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.