Interview By Sam Seder Of Professor Richard Wolf

This is only about half an hour, but it is absolutely worth listening to. H/T to AMERICAblog's Gaius Publius for providing the link.

The above podcast is from an interview by Sam Seder of Prof. Richard Wolf which basically walks the average person through the financial crisis in Europe, the austerity programs such as what is going on in Greece, why they don't and won't work, and comparisons with the United States and its proposed austerity solutions to the economic crisis here.

Basically, the point being made is that the problem in Europe and America lie within the rich that have the money, and the manner in which they have "lent" their money to the not rich, and how when the not rich find themselves in the position of not being able to pay back the rich, concoct methods and ways to continue to "loan" or "bail out" countries (or individuals here in the United States, such as the loan modification programs, which by the way, don't work either). Austerity will not work because it takes the responsibility for the mess and for the resolution of the mess, off of the very people that created the mess, the banks, corporations and rich people, and try to put the resolving of the miss onto the backs of the very people who cannot afford to help solve the mess, because of the very fact they are the poor as a result of the mess!

Some interesting comments also were made about Roosevelt and how he handled the situation in the 1930's and 1940's, and a comparison was made of him to those today like the Warren Buffets of the "rich." A trickle down society will not solve the problem, it has to be a trickle up situation that will stimulate growth and a way to get back to the middle class that we pretend still exists but in reality, we only have the very uber rich, and then those that fall close to or below the poverty line. The so called pretend middle class has been fooling itself for way too long now that they belong with the rich, or can achieve what the rich have in some fashion, and many are also trying to cling to what little they have, not realizing that in comparison to the rich, what the "middle class" have that they are holding onto is a pipe dream, and not based in financial reality.

Until the rich start paying their fair share, and that includes banks, corporations, governments and people, this financial meltdown will continue, and the riots in Greece and elsewhere in Europe over austerity programs will follow to here in the United States when we make the least capable and most vulnerable class of people have to shoulder the debt and financial crisis while at the same time the rich do nothing but continue to get richer!

Seriously, listen to the whole interview - you will come away so much more informed about the financial problems we are facing, not just as a country, but as a world.

"Deadbeat Illinois"

Great title (from this article). On the way back to O'Hare, there was a sign facing those leaving O'Hare going into Chicago that, I paraphrase, said Welcome to Chicago, We're Broke. It was a bit longer in phrase, but I really can't remember it other than it struck me odd as a "welcome to my city" type sign, because of its rather blatant slap. Most "welcome to my city" signs are upbeat, and if it has something important, it is usually highlighted in the welcome sign.

Drowning in deficits, Illinois has turned to a deliberate policy of not paying billions of dollars in bills for months at a time, creating a cycle of hardship and sacrifice for residents and businesses helping the state carry out some of the most important government tasks.

PA School District Using Sheep To Trim School Property!

I know budget cuts to school districts are no laughing matter, but one has to chuckle a bit at this school district's unique way to deal with it.

In Carlisle, Pennsylvania, those cuts meant putting an end to traditional means of cutting grass at two local schools. Instead of lawnmowers, the schools are using sheep:

Rather than spend money on cutting grass, the Carlisle School District has brought in 7 Romney sheep to tend the fields. “They’ve done a good job so far,” says Superintendent John Friend.

The sheep come free of charge, since they belong to the principal of the middle school. Friend estimates that they will save the district about $15,000 this year in mowing costs.

H/T to Think Progress.

Unemployed Need Not Apply - New Business Mantra

Sadly, this is the new craze in hiring. Ain't American business just grand?

Hundreds of job opening listings posted on Monster.com and other jobs sites explicitly state that people who are unemployed would be less attractive applicants, with some telling the long-term unemployed to not even bother with applying.

I'd bang my head on the keyboard, but I gave that up a long time ago (got a strong head, and I really like my keyboard!)

Who REALLY Owns America?

Many people — politicians and pundits alike — prattle on that China and, to a lesser extent Japan, own most of America's $14.3 trillion in government debt.

But there's one little problem with that conventional wisdom: it's just not true. While the Chinese, Japanese and plenty of other foreigners own substantial amounts, it's really Americans who hold most of America's debt.

[snip]

• Hong Kong: $121.9 billion (0.9 percent)
• Caribbean banking centers: $148.3 (1 percent)
• Taiwan: $153.4 billion (1.1 percent)
• Brazil: $211.4 billion (1.5 percent)
• Oil exporting countries: $229.8 billion (1.6 percent)
• Mutual funds: $300.5 billion (2 percent)
• Commercial banks: $301.8 billion (2.1 percent)
• State, local and federal retirement funds: $320.9 billion (2.2 percent)
• Money market mutual funds: $337.7 billion (2.4 percent)
• United Kingdom: $346.5 billion (2.4 percent)
• Private pension funds: $504.7 billion (3.5 percent)
• State and local governments: $506.1 billion (3.5 percent)
• Japan: $912.4 billion (6.4 percent)
• U.S. households: $959.4 billion (6.6 percent)
• China: $1.16 trillion (8 percent)
• The U.S. Treasury: $1.63 trillion (11.3 percent)
• Social Security trust fund: $2.67 trillion (19 percent)

Why So Many Elites Are Pushing For A Depression

A very long and intellectually difficult piece to read, but it is well worth it if you wish to try to have an inkling of understanding as to why the Republicans and the corporate, financial and some private sectors are trying to purposely lower wages and keep people in America poor. H/T to Crooks and Liars.

JAY: Okay. Now, you said because they realize the game is over. Why is the game over? And which game?

HUDSON: For the time being, the ability to pay debts. They realize that a debt that can't be paid won't be. The economy is so deeply in debt one-third of American real estate has mortgages in excess of its market price. So the Federal Reserve has come right out and said what we need is a reinflation. We need to restore the bubble economy. We need to push housing prices back up so that labor has to go into a lifetime of debt in order to afford access to housing.

Now, you say, quite correctly, "But this is going to prevent labor from buying the goods and services." That's Say's law. But Alan Greenspan explained this very clearly a decade ago. He said there's something wonderful about debt: it's cured the labor problem. The workers are now one paycheck away from homelessness. If they go on strike or if they're fired because they complain about working conditions, all of a sudden their interest rate goes up on their credit card, all of a sudden they miss their mortgage payment, they re losing their home. Alan Greenspan said debt is what has created stability of wages in this country, meaning steadily falling wages.

In America, despite the amazing rise in productivity we ve had in the last 30 years, real wages have actually gone down. All of the increase in productivity has been taken by the finance, insurance, and real estate sector, called the FIRE sector, almost all of it by the financial sector. So all of this growth has been siphoned off, not taking the form of rising living standards, but taking the form of debt service, mainly interest and fees. The fees are as large as interest for the credit card companies. So it's all siphoned off financially.

Be Afraid Of Oligarchy, Not Obama

The slide to oligarchy is evident everywhere. With the wars bleeding America dry, and the give-away to the rich mentality on the backs of the dwindling middle class, the question on most people's minds (well those that are actually aware this is happening and understand it) is will America stand for this, or will America fight the takeover of their lives by the few rich.

Does anyone doubt that once a society ceases to be able to afford schools, public transit, paved roads, libraries and street lights -- or once it chooses not to be able to afford those things in pursuit of imperial priorities and the maintenance of a vast Surveillance and National Security State -- that a very serious problem has arisen, that things have gone seriously awry, that imperial collapse, by definition, is an imminent inevitability? Anyway, I just wanted to leave everyone with some light and cheerful thoughts as we head into the weekend.

Read the piece. Become aware. Stop the takeover.

Hope Doesn't Live Here Anymore, Only Anger

The funny thing is, our government, in toto, is actually very much uninterested in what Americans want. It is as if politicians have allowed politics to actually be a job, a job unfortunately, one has to lobby to keep either every two years, every four years or every six years. So, the job of a politician is to lobby, and from the first day after they are elected, they lobby their entire term to stay where they are. This, sadly, has become quite known to many Americans (although that 24% of the stupid people don't even have a clue about this).

It has become maddeningly magnified by how waste, bad governing, and inattention to the constituency is just part of the daily job. And since lobbying is the job, in and of itself, any duty that, say, our congressional leaders owe to perform on the platform they ran, or govern in the manner in which they told those that elected them they would, once on the job, all that goes out the window as the politician has begun his actual job, lobbying.

Waste is an interesting topic. One of the reasons the government can never trim the waste is because those that cause the waste pay the politicians the most money to be able to continue to waste. So when The Washington Post does a three piece spread (here) concerning the "secret government" that virtually controls American lives (by "spying" illegally and legally), no politician jumped on it. The point of the piece was that this vast "secret government" which started out to be of national security importance, has turned into an unmanageable and poor functioning apparatus of the government such that hundreds of billions of dollars are being wasted.

Now, in this time of recession bordering on depression, and the mantra of the entire Republican party centering on "balance" with regards to budgetary ideology, you would think that someone would address this form of waste. Unfortunately, for Americans, our politicians figure that "waste" is helping those out of work, those unfortunate "teachers" who educate the majority of American children (because none of the politicians whose job is lobbying actually have children in public schools, so they don't care that teachers just don't make enough to live on), or in any jobs bill, or further stimulus package, or proper health care (remember, many of our elected lobbyists are actively lobbying funds to repeal the help to average Americans for affordable health care).

No, and that is because the people affected by those choices are American people, not the corporate people, a class we now have thanks to the Citizen's United decision. Even though actual American people are the only ones that can line up outside a voting booth, and put a mark down for a candidate, the corporate people have control over which politician will be elected, and what that politician's agenda will be. And so, as for the Washington Post expose, the very people involved in the "secret government," like AT&T and other surveillance giants, pay far too much money in kickbacks and in seeing that the lobby job of our politicians is carried out, such that the elected lobbyist would not actually try to cut this source off, regardless of how much American tax payer money is used to funnel the money to them. Nary a peep from our representatives in Washington except how irresponsible the Post was for actually doing the piece. No waste here. Move along. Nothing to see.

The sad part of this is that it is not exclusive of the Republican party. Democrats, Independents, and yes, some Progressives, once they get the "job," they realize that it is not to do the bidding of the real people that elected them, but to do the work of the corporate people who will see that they are still in their job and who will fund them quite handsomely to stay there.

The corporate people running the war that is destroying the lives of the real people in America will never give up their free line at the soup kitchen of the American government's tax monies. No sireee. And, thanks to all the tax breaks many of these corporates get from that same soup kitchen, the relationship is so symbiotic that neither side really is able to cut the other side off, for risk of dying.

It has come to that. We had that one moment of light that "a change is gonna come" feeling, in 2008,


when led by a grassroots coalition made up mainly of American people networked through the Internet, elected the first African American president, and overwhelmingly placed the Democratic party in charge. But after 18 months, and an upcoming "two year" job election by our elected lobbyists on the horizon, the focus from day one of Obama and the rest of the Democrats, Independents and Progressives the real people put in charge, things have not only not changed, some of stayed the same, and many have become worse. There are a small cadre of real people and corporate people that have something on the line in trying to highlight what the 2008 elected lobbyist actually did for the real people, but most of us already know what was done to us, because our collective asses really hurt.

And many of us with sore asses just won't get up come this November to stand in a line and punch a hole, when we already know we are screwed. Hell, the gas money alone to get to the polling place could probably feed a family of four at McDonalds.

At some point, this recession will turn into the depression, as the haves continue to hoard, and the have nots continue to be mislead, mistreated, maligned and ignored.

Hope doesn't seem to live in America anymore. But, anger, certainly is on the rise.

Addendum: Funny, after I put up this piece, AMERICAblog links to this article by Judy Woodruff, who addresses the same sentiments in my post, but takes the "change" part and gives it more "umph" as well as links and actual "changes" that have not come about, or just barely made a dent.

When "it" is in the air, "it" is in the air everywhere.

Bell Officials Resign, Finally

Three officials in a Los Angeles suburb whose high salaries sparked statewide outrage will step down from their jobs, the city's mayor said Friday.

That was quick. At first, the three vowed to fight the city's anger, and even went so far as to say they could not be fired, and that they had unique severance packages should they be forced to resign.

I am not sure who, outside of Southern Californians, were actually following this story. Bell is a really small community/city. But how these three were able to do what they do, is explained here:

The highly paid members of the Bell City Council were able to exempt themselves from state salary limits through a little-noticed city ballot measure during a special election that attracted fewer than 400 voters.

Council members in Bell earn nearly $100,000 – a salary that has prompted an inquiry by the Los Angeles County district attorney. A state law enacted in 2005 limits the pay of council members in "general law" cities, a reform prompted by the high salaries that leaders in the neighboring city of South Gate bestowed on themselves.

But the year the law passed, the Bell City Council held a special election with only one item on the ballot. It asked voters to approve a measure calling for Bell to convert to a "charter" city.

By doing this, it allowed the city council to circumvent the law that controls salaries for its members, and this was done on the sly and away from the knowledge of the actually people of Bell. In fact, only one city council member was unaware of the salary increases, and he appears to be the one that blew the whistle on it. I think the moral here is one needs to vote, and one needs to read the laws upon which you are voting for or against. This is what happens when there is apathy in voter turnout.

At least the scumbags are out of jobs. Hopefully, unless they are required to pay back their salaries, they invested well! Just a joke, son, just a joke!

Obama's Reaction To "Ant" Comment

From Obama today:

“We’re on the verge of passing the most comprehensive financial reform since the Great Depression—reform that will prevent a crisis like this from happening again. It’s reform that will protect our economy from the recklessness and irresponsibility of a few. Reform that will protect consumers against the unfair practices of credit card companies and mortgage lenders. Reform that ensures taxpayers are never again on the hook for Wall Street’s mistakes.

“But most of our friends in the other party are planning on voting against this reform. In fact, just yesterday, I was stunned to hear the leader of the Republicans in the House say that financial reform was like using a nuclear weapon to target an ant. That’s right. He compared the financial crisis to an ant. The same financial crisis that led to the loss of nearly eight million jobs. The same crisis that cost people their homes and their lives savings.

“Well if the Republican leader is that out of touch with the struggles facing the American people, he should come here to Racine and ask people if they think the financial crisis was an ant. He should ask the men and women who’ve been out of work for months at a time. He should ask the Americans who send me letters every night that talk about how they’re barely hanging on.

“These Americans don’t believe the financial crisis was an ant. They know that it’s what led to the worst recession since the Great Depression. And they expect their leaders in Washington to do whatever it takes to make sure a crisis like this never happens again. The Republican leader might want to maintain a status quo on Wall Street. But we want to move America forward.”

Bachmann Being, Well, Bachmann

“So I think clearly this is a very bad direction because when you join the economic policy of different nations, it is one short step to joining political unity and then you would have literally, a one world government,” said Bachmann. “I don’t want to cede United States authority to a transnational organization.”

Matt Yglesias notes that “the existence of a global economy in which events outside our borders impact us is not something Barack Obama dreamed up, and the idea that having world leaders gather for occasional meetings constitutes a ‘one world government’ is insane.”

But it’s not new for Bachmann to dream up nightmarish scenarios about the U.S. ceding its economic sovereignty. Around the time of the 2009 G-20 Summit, she peddled a false conspiracy theory that the world was moving toward a unified global currency. “This is not Michele Bachmann being a kook,” declared the Minnesota congresswoman. It was and is.

Drink pretty much starting to kick in ... ahhhh, wingnuttia, where we all can enjoy our own insanity!

Barney Frank's Pipe Dream

A panel commissioned by Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) is recommending nearly $1 trillion in cuts to the Pentagon’s budget during the next 10 years.

The Sustainable Defense Task Force, a commission of scholars from a broad ideological spectrum appointed by Frank, the House Financial Services Committee chairman, laid out actions the government could take that could save as much as $960 billion between 2011 and 2020.

Measures presented by the task force include making significant reductions to the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, which has strong support from Defense Secretary Robert Gates; delaying the procurement of a new midair refueling tanker the Air Force has identified as one of its top acquisition priorities; and reducing the Navy’s fleet to 230 ships instead of the 313 eyed by the service.

Yeah, like that's ever gonna happen! We can't even get this government (or the past one) to stop giving our taxpayer money to Arab nations while American's starve to death, are homeless by the thousands and FUCKING UNEMPLOYED IN THE MILLIONS! Good luck getting the military contractors and their war machine on board with this, Barney!

Why Do The Interests In Iraq, Afghanistan & Pakistan Override What Belongs To America?

Courtesy of Infoplease

From Prison Planet:

The cost of fighting the war in Afghanistan will overtake that of the Iraq conflict for the first time in 2010, Pentagon budget documents showed Thursday. On top of the basic defense budget of 533.7 billion dollars, the White House is requesting a further 130 billion dollars for overseas missions, including 65 billion for Afghanistan and 61 billion for Iraq.

As for military contractors:

The military is increasingly relying on private security contractors as President Obama ramps up the war in Afghanistan, with contractors now making up as much as 30% of the armed force in the country, a just-released congressional report shows.

In the period roughly tracking with President Obama's first nine months in office, the number of Defense Department armed security contractors soared 236% -- from 3,184 to 10,712 between December 2008 to September 2009. The number roughly doubled between June and September 2009 alone.

I could go on and on with articles, but I think my point is made. Our military budget and our wars have taken money from the American public and wasted it on frivolousness. Never mind the false "terrorism" meme the right and some on the left tout to support such expenses, the fact of the matter is that whatever we do or pretend to have accomplished "over there" has not had any impact on people over "here" feeling any better about the people over "there." The right wing nut jobs have labeled all Muslims as terrorists, so what is the point? Are we suddenly going to convert them all to White, and Christians, to boot? Hell, no!

The irony of spending money on infrastructure in Iraq based on the American government's destruction of said infrastructure, at the expense of spending money on AMERICA'S INFRASTRUCTURE is not lost on me, nor is it lost on millions of Americans. The irony of our congressional leaders refusing to put money into AMERICANS hands by not passing bills that support and give money to American citizens (with the stupid proviso that said bills and money need to be accounted for and paid for before they can be passed) while at the same time, funding for Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan is not paid for, and is balanced on the backs of the American people.

It's been seven years now. Seven fucking years of wasting money in the middle east, while we see our country going down the tubes financially at the same time our government (from the president on down) refuses to help our own country. States can't meet their budgets, we have unemployment in double digits, the banking industry is in ruins, Wall Street is sucking the life out of this country while only a handful reap any rewards, and our government sits on its hands and shakes its head, citing terrorism as a priority over American prosperity.

Hypocrisy, meet the American political system.

Who, Really, Wants To Serve On A Jury?

I have never served on a jury. The half dozen times in my life that I've received a jury duty summons, I've simply tossed it into the oval filing box aka the trash.

First off, for 20 years I was the sole caretaker and breadwinner in the family, and not on salary, so any days taken off would mean days that I would lose approximately $150 each day. All they pay in Los Angeles is $15! If that is all they are willing to pay, then I suggest they limit their jury pool to retirees.

Anyway, I found this story in the Los Angeles Times, interesting.

Spurned in his effort to get out of jury duty, salesman Tony Prados turned his attention to the case that could cost him three weeks' pay: A Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy was suing his former sergeant, alleging severe emotional distress inflicted by lewd and false innuendo that he was gay.

Prados, an ex-Marine, leaned forward in the jury box and asked in a let-me-get-this-straight tone of voice: "He's brave enough to go out and get shot at by anyone but he couldn't handle this?" he said of the locker-room taunting.

Fellow jury candidate Robert Avanesian, who had also unsuccessfully sought dismissal on financial hardship grounds, chimed in: "I think severe emotional distress is what is happening in Haiti. I don't think you could have such severe emotional distress from that," he said of the allegations in the deputy's case.

The spontaneous outbursts of the reluctant jurors just as Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge James R. Dunn was about to swear them in emboldened others in the jury pool to express disdain for the case and concerns about their ability to be fair, and to ratchet up the pathos in their claims of facing economic ruin if forced to sit for the three-week trial.

Hire A Relative, Don't Underestimate Their Talents (Grins)

Eschewing a car for mass transit has its positives and negatives. In my reality, the only negative is when I have to purchase something I can't take home on the bus.

I haven't been able to use my vacuum cleaner for like three weeks (ewww), so my house has been pretty sucky for a while. My daughter agreed to go get me a new vacuum today, (I paid for it, she just went "shopping") and she even used it to clean my house when she got here. After she saw how scummy my bathroom was, I asked her how much she wanted to clean it. $20 bucks was a steal, in my mind LOL.

Now, I'm having my daughter come in every two weeks to clean my house, and concentrate on one room for a full on cleaning. I'm sure I will pay her more than $20 bucks, but one of the perks while living with her was the fact that she was a fastidious cleaner. I am a cleaner ... clean enough not to attract bugs and whatnot, but to the observant eye, hey, so my wall borders are full of dust, as are corners of each room, up on the ceilings. Hey, at least I do dishes, take out the garbage, and used to vacuum regularly!

The vacuum I wanted was not available, so I settled on a cheap ass Dirt Devil. Who cares, I'll just replace it next year. It's still a far cry from spending $400 for a Dyson, damn it!

Ahhhhh... having a finally really cleaned up bathroom is bringing huge ass smiles from me (and from my ass, haha... ok, TMI, I agree!)

James K. Galbraith"s Opinion

Quite frankly, I could not agree more with this assessment.

I'm tempted to say that the United States is plainly unable to cope with the economic crisis in a serious way. The barriers are philosophical, procedural, and constitutional. So long as economic thinking is mired in a world that disappeared with the collapse of the Bretton Woods system in 1971, so long as any action requires 60 Senate votes, and so long as political capital erodes from the start of a fixed four-year presidential term, we're stuck.

Technically it would have been fairly easy, 10 months ago, to get this bus back on the road. There could have been open-ended fiscal assistance to stop the budget hemorrhage of the states and cities. There could have been a jobs program and effective foreclosure relief. There could have been a payroll tax holiday. There could have been a strategy for sustained massive effort on infrastructure, energy and climate. There could have been prompt corrective action to resolve, instead of coddle, the worst of the banks.

I mostly don't blame President Obama; he and his team went as far as they felt they could. I blame the head-in-the-sand politicians in Congress, the over-optimistic forecasters, the half-educated press, and the power of the financial lobby. I blame the avatars of fiscal virtue, the public debt scare-mongerers, the astrologers for whom thirteen significant digits (a trillion) for the stimulus package was just too much. I blame the Senate, which hands the balance of power to small states at the expense of disaster areas like California, Florida and New York. I do blame the Bush-Obama financial policy team, who either believed that "credit would flow again" if you stuffed the banks with money, or knew that it wouldn't.

What Is Wrong With Obama? Still Using Blackwater Ops In The Middle East?????

You know, every day, every week, every month, something new comes out about Obama that makes me wonder if he really is a Democrat. Perhaps, like Bush, he thinks God ordained him to be president. I don't know exactly what to make of it, except that what the man said while running for president, and what he's actually done as president, has damaged the Democratic party in ways that will have serious consequences in the 2010 elections. And I, for one, would hate to see all the work we did as netroots in securing the majorities in the House, Senate, and of course, the White House, evaporate becase Obama has turned out to be spineless.

This piece is just disgusting.

The Obama administration is using mercenaries with the firm formerly known as Blackwater to kidnap and assassinate high value targets in Pakistan, according to a published report.

The program, operated out of the US Joint Special Operations Command, "is so 'compartmentalized' that senior figures within the Obama administration and the US military chain of command may not be aware of its existence," an unnamed source with direct knowledge of the program told The Nation reporter Jeremy Scahill.

War, war, war, war, war, war, war ....

Money down the drain, and lives (Americans and others) lost for absolutely no fucking good reason. I know historically, there have been the "good" wars and the "bad" wars, but honestly, since World War II, what fucking war has come up with any "good" attached to it? And I am speaking globally, not just for Americans.

The world economy is crumbling, despite what "media" tries to tell you. The small amount of the very rich in the world dominate, along with the corporations that control the vast majority of the world.

But, just here in America, it does not bode well that politicians are panning true health care reform (mostly because they are taking money from the insurance and big pharma groups -- not because they really and truly feel that Americans would fall into socialism based on reform). As for the financial industry, Obama has let the foxes run the hen house, and as a result, taxpayers have propped up the richest of the rich in that industry, and have shown absolutely no backbone in curbing the disgusting salaries and bonuses of a handful of people and corporations.

And then there are the wars. For one thing, doesn't anyone in the ruling government today have any knowledge of the ass kicking the middle east did to the British the last century when they tried to control and rule there? Ideologically, western modernism is not going to be implemented in the middle east, and the sooner our government gets this, the better off we will be. But knowing that the Obama Administration is still employing the rogue Blackwater group in Afghanistan and Pakistan is especially galling. Americans are not going to make any progress or difference in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, India or whatever. I guess the guys (and gals) on the Hill just like masturbating (well, who doesn't, except, of course, the religious right wing ... well, they do, they just won't admit it). WE started two wars without any idea why, and without any real plans for how to run it or finance it. Hell, we might as well just have our government play a game of Risk and let that run our foreign policy ... I'm serious!

At least this story proves the point that money and the fucking health insurance industry aren't the be all and end all in medicine.

Dr. Shetty, who entered the limelight in the early 1990s as Mother Teresa's cardiac surgeon, offers cutting-edge medical care in India at a fraction of what it costs elsewhere in the world. His flagship heart hospital charges $2,000, on average, for open-heart surgery, compared with hospitals in the U.S. that are paid between $20,000 and $100,000, depending on the complexity of the surgery.

The approach has transformed health care in India through a simple premise that works in other industries: economies of scale. By driving huge volumes, even of procedures as sophisticated, delicate and dangerous as heart surgery, Dr. Shetty has managed to drive down the cost of health care in his nation of one billion.

His model offers insights for countries worldwide that are struggling with soaring medical costs, including the U.S. as it debates major health-care overhaul.

"Japanese companies reinvented the process of making cars. That's what we're doing in health care," Dr. Shetty says. "What health care needs is process innovation, not product innovation."

At his flagship, 1,000-bed Narayana Hrudayalaya Hospital, surgeons operate at a capacity virtually unheard of in the U.S., where the average hospital has 160 beds, according to the American Hospital Association.

The future of health care in the United States will be leaving the United States for affordable treatment. The meme that millions come here for expert medical treatment has lost its luster and its truth, as the reality is clear that Americans are leaving the U.S. and seeking affordable medical treatment elsewhere.

The last bastion ... the line drawn in the sand, as it were, has been and is the health care reform bill. As it stands, neither version (House or Senate) offers true reform, and since it appears that whatever actually gets passed will only benefit the insurance industry and big pharma at the expense of Americans, I simply don't see the Democrats keeping the majority they got. Their base will simply not donate any more money to a dying party with no principles, and will stay away from the voting booth. The unfortunate outcome of that will be an open door for the nutjobs to take over government.

God help us when that happens.

Madoff Gets 150 Years!

U.S. District Judge Denny Chin said Madoff's breach of trust was massive, and that he lied to investors and to the SEC to buy homes, yachts and pay country club fees. He called the maximum sentence symbolic to those who might imitate the fraud and to the victims seeking relief.

"Here the message must be sent that Mr. Madoff's crimes were extraordinarily evil and that this kind of manipulation of the system is not just a bloodless crime that takes place on paper, but one instead that takes a staggering toll," Chin said.

"Not a single letter was submitted in support of Madoff," Chin said. "Not friends, not family. That is telling."

Too bad no one else on Wall Street, etc. is being sued for fraud, damn it. I'd like to see more prison sentences for those that forced Americans to have to fork over tax dollars just to pay for their salaries and bonuses.

New Underwear

I don't know about the rest of America, but I am buying new underwear this weekend, and no, it had nothing to do with this piece!

During a recession, underwear is among the first things that people stop buying—because hardly anybody actually sees them. This creates pent-up demand, and so when underwear sales level off and increase, it should signal an uptick in consumer demand.

What If The Stimulus Fails To Stimulate? Then What?

Uh oh. No, he didn't say that, did he?

A real fix for the troubles of the banking system might help make up for the inadequate size of the stimulus plan, so it was good to hear that Mr. Obama spends at least an hour each day with his economic advisors, “talking through how we are approaching the financial markets.” But he went on to dismiss calls for decisive action as coming from “blogs” (actually, they’re coming from many other places, including at least one president of a Federal Reserve bank), and suggested that critics want to “nationalize all the banks” (something nobody is proposing). (emphasis added by me).

First off, Krugman's op-ed piece is a must read.

But, more alarming to me is the dismissal of "blogs" by Obama, just a casual throw away line. Again, call me stupid if you want, but I do believe this line of thinking still comes from Rahm Emanuel, who has the president's ear these days. And we all know how Emanuel despises the netroots.

Obama is not getting sound, credible advice on the economy. As Krugman has already pointed out, the Obama plan to create 3.5 million jobs by 2010 is just not going to cut it when we're losing 600,000 a month. All that money that the Bush administration blew on his wars only made a handful of American's wealthy at the expense of the taxpayers and off their backs. The TARP money has done nothing but continue to line the pockets of Wall Street and the banks, but has done very little to stimulate the economy or stave off the number of jobs being lost each month. Billions go to a handful of people, while millions of Americans are left holding the bill.

As Krugman and other economists have indicated, Obama's economic policies are still coming up short and will not prevent the eventual slide into a full blown, world wide, depression. As for the future, Krugman notes:

But he can’t get his new plan through Congress because approval for his economic policies has plummeted, partly because his policies are seen to have failed, partly because job-creation policies are conflated in the public mind with deeply unpopular bank bailouts. And as a result, the recession rages on, unchecked.

Oh well. I hate to see this happen on his watch because it will just feed fuel to the fire to the other, not very well intentioned, side.