Drowning Visions the Norquist Way

The Washington Spectator reports that Grover Norquist said we don’t need a president with ideas.

What’s even more astonishing is that a vast majority of Republicans have signed onto Norquist’s pledge to never raise taxes on the wealthy ever; essentially pledging their allegiance to a faction, the Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), over the United States of America.

The founding fathers and the Revolutionaries pledged themselves to the ideal that man has natural rights which were bestowed upon government, the radical opposite from the belief at the time, that rights were given to men by the government.

Yet when interviewed on the NewsHour, Grover Norquist said, if any Republican dares to even think of raising taxes on the wealthy, they will be going back on their pledge to their constituents. Ha, wielding conformity as a threat, hardly a radical idea.

From the Washington Spectator-”Norquist used a corporate analogy to make his point. The Coca Cola company works hard to ensure the quality of it’s product, because product defines brand. Were someone to discover a “rat head in the bottom of the bottle,” Norquist said “Coke’s brand would be ruined for everyone.” “Republican elected officials who vote to increase taxes are rat heads in a Coke bottle”.

Grover’s brand is tax cuts for the wealthy; which were renewed last December but no jobs were created. But rather than believe the reality that tax cuts do not create jobs, the country is convinced all we have to do is lower taxes for the rich and the economy will right itself. Thanks to elitist right-wing factions like the Americans for Tax Reform and the evil media megaphone Fox news; owned by Rupert Murdock is the tea party and republican’s personal broadcasting media station spewing the propaganda that the idiots believe, and it is the ‘gun’ that is shooting the bullet to the brain of the United States, leading to our downfall as a great nation.

FDR said without vision the people perish. What’s Grover‘s vision, to drown government in a bath tub. When that happens, (and we’re well on the way), the founder’s vision of the self governing rights of man, will be drowned by factions. James Madison warned us against factions, a lesson corporate fascists like Grover Norquist and Fox News, have convinced the masses to forget.

Hedging the Debt Ceiling

The politicians are willing to have a “showdown” over raising the debt ceiling but not much discussion on where all this debt is coming from, other than the policies of this president. There’s a lot more to it than that, but making a simplistic answer it’s more easily acceptable to the public.

Wall Street has failed the country. In June 2011 the AP reported that “JP-Morgan Chase & Co. agreed to pay $153.6 million to settle fraud charges that it misled buyers of complex mortgage investments just as the housing market was collapsing.” And “J.P. Morgan Securities a division of the powerful Wall Street bank, failed to tell investors that a hedge fund helped select the investment portfolio all the while knowing and betting that the portfolio would fail.”

In July 2010 The Securities and Exchange Commission has

reached a $550 million settlement with Goldman Sachs in its case accusing the company of misleading investors in mortgage-backed securities, the agency said in a statement ."

The role of Wall Street is to channel investment money into activities which create jobs. Instead two of the biggest banks pay millions for rigging the system while funneling billions into their pockets. In 2010 Wall Street bankers took in $20.8 billion in bonuses.

Where’s the showdown over this failure of Wall Street? There isn’t one, and despite this gargantuan failure, the Republicans refuse to raise taxes on these same hedge fund managers (who pay less in taxes than the working stiff).

If the Republicans are so concerned over government spending then why don’t they increase the income by taxing these hedge fund billionaires who set people up to fail then bet they would fail? And why aren’t the banksters doing jail time for what they’ve done?

According to book “Thirteen Bankers” by Simon Johnson banks today have more power over President Obama than he has over them. And if they have more power than this president, they’ll have even more power over the next president. Just blaming Obama isn’t going to reduce their strangle hold over the economy.

Then, to add insult to injury, Standard & Poor’s said if the debt ceiling wasn’t raised and the US government only paid the interest on it’s debt, then this would result in a lowered credit rating. Well some of the “investments” picked by hedge funds were made up of interest only mortgage loans. And these same credit ratings agencies were paid to lie about these risky securities, and gave them triple ‘A’ ratings, which investors bought in droves due to the high credit rating.

And now they’re going to lower our credit rating after they helped spark the economic tsunami engulfing the world? What an affront. They should be facing jail time not giving out credit ratings. The reality of the situation is that Wall Street and the bankers are rewarded for letting the country down and transferring responsibility to the citizens through bail outs and blame for the housing crisis. All which has been achieved through decades of bipartisan submission, resulting in monstrous gains for the few and massive suffering for the many.

Repealing Obamacare

Repealing Obamacare is a false crusade and fixating on it is misleading.

Which is not to say that the health reform bill is the answer, but the astronomical rise in the costs of health insurance will not be solved without facing reality.

For instance, in 1985 a solo physician could have a practice and hire one employee to do all the office work. Today, that same practioner has to hire four to five people to do all the clerical work the insurance companies insist upon to see a patient. On the one hand, this creates jobs you might say. But on the other hand, the insurance companies are in control of the physician’s income, so based on this control how well can the physician pay their employees and what type of benefits could they provide? Only as much as the insurance companies allow.

The insurance companies are very inefficient. It is well known that insurance companies do not receive mail or faxes. Submitting “appeals” on denied claims is one area which demonstrates this truth. One can send in an appeal to an insurance company and then call them to ensure that they did receive it. Two weeks later, the insurance company sends a letter stating that the claim is denied because no appeal was received. Call the insurance company back, and yes, they do see where the appeal was received and they’ll have it reviewed again. All medical practioners have to hire people to deal with this nonsense. No wonder the insurance companies only spend eighty percent of premiums on medical care. The rest goes to denying claims, through made up rules enforced by them.

Another truth is monopolization. UnitedHealth Care boasts seventy million members. The population of the United States is roughly three hundred million. This means that one insurance company has almost one third of the population as customers. It’s too much control and is of great concern, because UnitedHealth Care does not tell the truth. Call them on a claim that’s not paid and they say they’ll pay it, they were wrong to deny it. A month later when the claim is still not paid, call them and they’ll say they’re not going to pay it and they never said they would pay the claim. Which means that UnitedHealth Care collected a premium but refused to pay for the medical care.

These are unethical business practices; doctors and subscribers are powerless against the immoral and monopolistic health insurance corporations and their lobbyists, who insure that laws are passed which benefit them only. This is the reality of the situation, which neither “Obamacare” nor it’s repeal addresses.

Great Corporate Control

John Boehner; Speaker of the House said, “We can't raise taxes on the very people who create jobs, and keep spending money that we don't have.”

The founders understood job creation needs start up funds and a stable banking system to encourage entrepreneurs to be the “jobs creators”, something we lack here in the US.

From the book 13 Bankers by Simon Johnson -”Alexander Hamilton believed that the government should ensure that sufficient credit was available to fund economic development and transform America into a prosperous, entrepreneurial country, and who “favored a stronger federal government that actively supported economic development.”

Today we have Joel Naroff, president of Naroff Economic Advisers stating, “A lot of the especially large companies that have a lot of business overseas are looking towards their overseas markets, rather than the domestic U.S. markets to expand. As a result of that, they may be making a lot of money, but they may be putting that money to use somewhere else outside the United States.”

Lisa Lynch Dean of the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandies University said “new entrepreneurs that come into a bank that are looking for funds to go off with some new idea that no one else has done before are encountering a lot of resistance in terms of raising that capital that they need to grow their businesses.” “And a lot of net new employment at this stage of the recovery in the past would have come from new businesses starting up and adding employees. And that's not happening either.”

What we need is a strong federal government whose main interest is a sound financial environment where entrepreneurs can flourish and create jobs. Instead, we have an economy where mega Banks are in control of the nation’s wealth and monopolistic Conglomerates are in control of the jobs. This economic and political influence renders our politicians incapable of standing up for the founding principals which made this nation one of the most prosperous in the world. Today we are seeing giant corporations creating astronomical job losses, yet Representative Boehner insists the way to stop it, is to cut taxes on these jobs exporters.

Teddy Roosevelt said in his 1901 Inaugural address that “Great corporations exist only because they are created and safe guarded by our institutions; and it is therefore our right and our duty to see that they work in harmony with these institutions”. The economy will not improve until we reclaim our right to ensure economic harmony.

Racing for Global Profits

“The Associated Press, which released the study on CEO compensation, put it this way: In the boardroom, it's as if the great recession never happened.

CEO pay, including salaries, bonuses, and stock options, was up 24 percent last year, to a level higher than 2007, just before the recession hit. The study came a day after the Fortune 500 list was released, showing corporate profits increased by 81 percent last year, or more than $300 billion. CEO’s were rewarded because corporate profits soared in 2010 as the economy gradually got stronger and companies cut costs.”

When corporations talk of cutting costs, what they really mean is cutting the American worker, we cost too much. Corporations are raking in billions in profits overseas, they don’t even need us as customers, let alone as employees. Profits were up for companies last year and yet according to the AP “… companies could limit raises for rank and file workers because of the weak labor market.”

These global giants were made in America and exist because of our laws which at one time ensured a level playing field benefiting all Americans. Now, after decades of these megalith giants eliminating those laws and instituting their own through bought and paid for politicians, a majority of American citizens have falling wages, yet bonuses for the few “…Two-thirds of the executives got a bigger one than they had in 2009, some more than three times as big.” Meanwhile it’s debt for the rest of us due to uncontrolled price gouging for the necessities of life.

Deborah Wince-Smith, president and CEO of the Council on Competitiveness said, “… you know, the issue of corporate profits, companies sitting on, you know, over $1.5 trillion, where are they investing it? Are they investing it in the United States? There is a global race for the best investment, the best high-value activity.”

Actually it’s a race to suck up the wealth and productivity of this country into the hands of the few, by cutting out the American worker in a rabid search for obscene profits.

It’s glaringly obvious what is going on; CEO pay, bonuses and perks are on the increase because they cut pay and benefits of the American worker. Corporations sit on trillions, while racing for winner-take-all in global profits.

Deborah Wince-Smith also said “you know, 80 percent of all middle-class consumers will be outside the United States by 2020.”These corporations have outsourced our way of life and our standard of living. Well, almost all of us, the American way of life won’t change for the CEO’s, it’s only changed for the rank and file, who helped make these corporations the global blood sucking giants that they are today.

It's the Entitlements Stupid

Senator Mitch McConnell said “We have over $50 trillion in unfunded liabilities, that is, promises we have made that we cannot keep, to very popular things, like Medicare and Social Security and Medicaid, the health program for the poor, how much more do we need to know?”

A lot! For instance the Washington Spectator reports the real financial threat facing this nation is credit default swaps. A credit default swap is the swapping of risk with a third party, essentially to insure you against default. Now, because of decades of deregulation, credit default swaps and other complicated derivatives are traded without any regulation, resulting in “JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs holding more than 95 percent of derivatives exposure among the nation’s top 25 bank holding companies.”

A bank holding company isn’t just a bank, it’s a mega conglomerate and has a lot more companies under it than just banks, like insurance companies. Precisely why AIG, an insurance company who’s also a bank holding company, was included in the bank bail outs and why we’re on the hook for all those trillions in credit default swaps.

Eric Dinalo former superintendent of the New York Insurance Department stated “ in 2008 the total of private sector debt was about $16 trillion. So it appears that swaps on that debt could total at least three times as much actual debt outstanding.” Oddly enough, that’s close to $50 trillion.

The Spectator continues: “The numbers alone are terrifying. In 2008, Bear Stearns had written derivatives contracts backing credit valued at 10.2 trillion, a figure three quarters the size of the U. S. economy. When institutions with balance sheets like that go south, the entire economy goes with them.”

No wonder the Senator is “talking about trillions here, not millions -- I mean, not billions, we're talking about trillions.” It is easier to convince the populace that future debt is due to entitlements than it is to convince them it’s the bankers and their trick credit default swaps causing future debt. And this is just the tip of the iceberg, there’s a lot more spending on Wall Street that we need to know about, but sadly all we hear is the chant: it’s ‘the entitlements stupid‘.

Counter Balancing the Budget

Paul Ryan’s budget proposal “Path to Prosperity” is being hailed as courageous, which is an understatement, because it takes a strong man to balance a lop sided budget on the backs of the old, the sick, the poor and the jobless.

The budget has been designed to benefit the defense corporations and banks over the people. Former Wyoming Senator Alan Simpson said, ”You need to get rid of the 250,000 contractors in the Defense Department where you can really pick up some small change…We have a defense budget now which is larger than all 14 countries. That ought to get you somewhere.” Blackwater Security makes 94 percent of its profit from the federal government, according to the book Pinstripe Patronage.

William Greider writes in the Nation magazine Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner didn’t help struggling homeowners modify their mortgages but instead gave hundreds of billions to big banks “with no strings attached”.

The reasoning behind not helping millions of Americans facing foreclosure is that the Treasury didn’t want to create moral hazard amongst the citizens by letting them think they can get something for nothing like the mega banks did.

The Republicans are concerned with lulling citizens into complacency and laziness with the humane safety net this country provides to the terminally ill, severely disabled and the jobless.

It should be clear why the budget is lop sided and laced with huge deficit deceit. But yet it isn’t, because the corporations and their minions have convinced many that they are an example of the best free market capitalism has to offer, except they didn’t get to where they are due to hard work and effort rewarded by free market capitalism; they got to where they are because they bought control of our nation’s economy and the federal budget and were allowed by our elected officials to change the rules enabling them to funnel our nation‘s wealth into the hands of the few, while creating huge deficits for the rest of us.

From the Nation magazine: “The House voted to repeal healthcare reform after taking millions of dollars in campaign contributions from medical and insurance interests. Tea Party favorite Jim DeMint, along with eighteen other colleagues, introduced a Senate bill to repeal the tepid financial reform bill passed last year. Collectively, the senators backing repeal of those reforms have taken nearly $50 million in campaign contributions from the very Wall Street interests who were going to be affected by the law, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics.”

No wonder their budget concern is the laziness and immorality of the common people and not the abusive crookedness of our politicians and how spending really works in Washington.