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The Audacity of Ho's

Jon stewart takes on ACORN coruption.

Very Funny

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-september-15-2009/the-audacity-of-hos

Glenn Beck the Big Dummy

Glenn Beck the Big Dummy

The Health Care Debacle

Unfortunately most of the protesters that don’t want the government to interfere with their health plans don’t understand the way American health care works right now. The government is already deeply involved, even in private insurance. Government involvement is the only reason our system works at all.

Private insurers deny as many claims as they possibly can, and they also try to avoid covering people who are likely to get sick or need care. Their efforts to avoid paying medical bills or medical losses, the industry code language for paying out claims. Insurers spend much of the money taken in through premiums not on medical treatment, but on screening out people likely to make insurance claims.

Where people buy insurance directly rather than getting it through their employers, so much money goes into screening or underwriting and other expenses that only around 70 cents of each premium dollar actually goes to care. The only reason that the majority of people who have health insurance are reasonably satisfied with their insurance is government intervention.

The government already directly provides insurance via Medicare and Medicaid and although not perfect, surveys indicate that Medicare patients are generally much more satisfied with their coverage than Americans with private insurance.

Most Americans under 65 get insurance through their employers. The advantage of this method is that you and your employer get a tremendous tax advantage because the contributions are not considered taxable income. In order for your employer to get this tax break, they have to follow the rules that and they can’t discriminate based on pre-existing medical conditions or age. So for instance the only reason that I can get health insurance at my age of 58 with high blood pressure and a stint in an artery in my heart is because of government intervention.

Unregulated markets for health insurance don’t work and never have the only thing that keeps the majority of Americans insured is the government covers people over 65 and regulations and tax subsidies make it possible for many, but not all people under 65 to get decent and affordable private coverage.

So for all the disruptive protester at these town hall meetings, come up with a plan or give back your Medicare and Medicaid and try and get some private insurance that the government doesn’t regulate.

Peace, Liberty, and Prosperity through intelligence, strength, and integrity.

I Thought Steeling A Pension Was Illegal Mr. President

I Thought Steeling A Pension Was Illegal Mr. President

While GM workers are losing their retirement health benefits, their jobs, their life savings; while shareholders are getting nada and many creditors will get nothing, a few privileged GM lenders, J P Morgan and Citibank, expect to get back 100% of their loans to GM, about $6 billion in all.

How does this happen and why aren’t the Union’s lawyers all over this??

You see when a company goes bankrupt, everyone loses. Workers lose some contract wages, stockholders get wiped out and creditors get a piece of what's left. That's the law. What workers don't lose are their pensions and that includes the old-age health funds, already taken from their wages and held in their name.

This time though Steve Rattner, Obam’s Car Czar wants to grab the pension funds to pay off J P Morgan and Citi Group by demanding the bankruptcy court to simply give the money GM owes workers for their retirement health insurance held in trust and replace it with GM stock.

This is illegal..!!!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ERISA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pension_Benefit_Guaranty_Corporation

Pension money is protected from being seized in bankruptcy. Now though, the Obama Administration is demanding that money used to secure the old-age health funds, go to the very people who caused the financial melt down in the first place.

Under this plan GM’s pension assets are replaced with GM stock and this is illegal because the law requiring that companies, as fiduciaries, must "... act prudently and must diversify the plan's investments in order to minimize the risk of large losses." By "diversify" for safety, the law does not mean put 100% of worker funds into a single busted company's stock. Remember Enron who encouraged their worker to invest in Enron in their 401k plans.

Now we are going to throw thousands of workers out of work and give the money that would have funded the retiree’s health plan to J P Morgan and Citi Group, the same guys who have leeched up over one third of a trillion dollars in aid from you and me and replace it with worthless GM stock.

I got an idea let’s give the banks the stock and the pension plan keeps the cash.

If I had a business and ran its pension fund like this I’d end up in jail, but if the president and congress do it, it is business as usual in Washington DC.

Loyalty to country, always. Loyalty to the government when it deserves it." -- Mark Twain

“I believe we should be embracing the egalitarian ideals and rebellious spirit of the American Revolution, and challenge the orthodoxy of the military industrial complex corporate order, and empower workaday Americans so we can control our own economic and political destinies.”

Michael Chavers



Well as far as I’m concerned none of these guys in Washington know much about anything and are selling the American people to the corporate elites.

The Republicans and the Democrats are so beholding to big money, you and me, the average guy who has to get up each morning to a more uncertain future is footing the bill for the mess that started way back in the 80’s under Ronnie.

Bankers you want free market deregulation well when you screw up big time don’t come to me asking for money you have turned me down or gave me some high interest credit card bull crap and fixed the laws so it is hard to ever pay off the debt you suckered us into.

--------------------

Good articles to read:


I wholly support this regulation and it’s about 4 years too late.

Regulator to Detail Plan for Derivatives
By STEPHEN LABATON

WASHINGTON — The new chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission will ask Congress on Thursday to impose substantial new costs and restrictions on large banks and other financial institutions that deal in the complex and largely unregulated financial instruments known as derivatives.

Gary G. Gensler, the top regulator for futures trading, will provide significant new details of a plan announced three weeks ago by the Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner. Mr. Gensler will disclose his proposal before the Senate Agriculture Committee, which oversees the commission.
Lawmakers said they had been told that Mr. Gensler would propose two sets of regulations — one set for the individual dealers of derivatives and a second set for the marketplaces where the instruments are traded.

Mr. Gensler has said that taken together, the two sets of rules would largely eliminate the loopholes that critics said would have weakened the Treasury secretary’s plan, although some expressed concern that the proposals still might not go far enough to fully address problems that contributed to the market collapse.

Read the whole article here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/04/business/04regs.html?_r=1&ref=business


Goodbye, GM

Monday 01 June 2009
by: Michael Moore | Visit article original @ MichaelMoore.com
I write this on the morning of the end of the once-mighty General Motors. By high noon, the President of the United States will have made it official: General Motors, as we know it, has been totaled.

As I sit here in GM's birthplace, Flint, Michigan, I am surrounded by friends and family who are filled with anxiety about what will happen to them and to the town. Forty percent of the homes and businesses in the city have been abandoned. Imagine what it would be like if you lived in a city where almost every other house is empty. What would be your state of mind?

It is with sad irony that the company which invented "planned obsolescence" - the decision to build cars that would fall apart after a few years so that the customer would then have to buy a new one - has now made itself obsolete. It refused to build automobiles that the public wanted, cars that got great gas mileage, were as safe as they could be, and were exceedingly comfortable to drive. Oh - and that wouldn't start falling apart after two years. GM stubbornly fought environmental and safety regulations. Its executives arrogantly ignored the "inferior" Japanese and German cars, cars which would become the gold standard for automobile buyers. And it was hell-bent on punishing its unionized workforce, lopping off thousands of workers for no good reason other than to "improve" the short-term bottom line of the corporation. Beginning in the 1980s, when GM was posting record profits, it moved countless jobs to Mexico and elsewhere, thus destroying the lives of tens of thousands of hard-working Americans. The glaring stupidity of this policy was that, when they eliminated the income of so many middle class families, who did they think was going to be able to afford to buy their cars? History will record this blunder in the same way it now writes about the French building the Maginot Line or how the Romans cluelessly poisoned their own water system with lethal lead in its pipes.

So here we are at the deathbed of General Motors. The company's body not yet cold, and I find myself filled with - dare I say it - joy. It is not the joy of revenge against a corporation that ruined my hometown and brought misery, divorce, alcoholism, homelessness, physical and mental debilitation, and drug addiction to the people I grew up with. Nor do I, obviously, claim any joy in knowing that 21,000 more GM workers will be told that they, too, are without a job.

But you and I and the rest of America now own a car company! I know, I know - who on earth wants to run a car company? Who among us wants $50 billion of our tax dollars thrown down the rat hole of still trying to save GM? Let's be clear about this: The only way to save GM is to kill GM. Saving our precious industrial infrastructure, though, is another matter and must be a top priority. If we allow the shutting down and tearing down of our auto plants, we will sorely wish we still had them when we realize that those factories could have built the alternative energy systems we now desperately need. And when we realize that the best way to transport ourselves is on light rail and bullet trains and cleaner buses, how will we do this if we've allowed our industrial capacity and its skilled workforce to disappear?

Read the full article here:

http://www.truthout.org/060109A


THE BATTLE OF COAL RIVER VALLEY

Thursday, June 4, 2009 | Posted by Jim Hightower

"You've got to stand for something," sings John Mellencamp, "Or you're gonna fall for anything,"
Folks in West Virginia's Coal River Valley are no longer falling for the long litany of lies they've gotten from coal company executives and bought-off politicians. The corporate elites of the state have literally been destroying mountains, forests, streams, wildlife, livelihoods, human health, and whole communities in Appalachia by using a brutal and contemptible form of coal mining called "mountaintop removal."

For years, people here have tried the usual political and legal channels to stop this corporate assault – yet it continues. So people are now putting themselves on the line. "Somebody has to do something about it," says one Mountaineer, "so we do the little things we can."
One of those "little things" includes
Read the full article here:

http://jimhightower.com/node/6833



ACT NOW TO SAVE 3,500 GOOD AMERICAN JOBS

Tuesday, May 26, 2009 | Posted by Jim Hightower

Back when I had a job requiring me to wear suits, my brands of choice were Hart Shaffner Marx and Hickey Freeman. Fine suites they were, too – good cut, fine craftsmanship, fair price. Made me look mighty snappy, which isn't easy.
Both of those brands are now united in Hartmarx Corporation, which employs 3,500 top-quality workers in places like Rock Island, Illinois, and Rochester, New York. But now, those jobs and the future of Hartmarx, the largest maker of menswear in the nation, are in doubt.
http://jimhightower.com/node/6826

Stop the Money Chase

Stop the Money Chase

Instead of drafting legislation that will regulate Wall Street Congress is feigning indignation over 165 million dollars given in bonuses to the AIG employees.

This is an amount that is almost insignificant compared to 170 Billion dollars congress gave with no strings attached. I did the math and the 165 million in bonuses amounts to less than one tenth of one percent of that 170 billion.

All this began because many of the politicians, who appear so outraged, helped to deregulate Wall Street and did so because they were chasing campaign funds from the lobbyists who represent Wall Street.

The most important thing that we can do at this time is to support campaign finance reform. I am asking everyone to support a legislation that is to be introduced later this week by Senators Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) called the Fair Elections Now Act. Fair Elections is a bi-partisan reform that will free our lawmakers from the never-ending fundraising treadmill and allow them to concentrate on the critical issues of the day.

Under Fair Elections, candidates would qualify for limited public money by raising a specific number of small donations from their community, and would receive additional funds to match their ongoing small contributions. They would be prohibited from taking any large contributions.

Get involved and get your friends involved help pass the Fair Elections Now Act. Congress needs to hear from we the people so that they know that we are tired of the money chase and we are not going to take it any more.

Here is an organization that is dedicated to this cause I encourage you to sign up for their email alerts on this issue.
http://www.publicampaign.org/

Here is the letter I am writing and feel free to use it or alter it and send it to your congressman ASAP.

Congressman Young

I strongly urge you to support the bi-partisan reform bill to be introduced later this week by Senators Dick Durbin and Arlen Specter called the Fair Elections Now Act.

Fair elections are about voters and not big campaign donors. This legislation is modeled after the successful clean elections laws in seven states and two cities. Candidates need to be able to seek public office without having to court big money special interests for campaign contributions

We need our lawmakers accountable to the only to the citizens and free from the never-ending fundraising treadmill so that they can concentrate on the critical issues of the day.

Sincerely
Michael Chavers

You can find your representative here.
http://www.house.gov/

Enough is enough stop the bailouts and start the Nationalization

Enough is enough stop the bailouts and start the Nationalization

Here we go again more bad news from A.I.G. For the last 30 years both the Democrats and Republicans gutted the basic laws and enforcement i.e. financial regulations, anti-trust prosecutions that prevented financial institutions from becoming as we have been told “too big to fail” and David Sirota said in his latest column If It's Too Big to Fail, It's Too Big to Be Private.

We are going to have to realize that we can’t and should not bailout these huge corporations who have operated without prudence and common sense. What needs to be done is nationalize these institutions and fire the executives whose responsibility was to protect their investors with sound investments strategies, investigate any possible crimes that where committed. We could then unload the toxic debt for its real value break up these giants that are to big to fail and resize them and sell them back to private enterprise, so that one failure will not cause the tumbling of the house of cards as we have today.

There is a lot of money for investment but people are just not investing now because of the uncertainty on what the government will do. We know the government is going to do something, but like Ron Paul said “will it act like a chicken with its head cut off” and if you have never seen this before you don’t know what direction that bird is going to run just that it will flail about until it collapses. We need a sound monetary policy and some incentives for investing in the stock market again like removing the capital gains tax for investments made into the stock market and left there for two years.

The government should cut spending. Bush and company spent this country into the poor house and his policies are the initial cause of this mess. Now with president Obama’s massive spending we are being put into a huge pit debt that will probably take decades to recover from if we ever do.

All we hear from Rush Limbaugh and most of the Rightwing, is Obama is getting us into such a mess, and I hope Obama fails, well lets lay the blame where it belongs and not rewrite history like Karl Rove would have us do. By the way Rush I saw you on the C-PAC show and WTF, were you going for the bloated Tony Manero Saturday Night Fever look, GEEEEEE WIZ.

Let’s Start with the $3 trillion cost of George W's misadventure in Iraq that the White House and Congress Republican and Democrat alike merrily slapped on our children's future. Or, remember just a few months back when Bush's treasury secretary and Federal Reserve chief madly borrowed several trillion dollars from our children to stuff into the pockets of Wall Street executives, with no requirements that the banks do anything productive with the money?

So let’s get this straight, Republicans controlled congress for 6 years and the White House, for 8 years. The Republican-driven deficits dwarf Obama's spending. They saddle future generations with enormous costs for, as Jindal put it, "things we don't need," without returning any benefits to our country.

President Obama wants to create jobs and I think the first jobs Obama should create are hiring enough Border Patrol officers to secure our seaports and borders. He can immediately put people to work at the IRS investigating corporations who have been cheating on their taxes. He can put people to work by beefing up the SEC’s investigation personal so that we won’t have ponzi schemes that go on for years under the noses of the SEC undiscovered until after large numbers of people are duped into investing their life savings into worthless paper.

Some of the spending in Obama’s recovery package will buy roads, schoolhouses, water systems, parks, health care, mass transit, renewable energy and other real projects that we really do need. These things will be there to benefit future generations and me and many of my conservative friends support these things.

With our deficit problem though I think that the $237 Billion that gives $400 dollars to each worker isn’t going to be much help I would rather see that money used for more infrastructure projects. There are a lot of things in this stimulus package that I don’t agree with but we all should look at it and figure out where our priorities are and get busy and get congress to work on measures that will fix our economy and unite this country.

Peace, Liberty, and Prosperity through intelligence, strength, and integrity.

TO EVERYONE WHO HAS PROGRESS ENERGY

TO EVERYONE WHO HAS PROGRESS ENERGY:

PLEASE BE AWARE THAT YOU ARE NOW PAYING OVER 25% MORE FOR YOUR ELECTRICITY THAN CUSTOMERS OF FLORIDA POWER AND LIGHT CO. WE CAN TRY TO HAVE THIS INCREASE OVERTURNED BY FILING A COMPLAINT WITH THE FLORIDA PUBLIC SERVICE COMMISSION.

IT IS VERY EASY; Go on line at and fill in the complaint form. Feel free to use my letter or alter it any way you like to use.
http://www.floridapsc.com/consumers/complaints/index.aspx

OR CALL 1-800-342-3552. THERE WILL BE A MEETING IN MARCH, SO THE SOONER YOU DO THIS THE BETTER. THEY HAVE HAD THOUSANDS OF CALLS ABOUT THIS INCREASE, SO EVERY CALL WILL BE COUNTED.

Here is a site dedicated to helping consumers with info on Progress Energy
http://www.fireprogressenergy.com/



PROGRESS ENERGY Complaint letter to FLA Public Service Commission

Who decided that Progress Energy should be subsidized in their efforts to capitalize off building a nuclear power plant? It is very obvious that green energy is going to be a booming market in the very near future. Companies that can come up with new technologies and the infrastructure to deliver clean energy have a very bright future.

However, they should all have to compete for their share of this market but that’s not going to happen when you have a company that will have their infrastructure paid for when public officials approve a rate hike to pre pay for a new facility.

Also, what federal subsidies and contracts will Progress Energy be well positioned for after Floridians have paid for their new facilities? I don’t think that paying for Progress Energy’s construction costs is a fair or even wise move and I protest this increase.

Your Name
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Just remember "Even a little dog can piss on a big building." Jim Hightower " ...
Visit my web site Politics of an Independent Voter
http://michaelchavers.blogspot.com/
Mike Chavers

Peace and Liberty Through Intelligence, Strength and Integrity

Anyone who has followed my blog or articles at OpEd News has perhaps noticed that I signoff every time with my mantra, Peace and Liberty through intelligence, strength, and integrity. Today we stand on the verge of a total change in philosophy of how our federal government will behave nationally and internationally.

I believe that we have elected a new leader in Barack Obama, who possesses the intelligence, strength and integrity to bring Peace and Liberty and I shall add one more condition to this mantra, prosperity, to a nation that has veered so far off course for the last eight years.

Our new president has many challenges ahead. We as a people have many challenges ahead so let us put our differences aside and work together at least on the issues that we agree on.

Least not we forget that we are the heirs of the revolution that formed this great nation the United States of America. The torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans born in the 20th century and their deeds will shape the 21st century. Let us remain proud of our heritage and remain steadfast in defense of the Constitution.

Let every enemy foreign or domestic, that wishes us ill know, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, in order to assure the survival and success of our liberty.

In a world where the instruments of war have far outpaced the instruments of peace, let us begin a quest for peace before the powers of destruction unleashed by science engulf all humanity in self destruction.

We dare not tempt the enemies of liberty with weakness. We must remain strong to the point that any enemy, domestic of foreign who would attack our liberty will know with certainty that they must fail.

To the world let us never negotiate out of fear but we must remember we should never fear to negotiate. We must always find what unites us instead of belaboring those problems which divide us.

Let America stand for invoking the wonders of science instead of its terrors. Let us create clean and renewable energy, eradicate disease, protect the environment, explore the universe, encourage the arts and commerce.

Let us together create a new world where the rule of law is supreme, where the strong are just and the weak shall be secure and the peace preserved. This may take longer than a lifetime but let us begin now.
Remember in the hands of our citizens more than Obama’s rests the final success or failure of the new course. Through mindful attention to our problems we must struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war.

We are at a turning point in the history of the world. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will determine its outcome.

So president Obama I wish you Godspeed and will stand with all who shall support the principles of Peace, Liberty, and Prosperity, through intelligence, strength and integrity.