Into the Void

I have an answer for the auto industry. The bailout should take the form of vouchers to individual citizens that can only be used to purchase a car. If you give 100,000,000 citizens $25,000 each, there’s your bailout. Plus the auto workers keep getting paid.

Got this email from a friend. I howled with laughter when I read it. See the next post for my response.

Dear American:

I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude. I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you. . .

I am working with Mr. Phil Gramm, lobbyist for UBS, who will be my replacement as Ministry of the Treasury in January. As a Senator, you may know him as the leader of the American banking deregulation movement in the 1990s. This transaction is 100% safe.

This is a matter of great urgency. We need a blank check. We need the funds as quickly as possible. We cannot directly transfer these funds in the names of our close friends because we are constantly under surveillance. My family lawyer advised me that I should look for a reliable and trustworthy person who will act as a next of kin so the funds can be transferred.

Please reply with all of your bank account, IRA and college fund account numbers and those of your children and grandchildren to wallstreetbailout@treasury.gov so that we may transfer your commission for this transaction. After I receive that information, I will respond with detailed information about safeguards that will be used to protect the funds.

Yours Faithfully
Minister of Treasury Paulson

Thank goodness the nightmare is almost over.

The Bush administration has plunged us into a moral and spiritual abyss, one that has separated us from our allies and friends. It is this same moral vacuum that has created the toxic business climate in the US.

CEOs, COOs, CFOs are required by law to create the maximum return for their investors. This has resulted in American jobs being farmed out to shady Asian companies; top-level executives earning pay that is orders of magnitude higher than the pay of the lowest-level minimum wage worker; sacrificing quality and safety in American products; and a nationwide goose-step towards Marxism as Reaganomics – “trickle-down economics” – causes the collapse of the middle class. McCain would have continued the economic strategy of robbing the poor to give to the rich.

There is a lot of work to do and it will take time. I hope we haven’t waited too long.

My recommendations:

• Tie executives’ gross pay, benefits and perqs to the minimum wage – no exceptions!
• Tie stock dividends to worker pay increases and new hires.
• Place tariffs on Chinese imports. Sorry W*lMart.
• Immediately start work programs similar to the WPA and managed by the Army Corps of Engineers in areas of the country hardest hit by manufacturing outsourcing.
• Re-open all the military bases that Bush closed after 9-11 and transition HSA training and jobs to those facilities.

I also suggest that if an executive has committed a crime, he or she should go to jail just like anyone else.

We have work to do. Let’s get started!

http://www.house.gov/apps/list/press/financialsvcs_dem/essabill.pdf

The above link is to the full text of the bailout bill, and I suggest that everybody read this bill. It was pushed through with only a couple of days debate by lawyers who have little understanding of the workings of Wall Street or The Fed. And they tacked a lot of pork barrel spending onto it to BRIBE Congress to agree to it. Unfortunately, mental health parity verbiage was tacked onto the bill with the pork. NAMI, of course, is celebrating the bill for its own sake without regard to what effect it will have, or when. Having appeased the mental health lobby, congress is off the hook as far as enacting any further legislation. Way to go!
http://www.house.gov/apps/list/press/financialsvcs_dem/essabill.pdf

“To amend section 712 of the Employee Retirement Income
Security Act of 1974, section 2705 of the Public Health
Service Act, section 9812 of the Internal Revenue Code
of 1986 to require equity in the provision of mental
health and substance-related disorder benefits under
group health plans, to prohibit discrimination on the
basis of genetic information with respect to health insurance
and employment, and for other purposes.”

This means that you only get parity if your employer provides your insurance AND that insurance already has mental health coverage. It doesn’t seem to require them to cover it in the first place. It also doesn’t appear to apply to private health insurance.

There is a cost exemption so to limit mental health coverage if it increases costs by some undetermined amount. The insurance companies can still deny claims bases on their definition of “medical necessity” or by their definition of “reasonable and customary” services.

??(2) COST EXEMPTION.?
6 ??(A) IN GENERAL.?With respect to a
7 group health plan (or health insurance coverage
8 offered in connection with such a plan), if the
9 application of this section to such plan (or cov
10 erage) results in an increase for the plan year
11 involved of the actual total costs of coverage
12 with respect to medical and surgical benefits
13 and mental health and substance use disorder
14 benefits under the plan (as determined and cer
15 tified under subparagraph (C)) by an amount
16 that exceeds the applicable percentage described
17 in subparagraph (B) of the actual total plan
18 costs, the provisions of this section shall not
19 apply to such plan (or coverage) during the fol
20 lowing plan year, and such exemption shall
21 apply to the plan (or coverage) for 1 plan year.”

Discrimination on the basis of genetic information only affects illnesses for which genetic tests have been developed. This bill ignores a lot of of the provisions of the ADA, while modifying ERISA quite a bit. I am concerned that this will weaken the ADA by tightening the definitions to exclude non-genetic diseases.

Specific diagnoses this bill applies to will be determined by the GAO, which has 3 years to study it and present a report. Once the beancounters are through will this bill, we’ll have no more than we had the day before the bill passed.

(h) GAO STUDY ON COVERAGE AND EXCLUSION OF
4 MENTAL HEALTH AND SUBSTANCE USE DISORDER DIAG5
NOSES.?
6 (1) IN GENERAL.?The Comptroller General of
7 the United States shall conduct a study that ana8
lyzes the specific rates, patterns, and trends in cov9
erage and exclusion of specific mental health and
10 substance use disorder diagnoses by health plans
11 and health insurance.”

I doubt this will change anything in the near future.

A few years from now you’re going to hear Congressdroids bitching because they didn’t have enough time to collect the facts before enacting this bill.