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No, it is not a day to slice one’s arms. It is the NFL’s day of saying you are on the team, or you are off…. The training camps are over, the preliminary games are done; the next games are for real….
This is something that happens in sports on a regular basis. Those who can lead the team forward get to stay, and those who drag it behind, get the pink slip…..
No one would expect it to go the other way…
Yet in our nation’s politics, the other way seems to happen more than not… The House Republicans have forced Congress to be the least productive in history, had wasted millions on political investigations, only to have them all come up empty-handed; have shut down government and cost the economy $24 billion; by stating they were going to default on America’s debt, one house lowered our credit rating. And we got nothing resolved for it; the only thing the Republican Congress has done is kick the debt ceiling up the road… It comes due again after the election.
America could be so much better if there were fewer Republicans. It is America’s duty to make sure the team we put on our field, is the best one we can possibly find. Stocking it with losers does no one any good at all.
We need the best… and that means people who will put effort into making big plays, not those ones sitting on the bench, refusing to play unless their absurd demands are met…..
It’s cut day for Congress too…. You need to cut them….
Recently a study showing the damage the Bush Tax cuts did, emerged… It was offered to all major publications who refused to publish it. Hence is emerged through what has become one of the best news sources in America today… Al Jeezerah…
The author won a Pulitzer Prize in 2001… David Cay Johnston
The Bush tax cuts, touted as a harbinger of prosperity by the Republican Party, actually robbed each American taxpayer of $48,000 in pre-tax personal income during the twelve years of their existence, for a total of approximately $6.6 trillion dollars.
In other words, you do not have $48,000 you should have had… because of that party that does nothing… How much of a difference could that $48,000 have made to you? It would have been there too, but… sigh, well, you know, you can’t go back in time and give Al Gore the presidency….
“it would have been enough to pay off all the student loans in United States ($1.26 trillion), all the automobile loans ($892 billion) and all the credit card debt ($827 billion),” he noted. “After paying all that debt off and taking taxes into account, Americans still would have more than $2.4 trillion left in their pockets and bank accounts.” Per filer, that $2.4 trillion left would be a cool $17,454 dollars…!
What you CAN do is understand that as long as Republicans have enough people to block legislation anywhere, state, local, national, from changing this… It will continue. Republicans still, at this late date, only care about the top 1%…..(For example after fighting tooth and nail to keep $10 billion that was paid for from being used on our broken down bridges, the Republican House flipped and just passed a bill to add $267 billion dollars to the national debt in the form of a tax cut for the top 0.01% of taxpayers…. ) A $267 billion dollar tax cut for the elite of the top 1%, charged directly to the debt… Meaning your children for years will be paying back this debt for no other reason than make them even richer than they are now… But we can’t have our $10 billion to fix America’s worst bridges because that is too much debt…
These same people, Who, btw… received one whole third of all the accumulative wage increases from 2001 to 2012… a total of under 16,000 households…. roughly 16 city blocks in one city, somewhere in the entire expanse of America….
The rich got richer; the poor get poorer, and the Republicans get kookier…. So are you going to do something about it?
You can. Let everyone know you aren’t voting for anyone who still says we need to cut taxes… because it is your money they are taking.
Oh, can I borrow some of the $48,000, please?
What? You don’t have it?
This kind…
Doesn’t he have an election coming up soon? If so, how can anyone expect to make a credible run for Attorney General IN THIS STATE, AFTER BEAU BIDEN’S TERM, and be guilty of keeping a tiny little bill, which has no harm but opens all board meetings to being recorded and accessible on line?
Only Simon Barsinister could be against something so inane… Or…. Hmmmmm…. Somebody … With… Something…. To …. Hide….
Hmmm. Now… Why would the surprise future attorney general, be sooooo adamant, even to the point of losing an election over blocking legislation so inane, that all it does is open school boards of all things, open to the public as a service… Anyone can walk into a school board and hear exactly the same thing they’d hear on tape… But sometimes… a diaper needs changed. But sometimes, a family meal needs prepared. Sometimes extra work for the office must be done for deadline the next day…. Darn we say now….I guess we won’t get to know what happened…
So why? Why is HB 23 being put on ice as my compatriot Kilroy is found of saying. Who is soooooo scared someone will find out what is really going on in school board meetings? Is it Charlie Copeland? Is it Mark Murphy? Is it… Darryl Scott? Is it Pete Schwartzkoph?
Hmmm. I wonder if it has any sponsors in the General Assembly right now?
HOLY MOLY!!!!!! LOOK AT THIS!!! Sponsors: Hudson, Sen. Peterson, Reps. Dukes, D. Short, Miro, Peterman, Wilson, Baumbach, Bennett, Mitchell, K. Williams; Sens. Hocker, Lavelle, Simpson, Townsend….
Is Pete Schwartzkoph there?….. No…… Is Bryon Short there? ….. No…… Is Melanie George Smith there?….. No…… Is Valarie Longhurst there?……. No…… Is Darryl Scott there? … No….Is Earl Jacques there?…… No Is Patty Blevins there? …… No…… Is Quentin Johnson there? …. No…. is John Viola there?…… No…. Is Ernie Lopez there?….. No?
Hmmmmmm… What do those all have in common…… 🙂 Hmmmmmmmmmmmm…. Do they all drink their coconut milk imbibed with lime? …. No….. Do they all call each other up and wear the same color of underwear each daily session?…… No…… Ummm. Do they all have the same Delaware extension tatoo’d to their buttocks?….. Ummmm…..M a y… b e…….
It is someone with a lot to hide; that is for sure… And it is nobody from here:
Red Clay, Christina, Capital, Delmar, Brandywine and Colonial currently already voluntarily record their board meetings! As well as the Delaware State Board of Education records their meetings!
So why is this something that has to be kept secret, and never brought to pass?….. Because we are not talking about individuals VOTING on a bill…They could vote YEA or NEA and it wouldn’t matter! What concerns us and you, is the pure morality of KEEPING A BILL FROM BEING VOTED FOR YOU BECAUSE IT WILL PASS….
So according to its sponsor, Deborah Hudson, Matt Denn is sitting on this bill…. He is doing it to protect someone else, to whom perhaps he is loyal…. How seriously then, were a procedural crime to be committed requiring a judicial investigation, can he be trusted to dig and search for the truth instead of whitewashing the whole affair to protect this same someone, when he can’t even be trusted to get a vote for heaven’s sakes….on a voice recording of school board meetings, out on to the floor for a vote? Let that sink in for a second…. Really?
Put all else aside….. Really?
IS that really the kind of attorney general we want after Beau Biden…. a crony?
Really? He’s going to throw his whole career away …. on that?
Really? Why would he do that? But it is definite a campaign issue, like blocking the GW bridge, one that resonates and will stick, because EVERY parent has a child in school….Whether they would ever listen themselves or not, this concerns them now… They too will question: why is Matt Denn, who is running for Attorney General, trying so hard to keep information regarding my kid and his friends, from ever being made public??? Hmmmmm….
Seriously, this blemishes his entire pro-family image he developed while serving as our insurance commissioner. This makes him one of the snakes….. with those evil eyes…..
The National Weather Service has issued a Winter Storm Warning for the region at 6 a.m. Monday lasting until 7 p.m.
The weather report is identical to last week’s… 6 inches due starting at 10:00
Just like last week, we knew the exact forecast a day before…..
It was to start around 9. The districts decided to go for the half day. Clear roads going in at 6 am, but by 10:00 the roads were dangerous after the first hour’s snow. The elementary schools didn’t get out until 12:30… often awaiting delayed buses from previous runs. Furthermore, as everyone was leaving to go home from work, as the danger of the 2-3 inches fallen so far became apparent, they not only had to navigate at 5 mph on the account of the ice and snow, but all major routes were stop-and-go from blinking red school bus lights disgorging their precious cargo.
The entire northern state of Delaware was a disaster, by 1:00… Exactly right when the buses were still running with elementary kids, and the snow was already too deep to go get them if anything had happened. The buses were driving on unsafe roads…
This, I know has to be balanced against children who only get one meal a day and that is at school.. We can certainly thank our Republican friends for that later. But we must sincerely consider whether any meal is a reason enough for creating the most costly snowstorm traffic damage estimates ever made by New Castle’s County’s insurance companies.. Most could have been prevented if we’d just trusted the weatherman and said no school on account of snow….
And if it had been done the night before, all parents could have had contingency plans in place, instead of telling their boss they had to leave early to be home for their child getting off the bus, then finding themselves being stuck 1 hour and a half because of snow. Meanwhile the child is standing outside the locked door, wondering where her parents are…..
We can do better, we must do better… call off school early.
As the weeks sneak past, the cry of the unemployed becomes fainter and fainter. It’s official. The Republicans won. They were right; we were wrong. For them, indeed, it was a good political move. They were right. Everyone cares about money saved; no one cares about people anymore, even those suddenly destitute, hit almost without warning.
I guess since there are no stories out there now of what it is like to have no money, the Republican got it right about our concern over the long term unemployed. Those unemployment checks were going to freeloaders and as soon as the money quit, they all got jobs. At least that is what one would certainly think, from the silence, from the complete lack of stories, lack of diaries, or even lack of pleas to get something moving again on the assisting the unemployed. It’s like the Republicans said “no”, and that was it… no more long term unemployment… Gravy train—> over… Back to work you scum….
Who would have expected it could have worked out this well? Certainly no one I know. We are all shell-shocked that any concern for these fellow citizens has just gone, evaporated. It appears that people are indeed, despite their lip-service, privately tired ot those lazy, cheapskates, mooching off the public dole, and that, though they say “tisk, tisk, you shouldn’t cut them”, there simply is no heart in them anymore to treat people more humanely than say, corporations….
Just out of curiosity over how this could be so, how we could have been so wrong, I wanted to crunch numbers for myself to see if it was true.
It is estimated that there are 4 million workers who are over 26 weeks unemployed. As of December 28th, there were 1.3 million who would lose benefits. That would be week zero of the crises. From December 29th through January 4th. 70,000 more were Immediately dropped high and dry. Then the following week, January 5th through the 11th, another 70,000 tumbled off the roles.. The week following, January 12th through the 18th, 70,000 more…. Last Saturday, saw the grand total rise by another 70,000 people…. We have now gone a full month, at four times 70,000 and have added 280,000 more destitute families to our national roster…. 1.58 million families are facing their own personal Grapes of Wrath… In the silence of public outcry, Republicans just laugh and laugh while they swim in the Congressional pool and wipe their clean butts now with clean towels, (now that the sequester and shutdowns are over)….
What’s the effect of all this? I do Federal Budgets so these numbers are small to me… What’s a million?. Chump change… or 1 X 10^-12 or 0.000000000001 of my problems….It is so small it is very hard to visualize the human cost. It is far easier to visualize the dollars saved.. The initial cut saved approximately . $ 397 million ($306 listed as the average unemployment check amount)… Each subsequent week that total climbs as 70,000 X $306 or $21,420,000 gets added to the amount the Republicans are saving America….So as of last week, January 25th the chart of weekly savings looks like this….
- $397 million as of January 4th
- $418 million as of January 11th
- $440 million as of January 18th
- $461 million as of January 25th.
Total saved America courtesy of the Republicans of the United States of America is… $1.76 billion dollars! Roughly one thousandth of our budget….
Hats off to them. They saved money by taking care of a problem Democrats were too squeamish to handle. Why have extended unemployment at all? There was no where else that money could be saved, and it was time those lazy, useless freeloaders went back to work anyways. There is no where else to make up that money.
For last month they already let tax breaks expire for college tuitions. That’s been done; $4 billion saved.. Last month they let teachers writing-off their classroom expenses, expire. That saved almost a billion. No mortgage insurance premiums can be now be deducted. That saved over $5 billion dollars. If you lived in a state with no sales tax, where you used to be able to deduct state and local sales taxes, .. you can’t now. Savings of $16 billion. The mortgage-modification tax break expired… meaning if your home was under water, and you got relief from a bank, you get taxed on the amount of relief, thousands more than you can afford…. Got to love those Republicans, saving America money..
And of course no one can make changes to these tax breaks... The Cato Institute estimates that direct federal subsidies to corporations costs taxpayers almost $100 billion every year. Furthermore, the tax code gives corporations special tax-breaks which reduced what is supposed to be a 35 percent tax rate to an actual tax rate of 13 percent, saving these corporations an additional $200 billion annually,,, Likewise, special tax breaks for hedge fund managers allowing them to pay only 15% rate? (This is the break where the multimillionaire manager pays less of a percentage in taxes than her secretary). Estimates are that this costs taxpayers $83 billion annually and 68% of those who receive this special tax break earn far more than $462,500 per year (the top one percent of earners).
So Republicans are laughing all the way to the bank. None of their money was touched, and $1.6 billion was saved on the backs of people who apparently live inside the cone of silence… I don’t hear outrage anymore, do you?
After all, what they did all those freeloaders, was apparently a favor. They finally got them off their ass and made them get a job. No lazy asses in a Republican-run world.. Bring on 2014…
They did all get a job, right? No one is saying anything to the contrary, so surely, they all got a job, right? All you have to do is walk up to a business and say, “I need a job” and they give it to you on the spot, right? Of course, right? Isn’t that how it’s done on TV sitcoms? If you need a job, you just go out and get one. Like Drake and Josh? So, everybody is now working, right, except those lazy butts whose long term still has not run out!
Let’s look. Here is the unemployment table for December 2013….
- A) According to the BLS 37.7% or over one third of all our unemployed are over 27 weeks…
- B) 24.4% or one fourth land a job in 4 weeks and start in 5…
- C) Another quarter or 24.4% get a job their second month… that’s up to 8 weeks between jobs.
- D) The remaining 16% or one seventh of the unemployed, get their replacement job somewhere between the 3rd and 6th month….
- It is the first third, or 37.7%, who will lose benefits…. They are the losers….
“These had better get off their sasses, get over to Burger King, and start flipping (cooking) burgers.” (actual statement by Congressman on Budget Committee). So are they?
The advanced number for seasonally-adjusted insured-unemployment during the week ending January 11, was 3,056,000, an increase of 34,000 from the preceding week’s revised level of 3,022,000. The 4-week moving average was 2,939,000, an increase of 31,000 from the preceding week’s revised average of 2,908,000.
What? Unemployment claims are rising? That can’t be. People should be going back to work, not more people getting laid off! How will those long-term people now with no income, courtesy of the laughing House Republicans, get all those jobs they were supposed to walk in, demand, and get? You say there are now even more unemployed?
December’s unemployment for the month, was at a 6.7 %… The last monthly rate below 6.7% occurred in October 2008... the month after Lehman collapsed. (Amazing this Obama) Unemployment is almost at pre-recession levels. But wait! Something must be wrong… 1 million unemployment claims just disappeared overnight on December 28th… What jobs did they all get? Burger King?
January’s jobs data is embargoed until February 7th…. But based off of December’s estimates, here is what HAS to happen for Republican wet dreams to come true. Over the course of last year, across all of 2013, the ranks of the long-term unemployment declined by 897,000. For Republican dreams to materialize, this month of, January 2014, total employment must rise by 1.58 million workers or by a total equal to all those left unpaid by long term employment…. For the record, that would be a 60% increase in one single month, over the entire past year’s hirings decreasing the totals of the long-term unemployed….
It probably won’t happen.
Since the unemployed usually spend all their check each week, the economy for January just toof a hit of $1.67 billion dollars from the lack of money these unemployed would have spent.. Most of that was felt immediately in retail. Retail just hired 55,000 new hires in December. I hope most still have jobs.
One further factor which sort of smudges up the calculations, making things not so clear cut, … is the the huge number of persons employed part time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers) which has remained essentially unchanged at 7.8 million through December. These individuals who are working part time because their hours have been cut back or because they were unable to find full-time work.
I expect this to probably be where most of the absorption of the ex-communicated long termed unemployed will be found…..
Now so far, all I’ve talked about is money. But being unemployed is much more. It is about people…Human beings less fortunate than you or I, but, at a moment’s notice, at the whim of a boss and having no protections, we know we could be there too.(let’s hope the swirling rumors over HSBC’s imminent Lehman-sized collapse, aren’t true.)
How does one possibly show the human cost that this Republican obstinance is doing to the optimism, and the pride of this nation, the United States of America? Many of you are too young to remember this image ingrained in us, but try to imagine a map of the United States of America and that it is under attack by nuclear weapons… When a strike hits, a white circle flashes on the map showing each lost city….
December 28th 2013….. San Diego…… Gone…… 1.3 million people.
January 4th 2014….. Wilmington Delaware…. gone… 70,000 people
January 11th 2014….. Canton, Ohio…… gone…. 70,000 people.
January 18th 2014….. Rapid City SD … gone…. 70,000 people.
January 25th 2014….. Scranton PA…… gone…. 70,000 people.
If these were real nukes dropping on our fellow citizens, launched by a sub-class of our fellow citizens, would we still be as silent, afraid to step out of line and express concern over fear of how we’d look to our corporate bosses and the snitches we work beside, and just shrug off the laughing Boehner and Cantor as they dry off with clean white cotton towels in the U.S House of Representatives members-only pool? I’m worried the answer is yes.
Well, guess what? There is something you can do. Act. Stop waiting. Do something. Act. Phone. Email. Text… Just act and tell your friends to act too.
Addendum: I saw this afterwards… it’s so ironic. After snuggly bashing the Soviets for years (and I was good at it) as being softly inferior to us tough, old capitalists, I with pure admiration today see their progeny in the squares of Ukraine, who won’t accept injustice lying down, who won’t see their dreams arbitrarily squelched, who won’t let something just get taken away from them because that entity is so powerful and distant, it seems senseless to contest it… I see them, and I say… wow, we really suck as human beings.. What is wrong with us?
And then I again see by the pool, Boehner and Cantor, just gaffawing away at us timid Democrats… Oh well. I guess that is how it goes. Sigh.
.
Items needed.
2012 Tax Form 990 (filed)
October 15 Quarterly Report To Federal Election Commission
January 31 Year-End Report To Federal Election Commission.
Now compare….
If you do the above on Grover Norquist’s group for Americans For Tax Reform, or ATR…. you will find that Grover’s group reported ATR reported spending $15,794,582 on political ads to the FEC… but told the IRS it spent only $9,791,515 on its 2012 campaign activity, a disparity of $6,003,067…..
ATR spent a total of almost $30.9 million in 2012, meaning more than half of the spending it reported to the FEC for the year was on politics, a clear violation of its tax-exempt status.
Companies in violation, must pay taxes on their income. It’s the law.
Now find your own company to bust… I’m sure you have one, or two, or three….
It is pretty obvious, really. To anyone who has studied History.
Things run in cycles. There is good, then there is bad. There is then good again as people react to the bad. And eventually an ennui settles in, as people stop reacting to the events, and like turtles just curl up and let others “run” things.
The standard of course is Ancient Rome due to its influence and longevity. Ruling the world a 1000 years is a long time. Until some future enterprise last longer, that is the mark by which all will be judged…
Like us, Rome was a democracy for its first 200 years. Then it lost interest; too much work. And things were settled and stable enough that if you were a Roman citizens, it really didn’t make any difference who was running your country… You lived your life.
So it is with sadness and trepidation, that one looks back on just our past 100 years and sees no progress has been made. Or better put, if viewed on a graph, we made great progress from the 30’s onward, then after 2000, “here you go”, we gave it all back. The initial tendency is to blame one political party. That is too easy, and if used, is used primarily as a distraction to divert attention away from the real problem.
The real problem is capitalism. Or since most of us think capitalism is good, the real problem should be properly defined as “unfettered” capitalism… Most of us would agree that “fettered capitalism” isn’t so bad.
Therefore one can look at the history of this nation and see that whenever we put “fetters” on capitalism we did well; whenever we took them off we suffered.
Even Republicans put fetters on. Teddy Roosevelt busted monopolies. That fueled growth for two decades, until all fetters were removed under Coolidge and the bottom fell out under Hoover.
From those economic ashes we then built a different system. The system we built was to benefit capitalists up to a point, and benefit everyone else afterwards, including the consumer and laborers. As a result, we had great growth for one reason. Americans had great purchasing power…. We bought things.
If one looks across the scale of the entire economy up and down the past century, and traces simply the bulk items up and down from that time frame to now, one easily sees that the purchasing power of Americans has eroded considerably since 2000. This was conveniently hid during the Republican presidency by their use of averages…. If Bill Gates walks into a bar, the average net worth of all those patrons inside, just jumps up $20 billion. What was hidden in being told the average American was doing better and better, was that one person was doing better by so much, he covered the losses of all those who were doing worse.
One person cannot buy as much as do 315 million people. So our national purchasing power as a nation has declined by exactly the opposite amount the rich have gotten richer. To paraphrase Perot, a giant vacuum cleaner has sucked all the money we need, right out of the economy…
it is because a massive psychological shift has occurred in this country since 2000.
We first choose to ponder…. how does this decision we are considering affect our money,… as our prime value, over how does this decision affect the lives and dreams of real human beings.
We simply have shifted our priorities… Money is more important. People are expendable. Some who don’t share the view that America is exceptional will argue “so what?”. That has always been the history of the world. The poor serve at the benefit of the rich. Always. As in Rome, if one entertains them enough and distracts them with enough gore and blood, the poor will leave you alone.
True. But some who lived through an America that was better than that, would like to have it back.
To them, money doesn’t matter. They can print more of it every day. But a human being is unique. There is no one like it anywhere else in the world. Nor will there ever be another just like anyone here right now.
This same concept and belief motivated Jefferson when he wrote the Declaration of Independence. People were deemed to be the property of the king. That simply is what a king was. Jefferson took that on and stated that “All men are created equal.” It was a novel concept back then; one most Europeans took to mark him as quite crazy. “All men are created equal; ha, ha, ha, ha ha…
But the reality of that is true. Even though every baby coming down the birth canal has differences, if one were to switch babies at birth, they each could turn out as well as the other… Inside of all of us, there is not much genetic difference between us….
If America is to remain different across the course of history, it needs to return to its philosophical roots. Accept that we are a nation of people; not investments. If we do treasure our investments, it is solely because they benefit our people as a whole, they do not exist solely at the expense of them.
The time has come where we need to twist our priorities. America needs to focus on its people. Not its wealth. The decisions we start making now need to be based on and geared to “how does this benefit human beings”. Not on how much does this cost…
Saving money is sometimes good. But killing someone to save 50 cents is a mis-direction of priorities. And that is the direction we seem to be headed.
For now. Listen to those asking for your vote. Do they want to give you opportunity? Or are they just chasing dollar signs and using you to get them?
You can tell by their stance on taxes. If they want to raise taxes on the rich, they are good people. You are at the core of their heart. If they don’t they are bad. This is a non-partisan issue. A Republican who agrees to raise taxes is good people. Likewise, a Democrat who is against it, is not….
Ask everyone if they are for raising the tax on capital gains to where it was back during the 90’s. If they say no, … ditch them and find someone who is….
If enough people do, we can still save this nation. No matter which party gets into political office….
Just heard that discussion was flying around Moody’s after the Fitch announcement today, over whether their rating should be in the “B” range or “C” range if the default occurs.
One train of thought was that with the alternative universe Republicans currently live in, where thinking that we can weather the default of the debt ceiling as well as the government shutdown indefinitely or until at least Obama puts in his resignation papers, dropping the USA’s rating only a point or two, would not be an accurate portrayal of the risk.
These rating organizations have a reputation to keep. Were they to make the bonds drop only from A+++ to an A++, or down to an A+, it would give credence to the viewpoints of the alternative universe’s thinking that “gee, that wasn’t so bad” and prolong the crises.
If the US Government can’t decide to open itself up, and can’t decide to pay the obligations to which it has already committed, then it is no better than Somalia, or Chad, or the Central African Republic They can’t open due to war and insurrection; we can’t open because of immature legislators. The result is the same; they aren’t governing, and that is a bad risk. Except we have a lot more money than Somalia, Chad, and the Central African Republic, which will depreciate faster than the Titanic hit bottom once it finally slipped under.
And that is the other side of the argument. That considering the outcome of default, and effect of the lowering of the rating, that perhaps modifying the amount of the drop might be prudent. Drop the bond ratings to the level of Portugal or Bulgaria, keep it in the “B” range, instead of the Somalian range where it belongs.
Then the other side counters back… But if we do that, the Tea Party will say, “see, they were lying, default is not as bad as they said…”
Most likely they will err on the side of caution. Drop it into the “B” range…. Save the “C” range for another day….
That at least, was the rumor told to me as being the current mood at Moody’s… As everyone knows, the “official” word could be a whole different level entirely.
There is a reason the opponents of Obama care are racing the clock to defund it before October 1st. They know how popular it will become to the American people.
I just looked and Delaware does not have their worksheets up yet, but in the state offices, things are looking rather rosy for the citizens of Delaware… Most of you will save thousands per year on medical bills. Not all, but most.. Looking at the voting trends, those who vote often, will all save money with insurance.
Other states do have their insurance options up and I have been looking through them. The general trend is thusly. If you are young, you are going to incur an expense you have not had to yet pay. Sorry. That will come with sticker shock, as does a new car, as does your first house. However, it should allow you the confidence to get checked out sooner, and therefore live healthier in your golden years than you otherwise would today if you had to pay full expense for care.
Hopefully, since you have to pay for it anyway, you will take advantage of it.
But you! Oh you! Who are old? Who have pre-existing conditions? Who have suffered with poor coverage for so long? You are going to love what this does. You will be able to figure out medical costs to the penny across your future years with your financial planning advisor, no matter what happens to your body. The costs will be fixed, and a lot cheaper than you paying through the nose upon each occurrence.
One can describe it as buying a warranty. What, the initial questioners ask? You want me to pay money to this shop each month even when nothing happens? Yes and if something happens you get your car fixed for free. Some gripe about losing $150 a month, until they see their first bill at a hospital would have cost them $5,000…. Then … they finally understand.
And you with families? Especially you who have not taken your kids to a doctor because you couldn’t afford it? You’re kids can now go…
So yes, those with money to lose will spend it all on ads telling you horror stories and capitalizing on one or two exceptions they make up as to who will pay more…
but just wait till October 1st, when you see that you start saving thousands… EVERY SINGLE YEAR!
Then remember the Republican party tried to run the economy over a cliff, twice, to stop these savings from coming to you…..
October 1st, it is almost here. About time for the pirated version to be leaked, don’t you think?
Courtesy of Frank Capra
Any investor knows you buy low and sell high. Buying high and selling low makes you a loser. The same goes with a business. Buying a business doing very well, will leave you no room for growth. Your pie can only get smaller, as more businesses arrive on your block and begin exploiting the fact you are so busy, by offering similar quality and prices with lower wait-times. Their profits grow; while both your market share and profitability decline.
This is why people like monopolies so much. One can consistently almost guarantee one’s income and profitability.
Now because of “math” it is easier to show great gains on low profitability options, more bang for the buck, than on high ones. The closer one is to zero the higher percent increase one can show their clients. If you have just one customer sale, it is easy to have a 100% increase by having 2 customer sales; someone just has to walk into your store. But if you have 1000 customer sales per day, then it is rather hard to jump up to 2000 customer sales per day. Where are you going to put them?
Understanding this is critical to growing the economy.
History lesson. In the summer of 2007 ARM’s started defaulting as the higher rates kicked in, starting a mushrooming effect up and down the securitized mortgage chain. In 2008 when Lehman Brothers collapsed, all hell broke loose. The world financial markets came within 20 minutes of collapsing entirely. But the US under George W. Bush restored confidence in the dollar, and people decided to leave their investments alone and let them ride. That is his most defining moment. That is one memoir I want to read.
Fortunately Ben Bernanke was an expert on the Great Depression. Bolster the banks, keep money solvent, coddle corporations, and keep the infrastructure intact. Knowing full well, if it totally collapsed (like a small town losing its factory) there would be no economic driver to hammer the economy back into shape.
For this reason, great pains were taken to assist big business on their bounce-back.
They bounced back very well. Only this time, they didn’t need as many people to work for them. Over the last decade, software had become smart enough to replace many jobs people had previously occupied.. Just that before the recession, it wasn’t that obvious, It was only after one let people go and ran well or better without them, that one realized how just how fat you were beforehand.
So this brings us to the point. We have invested in corporate bounce-backs as far as we can go. We have hit the ceiling as far as getting a return on our investment. On the other hand, now on the labor side, we have great opportunity. Every little investment over there into into putting people to work, will return great dividends very quickly.
We have to realize there as simply some jobs in society that cannot be performed by machines inside corporate establishments or a banks. Those jobs, simply put, are ones whose duty is to watch corporate giants and banks to insure that they comply within the law and prosecute them fully when they step out.
We need these jobs. We really need them now. After all, people do not work best without any accountability. In fact the opposite is mostly true. When you have to personally answer to a boss, you are more productive. Even when that demanding boss is oneself; they still answer to someone. Consider the opposite. If you could be paid whether you did work or not, would you be as productive as you are now, where if you don’t do work, you don’t get paid? Or would you take advantage of that opportunity, to heck with productivity, and seek to experience some of the quality of life you missed hereto? Our corporate entities and banks need to answer to a boss. That boss should be the American People via their proxies. the government watchdogs.
Those record breaking Corporate profits which are achieved by cheating society, are not really profits towards society’s benefit at all. Some one has to eventually pay for them. If you pump toxic chemicals into the ground to avoid paying for their disposal, at some future point when they hit a water table, society will have to pay to remove them and the damage they caused as well.
It is cheaper now to prevent that action while we have tons of money, than it will be to fix it when we simply do not.
The small business method to fix our economy, is to hire more government workers (invest in a brand new business) and pay for them out of the corporate earnings (our business already tapped out) because they can run with less people.
It is really no change from before. Except for the person writing the check. Prior to the recession these people worked for a corporation and got paid by their company. Where we need to go, is to have these people work watching over their former corporations, now getting their pay checks written by the government, which gets its extra funding to cover their pay, from taxing the excessive profits those corporations are making. Why are the making them? Because they aren’t working as many people….
This is quite sustainable when viewed from this perspective, as would be readily seen by the owner of a small business. If we were happy in the nineties, back when everyone was better off each year than they were before, then we can be happy again, just by keeping all portions similar, just moving labor from the private to the public, and increasing assessments on the private sector to pay for it.
There are those who will scream. They are selfish. They will be proven wrong.
As our planet becomes more crowded, we need more solutions. Some solutions are not very profitable and for that reason, we need a government capable to grow to meet them.
The old arguments of government being the problem, are long gone. They weren’t true ever, though a lot of people believed them back in the day. The opposite is certainly true now. As a society we need more watchdogs working to make our lives better. As a society we really don’t need more profits. We have too many of them now and really, what good are profits really doing for us? None. Instead, we need more people working and buying things.. Nice things that someone’s got to make…
It is time to pivot in how we view the entire American economy. Let’s hire us some watchdogs and cut the deficit while doing so, by increasing the rate of taxes on all those profits being sucked up in excess because a lot of workers got fired..
kavips 