Politics
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- ********0
ok.... I heard the tail end of a Radio show last night and it was fucking disturbing.
It was something to the extent that the head of GE has come out and stated that we are headed towards another great depression very soon. WTF, I didn't catch the whole segment but from what I heard did not sit well with me.
- ukit0
http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blo…
El Viajero asks "why aren't the people of CA holding their state elected officials [responsible] for financial mismanagement?"
California effectively has four branches of government: The governor, the legislature, the courts, and the ballot initiatives. And these last have ripped through our finances. The firms that build ballot initiatives aren't stupid: People like what they don't think they're paying for. Sparkly sidewalks are good. Sparkly sidewalks that require higher taxes are bad. And so most ballot initiatives pass without a revenue source. Which means they're paid for out of general revenues. Which means there is less money for everything else. The legislature cannot reject the initiatives, but both their bills and the ballot proposals are coming from the same pool of money. So the legislature returns after the elections and must now build a balanced budget -- including all the same programs, plus population growth, plus anything new -- without $600 million that used to fund education but is now allocated to more sparkles in the sidewalk.
And we're looking at a considerable sum that's out of their control. Last August, Mark Paul estimated that these programs were now equivalent to about 9% of the total general fund, "or about the total cost of all of today's state social service programs."
Then, of course, is the second problem: The legislature effectively can't raise revenues. Taxes require a 2/3rds majority and California's Republicans are mono-maniacally anti-tax. It is, after all, the only thing they can control. So essentially, California operates with a government that can't control either spending or revenues. It's not a good situation.
- california and it's court system is always run by yahoos, so no surprise here.sputnik2
- sputnik20
"At no period in American history has our democracy been in such peril or has the possibility of totalitarianism been as real. Our way of life is over. Our profligate consumption is finished. Our children will never have the standard of living we had. And poverty and despair will sweep across the landscape like a plague. This is the bleak future. There is nothing President Obama can do to stop it. It has been decades in the making. It cannot be undone with a trillion or two trillion dollars in bailout money. Our empire is dying. Our economy has collapsed."
please...there's always some doom and gloom moron running around the block howling "the sky is falling!" this is laying on a bit thick.
- <- from TBO's note postsputnik2
- This would be the "doom and gloom moron":
http://en.wikipedia.…TheBlueOne - WW2 Bomber Pilot, Harvard Grad..you know, a moron.TheBlueOne
- yep, if he's fallen that far off the deep end, he's a moronsputnik2
- lowimpakt0
now for some real politics
- TheBlueOne0
@TommyO: For all your "answer my question" yapping about how employment got tied with health coverage. Amazing..it comes down to business and tax breaks - who starting in the 20's saw a growth industry and wanted to keep it out of the public sector. So all your yammering about it being socialist or communist or whatever, the origin of the problem lies in the "free market" ideas of the 1920's...
"Jonathan Cohn, a senior editor at the New Republic, has written such a book, and I would urge Sen. Wyden to read it at least three times. Cohn's book, to be published next month, is Sick: The Untold Story of America's Health Care Crisis—And the People Who Paid the Price. Each chapter of Cohn's book is devoted to one or two patient narratives that illuminate a particular dysfunction of the present medical system, and the chapters are arranged in such a way that the dysfunctions appear more or less in the order in which they first became significant national problems. The result is an 80-year chronology of repeated market failure, with each successive reform serving at best as temporary respite from the previous problem. Read it and weep. Capitalism can't deliver decent health care.
What we recognize as modern medicine, Cohn writes, began in the 1920s. That's when doctors and hospitals, having only during the previous decade learned enough about disease that they could be reliably helpful in treating sick people, began charging more than most individuals could easily pay. To close this gap, which worsened with the advent of the Great Depression, the administrator of Baylor Hospital in Dallas created a system that caught on elsewhere and eventually evolved into Blue Cross. The Blues were essentially nonprofit health insurers who served local community organizations like the Elks. In exchange for a tax break, Blue Cross organizations kept premiums reasonably low.
The success of the Blues persuaded commercial insurers, who initially considered medicine an unpromising market, to enter the field. Private insurers accelerated these efforts in the 1940s when businesses, seeking ways to get around wartime wage controls, began to compete for labor by offering health insurance. If government regulators had thought to freeze fringe benefits along with wages, we might have avoided making the workplace primarily responsible for supplying health insurance, a role that most people now agree was ill-advised. Instead, the government jumped on the bandwagon by exempting from the income tax company expenses associated with health care."
You can read more here:
http://www.slate.com/id/2161736/…Or buy a book:
http://www.amazon.com/Sick-Untol…Or check out a timeline:
http://www.pbs.org/healthcarecri…Or look at other sources:
http://eh.net/encyclopedia/artic…
- tommyo0
AHAHA Yeah thanks, completely amazing. I never said anything about it being socialistic, communist or anything of the sort. Mmmmm those words you're putting into my mouth taste exquisite! You did the exact same thing yesterday, and I appreciate it, no really, I feel more intelligent when someone as smart as you resorts to Foxesque O'Reillyism. For an intelligent man, you really can be quite a snobbish elitist shrill at times.
All I asked was why the two were tied together. You berated my question and never explained, which I was genuinely interested in knowing about ... but I guess that's 'yapping.'
Thank you, your last paragraph above was exactly what I was looking for.
- "Snobbish elitist"...yeah...so... man..I CAN be I know..I try not to though...TheBIueOne
- ..seriously, don't take it personally. It's not directed at you personally, just frustration..TheBIueOne
- TheBIueOne0
Income disparity in the US on par with income disparity under the Kings in France:
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2…
(chart via the WSJ)
- TheBlueOne0
Sense? This makes none. The new RNC chairman and token black guy Michael Steele bemoans the stimulus package on the teevee this morning because, see, it only creates work, and not jobs. Got that. It creates work and NOT jobs.
I have no idea what this moron is talking about, but George Stephanopolous tries calling him on his batshit statement:
"STEELE: But you've got to look at the entire package. You've got to look at what's going to create sustainable jobs. What this administration is talking about is making work. It is creating work.
STEPHANOPOULOS: But that's a job.
STEELE: No, it's not a job. A job is something that -- that a business owner creates. It's going to be long term. What he's creating...
STEPHANOPOULOS: So a job doesn't count if it's a government job? [..]
STEELE: ... That is a contract. It ends at a certain point, George. You know that. These road projects that we're talking about have an end point. "
Got that, see, if it's a contract, then it's not a job. It's work. And it's not what the American people need.
Man, it's going to be real fun on Monday when I go into work and tell my boss we don't have jobs because we do shit with contracts. You know, our contracts end when we fullfill them, and well, that's just not a job apparently.
Please, when will we stop listening to the morons in the Republican party when they open their mouths to talk about economics.
- utopian0
In "The Dark Side," FRONTLINE tells the story of the vice president's role as the chief architect of the war on terror, and his battle with Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet for control of the "dark side." Drawing on more than 40 interviews and thousands of documents, the film provides a step-by-step examination of what happened inside the councils of war.
This should just about sum up the Bush & Cheney Admistration
CHENEY, DARK SIDE PART 01
CHENEY, DARK SIDE PART 02
CHENEY, DARK SIDE PART 03
CHENEY, DARK SIDE PART 04
CHENEY, DARK SIDE PART 05
CHENEY, DARK SIDE PART 06
CHENEY, DARK SIDE PART 07
CHENEY, DARK SIDE PART 08
CHENEY, DARK SIDE PART 09
God Bless America!
- robotron3k0
as of today the numbers under google search results:
54,900,000 for (word) recession
94,200,000 for (word) depressionand
4,370,000 for (word) bankers bailout
1,980,000 for (word) bankers rescuethe general public seems to thinks we are in a depression and are bailing out bankers, I can only presume...
- GeorgesII0
lol its true and sad
- CALLES0
Bad economy forcing immigrants to reconsider U.S.
- lowimpakt0
I wonder if those fuck head border vigilantes will now block people leaving so they can keep having their fat asses served fast food, car washed etc.
- DrBombay0
There is $800 to $900 trillion in credit out there with nothing backing it up, worldwide. I had to look it up and didn't really believe it at first but the thing that comes after trillion is quadrillion.
- I think it is time to reboot.DrBombay
- bank holiday!TheBlueOne
- ukit0
Senate passes Stimulus bill, 61-37
- PonyBoy0
you fuckers figure out why I can't find a job yet?
- and by 'fucker'... i mean dobs & tommy and blue and low and ukit and calles... george.. robo etcPonyBoy
- yeah, the money, they eated it.TheBlueOne
- Because your hygiene isn't up to par.tommyo
- ********0
- BattleAxe0
a fun read
