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Politics, Culture and American Life

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Good News: Obamacare Is Almost Here.

May 22nd, 2013 · Health Care

On October 1, 2013, health care delivery in this country will begin to change. The results will be good for everyone. For the first time, the trajectory of health care costs will gradually begin to turn down. Over several years, health care insurance premiums will fall and health care costs will commensurately begin to drop. Just as with inflation or deflation, the markets will trend, and the trend now will be towards lower costs.

In spite of all the lies about “government takeover” and “death panels” which now seem silly, and the $400 million dollars spent on lobbying Republican legislators in 2009 alone by the health care industry, the American people have succeeded in creating a new, better, fairer and more efficient health care system. No repeals can stop it now.

The Republicans, to their credit, have remained loyal to their Masters…the health care industry…insurance companies, the conservative doctor organizations, hospital chains, pharmaceutical companies, the Koch Brothers and the Chamber of Commerce. They have voted against every single one of their constituents to be faithful to the almighty dollar of the American health care industry…to keep them looting the American people and cheating them out of health care…while pretending to do the opposite.

But all that is at an end. With the 37th Republican and Tea Party attempt to repeal affordable health care for Americans, and with 29 Republican governors still out there, trying to make implementation of universal health care as difficult as possible–the American people have spoken.

Forget all the other issues–gay marriage, abortion rights, wars, economic conditions—the American people had the opportunity to turn down something very valuable to them and their children and grandchildren—something that was lobbied against by the most powerful political forces in the country–yet the People did not reject it. They saw that an American President had fought against difficult, almost insurmountable, odds to win a better life for everyone. And they said: “Yes we can and yes we will!” And they voted Democrats into office and into control, so that no repeal could take place.

So with the assurance that life is going to change, it is time to revisit the Patient Accountability and Affordable Care Act, often known as “Obamacare.” The world of health care for American citizens has changed already but the biggest changes begin this fall. [Read more →]

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Monetary Madness and Economic Cowardice

May 3rd, 2013 · Capitalism, Economics, Lobbying, Politics, Populism

Since 2008 and the onset of the Great Bush Depression, we have seen some of the most remarkable and inane economic theories ever proposed and some of the greatest revisions in economic history ever put upon the American People.

For example, with 15 million people out of work and Europe on its back, many conservative economists were publicly worried about inflation. Inflation? They were worried….or said they were….(which brings up that other problem, loss of integrity)…about prices rising at a time when interest rates could not be raised with a crane.

No one….no one…wanted to borrow money. There was no demand. There was no reason to borrow money and everyone on the planet wanted cash in the bank. But the brilliant economists were crying inflation.

Next came the hue and cry about the great international debts. Of course, during the previous decade when every semblance of regulation was being stripped from the financial community and men who should have gone to jail, including Bernie Madoff who finally did, were selling worthless stock to pension funds and sovereign state funds no one was doing anything about the national debt.

And why were we having current deficits of over a trillion dollars a year? Because we were (and are) paying huge amounts for welfare, at the height of unemployment and closed businesses of about $700 billion a year more than we took in.

The national debt is a problem of course. But it isn’t going to go away. It will not go away because we have 15 to 20 million people out of work and we are doing nothing to restore an economy that can support jobs for those people. [Read more →]

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Starting Over in the New World

April 25th, 2013 · ALEC, Economics, Politics, Populism

There is an ongoing petulant argument being carried out in what one might call the economic and political press.

Should we cut government which will supposedly make us leaner and meaner and more ready to expand our economy? Or should we create more jobs, try to jump start the economy, create public jobs and revenues that can then be transitioned into private industry once investors see that aggregate demand is once again at a point that gives them confidence to invest?

There is a suspect study by two economists by the name of Carmen Rinehart and Kenneth Rogoff, both Ph.ds, both pretty bright, who said in a book called “This Time Is Different” that any country that allows its national debt to get over 90% of its GDP is headed down and will fail to grow, and that country will suffer serious long-term growth problems. Things like diminished education, social services and in particular…economic development.

The question is whether this report, if accurate, and there is some debate on that, has relevance to the United States and to our current economic condition. We have 90% debt to GDP and so the study talks about countries like us. But the issue has been clouded by the response of the Right Wing, the Republican Party. Rather than studying the issue using the information in the book, they simply used the general implications of the book to forecast the ruin of our economy out of hand. They used it to intimate that America’s economy is in grave peril.

The problem of course is that, even if the book’s predictions were accurate, the United States is far from the kind of country described in the book. The United States is the largest economy in the world. The world’s currency is our currency. We have personal assets worth four times what it would take to make us virtually debt free immediately. Not five years. Not twenty years. Immediately. We are in the unusual position of being both the world’s largest debtor nation (since Ronald Reagan) and the world’s richest nation.

Our national debt is $16.7 trillion dollars. The Republican Neo-Fascists will tell you that we have “unfunded’ liabilities of more than that. For example, we have unfunded liabilities in Social Security. If they are “unfunded” when will they be funded? The same time that the current Social Security recipients’s funds were funded…by the time they need them. In other words the prophecy of our dire circumstances is closer to a hoax than to reality. But the Neo-Fascists don’t end there. [Read more →]

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The Failure of Conservative Economics Part VII — Solutions

April 16th, 2013 · Economics, Politics, Populism, Social Security, The Budget, Wall Street

So what are the solutions to our economic problems?

They’d better be good. The Bush Administration left us with an enormous mess.

In January of 2009, the first month of the Obama Administration, 779,000 people lost their jobs. The average number of jobs lost in the first quarter of 2009, was 753,000….per month. The American workforce was coming apart.

Banks and Financial institutions were failing and those that weren’t were coming to the government, palms outstretched. Lehman Brothers, a financial institution for over a century, failed, after Bear, Stearns a seeming stalwart, gone a’gambling with OPM, (other people’s money) barely survived.

Banks like Wachovia and Washington Mutual and First City Corporation, some of which had been in business since the mid-19th Century, were merged. Tens of billions of dollars were involved.

And it could have been worse except for the financial safety net put into place by the “Liberals” after the last Conservative mess in 1929. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation limited damages to personal bank accounts. This meant that there would be no 1930s-style run on banks to remove savings. They were safe, but no thanks to the “Conservatives.”

Unemployment insurance softened the landing for many people who were laid off, at least initially. Food stamps were available to those who also saw their home equity disappear and had to look for both a job and a home. By January of 2009 a full-fledged Depression had arrived, not a Recession. [Read more →]

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The Failure of Conservative Economics Part VI – Our Current Problems and Why

March 26th, 2013 · Capitalism, Economics, Politics, Populism

We have talked about the problems with our economy. We have discussed how they have been caused by a cynical use of failed economic policies by Republican politicians backed by billionaires and giant corporations. But one person sticks out to us as analogous to the entire period of Neo-Conservative dominance of the weak American mind.

Perhaps, the great economic Quisling of the 21st Century so far has been the slightly foppish but somehow academically certified Douglass Holtz-Eakin. He has latched on to the Republican Party as his personal fiscal lifeboat and spends his life trying to give academic credence to the false hope of a Conservative-sponsored balanced budget…which never comes.

The Neo-Conservative theory was that, if we just cut taxes, that money will flow into the private sector and create investment. That, in turn, will create jobs and taxes, increasing government revenues far beyond the cost of the tax cuts. Supply-side economics at work. It didn’t work. We cut taxes and all we got was more debt.

While Holtz-Eakin was head of the Congressional Budget Office under President George W Bush (Dubya) the CBO published a strong report stating that lower taxes did not create more revenue. It only reduced government income. Tax cuts, the CBO said, do not cause an eventual increase in revenues in an amount that even pays back the loss in tax revenues. In fact, the study said, and Holtz-Eakin and other Neo-Conservative economists know, only between 1% and 20% of the lost revenues are ever recovered.

Is it any surprise then, that since 1981, when Ronald Reagan cut the top marginal income tax rate from 74% to 50% and then later from 50% to 28%…we have steadily increased our debt to the point that it is now $16.7 trillion. [Read more →]

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The Failure of Conservative Economics Part V – The Bush-Cheney Depression

March 14th, 2013 · ALEC, Capitalism, Corporations and Industry, Economics, Media, Politics, Populism, The Budget

The United States has been in decline since 1981.

That was when Ronald Reagan’s charismatic personality took over the country. Reagan was the all-time, All-American, schoolboy President. The gosh-golly-gee whiz President came to power overwhelmed by the more sophisticated long-range plans of the Corporatists. They saw his gullibility and his charm as an opening to turn the clock back 70 years. And they did.

Since 1981, the steady assault on the Middle Class American has been led by the propaganda machine of the Right Wing. Led by the oil-patch Texas billionaires, Corporatists always one careful step from Fascism, they used Reagan’s name and the fanaticism of Fundamentalist Christianity to promote “God, Guns, and Smaller Government.” The Right used Reagan’s popularity to introduce the big lie.

That lie, so popular among the American ignorati, is the foolish, “Emperor Has No Clothes” notion that we can have it all…low taxes and a Great Society. The fact is that low taxes and high spending never has, and never will build the economy. Successive Republican governments have simply borrowed more and more money.

The American people are ourselves to blame. The majority of Americans never have caught on, never understood the practical joke played on them by the Republicans. Half of us continue to vote to reduce our wages while CEOs earn an astonishing 380 times the income of the average worker.

We as a people have less and less savings and more debt because we buy into the divide-and-conquer idea of the Right that our neighbor may have a greater pension or a higher wage than we. The Republican governors of 30 states understand this. They know that if they can make Americans believe that “right-to-work” is somehow synonymous with more and better jobs, they can eliminate unions and deal with workers one at a time. And that, my friends, is and will always be an unfair fight. [Read more →]

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Time Out –A Look at the Republican Non-budget

March 12th, 2013 · ALEC, Capitalism, Corporations and Industry, Economics, Health Care, Politics, Populism, Social Security, taxes, The Budget

Before we can return to the Failure of Conservative Economics, we must address a current issue on today’s Neo-Conservative agenda…the Paul Ryan Republican Budget for 2013.

We need to examine the premises here and debunk the stuff that is simply wrong. Paul Ryan announced the Republican Budget on March 12, 2013 and it fell with a clank on the floor of the House. We will take it, point-by-point, but it is very clear at the outset that this is less of a budget than it is a political statement to the rich, Right-Wing backers of the Republican Party. It is a budget designed to be a failure. It is merely a political statement to its financial supporters.

First Ryan point:
- A balanced budget achieved in a decade by not allowing the government to spend more than it collects in revenue, which Republicans set at 19.1% of gross domestic product. By their measure, the federal government will spend $4.6 trillion less over the next decade.

Response:
Two strong revenue sources are missing in this budget to balance any budget in the next decade. The first is higher taxes on everyone…to achieve a 20.5 or higher revenue base. We need to virtually double income tax revenues. That’s just the way it is. It is the result of electing a President (Bush) who was an irresponsible idiot and a Vice President who was a world-class criminal.

The second is that we need full employment (5% or less unemployment.) Only those two things will start to balance the budget. The next thing we need to do is get our trade policies and our policies on natural resources under control. Billionaires who are trying to destroy the American Middle Class now have control of our vital resources. We need to take our natural resources away from billionaires and return them to all the people.

Second Ryan point:
- Authorizes construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.

Response:
This is somewhat laughable. Why this would even be in the Ryan-Republican budget shows how shallow and political a statement it is. Why not developing oil in ANWAR? Whatever happened to that? Well, it is simply not a current political argument. The Keystone Pipeline, whether it is developed or not, will never be a major factor in our economy unless it ruptures and somehow seeps into our water system in the West. Only then will it be a major factor. It creates only temporary jobs. It creates jobs in an industry which ten years from now will be on its way out or we will all be too busy with the effects of climate change to notice. [Read more →]

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Time-Out. A Brief Discussion of the Sequester

March 4th, 2013 · Politics, Populism, The Budget

(Part V of The Failure of Conservative Economics will be posted following this post, in a few days. But we thought that what is happening immediately would form a good example of what Conservative Economics and Politics have led us to thus far. )

After the Bush Stock Market Crash of 2008 and the resultant Bush-Cheney Depression of 2009-2012 several theories on recovery were put forth.

The Democratic proposal, put forth by the President, was a traditional stimulus. In other words there would be a government infusion of capital and other asset development directly into the economy to replace what was thought to be a bare cupboard of private investment capital, and hiding in that cupboard also the shriveled egos of formerly strident American bankers and “investment” brokers, basically…we discovered to our remorse and anger…con men.

So these “brilliant” men who knew the price of everything and the value of nothing turned out to be worth…nothing. They were and still are no help to anyone but their own bank accounts. They were too weak and frail from having lost a few bucks to be able to regenerate business activity.

The Republican Party was on their side. When the President did pass a stimulus bill through Congress in March of 2009, most Republicans said that it would never work, that we would be doomed. By threatening and complaining and refusing to vote to help Americans, they picked up about one-third of the bill in cash, tax cuts, for their rich pals and corporations. More political contributions. But the remaining 500 billion dollars that did go into projects over about 2 years, resulted in 3 million jobs and that meant another 3 million jobs saved in the private sector. It took unemployment from almost 11% down to 8%. [Read more →]

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The Failure of Conservative Economics–Pt. IV–Bush, Cheney and Big Government by Debt

February 25th, 2013 · Capitalism, Democracy, Economics, jobs, Lobbying, Media, obstruction, Politics, Populism, taxes, Wall Street

In 1994, in an interview, Milton Friedman said that in the 1990s there is “much less optimism and all the problems have been produced by government.”

This is the essential argument between the two political parties in the United States today. One pretends to be the party of Conservatives, whom they define as people like Milton Friedman.

The other, the Democratic Party does not object to being called the Party of (big) government because they see government doing good works for the People. When it is allowed to do so.

Both political parties are deeply involved in every activity of government. Both political parties know how much is earned in revenues and how much is spent. There are no stupid people asleep at the switch, or not many, as they would have you believe.

Your representatives in Congress are not stupid. But some are liars.

Friedman was wrong. Government does not create problems. Government is the recipient of problems. For example, the Wall Street crash was not the fault of government. It was inaction of government. If there was any fault of government, it was in deliberately ignoring the fraudulent activity of the private sector. The private sector crashed the economy. Government should have done more, not less, to prevent it.

The government became the recipient of the resulting catastrophe–the unemployment, the bankrupt companies, the financial bailouts. Private bankers, left to their own greed and fraud, either needed government or our entire economy, or so we were told, would collapse. So government once again stepped in to rescue the greedy and the foolish in the business world. [Read more →]

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Failure of Conservative Economics, Part III The Big Economic Lie

February 10th, 2013 · Capitalism, Economics, General, Politics, Populism

No discussion of Conservative economics will be complete without a full analysis and review of the theories of Fredrich Hayek. Hayek was an Austrian economist who moved to England in the early 1930s and taught at the London School of Economics. The general tone of his work is that free competition in the marketplace and in other areas of life encourages the best of those competing to rise to the top. Thus, he proposed that less government is better, big government in inherently Socialist and Socialism is inherently inefficient, even when its motives are laudable.

Milton Friedman, who was a colleague of Hayek’s when he moved to the United States to teach economics at the University of Chicago, expanded on Hayek’s theories. Friedman also popularized Hayek’s conservative economic theories. The Conservative, “Chicago School” was so named because of the many Conservative economists from the University of Chicago influenced by Friedman, Hayek and others in that faculty.

There are some economists today who think that the strict adherence to what many feel are outdated and disproved theories of the Chicago School, the “supply side” borders on the inane. The New Keynesian economists look at the Bush Depression and the national debt and the lack of investment and wonder what ever happened to all the policies that took us out of the Depression and served us well through the Second World War and the dynamic post-war period all the way up to Reagan. Where are any policies that will lift the economy for the many Americans who sit on the sidelines, unemployed? In the meantime, so-called Conservatives do nothing, waiting for good times to somehow magically return.

As with so many things, the world of economics has changed. The 20th Century showed that the world of Adam Smith, the elementary economic world of laissez faire and the world of waiting for things to happen is long gone. Yet the Conservatives continue to live in the previous age, where Hayek’s theories might have made some sense, at least in the context in which they were written.

Where to start? Hayek said that in the current crisis of the era about which he wrote, 1900-1944, democratic Socialism, or so he called it, was an illusion.

“that great utopia of the last few generations, is not only unachievable, but that to strive for it—produces something so utterly different that few of those men who now wish it would be prepared to accept the consequences, many will not believe until the connection has been laid bare in all its aspects.”

The “consequences” of what, writing from 1930s Great Britain, he called democratic Socialism was totalitarian government. His logic told him that central government and central “planning” would lead only to greater consolidation of power and less individual choice. And he was right about that. Hayek, the lawyer and doctor of political science, was right. Those governments, however, that Hayek called Socialist, were already turning Fascist. They had long since left off Socialism.

So, Hayek the economist was wrong. He looked at Spain, Italy and Germany, including his native Austria and saw supposedly free societies, that he saw as Socialist, trending towards dictatorships. But he read them incorrectly. These countries were exactly the opposite of Socialist countries. They were already Fascist.

The leading political parties may have called themselves Socialist. Political parties commonly used the term Socialist in those days, when popular support was necessary in a time of wildly fluctuating economic periods of inflation and depression. Concealed from the public, these governments were not seeking Socialistic equilibrium but dictatorial control.

These countries that Hayek saw as Socialist heading in the wrong direction were in fact colluding with the military and the large industrialists to their own political advantage and using propaganda to create the illusion of Socialism. One of the hallmarks of Fascism is to lie to the people about your allegiances and intentions. Hayek was fooled. There was no Socialist motive in any of the programs of the Nazis or the Fascists or the Falangists. It was about raw power. [Read more →]

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The Failure of Conservative Economics–Part II. Ronald Reagan

January 27th, 2013 · Economics, Politics, Populism

In the period from the 1950s until the late 1970s, the Conservatives were largely considered Right Wing radicals and economic zealots. Republicans of those days were mostly moderate, even some liberal, as with the Nelson Rockefeller wing of the party. The Republican Right Wing presented a political problem as it had a series of rather absurd notions. Among these acknowledged perverse political ideas were McCarthyism and the John Birch Society. So most Republicans pulled as hard as they could to the political center, where the definitive votes tended to reside.

But Republican politics changed dramatically with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. Reagan, the B-movie actor, who had always been interested in politics, the one time union leader–the head of the Screen Actors Guild–had become a Conservative. He had entered formal politics with a bang, as Governor of California, defeating popular Democratic incumbent Governor Pat Brown in 1966.

Reagan was a great communicator and a charismatic personality. Further, he sold himself as a “reformed” Democrat. He had not left the Democratic Party, he said, but it had left him. And so he had become his own kind of Republican, advocating for smaller government and more responsible use of taxpayers funds. He excoriated unions at a time when some unions–to be fair–had earned a reputation for excessive behavior, even to the point of involvement with mobsters.

Ronald Reagan had been a Democrat and a strong supporter of Franklin Roosevelt. He voted for Roosevelt every time and for Harry Truman. But, still nominally a Democrat, he voted for Dwight Eisenhower twice and for Nixon over Kennedy. How could that happen?

To understand it, you need to know the story of the “co-opting” of Ronald Reagan. It is virtually certain that he was influenced in the later 1950s and 1960s by his wife, the daughter of one of the nation’s leading Conservatives and his eight-year association with General Electric, where he became the spokesman for “General Electric Theater” on television.

Reagan’s career in motion pictures had waned simultaneously with the decline of the Hollywood movie studio system. By 1952, his career had declined to the point that he was forced to perform as a singing and dancing act in Las Vegas, despite the fact that he was neither singer nor dancer.

But he had one thing going for him. In 1952, he married Nancy Davis, an actress and the stepdaughter of one of the most bigoted and reactionary Right Wingers in the country, who, nevertheless, was one of America’s most brilliant neurosurgeons. [Read more →]

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The Failure of Conservatism and the Future of American Economics. Part I

January 8th, 2013 · ALEC, Capitalism, Corporations and Industry, Economics, Labor, Lobbying, obstruction, Politics, Populism, Social Security, taxes, The Budget, Wall Street, wars and militarism

In 1946, in the shadow of the carillon tower on the campus of the University of Chicago, an economist by the name of Milton Friedman began teaching economics to some of the brightest students in the country. His particular approach to economics was by and large what might be called neo-classical liberalism. It is a redefining of an economic philosophy called Classical Liberalism.

This economic philosophy proposed that society be supported by an economic system that would be unimpeded from any interference with the free exchange of goods. In other words, an economy uncluttered with obstructive regulations that would slow the interaction of buyers and sellers, of young growing enterprises leading to jobs and prosperity and of corporations that would provide needed products and services on a large scale.

This was basically the approach of Adam Smith in “The Wealth of Nations,” written in 1776, the year of the Declaration of Independence. When Smith wrote his treatise there were no corporations as we know them. There was no means of internally powered locomotion either by land, sea or air, no means of immediate communication and a large segment of the American, British and Latin American workforce was made up of slaves

So this was the era into which Classical Liberalism was introduced, a decade or so after Adam Smith’s demise, around 1800. Today, the world is much changed.

Much had happened between 1800 and 1946 also, when Friedman began teaching at the University of Chicago. Economics had become as complex as the now primarily urban, metropolitan societies it served. Innovations such as electricity, locomotion, aerodynamics…and by 1946, atomic power…dictated different approaches to the idea of “economic freedom.”

By 1946, when Friedman began teaching a classical conservative economic philosophy, New York City was no longer a small seaport made up primarily of British and Dutch settlers but a major metropolis of over 3 million people. Transportation from one place to another was no longer a solitary journey on horseback or with a half-dozen others in a coach-and-four, but a communal journey on a commercial enterprise called a railroad or an airline. The question no longer was whether we could free ourselves from economic serfdom with a free enterprise society but how we could find more free time on weekends.

The basic point of the Conservative point of view is let the markets decide. Wall Street executives, for example, should be free to create any stock they wish and, in a totally free economic condition, sell it to the public. The people, once fleeced apparently, will decide not to be fleeced again. Government merely provides the environment for transactions to take place. Hayak and Friedman would say, yes, this is best. Let the market decide. Others would say that the result of unfettered capitalism is uncontrolled greed, leading to speculation, often fraud and too often economic catastrophe.

That is where we are today, after half a century of Chicago-style economics and after 30 years of one foolish, myopic, politically motivated economic disaster after another by the Conservatives. We have seen the most recent example. It is called the Bush Second Great Depression. [Read more →]

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Why We Need Unions

December 19th, 2012 · ALEC, Corporations and Industry, Labor, Lobbying, Politics, Populism

There are a lot of people today who do not understand the history and the purpose of unions. And that is very important. Very important.

The reason is as the old saying goes…”Just because I am paranoid does not mean that there are not people out to get me.” And what does that mean?

It means that if you see unions as a large group of thugs who are out to convert your small business to a union shop and raise your labor costs or force you out of business…you are not necessarily wrong, but you are about 70 years behind the times.

We are not going to go into the history of the union movement. We’ve done that before on this blog. But just remember that, despite what the giant corporations, and their advocates the Republican propaganda machine, say, unions are responsible for almost everything good about working in America. The minimum wage, safety regulations, the work week, overtime stipulations, pensions, health care…everything that any worker may need…from the factory floor to the executive suite.

1. UNIONS

Union management, and unions are big, is made up of very smart, very long-viewing individuals who understand economics, both macro and micro. They will not burn down the house to repossess the furniture.

And so on that side, the realm of worrying about whether some union thugs are going to threaten you or beat you to get you to belong to a union, you can stop worrying. On the contrary, unions today are focused on the same issues that non-union workers face…loss of benefits, loss of jobs to foreign workers, huge disparities between the wages in the executive suite and the factory floor. [Read more →]

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Republicans Oppose Obamacare…and the Middle Class

November 29th, 2012 · ALEC, Fascism, Health Care, Lobbying, obstruction, Politics, Populism, Social Security, taxes

For years, even decades, the health insurance industry has run medicine in this country. Health insurance is basically when a corporation gets between you and your doctor and tells your doctor if he can perform a procedure to improve your health or in some cases save your life.

You pay for health insurance but you don’t always get it. Why? Because health services can be expensive and health insurance companies are profit making organizations. The average CEO of an insurance company makes $14 million dollars a year, every year that he or she is CEO.

Health insurance companies in the U.S. provide the same service that governments provide in other countries, only more expensively than in other countries. In each case, governments in foreigh countries and health insurance companies here in the United States do the same thing. They take money from citizens in premiums so that the cost is spread across all of society, (in our case about two-thirds of society.) They handle administration and payment of doctors and hospitals.

In other countries, that costs about 6% of everything that goes on in the economy…the Gross Domestic Product. (GDP) In this country, it costs about 18% of our GDP. Why? So that CEOs and stockholders can make money on your health services. Except in the case of Medicare. In Medicare’s case, the costs are much lower, something like 3%. Why? Because there are no huge salaries and no profit is taken out.

Medicare and the Veterans’ Hospital system are the most efficient delivery methods we have in this country for care. Medicare’s administrative costs are about 3% of revenues. Private insurance plans, on the other hand, cost about 16.7% of total revenues to administer. But remember, we are talking about hundreds of billions of dollars of difference when you look at the actual numbers. So, if you are trying to save money and reduce the debt, yet find some kind of health care coverage for all citizens….these are significant percentages.

The Veteran’s Administration health care system beats the private health insurance industry, hands down. The VA system is by far the best and most efficient. It beats Medicare by a wide margin in cost efficiency and in customer satisfaction, it regularly beats the best private health insurance by 5 to 8 percent. If all health care were run by VA, health care costs would be reduced for the average family to some very low number, probably about $500 a month.

So, President Obama came into office knowing a couple of things. First, a huge number of Americans were suffering under the policies of the health insurance industry. Many very sick people, with long term illnesses or chronic painful and dangerous conditions could simply not buy health insurance at almost any reasonable cost. It is, by the way, a public, a Socialist if you will, health care delivery system. [Read more →]

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Moving to the Left

November 15th, 2012 · jobs, Politics, Populism, taxes

If you are a Populist, you should not think that the elections on November 6, 2012 solved anything. We elected a President and Senators and House members. But they were not all Populists. Until we elect officials who are dedicated to the will and the common good of the People, much remains to be done.

In the early part of the 20th Century, Republicans were populists. Some Republicans were even called Populists and Progressives. Today, the votes from the former Confederate states are dominated by what used to be Segregationist Democrats. These new Republicans are the un-reconstructed descendants of segregationists and the few remaining Segregationist Democrats who have turned Republican.

Populists are those who are concerned for the people, those who consider that all legislation, laws, rules, and government decisions should be accomplished first and foremost for the good of all the People. For Populists, November 6, 2012 was a major victory for Populism.

It was indeed a substantial move in the right direction. But it was not a final victory. The House is in the hands of the obstructionist Republicans and the Senate is still Both the House and the Senate still operates without enough Democratic and Independent Senators (60) to override the filibusters of the Republican Senators who have blocked progressive legislation over 350 times.

Hundreds of millions of dollars was spent in this election by hugely wealthy individuals and corporations in the Right Wing to try to cancel your civil rights, to incorporate their religious views into law, to prepare to send more military forces abroad, to curtail the vote and to reduce or totally eliminate a system of affordable national health care and to weaken a subsistence-level retirement support system.

Both of the latter, Medicare under the new reform laws and Social Security, are called entitlement programs only because we have all paid into them since we began working. These are basically insurance programs. You pay into an insurance plan of any kind for 40 years and unless you are a Neo-Fascist Republican you expect that the insurance plan you paid for will be there when you need it.

The Republicans simply believe that we should have lower taxes, especially for those who pay the largest tax bills, i.e., those who have the most money, and if that means the money is not there when you retire, you should then be asked to pay your own insurance for retirement and buy your own health insurance at a time when it would be most expensive to you. If that sounds fair to you, then you probably should be a Republican.

So, regarding the 2012 elections, we cannot deny that it was a victory for Democrats at most national levels. Governorships stayed about the same. But even though the money spent by the billionaires…some estimate as much as one billion dollars…did not succeed in most cases, the threat posed by Citizens United has not gone away. Serious problems remain. [Read more →]

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