Thursday, November 8, 2018
A Modest Proposal
The main reasons schools are targeted is it is assumed that you won’t meet armed resistance there, there is a multitude of targets there, the people that a troubled young person is most likely to have a grudge with are there, and the press coverage will be assured.
Here is a solution set;
1. Relocate police precincts and Sheriff’s offices in schools so they share the same building. Redistribute all existing law enforcement. Police should work out of the school buildings exclusively. Kids will grow up with them there everyday.
2. Hire and train additional veterans as sworn law enforcement officers to cover all schools in the district.
3. Cover all school zones and crosswalks to schools with the assigned law enforcement officer every morning and every afternoon. There is no more important place to be everyday.
4. Change policies and practices so that police only respond to calls, they no longer patrol on a regular basis. There is no data showing that patrolling reduces crime at all.
5. Pass a nationwide bill that makes it illegal to publish the name of a person suspected of a school shooting, or any terrorist act, or the details of the attack. This removes the incentive.
6. Implement programs and culture in schools to reward bravery, courage, and self-sacrifice to those who stand up for the less fortunate and protect those being bullied. It needs to be the culture that when students see someone being picked on, THEY step in, several students. They don’t go to an adult, and schools need to encourage and reward this.
7. The entire mental health care system needs to be nationalized and free to everyone. Every facet of it; from medication, to therapies, inpatient care, and life-long care.
The reason entertainment venues are chosen is for similar reasons; the shooter is least likely to meet resistance because these facilities screen for weapons at the door, there is a large number of targets in a small space, and press coverage is extremely likely. Like the school shooting problem, the solution is multi-faceted and required several things done simultaneously.
In addition to all the measures above for schools, here also is a solution set:
1. Allow concealed carriers with valid permits and ID to enter with firearm.
2. Require professional security for certain size venues. Armed and trained. Not on duty for any other reasons; i.e. bouncing drunks etc.
3. The random nature of these events, and inability to total secure this type of venue leads to best defense is a good offense. The type of measures and the venues need to be offensive in nature ensuring that it is no longer a soft target.
4. The best measure against active shooters is actively hunting them in society before they commit. This means training all people who may come in contact with them on a regular basis in identifying their behaviors and how to stop them early. Mental health intervention early and with complete resources and powers is a must.
How Money Works; You might want a cup of coffee and a smoke before you start reading this...
How Money Works
Here is quick economic primer for many of you for whom the working of our Federal system seems to be a mystery. I keep hearing people say, "But what about our deficit?", or "We can't afford to keep borrowing money to run the government." When I hear these type of statements, it indicates to me the speaker does not understand how our treasury system works. Work through this slowly and carefully. Think long and hard about the parts you don't understand, or don't agree with. This isn't opinion, it's cold hard fact, and basic macro economics. We have known, and proven, these concepts over time and have used them successfully since the inception of the Federal Reserve System.
First of all, resources like water, minerals, food, labor, wood, and animals are of course finite. However, money is only a marker, or replacement for these resources and is infinite (not really, but for the purposes of any individual it is infinite). So, when you have resources, but it doesn't make sense to move them to where they are needed, or you don't need them now, you trade them for money, and then buy them later when and where you need them. The treasury of the federal government has the power to print more money at any time.
Here is quick economic primer for many of you for whom the working of our Federal system seems to be a mystery. I keep hearing people say, "But what about our deficit?", or "We can't afford to keep borrowing money to run the government." When I hear these type of statements, it indicates to me the speaker does not understand how our treasury system works. Work through this slowly and carefully. Think long and hard about the parts you don't understand, or don't agree with. This isn't opinion, it's cold hard fact, and basic macro economics. We have known, and proven, these concepts over time and have used them successfully since the inception of the Federal Reserve System.
First of all, resources like water, minerals, food, labor, wood, and animals are of course finite. However, money is only a marker, or replacement for these resources and is infinite (not really, but for the purposes of any individual it is infinite). So, when you have resources, but it doesn't make sense to move them to where they are needed, or you don't need them now, you trade them for money, and then buy them later when and where you need them. The treasury of the federal government has the power to print more money at any time.
So, when you have potatoes, but need something else, you trade the
potatoes for money and then trade the money for what you need. People
who had those things you needed traded money for them at some other time
in some other place, etc.
Now, if more money is needed, the treasury has methods of determining when and where and printing more money to meet this need. They have long ago established mechanisms to put the money into circulation, and remove money when necessary. It works very well, and has been proven over time.
One of these methods is a recursive technique called "Quantitative Easing", by which the treasury buys back bonds it had previously issued in the form of a loan. These accumulated bonds are our "National Debt". We have about $16 Trillion of these bonds issued on average.
However, since November of 2008 the treasury has conducted three rounds of "Quantitative Easing", totaling about $5.1 trillion. Basically, they have printed $5.1 trillion dollars and removed this from the debt by buying these bonds back from bond holders who were holding this debt, primarily US banks. They are scheduled to conduct several more rounds through 2014 perhaps reducing the debt by another $3.4 trillion. Basically, they can keep this up indefinitely, selling bonds and many years later buying them back with interest.
So, here is the kicker; there is no "National Debt". Quit your whining please. It is just a tool to move money around when and where it is needed. We could effectively reduce it to zero if we wanted, it would just take this other tool away from the treasury. We need this volume of money and loans in float around the world to buy the things we need and control the parts of the world economy we need to control.
Now, if more money is needed, the treasury has methods of determining when and where and printing more money to meet this need. They have long ago established mechanisms to put the money into circulation, and remove money when necessary. It works very well, and has been proven over time.
One of these methods is a recursive technique called "Quantitative Easing", by which the treasury buys back bonds it had previously issued in the form of a loan. These accumulated bonds are our "National Debt". We have about $16 Trillion of these bonds issued on average.
However, since November of 2008 the treasury has conducted three rounds of "Quantitative Easing", totaling about $5.1 trillion. Basically, they have printed $5.1 trillion dollars and removed this from the debt by buying these bonds back from bond holders who were holding this debt, primarily US banks. They are scheduled to conduct several more rounds through 2014 perhaps reducing the debt by another $3.4 trillion. Basically, they can keep this up indefinitely, selling bonds and many years later buying them back with interest.
So, here is the kicker; there is no "National Debt". Quit your whining please. It is just a tool to move money around when and where it is needed. We could effectively reduce it to zero if we wanted, it would just take this other tool away from the treasury. We need this volume of money and loans in float around the world to buy the things we need and control the parts of the world economy we need to control.
Wednesday, November 7, 2018
The Parable of the Pecan Tree
The Parable of the Pecan Tree
You have worked hard. You have a few dollars in a bank account for a rainy day. One day, your next door neighbor sees you in the yard and beckons you over. He explains to you that he is thinking of planting a pecan tree on his property between your two homes. He says that the tree will provide delicious nuts in the fall and good shade in the summer.
Your
neighbor says, however, that he is a few dollars short of enough money
to buy a small tree from the nursery, but was wondering if you would
like to invest a bit of your savings in the tree, and thereby share in
it’s benefits in the future. (Common Shares) This sounds like a small
price to pay for some pecans, which you love, and shade in the future,
so you agree.
After several years the neighbor explains that he would like to fertilize and water the tree more and wonders if you would like to invest a few more dollars in a minor share of that work. He explains that the tree will grow much larger, and faster, and provide a nice shady spot for you both to put your chairs in your old age (401k, IRAs, etc.).
Later, your neighbor explains that he is loaning out a portion of the pecans to several people who bake in the neighborhood, and in return they will bring back some delicious pecan pies as payment. He goes on to ask if you would like to invest some of your share of the pecans in this endeavor (Mortgages).
In a few years, the much larger tree yields so many pecans that the neighbor is getting many more pies from the bakers than he can eat, so he gathers up these extra pies and sells these at the farmers market (Mortgage Bundles, and Mortgage Backed Securities). He doesn’t ask you to share in this scheme. But, he asks your daughter to work at his stall at the farmers market, so you don’t complain. She uses the money; along with some she borrows from your neighbor at a high interest rate, to go to school at night to finish college. The college your daughter is going to realizes that she can borrow all the money she asks for, so the college raises the tuition by astronomical amounts each year (Student Loan Programs).
That next fall, after he fertilizes the soil and the leaves fall around the tree, the neighbor’s dog is sniffing and digging at the base of the tree. The neighbor pulls his dog’s nose out of the hole and notices strange black lumps in the shallow dirt under the leaves. He pulls them out of the ground and looks them up on Google; they are black truffles! (Derivatives and Securities) He learns they are worth a fortune. He takes these to the farmers market and has your daughter sell them for a lot of money. Chefs are clamoring for more! He tells the chefs to leave a deposit and they can have first claim on the next truffles he digs up next fall (Mortgage Insurance, Reinsurance, REITs).
The next fall, as he is digging around the base of the tree for black truffles, he notices a curious white lump occasionally. He takes this to the farmers market and the white truffles sell for even more money! (Collateralized Debt Obligations, Credit Default Swaps, and other exotic securities) He rushes home and greedily digs all around the base of the tree, digs along all the roots, and even rents an excavator to explore every last inch of the soil. (Adjustable Rate Mortgages, Low-Doc Mortgages, Second Mortgages, Sub-Prime).
That very night it rains. With the roots of the tree unable to find a purchase in the wet, loose soil, the tree comes crashing down on both of your houses!
Your neighbor comes to your door and explains that he is truly sorry, but he owes a lot of money to these chefs. Also, he must rebuild his house and replant the tree. You decide that this relationship was good for so many years that you agree to bail him out. (TARP) Heck, you are such a good person; you aren’t even going to charge interest! (Quantitative Easing) You are later surprised to find out the bill for fixing his house is about 100 times yours. He explains that with all that extra truffle and pie money, which he didn’t share with you, he had put many luxury items in his house and had renovated the whole place. He had millions (Trillions) of dollars of stuff that you didn’t really pay attention to over the years.
This news bothers you a bit, but you are so far in now you feel like you don’t have a choice. So, when he comes over later for more money to replant the tree and clean up the old mess, you give it. (Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008)
The following fall he says he needs a bit more money at zero interest and more time because the new tree is small and hasn’t grown any pecans yet. He also informs you that he is going to have to lay off your daughter, who has worked for him at his stall in the farmers market, and can’t provide you any pecans going forward. (Quantitative Easing II, Recession and Unemployment)
Your daughter eventually finds a job that pays far less than she needs to pay off her school loan to your neighbor, but it is all that is available. Your savings are completely depleted. You have had to borrow some money at a high interest rate from another neighbor to finish repairs on your house because you had to help your daughter out with her bills. But, you figure when things get back to normal you can pay this loan off and your daughter can contribute (2009, 2010 Recession).
The next fall, your neighbor pays you back the money he borrowed to rebuild his house and replant the new tree, without interest. You use this to pay back the loan you took to repair your house. Your neighbor also gives you the $2 you loaned him in the beginning for the purchase of the first tree. He explains that the money you both put in to fertilize and water the old tree is a total loss, which you will both share. He says that he is free and clear and doesn’t need your help anymore (Q1.Q2 2011).
However, he cheerfully tells you that he is getting a new large screen TV for himself with the money he has made from your daughter’s loan payments. He explains that thanks to your interest free bailout, he didn’t have to dip into his retirement money or sell any of his vast fortune. He also says that as a bonus for making it through these hard times he is treating himself to a vacation to Europe (Q3 2011 Reports). Then he asks why your under-employed daughters, and her unemployed baker friends, are protesting in his front lawn (Occupy Wall Street)?
After several years the neighbor explains that he would like to fertilize and water the tree more and wonders if you would like to invest a few more dollars in a minor share of that work. He explains that the tree will grow much larger, and faster, and provide a nice shady spot for you both to put your chairs in your old age (401k, IRAs, etc.).
Later, your neighbor explains that he is loaning out a portion of the pecans to several people who bake in the neighborhood, and in return they will bring back some delicious pecan pies as payment. He goes on to ask if you would like to invest some of your share of the pecans in this endeavor (Mortgages).
In a few years, the much larger tree yields so many pecans that the neighbor is getting many more pies from the bakers than he can eat, so he gathers up these extra pies and sells these at the farmers market (Mortgage Bundles, and Mortgage Backed Securities). He doesn’t ask you to share in this scheme. But, he asks your daughter to work at his stall at the farmers market, so you don’t complain. She uses the money; along with some she borrows from your neighbor at a high interest rate, to go to school at night to finish college. The college your daughter is going to realizes that she can borrow all the money she asks for, so the college raises the tuition by astronomical amounts each year (Student Loan Programs).
That next fall, after he fertilizes the soil and the leaves fall around the tree, the neighbor’s dog is sniffing and digging at the base of the tree. The neighbor pulls his dog’s nose out of the hole and notices strange black lumps in the shallow dirt under the leaves. He pulls them out of the ground and looks them up on Google; they are black truffles! (Derivatives and Securities) He learns they are worth a fortune. He takes these to the farmers market and has your daughter sell them for a lot of money. Chefs are clamoring for more! He tells the chefs to leave a deposit and they can have first claim on the next truffles he digs up next fall (Mortgage Insurance, Reinsurance, REITs).
The next fall, as he is digging around the base of the tree for black truffles, he notices a curious white lump occasionally. He takes this to the farmers market and the white truffles sell for even more money! (Collateralized Debt Obligations, Credit Default Swaps, and other exotic securities) He rushes home and greedily digs all around the base of the tree, digs along all the roots, and even rents an excavator to explore every last inch of the soil. (Adjustable Rate Mortgages, Low-Doc Mortgages, Second Mortgages, Sub-Prime).
That very night it rains. With the roots of the tree unable to find a purchase in the wet, loose soil, the tree comes crashing down on both of your houses!
Your neighbor comes to your door and explains that he is truly sorry, but he owes a lot of money to these chefs. Also, he must rebuild his house and replant the tree. You decide that this relationship was good for so many years that you agree to bail him out. (TARP) Heck, you are such a good person; you aren’t even going to charge interest! (Quantitative Easing) You are later surprised to find out the bill for fixing his house is about 100 times yours. He explains that with all that extra truffle and pie money, which he didn’t share with you, he had put many luxury items in his house and had renovated the whole place. He had millions (Trillions) of dollars of stuff that you didn’t really pay attention to over the years.
This news bothers you a bit, but you are so far in now you feel like you don’t have a choice. So, when he comes over later for more money to replant the tree and clean up the old mess, you give it. (Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008)
The following fall he says he needs a bit more money at zero interest and more time because the new tree is small and hasn’t grown any pecans yet. He also informs you that he is going to have to lay off your daughter, who has worked for him at his stall in the farmers market, and can’t provide you any pecans going forward. (Quantitative Easing II, Recession and Unemployment)
Your daughter eventually finds a job that pays far less than she needs to pay off her school loan to your neighbor, but it is all that is available. Your savings are completely depleted. You have had to borrow some money at a high interest rate from another neighbor to finish repairs on your house because you had to help your daughter out with her bills. But, you figure when things get back to normal you can pay this loan off and your daughter can contribute (2009, 2010 Recession).
The next fall, your neighbor pays you back the money he borrowed to rebuild his house and replant the new tree, without interest. You use this to pay back the loan you took to repair your house. Your neighbor also gives you the $2 you loaned him in the beginning for the purchase of the first tree. He explains that the money you both put in to fertilize and water the old tree is a total loss, which you will both share. He says that he is free and clear and doesn’t need your help anymore (Q1.Q2 2011).
However, he cheerfully tells you that he is getting a new large screen TV for himself with the money he has made from your daughter’s loan payments. He explains that thanks to your interest free bailout, he didn’t have to dip into his retirement money or sell any of his vast fortune. He also says that as a bonus for making it through these hard times he is treating himself to a vacation to Europe (Q3 2011 Reports). Then he asks why your under-employed daughters, and her unemployed baker friends, are protesting in his front lawn (Occupy Wall Street)?
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Michael Moore On Larry King about Auto Industry Bailout
As I read a story on CNN.com about a Larry King interview with Michael Moore regarding the impending auto industry bailout, I was over-wrought with ambivalence. Moore's basic premise; that the auto industry is in the mess it is in because it did not listen to consumers and employees, is substantially correct. However, arguments Moore gives to support this premise are flawed, and the conclusions Moore draws are profoundly wrong.
The Economic Recovery of 2011
I recently received this link and was asked to comment on the op-ed posted. I read the article, and I ruminated for some time... and the thoughts came... like molten magma through a deep fissure in the earth's crust, they burst forth in red-hot fury. But, I digress. Let me take you back, way back to a time before most of us lost our sense.
The time was 1933. The country was at the depths of the Great Depression. No one argued the need to get the people, and the economy back on it's feet anymore. Everyone was effected in one way or the other. Some lost great fortunes; some made great fortunes. Some just lost grip of the tenuous hold on life that they had. People were actually starving in the middle of New York City and Chicago. From this time of terrible suffering, we learned many lessons. However, most of them are long forgotten.
One of the lessons that was burned into the memory of those unfortunate enough to live through this time is that: we can make it through the most difficult times if we work together and care for each other personally. Another great lesson was: at a certain point it doesn't matter how a person got to where they are; they are there now. We now have the duty to help them.
The time was 1933. The country was at the depths of the Great Depression. No one argued the need to get the people, and the economy back on it's feet anymore. Everyone was effected in one way or the other. Some lost great fortunes; some made great fortunes. Some just lost grip of the tenuous hold on life that they had. People were actually starving in the middle of New York City and Chicago. From this time of terrible suffering, we learned many lessons. However, most of them are long forgotten.
One of the lessons that was burned into the memory of those unfortunate enough to live through this time is that: we can make it through the most difficult times if we work together and care for each other personally. Another great lesson was: at a certain point it doesn't matter how a person got to where they are; they are there now. We now have the duty to help them.
Tom Daschle?
When I heard the name of Obama’s pick to lead his (our) healthcare initiative as the Secretary of Health and Human Services, my heart fell. An irrational wave of anger swept over me, as the depth of his betrayal became clear. Obama was obviously as much in the pocket of industry special interests as any previous politician. As the first burst of anger slowly ebbed away, in its place, like loose grains off sand carried up by the tide, was left an aching sense of loss. The jagged pieces of my shattered hope lay scattered about me waiting for me to cut my fingers as I tried to pick them up the morning after the big party.
How could this name be the cause of such profound pain to only a scant few people in America, when the impact will soon reach far and wide? The incredulous choice of the craven and corrupt Tom Daschle begins a sad story of how, once more we have been sold down the river like weary plantation slaves to the wealthy elite who work us in their cotton fields of corporate healthcare until we collapse from financial exhaustion…
It all started back in 1996, when a nation reeling from the drunken euphoria of overturning the corrupt George Herbert Walker Bush regime in an electoral revolution harkening to the Lexington and Concord insurrections of 1776, swept a villainous cacophony of Equity Lords and corporate sycophants from power by electing a poor boy from Arkansas and his brilliant, but slightly unnerving lawyer/wife as our hope for a brave new future.
The world stood breathless as William Jefferson Clinton took the oath of office, while his homely and slightly frigid wife held Lincoln’s Bible in her small hands. Those close to the ceremony where taken aback as they observed that a hoar frost slowly crept over the historic religious tome in her little icy palms, crackling the pages and rich leather binding of the 100 year old Bible, as her husband completed repeating the words of the Chief Justice. Only Hillary knew the evil about to be silently unleashed on the unwitting public, crushing the long-kept hope for real change in healthcare in the United States.
Alas, change did not come. Eight long years of corporate schmoozing by the First Family, unprecedented swilling at the corporate trough by the Clinton Administration courtiers, and continuous “bungling” and obstruction by the First Lady as the head of the Presidents Commission on Healthcare Reform, while the President himself, distracted by rounds of surreptitious fellatio in the Oval Office, hob-knobbed with health industry executives and girded himself in their corporate largesse, yielded the people a great big, sloppy overflowing bucket of nothing in the “healthcare system”. We used quotes on the term “healthcare system”, because it is really more akin to a wild boy raised by wolves and then fed upon by vampires bats and great bloated ticks, as opposed to an actual functioning system built with planning and forethought.
It took eight long years for the people of the nation to realize that nothing was going to be accomplished by the Clinton Administration in healthcare that would actually be of benefit them. After this cloudy realization, like waking up in a stranger’s living room in your underwear after a weekend bender stinking of cheap liquor and cigarettes, did the people’s true despair really set it. The people gave up on the dream and the healthcare corporations, invigorated by their victory over the hopes of the people, surged forth in a renewed orgy of corporate greed and exploitation of the sick and injured. The social and economic carnage was unlike anything seen since ancient times; the sacking of Carthage, the slaughter of the 300 at Thermopile, or razing of Jerusalem by the Crusaders would be useful parallels here, as the hospital corporations took out their pent-up years of frustration on an unsuspecting population of sick and dying customers and tore their entrails out in a violent fit of billing up-coding and other financial pillaging.
Municipal and religious charity hospitals were consumed in the corporate M&A fireball the rolled across the land, scorching the earth with ceaseless destruction, as the people wailed and lamented. But there was no respite from their agony, like mongrel dogs, picking over the corpses on the strewn battlefield in the days and weeks following the great rout, big pharmaceutical companies were given license by Tom Daschle to strip the bones of the fallen by inflating the price of once inexpensive drugs using the ripping and tearing teeth of the new patent laws that allowed them to re-patent old drugs by slightly altering their delivery and removing the older alternatives from the market. As the final wave of locusts, known as insurance companies, picked the last pieces of vegetation from the land in a roiling wave of consumption, the son of the evil Emperor Bush returned with his terrifying warlord Darth Cheney, to sit upon the throne resting on the pile of skulls of the vanquished people. But, I digress, we will return to this story later.
Tom Daschle, as a bright-eyed, fair-haired young senator from South Dakota, first took his seat as a freshman Senator in 1986 on the Senate Finance Committee. In these heady days of non-existent political oversight and “blank check” of the electorate given to the Reagan administration to gut social programs on the promise of later disproven “trickle-down” economics, and the harnessing of the team of the executive and legislative branches of the federal government as the plowing brace of “rented mules” for industry., a dashing young Tom took his comfortable leather seat in the United States Senate, kissed the frozen wastelands of South Dakota goodbye forever, and began cold-calling industry lobbyists as fast as he could to latch on the “corporate teat” like a day old baby kangaroo in the pouch.
In no time at all, young Tom built an impressive record as the “go to man” in the Senate, as member of the Finance Committee and the Nutrition Committee. If your business needed a specific tax exemption or some bothersome regulation was holding back unfettered profit taking by your healthcare conglomerate; Tom was your man.
As the Reagan Administration ground slowly on, regulation was hacked like the carcass of a slaughtered steer by the new Congress, the constitution was bent, and “reinterpreted” to bring a showering of money and favor to billionaire corporate investors and fantastically wealthy hospital corporation and pharmaceutical company executives. The golden age of company building was upon us, and the people were bewildered as the bills came in the mail and the doctors showered them with new medications written from pads emblazoned with the logos of drug companies and stained from the grubby hands of doctors sodden from boozy nights of schmoozing with pharmaceutical reps at “informational seminars”. Luckily, new mood stabilization drugs such as Xanax, and Paxil eased the pain of the people while their savings accounts withered and their paychecks were devoured by healthcare premiums and FICA deductions. In heaven, the angels wept at the people’s suffering, but the people themselves were blind to their own agony.
The people blamed the “liberal media”, and homosexuals, and foreigners for their problems. Talk radio hosts created myths and legends to obscure the truth, because as uneducated fools with smooth voices and “gravitas”, they themselves did not know the truth. So, they invented monsters and demons of convenience and flogged them for our suffering. We believed and cheered Reagan for bashing these monsters, as he rode into battle against airline regulation, interstate banking rules, limits on healthcare companies, controls on insurance corporations, the agenda of homosexuals, and basic dogma of liberals of all sorts. We cheered as he slashed through the ranks of air traffic controllers as they demanded safety rules and fair pay. We huzzahed him as he allowed airline executives to enrich themselves with borrowed money as they looted the pension savings of employees. The people cried “more!” as he tore apart an airline industry that was the envy of the free world. We wept with joy as he smashed the castle walls of interstate banking regulations that protected our savings and kept rabidly slobbering rouge bankers in check for centuries.
Meanwhile, Tom Daschle did not fight this great partisan evil as it swept over the land… no… he looked for opportunity, and of course it came. It came just the same. In his second year as a member of the Senate Finance Committee, Tom helped to break the promises of his first year on the committee by bringing the largest Medicare tax increase in history.
Tom voted “YES!” on changes to the rules restricting personal bankruptcy, as poor sick people writhed under the heavy weight of crushing healthcare debt. Incidentally, credit card companies lauded Tom’s bravery on this issue and rewarded him with large contributions. Tom voted “YES!” on tearing down the FCC’s power to approve large media conglomerates. His friends in the media industry even a chariot to wheel around Washington. He voted “YES!” on telcomm industry deregulation, and then stood back in awe as these fabled giants of AT&T, MCI Worldcom, the Bell’s, and ITT teetered and crumbled at his feet.
After this storied career in the Senate, Tom moved comfortably to the business world and became a “special policy advisor” for a Washington heathcare lobbying firm of Alston & Bird. He couldn’t actually work for the firm, because it would violate Senate Ethics rules baring office holders from lobbying after serving. But, to get around that bothersome restriction all it took was a “special title” and Tommy could get his $2 million in compensation from powerful healthcare interests. Of course, the remainder of his $5.5 million in compensation came from other powerful interests.
Meanwhile, back in 2009 the new President vowed “put an end to the revolving door in Washington and ban lobbyists from his administration”. That brings us to Daschle. As a former lobbyist for the healthcare industry, why would the new President appoint him to the most important post in his administration for healthcare policy?
The answer to that important question we may never know. Mr. Daschle bowed out of the race even I as drafted this note…
How could this name be the cause of such profound pain to only a scant few people in America, when the impact will soon reach far and wide? The incredulous choice of the craven and corrupt Tom Daschle begins a sad story of how, once more we have been sold down the river like weary plantation slaves to the wealthy elite who work us in their cotton fields of corporate healthcare until we collapse from financial exhaustion…
It all started back in 1996, when a nation reeling from the drunken euphoria of overturning the corrupt George Herbert Walker Bush regime in an electoral revolution harkening to the Lexington and Concord insurrections of 1776, swept a villainous cacophony of Equity Lords and corporate sycophants from power by electing a poor boy from Arkansas and his brilliant, but slightly unnerving lawyer/wife as our hope for a brave new future.
The world stood breathless as William Jefferson Clinton took the oath of office, while his homely and slightly frigid wife held Lincoln’s Bible in her small hands. Those close to the ceremony where taken aback as they observed that a hoar frost slowly crept over the historic religious tome in her little icy palms, crackling the pages and rich leather binding of the 100 year old Bible, as her husband completed repeating the words of the Chief Justice. Only Hillary knew the evil about to be silently unleashed on the unwitting public, crushing the long-kept hope for real change in healthcare in the United States.
Alas, change did not come. Eight long years of corporate schmoozing by the First Family, unprecedented swilling at the corporate trough by the Clinton Administration courtiers, and continuous “bungling” and obstruction by the First Lady as the head of the Presidents Commission on Healthcare Reform, while the President himself, distracted by rounds of surreptitious fellatio in the Oval Office, hob-knobbed with health industry executives and girded himself in their corporate largesse, yielded the people a great big, sloppy overflowing bucket of nothing in the “healthcare system”. We used quotes on the term “healthcare system”, because it is really more akin to a wild boy raised by wolves and then fed upon by vampires bats and great bloated ticks, as opposed to an actual functioning system built with planning and forethought.
It took eight long years for the people of the nation to realize that nothing was going to be accomplished by the Clinton Administration in healthcare that would actually be of benefit them. After this cloudy realization, like waking up in a stranger’s living room in your underwear after a weekend bender stinking of cheap liquor and cigarettes, did the people’s true despair really set it. The people gave up on the dream and the healthcare corporations, invigorated by their victory over the hopes of the people, surged forth in a renewed orgy of corporate greed and exploitation of the sick and injured. The social and economic carnage was unlike anything seen since ancient times; the sacking of Carthage, the slaughter of the 300 at Thermopile, or razing of Jerusalem by the Crusaders would be useful parallels here, as the hospital corporations took out their pent-up years of frustration on an unsuspecting population of sick and dying customers and tore their entrails out in a violent fit of billing up-coding and other financial pillaging.
Municipal and religious charity hospitals were consumed in the corporate M&A fireball the rolled across the land, scorching the earth with ceaseless destruction, as the people wailed and lamented. But there was no respite from their agony, like mongrel dogs, picking over the corpses on the strewn battlefield in the days and weeks following the great rout, big pharmaceutical companies were given license by Tom Daschle to strip the bones of the fallen by inflating the price of once inexpensive drugs using the ripping and tearing teeth of the new patent laws that allowed them to re-patent old drugs by slightly altering their delivery and removing the older alternatives from the market. As the final wave of locusts, known as insurance companies, picked the last pieces of vegetation from the land in a roiling wave of consumption, the son of the evil Emperor Bush returned with his terrifying warlord Darth Cheney, to sit upon the throne resting on the pile of skulls of the vanquished people. But, I digress, we will return to this story later.
Tom Daschle, as a bright-eyed, fair-haired young senator from South Dakota, first took his seat as a freshman Senator in 1986 on the Senate Finance Committee. In these heady days of non-existent political oversight and “blank check” of the electorate given to the Reagan administration to gut social programs on the promise of later disproven “trickle-down” economics, and the harnessing of the team of the executive and legislative branches of the federal government as the plowing brace of “rented mules” for industry., a dashing young Tom took his comfortable leather seat in the United States Senate, kissed the frozen wastelands of South Dakota goodbye forever, and began cold-calling industry lobbyists as fast as he could to latch on the “corporate teat” like a day old baby kangaroo in the pouch.
In no time at all, young Tom built an impressive record as the “go to man” in the Senate, as member of the Finance Committee and the Nutrition Committee. If your business needed a specific tax exemption or some bothersome regulation was holding back unfettered profit taking by your healthcare conglomerate; Tom was your man.
As the Reagan Administration ground slowly on, regulation was hacked like the carcass of a slaughtered steer by the new Congress, the constitution was bent, and “reinterpreted” to bring a showering of money and favor to billionaire corporate investors and fantastically wealthy hospital corporation and pharmaceutical company executives. The golden age of company building was upon us, and the people were bewildered as the bills came in the mail and the doctors showered them with new medications written from pads emblazoned with the logos of drug companies and stained from the grubby hands of doctors sodden from boozy nights of schmoozing with pharmaceutical reps at “informational seminars”. Luckily, new mood stabilization drugs such as Xanax, and Paxil eased the pain of the people while their savings accounts withered and their paychecks were devoured by healthcare premiums and FICA deductions. In heaven, the angels wept at the people’s suffering, but the people themselves were blind to their own agony.
The people blamed the “liberal media”, and homosexuals, and foreigners for their problems. Talk radio hosts created myths and legends to obscure the truth, because as uneducated fools with smooth voices and “gravitas”, they themselves did not know the truth. So, they invented monsters and demons of convenience and flogged them for our suffering. We believed and cheered Reagan for bashing these monsters, as he rode into battle against airline regulation, interstate banking rules, limits on healthcare companies, controls on insurance corporations, the agenda of homosexuals, and basic dogma of liberals of all sorts. We cheered as he slashed through the ranks of air traffic controllers as they demanded safety rules and fair pay. We huzzahed him as he allowed airline executives to enrich themselves with borrowed money as they looted the pension savings of employees. The people cried “more!” as he tore apart an airline industry that was the envy of the free world. We wept with joy as he smashed the castle walls of interstate banking regulations that protected our savings and kept rabidly slobbering rouge bankers in check for centuries.
Meanwhile, Tom Daschle did not fight this great partisan evil as it swept over the land… no… he looked for opportunity, and of course it came. It came just the same. In his second year as a member of the Senate Finance Committee, Tom helped to break the promises of his first year on the committee by bringing the largest Medicare tax increase in history.
Tom voted “YES!” on changes to the rules restricting personal bankruptcy, as poor sick people writhed under the heavy weight of crushing healthcare debt. Incidentally, credit card companies lauded Tom’s bravery on this issue and rewarded him with large contributions. Tom voted “YES!” on tearing down the FCC’s power to approve large media conglomerates. His friends in the media industry even a chariot to wheel around Washington. He voted “YES!” on telcomm industry deregulation, and then stood back in awe as these fabled giants of AT&T, MCI Worldcom, the Bell’s, and ITT teetered and crumbled at his feet.
After this storied career in the Senate, Tom moved comfortably to the business world and became a “special policy advisor” for a Washington heathcare lobbying firm of Alston & Bird. He couldn’t actually work for the firm, because it would violate Senate Ethics rules baring office holders from lobbying after serving. But, to get around that bothersome restriction all it took was a “special title” and Tommy could get his $2 million in compensation from powerful healthcare interests. Of course, the remainder of his $5.5 million in compensation came from other powerful interests.
Meanwhile, back in 2009 the new President vowed “put an end to the revolving door in Washington and ban lobbyists from his administration”. That brings us to Daschle. As a former lobbyist for the healthcare industry, why would the new President appoint him to the most important post in his administration for healthcare policy?
The answer to that important question we may never know. Mr. Daschle bowed out of the race even I as drafted this note…
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