TeaParty365 invites all candidates in the five boroughs for NY Assembly and Senate, all candidates for statewide offices, and Congressional and Senatorial offices to our Candidates Forum. This invitation is extended to candidates in all parties. The forum will provide a unique opportunity for candidates to demonstrate to New Yorkers their desire and ability to be effective public servants. There will be brief opening statements followed by audience and viewer Q&A moderated by David Webb.

The forum will be held at Baruch Performing Arts Center, Engelman Recital Hall
Doors will open at 6:00pm and the forum begins at 7pm.
There is a $15 door charge for the general public –– Click to register
Handicapped Accessible

Media is invited to cover the forum.

Elements of this event, all with the ability to pose questions:
Interactive video webcast on TeaPartyTV at www.teaparty365.org with live chat
Video watching parties at tea party member’s homes. We suggest candidates do the same.
Email questions to info@teaparty365.org
Live twitter-cast @TeaParty365
Live facebook discussion forum on TeaParty365 facebook fan page

Please contact us to RSVP or with any questions at 212.372.8008 or by email; Lisa O’Neill, Executive Director lisa@teaparty365.org.

Click for directions and public transportation

2nd Annual Tax Day Tea Party Headlined by Lou Dobbs, Dr. Manny Alvarez, Andrew Wilkow, Mike Church and more.

FULL DETAILS / LOCATION BELOW – READ POST UNTIL END

TeaParty365 and Staten Island Tea Party Rally for Fiscal Responsibility and Limited Government

Download and share: Press Release and Flyer and Press Release 2 – Lou Dobbs

Rally Rules

• No signs on sticks – must be on cardboard tubes
• No large bags, backpacks or coolers

Speakers

Lou Dobbs is an American radio host, former television host, and author. He anchored CNN’s Lou Dobbs Tonight until November 2009. more…

.

Dr. Manny Alvarez, M.D., is a dedicated medical professional and pioneer of innovative advances in medical technology. For nearly a decade, Dr. Manny has served as Chairman of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Science at Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey.  more…

Andrew Wilkow, the next generation of great talk radio got his “start” in the 4th grade when he drew radio controls on his loose leaf binder and stuck a pencil in the center to be his microphone. The station “WILK-Oh W” and Andrew’s commentary in class was not appreciated by his teacher. In 1990 Andrew became a college DJ at 640-AM WDTU at S.U.N.Y. Delhi in upstate New York. more…

Mike Church – Who Is Mike Church? A man, a myth and a machine of clear Constitutional thought. An author, filmmaker and singer/songwriter, Mike uses facts to promote the singular notion that in order to save our future, we must look back to the principles our beloved union was founded upon. Mike also has a habit of using brilliant parody songs to make a serious political point. more…

Kathleen Troia “KT” McFarland is a national security commentator and columnist who appears weekly on a number of TV, online and national radio programs. Ms. McFarland held national security posts in the Nixon, Ford and Reagan Administrations, and received the Defense Department’s highest civilian award. more…

David Webb is the host of The Grinder business talk show on AM 970 NYC and a talk show host at Sirius XM Satellite Radio. David has a distinguished history with over 15 years of entertaining and informing the public; a blend of experience as a Local & Syndicated Talk Show Host, Music On-Air Personality, Producer, Assistant Program Director and Promotion Director. more…

Kellen Giuda is currently Director of Coalitions for Newt Gingrich’s Renewing American Leadership, Co-Founder and Co-Director of TeaParty365 Inc., President of Parcbench Media LLC and has previously served on the Board of Directors of the national Tea Party group, Tea Party Patriots, with over 1200 affiliated tea parties. more…

Lorraine Scanni, co-founder and organizer of the Staten Island Tea Party,  is a tireless worker and major contributor to this active and influential group.  A wife and mother of two children, Lorraine maintains the SITP social networking websites and devotes a great deal of time speaking to local civic groups about the tea party movement.  more…

Frank Santarpia is the co-founder, organizer and communications director for the Staten Island Tea Party.  He is a guest columnist for the Staten Island Advance and writes a weekly blog.  Frank’s career as a small-business owner and real estate investor gives him an entrepreneur’s perspective on the political scene, and his love of American History fuels a passion to restore America to the principles that made it great.  more…

Music by:

John King and Rahway!

www.chungkingstudios.com

www.rahwayband.com

WHEN: Thursday, April 15, 2010   7:00 – 9:00 PM

WHERE: JAMES A. FARLEY POST OFFICE

8th Avenue and 31st Street, New York, NY (next to Penn Station)

The event is free and open to the public

Media should RSVP to the number or email below.

Media Contact:  David Webb – 212.372.8008, media@teaparty365.org

Rachelle Younglai and Kevin Drawbaugh

Charles Prince and Robert Rubin, who led Citigroup in the run-up to the 2008 banking crisis, voiced regrets on Thursday, but accepted no responsibility for the mega-bank’s massive losses.

The two came under heavy fire in a congressional panel hearing for being blind to Citi taking on huge financial risks under their watch, leading ultimately to the bank’s near collapse, prevented only by a $45-billion (29 billion pound) taxpayer bailout.

<< Get the whole story. >>

By Don Lee and Jim Puzzanghera

3:50 PM PST, January 24, 2010

Reporting from Washington

With congressional support eroding, his popularity falling and his renomination of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke potentially in trouble, President Obama faces an even more daunting task in saving his entire domestic agenda — persuading millions of angry Americans that his economic policies will bring them a brighter future.

Even as the economy has begun clawing its way out of the Great Recession and job losses have slowed dramatically, critics on the left and the right — even party loyalists — say the president has failed to articulate a clear economic vision.

That is stoking public anxiety over high unemployment, continuing home foreclosures and widespread financial insecurity. It also feeds popular resentment over government bailouts that restored soaring profits and paydays for Wall Street while the rest of the country faces alarming budget deficits and a still-faltering job market.

“It’s not clear what Obamanomics is,” said Robert D. Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a nonpartisan Washington think tank. “That does hurt the administration. It becomes harder to convey a vision of where you want to go.”

Ironically, Obama has gathered some of the best and brightest minds to form his economic team, much the way President John F. Kennedy assembled a national security team composed of the “Whiz Kids” of their day.

But what has led Obama into trouble is not so much the quality of technical advice he’s received as it is the political failure to persuade voters that he’s doing everything possible to ease their pain.

A year into their task of saving the sinking economy, Obama’s advisors have garnered kudos from much of the nation’s economic elite, but Obama has not yet found a way to instill public confidence as Franklin D. Roosevelt did during his first year of fighting the Great Depression.

Now, facing the possibility of bigger losses for Democrats in November that could paralyze his presidency, Obama is moving to hammer home a new economic message. It began with last week’s proposals for tough new banking regulations and will culminate in Wednesday’s State of the Union address.

His goal, officials say, is to deliver a clear message about his priorities and economic strategy, emphasizing efforts to jump-start job creation while reining in the soaring budget deficit.

But it will not be easy to win back disillusioned voters who see the president as out of touch with everyday lives.

That impression of remoteness has been created largely by the months-long push to overhaul healthcare, which many voters see as unrelated to their most pressing concern — economic security.

“Healthcare has sucked up so much of the oxygen in what people are seeing,” Rep. Joe Courtney (D-Conn.) said the morning after the bitter loss in the special Senate election in Massachusetts that deprived Democrats of their filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.

Beyond the preoccupation with healthcare, the administration has tended to focus on the specifics of its economic strategy — whether the $787-billion stimulus package or regulatory reform — rather than presenting a clear explanation for how the complex initiatives would connect with ordinary Americans.

“They would be better served by conveying a view and narrative of how their policies will produce greater prosperity for most Americans,” said Robert J. Shapiro, an economic advisor to former President Bill Clinton and chairman of consulting firm Sonecon Inc.

“It’s possible that Obama will run for re-election with fewer people working than when he took office,” Shapiro warned.

The vaunted White House economic team may have called some shots right, but the members aren’t helping much in getting a concise message out, critics said.

High-powered and experienced in Washington policy-making, the group included former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, ex-Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker and one-time New York Fed chief Timothy Geithner, as well as such respected academic economists as Christina Romer.

Now, even some Democrats see the team as conventional in its economic thinking, too cozy with Wall Street and ineffective in communicating how its policies would benefit ordinary people.

The problem, said Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz of Columbia University, stems from the president and his economic team focusing on pragmatic, nuts-and-bolts responses to the troubled economy.

“He wants to create jobs. He wants to restore the viability of our financial systems . . . make our economy more green. There is a set of well-defined objectives he’s trying to achieve,” Stiglitz said.

“Part of a pragmatic approach is you make a list. It’s not a vision.”

Obama himself seemed to acknowledge the problem last week.

“If there’s one thing that I regret this year,” he said in an interview on ABC-TV, it was that “we were so busy just getting stuff done and dealing with the immediate crises that were in front of us, that I think we lost some of that sense of speaking directly to the American people about what their core values are.”

Recently, the president has begun to recast his message — adopting tougher, more confrontational rhetoric to dispel the notion he cares more about Wall Street than Main Street.

On the day after Scott Brown’s upset victory in Massachusetts, administration officials leaked word of their new populist proposal to set sharp limits on the size and risk taken by the nation’s biggest banks.

Officially unveiling the plan, Obama said he was eager to take on Wall Street and its lobbyists, who were expected to oppose the new restrictions.

“If these folks want a fight, it’s a fight I’m ready to have,” the president declared.

Obama’s previously light touch in dealing with banks may reflect the influence of his top advisors, primarily Summers and Geithner.

While some Democrats urged a tougher, more progressive economic strategy, the White House favored a more conservative stance that eschewed New Deal-style programs and meddling with the free-market system.

Obama came into office without a strong set of economic ideas, as former Presidents Reagan and Clinton did. And he has largely hewed to the emergency policies of Bush in trying to resuscitate the economy with stimulus measures, tax cuts and bailouts.

Analysts say that more-of-the-same approach has made it tougher for Obama to blame the past administration on the economy and has allowed the Republicans, who are far more unified in their anti-tax, smaller-government economic agenda, to drive the debate in Washington.

Meanwhile, healthcare and the war in Afghanistan have dominated the news. Month after month, polls showed Obama’s approval rating in decline and the public increasingly frustrated with rising unemployment and the government’s bulging debt.

“Americans have spent the past 18 months around the kitchen table figuring out what they can do without, and they want their leaders in Washington to prioritize as well,” said Bruce Reed, chief executive of the Democratic Leadership Council and an advisor in the Clinton White House.

Administration officials insist the president and his advisors have been focused on jobs since even before taking office. In February, Obama pushed through a $787-billion economic stimulus, which officials have trumpeted as saving up to 2 million jobs and returning the nation to economic growth.

And Obama has been engaged deeply in economic policy issues, aides say. Each day in the Oval Office, the president meets with his top economic advisors, plus Vice President Joe Biden, Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel and senior advisors David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett, to discuss the economy for at least a half hour.

Summers described Obama as “very active in formulating policy,” expecting to get a briefing memo or a printout of PowerPoint slides before each meeting and coming up with questions to toss out to the participants.

The widely respected Volcker, who helped lead the nation out of stagflation in the 1980s, hasn’t attended the meetings and apparently spent much of the year on the periphery of White House discussions as he publicly pressed his case for stronger restrictions on banks.

That changed abruptly last week. Volcker stood next to Obama as the president announced he would push for new banking restrictions.

Still, the economic recovery remains frail and has not yet begun to create needed jobs.

The administration’s economic vulnerabilities are compounded by its initial miscalculation of the depth of the downturn.

When the White House and congressional Democrats pushed through the stimulus early last year, the administration had forecast that the jobless rate would top out at 9% without any action and 8% with the recovery efforts.

Today, nationwide unemployment is 10%, much worse in California and other states.

“Unfortunately we oversold the program,” House Democratic Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer conceded last week at a jobs forum.

don.lee@latimes.com

jim.puzzanghera@latimes.com

Copyright © 2010, The Los Angeles Times

By DAVE MICHAELS / The Dallas Morning News
dmichaels@dallasnews.com

WASHINGTON – With a booming health care market and no check on hospital growth, Texas looked ripe for more rehabilitation hospitals.

But Dallas-based Reliant Healthcare Partners’ plan to build 13 of the niche hospitals in Texas might turn out to have one major problem: It recruited physicians as investors.

Health care legislation that soon may be passed by Congress would halt the growth of physician-owned hospitals and prevent any more from opening after Aug. 1. Reliant says as many as six of its 13 hospitals might not go forward without physician investment.

Critics of the facilities – including the American Hospital Association and powerful Democrats in Congress – say the practice of physicians referring patients to their own hospitals is a conflict of interest that results in unnecessary, more expensive care.

Supporters say the model improves efficiencies and produces better results because doctors are more likely to be involved with the patient during and after a hospital stay. Doctors also are important generators of business – about 25 percent of Reliant’s patients are referred by physicians with an investment in the hospital, said chief executive Emmett E. Moore.

“When we first started the company four or five years ago, we felt like there was room for seven or eight of these” in North Texas, Moore said. “The American public does not want their older loved ones convalescing in a nursing home. They want them rehabbed and brought home with functionality.”

Rehabilitation hospitals mostly treat older patients recovering from strokes, brain injuries and joint replacements. The number of stand-alone rehab hospitals operated by companies like Reliant has grown as federal regulations limited the number of rehab patients who could be handled by acute-care hospitals.

Texas has more rehabilitation hospitals than any other state, according to Medicare. And the booming health care sector in North Texas has a higher concentration of physician-owned hospitals than any other area in the country.

Yet operators like Moore say there is still a shortage of rehab hospitals, which will be needed to care for the large number of baby boomers entering Medicare. Their fate is closely tied to Medicare, which pays them more per case than it does to skilled nursing homes or home health care agencies. At Reliant Rehabilitation Hospital in Richardson, Medicare paid for 86 percent of in-patient days in 2008, according to data from American Hospital Directory. 

Reliant has built its new facilities near acute-care hospitals where older patients have been treated, Moore said. One of its hospitals under construction is just south of Medical City Dallas Hospital near Central Expressway and Forest Lane in North Dallas. Another, planned for Bedford, is near Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital Hurst-Euless-Bedford.

Reliant also has three hospitals under construction in Texas that it says would open even without physician ownership (the doctor-investors would have to be bought out). Six others planned for Austin, Corpus Christi, Fort Worth, Houston, Mesquite and San Antonio would have to be reassessed because banks may view the hospitals as riskier projects, he said.

“The banks are not going to be as comfortable without physician ownership,” said Moore, a veteran health care executive whose previous companies included physicians as investors. “We would have to reassess how we structure those and capitalize them.”

The Physician Hospitals of America, a trade group, has said about 75 physician-owned hospitals under development across the country won’t meet the Aug. 1 deadline. The group says 32 of those are in Texas, including eight in Dallas and Tarrant counties.

A ban on physician ownership would be the culmination of an effort by key Democrats who have been fighting with the organizations for nearly 20 years.

Sensing the momentum in Congress to extend the restrictions, Reliant hired its own federal lobbyist for the first time in September. Moore and other Texas hospital executives targeted lawmakers with a large number of physician-owned hospitals in their districts, including Democratic Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson of Dallas.

They want lawmakers to delay the deadline at least a year. Under that scenario, physician-owned hospitals that earn Medicare certification by Aug. 1, 2011, would be permitted to receive payment from Medicare and Medicaid.

A spokeswoman said Johnson has asked House leaders to consider a 2011deadline. Yet the August deadline appears likely to stick, partly because it was included in a compromise with moderate Senate Democrats that allowed the health bill to pass in December.

“I am pushing for more protections for them in the final health care bill,” Johnson said in a prepared statement. “The compromise language won’t be perfect, but it is my belief that physician-owned hospitals will be better off.” Moore isn’t betting on it.

While physician-owned hospitals enjoy support from some moderate Democrats, most of their allies are Republicans. Moore said his talks with them have often ended with him being told to cozy up to Democrats.

Molly Sandvig, executive director of Physician Hospitals of America, said her association is lobbying to change the bill and is exploring whether to sue to try to block it from becoming law. If the group pursues a legal challenge, Sandvig said that may be filed in federal court in Texas.

Sandvig said some planned physician-owned hospitals won’t get built if the proposal becomes law. The facilities would have to forgo income from Medicare and Medicaid if they opened with physician investment.

“In order to make ends meet or to stay in the black, most of our hospitals really need to take Medicare and Medicaid,” she said.

Methodist Health System, which has built hospitals as joint ventures with physicians, says it will complete a $38 million surgical hospital in McKinney by the 2010 deadline.

A $60 million surgical hospital in Addison won’t be complete by then, but Methodist still plans to find a way to open the project, said Stephen L. Mansfield, Methodist’s president and chief executive.

“Where there is a need, hospitals will continue to be built, and they can be built without having physicians in ownership,” Mansfield said.

January 22, 2010, 2:46 PM ET