goblin uprising

Who's Property? Their Property.

2012-02-09T09:57:00.000-08:00

Scene 1: Oakland, CA, January 2012.

Occupy Oakland protesters gather with the stated intent to commandeer an abandoned building, so that the building could be used as a meeting space. En route, protesters clash with police, who fire on unarmed citizens.

Eventually, police dedicate a truly impressive amount of time and energy to arresting 400 people outside of the Oakland YMCA, while violent crimes and emergency calls go unattended.

In the aftermath, City Councilman Ignacio De La Fuente states that it’s “terrible” that protesters are consuming police resources, but “when you have hundreds if not thousands of people, and you never know if they are going to break windows or vandalize businesses, you have to respond.”

Scene 2: Truckee, CA, also all across the country, 2010.

Bank of America wrongfully forecloses on the house of one woman, disposing of her belongings without alerting her. She tells the NYT “This is in essence a burglary, but when a burglar goes in, they don’t take your photos and your husband’s ashes.” Yes, dead husband’s ashes.

Today, the federal government reached a settlement with 5 of the largest banks over the offenses related to “robosigning” foreclosures, the practice of rapidly processing millions of foreclosures without proper documentation, which resulted in scenes like the woman in Truckee’s all over the country. The settlement means that the number of people arrested for these crimes will remain at 0.

Says Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone, one of the best out there, “Robosigning is not a small offense. It's not a "clerical" issue. It's a mass-perjury issue, a tax evasion issue, a contractual fraud issue, and it's a criminal conspiracy issue (the banks' highest executives were engaged in planning it) and it resulted in millions of errors that resulted in untold numbers of premature foreclosures.”

-----

Personally, I think it’s ridiculous that a city leader would state that the possibility of windows being broken totally forces the hand of an entire police force. It’s a fucking window my man, and last I checked we’d figured out how to replace windows. To me, property crime should always take a back seat to people crime, especially violent-emergency-type people crime. Isn’t it just absurd to think of dozens of police in armor guarding an abandoned building while 911 rings off the hook?

But it’s not just that they have a dumbass policy of protecting things before people, because when it’s people’s things that need protecting from businesses, rather than the other way around, no one goes to jail. The banks are allowed to “settle” for less money than they made doing the robosigning in the first place, and as part of it, they get immunity. Them and all the contractor thugs who actually do the burglarizing.

This is what the Occupy movement is really about. It’s about how we’re playing a rigged game, how powerful businesses get a pass on things like “laws,” while normal people who point that fact out get arrested.

I don’t want the movement to get unduly wrapped up with police confrontation; I’d rather concentrate on the real 1%. But the police ARE a symptom of the larger problem. It is impossible for me to consider the two scenes above and not conclude that, when push comes to shove, the police are equivalent to a taxpayer-funded private security force for business interests. As we push for real reforms to the system, how the police approach people’s interests and business interests has to be on the table.

Democratic Plan for Iraq

2006-11-02T16:06:00.000-08:00

Perhaps the greatest mistake the Bush admin has made, and it has made many has been to over-simplify and over-generalize the national security situation facing the United States. I propose the following plan for Democrats to bring reality back into the foreign policy debate and to counter the “cut and run” and “no plan for victory in Iraq” accusations levied by Republicans.

The Plan: Fight a war against terrorists who have attacked the United States and its allies.

The Background: The Bush administration has said we are fighting a “war on terror,” which is indefinable and has lead to grave miscalculations in our strategy and the current quagmire in Iraq. Case in point: Iran was included in the “Axis of Evil” by the president and included in the war on terror, but the Iranian government is a natural sectarian foe of the Sunni-extremist Al-Qaeda (who actually attacked our country on 9/11). To include Iran in our fight was taking our eye off the ball. Another example: Iraq’s Sunni government (which had no WMD) was hostile to Al-Qaeda, not friendly. To invade Iraq was taking our eye off the ball.

This is not to suggest that the United States was or is friendly with the Shi’a government of Iran or the former Sunni government of Iraq, but neither had anything to do with Al-Qaeda. 5 years after 9/11 we haven’t stopped Al-Qaeda, and the National Intelligence Estimate concludes that they are in fact stronger now because the Bush administration took its eye off the ball.

The Situation in Iraq Today: Among the Sunni and Shi'a fighters in Iraq there are many factions and factions within factions. Some Shi’a fighters are closely aligned with Iran, some more nationalist groups are closely aligned with Iraq’s elected prime minister. None of these fighters had anything to do with Al-Qaeda. We may not like all of them but they were not our enemy in the war against terrorists who have attacked the United States and its allies, until we attacked their country.

The Iraqi Sunni fighters can be divided into two main categories: nationalists and Islamists. The nationalists are primarily former members of Saddam’s military and fight to rid Iraq from foreign occupation (US) and interference (Iran). They had nothing to do with Al-Qaeda and were not our enemy in the war against terrorists who have attacked the United States and its allies, until we attacked their country.

The extreme Sunni Islamists, and there are more moderate groups, are Al-Qaeda in Iraq and the many groups aligned with it. These are our enemies in the war against terrorists who have attacked the United States and its allies, and the Bush Administration’s actions have only made them stronger as foreign fighters join them and more moderate Iraqi Sunni Islamists drift towards them defensively after being attacked by the US.

The Plan Going Forward: Coalition intelligence reports have stated that the Shi’a and nationalist Sunni fighters are willing to talk peace with the US. We will begin a three way diplomatic process immediately, in an effort to stop the sectarian civil war and the attacks on Coalition forces. It is likely that any agreement made will include the removal of some US troops from Iraq as both Sunni and Shi’a leaders have called for this and polls suggest more than 80% of Iraqis support the idea.

But we will not remove all of our troops from Iraq because we do have a job to do there now: to fight Al-Qaeda. We will not allow these terrorists to take advantage of the confusion the Bush Administration created by invading Iraq by setting up new bases and training camps. We will cooperate with the nationalist Sunnis and the Shi’a, both of which opposed Al-Qaeda before we made the mistake of lumping them together, and our remaining troops will fight only Al-Qaeda in Iraq and the groups associated with it.

Troops removed from Iraq will be redeployed either to Afghanistan to fight Al-Qaeda and the Taliban on the border of Pakistan, or to other key areas in the fight against terrorists who attacked the US and it’s allies, including the US, where homeland security can be increased.

The Goal: From the moment the Bush Administration let Al-Qaeda and the Taliban escape it has been clear that they have taken their eye off the ball. They branded regimes that were not friendly to the US as enemies, even though those regimes had not supported Al-Qaeda, our real enemy in the war on terrorists who attacked the US and its allies. It’s time to change course and focus on fighting our enemies rather than creating new ones. We will form new partnerships and in so doing make the US safer from the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11, and promote discourse and peace across the Middle East.

Take Back Power, Give to Ned Lamont

2006-10-27T07:33:00.000-07:00

Visit: The Lamont Underground

Bloggers in Connecticut and around the world took the control of information back from Big Media and helped get the truth to the voters:

Joe Lieberman is just this side of a Neocon, and Ned Lamont is the Democratic candidate who represents the people's views.

A win for Ned Lamont in November is a big step forward in the Revolution of the 21st cenury: The Information Revolution.

A win for Ned Lamont gives the progressive blogosphere (the people's media) overnight credibility.

And don't forget that a win for Ned Lamont gets a politician willing to stand up for rationality into the senate.

I'm sponsoring a fundraising page for Ned Lamont because I think this race is a great chance to increase the power of real people everywhere. Visit my personal Ned Lamont fundraising page and join The Lamont Underground.

Even if you aren't a Connecticut resident, if you have money to give to a political candidate this year, please consider giving to Ned Lamont. A win for Ned Lamont will make a broad statement like few other races can.

Torture? That's a No Brainer!

2006-10-27T07:14:00.000-07:00

On Monday 9/25 i wrote this quickie on that whole torture conundrum the junior Gmen on the hill were mulling over and the general crappiness of mainstream media political interviews:

Alright, so we've all heard the Response According to Hoyle from the GOP on the water-boarding issue. A great example was given by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist to George Stephanopoulos on Sunday, and you can watch it here if you'd like (http://crooksandliars.com), but it's the same thing you've heard a dozen times by now and it goes something like this:

Q: 12 human rights organizations have united to petition this government to keep practices which violate Common Article 3 of the Geneva convention, such as water-boarding, illegal. This law was in fact used to prosecute Japanese soldiers after WWII for that exact practice. Does the senate's "clarification" of the language of that law keep those practices illegal?

A: See, you have it all wrong. The whole point of this clarification is to clarify the very vague language of this law that's been agreed upon by everyone in the world for more than 50 years. If we can't clarify this law, the interrogation of Terrorist suspects, which has saved lives in America, will have to stop, and we can't allow that.

Q: But are the specific practices mentioned by the human rights groups still illegal? You should know since this law is so clear now right?

A: I can't talk about specific practices because that would be giving the terrorists a play book. They could train themselves to endure the techniques that are allowed by the very clear law and terror would ensue.

It's at this point that every single journalist I've seen engaged in this discussion, which is many, then moves on to another topic (or maybe they repeat the last question, getting the same response and then move on, but what's the difference?). This is the problem, they don't follow up with simple questions that would nail it down, leaving the issue up in the air and defined by the GOP spin doctors, which generally turns the "interview" into propaganda.
Here is an easy one for example.

Q: But if water-boarding wasn't allowed in this new rule, wouldn't it be okay for the terrorists to know, since we're never going to do it them? We haven't told them what we will be doing, so they still can't train to get around what we will be doing, so we haven't lost any future information. It almost seems like by saying that you can't tell us whether the practice is in or out, you're saying that it is going to be allowed, and wouldn't that be eroding the law as it's stood for more than 50 years? This is a practice that's been illegal and that the US has prosecuted foreign nationals for, so including it in our interrogation programs would be changing the law, not clarifying, right?

Was that so hard?

-----

thought i'd post it here with this update:

Cheney was interviewd on Tuesday on a conservative talkshow and had this to say of waterboarding (Miami Herald).

''Again, this debate seems a little silly given the threat we face, would you agree?'' Hennen said.

''I do agree,'' Cheney replied, according to a transcript of the interview released Wednesday.

''Would you agree that a dunk in water is a no-brainer if it can save lives?'' asked Hennen.

'It's a no-brainer for me," said Cheney.

So, it seems that we can talk about individual practices afterall. What a bunch of assholes.

Meet Your 2006 GOP

2006-10-27T07:02:00.000-07:00

If you're like me and didn't really know much about who the republican party is running in the midterm elections, but don't want to go off on someone without having any amo, here are some articles collected by bloggers to help you out.

--AZ-Sen: Jon Kyl
--AZ-01: Rick Renzi
--AZ-05: J.D. Hayworth
--CA-04: John Doolittle
--CA-11: Richard Pombo
--CA-50: Brian Bilbray
--CO-04: Marilyn Musgrave
--CO-05: Doug Lamborn
--CO-07: Rick O'Donnell
--CT-04: Christopher Shays
--FL-13: Vernon Buchanan
--FL-16: Joe Negron
--FL-22: Clay Shaw
--ID-01: Bill Sali
--IL-06: Peter Roskam
--IL-10: Mark Kirk
--IL-14: Dennis Hastert
--IN-02: Chris Chocola
--IN-08: John Hostettler
--IA-01: Mike Whalen
--KS-02: Jim Ryun
--KY-03: Anne Northup
--KY-04: Geoff Davis
--MD-Sen: Michael Steele
--MN-01: Gil Gutknecht
--MN-06: Michele Bachmann
--MO-Sen: Jim Talent
--MT-Sen: Conrad Burns
--NV-03: Jon Porter
--NH-02: Charlie Bass
--NJ-07: Mike Ferguson
--NM-01: Heather Wilson
--NY-03: Peter King
--NY-20: John Sweeney
--NY-26: Tom Reynolds
--NY-29: Randy Kuhl
--NC-08: Robin Hayes
--NC-11: Charles Taylor
--OH-01: Steve Chabot
--OH-02: Jean Schmidt
--OH-15: Deborah Pryce
--OH-18: Joy Padgett
--PA-04: Melissa Hart
--PA-07: Curt Weldon
--PA-08: Mike Fitzpatrick
--PA-10: Don Sherwood
--RI-Sen: Lincoln Chafee
--TN-Sen: Bob Corker
--VA-Sen: George Allen
--VA-10: Frank Wolf
--WA-Sen: Mike McGavick
--WA-08: Dave Reichert

Get to know the DLC

2006-08-11T12:57:00.000-07:00

If you’ve followed the news in recently you’ve probably seen some pretty harsh condemnation of “bloggers” (whoever these nutcases are) for their support of Ned Lamont, Democratic candidate for senate in Connecticut. Big Media pushed hard for Joe Leiberman, the incumbent “Democrat” who’s been endorsed by such pillars of the Blue Team as Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Michelle Malkin, Bill Kristol, and George W Bush.

Cokie Roberts said on ABC that voting against Lieberman would be a “disaster” for democrats.

The Washington Post (1/29/06) reported that “Democrats are getting an early glimpse of an intraparty rift that could complicate efforts to win back the White House: fiery liberals raising their voices on Web sites and in interest groups vs. elected officials trying to appeal to a much broader audience.”

Then again, (6/11/06) wondered “whether the often-angry rhetoric and uncompromising positions of the bloggers will drive the party too far left and endanger its chances of winning national elections.”

The Los Angeles Times (6/11/06) shares the worries of “Democratic centrists who fear that the new activists are pressuring the party toward liberal positions that will impede its ability to build a national electoral majority.”

And the paper that the Rush Limbaugh’s of the world smear for it’s liberal bias, The New York Times (4/2/06), wrote that liberal blogs “have proved to be a complicating political influence for Democrats. They have tugged the party consistently to the left, particularly on issues like the war”

So why are Democratic voters being lambasted for voting for a real Democrat rather than a Republican in Dem’s clothing? Why are we being told that blogs and candidates that share the view of 60% of the country, Iraq war = bad, only “complicate” th ings? For the answer to these and other perplexing questions, you’ll need to become familiar with a particularly despicable group that gave you your last Democratic president: the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC). Remember when Paul Wellstone said he hailed from the “Democratic wing of the Democratic Party?” Yeah well, these are the other guys.

It’s beyond the scope of this post to give a full rundown of DLC history, but it’s out there, “DLC” into google does the trick. What’s important to know is that they are neocons in the democratic party. Story goes, conservative democrats got together with lots of big corporations (just for support, they’re very supportive those faceless monoliths) after the 1984 presidential debacle and formed the DLC as a way of moving the party further to the right to become more electable, which is where you get all this moderation, move to the middle bullshit now. It’s where we got John Kerry.

Thing is, similar institutes that were also funded by big corporations had just moved the republicans much further to the right in the decade before. It’ was a particularly well played hand in a way. Social conservatives were easy to sway because they were pissed off at the progressives in the 60’s and 70’s who had been telling them that they were wrong and stupid for the better part of 20 years. “You’re a bigot! FREE LOVE!” didn’t play well in the heartland and what were once hotbeds of economic populism became strongholds for “family values” and soon the neocons that would exploit them.

Once that was pretty well locked in, big business played the DLC card, convincing progressives that the only way they’d get elected, so that they can get environmental protections passed donchaknow, would be to follow the lead to the economic right. Clinton supported NAFTA, rememer? Free trade runs wild and big business wins thanks to the DLC and the neocon engineers.

Sure I like the environment and education better than bans on gay marriage and prayer in schools, and I guess that makes me more a democrat than a republican. But what WE, all of us, need to realize is that we’re getting played. Big business, and it’s mouthpiece Big Media (see nonsensical quotes above), don’t really give a crap about your cause. In fact, the economic system that they want to see advanced will almost inevitably kill your cause, be it cleaning up the potty mouths or cleaning up the superfund sites. The proof of that is easy enough to see now, look at abortion bans, and gay marriage bans, and all that crap. Hasn’t happened even though that’s what Bush won with. The tax cuts for the wealthy and war profiteering are happening sure enough, but the social conservative stuff seems to disappear when push comes to shove.

They’re plenty ready for you to have your cause if it gets you so worked up that you’ll sell out your own best interests. And that’s what we’re all doing here, we’ve got to be able to see that. Read What’s the Matter with Kansas, conservative or liberal you’ll learn something about what those terms used to mean. Just because you want to end legal abortion doesn’t mean you’re ready to give the national treasury to the richest .001%. Ditto the save the whales crowd.

The sheep’s clothing is slipping off the wolf a little bit with this Lieberman campaign because it’s so absurd. I mean the guy said he’d ditch his party if he lost and then begged voters to be loyal to him because he’s a long time incumbent. The media lockstep for a guy like that just doesn’t add up unless there’s something else going on, and there is. He’s the DLC guy, and they have the power to put that on the airwaves.

Let's all bicker about the surface stuff later, deal? Let's vote for guys like Ned Lamont, who actually represent what most of us are thinking. Let's stop getting manipulated by the mother fuckers! We can sort all that other shit out after we have a decent economic and foreign policy.

Bush Jr., Insult Comic of Presidents

2006-06-08T07:50:00.000-07:00

I am the product of a same-sex household, having grown up with my mother and her partner of 16 years in a warm, loving, and supportive environment. I am also a person capable of rational thought and a follower of the teachings of Jesus Christ. Each of these complimentary parts of my person have been offended this week by the attempts of our nations political leaders to amend the constitution of the United States, banning same-sex marriages.

Political and religious leaders supportive of the amendment noted this week that allowing same-sex couples to marry will have disastrous affects on children, family, and society. I take exception to that, for obvious reasons. I do not consider my life a disaster, and while I welcome debate on that point from any politician who would like to make an appointment with me, I'd rather they didnt continue deriding me publicly. My family is not a disaster either; I count on them for support, were close, and enjoy regular visits and correspondence, so that claim is a sore spot for me as well. Additionally, the work that I and my family do in the health care and education fields, and our active involvement with our church and other charitable organizations, hardly seem like a disaster for society. So that one stings a little too; it feels a little like an attack on my family. It's a personal insult to me and the hundreds of thousands of other non-disasters raised in same-sex households, and not one we should have to bear from our elected representatives.

I'm also offended as a rational person by the presented arguments for this amendment. For example, President Bush has stated that changing the definition of marriage would undermine the family structure. Putting aside the use of the pejorative undermine, this is insulting to a rational mind because it is clear that allowing same-sex couples the benefits of marriage will not change the family structure in any way. Right now, same-sex couples in every state in the union cohabitate, raise families, go on vacation, etc., and none of that will change with this amendment. My childhood is evidence of that fact as my mom and her partner are not legally married. This amendment does nothing, thankfully, to outlaw same-sex relationships, it just makes life harder for those couples by not allowing them the ability to share benefits and by defining them as second class citizens.

Neither does the amendment protect heterosexual marriages in any way, because unless some people arent being honest with their fiancés, husbands, wives, no currently heterosexual person is going to marry someone of their own sex just because its legal. So the entire undermining the family structure argument for this amendment is illogical, because this amendment wouldnt change one thing save making nearly permanent the denial of equality to a group of American citizens. It is not the legal definitions that make a family, it is the actions of the people who come together to form it, as any rational person knows.

Finally I am offended as a follower of the teachings of Jesus Christ that this amendment has been trumpeted as if it were in some way in accord with those teachings. It is widely understood that this amendment is indented to please a particular religious orientation, but it is not in accord with Biblical wisdom like:

In everything, therefore, treat people the same way you want them to treat you,

And,

Do not judge so that you will not be judged.

Clearly this amendment seeks to permanently restricts freedoms and protections, a fate none of its supporters would chose for themselves, and judges those in the GLBT community as second class. Additionally I am reminded of the famous story of Jesus and a woman accused of adultery, a marital sin. While I do not believe homosexuality is a sin, there are those that do, and for them the parallels of this lesson cannot be ignored. To those who would have condemned the woman, Jesus said:

He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.

economists, public agree: supply, demand more confusing than they sound

2006-05-12T10:04:00.000-07:00

Over the last couple of days I've had this conversation with too many confused and outraged motorists, pissed at Dems for not allowing the destruction of Alaskas environment, not to put something out there. The topic is oil and the price of gas.

See, the oil companies have wanted to use the large phallic invisible hand of the Free Market to stick it to you, me, and the rest of the gas users in this country for a long time. They've known they could raise the price of gas by at least a dollar for a while, and we'd all have paid it, because our society is over the proverbial and literal barrel on this one because of our transportation habits.

But we dont have a free market, whatever certain politicians would preach to you, because among other things we protect against something called "Price Gouging," which is drastically raising the prices on things that people really want/need for profits sake. Don't get much freer than that.

Anywho, if youve followed the news lately you've seen that oil companies are currently breaking every record in the book for quarterly profits. ExxonMobil for example recently posted a three month profit of $10 bil, or as the Washington Post put it: enough money to send 60,000 kids to ivy league schools for 4 years, or even better, enough to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for 2 months (which really gets at that "we put it in they take it out" feeling thats so prevalent these days). This is because theyre finally getting to do what they've dreamed of for years... sort of.

The reason its not price gouging this time is that the profit margin has stayed the same, about 9%. Read any newspaper about this and youll see all the oil execs scrambling to direct you to the margins. "See, see, were not gouging, were not gouging. If we were gouging our margins would have gone up! Ha Haaa! Beat that!" I'm paraphrasing there, but thats the idea. As the price of oil has gone up due to conflict and turmoil in the middle east and Latin America, the whole system has inflated right along with it. 9% of $20/barrel = $1.80 in profit. 9% of $75/barrel leaves them $6.75. Simple as that.

The only reason this works is that the market (us) will bear the increased cost, like the oil companies knew all along, because were ravenous for gas. Sure they'd like to increase their margins by charging what they are now but with oil prices at mid-90s levels, but tripling your profit is tripling your profit the margins be damned, and they'll take that to get around the idea of gouging. So thats why your gas prices are so high: because you'll pay it. Welcome to capitalism. Well again... sort of.

See there's more to the story. You may have noticed that I've discussed this issue as if the oil companies were responsible for the increase in the price of oil thats led to the inflation of the whole system, getting us to the price of gas they wanted to charge in the first place, i.e. what we'd pay, without looking like a bunch of butthole price-gougers. That's because there are only two ways of looking at this:

1) Our government, controlled by oil executives, started the war in Iraq to, among other things, raise the price of oil and thus gas, making them directly responsible; or

2) The war really was started because of WMD and freedom, and the oil companies are innocent WAR PROFITEERS, making them implicitly responsible because you do not profit off of people dying like that. Those profits should go to pay for supplies for troops, rebuilding and stabilizing Iraq so fewer die in the future, and for benefits for the families that have suffered casualties thus far, such as 60,000 ivy league educations.

#2 may be the lesser of two evils, but thats just because the only thing more sick/dastardly/nauseating/terrible/heart-breaking/despicable than war profiteering is actively starting wars for profit, killing and injuring hundreds of thousands of people in the process, and that's not much of a standard.

The interesting thing is, there's actually a way for us to tell which answer is right! But we all have to come together to do it, here's how it works. We all start driving less, flying less, carpooling, mowing less, go-carting less, nascar-ing less, and buying local products more (to cut down on trucking). All that lowers the demand for gas, and then we watch. If the price of oil stays high, because of the afore mentioned conflicts, then their margins will shrink, and well know theyre just war profiteers raking in the blood money. If the price of oil goes down, or dare to dream conflicts begin to end, then we'll have more evidence that the wars were actually started to raise the prices.

Pretty sneaky huh?

give me that word back, i was gonna use it

2006-05-12T09:52:00.001-07:00

socialism ('sO-sh&-"li-z&m): any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods.

Consider federal grants for higher education, are they socialist? We want kids to get an education so we give them money to purchase that education from any provider they choose, so no. While they may reflect social values, college grants are not considered socialist because they do not govern or administer any means of production, nor do they distribute goods or services.

The desire to educate our population is analogous to our societys desire for its citizens to have access to healthcare. Universal access to healthcare has been proposed in the past, an analog to federal financial aid, but for some reason this has been labeled socialized healthcare and demonized as a one way street to Big Brother controlling our every waking moment and dolling out just enough victory gin to get a guy through the day.

Who could have possibly gotten it into our heads that wanting to provide healthcare to our fellow humans is socialist? Well, who would suffer if the government provided money for healthcare? The insurance industry, in the back, I'm looking at you.

Some quick facts about the health insurance industry:

Over the four years from 2000-2004,

Despite a weak economy and soaring medical costs, U.S. health insurers took in profits at a far greater pace than the rest of corporate America. Profit margins doubled for the top 10 insurers, while the average profit margin across the S&P 500 dropped 20%.

Profits for the 17 top U.S. health insurers rose 114 percent to $414 million from $193 million on average.

Average pay for the five top executives at the top health insurers almost doubled to $3 million a year.

"They're making boatloads of money," said Tom Boldt, senior health-benefits consultant for Watson Wyatt, a leading human-resources consulting firm.
(see http://investors.com/breakingnews.asp?journalid=23544168&brk=1)

Thats profit in the second bullet, not income, profit. Thats $414 million in a year that people spent to have healthcare, that never went to providing them healthcare. Is that the most efficient system, or is that a gargantuan middle man? Where's my invisible hand!?

Were nice people here in Massachusetts, and we want our citizens to be able to get the healthcare that they need, but we've been taken. We let our fear of the Red Menace cloud our judgment and weve been had by shysters and shills. Instead of passing a law to give money to people to get healthcare, we passed a law which forces them to get, and in some cases gives them money to get you guessed it, health insurance. Over $7.5 million was spent on lobbying for this bill alone, much of which came from the insurance industry, in a state government!

So now somehow our goodwill has been turned into more profits for health insurers, and all because weve been fooled about what universal healthcare would mean. Whatever your stance on Socialism with a big S, dont let middlemen take advantage of a hot-button word to extort money from good people who just want to have access to medical care for themselves and their fellow people. Lets bring creative solutions for universal healthcare back to public debate, and stop the major corporate giveaways.

"budget cuts!" or "where george put my scrilla"

2006-05-12T09:52:00.000-07:00

Truth be told, the budget deficit is pissing me off. Remember what youve heard about the national debt? How deficits are bankrupting our childrens future? Yeah, well that was true in the Wilson administration, and now we are those unlucky children. See, the national debt isnt due in our childrens future, its due - to wealthy people and governments all over the world - right the hell now. And we pay dearly, year after year, through a special (almost universally unreported) part of the budget: The Mandatory Budget.

The FY 05 had a cool 2.5 tril in spending, less than half of which was called discretionary spending (what for all intents and purposes in the media is the budget). That leaves a lot doesnt it? Wanna guess how much of what was left went to interest on the national debt? You really dont.

352.4 Billion Dollars.

And thats not even the scary part, but well get to that in a second. For now, take a moment to contemplate just how large that number is and to compare it to such discretionary spending items as:

68.2 bil on Health & Human Services
57.3 bil on Education
31.3 bil on Housing
13.3 bil on Transportation
11.9 bil on Labor
7.8 bil on Environmental Protection

Combined thats just north of 1/2 what we spent on interest! So now pray tell, why is the interest so high again? Well, mostly because during the presidencies of Regan, Bush, and Bush again, the debt got monstrous due to drastically increased military spending (not for vet salaries though), drastically reduced taxes on the wealthy, and drastically increased corporate subsidies. We owe 8.2 tril right now, with 5.8 of that having been run up during those 3 presidencies, the other 2.4 having been generated during the rest of the history of the fucking country. If that group of idiots could have done what Bill Clinton did, i.e. balance the budget, we could double the amount we spend on the above mentioned discretionary items, without changing anything else. Think about that next time a social program on that list is getting cut to pay for our war of aggression.

Now back to that really scary point. While Clinton was balancing the budget he was also paying a lot on the debt, getting us better interest rates on future debt. Bush II has decided to cut the rate we put toward the debt by a third (yes, that does mean that we should be paying 500 bil now, making his deficit reducing claims a total sham), and thats just going to drive up interest rates on us and make things much much worse.

So the next time you hear some conservative griping about tax and spend liberals, welfare, or the capital gains tax; or you think about how kids dont have books, teachers dont get paid anything, the EPA is handcuffed, or any of the hundreds of other rollbacks being put in place that hurt people in this country; remember the deficit. Remember the interest we pay every year. Remember where that debt came from. Think about who we pay that interest to. Then look up the word extortion.

For figures:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2005/tables.html
http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/opd/opdpenny.htm

sub-atomic particles for the masses

2006-05-12T09:51:00.000-07:00

what if we're not a bunch of distinct little whirly bits circling and clinging to each other, plunging through the air/water/space around us? quantum mechanics seems to suggest that sub-atomic "particles" pop in and out of existence all the time, creating and destroying themselves and their opposites in a semi-erotic flashdance that produces localized mass/energy we can measure. despite this, the idea of the enduring single atom has persevered, sweeping the apparent discontinuity of matter under the rug.

Sure the atom has been a useful idea, and continues to be one to this day for some people i'm sure. But thinking of myself and the world around me as a bunch of tightly packed spheres doesn't do much for me on a daily basis, t'be honest.

All these ideas we have about how reality works are just models in the end; tools to give us broader ranges of ability in our interactions. So i have to ask, "what's the atom ever done for me?" unlike Yahoo Serious I can't split an atom, or grab one, or see one, or interact with one in any way really. Feels like my range of ability is as narrow as ever. (quiet you).

so i think about it for a bit and it occurs to me, what if we're more like figures you might see moving across a scoreboard at your favorite sports event. We see the figures, in 2d, as they dunk on each other and demand that we charge at things, but we also understand that the figures are just patterns of lights turning on and off on a 2d grid. the quantum model has our particles appearing and disappearing constantly, and showing up in different places, so maybe we're not moving our atoms from one place to the next through whatever medium du jour, we're just turning on potential particles on a 3D grid.

Well it seems like the implications of this new model would be massive, and potentially useful in day to day life, but it's tricky. First, what is changing the particle pattern? Who's running the scoreboard? In our case, it seems straight forward: we are, through our consciousness. But we aren't living in a vacuum, there's already stuff in all of the places that i want to be, so it has to get out of the way when i'm appearing. The air around me has to have it's particles appear in he space i've chosen not to be in, and how would in know where that space is, or how to make itself appear there. well, one way to explain it would be to think of all forms of matter/energy as possessing a certain type of consciousness, or will, and to suggest that all the different forms of consciousness are interacting and communicating with each other.

whoa. so i'm like talking to the wind when it blows by me, and what i feel as a rush of breeze on my skin is really my consciousness talking with the ancient mind of the earth?

hold it, not quite yet. but maybe, yeah. what do i know.

still, there's much more to explore here before we all accept the oneness of the grid. What about when things get destroyed for example. Where was the communication there? Well, i say in my voice of pure conjecture, maybe that's when one will dominates another, or when one consciousness isn't flexible enough to move. what would that mean for day to day life? Could we dodge bullets with an open mind? Walk on water if we were accepting enough?

To be sure it leads to some interesting ideas that i think are worth exploring, and hypotheses in need of testing. The latter is the important part and i'm still working on what i think would be suitable experiments. I walked down the street and tried to keep in my mind the sense of appearing and disappearing with each movement, and it felt very odd; a new sensation, and a pleasurable one. So put one on the board for the grid. grid one, enduring atom zilch. But i like to run up the score, so if you have any ideas on where to go with this next, leave a comment or send me a message.

loving freedom hater haters on holiday

2006-05-12T09:46:00.000-07:00

I think for the first time ever I can say that I had a really great Martin Luther King day. Everyones had some fun on federally mandated time away from school or work, thats not what I mean (though have you ever noticed how when you get Monday off it feels more like you had two Sundays, and when you get Friday off and it feels like you had two Saturdays? Certainly the calendar has a deeper history than most of us realize, and perhaps this effect is due in part from differences in the days themselves, but Im betting that most of the sleepiness I get on Sunday night, even when I have Monday to sleep in, is just habit). Its more that when we give a day a name, a theme, an honor, and a feeling like that, we give it extra substance and information that we all live through as reality, and Id never really tapped into that before on MLK day.

Yesterday two friends of mine and I used a little bass amp to blast a message of peace, economic justice, international compassion, and the brilliant possibilities in and for human dignity across a well populated public space, hijacking some corporate resources in the process. Certainly not an original idea by any stretch of the imagination, nor indeed really a first for myself. All except the reaction we got.

See this was Martin Luther Kings day, and we had the man himself on our side thanks to the magic of internet audio downloads. We didnt say a damn thing actually, just sat their in the ass freezing cold smiling and people smiled right back, and slipped low fives and thumbs up, and stopped and stood or sat with us, smiling at each other every once in a while, nodding, but mostly just taking in what the prescription Dr. King had for us.

It was his day, what were you going to do, get pissed off about kids making trouble, or their apparent distaste for war? Maybe on most days, but you just couldnt get the energy up to do yesterday for some reason, and you always did like Dr. King We played it for hours and hours and didnt receive a single complaint, not even from the beat cops who went by occasionally. Reality had shifted under the weight of the consensus, ordered by the government, that we should respect Dr. King on that day, and we jumped all over it and maybe got into a few peoples heads.

So that gave me two ideas. One, we all go around looking for these seemingly naturally occurring shifts in consensus reality and exploit them to their fullest extents. Is there a contradiction in a government that says honor Dr. King and simultaneously advances a doctrine of war, repression, and injustice? Fraid fucking so, and contradiction is at the core of unraveling belief systems in this dualistic logic we all use, so lets pull the loose end like winch. Two, lets think of ways to try to engineer those reality circumstances more often. Trickier, I know, but Im thinking about it and Ill let you know what I come up with. See you on presidents day.