Banking on Failure

Thomas Jefferson warned us that if we let the banks control our currency by inflation and deflation then we’d end up homeless. And look it’s happening, the Fed (a bank) tells us they’re watching out for inflation while many Americans are waking up homeless.

In the book “Our Lot How Real Estate Came to Own Us“, author Alyssa Katz said “The generations between FDR and Reagan barely knew what homelessness was; now, nearly seven hundred thousand Americans, most of them hardly stereotypical street people, have no place to live.”

Due to increased inflation the cost of living skyrockets while good jobs vanish overseas. Not only has the government and the Federal Reserve failed to control inflation they have failed to control the banks.

The government deregulated the banks and the Fed allowed banks to take unreasonable and irresponsible risks which created the housing bubble while Alan Greenspan Fed Chairman (the one supposedly charged with keeping inflation at bay) spurred them on. When they “failed” we the people had to bail them out or else. The Bush administration rewarded this reckless behavior by doling out 700 billion in tax payer dollars with no strings attached. When the Obama administration tries to attach strings to this bail out bonanza, suddenly they’re paying back the TARP loans.

With unemployment so high, credit markets frozen and people aren’t spending, so where are the banks getting this money to pay back these loans?

Ben Bernanke current Fed Chairman said in an interview that the Fed has pumped billions into the basements of banks just in case they need it but not to worry, the banks won’t spend this money until the time is right. You know, so the spending of these Fed infused billions won’t cause more inflation.

Now the Fed is seeking to create a fund for banks similar to CD funds where these banks can keep their profits to refrain from pumping this money back into circulation. The Fed is concerned that if the banks return these profits back into society, it will cause inflation.

What is going on? How are they making profits while Americans lose their homes and their jobs? Maybe they’re paying back these loans using our money they have buried in their basements.

We have failed to heed the warnings of Thomas Jefferson about preventing “overgrown wealth” becoming “dangerous to the state”. These banks including the Federal Reserve have too much wealth and are dangerous to the financial state of our nation.

Open Letter to the Senators

Please feel free to copy my letter, ammend it or leave it as is, but please send it to your Senator today. Thanks!

Dear Senator Kerry,

According to an AP article in December sixth’s newspaper, the Senate is going to cut 42 billion in Medicare spending on home health care. More people will die in institutions rather than at home thanks to this cut. How cruel.

Insurance companies have been allowed to consolidate and monopolize the market allowing them to fix prices and eliminate competition across the country, this is why so many people lack health insurance. To solve the health insurance debacle the giant insurance corporations need to be busted up. Perhaps that’s the avenue you should be investigating rather than looking for cuts in Medicare.

Thomas Jefferson believed one of the government’s roles in society was to prevent corporations from taking the bread out of the mouth of the laborer who has earned it. As a representative of the people, you have failed that role. First you let the banks steal half the value of my home, then you let the corporations steal the value of my labor, now you've let the insurance compnaies steal the value of my life.

A large part of the problem today is that we measure value in dollars only. As long as you’re a health insurance premium paying consumer you have value. But when you become sick, injured or fatally ill and the insurance companies have to spend money on you, (as in when you need home health care), that’s when we become liabilities, we lose value. How can a ‘for profit’ corporation interested only in cutting costs for the ‘bottom line’ decide how much medical care a person gets? There is something ethically and morally wrong going on here.

We give banks seventeen trillion and we’ll spend three trillion on war in Afghanistan alone, not even counting the trillions in Iraq, but we don’t have 42 billion for Americans. Surely you can see there’s something wrong with this picture Senator. Andrew Jackson said one man with courage makes a majority. Where is that one man today?

Sincerely,

Nancy T. Lindsay

Registered Voter

Stopping the Spread of "Ism's"

During Vietnam the country was told we were there “to stop the spread of communism.” Now we’re being told we’re in Afghanistan to prevent it from becoming a safe haven for Al Qaeda and to stop the spread of terrorism.

Al Qaeda does not need Afghanistan for a safe haven, they enjoy safe harbor around the globe as witnessed by suicide bombings in Iran, Iraq, India, Saudi Arabia, the Philippines, Somalia, England, Spain and Afghanistan just to name a few.

Suicide bombings are a tactic of Al Qaeda. Compare sending ninety-six thousand soldiers to Afghanistan to route out 100 members of Al Qaeda, to loading up an individual with a suicide vest. Their main weapon is cheap and inexhaustible while we spend trillions.

We’re told this “war” in Afghanistan is vital to national interest. We’re paying thugs, warlords and the Taliban to keep them from attacking convoys that supply the US troops. The son of an Afghani minister provides the security which he obtains through the cousin of the Afghan president Harmid Karzai. How is paying these people millions in our national interest?

There are two things to do to stop the spread of terrorism. One is to solve the Palestinian Israeli crisis and the other action needed is to get out of Arab lands. These are the main recruiting tools terrorists use to wage jihad around the globe. Eliminate these reasons and we stop the growth of terrorism.

The US was able to win two wars and develop the atom bomb in four years, yet we can’t solve our reliance on oil to end this “war on terror” Why is that?

Contradictions that Confuse

For years it’s been drummed into our heads that early detection of breast cancer increases the odds of survival, and advocates for health care reform have said they’re going to make screening exams a covered benefit.

Then a government picked panel of experts recommends women wait until they’re fifty to start getting mammograms for breast cancer screening. If mammograms aren’t covered, then a woman’s risk of dying from breast cancer increases. Given the evidence about stories of women who have survived breast cancer due to early detection, how could they possibly come out with something like this?

According to the government task force one in 1900 mammograms saves a life. If that one was you, all those mammograms would be worth it. Right? They’re just not worth it to the insurance company. To them we are premium paying consumers, not a human being whose life is worth 1900 mammograms. And the government agrees! Have Medical insurance company stocks gone up on the news that they’ll be saving five billion dollars a year for mammograms?

One excuse offered up by a doctor on the task force is that the message was misinterpreted. What they really mean is at age forty a woman should start talking to her doctor about obtaining mammograms. I rely on my physician to keep up with all the news in the world of medicine and to inform me as to the benefits or necessity of tests available to prevent early death. It is isn’t up to the patient to self-treat themselves or keep abreast of which screening tests we should be talking about.

It’s unethical and morally unjust that a ‘for profit’ company concerned with cutting costs as a corporate measure can have so much control over whether people live or die due to corporate profits.

We are the only ‘civilized’ country in the world that mixes & confuses corporate profits with an individuals life or death.

The blame can be laid on our reprehensible representatives in congress who cater to the bribes the health care lobbyists bestow into their re-election campaigns, instead of doing what they can for the voters health.　

We'll Never Know

Alexis De Toqueville wrote “in America there is a general distaste for accepting any man’s words as proof of anything".

Not so today, Glen Beck who started out as a stand up comedian, has many followers who praise his words as gospel truth.

James Madison said "A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy, or perhaps both.”

A former managing director on Wall Street Nomi Prins said in the Nation magazine that we’ve given the sum of 17.5 trillion to banks in loans and guarantees to keep them afloat!

In just one of these programs the Treasury Secretary has set aside one trillion in the public private investment fund to entice billionaires to buy toxic assets (our homes) from banks. Are these and all the other ways we’re baling out banks popular on these news programs?

The farce is the orchestrated outrage over spending one trillion in ten years for health insurance and the tragedy is our silence when it comes to spending over 20 trillion for war, wall street and banks.

It’s all about marketing. TV talking heads are interested in grabbing as much market share to continue to rake in their millions, as opposed to obtaining popular information about our government. And thanks to these marketers we have gone from thinking citizens to mindless consumers.

Chalmers Johnson a former CIA analyst stated in 2007 that Americans do not know what is going on in their government; it’s too late, we’ll never know. 　

Circus Complex

The politicians are right in saying we facing complex issues. We face a medical / pharmaceutical /industrial complex with millions being paid to the very politicians who are turning their backs on the ‘will of the people‘, and we mustn’t forget the military industrial complex, which blatantly pushes for war in spite of the wishes of the majority.

When are the politicians going to grow a set and do what’s right for the general public instead of doing whatever they can for the bottom line of the medical; pharmaceutical and insurance megaliths.

The theatrics over the public option is scripted. Republicans say their lines and the Democrats say theirs. Neither side is addressing the real issue, which is corporate control, the real reason why so many Americans are uninsured and we’re bankrupt.

It’s all a dog and pony show, which complex is the pea under?

Having a majority in the House and Senate and the Executive branch, the Democrats could pass any solution they wanted, that is if they were actually motivated to find the solution.

The proposed legislation on “health care reform” will supposedly cost nine hundred billion over ten years.

Republicans are saying it’ll bankrupt us. Hello?? Who doesn’t know we’re already bankrupt.

Why don’t the Republicans come out and complain about the seventeen trillion we’re giving to the banks and wall street, or the three trillion Afghanistan will cost us? And that’s not counting the lives of American troops, and the uncountable enemy/civilian lives, nor the cost of Iraq which Bush never included in the budget.

Our government is a circus with the public option back in the center ring.　

Memories of Antitrust Laws

Health insurance companies are exempt from antitrust laws. Senator Leahy is sponsoring legislation in the Senate to eliminate this exemption stating- “Virtually every company in America has to follow the antitrust rules. They can't conspire to set prices and cut out competition. There's one exception, in all the industries in America, one exception: health insurance.”

“And they can get together, without violating the antitrust laws. They can do what they want in carving up markets without getting involved in the antitrust laws. All I'm saying, if the law applies to everybody else, it should apply to them.”

This is astounding, because it is not the reality on the ground in American society. Every facet of our lives is controlled by monopolies who exploit us. Teddy Roosevelt’s anti-trust laws have been striped bare and precisely why we bailed out banks who were allowed to become “too big to fail“. Ever since the failures of the Savings and Loans, banks have been consolidating. This “financial meltdown” is causing more banks to fail, creating even bigger banks. Talk about getting together, literally.

We used to have hundreds of oil companies, today we have four or five. Competing gas stations used to be plentiful, now there’s very little competition. The price at the pump is fixed by Big Oil.

Big Pharma and Agri-Business control the price and of food and medicine. More people are dying from poison food, and if the government can’t protect us from poison food, there’s little hope they can enforce anti-trust laws.

The media of print, radio and television have been consolidated until there’s just a few news corporations left. Now we have to pay for cable with few choices in cable companies.

Ever since the late eighties health insurance companies have been consolidating and setting prices. UnitedHealth Care alone has 23 million members and the CEO makes one hundred and eight six million dollars a year. No wonder they can’t pay claims, they have to pay the CEO. Airlines and utilities have consolidated leaving us with fewer choices and poorer services.

Much of our over seas military operations are out sourced to private corporations, with companies like Blackwater Security performing missions on the level of the CIA. More and more of our prisons and schools are being run by private companies.

With all this going on around us how can the Senator say every company in America is following the anti-trust laws? Maybe antitrust laws exist in the Senator’s memory, but they certainly do not exist today nor will the insurance companies ever be subjected to them.

Sink or Swim

The 700 billion bank bailout was only the tip of the iceberg, between the capital injections; guarantees; indirect loans, and propping up of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, we’ve invested 17.5 trillion into the country’s financial institutions.

Due to increased earnings the stock market is up for banks like JPMorgan- Chase and Goldman Sachs, who are on track for doling out record bonuses. If it wasn’t for the tax payer these financial institutions wouldn’t even exist. Millions of Americans are in foreclosure yet we’re supporting Wall Street with trillions. There’s something wrong with that picture.

Where is the orchestrated outrage over the trillions we’re pouring into Wall Street causing deficits “as far as the eye can see”?

There isn’t any, we only see the outrage over Acorn, not the morally bankrupt actions of the nation’s financial institutions while our government spurs them on.

Having two bankers in a row as Treasury Secretary’s doesn’t help. Former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson was former CEO of Goldman Sachs and Timothy Geithner headed the Federal Reserve of New York while we bailed out Wall Street Banks.

Secretary Giethner has set aside one trillion to the Public Private Investment Fund, which guarantees the purchaser of “toxic assets” six dollars for every one dollar invested to sell these toxic assets. If prices go up the purchaser wins, if the price goes down the purchaser loses little while the tax payer picks up the difference. That money could be better used investing in ordinary Americans to reduce principals rather than enticing billionaires to buy toxic assets.

FDR's New Deal brought us deposit insurance; stock market regulation, and the separation of commercial and investment banking. Since the seventies our politicians both Democrats and Republicans alike have whittled away these and other protections leaving us in the situation we face today: an economy supported by over inflated values and financing of debt.

In a capitalistic democracy all boats rise not just the yachts. Our economy is experiencing an inverted gravity, only the yachts are rising while all the other boats and dinghies sink in the shark infested economy. This is why earnings are up on Wall Street while Main Street is being boarded up.

Voting for Victory

According to the book “Blowback The Costs and Consequences of American Empire” by Chalmers Johnson, President Carter signed a directive ordering secret aid to the forces who were against the Soviet controlled government in Kabul, the Mujahadeen, on July 3 1979. The National Security advisor to Carter states he wrote a note to the president “in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention” and “we now have the opportunity of giving the USSR its Vietnam War.”

Robert Gates present Secretary of Defense corroborated this early aid in his 1996 memoirs where he stated that the US started supplying aid to the mujahadeen six months prior to the Soviet invasion on December 24, 1979.

We goaded the Soviets into Afghanistan to defeat the Russians and win the Cold War. Today we are faced with another Vietnam with Bin Laden doing to us what we did to the Soviets.

Bruce Riedel states in his book “The Search for Al Qaeda” that Bin Laden calls 9-11 the “Manhattan Raid” and wants Afghanistan to collapse the American empire just like it collapsed the Soviet empire.

Many think it was the Bush administration and their torture tactics which has prevented another attack: perhaps we haven’t been attacked because Bin Laden has us right where he wants us; his trail of breadcrumbs led us right to Afghanistan, where many parts of the country are still in the Fourth Century. And we’re going to bring them democracy and the vote? Like hell we are.

The scary part is that the US military said the measure of victory will be counted with the number of people who voted in Afghanistan’s recent elections.

There was voting in South Vietnam during the Vietnam war and we saw how well that voting for victory worked out. Now we are repeating history in Afghanistan with massive voter fraud to “re-elect” another American puppet. The result will be a combination of Viet Nam/ and Russia’s Afghanistan experience. No one wins in Afghanistan, ever, just ask Alexander the great & the Russians. Scientifically speaking, Afghanistan is a Black Hole. It swallows everything, and has absolutely no value…except to Big Oil, the Defense Contractors, Halliburton, KBR and Blackwater Security.

Mandating Millions

In his speech of September 9^th, the President said citizens without health insurance are being irresponsible, and he is going to end that practice.

Rep. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts said at a Town Meeting that taxpayers are paying millions for people without health insurance.

Not only is the federal government going to mandate that we all have health insurance, they’re laying the blame for the high cost of insurance on the uninsured.

A few days after the president’s speech on health care, insurance companies’ stocks were up. If everyone is so worried about health insurance reform putting insurance companies out of business, why have their stocks risen? And please explain how a ‘for profit’ industry can morally control expensive life or death medical treatments?

The insurance companies control the industry and Washington by buying votes. They gave Senator Grassley over one million dollars; Olympia Snowe received a life time take of over nine hundred thousand, and Senator Max Baucus over three million dollars, Baucus himself is obliging them, as his bill includes the insurance mandate that all citizens must have health insurance.

In Massachusetts, health insurance premiums are due to rise ten percent next year, with a five to seven percent increase across the rest of the country. No wonder their stocks are up, they’ll be getting all those new billions in premiums paid to the insurance companies from the 30 million or so that presently cannot afford the high cost of health insurance premiums, millions of new customers they can cheat by cutting their medical coverage while overcharging them with outrageous premiums.

We are not witnessing health insurance reform, we’re witnessing a give away of our money to the health insurance companies.

To say this is Health Care Reform is another subterfuge being played out on the American people, the war cry instead should be Health Insurance Reform!

Corporate Clowns Speakin' Out

We shouldn’t trust the propaganda coming out of the corporate mouthpieces on TV. When sixty percent of media coverage was spent on the outrageous orchestrated antics at Town Hall meetings, and not the real content in health insurance reform, they’re not reporting on the real issues. We react to the propaganda thrown out by the TV media and repeat it as our own thoughts no matter how outlandish it may be. For some, the more outlandish the better. It’s a dog and pony show to get us to react with emotions first, and think second. By the time we have a chance to think it’ll be too late.

Citizens repeat ludicrous concerns, such as fearing a redistribution of wealth lurking behind the health insurance reform bill. The transference of wealth has already occurred, it’s been transferred from our pockets to the pockets of the insurance companies. Where do the insurance companies get this money? From us in the outrageous and ever increasing premiums and sky rocketing deductibles we’re forced to pay.

Insurance companies are in control. If the Democrats control the House and Senate why can’t they pass this bill? Because Blue Dog Democrats are blocking it, due to the enormous amounts of money flowing from the insurance companies lobbyists into the their campaign coffers.

The size of one health insurance reform bill is over one thousand pages so lots of people are up in arms. These same people forget that during the Bush administration Treasury Secretary Paulson sent a three page memo to Congress with no time for Town Hall meetings to transfer 700 billion dollars from us to the banks, no questions asked. We didn’t mind giving away three quarters of a trillion in less than a year, but when it‘s one trillion over ten years and a thousand pages, look at the orchestrated outrage.

Another repeated mantra is the cap and trade tax, oh it’s gonna destroy thousands of jobs in this country. Take a look at the health insurance monopoly UnitedHealth Care. They outsource their call center to India, which takes away thousands of jobs, but that’s just doing business in a global economy so that‘s acceptable. Where is the political outrage over that loss of American jobs? There isn’t any.

We’re told health insurance reform has to include tort reform so doctors won’t have to practice defensive medicine. On the one hand we trust the doctors so much we believe malpractice insurance is too high and a great burden. But then on the other hand insurance companies dictate to these same doctors which procedures, tests, and medicines may be prescribed for us. Insurance companies trust doctors enough to lower their malpractice insurance, but don’t trust them as treating physicians to diagnose our illnesses and cure our sickness.

Don’t listen to these circus clowns who along with compliant politicians dispense with the facts to frame all politics as emotional issues. We deserve better than that.

One of Their Own Speaks Out

Read what a former Cigna executive has to say about the illegal business practices of health insurance companies.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/health/july-dec09/health_08-20.html

Propaganda of the Absurd

Health care hypocrisies abound which any reasonable person could dispute.

People oppose health insurance reform because the government will kill the elderly. Concern about killing the elderly would have more validity if we weren’t already killing the young in Iraq and Afghanistan. Where’s the raucous debate or concern over that?

Besides, health insurance companies are already killing people by refusing to refer patients to see doctors other than their primary care physician or their refusal to pay for cancer medication saying it’s not medically necessary.

Another misguided protest slogan is that free markets work best in health insurance. In the health insurance world it’s not a free market. The insurance companies decide how much a procedure, test or office visit is worth. They reimburse at the rates they want to pay. How is that a free market? Can we pay our own allowed rates for food, gas, insurance, utilities and mortgages? That’s out of the question because insurance corporations control the media and delude people into thinking health insurance reform means the free market is under attack. Hardly, the free market has already been attacked by CEO’s like Cigna’s CEO who rakes in eleven million a year.

There’s nothing wrong with making a profit. But making exorbitant profits at the expense of the suffering of others is unconscionable and un-ethical.

Another easily refutable slogan is saying health insurance reform will bankrupt us, we’re already bankrupt. Add up the seven hundred billion we gave to Wall Street and the nine hundred forty seven we’ve given to war, that’s almost equal to this year’s deficit or a trillion dollars over ten years for health insurance reform.

Saying that all these Town Hall Meetings is democracy in action is absurd. It’s the machinations of insurance companies working through former politicians like Richard Armey and his organization FreedomWorks instigating these dog and pony shows. People voicing their opposition to health insurance reform are repeating whey they hear from TV clowns, who get paid millions, to repeat to the public what the corporations want us to hear. If anything, these Town Hall meetings prove that the American people are determined to keep the insurance corporations in control.

And the public option plan that is everyone is so worried about, well not to worry. This public plan won’t be socialist but fascist. After the federal government mandates that all citizens have health insurance like the insurance companies want, the public option plan will be a pool of private insurance companies from which people will choose, essentially pouring more of our tax dollars into the pockets of private insurance companies.

Who’s in control? In the end we’ll get a few bones thrown our way like the elimination of a maximum an insurance company will pay in a lifetime, caps on out of pocket expenses and maybe even a cap on how much insurance companies can raise yearly premiums, but control will remain in the hands of the few, the insurance companies.

Reforming Corporate Masters

Instead of the debate being about reforming “health care”, it should be about an investigation into reforming the health insurance companies, and the reason it isn‘t is because of the insurance company’s control of the politicians and have turned the issue.

The insurance companies make billions because they are allowed to operate using unfair, discriminatory and exclusionary business practices.

We have some of the best medicine in the world, but what good is it if we can’t avail ourselves of it? How many women don’t have mammograms because they can’t afford it? Now, if it’s routine it’s not covered by the health insurance. So we’re paying insurance premiums and paying for the tests. It’s a win-win situation for the insurance companies and a losing situation for the citizens. They have plenty more tricks aimed at denying all claims which in turn allow them to keep the premiums we pay, while refusing to reimburse the doctor. It’s only a matter of time before we run out of doctors. Who wants to practice medicine under a corporate master?

Senator Charles Grassley is against a national health plan that would compete with private insurance companies because government would “take over the market”, which would be laughable if it wasn’t so sad. The insurance companies have already “taken over the market” and taken over our politicians, they just don’t publicly admit it.

The July 15 issue of the Washington Spectator reports seven of the top ten political donors to Senator Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, are health insurance and pharmaceutical companies. Companies including Schering-Plough, Amgen, Aetna and Blue Cross Blue Shield.

Healthy competition is necessary to a healthy economy. Maybe that’s why our economy is so sickly, because there’s no competition in either the consumer market, or in our political elections. In the health insurance field, there’s even less competition and no rules. The only ones making up the rules are the insurance companies; and they’re making them up for their own benefit as they go along., and it’s working. Insurance companies control our health care and our politicians.

In America it used to be a two way street, now it’s a one way street with all the advantages money can buy, but especially the cash, flowing to the health insurance companies.

Abolish the Federal Reserve

The Federal Reserve was created in 1913 as a central bank with a mandate from Congress to move interest rates up and down, it’s purpose was to keep prices stable and inflation low.

Thomas Jefferson said “I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our civil liberties than standing armies”. “If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation then by deflation, the banks and the corporations will grow up around them, will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs."

The current Fed Chairman Bernanke, doesn’t agree. In recent discussions of the administration’s proposed new financial regulations the Chairman said the Federal Reserve needs independence from Congressional oversight to keep politics out of the nation’s monetary policies.

Current Federal Reserve policies include the Fed doling out 80 billion for AIG, trillions for banks and financial institutions, yet the Fed didn‘t have the 40 billion needed to fill the hole in Lehman Brothers whose failure was the beginning of this global recession. Wall Street investment banks have recently posted billions in profits, was there political motivation in allowing Lehman to fail?

William Greider stated in the Nation magazine- “The Feds favoritism toward bankers is embedded in its DNA”.

President Wilson said after creating the Federal Reserve that “I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men.” We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world -- no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men.”

We should abolish the Federal Reserve; they are the reason we’re in this recession and why Jefferson’s predictions ring true today.

The communists are coming

Communism once was the antithesis of democracy, now we’ve embraced it with a bloodless coup.

The communist creed is “everyone from according to their wants to everyone according to their needs.” This sounds like head lines we’re hearing today in the news, that more and more Americans are buying only what they need, as opposed to they want. This is scarier than the president bringing us socialism.

We’ve recently witnessed the rise of capitalist communism; where the minority of corporate crooks control all of our government and all of our accessibility to the basic necessities in life, like food; clothing; fuel and shelter.

Corporate consolidation in our food industry created agribusiness, leaving us with fewer choices and poison food. Consolidation has eliminated the boycott as an option to fight against price gouging. If we boycott one product there’s no telling how many other products that same company is selling in the same store, rendering the boycott, a Revolutionary tool useless.

Every year health insurance premiums increase while coverage decreases. This yearly increase ensures many Americans take home much less year after year.

That’s capitalistic communism, ensuring the robber barons make more money while the rest of us are all equal in taking home less.

Thomas Jefferson believed a government should provide for a society where citizens could be industrious and work towards self improvement. How can anyone work towards self improvement when they make less every year?

Our disastrous engagement in “the grave yard of empires” in Afghanistan will lead us to bankruptcy just like it bankrupted the Soviets. The Washington Spectator, a newsletter published by the Public Concern Foundation, reports that we have spent 947 billion between Iraq and Afghanistan thus far. And we have years to go in Afghanistan, so we’re told.

We have a secretive government who spies on us and allowed billionaire hedge funds and private equity firms to precipitate the downfall of our entire financial system.

The corporate crooks control this country with an iron fist and it’s as heavy handed as that of any communist iron fist.

Cap and Trade Taxes

One aspect of the American Clean Energy and Security Bill is the Cap and Trade tax about energy corporations being required to purchase permits for the amount of pollutants they emit. The higher the output the higher the number of permits will be required.

Representative John Boehner said that the cap and trade tax will put small businesses out of business and cost American jobs. Republican Eric Cantor said this bill will impose an energy tax on people and repeated the mantra of putting small businesses out of business. The price of health insurance is preventing small businesses from hiring Americans yet we don’t hear any outrage against that. But when we try to tax the energy industry well, don’t the howls go up then.

Thanks to the good servants of Big Oil who worry about the cap and trade tax affecting small businesses the oil companies are allowed to contaminate, sicken and destroy lives with the poison their antiquated refineries belch into neighborhoods in California cities. Their refineries are old, decrepit and in need of repair. Big Oil and their market propaganda has been able to shift the focus and blame their steadfast refusal to update their refineries onto the backs of the tree huggers across the country. And it’s worked, many believe Big Oil’s propaganda. How many jobs would updating oil refineries create, how much cleaner would the air be with more efficient refineries? Not only is Big Oil polluting our earth they’re charging us top dollar for a necessity like oil for heat and gasoline for cars.

The Democrat’s dance, saying they’re creating a bill for the public good and the Republican’s dance says the Democrats are going to tax you more and we’re here to say we told you so.

In the end, any public good this bill may have in it will result with us paying more in taxes, Big Oil and Big Energy will see to that, and continue with their insane profits. Just like the US government subsidizes Big Oil for the share the OPEC countries charge for their oil, Big Energy will make sure we subsidize any penalties they pay.

Big Business will not pay the price for their pollution, we will; not only in taxes but with the additional suffering destroying the earth’s resources will bring us.

Big Brother Insurance

Many are saying this government funded health insurance plan is the first step to nationalized medicine with a socialist bent. It’s not socialism at all, but Big Brother.

The Democratic House plan is to mandate that all citizens have medical insurance and the insurance companies are going to drop the pre-existing clause. This is what the insurance companies want, they’ve already said as much.

The Democratic House plan includes new taxes on health insurance benefits (ha what benefits), taxes on sugared drinks and alcohol. Not only will we continue to pay exorbitant prices for medical insurance, if this plan passes we’ll all be paying more of our taxes into the insurance companies. This is not socialism but oligarchy.

Thomas Jefferson believed one role of government was to prevent corporations from “taking the bread out of the mouth of labor who has earned it”.

It’s up to the government to ensure healthy competition amongst these insurance companies and to prevent them from turning medical insurance into industrialized mega-corporations; consolidation of too much market share leads to exploitation, which is why the price of health insurance is too high and prohibitive to so many.

Supposedly this government funded plan is intended to promote competition amongst insurance companies to bring down the cost of health insurance. Healthy competition keeps prices low. We don’t have healthy competition and that’s why our economy is so sick and insurance premiums too high.

Why is it that the only way we can get out from under the merciless control insurance companies have over us is by paying more?

In addition to the sinfully extreme cost of medical insurance Americans are forced to pay now, the American taxpayer will be forced to pay even higher premiums and drug costs. Why does an inhaler in Canada cost $12 a month while the very same inhaler costs $160 a month in the US?

The insurance companies are not going to lose money, no matter what plan the federal government creates. As a matter of fact, they’ll be making more money and we still won’t see equality in health insurance; and that‘s the plan of the corporate crooks, the minority who own our government, Big Brother, there‘s no socialism about it.

　

　

Health Care or Profit Care?

According to a report on the News Hour, health insurance companies came out and said if the federal government mandated all citizens have health insurance, they’d drop the pre-existing clause; a pre-existing clause is one where people with pre-existing conditions are unable to obtain health insurance or have to pay a higher premium for scant coverage.

Evidently we are not all equal when it comes to health insurance, only the healthy can have insurance, all those with sickness and injuries need not apply.

During his campaign the president said he was not in favor of mandating all citizens have health insurance, now the president is taking it under consideration. The change in the president’s stance could mean one of two things-first step to nationalizing health insurance is to make sure all have health insurance or the president may be leaning towards the insurance company’s desires.

We need to stop being hysterical and understand that today all political issues are approached on a purely emotional level.

In the earlier part of the twentieth century Edward Bernays the nephew of Sigmund Freud was instrumental in the pioneering of mass marketing. During his study Bernays said if you understand the group mind it is possible to manipulate and control people’s desires without them even knowing it.

Demagoguery is controlling people politically through emotions, that’s what the capitalist crooks and their political puppets are doing and we don’t even know it.

You can bet the insurance companies approach all aspects of their business in a cold hearted calculating way and they don’t let emotions interfere with their decisions as to who lives and who dies.

Kings and heads of state used to come to the US for treatments and operations because we had the best in the world. What happened? The capitalist crooks have seized medicine for profits.

Taxing for Transportation

Opportunity is knocking, nationwide transportation reform is banging on the door.

With the decimation of the manufacturing industry and the desperate need to end our dependence on oil, an obvious choice would seem to be the complete overhaul of the nation’s mass public transportation system to be more efficient, convenient and create more lasting jobs.

Unfortunately this choice doesn’t seem as obvious to this administration pumping billions into GM who will eventually make small cars the public wants. Far cry from better public transportation.

Why don’t we don’t see more Democrats seizing the moment to bring this issue to the forefront? And why isn’t reduction on foreign oil more urgent to our politicians?

With Orwellian double speak we’re told we’re addicted to oil. Well excuse me for living and not to worry, just as soon as I cure my addiction to food, then I’ll move on to my oil addiction.

Modern day life depends on oil and they’ve made it that way. The USA put a man on the moon and created the Internet. Is there any reason why we can’t have and maintain better public transportation? Necessity being the mother of invention has been a cornerstone of development in our nation; whatever happened to it?

The answer to all these questions is that Big Oil is in control; this is why the crucial issue of oil dependence is not being addressed or mentioned.

FDR said you couldn’t do anything with the Oil companies and you couldn’t do anything without the Oil companies. During FDR’s time there were hundreds of oil companies, today they’ve been concentrated so that there are just seven or eight, and we can do even less with them.

As of the last week in May, the national price average for a gallon of gasoline is two dollars and fifty cents. This price has been rising as the summer has been approaching. The oil companies are putting more barrels of oil into reserve so there’s less oil for sale.

The only transportation reforms in Massachusetts our politicians can come up with are higher taxes on gasoline and toll roads. The governor wanted to install chips in our inspection stickers to track the number of miles we drive so they can send us a bill for our road usage.

Using Orwellian double speak, the politicians tell us higher gas tax means we’ll drive less and reduce our oil consumption. This places the blame and burden of oil dependence on the backs of ordinary American citizens and not at the door step of the capitalist crooks in Big Oil along with their paid off puppet politicians where it belongs.

Government Motors Keeps On Truckin'

The Treasury Department along with the auto task force is calling the shots at GM so that we the tax payer now own about seventy percent of “Government Motors“.

The leader of this auto task force Steve Rattner is a hedge fund operator whose firm, according to an article in the Nation magazine is “deep in a pension-fund bribery scandal“. Isn’t that nice, some of the larger bond holders in GM are pension-funds.

We’re giving GM billions, up to fifty billion by some estimates and how do they thank us? By shipping jobs to China and Mexico.

GM was going manufacture a small compact car in China and then ship them back to the US for sale. The UAW kept up the pressure to keep this from happening and now part of the bail out plan includes GM manufacturing a compact car here in America.

Interviewed on the Newshour Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was asked if he was going to pressure GM not to ship jobs to Mexico, which the Secretary refused to answer, stating it is important to remember that they’re restructuring GM to come out as a viable company in the future without government control. This is their story; government take over to restructure, creating a more viable company providing American jobs in the future, even the president’s press secretary recites this same line.

Why are these people calling the shots at GM? Why isn’t our government demanding GM keep jobs in this country? Why doesn’t the tax payer deserve a vote on how this bail out is handled or even allowed to occur for that matter.

It was Steve Rattner who fired Rick Wagoner the CEO of GM. If that doesn’t’ beat all, a corporate crook firing a corporate crook. As seventy percent owners in this new and improved GM corporation we should do some firing of our own. First lets fire whoever is responsible for the restructuring plan which included shipping jobs to China, South Korea, Japan and Mexico.

Corporate Crooks Win Again

As is always the case the issue with credit cards is once again skewed to make it look like it’s the little people who are wrong while the capitalist crooks receive none of the blame.

From the time of the Depression up until the ’80’s, we had laws against usury, (usury means setting people up to fail) and now, without these protections the credit card companies have been setting people up to fail for decades.

Nancy Trejos journalist for the Washington Post said “…in the 1980s when the usury laws were relaxed, when credit scores were created, and suddenly card companies that used to have this one-size-fits-all approach were able to tailor terms and conditions, you know, according to the person's risk. Credit card companies were raising interest rates on existing balances for any time, for any reason. They were also charging excessive fees, not giving consumers enough time to make their payments, and they were doing some aggressive marketing of credit cards to college students, to people under 21.”

The Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure Act just singed by the president brings some measure of regulation to an industry which had been allowed to run rampant and make billions gouging Americans in excessive late fees and penalties.

With these new rules the credit card companies are threatening to raise interest rates on everyone, including all those who pay their bills on time! And they will be ‘forced’ to with hold credit because it’s too risky. Ha that’s a laugh, who owns these credit card companies? Banks, the same banks the taxpayer has bailed out for taking too much risk. Banks like JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America to name two.

Interest rates on credit cards may go to eighteen percent yet we the tax payers lent JPMorgan Chase 40 billion to buy Bear Stearns at three and a half percent interest. How does that work?

Just like we’re told the financial collapse was due to people who couldn’t pay their mortgages, banks issuing credit cards say credit will be tighter with higher rates due to the new laws.

This new legislation is only on the surface, because it doesn’t return us to the protections against usury, credit card companies will find other ways to bilk us out of billions. Subsequently, the capitalist crooks ruling this nation will continue to set us up then pull the rug out from underneath our feet, while our paid off politicians look the other way.

The Real Social Security Crisis

Social Security will be bankrupt in 2037.
FDR signed Social Security into law to protect anyone who earned a living against the poverty of old age and the loss of a job. Ever since, the Republicans have wanted to dismantle Social Security. Witness the failed Republican attempt under President George Bush to privatize Social Security (imagine if they had, all that money would be gone, stolen by the corporate crooks on Wall Street).

The whole idea behind the Republican façade of “less government“, is to bankrupt the federal government so that social programs like Social Security and Medicare become insolvent.

In 1981 President Reagan increased the Social Security tax to 12.4 percent split between employers and employees while decreasing taxes on the wealthy, the Republican idea of good governance. We were told the increased taxes were to create a nest egg for when the baby boomers retired. Now we’re being told as the boomers retire, it’ll create a financial tsunami.

The “crisis” facing Social Security is that presidents and Congress have “borrowed” from the trust fund leaving an IOU with a promise to pay back the money when Social Security benefits come due. Now that pay back time is arriving, the funds are not there for the ‘government’ to pay back its obligation to the tax payers.

All of this leaves the president in a difficult position. If he doesn’t gut benefits, he’ll be labeled a tax and spend liberal. If he does gut benefits, then he’s not standing up for the American citizen to whom that money rightly belongs.

The worrisome part is that we’re now hearing this administration talk of reforming “entitlement programs”. Will the president stand up for the American people or will he back down as he did on cutting farm subsidies to agri-business and eliminating off shore tax havens. As soon as the howls of opposition went up in DC and in the corporate world, the president backed down.

The corporate crooks on Wall Street stole peoples’ pensions and the government stole everyone’s’ Social Security money that we‘ve paid for with every single paycheck we‘ve ever earned. Why do you think the Founders of our country had a strong distrust of banks and governments? So much so that they revolted and it’s high time we do the same.

Wealth Transference

Last week the Senate defeated a mortgage measure to allow bankruptcy judges to modify mortgages for thousands of Americans in foreclosure. The vote was 45-51 and according to an AP article the Democrats “lamented they were powerless, with the 45 votes falling short of the 60 to overcome procedural hurdles.”

No kidding they’re powerless, they’re powerless against taking our millions away from the lobbyists who pay them to vote their way; in favor of the capitalist crooks.

In years past a bankruptcy judge had the ability to modify a mortgage until the Republican controlled Congress under President Bush changed the bankruptcy rules (at the request of the credit card companies, and the banks who own them) to eliminate this rule.

Now with the Democrats in control they had the opportunity to change the rules back, and they refused. Not only do they refuse, they whine about being helpless because of the “procedural rules“. Well they’re not as helpless as those Americans facing foreclosure or the loss of a job. Just think, these whining Democrats have all that lobbying money to back them up while the rest of us are lucky enough to still be able to pay the mortgage. Just goes to show no matter which party is in control of Congress, the real control lies with whoever supplies the payoff to campaign funds in the millions. It’s all influence peddling dollars.

These banking lobbyists work for the same banks who for decades have made billions from us. The Washington Spectator’s editor Lou Dubose reflects on liberal House Democrat Henry B. Gonzalez who chaired the House Banking Committee from 1989 to 1995 who reminded Lou that “In 1988 a thirty-year fixed rate mortgage required the average family to pay for its house twice-once in principal and once in interest. He described mortgage lending as a vast transfer of wealth from the working class to the stocks-and-bonds class.”

It is this transference of wealth which has created the situation we’re in today, with the power and wealth in the hands of the few.

The president supported this bill but backed off when he faced stiff opposition from the banking lobby, which is further evidence that no matter the party in the White House, or Congress, Republican, or Democrat, they are all complicit in this transference of wealth to the capitalist crooks.

Tea Parties for the Rich

Many conservative columnists are raving about the “tea parties” staged across the country on April 15 tax day, saying don’t underestimate the power of these protests. The real message of these protests should be don‘t underestimate the power the capitalist crooks have over the majority in this country.

The protesters were supposedly upset about taxes but in reality it is Obama’s “socialist” movement in the passing of his 787 billion dollar stimulus bill; they worry about the debt this bill will be leaving to future generations. President Bush gave billions to his banking buddies as he walked out the door and yet there were no protests nor worries about future generations.

But when President Obama spends billions domestically to help the little guy, well then that’s socialism: this is when people start protesting carrying signs, saying things like “pay your own mortgage” and “Stimulus is Socialism”. But when we hand over taxpayer money with no accounting or records to ‘give it freely with no-questions-asked’ to the bankers who got us into this mess, that’s not socialism, that’s democratic capitalism.

Where are the signs telling capitalist crooks like AIG, CitiGroup, Morgan Stanley, Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch Bank of America and all the other banking crooks to pay for their reprehensible deeds themselves? There aren’t many and of the few they sure didn’t receive as much coverage as these tax protests on networks like Fox News owned by robber baron Rupert Murdock.

The capitalist crooks own all the networks and tell people what to think and when to protest. That’s why citizens protest and complain when the government wants to bail out our fellow citizens, but when our government doles out billions of our tax dollars to the capitalist crooks there’s nary a peep and certainly no protests organized by the media.

The true power of these protests demonstrates that those who champion for the rights of the little guy will be thwarted, while those who campaign for the rich will be enthusiastically supported.

Whatever happened to rugged American individualism where one thought for oneself? Big Brother in the form of Fox News and the mind numbing media is what happened.

Consolidating Doublespeak

According to an AP article published on Friday, “Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase reported solid earnings for the quarter and Wells Fargo minimized possible future losses on its purchase of failed bank Wachovia. And thanks to a recent rules change, many banks were able to pump up the values of the toxic assets at the heart to the credit crunch.”

Last year the administration told us we had to hurry and pump billions into Wall Street banks or our entire financial system would collapse. But owing to the fact that it was such an urgent nature, we had no time for questions. Subsequently the bail out money was doled out so fast there were no rules and no one kept track of where it was going.

The banks needed the money then, now with this new administration, they’re showing earnings so they can give back the TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) money. Yeah they want to give it back now, ’cause the rules changed.

One rule the larger banks are unhappy with is they won’t be able to buy out the smaller banks. Consolidation of wealth into the hands of the few is why we have this recession-depression. Concentration of wealth also means there are fewer and fewer people controlling the influence on our government. The banking industry gives millions in campaign contributions. How can a vote compare with that type of campaign influence? It can’t.

Proof of this influence is the fact that the banks pushed for those rules changes allowing the banks to value their toxic assets at a higher value. Great, now those worthless toxic assets are worth more. Pure Orwellian double speak. Like the double speak when Bear Stearns reported that they were in great shape and had plenty of capital right up to the day they went bankrupt. We even loaned JP Morgan Chase billions at rock bottom interest rates to buy Bear Streams.

So, is it double speak or the truth when the corporate crooks report increased earnings? And if their earnings are increasing then will all those people who lost their jobs in the finance and banking sector get them back? Probably not, their earnings aren’t high enough for that, they’re only high enough to keep the government from implementing rules against banking consolidation.

American Interests

Reading between the lines, what does it mean when Ambassador Holbrook special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan states that “military victory is not possible in Afghanistan, the best we can hope for is the protection of American interests.” Just what are the “American interests” that our military is now in charge of protecting?

What if the main American interest is oil and natural gas? There is plenty of it in countries surrounding Afghanistan where pipelines will be needed to transport this energy supply.

Harmid Karzai is a former oil executive who worked for Unocal, also known as Standard Oil of California. Why is an oil executive running Afghanistan? No wonder his government is corrupt, oil companies put profits over people.

Why does the State Department constantly harp on Iran’s desire to build nuclear weapons when both Pakistan and India have them, and of the three, Pakistan is a lot closer to giving terrorists a nuclear weapon. But it’s Iran who is in the news. Maybe Iran has more oil than Pakistan.

Why is it we’ll be sending billions to Pakistan over the next five years to combat terrorism? We’ve given them billions upon billions already, and they haven’t done anything but continue to support the Taliban, give the Taliban the choicest parts of Pakistan, and pay them off in Dollars, our dollars.

The oil companies are bleeding us here at home and Bin Laden wants to bleed us dry in Afghanistan, just like the Afghans did to the Russians.

Latest estimates are that these two wars will cost us one trillion. One heck of a price for us to pay to protect American interests.

The last oil president called this protection “the global war on terror”, now this new administration is calling this protection “overseas contingency operations”.

What’s in a name? Iran or Iraq, it’s all to protect us from nukes. Too bad we don’t have someone protecting us from American interests.

Trading for Toxic Assets

“This time, the banks, especially the smaller banks, went to their Congress people and said, "The reason we can't lend is because they say we don't have enough capital. But we would have enough capital if they just would let us value these assets at what we think they're really worth." And that got a really good reception in Congress” states Floyd Norris chief financial correspondent for the NY Times.

The week before that, when Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner announced the plan for the government funded selling of these toxic assets said “The alternative approach is we should have the government buying all this stuff, taking on all the risk on their balance sheet, which would be much more expensive to the taxpayer. The alternative of letting it just sit there, let these assets just sit on the balance sheets of banks, would risk creating a much longer, deeper recession.

On the bail out of AIG Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said “At best, the consequences of AIG's failure would have been a significant intensification of an already severe financial crisis and a further worsening of global economic conditions. Conceivably, its failure could have resulted in a 1930s-style global financial and economic meltdown, with catastrophic implications for production, income and jobs.”

Sounds like blackmail to me, especially when one understands that Goldman Sachs recipient of 12 billion in the AIG bail out owns oil pipelines, terminals, and an oil refinery in Kansas and natural gas wells in PA, W. VA, TX, OK, LA and is the new owner of Cobalt International Energy a firm run by former Unocal (originally Standard Oil of California) executives.

In 2005 Peter Fusaro and Gary Vasey of the International Research Center for Energy and Development said “The proprietary trading desks of (Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and Morgan Stanley) and other large investment banks are actually ‘hedge funds in drag’ just as Enron was.”

The banks are moving aggressively into energy trading and the leaders are investment banks Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs. Now we’re bailing them out and if we don’t, we’re being threatened with a longer depression.

All these banks have other divisions especially in the unregulated energy trading which make money like in their oil and gas divisions. Why not take some of the profits from these money making divisions and give that back to the tax payer? Why do we get threats of a deeper recession and toxic assets? Why don’t we get any of the cream?

Why?… Because for decades the power and the wealth have been steadily consolidated into the hands of the few that brought us these toxic assets. These banks can pay for their own mistakes but because they have the power, and the wealth to back it up they’re forcing us into paying for them. This is the real reason this recession-depression won’t end and not because their toxic assets don’t have more value but, because they own all the assets (including our government ) both toxic and profitable, furthering the gap between rich and poor.

In the News

The Obama administration announced two huge news items last week. One being Treasury Secretary Geithner wants the Treasury Department to have new power to seize financial firms like AIG, stating the failure of AIG proves the old regulations didn’t work so we need new regulations to keep the checks and balances of the economy in place.

We had rules in place that should have prevented companies like AIG from getting “too big to fail”, it was called the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). But the corporate crooks along with their crony politicians did away with the FTC having any real power to prevent corporations from getting “too big to fail”. Now the Treasury Secretary wants new powers to take over financial institutions before they get to the critical stage of failure. Don’t we already have that power? Doesn’t the American tax payer own 80 percent of AIG, is that not a takeover? Haven’t we pumped billions into the largest banks in the country already? How much more power does he need?

Geithner was head of the Federal Reserve in New York when that massive 700 billion bank bailout was being engineered which indicates to me he’s on the side of the bankers and not the citizens.

The other financial bomb shell is that the Treasury and the Obama administration have set up a government funded program to sell the trillion dollars of “toxic assets” of banks to investors through private and public partnership.

Paul Krugman 2008 Nobel prize winner for economics states “In a way, we'd like to make the whole story of these assets go away. The only reason that they're there, the only reason it's an issue is because the banks have lost so much money that they are not effective at their job of passing funds from one end of the economy to the other.”

The government is investing tax payer dollars in the same toxic assets that got us into this trouble in the first place.

To quote Krugman “it’s not the toxic assets that are the problem, it’s the toxic banks that are the problem.” We could take it a step further and say it’s not the regulations that were the problem, it’s the people who have failed to enforce the regulations who are the problem.

Will these companies who buy the toxic assets become too big to fail? And who are these investors? They only risk 15 percent of the loan and the tax payer takes on the other 85 percent of the loan’s risk. It’s a good deal for the investors, but a raw deal for the citizen.

And what’s in these toxic assets but homes loans? If the few investors were to buy these assets won’t a lot of our debt be in the hands of the few? Where’s the FTC when it’s needed?

Many in the country are concerned Obama is leading us into being a socialist nation. It is not socialism he is leading us into, we’re being led into Big Brother governance with the corporate crooks in control. Tim Geithner’s quest for more power and the federally guaranteed loans to sell these “toxic assets” are two more steps in the direction of Big Brother.

Bonus Betting

It’s maddening to hear of the bonuses being doled out to both current and former AIG employees, but don’t let them use this as a ruse to take the heat off the issues going on behind those bonuses. The amount of money in said bonuses is 465 million, which is one half of a billion, and we’re doling out billions upon billions to all kinds of banks, foreign and domestic and where is the media spot light? On half a billion. Where have all the other billions gone?

They won’t tell us, as Bob Kuttner economics writer for American Prospective stated “…Treasury was essentially saying, This is proprietary business information. We're not even going to require AIG to tell you who got all the money." Bob Kuttner said “You know, this is being run by the Treasury in the way that JPMorgan and Company were brought in after the bank panic of 1907. It's being run like a private bankers' club, instead of like a government agency that owes the taxpayer some transparency and some accountability.”

The huge risks AIG took are hidden away in the twisted language of credit default swaps, and now it’s become complicated to figure out who in our own government knew what and when.

One thing we do know is that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was in on that 750 billion dollar bank bail out bill because he was head of the New York Federal Reserve at that time, and now as Treasury Secretary, he won’t tell us where AIG spent our tax dollars.

Now it’s come out that 12 billion of the AIG bailout money went to Goldman Sachs a Wall Street banking firm, where former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson was at one time CEO. And billions more are going to AIG’s counterparts, foreign banks.

Not only does AIG steal our money, they add insult to injury. According to a report on the News Hour “much of the bonus money went into a division that took huge losses linked to risky mortgages, but company officials have said they need those employees to help undo the damage.” With employees like those who needs enemies?

There’s a lot more going on with this AIG swindle than meets the eye, the bonuses are a diversion to take attention away from the greedy capitalists who stole 90% of the money and control our country with evermore success.

Return of the Robber Barons

For all those who are concerned about the redistribution of wealth, not to worry, the president can only dance around the fringes of addressing this issue. All us little people at the bottom of the distribution chain only get to redistribute our wealth from government agency to government agency and from corporation to corporation, the real power and wealth of our country has already been redistributed into the hands of the few, and it began decades ago.

We have gone back to the gilded age when the robber barons were in control with the resurrection of Standard Oil, the model of corporate concentration of wealth as designed by robber baron John D. Rockefeller. Standard Oil, took over the entire country’s oil production by buying or destroying those who were unwilling to sell and ended up controlling eighty percent of the world’s oil production during the late 1800’s and early1900’s.

Citizens pushed back against Standard Oil resulting with the Supreme Court in 1911 ordering Standard dissolved, but that all changed with the “merge or die” mantra during Reagan’s presidency.

As a result of Reagan’s FTC lax rules against monopolies, his FTC allowed the resurrection of Standard Oil so that we now have Exxon Mobil the descendents of Standard Oil of New Jersey and Standard Oil of New York, the largest and most profitable company ever in the history of the world. With globalization Exxon Mobil can do to the world what Standard Oil did to the country, take complete control while squeezing all others out, by whatever means necessary.

James Webb writes in his “A Time to Fight” “The take it all mentality of corporate America in these early years of the twenty first century has come to resemble in many ways the un-caring rapacity of a corporate America that Teddy Roosevelt chose to confront a hundred years ago.”

It remains to be seen if President Obama can live up to his promise of restoring equality of “economic opportunity”. To do that he needs to take on today’s global robber barons; until he does that, there will be no downwards redistribution of wealth.

You Decide

There isn’t a health care crisis in this country, paying for health insurance is the crisis. Our health insurance industry is plagued by the same problem as our financial system… greed !

The health insurance companies make up rules and refuse to pay the doctors, nurses and hospitals. Take for example the ninety day rule. If a claim is not billed within 90 days, the insurance company denies payment because it was billed later than the ninety day filing limit, even if it’s billed on the ninety-first day. Imagine all the millions of people paying premiums, and the insurance companies keep the money while denying payment. It amounts to legalized stealing.

For the past two decades the insurance companies have taken over medicine, resulting in doctors and hospitals having to hire legions of employees just to call insurance companies to ask them for permission to perform surgeries; diagnostic testing; and physician visits, along with seeking approval to prescribe certain medications. The insurance companies act like they know better than doctors what is best for us, so they control all medical decisions with a maze of regulations to determine if treatment is necessary. File clerks looking at paperwork submitted by those legions of employees are making our medical and health decisions for us.

Another trick up their sleeve is something called the disallowed amount. They deduct paying one third of the billed price and call that the disallowed amount. For instance, if the doctor visit is seventy five dollars, the insurance company says we’ll only allow fifty dollars, with a discount of twenty five dollars. But a patient without medical insurance goes to the same medical professional, they have to pay the entire bill without any deductions.

Why does the insurance company decide they deserve a deduction but not the average citizen? Because they are ‘Big Brother’ and they make the rules. Their rules say they are the warranty holders and we are their rented machines, which require fixing just like automobiles. Insurance companies decide how much and what type of repairs their ‘machines’ will receive.

It was recently reported the insurance industry actually came out and said if the federal government mandates that all citizens have health insurance, they’ll drop the pre-existing clause. A pre-existing clause is where coverage is denied if the medical condition was in effect prior to the purchase of the health insurance.

Every year the cost of health insurance premiums rises faster than any raises we may receive. In effect we’re giving the insurance company our raise while receiving less coverage. This has been going on for close to two decades, no wonder people can’t save money, we never get a raise in our pay. And if you don’t receive a raise, then your pay decreases because the health insurance premium increases and you take home less. Of course, maybe if we could start employing the disallowed theory, we could save a bundle on our health insurance premiums.

They’ve even changed what we call doctors, we now call them providers. What would the new degree for a doctor be, a PR for provider? Besides, I’d rather see a doctor for medicine than a provider for healthcare any day.

This is just a glimpse of how much power these insurance corporations have over our government, how much disdain they have for us and only a few of the myriad of reasons why we need leaders who are able to stand up to the insurance industry, because as it is now, health insurance companies decide who lives and who dies.

The president is promising us health care reform by the end of the year. He should take the medical decision making out of the hands of insurance companies, whose decisions are driven solely by profits, and place it back into the hands of the people along with their treating physicians. This is what America is all about, taking the power and decision making out of the hands of the few and putting it back into the hands of the people where it belongs.

True health care reform begins with regaining our right to make our own medical decisions and realizing it is the insurance companies who make medical care overly expensive.

Banking Challenges

President Obama told us we had to pass the 787 billion dollar economic stimulus on top of the 700 billion we’ve already given to the banks with little in return. But wait there’s more…

The Federal Reserve is going to lend out trillions in car loans, student loans and small business loans, which is kinda scary considering the Federal Reserve is a bunch of bankers who control our currency. The Federal Reserve Chairman controls inflation and deflation by setting the interest rate banks charge to one another called the Federal Funds Rate.

Thomas Jefferson said “I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our civil liberties than standing armies”. “If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation then by deflation, the banks and the corporations will grow up around them, will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs."

The president tells us we are entering uncharted financial territory which call for drastic changes to the entire economic system. Considering what Thomas Jefferson had to say about banks, how uncharted is today’s financial situation when greed is its lifeblood, no matter the century?

Our currency has been turned into credit, and because the Federal Reserve failed to control the dot com and housing bubbles with the proper interest rates, the banks and corporations parasitically grew up around our economy choking the life out of it, so that now we the tax payers now have to bail out the banks with many of us ending up without a home because the Money is now gone because the bankers stole it! These bankers have ruined our economy, and many people's lives, and have no remorse having done so.

The attitude of the greedy bankers is one of arrogance and entitlement, evidenced by CEO salaries, and AIG’s trips to resorts in Colorado and California after receiving government bail out money. Northern Bank received 1.6 billion in bail out money and still went on their golfing trips because they had already been planned. Many Americans had also made plans, like staying in their homes and investing in their retirement, their plans were curtailed by the arrogant greed of the financial industry.

This is the challenge, tackling the unfettered greed of the few, the rich the powerful, and only one of many challenges this president faces. During Jefferson’s time they had men who were willing to risk their lives and their fortunes to take on the bankers. Today our politicians owe their fortunes to the wealthy few and dare not risk their “elected positions” of power by taking on the bankers.

We're Being Taxed to Death

For decades the federal government has decreased taxes on the wealthiest, and increased taxes for the rest of us. During the Bush reign the tax codes were changed even more drastically, to redistribute wealth upwards, so that a billionaire hedge fund manager pays less in taxes than the janitor or secretary working in the same office building. Is that socialism or concentration of wealth?

Federal funding for expanded S-Chip health insurance for low income children was passed this year with an increased tax on cigarettes. In Massachusetts a mandatory health insurance pool was funded in part by an increased tax on cigarettes.

And it’s going well beyond just cigarettes. Here in Massachusetts the governor wants to raise gas tax with an increase yearly on top of the Feds raising the gas tax. They’re all raising the gas tax.

The state of California has an economy that is eighth in the world, larger than some countries and they’re withholding state income tax return checks. The state has also imposed forced furloughs on workers by shutting down the state offices twice a month.

President Reagan increased payroll taxes on the middle class now the Republicans said the payroll tax decrease in the stimulus bill would cost too much, so they reduced it from five hundred per individual and one thousand per couple to four hundred per individual and eight hundred per couple.

On the one hand they give us a miniscule tax break in our pay checks, but then they take it back with two hands by raising taxes on everything else we purchase, including food.

Under the guise of the “urgent” need for increased state or federal revenue they will find creative new names for taxing us, the current “recession” has created a band wagon for tax increases. Haven’t they heard “you can’t get blood from a stone”?…and they blame it on the “economic crisis“. Once taxes go up they never come down again.

Here in Massachusetts the governor is looking to increase state revenue by taxing candy, flavored drinks, alcohol and implementing tolls at the state borders.

Whatever happened to no taxation without representation? Must’ve gotten lost in the translation somehow, because all we have now IS taxation without representation.

Come and See the Show, Republicans Dig In

Weeks ago Senator Jon Kyl said no Republican would vote for the economic stimulus bill, so that in six months when it fails the Republicans can say they had no input. Not one Republican House vote was cast on this legislation and only three Senators voted to push the bill through.

It’s as if the Republicans are digging in their heels just to be on the opposing side. After the stimulus bill was passed Republican House leader John Boehner said “you can’t blame us” (meaning the Republicans). They really can’t say anything about the spending on this bill when under their watch trucks full of cash and weapons vanished in Iraq.

Senator Judd Gregg from New Hampshire withdrew his willingness to be the Commerce Secretary because he couldn’t be true to his Republican fiscal conservatism in an administration controlled by Democrats. Why didn’t he announce this before the wheels for his appointment had been greased by the governor of New Hampshire pledging to appoint a Republican Senator to replace Senator Gregg? His actions are striking in that they put party ideology before country.

When the Federalist party dissolved, members who had also been founders said that it was good so then they could put country above party.

Today’s politicians use party loyalty to trick us with the illusion of being a self governing nation, their arguments over spending are all for show. After all, the Republicans take your money and keep it, the Democrats take your money and give it away, otherwise they’re interchangeable, beholden to the same large campaign contributors.

JFK said the “common enemies of all mankind are tyranny, poverty, disease and war itself”. The one thing we all hold in common irregardless of party, is that we are all in hot water, the world is roiling over oil, globalization, concentration of wealth and wars.

We're So Sorry

Senator Chris Dodd apologized for his involvement with Angelo Mozilo’s crooked sub prime loan company; Countrywide. The Senator and his wife (a banker) apologized for refinancing their mortgages with Countrywide. They were dismayed as to how they came to be on the list known as “Friends of Angelo” as they “hadn‘t been informed they were on the list and it’s a lie”… they‘re not friends of Angelo. Riiiight.

The president also apologized, saying he “screwed up” on his choice of Tom Daschle for Secretary of Health and Human Services, after the Senator’s tax troubles came to light. Then David Axelrod, senior advisor to the president, apologized for bringing trouble to Mr. Obama.

Maybe they should stop apologizing. Once they apologize the discretion or double standard is swept under the rug where it doesn’t belong. MLK said America is a ten day nation. If they would stop apologizing perhaps there’d be more accountability and a longer public memory.

Mistakes Were Made

While it is not clear if this ‘economic stimulus bill” will work to “save our economy“, what is clear is that we have a very broken political system when they spend trillions for War and Wall Street but have to slow down when it comes to domestic spending.

Senator Arlen Specter said “we passed the TARP bill, $700 billion, without having a chance to study it. It was a rushed matter, and we made a lot of mistakes. There were provisions there that no one really understood.”

Fifty one billion was lost due to mismanagement in Iraq reconstruction according to a recent report and they mistakenly gave out seven hundred billion in misunderstood provisions.

That’s 751 billion given away before any stimulus bill is passed, but now Republicans are concerned about their Constitutional responsibilities to take a good look at this bill because there is too much money being thrown around. The Republicans weren‘t too concerned about their duties when it came to throwing money around in Iraq or “losing” 51 billion in reconstruction aid. (As for where the money went don’t let them kid you, it wasn’t mismanaged, the few who were in control managed to steal it very well.)

Get out of Iraq, Afghanistan and end this perpetual “war on terror” and there’s the money for the economic stimulus bill. But with all the “misunderstandings” in our deliberative bodies of government along with a president who does not want to look back, it is clear these wars will continue well into the future.

Patrick Henry said “I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided; and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way judging the future but by my past”.

The past warns us that all warring empires crumble from within, does the need for an economic stimulus bill signify we’re on the verge of crumbling?

When that happens, who’s going to pay the price? Certainly not the few, the bailed out greedy who along with their political puppets got us into these wars and economic disaster in the first place.