Forget giving away the store — Obama is handing the store to Republicans and inviting them to burn it down.

Posted: July 5, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: income inequality, Medicare, Psychopaths in charge, Republican politics, Surreality, Team Obama, The Great Recession, The Media SUCKS, the villagers, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics, voodoo economics, We are so F'd | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 22 Comments

Please read this shocking story at The New York Times — there’s no way for me to excerpt all the important parts.

Obama administration officials are offering to cut tens of billions of dollars from Medicare and Medicaid in negotiations to reduce the federal budget deficit, but the depth of the cuts depends on whether Republicans are willing to accept any increases in tax revenues.

Administration officials and Republican negotiators say the money can be taken from health care providers like hospitals and nursing homes without directly imposing new costs on needy beneficiaries or radically restructuring either program.

What this really means is that more doctors and hospitals will refuse to accept Medicare and Medicaid patients, and nursing homes will turn away frail elderly patients who can’t pay out of pocket–because Medicaid will no longer be able to assist those who are poor or have already spent their life savings on health care.

“Congress smells blood,” said William L. Minnix Jr., the chief lobbyist for nonprofit nursing homes.

Mr. Minnix, the president of a trade group known as LeadingAge, is urging nursing homes to “bombard your senators with the message that Medicaid cannot be cut by $100 billion” over 10 years, as President Obama and many Republican lawmakers have suggested.

A coalition of hospital lobbyists, worried about the direction of the budget talks, has begun a national advertising campaign to block further cuts in the two health care programs, which account for about 55 percent of hospital revenues. The hospitals have made a commitment to spend up to $1 million a week through August on television, print and online advertising.

Now check this out: Chuck Schumer, supposedly a Democrat, is quoted in the article as saying, “We are very willing to entertain savings in Medicare. Medicare gives very good health care very inefficiently.”

Really? Medicare has almost no overhead, and it pays way below the going rate for health care services. That’s why so few private doctors accept Medicare patients right now.

Now think about what Dakinikat has told us about the dangers of cutting federal spending and read this:

Medicare and Medicaid insure more than 100 million people, account for 23 percent of all federal spending and are likely to be an important part of any budget deal. Military spending, which accounts for about 20 percent of federal expenditures, is likely to be included as well.

President Obama and his Republican pals are on a mission to bring down the American economy and bring on a repeat of the Great Depression. Can anything or anyone stop them? We need riots in the streets, but can elderly people do it alone?

Perhaps Strauss-Kahn Really WAS Set Up?

Posted: June 30, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Psychopaths in charge, Surreality, U.S. Politics, Violence against women | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 43 Comments

Dominque Strauss-Kahn

Lots of people questioned the convenient timing of the Strauss-Kahn arrest, and I pooh-poohed them. Now The New York Times is reporting that the woman who accused former IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn of sexual assault is turning out to be a very different sort of person from the simple hotel maid she had originally appeared to be–so much so that the case against Strauss-Kahn is “on the verge of collapse.”

Although forensic tests found unambiguous evidence of a sexual encounter between Mr. Strauss-Kahn, a French politician, and the woman, prosecutors do not believe much of what the accuser has told them about the circumstances or about herself.

Since her initial allegation on May 14, the accuser has repeatedly lied, one of the law enforcement officials said….Among the discoveries, one of the officials said, are issues involving the asylum application of the 32-year-old housekeeper, who is Guinean, and possible links to criminal activities, including drug dealing and money laundering.

Either the woman or her boyfriend, who is currently in jail for possession of 400 pounds of pot, has apparently been using her name to facilitate a drug dealing operation. She claims she didn’t know anything about all this, but she was recorded talking to the jailed man about how they could profit from the sexual assault charges against Strauss-Kahn.

They also learned that she was paying hundreds of dollars every month in phone charges to five different companies. The woman insisted she only had a single phone and said she knew nothing about the deposits except that they were made by a man she described as her fiancé and his friends.

Could she have been paid to set Strauss-Kahn up and get him fired from the IMF as well as dropped from consideration as a candidate for President of France? If so, who set him up? Who had motive, means, and opportunity, and who benefited? I see a couple of possibilities:

1. The Brits and Americans wanted him off the IMF so they could really stick it to Greece. Strauss-Kahn is a socialist and was talking about trying to help struggling countries. Obviously the Obama administration or some rogue element in the government had means and opportunity.

2. Sarkozy wanted to get rid of a dangerous rival for the French presidency and also to install his Finance Minister as head of the IMF. He would probably need cooperation from the Obama administration or the aforementioned rogue government elements to get the NYPD on board. (Coincidentally (or not?), Sarkozy was attacked in France today).

Are there other possibilities I’ve overlooked?

David Vitter is Facing Conservative Calls for His Resignation–Plus Ethics Charges

Posted: June 22, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Politics as Usual, Psychopaths in charge, Republican politics, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

David "Diapers" Vitter

It’s a little late but still well deserved. Louisiana Senator David Vitter suddenly has a higher profile because of the way Anthony Weiner was unceremoniously hustled out of the House of Representatives. Now a conservative Christian Group is calling on Vitter to resign, and an ethics group has accused him of bribery.

The president of the Christian conservative Family Policy Network sent Sen. David Vitter, R-La., a letter Monday (June 20) calling on him to follow the lead of former Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y., and resign rather than leave Republicans and conservatives open to charges of hypocrisy.

Vitter admitted to a “serious sin” in 2007 after his phone number was found in the 2001 client records of a D.C. madam, when he was a member of the House.

Weiner resigned after first lying about and then admitting to “inappropriate” online communication with various women.

“There are a lot of people that I think are committing outright hypocrisy and are forced to do so as long as he (Vitter) remains in office,” said Joe Glover, the president of the Family Policy Network, based in Forest, Va. “I don’t think the senator should put those folks in the untenable position of having to pragmatically defend his presence in the Senate.”

In addition, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) has filed a complaint with the Senate Ethics Committee, alleging that Vitter tried to “bribe” Ken Salazar, Obama’s Interior Secretary.

The complaint, filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), cites a letter that Vitter wrote to Salazar last month. In the letter Vitter said he would continue to oppose increasing Salazar’s paycheck by $19,600 until the secretary issued permits for new exploratory deepwater wells in the Gulf of Mexico.

In a five-page letter to committee Chairwoman Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Vice Chairman Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.), CREW’s executive director Melanie Sloan detailed the allegation of Vitter’s “quid pro quo” and recommended that the committee refer matters to the Justice Department if they found the senator guilty of wrongdoing.

“Our country’s criminal laws apply to everyone, including senators,” said Sloan in the letter. “There is no exception to the bribery law allowing a senator to influence a department secretary’s official acts by withholding compensation.”

I believe that, and I know you believe that too. I guess we’ll have to wait and see if the Senates agrees with us.

Karma works in mysterious ways.

Mitch McConnell, Barack Obama, and Fake “Hostage Negotiations”

Posted: June 3, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, Barack Obama, financial institutions, Psychopaths in charge, Republican politics, Social Security, The Bonus Class, The Great Recession, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics, We are so F'd | Tags: , , , , , , , | 17 Comments

Demon Mitch

I am really angry right now, but I’m going to try to write this as calmly as I can. As we all know, Mitch McConnell, who somehow got himself elected to the Senate from the State of Kentucky is holding the entire economy hostage, insisting that the only way Republicans will allow an increase in the debt ceiling is if the Democrats agree to drastic cuts in Medicare.

As Dakinikat wrote yesterday, what McConnell and other Republicans are doing is “playing chicken with financial markets.” We are in serious danger of another Great Depression. These freaks are suggesting that they will tank the economy in their efforts to win points for their party. Michael Tomasky writes:

McConnell has made it abundantly clear that his goal is not to help the economy or anything else; his overriding concern is making Barack Obama a one-term president. When he said Sunday that there will be no deal on raising the debt ceiling without substantial Medicare cuts, he made his motives clear again.

Tomasky is saddened because

…there was a period in the history of this republic, and of the world’s so-called greatest deliberative body, when senators really did, at some crucial point in deliberations, put their partisan differences aside and work out solutions to the country’s pressing problems.

[….]

McConnell benefits from the lingering good feeling that still permeates the institution in which he serves—because people insist on presuming that the leader of the minority party speaks in good faith. But there’s no good faith here.

The only question is whether the Democrats will accede to the hostage-taker’s demands. They’re in a tough position, especially after yesterday’s vote in the House, where nearly half of the Democrats joined all Republicans in refusing to raise the debt limit without deep and permanent cuts. Raising the ceiling is extremely unpopular in polls (of course it always has been, but that fact that didn’t prevent a certain M. McConnell from voting to raise it seven times during George W. Bush’s presidency).

Dakinikat isn’t alone in her warning about the insanity of what McConnell and his Republican pals are doing to us. Even the Wall Street Journal is questioning McConnell’s motivation. Author Stan Collender concludes that McConnell is willing to sacrifice his party’s chance at the White House in an effort to set himself up to be the next Majority Leader in the Senate.

…McConnell has decided that the GOP winning the White House in 2012 isn’t as important to him as the GOP getting the majority in the Senate and that requires continually energizing the base rather than trying to win over independents and Democrats.

If Obama wins and the GOP takes over the Senate, (Roger Ailes aside) McConnell will be the most important and powerful Republican in the United States. That won’t be true if there’s a Republican president, of course. But if all of the best known GOP candidates lose the Republican nomination in 2012 and the 2012 nominee then loses in the general election, the next tranche of potential Republican presidential candidates will be at least two years away. In the meantime, McConnell will be the one negotiating with the White House and stopping its initiatives.

The McConnell statement makes a great deal of sense in this context. Openly attacking Medicare as he did strengthens his credentials with the base even if it weakens them with everyone else. But that’s okay because it’s the base that’s needed to elect Republicans to the Senate next year and that would strengthen McConnell even if it makes life harder…or impossible…for the GOP presidential candidate.

At Market Watch, Rex Nutting writes of Republican threats to cause the U.S. to default on its debts:

This is an insane idea cooked up by political consultants who can count votes but not dollars. Assuming they are willing to go through with their threat, it’s simply terrorism — a sort of tea-party suicide bomb.

Both parties have played games with the debt ceiling, but never has anyone suggested out loud that default is really an option. Until now.

Default would make our problems immeasurably worse. Our borrowing costs would soar, and no one has quite explained how that would make our debts more affordable. Moody’s said Thursday that it might downgrade our debt (making it more expensive for us to borrow) if there were just a chance of default. Imagine the costs if we actually reneged on our promises. Read our full story about Moody’s warning on U.S. debt.

Taking all this into consideration, any reasonable person would be able to see that the Republicans are simply playing games and that in the end they are going to raise the debt ceiling. They aren’t going to go against the wishes of their Wall Street masters. Even McConnell’s hometown paper agrees:

Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-KY, won a prominent place in the weekend news cycle when he made pointed statements last Friday about Medicare, taxes, and what it would take for him to support an increase in the debt ceiling.

He chose his words carefully. Amid blustery talking points, McConnell painstakingly did not say that Republicans would refuse to increase the debt limit. Ultimately, the only threat he issued was about his own individual vote — not about what Republicans will do in general.

[….]

Because the threat is not credible, the only value it has is the value Democrats choose to give it. If they agree with the Republican proposals and want their own political cover, they will treat the threat as credible. They will “save America” from the dastardly Republicans. If they have more responsible strategies they will call the bluff. They hold all the cards.

Therefore, the Democrats and President Obama should simply sit back and let them throw as many tantrums as they want while pointing out how idiotic they are and laughing uproariously.

So what does our President do? He calls Republican and Democratic legislators to the White House for bogus deficit talks that are nothing but an obvious charade to enable these elite criminals to continue stealing American taxpayers blind. He even plans to hold a “golf summit” with Speaker of the House John Boehner.

There can be no other explanation for President Reagan’s Obama’s behavior than that he agrees with McConnell that Paul Ryan’s plan to eliminate Medicare is the way to go. He apparently also thinks it’s worth it to trade our collective economic futures for another four years in the White House. Next up, Democrats and Republicans “compromise” on Social Security “reform.”

How Badly Does the World Need iPads?

Posted: May 22, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: China, Corporate Crime, Foreign Affairs, health hazard, Human Rights, Psychopaths in charge, worker rights | Tags: , , , , , | 21 Comments

Man poses as Apple's Steve Jobs at protest in Hong Kong

Are these gadgets really worth the sacrifice of workers’ lives? I admit I’m not an Apple enthusiast, but I don’t think so. Last year there was a series of suicides at Foxconn plants and on Friday, there was a fatal explosion at a Foxcomm iPad factory in Chengdu, China, that killed two workers and injured 15 others. Today a third employee died from injuries sustained in the blast.

Company officials said the explosion occurred on Friday May 20 in one of the polishing workshops at the factory, and that the initial finding of a joint investigation task force led by government officials and law enforcement authorities was that combustible dust exploded in a duct.

A little more detail from Mashable.com:

…the Chinese government in Chengdu has taken over the plant, censoring the information flow to the extent that local newspapers aren’t reporting about it.

With numerous workers committing suicide at the company’s Shenzhen-based iPad plant last year, Foxconn attempted to remedy the situation by giving them raises, but still needed to increase the production capacity to meet increasing demand. As a result, the new factory was built, an enormous eight-building complex hastily constructed in a record-breaking 70 days to accommodate the voracious demand for the iPad 2.

Soon after the factory was built…Apple’s inspection team visited the facility, taking two days to inspect the buildings, production lines and “especially the workers’ dormitories.” After its inspection, Apple approved the plant for manufacturing iPads.

After the suicides in 2010, the group Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior (SACOM) investigated the factories and produced a report (pdf) that documents the horrors of the working conditions in Foxconn’s factories.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the study found that slave labor-type conditions are still in effect at the factories. Workers are now forced to sign “no-suicide pacts,” and they are routinely humiliated by “military-style managers.” They may have to work as much as 100 hours of overtime per month, and are still not paid a living wage–they earn only about $186 per month. And Foxconn “routinely” fails to pay workers the correct amounts they have earned. This is after Apple visited the factories and approved the wages and working conditions!

Conditions at Foxconn’s two Chengdu factories, which exclusively produce Apple iPads, were among the worst reported. While nets have been installed to catch suicidal workers, factory staff are reportedly required to sign “no-suicide” pacts which also give licence to Foxconn to institutionalise them if it sees fit.

Workers at Chengdu say they are routinely humiliated and scolded by management. One was forced to stand in a corner with his hands behind his back because he giggled with a colleague. Others have been required to write confession letters to their supervisors after making mistakes and in some cases read the letters out in front of colleagues.

“Some of my roommates weep in the dormitory. I want to cry as well but my tears have not come out,” said 19-year-old Chengdu worker Chen Liming.

Ah Ming, 19, who produces cases for the iPad, said he stands for at least 14 hours a day. He wakes up at 7am to queue for the bus to the factory and it is 9pm by the time he returns home every evening.

The report also found that workers don’t

have adequate protections to safeguard against occupational health and safety issues such as aluminium dust and harsh reactions from chemicals used in the production process.

“I’m breathing in dust at Foxconn just like a vacuum cleaner. My nostrils are totally black every day,” one male worker said.

From the aptly named “Crave” blog at Cnet.com:

SACOM researchers visited Foxconn plants in Chengdu, where iPads are produced; in Chongqing, a smaller facility making mostly HP products; and Foxconn’s huge campus in Shenzhen, where half a million workers assemble a variety of computers, mobile phones, and additional products for Apple, HP, Nokia, Dell, and others. The researchers claim to have observed a number of problems at the Chengdu facilities in particular:

Workers do not have adequate training on usage of chemicals and do not have regular on-post health examinations. A number of interviewees even complain they suffer from allergy, but the management does not probe into the adverse health impacts of workers. Workers also highlight the problem of poor ventilation and inadequate personal protective equipment.

While SACOM notes the lack of ventilation as a possible threat to workers’ respiratory health, it appears that it may also have been a contributing factor to Friday’s explosion, which reportedly was centered in the “polishing” section of Foxconn’s facilities.

According to the report, the polishing department is filled with aluminum dust and there is inadequate ventilation.

Both aluminum and magnesium are commonly used ingredients in industrial polish–magnesium is a highly flammable metal used in fireworks, flares, and flash powder. A buildup of such dust due to improper ventilation could have created dangerous conditions.

I don’t know about you, but I’m very glad I don’t have an iPad, because if I did I’d be tempted to trash it right about now. If this is what it takes to produce a gadget that appears to be little more than a glorified cell phone that doesn’t do much other than provide entertainment and status to its users, I say it’s not worth it.

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