The Recession Is Over?
All around me I see signs of things getting worse. As just an average person going about my day I'm seeing more empty stores and the ones still open, which aren't as crowded, sporting sales signs trying to entice customers. There are more obviously homeless people.
Through my work I am seeing more people being dragged into court, ordered to bring all their financial information, in order to enforce judgments against them usually for a consumer loan. Noticeably more people are getting evicted for non payment of rent.
Now this sad local story.....
Man sets fire to home and hangs self in yard.
"People who know the man told authorities he was going to be evicted from the residence for failure to pay rent, Fields said."
Michael Moore should include that story in his next film.
I did remember something I learned from "Capitalism" that I hadn't been aware of before. US Airline pilots are grossly underpaid for what they do. Some have second jobs. Some qualify for food stamps.
That is appalling.
Through my work I am seeing more people being dragged into court, ordered to bring all their financial information, in order to enforce judgments against them usually for a consumer loan. Noticeably more people are getting evicted for non payment of rent.
Now this sad local story.....
Man sets fire to home and hangs self in yard.
"People who know the man told authorities he was going to be evicted from the residence for failure to pay rent, Fields said."
Michael Moore should include that story in his next film.
I did remember something I learned from "Capitalism" that I hadn't been aware of before. US Airline pilots are grossly underpaid for what they do. Some have second jobs. Some qualify for food stamps.
That is appalling.
Vindication
I wrote a blog post a while back complaining about how my generation is lost because of this financial mess. I saw this article on Huffington Post this afternoon, linked from Business Week. Saying pretty much the same thing. I'm of course depressed this is true, but am happy that something is coming out that isn't thru the eyes of a 40-45 year old professional. I appreciate that view point, but I don't like that it is the only one news is ever told from.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_42/b4151032038302.htm
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_42/b4151032038302.htm
Stoned Thoughts
I was out with a friend smoking and drinking coffee and I solved every single US problem. If we established a Dept of Science that was a part of the president's cabinet, like the State Department. The whole purpose would be to study stuff. For example, to compare other empire defeats in Afghanistan to our own, who has a seat in the war room and can advise the President accordingly. Where as the military is interested in doing what the president wants to do, the Department of Science would analyze historical stuff. They would also just run scenarios like Katrina, study crowd control, and have engineers doing research and development of green technology.
Has this ever been proposed? I seriously feel like a genius and slightly like Hitler. However, that could be one thing he did right. He just left the ethics out.
Has this ever been proposed? I seriously feel like a genius and slightly like Hitler. However, that could be one thing he did right. He just left the ethics out.
Nobel Prize
The Obama Nobel Prize. I'm just curious what you think of it. I've literally gotten 4 calls this afternoon from pretty non-political people bitching to me, cuz they all know how hard I worked to get him elected. I went over to America Blog, but I don't think the news has really been digested yet. John pointed out the gay speech tomorrow. It seems like the event may be extremely charged if he denies helping gay people.
Has the Nobel Peace Prize ever been awarded to someone who is leading two wars and sending unmanned drones to drop missiles in yet another country? Their definition of peace seems to differ from mine.
Has the Nobel Peace Prize ever been awarded to someone who is leading two wars and sending unmanned drones to drop missiles in yet another country? Their definition of peace seems to differ from mine.
Health Care Reform - Olberman's Special Comment
This is a copy and paste to link to both the transcript and video of Keith Olbermann's hour long Special Comment on Health Care Reform in America. Olbermann explains that his frequent absences from Countdown since August have been due to the hospitalization of his older father in August. Olbermann's mother died earlier this year.
I will post this as both a copy and paste:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33213245/ns/msnbc_tv-countdown_with_keith_olbermann and
hyerlink:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33213245/ns/msnbc_tv-countdown_with_keith_olbermann
I am excerpting that part of the Special Comments in which he explains the "Life Insurance on Employees by Employer" scam so you won't need to "search" for it (note: it's lengthy, but well worth the read to learn how this scam really works and the collusion of our Congress to enable it to happen and continue):
"I told my father the other night that the insurance I really want to get for him and me is called Corporate-Owned-Life-Insurance. "COLI" — like in E. Coli. How fitting. With or without your consent, your employer is permitted by law to take out life insurance on you. It can, in fact, take out life insurance on everybody who works for it. Who gets the money when you die? Your employer does.
"Dad pointed out that theoretically this would give them motivation to kill you. That, of course, would be for the same reason, as Michael Moore points out in his new movie "Capitalism: A Love Story," that you can't buy fire insurance on the house of the guy who lives next door to you. Golly gee, that's right, suddenly you'd have a motive to burn down his house and the world is already too much like that symbolically to make it like that in reality.
"No, it's really unlikely that even the most evil corporation would think of killing you to get a payout from the COLI insurance plan. This exists for a much more mundane and passive reason. You're going to die anyway, and the tax laws of this country are such that if your company has a hundred thousand employees, it can take out small whole-life policies on everybody and just let the actuarial tables do the work for it. Ten thousand dollars here, $20,000 there, maybe $50,000 back here and all of it tax-exempt.
"Oh and your employer can borrow the money to pay the premiums on the secret insurance it has on you. And the interest on that loan is tax-deductible. And your employer can, in essence, over-pay the premium it has on you and your fellow drones, and the extra money in the kitty is called "Cash Value," and it can be stuck into a pension-benefit plan or other product of the mad world of accounting. And "Cash Value" is also tax-deferred. It can be returned to your employer as a tax-free loan. And if your employer goes bankrupt, the Cash Value of those insurance policies is protected by the tax-laws - from creditors!
"In short, your employer can get a tax-deductible loan to buy insurance on you that until this past June he didn't even have to tell you about, and the money is first tax-deferred and then tax-free, and when you die, the payoff it gets is tax-exempt, and when the company dies, the boss still gets to keep the money away from the creditors even if somehow you, the guy on whom your boss has surreptitiously taken an insurance policy - happen to be one of the creditors.
"And even though it's based on insurance on your health and your life, all of that tax-free, tax-exempt, tax-deferred money not only doesn't go to you, it also doesn't go to the government. And so if we really are ever going to do anything about federally-supported health care as an alternative to these private insurers, there's that much less tax money to do it with.
And some of the money that isn't going to you, and isn't going to the government, is going to strengthen the already monolithic insurance companies!
"And just in case this isn't a sweet enough deal, the government is almost silent about telling that employer of yours about what kind of health insurance it must give you. And year after year, the companies get smarter and more audacious about either cutting what your health insurance covers, or cutting the number of employees the health insurance covers, or both.
And if that still isn't enough, there is something called the National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors. And it has a Political Action Committee, IFAPAC, and last year IFAPAC had one million, $492,000 worth of campaign money with which to buy politicians.
And you'd be amazed how many of them you can buy with even one million, $492,000.
"And these are the same people who are not only influencing the health care debate, spending more than a million dollars a day to defeat reform, they are also the same people, who by raising your premiums and cutting your reimbursements, who by manipulating prices at hospitals and doctor's offices for everything from tongue depressors to enemas, who by influencing health care in this country more effectively and more selfishly than a dictator could ever do these are the people who decide what kind of health care you get, how much you pay for it, and whether or not they'd rather not see you get it."
I will post this as both a copy and paste:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33213245/ns/msnbc_tv-countdown_with_keith_olbermann and
hyerlink:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33213245/ns/msnbc_tv-countdown_with_keith_olbermann
I am excerpting that part of the Special Comments in which he explains the "Life Insurance on Employees by Employer" scam so you won't need to "search" for it (note: it's lengthy, but well worth the read to learn how this scam really works and the collusion of our Congress to enable it to happen and continue):
"I told my father the other night that the insurance I really want to get for him and me is called Corporate-Owned-Life-Insurance. "COLI" — like in E. Coli. How fitting. With or without your consent, your employer is permitted by law to take out life insurance on you. It can, in fact, take out life insurance on everybody who works for it. Who gets the money when you die? Your employer does.
"Dad pointed out that theoretically this would give them motivation to kill you. That, of course, would be for the same reason, as Michael Moore points out in his new movie "Capitalism: A Love Story," that you can't buy fire insurance on the house of the guy who lives next door to you. Golly gee, that's right, suddenly you'd have a motive to burn down his house and the world is already too much like that symbolically to make it like that in reality.
"No, it's really unlikely that even the most evil corporation would think of killing you to get a payout from the COLI insurance plan. This exists for a much more mundane and passive reason. You're going to die anyway, and the tax laws of this country are such that if your company has a hundred thousand employees, it can take out small whole-life policies on everybody and just let the actuarial tables do the work for it. Ten thousand dollars here, $20,000 there, maybe $50,000 back here and all of it tax-exempt.
"Oh and your employer can borrow the money to pay the premiums on the secret insurance it has on you. And the interest on that loan is tax-deductible. And your employer can, in essence, over-pay the premium it has on you and your fellow drones, and the extra money in the kitty is called "Cash Value," and it can be stuck into a pension-benefit plan or other product of the mad world of accounting. And "Cash Value" is also tax-deferred. It can be returned to your employer as a tax-free loan. And if your employer goes bankrupt, the Cash Value of those insurance policies is protected by the tax-laws - from creditors!
"In short, your employer can get a tax-deductible loan to buy insurance on you that until this past June he didn't even have to tell you about, and the money is first tax-deferred and then tax-free, and when you die, the payoff it gets is tax-exempt, and when the company dies, the boss still gets to keep the money away from the creditors even if somehow you, the guy on whom your boss has surreptitiously taken an insurance policy - happen to be one of the creditors.
"And even though it's based on insurance on your health and your life, all of that tax-free, tax-exempt, tax-deferred money not only doesn't go to you, it also doesn't go to the government. And so if we really are ever going to do anything about federally-supported health care as an alternative to these private insurers, there's that much less tax money to do it with.
And some of the money that isn't going to you, and isn't going to the government, is going to strengthen the already monolithic insurance companies!
"And just in case this isn't a sweet enough deal, the government is almost silent about telling that employer of yours about what kind of health insurance it must give you. And year after year, the companies get smarter and more audacious about either cutting what your health insurance covers, or cutting the number of employees the health insurance covers, or both.
And if that still isn't enough, there is something called the National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors. And it has a Political Action Committee, IFAPAC, and last year IFAPAC had one million, $492,000 worth of campaign money with which to buy politicians.
And you'd be amazed how many of them you can buy with even one million, $492,000.
"And these are the same people who are not only influencing the health care debate, spending more than a million dollars a day to defeat reform, they are also the same people, who by raising your premiums and cutting your reimbursements, who by manipulating prices at hospitals and doctor's offices for everything from tongue depressors to enemas, who by influencing health care in this country more effectively and more selfishly than a dictator could ever do these are the people who decide what kind of health care you get, how much you pay for it, and whether or not they'd rather not see you get it."
Spying
The Patriot Act spying provisions made it out of committee and are up for a full Senate vote to renew.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/10/pariot-act-renewal/
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/10/pariot-act-renewal/