Too Rich to Fail?

Budget shortfalls in many states have helped shine the spotlight on fiscal responsibility, but as we've seen in Wisconsin when there are political careers on the line rhetoric tries to muscle its way into the spotlight, too. There is no guarantee of objectivity left in commercial "mainstream" media in the U.S. anymore; the chase after "bottom line" success has also chased truth and journalistic standards into full retreat.

Now elected so-called leaders want to chase education into full retreat, too. With the full complicity of ratings-driven networks who will present any side of an issue if they make a buck today, the folks who can afford to pay as much for their kid to attend an elite private academy every year as the rest of us can justify for a graduate school have decided public schools and the people who teach them are no longer a priority.

"...in the derivatives market alone, $600 trillion is in play. That’s why the players, and the Chamber of Commerce, are lobbying so hard to be left alone..."

from "$6 Trillion in play: derivatives markets"
18 February 2011 at realitytax

We bailed out Wall Street bankers after the 2008 crash caused by years of risky business put our economy in a tail-spin, supporting their lavish lifestyles, sky-high salaries, and jaw-dropping year-end bonuses; in exchange they demand we reduce taxes on the ultra-rich while our bridges crumble, potholes proliferate, and we're reducing the modest paychecks and threatening the retirement benefits of public school teachers? In the land of opportunity? Seriously?


We've let corporations and lobbyists build a system where the rule is that some are not only being asked to pay less than their fair share, but they're also too rich to fail. What's next, taking away the collective bargaining rights that made this country great by building the middle class into the engine of the world's greatest economy? We can do better than this; on behalf of our children we must do better than this.

In 2009, "America’s top 25 hedge fund managers earned an average of $1 billion each — enough to pay for 20,000 teachers." Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich 3 May 2010

Political Correspondent Thomas Hayes is a former Congressional Campaign Manager; he's a journalist, photo/videographer, entrepreneur, and communications consultant who contributes regularly on topics ranging from economics and politics to culture and community, who incidentally stands in solidarity with the citizens and workers in Wisconsin refusing to let their Governor's self-created budget "crisis" and new spending priorities be re-cast as a reason to undermine contractual obligations and collective bargaining agreements.

You can follow Tom as @kabiu on twitter. Tweet

Robert Reich, The Borg, and The Heath Care Debate

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I just happened upon Berkeley professor and dweller, Robert Reich's blog and a post title that caught my eye: "The Guns of August and Why The Republican Right Was So Adept at Using Them on Health Care" and a particularly true statement he wrote:

"The Left had ideas; the Right has discipline"

Prof. Robert Reich

The former professor at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government and former Secretary of Labor is right. I'm stunned over the almost "Borg-like" efficiency the right brings to the effort of getting out a message consistently, and getting its members to follow the cue cards chapter and verse, time after time.

(Oh. The Borg were characters from Star Trek: The Next Generation who were part machine and part human and ran by a central computer system.)

Now, if one thinks about my Borg analogy, they might say I'm implying that there's little or no independent thought on the Right. One would be correct here. After all, it's independence of thought that leads to the creation of a new idea.

While the idea-laden Left needs to get its messaging act together, the Couch Potato Conservative representatives on the Right must show the ability to think about what they're talking about. For example, the who notion of "The Public Option".

Conservatives I've talked to think the "Public Option" in the proposed Health Care Bill means you going to a government-run hospital, or having the feds pick a doctor for you. Not so. Ir's just another insurance program. Period. That's it. End of story.

But the facts don't stop the Right from tossing out more untruths, take this email I got from a friend recently:

Hiya,


I got this in my mail. Can you forward it on to Zennie. Could be good stuff for his blog.


It's kinda scary... It seems like it's coming from a legit website.


Below are the items you may find interesting and worth more investigation:




Pg 22 of the HC Bill MANDATES the Govt will audit books of ALL EMPLOYERS that self insure!!


Pg 30 Sec 123 of HC bill - THERE WILL BE A GOVT COMMITTEE that decides what treatments/benefits you get


Pg 29 lines 4-16 in the HC bill - YOUR HEALTHCARE IS RATIONED!!! You can only get so much "care" per year


Pg 42 of HC Bill - The Health Choices Commissioner will choose your HC Benefits 4 you. You have no choice!


PG 50 Section 152 in HC bill - HC will be provided to ALL non US citizens, illegal or otherwise


Pg 58HC Bill - Govt will have real-time access to individs finances & a National ID Healthcard will be issued!


Pg 59 HC Bill lines 21-24 Govt will have direct access 2 your banks accts for elective funds transfer


PG 65 Sec 164 is a payoff subsidized plan for retirees and their families in Unions & community orgs (ACORN).


Pg 72 Lines 8-14 Govt is creating an HC Exchange to bring private HC plans under Govt control.


PG 84 Sec 203 HC bill - Govt mandates ALL benefit pkgs for private HC plans in the Exchange


PG 85 Line 7 HC Bill - Specs for Benefit Levels for Plans = The Govt will ration your Healthcare!


PG 91 Lines 4-7 HC Bill - Govt mandates linguistic appropriate services..... Example - Translation for illegal aliens


Pg 95 HC Bill Lines 8-18 The Govt will use groups i.e., ACORN & Americorps to sign up individually for Govt HC plan


PG 85 Line 7 HC Bill - Specs of Benefit Levels for Plans. #AARP members - your Health care WILL be rationed


-PG 102 Lines 12-18 HC Bill - Medicaid Eligible Indiv. will be automat.enrolled in Medicaid. No choice


pg 124 lines 24-25 HC No company can sue GOVT on price fixing. No "judicial review" against Govt Monopoly


pg 127 Lines 1-16 HC Bill - Doctors/ #AMA - The Govt will tell YOU what you can make.


Pg 145 Line 15-17 An Employer MUST auto enroll employees into public opt plan. NO CHOICE


Pg 126 Lines 22-25 Employers MUST pay for HC for part time employees AND their families.


Pg 149 Lines 16-24 ANY Emplyr w payroll 400k & above who does not prov. pub opt. pays 8% tax on all payroll


pg 150 Lines 9-13 Biz w payroll between 251k & 400k who doesnt prov. pub. opt pays 2-6% tax on all payroll


Pg 167 Lines 18-23 ANY individual who doesn't have acceptable HC accrdng to Govt will be taxed 2.5%


Pg 170 Lines 1-3 HC Bill Any NONRESIDENT Alien is exempt from individual taxes. (You and I will pay for them)


Pg 195 HC Bill -officers & employees of HC Admin (GOVT) will have access to ALL Americans financial/personal recds


PG 203 Line 14-15 HC - "The tax imposed under this section shall not be treated as tax" Yes, it says that


Pg 239 Line 14-24 HC Bill Govt will reduce physician services for Medicaid. Seniors, low income, poor will be very affected


Pg 241 Line 6-8 HC Bill - Doctors, doesn't matter what specialty you have, you'll all be paid the same


PG 253 Line 10-18 Govt sets value of Dr's time, professional judgments, etc. Literally value of humans.


PG 265 Sec 1131Govt mandates & controls productivity for private HC industries


PG 268 Sec 1141 Fed Govt regulates rental & purchase of power driven wheelchairs


PG 272 SEC. 1145. TREATMENT OF CERTAIN CANCER HOSPITALS - Cancer patients - welcome to rationing!


Page 280 Sec 1151 The Govt will penalize hospitals for what Govt deems preventable readmissions.


Pg 317 L 13-20 OMG!! PROHIBITION on ownership/investment. Govt tells Drs. what/how much they can own.


Pg 317-318 lines 21-25,1-3 PROHIBITION on expansion- Govt is mandating hospitals cannot expand


pg 321 2-13 Hospitals have oppt to apply for exception BUT community input required. Can you say ACORN?!!


Pg335 L 16-25 Pg 336-339 - Govt mandates estab. of outcome based measures. HC the way they want. Rationing


Pg 341 Lines 3-9 Govt has authority to disqualify Medicare Adv Plans, HMOs, etc. Forcing all into Govt HC plan


Pg 354 Sec 1177 - Govt will RESTRICT enrollment of Special needs


Pg 379 Sec 1191 Govt creates more bureaucracy - Telehealth Advisory Cmtte. Can you say HC by phone?


PG 425 Lines 4-12 Govt mandates Advance Care Planning Consult. Think Senior Citizens end of life. Seniors will be interviewed every year for health issues and decisions made as to what care they can or can't receive


Pg 425 Lines 17-19 Govt will instruct & consult regarding living wills, durable powers of atty. Mandatory!


PG 425 Lines 22-25, 426 Lines 1-3 Govt provides apprvd list of end of life resources, guiding you in death


PG 427 Lines 15-24 Govt mandates program for orders for end of life. The Govt has a say in how your life ends


Pg 429 Lines 1-9 An "adv. care planning consult" will be used frequently as patients health deteriorates


PG 429 Lines 10-12 "adv. care consultation" may include an ORDER for end of life plans. AN ORDER from GOV


Pg 429 Lines 13-25 - The govt will specify which Doctors can write an end of life order.


PG 430 Lines 11-15 The Govt will decide what level of treatment you will have at end of life


Pg 469 - Community Based Home Medical Services=Non profit orgs. Hello, ACORN Medical Services here!!?


Page 472 Lines 14-17 PAYMENT TO COMMUNITY-BASED ORG. 1 monthly payment to a community-based org. Like ACORN?


PG 489 Sec 1308 The Govt will cover Marriage & Family therapy. Which means they will insert Govt into your marriage


Pg 494-498 Govt will cover Mental Health Svcs including defining, creating, rationing those services


This is all in there, check it out yourself! And be afraid. You must contact your representatives and STOP this insane Health Care Plan before they pass it some night at midnight.

Now none of the points in the email is true. For example, the first item on the list, "Pg 22 of the HC Bill MANDATES the Govt will audit books of ALL EMPLOYERS that self insure!!" is a load of crap. The Heath Care Bill calls for a study of the ABILITY of self-insured programs to cover their obligations. It's part of a call for a national study.

I was pretty upset with the email because of the list of distortions you saw, so I asked harshly "What idiot sent out this email?"

I got this response from the friend of my friend who originally sent the email:

I do not know who wrote it which is why I ask a few friends if they knew anything about it.


My persoal opinion is not an F for who wrote it but a F for the ones that wrote such a complex plan and involved bill. No wonder there is confusion on both sides of the fence. Seriously who will interpret the plan if no one can read it? Will it be the politicians that interpret it to the doctors and patients?


That is I want to know.


Thank you.

To which I replied:

Hi


Just saw this.


The Bill is not complicated to read. It's simple but one had to take the time. You're asking for the "dumbing down" of an important piece of legislation. Please don't do that.


Take time to get a cup of coffee, turn off the TV, and read the bill for yourself. It's that important. I'm really concerned with the apparent lack of desire of Americans to absorb information that's not in small bites.


Read. Read. Read.


...And then ask questions.


Best,


Zennie

But do you see how the Right's sending out these takes on the Health Care Bill and scaring the uninformed with their own uninformed view? Part of me thinks its deliberate and they know its wrong, but a larger part of me thinks they just can't comprehend what's before them.

We've always complained about America's declining levels of education, so it should come as no surprise and complete alarm that we now have a good set of the population that's just not used to reading large amounts of information and turns off past page two.

And it seems most of those people have decided to be on the Right and not the Left.

(I'll return to this list for more vetting soon.)

Berkeley's Robert Reich Blog Seems To Point To Bailout Of The American Taxpayer

Berkeley Professor of Public Policy Robert Reich became famous for a book called "The Next American Frontier" where he favored a kind of American Industrial Policy while at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. That book, and "American Industry in International Competition" and "The New Industrial State" by John Kenneth Galbraith, plus a healthy practice of system dynamics modeling, helped to form my current economic view.


Currently, Reich serves as what he describes as an "informal advisor" to President-Elect Barack Obama.  In his blog, which I'd wish he'd break up into subject portions for linking, Reich points to the big "C" - Consumers -- as being at the heart of the economic problem. He writes:

The real problem is on the demand side of the economy.


Consumers won't or can't borrow because they're at the end of their ropes. Their incomes are dropping (one of the most sobering statistics in Friday's jobs report was the continued erosion of real median earnings), they're deeply in debt, and they're afraid of losing their jobs.


Introductory economic courses explain that aggregate demand is made up of four things, expressed as C+I+G+exports. C is consumers. Consumers are cutting back on everything other than necessities. Because their spending accounts for 70 percent of the nation's economic activity and is the flywheel for the rest of the economy, the precipitous drop in consumer spending is causing the rest of the economy to shut down.


I is investment. Absent consumer spending, businesses are not going to invest.


Exports won't help much because the of the rest of the world is sliding into deep recession, too. (And as foreigners -- as well as Americans -- put their savings in dollars for safe keeping, the value of the dollar will likely continue to rise relative to other currencies. That, in turn, makes everything we might sell to the rest of the world more expensive.)


That leaves G, which, of course, is government. Government is the spender of last resort. Government spending lifted America out of the Great Depression. It may be the only instrument we have for lifting America out of the Mini Depression. Even Fed Chair Ben Bernanke is now calling for a sizable government stimulus. He knows that monetary policy won't work if there's inadequate demand.


So the crucial questions become (1) how much will the government have to spend to get the economy back on track? and (2) what sort of spending will have the biggest impact on jobs and incomes?


The answer to the first question is "a lot." Given the magnitude of the mess and the amount of underutilized capacity in the economy-- people who are or will soon be unemployed, those who are underemployed, factories shuttered, offices empty, trucks and containers idled -- government may have to spend $600 or $700 billion next year to reverse the downward cycle we're in.

The solution, in my view, is to give the American Taxpayer a $4,200 per-person check, each. Then form a plan to subsidize labor costs in selected export industries and rather than pick the firms, let them fill out an online application for assistance and make it so everyone knows who's applying for it and who got it. Finally, the massive infrastruture reinvestment program is part of this, too. But the idea is that the check will help American workers during this time of economic adjustment and even reach those -- like Joe The Plumber -- who can't file for unemployment insurance.

Robert Reich Attacks Hillary Clinton for Her Attacks On Barack Obama

In his blog, Robert Reich , a former Labor Secretary of President Clinton's, came after Senator Hillary Clinton for attacking Barack Obama. The full blog post is below and here.

Why is HRC stooping So Low?

I’m becoming increasingly concerned about the stridency and inaccuracy of charges in Iowa -- especially coming from my old friend. While I’m as hard-boiled as they come about what’s said in campaigns, I just don’t think Dems should stoop to this. First, HRC attacked O's plan for keep Social Security solvent. Social Security doesn’t need a whole lot to keep it going – it’s in far better shape than Medicare – but everyone who’s looked at it agrees it will need bolstering (I was a trustee of the Social Security Trust Fund ten years ago, and I can vouch for this). Obama wants to do it by lifting the cap on the percent of income subject to Social Security payroll taxes, which strikes me as sensible. That cap is now close to $98,000 (it’s indexed), and the result is highly regressive. (Bill Gates satisfies his yearly Social Security obligations a few minutes past midnight on January 1 every year.) The cap doesn’t have to be lifted all that much to keep Social Security solvent – maybe to $115,00. That’s a progressive solution to the problem. HRC wants to refer Social Security to a commission. That's avoiding the issue, and it's irresponsible: A commission will likely call either for raising the retirement age (that’s what Greenspan’s Social Security commission came up with in the 1980s) or increasing the payroll tax on all Americans. So when HRC charges that Obama’s plan would “raise taxes” and her plan wouldn’t, she’s simply not telling the truth.

I’m equally concerned about her attack on his health care plan. She says his would insure fewer people than hers. I’ve compared the two plans in detail. Both of them are big advances over what we have now. But in my view Obama’s would insure more people, not fewer, than HRC’s. That’s because Obama’s puts more money up front and contains sufficient subsidies to insure everyone who’s likely to need help – including all children and young adults up to 25 years old. Hers requires that everyone insure themselves. Yet we know from experience with mandated auto insurance – and we’re learning from what’s happening in Massachusetts where health insurance is now being mandated – that mandates still leave out a lot of people at the lower end who can’t afford to insure themselves even when they’re required to do so. HRC doesn’t indicate how she’d enforce her mandate, and I can’t find enough money in HRC’s plan to help all those who won’t be able to afford to buy it. I’m also impressed by the up-front investments in information technology in O’s plan, and the reinsurance mechanism for coping with the costs of catastrophic illness. HRC is far less specific on both counts. In short: They’re both advances, but O’s is the better of the two. HRC has no grounds for alleging that O’s would leave out 15 million people.

Yesterday, HRC suggested O lacks courage. "There's a big difference between our courage and our convictions, what we believe and what we're willing to fight for," she told reporters in Iowa, saying Iowa voters will have a choice "between someone who talks the talk, and somebody who's walked the walk." Then asked whether she intended to raise questions about O’s character, she said: "It's beginning to look a lot like that."

I just don’t get it. If there’s anyone in the race whose history shows unique courage and character, it's Barack Obama. HRC’s campaign, by contrast, is singularly lacking in conviction about anything. Her pollster, Mark Penn, has advised her to take no bold positions and continuously seek the political center, which is exactly what she’s been doing.

All is fair in love, war, and politics. But this series of slurs doesn't serve HRC well. It will turn off voters in Iowa, as in the rest of the country. If she's worried her polls are dropping, this is not the way to build them back up.