As predicted, the rich will continue with their tax breaks

I can't believe there was a double-team press conference with President Obama and former President Clinton, telling the American people that our economic stability depends on the rich retaining their tax breaks. Completely outrageous. How are we going to pay for the endless war in the Middle East? Not to mention the extension of unemployment benefits? Why is thought that by letting the rich hang on to their money, they will spend it to stimulate the economy and not horde it for a rainy day, and the forecast looks like nothing but blue skies ahead for the rich while it pours down on the middle class?

Government needs to take control of this horrible economic situation, and stop letting the rich, the plutocrats, run this country into the ground. Now more that ever it is easy to communicate with your congress representatives. Take the time to contact them and tell them that you do not want to see the rich continue their tax breaks.

Democrats and Republicans, the old two man con?

Here is a theory of mine that I would like to share with you. I think the American people are being set-up, with one of the oldest tricks in the book, the two man con. I think at some point after the FDR presidency the wealthy powers-that-be got together to figure out how they could stop the scourge that is the American middle class. Using their money and influence they financed the campaigns of both Republicans and Democrats and pulled the strings so that whoever was elected would be the candidate that would do their bidding.

Their first soldier was Richard Nixon who went to China to lay the groundwork for the mess we have now, the one where all of our manufacturing jobs are moving over there. After Nixon managed to engage himself in criminal activity, the American people wanted anyone but a Republican. What the proponents of plutocracy came up with was Jimmy Carter an inexperienced Georgia Governor from a peanut farming family.

President Carter did an incredibly poor job, especially when it came to handling the economy, it would almost seem that his policies help exacerbate the stagflation that lead to his ultimate defeat by super Republican, Ronald Reagan.

Ronald Reagan, a former B-movie actor turned puppet for the Republican party, did intentional and irreparable damage to social security, and drove the national debt sky high.

The gilded age he created was so great that he got his Vice President, George Bush, senior in for another term before the economy collapsed in in the late eighties and early nineties.

Then the proponents of plutocracy found Bill Clinton, who they assumed was another inexperienced Southern hick Governor this time from Arkansas. But, "Slick Willie" lived up to his nickname, and this Rhodes scholar was no hick by any means. He knew how to play ball like a Republican, so much so, one would wonder if he was a shill from the Republican party with his approval of NAFTA among many other very conservative policies. Also, thanks in part to the Internet economic bubble, he managed to even get elected for a second term.

The Republicans were not going to stand for three terms of Democrats. If they let this go on the United Stated could have the longest Democratic presidential run since FDR, and there was no way that was going to happen. The powers that be then stuck Al Gore with the unpopular Joe Lieberman which lead to a narrow defeat in Florida, by George W. Bush.

Bush appeared as clueless wonder, that relied heavily on his Vice President to make important decisions. Decisions that would ultimately lead to the financial mess we are in now. For his second term W. was virtually unopposed by John Kerry, another very conservative Democrat, that offered very little different from the Bush campaign, and therefore he was was easily defeated.

But W. who cared more about sending soldiers to the Middle East and sending jobs overseas did absolutely nothing to help the United States economy which had turned into one great Ponzi scheme.

Realizing that the no one in as single election term, Republican or Democrat could get the economy out the quagmire it had been placed in the purveyors of plutocracy knew that they had to get yet another inexperienced Democrat in office, to make sure that the Democratic party will look completely inept and they could have four years to find another Republican to at least appear to come to the rescue.

They found Barack Obama, who had about seven years of experience representing Illinois in the United States Senate, and that's it. Just as the powers-that-be have planned, he appears to be either taking no action or similar action that Republican president would have taken in reaction to the current economic crisis; like Nero, he just fiddles while Rome burns.

So there you have the basic pattern, aggressive Republican (Nixon) inept Democrat (Carter) aggressive Republican (Reagan & Bush), inept Democrat Bill Clinton (inept only in that he was a very economically conservative Democrat), aggressive Republican (George W. Bush, but it was really Dick Cheney), inept Democrat Barack Obama. Isn't there anyone else out there who thinks this pattern is not coincidence? Can we do anything to stop this? If we re-elect Obama will we get four more years of him doing next to nothing to further the economy along? Or will he be followed by another heroic looking Republican, who will pretend to be coming to save the day when he or she is actually just furthering along the destruction of the United States as we know it?

Government's answer to controlling spending: Layoffs and more layoffs

The Tea Party republicans are really making their voices heard, "We don't want to pay any more taxes, period!" Actually, it is more like we don't want to pay any taxes, but that's another story. The general politicians response on the federal, state, and local level is to have hiring freezes, pay freezes and now they are talking about layoffs, major layoffs.

Now, gee, with unemployment rates in many states at an all time high, do more layoffs really make sense? The government is still going to have to pay out unemployment for many former employees for who knows how long.

This is not a smart strategy. I am sure there is waste in many other areas of government that have nothing to with employee salaries and benefits, but they are not favorable targets like poor working class people.

Ages ago government jobs had to offer great benefits and pensions in order to compete with private industry. Now private industry jobs are disappearing faster than ever, and therefore government no longer wants to offer jobs with benefits to its workers. Instead of just laying off people indiscriminately, government should go to their workers' labor unions and ask them to grandfather their benefits, and make sacrifices in order to keep their jobs, and not even think about job cuts to contribute to the welfare rolls.

I recently heard a quote from some congressional committee looking to save money, that many federal employees are making six figure salaries and doing much better than their private sector counterparts. The reason federal workers in the DC area make so much money is because housing is so damn expensive, to quote former NY gubernatorial candidate Jimmy McMillan, "The rent is too damn high!" Therefore they have to pay workers big salaries. Housing subsidies for government workers would be one way to justifiably lower federal workers salaries, but just making stupid comments like federal workers are making more than private sector workers is just ridiculous, and meant to get Tea Party yahoos all roused and riled up.

During the Great Depression, President Roosevelt created the Work Projects Administration, which actually created jobs for the many unemployed. This is what we need now, not Tea Party Republicans pushing their government shrinking agenda.

Laying off government workers is not a solution to our economic woes, it will just contribute to already out of control unemployment, and do little else. It is just another way the rich want to make sure that they don't have to pick up the bill through increased income taxes which is what they should be doing.

Apple and Amazon and proprietary software: not a model for free trade.

Both Apple and Amazon like to maintain monopolies and don't like free trade, at least when it comes to selling applications and software for their products.

When you buy an iPod or an iPhone you have buy all the mp3s and Aps through Apple's iTunes. There is no chance for buying competitively priced products when you own one of these devices.

It's the same when you buy Amazon's Kindle, the electronic book reader. You can only buy books through the Amazon website. So if you buy a Kindle you have to buy all your books from Amazon and there is no chance for getting them through another source. There was controversy as well, when Amazon set the maximum price for a book at $9.99 and refused to let publishers charge more, when actually they should charge less because in the electronic format you can reproduce books infinitely at very little cost. The publishers wanted to charge whatever the market will bear. The controversy ended when iPad came out and let publishers charge whatever they wanted.

Now you can buy a competitors product and have more options, but you are then shut out from many of the cool apps or other exclusive content from these companies.

In other words their business model is protectionist, and these companies are thriving on it. Why can't this model work for trade in the United States?

Now if it is OK for these companies to have devices with exclusive content, why isn't are trade regulated that way? Why isn't it OK to regulate who you trade with and what gets traded with tariffs and regulations?

It is OK for these companies to make money with exclusive content, but when you try to protect jobs by saying things like you can only hire American workers for certain jobs that is not OK. Or companies that offshore workers have to pay higher taxes which would give them incentive not to offshore workers, that won't work either.

The Apple and Amazon business model should be the model for how the United States handles trade and protects jobs for its workers.

FDR bashing, the new right-wing hobby.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was probably one of the greatest presidents that the United States has ever had. His four term legacy led to the right seeking term limits of presidency and the office has never wielded quite the same power again.

Now the right-wing dings are trying to re-write history to show that his so-called socialist policies like social security extended the great depression and did not end it.

Everyone knows that FDR's policies set up the United States for the Golden Age of prosperity that was 1950's and 60's, and since then it has been systematicaly destroyed under the guidance of Richard Nixon and more recently and more devastatingly by Ronald Regan (and Clinton and both Bushes didn't help things either).

They are now calling Obama a socialist and he is far from it. He is not touching income tax on wealthy Americans and he probably never will. It looks like the change he promised is not coming, and the US Government is proving once again it is really big business's bitch.

Please right-wingers, don't drag FDR's name (or his initials for that matter) through the mud. And face facts, the country did improve greatly after his presidency. And it is right-wing ideology that is destroying this country, not a move towards socialism.

Health Care Reform that I would like to see..

Well, it looks like health care reform is probably dead in the water now that Ted Kennedy's seat in the Senate went to Republican Scott Brown. Massachusetts seems to be rapidly going from a liberal Democrat state to a conservative Republican state, and given the amount of educated people there and the fact that there are no jobs for educated people in MA, you would think that this wouldn't happen.

Anyway as I have stated before if this health care reform plan doesn't take off, you won't see anyone take a middle ground. As a working class American currently with health care benefits, there are two reforms that I would like to see. One, if they could force doctors and hospitals to take anything qualifying as health insurance and not give them a choice as to whether or not to be a participated provider. I would like to see a mandate from Congress that says, if you are a doctor or hospital and you want to practice medicine you must accept all health insurance, there is no choice to opt out.

Two, medical offices, health insurance, and hospitals have to be run as not-for-profits, this way there will be no temptation from these organizations to give profits priority over peoples lives.

Members of congress are so out of touch with reality that they would never propose such things. I hope Obama's strategy calls for some contingencies, and they just don't give up like the Clintons did back in the 1990s.

The health care reform bill looks like it will just raise health care costs...

The proposed health care reform bill seems very strange to me, with no clear explanation from the government or the media how this bill will actually work. The bill that formed in Senate which seems to be the leading plan for reform has a tax on high cost health insurance plans to pay for things. Now who pays this tax, the worker or employer? I can't get a clear picture from the articles that I read, maybe I'm a little slow, but I think things are being left vague on purpose.

And what if these plans become unpopular and the health insurance companies stop offering them, then where does the money come from. I read an article that said the bill has no provision for inflation, what if all of our plans reach the $8,900 ceiling for individuals and $24,000 ceiling for families, then we all have to pay the tax?


This might make our health care plans worse in order to avoid that price cap. It would make much more sense to tax rich people. The House version of the bill had a tax on invidiuals making over $500,000 and families making over a million dollars. This makes more sense to me. Heck, I would even say we should be taxing individuals making over $150,000 and famlies making over $300,000. This would raise even more money. But somehow, maybe through heavy lobbying by the wealthy, the US government can't get away from supply-side economics, I guess Ronald Regan's hypnotic powers haven't worn off yet.


This looks like it will be fiasco, we really need to explore the one payer plan for this county, but it doesn't look like that will ever happen. And Ted Kennedy's seat now going to a Republican it looks like it is over for health care reform.