Populist Daily

Politics, Culture and American Life

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    Unemployment, Job Creation, and Back-of-the-Envelope Economics

    March 10th, 2010 · General, Health Care, Politics, jobs

    Do you want a job? Do you need a job or know anyone who does? Do you think that there are fewer jobs than are necessary for the workforce right now?

    Sounds stupid, doesn’t it? Sounds ridiculous. Apparently not to Senators John Kyl of Arizona and Sentor Jim Bunning of Kentucky. Bunning held up unemployment insurance payments for millions of people and Kyl backed him up on it. They don’t understand, it seems, that people who have been laid off and cannot find another job need money to survive. Now, people on the Right may look at the legislative situation and say, “Yes, but…” There is no “Yes, but…” There is only doing what you are supposed to do, being a decent human being first and an irascible, bought-and-paid for lobbyist-pandering Senator second. When it comes to people’s lives, the answer is simple: do it now!

    By any standard statistical measurement, we have at least 14,900,000 people unemployed. How is there any discussion of this other than to plan ways to get these people help until we can create sufficient jobs to employ them?

    It is time that we all started offering alternatives and pushing them on Congress by any means of communications possible. We all agree on one thing for sure. In the United States especially, it costs money to live. Food, water, shelter and much, much more. Life is not free. We’re not the richest country in the world when it comes to per capita income for our people, or the second or even third. But we are the tenth richest, with a median income of $47,000 per year. We are the wealthiest in simple gross economic terms. So, that means that we have the ability to solve our economic problems. [Read more →]

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    Profile of a Neoconservative: How Neocons Think and Vote.

    March 7th, 2010 · Media, Politics, jobs, wars and militarism

    Peter Roskam was elected in 2006 to fill the seat of Rep. Henry Hyde, who retired and died. Roskam is a typical Neoconservative Republican…e.g., a Neocon. He had been a member of the Illinois State House of Representatives. He was in favor of cutting taxes. (Not very controversial.) He was in favor of preventing women from having abortions. (Very controversial if you’re a woman.)

    Roskam’s emerging career (he’s only been in national politics for two terms) is typical of so many Neocons these days. Say one thing to get elected and then do the opposite and look for cover from the vast reservoir of media outlets and organizations paid off by pharmaceutical companies, oil companies, natural gas companies, manufacturing companies, mining, timber, health insurance, media…big international corporations making billions while the people suffer.

    Neocon Roskam says he is for fiscal responsibility and in favor of two big wars and continuing to keep taxes very low for the rich. He is also in favor of denying anything to citizens, like reasonably priced health care (except tax cuts) but in favor of supporting more oil drilling in this country as opposed to promoting alternative sources of energy. He is in favor of higher gas prices, maintaining low-mileage cars, and not in favor of stimulating the economy to create more jobs.

    Roskam is a protégé of his former boss, Tom DeLay, the former leader of the Right Wing from Texas, who along with Dick Armey and the Bush Administration brought us $7 trillion of the current $12 trillion in debt. DeLay, many people will remember, was the man who led the effort to gerrymander the districts of House Members in Texas, which he eventually did. It has been pointed out that there is not one Democratic district left in Texas that is not either Hispanic or African-American. [Read more →]

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    Are You an American or Are You a Neocon?

    March 5th, 2010 · General, Politics

    The actions of John Kyl and Jim Bunning recently bring into sharp focus, as Dr. Paul Krugman, the Nobel Laureate has said, the differences between the two most prominent political parties. But it goes beyond that.

    When are you a citizen of a country? If I move to France to live, am I automatically a citizen of France? If I come across the border from Mexico or if, God forbid, one of those Socialist Canadians, with their despotic and radical national health care ideas, should come across that border…are they citizens? The answer: no. Because you live somewhere does not make you a citizen.

    They can become American citizens, not always something that everyone who stays here for some time wants to do, especially when we are killing people in Asia or the Middle East. They don’t always want to become U.S. citizens. Many times they simply want to have the American experience and then return to Great Britain, or Sweden or Canada.

    Some people come temporarily. But if you already have economic opportunity and enough space in which to live comfortably, the United States is not always some kind of Paradise. In Friedman’s crowded and flat world, good personal economics can provide some pretty entertaining lifestyles in many, many places around the globe. Switzerland or the south of France can be…yes, it’s true…more enjoyable than New Jersey or Delaware. It really has to do with economic factors. [Read more →]

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    More Idiotic Propaganda From the GOP Lunatic Fringe

    March 4th, 2010 · Health Care, Media, Politics

    The Republicans have lost the battle against health care for their supporters in the health insurance industry. With no more stalling options, they are trying to use propaganda to scare and distract Americans about the federal government. Most of it is just gibberish.

    Be assured of one thing. We are in no danger of becoming a totalitarian, either Fascist totalitarian or a Communist totalitarian state. First of all, only in situations where government is taken over completely by one or the other of these political philosophies does it become totalitarian. Totalitarian means that a state’s political leadership is seamlessly intertwined with its financial and industrial sectors.

    Frankly, under President Bush, we were getting pretty close to that with the number of lobbyists in Washington that were actually brought into the departments of government. Now, with the Bush Supreme Court’s decision that corporations can literally come into any political campaign anywhere in the country and buy an election directly, corporations don’t need to go through any kind of political organization. They can go directly to Ohio, for example, and spend as much as they want to elect a Senator.

    President Obama is unfortunately the last thing from a dictator. All you need to do is watch his constant pandering to the Right, trying to get their votes, which he never will. To Democrats and Progressives his ongoing and unsuccessful attempt to bring a totally obstructive Republican Party into the mix of legislative matters is weak. Especially, after they have filibustered over 200 bills, his approach, far from being dictatorial is not remotely aggressive enough for a Party anxious to move legislation that the people need.

    But that is the Neocon game plan. If you are a propaganda organization like the Neocon Republicans, you need someone to demonize. In a normal society, where there are many different sources of news and information, it would be easy to shoot down all the Right Wing nonsense about our now being some kind of totalitarian society and Obama being some kind of Napoleon. But we have such a concentration of ownership of media by Right Wingers, that it is almost impossible to get the truth out. [Read more →]

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    The Communist Fallacy

    March 2nd, 2010 · Media, Politics

    You might want to take everything you know about our country and have a second look.

    We all used to participate in the defense of our country. Now we have young people, mostly poor, trying to get ahead, who risk their lives for a college education while others, not risking their lives, go to college first.

    We used to take pride in our benevolence. We see the remnants of that attitude in the remarkable outpouring of support by firemen and cops who traveled from all over the country to New York City and by all kinds of people who simply picked up and went to New Orleans, when they were needed. We all gave money to those efforts, to those areas where government wasn’t enough, and we did and still do the same for Haiti, and now Chile. But we have at least a dozen tent cities all over the country and one Republican Senator holds up unemployment benefits for 15 million Americans.

    We collect clothes and toys at Christmas and collected food in stores and businesses and schools to send to Ethiopia and other far off places. We have always done our best to respond, even to the quake victims in Iran. Yet 40 Republican Senators have held up millions of jobs in legislation they have blocked for their own political gain. They literally double-crossed many who sent them to Congress to support a legion of lobbyists who contribute hundreds of thousands of dollars to their campaigns.

    We have changed. A lot. And not for the better. [Read more →]

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    Torts, Filibusters, Health Care Reform and Disastrous Supreme Court Decisions

    March 1st, 2010 · Courts and the Law, Health Care, Politics

    We are now well into this session of Congress. The Senate has already begun a pace of filibusters that will exceed that of the last session, which was already double the highest number ever. It is very clear. The Neoconservatives are committed not to the constituents who elected them but to large industrial corporations, or Right Wing think tanks, funded by large corporations and by wealthy individuals, like the Scaife Family, and the Koch Family and others. In general, the same people who paid the money to elect Ronald Reagan and the upper and lower Bush houses (not hard to figure out which is which) are those who are funding these filibusters.

    You may not like everything about health care reform but it is not enough for Republicans to say that we will simply stop and start over. After all, some Republicans foolishly lost their heads and contributed some good amendments to it. So, why then, did they later come out with a health care plan that is deliberately and obviously written for two groups in particular….pharmaceutical companies and liability insurance companies?

    There are many doctors…some are even surgeons who are the best in their field…who literally do not know that there is no relationship whatsoever between medical liability lawsuit payments and medical liability insurance rates. Some do not want to know. Do you know why? They have a vague sense that there is nothing they can do about these high rates anyway. Insurance companies are not covered by anti-trust legislation. So there are no competitors anyway in many cases.

    These are doctors, for the most part pretty bright people. Their attorneys have probably explained to some of them that when the stock market goes down, there is suddenly a strange tendency for the liability insurance rates to go up. And suddenly campaigns come out of the woodwork trying to paint trial attorneys as the people actually instigating the lawsuits, not even the persons sitting in a wheelchair, or walking with a cane, or on life support. Or carrying a damaged child.

    The fact is that less than one half of one percent of all health care costs are the result of health care claims. Two things you should know. First, that these statistics come from studies done by the national association of state insurance regulators. They say that there is no relationship between the awards to individuals from tort suits and liability insurance rates. [Read more →]

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    The Next American Revolution

    February 27th, 2010 · Economics, Health Care, Media, Politics, wars and militarism

    It is time for all Americans to stop what they are doing and think about the future. Your future has already been mapped out for you by a relatively small percentage of Americans, who want to eliminate the middle class. The Neoconservatives, on a mission for the very wealthy and huge international corporations, have the power to do it, if you let them.

    The danger comes from Washington. That is where the seat of power lies, where the levers will be pulled, the gears started in motion that will change America. There is a small group within that larger group. These are the people paid to implement the policy and make no mistake about it, they are coming for you. They want to establish a United States of America that is one-half forward-looking, hi-tech democracy, and one-half Latin-American plutocracy.

    The first part is to continue a segmented manufacturing base, small but highly technological, where the United States can continue to dominate using its knowledge base. They want to continue to dominate the world economy for at least 50 and maybe 100 more years on a segment of patented export products. They also want to control a large segment of the world’s arms manufacture, and export those products. The same technological superiority that may give us an export advantage in industrial goods will give us, they realize, an edge in military hardware. We will have the latest and best military equipment with which to defend ourselves. Other countries will have military hardware that becomes obsolete for the American military.

    The problem is that this relatively segmented manufacturing objective is probably not moral…creating an export industry out of weapons of war. Even if it were moral, it would not provide enough employment for the additional workers that we will have in that same 50 to 100-year period. Unless we change our policies, Americans will by and large exist on a consumer economy as it exists today. [Read more →]

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    Do Americans Really Want Health Care Reform?

    February 25th, 2010 · Health Care, Politics

    We have spent an entire year listening to politicians talk about health care, argue health care, debate health care and even do their best to obstruct health care. When Senator John McCain and then Senator Barack Obama were campaigning on the issue of health care 76%, over three-quarters of all Americans surveyed said that they wanted health care reform. Today the Republicans say that the majority of Americans have changed their minds, that they do not want health care reform.

    They are somewhat right, but, as usual, wrong on the most important aspect of what Americans want. The fact is that there are a number of reasons why health care reform is urgent right now. Costs are out of control, premiums and denials are particularly egregious to the average American family. And while the numbers have gone down, it is incorrect to say that Americans do not want health care reform. But it is true that they have been confused about it and are not as enthusiastic as they had been.

    So here are some questions asked by a NEWSWEEK poll recently that reflect what Americans think of health care reform right now in late February 2010. [Read more →]

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    The Grim State of the Nation

    February 24th, 2010 · Culture, Economics, Health Care, Politics, energy, jobs

    As we are about to enter the third month of 2010, the nation is in its worst financial and economic condition since, perhaps, 1939. We have large-scale unemployment, foreclosures, bankruptcies, homelessness, hunger, lack of living essentials, and many working families with huge credit card debt. The Neoconservative Republicans who control the Republican Party, have decided to align themselves completely with the top 5% of income earners and with huge international corporations. The Democrats have aligned themselves with the People. And the people are hurting.

    If we are not in a depression, then certainly we are in a condition that closely mirrors the conditions coming out of our Great Depression. We have about 15% effective unemployment. As the country came out of the Great Depression of the 1930s, it also had 14-to-15% unemployment. Now we are in a situation where people who had unemployment and COBRA protection are coming to the end. And the Republicans do not want to extend it. It has to be done soon to extend unemployment benefits for another period beginning on March 1st.

    That is causing anxieties but so is the housing situation. The housing market is down drastically. An anticipated 3.5% increase, that economists thought would result from the extension of the $8,000 new homes tax credit to April 2010 did not materialize. Instead the numbers fell by 11.2% in January to the lowest number since these kinds of records have been kept. Overall, since home prices began to fall in 2007, they have dropped by 36%.

    When home prices fall and the value of the mortgage exceeds the home’s price, there is often trouble for the homeowner. There were 2.8 million foreclosures in 2009, and another 3 million are on track to foreclose this year. That means a lot of people out of their homes. That has caused another problem. [Read more →]

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    Health Industry Greed and Democratic Reform

    February 23rd, 2010 · Economics, Health Care, Politics

    It was the best of times, it was the worst of times….

    Yes, indeed. It was the best of times for the health care industry in 2009. And the worst of times for their customers. And it continues in 2010.

    Let’s get right to it.

    Wellpoint, UnitedHealth Group, Cigna, Aetna and Humana…the top five health insurers, earned a combined $12.2 billion last year, 2009. That was an increase of 56% over 2008, in what is likely to be the 2nd worst economic climate in our country’s history after the years of the Great Depression of the 1930s.

    Humana alone earned $452 million in the 4th quarter of 2009 from Medicare Advantage Plans. Now why is that significant? Because these are people on fixed incomes, many of them poor. But that is not the worst of it. As the economy tanked, Humana actually made more in 2009 than in 2008. In 2008 it earned $267 million in the 4th quarter. In 2009, $452 million…a 70% increase!

    In 2009 there were at least 7 million more unemployed, several million foreclosures, over a thousand banks closed, $700 million in government money poured into Wall Street to save the financial system and an $800 billion stimulus bill that should have been large enough to say to the health insurance industry: enough already! But it wasn’t enough for the greedy CEOs of health insurance firms. [Read more →]

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    Beck at CPAC: Libertarian…maybe; Populist…definitely not!

    February 21st, 2010 · Politics

    Glenn Beck made a splendid keynote speech at the CPAC Conference. He was in rare form as are many speakers with great imagination who place no importance on the veracity of their words.

    He did, however, do something unusual and to some probably dramatic, although not impressive to those who have beaten addictions. It is not surprising to people who have long since beaten addictions that they might mention it. Most would not use it as a ploy, nor would they use the comments of someone else, as he did of Tiger Woods, without their approval. But just as he said the Republican Party must say that they have a problem with tax cuts and profligate spending, and as Tiger must prove himself to his wife….Beck must go a long way to prove his bi-partisanship.

    He says that the Republicans should say, “Hello! I’m the Republican Party and I’ve got a problem. I’m addicted to spending and big government.” Well, hello! Glenn Beck has been supporting this Party, in fact broadcasts on the official network of the Republican Party, Fox News, every night. The word “hypocrite” does come to mind.

    Still, Beck seemed less fanatical and emotionally disturbed than usual. His ranting included the Republicans for a good reason. He built his speech around an effort to seem populist. It didn’t work. Again, it was merely a little problem with the truth. [Read more →]

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    CPAC Conference: Armey Firing Blanks

    February 19th, 2010 · Politics

    Dick Armey gave a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference yesterday. He walked in wearing a cowboy hat. He was ready to take aim and fire at the Obama Administration. Unfortunately, he was firing blanks.

    Almost every word that came out of his mouth was a complete fabrication. Not only did he, frankly, lie about situations, but he turned situations completely on their heads. For example, the Democrats were the ones who would ruin the country with regulations on financial instruments. So his plan for the Republicans would be a return to the same policies that caused huge deficits and the recession. But he tried to characterize the Democrats as ideologues, wanting control of all aspects of government, just what Bush and Cheney did for 8 years. For example, Armey said this: “there is nothing so righteous as an income re-distributor” He was referring to Obama.

    Of course, it is the Republicans who re-distributed income…upward. Obama has given tax cuts so far, not tax increases. So if he is “re-distributing” income it is working in everybody’s favor. Second, when Armey was entering Congress, Ronald Reagan, whom Armey supported, had just completed the biggest income re-distribution in the country’s history. He reduced the top marginal tax rate from 74% down to 28%. In other words, he doubled the income of the richest taxpayers. And those tax rates, with some modifications, some up by half a dozen points, but also down again, have existed since that time until today, under the Obama Administration.

    In fact, there is no income tax re-distribution plan in the works that anyone in government has discussed, although there must be some discussions starting soon, because Armey and his pals, Reagan, Bush I and Bush II have left us with debt that is beginning to approach the magic number of 90% of GDP, at which point the country, actually any country, begins to decline.

    But he made it sound as if Barack Obama is out to take away people’s incomes and create Socialism. It is absurd of course but that is the whole approach of this CPAC meeting. Each speaker gets up and says, one way or another, that President Obama is trying to take away our “freedoms.” But what does that mean? And who is he going to redistribute income to? We have all seen the federal government bail out Bush’s pals on Wall Street. And Obama has only produced jobs for the middle class, not changed their tax codes. The Republicans seem to want the jobs that the stimulus is producing but then they complain that it is redistributing wealth. None of what they say makes sense.

    But Armey was funny. Not intentionally. He called the President “shallow,” “self-indulgent” and “the most incompetent President in our lifetime.” Now, if he had said, “in our history” we could have asked for a time-out and considered Van Buren or Buchanan, Andrew Johnson and so on. But he limited it to several people and the only matchups (remember it is just one year into office) would be George W. Bush and President Obama. Any votes for Bush as better than Obama, even after only one year? That’s right. None. [Read more →]

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    The Neoconservative Republican Agenda Is Quite Simple. Lie and Lie Again.

    February 18th, 2010 · Politics

    In the cool, rarefied air of Senate multi-millionaires it may be possible to conduct policy discussions with great civility. At least on the non-producing Democratic side. On the other side, the Neocon Obstructionist Party smiles, makes sarcastic comments in the legislative chamber and then votes against everything. No exaggeration. They have voted against everything by sending up 112 filibusters in one Congressional session. Even in the last session where they did the same thing, they only were able to produce less than 60 filibusters.

    Then, of course, they walk out the door to spew the worst kind of vitriolic venom to the press that has absolutely no bearing on reality. They lie about the legislation itself. They lie about Democratic postures, referring to Democrats as “tax and spend.” which is actually what they have done only worse. They were the tax relief for the rich but “borrow and spend” Republicans to accomplish their goals: wars and inflationary bubbles used to cause a major recession. And the press unquestioningly prints it.

    Do nothing and lie about it. Let Sean Hannity continue the lies and broadcast them to the very people who should be outraged, and would perhaps if they could find out the truth. Have Rush Limbaugh, who supposedly reaches 15 million listeners a day, demonize the opposition, calling any intelligent woman legislator a “Feminazi” which goes over well with his moronic base of Fundamentalist, keep your women barefoot-and-pregnant ditto-brained listeners.

    Hannity is merely a Limbaugh wannabee. And there is no surprise that Limbaugh lies on a daily basis. Several books have been written about it, including one by a sitting Senator of the United States. But, because Limbaugh is sponsored by the very Texas oilmen who never got over losing the oil depletion allowance and, like the Texaco executives, never got over de-segregation, he cannot be removed from the airwaves. He is, of course, by any standard, a pig with apparently 15 million pig-lovers listening to his program every day.

    We don’t know why people can lie and lie and lie, over and over, about very important legislation, important to the people, like health care, where a solution is sitting in the Senate chamber, and cannot reach the President’s desk. We know why it is not moving…because of $400 million spent to buy off Senators like Birch Bayh, Blanche Lincoln, Ben Nelson, Joe Lieberman and of course every single Republican Senator. Even these people lie about their votes. Here’s how bad the situation has become. [Read more →]

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    Who Is Going to Pay the National Debt?

    February 17th, 2010 · Economics, Politics

    There was a wonderful line once in an old movie. A very savvy and skilled old billiards player, a hustler, was about to take the money from a slick and smart-alecky young man who had just ridden into town. And as the hustler chalked his cue stick, and leaned over the table to take his first shot, he calmly and quietly said: “Young feller, the sharp edge of fate is about to descend upon your red hick’s neck.”

    The sharp edge of fate is about to descend upon all our red hicks’ necks if we do not wake up. The biggest problem in the country today, one far greater than health care reform or the stimulus, is deficit reduction. I don’t mean the deficit. That’s merely the problem. The deficit is really only the bill. The question, the real problem is–who is going to pay the bill? Your share of the bill, should you accept it, and you don’t have any choice and the share owed by each of the roughly 305,000,000 Americans, is $40,000.

    Did you get $40,000 worth of benefit from the deficit? Did you even get lower cost and totally reliable health care? Under merely the first of George W. Bush’s tax cuts and merely in the first year of those tax cuts, every millionaire got about $40,000 in tax breaks. And now you owe $40,000. You may say that, well, you really don’t have to pay it. It is merely an accounting figure, something on some government piece of paper. But it isn’t. [Read more →]

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    Budget Crisis Commission: Coming for Your Social Security and Medicare

    February 16th, 2010 · Economics, Politics

    In Washington today, a whole hall full of white-shirts and rimless glasses sat at attention while the gurus of fiscal policy told us that we need to cut our biggest areas of expenditure—Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid—in order to save us from disaster that they make sound worse than the Spanish Inquisition.

    The Peterson-Pew Budget Commission meeting is quick to tell us that our country, our lives, our children and our very Democracy are in great jeopardy, worse than any Hollywood disaster scenario of falling buildings and oceans swamping our cities could envision.

    This is…well…how should we describe this…ah, let’s see…Bullshit!

    They are not coming to get the excess money of the rich. They are not coming to raise taxes on Halliburton. They are not going to put an excess profits tax on a movie that costs $50 million and makes $500 million. They are not going to tax the pure 100% profit the oil companies make, in the hundreds of billions…out of your pocket…every time they raise gas prices over $3.00 per gallon.

    They are, in fact, coming for your slim Social Security payments and for more money from you in Medicare co-payments and premiums. That is how Pete Peterson’s crisis in entitlements will be solved.

    The Peterson-Pew Budget Commission has been heavily involved in spreading its message that our national debt is ruining us, which is partly true. Debt is bad and thrift is hard to argue against. But this commission is unfortunately merely a stalking horse for a vast array of organizations who want to impoverish the middle class, cut their meager retirement benefits, both financial and medical. Their message is that the government cannot sustain the enormous and growing national debt. But you will not hear anything about taxing the rich or corporations. That is a little strange, don’t you think? After all if you need money, go where the money is. [Read more →]

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