Morning Briefing for October 1, 2010

RedState Morning Briefing
For October 1, 2010

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1. Tom Coburn Has Medicare Fraud in His Sights

When it comes to solving the multi-billion-dollar challenge of Medicare and Medicaid fraud, Oklahoma Senator (and physician) Tom Coburn has led the way in calling for innovative approaches to fraud prevention. Now he’s introduced legislation focused on addressing the problem. It may not go anywhere in this Congress, but expect it to get a lot of consideration early next year.“This act does several things to target fraud. One of the biggest problems we face is providers and suppliers who are banned in one State, but then just jump to another,” Coburn told me in an interview today. “So we’re going to give the Secretary [of HHS] the ability share information to a greater degree, so we can track and identify providers and suppliers excluded from participation.”Please click here for the rest of the post.

2. Dear Thomas Friedman

Dear Mr. Friedman,I read your column on Wednesday in which you wrote, “The Tea Party that has gotten all the attention, the amorphous, self-generated protest against the growth in government and the deficit, is what I’d actually call the “Tea Kettle movement” — because all it’s doing is letting off steam.”I suspect you are writing more about yourself than the actual Tea Party Movement. You see, I was sitting across from you on the Acela Express last week from New York to Washington. We all saw and all heard you berate the Amtrak worker for not picking up your trash quickly enough. We all heard you complain that you were trapped in your seat because, heaven forbid, you had your tray table down and couldn’t be bothered to move your laptop to get up.Never mind that the Amtrak employee was actually in the midst of doing his job.We also all heard you mutter about how the Amtrak employee’s failure to pick your trash up quickly enough was a sign of why the country was disintegrating or something or other like that. Yeah, you said that too. We all heard you. You were too busy lecturing to see all the glances back and forth among those around you and the smirks caused by that last line.Now you are rattling on about tea partiers having “no plan to restore America to greatness.”I guess we need to go ask your buddies the Chinese for a plan.Please click here for the rest of the post.

3. Message for Meg Whitman: Go on Offense. Now.

The best way past a “scandal” for a Republican is through it. Take a day or two – no more, no less – to think it through, find a line of attack and go on offense. If George Allen had done that instead of trying to plead, ignore and then cower his way past the “macaca” incident, we’d not have the tragedy of both Senators from the Commonwealth of Virginia being Democrats.On the latest so-called “scandal!” and “controversy” that has all the political talking heads in California running around screaming at the top of their lungs i.e. Meg Whitman’s illegal alien former housekeeper; if I were advising Whitman I’d tell her, apart from her offer to take a polygraph test, to call a Press Conference, and go on offense. Please click here for the rest of the post.

4. Congress backstabs POTUS on recess appointments.

It seems a bit odd that Senate Democrats have agreed to use a rules technicality to prohibit the President from making any recess appointments between now and the election – particularly since Senator Dick Durbin (D, IL) seemed to be suggesting earlier this week that a recess appointment for blocked OMB nominee Jacob Lew would be possible if the hold on his nomination was still active. None the less, the prohibition is now in effect: and in exchange, the Republicans gave up……nothing.Please click here for the rest of the post.

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