Christmas As Usual

The  commercials on television this year for Christmas 2009 have already started. They seem especially odd to me this year. It seems that it is business as usual. It’s as if nothing has changed in this country from previous years. The ads ignore the horrible financial disaster that many Americans are going through. The ads ignore the ridiculously high unemployment rate in this country. The ads ignore the suffering. It’s like nothing happened. How can that be? Has it been like this for years and I just didn’t notice it? Or, has what happened over the past year in this country really changed things?

The “too big to fail” banks have been bailed out and they are making money again. They are giving out billions of dollars in bonuses to their employees. The wall street firms are doing the same. ( I refuse to capitalize “wall street” anymore. They don’t deserve it.) The incompetent, greedy idiots on wall street who brought this country to its financial knees, still think so highly of themselves that they actually believe they are worth the ridiculous bonuses that they get. They think that by creating, marketing and selling trillions of dollars of worthless derivatives they are actually contributing something of value to this country and should be proud of themselves. They are not.

I know that stores like Walmart, Target, Kmart, Kohls, J.C.Penney, Macys, etc., have to sell as much stuff as they can. That’s what they do. That’s how they survive. Besides, if they don’t sell lots of stuff, and we don’t buy it, millions of people in China will lose their jobs. But  the ads just strike me as very odd this year. I can’t exactly put my finger on it. I guess in a way, it’s just like pretending that things are the same as they always were. It isn’t. I never liked Christmas marketing prior to the Thanksgiving holiday anyway. Is Christmas shopping just one more fraud that is being perpetrated on this country? Do we really need this insane shopping period between now and December 25th every year?

Is there a better way to celebrate this holiday without all of the credit card debt and other spending that a lot of people can’t afford anyway? Since the credit card companies, owned by the banks that the American people just bailed out, have raised interest rates on many accounts to a mind boggling 30%, will people be falling off their chairs in January when they get their credit card bills, hurting themselves in the process and needing to go to the emergency room at the nearest hospital? (At least the ones that are left that still have health insurance?) Will the health care insurance companies be raising their rates again because of all of this? You bet they will. It’s a vicious cycle. Maybe congress should have put some rate limits in the Credit Card Reform Act of 2009. Duh.

I know a lot of people who are unemployed, under employed or at best, living on the edge of economic oblivion and struggling to survive. They are one paycheck, one illness or one accident  from financial ruin. And yet nobody talks about it. There are people like Bob Herbert, Paul Krugman and Charles Blow in the New York Times that write columns about it, but the people who are experiencing the real pain and suffering don’t talk about it. At least not to me. They suffer in silence.

Do you think the clowns in Washington, D.C. who supposedly represent us are worried about any of this? They have spent all summer and fall trying to reform health care in this country. The final bill that came out of the House of Representatives should be titled, “How I spent my summer vacation.” They threw commonsense out the window when they began the debate and were never able to find it again. The bill that passed may be progress and it does fix some problems, but it is totally lacking in commonsense and much more complicated and stupid than it needs to be. Are these the people who are going to put people back to work so that they can spend a lot of money on Christmas 2010?

I’m very disappointed. Our new president and his party are squandering an opportunity to really make a difference. It reminds me of the Newt Gingrich days in the ’90s when the Republicans won control of Congress and were going to do all these amazing things. They didn’t. I supported Obama for president.  I still have his bumper sticker on my car. I want him to succeed. But he obviously doesn’t get it or he would have done something by now to stimulate employment.

He has had over a year to try and put the economy back on track for working Americans. It seems that it is the last thing on his agenda. We need some sort of incentive for businesses of all kinds and sizes in this country to stop sending jobs to China. We need to start doing things here in America again. Where are the green jobs that the president talks about? They are needed now. Today. Not two years from now. Our roads, bridges, underground infrastructure, and railroads etc. are falling apart. Millions of jobs could be created by fixing these problems. If more people need to be trained, and they do, let’s train them.

There is no reason in the world for so many people to be unemployed when there is so much that needs to be done.

What are we waiting for? Everyday that goes by is another day wasted. Let us seize the day. The Great Recession will not end until Americans can go back to work at jobs that pay a living wage.

A few days ago, I found a 1946 Roosevelt dime in my pocket change. I was very surprised because most of the 90% silver coins went out of circulation in this country years ago. Where is Franklin Delano Roosevelt when you need him?

What do you think? Does Christmas 2009 seem a little different to you?

The Born Warning

I watched a very disturbing story called “The Warning” on Frontline last night. I urge you to take an hour and watch it yourself. You can watch it on Frontline’s website now.

It is the story of a courageous woman named Brooksley Born and how, way back in 1998, she warned Congress and the American people that the over the counter derivatives market needed to be regulated. Alan Greenspan, Larry Summers, Robert Rubin and Phil Gramm all fought hard against regulation. They won. The Amercian people lost. It is just shameful. I did not know who Brooksley Born was until I saw the story on Frontline.

Even after the hedge fund Long Term Capital Management collapsed in 1998, nothing was done. Greenspan still didn’t think regulation was needed. I didn’t know until I watched this that Greenspan was a huge follower of Ayn Rand. She didn’t believe in regulation of the markets either.

We still don’t have any regulation over the derivative market. It is a $595 trillion market that operates in the dark. Even now, after the economic collapse of last year and the government bailout of the banks, Wall Street is fighting against regulation.

What horrible thing is hiding under that rock?  Someone needs to shine a light on it. I have more questions.

Why isn’t there an investigation of exactly why the economy collapsed so the guilty parties can be punished?

Is Bernie Madoff the only person going to prison?

Why hasn’t anyone given Brooksley Born a medal for what she did? Alan Greenspan should take off his Presidential Medal of Freedom and give it to her.

Why hasn’t anyone turned this story into a movie?

At the end of the show, I sadly concluded that our government is either totally incompetent, horribly corrupt, or both. There is just no other conclusion to be reached. It’s disgusting.

As Paul Krugman says, “We need a better government than we’ve got.”

Watch “The Warning” on Frontline.

The Courageous Decision

President Obama must make a decision soon on whether to send more troops to Afghanistan. The most courageous decision he can make is to just say NO.

The Republicans will scream bloody murder, but I would rather have them screaming in Washington than some young American kid dying in Afghanistan.  We can defeat the Taliban and Al Qaeda without sending more troops.

We didn’t invade Afghanistan to rebuild their country. We invaded because the Taliban would not turn  Osama bin Laden and other members of Al Qaeda over to us. We wanted to deny Al Qaeda a training ground and a safe place to plot against us. What do you think they have been doing in Pakistan for the past eight years? Do you think they have been waiting to get back into Afghanistan to train and plot against us? Of course not. An imaginary line in the mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan did not stop Al Qaeda from doing anything.

Let’s fight the most primitive means of warfare, suicide bombers and roadside bombs, with the greatest technology that the world has ever seen. Let’s use our overwhelming, unopposed, superior, air power to defeat the Taliban.

In “To Beat the Taliban, Fight from Afar” in the October 14, 2009  New York Times, Robert A. Pape suggests that we rely on air and naval power from a distance and work with local security forces on the ground. That’s how we beat the Taliban in 2001. We had some troops on the
ground, but we mainly worked with local Afghan fighters by providing air strikes against the Taliban. The Taliban may be able to survive underground in caves in Pakistan, but large groups of them out in the open, whether at night or during the day, are toast.

We have Reapers and Predators, unmanned aircraft that are operated remotely from bases in the United States. The assembly lines should be running twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week making these unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). We certainly have enough laid off auto workers that they could be put to good use building UAVs to defend America, our ground forces and the ground forces of our Allies and friends. Let General McChrystal have all the UAVs he wants.

The November 2009 issue of Esquire magazine has an article by Brian Mockenhaupt called, “We’ve Seen The Future and It’s Unmanned.” Here is a quote from the article: “An F-16 burns a thousand gallons of fuel an hour and can stay over a target for about an hour before it must swap out with another plane or refuel midair. A Predator carries a hundred gallons of fuel with which it can stay over a target for twenty-four hours.”

Arizona Senator John McCain said that if President Obama didn’t send the 40,000 troops requested by General McChrystal it would be an “error of historic proportions.” He also said that more troops were “vitally needed” in Afghanistan and that any delay in ordering more combat forces to the fight would put American lives at risk. He will probably lead the criticism of the president if he says no.

Frank Rich wrote a column for the NY Times called, “Two Wrongs Make Another Fiasco.” It documents all the different ways that Senator McCain has been wrong since September 11, 2001. McCain has been wrong on just about everything.

Vice President Joe Biden doesn’t want the president to send 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan either. He supports using UAVs and Special Forces to target Al Qaeda in Pakistan and letting the Afghans take over their own security. I’m with Joe.

What happened to all of the Afghans who fought the Taliban in 2001? Where are they now? Let’s invite 40,000 of them to defend their own country again. If we fight with local Afghan forces on the ground, they should be covered by an umbrella of massive fire power from unmanned drones and whatever other air power our military thinks is necessary.

New York Times columnist Bob Herbert wrote a column on September 21, 2009 called, “The Hard and Bitter Truth.” He doesn’t want the president to send more troops either.

We should use all of the technology that we have to stop the Taliban and Al Qaeda from operating in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but we shouldn’t send more troops. Why should our soldiers have to die because the Taliban and Al Qaeda want to live in the 12th Century?

As Robert A. Pope says, “To Beat the Taliban, Let’s Fight From Afar.” May I suggest, “Kill them from a distance?”

President Obama, be courageous and just say NO!

Bob Herbert and The New York Times

Bob Herbert is my favorite columnist. You can read him every Tuesday and Saturday in The New York Times. Or should I say “on” The New York Times? His column today is called, “Does Obama Get It?“  The column is about the huge unemployment problem in the United States.

After I read the column I commented the following: Bob, Thanks for another great column. It seems extremely stupid to me that they don’t count unemployed people who are so discouraged that they stop looking for work. When an individual becomes unemployed, they are no longer making deposits into their Social Security account. That is what should be tracked.

Unless the person has retired, and that should be easy enough to figure out based on their age and whether or not they are collecting unemployment from a state, they should be counted in the unemployment figure. I’m sure that computers could track that quite easily.

The federal government bailed out Wall Street and the banks. They didn’t help the average citizen. Another jobless recovery in this country is going to be very ugly for a lot of people.

Where are the green jobs and when are we going to start rebuilding our infrastructure? Perhaps the president should read, “Freedom From Fear” by David M. Kennedy. (end of my comment) We need to bring counting the unemployed into the twenty first century.

“Freedom From Fear, The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945″ was published in 1999 by the Oxford University Press.

Bob Herbert’s September 15, 2009 column is titled, “A World of Hurt.” In it he says, “This recession, a full-blown economic horror, has left a gaping hole in the heart of working America that is unlikely to heal for years, if not decades.” It is another great column that is well worth reading.

If you click on his name under the title of the column, you will see a brief biography and a list of the columns he has written over the past several years.

If you haven’t discovered Bob Herbert yet, I’m glad that I can introduce you to him.

We Need Healthcare Reform Now

The U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.

President Barack Obama’s speech last night to a joint session of Congress was amazing. He is such an eloquent speaker. From the beginning of  his speech to the end, he spoke directly and clearly to Congress and the American people about what was needed to reform health care in America. It’s time for our elected officials to get behind the president and enact health care reform.

All of the other major industrialized countries in the world can’t be wrong. Citizens of the United States shouldn’t have to go bankrupt or lose their home because they get sick. It is time for the Republicans to shut up and do the right thing for their country.

The idea that the Republicans would lie about and fight against health care reform so that they could “defeat” the president is despicable.

In an interview with the Huffington Post last month, Congressman Henry Waxman, a Democrat from California said, “I think they have made a political decision that their best chance to pick up the Congress and to get power again is to be able to run in 2010 and say that Obama didn’t accomplish anything. And they are doing their best to make sure that happens.”

I was going to call Republican Congressman Joe Wilson from South Carolina, who shouted “you lie” at the president at one point during the speech, a “little weasel”, but I’m not. Maybe he is taking Wellbutrin to help him quit smoking and it’s making him a little paranoid. I was trying to quit smoking a few years back and was taking Wellbutrin. It made me paranoid and sometimes I would yell things out. I stopped taking it. As far as I am concerned, it would have been appropriate for the Sergeant-At-Arms to have removed him from the room.  I would have loved to have seen that.  Where was Wilson when Bush was lying to Congress about going to war with Iraq? He is more worked up about health care reform and illegal immigrants than he was about war. From what I have read, we are already giving free medical care to illegal aliens. If you have a medical emergency and show up at a hospital, the doctors have to treat you.

Cell phones and Blackberries should be banned from the room when the president is speaking. Republican Eric Cantor from Virginia could be seen playing with his Blackberry during the president’s speech. How disrespectful.  What could possibly have been on his Blackberry that was more important than what the president was saying? What? He should start paying more attention to what Barack Obama is saying and stop listening to Rush Limbaugh and John Boehner.

John Boehner, a Republican Senator from Ohio, was sitting right next to Cantor. They are the dynamic duo of the Republican party. They just say no to anything the president wants to do.

It wasn’t always so. Republicans were not always obstinate jackasses. Republicans have actually supported some important pieces of legislation in the past. Eighty-one Republicans in the House of Representatives voted for The Social Security Act of 1935. Fifteen voted no and 4 didn’t vote. The Democrats voted 284 yes, 15 no and 20 didn’t vote. The Senate vote was Republicans, 16 yes, 5 no and 4 not voting. Sixty Democrats voted yes, 1 no and 8 didn’t vote.

Many Republicans supported the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The House vote was Republicans 138 yes, 34 no, Democrats 152 yes, 96 no. In the Senate the vote was Republicans 27 yes, 6 no, Democrats 44 yes, 23 no.

It actually is possible for our elected officials to do the right thing and vote their conscience and not their party.

I don’t understand the rabid hatred that some elected officials have for President Obama. How can Republicans like former Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin and Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa spread lies about “death panels?”  It is the same mentality that allowed Bush and Cheney to start the war in Iraq. It’s obvious that lies are being told and that the emperor has no clothes.

The Republican party needs to come to its senses and support meaningful legislation to move this country forward in a positive direction. They can’t just sit back, do their best to thwart the president and hope he fails so that they can reclaim the White House in four years. They supported tax cuts for the rich. That was the first thing Bush did when he got elected. That is one of the reasons the deficit is so big today. They supported starting a war in Iraq that we didn’t have to fight. That was another unfunded, shameful, budget disaster. We can waste a trillion dollars on a needless war, but we can’t provide health care for our citizens. That would be too much like socialism.

Doctors today, with all of the  technology, drugs and knowledge available, can do some amazing things. I know. I have been a beneficiary of  some of that advanced care. I’m glad to still be here. At the time I worked for a great company that provided one of the best health insurance packages in the world. I don’t think I ever had to pay a bill except for small co-pays at the doctors office. I don’t work for that company any more and I buy my own health insurance. It’s not as good as what I had when I worked for the world class company.

If something happened to me again today, I know that I would have to pay out a lot of my own money. Perhaps if the members of Congress had to buy their own insurance and didn’t have a taxpayer paid plan, they would be more interested in reforming health care. Your health care shouldn’t be dependent on where you work or what you do.

Although I remember when they did, doctors don’t make house calls anymore. Health care has changed dramatically since Teddy Roosevelt and the Progressive Party Platform of 1912 mentioned it. Franklin D. Roosevelt wanted to create a national health care system in 1935 when Social Security was started, but couldn’t do it. President Clinton and First Lady Hillary Clinton tried to get health care reform passed in 1993. They were shouted down by the same mentality that is trying to shout down reform today.

Daniel Gross wrote a great article on Slate called, “The Private Option.” The subtitle is “Employment-based health insurance is in big trouble, but don’t blame Obama.” In it he says that 29% of Americans already get their health insurance directly from the government (people on Medicare, Medicaid and members of the military). That figure doesn’t include teachers, state workers, county workers, city workers, and town and village workers who get their insurance indirectly from the government, but still paid for by taxes.

On September 8, 2009 in the New York Times, Paul Krugman, one of my favorite writers, wrote a column called, “Why the public option matters.” The health care reform bill must contain a public option. Anything less will not be real reform.

It’s absolutely crucial that the reforms that President Obama outlined in his speech last night are implemented. The American public must win this fight over the special interests and lobbyists who want to defeat health care reform. Contact your Congressman and Senators and let them know that you support President Obama.

I support Barack Obama and I commend him for fighting for health care reform. You should too.

Nicholas D. Kristof wrote a column for the New York Times called, “Let Congress Go Without Insurance” on October 7, 2009. Take a few minutes and read what Nicholas Kristof has to say.

Reforming Albany

There are 150 members of the New York State Assembly and 62 Senators. There are 19 million of us. They are seriously outnumbered.

How do you force the politicians in Albany to reform a rotten system that benefits them at the expense of the people of New York? The perception is that the government in New York state is corrupt, unethical, and dishonest, and that nothing can be done. That’s just the way it is and nobody can change it. It’s politics as usual.

I disagree. We can fix Albany. It is not an impossible task. A serious ethics law is the first step. No meaningful reform will come out of Albany until a real ethics law is passed. Everything else will flow from that. Here is how we can force them to enact a serious ethics law.

Common Cause or the League of Women Voters should write an ethics law for the New York Assembly and Senate. It should be written in plain English so that a fifth grader can read and understand it.

It should be published in all of the daily newspapers in New York state on the same day. That is important. It should take up the entire page. It should be published on their websites as well.   At the bottom of the document leave a space for every member of the Assembly and Senate to sign it.

It would be like the signatures on the Declaration of Independence. If the signature isn’t legible, print the name too. This will take ethics reform out of the State Capitol in Albany and put it in front of the public in plain view.

The newspapers should also publish the phone numbers, email, and postal addresses of each member of the legislature. The newspapers should ask each reader to contact their representatives and demand that they sign the new ethics law as published in the paper.

The League of Women Voters or Common Cause would be the main contact point for the legislators. They would have to send a letter saying that they supported the ethics law and to please sign their name to it so that their constituents could see it.

This document would be updated every day with the new signatures on the websites of the newspapers until there are enough signatures to make it a law. You would be able to see on a daily basis who supported it and who didn’t support it.

This should shame the politicians into doing the right thing, since they won’t do it themselves. Voters will be looking for the names of their representatives. If voters don’t see their names, they can call them and find out why. If not enough signatures are obtained after 30 days, proceed to step two.

Step 2 would be a daily protest at the State Capitol in Albany. A hundred people a day would do. This would go on every day while the legislature is in session.

If there are still not enough signatures and the legislature goes home, proceed to step three.

Step 3 would be several protesters following each individual legislator 24 hours a day until they sign the document. Everywhere the legislator went, there would be protestors with signs following them.

Eventually, there will be enough signatures. Someone will have to introduce a bill to make the ethics law a real, legal law that the Assembly and Senate must obey or face the consequences. The first person to step up and sign the ethics law in the newspaper should have the privilege of introducing the bill.

After the ethics bill becomes a law, the members of the Assembly and Senate should have to take an oath and proclaim that they have read it, understand it and will act accordingly.

There has got to be a way to reform the politicians in Albany. Business as usual is killing this state. The citizens of New York are being cheated everyday.

Paul Krugman, the Pulitzer Prize winning economist from Princeton University and a New York Times columnist, said on the Bill Maher show last September, “We need a better government than we’ve got.”

He was talking about the federal government in Washington, D.C., but you can apply it to New York state government just as easily.

We need a better government than we’ve got and we need it now.