15-06-2025
- Health
- First Post
History Today: When blood transfusion was performed for the first time in France
The first blood transfusion was performed by French physician Jean-Baptiste Denys on June 15, 1667. The procedure was performed on a 15-year-old boy who was weakened by a fever for nearly two months. On this day in 1917, the US Congress passed the Espionage Act, just two months after joining World War I read more While blood transfusion is common now, the first one took place in France. Representational image/AP In today's times, a huge number of people depend on blood transfusions. Those that need it can range from accident victims to people with blood disorders like Thalassemia. While these transfusions are a common practice in today's world, that was not the case in the 17th Century. Back then, it was unheard of. But all changed when the first successful blood transfusion took place on June 15, 1667, in France. French physician Jean-Baptiste Denys performed it to transfuse 0.35 litres of a lamb's blood into a 15 year-old-boy who had been severely weakened by a prolonged fever and repeated bloodletting. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD If you are a history geek who loves to learn about important events from the past, Firstpost Explainers' ongoing series, History Today will be your one-stop destination to explore key events. On this day in 1917, the US Congress passed the Espionage Act, just two months after it formally entered World War I. 'All the President's Men', the first definitive book about the Watergate scandal, was published on this day in 1974. Nearly two months later then-President Richard Nixon resigned from office. The first blood transfusion was performed One of the most pivotal moments in medical history took place on this day in 1667 when French physician Jean-Baptiste Denys performed what is widely considered the first fully documented blood transfusion to a human. Faced with a 15-year-old boy suffering from a severe, two-month fever, Denys and his assistant first tried the traditional method of 'letting blood.' When this proved ineffective, they opted for an experimental blood transfusion from a live animal, a technique they had been exploring for years. Connecting a tube from a lamb's artery to a vein in the boy's arm, they transferred approximately 340 grams of blood. After the procedure and a period of rest, Denis noted the boy awoke feeling 'cheerful enough' and subsequently made a full recovery. France released a stamp to mark the day the first blood transfusion took place. file image/AP Denys later performed another successful animal-to-human transfusion on a labourer. These early attempts at xenotransfusion (transfusing blood from one species to another) were experimental and often met with controversy and mixed results, with some subsequent patients experiencing severe reactions and even death. The scientific understanding of blood compatibility, including blood types, would not emerge for centuries. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Despite the inherent risks and the eventual ban on animal-to-human transfusions due to adverse reactions, Denys's courageous experiments on June 15, 1667, marked a crucial early step in the long and complex history of blood transfusion. US Congress passes Espionage Act A landmark federal law was enacted on June 15, 1917, with the US Congress passing the Espionage Act, just months after it officially entered World War I. The law was enacted in view of widespread concerns about national security, espionage and growing anti-war sentiment. Under President Woodrow Wilson , Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer was a key enforcer of the Espionage Act. This legislation effectively made it an offence to transmit information designed to hinder the US armed forces' conduct of the war or to promote the adversaries' cause. Convicted individuals were liable to a $10,000 fine and 20 years in prison. Furthermore, it made it illegal to make false statements intended to interfere with military operations, cause insubordination, disloyalty, or obstruct military recruitment. The Espionage Act was reinforced by the Sedition Act of the following year, which imposed similarly harsh penalties on anyone found guilty of making false statements that interfered with the prosecution of the war, insulting or abusing the US government, the flag, the Constitution or the military, agitating against the production of necessary war materials or advocating, teaching or defending any of these acts. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD It is still relevant today. The Julian Assange case is one of the most recent cases where the Act has come into effect. In June 2024, Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, pleaded guilty to a single count of conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defence information, a violation of the Espionage Act. 'All the President's Men' was published One of the most ground-breaking non-fiction books 'All the President's Men' was published on this day in 1974. The book was a detailed account of the investigative reporting of the Watergate scandal. This release occurred just months before President Richard Nixon's resignation, making it an incredibly timely and impactful exposé on the unfolding Watergate scandal. Authored by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the book told the behind-the-scenes story of the Watergate scandal beginning with the 1972 burglary of the Democratic headquarters at the Watergate Complex , and revealing the full scope of the saga. President Richard Nixon tells a group of Republican campaign contributors, he will get to the bottom of Watergate Scandal. File image/AP It revealed the involvement of officials like HR Haldeman and John Ehrlichman and famously introduced the mysterious anonymous source, ' Deep Throat, ' whose identity remained a secret for over 30 years. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD With this book, the authors became household names. The Denver Post termed All the President's Men, 'One of the greatest detective stories ever told.' Time magazine called the book 'perhaps the most influential piece of journalism in history.' The New York Times dubbed it a 'fast-moving mystery, a whodunit written with ease.' This Day, That Year On this day in 1944, US Marines attacked Saipan in the Mariana Islands. Arlington National Cemetery was established on this day in 1864. George Washington was named Commander in Chief of the Colonies by the Continental Congress in 1775.
Yahoo
02-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Opinion - Follow the money: Trump's corruption hits shocking heights
'Follow the money.' That was FBI agent 'Deep Throat,' played by Hal Holbrook, advising a young Bob Woodward of the Washington Post, played by Robert Redford, in the movie 'All the President's Men.' It premiered in theaters 49 years ago. The advice proved to be golden. And it is golden advice now — for anyone watching the corruption taking place in President Trump's second term. Right now, it is hard to miss what looks like a deluge of pocket-lining as private money swirls around this president. And let's not mention the free airplane he is ready to accept from a foreign power. The money grab is so breathtaking that it has left Trump's critics muttering expletives while the normally reliably loud critics of government corruption, especially congressional Republicans, appear in stunned silence. Even as Trump's administration seeks to regulate crypto more loosely, his jaunt into crypto — his $TRUMP and $MELANIA meme coins, plus his stake in World Liberty Financial — has reportedly increased his family's wealth by billions in the last six months and now accounts for almost 40 percent of his net worth. New York Times reporter Peter Baker posted on X last week, 'Trump and his family have monetized the White House more than any other occupant, normalizing activities that once would have provoked heavy blowback and official investigations.' Presidential scandals of the past seem quaint by comparison — Hillary Clinton's cattle futures, Eisenhower's chief of staff resigning over a coat, Nixon stepping down over a 'third-rate burglary.' The magnitude of Trump's self-serving actions to enrich himself exceeds anything in our history. Nixon sought distance from wrongdoing, telling Americans that he was 'not a crook.' He wanted to be clear that he did not personally gain money from any abuse of power that took place in his administration. Trump makes no effort to proclaim his innocence as he pursues wealth while in public office. And while Nixon held power during a time of relative economic calm for the middle class, Trump is acting against a backdrop of economic anxiety for most Americans. Mortgage rates have soared past 7 percent. Last month, Moody's downgraded our federal government's credit rating, signaling to global investors that America is now a risky bet on the basis of its mounting debt and political instability. Uncertainty over Trump's push for tariffs has the stock market on a roller-coaster ride and the bond market — the basis of retirement planning for many Americans — is trembling due to record-setting federal debt. And Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act (yes, that's what it's actually called), now going through the Senate, is set to push the nation much deeper into debt. That's not all. Trump is demanding that Walmart 'eat' the tariff-fueled added cost of products it sells, rather than passing them along to customers, even as analysts point out that retailers operate on slim margins. Last week, the U.S. Court of International Trade deemed Trump's tariffs to be illegal, further adding to the yo-yo of uncertainty and confusion that is spooking the markets, especially the bond markets. It wasn't long ago that conservative Republicans would recoil at the idea of the federal government dictating what profits businesses are allowed to earn. It was heresy. It was an affront to Milton Friedman and Frederick Hayek, conservative patron saints of economics. For decades, corporations used 'fiduciary duty' as an argument against government regulation and calls to increase employee pay and benefits. Now, they're so fearful of Trump's social media attacks that they are biting their tongues as they are being rolled by his bullying. In his first term, Trump promised that his tax cut plans would 'pay for themselves.' But the national debt increased by $1.9 trillion. And that tax cut windfall for corporations was not used to create more jobs or raise pay for workers. In most cases, the money went to buy back corporate stocks and make executives and investors richer. Now the question is whether voters will care. There are gubernatorial elections later this year in Virginia and New Jersey, and congressional midterms next year. Do voters care that Trump, his family and business partners are cashing in on Bitcoin schemes and lavish quid-pro-quo dinners with wealthy patrons? Do voters care that Trump's largest campaign donor, Elon Musk, the world's richest man, now leaving the administration, had access to personal financial information on millions of Americans, which journalists and senators have warned could be useful to his business ventures and harmful to national security? Do voters care that the outcome of Musk's attempt to cut government spending has had little impact, beyond fear, confusion and reduction of services? Do they care that Trump appointed the wealthiest Cabinet in U.S. history? Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick alone is worth over $3 billion — and entered government heavily invested in crypto, which he now helps oversee. It's time for the American people to follow the money — and connect the dots. While they grow poorer, Trump and his inner circle are growing ever richer. Juan Williams is senior political analyst for Fox News Channel and a prize-winning civil rights historian. He is the author of the new book 'New Prize for These Eyes: The Rise of America's Second Civil Rights Movement.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
