The other shoe

So now we know that the target was not only terrorism.  It may have started that way in the minds of some., but that NSA data is finding it's way into other hands.

The DEA and the IRS are getting this stuff.  Does anyone care to wager that this is not the last recipient that we will find out about.

To paint a broad brush that everyone is a potential terrorist, and therefore all of their electronic communications are fair game, but only for 'national security' of course, was already a stretch.  But of course it was never going to stop there.

And of course it will not stop with the DEA and the IRS either.  We are all suspects now, and for the moment it is about whether or not we may be committing a crime.  The more people get there hand on this information, it will be used for more and different purposes.

Just the way San Diego Mayor Bob Filner used information he gained as a member of congress to target women who had been victims of sexual harassment and rape, to help select his own targets, so you will find others with access to the NSA data using it for their own purposes.

Got any secrets?  Not anymore!
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Who stood up for you, who stood up for the corporations

There has been a lot written about the Monsanto Protection Act, that was slipped into Farm Bill in a house committee before passage.  If you don't know much about it, you can read about it here, here, and here.  Opposition has appeared from both the left and the right on this one, but that has not stopped Republicans from lining up to support it.

When Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) introduced an amendment to strip that from the bill in the Senate, it was blocked by Ayotte (R-NH), Burr (R-NC), Coburn (R-OK), Crapo (R-ID), Cruz (R-TX), Enzi (R-WY), Fischer (R-NE), Graham (R-SC), Grassley (R-IA), Heller (R-NV), Inhofe (R-OK), Johnson (R-WI), Kirk (R-IL), Lee (R-UT), McCain (R-AZ), Paul (R-KY), Portman (R-OH), Risch (R-ID), Roberts (R-KS), Rubio (R-FL), Scott (R-SC), Tester (D-MT), Toomey (R-PA), Vitter (R-LA), Flake (R-AZ),and Moran (R-KS).  Yes, there was one Democrat on the list too.

There was another attempt to amend the bill, one that would have allowed individual states to have GMO labeling requirements.  This amendment (refer to SEC. 12213 on this page) would protect states from being sued for enacting DMO labeling laws.  The amendment was resoundingly defeated, and the opposition included a number of surprising names.

Voting against were Alexander (R-TN), Ayotte (R-NH), Baldwin (D-WI), Barrasso (R-WY), Baucus (D-MT), Blunt (R-MO), Boozman (R-AR), Brown (D-OH), Burr (R-NC), Carper (D-DE), Casey (D-PA), Chambliss (R-GA), Coats (R-IN), Coburn (R-OK), Cochran (R-MS), Collins (R-ME), Coons (D-DE), Corker (R-TN), Cornyn (R-TX), Cowan (D-MA), Crapo (R-ID), Cruz (R-TX), Donnelly (D-IN), Durbin (D-IL), Enzi (R-WY), Fischer (R-NE), Franken (D-MN), Gillibrand (D-NY), Graham (R-SC), Grassley (R-IA), Hagan (D-NC), Harkin (D-IA), Hatch (R-UT), Heitkamp (D-ND), Heller (R-NV), Hoeven (R-ND), Inhofe (R-OK), Isakson (R-GA), Johanns (R-NE), Johnson (D-SD), Johnson (R-WI), Kaine (D-VA), Kirk (R-IL), Klobuchar (D-MN), Landrieu (D-LA), Lee (R-UT), Levin (D-MI), McCain (R-AZ), McCaskill (D-MO), McConnell (R-KY), Menendez (D-NJ), Moran (R-KS), Nelson (D-FL), Paul (R-KY), Portman (R-OH), Pryor (D-AR), Risch (R-ID), Roberts (R-KS), Rubio (R-FL), Scott (R-SC), Sessions (R-AL), Shaheen (D-NH), Shelby (R-AL), Stabenow (D-MI), Thune (R-SD), Toomey (R-PA), Udall (D-CO), Vitter (R-LA), Warner (D-VA), Warren (D-MA), Wicker (R-MS).

Now the bill has not yet cleared the Senate, it will be taken up again after the June recess.  You know who they are now, time to hold their feet to the fire.
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They will say: If only there were some way he could have gotten help

The events in Newton Connecticut are of course only the latest in a series of insane attacks by an unbalanced men with guns.  When someone speaks of gun control we are told not to politicize this tragedy, as though a preemptive attack on ways to minimize future mass murders was not politicizing it already.

And you hear another refrain, this one coming from both the left and the right.  If only he could have gotten treatment, if he could have been helped, perhaps it would never have come to this.  It is especially hypocritical when it comes from the right wing.

Because if there was a program, say, mental health screening as routinely as children are vaccinated, and treatment for those that needed it.  If we had all that in place. the right wing would be anxiously dismantling it as quickly as they could.

Mental health screening?  Social engineering they would call it.  A treatment program?  Well that would be an entitlement that needs to be done away with.  Why do I think that?  Because we used to have a lot of that in this country.

California had a state hospital system.  Schools had psychologists.  But in the right wing point of view, all that stuff is unnecessary coddling.

Of course they will have excuses, we can't afford it, it is not the job of the government, but of course it is exactly why we have a government.  Because collectively we can do things that we cannot do individually.

So, to the Karl Roves of the world, you own this one.  This is what you get when you combine unregulated gun access with no real mental health policy.  Not that he cares, but you should.

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Bend over and crack a smile

Imagine you are driving along and you come to a traffic light.  It is green so you don't slow down.  As you cross the intersection you are struck from the side, your car rolls over several times, and you awaken in a hospital.

The next few months are spent in a painful recovery.  As you are unable to work, the bills pile up.  Your insurance company files suit against the insurance company of the other driver, and they settle on an amount that, while not making you whole, will at least pay off a lot of your medical bills.  Then you receive a letter from your insurer, telling you that they are going to keep all the money and you are left to fend for yourself.

That stinks, right?  OK, here is another story, and this one is true.

The banking industry discovers that if you write crappy loans, that are likely to default. you can sell them to some sucker if you package them with a bunch of other crappy loans as mortgage backed securities.  You might even make some additional profit by servicing the loan for the sucker you sold them to.

So your CEO gets a huge bonus, and because anyone and his brother can get a loan now, the price of real estate goes crazy.  Buying a home becomes more and more expensive.

Now you have a decent job, perhaps some savings for a down payment, and you go shopping for a house.  The prices are absurdly high, but that is just what they cost.  You take some comfort in the fact that with your purchase, you are building some equity, and you can recoup that when you sell.

Of course the house of cards that the banks have constructed eventually comes tumbling down, and then suddenly the house you have been making payments on every month for five, six, or seven years is worth dramatically less than you owe on it.

If you were to lose your job,  you cannot go somewhere else to look for a job because you cannot sell your house.  If you are ready to retire, you have no equity to pull out.  Need to move to a smaller, cheaper place now that the kids are grown?  Forget it.  Even if you walk away from that mortgage, your credit is trashed and you won't be able to buy another house for years.  Some landlords will not even rent to you.

Ever the federal government and the states.  They reach a settlement with the banks.  Now the amount of the settlement reached is a tiny percentage of the amount of equity that was wiped out as the result of the banks gaming the system.  But at least you may get some small amount of relief.

Until the state decides that they are going to keep your share of the money, the money that was supposed to provide you with some sort of relief.  That is what many states, including my own state of California intend to do.

So bend over and crack a smile.  You are about to get fucked in the ass...again.

Peanuts

That is the word that comes to mind whenever I think about the proposed settlement with the banksters. 

The housing bubble was essentially their creation.  They made money creating it, and when the bubble burst, we paid to bail them out.

So they were made whole again.

How much equity was lost by how many people?  Twenty-five billion dollars is a drop in the bucket.  It does not come close to repairing the damage done to the financial position of millions of Americans.  So the banks got their money back, and they got a lot of the properties back too, in foreclosures, many of them illegal.  They rest of us?  Chump change.

If the price of food goes up, you have to pay it.  If the price of gas goes up, you have to pay it.  How is it different if the price of a home goes up?  If you do not pay it by buying a home, you pay it in rent, either way, you pay it.  And in this case, the price of homes went up because they gamed the market.  And if you do not think lending money to buy a house to virtually anyone who wanted one drives up the price of homes, then I would like to talk to you about a great opportunity in investment property.

So the bankers got theirs.  Until the homeowners of America are made whole, this isn't over.  Not even close.

The same rules?

Perhaps someone can explain this to me.

We on the left, would like to limit the influence of corporations and their money, on electoral politics.  Defining a corporation as a person, with all the rights under the constitution afforded a person just seems absurd.  So the struggle goes on to try and rein them in.

Those on the right, would like to limit the influence of unions and their money on electoral politics.  They would be aghast if a union were treated as a person.

How are these two entities different?  Both are composed of people who are the ownership/membership.  Both have a hierarchy that is elected by the ownership/membership to make the day to day decision of operation as well as decisions about political contributions and lobbying.

So why are unions held to a higher standard?
There is never any talk about limiting political activity of a corporation based upon the preferences of an individual shareholder.  And yet the right would say that a union member should be able to object to political contributions made from his or her dues.
When shareholders vote on electing members of the board, or any other business presented to the shareholders for a vote, shares not voting are never characterized as 'no' votes.
Having union dues withheld from your paycheck is no different from having your 401K investment withheld from your paycheck.  Neither is to the benefit of the employer, they are for the benefit of the employee, and yet one is attacked while the other is not.

So here is my suggestion.  In all legislation where there is an attempt to muzzle the unions, the progressives should be fighting tooth and nail to insert 'and corporations' into the text.  Will they fail?  Sure they will.  But at least they will be highlighting the hypocrisy of the right.

Whether or not you can win is not what defines if a fight is worthwhile.  The right relies upon the public not understanding what they are really about.  So every opportunity must be taken to show them for their true colors.

If the mantra were true

Over and over you here the right saying you don't raise taxes during a recession.  And on the surface, it even sounds like it might make sense.  After all, the last thing you want to do in the middle of a recession is to take money out of circulation, have people spending less.

Most of your basic necessities, you know, food, clothing, utilities, gas, those are all spent locally.  Even if most of the manufactured items were made elsewhere by slave labor, at least someone in the country is making a buck on it.

The people who's taxes they don't want to raise are the one's who are not going to spend it anyway. All of their basic needs are already covered, and most of their luxury desires are too.  They already have the boat.  And if they do spend it will not be on stuff that is going to have any impact on the US economy.

Because when you get beyond that stuff, well hiring another illegal alien to clean your toilets does not do all that much for our economy.  Nor does investing in more slave labor factories in countries with no worker protections, no safety standards, no child labor laws do much to pull us out of this.

Now contrast with their other big passion, cutting government spending.  What do you think happens when you cut government spending?  You take money away from people who are going to spend essentially all of it here in this country.  Every dollar you cut ripples through the economy many times.  So that completely belies the argument that they are doing this for the economy.

Of course there are exceptions, we could stop paying mercenaries in Afghanistan, the gold-plated benefits our elected representatives grant themselves could be cut back to something comparable to what the rest of us have to live with.  But that is not what they want to cut. They would cut meat inspectors and the FDA and other agencies whose responsibility is protecting you and your interests.

It really does come down to this.  The Republican party, and many Blue Dog Democrats, work for their corporate masters and only their corporate masters.  And they do not need the US economy to make money.  They don't need you.

A small jab at hypocrisy

I am sure it came as no surprise when it was revealed that Teahaddist darling and stimulus critic Michele Bachmann sent a letter to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack thanking him for the use of stimulus money to help support the Minnesota pork industry, and encouraging him to spend more.  After all, who doesn't expect hypocrisy from a politician?

Now it is my understanding, that in many cases, exactly where money will be spent is not in the legislation itself, there is considerable flexibility by the federal agencies that are disbursing the money.  So how about this?

If you as a congressman voted against it, then none of the money goes to your district.  If both of the state's senators voted against it, skip that state.   You want to take credit for bringing home the bacon, then actually help bring it home.  Time to play a little hardball.

A modest proposal

As I was driving in to work this morning, one of the radio shows I listen to was talking about a caller who had said that $250,000 a year is not really all that much.  This from the same people that say a teacher making $50,000 is greedy and overpaid.  It is time for a small dose of reality, and I think I know how it can be accomplished.

• Members of congress and the senate would no longer be paid by the federal government, but by the states they represent.
• The salaries of U.S. Representatives would be fixed at the median income for a K-12 public school teacher in their home state.  Their benefit packages would also be the same.
• The salaries of U.S. Senators would be fixed at the median income for public high school principals in their home state.  They too would recieve the same benefit packages.
• There would be no federal retirement for members of congress or the senate, rather they would participate in the same plan as the teachers in their home state.
• In recognition of the cost of maintaining two residences, the elected representatives would qualify for Section 8 housing in our nation's capital.

OK, it will never happen.  Because if it did, then our elected representatives would have to find someone else to demonize other than teachers and the working poor.

Another take on "freedom isn't free"

You hear that a lot, "Freedom isn't free".  That is the excuse you hear all the time for letting the government listen in on your phone calls, torture suspects, and arrest and threaten people without a warrant, and lie to you every day.

But that is not what I think about when I hear that.  When I hear that phrase, a completely different thought comes into my mind.

Freedom is not for the timid.  By that I do not mean that a timid individual has no place in a free society, but that society as a whole cannot be timid.  Freedom is dangerous.  In a free society, bad people will do bad things, and it is the responsibility of society to punish them for those bad things.  But until they have actually done something bad, they are just free people in a free society.

But what about....there are a whole lot of those.  And the answer is the same.  You want to be free, you have to give that freedom to everyone else.  And that means big brother is not constantly stepping in to prevent someone from hurting you.

Does that mean they government cannot tap the phones of organized crime or suspected terrorists?  Of course not.  But it does mean they have to stand up in front of a judge and lay out a real reason why they should be allowed to.

Would we miss some threats, if the government could not be constantly mining all of your cell phone calls and emails for key words and patterns?  Probably yes, although not as many as the government would like you to believe.  But you know what?  That is the price of freedom.  That is what freedom not being free really means.

There really are only two choices.  A free society, or a police state.  Yeah, you can put a pretty face on a police state, make most people feel like they are mostly free, but it is all a facade.  You are free or you are not.  And it takes courage to be free.  The politicians who write things like the Patriot Act are counting on you been too much of a coward to object.

Nuclear Power and the free market

There has been a lot of talk about our need to be getting more of our electricity from nuclear power, and of course a lot of people raising concerns in view of what has been happening in Japan.  But for all you free market get the government off our back types, there is one more tiny little gotcha.

A lot of the free market types (except for the tiny percentage that is ultra rich, who are living off your back, and your tax dollars) believe in self reliance.  That means taking responsibility for your actions, and the consequences of those actions.  Sometimes you take risks and you lose, and you suffer those losses.  This is essentially the way the rapidly diminishing middle class lives today.

But when you are talking about nuclear power, there is a different set of rules.  The Price-Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act limits the liability of the operators and builders of these power plants.  And the government offers loan guarantees for the construction of new ones.  These were part of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, and there has been a proposal by the Obama administration to expand them significantly.

So I pose these questions.

• If they are really safe, and it is the intent of the operators to operate them in a safe manner, then why can they not purchase private insurance.  Why are they unwilling to accept the consequences of their own actions?  
• If the consequences of their actions are limited by law, what is their incentive to not cut corners?  After all, if they screw up, you pay for it, not them
• If nuclear power plants are such a good bet, why cannot the money be found on the private market?

So all of you rugged individualist types, how does the idea of subsidizing a power plant on the other side of the county with your tax dollars sound to you? 

Blood on who's hands?

I keep hearing that Wikileaks has 'blood on their hands'.  So let me get this straight. 

Dick Cheney outs one of our CIA agents, essentially passing a death sentence on any of the contacts she had been working with. Bush and company lie us into a war that costs Irag the lives of about a hundred thousand civilians, as well as costing the US the lives of a couple thousand soldiers, strengthens our biggest rival in the region (Iran), drives thousands of Muslims into the hands of the jihadist radicals, oh and bankrupts our country in the process, and it is Wikileaks that has blood on it's hands?

Access to information is what allows us to to see past the propaganda.  That is the job of news organizations around the world.  If a news organization is not pissing off governments and politicians, then it has become a just another propaganda machine itself.

Wikileaks is a news organization.  They did what they are supposed to do, which is publish the truth.  And the only people that are bothered by the truth being published, are those who count on lies to convince people to follow them.

What did you think it was for?

You are constantly hearing the right talking about limiting government, as though everything would be fine if only the government would just stop getting in the way of business.  So let's just look at some of those crippling regulations that business and the right fought so bitterly against.

As you walk through the supermarket, throwing  items into the shopping cart, your are checking the labels.  Your child is allergic to nuts, and you know that selecting the wrong product could be the difference between life and death.  Did you think that listing the ingredients on the labels was something the manufacturers did out of the goodness of their hearts?  They do that because the law requires it. The Fair Packaging and Labeling Act of 1966 established labeling standards that were bitterly fought by industry.

Do you work an 8 hour day?  Do you expect to be paid overtime when you work more than 8 hours a day?  Although 8 hour work days had been won in pockets throughout the country over the years, through strikes dating back to 1835, it was not until the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 was enacted that the federal government got into the business of enforcing standards and working conditions.  That established a 44 hour work week for a considerable portion of the nation, a minimum wage, time and a half for overtime, and outlawed "oppressive child labor".

When you have a cold, a fever, an ache, you can reach into your medicine cabinet and find a number of non-prescription drugs to treat the symptoms.  And you can do so knowing that none of those medicines contain poison or heroin or cocaine.  That all began with the Biologic's Control Act (1902) and The Pure Food and Drug Act (1906),  These two pieces of legislation were the foundation upon which the Food and Drug Administration was eventually built.  It is because of the FDA that pharmaceutical companies actually have to prove that a new drug works, that it does not do more harm than good, and that they have to tell you when the potential side effect are.

It is cheaper to sell contaminated food and medicinal products than it is to maintain a safe and clean facility, and to monitor for contaminants.  It is cheaper to dump your toxic waste where it will contaminate the drinking water of the surrounding community, than it is to properly dispose of it.  And if a small group of manufacturers do that, then others must do the same to compete.

Who's job did you think it was to enforce that the bottle that says 'Asprin' on it contains aspirin?  Would you rather go back to the days when you might work in a factory where the air was filled with asbestos?  If you get sick, and cannot work for a week, do you still want a job when you get back?  Did you think the only purpose of the government was to invade relatively weak countries so that US companies could do things there that would be illegal here?

The purpose of our government is to protect us from those more powerful, those we cannot fight on our own.  That includes, of course, foreign governments, that's why we have a military, but also from companies that would control our lives the way mining companies that ran 'company towns' in the 1800's did.