Into the Void

This refers to a previous bailout, not to the latest ripoff.

H. R. 1424: Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008

Here is the full text, 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 who have huge financial interest in the institutions that will benefit from it. To add insult to injury, they tacked a lot of pork barrel spending onto it to BRIBE Congress to agree to it.
http://www.house.gov/apps/list/press/financialsvcs_dem/essabill.pdf

Some comments:

“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. How many of you all work full-time?

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 in ways that are completely meaningless. 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.

“(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.”

Congress can continue to modify this Act.

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. Listen to them whine about how they were boondoggled into exercising the Bush Doctrine on Iraq.

A friend recently consulted me about a rumor he heard. He wanted to know whether the Muslims are investing money in the US in order to take over. This is my reply:

The simple answer is “No, and if they did it was an amazingly stupid investment.”

But I don’t do simple. :-)

I’ll start by saying, screw the Taliban, they’re stone-age guys with guns and a beautiful book of inspired verses that none of them is educated enough to actually read. And WE put them in power to drive out the Russians.
Third World Traveler: Afghanistan, the CIA, bin Laden,
and the Taliban

Unfortunately, in the late ’90′s the Taliban was opposing an oil pipeline through Uzbekistan that would have had to come down through their country. This incensed oilman George W. Bush.

The Taliban doesn’t own anything but poppies, guns and rocks. Their country was destroyed by years of war against Russia. There is an entire generation of people who can’t read, who have no government records like land deeds, marriage licenses or birth certificates. They aren’t investing in anything but the feudal system that protects them from themselves.

We often boost up third-world, authoritarian regimes when there is something in it for us.

Ok, so one way is to go to an underdeveloped nation with a mineral you need that you can’t get in the U.S. Pay the guys in power so that they have absolute control over the populace and can use them to mine the mineral. **Saudi Arabia** is a prime example of that – and Osama Bin Laden was a Saudi until we enlisted him to organize the Taliban in Afghanistan. The Shah of Iran and Saddam Hussein are also good examples of it. Where’s that photo of Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam Hussein after they negotiated an oil deal?

Think of Teddy Roosevelt riding roughshod over Libya, etc. NeoCons are “Teddy Roosevelt Republicans.” Iraq didn’t go so well, but they don’t see it. With “trickle-down economics” the poor and the middle class bear the burden. It doesn’t affect the NeoCons so they don’t even know it exists.

I wrote a couple of blog entries on the public debt recently. You really need to read some of Jefferson’s and Madison’s thoughts on scrip before you read my short, simple answer. Here’s the URL and a quote from it.

In modern terms, the Federal Reserve Bank decides on a dollar amount that it needs to borrow to stimulate the growth of new businesses or to fund a war, then it prints dollars to symbolize the debt. When you and I then borrow the dollars, we take on a portion of the Fed’s debt. Once we own the dollar bills, we pay interest on the dollars that the Fed borrowed. The Fed borrows not just interest-free, but at a profit.

Pull a dollar out of your wallet if you don’t believe me. There is statement in the upper-right corner “This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private.” The dollar bill is an I.O.U.!

Having read that, and knowing that the dollar is (or was) the standard world-wide, you can deduce who owns our public debt. Pretty much the whole world, eh?

Foreign investors own large portions of corporate America. Fortunately, most of them don’t own isn’t enough to actually control the companies, but what if they did? They’d still want to make a profit!

At the same time, convince these investors that real estate is booming and to invest not in the real estate itself, but in the real estate and financial instutions that hold the mortgages. Stocks are more liquid than mortgages, who would want that hassle?

The way to make real estate boom is to make it easier to borrow money, that is, to print money so there can be more debt. It also is necessary to make it easier to buy an overpriced house, like with variable-interest loans.

So here’s how to eliminate large portions of the public debt quickly: We have induced foreign countries take an interest in our biggest industries instead of in cash. That would be financial institutions, mostly.

Make the institutions crash and have the government take over, leaving all the investors with nothing.

The conflict in Iraq has been taking away our pay raises for several years, so many folks were unable to meet the balloon payments. Countrywide Mortgage went first, and the foreign investors said oh shit and started trying to get their money out of our financial institutions. The Wall Street version of a run on the bank, 1929 style. Suddenly dollars aren’t so popular. (That’s why it looks as if oil costs more. It’s the exchange rate, people!!!)

If the dollar is worth less, the debt is less! But simultaneously it gets harder to attract those foreign investments we need so badly to support the opulent lifestyle that we euphemistically call “the American Dream.”

The Fed is trying to control it, so the fall is slow, but we are definitely falling and who the hell knows where the bottom is. Maybe it will stop when Americans have the same lifestyle one of our biggest creditors, the Chinese.

Oooo.

Let’s talk about the Department of the Treasury for a minute. When you buy a Treasury Bond or other instrument, you are borrowing money from the future of the United States financial health. What I meant to say actually is that you are betting the the government will be strong enough to pay the bill with the stated interest at the end of the term of the bill. The shakier the U.S. looks, the harder it gets to sell them.

Thee Treasury department web page maintains a list of what countries hold the Public Debt in Treasury notes. If you want to demonize oil producers by generalizing them as Muslims, then they are #4 on the list. Venezuela is actually Catholic. The Carib and Luxemborg entries actually are world banks that launder money for everywhere. Ditto Switzerland.

As for this bailout, your grandkids will still be paying for the last eight years of laissez-faire economics 30 years from now. Personally, I think that only folks who voted for oilman Bush should have to pay for the bailout.

Basically, your question has no meaning. We have been relying on foreign governments to support our opulent lifestyle for years.

I have been considering picking up some cheap real estate to sell a few years from now when the market picks up. I don’t see why our friends the Saudi Arabians wouldn’t do the same thing. Along with lots of Japanese, Chinese and Russian citizens. I don’t see this as a sinister plot, I see it as good Capitalism.

Which doesn’t means it’s good for you and me.

Did that sort of answer the question?

Huffington Post: John Neffinger, Glynnis MacNicol, and Drew Westen| Dem Iowa Debate LiveBlog!

Debate? Not much of a debate, just a bunch of Dems comparing their talking points. Really, business as usual. The Democratic Party slinked off with their collective tails between their legs because they couldn’t come up with a response to the “soft on terrorism” card, and they’ve never really come back from that. I am almost ashamed to be a Democrat, but there is no better choice.
Biden was able to joke about saying stupid things, a reference to his “articulate and bright and clean” comment about Obama. Obama is good, he’d still be “articulate and bright and clean” by comparison if he were white. Compare him to our current Prex!
A Clinton-Obama ticket is not going to lure over any middle-of-the-road Republicans. Unfortunately, to win 2008 that’s what the Dems have to do. I hope they don’t forget.
I think Biden’s wife is going to get fired from her teaching job after his comment on school administrators.
Teachers are probably the only professionals who don’t get pay incentives for competence and effectiveness. Apparently the folks in the debate have no insight into punishment and reward. Throw all the money in the world at our schools, but if there is no incentive for teachers to further their own educations and to improve their job performance, they aren’t going to bother to improve, not for any amount of collective bargaining. I don’t think the teachers should get more money and benefits than engineers, no matter what the folks in the debate seem to think.
Throw money into a school system and you’ll see that it doesn’t go into computers and books. I’m not sure where it goes. New lights for the football field maybe?
No Child Left Behind? Hasn’t the major result of that been an increase in the dropout rate? “Get out, kid, you’re screwing up the numbers.”
The question about honesty was good. The Dems have to issue a blanket statement that they all voted to go into Iraq because the folks in the White House are evil. That way individual Democratic politicians won’t have to waste time explaining their vote when they should have been saying, “If I’m dishonest and I get caught, I’ll be in deep doo-doo. So I have to be honest.” Face it, the occasional transgression is forgivable. Lying about it is perjury.
As for honesty, with his Grecian Formula hair how can Kucinich pretend to be honest?
Did anyone else notice the fly in Dodd’s hair during his last answer?
Edward’s hair was perfect as always.
Hillary has porked out a bit. She could use some time away from the desk. A darker suit would hide it better until she’s president and has her own private gym.
Ok, ok, that was catty. I think Clinton would have done better to say, “What he said” when she spoke after Obama instead of taking time to paraphrase him. That way maybe she could have told us something we don’t already know. I think Clinton has some great ideas. If only she’d tell us how she can make them work. Maybe she doesn’t want the Republicans to steal her recipes?
The one thing these folks have to remember is that anything they say about one another now will be played as soundbites by the Republicans when Judgement Day, errrr, the Presidential Elections are at hand.
I feel as if the future of the world depends on the Dems playing this right.

The Clean Fuels and Energy Independence Act

X-Originating-IP: [209.158.227.171]
From: RepGerber@pahouse.net
Reply-To: info@pahouse.net
Subject: Energy crisis demands action now
Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2007 10:00:13 -0400

Energy crisis demands action now As the war in Iraq continues, energy and fuel costs rise and America’s energy consumption continues to cause climate change, the need for a cleaner and more energy-independent Pennsylvania is paramount. The Clean Fuels and Energy Independence Act, as part of the House Democratic Caucus’s Energy Independence Strategy, would put Pennsylvania in the forefront of the alternative and renewable fuel economy. This legislation would mandate the blending of ethanol, soy and other clean energy sources in fuels. It would establish production and distribution standards to advance the shift to cleaner and cheaper domestic fuel sources. And it would help to stimulate the Pennsylvania economy with in-state production of renewable fuels. Our proposal is likely to come to a vote on the House floor next week and, if enacted into law, would put Pennsylvania on track to produce enough homegrown fuel to replace all the fuel we now import from the Persian Gulf. Clean the environment. End our dependence on foreign oil. Reduce fuel costs. Stimulate Pennsylvania’s economy. Show your support for this important legislation. Contact your representative and tell them to vote YES on House Bill 1202!

Spread the word!

I am utterly appalled by the ignorance of the present energy issues displayed in HOUSE BILL No.1202, otherwise known as the Clean Fuels and Energy Independence Act.

Perhaps the Pennsylvania representatives aren’t aware of the gas crisis in the early or mid-70s where the State of New Jersey had to go to even-odd day gas rationing.

Maybe the Pennsylvania representatives have forgotten the gas crisis in 1978 or 1979 during which lines at the gas station where up to a half mile long. Gas stations sold out their daily allotment by 10AM. People were shooting each other in gas lines in anger and frustration. Increased energy costs caused several years of stagflation, where prices and interest rates went up but salaries didn’t. The average Pennsylvanian’s life savings lost a large percentage of buying power, forcing retirees to go to back to work.

The problems inherent in relying not just on foreign oil but on fossil fuels in general are not new. Any rational, responsible individual opted a long time ago to forego luxuries such as comfort, style or the illusion of safety in favor of reduced emissions and better gas mileage.

Let’s be clear, also, that the United States buys most of its oil from friends and allies. Iraq was once a friend and ally, and continued oil revenue is essential to building a government to replace the one the United States destroyed. It would be wiser to stop buying oil from that notorious Wahabbi stronghold Saudi Arabia.

As it is written, HOUSE BILL No.1202 will have no effect on Pennsylvanians’ driving habits. The bill provides no incentive for individuals to use less gas or to pollute less. There is no mention of the paranoid trend towards larger vehicles that occurred after 9-11, as if the family car is a bomb shelter rather than simply a means of getting from point A to point B. There is also no mention of the windfall profits American oil refineries have made by basing manufacturing overhead allocations that did NOT increase on the increased cost of the raw material. The emphasis in HOUSE BILL No.1202 on biodiesel technology trivializes or ignores viable alternatives to the internal combustion engine, much less the development of proposed new alternative energy technologies. There is absolutely zero mention of the effect continued reliance on fossil fuels will have on carbon dioxide levels in the air we breathe. There is nothing the bill about addressing the soil depletion that will occur if current farming practices are continued while implementing biodiesel technology.

HOUSE BILL No.1202 is an short-sighted, agrarian solution to an industrial problem. In fact, the solutions outlined in HOUSE BILL No.1202 are exactly the solutions that high school ecology clubs were promoting in the ’70s. These solutions are so archaic that to implement the bill as written would be to set energy policy back 30 years. The result of HOUSE BILL No.1202 will be to push Pennsylvania back into the the Dust Bowl era. A post-modern technological solution that addresses multiple social, financial and geopolitical facets of the energy problem makes far more sense to any reasonably intelligent Pennsylvanian.

Iraq Pennsylvania Persian Gulf climate change energy crisis

Mental Health Care Failing At-Risk Troops, Related Study Finds Battlefield Ethics Also Suffering – CBS News

This story on CBS shows an ongoing problem in Iraq. Overworked, stressed-out soldiers start to fall apart due to long deployments and irrational (if any) strategy. I question labeling someone as mentally ill when it’s due to long-term stress.

Think about it. You get sent to the Middle East on a six-month deployment. 18 months later they still won’t let you go home. Your kids think you lied when you said you’d be home in six months – and again when you said you’d be home in a year – and are showing behavioral problems in school; your mortgage is in arrears because you took a pay cut for what you thought would be only six months; if you owned a business it has long since failed; you’ve missed 18 months worth of family get-togethers; you have to climb over a half-dozen Jersey Barriers to get to your ratty, noisy little home-away-from-home. And every day you drive highly-paid civilian contractors up and down the road to the airport like a duck in a shooting gallery. You start to envy the ones who get to go home in a body bag.

You see no progress being made, and you no longer believe that your efforts can make a difference. It creates a lot of confusion.

And in frustration you start lashing out at people. This is not good. We are literally driving thousands of our best citizens insane with our irrational policy and complete lack of strategy for rebuilding the country we tore apart. For someone with a degree in History, Bush seems incapable of learning from the mistakes of the past. Perhaps he was AWOL for history class, too.

I would like to remind everyone that we are not at war over there. Bush declared that the war was over years ago. Let’s get the other Islamic countries involved at the political level – their citizens are already in there helping the “insurgency,” as we like to call their freedom fighters. Whether you like Iran or not, they have what passes in the Middle East as a Democracy. So does Turkey. You’d have to get all kinds of agreements to stop the sectarian violence, but we knew that before we started this whole thing.

Technorati: Bush civilian+contractors Democracy freedom+fighters insurgency Iran Iraq Islamic stress mentally+ill Middle+East politics sectarian+violence

From CNN Report: Mentally ill troops forced into combat

The paper reported that some service members who committed suicide in 2004 or 2005 were kept on duty despite clear signs of mental distress, sometimes after being prescribed antidepressants with little or no mental health counseling or monitoring. Those findings conflict with regulations adopted last year by the Army that caution against the use of antidepressants for “extended deployments.”

I believe it’s been like that in most wars. Has our culture stopped evolving? Certainly a large block of Americans, most of whom voted for Bush, fight evolution tooth and nail. I guess fear of change goes very deep in some folks.

I seem to recall an interview with a fellow who was a doctor in WWII. He told about how when soldiers came in shell-shocked (severely traumatized), they’d keep them in the field hospital, dope them into oblivion for a period of time to let the worst of it pass, then take them off the drugs and send them right back out to their unit. I forget how long they kept them, just a few days I think. The doctor was pretty sure that these poor fellows were going to be completely unable to take care of themselves, much less engage in combat. He was pretty sure he was sending them back to die. It seemed that it had been haunting him for the last 50 years. You can bet that this war isn’t going to haunt Bush and Rummy, not even for a minute.
In WWII we were facing an aggressor who had already swept across Europe. He had a face, Hitler’s face. And we didn’t go in until every friend of ours except Britain had fallen. What is our symbol in this war? Saddam Hussein? Hey, we got him. Osama Bin Laden? We aren’t even *thinking* about him any more. The World Trade Center and its 3000 deaths? Iraq had nothing to do with that – it was perpetrated by Saudis protesting our continued presence in Saudi Arabia. What the hell *is* this war about?
The aggressor is just beginning to sweep across the Middle East. It’s not clear to our soldiers who they are fighting. Many of them feel as if they are little more than bodyguards for civilian contractors. They drive Halliburton employees and other civilians back and forth from the green zone to the airport through a well-established corridor, like ducks in a shooting gallery. And in between trips they sit in tents in a big maze of Jersey barriers waiting for one of the locals to slip in and set off a bomb.
The word that the suicide rate is high in this war came out a couple of years ago. Every war has suicides. Yes, even The Big One, WWII. But when you are supporting the war, as just about everyone did during WWII, suicides make bad press so you don’t cover them. You want to show newsreels of Axis bombs and dead foreign children, not films of mentally ill American soldiers – hardly more than children themselves – committing suicide.
One interesting difference in this war is that at the beginning of the war, if you check the numbers, the casualties were mostly older people with families and well-paid jobs back home. These are folks whose lives back home are being systematically disassembled by their extended absence. You join the Army Reserves with the understanding that you will serve as a stop-gap until the military can muster and train enough recruits to step in, maybe six months and certainly not two years. You join the National Guard with the understanding that your job is to protect the people here at home in during emergencies. Something got really screwed up here.
Oh, this is a good line. This fellow makes it sound as if every soldier is a time bomb waiting to go off.

“Ritchie insisted the military works hard to prevent suicides, but it is a challenge because every soldier has access to a weapon.”

I lost count. Have we killed more Iraqis than Saddam Hussein yet?

But I digress… the war in Iraq isn’t a desperate struggle against a madman with intentions of World Domination: quite the contrary. From the beginning we haven’t even attempted to be sure to have enough men and materiel to successfully complete our mission against this most nebulous enemy, Terror, either.
Finally, and most importantly, in the 21st century you’d think that our species would be sensitive to each other’s psychological needs. When did we lose our ability to empathize? We have taken huge steps back in so many areas – environment, new energy sources, “Civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights: it’s all wrong” – and I want to know why this is.
Who are these people who want to ignore the hard lessons of the last 60 years and go back to an idyllic past that never was?
I think it’s time for me to read up on exactly what this NeoCon movement is about.

[Lyric above is from Gil Scott Heron's excellent invective against Ronald Reagan, B Movie, from his 1981 album Reflections.]

In the grand American tradition of kicking them while they’re down, President Bush made a Proclamation last week that suspends the minimum wage laws for workers in the areas affected by Hurricane Katrina. Hell of a thing to do to people who have lost everything and want to rebuild. Here it is, right from the horse’s mouth, Whitehouse.gov.
Proclamation by the President: To Suspend Subchapter IV of Chapter 31 of Title 40, United States Code, Within a Limited Geographic Area in Response to the National Emergency Caused by Hurricane Katrina
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/09/20050908-5.html
Bush is even extending the Emergency Declaration to many states that took in refugees. Like New Jersey???
President Approves Emergency Declaration For New Jersey
http://www.fema.gov/news/newsrelease.fema?id=19001

Here is a list of the five major companies getting contracts in the area.
FEMA Contracts to Provide Housing Relief for Displaced Hurricane Victims
http://www.fema.gov/news/newsrelease.fema?id=18708
These companies already have found windfalls in government contracts. There is no need to take money from the wage earners at the bottom of the corporate pyramid. They also have lucrative contracts in Iraq. Our Army protects their civilian contractors, oil workers, at public expense.

The former head of FEMA, Joe Allbaugh, is or has been a lobbyist both for the Shaw Group and for Halliburton.
Former FEMA Chief Is at Work on Gulf Coast: Lobbyist Allbaugh Gives Clients Help
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/07/AR2005090702385.html
You know Halliburton, that’s the company that is being investigated for overcharging us, the taxpayers, in Iraq.
Halliburton Overcharge Not Deliberate, Zakheim Says

Halliburton’s KBR unit, formerly known as Kellogg, Brown & Root, has been paid $866 million on the oil reconstruction contract and “$61 million is actually the only part that is being questioned,” Zakheim said.

http://www.halliburton.com/news/archive/2003/article_121703.jsp

In an unrelated story, our Vice President was still on the Halliburton payroll in 2001. To his credit, he used all of his stock options in 2000 so that he could sell the stock to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest.
Vice President and Mrs. Cheney Release 2000 Income Tax Return

Included in the wage and salary income reported on the tax return is $806,332 in salary and $4,333,500 in deferred compensation and bonuses from Halliburton Company, where Mr. Cheney served as chief executive officer until he resigned on August 16, 2000. As previously reported in Halliburton’s proxy statement, Mr. Cheney received a cash bonus of $1,451,398 from Halliburton in January of this year, which will be included in the 2001 tax return.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/04/20010413-5.html

Well, the news is full of fun stuff today. The press could do so much good if they directed their energy into improving the world.
Man faints, dies after seeing epidural. Ok, I can almost see this. The needle is three inches long and marked in stripes to indicate depth of penetration. It looks kind of like a skeeter’s tweeter.
US reporter jailed in CIA trial. This one is tricky. Background: Joseph Wilson was confronting Dubya over the questionable evidence he had presented to justify the rape of Iraq. To retaliate, someone told a NY Times reporter that his wife, Valerie Plame, is a CIA agent. Nobody knows how many people have died because she was outed – she was in a sensitive overseas post. Furthermore, the reporter who is being jailed, Judith Miller, doesn’t even know who the leak was! The issue here is whether the press has the right to keep sources confidential.
G8 calls for new climate dialogue. There are only 5 people left in the world who don’t accept the awful fact of global warming. All of them are in the White House.
The Day the Earth Stood Still.
Christian Doc Speculates Why Americans Rank #1 in Mental Illness. Have you talked to God today, Ma’am? He can save your sanity.
Drug Kingpin investigated for “doctor shopping”.
Ah, here we go… Mars picture of the day.
Soccer moms on dope. “We don’t see families torn apart. We don’t see the violence. We don’t see the robberies and the burglaries,” he said. “Meth is definitely worse on society than ( marijuana ).” Huh?
Ever wonder why we went after Iraq when so many of the 9-11 highjackers were Saudis? Here’s a profile of the gentleman that Dubya knows as Uncle Bandar.
Armor Plate your iPod. Clever devils, those Japanese.
This one’s from MemeMachineGo! It’s about the recent eminent domain decision by the Supreme Court. The one that allows your town to bulldoze your home if they can increase their tax revenue by giving the land to someone else.

Technorati: Joseph+Wilson Dubya Iraq Valerie+Plame Judith+Miller Mental+Illness Uncle+Bandar eminent+domain