First Draft

Healthy, LIVING Employees are Good for Your Business!

I mean, really, unless you own a zombie bar:

But our politicians have a problem. Both Democrats and Republicans have shared in the $46 million in campaign contributions from the insurance industry. Needless to say, what is in the best interest of the nation is exactly opposite to the best interest of the for-profit insurers. The 22-percent saved comes right out of their pocket.

The question is how do we pay for it as a universal program? But first let’s understand who’s paying for it now.

Everybody is. We pay in cost-shifting, bankruptcy costs, and lastly, when businesses add their employee health costs to their product price and we reimburse them at the cash register.

In the process we make our businesses highly uncompetitive with foreign products, which often forces employers to build their products in countries that do not burden them with health care. We make more cars in Canada than in Michigan because their health care costs are $800 per employee per year and ours is $6500. That adds $1,500 per car.

And when you consider the cubic tonnage of time and attention HR departments spend explaining and arguing and fighting with employees over health care plans and what they mean and the endless fucking meetings with reps from the health insurance companies and you begin to realize just how much it would increase productivity if all that crap went away.

Via corrente.

A.

What Recovery

America: Still screwed.

This is just my gut sense, but the two nonprofits I volunteer with are just now starting to see the effects of everybody's October-January economic freakout when we thought we'd revert to an agrarian barter economy or something. People's layoffs and pay cuts are starting to bite in; if they had any savings they're gone and the credit card debt's mounting up now, so the cutbacks start. Yes, people lost their jobs before, but it still seemed to me that we were more bracing for what's coming than actually feeling it hit. Now it's hitting. Companies that thought they could avoid layoffs are finding that they can't. Places that had planned to re-hire people by now can't do that yet.

Is that what it's like where you are?

A.

Suburbia

I generally enjoy reading Atrios's take on better urban planning.  I'm a big fan of urban mass transit, especially now that I'm in a place where it is available only minimally.  (We only just got bus service that connects the town where I live to the one where I work, and between the transfers from one system to another and the normal vagaries of bus schedules, it'd take me almost an hour and a half to get to work every morning.  Given my post-work schedule, that just doesn't work for me.)  I got to experience just about the best version of urban living I can imagine--I lived in London for the better part of a year.  I loved the Tube, even after commuting a half an hour to and from work every day for six months.  I got to where I really enjoyed the commute time as a chance to separate my work and private lives.  (And no, driving commutes don't have the same effect--they're just annoying and stressful.)

I find it amazing that so many people seem to take it for granted that Americans want the picket-fence  suburbia version of the American Dream.  I've had that for the last six years, and frankly, I'd much rather be living in a high-rise condo or above a storefront or something.  The fact is, I hate yardwork.  Hate it.  Having experienced both, I much prefer the idea of urbia to suburbia.  If I could get out of the house we're in without losing an arm and a leg (and if I could overcome my own natural inertia), I'd be in a condo right now.

So all that leads me to conduct this very unscientific survey (sort of a follow-on to the country mouse/city mouse post A did a few Saturday's back):  If you could choose, free from constraints such as job availability/commuting issues/family issues/pet issues, would you prefer the house with yard, or the urban condo/loft/whatever?  What are the things about either option that lead you to that choice?  How would mass transit factor into your thinking?

p.s.  One of the wierd factors I consider is the fact that an upstairs apartment means far fewer bug encounters.  I'm not phobic or anything, but I do see that as a plus.

Family Values in Action

Conservatives, seriously:

The Pregnancy Discrimination Act makes it illegal to fire, or not hire, a woman because she is pregnant. The law even restricts workplace speech. Employers are warned that in a job interview they must never ask questions like, "Might you start a family?"

If Congress thought the law would end claims of workplace discrimination, it was wrong, as usual. Companies are increasingly being sued. Even a maternity-clothing chain was sued.

Waters's lawyer, David Sanford, filed a class-action lawsuit against Novartis. "If you get pregnant, you're in trouble at Novartis," he told me.

Novartis denies wrongdoing and points out that Working Mother magazine named it one of America's 100 best companies for women.

Sanford claims that his $200-million lawsuit will teach Novartis and other companies not to discriminate.

But Carrie Lukas says such lawsuits do more harm than good. Lukas is also a working mom, vice president of the Independent Women's Forum.

"If my employer decides they no longer want me as an employee, then it should be their right to fire me." she told me. "I understand the desire for people to have government step in and try to protect women, but there's real costs to government intervention."

This was discussed at length on the local teenybopper radio morning show (that I usually LOVE, by the way, since they bag on Clear Channel and record companies and conservatives all the time) and what pissed me off was that there was zero mention of the fact that Stossel and Lukas are professional conservatives, especially Lukas, who seems to be positing that the response to discrimination is to be a very good girl and beg the boss not to hit you anymore:

"Sometimes laws that are intended to help women like me actually end up hurting women like me," Lukas said. "All of a sudden, a potential employer is looking at me and thinking, 'She just might turn around and sue us.' That makes it less likely that I'm going to get hired. You raise the cost of hiring a woman like me."

Yes. The desire for a fair workplace is to blame for all unfair douchebaggery ever. That makes SUCH TOTAL SENSE. If we'd just stop demanding to be treated equally by a society that first fetishizes childbearing and then demonizes the people who do it, everything would be fine!

Many of the radio callers had horror stories about their employers fucking with them while they were pregnant (including one winner of a boss who showed up to the funeral of a worker's three-day-old baby and told her she had to be back at work in a week or she'd be canned), but there were a few that echoed Lukas here:

And while some pregnant women work harder than any man, she says, let's be honest: Most pregnant workers impose costs on employers.

"Responsibilities are shifted each time I go to a doctor's appointment," Lukas said. "That means I'm unavailable to do whatever work needs to be done during that time, which means one of my colleagues is often picking up the slack."

I have been the childless person who gets extra work because somebody had to go home and be with his or her kids, and it sucks, and it's horribly unfair. "So-and-so has a family," I'd be told, which, like I don't? Just because they don't include spawn of my own, my people don't count? And I had at least one colleague in my career who tried to make her irresponsibility all about her status as a mother, like she was so busy taking care of her kids she couldn't possibly do the duties done by other mothers in the office just fine, whose response to her nonsense was universally "mommy, please." So I'm familiar with the way childless and single people can be fucked over.

But they're fucked over by their bosses, not by the people who have kids. Making this about pregnant vs. non-pregnant ladies relieves the higher-ups of their responsibilities of staffing their shops adequately and managing their people in such a way as to leave them allowance to be human. If we're busy arguing with each other about somebody who had another baby oh my god, or has another doctor's appointment, and resenting each other, we won't notice that it's the job of the people in charge to account for this stuff in a way that doesn't involve simply pointing at whoever's left and saying, "You do this."

Not to mention which, we ALL pick up each other's slack now and again. It's not like it's any different when I get sick and someone else has to answer my phone

As usual, it is to the benefit of those in power that those with none fight with one another, which is what pisses me off so much about Stossel here:

How would the job market work without discrimination laws?

"You don't have to hire me, and I don't have to work for you," answers Carrie Lukas.

Why, it's almost like magic, the way it takes care of itself like that!

A.

Because There's No Point

In building things for the children of poor parents:

Nothing about the demolition at Collins was mentioned publicly until May 2, when Arnold Randall, who leads neighborhood outreach and legacy efforts for the bid committee, told residents at a community forum in Douglas Park that the school pool and gym would have to come down to make way for the cycling arena.

“I couldn’t believe it when he said it,” said Reginald Johns, a west-side resident who was at the meeting. “That’s the first any of us heard about it. It doesn’t make sense. They just rebuilt this gym. Why are they tearing it down?”

According to Johns and other west siders who were there, several cycling enthusiasts were on hand to endorse the plan. They didn’t go so far as to say it would help west siders conquer their fears of bike riding. But they did say that thanks to the velodrome future west siders would learn to bike ride competitively and might even qualify for a future Olympics. Residents say there was no mention of the velodrome being part of a multisport complex.

Residents say they left wondering what an elite cycling facility had to do with their community’s needs. And if the city knows it needs a bike track—or a swimming pool—why does it need to wait for the Olympics? Why not dig into any one of several available TIF accounts and build them on some of the scores of empty lots in the area?

Well, to be fair, TV news will cover the Olympics and anything related to the Olympics with the breathless enthusiasm of a teenage prom date, and regular community improvements, not so much. Building a regular old bike track for regular old people, some of whom aren't even rich or pretty, doesn't exactly bring the cameras out, now does it?

A.

We Gave the Insurance Companies All Our Money

And it resulted in everybody being hosed, so let's require people to give the insurance industry more of our money:

It is important to understand why a "public health insurance plan" created to "stand beside" existing private health insurance plans does not provide a cure. This proposal is based in part on the experience in Massachusetts. The current Massachusetts universal coverage health reform plan is being looked upon as a model for the nation. It has had some success, yet it cannot and must not be used as a model for national reform with a "stand along public health plan" option. The Massachusetts model relies on government subsidy directed through the private health insurance carriers. There are three important observations here:

1. A 2007 study sponsored by AHIP reviewed prior experience with this type of reform model in 8 states in the 1990s (Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts (in 1996), New Hampshire, New Jersey, Vermont, and Washington). They found that  "in general..., individual health insurance markets deteriorated....Often, insurance companies chose to stop selling individual insurance in the market....Enrollment in individual insurance also tended to decrease, and premium rates tended to increase, sometimes dramatically...(And) we did not observe any significant decreases in the level of uninsured persons following the enactment of these market reforms." The result was that all these reform programs failed and went out of existence.

2. Even with state government subsidy and leverage on premium charges many residents are excused from the "universal" program because they cannot afford the premiums. Many others are faced with unacceptably high and unaffordable copayments, deductibles, and benefit limits built into the approved insurance plans.

3. The program is totally dependent on the private insurance companies and there is no cost and minimal quality control mechanisms built in. The state of Massachusetts is thus currently facing a huge and perhaps intolerable budgetary deficit.

Emphasis in the second-to-last graf mine, because:

Discussion of making sure everyone is insured drives me wild. Insurance for all is not the goal. Even good insurance for all is not the goal. HEALTH CARE for all is the goal, because even if you have a job, and have health insurance, and you need an operation or other procedure and the insurance covers 90 percent of your costs but the other ten percent is $10,000 and you don't have $10,000, you're still screwed. That's the BEST CASE scenario, that you're screwed. Insurance is not the solution.

I do not know what is difficult about this for the Bush Dogs and Republicans to get. I mean, I get you're in Congress and therefore know how awful socialized medicine really is, being that all of you are taking part in it, but one would hope you'd have friends who could tell you stories of how much fun it is to spend half a day on the phone with the hospital trying to explain that a) you paid that bill b) you don't have the money to pay it twice and c) your insurance was supposed to cover it anyway and for the love of Christ, you're trying to do a job here and keep your house in order, can't somebody get on the phone with somebody and figure this shit out?

It requires a Herculean amount of emotional strength and patience for me to sort my way through the vagaries of modern medicine every month. I find it exhausting and frustrating and homcidal-rage-inducing and I'm in relatively good health, without a rare disease or disorder, without the diminished capacity for bullshit that comes with advanced age or extreme poverty. So again, the best case scenario with insurance and at least some time to handle things would be a screwball comedy if there was anything funny about it at all. And our government seems to think the best way to handle this clusterfuck is to add more cluster and more fuck.

A.

TEDDY K

On health care, not just coverage:

But reform isn't just about coverage. It's essential to bring down the cost of healthcare. That's why a second major element of our reform is cost reduction.

We'll go after fraud and abuse, cut red tape, and make sure that doctors and patients know of the latest, most effective therapies for their conditions. As experience has shown, it's better - and cheaper - to get it right the first time rather than have patients go in and out of the hospital. So we'll start paying for the overall quality of care, not the quantity of procedures. We'll make certain that doctors and patients will have better information so they can decide which treatment is best based on real evidence.

Runaway healthcare costs threaten the economic survival of this nation. Bringing them under control will not be easy, and all of us - business, labor, providers, and government - will have to make real sacrifices if this is to work.

I've been yelling about this since the election: It is completely pointless to give everybody health insurance if, even WITH that insurance, it still costs thousands of dollars to get your shit fixed. If you work part-time and have no sick days, if you work hourly for minimum wage and get the minimum, you're still fucked when they need to take out your kidney. If your insurance pays half or even two-thirds or even 90 percent of what you need done but the other 10 percent is $10,000, I don't know about you but right now that would break me and I'd be maxing out the Mastercard.

Also, and this is just me? Even if we make everything free, even if we make the best doctors on the PLANET pay YOU to come see them, if we don't make it quick and easy to get appointments and get to them and get out again, it's still going to be a pain in the ass to get antibiotics for your bronchitis and easier for you just to ignore it for six weeks until you're coughing up blood and in the ER.

Fourth, we'll make it possible for the elderly and disabled to live at home and function independently. Our bill will help them afford to put ramps in their homes, pay someone to check in on them regularly, or any of an array of supports that will enable them to stay in their communities instead of in nursing homes.

Finally, we will take strong steps to see that America has a 21st-century workforce for a modern and responsive healthcare system. We must invest in training the doctors, nurses, and other health professionals who will serve the needs of patients in the years to come. And we must make sure that an emphasis on primary care and basic prevention is at the heart of our efforts.

BRING BACK HOUSE CALLS.

A.

Dog Whistles Only Work on Dogs

DougJ:

But the fact is that screaming about about quota queens and welfare moms and young bucks buying T-bone steaks simply is not a magic bullet anymore. It works with white southerners and it works with Chris Matthews’ cranky uncle. But the Republican party has already maxed out with that demographic. Unless they can improve their standing with women, Latinos, and younger voters, they’re screwed. Obviously, attacking a Latino woman for being a Latino woman will hurt politically with Latinos and women. And younger voters don’t hear 40 year-old dog whistles that well.

I think they hear them just fine, I don't think they give a fuck, is all. The younger-than-40 set has seen firsthand how well that shit worked out for our parents: Their pension plans and retirement accounts are gone despite a lifetime of hard work and promises kept, their lives were fraught with racial and religious and sexual tensions over the rightful place of the minorities and the chicks, and all they've got to show for it is a worn-out Barcalounger and a prescription for Xanax.

I mean, for fuck's sake, I don't even bother arguing with Republican dickheads my parents' age anymore because they've already pretty demonstrably lost everything and rubbing it in just tires me out. Are you better off now than you were eight years ago? Are you better off now than you were 30 years ago? Is your house worth more? Do you have any hope that your grandkids will go to college the way you did, without it bankrupting your children? Is the factory down the street still open? How many people work there, as many as before? There's only so much you can lay at the feet of girls and Mexicans and we're over here going, yeah, yeah, yeah, gimme a job, gramps.

I will say this for the younger generation: Those kids my sister's age and younger who I know are relentlessly practical, infuriatingly so in fact. How will this help me? How will this benefit the life I want to live? It ain't that nobody's studying philosophy and Latin grammar anymore, but everybody I know in his or her twenties has not just one plan but several contingencies and ain't none of them involve going to a tea party rally to yell about government hating the Baby Jesus. The freaks who do show up there are the exceptions; the rules are at their second jobs trying to pay their own way through college or fucking high school because Dad just got laid off.

The dog whistles come through loud and clear, and there's always that moment of temptation, because wouldn't it be nice if it was all somebody else's fault that we're not king of the world, somebody powerless we didn't have to worry about kicking? But then the phone rings and it's the bill collectors again and that drowns out that dog whistle good.

A.

George Will: Lizard of All He Surveys

Good God, I'd forgotten how pretentious he is:

At the Academy of Obama, professors and others devise plans for extracting a new and improved automobile industry from a semi-sort-of-bankruptcy arrangement that -- if it survives judicial scrutiny; that is not certain -- will give the United Auto Workers 39 percent of General Motors, with the government owning 50 percent. During future contract negotiations, will the union's adversary be an administration that the union helped to put in power?

Well, if the UAW is doing its job right, and I'm sure reasonable people can argue, then the union's adversary will be anybody trying to fuck with its workers, because that's how this is supposed to work. But I'd hate to interrupt a good wank just when George is reaching for the tube sock, so let's continue.

It is Demagoguery 101 to identify an unpopular minority to blame for problems. The president has chosen to blame "speculators" -- a.k.a. investors; anyone who buys a share of a company's stock is speculating about the company's future -- for Chrysler's bankruptcy and the dubious legality of his proposal. Yet he simultaneously says he hopes that private investors will begin supplanting government as a source of capital for the companies. Breathes there an investor/speculator with such a stunted sense of risk that he or she would go into business with this capricious government?

Breathes there an editor with the testicular fortitudinousness to stymy this relentless twaddle?

Oh, and while we're demagoguing, Georgie Porgie, you seem to have no problem demonizing unions. When was the last time anybody who worked on the assembly line came to your dinner table?

Obama overflows with advice for Americans who he thinks need admonitions such as "wash your hands when you shake hands" and "cover your mouth when you cough."

Well, George W. told us to pray about the war, so I'm not going to get too upset about hand sanitizer.

Twit.

A.

Best Question

Good reporter. Have a cookie. At 7:28 in, Andre Showell from BET points out that, you know, some parts of America have been in a recession for half a damn century, while middle-class white people pretended they didn't exist, so let's have some economic recovery that actually helps them this time around:



A.

And unhappiness is treason

  American economic mythology.

Coney Island, which lost its beloved Astroland amusement park last summer after 46 glorious years, is set to be home to the rebirth of one of the area's original landmarks, Dreamland. 

Constructed in 1904, Dreamland Park was one of the first entertainments built on Coney Island. It burned to the ground in 1911, following a fire that started appropriately enough at the "Hell Gate" attraction. 

Now, nearly a century later, Thor Equities, the polarizing real estate developer who bought the site in 2006 for $30 million, is set to bring Dreamland back.

 <...>

 "To throw some carnival rides in and call it Dreamland seems kind of a shame," said Charles Denson, a Coney Island historian. 

Dick Zigun, however, founder of Coney Island USA and frequent Thor critic, doesn’t think it's so bad. "There's nobody alive who remembers going to Dreamland," Zigun said. "I think it will be fine."

Keep Teabagging

The idea that you shouldn't have to pay anything for anything is really working out great:

Tinley Park officials can look to a few neighbors for advice as the village considers charging residents and businesses a fee when firefighters are called to their properties.

Park Forest for more than a dozen years has charged fees for responding to false fire alarms, vehicle fires and extrications, Park Forest Deputy Fire Chief Bruce Ziegle said. Matteson charges fees when firefighters douse burning vehicles and rescue people in confined spaces, among other incidents, Fire Chief Nick Wilkens said.

Tinley Park has been researching the idea of charging a fire service fee since last month, when trustees were trying to tighten the budget.

To keep the proposed $34.6 million budget in the black the village also debated offering early retirement to village employees, having employees do work now done by outside firms when possible and reducing fines for outstanding ordinance violation tickets so the village can recoup at least some of the $1 million in outstanding tickets. The next budget year begins May 1.

Although an exact amount has not been determined, a fire service fee likely would generate between $50,000 and $100,000 a year based on the type of incidents the village would seek reimbursement for. Trustees are slated to discuss during a public safety committee meeting tonight whether to charge a fire service fee and who would have to pay it.

With nearly 60,000 residents, Tinley Park has a mainly paid-on-call staff of about 100 firefighters that doesn't receive benefits.

Taxes are THEFT!

A.

Bottom Line

Link:

While reporters hooted at the comically simplistic charts and lack of details in the House Republican leadership’s budget plan, the green eyeshade types at Citizen’s for Tax Justice crunched the numbers (PDF). They conclude that a quarter of all households, most of them poor, would pay more taxes under the GOP plan, while the richest one percent would pay $100,000 less.

But at least it's not SOCIALISM!

A.

Infrastructure

Rebuilding America is just so much unnecessary spending, after all.

A.

Comment of the Day

"Perhaps Barry should take up golf so that he could give it up for the economy."

A.

Wednesday Night Cool Thing

Dude. WANT.

A.

Retention Guarantees

Everybody's got a co-worker, right, who does this? Marches in every couple months and demands more money or else he or she will leave? And the question isn't whether he or she deserves more money, it's whether blackmail is a long-term negotiating tactic. You can only pull that card so many times.

Because honestly, there's a part of me that gets the bonus argument; Mr. A used to work at a place that gave out bonuses. Nothing close to what's being talked about with AIG (dude, can you imagine the blog we'd have if it had been? Hot and cold running interns, crack vans every day, a compound in the French Quarter where you'd all be welcome to shack up ...) but a bonus, still. And there were people who banked on those bonuses, counted on them to pay off debt each year or make a major purchase, so I can see the argument that jerking those bonuses away is devastating to them.

The problem, though, is that this shit happens all the time. People count on their jobs, right, and those jobs get yanked away when the world economy goes kablooie and there's no arguing that you were budgeting for that salary so give it to me anyway. People count on all kinds of stuff, and there are times when your bosses are bullshitting you about how much they want to pay you and you deserve to squeeze them a little, and times when genuinely, there is no money for you, so threatening to leave is kind of pointless.

Such as when you've been bailed out by the taxpayers after you kind of wrecked the whole world. So maybe on balance it would be better not to threaten to leave lest your employers, at this time you and me in the case of AIG, look at you across the desk and say, "Well, go on then, split already."

A.

Paying It Back

Some of the bonus money being returned:

NEW YORK – New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said Monday that 15 employees who received some of the largest bonuses from American International Group Inc. have agreed to return the more than $30 million worth of payments in full.

In total, AIG employees have agreed to return about $50 million of the $165 million in bonuses awarded earlier this month by the troubled insurer, Cuomo's office said.

Cuomo said he still hopes that more AIG employees will return their bonuses. At most, Cuomo said his office could hope to recoup $80 million of the bonuses — roughly the amount paid out to American employees.

"I applaud the employees who are returning the bonuses," Cuomo said during a conference call with reporters. "I think they are being responsive to the American people."

[snip]

About 400 employees and future employees in AIG's financial products division received bonuses. Documents provided by AIG to the Treasury Department said the awards ranged from $1,000 to nearly $6.5 million. Seven employees were to receive more than $3 million. Last week Cuomo said AIG paid bonuses of $1 million or more to 73 employees, including 11 who no longer work there.

A.

There Is No Crisis

Not any more of one than there always has been for working mothers without six names who don't get featured in the New York Times Magazine:

Now, I’m just as jealous of the yoga-pants-at-9-a.m.-on-Monday-morning crowd as the next frazzled working mom. But, I’m sorry to say, however delicious charting the downfall of the wealthy at-home mom may be, we do have to stop for a little reality check. While the rich, bathed in our attention, are turning necessity into a hand-wringing sociological event, most women in this country are just going about their business, much as they always have.

We — journalists and readers both — simply must, for once, resist the temptation to let what may or may not be happening to the top 5 percent (or 1 percent) of our country’s families set the story line for what women’s lives are becoming in this recession.

Because, the fact is, the story’s not about them.

Seriously. One more trend story about how manicures are too expensive these days and I'm gonna scream. And it's interesting that this is more prevalent at the big-city papers than it is in the smaller ones, where chronicling the day-to-day lives of people struggling has always been the mission:

Hall said a lot of male teachers take such summer jobs as painting, roofing and carpentry, while female teachers often work retail sales, office work and waiting tables.

The school district was a major employer itself, hiring many teachers for the summer school program that helped slower learning students, Lacey said.

But that program was cut from 24 days to nine last summer after voters rejected school levies. The district is deciding how extensive the program will be this year.

The most gifted teacher I ever knew, the man who taught me about the power of words and whose love of learning and debate made all his students fearless in their arguments, worked construction in the summers to pay the mortgage, and this was in the early 90s, when times were supposedly so good. There has always been a struggle to pay the bills in middle-class America. It's just that until the prices of manicures start soaring, the punditry doesn't really notice all that much, and it's really only a problem when they say it is, right? 

A.

Bad Faith

Via Balloon Juice, we learn that anyone sticking up for Dodd wants Obama to fail and is just as bad as Rush Limbaugh OMG !!11!

And there’s a constituency for this type of garbage (which is not really that different than or morally superior to the Glen Beck or Sean Hannity or Bill O’Reilly or Rush Limbaugh inverse poutrages on the right): primarily some folks that supported Senators Clinton or Edwards in the primaries against Obama and, like Limbaugh, they “hope he fails.”

And what faster hope could they have to make him fail than to seek to remove Obama’s Treasury Secretary at exactly the moment when he’s begun to implement the economic recovery plan.

[snip]

Any different Treasury Secretary would be following the exact same instructions as the current one. The suggestion that President Obama is somehow hands off on the economic recovery or the kind of weak mind subject to Svengali-like hypnotism by his cabinet members is the real "magical thinking" going on here. More "magical thinking" (they like that term over there in the Poutrage Club, so let's make them eat it) comes in their delusional ignorance of what the consequences would be for the economic recovery and the 2010 midterm Congressional elections if the Republicans in the US Senate were to be given a second shot at derailing a Treasury nominee. They clearly haven't thought it through, or, if they have, then why can't they just admit they secretly hope, like Limbaugh, for failure?

It’s become such a tired script from the same cast of characters only two months into the new administration that eventually I predict many will come to see them as I do: Objectively speaking, I consider them members of the opposition. Their goal is to tear down the Obama program, just as much as it is the Republican National Committee’s goal to do that. At least Limbaugh is honest. He “hopes Obama fails.” But these cats keep claiming they’re on our side. I don’t consider them to be on my side or yours. (And obviously, I don't care if they feel offended by my willingness to say aloud what so many of you whisper.) I wouldn’t let them near my foxhole. And my guess is that others that previously gave them the benefit of the doubt are losing any such illusion as well.

First of all, "cats," we're still saying now?

Second, without Geithner as Treasury Secretary the universe will collapse and there will be no economic recovery, but then later in the same piece, any other treasury secretary will do just as well? WTF? Are Jane and Glenn trying to take down Geithner unfairly and horribly, thus scuttling any economic recovery and surely killing us all, or are they trying to take down Geither unnecessarily, such that their actions won't make any difference except to Republicans and thus it's pointless?

Third, who said anyone wanted to get near Al's foxhole?

Fourth, fuck shit Jesus, Jane and Glenn are as bad as Rush for saying erm, Dodd didn't really do anything other than what he clumsily said he did, which is to adhere to the request of the leader of his party or that leader's representatives — in Geithner's case — and it might be nice if that leader was there for the man who stood up when everybody else was endorsing his rival, for fuck's sake. I'm not defending Dodd's capitulation to what has turned out to be a politically stupid move (if not the outrage of the century everyone thinks it is), or any of his other missteps, but for a couple news cycles now Republicans have been making him their Dodd-shaped pinata:

A takedown of a national party figure like Dodd would be a coup for Republicans eager to rebound from their recent congressional losses.

"This is a state we will be actively participating in," said Amber Wilkerson, a spokeswoman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

And it might be nice if they were visited by Rahm and his bag of whoopass telling them to cut it the fuck out. I don't agree with Glenn that Obama officials were specifically blaming Dodd — that one seems to be on the perpetually bitchy Village pundit class — but they certainly got caught flat-footed here, making it possible for Republicans to have a really good time kicking the guy who owned them repeatedly on every issue imaginable in 2007 and 2008.

But hey, why discuss what happened and who's to blame for it and how this story's changing by the hour as people get their asses covered when you can accuse people of working out their psychodramas and carrying torches for Edwards and Hillary at Obama's expense:

Their latest failed attempts (two of many so far in only the first eight weeks of the new administration) to storm the gates of the White House and make a scapegoat out of (fill in the blank: Emanuel, Geithner, whatever absent father figure is in their craws on any given day) reveal the simple formula of their online aneurisms and from here on out will serve as a guide to how they whip themselves into a froth so routinely only to be discredited within days of each spastic attack.

A.

Memo to the Man I Voted For in the Presidential Primaries

Yo. CHRIS.

What, it was like a secretary? Clearly, the administration flunky or whoever asked you to do this, dude, is not going to stand up and name him- or herself. "Yeah, it was me, my bad, I'm positively eager to take responsibility and become the most hated person in America right now, whoopsie daisy, sorry 'bout that." Clearly that is not going to happen, so who was it? TALK.

I also reiterate my point of earlier today that once we started bailing out these people, knowing they were fuckups, we really had no right to begin expecting them not to be fuckups anymore, because that's not how the world works. I'm not defending the bonuses; I am saying hey, this is why the club of the most of us looked at the bailouts in the first place and said "... the fuck?"

Most of us have seen first hand the excesses of corporate America for years, and having seen my own not-so-benevolent overlord squander 12 K on "summer drinks" while telling me I couldn't have 10 K for journalism, I find myself with a surprise deficit. I expected this. In fact, I expected it to be worse. It's why my response to the bailouts was oh, fuck you, you won't  bail out NOLA or the auto companies or the pressmen's union but you'll bail out these dickheads, don't they have some bling they could sell?

It's nice that you're going to replace Liddy as the most hated man in America for the next ten minutes, Chris, and while we're talking, don't open your mouth about anything of consequence to Wolf Blitzer ever again. You'll only frighten the poor dear.

Also, as long as we're castigating people in public who wrote shitty memos that cost us lots of money, Doug Feith continues to be employed, and his memos had the added special bonus of making lots of people DEAD, so don't come at me all, "WHAR IS UR GOD NOW" because you cannot pay me to care.

A.

Insurance

Is it any wonder nobody's sympathetic to these dicks?

Insurance companies say they have no choice but to honor contracts, and banks are pleading that their assets will be worth more if you just give them a little time.

For anyone, especially in business, who has tried to make those same arguments to insurers and bankers, to no avail, it's painfully rich.

As in the case of a whole fucking city, for example?

Assholes.

Seriously, I've been trying to work up something to say about AIG all week and I honestly don't have an opinion about the bonuses. I don't know why I don't. Maybe it's my total lack of surprise that rapacious corporate assholes who fucked everything up wouldn't suddenly stop fucking everything up or being assholes just because it was taxpayer money instead of their own money. Money isn't real to these people anyway, it doesn't represent cans of beans or sacks of flour or the car payment to them. My shock is nonexistent.

More likely, though, it's that Congress and the President can get more worked up about some be-Brooks-Brothers-ed schmucks stealing some cash than they can about hundreds of people being tortured in secret prisons around the globe. Destroy the idea of America in six easy steps? Admonishing you in any way would be backwards-looking! Buy yourself a gold umbrella stand on the public dime? To the stocks with ye!

A.

Because Michael Moore Is Fat

Ask a simple question ...

A.

'Taxes Are Stealing'

Cause and effect, bitches:

So, yes, this sucks and it’s going to alienate some people from the museum. But if you’re angry because the Art Institute isn’t free, or as cheap as the Louvre, blame the man my brother-in-law spotted outside the museum on his last visit—the one wearing a T-shirt that said “Taxes are stealing.”

A.

You Can't Be Poor!

 

Self-Parody

One of Michelle Malkin's acolytes sends in an unintentionally honest despatch from the Tea Party front:

There were families there, big tough guys in their local union# jacket, young college age people, grandparents, single people, everyone was represented, everyone was middle-class. It was great to see and also, to KNOW that for every person who showed up at this Tea Party, there were probably 500 that couldn’t make it….kinda like roaches!

Like roaches.

You know what, though? She's probably right. If America is full of anything it's full of people who couldn't be bothered to get off their asses.

I'm so glad everyone there was middle class, too. I hate when filthy poor people and those nasty rich folks show up. Just those with incomes between $30,000 and $50,000, please. We'll be checking at the door, so bring your most recent tax return!

Is "middle class" the new "real American" or the new "white?"

I can't afford your silk jacket or your shiny earrings or your haircut, so we're even.

(I'm sorry, but if that's the level of debate they want, criticizing anonymous people's presumed possessions based on a random photograph on a blog, that's exactly what they're going to get.)

A.

Laid-Off Ballerinas

The arts are expendable.

A.

When Are Public School Teachers Gonna Contribute to Society Already?

I mean, Jesus, it's time for them to step up to the plate.

A.

Weekend Question Thread

One of Mr. A's and my favorite games to play in the car on long trips is to pretend we've won the lottery. $100 million. What would you do with it?

Well?

A.

Got Your Pitchforks And Torches Ready?

Really, at this point, is there anything else that will get the message across?

I don't know if you've heard, but Associated Bank here in Wisconsin has been making headlines lately.  And not in a good way.

It seems that Associated Bank went to the government and got some of that sweet, sweet TARP smack.  Somewhere around $525 million.  Yeah.  Half a billion dollars of our money went to this bank.

And what did they decide to do?

Throw a party, of course!

Actually, the trip in question had been planned for some time.  It was a getaway for 100 people to an exclusive resort in Puerto Rico.  Now, I'm happy that some employees (it wasn't all just executive pricks who were going to go) get rewarded for good performance.  But come on.  If you go begging for my money, don't turn around and take a fucking resort vacation the next month.  Don't these cocksuckers understand anything?  It's called a social contract, asshole.  When I loan you emergency money, I expect you to use it for fucking emergencies.  While I could be wrong, I don't think anyone has ever had to take an emergency luxury vacation.

When the bank CEO was called out for this, what was his response?

Somehow, he mustered an approximation of righteous indignation.

I'm not kidding.

"Should we ask you or anybody else each individual thing we do to see if it's politically correct?" he asked. What he cares about, he said, is the opinion of his employees, and they overwhelmingly support the Puerto Rico trip: "I think it's coming across very positively."

Seeing as how his employees leaked the story to the press, I don't think he's exactly right about that last part, either.  See also this.

Now for a personal anecdote.  Years ago, in the service, another guy came up and asked me if he could borrow a few hundred bucks.  I told him that he got paid on the first of the month, same as me.  He was pretty insistent, though, and I finally loaned him $250.  I told him to have it back to me as soon as he could.  Well, the next time I saw him (two days later), he said, "Hey, man, wanna see my new tattoo?"

*blink*

*blink*

So I said "Sure!"  And he gingerly rolled up his sleeve to show me--and I swear I am not making this up--a cattle skull tattoo on his upper arm.  In color, of course.  I looked really close.  Because, you know, I'd never just taken $250 out of my wallet and lit it on fire before.  So, after examining this tattoo closely, I leaned back and punched him in the arm as hard as I possibly could.

And this was a good hit.  I mean textbook.  Punched right through his arm, had a good follow through, and got that good hurt you get in your hand when you land a solid, solid punch.

Now this prick's rolling around on the ground screaming, and I'm standing over him doing the same.  I told that dumbass that I wanted all my motherfucking money as soon as payday rolled around, and if he ever came to me looking for cash again, I'd knock a few teeth out of his goddamn head.

As he never requested a loan again, I think I got my point across.

What's that?  You're surprised I had a point?  Yeah, me too.

But the point is this:  If you come to me in desperate need of cash, and you get it, you don't goddamn jolly well go and spend it on frivolities.  You buy groceries.  You pay the heat.  You shore up your goddamn financial institution.  And if you do blow it on something stupid, don't get all in high fucking dudgeon when you get called out for it.  Asshole.

Associated Bank has ended up cancelling the trip.  So that's something.  However, the CEO, Paul Biedeman, made two million bucks last year.

Let me say that again.

This dipshit made two million dollars last year.  So, if he really, really wanted to reward these 100 employees, he could pay for the fucking trip himself with no problem.  And, really, wouldn't that be a much better expression of appreciation from the boss?

I hope somebody punches him in the arm.  Hard.

Sell Some More Bling

About time we started requiring these lazy welfare queens to quit buying bling with their government checks.

It never fails to amaze me the way we'll hassle some poor family about how they divide up their household income, but any attempt to tell Armani-suited white boys they maybe shouldn't be snorting their government handouts up their noses is looked upon as radical market intervention.

I'm sorry, I just don't have a lot of sympathy for somebody making 20 times more than my household income, the same way plenty of people don't have any sympathy for somebody making 20 times less than theirs. If we're gonna get self-righteous as a country every time somebody makes a purchase of which we don't approve, I'd like us to start that righteous anger off at the top, not the bottom.

Granted, I'd much rather we just completely quit bothering everybody with how they spend their paychecks, but not being nosy gossipy carping assholes doesn't seem to be in our national DNA, not with the Today show tut-tutting over every tidbit of Octuplet Mom, so let's begin with the people who, if you hack their salaries in half, ain't gonna starve, and probably already HAVE all the bling and big-screen TVs their houses can hold.

A.

What Pisses Us Off

Continuing on my theme of how much I would like to marry Alan Grayson in a ceremony of his choosing, Paddy sends along this vid:

For me the money moment (ha, I kill myself) is when Grayson asks who's been lent money, how much, and what conditions were set on those loans. Kohn's response is basically, "We ain't gonna tell you, you can't make us, you don't have to know anyway, we'll tell you how much we want to tell you, and you'll lay back and like it and give us our change." Grayson's response, quite properly, is "... the fuck?"

And look. This isn't about me having a better idea than Kohn on how to prop up the credit market. It is about being absolutely enraged at the unnecessary step to make this opaque. I get that people don't want their competitors knowing how hard on the government teat they're currently sucking. I get from a banker's perspective why you wouldn't want that information out there. You know what, though? TOUGH SHIT. It is not the government's job to protect these people from each other or from themselves. It is the government's job to make sure taxpayer dollars are being spent responsibly (I'll go get a drink while you stop laughing) and if bankers don't like that there's a very clear alternative: Get off the US of A's jock already.

A.

ps. Alan Grayson? Have you ever in your life heard a more obvious cover-up name for the secret identity of a superhero?

These Motherfuckers Are Beyond Shame. Or Redemption.

Time to throw a few rich pricks in one of these again.

It takes a very special kind of person to be this much of a prick:

Three days after receiving $25 billion in federal bailout funds, Bank of America Corp. hosted a conference call with conservative activists and business officials to organize opposition to the U.S. labor community's top legislative priority.

Participants on the October 17 call -- including at least one representative from another bailout recipient, AIG -- were urged to persuade their clients to send "large contributions" to groups working against the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), as well as to vulnerable Senate Republicans, who could help block passage of the bill.

Bernie Marcus, the charismatic co-founder of Home Depot, led the call along with Rick Berman, an aggressive EFCA opponent and founder of the Center for Union Facts. Over the course of an hour, the two framed the legislation as an existential threat to American capitalism, or worse.

"This is the demise of a civilization," said Marcus. "This is how a civilization disappears. I am sitting here as an elder statesman and I'm watching this happen and I don't believe it."

It's pretty impressive to see people that aren't even slightly concerned that there might be a hell, isn't it?  So let's recap.  Bank executives, who took your money and made shitty decisions with it, have appealed to the government for more of your money so they don't go out of business.  Then they spend a portion of your money to ensure that you can't have the rights and protections that you deserve.

And fuck Home Depot.  "This is how a civilization disappears?"  Yeah, god knows they don't have any civilization in Germany or France.  It's a fuckin' Hobbesian state of nature over there these days. 

Honestly, the older I get, the more I understand the guillotine.

Kickass Kucinich Video: QUIT SUCKING DO IT RIGHT NOW

A.

Simple Question

Why, when a law needs passing to violate the civil rights of Americans or go to war with a country that hasn't attacked us, is a delay unconscionable, but when a law needs passing to fix the country's economy, delays are needed to fully examine all possible spun-out consequences and apocalyptic scenarios?

I never really bought into the idea that Republicans like losing so they can be the noble opposition and not have to govern. I thought it was simplistic and gave them too much credit for strategy. But this is making me wonder if they really don't want to win an election ever again.

A.

Ah, College

If I went back to my alma mater today, not only would I not be able to get in, with the grades that were good enough back 15 million years ago, but I wouldn't be able to afford it anyway.

And the discussion in the comments about how today's bachelor's degree is yesterday's high school diploma scares the shit out of me.

A.

It's All Our Fault

It always is.

A.

Echidne, Natch, Says It Better

I should just outsource:

Following the discussion about who deserves a bailout is fascinating, because Detroit and its car-makers don't deserve one, never mind that the industry is one of the largest employer in the country, but banks, those halls of marble and pillars, do deserve one, because they have us all by the short and curly. They are too big to fail! Or rather, their failures will hurt all the little gals and guys much more than it will hurt the rich, and that is how the rich got saved, once again.

I am not belittling the need to do something about the economic recession, because the financial industries do have us by the short and curly. I just want to point out that when we ended welfare for all times we added lots of stuff about the poor having to work to get welfare payments and lots of time limits on how long any one family could stay on welfare. And all this for an expense that was around one dollar out of each one hundred dollars the federal government spent then! Now we are willing to hand over brazillion dollars and ask nothing back in terms of good behavior. Indeed, we are not even demanding that those in charge would be demoted, because we want stability in the banks! Nobody worried about the stability of families on welfare in the great and roaring nineties.

A.

Column: Everybody Wants A Bailout

Where do you stop? You don't. You start fixing the real problems:

Of course, $25 billion to the car companies isn't going to change the fact that the roads they drive on are crumbling, that the people who drive them are barely making the payments and that the people who make them aren't paid a fraction of what their CEOs presently pleading poverty can boast.

President-elect Barack Obama called on Saturday for the type of massive public works program that would in the long term solve the kinds of problems that lead to economic collapse. "We'll put people back to work rebuilding our crumbling roads and bridges, modernizing schools that are failing our children, and building wind farms and solar panels; fuel-efficient cars and the alternative energy technologies that can free us from our dependence on foreign oil and keep our economy competitive in the years ahead."

In the meantime, if we're going to be bailing out those in trouble, I really could use a nice new American-made hybrid car. One with those heated mirrors that defrost automatically, really plushy seats and snow tires. From the size of the squirrels in my neighborhood, it's gonna be a long, cold winter.

A.

Big Changes

Josh:

But the point is that we've got the hood up and maybe the engine out on the national economy. That's a bad situation on a lot of fronts. But it's also the opportunity to really change things. Not just fix things on the margins but make the big changes. As long as we're talking about sums of money in the tens and hundreds of billions of dollars, let's not restrict ourselves to considering whether we throw Detroit a lifeline that keeps them in motion and employing their workers through the current recession. Maybe we need to invest 50 billion dollars in having a mass market fully electric car in five years. I don't see anybody who doesn't agree that whatever the costs of letting GM go under, that it's management who drove this company into the ditch with a lot of terrible decisions and unwillingness to change. So maybe we take GM into some sort of managed restructuring, push out management, clean out the equity holders, and use the 'company' as the vehicle for leapfrogging the US into the 21st century, non-hydrocarbon auto industry.

It always annoys the shit out of me during political campaigns when somebody will bring up a government program that costs 3 cents per capita and use it as an example of why we can't pay for education or health care or veterans' benefits or other stuff that costs so very much more that it's almost a joke. We're not capable of doing big things, is the message, we're only capable of the small, and even then, not doing it that well. It's like we all have collective amnesia about World War II and the moon landing, like we've internalized so much of the Republicans' crap about how government can't do anything so just sit and have a Cheeto feast and bitch some more that we can't even comprehend the possiblity that our national will can be focused on anything other than war.

You don't lose people as supporters because you ask them for too much. You lose them because you ask too little. Let me tell you, in every nonprofit organization I've been involved in and I'm currently up to my neck in three, it's the ones that need my help that I help. If somebody isn't ringing my bell, hell, I'm a busy girl, call me when you have a job for me to do. I think for so long our phone just hasn't rung that when we do hear the noise it might weird us out a little at first.

A.

Before They Have The Balls?

TPM prints an e-mail from a reader about Dems and health care reform:

It's going to come down to a whip count in the Senate. If Baucus' bill has legs, they should move on it quickly, before the honeymoon is over and Senate Republicans have the balls to use a filibuster.

Because I'm sorry, but was the writer awake during the past eight years? The Republicans have always had the balls to use that which they declared the Democrats could not without destroying the very fabric of society. Hypocrisy isn't just a tool in their arsenal, it's the sum total of said arsenal and most of its ammunition. The Republicans will filibuster Baucus's bill just to watch it die and declare to all and sundry that they had no choice because liberals suck.

If there's one thing that has consistently made me fucking crazy over the past two presidential administrations it's the willingness of Republicans to use any and all means available to screw over their constituents in order to piss off liberals, while Democrats are reluctant to use the same means to make people's lives better for fear of pissing off conservatives.

A.

Today's Dose of People Are Total Dicks

What would Jesus do?

Noreen had been tipped off that Keep Colorado Springs Beautiful was in the business of raiding homeless camps and throwing away what few possessions the homeless have. They throw away sleeping bags, clothes, sheltering materials and even the identification documents Catholic Charities helps homeless people obtain.

Dee Cunningham, executive director of Keep Colorado Springs Beautiful, confirmed with Noreen that anything belonging to the homeless is fair game during the organization's routine transient sweeps. Thankfully, the law says otherwise and it should be enforced.

Cunningham said her organization supports the "hand-up not hand-out" philosophy of Homeward Pikes Peak. Homeward is the organization that tells us "don't give" to the homeless, and instead channel our money through agencies with high-paid professional staffs and government subsidies. Apparently, "hand-up not hand-out" justifies a variety of uncharitable acts, including destruction and disposal of personal possessions and unwarranted searches.

Neither Homeward Pikes Peak nor Keep Colorado Springs Beautiful should criticize handouts, as each is the recipient of handouts. Each receives government handouts as well as private handouts. Keep Colorado Springs Beautiful is slated to receive $42,300 from the city's 2009 general fund, after receiving $45,000 in 2008. Transients sometimes ask for money, but Keep Colorado Springs Beautiful gets its from money the city takes through taxation. And remember, this is the city that plans to lay off some 90 employees in coming months.

Via ONTD_Political.

A.

“Get me out at any price”

Sports journalist E.M. Swift is fond of noting that whenever an underdog team was doing well, his phone would ring.  The question was always the same: could this team create another moment in time that could become the next "Miracle on Ice." His answer was always the same: “There’s never going to be another Miracle. You just can’t get all the things to line up the way they did in 1980.”

In reading this piece on our rather precarious financial standing, I found it interesting that Eichengreen always took the same kind of stand whenever we saw the dark side of capitalism. Could there be another Great Depression? Nah. Things can’t line up like that again. Given his more recent penchant for hiding under his bed when reporters are calling these days (maybe he’s fearing some “gotcha journalism”), we’ve got reason to fear.

This  is perhaps the best explanation as to how the economy managed to get screwed to this point. The part on credit default swaps is particularly enlightening and yet frightening. There hasn’t been this big of a set of entangling alliances since World War I.

When something turns out OK, people who were worried are called “alarmists.” When people complain that nothing was done, they’re called “pundits.” What do you call the people who are right on the money, screaming at the top of their lungs to inform us that the ass end of Hell is opening up and preparing to swallow life as you know it in one giant gulp? What do you call it when people say, as they did Thursday “get me out at any price." I’d call it fear, panic and desperation. I’d also call it the tip of the iceberg.

No one wants to say the “R” word or the “D” word, but let’s call it what it is: The greatest financial crisis since the time of Herbert Hoover. Maybe the pieces didn’t line up exactly like they did in 1929. Maybe there aren’t ration stamps like in the 1940s. Maybe we don’t have gas lines and 20-percent interest rates like we did in the 1970s. That doesn’t mean we’re any less screwed.

On the plus side, the hockey season just opened.

I’ll be looking for another miracle or a close facsimile thereof.

The Most Unbelievable Thing You'll Ever Read

I believe the phrase you're looking for is "You gotta be shitting me."

Okay, got up in the morning, looking through the news for things I missed yesterday, dah dee dah du---wait, what the fuck?

Today, with the world caught in an economic tempest that Mr. Greenspan recently described as “the type of wrenching financial crisis that comes along only once in a century,” his faith in derivatives remains unshaken.

The problem is not that the contracts failed, he says. Rather, the people using them got greedy. A lack of integrity spawned the crisis...

Seriously?  Alan Greenspan bet all of our futures on the integrity of financiers and traders?  Sweet Jesus stuffed with cornbread.  What the fuck?  If this is true,

ALAN GREENSPAN IS THE MOST GULLIBLE FUCKER ALIVE.

Can I get this fucker into a regular poker game?  He'd fall for any bluff I'd make.  I thought all these Republicans were hard-nosed realists--you know, the sort of people who would never count on the goodness or integrity of others.  If you go on record saying that you're counting on financial forbearance to be a trait of the most rapacious fuckers on the whole planet, you're either a) lying or b) completely fucking stupid.

Greenspan should have to personally visit the home of everyone who's facing foreclosure and stand there while everybody in the household kicks him in the nuts.  And Andrea Mitchell should have to cover it for NBC News.

Others In Need of a Bailout

Just saying.

Restoring Galveston's public school district after Hurricane Ike is an enormous and expensive task, but Cleveland knows that functioning schools are key to bringing the island back to life. Families won't move back if their children can't go to class.

Most of the district's 11 schools held up surprisingly well, but carpets were drenched; air-conditioning units needed repairs; and computers, library books and school buses were ruined.

Estimates put the cost of damage between $25 million and $45 million, Cleveland said, and the district's flood insurance will cover only a sliver of that — about $11 million, or $1 million per campus.

Galveston ISD expects some reimbursement from the federal government, and Cleveland has assured employees they will get paid through the school year.

But tough decisions could come in the spring when administrators project how many teachers will be needed next year based on the number of students who have returned.

"We'll see what our enrollment is, and then we'll start that process if we have to to downsize," Cleveland said. "For this year, everybody knows they have their job. They'll have their benefits for the remainder of this school year."

A.

Riddle Me This

Via Metaquotes:

Anyway, and it's been said a jillion times already but I like joining the chorus: isn't it completely hysterical to see so many conservatives having honest debates about exactly how much of this billion dollar bailout is acceptable, when a national health care plan that costs a fraction of the bailout is MARX-FASCI-COMMU-CHE-STALIN-STREISAND horrible? Like, we can't spare a penny so your kids can go to the doctor but, OH God you libtards don't understand that the CEO of Goldman Sachs has a standard of living to which he's grown accustomed and if he doesn't have gold flakes in his eggs in the morning he'll have a heart attack and die and you people will be THE MURDERERS AND WE WILL HUNT YOU and you will blame the one armed man and when the train derails you will run run run through the woods but Tommmy Lee Jones is on to you and "I didn't do it!" "I don't care" and then Batman Forever is fucking UNWATCHABLE.

A.

Bush's "Ecomony" Speech.

I've got the video.

To be fair, Terry Crews is much smarter, funnier, more talented, and better looking than Bush. And Bush is too much of a wuss to handle a SAW, anyway.

Briefcase vs. shotgun: renewed relevance

Yeah, I could be accused of being an overzealous fan of The Wire, but tell me that this clip isn't a bit more relevant than ever before in context of the week's economic events?

An Open Letter to Sixty Years in the Future

I'm talkin' to you, future.

Dear Future:

Hi there.  How are things?  Here's hoping the America of 2068 is just, reasonably peaceful, and equitably prosperous. 

But enough with the pleasantries.  I write to you today with a dire warning from your past.

You see, things are about to get pretty bad for us.  And, by "pretty bad," I mean "downright shitty."  Check this shit out, if you need to see what I mean.  We will be dealing with oil shocks, financial crises brought about by irresponsible speculation and stupid, shitty loans, and an international environment that will be very hostile to us because of our goddamn idiotic war and this economic downturn that will affect other countries as well as our own.

About that economic trouble--here's what you need to keep in mind--it didn't have to happen. 

That's right.  This shit is our own doing.  You see, about ninety years in our past, we had some similar problems:  economic bubbles, huge disparities in wealth and income, malfeasance and incompetence by financiers and government officials, and the greed of the wealthy who just wanted more.  After a brief, heady period of the rich getting richer, the entire system caved in on itself, starting in 1929.  Now, the exact causes and circumstances of our looming problem and the Great Depression eight decades ago are not one hundred percent similar, of course.  But the point is that we've seen this sort of thing before.  And, during and after that horrible, horrible period, some smart people put in lots of rules and regulations that would guard against a repeat of said economic collapse.

The businesspeople at the time hated those rules, and agitated against them.  However, the rules were there for their own good.  We didn't become a socialist society; far from it.  FDR, with his New Deal and new regulations, wanted to protect capitalism (and capitalists) against their worst excesses, thereby saving millions of ordinary people the agonies of poverty and deprivation when those capitalists inevitably stole too much for their own (and everybody else's) good.

Now we get to an interesting part of the tale:  The rules and regulations worked.  In fact, they worked so well, people began to assume (with such assumptions strongly encouraged by the same rich cocksuckers who were in large part responsible for the Great Depression) that the prosperity achieved under those rules had been achieved in spite of them.  So, for eighty years, while there were minor shocks to the country's economy, there were no major disruptions.  And, during that time, those rich cocksuckers and their water-carriers in the Republican Party chipped away at the regulatory framework whenever they could.  "These unnecessary regulations are impeding growth!" they cried.  "These laws made sense in the 1930's, but things are different now!" they crowed.  "Our system is self-correcting, and this is a New Economy that would thrive with fewer regulations--ideally none!" they yammered.

And, slowly, the rules and regulations went away. 

What happened next, of course, was as predictable as the phases of the Moon.

Without regulations in place to tell financiers that they shouldn't make shitty, risky loans, those loans were made.  Unsurprisingly, a lot of those loans could not be paid back.  Unfortunately, lots of securities were bought (again, by the rich cocksuckers looking to steal a little more) based on those loans.  And, since those rich pricks can't handle the risk they praise so highly, they insured those securities. 

Well, insuring shit means that you get shit back.

And now we're going to pay for our shortsightedness.  And, by "we," I mean "the taxpayers of the United States of America."  The rich cocksuckers responsible for this mess?  Shit, they've already made their fortunes.  And they've ensured, by helping their buttboys in the GOP get into and stay in power, that they won't pay taxes or be held accountable for what they've done.  That's the beauty of complicated crime--if you're rich enough, you can make it too hard to follow.  Or, if you're really rich, you can get illegal shit made legal by government fiat.  Or, if you're buddy-buddy with the cocksucking Republicans in charge, you can just get pardoned.  Then it's off to a cushy lobbying job, or just relaxing in one of your dozen mansions while the peasantry clean up after your fucking mess.

So we're in for some tough times.  But we'll pull through.  It's what people always do.  We have a historical template for electing more-or-less liberal leaders after the conservative free-market worshipers have fucked us seven ways from Sunday.  And, in all likelihood, we'll recover and enact similar safeguards against future goat-fuckings like the one we're about to see.

What's the point of all this?

It's quite probable that, by your time, the misery of our near future will have faded from memory.  And the same rich cocksuckers (actually, their future equivalents, 'cause these motherfuckers are like cockroaches--they never disappear) will be agitating for a repeal of the rules and regulations that kept them from stealing everything of value and making the economy collapse.  Again. 

DO NOT LISTEN TO THEM.

They have a seductive pitch:  "Oh, look, friends, if it weren't for this meddling government, we'd all be rich!  Rich!"  But they don't mean it.  They need your money to make them even richer.  Where do you think all that investment capital comes from?  Your bank accounts.  These cocksuckers don't put up their own money.  Hell, when shit tanks, they don't even pay the bill.  You (and, in our time, we) do, as taxpayers.  All they're engaged in is a massive transfer of a bunch of small holdings (yours & ours) to a few big ones (theirs).  That's all they want.  That's all they've ever wanted:  Your shit.  Like these pricks don't have enough already.  Don't let it happen again. 

With deepest concern,

Jude from the past

P.S.  Did you guys ever get flying cars?  We've been promised those for years.  Also, in case you haven't heard, there used to be ice at the North and South Pole.  Crazy, huh?

This Doesn't Have to be Hard

Obama, to win the election, needs to point out that you're being screwed blind:

Obama needs to extend the Democrats' historic concern for fairness beyond racial minorities, women and gays to an abandoned working class. His proposal to offer tax credits to employers that create jobs in the United States is a step in the right direction, and it's even better that he spoke of it yesterday to a group of southern Virginia workers who'd lost their jobs in plant closings. It's their story he needs to tell and their concerns he has to address -- not just to win the White House, but, should he win, to rebuild a nation in which broadly shared prosperity is fast becoming a distant memory.

Which, yeah, guys. I mean, come the fuck on. I don't buy the subtle thread running through this piece that Obama has an elitism problem, or a white folks problem, but I do very much buy that it's about time we stopped talking about how best to coddle CEOs so that they can not really very much "pass on" their good fortune to their employees, and started talking about how if you can embezzle, for example, a couple million bucks, or pay for your limo rides with your leftover lunch money, you should maybe shut the fuck up about how your employees need to kick in for health insurance. The problem with class warfare is that it's been so one-sided.

A.