At Last! Something I proposed long ago has found…
posted by Bill Arnett @ 3:57 PM Permalink
…it's way into the mainstream press and, even though I did not encourage Kristof from the NYT to take this position, let's hope this thing goes viral and
can no longer be ignored:
Let Congress Go Without Insurance
Let me offer a modest proposal: If Congress fails to pass comprehensive health reform this year, its members should surrender health insurance in proportion with the American population that is uninsured.
It may be that the lulling effect of having very fine health insurance leaves members of Congress insensitive to the dysfunction of our existing insurance system. So what better way to attune our leaders to the needs of their constituents than to put them in the same position?
About 15 percent of Americans have no health insurance, according to the Census Bureau. Another 8 percent are underinsured, according to the Commonwealth Fund, a health policy research group. So I propose that if health reform fails this year, 15 percent of members of Congress, along with their families, randomly lose all health insurance and another 8 percent receive inadequate coverage.
Congressional critics of President Obama’s efforts to achieve health reform worry that universal coverage will be expensive, while their priority is to curb social spending. So here’s their chance to save government dollars in keeping with their own priorities.
Those same critics sometimes argue that universal coverage needn’t be a top priority because anybody can get coverage at the emergency room. Let them try that with their kids.
Of course I don't think this goes far enough. WE ELECTED THESE PEOPLE TO REPRESENT US and if they aren't going to do something good, finally, for the nation and the least among us, let's CANCEL ALL THEIR HEALTHCARE immediately.
We are their putative bosses, but we can't fire them, but if everyone gets together and goes apesh*t viral about health care we can at least stop their super beneficial healthcare.
Most of them are rich. Let 'em pay for their and their families healthcare. I'd guarantee that the first congress-critter whose wife or child came down with cancer or some horribly expensive disease to treat and went broke trying to get that family member proper care WE THE PEOPLE who form this Union would see health care proposed and passed in a flash!
About 15 percent of Americans have no health insurance, according to the Census Bureau. Another 8 percent are underinsured, according to the Commonwealth Fund, a health policy research group. So I propose that if health reform fails this year, 15 percent of members of Congress, along with their families, randomly lose all health insurance and another 8 percent receive inadequate coverage.
Congressional critics of President Obama’s efforts to achieve health reform worry that universal coverage will be expensive, while their priority is to curb social spending. So here’s their chance to save government dollars in keeping with their own priorities.
Those same critics sometimes argue that universal coverage needn’t be a top priority because anybody can get coverage at the emergency room. Let them try that with their kids.
Same idea as mine, roughly, but more elegantly expressed.
MAKE THIS GO MAINSTREAM VIRAL AND FORCE THE PEOPLE WHO WORK FOR US TO ACTUALLY WORK FOR US and give every American, especially the least among us, people working three or four jobs in a single family that still has to gather aluminum cans weekends and at night to still fail make ends meet.
SEND A COPY OF KRISTOF'S COLUMN TO YOUR CONGRESSMAN AND SENATOR! And BTW:
There was a lag of 19 years after the Nixon plan before another serious try, and a 16-year lag after the Clinton effort of 1993. Another 16-year delay would be accompanied by more than 700,000 unnecessary deaths. That’s more Americans than died in World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam and Iraq combined.
The collapse of health reform would be a political and policy failure, but it would also be a profound moral failure.
Couldn't have said it better myself. Thanks, Mr. Kristof.
Labels: christian hypocrisy, Congress, corporate-ownded meda, disinformation, Fiscal irresponsibility, health care reform, hypocrisy, incompetent leaders
We the people…We the people…WE THE PEOPLE … run this country through a$$holes…
posted by Bill Arnett @ 9:23 AM Permalink
…we voted into office to act for the good of the country, care for all of us, establish a better union where all men are free and endowed by THEIR creator, not the most commonly mistaken quote of endowed by OUR creator, with certain unalienable rights, among those rights the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Ever since corporations were deemed 'people' the unalienable right of the REAL people have been further diminished each year until we find ourselves in our present situation: real people serving at the whim of and in servitude to nonexistent 'people' who command all power, own all the wealth, that are protected by legislation passed by people with their heads so far up the collective arses of these fictitious 'people', so indebted to their corporate masters that they have no choice to obey or be destroyed; their careers shattered, relegated to the unemployment lines, no longer employable in their former capacity for having committed the near fatal error of failing to kneel in subservience, failing to kiss the bejeweled hands of their corporate masters, and licking the dog crap off their shoes while telling those masters how much they LIKE the taste of crap, so you will always be available to lick their arses after they defecate, and tell them how honored you are to be so privileged and with what joy you will accept the smallest compensation for having had such an honor bestowed upon yourself.
Example:
On a household level, simple triage is relatively obvious and painless. Eating out is, well, out. The closure of 600 Starbucks, the closure of entire restaurant chains, the closure of various fast-food and restaurant outlets--these are already in the news every week.
Having your nails done weekly, after-school tutoring and classes for the kids, seasons tickets to sporting events--all are easy decisions: gone. Ditto overseas vacations, spa treatments, or vacations which require large amounts of gasoline or costly stays in resorts or hotels. Remodeling, new furniture, lavish back-to-school shopping, having the dog shampooed, music lessons, hiring house cleaners, car washes, texting, unlimited Netflix, the big office space--the list of easy triage items is nearly endless in the consumer-mad, service-economy U.S.
But that's the easy stuff. That's the financial equivialent of getting the lightly injured away from the scene. Once the household loses one income, or the sole income is slashed (bonus disappears, hours cut, benefits slashed, etc.) then the easy cuts won't be enough.
At the other end of the spectrum, the financially mortally wounded are also easy to spot and deal with. If a household's mortgage re-sets to $3,000/month and their income is $2,000/month, then they have to walk away from their house. Painful but obvious: the old "living large on borrowed money" spending $90K/year lifestyle has passed from this life. Mourn it and move on to a more positive and financially healthy way of life.
Unfortunately, at the Congressional level, this sort of obvious financial triage is political suicide. So we as a nation are wasting hundreds of billions trying to save the already-dead. This includes Lehman Brothers and hundreds of insolvent banks, and millions of under-water insolvent households.
It's political suicide because we voters continue to reward the biggest panderers with re-election. Denial is much more fun than reality, and if we elect panderers then they will gladly spend borrowed money to win our "please don't make me leave Fantasyland" vote.
Pundits such as Bill Gross are gamely suggesting the Federal deficit will have to run from a "mere" $500 billion a year up to $1 trillion. That's borrowed money, folks, which will require interest payments for the rest of our lives and our grandchildren's lives, too. How cavalierly Mr. Gross suggests funding a third of our Federal government's insanely wasteful expenditures by borrowing another trillion dollars from the Chinese and Gulf Oil exporters.
Or see this:
SEC Announces Enforcement Actions
During the week of August 3, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced the following enforcement actions.
On August 4, the SEC charged a large public bank holding company (“BHC”) for misleading investors about bonus payments that were being paid to investment bank executives at the time of that firm’s acquisition by the BHC. The BHC agreed to settle the SEC's charges and pay a penalty of $33 million. The settlement is subject to court approval.
The SEC alleges that in proxy materials soliciting the votes of shareholders on the proposed acquisition of the investment bank, the BHC stated that investment bank had agreed that it would not pay year-end performance bonuses or other discretionary compensation to its executives prior to the closing of the merger without the BHC’s consent. In fact, the BHC had already contractually authorized the investment bank to pay up to $5.8 billion in discretionary bonuses to its executives for 2008. According to the SEC's complaint, the disclosures in the proxy statement were rendered materially false and misleading by the existence of the prior undisclosed agreement allowing the investment bank to pay billions of dollars in bonuses for 2008.
On August 4, the SEC filed civil fraud and other charges against a large public corporation, alleging that it misled investors by reporting materially false and misleading results in its financial statements. The firm has agreed to pay a $50 million penalty to settle the SEC's charges.
The SEC alleges that the firm used improper accounting methods to increase its reported earnings or revenues and avoid reporting negative financial results. The accounting violations were identified in a risk-based investigation of the firm‘s accounting practices. They included:
• An improper application of theaccounting standards to its commercial paper funding program to avoid unfavorable disclosures and a pre-tax charge to earnings.
• A failure to correct a misapplication of financial accounting standards to certain interest-rate swaps.
• Reporting end-of-year sales that had not yet occurred in order to accelerate revenue.
• An improper change to accounting for sales of certain products that increased net earnings.
How 'bout this?:
Citigroup Inc., one of the biggest recipients of government bailout money, gave employees $5.33 billion in bonuses for 2008, New York's attorney general said Thursday in a report detailing the payouts by nine big banks.
The report from Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's office focused on 2008 bonuses paid to the initial nine banks that received loans under the government's Troubled Asset Relief Program last fall. Cuomo has joined other government officials in criticizing the banks for paying out big bonuses while accepting taxpayer money.
Comparisons to historical payouts weren't available, as the banks are not required to disclose the information publicly. They provided 2008 details to Cuomo's office under subpoena.
Cuomo's office found that the companies, which also included Bank of America Corp., Merrill Lynch & Co., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc., awarded nearly 4,800 million-dollar-plus bonuses, with much of the money going to Wall Street investment bankers.
Citigroup, which is now one-third owned by the government as a result of the bailout, gave 738 of its employees bonuses of at least $1 million, even after it lost $18.7 billion during the year, Cuomo's office said. The bank's top four recipients received a combined $43.7 million.
The New York-based bank received $45 billion in government money and guarantees to protect it against hundreds of billions of dollars on potential losses from risky investments.
"There is no clear rhyme or reason to the way banks compensate and reward their employees," Cuomo said in the report, noting banks have not in recent years actually tied pay to performance as they claim when describing their compensation programs. Cuomo added that when banks' performance deteriorated significantly, "they were bailed out by taxpayers and their employees were still paid well."
Bank of America, which also received $45 billion in TARP money, paid $3.3 billion in bonuses, with 172 employees receiving at least $1 million and the top four recipients receiving a combined $64 million. Merrill Lynch, which Charlotte, N.C.-based Bank of America acquired during the credit crisis, paid out $3.6 billion, including a combined $121 million to four top employees.
Bank of America earned $2.56 billion in 2008, while Merrill lost $30.48 billion. Cuomo's office said Merrill Lynch doled out 696 bonuses of at least $1 million for 2008.
Bank of America has been sharply criticized for its acquisition of Merrill Lynch because of mounting losses at the Wall Street bank and the size of bonuses Merrill paid its employees. Of the $45 billion in bailout funds Bank of America received, $20 billion was to support the acquisition of Merrill. Neither Bank of America nor Citigroup have repaid their TARP loans.
A Bank of America spokesman declined to comment on the report. A spokesman for Citigroup did not return repeated calls for comment.
Banks have said they needed to pay their top performing employees to prevent them from defecting to competitors. Companies that accepted TARP money have faced intense government scrutiny and must now comply with restrictions on compensation, including bonuses.
Aw, c'mon people, this represents less than ten minutes research with the Google and the internets pipes, but I think it more than amply illustrates that corporate non-corporeal 'people', carefully protected by the sycophants in both parties, but especially the republican party, who are finding ever more creative and destructive means to serve their corporate masters while totally ignoring the least among us as they destroy America by allowing the unhindered theft all that we USED to hold dear.
Holy, god-fearing, Sunday-in-church-for-show-worshippers, and the ultimate liars that have engineered and now effect a new Dark Ages in America that will dwarf the Dark Ages of Europe, laughing all the way as they destroy the world.
Labels: bad laws, bank of america, Banking, banks, blowback, civil liberties, class warfare, corporate personhood, corporate-ownded meda, corptocracy, corruption, disclosure, GOP, hypocrisy
Is it me....
posted by The Vidiot @ 10:42 AM Permalink
or did the Ted Kennedy funeral go on FOREVER?
I swear, every time I clicked on the TV, starting in the morning, there were live pictures of the funeral. This continued on all the way through dinner. Damn thing must've gone on for 12 hours or more.
Last funeral I went to only lasted one hour, and that
included a church service.
Labels: corporate-ownded meda, MSM, ted kennedy
The Media Lied? I'm Shocked!
posted by The Vidiot @ 8:55 AM Permalink
Well, they either lied or it was some really shoddy reporting. Remember that news story a few days ago, the one that said "Home sales rose in February." Well,
funny thing:
No, New Home Sales data did not improve. In fact, they were not only not positive, they were actually horrific. The year over year number was a terrible down 41%. Sales from this same period a year ago have nearly been halved.
Why did the media report this as positive? If you only read the headline number, you saw a positive datapoint: February was plus 4.7% over January.
To get the the facts, you need to read below the headline. In the present case, it wasn’t the seasonality factor that was confusing, it was the “90-percent confidence intervals” — or as it is more commonly known, the margin of error.
Why would they lie? Could it be that the market was seemingly doing better and if people were comfortable and thinking that the market was turning around AND the housing market was doing better that maybe it was time to go out and spend again?
See, these are the folks who didn't tell you the market was in trouble when it was. These are the same folks who didn't tell you housing values were declining until way after the fact. There is an agenda and the agenda is tell the people whatever is necessary to make them behave as good little consumers.
But are they conscious of the agenda? I don't know. I've spoken with reporters and for the most part, they're nice people and they don't seem nefarious in any way. I think they're just so ensconced in the system that they just work as a cog in the machine, never really realizing they are little more than cogs. The institution now controls the people who created it.
I know most of you who read the blogs already know to not trust the corporate owned media but sometimes the breadth of it is just shocking.
Labels: corporate-ownded meda, MSM
