I missed this interview with Bob Dole but recently discovered it on Quora. It's a year later and he's still 100 percent right.
Sunday, July 06, 2014
Saturday, July 05, 2014
The Hypocrisy of Hobby Lobby
In what has to be a textbook definition of hypocrisy, Hobby Lobby invests money in the very companies they take exception to for religious reasons.
Hobby Lobby's founders have made it clear that any abortion and certain contraceptives are unacceptable in their eyes, yet the company's 401(k) plan has millions of dollars invested in funds that own the companies that make birth control methods including Plan B, the so-called "morning after" drug. Like many companies, Hobby Lobby offers its employees a 401(k) plan.
Over 13,000 past and present employees have taken advantage of that plan, according to the latest documents filed with the Department of Labor. Employees have the option to put their retirement dollars -- and the money that Hobby Lobby contributes on their behalf -- into over a dozen different mutual funds.
At least eight of those funds have been invested in companies that produce contraceptives such as Teva Pharmaceutical (TEVA), Bayer (BAYRY), and Pfizer (PFE), according to a CNNMoney analysis. Teva makes Plan B. At least one fund also held Forest Laboratories, which makes a drug that is used to induce abortions.
Clearly, their reluctance to pay for women's birth control was not motivated by religious objections. It was motivated by financial objections.
They were simply being cheap.
Hobby Lobby's founders have made it clear that any abortion and certain contraceptives are unacceptable in their eyes, yet the company's 401(k) plan has millions of dollars invested in funds that own the companies that make birth control methods including Plan B, the so-called "morning after" drug. Like many companies, Hobby Lobby offers its employees a 401(k) plan.
Over 13,000 past and present employees have taken advantage of that plan, according to the latest documents filed with the Department of Labor. Employees have the option to put their retirement dollars -- and the money that Hobby Lobby contributes on their behalf -- into over a dozen different mutual funds.
At least eight of those funds have been invested in companies that produce contraceptives such as Teva Pharmaceutical (TEVA), Bayer (BAYRY), and Pfizer (PFE), according to a CNNMoney analysis. Teva makes Plan B. At least one fund also held Forest Laboratories, which makes a drug that is used to induce abortions.
Clearly, their reluctance to pay for women's birth control was not motivated by religious objections. It was motivated by financial objections.
They were simply being cheap.
Billionaire Once Again Warns The One Percent
Nick Hanauer has done it again. His recent open memo to his fellow zillionaires is exceptional. Here are a few great pulls...
At the same time that people like you and me are thriving beyond the dreams of any plutocrats in history, the rest of the country—the 99.99 percent—is lagging far behind. The divide between the haves and have-nots is getting worse really, really fast. In 1980, the top 1 percent controlled about 8 percent of U.S. national income. The bottom 50 percent shared about 18 percent. Today the top 1 percent share about 20 percent; the bottom 50 percent, just 12 percent.
But the problem isn’t that we have inequality. Some inequality is intrinsic to any high-functioning capitalist economy. The problem is that inequality is at historically high levels and getting worse every day. Our country is rapidly becoming less a capitalist society and more a feudal society. Unless our policies change dramatically, the middle class will disappear, and we will be back to late 18th-century France. Before the revolution.
And so I have a message for my fellow filthy rich, for all of us who live in our gated bubble worlds: Wake up, people. It won’t last.
Of course, it's not just his fellow zillionaires that need to wake up. It's the 30 percent or so of voters who still buy into supply side economics. These are the people who believe that our nation is divided into two parts: the haves and the soon to haves. It's also no coincidence that these same people would like to see a return to the Antebellum South and its aristocratic framework. That's why the are fighting so hard to maintain the status quo. As Hanauer notes, however, it never works.
If we don’t do something to fix the glaring inequities in this economy, the pitchforks are going to come for us. No society can sustain this kind of rising inequality. In fact, there is no example in human history where wealth accumulated like this and the pitchforks didn’t eventually come out. You show me a highly unequal society, and I will show you a police state. Or an uprising. There are no counterexamples. None. It’s not if, it’s when.
When, indeed. I challenge anyone to find an historical example that refutes Hanauer.
The most ironic thing about rising inequality is how completely unnecessary and self-defeating it is. If we do something about it, if we adjust our policies in the way that, say, Franklin D. Roosevelt did during the Great Depression—so that we help the 99 percent and preempt the revolutionaries and crazies, the ones with the pitchforks—that will be the best thing possible for us rich folks, too. It’s not just that we’ll escape with our lives; it’s that we’ll most certainly get even richer.
This is where the whole issue of hubris comes into play. Conservatives just don't want to admit that liberal policies will make wealthy people wealthier. They ignore how a minimum wage hike will give people more money to spend in the economy which will, in turn, lead to more hiring and more wealthy for the wealthy. It's as if the word "demand" has been excised from their brain stems.
I wanted to try to change the conversation with ideas—by advancing what my co-author, Eric Liu, and I call “middle-out” economics. It’s the long-overdue rebuttal to the trickle-down economics worldview that has become economic orthodoxy across party lines—and has so screwed the American middle class and our economy generally.
Middle-out economics rejects the old misconception that an economy is a perfectly efficient, mechanistic system and embraces the much more accurate idea of an economy as a complex ecosystem made up of real people who are dependent on one another. Which is why the fundamental law of capitalism must be: If workers have more money, businesses have more customers. Which makes middle-class consumers, not rich businesspeople like us, the true job creators. Which means a thriving middle class is the source of American prosperity, not a consequence of it. The middle class creates us rich people, not the other way around.
Exactly right and props to him for coining middle out economics. It's exactly the kind of focus we need on demand.
So, Hanauer asserts that we need to dramatically raise the minimum wage.
The standard response in the minimum-wage debate, made by Republicans and their business backers and plenty of Democrats as well, is that raising the minimum wage costs jobs. Businesses will have to lay off workers. This argument reflects the orthodox economics that most people had in college. If you took Econ 101, then you literally were taught that if wages go up, employment must go down. The law of supply and demand and all that. That’s why you’ve got John Boehner and other Republicans in Congress insisting that if you price employment higher, you get less of it. Really?
Because here’s an odd thing. During the past three decades, compensation for CEOs grew 127 times faster than it did for workers. Since 1950, the CEO-to-worker pay ratio has increased 1,000 percent, and that is not a typo. CEOs used to earn 30 times the median wage; now they rake in 500 times. Yet no company I know of has eliminated its senior managers, or outsourced them to China or automated their jobs. Instead, we now have more CEOs and senior executives than ever before. So, too, for financial services workers and technology workers. These folks earn multiples of the median wage, yet we somehow have more and more of them.
Fucking. Brilliant.
Next, Hanauer turns to the size of government and, again, makes a brilliant point.
I’d ask my Republican friends to get real about reducing the size of government. Yes, yes and yes, you guys are all correct: The federal government is too big in some ways. But no way can you cut government substantially, not the way things are now. Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush each had eight years to do it, and they failed miserably.
Republicans and Democrats in Congress can’t shrink government with wishful thinking. The only way to slash government for real is to go back to basic economic principles: You have to reduce the demand for government. If people are getting $15 an hour or more, they don’t need food stamps. They don’t need rent assistance. They don’t need you and me to pay for their medical care. If the consumer middle class is back, buying and shopping, then it stands to reason you won’t need as large a welfare state. And at the same time, revenues from payroll and sales taxes would rise, reducing the deficit.
This may seem hard to grasp for those individuals who have a pathological hatred of the federal government but we can make laws that actually reduce the size and influence of our national governing body.
Hanauer closes with an argument I have made many times.
Capitalism, when well managed, is the greatest social technology ever invented to create prosperity in human societies. But capitalism left unchecked tends toward concentration and collapse. It can be managed either to benefit the few in the near term or the many in the long term. The work of democracies is to bend it to the latter. That is why investments in the middle class work. And tax breaks for rich people like us don’t. Balancing the power of workers and billionaires by raising the minimum wage isn’t bad for capitalism. It’s an indispensable tool smart capitalists use to make capitalism stable and sustainable.
Amen. Let's get started!!
At the same time that people like you and me are thriving beyond the dreams of any plutocrats in history, the rest of the country—the 99.99 percent—is lagging far behind. The divide between the haves and have-nots is getting worse really, really fast. In 1980, the top 1 percent controlled about 8 percent of U.S. national income. The bottom 50 percent shared about 18 percent. Today the top 1 percent share about 20 percent; the bottom 50 percent, just 12 percent.
But the problem isn’t that we have inequality. Some inequality is intrinsic to any high-functioning capitalist economy. The problem is that inequality is at historically high levels and getting worse every day. Our country is rapidly becoming less a capitalist society and more a feudal society. Unless our policies change dramatically, the middle class will disappear, and we will be back to late 18th-century France. Before the revolution.
And so I have a message for my fellow filthy rich, for all of us who live in our gated bubble worlds: Wake up, people. It won’t last.
Of course, it's not just his fellow zillionaires that need to wake up. It's the 30 percent or so of voters who still buy into supply side economics. These are the people who believe that our nation is divided into two parts: the haves and the soon to haves. It's also no coincidence that these same people would like to see a return to the Antebellum South and its aristocratic framework. That's why the are fighting so hard to maintain the status quo. As Hanauer notes, however, it never works.
If we don’t do something to fix the glaring inequities in this economy, the pitchforks are going to come for us. No society can sustain this kind of rising inequality. In fact, there is no example in human history where wealth accumulated like this and the pitchforks didn’t eventually come out. You show me a highly unequal society, and I will show you a police state. Or an uprising. There are no counterexamples. None. It’s not if, it’s when.
When, indeed. I challenge anyone to find an historical example that refutes Hanauer.
The most ironic thing about rising inequality is how completely unnecessary and self-defeating it is. If we do something about it, if we adjust our policies in the way that, say, Franklin D. Roosevelt did during the Great Depression—so that we help the 99 percent and preempt the revolutionaries and crazies, the ones with the pitchforks—that will be the best thing possible for us rich folks, too. It’s not just that we’ll escape with our lives; it’s that we’ll most certainly get even richer.
This is where the whole issue of hubris comes into play. Conservatives just don't want to admit that liberal policies will make wealthy people wealthier. They ignore how a minimum wage hike will give people more money to spend in the economy which will, in turn, lead to more hiring and more wealthy for the wealthy. It's as if the word "demand" has been excised from their brain stems.
I wanted to try to change the conversation with ideas—by advancing what my co-author, Eric Liu, and I call “middle-out” economics. It’s the long-overdue rebuttal to the trickle-down economics worldview that has become economic orthodoxy across party lines—and has so screwed the American middle class and our economy generally.
Middle-out economics rejects the old misconception that an economy is a perfectly efficient, mechanistic system and embraces the much more accurate idea of an economy as a complex ecosystem made up of real people who are dependent on one another. Which is why the fundamental law of capitalism must be: If workers have more money, businesses have more customers. Which makes middle-class consumers, not rich businesspeople like us, the true job creators. Which means a thriving middle class is the source of American prosperity, not a consequence of it. The middle class creates us rich people, not the other way around.
Exactly right and props to him for coining middle out economics. It's exactly the kind of focus we need on demand.
So, Hanauer asserts that we need to dramatically raise the minimum wage.
The standard response in the minimum-wage debate, made by Republicans and their business backers and plenty of Democrats as well, is that raising the minimum wage costs jobs. Businesses will have to lay off workers. This argument reflects the orthodox economics that most people had in college. If you took Econ 101, then you literally were taught that if wages go up, employment must go down. The law of supply and demand and all that. That’s why you’ve got John Boehner and other Republicans in Congress insisting that if you price employment higher, you get less of it. Really?
Because here’s an odd thing. During the past three decades, compensation for CEOs grew 127 times faster than it did for workers. Since 1950, the CEO-to-worker pay ratio has increased 1,000 percent, and that is not a typo. CEOs used to earn 30 times the median wage; now they rake in 500 times. Yet no company I know of has eliminated its senior managers, or outsourced them to China or automated their jobs. Instead, we now have more CEOs and senior executives than ever before. So, too, for financial services workers and technology workers. These folks earn multiples of the median wage, yet we somehow have more and more of them.
Fucking. Brilliant.
Next, Hanauer turns to the size of government and, again, makes a brilliant point.
I’d ask my Republican friends to get real about reducing the size of government. Yes, yes and yes, you guys are all correct: The federal government is too big in some ways. But no way can you cut government substantially, not the way things are now. Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush each had eight years to do it, and they failed miserably.
Republicans and Democrats in Congress can’t shrink government with wishful thinking. The only way to slash government for real is to go back to basic economic principles: You have to reduce the demand for government. If people are getting $15 an hour or more, they don’t need food stamps. They don’t need rent assistance. They don’t need you and me to pay for their medical care. If the consumer middle class is back, buying and shopping, then it stands to reason you won’t need as large a welfare state. And at the same time, revenues from payroll and sales taxes would rise, reducing the deficit.
This may seem hard to grasp for those individuals who have a pathological hatred of the federal government but we can make laws that actually reduce the size and influence of our national governing body.
Hanauer closes with an argument I have made many times.
Capitalism, when well managed, is the greatest social technology ever invented to create prosperity in human societies. But capitalism left unchecked tends toward concentration and collapse. It can be managed either to benefit the few in the near term or the many in the long term. The work of democracies is to bend it to the latter. That is why investments in the middle class work. And tax breaks for rich people like us don’t. Balancing the power of workers and billionaires by raising the minimum wage isn’t bad for capitalism. It’s an indispensable tool smart capitalists use to make capitalism stable and sustainable.
Amen. Let's get started!!
Details of the Latest Jobs Report
An even brighter spot in June's jobs report is that fewer Americans are giving up on the job search because they are discouraged by their prospects. Adam Belz notes the fine print.
The fine print of Thursday’s cheery U.S. jobs report revealed that the number of people who are not looking for a job because they don’t think they can find one has fallen by 351,000 in the past 12 months.
Those who aren’t actively looking for a job don’t count as unemployed in government labor statistics. As the unemployment rate has fallen, a common concern has been that the number misrepresents the reality of the job market, because the ranks of discouraged workers rose as high as 1.3 million in 2010. That figure has fallen to 676,000.
Thursday’s numbers, which show the ranks of discouraged workers falling by 21,000 in June and declining steadily over the past year, indicate that retirement — not a weak job market — is increasingly the biggest reason people are leaving the workforce.
Very good news indeed!
The fine print of Thursday’s cheery U.S. jobs report revealed that the number of people who are not looking for a job because they don’t think they can find one has fallen by 351,000 in the past 12 months.
Those who aren’t actively looking for a job don’t count as unemployed in government labor statistics. As the unemployment rate has fallen, a common concern has been that the number misrepresents the reality of the job market, because the ranks of discouraged workers rose as high as 1.3 million in 2010. That figure has fallen to 676,000.
Thursday’s numbers, which show the ranks of discouraged workers falling by 21,000 in June and declining steadily over the past year, indicate that retirement — not a weak job market — is increasingly the biggest reason people are leaving the workforce.
Very good news indeed!
Friday, July 04, 2014
Give Us Your Tired, Poor, and Hungry (unless they are brown women and children in which case...FUCK OFF!)
Happy Birthday, America. Sorry you still have to deal with people like this...
When the three busloads of immigrant mothers and children rolled into town for processing at a Border Patrol station this week, they were met by protesters carrying American flags and signs proclaiming “return to sender” as they screamed “go home” and chanted “U.S.A.” Fearing for the safety of the migrants and federal officers, immigration officials decided to reroute the buses to San Diego, an hour south.
After a Border Patrol official explained that more buses would probably arrive in Murrieta in the coming weeks as part of an attempt to relieve processing centers near the Texas border, one man took to the microphone and demanded to know: “Why do we have to put them on a bus to Murrieta? Why can’t we just transport them on a bus to Tijuana?”
The crowd responded with thunderous applause.
I'm feeling pretty ashamed of some of my fellow Americans today. These are children who fleeing violence in Honduras and other Central American nations and this is what they get? Anger and hate? What would Jesus Christ think of this? Christian nation my ass.
The one thing that gives me hope, though, is Steve Schmidt's prediction contained in the video below. It starts at the 4 minute mark.
Take note, Republicans. Keep up the hate and intolerance and you will end up like the California Republican party.
A regional party with zero fucking power.
When the three busloads of immigrant mothers and children rolled into town for processing at a Border Patrol station this week, they were met by protesters carrying American flags and signs proclaiming “return to sender” as they screamed “go home” and chanted “U.S.A.” Fearing for the safety of the migrants and federal officers, immigration officials decided to reroute the buses to San Diego, an hour south.
After a Border Patrol official explained that more buses would probably arrive in Murrieta in the coming weeks as part of an attempt to relieve processing centers near the Texas border, one man took to the microphone and demanded to know: “Why do we have to put them on a bus to Murrieta? Why can’t we just transport them on a bus to Tijuana?”
The crowd responded with thunderous applause.
I'm feeling pretty ashamed of some of my fellow Americans today. These are children who fleeing violence in Honduras and other Central American nations and this is what they get? Anger and hate? What would Jesus Christ think of this? Christian nation my ass.
The one thing that gives me hope, though, is Steve Schmidt's prediction contained in the video below. It starts at the 4 minute mark.
Take note, Republicans. Keep up the hate and intolerance and you will end up like the California Republican party.
A regional party with zero fucking power.
Thursday, July 03, 2014
How We'll Adapt to Climate Change
For years many conservatives have been denying climate change even exists, and when they finally break down and admit it does, they say it'll cost too much to do anything about it and, as Rex Tillerson of ExxonMobil (and Putin buddy) says, we'll find some way to adapt.
What form will adaptation take? Let's look at an example. The American Southwest has been hammered by drought for years, a condition that has been worsened by higher temperatures due to climate change. We're already beginning to see the fallout across the country:
[Minnesota-based] Dakota Premium Foods said Wednesday that it will temporarily cease production at its South St. Paul beef processing plant due to “extremely short cattle supply.”
The shutdown is effective immediately and will idle 300 workers. Dakota Premium said it does not know how long the plant will remain closed.
The U.S. beef processing industry has wrestled for the past two years with a shortage of cattle, due primarily to drought conditions in the Southwest. As drought burned out pasture lands, ranchers greatly cut back on their herds.A recent report on climate change (Risky Business) from businessmen and former Secretaries of the Treasury, both Republicans and Democrats, outlined many of the economic woes climate change will wreak.
“We regret that the current limited cattle supplies, the smallest numbers since the early 1950s, [have] forced us to make this very difficult decision,” Dan Mehesan, president of Dakota parent American Foods Group’s fresh meat division, said in a statement.
It won't be long before cattle production will become impossible in many parts of the Southwest because the rivers are drying up (due to lack of snowpack in the Rockies) and the aquifers are running dry (due to excessive pumping to irrigate crops, water golf courses in Phoenix and Tucson and run the fountains in Las Vegas). A single beef animal requires 2,000-7,000 gallons of water a year (more the hotter it gets). Putting them in expensive air-conditioned barns won't help; hay shortages have plagued ranchers for years now.
How will we adapt? Ranchers will declare bankruptcy. The price of beef will go up. Meat packers will go out of business. Americans will eat fewer hamburgers. Some cattle ranching will move to areas that are currently productive farmland, but which will become more arid and become fit only for pastureland. The communities in the stricken areas will become ghost towns. Agricultural production and American exports will decline.
So, even if cattle production is eventually relocated elsewhere, the economic disruption and dislocation will figure in the hundreds of billions of dollars, and the human misery caused is incalculable.
But it's not just cattle ranching that will be affected. California's Central Valley has been stricken by the same drought. That's an even greater problem:
[California's] $45bn (£26bn) farming industry produces almost half the fruits, vegetables and nuts grown in the US, and to do that it uses 80 per cent of California’s water. Almonds alone account for 10 per cent of the state’s water use – not surprising, given that California produces 80 per cent of the world’s almonds.And it isn't just California. The plains states are also suffering from a years-long drought. In other words, the United States is losing the most productive farmland in the world.
Adapting to climate change will mean millions of people will lose their jobs and millions of acres of land will become unproductive deserts. The people affected will have to look for work in other states, mainly the north, because the South and Southwest will become unbearably and dangerously hot in the summer.
The "adaptation" that wealthy oil executives and their conservative apologists speak so blithely about will leave millions Americans out of work, forced to abandon their homes for other states, falling into bankruptcy and poverty.
Wouldn't it make more sense for us to adapt by having Mr. Tillerson's company help pay for the damage that his company's product is causing?
And that's why we need a carbon tax and/or a cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions. It's a far more efficient way for us to adapt than throwing every other sector of the economy out of whack and rendering our most productive farmlands infertile.
Kindly Do Not Bring Your Guns
Target Corporation has kindly asked the Gun Cult to leave their guns outside their stores.
Target's interim CEO, John Mulligan, in a memo posted on the chain's website Wednesday, said: "This is a complicated issue, but it boils down to a simple belief: Bringing firearms to Target creates an environment that is at odds with the family-friendly shopping and work experience we strive to create."
It's not a ban but they are asking nicely which makes Mulligan a very brilliant man. Not only is he saying no open carry but he's also asking even concealed carry to keep their guns out of the store. So, if gun humpers still do it, how will that make them look?
As I have stated previously, the biggest threat to the Gun Cult is themselves. They seem to be undoing their years of progress by acting like sex starved adolescents with their firearms. All gun safety folks need to do right now is sit back and let them self destruct:)
Target's interim CEO, John Mulligan, in a memo posted on the chain's website Wednesday, said: "This is a complicated issue, but it boils down to a simple belief: Bringing firearms to Target creates an environment that is at odds with the family-friendly shopping and work experience we strive to create."
It's not a ban but they are asking nicely which makes Mulligan a very brilliant man. Not only is he saying no open carry but he's also asking even concealed carry to keep their guns out of the store. So, if gun humpers still do it, how will that make them look?
As I have stated previously, the biggest threat to the Gun Cult is themselves. They seem to be undoing their years of progress by acting like sex starved adolescents with their firearms. All gun safety folks need to do right now is sit back and let them self destruct:)
Unemployment Rate Drops
U.S. employment growth jumped in June and the jobless rate closed in on a six-year low, decisive evidence the economy was moving forward at a brisk clip after a surprisingly big slump at the start of the year.
Nonfarm payrolls increased by 288,000 jobs last month and the unemployment rate fell to 6.1 percent, its lowest level since September 2008, the Labor Department said on Thursday. Data for April and May were revised to show a total of 29,000 more jobs created than previously reported.
This marks the 5th straight month of 200K+ job growth which is great news for the US Economy. Of course, this is not so great for the Republicans who have now officially lost the economy as a campaign issue in the fall. If the economy is the #1 issue in the fall election and it's going in the right direction, why would they want to vote an incumbent out of office?
This marks the 5th straight month of 200K+ job growth which is great news for the US Economy. Of course, this is not so great for the Republicans who have now officially lost the economy as a campaign issue in the fall. If the economy is the #1 issue in the fall election and it's going in the right direction, why would they want to vote an incumbent out of office?
Wednesday, July 02, 2014
Still Loving Quora
After just over two months on Quora, I have to report that I am really having a blast! If you haven't gotten on yet, I urge you to do so. There is such a great variety of people with different views on Quora that I honestly feel right at home. I've struck up some great online friendships.
And I can't believe the traffic. Take a look at how many people read and upvoted one of my answers. Wow! It's also kind of funny to note how sometimes a quick answer (like this one or this one ) generates a lot of views and upvotes. I wish that I could get some more traffic here but I think people tend to flock where there is more population and that's just not here in my little online, small town newspaper. Although, Nikto's last few posts have gotten double what we normally get on daily pieces so that's pretty cool.
And I've more or less confirmed what I thought about TSM commenters out in the real world...they are pretty much cowards. They never ask questions of their own, rarely answer and seem to only upvote or offer a comment here or there. It makes sense because they know how batshit their ideology is outside of the bubble and their insecurity simply won't allow any sort of negativity. Oh well, at least they are mildly self aware:)
Even the downvotes and negative reactions to some of my questions haven't really bothered me. There is just such a nice balance there that is more representative of reality. What comes next promised to be most exciting!
And I can't believe the traffic. Take a look at how many people read and upvoted one of my answers. Wow! It's also kind of funny to note how sometimes a quick answer (like this one or this one ) generates a lot of views and upvotes. I wish that I could get some more traffic here but I think people tend to flock where there is more population and that's just not here in my little online, small town newspaper. Although, Nikto's last few posts have gotten double what we normally get on daily pieces so that's pretty cool.
And I've more or less confirmed what I thought about TSM commenters out in the real world...they are pretty much cowards. They never ask questions of their own, rarely answer and seem to only upvote or offer a comment here or there. It makes sense because they know how batshit their ideology is outside of the bubble and their insecurity simply won't allow any sort of negativity. Oh well, at least they are mildly self aware:)
Even the downvotes and negative reactions to some of my questions haven't really bothered me. There is just such a nice balance there that is more representative of reality. What comes next promised to be most exciting!
Tuesday, July 01, 2014
Why All the Red-State Pill Popping?
Opioid painkiller abuse is a serious problem in this country. High profile cases include actor Philip Seymour Hoffman, who died of a heroin overdose earlier this year after getting hooked on prescription painkillers, and Rush Limbaugh, whose hearing loss may have been caused by oxycontin abuse.
[T]he rates were much higher in some southern states. In Alabama, which led the country, there were 143 painkiller prescriptions for every 100 people in 2012. There were 11 other states where each adult, on average, got a least one painkiller prescription that year, including Tennessee, West Virginia and Kentucky.These excessively high prescription rates contribute directly to higher death rates by overdose in those states. Florida changed their regulations to combat an epidemic of oxycodone overdoses with great success:
CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden told reporters that officials don't think the high rates of prescribing in some states are because people living there have more pain. "This is an epidemic that was largely caused by improper prescribing practices," he said during a media briefing.
Between 2010 and 2012, annual overdose deaths in Florida dropped 16.7 percent, from 3,201 to 2,666. And deaths from oxycodone, the generic name of the ingredient in many brand-name opioid painkillers, fell by more than half, according to an analysis published in MMWR.Why are the conservative states so ready to pop addictive painkillers? There's some research that finds conservatives to be driven more by fear, something that seems to be borne out by the attitudes so many conservatives espouse when they insist they have to carry guns everywhere they go. Does all that fear also make conservatives more afraid of pain?
Are southern doctors letting drug companies use them to bilk insurance and Medicaid out of billions of dollars to hook patients on addictive drugs? Are patients just getting prescriptions so they can turn around and sell the pills on the black market?
I don't know. All I can say for sure is that if the numbers were reversed, conservatives would be telling us how liberals are wimpy nancy-boys, how blue-state welfare policies encourage prescription drug abuse and Obamacare is leading to moral decline by giving them heroin-light instead of making them tough it out.
What I do know from personal experience is that these drugs are extremely dangerous. Some years ago I contracted pneumonia, though I didn't know it because I had no problems breathing: the main symptom was an incredibly bad headache that prevented me from sleeping.
When they finally prescribed the right antibiotic, they also gave me a prescription for Percocet (oxycodone and acetaminophen) so that I could sleep. I took one tablet. But as soon as I would start to fall asleep I would stop breathing. I had to force myself to stay awake and breathe until the drug wore off.
I cannot understand why people put this crap into their systems just for the hell of it...
Monday, June 30, 2014
Supreme Court Okays Corporate Interference in Personal Lives
The Supreme Court decided in favor of Hobby Lobby's claim that paying for birth control violated "the company's" freedom of religion.
This is wrong on two counts.
First, corporations are not human beings and cannot have religions. Corporations do not attend church. They cannot be excommunicated. They cannot be married. They cannot partake of holy sacraments or receive communion. They cannot be baptized. They cannot vote. They cannot go to prison.
Corporations are legal entities created by government. They exist to prevent the owners from being held personally liable for corporate debts and actions. If Hobby Lobby goes bankrupt, the company's creditors cannot go after the owners' personal assets to recoup debts. The CEO is not culpable for crimes committed by other employees.
That means that the owners of Hobby Lobby are not personally responsible for actions that corporation takes that are required by law. The owners and officers of the company are not the company, unless they are a sole proprietorship that is is not protected by the liability limitations that Hobby Lobby's incorporation provides.
Thus, if Hobby Lobby wants to force their religious beliefs on their employees, they can't hide behind the shield of corporate law that the government provides them. The Supreme Court should have allowed this only if they dissolved the corporate entity the Hobby Lobby owners hide behind.
Second, the company's argument against providing coverage was this:
The companies objected to some of the methods, saying they are tantamount to abortion because they can prevent embryos from implanting in the womb. Providing insurance coverage for those forms of contraception would, the companies said, make them complicit in the practice.They're saying that their religion prevents them from giving money to person A, who will give that money to person B to provide contraception to person C.
Then why is is acceptable for them to money directly to person C who will spend it on contraception?
What happens when Hobby Lobby finds out that one of their employees is spending that money on forbidden contraceptives? Or when they find out that an employee has had an abortion? Based on their victory in the Supreme Court today, won't they feel emboldened to fire that employee, because the employee is using their money to make them complicit in the practice? How can the government force them to pay people who violate their core beliefs?
How long before other "family-owned" corporations come crawling out of the woodwork saying that they can't hire Hindus because it would make complicit in paganism, or Jews because it would make them complicit in the death of Jesus, or women because their religion preaches that women should stay in the home, or gays because -- well, gays!
In the final analysis the Hobby Lobby case is not about corporate freedom of religion. It's about employers thinking they have the right to control the private lives of the people who work for them.
In particular:
[Hobby Lobby] said they had no objection to other forms of contraception, including condoms, diaphragms, sponges, several kinds of birth control pills and sterilization surgery.That means Hobby Lobby thinks corporations have the right to tell an employee the only method of birth control they will accept is sterilization, if they couch their reasons in appropriately mystical terms.
That should give even the most die-hard conservative reason to doubt the wisdom of this decision.
Sunday, June 29, 2014
NPR Plays The Cult of Both Sides
Last Friday, the president spoke in my hometown and NPR in Minnesota aired a post speech analysis. At about the 12 minute mark, Keith Downy, chair of the Minnesota Republican party joins the conversation and, thus, any criticism of NPR being liberal goes directly out of the fucking window. For the next few minutes, Downy spins the usual yarn about how the free market can just sort itself out. If we had only left the government out of it in 2008, all would be well with our economy today.
What fucking planet are these people living on?
Worse, he's being terribly dishonest because he would have done the exact same thing the president did. I'd like Mr. Downy or any other free market fundamentalist to point to real world evidence of their theory. Show me a recession that was that bad and then show me how doing nothing worked out.
Of course the real treat of the segment was Andy from Sioux Falls, a small business owner fed up with federal taxes, who comes in at around 14 minutes into the segment. After hearing his remarks, I have to question whether or not this man was an actual small business owner or whether he was a Tea Party troll calling in to wax Ayn Rand. No business owner (large, medium, or small) turns down making more money because they are worried about paying federal taxes. What a ludicrous bunch of nonsense! After Downy's ad hom on the woman the president met with to discuss local economic concerns, I was left to wonder how NPR let themselves get into such a position.
When will the "liberal" media stop playing the cult of both sides? Sometimes there is only one side to a story. Supply side economics doesn't work. Even the guys that came up with it (David Stockman, Bruce Bartlett) have admitted they were wrong. You can't simply ignore aggregate demand and pretend it doesn't exist. The problem with our economy today is that there are not enough people buying things so businesses don't hire people. There isn't enough population at the top to support our economy.
The middle class is the engine that drives our economy and when they have more money, our economy will improve.
What fucking planet are these people living on?
Worse, he's being terribly dishonest because he would have done the exact same thing the president did. I'd like Mr. Downy or any other free market fundamentalist to point to real world evidence of their theory. Show me a recession that was that bad and then show me how doing nothing worked out.
Of course the real treat of the segment was Andy from Sioux Falls, a small business owner fed up with federal taxes, who comes in at around 14 minutes into the segment. After hearing his remarks, I have to question whether or not this man was an actual small business owner or whether he was a Tea Party troll calling in to wax Ayn Rand. No business owner (large, medium, or small) turns down making more money because they are worried about paying federal taxes. What a ludicrous bunch of nonsense! After Downy's ad hom on the woman the president met with to discuss local economic concerns, I was left to wonder how NPR let themselves get into such a position.
When will the "liberal" media stop playing the cult of both sides? Sometimes there is only one side to a story. Supply side economics doesn't work. Even the guys that came up with it (David Stockman, Bruce Bartlett) have admitted they were wrong. You can't simply ignore aggregate demand and pretend it doesn't exist. The problem with our economy today is that there are not enough people buying things so businesses don't hire people. There isn't enough population at the top to support our economy.
The middle class is the engine that drives our economy and when they have more money, our economy will improve.
Saturday, June 28, 2014
Free Speech and Clinic Safety
Noah Feldman from Bloomberg breaks down the recent SCOTUS decision which allows anti-abortion activists inside the buffer zones that clinics have created in front of their buildings for safety. He notes that a first glance might reveal a big victory for abortion foes. Yet, a closer examination reveals much more.
The crucial element in the opinion — the element that got the liberals on board and enraged the conservatives — is that Roberts said the law was neutral with respect to the content of speech as well as the viewpoint of the speakers. That conclusion protected the possibility of other laws protecting women seeking abortions that pay more attention to what Roberts said was missing here, namely proof that the law was narrowly tailored.
What would be a real world example?
Consider a law banning sound trucks blaring on your street at night. It would probably be constitutional, because the government has a significant interest in citizens’ sleep, and there would be plenty of other times for sound trucks to operate, leaving ample alternatives for communication. It is this standard that Roberts applied to the buffer zone — and that will therefore be applied to other, similar buffer laws in the future.
Essentially, the details of the ruling give fair warning to abortion foes who may be emboldened to shout or threaten clinic patrons. The constitutionality of a ban or a buffer zone is still there because (surprise!) the freedom of speech is not unlimited.
The crucial element in the opinion — the element that got the liberals on board and enraged the conservatives — is that Roberts said the law was neutral with respect to the content of speech as well as the viewpoint of the speakers. That conclusion protected the possibility of other laws protecting women seeking abortions that pay more attention to what Roberts said was missing here, namely proof that the law was narrowly tailored.
What would be a real world example?
Consider a law banning sound trucks blaring on your street at night. It would probably be constitutional, because the government has a significant interest in citizens’ sleep, and there would be plenty of other times for sound trucks to operate, leaving ample alternatives for communication. It is this standard that Roberts applied to the buffer zone — and that will therefore be applied to other, similar buffer laws in the future.
Essentially, the details of the ruling give fair warning to abortion foes who may be emboldened to shout or threaten clinic patrons. The constitutionality of a ban or a buffer zone is still there because (surprise!) the freedom of speech is not unlimited.
Friday, June 27, 2014
Democrats Counting Cash
On behalf of all Democrats and liberals, I would like to personally thank John Boehner and all Republicans everywhere for helping out with our fundraising yesterday. The DCCC has the best day it's had this year with a cool half mil coming into the coffer. Thanks dudes!
Perhaps continued attacks on the president will also increase voter turnout in the midterms and he can kick their ass a third time:)
Perhaps continued attacks on the president will also increase voter turnout in the midterms and he can kick their ass a third time:)
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