Don't want social medicine? How about at least socializing medical school.

I still hear a lot of grunting and groaning about Obamacare.  One left-wing news feed I get on Facebook, was making fun of the owners of Papa John's pizza who were, I guess, noteworthy opponents to Obamacare.   The news feed author claimed that all Papa John's has to do is raise their pizza prices by 14 cents a pie and they will be able to offer health care to their workers without a problem.  I guess this is just to illustrate how ridiculous corporate America's stance is on this issue.

Anyway, I think a major issue we face with or without Obamacare is rising medical costs which seem to greatly outpace inflation.  Without government imposed price-caps on medical service, the only way I can see that they could contain costs is making sure that there is an abundant supply of doctors.

With the baby boomers all starting to head towards the golden years, the demand for medical care will go up greatly, and the supply of doctors in the United States will not most likely meet the demand.  This will lead to even higher medical costs. 

Making sure that there is a plentiful supply of doctors should be a priority for Washington, but it doesn't look like they want to do anything about it.  One step they could take is to put a lot money into medical school scholarships.  Free tuition may give a lot more people the incentive to go to medical school  Once the supply doctors is increased medical costs should go down. 

The US government should also give green cards and medical licenses to any foreign born person who can pass the board certifications exams for medical doctor.  Having the most competition possible is the only way we can curb costs. 

The time to take action is now, by the time the 2013 college graduates can enroll and complete medical school there will be more old people in the United States than ever before.  Write your local congressperson and tell them that we need more doctors now and government has to make sure that physicians’ ranks increase as quickly as possible. 

Keep on striking! Walmart workers...

I am so glad to see that Walmart workers are finally taking some nationwide action against their employer. 

The attitude of most employers in America today has become like this:  "Well, you are very lucky to have a job right now, so many people are out of work, so you won't mind if I defecate on your head.  Please bow your head to the ground, while I pull down my pants."

Walmart is notorious for treating its employees in such a fashion and underpaying them.  Walmart's everyday values come at a great price to its workers.  I try to avoid shopping there. I prefer shopping at Target which has a slightly better reputation.  Sometimes you really don't have a choice because your wages are stagnant, and discount stores are usually very convenient and have the best prices, what can you do?

I got a kick out this Jibjab animated video called "Big Box Mart" which sums the situation at Walmart and how the powers-that-be are purposely driving the United States into the ground.  And it does a great job of explaining our current predicament in under three minutes to the tune of "Oh, Suzanna."

Please check it out here:  

http://www.jibjab.com/originals/big_box_mart

It is time that Walmart workers unionize at fight for better wages and working conditions.  And if this eliminates Walmart's competitive edge in the market that's too bad.  Maybe it will make it easier for smaller retailers to compete.  Markets do best when there is competition, right?

Let's jump off the "Fiscal Cliff" and see what happens!

I don't like all of this media hype about the "fiscal cliff' we are going to fall off of if we let the Bush tax cuts expire in 2013.  Did you notice that no one bothered to mention this before the Presidential election?  All of the sudden this is a big problem, but I don't think it is really. 

If there is such a great concern over the deficit then increased tax revenues when the Bush tax-cuts end will certainly be welcomed.    I don't think it will slow economic growth much more than it is now.

President Obama has to behave like a real lame-duck and stand his ground on this issue and make sure wealthy people pay their fair share of taxes.   "Well, if you tax all the wealthy, how will they create all those jobs people need?" you ask.   We are not taxing them so much now, and they are not creating jobs.  American workers are a bad investment, we are too expensive, they would rather hire capable Chinese workers who are available in the hundreds of millions at the fraction of the price.  And even better Obama-care doesn't extend to China, so they won't have to worry about providing health care for those people.

Also we have to look at history.  Traditionally, when taxes on the wealthy have been increased the economy has improved.  Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman in his book "End This Depression Now." says that there is no real provable correlation between raising taxes on the wealthy and economic improvement, that it just looks like it could be a coincidence that the economy improves when taxes are raised on the wealthy.  However, I think there could be a real correlation.  Perhaps when the wealthy start realizing that they will have to start picking up the tax bill, they start working on fixing the economy in order to have the tax burden shifted back on the middle class.  They really want to run the economy into the ground, that is why they are having the Republicans in the House trying to stand their ground on not raising taxes on the wealthy.  I am by no means Nobel Prize material, so what really do I know, but let's raise taxes on the wealthy and see what happens.

President Obama, please be a real lame-duck and don't let John Boehner and Mitch McConnell walk all over you.  Please grab hold of them and force them to jump down the "fiscal cliff" with everyone else.

Those annoying ads from Thomas Peterffy.

During the presidential election campaign, we were bombarded by ads from billionaire Thomas Peterffy telling us how bad things were in the socialist country of Hungary where he was born, and how we had to get Mitt Romney into office because along with making the rich poorer, socialism would make poor poorer as well.  He allegedly spent eight million dollars of his own money on this message, which I am sure was chump-change for him.

The only problem is that Hungary did not really have a socialist system.  They were under control by a Soviet military dictatorship pretending to be communism. 

Peterffy fails to mention in his ads the success of Norway's socialist democracy, and that Norwegians enjoy a better standard of living than Americans do. 

What I really would like to see is a study of Scandinavian socialist countries and what makes it work for them, and why can't we make socialism work in the United States.  The corporate controlled media seems to steer clear of this topic.  There also doesn't appear to be any American based academics interested in this topic.  I think Norway's socialist policies could be applied to the United States, and our employment situation and quality of life would improve greatly.

Of course Thomas Peterffy is only interested in hanging on to his billions, and not interested in helping the masses.  For the wealthy there is no common good.  Common is bad, and only rich is good. 

There is also the problem that President Obama's policies are far from socialist which probably helped get him re-elected.

Don't worry Thomas Peterffy you will have plenty of money for the rest of your life.  Instead of warning Americans about how bad socialism is, why don't you go back to Hungary and straighten things out there.  I think they could use your help, once the Soviets withdrew from Hungary things only got worse economy-wise for them.  I am sure that you could show them just how great the capitalist system is and how it can work for them.  Good luck.

Is it one party time?

If you  are like me, you have Republican friends who are still in a state of shock, still sitting or standing around with their mouths open.  They were sure that President Obama was going to be another one-term wonder like Jimmy Carter, absolutely sure.  How could the American people not see what a mess President Obama's evil socialist agenda has made of their country? Of course it had nothing to do with George W. Bush's economic agenda that brought the economy down shortly before President Obama took office in 2008.

Well, the American people are not that stupid after all, but there are enough pockets of stupid people around to allow for the Republicans to retain control of the House of Representatives, you can't win them all.  And of course, they still have the agenda of not taxing the wealthy under any circumstances, another battle looms over this issue and I hope Preisdent Obama will be able to make some headway on this problem over the next four years, but I am doubtful.

Your Republican friends are probably also, saying stuff like, "Well, I guess we are going to have a one party system now, only Democrats, the GOP is kaputsky!"   I was surprised to hear this from a couple of different friends on a couple of occasions, therefore I am wondering if they are quoting someone else from Fox News or another right-wing media source. 

You can respond to this statement by saying that there is plenty of room for two parties, there will be the Democrats as always, and new Socialist party, won't that be great?  Then watch your Republican friends' faces go beet red with anger.

This of course will be a hollow victory for us if President Obama cannot now turn the  tide and get the rich to pay their fair share of taxes and regulate a more fair system of trade in order to turn the American economy around. And then if Obama fails, your Republican friends are going to turn to you and say,"See, I told you so...."

My baby boomer retirement conspiracy theory...

Could it be possible that Republicans want Barack Obama to win?  Could it be that the wealthy powers-that-be know that the American economy is not salvageable in the immediate future and they want to see a Democrat in the White House for at least another four years to prove to Americans that the Democrats are incompetent and they cannot run this country?

I have a theory involving the dreaded baby boomers and the upcoming massive retirement that we are going to see probably coming around 2017 or sooner.  At least by 2017 there will be so many of them retired that there is bound to be some impact on the economy. 

I myself believe (and I bet the top 1% of earners believe this as well) that the economy will continue to flounder for quite some time.  There is no point in getting a Republican in the White House because then the blame will be put back on the Republicans for the perpetually sagging economy.

Now if the Republicans win the 2016 election, and at least the employment situation recovers thanks to the retiring boomers, they will look like they have solved the employment crisis and due to their diligence and good economic policy. America is making a comeback thanks to them.  Of course all the time it will really be the retiring baby boomers we will have to thank and not the Republicans. 

However, the baby bommer retirement may not be enough to open up the job market.  Automation has been and will continue to eliminate jobs probably more quickly than off-shoring will.  I already see that a lot companies are not replacing retirees because there are now more efficient ways of doing buisness mainly thanks to computers, the Internet, and the Information Technology revolution. 

I have also conisdered the possibility that the ecomomy is being deliberately screwed with in order to keep employment costs down.  The goal of the wealthy always seems to be to increase the labor supply to make labor costs go down. 

There is no way to tell if any of my theories are correct until we get to 2017, but whatever the outcome is it will be interesting to see what kind of impact the baby boomer retirement will have.

Betwen Barack and a hard place.

Now that the Republican and Democratic National Conventions are over, Americans will have to turn to media ads and the debates to see and hear the final mudslinging before casting their vote.

I understand that the choices are not very good.  The Democrats for me talked the talked, telling the American middle class what they wanted to hear, that they are the middle class's party and they are the only ones interested in its preservation.  But they haven't walked the the walk, and taken the right actions to restore the economy.

What really scares me is that they have accused the Republicans of actually planning to raise taxes on the middle class in their vision of economic recovery, and the Republicans are not vehemently denying it!  They should have been at their national convention quoting George H.W. Bush's infamous line, "Read my lips, no new taxes!" but they know they are not dumb enough to let history repeat itself.  The Republican economic plan would only add gasoline to the fire.

So the choices are basically, another four years of a do nothing President, who will now be a lame duck with really little incentive to do anything, and a crazy Republican who thinks that that by raising taxes on the middle class and slashing government spending left and right, that all of our economic woes will be over.

I am going to have to vote for Obama, because I truly feel that doing nothing, is a much better scenario than what the Republicans have proposed.

Mitt Romney is "all about jobs" all about sending them overseas that is....

Regardless of whether or not you believe Mitt Romney when he says that he was not responsible for sending thousands of jobs overseas when he was allegedly running (or not running) Bain Capital, you still have to ask what his plan is for creating jobs when he is elected President, and will these be well paying head-of-household jobs, or menial minimum wage job?

What will his strategy or, "statergery" as George W. Bush was known to call it, for creating new jobs.

Are lots and lots of tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, and big business the answer?  I don't think so.  If you put more money in the hands of the wealthy who says they are going to spend it? Why not just invest in gold, stocks and bonds and forget about creating jobs?  If you give more tax cuts to big business they will only invest countries like mainland China where the labor costs are low, China should probably have plenty of jobs in the future thanks to people like Romney.

Will it be through austerity measures? You know the Republicans are into shrinking government.  Therefore the massive downsizing of government and the laying off of thousands upon thousands of government workers would create more jobs?  How does that work?

Would keeping interest rates low so his Wall Street buddies can continue to play high-stakes casino with our economy be the answer?  Another burst bubble and companies folding like Lehman Brothers would create more jobs for sure.

Will cutting back on social programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid  be the answer?  By forcing baby boomers to stay in the workforce longer to retain a decent standard of living and benefits,  the job market will remain closed to young workers looking for their first job.

Would ending Obamacare create jobs?  With not everyone having to have insurance, insurance companies would not have to hire all those extra people to cope with the new higher demand for insurance coverage.

Mitt shouldn't focus on defending his reputation, it is just not worth it.  What he should focus on is showing the American people his great plan for creating jobs, which he won't because he has no plan or intention of creating jobs, at least not in this country.  The media should really stick it to him, and demand to know his plan for turning around the American economy, because I don't think he really has any.

An alternate retort Romney could have come up with would be to say, "Hey look President Obama, if you think off-shoring is a bad thing, you had four years to get Congress to pass legislation to stop off-shoring and you did nothing."  Of course the problem with that is Romney has no interest in stopping off-shoring when elected President and apparently neither will President Obama. 

Neither of these candidates want to help this country.  The American voter's choices are really between the devil and the deep blue sea.
 

Only clean elections and an end to corporate lobbying can save America...

Abraham Lincoln in his famous Gettysburg address said that "government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."  I am not sure that it ever existed, at least not in the United States, especially not now.

What we have now in the United States is a government for the wealthy, the multi-national corporations, and any special interest that can rub more than two Lincoln pennies together.   And because of this the U.S. government appears to have its policy skewed on a seemingly inexorable path to the destruction of the middle class and everything that set America apart from the rest of the world. 

The only way to really have a democracy of the people, by the people, and for the people is for a constitutional amendment that will put an end to corporations, and the wealthy lobbying congress, and financing their political candidates of choice.

Only individuals should have the right to lobby the legislative and executive branches, and election campaigns should be entirely state run to put every candidate on an equal footing. 

However, the problem lies in the old saying "Money talks and BS walks."  There is little incentive for politicians to do the right thing and enact campaign finance reform.  There is great incentive for them to line their pockets with cash, which in any other profession would be called payola, and be totally illegal.  And suggesting that lobbying come to end would be unconstitutional. 

The Constitution needs to be amended to protect the rights of and empower the individual and greatly limit the rights of corporate entities.  Then we can really have the government Lincoln envisioned.

Please just give Obamacare a chance....

What a surprise the supreme court did something kind-hearted for a change and let the Obamacare legislation stand as is! 

I think the future effects on the economy will probably put an end to it without the GOP's plan for continued fierce opposition.  Republicans are getting all riled-up for no reason   Well, the reason probably is they want to just oppose Obama for the 2012 election in spite of Romney passing similar legislation in Massachusetts when he was governor there.  I think they should just give it a rest and give Obamacare a chance, and see what happens.

I believe healthcare premiums will now go through the roof, and it is not like they haven't been doing that anyway.   Health insurance companies will soon have to insure everyone regardless of per-existing conditions, which I would imagine would raise the cost of premiums.  Last year my work's healthcare plan's cost only went-up only 3.6 percent, a far cry from the 12 to 15 percent it had usually gone up in the previous years.  I think they were holding back waiting for the supreme court ruling.  If the Supreme Court held off until 2013, I think I would have seen an other year of a moderate premium increase.  Now that the Supreme Court has made its decision, premiums will now get back on their sky-rocket increase trajectory.  It was a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation.  If the Supreme Court shot the Obamacare legislation down the health insurance companies would sing the MC Hammer song "Can't Touch This"  thinking they are now invincible and then drive premiums up.  But now, since the Supreme Court has upheld Obamacare, insurance companies are going to get their revenge by raising premiums to new astronomical highs. 

The bottom-line is that the medical profession and the health insurance industry both know the variant of the old science fiction villain cliche, "You will pay for your life, dearly."  And you will.  Without price caps doctors and insurance companies can charge anything they want, and they will.  Obamacare is likely to fail as an alternative to the current mess we have now, but I think we should at least give it a chance to see the actual effect on the market.

A social medicine system similar to what they have in the UK is what we need, but we remain light years away from it.    

My fast food conspiracy theory...

Burger King just released their latest product, an ice cream sundae covered with bacon bits. It consists of bacon atop vanilla ice cream, hot fudge, and delivers 510 calories, 18 grams of fat, 61 grams of sugar to the consumer.
With the recent war on transfats that has forced some states to pass legislation to ban the use of certain oils to make fast food staples like french fries, it looks like fast food restaurant chains are looking for new ways to kill us.  What could be better than a ice cream sundae topped with bacon?

Why are they trying to kill us?  One reason may be that coporation controlled fast food restaurants want to make sure Americans don't live long enough to collect Social Security or Medicare, the longer we live, the more strain we put on these social resources. 

I really think that corporate America doesn't want to see Americans living so long, not long enough to collect social security or cash in their pensions.  This will leave more money for the corporations in the long run. 

As families are forced now to have both mom and dad working, families turn to fast food as a cheap alternative to having to cook a meal every night.  Not only are famlies deprived of wholesome home coooking, but they are also exposed to a lot more salt and fat than they would normally be exposed to at home or even in a regular restaurant. 

Having the worst dining opitons be the most convenient seems to be the way corporate America likes it. 

Perhaps my theory is far-fetched, but regardless I just think this is another way that the shrinking middle class has to suffer in the face of coporations and the wealthy controlling our fate.

Immigration reform means more people compete for fewer jobs.

That new immigration policy President Obama announced was a real humdinger.  It will allow 800,000 illegal aliens who had come to United States when they were sixteen years or younger to reside and work here. 

Mitt Romney has refused to make any real comment coming out against this policy because it would seem that he would not want to offend the Latino community whose vote is very important for the upcoming election.  However, I believe that the Republicans want this new policy even more than the Democrats do.  It will mean 800,000 more people competing in a shrinking job market, driving labor costs down even further, now if we could only get rid of that pesky minimum wage....

The country that is renowned for having a very strict immigration policy is Australia.  I checked online to see what their unemployment rate was like since the current economic downturn is supposed to be worldwide.  The statistic I found was that in April 2012 their unemployment was only 4.9%.  Wow, that's about equal to the United States unemployment rate before the economic downturn in 2008.

It is very easy to see the purpose of immigration, which is to bring labor costs down.  It may make sense in times of prosperity, but it does not make sense in times of despair.  "But things are looking up" you say.  I don't think things will look up until our unemployment rate is the same as Australia's.

No Democrat or Republican is pushing for a mandate of the E-Verify system to establish a nationwide citizenship verification system.  E-Verify was put into place after 9/11 in order to enhance security, but no one wants to use it to get rid of cheap illegal labor.  

Also the Republican controlled House of Representatives voted down the "U.S. Call Center Worker and Consumer Protection Act" which was aimed at giving the right for a person to ask to speak to a customer service representative in the United States.  Over 500,000 call center jobs in the last six years have been lost to off-shoring and this bill would have prevented the loss of even more jobs.  

By looking the actions of both the Democrats and the GOP and the actions of both the executive and legislative branches of our government, Americans can see that we are the victims of a two man con came.  A game that will bring the same 30 percent unemployment that some European countries currently have to the United States.  Neither party is looking to alleviate this unemployment situation, they appear to only want to make things worse.  Is there no one out there who can help us?

The job situation and the real road to serfdom.

A reporter friend of mine recently got laid off, as the economic downturn and advancements in information technology have taken a great toll on jobs in the newspaper industry. He was a bureau reporter for a newspaper in a relatively small market, and he knew it was coming and wasn't surprised when it did finally come, it was like what took them so long? It was a family owned newspaper, therefore the publisher had a little bit of a heart, I guess.

What kills me is that he replaced a reporter who held the position for almost thirty years, and who retired on his own terms. It took him several weeks to get out of the office and retire completely. I am just angry that the previous generation had this kind of job security, one that Generation X or our children will never have.

And you get people like Thomas L. Friedman, author of the books "The World is Flat" and "That Used to Be Us," who say that it is good thing. That we all have to reinvent ourselves and work our butts off to provide a unique service or product just in order to have the right to survive. All the while knowing that the previous generations just had to fall off a log in order to get a life long job or career. This is ridiculous we are heading backwards instead of forwards. In fact, I think we are heading all the way back to the dark ages, but more on that later.

I am encountering all sorts of people in every age group and every level of education who are either recently laid-off and struggling to find a new job, or entering the job market for the first time and unable to find work. With the recent poor jobs report and companies like HP announcing as many as 25,000 layoffs, I cannot imagine things getting better anytime soon.

But this is the dream of the wealthy, those that own the means of production. They have and will continue to off-shore as many jobs as possible. They will make sure that labor markets worldwide are like the labor markets in China. They will make sure that our working future is a lot like Foxconn in mainland China. Foxconn manufactures electronic components for companies like Apple, and runs what basically sounds like a labor camp where the workers live miserable lives making only two dollars an hour. Their only means of outlet appears to be suicide as they protest their poor working conditions. This is our future, but it sounds like the past.

There is a famous book that conservatives use as their economic manifesto. It is called the "The Road to Serfdom" by an Austrian economist,  Friedrich August Hayek.  It basically warns of the evils of socialism and how if government is allowed to grow out of control we will all become "serfs" of an oppressive overlord government.  Ah, but that wasn't feudalism.  Feudalism was where there was no government at all.  There was just a feudal lord who was the landowner, the knights who were like his sword-for-hire security detail, a type of police or enforcers, and the serfs who worked his land and produced crops for the feudal lord.  The wealthy people of the United States and probably the rest of the West want desperately to go back to this system.  A system where only their word is law and workers have absolutely no rights.   You can see this as the rich so desperately want to downsize federal and state governments, but always have a hand in their local government to make sure that they have more than their fair share of power in the area where they live, they desperately want and need to micromanage their own backyard. 

But why would Hayek call his book "The Road to Serfdom"?  Because the wealthy are notorious for saying something is white when it is actually black.  Look at the accounting firm Arthur Anderson who tricked shareholders into thinking everything was OK by calling Enron's losses profits.

United States is moving to real serfdom, much more quickly than I have expected, as President Obama has refused to take any helpful action for getting Americans back to work.  What scares me is now I am hearing a lot of Democrats say well maybe we should vote for Romney, just to shake things up a bit and see what he does.  The most shocking place I have encountered this suggestion is Paul Krugman's new book "End This Depression Now,"  where he basically states that Romney has some moderate economic advisers that might advise him to do the right thing and move away from the supply-side self-correcting market model we are following now, to a more Keynesian approach.  This is not bloody likely.

I am certain that if re-elected Obama will continue to do nothing about the unemployment situation, but I am also certain that whatever action Romney will take, it will only make things worse.

Just a note about the picture above.  It was a dispenser of an employment advertisement magazine called "Top Jobs" and it now used for garbage.  A perfect statement for what's going on in this country.

Wisconsin: They don't call them cheeseheads for nothing...

I have only met one person from Wisconsin in my entire life. And he left there because he thought it was a good-for-nothing state. How these people could allow Scott Walker to remain as their governor is beyond me.

Well, I know a couple of reasons. The Republicans outspent the Democrats greatly. Thanks Koch brothers (who have allegedly supported causes like this one). Also do you think President Obama could have paid a visit to Wisconsin in support of the Democratic candidate, Tom Barrett? Of course he couldn't. Perhaps the Koch brothers have him in their pocket as well.

The wealthy are winning their never ending battle to eliminate the American middle class. By off-shoring jobs and moving manufacturing to Asia they have all but eliminated unions from private industry. The new target is now is local government jobs, because they cannot be easily off-shored. It is now necessary to break government unions by passing legislation that takes away their rights. Wisconsin is only the beginning.

Their sights are now set on New York where a movement to eliminate a piece of legislation called the Triborough Amendment of the Taylor Law is now underway. The Triborough Amendment allows the regulations of expired contracts to stand until new contracts are negotiated. Therefore, salaries that have a negotiated salary step schedules will remain on schedule until a new contract is negotiated. They want to have the right to freeze contracts altogether and not allow contracts to advance in salary steps until a new contract is negotiated.

The wealthy know that the off-shoring of jobs was a great union buster, and the private sector can no longer afford to offer its workers decent wages and benefits. They desperately want to make sure that the public sector follows suit.

Labor unions and individual citizens must stand-up and defend this last bastion of the working class in the public sector, as well as try restoring it to the private sector, if the middle class is to survive. Scott Walker's victory in Wisconsin will probably be remembered as the beginning of the end of  middle class America if we continue to allow things like this to happen.

Why different prices for cash and credit at gas stations?

Here is a pet peeve of mine.  Why is does it seem like it is only gas stations that make you pay a higher price for using credit cards?  Shouldn't that be true for all retailers? 

What the gas stations are doing here are two things.  One, they are pushing off the fees that the credit card companies charge them onto the consumer.  You didn't think that those reward points you get from your credit card company came out of thin air, did you?  Two, they are also trying to take in more cash. When they take in cash they do not necessarily have to declare the cash on their tax filings.  This is exactly what Richard Kiyosaki states in his "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" book series.  He wants everyone to run a small business, doing as much of it as possible as cash only.  This way you can run your business at a loss on paper, pay no taxes, and maybe even get assistance from the government.  Isn't that great?

I once heard of a take-out restaurant owner in a neighborhood where I worked, that did a cash only business.  A co-worker of mine said that she had seen the owner pay for groceries with food stamps, and then drive away from supermarket in a new Lincoln Continental or similar luxury car.  Anyway, we guessed that she really didn't need to be paying for groceries with food stamps.

I imagine that the gas station owners are doing a similar thing, by pushing customers to pay cash in order to save a buck.  I wonder if the Service Station Association had Kiyosaki as a guest speaker at a national convention or something.  

The bottom line is I hate to be inconvenienced so someone else can pocket more money.  There should be laws that prevent businesses for charging different prices for cash and credit payment.  While some may argue that people who want to pay cash shouldn't be penalized by credit card user's service fees, all I have to say to that is, well maybe we shouldn't have credit cards at all.  I didn't come up with this system, I only use it because it is convenient.

France and Greece: Just say no to austerity!

Wall Street was in an uproar when France and Greece used their right to vote to oust elected government officials that imposed austerity measures causing their economic downturn to be much worse than the one in the United States. Now I believe the same thing is about to happen in Germany.

When businesses will not spend their money and banks will not loan their money, it is up to the government to step in as the big spender. This what happened in the United States with the United States government's bail out of Wall Street. Our recession/depression would have been a lot worse if they did not step in this role. I would even argue that the United States hasn't done enough. If they knew what they were doing they would raise taxes on the top one percent of earners and use the money to create nice government jobs for people out of work, but the right-wing nut jobs corrupting our government will not let that happen.

Right-wingers want to seem the same austerity measures here while sending as many American jobs to overseas as possible. They want small government because big government cost money and the wealthy are the only ones with the money to pay for big government.

Republicans do not want the economy to get better, they want it to get worse. In his book "Greedy Bastards" Daniel Ratigan, quotes minutes from a Dallas Federal Reserve meeting showing that Richard Fisher, its president is very disappointed that more jobs are not going overseas to make American labor costs cheaper.

Europeans seem to know that this is what this recession is all about. The wealthy want to move as many jobs over to Asia as possible to make labor costs as cheap as possible globally. They do not want businesses to create jobs in the West because labor is too expensive here, and the only remedy is to send as many jobs away as possible.

They want us to all be like Foxxcon employees in mainland China. They work in labor camp like conditions for a about $2.00 an hour, and the only recreational outlet they have is to commit suicide. This what the wealthy people want for the entire world.

Thankfully, European voters are not letting the rich pull the wool over their eyes. I hope Americans will follow suit and make sure that Republicans stay out of office.

So much for free trade with South Korea.

South Korea recently banned United States beef with just concern over Mad Cow Disease, but doesn't that violate our free trade agreement? They should only ban beef for sale only if we ban beef for sale in the United States, isn't that how free trade works? I guess not.

Perhaps later the Korean government will deem America cars unsafe and ban them from being bought in Korea as well. I doubt that they will go that far, but if Korean automakers start to feel the pinch from American competition, I bet something like that will arise and Koreans will be "encouraged" to buy Korean automobiles instead of American ones.

I have to say that I totally do not blame the South Koreans for banning American beef. I stopped eating beef around 2003 when their were reports that Canadian beef had been discovered to contain Mad Cow Disease. And I know that unless the American farmer has his armed twisted, he is going to ignore safe feed practice laws if it impacts his bottom line. Therefore beef will never really be safe unless proper feeding guidelines are strictly enforced or that beef sales decline so much that they have to change their ways. Perhaps a ban on beef would be a good thing for everyone, not just South Koreans.

I really miss hamburgers, but I'm not taking any chances and I do not blame the South Koreans for playing it safe either. I just wanted to give you this example of how free trade doesn't really work very well when a government places a ban on imported products.

Obama supports Cartoon Network's anti-bullying campaign.

I saw President Obama on Cartoon Network the other day introducing a special for children on bullying. I guess he wanted to introduce the show because he must be a victim of bullying as well. During his entire presidency he as been bullied by the GOP, special interests, corporate America, and BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China).

He must have been a victim of bullying, this is why he cannot break the GOP hold on government that says supply-side economics is a good thing, that not raising taxes on the wealthy is a good thing, that having a huge trade deficit is a good thing, and off-shoring all of our jobs is a good thing.

Yes, Obama must be the victim of bullying, because it is the only explanation of why someone who ran on a campaign of change, didn't manage to change one darn thing from the mess that was created by George W. Bush from the previous eight years.

Will I vote for Obama? Of course. What choice do we have? But it's like the wealthy people and special interests are Jersey Shore musclemen kicking sand in our faces, while the only person we have to defend us is the 98 pound AV geek.

Obama's State of the Union Address.

Obama said a lot of great things in his State of the Union Address the other night.  It is very frustrating that he and the American people know the path that we should be on, but it seems impossible to get the rest of government on the right track.

One of my Facebook friends posted what I guess was a mock bumper sticker that said "Republicans 2012: Keeping millions out of work to put one man out of a job."  which about sums up what is going on in Congress.  They all know what the right thing to do is, but because of their own political agendas they won't even bother to try doing it.   And on their agenda is making sure Obama is not re-elected.

What is really scary is Newt Gingrich portraying himself as underdog of the middle class when he is just the opposite. 

I would rather have a do nothing President like Obama than a phony like Gingrich who will tell everyone that is going to put out the fire while not bothering to tell everyone that he will be using gasoline. 

Our path to economic destruction appears to be inexorable, it is just a matter if you want to take the slow route with a do nothing President like Obama or the quick route with a Republican president.

Offshoring of American jobs: What the US government needs to do, but won't.



Taken from Wikimedia Commons

 The massive off-shoring of jobs from the United States has only been around for less than ten years but we already have national unemployment rate of over eight percent.  If the United States government continues to take no action, having a totally liassez faire attitude towards business and economics, unemployment will continue to rise inexorably. 

The United States government needs to take action now, by making a law that forces American companies or companies that do business in the United States to pay off-shored workers at least the current federally mandated minimum wage.  They also need to add high taxes to overseas telecommunication in order to make off shoring less attractive and give American workers a chance to compete for jobs.

This kind of action will be labeled protectionism, which the right-wing yahoos have tried to label as a taboo, worse than incest or bestiality.  But it is not a taboo.  We don't try to protect what we have?  The rich don't try to protect what they have by off-shoring their money and refusing to pay taxes? You don't try to protect what you have by having locks on your doors?

Protectionism is not a bad thing.  We need to put the brakes on off-shoring and free trade.  We need balanced trade and jobs paying livable wages for anyone who wants to work.  We will not get this by letting the wealthy live tax-free or letting business do anything they want without regard to the law.  We will not get this by allowing federal debt to exceed our GDP.   We desperately need to stop big business and special interests running this country into the ground by taking away jobs from Americans.

We can only do this if American politicians start developing a conscience and start serving the American people and not serving big business and special interests who want to send your jobs overseas and see the American middle class completely disappear.

Don't believe the [insert adjective here] media.

This past summer, some right-wing nut job posted signs all over the town where I work that stated "Don't Believe the Liberal Media!"  The first thing that came to my mind when I saw those signs was that they should read "Don't Believe the Corporate Controlled"Media." 

I personally feel that the media is far from liberal.  It focuses on criminal trials of celebrities and baby murderers and totally ignores or downplays topics like the fact that US Debt exceeds our GDP, that we appear to be in an endless war in the Middle East that we cannot afford, that information technology as well as move to free trade is taking away jobs from Americans, that political lobbies run by multinational corporations, and other special interest groups hold more sway over government than do the needs of the American people, and that we cannot have clean elections without violating the rights of multinational corporate entities, that claim that they have the same rights as individual American citizens.

Over the past several years laws have loosened up about corporate media control and the amount of media a company can control nationwide and in specific markets and this has had an overall detrimental effect on news coverage, but the media won't report that either.

Made in China: You get what you pay for

During my childhood when the term "Made in Japan" went from being synonymous with cheap imitation to being synonymous with a quality product, I was thrilled. I had grown up loving Japanese monster movies and anime. These were the people after my own heart, and I felt they deserved to become the successes they were because to me their pop culture was much more interesting than American pop culture. Perhaps a silly reason to be rooting for them, but I was rooting for them.

While all of this was going on I think the powers-that-be, evil people who control the means of production in the West, started to rub their greedy hands together and say if the little island nation of Japan can go from zero to manufacturing whizzes in a matter of years, then their Chinese cousins on the verge of numbering in the billions could do so also. And they can do so in a lot cheaper fashion because there are so many of them. So many workers will mean millions upon millions of people willing to manufacture things at minimal cost.

This came to pass in the 1990's and the early 21st Century. And now we get tons and tons of cheap manufactured goods from China. But they are not only cheap in price, they are also cheap in quality. But I think for many Americans, it doesn't matter, one TV breaks go out an buy another one. This is the dream for those who profit from a consumer driven economy. The consumer driven economy requires that people keep consuming and this new model of consumerism made possible by cheap labor and production costs.

I am also noticing that China is becoming the clothing manufacturer of choice for many name brands on both the higher and lower end of things. And from my personal experience I do not think it is a good thing. A couple of years ago I had bought this one Stratford dress shirt from JC Penny because JC Penny marketed it as a very durable product. And it was. It was made in Vietnam and it was a great deal for the price, I still wear it on a regular basis to this day. When I went back a year later to buy another shirt, I had found that they had changed their manufacturing to China, but I gave it try expecting the same quality. Unfortunately the "made in China" version did not really live up to the quality of the Vietnam shirt. While it has held together OK, the fabric has become pilled. It is also a lot thinner fabric than the Vietnam shirt. I feel that this was sort of a bait and switch on the part of JC Penny, but I guess they are just trying to keep the price down, which is OK if the quality doesn't go down with it.

I had a similar experience with a Tommy Hilfiger rugby shirt that I bought a few years ago. It was made in Sri Lanka, and it was terrific, very durable and comfortable. And again I went back to the outlet store where I bought it with the intention of buying several more like it. Unfortunately, Hilfiger also switched to China as its manufacturer. The new line of rugby shirts appeared to be so poor in quality, I just walked out of the store disappointed.

Also for electronics, I am only buying products made in Korea as they seem to get the whole quality over cheapness thing that Japan had gotten for while. Nowadays Japanese have also seemed to have outsourced their electronics manufacturing to China with the same poor quality results.

But as long as people keep buying, I guess manufacturers don't care. I would say that we should not buy products made in China just based on the poor quality issue, but sometimes I realize you don't even have a choice. I can no longer find headphones made anywhere other than China, perhaps in the $100 range, but who wants to pay that much for headphones. Therefore, I can totally understand the lure of cheap Chinese goods. Of course the government could add tariffs to Chinese goods to make them less appealing, but why would they do that? It would be nice to see made in America once in a while as well, but without an attempt to balance trade this will never happen. The corporations rule and plutocracy will prevail as the middle class are crushed under a pile of broken consumer electronics made in China.