The problem is the United States Congress is paid too much and is very explicitly a highest bidder whorehouse.
Faced in a time of wars and uncertainty with skyrocketing oil prices breaking businesses, and personal and state budgets as the cost of everything that had to be heated, cooled or moved went skyward would a congress made up of individuals making seventy-four thousand dollars a year instead of $174,000 have responded with ideological indulgence or swift and brutal legislative vengeance?
Confronted with the realization war contractors were stealing billions of tax dollars in cost-plus contracts and other schemes would a congress that made $50,000 a year, minus various taxes, have sighed at the regrettable cost of doing business or went personally to the pentagon each holding a calculator in one hand and a baseball bat in the other?
The American public has been bamboozled into insulating congress from the American experience. To the aristocrat senator and representative strutting around Washington D.C. the economy is a theoretical construct.
Selling legislation is now very straightforward. Rare is the politician who does send out an email saying I have to fight for your rights, now send me money. Why debate at all? Just leave a few versions of legislation on line and whichever group can raise enough money to buy their relief wins. Government by ebay.
Equating political donations with free speech has institutionalized the right of the wealthy to determine public policy in the United States. And after a career living on the public dole kickbacks of “consulting” or lobbying jobs and painless positions on Board of corporations politicians have proven useful to is common place.
And so we come to the latest vote in the tragic comedy that healthcare reform has become, another Saturday vote. This one just to allow the Senate to continue the never-ending debate about voting on the eventual bill. Not kidding. And the elephant in the room is still the bribes paid to conservative politicians to block anything that will reduce the obscene profits of private insurers and drug pushers; the endless advertised threats to raise prices if the public, represented by congress, dares to challenge them. Literal threats of course because if you are priced out of the care you need you will suffer or die.
What the new law should do is break the power of private insurers as they would any dangerous racket, deny drug companies of any “ever-greening” patent rights, outlaw outrages like dumping people when they get sick and provide real public health insurance that is available on day one to any American who wants it to create real competition, not provide a fig leaf for cherry-picking and higher prices. You have to call congress again Monday; it’s your two Senators this time, if that is what you want.
And ask them to raise the question of election finance reform soon including political advertising so congress can start running the country rather than servicing a few wealthy patrons and Americans no longer have to pay for representation by the hour.
The so-called public option “leaders” are breaking their arms patting themselves on the back for is not a public option. It is only available for a tiny group. Not a choice. Not an option. It is a last resort for those with nothing. Period. It is more or less the first offer written on a new sheet of paper.
There will also be an exchange where you can compare private insurance. Isn’t that something the private insurers could have done for themselves you might wonder. Wouldn’t they have been more aggressive in competing if congress acted to break up obvious monopoly and collusion in the first place you may say. Of course. But then the Directors and major share holders of private insurance companies and drug companies would not have gotten their defacto bailout and guaranteed obscene profits.
Don’t ask about the price of your drugs. They are staying up and still going up. Don’t ask when any benefit, will be available to anyone. Years from now. Don’t ask about the cost and service death match that will be set up between the plan and Medicaid thanks to the interesting promise it would be paid for partly by cutting “waste” from Medicaid and that if it wasn’t paid for whatever public plan would die. Don’t ask about the cost of your private insurance. It is still going up. Why not?
This is the great victory Democrats fought with themselves for a year to get after Republicans made it clear they were not going to support anything that would help the American people at the expense of the profits of private companies. This is the mighty work they come up with after bowing and scraping before every conservative who suddenly realized they were conservative when it came time to pay to save American lives instead of kill men, women and children somewhere else. This compromised compromise is the best Democrats can do with control of the House, the Senate and the White House.
No wonder Republicans laugh at them.
This isn’t some moral stand. Morality, morality being defined as demanding coverage for everyone without undue heed to private financial gain, would be single payer. This isn’t about conservative principals. What could be more conservative than going with the plan that will cost Americans the least? This is about who the White House and congress works for and who they talk about working for
But it’s not accurate to say all Democrats are half-honest. Some have been fighting to break the power of the private insurance industry all this time. It is partly because of them that we have come this far and the bills on the table have anything good in them at all. It is mostly because of the American people. The endless calls that let congress know Americans were watching.
It isn’t over yet. The final debate begins this week. Call your two senators and your member of congress and tell them you don’t want co-ops and opt-outs, triggers or cop-outs. If you want every American to have a real choice for public health insurance and they are too timid to use every tool of congress and the senate to get it even with the support of 70% of the American people and math behind them tell them next time you will support someone with the will to do the right thing. And mean it.
Eighty-three million Americans are using government run health insurance today including Medicare, Medicaid, state health plans, the State Children’s Health Insurance Program and military care. Approximately two-hundred and two million people are using private health insurance. To claim expanding public health insurance would be a radical shift in the way Americans get their insurance is like saying a man who has two apples and an orange and decides next time to buy two oranges and an apple has had a radical shift in his snacking habits. But that is what some politicians are going to try to do now in this eleventh hour.
For months the United States congress has been caught up in a bitter struggle not to do the right thing, which also happens to be the most cost effective thing.
Medicare for example delivers healthcare at a cost that brings Americans shouting into the streets to defend it. This is because Medicare has a 3% overhead, compared to about 30% in private insurance. Hundreds of billions of tax dollars per year are at stake. That money can pay private insurers to run ads, pay multi-million dollar salaries and fund their lobbying armies or it can pay for healthcare.
And once you are forced to buy private insurance as Max Baucus and others want, what exactly is going to keep those private insurers from jacking up prices as they have been doing and bankrupting Americans?
Answer: Nothing. And if Americans refuse? Is the U.S. congress, controlled by Democrats, going to make the government muscle for gangsters? Was all of the talk about reform just cover for transferring another few trillion dollars into the hands of another powerful private industry? To create a law that does not do what works, public health insurance, but instead subsidizes a pathologically greedy few while taxpayers pay more ever year, care diminishes and private insurers and pharmaceutical companies defiantly bankrupt the nation and laugh like the Directors and major shareholders of big banks, war contractors and big oil before them?
Public health insurance for any who want it. No personal mandates.
Call your representative and two senators to remind them.
The private insurance industry racket has announced that if congress refuses to force the American people to buy health insurance from them they will raise premiums thousands of dollars.
Whether you accept their claim that this will be because they are afraid people will wait too long to seek medical help or you see a brazen public attempt to blackmail the United States the solution is the same: an option for public health insurance available for any American citizen who wants it from day one.
Private insurers won't have to worry about people waiting too long to seek treatment and the American people never again have to submit to blackmail by the Directors and major shareholder of an industry grown too big for itself.
There is an important vote scheduled in the Senate. Call your two senators. Remind them you don’t want to be forced to buy from private insurers and you want the option of public health insurance available from day one.
Just in case the rates for private coverage suddenly go up.
I would like to ask you to take some time today, maybe on your lunch hour, and call your representative in congress and tell them you want the option of public health insurance in the United States, often called single payer because the government pays for everything.
Many of you reading this already have some form of public health insurance.
Maybe you have Medicare or Medicaid. Maybe you’re a veteran. Maybe you are a seantor or representative. If you already have public health insurance you know your coverage is as good as anything your friends or loved ones have, in many cases it's better. It’s definitely much cheaper.
That’s because you are not paying the 40% or so extra to cover the fat salaries and other profit of private insurance companies. If you have public health insurance have probably wished more than once you could give your friends or loved ones the opportunity to have the coverage you have. Now is your chance.
Many ideas have been discussed about how congress should fix healthcare in the United States. Some politicians, because private insurance companies have given them financial support, and some media organizations, because some people on their boards of directors also happen to be on the boards of directors of health insurance and pharmaceutical companies, have said and published pretty silly often nasty things to defeat public health insurance.
Here’s the thing.
If you or someone you care about has private health insurance you know all the things they have tried to scare you with already happen with private insurance. Your private insurance company rations your care all the time, refusing to cover tests and treatment. The private health insurance company you or your loved one has forces you to face so-called death panels that can refuse to cover your treatment because of pre-existing conditions or because it is “non-essential”; it will just keep you alive. Or save your hearing. Or keep you from becoming permanently crippled.
The less private insurance companies cover the more they profit. It’s that simple.
Call your representative in congress today. It’s very important. Tell them to support single payer public health insurance. The number is 202-224-3121 When you tell her your zip code the person at the exchange will tell you who your representative is and transfer the call. Thank you.
Today one hundred and sixty-seven Republicans and twelve Democrats in the House of Representatives refused to say that Joe Wilson, the confederate from South Carolina, pointing and shouting at the President of the United States in the middle of a Joint Meeting of the House and Senate was a breach of decorum and degraded the proceedings to the discredit of the House. Those who rose ostensibly to defend Dixie agreed that what Wilson did was wrong they just didn’t understand why anyone would want to put in the record that the House disapproved.
Honestly. That was their argument.
Representative John Boehner appeared to be outraged at the precedent being set saying that now there could be resolutions of disapproval every day of the week. Assuming he gets re-elected it will be interesting to see which actions Mr. Boehner equates with shouting at the President at an internationally televised official event. Boehner was not concerned that his actions and that of his colleagues put the final nail in the coffin of the myth of conservatives. In the name of gang loyalty Republicans turned away from even the vaunted collegiality and respect for tradition that was the last fig leaf since they gleefully set aside the rule of law and fiscal responsibility when the choices were theirs to make.
Eric Cantor, with the oblivious irony only a conservative can muster, pointed out that the instances of past statements of contrition made on the floor of the House were for bad behavior in a committee and during debate. The point apparently being neither was as trivial an occasion as the President addressing a Joint Session of Congress.
Mike Pense denounced the resolution as requiring a man to apologize for something he had already apologized for. But the resolution was no such thing. Wilson was afforded an opportunity to apologize to the House and chose not to take it. The resolution recorded the infraction Wilson was willing to apologize for privately but unwilling to take responsibility for before the body whose rules it offended.
Candace Miller one of many who used Wilson’s children as political human shields also managed to defend the Republicans who acted as untrained and out of control as Dixie during the summer town halls. Miller also compared people demanding that President Obama apologize for saying arresting a man mistakenly accused of breaking into his own home was stupid with a resolution of disapproval at a member of congress shouting “You lie!” at the President of the United States in the middle of a speech. A president who was not if it matters lying at the time.
Several supporters in fact, seemingly catching the pass from the New York Times piece, presented the argument that Wilson was wrong in action but right in principle. There was legislation they argued that although it specifically prohibited undocumented people from benefitting from the plan did not have an ID provision and thus was vulnerable. For reasons only they can explain professional Republicans are obsessed with the idea of putting an identifying mark on every man, woman and child in the country.
You may be wondering wouldn’t one need a social security number or tax status to take advantage of any public benefit so anyone off the grid i.e. an illegal immigrant, could not even successfully apply for it. Almost certainly, but professional Republicans are not happy unless they are pretending to fight off a Mexican invasion to take American jobs that professional Republicans also claim no Americans will do, and preventing the Mexican invaders from getting welfare they cannot even apply for and now imaginary healthcare. This and supporting wars against countries that cannot possibly defeat the US and that cannot possibly be overcome by force of arms is all that remains of conservative ideology in the United States.
It is a critical moment in history. Professional Republicans have devolved into a gang; no longer bound by the rules and customs of congress or any recognizable principles. They are wild animals. Every day they dare a little more and defend the worst among them. The only question is will rank and file conservatives follow their leaders into the abyss.
Read The New York Times article “Thousands Rally in Capital to Protest Big Government” on the protest in Washington D.C. The protest was organized by which “anti-tax groups”? We could phrase the question as who? What “ever-expanding intrusion by government” are they complaining about exactly? Or put another way, why? Everything the administration does is promoting job loss and making things worse a protestor is quoted. Except job losses have plummeted. A cute little side note about a young girl whose sign says don’t redistribute the wealth of her dolls, except 95% of Americans including the plastic ones just got a tax cut.
Where is the dissenting quote and epilogue as when the protest focused on Iraq troop increase?
Where is the point and counterpoint as when unions were protesting against George Bush’s social security scheme?
The opinion of the American people so carefully noted when hundreds of rallies were held across the United States to protest the Iraq war is oddly absent when the in the opinion of most Americans a public healthcare option would be just fine.
This is The New York Times September 2009. Publicity pieces for quasi-conservative forces from Baucus dogs to anonymous anti-tax organizations. The correct take away one imagines is gosh people are really angry maybe I’m missing something instead of wow people are astonishingly ignorant, maybe they read The New York Times.
The New York Times is right now twisting the topic from what was actually in the healthcare reform proposals Joe Wilson was yelling about to illegal immigrants being seen in emergency rooms. The article even goes to the trouble of saying the White House position may draw a backlash because that is what you are expected to do. Retroactively give credence to a confederate asshole by a) acting as if he had a point and b) jumping into an argument about something else entirely and presumably trading a real public option, trading single payer, for not having people die in the street when hospitals turn them away.
This is what it’s come to. This is what conservatism is and what mainstream news has become.
Forget The New York Times. The aluminum tubes taking –William Ayers elevating –Cheney talking points printing New York Times has been spotting for the bad guys for a very long time now. It’s time to face it. There is a big difference between what you can find in a column or two and what is presented as news.
Forget the Democratic Party as an entity. When the Democrats have control of both Houses and the White House and over 60% of the American people want something and the so-called leaders simply refuse to do it, it has nothing to do with theories or conspiracies. It is what it is.
New news institutions can be built. Many are off to a fair start. With support they will grow faster. You don’t need an old media legacy to report that the White House believes it has found damning aluminum tubes in Iraq. But you do have to have the arrogance only an old media brand can muster not to ask someone who actually makes that kind of tube if it’s true and say that that’s how journalism works. Access? Ask Judith Miller.
The Democratic Party can be abandoned or hosed out on a candidate by candidate, district by district basis. The dogs have proven to be more trouble than the Republicans ever were. That is a good place to start.
Change has come to the United States. Most of the country has become progressive whether that is what they call themselves or not. Want out of Iraq and Afghanistan not now but right now? Progressive. Pro-choice? Progressive. Have as many guns as you think you want but register them and get a background check? Progressive. Burn down the Fed with Ben Bernanke still in it and throw in Tim Geithner for good measure? Progressive. Think that government run healthcare is anti-American socialism but its okay for Medicare, veterans and the politicians who are telling you its anti-American socialism? You’re stupid and since that level of raw stupidity is actually rare that probably isn’t the real reason you don’t like the plan.
All of the United States is not post-racial. Otherwise News Corporation would not be able to gain traction accusing a harmless half-white politician of being a black panther militant. But 60-70% of the American people are moving past the tan. Now that 65-70% has to give up the hero thing too. If you count on one leader when that leader fails the movement dies. It is time to focus on the goals not the players. No one has come to save US but that’s ok. We’re already here.
It doesn’t matter if the president packs up and goes fishing. We want single payer healthcare. It doesn’t matter if Joe Biden takes over and The New York Times reports Iran, again, is very, very close to possibly someday having a nuclear bomb. We want single payer. It doesn’t matter if bin laden cuts an entire CD with dance videos and online sticky apps. We want single payer. It doesn’t matter if the woodchuck flu breaks out. We want single payer. No one gave a damn about deficits when they were running the Iraq war off the books and handing out hundreds of billions in welfare to big bankers who laundered it and stuck it in their pockets. They can give US single payer. Every asshole in congress has government run healthcare. We want the choice. Not a stupid co-op. No triggers or other self-crippling detail. Single payer. Now.
You can’t radically change the healthcare system of the United States with a few politicians and a severe attitude problem?
Yes. We. Can.
The only way to lose the argument over healthcare is if you let hypocrites in congress who enjoy government healthcare themselves and wouldn’t dare speak out against Medicare declare stupidly that government can’t do healthcare.
The only way to lose the argument is if you let the same scum that invaded Terry Shiavo’s deathbed but ignored Son Hudson being murdered rant about government deciding who lives and who dies.
If you allow a politician to say with a straight face that insurance companies that are raping Americans deserve to be protected from competition then you could lose this debate, but you would have to try.
Every health insurance company stands between you and the doctor. Every single health insurance company has death panels. They are called pre-existing conditions and non-essential treatments. If you have a preexisting condition and you get sick your treatment isn’t covered. If your doctor wants you to have some treatment and the health insurance doesn’t think it’s essential you don’t get it. You die like Son Hudson. There’s your survival of the fittest. Looking for Hitlers and secret holocausts? Pick one.
The power of the progressive argument has never depended on eloquence; only the ability to tell the truth concisely and without equivocation. If all you care about is bang for the buck Medicare is a model of efficiency at 3% overhead. The healthcare reform bill should have been three words on a blank sheet of paper.
Medicare for all.
Since when it is the government’s role to guarantee profits for an industry? The filthy dogs in congress expect the American people to not have the quality of coverage they enjoy because it would adversely affect the bottom line of insurance companies. Insurance companies can’t compete with the government? I thought private industry automatically beat the government at everything?
It was not the job of the American people to guarantee the profits of the Big Banker animals who raped and pillaged the country until there was nothing left that stuck their paws out and demanded more. And Ben Bernanke their bagman in Chief, bought up the worthless assets and handing out American dollars to foreign banks like a fat evil Santa all the while carefully ripping up the receipts. And Obama rehired him. That was when we knew where we stood.
Now the insurance companies with their pets, Max Baucus and the other dirty dogs and the Republican Party are again mugging the public. We have given the Democrats everything they said they needed and they have failed again and again and again. Not because the arguments are hard. It is because they do not believe it. So much of the leadership is now the Third Way pre-appeasement crowd.
The Psuedo-conservatives have shown US the way. As long as they have The New York Times to run endless flattering “news” articles about the filthy dogs and, with the Associated Press and the rest of the worthless US old media endlessly browbeat the White House with polls that say the public has lost confidence without saying why they are losing confidence or what they really want, the imbeciles, whores and bagmen can get whatever they want. We do not need majorities in the House or the Senate. We do not need the White House. All we need is men and women with the brains to smack down stupidity and the guts to say no.
Congress is a wild place and in that place there are wild dogs. Although they are most often considered Democrats this is not the case. According to their own smug manifesto the dogs are, “dedicated to a core set of beliefs that transcend partisan politics”. Translated from the original bullshit, this means they are not Democrats and say so up front. Non-partisan means not in support of a particular Party. Fair enough. Actual Democrats on the other hand, human ones, are partisan. That's the point of having a political Party.
It is, from a voters point of view, the only reason to have a political Party.
There are a number of reasons for politicians to have Parties, most notably the fundraising, and for them to want those parties to be in the majority. But there is only one reason for the public to desire a majority, in this case a Democratic majority. To enact what is commonly thought of as Democratic legislation. Not non-partisan legislation. Not Republican-light legislation. Presumably you would get half a loaf with the Houses equally divided; or even, if we are to accept the meme coming out of the every large media organization in the United States, even if the Republicans were in the majority because Republicans are very, very serious about being “non-partisan”.
Which is absolute nonsense obviously. You can call Republicans any number of things, incompetent, selfish, foolish, backwards, you can say they can’t govern their way out of a paper bag and bankrupt whatever public trust they are responsible for leaving it dirtier, more ignorant and with a greater divide between the rich and poor than when they arrived; and all that would be true. But you can never say Republicans do not know how to play the politics and you can never ever call them non-partisan. The fact that the news organizations are even pretending the idea isn’t laughable and is caressing the dogs with exciting titles like “rebel” instead of lambasting them as “obstructionist” let’s you know they are in on the joke.
Faced with “insurgent” Party members the Republican leadership would have sat them down and explained in very unkind language that the “rebels” damn well would support this legislation or after the next election cycle they would be spending more time with their families and they could try their luck finding healthcare at their next job. Then they would give each “insurgent” a legislative cookie to take home to their voters and send them out to publicly declare their undying loyalty to and complete satisfaction with The Party.
Republicans are in fact so good at this kind of thing that they lost their principles to it and successfully convinced every Professional Republican to give up everything they stood for. So it was “conservatives” cheered exploding deficits, patriots saluted a President who rewrote the law at will and Christians defended dropping fire on women and children in Iraq for no good reason at all. But Americans no matter what the movies may make you think are not fools and in a few years they dumped most of the Republicans and replaced the President of the United States with someone who represented the exact opposite of everything Republican had come to mean.
The dogs have shown that a majority in congress is meaningless. A few politicians can rewrite the laws as they see fit as long as they stick together. That being the case why should the small group be quasi-conservative wild dogs when they could be liberal or progressive Democrats instead?
This Just In
The Associated Press (AP), CNN, ABC and News Corporation have announced an unprecedented joint investigative series. The collaboration of small, independent news organizations will focus on the source of distracting, trivial, worthless news mysteriously kept alive for months. The series will have 196 parts.
“What we’ve found so far is shocking.” Said a shocked member of the AP. “In just the last couple of weeks we have been able to follow a pattern where stories with almost no news value become the lead stories of every major American news entity and stay there. More disturbing was in many cases the stories were exactly identical as if all these organizations were getting their material from one source!”
An investigator from tiny media startup News Corporation pointed out the cost to news consumers in what they are not hearing about in detail. “I have been floored by what people are not hearing about. Saudi Arabia, a repressive regime and leading producer of religious terrorists including the 9-11 hijackers is going to get nuclear protection from the United States. A handful of Democrats just sabotaged Democratic healthcare. Major shareholders and executives of financial institutions that got federal aid second or third hand are taking the money as kind of laundered profit while Americans still can’t get loans or refinancing. There is at least one war still going on, it might be two. Ben Bernanke at the Fed has basically lost five hundred billion dollars. It just makes me wish News Corporation had enough influence to make sure Americans are getting real news but we’re just a scrappy new media company.”
An up and coming new anchor on ABC has a similar observation.
“I was walking onto our set the other day after spending the whole night researching the nuances of the rivalries in Iraq with an eye toward giving our viewers an idea of what’s really going on there. The next thing I remember I was sitting in my chair with my co-host and we were talking about crop fertilizer. Some unknown force takes over and makes me talk fertilizer every day. At least now we'll be able to identify it."
Neighbors and local police agree that scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. would not have had any problem with the officer who invaded his home erroneously if Dr. Gates had simply been willing to shuffle a little.
“I hear the officer was in an unmarked car and all Gates did was yell at him” said Commander Archibald Bunker, “and I’m not saying a whole Usher thing but a little bop would have really eased tensions in that situation. And listen you know and I both know this guy was looking for trouble. First off he’s wearing a backpack. Boom there you go. Who does that huh? Gangsters. Second he starts yelling because someone accuses him of breaking into his own house. Who would get upset in that situation? You know what I would’ve done? Sung a nice gospel tune.”
“I’m no racist.” The police head declared. “I voted for the President and this … you know this guy Gates looks like he’s half white too. Look, I’ll tell you what you happened. Between you and me you had a bunch of cops there, you had this woman there, maybe she’s good-looking maybe not, I know she was white, but that’s got nothing to do with it. My point is this was peer pressure that’s all. We’ve all been there am I right?”
According to Cambridge law an officer does in fact have the right to arrest someone for talking about his mama. If the mama jokes are particularly hurtful the officer may resort to using his weapon or telling.
You might be walking or standing still full of your ordinary concerns and for some reason you look up and you see the sky. Maybe it’s sunset or a summer’s day and you look at it, the clouds and the sun and the huge sky laid out and suddenly you understand. You realize how temporary this all is and meaningless, and how eternal and profound. You look up from your concerns almost by accident and you know. It’s all so simple.
This is one of those times. Look up or you’ll miss it.
It isn't pretty.
Look at the bankers celebrating their huge profits. We all just saved them didn’t we? Everyone in the world? Because if we didn’t the world would crumble. That’s what they said. So why is the world still crumbling and how can they possibly be making profits? Not getting by. Not staying afloat, existing from hand to mouth, living in financial terror like you and just about everyone you know.
Making. Big. Profits. Is that all what all this has been about alll this time? The obscenity of god invoked on a dollar bill? The sly con suggesting by pursuing one you serve the other. Or was it the other way around? How much is that Goddie in the window?
Look quick, the fight in Washington over remaking the healthcare system in the United States. Republicans and backstabbing "blue dog" Democrats are suddenly concerned about deficits. Deficits. There’s a word we haven’t heard much in almost ten years. What's different now? Hmm…let me think…
But we were talking about healthcare.
The US healthcare system is the most expensive and possibly the least financially efficient in the world and yet “conservatives”, Republicans and dog Democrats, the people who were willing to hand over unlimited tax dollars to demonstrably incompetent financial institutions no questions asked, are suddenly sharp-eyed stewards of the public purse and incensed about government intrusion, socialism and any other ism that does not impeded their own ability to enjoy free healthcare controlled by the government and paid for with other people’s taxes.
Look. Watch conservative politicians pull small business owners in front of them like human shields –again, claiming healthcare will hurt “small businesses”. How? Which ones exactly?
It will never be clearer than it is right now. To half of the people having this debate, like the one before it, the one that will come after, and the one after that, this is not about you. Their agendas have nothing to do with you in fact the more you suffer the more they approve. Their freedom is the freedom of major shareholders of financial institutions and health insurance companies and oil companies et al to profit obscenely at the expense of every other person in their own country. That's all.
Stop. And look.
This Just In…Conservatives Decry Celebrity Palins
The Conservative group Focus on other People’s Families held a rally yesterday in front of liberal governor Sarah Palin’s Alaska mansion protesting the appearance of Palin’s daughter, celebrity unwed mother Bristol Palin, on the cover of PEOPLE magazine.
“The Democrats and the liberal media are pushing their immorality in the face of the American people again.” Said spokesman Ima H Pocrite. “They can’t even spell shame.”
Pocrite pointed Governor Palin’s position on sex education and implied there is a link between it and her policy and her family’s fortunes. “I’m not going to say whether or not young people are exposed to sex education determines whether or not they get into trouble but it is a factor. We’ve always said the rest is parenting and the values in the home.”
FooPF’s position is in fact consistent with Conservative ideology in the US. Conservative leaders have all but abandoned their forbearer’s obsession with strict adherence to the Constitution, transparency and accountability in government contracts and limiting the role of the US as international policeman to focus on the sex lives, marital choices and reproductive habits of their fellow citizens.
Palin has also come under fire for Alaska’s use of oil money to support the State.
“We are supposed to celebrate that they don’t need as much federal money because she takes corporate welfare instead.” Said shock jock Fahed Poonk. “Sure let’s just make corporations pay their taxes and people won’t have to pay as much and then they’d have more money to spend on each company’s products blah blah blah kumbaya. You can believe that progressive mumbo jumbo if you want. But this is America. We don’t force people to pay more taxes just because they are successful and corporations are just people. People who need more flexibility in laws and taxes than you and I.”
“We don’t tell some business hey you know you use the roads more, or you need the military to defend your facilities abroad, or you use up more of the government’s or the courts time so you should be paying more to keep the country going. That stuff is free. Nobody pays for that. We say “Thank you for allowing us to help you. Can we please give you tax breaks and services worth about ten times what you put into this country? That's our system. I didn't make it up and it’s made this country the richest debtor nation in the history of the world. That’s just a fact.”
“What you have here is a witch, the governor I mean. I’m not calling her names there’s video of her having spirits or whatever pulled out of her head. Don't ask me. She’s up there running basically the People’s Republic of Alaska. She’s the parent of an unwed teenage mother and we’re supposed to accept her as some kind of leader on family values. Now, now they’ve got the daughter running around as some kind of spokesman on teenage sex. I mean are you kidding me? Just imagine if these two were in my Party. You guys would have had a field day. Instead you make them celebrities. That right there shows you who controls the media.”
The United States government is going to pay to buy toxic assets from the failed financial franchises ostensibly because they, the bad franchises, are too big to fail. Of course they have failed. The problem has been their leaders are too small, too arrogant and too stupid to do anything about it. So all indications are we are about to witness the greatest redistribution of wealth in the history of the world, and it is from the poor to the rich. The American taxpayer will give incompetent bumbling bank franchises an almost unimaginable sum in exchange for a pile of garbage.
It is the opposite of capitalism. It perverts the very idea of the Market lavishly rewarding abject failure. It is nothing like socialism. It takes from working people to prop up a worthless elite. If it is any ism it is vampirism and the blood sucking freaks are about to win.
More ridiculous than the snotty bank leaders who, stinking of their own waste, still cop an attitude, is the new meme that that private sector buyers who are belatedly coming out of the shadows are heroes. When the Market stumbled and fell, when the banks teetered, the vaunted private sector curled up in a corner and buried its face against its knees. Now that there is no risk whatsoever investors suddenly find their courage and we are expected to give them Purple Hearts. They are not heroes. They are ordinary businessmen and bargain shoppers; like all Americans they are more than willing to buy something worthless if it’s practically free.
The banks should have been forced to clean up its own mess with refinancing, or given the choice to hand over the toxic assets for nothing and take a loan from the government or fail at which point the government would take over and clean the store. But Henry Paulson, Ben Bernanke and Timothy Geithner, a man cunning enough to convince a charity to pay his back taxes, did not have the wit or the will to bring powerless, broke franchises to heel. Instead they are raising the dead.
And you know what happens when you do that.
It’s already started. Using of all things the betrayal by AIG as a pivot point, the professional Republicans and moderate Democrats are attacking Americans; hungrily going after unemployment benefits and healthcare. The undead will attack every city and small town sucking public works and public services dry so that when Americans at last have nothing left they can offer the “heroic” private sector to take the place of all the government that has failed – because of them.
So what can you do? There is only one way to stop blood sucking freaks. Starve them. If you still have your money in a franchise institution, take it out. You’re just paying them twice once in bailout and again in fees, and there are plenty of small banks and credit union that would be happy to have you. Stop using your ATM so much and handing them two or three dollars a pop. Use your debit card and keep a little cash as a backup. Still got your money in the Market? Try some bonds instead. The country is going to need it and the price won’t change every time Wall Street has gas.
Once Geitner hands over everything the country has the franchises will return, stronger, more arrogant and destructive than ever. It’s up to US to beat them.
For the fortieth time in as many days the Pope told gathered international journalists Friday that those who deny the ruthless occupation of Palestinian territories by Israel including the use of food deprivation as a weapon, spontaneous humanitarian disasters through loss of electricity, catastrophic force in overwhelming civilian areas, and denying Palestine’s right to exist “are “intolerable”.
Jacob Stern, a popular commentator among older Israelis said he detects some racism in the Pope’s exhortations. “Every day he talks about Palestinians dying and suffering today yet barely a mention of the wholesale slaughter of Jews eighty years ago. You don’t need to have a house dropped on you.”
In his Friday statement the Pontiff pointed to arguments among the candidates in the recent Israeli election as an example of declining humanity. “Well I have to give him that.” Stern said with a good natured laugh. “But you know how it is. You’re in the heat of the moment in a hard campaign, next thing you know you’re arguing over who has actually shot a Palestinian and Arab loyalty oaths.”
“We have for decades asked a people to endure a generational catastrophe in the name of a religion they do not adhere to, a land history they dispute and sins they are not guilty of” Said the Pope. “Then we are outraged by their outrage. This is why Intelligent Design can be such a hard sell.”
The Pope also used his Friday statements to condemn the recent United Nations decision to return three North American States to the Native peoples as a small token of recognition for their suffering. In a deal negotiated by the Chinese, Russian and French governments Americans currently living in the area will be moved. Close to five trillion dollars in military aid has already been committed to the newly restored Native country including five hundred billion dollars from Columbia, Mexico and Iraq. The UN said it anticipated some anti-Americanism from nearby Americans and would not stand in the way if the new country was forced to claim more States.
“There must be a better way.” Said the Pope.
Once upon a time the desire of those with a lot to get much more from nothing was honestly expressed.
There were individuals who spent long years trying to transform worthless things into precious items. The practice was called alchemy and in those innocent days it was recognized as what the act would have to be if anyone was ever successful: magic. The alchemist’s fantasy tantalized ages when wealth could only be acquired through the excruciatingly slow labor of quite a lot of people which led to the irritating expenses of food, shelter, clothing and armed individuals to enhance productivity or by costly war that was still so uncivilized there were no defense stocks or sweet consulting jobs waiting for war chiefs so you actually had to stop fighting occasionally to make any money.
With so many restrictions on private enterprise it is not surprising a clever man could make a good living by convincing a powerful benefactor that he could produce an infinite fortune in no time if the lord would only trust him and provide a relatively small investment.
That was then.
Today the misguided, the villains and the shabby magicians of alchemy have been replaced by the confidence men of trading and banking who have surpassed their forebears and in the process become little lords in their own right. They do not make anything, like cars for example. Their stock in trade is to make quite a lot of something out of nothing. They create wealth.
Today’s alchemists hold nations hostage with the power of their imaginary wealth: wealth from betting on what other people will bet that a company is worth (a trick made easier when the experts are guessing, the pundits are groupies and both treat the individual with the most to gain or lose from the stock price as a reliable source); wealth from making booby-trapped loans, selling those worthless loans and using the profit from that nothing to buy something. Like real estate and businesses.
When the illusion begins to fade the traders and bankers believe if they chant with enough fervor and display the correct symbols and numbers in the correct order they can force citizens through the government to buy the toxic bank assets at the magical value.
It is possible and preferable to have a Market based on harshly enforced transparency and cool evaluation. There are many examples of small banks and credit unions that are careful stewards of their customer’s money. There is no excuse for what has been done and no reason to keep doing it.
If the bad franchise financial institutions are not walked through carefully managed failure their assets will continue to be hidden or fraudulently assed, their bad loans will be subsidized instead of refinanced and a significant portion of the nation’s economic health will continue to be based on fantasy. The homeowners and businesses caught in the middle do not benefit from protecting the culprits. The only way to free them is to extricate them from the grip of the alchemists and, just out of sight, their benefactors, the big investors and major shareholders waiting desperately for taxpayers in the US and all around the world to change their piles of garbage into trillions of dollars.
It must seem like they’ve been waiting for ages.
Bankers, Wall Street Demand More Government Handouts so Market Can Self-Correct
The dow fell another hundred million points today on fears the government would not allow the markets to self-correct by paying all of the big banks debts, guaranteeing all future loans, wiping all of the big bankers bottoms and giving each a chewy cookie.
“It’s outrageous.” said professional trader Bobby Jones, dragging a Winne-the-Pooh comforter behind him into the 544 Club where we met to talk. “The administration is wasting tax dollars on stupid things like disaster preparedness, who’s paying attention to what we want, who’s preparing for our disaster? If the government doesn’t fix this soon the public is going to start to think big banks and Wall Street have no idea what we’re doing.”
Jones dismissed the idea of bank chiefs, executives and other upper management responsible for bad investments being fired.
“That would send a message that they could lose their jobs for creating an international disaster and I promise you we would not be able to keep the same quality of leadership we have now. Next thing you know you'll be saying if the value of a stock means something it doesn't change everytime a dog farts. No, What The Market really wants to hear is that the more a bank franchise has managed to lose the more tax dollars the government will give it to pay debts, shareholders, and appropriately generous executive salaries in return for the right to express their opinion. That will definitely put a lot more confidence in the game.”
Asked if the government should create some national banks or people should consider credit unions and small independent banks since big private bank franchises present Americans with such a staggering level of liability in addition to a daunting list of penalties, fees and unattractive interest, Jones said the government would just “mess things up”.
“Listen this rules and regulations talk is just more big government.” Said Jones.
“That’s why I’m a Republican. Republican politicians understand how useless the government is. ”
The main thing is not to panic.
What do we need? People need more money in their pocket to spend to support businesses; businesses will have more money and buy more goods, eventually make more hires, those people will spend, those goods providers will do better and so on. Ninety-five percent of taxpayers just got a tax cut as part of President Obama’s Recovery and Reinvestment Act and they’ll see it in their paychecks in a few weeks. Check.
We need to pay our national bills, stop borrowing money from China to pay off Saudi Arabia. There’s an increase in taxes on those making over two-hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year coming. Don’t feel too bad. Wealthy Americans did very well that last few years while the rest of the country’s wages were frozen as the cost of living rose; and the American people are a damn good investment. Check.
We need to dramatically reduce and eventually get off of oil entirely if for no other reason than anti-American oil companies can never again gouge US in a time of wars and national crisis, literally drive the country into a recession while they make historic profits and claim The Market made them do it. The new law includes alternative energy and conservation. Check.
We need to fix our roads and bridges and get more Americans back to work. Check Check.
We need to bring our people back from Iraq, that will save US a few billion a month. We don’t need to subsidize the stock profits or super salaries of failed banks and bankers. We certainly don’t need to put the same jokers on salary who destroyed their banks and helped get US in this fix. National banks and credit unions. Working on it.
Alright. Looks good. A strong start. So why are some so upset?
Professional Republicans are mad because they all voted against the Recovery and Reinvestment Act, all but three. In the entire congress. House and Senate. Three. I know I can’t believe it either; and somewhere deep down these bad apples know they just crossed a line. After cheering while their President squandered a national surplus on cost-plus no-bid contracts in Iraq, Republicans voted against support for schools in the United States, bridges and roads in the United States, energy independence and tax cuts. They voted against tax cuts!
And cried deficits and fiscal accountability. Are you kidding?
Where was all the Republican outrage when our soldiers were being fed human waste by contractors to maximize profit? When mercenaries were being paid ten times what American soldiers are paid for doing the same job? When failed bankers were handed $350,000,000,000 with a “b” and proceeded to legally steal it?
And rather than excoriate Republicans for being rejectionists as Democrats were called obstructionists everyone from the Complete Nonsense Network to Monkey Man Murdoch’s media minions (that's catchy) are working overtime to blame President Obama for the “lack of bipartisanship”.
Which is funny because for most of the last eight years I got the distinct impression it was the party not in power that was responsible for partisanship and allowing up or down votes and everybody in old media was terrified that if they were critical or skeptical of the administration or the President they would “lose access”. But all of the sudden when the President of the United States has the audacity to help the 95% of Americans who really need it and spend some money on this country everybody is in a tizzy. Go figure.
