Free Republic

One in five Germans would like to see the monarchy restored, according to a survey released on Thursday. Young Germans were even keener on replacing the president with a new Kaiser. … Despite swelling support among the young, most Germans still oppose the idea. 51 percent of all respondents said that having a king or queen would cost too much money. Sixty nine percent said they were completely against the idea. …

Kaiser Permanente officials have confirmed 530 union employees in Southern California have been laid off. At least 85 position were eliminated at the Fontana and Ontario medical centers, officials said Friday. Officials at the health-care provider did not release the locations of the other 445 positions. The layoffs do not include physicians.

One of the nation's largest HMOs is laying off 530 employees in Southern California this weekend, including some in San Diego County, a company official confirmed Saturday. Kaiser Permanente said the layoffs -- constituting about eight-tenths of one percent of it employees -- would be spread across its 65,700 employees and doctors working in offices and hospitals from Kern County to the Mexican border. Under its union contracts, the laid-off employees who are in unions will get income and benefits for a year. many may also be rehired next year, when Kaiser Permanente expects "significant membership growth" next year. "Health...

The Department of Health and Human Services last week announced it had awarded a $5.9 million grant to a University of Chicago Medical Center program tied to Michelle Obama and run by Eric Whitaker, one of President Obama’s closest friends. The Urban Health Initiative, which received the award, was originally based on a smaller program launched during the last decade by Michelle Obama, who was an executive at the University of Chicago Medical Center before she departed to become first lady. The UHI is headed up by Obama basketball and golf buddy Whitaker, who has known the president since Obama’s...

Police say a hospital employee fatally stabbed a man he had told to leave the facility’s property. The stabbing happened about 3 a.m. at Kaiser Permanente Woodland Hills Medical Center in the 5600 block of De Soto Avenue, Los Angeles police Officer Norma Eisenman said. Eisenman says a male employee told the man, who was apparently a transient, to leave the property. However, the man struck the employee, who then pulled out a knife and stabbed him, she said. The fight was outside the hospital. The wounded man, who was in his 40s, died at the hospital, coroner’s Assistant Chief...

Solyndra investor frequently visited White House officialsDaniel J. Goldstein, California Watch December 1, 2011 George Kaiser, the top investor in the failed company Solyndra and a chief fundraiser for the Obama campaign, visited White House officials at least 16 times between March 2009 and July 2011, including three times in one day shortly after the administration expressed second thoughts about granting the company a loan, according to White House visitor logs. Solyndra, a maker of thin-film solar panels, received a $535 million loan from the Department of Energy in September 2009. In August 2011, the company declared bankruptcy. Kaiser, an...

(Reuters) - Contributors to President Barack Obama's campaign did not influence the decisions on government aid to the now-bankrupt solar panel maker Solyndra, Energy Secretary Steven Chu told National Public Radio. Chu defended decisions made by the Energy Department on the $535 million loan guarantee to Solyndra in his first major interview on what has become a nagging political issue for the Obama administration. The interview, on Tuesday night, comes just ahead of his testimony to the House Energy and Commerce committee on Thursday, where Republicans probing the loan are expected to grill him on the taxpayer-funded aid to Solyndra....

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration wanted the failing solar energy company Solyndra to delay announcing an early round of employee layoffs until after the 2010 midterm elections, according to newly released emails. An October 2010 email from a Solyndra investment adviser to a colleague said Energy Department officials were pushing "very hard" to delay making the layoffs — an early sign of the company's financial woes — public until Nov. 3, 2010 — the day after the midterm elections. "Oddly they didn't give a reason for that date," the email states. The email was released Wednesday by the House...

WASHINGTON — Emails released by a House committee appear to show that a major donor to President Barack Obama's 2008 campaign discussed with White House officials a federal loan to a failed California solar company. That's despite repeated assurances by Obama administration officials that the donor, George Kaiser, didn't discuss the loan with the White House. The emails show that Kaiser, an Oklahoma billionaire, called the failed company, Solyndra Inc., a White House "poster child" on renewable energy. Solyndra received a $528 million loan from the Energy Department before it declared bankruptcy. The emails were from Kaiser to an associate....

Advisers to Obama fundraiser George Kaiser discussed Solyndra and other government contracts during their visits last year to the White House, according to emails released Wednesday by House Republicans. The emails between Kaiser and two of his top business associates center in part around Solyndra's failed bid to win a second loan guarantee from the Energy Department for $469 million. In one exchange from Feb. 27, 2010, Ken Levit, executive director of the George Kaiser Family Foundation, said aides to Vice President Joe Biden responded enthusiastically when the topic of the California solar company came up during a meeting about...

Obama fundraiser George Kaiser and his business associates discussed lobbying the White House to help Solyndra, the solar panel company that failed in August, newly released e-mails show. Records made public Wednesday by House Republicans show Kaiser’s associates were interested in winning White House assistance in selling its panels to the government, and that they discussed Solyndra with Obama Administration officials in charge of stimulus funding. A Republican-led House panel on Thursday agreed to subpoena the White House for documents related to Solyndra Inc., the failed California solar company that received a half-billion-dollar federal loan. (Nov. 3). At one point,...

At Friday’s Solyndra hearing, an Obama administration Treasury Department official admitted that he’s never heard of taxpayer money being subordinate to outside commercial firms. That means the Obama administration is admitting it’s awfully suspicious that investors like George Kaiser’s firms and others got their cash back when Solyndra failed, but the taxpayers ended up on the hook for the $535 million the Department of Energy promised it via a loan guarantee.

Oklahoma billionaire George Kaiser has been in the headlines in recent months thanks to his role as a major investor in Solyndra LLC, the now-bankrupt California solar panel maker hailed by President Obama as a model for America's "clean energy future." Congress is investigating why the Obama administration gave Solyndra a $535 million loan guarantee despite multiple warnings from career bureaucrats and private sector investment experts that the company was a poor risk, lacked a realistic business model and was likely to go bankrupt as a result. Because Kaiser was a campaign "bundler" - an individual who collects contributions to...

When the Kaiser Family Foundation reported last week that insurance premiums had climbed 9.5% this year — the biggest increase since 2004 — it looked as though a key promise of Obama-Care had been broken. Indeed, just before he signed the health reform law, President Obama said it would "bring down the cost of health care for families, for businesses, and for the federal government." Instead, average family premiums have climbed $2,393 since 2008, the Kaiser survey found. This is the latest ObamaCare prediction that has failed to materialize. If the history of state and federal health care reforms is...

The Washington Post reported yesterday that Secretary of Energy Steven Chu gave Solyndra more taxpayer money even after Solyndra was in default on the government’s $535 million loan guarantee: Energy Secretary Steven Chu acknowledged Thursday making the final decision to allow a struggling solar company to continue receiving taxpayer money after it had technically defaulted on a $535 million federal loan guaranteed by his agency. Chu spokesman Damien La­Vera said in a statement that the secretary approved the restructuring agreement for Solyndra because it gave the company “the best possible chance to succeed in a very competitive marketplace and put...

Bloomberg reports that the FBI is investigating Solyndra for accounting fraud, according to a source close to the solar panel company. The report confirms assumptions that the Department of Justice has been looking into whether Solyndra misrepresented the company's financial situation in order to obtain — and then refinance — a $534 million loan from the federal government. We've previously written that Solyndra executives assured the administration that the company's future was bright, even as the company's internal audits showed its finances deteriorating. The company declared bankruptcy earlier this month, prompting the FBI probe, as well as two Congressional investigations.

The cost of health insurance for many Americans this year climbed more sharply than in previous years, outstripping any growth in workers’ wages and adding more uncertainty about the pace of rising medical costs. A new study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit research group that tracks employer-sponsored health insurance on a yearly basis, shows that the average annual premium for family coverage through an employer reached $15,073 in 2011, an increase of 9 percent over the previous year. “The open question is whether that’s a one-time spike or the start of a period of higher increases,” said Drew...

Thousands of nurses at more than 30 Sutter Health and Kaiser Permanente hospitals in Northern California will walk off the job Thursday in what union officials say will be the nation's largest-ever nurses' strike. More than 23,000 nurses represented by the powerful California Nurses Association – including 17,000 from Kaiser hospitals – are expected to honor the walkout, primarily in the Bay Area but also at Kaiser's Sacramento-area hospitals. Kaiser officials said they are prepared "to provide high-quality health care and service" during the strike. The massive one-day strike, engineered by the CNA –

A key unanswered question in the Solyndra loan investigation concerns the role George Kaiser, the Oklahoma billionaire and major Obama fundraiser whose Family Foundation owned a large stake in the failed solar-panel company. Kaiser made multiple visits to the White House in the week before the Department of Energy approved a $535 billion guaranteed loan to Solyndra on March 20, 2009, and helped arrange 16 separate meetings between top White House officials and Solyndra executives around that time. Yet Kaiser maintains that he “did not participate in any discussions with the U.S. government regarding the loan.” But as the following...

Billionaire Obama fundraiser George Kaiser visited the White House 16 times over the past 3 years, and is caught in the middle of the Solyndra scandal as the company’s chief investor and prime beneficiary of the debt restructuring approved by the Obama Administration earlier this year. This has lead to the obvious question of whether Kaiser leveraged his political connections to obtain federal stimulus funding, and preferential treatment, but surely there might be a less nefarious explanation for Kaiser’s White House visits, right? Nah…

How glorious, watching investigative reporters on primetime news meticulously dissect the $535 million Obama-Solyndra connection while co-anchors squeeze in comprehensive charts and detailed explanations on where all of the taxpayer’s stimulus money went since Obama needs another ‘this-will-fix-it’ $300 billion; oops, now $400 billion; hold it, ok, $450 billion. No? Fine, but [the] MSM wouldn’t also be ignoring Project Gunrunner and the Obama-GE connection simply because AP Members such as The Washington Post and CBS receive $ millions in ObamaCare subsidies, i.e., bribes? I mean, that would be a conspiracy...

Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama surprised the staff of Tulsa's Educare Center, 2511 E. Fifth Place, with a surprise visit on Monday. Obama was in Tulsa for a private fundraiser. "I've been a big proponent of early childhood education for some time," said Obama. "I'm extremely pleased and proud of Oklahoma for the ground-breaking work that's being done here." Obama's campaign had kept his stop at the Educare Center so quiet only a two staff members of the staff knew he was coming. Those two, Co-Director Carol Rowland and Associate Director of Early Childhood Education Lyn Lucas, were sworn to...

Link only - Questions Raised After DOE Hides Costs Of Energy Projects Each project is listed in detail on the DOE's website, but the costs were recently taken down.

Solyndra - Gate9/8/2011The Solar DoleFlashback: Official White House Video Praises Solyndra as a Recovery Act Success StoryFBI agents executed search warrants on Thursday at the headquarters of California solar firm Solyndra, which received a $535 million loan from the federal government before filing for bankruptcy last week. Solyndra officials made numerous trips to the White House, logs show9/7/2011Obama blows another $100bn on green fantasies(Energy Sec. Chu's office declares Solyndra a success)Solyndra - The Obama connection9/6/2011Solyndra files bankruptcy, employees sueSolyndra Looking for a BuyerSolarGateObama's Solyndra-Gate Won't Go Away9/5/2011Hilda Solis: Labor Secretary . . . Or Central Planning Comissar?9/3/2011George Kaiser Made Multiple...

Not only does the now-bankrupt solar energy firm Solyndra have a cozy financial  relationship with the Obama administration, company representatives also made numerous visits to the White House to meet with administration officials, The Daily Caller has learned. According to White House visitor logs, between March 12, 2009, and April 14, 2011, Solyndra officials and investors made no fewer than 20 trips to the West Wing. In the week before the administration awarded Solyndra with the first-ever alternative energy loan guarantee on March 20, four separate visits were logged.George Kaiser, who has in the past been labeled a major Solyndra investor...

Solyndra - The Obama connection I wrote about the solar panel manufacturer Solyndra last week; "Government Investment Disaster in the Works" I highlighted all of the negatives that the company was facing. It was pretty clear to me that that company was facing trouble. But I had no idea that they would file Chapter 11 the very next day. (Sometimes you just get lucky) I also made note of some scuttlebutt that George Kaiser (Oklahoma oil billionaire) was involved with Solyndra. I have been looking for a confirmation of this. Kaiser is an important link in this story. He is...

The Obama administration bypassed procedural steps meant to protect taxpayers as it hurried to approve an energy loan guarantee to a politically-connected California solar power startup, ABC News and the Center for Public Integrity's iWatch News have learned …The Energy Department in March 2009 announced its intention to award Solyndra Inc. a $535 million loan guarantee before receiving final copies of outside reviews typically used to vet such deals. ...The loan guarantee, the administration's first for a clean energy project, benefited a company whose prime financial backers include Oklahoma oil billionaire George Kaiser, a "bundler" of campaign donations. Kaiser raised...

A solar energy company that intends to file bankruptcy received $535 million in backing from the federal government and has a cozy history with Democrats and the Obama administration, campaign finance records show. Shareholders and executives of Solyndra, a green energy company producing solar panels, fundraised for and donated to the Obama administration to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Tulsa billionaire George Kaiser, a key Obama backer who raised between $50,000 and $100,000 for the president’s election campaign, is one of Solyndra’s primary investors. Kaiser himself donated $53,500 to Obama’s 2008 election campaign, split between the DSCC...

The mainstream media won’t point this out. Obama gave $535 million dollars to billionaire George Kaiser who just happens to own Solyndra, Inc. Oh, Kaiser is also a major Obama fundraiser. No conflicts of interests at all.

NBC is reporting on yet another green scheme going belly-up and this one is a big one. Scott McGrew reports: Solyndra, a major manufacturer of solar technology in Fremont, has shut its doors, according to employees at the campus. "I was told by a security guard to get my [stuff] and leave," one employee said. The company employs a little more than 1,000 employees worldwide, according to its website. Solyndra was touted by the Obama administration as a prime example of how green technology could deliver jobs. The President visited the facility in May of last year and said "it...

WASHINGTON – Millions of women stand to gain free access to a broad menu of birth control methods, thanks to a recommendation issued Tuesday by health experts advising the government. An Institute of Medicine panel recommended that the government require health insurance companies to cover birth control for women as preventive care, without copayments. Contraception — along with such care as diabetes tests during pregnancy and screening for the virus that causes cervical cancer — was one of eight recommended preventive services for women. "Unintended pregnancies carry health consequences for the mother — psychological, emotional and physical — and also...

KRISTINE KAISER: We must stop the corporate takeover of AmericaHigh Point Enterprise 18 hrs ago Corporations are making their move and will soon rule American politics. They are giving big money to the GOP, with the hopes of grabbing American electoral power. You see, they operate with one disadvantage; they are not people and cannot vote. So, they need front groups, regular people to carry their banners. Some people want to rub elbows with power. Others delight in the contrariness of being for the other fellow and negating their own interests. Some people are against aiding neighbors. But all, I...

81 percent report knowing that health reform legislation has been signed into law by President Obama. But more than half (56 percent) say they don’t yet have enough information to understand how it will impact them personally and 55 percent are confused about the law.

OAKLAND, Calif., April 7 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- As months of national bargaining for a new union contract covering 100,000 union members at Kaiser Permanente began yesterday, Service Employees International Union--United Healthcare West (SEIU-UHW)'s 121-member bargaining team delivered a strong message to management: we are united for a contract that upholds high standards at the nation's largest not-for-profit health care provider, including good wages and maintaining all existing healthcare benefits.At Tuesday's introductory session, Kaiser management described their current cost structure as "unsustainable" and said "changes must be made." SEIU-UHW members, who at 48,000 make up nearly half of the 100,000 union members...

As part of a series, "The Five Keys To Health Reform's Success Or Failure," Time writes: "Fiddling with Medicare is not for the faint of heart. ... But if there are to be far-reaching changes in the way medicine is practiced in this country, Medicare will have to drive them. ... 'Medicare has to go first,' says Len Nichols, director of the Center for Health Policy Research and Ethics at George Mason University. 'It's the only buyer [in the health care market] with enough power. It's the only buyer big enough to make the hospitals pay attention.' The huge government...

RIVERSIDE (CBS) ― Kaiser Permanente is laying off 650 workers in Southern California. Another 1,200 jobs are being cut in Northern California. The cutbacks will reportedly involve temporary, on-call or short-hour employees, but no doctors or nurses. The company's vice president cited uncertainty over Medicare and health care reform. Kaiser is offering a severance package to employees and trying to place them in other jobs.

Fifteen hospital workers have been fired and a further 8 disciplined for improperly accessing the medical records of the mother who recently gave birth to octuplets, Nadya Suleman. A spokesman for the Kaiser Permanente medical facility in Bellflower, California, confirmed the dismissals, stating the high-profile nature of the case left them susceptible to breaches of this nature. "We knew from the time she (Miss Suleman) was admitted to the hospital in December, this case would attract attention", Jim Anderson said. "Even though no one knew she was there, they knew she was going to have a lot of babies." The...

Man Kills His Wife and 5 Children By REBECCA CATHCART and RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD Published: January 27, 2009 LOS ANGELES — A man shot and killed his wife and five young children before taking his own life Tuesday, apparently out of despair after the couple lost their jobs at a hospital, the police and city officials said. Officers responding to 911 calls placed by the man, Ervin A. Lupoe, and by a television station to which Mr. Lupoe had sent a fax around 8:30 a.m., found seven bodies in a house in Wilmington, a working-class neighborhood near the Port of...

Kaiser Permanente is contacting 960 mothers whose babies may have been exposed to a health care worker in San Francisco who has an active case of tuberculosis. The worker was assigned to the postpartum unit in the maternity ward of Kaiser's San Francisco Medical Center to care for mothers and infants. Kaiser officials say the infection risk for patients is very low, but testing will be provided along with treatment if necessary.

Publisher Peter Osnos, who admits to personally working with former Bush White House press secretary Scott McClellan on his new book, What Happened, began his career as an assistant to I.F. Stone, the pro-communist "journalist" named as a Soviet agent of influence who was the uncle of Weather Underground communist terrorist Kathy Boudin. But the connections don't end there. Boudin's son Chesa was raised by Barack Obama associates Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, who were Boudin's comrades in the communist terrorist group, after Kathy Boudin went to prison for her involvement in an armed robbery and assault that took the...

The United States, with its claims of exceptionalism, is usually thought of as free of historical analogies. But comparisons with the fate of earlier empires are becoming more common. I have recently been struck by an analogy from German history: the disaster of German leadership during the first world war, epitomised by Kaiser Wilhelm II. In 1888, at just 29, Wilhelm became the leader of a country on the cusp of European mastery. Wilhelm flaunted his absolute power, believing it to be divinely ordained, was contemptuous of parliament, revelled in the trappings of power, and delighted in uniforms. He was...

SAN ANSELMO, Calif. -- The home of a woman who refused to leave her hospital bed will be auctioned Tuesday to pay for the cost of her 14-month stay. Kaiser Permanente patient Sarah Nome racked up a $1.4 million dollar bill when she refused to leave her hospital bed for more than a year, arguing she couldn't walk and it was the health-maintenance organization's responsibility to find her an appropriate care facility. She'd been admitted after she broke both her legs while living alone. A Marin County judge eventually put the now 84-year-old woman in the county's care. She was...

Brave New World - Muslim Doctor Jihad in America Resumes: Muslim Doc Kills Patient for Organs By Debbie Schlussel www.debbieschlussel.com July 31, 2007 Remember "Kurtlar Vadisi - Irak," the Turkish state-sponsored anti-American, anti-Semitic movie that alleges a new blood libel of Jewish, American, and U.S. Army doctors killing Muslims to harvest their organs? It starred Gary Busey as the Jewish-American Army doctor who killed Muslims for organs for Jews in New York, Tel Aviv, and London. Both I and my father, H.L. Schlussel, MD, wrote about it on this site. Well, guess what? In real life, guess who's actually murdering...

(02-14) 12:06 PST OAKLAND -- Kaiser Permanente said today it has launched a multi-year study of the genetics and lifestyle factors that give rise to such common diseases as diabetes, heart failure and Alzheimer's. Researchers said it could turn out to be the largest study of its kind, drawing potentially hundreds of thousands of participants from the health medical organization's 3.3 million Northern California membership and lasting at least 50 years.

Why does The Washington Post willingly publish "classified" information affecting national security? Should Post journalists and others who reveal the government's secrets be subject to criminal prosecution for doing so? These questions, raised with new urgency of late, deserve careful answers. There's a reason why we're hearing these questions now. We live in tense times. The country is anxious about war and terrorism. Washington is more sharply divided along ideological lines than at any time since I came to work at The Post in 1963. The Bush administration has unabashedly sought to enhance the powers of the executive branch as...

CBS) LOS ANGELES Letters carrying identity theft warnings have been sent to 25,000 patients who have been treated at Kaiser Permanente’s South Bay Medical Center, after two contract employees were arrested on suspicion of stealing their personal information. Pamela Moore of Los Angeles and LaShonda McKenzie of Hawthorne, both 27, were arrested Wednesday on suspicion of stealing personal information from patients and ringing up thousands of dollars in credit card charges. Moore and Mckenzie worked for QuestNine Inc., a photocopying company in San Bernardino. Kaiser hired the company to provide workers to copy patients’ medical records. The women also handled...

WATERLOO — The state Commission of Investigation will be asked to look into allegations of inappropriate activities by Democrats prior to the Nov. 8 general election. The Seneca County Board of Supervisors’ Government Operations & Technology Committee voted 4-1 Tuesday to consider four specific points Committee Chairman David Kaiser of Romulus brought up Nov. 7, when the measure was tabled because it was the night before the election and two of the committee’s members were facing a challenge. Kaiser, a Republican, alleges county property may have been illegally used for political purposes. He specifically cites the listing of Democratic Elections...

As regular readers in this column know, my reporting senior and lawful sovereign is His Imperial Majesty Kaiser Wilhelm II. When I finally report in to that great Oberste Heeresleitung in the sky, I expect to do so as the Kaiser’s last soldier. Why? Well, beyond Bestimmung, the unhappy fact is that Western civilization’s last chance of survival was probably a victory by the Central Powers in World War I. Their defeat let all the poisons of the French Revolution loose unchecked, which is the main reason that we now live in a moral and cultural cesspool.

Love Means Never Having to Say You're Sorry: Today, RNC chair Ken Mehlman will apologize for the Republicans' divisive, racist Southern strategy: "Some Republicans gave up on winning the African American vote, looking the other way or trying to benefit politically from racial polarization. I am here today as the Republican chairman to tell you we were wrong." Even in what is fast becoming the sorriest year in American politics, Mehlman's apology may be the most galling. If not for its Southern strategy, Ken Mehlman would be stuck in Baltimore and the modern Republican party simply would not exist. From...

When liberals ask me why they should oppose physician-assisted suicide (PAS), I always reply, "I can summarize a big reason in just three letters: HMO." That always raises an eyebrow. Liberals hate HMOs. Then I ask, "Do you know how much it costs for the drugs used in an assisted suicide?" They usually shake their heads, no. Answering my own question, I say, "About forty bucks," adding, "Since HMOs make money by cutting costs, and it could cost $40,000 (or more) to provide suicidal patients with proper care so that they don't want assisted suicide, the economic force of gravity...