Every Sunday, and often on a weekday or two, millions of Americans eat Jewish flesh and drink Jewish blood. As a Jew, this scares the shit out of me.

The people doing this claim theyâ(TM)re faking it; that itâ(TM)s not real Jewish flesh and blood. Yeah, right. Thatâ(TM)s like Rush Limbaugh saying he really isnâ(TM)t a hateful bigot, heâ(TM)s just kidding, hah hah hah.

But let me tell you something: before the Army sends you off to shoot at real people and kill them, they have you practice on human-shaped targets.

CPR and first aid are the same way. You practice on a dummy before you are turned loose to do it on real people.

And kids who torture or kill pets often grow up to be serial murderers.

Do these âoeChristiansâ expect us to believe that after practicing for years, even for decades, on âoetransubstantiatedâ fake Jews, they donâ(TM)t want to sink their fangs into the real thing?

I am not a big fan of Islam, but given a choice between people who blow up a few Jews now and then and people who openly practice ritual cannibalism on Jews all the time, Iâ(TM)ll choose the Muslims any day of the week â" especially Sunday.

Yes, there are "terror babies" among us. But most of them were planted here many years ago by Russian Communist spymasters, not recently by demented Muslims.

One notorious Soviet-planted goon is Sarah Palinsky. Her parents and her husband's parents were secretly transported across the Bering Strait from The Motherland in the 1950s.

Note that Todd Palinsky has agitated for Alaska to secede from the United States, no doubt so that it can rejoin Russia, and Sarah Palinsky has noted, wistfully, that she can see The Motherland from her home in Alaska.

This song -- http://tinyurl.com/Sweet-Ala -- could easily be rewritten as "Sweet Home Mother Russia" and used to help Americans realize that Red states are going to become Red for real.

You see, the nefarious commie plot is subtle. Right now, in Phase One, the main objective is to impoverish the American working class while further enriching the richies. Phase Two, of course, will be the violent workers' uprising. In Phase Three, a resurgent Soviet Union will send troops "to restore order."
Newt Gingrovich, Ron Paulowsky, Rush Limbauvich, and Glenn Beckovits are also leading members of this evil conspiracy.

So, too, is GOP Chairman Michael Stalin (Stalin is "Steele" in Russian).

Please, fellow Americans. Go to the rifle range and hone your shooting skills. Make note of the tea party people, Republicans, and other traitors who live near you, and be ready to exercise your 2nd Amendment rights on them when the day comes, which won't be long now.

And remember, no matter how evil the Richies and their Republican stooges become, We are the country, we will survive!

Face it: we're going to have at least two or three more years of economic decline, and Obama is a DINO who worries more about his image on Fox News than about doing anything that might actually help working Americans, so we might as well have a Congress that agrees with him.

Here's what we'll get if we vote in a Republican Congressional Majority:

• More local and state government layoffs as federal aid to local jurisdication stops
• "Obamacare" gets repealed despite presidential veto; Blue Double Cross and other health care insurers raise rates 50% to celebrate; Columbia/HCA and other Medicare-defrauding pain profiteers rejoice
• Less Medicaid funding; reductions in other medical care for poor people; many deaths due to lack of medical care
• No taxes at all on Paris Hilton, the Walton heirs, and other useless rich parasites, lower income taxes on speculators' proceeds than American Workers pay on their salaries (if you include FICA, which *I* do)
• National parks and other government amenities we take for granted closed or their operations drastically curtailed
• More homeless people as more of the long-term unemployed stop getting any government aid at all
• More crime as more of the long-term unemployed stop getting any government aid at all
• More BS from Republicans about "the free market" and how "fiduciary reponsibilities" are the reason their asshole profiteer buddies keep laying off American workers and sending jobs overseas even as more long-term American unemployed stop getting any government aid
• This George Carlin routine becomes the most popular video on YouTube
• Formation of local Coffee Party groups that hold mass firearm training and target practice sessions at local shooting ranges
• Massive long-term unemployment leads to wave of assassinations of Republican politicians, thieving richies, and Fox News anti-American commentators by laid-off blue-collar workers who have nothing left to lose
• Assassination fear leads to mass resignations by Republican politicians, corporate thieves, lobbyists, and other traitors
• 2012: Election of a strong Democratic majority in Congress and a "for real" Democratic President with balls, possibly Hillary Clinton -- who appoints Barrack Obama to the Supreme Court the next time there's an opening.

Yeah. Let the Republicons do their worst for the next two years. We're Americans. We're resilient. We will survive. And once we totally discredit them, we can get on with the business of moving America into the 21st Century.

 

A Reagan-appointed Republican Federal Judge who owns a bunch of oil company stock has said the government can't stop drilling in the gulf because, you know, just because one rig went blooie doesn't mean others will.

Yeah. And when I was learning to ride a motorcycle about 200 years ago, the old Calif. Motorcycle Highway Patrol guy who taught my cycling class told us that even if the last 1000 blind curves you took didn't hide oil slicks that would lay you out flat, you should still act like there might be a slick or a gravel patch around the next blind curve until you saw otherwise.

This is sort of like the flight instructor's saying, "There are old pilots, and there are bold pilots, but there no old, bold pilots."

This thought pattern used to be called "conservatism." What is currently passing for conservatism in political circles, specifically when it comes to regulating the oil industry, not to mention bankers, investment houses, health insurance companies, and other white-collar thieves, could more accurately be called "moronism."

Judge Feldman and a whole lot of Republicans and loonietarians need to learn about the Dunning-Kruger Effect, assuming they're smart enough to understand it -- which is unlikely.

Unions not only destroyed many once-proud American businesses, but also promulgated such evils as a 40 hour workweek (remember that?), health and safety regulations on the job that have saved many workersâ(TM) lives, paid vacations, and the now-discredited idea of defined-benefit pensions, plus a particular horror this country used to value called âoejob security.â

And letâ(TM)s not forget that pesky minimum wage.

We need to finish rolling back all the damage unions have done to the U.S. so we can compete with China and India. American workers have been spoiled by having things like indoor plumbing, electricity, telephones, and cable TV. Once we get them to roll back their living standards to the dirt-floor hut level common in the countries that are now eating our economic lunch, we will return America to its former state of greatness, where millionaires had hordes of servants (which we need because of the stress our fortunes cause) and children started working at age 8 instead of lollygagging around in schools all day.

Another institution we may want to consider bringing back is slavery â" except that weâ(TM)re more racially enlightened now that we were in the 18th and 19th centuries, so we wonâ(TM)t deny this opportunity for lifetime employment to non-black people but will extend it to all.

Never forget: America is a Christian nation, and slavery is mentioned in the Bible but unions are not.

God bless America!

by Lazlo Toth, American

(at least, I *think* that's what the scrawled signature said.)

We seem to have collectively decided that at least 15% of our working-age population is no longer necessary to keep our country's businesses running, and every year we have a larger number of surplus people as we shift more jobs overseas or automate them out of existence. We basically have two choices: we can either remove some of the connection between work and income or we can build tariff barriers that eliminate at least some competition for American workers from people in other, lower-cost countries. Or we can come up with some combination of these two solutions.

Let's assume we don't want citizens' armies of former workers who have nothing to lose roaming our countryside, looking for food and shelter and killing anyone who gets in their way. If you are a prosperous or rich American, this would not be good for you, because you and your family would become possible kidnap, carjacking or home invasion victims. You can hide behind the walls of gated communities, but then you will need to worry about your hired guards, especially if you pay them the same low wages most security personnel receive today. And what if some of the redress-righters who want to kidnap you or steal from you are relatives of your guards? When this situation arises, your guards are more likely to help loot your house than protect it from looters.

It is, therefore, a good idea for America's more prosperous citizens to help those who have little. Forget morality for a moment and think of enlightened self-interest. Almost every communist revolution and pre-communist revolt against an imperial or dictatorial government was preceded by period during which the rich got richer at the expense of everyone else. In other words, maybe pre-communist Cuba was a paradise for the wealthy families whose offspring fled to Florida to get away from Castro's revolutionaries, but before the revolution life was miserable for most Cubans; no decent medical care, barely enough food to eat, high illiteracy rate due to a lack of public schools, low pay at best, no work at worst. In other words, a dog-eat-dog state, with no protection of the poor from the depredations of the rich, and no social safety net.

Class warfare? You bet! And it typically ends with bodies of the formerly rich or prosperous hanging from lamp posts or their heads piling up next to guillotines while rampaging mobs loot the stores and ransack mansions. Smart American rich people (think Warren Buffett) realize that too much greed by too many people will inevitably cause society to break down, so the rich and prosperous need to allow a certain amount of wealth-sharing through taxation, and must support at least some level of "entitlements" in order to save their own skins. Dumb American rich people (think of the Olin, Walton, and Hilton heirs) seem to believe they can get away with living on the backs of working people because they chose the right parentage and have no obligation to share any of their unearned wealth with anyone else.

If we want more employment, let's hire a lot of people

The two biggest federal depression-era employment programs were the WPA and the CCC. I know the current anti-government people love to say no government handout program ever ends, but both the WPA and the CCC went away as soon as they were no longer needed. It took WWII -- and a level of government spending that eclipsed the WPA, CCC, and all other government entitlement programs before or since, to end the need for these two agencies. Hopefully we won't need a similar war to pull our country out of our current depression, but to make sure of that we need to start figuring out how to help our surplus people before the unemployment problem becomes as acute as it was in 1934 or 1935.

Remember that the WPA and CCC were both "workfare," not "welfare" programs. They included construction projects and public art projects, folklore research (John and Alan Lomax were partially funded by the WPA), and many other useful projects both blue-collar and white-collar.

Were the WPA and CCC "successful?" Not from the standpoint of the 30s far right wing, but a large majority of Americans both rich and poor supported these programs because they staved off misery for an awful lot of Americans, and removed much of the very real threat of a socialist or communist revolt supported by the Soviet Union, which at the time openly talked about spreading communism to the whole world.

There was plenty of right-wing squawking in the 1930s about the government getting too large and not following the Constitution, but that noise was tempered by knowledge that millions of angry workers out of work permanently or even for more than a few years represented a far greater danger to the Republic than a liberal interpretation of the Constitution's Commerce Clause.

The Player Piano Alternative

Kurt Vonnegut's 1952 novel, Player Piano, takes place in a future where most American workers have been displaced by machines, live on scant welfare payments, and want to be useful rather than live on the dole -- except that there is hardly any demand for physical workers in an automated world. Replace automation with "Chinese workers" and include many white-collar workers whose jobs have moved to India, and you still have Vonnegut's Player Piano, along with its original automation component. You not only have massive and growing unemployment, but structural unemployment that is unlikely to abate even if the economy "recovers" from its current malaise.

What do we do about this problem? Warehouse our surplus workers and feed them just enough dole money and free TV to keep most of them sitting on their couches drinking beer instead of plotting home invasions? Do we decide to put strong tariffs in place that make imports artificially more expensive than American-produced goods and services -- and deal with the inevitable smuggling and other problems this solution would create as by-products?

I'll admit that I am personally attracted to the idea of protectionist-level tariffs for a large "basket" of items that we should make here in the U.S. instead of obtaining overseas if only because we are so dependent on them. Food? Yup. Energy? Why not? Support American oil, nuclear power, solar and wind generation, etc., by levying a large per-Joule tax on all imported energy sources. Computers and electronic components? If, as so many companies in this industry claim, "intellectual property" is what matters, producing the physical products here would not lead to huge price increases. Ditto with pharmaceuticals. One day I bought a popular over-the-counter cold remedy and noticed that it was manufactured and packaged in Costa Rica. This is a product where the actual production cost is only a small fraction of the retail price. Making it here in the U.S. would not drive its maker into bankruptcy, especially if all that company's competitors also manufactured here because of tariffs or because of laws prohibiting the manufacture of FDA-controlled products outside our borders.

An aside: we pay the world's highest prices for pharmaceuticals, and have many laws prohibiting individual citizens from buying pharmaceuticals in other countries and bringing them home for their own use. And yet, a growing percentage of the price-supported drugs we buy are made elsewhere. This makes no sense whatsoever. If "safety" is the reason not to allow individual Americans to import drugs on their own, why should pharmaceutical manufacturers or wholesalers be allowed to do it? This is a ripoff. And I'm scared that we won't get rid of it anytime soon because the pharmaceutical industry has always been a prolific source of political donations and the Supreme Court recently decided to make it even easier for pharma companies and their trade associations to influence elections. Grrr....

Where Will We Put the Welfare Trailer Parks and Tent Cities?

Another way to make American workers competitive is to house them in circumstances similar to those "enjoyed" by Indian and Chinese workers. In other words, get away from the idea that Americans inherently deserve luxuries such as separate bedrooms for children, indoor plumbing, and broadband Internet service, let alone government-paid education or decent medical care. Under this scenario, we dump the concept of a minimum wage and let the market determine the value of each human's contribution to our increasingly corporate-dominated society. If supply and demand in a world of free trade dictates that the value of an American blue-collar worker is $5/day and that a knowledge worker is worth $10/day, so be it. Of course, this means most American workers won't be able to afford any market-rate housing we currently have, let alone allow their children to attend school instead of working for their daily bread (or possibly nutritious soy mush). TV? We'd better make sure they still have that, along with low-cost beer (and possibly pot) to keep them happy in their new ghettos, where they will live out their lives in the equivalent of FEMA trailers. Or tents. Or yurts. Or shanty towns and slums like the ones common in third-world cities.

Provide a Minimum -- but Low -- Income to All

I am starting to believe we need to provide a minimum income "floor" for all Americans, along with basic education and health care services. This is not an ideological belief. It is purely practical. Perhaps you want to live somewhere people are falling off the edge of civilization and you need to carry a gun whenever you go out because many of your fellow citizens have no way besides crime to eat, clothe, and shelter themselves. I do not want to live in that kind of country. At the same time, I don't want to live in one where the government dictates my every move, including where I live and how I earn a living.

This is why, when I say "minimum income floor," I mean truly minimal, not in suburban houses people work hard to afford. And I don't believe everyone has a right to the most expensive medical treatment available, either. And education? I have nothing against you (or anyone else) sending your children to a private school at your own expense, any more than I have a problem with you wanting (and paying for) medical care from a private physician and private hospital rooms while people with less money deal with clinic-style medicine and open hospital wards.

Housing? This is what I wrote about housing the homeless in 2007. I haven't changed my mind since then.

As far as food, I am not in favor of the current program that lets poor people spend government food subsidies on things like soft drinks and cheese doodles. Sorry, but if you're going to eat on the taxpayers' tab, you had better get used to cooking from scratch or at least from low-cost mixes. Want more than four to six ounces of meat per person per day? You are going to have to find a way to make some money. Ditto if you want white meat chicken instead of thighs and legs or butter instead of (generic) margarine.

Opportunity is Important

What keeps people from going wild when things aren't going well is hope. For many, religion furnishes it, in the sense that there will be pie in the sky bye and bye. But for even more it is important to have a belief, even a false one, in our ability to make our lives better through our own efforts. This is the oft-cited "American Dream.

If you're broke and facing bankruptcy or you've already lost a home you sweated hard to buy, that dream seems more like a nightmare. We have millions of citizens who are living that nightmare, and even when we read "hopeful" employment numbers, they are "hopeful" only because fewer people lost jobs this month than in previous months, not because more people are suddenly getting hired than are getting fired.

So what are we going to do?

I'm afraid that lowering taxes, especially on our richest and greediest citizens, isn't going to help put a lot of unemployed Americans back to work. An awful lot of people seem to have forgotten that some of the years when this country experienced its greatest economic growth, and saw the greatest rise in the percentage of citizens who owned their own houses, and the greatest rise in standard of living for working people, and some of our greatest scientific advances, along with major strides in civil rights and other social aspects of our lives, happened in the 1950 - 1970 period when we had some of the most progressive income tax schedules ever. Banks and other financial institutions were highly regulated. Unions were far stronger than they are today. And in most married households, one income paid all the bills.

Sure, our houses were smaller then, and we didn't have Medicare for old people. But, in general, every year was a little better than the year before. Every day, in every way, we really were getting better and better.

Can we say the same thing today? I don't think so. If anything, life is getting worse for a majority of Americans.

Are we really willing to see our fellow citizens living in tents, especially in winter? Are we willing to risk that kind of life, ourselves, if we lose our jobs and health insurance and face medical bills we can't pay? Are we so determined to hold on to the illusion of liberty it's easy to enjoy when we have substantial incomes, but not so easy to hold onto when we run out of money before the end of the month, that we want to keep saying, "The free market will save us," in the face of evidence that it will not? And increasing evidence that our most vocal "free market" proponents aren't even interested in trying?

At the same time, we can't run government deficits forever. I'm okay with the Keynesian ideas that led to the Golden Age of Capitalism after WWII, but sooner or later we need to pay back the money we have borrowed -- and that means true government austerity, not the little bits of savings (starting next year) Obama has proposed, plus it would mean tax increases larger than any American politician at the national level has enough guts to propose.

No matter what, the current "rich get richer while the poor get poorer" economic reality will not go on forever.

The only question is whether we'll end it by purely political means (more transfer payments), by government stepping in and helping capitalism work (creating jobs during bad economic times; increasing import tariffs; tax incentives to help persuade businesses to hire more Americans) or by civil breakdown and insurrection.

So which alternative do you prefer?

• 
         
• The ultra-leftist ideal of giving money to everyone in need, no strings attached

•        

• 
  The ultra-rightist ideal of low taxes on rich people, regardless of their neighbors' misery, until society breaks down

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• The Keynesian course of helping people get back to work with government help

I prefer the third alternative, myself. But I don't hold an elective office and don't plan to run for one (and don't have the level of corporate support it's going to take win future elections, anyway), so you might as well disregard my opinion since it can't possibly translate into action in today's sad political climate.

This post sponsored by Millers Art & Video -- the company that makes professional video for people on tight budgets.

In a fantasy libertarian paradise, each citizen works hard out of enlightened self-interest. No one uses force on anyone else, since my rights stop where your nose begins. If you accumulate a whole bunch of property, bully for you! If I fail in business or some other endeavor and suddenly have no money for food, clothing or medical care, too bad for me. Maybe some of my enlightened neighbors, out of self-interest, will help me out with voluntary donations. And maybe they won't. Under communism, the opposite is true. Each citizen works to his or her maximum capacity in order to benefit society as a whole, and society as a whole owns the major means of production, including farms, factories, and mines. No one goes without the basics of life, and the idea of any one person owning a yacht disappears, because no citizen needs a private yacht when he or she can freely use state-owned boats for anything from fishing to partying. Under either system, everyone is happy and fair and treats other members of society with respect.

But both philosophies suffer from a problem. That problem is human nature. I'm sorry, but there are hardly any instances in human history (or pre-history) where applying an essentially utopian political or economic philosophy has resulted in a utopia. In the modern world, we have Somalia as an example of extreme libertarianism in practice, and North Korea as an example of extreme communism in practice.

"But...but...but," the libertarians stammer, "we don't want anarchy like Somalia. We believe in having enough government to serve as referee in disputes, and we don't believe violence is a valid basis of society." I hear you, folks. Unfortunately, plenty of people do not hear you, and in a situation where government is weak, will inevitably exert their will through force. It doesn't take a high percentage of the population to believe that power comes from the barrel of a gun to destroy even the rosiest libertarian paradise. And, as we have witnessed in the U.S. over the past few decades, many of the people who talk loudest about deregulation and freeing themselves from burdensome laws essentially want to be able to steal from their fellow citizens without risking prison sentences when they do.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the street, the communists are apoplectic with rage at the very idea that any sane person could conflate their inevitable workers' paradise with North Korea's brutocracy. Or Cuba's repressive regime. Why, those countries don't represent communism any more than Somalia represents libertarianism! True. But in real life, communist revolutions have almost always led to dictatorships of one sort or another. And, as a little-noted side effect, endless, mind-numbing speeches by the dictators. Even mild communists like Venezuela's Hugo Chavez (who calls himself a Bolivarian and denies being a doctrinaire communist) can go on TV and spout drivel for hours on end, and has enough control over the airwaves that you can't necessarily change the channel and catch a soccer game or telenovela instead.

Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's the other way around.

Under a truly libertarian capitalist system, if some people become so wealthy that they can afford personal airliners while a few miles away, others live in
grinding poverty, that's fine. Under the Soviet Russian (communist) regime, party leaders have always had sumptuous dachas where they lived in luxury, far from the prying eyes of ordinary citizens who typically lived in crowded communal housing.

In other words, neither system serves most people very well, although adherents of both philosophies will spend as many hours as you let them (and then some) telling you why theirs is better for you than the other one.

As an American, what I really want is the best parts of both systems. I want the income security of communism, or at least of its milder cousin, socialism, while at the same time I want libertarian-style personal freedoms. I realize that taxes are the price we pay for civilization, so I am happy to have you pay taxes to support our government. (I also believe I should be exempt from most of them, just as I'm fine with laws that restrict any of your behavior I may not like, but none that restrict my behavior.)

Do I sound spoiled, hypocritical, cynical, or all three?

Or do I just sound like a normal American?

The reality is that no system will work perfectly as long as it is run by human beings. Private industry screws up all the time, and big companies often turn into impenetrable, inefficient bureaucracies -- as do government agencies that don't get constant oversight from concerned citizens. Even science-fictional computers running a large society are likely to screw up, since they would be built and programmed by fallible humans.

So what is the solution?

I' m a mild believer in what some call the Third Way. Neither leftists or rightists (in old-fashioned politics-speak) like or respect moderation. I do. Nobody goes away happy, but we manage to generally keep everyone's unhappiness level low enough that we transfer power after elections without blood in the streets, and tend to have excesses of socialist-leaning presidents and Congresses muted by the libertarian-leaning ones that almost inevitably follow them -- and vice versa.

This kind of compromise is the American way. Our founding fathers didn't agree on everything. They compromised, and our Constitution was the result of that compromise. Let's carry on that tradition!

(Now we will all rise and sing the national anthem together.)

More drivel at Roblimo.com

     

One of my wife's friends is a doctor's wife -- who is now on an austerity budget because, she says, her husband's pediatric practice now sees an average of seven patients per day, down from an average of thirty patients per day a year ago. He's laying off two more of his office staff people this week, and this is not his first layoff. The reason? My wife's friend says it's because many of her husband's patients' parents have lost their jobs and health insurance and can no longer afford to take their kids to a doctor for minor illnesses or regular checkups. And if something happens to their children that makes medical care necessary rather than optional, these newly-impoverished families seek out public health clinics or go to the local emergency rooms, and will only call their old pediatrician as a last resort.

This situation is not necessarily typical in the doctor business. We are speaking here about a Spanish-speaking (bi-lingual) pediatrician in Sarasota, Florida, one of the cities in the U.S. that is in a true depression, not a mere recession. We're also talking about a doctor who caters heavily to Spanish-speaking residents, a group whose members have historically depended more on the now-moribund construction industry for income than most others, and because of this is now experiencing an extraordinarily high rate of unemployment -- by some estimates as high as 40% or 50%.

And even Hispanic families here whose members still have jobs are feeling pinched. Many of them are facing reduced hours and, even if that's not a factor, feel obliged to help unemployed relatives. There has long been a local, truth-based stereotype of Mexican and Central American families packing four people into a one-bedroom apartment and six or eight into a two-bedroom place. Now families are doubling up, so that crowding is worse than ever.

An Anglo with a steady job or some kind of entitlement income (Social Security or an old-fashioned defined pension) may turn up his or her nose at the idea of so many people living in so little space, especially if the nose-turner is living alone in 1000 square feet or is part of a family of four that lives in a 2000 or 3000 square foot suburban house. The complacent love to sneer at those less well-off than themselves. I don't know why this is, but it is a habit among many in this part of the world.

But how many of the sneerers have taken in their laid-off relatives? Or send substantial part of their incomes to relatives in Mexico or Michigan or other places where the economy is even more depressed than it is here? Some, I'm sure, but not a huge percentage.

We can also sneer at families whose adults may be illegal immigrants, and point out that a Spanish-speaking pediatrician here probably has plenty of illegals -- or their "anchor baby" children -- among his patients. Still, when these children don't go to doctors as often as they should, the doctor's income drops, and employment in his office drops, and the risk of those children carrying commicable diseases goes up. And fine, yes, we can send all those families back to Mexico or Guatemala or which means the pediatrician will have even fewer patients and may eventually be forced to close his practice entirely, which means everyone who works for him becomes jobless and our already-high local commercial property vacancy rate will increase by one more unit.

I'm sure other doctors are also feeling pinched. From what I hear, mostly second-hand and third-hand, plastic surgeons and those who specialize in Lasik eye surgery and other optional procedures are also seeing their practices shrink, and more people are tryig to stick with their family doctors or internists instead of going to pricier specialists either because, now uninsured, they are paying for treatment out of their own pockets or because (my wife is in this second group) they can't afford the risk of their insurance company failing to pay all or part of a specialist's fee.

What's the point here? Nothing, really, except to point out that even businesses once considered recession-proof aren't. Gambling was once considered recession-proof but casino revenues are now way down from where they were a year or two ago. And the medical sector was once considered even more recession-proof than the gaming industry. But this no longer seems to be so. We don't have many doctors standing on street corners yet, holding their medical bags and signs that say, "Will Cure You for Food," but I have one relative and more than a few friends who have lost more humble jobs in the medical field (phlebotomy, lab techs, receptionists, etc.) and are now having a rough time feeding their families.

What should we do about all this? Unleash the now-discredited free market so it can work its so-called magic? Use more government subsidies or job-creation programs to put money in ordinary citizens' pockets? I have no idea. But I hope someone has one. Soon.

---------------

Read more of my essays and see some of my videos at Roblimo.com

I find it amazing that so many people who talked a good "free market" game were so quick to use my tax money to save their wealthy friends' millions when said friends made poor bets -- and lost. This "bailout for the rich" scheme was originally hatched by Bush appointees. The only piece of blame Obama should shoulder -- and it's a large piece -- is his failure to stop the "too big to fail" yammer and let the Wall Street finaglers know, the day after his inauguration, that there was a new sheriff in town and that their previous antics would no longer be tolerated.

Making financial re-regulation (bring back Glass-Steagall!) his first priority would have been a far more productive move for Obama than immediately jumping on health care reform.

It looks like even the most optimistic health care scenario, based on the bills now before the House and Senate, will do little to change our current, broken system for the next two or three years, while some tough love for our financiers could have yielded near-immediate results.

Read a slightly different version of this essay at Roblimo.com

Letâ(TM)s all blame Obama for everything bad that has ever happened to any American, anywhere in the world.

Now that weâ(TM)ve got that out of the way, can we please pull together and try to solve this countryâ(TM)s problems?

Thank you,

- Robin

A sadly amusing article from National Journal that begins, "Hello! Thank you for calling Air Health Care, the airline that works like the health care system. My name is Cynthia. How can I give you travel care today?"

As one who has had a number of similar experiences with our health care non-system, I can tell you that there is way too much underlying truth to this parody. I am profoundly unhappy with the health care bills recently passed by Congress, but one thing is clear: our current health care system is broken and needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. And no, I do not believe parroting the "free market will save us" line will solve anything. Free market health care, in its current incarnation, is a major FAIL.

Article also appears at Roblimo.com

Back in August, 2008, I wrote an essay titled Voting For a One-Term President. At the time we didn't know whether Barack Obama or John McCain would be our next president. My contention was that we had so many contentious problems that neither contender could successfully contend with all of them.

I haven't changed my mind. I don't think Barack Obama will be re-elected in 2012. But I suspect this would be true if John McCain or Hillary Clinton or Mike Huckabee or Ralph the Wonder Dog had become president instead of Obama.

Our country's problems are too severe, and have been building far too long, for any one person to solve in four years. Indeed, I don't believe they can be solved within four decades unless a majority of elected officials from both major political parties decide to work together instead of playing stupid "gotya" games with each other all the time. Yes, I know your political party is straight and clean and tells the truth, and that the other one is full of corrupt liars. Well, too damn bad. You'd better figure out a way to work with those corrupt liars whose policies are (in your opinion) sure to ruin our country.

But you -- and most of our political leaders -- are not going to start doing that by 2012 unless we get attacked by space aliens or a major plague kills off 60% of our population or we have some other equivalent disaster. So I don't expect Obama to be re-elected in 2012.

I have no idea whether his replacement will be a Republican, a Democrat or someone nominated by a political party that hasn't formed yet. I have no idea whether our next president will be a "liberal" or "conservative" or "libertarian" or "socialist." A lot will depend on what happens to the economy between now and then.

And, you know, it's even barely possibly that enough people will be back to work by 2012 that Obama will be re-elected. But I'm not holding my breath waiting for that to happen. And if you are, I strongly recommend that you resume breathing, because you have no more idea than I have what will happen in the world (and in American politics) between now and then.

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This essay also appears @ Roblimo.com

The Ponzi scheme prosecutions we've been reading about lately are unfair, and I blame the Democrats, or "Dumbocrats" as some call them, for treating business people as criminals when all they were trying to do was maximize profits.

Here's why:

For many years, starting with Ronald Reagan, all patriots have worked not only to "starve the beast" of government in order to stave off socialism and go back to the time when we all lived like Thomas Jefferson in the full glow of personal responsibility outlined in the Sacred U.S. Constitution, aided only by our slaves, but also to "deregulate" our financiers and corporate executives.Starting in the 1930s, our government passed many evil regulations that kept brave entrepreneurs from maximizing their profits. By the time Reagan (bless his holy name) became President, many of our nation's leading financial executives were only able to afford three or four houses, one or two yachts, and often could only support three or four ex-wives and two or three mistresses.

Reagan and the other Republicans came to the aid of our beleaguered financiers by lifting many onerous regulations from their shoulders while, at the same time, cutting taxes and raising government expenditures, thereby putting our country into greater debt than it had ever been in before, which forced cutbacks in enforcement by those once charged with regulating (what the teabaggies call "hobbling") our Great Financial System.Naturally, this deregulation proved to be a boon to many speculators. A few overreached, perhaps just a tad, and brought about a savings and loan crash. But not to worry! Our taxes bailed everyone out -- except the small investors, but who cares about them? I mean, do a bunch of old people in Florida really matter to anyone?

The example of the S&L debacle excited financiers so much that they funded a lot of "institutes" with names like Cato and American Enterprise and even a "Club for Growth," and had these "institutes" pour out studies and articles and op-eds that proved government was always evil, while anything Private Industry did was pure, unadulterated Good. Greed was Good, yesiree Robert!And Republicans bought into this in a big way. More deregulation! Why, a Republican Congress even managed to repeal the depression-era bank anti-speculation regulations and -- get this -- made derivative trading legal even though for many decades it had been prohibited under anti-gambling laws.

Ah, the sweet breath of freedom!

CEO salaries jumped and new financial schemes abounded. Brokers bought bigger yachts (for themselves, not for their customers), real estate mavens borrowed more money than they had ever been allowed to borrow before, and some of them (Donald Trump was a prime example) managed to have some of their companies go broke (thereby stiffing investors) while other companies they controlled prospered. What a boon for capitalism!

Naturally, there were silly people who still squawked about fiscal sanity and how all this was undermining our Judeo-Christion belief in hard work and rewarding labor and thrift. These sillies were obviously socialists or communists, and the various Institutes and their media stooges (who, but this time numbered far more than the original three) talked incessantly about the Wonders of the Free Market and how we would all benefit if we moved most of this country's blue-collar jobs overseas -- and some of our more lucrative white-collar jobs, as well.

Greed is Good! Capitalism Rules! Bigger yachts. More mistresses. More layoffs -- but don't worry, Wal~Mart and Target and Home Despot have lots of $8/hour jobs. Not quite as much as you *used* to make, but that's okay. The world is flat, and corporate profits are more important than small-timers who can't afford health insurance, decent housing, and other, similar luxuries.

In fact, with profit as the *only* measure of a company's or investor's success, why not skip the part about actually making things or selling goods and services or actually using investment clients' money to buy stocks, the way fuddy-duddies like Warren Buffett did? Why not just take the clients' money and SPEND it? And, meanwhile, keep promising new investors solid profits and endless growth from now unto eternity?

Is this not the holy grail of deregulated capitalism, American-style? To cut the payroll to zero or next to it? To make profits of nearly 100% on all money taken in while giving nothing back in return, all the while producing no useful goods or services because doing so would create overhead, thereby lowering the Holy Profit Margin?

So you had derivatives, securitized debt, and even more flagrant financial scams all over the place. Happy, happy, happy. Donald Trump even thought about buying a better toupee (but obviously decided against it). Mistresses got bigger breast enlargements than ever. The yachts got HUMONGOUS. A presidential candidate who was married to an Arizona heiress literally forgot how many homes he and his wife owned, and told us it took $5 million to belong to the middle class.

But while life was full of joy for the people who count in America, those sneaky communist Democrats somehow managed to grab control of Congress in 2006, and started looking into some of the stranger financial goings-on in our once-proud country.

Now, there had been a few scandals already that were so flagrant even Republicans couldn't hush them up. Remember Enron? And MCI? Ponzi schemes!

Also, please do not think all Democrats wore halos. Plenty of them were just as corrupt as their Republicans counterparts, which was very sad. I mean, we *expect* Republicans to steal and help their henchmen steal, and to do nasty corporate welfare deals like the Medicare Advantage insurance company giveaway and the "Welfare for Big Pharma" Medicare prescription plan. Democrats are supposed to be different. They're supposed to work to make our country better, and we have a right to be disappointed when they act as venal as Republicans, just as we have a right to get angry at Republicans who dare to have sex -- unless it is strictly for procreation, in the missionary position, with a spouse who doesn't enjoy it much.

So, anyway: after all those "Greed is Good" and "Private Industry Good, Government Bad," years, we started to see actual enforcement of some of the anti-fraud laws the Republicans hadn't yet been able to repeal.

We've had a few show trials of small fry like Madoff and Diamond. We haven't arrested Goldman Sachs or Citi or B of A execs, and probably never will -- even though any one of them has arguably done more harm to more Americans than all the recently-busted Ponzers put together.

The big question is, "What do we do now?" Do we keep listening to the bamboozlers who got us into this mess and seem to think we'll be happy if they throw us a Ken Lay or Bernie Madoff now and then? Or do we think seriously about who this country is for, what our government should and should not do, and what regulations we need to keep things fair?

I have looked at countries that tried to have true communism. Not one of them has succeeded. They all ended up as nasty dictatorships. I have also looked at countries where there is little or no government (Somalia is an obvious example), and have decided that extreme libertarianism *in actual practice* is no better than communism.

We need to come up with a new system. I don't know what it is. But, then, I'm a small-time schlump who lives in a Florida trailer park, not an award-winning academic thinker or cabinet member or economist or any of that. In theory, people who have all kinds of big-time credentials should be coming up with ways to compromise between the worst aspects of human economic behavior (unbridled "profit at all costs" greed) and the best parts of capitalism ("hey, if I work hard to build my company, I'll get rich -- so I'm going to work 20 hour days until I do").

So far, I see zero evidence that our "leaders" have any good ideas. The right-wingers have become pure noise, meant in the sense of "signal to noise ratio," and their extreme leftist counterparts aren't much better.

We need a lot more signal and a lot less noise.

I'll do my part if you'll do yours. We may not agree all the time. Handling disagreements peacefully and reaching useful compromises is a hallmark of democracies and well-run republics, while (theoretical) communist and libertarian countries tend to settle their internal debates with violence.

Let's not go the Somalian or N. Korean directions, okay?

Thank you, fellow Americans, for listening.

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This article also appears at Roblimo.com

This is a screed I originally posted on an Indian friend's Facebook wall: Don't worry about the US [on the pollution front]. We're down from using 40% of the world's resources (and generating 40% of the pollution) to under 30% -- and dropping. Our richie-riches are determined to keep us "competitive" in the world labor markets, which seems to mean they expect the majority of us to live in dirt-floored shacks, same as the rural poor in China and India. At the rate our working people's incomes are dropping, we will hardly be able to afford any carbon dioxide production at all within a few decades, and we'll be shipping our brightest University grads to India, not the other way around.

One thing to note is that the U.S. has a lot of really old industrial infrastructure. I know of textile mills in the state of Massachusetts running 100 and 150 year old machinery that has been modernized but is still dreadfully inefficient by today's standards. In contrast, Germany and Japan have hardly any factories built before 1946 because we bombed their previous ones in WWII. India, Vietnam, and other countries that had hardly any industry before the 1970s have even newer plants, on average.

And then there's technology leapfrogging, the phenomenon of jumping over old technology on purpose and going straight for the latest. Telephones are a prime example. The U.S. and other long-industrialized nations put in copper phone wires almost everywhere 75 or 100 years ago, then started switching to microwaves and satcom for long distance 50 years ago, and are now switching to fiberoptics and cellular systems. Countries now building out their telecomm infrastructure for the first time are going straight to fiber and cellular without the evolutionary steps.

In other words, they're using resource-efficient commo technology from the start instead of mining and manufacturing endless kilometers of copper wire first.

The same idea can and should apply to power generation. The U.S. has many 100 year old coal-fired electrical plants that still work well enough that, pollution (and mining damage) aside, there is no economically justifiable reason to replace them. And we have enough coal to power the U.S. for hundreds of years, so our government and power industry spend endless money on patchwork cleanups for coal-fired plants, while India can get right to the business of building clean, 21st century generating facilities.

Technology leapfrogging can and does happen in many other fields, too. The Tata Nano can be built cheaply in large part because it stands on the back of generation of (primarily) American, European, and Japanese auto and production engineering. Meanwhile, the big American car companies are still using some plants that -- while heavily modernized over the years -- were built in the 1920s and 1930s and are nowhere near as efficient as a brand-new Tata plant but are so expensive to replace that they go on being modified and patched up apparently forever. And the old auto plants that *have* closed become huge eyesores, too expensive to use for anything else, often too expensive to tear down so we can use that land for something else. So they sit there, rotting, a blight on the landscape, testimony to our country's former greatness.

The final indignity: I lost my job at the end of last year, and my chance of finding an equivalent one at my age (57) is essentially zero. This means I had to give up my mortgaged house because I could no longer afford the payments on it. The bank that held our mortgage went broke and was absorbed by a larger bank, which also went broke and got absorbed by an even larger one. Finally, nearly a year later, they are getting around to the legal foreclosure and title transfer process. But as part of that process, they have representatives call us several times a week to ask if there is any way we can start making at least partial payments and to threaten us with a severe drop in our credit rating -- which has already happened anyway, because of my job loss, so the threats are essentially meaningless.

Now, guess where those annoying calls come from? That's right. India. Wells Fargo Bank, which is still in business (and has manged to absorb other, even weaker, banks) only because of massive cash infusions from the U.S. government, is hiring Indians to harass Americans who have lost their jobs and can no longer pay their bills.

I'm sure those Indian debt collectors are glad to have their jobs, and are happily spending their paychecks on cellular phones, furniture, flats and houses, computers, clothes, motorcycles and perhaps even Tata Nanos.

Meanwhile, Americans like me, who have essentially been cast aside as unwanted surplus by American businesses, are buying hardly anything. We are, therefore, accounting for a lower percentage of global pollution than we did even a few years ago. At the same time, the Indian collector and his family are busily *increasing* their resource use and pollution production.

If I was in my 20s instead of in my 50s, I would move to one of the rising countries. But I'm not, so I stay here, watching my savings and my economic impact (and carbon footprint) dwindle every month.

This is why India and other rising countries need to do more, not less, than the U.S. to stop pollution and use resources more efficiently.

I have a simple approach to fixing our health care system that will piss off both Republicans and Democrats, not to mention insurance, hospital, pharma, and other health care executives whose huge incomes are dependent on major profits from the current system. Trial lawyers won't like it, either. Therefore, treat this as a fantasy -- but one that, if it came true, would save money and provide better medical care to Americans of all income levels.

Item One: Encourage Health Insurance Competition

This is a Republican idea, and a good one. Health insurance companies should not only be allowed but encouraged to sell their policies across state lines. And, as long as they don't turn down people with pre-existing conditions or sell insurance that has unrealistic deductibles (no more than, say, $2000 per year per policy) or copay provisions (perhaps capped at 20% of all bills up to $5000 or $10,000, with 100% coverage beyond those levels), they should not be forced to cover routine medical care. In other words, I'm talking about a shift -- entirely voluntary, only for those who want it -- from today's typical all-inclusive, HMO-type plans to old-fashioned major medical and hospitalization coverage. This would create a simple health insurance option that would keep people from going bankrupt because of medical emergencies. Let the free market dictate exact rates -- again, within broad limits, with perhaps a 3:1 maximum rate difference based on age and other risk factors.

The free enterprise component will piss off serious socialists. Fine. Let them be angry. And they will be, even though I believe we should subsidize health insurance premiums for people who can't otherwise afford to pay them. With tax dollars. Naturally, we'll put the subsidized insurance plans out for public bid. The least-expensive insurance companies (that meet basic plan standards) get the contracts. Less-efficient insurers don't. And, as an additional measure to keep quality high, Members of Congress, their staffs, and other federal employees will be insured under the same low-bid plans available to the rest of us.

Note that I am not stopping any insurance company from offering higher-priced plans with more than the minimum mandated benefit levels. Individuals and employers who want to pay more -- and hopefully get more services in return -- should be free to do so.

Item Two: Encourage More Non-Profit Routine Health Care Delivery

There are many low-cost alternatives to the mainstream medical system, such as this non-profit group where I live in Manatee County, Florida, that make routine doctor visits and prescription drugs affordable for even the poorest patients. Our local Gulf Coast Discount Medical Plan is not free. It's just a lot less expensive than any other local health care option we've found. Those who run to a doctor every time they sneeze pay every single time, which discourages excess use. Prescriptions are heavily discounted, too, but like doctor visits, they are not free. Once again, excess use is discouraged.

Gulf Coast has a sliding-scale fee structure. For those who can't afford even the lowest sliding-scale rate, let's have government subsidies, paid out of our taxes. On the other hand, I see nothing wrong with someone spending an hour or two cleaning bathrooms or picking up litter in the parking lot in return for a doctor visit or prescription. Or making phone calls to remind patients of their appointments. Or something. Anything. Naturally, it is only right to waive the service requirement for people who are so disabled or decrepit that they can't do much of anything, but I suspect that in the spirit of voluntarism many church groups and individuals would step up and do "their" service for them. (I surely would.)

As a personnel recruitment aid, perhaps we could offer partial or full tuition reimbursement for doctors, nurses and administrators who agree to spend a set number of years as salaried clinic employees. I also suspect that a large number of experienced doctors and nurses who are tired of dealing with insurance company forms and the other hassles that have become part of our current medical non-system would be drawn to this kind of practice.

If nothing else, a good system of non-profit clinics can help keep patients who don't belong in emergency rooms out of them. Yes, I've heard the Yowler yammer about how anyone who is seriously ill can go to the ER and get "free" treatment, but that treatment is not free. It's subsidized by the rest of us through higher hospital charges. Real, budgeted subsidies to non-profit clinics would not only be more honest than the current system, but would be easier to track and control.

Once again, I am not forcing anyone to do anything. If your local clinics (and I see no reason why there can't be many competing ones) don't suit your needs, and you can afford to go to a fee-for-service provider, go ahead. I also don't see why there can't be for-profit clinics competing with the non-profit ones either on price or by offering shorter wait times, free marijuana (sort-of kidding about this one) or other perqs to their patients. Choice is good, right?

Item Three: Tort Reform

Malpractice judgments are a tiny fraction of total medical expenses, and without public-spirited lawyers who often allow the damaged parties to keep 50%, even 60% or 70%, of court-awarded malpractice judgments, we would have nothing but drunk barber-surgeons in filthy hospitals. Let's give all those heroic lawyers plaques for having performed their valuable public service, and let them keep on suing for-profit physicians' groups, medical labs, hospitals, and pharmaceutical companies that don't participate in discount medical plans or otherwise make their services available, at least part of the time, to people unable to pay full tab for their services.

Patients harmed by medical care gone awry should still be able to collect some reasonable amount, surely enough to cover additional treatment they might require, plus compensation for lost income and general suffering, but let's have compensation set by competent boards made up of carefully-selected doctors and citizens, not random juries. And let's put a severe cap on the amount of punitive damages any one patient can get. And while we're at it, let's severely limit legal fees in class-action lawsuits, which all too often leave the actual damaged parties with little or nothing while the lawyers end up with millions.

Come to think of it, why limit tort reform to health care? I live in Florida, where defending against groundless lawsuits routinely bankrupts small businesses. Our entire civil litigation system is as nutsy as our current health care system. But for the moment, on the medical front, let's just take malpractice matters out of the court system for all doctors and others who accept any public funding for their services, and require patients who use doctors and other services that accept government money to sign away at least part of their "right" to sue if their toes start aching six years after they got their gall bladders removed. Once again, freedom-loving doctors and patients are 100% free to opt out of all this and stick with the current way of doing things.

Item Four: A Public Option If and Where One is Needed

What if, in some parts of the U.S., there are no low-cost non-profit medical clinics or private, for-profit companies willing to go into the discount medical care business? Why not allow government-sponsored health care in underserved areas? Said areas might be remote rural counties and they might be poverty-stricken inner city neighborhoods. Would even the nastiest, Glenn Beck-ist Republicans really deny medical treatment to Indians on remote reservations or children born in the worst parts of Detroit? Well... yes. They would. So let's ignore them. They're going to complain no matter what. We should let them yowl while the rest of us work not only to make our country's health care system better, but work in every way we can to promote the general welfare and make life in America better for everyone, rich or poor.

That's the Whole Plan

Socialists, libertarians, and trial lawyers will all line up to make sure this plan never happens. So will everyone at the top of the health care income hierarchy. In a lot of ways, my plan is closer to the Republican Small Health Bill (pdf) than to current Democratic proposals, even though it contains a "public option" provision that will raise as many Republican hackles as its free-choice provisions will raise among the most liberal Democrats. Still, my modest proposal would serve more people better than any alternative yet advanced by a major political party, while preserving more personal freedom for both doctors and patients than any other proposal I have seen so far.

Common sense is in short supply in this country, though, so whatever "health reform" we get will almost certainly be expensive, bloated, stupid, and designed to preserve health care industry profits more than to provide the most medical care, to the greatest number of people, at the lowest possible cost.

That (sigh) is 21st Century America for you. We haven't descended totally into Idiocracy yet, but we're working on it as hard as we can.