OK, I promise that at some point I am going to get back to the economy, but I just had an epiphany and I have to share it with you, dear readers. So today, I was again listening to Colin Cowherd (ironically that fact proves his point, but I'm right god damn it), and he and Trey Wingo (NFL Live host and kind of a deushbag) and Mark Schlereth (sometimes I really like him, and sometimes he is a tremendous tool--we're talking double lock, power grip, ultra duty, beefcake strength) are talking this morning about the whole Rush Limbaugh/Rams fiasco (by the way, apparently they didn't have the balls to read or discuss my response--not surprising--and no, I don't think its advisable to use this many parenthetical statements in one sentence, but fuck it, I'm not teaching English right now--put that in your pipe and smoke it Dom).
Anyway, as usual, they are just really congratulating themselves on being successful and rich and right about everything, and they say, well, you can tell that Rush is just a super great guy because he elicits such a strong response, be it positive or negative. From there they seemed to collectively decide that the best kind of a radio/television host or newspaper columnist is one that horrifies and alienates half of his audience, while vindicating and glorifying the other half. And why? Because that generates ratings and interest and big surprise--it makes the most money. Initially I just sat there kind of disgusted, because as anyone knows whose ever been around a bunch of rich white men congratulating themselves on being pompous, you realize that it is this kind of narcissism that perpetuates poverty, corrupts government, and justifies war carried out for the purpose of protecting national security/economic interests--and more importantly, as everyone knows, I hate bragging unless I'm the one doing it.
But then it hit me--this is why my dad hates Colin Cowherd (he, because of a stronger moral imperative than I can muster, refuses to listen to the Herd anymore). Cowherd espouses exactly the kind thinking that caused our nation's economic collapse: nothing matters but the bottom line, making money, and being politically ambiguous. "Winning isn't everything, its the only thing."(1) That may sound nice, and it may seem appropriate for a sports talk show, but when you apply it to the housing market or the stock market, you start to see why our economy is in deep fucking shit.
Indeed, that is exactly what mortgage brokers wanted to do, its exactly what the banks thought, and it might as well be the mantra for the Republican party as well (and judging by the assclown health care bill we are probably going to get, half the Dems as well). Our society has become too obsessed with the appearance of success, with making money for money's sake. Gordon Gecko was wrong. In fact, he was a fuckhead. Greed is not good, at least not pure unadulterated, unregulated, unashamed greed.
In fact, it reminds me of a quote in Jurassic Park (the first, and only good one), in which the physicist, Dr. Malcolm, says, in objection to the park, "The problem with scientific power you've used is it didn't require any discipline to attain it. You read what others had done and you took the next step. You didn't earn the knowledge yourselves, so you don't take the responsibility for it. You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could, and before you knew what you had, you patented it, packaged it, slapped in on a plastic lunch box, and now you want to sell it."
The problem with Rush Limbaugh, and a whole hell of a lot of people in our society, is that they do something purely for personal profit, regardless of whether or not it is a good thing to do. In other words, there is no responsibility. MTV glorifies wealth and the objectification of human beings in a way that is criminal, but somehow that's OK, because kids watch it, and it makes them money. Other networks put miscreants and people that engage in disgusting behavior on reality shows because it makes them money. Limbaugh lies to his audience on a regular basis to make money, stock brokers and mortgage brokers bought and sold bad housing loans to make money, health insurance companies deny their clients necessary, life sustaining procedures to make money. The grocer who owned the corner store and stood behind his products has been outmaneuvered by the travelling salesman and the faceless corporation that care for nothing but to sell their product and leave as quickly as possible so they don't have to take responsibility for them.
My dad hates Cowherd because he justifies it. He and his cronies justify the love of money for money's sake, the triumph of wealth and comfort over the externalities (an economic term for the unintended consequences of a particular activity) that arise from the business of profiteering.
Sure, money matters. Anyone who tells you it doesn't is probably working for Pat Robertson and the 700 club, or some other two faced evangelist taking advantage of his flock. Money matters, but not at the expense of our humanity. In the words again, of Dr. Malcolm: "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should. Science can create pesticides, but it can't tell us not to use them. Science can make a nuclear reactor, but it can't tell us not to build it!"
(1) This quote had often been attributed to Vince Lombardi, but it was actually first uttered by UCLA coach Harry Russel "Red" Sanders.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
ESPN and Rush Limbaugh
I'm not sure how many of you listen to sports radio (I'm not really sure why I still do), but if you do, it would be almost impossible to not have heard the story about Rush Limbaugh's wish to own the St. Louis Rams. Not surprisingly, every host I've heard so far defends Limbaugh's right to own the Rams (maybe they had a staff meeting). One of the most popular, Colin Cowherd took it a step further and noted that a huge number of NFL players were arrested for domestic abuse, DUI's, etc., so who were they to be judging Limbaugh? Cowherd also stated that since Limbaugh uses only words, and not actions, he should get a pass from society at large.
Apparently, Colin and the folks as ESPN have failed to consider a few key points:
1) NFL players that commit crimes are forced to apologize for their actions, and are usually punished with fines or jail time--Rush Limbaugh, as far as I know, makes no apologies for his talk show, and plans on continuing his broadcast. Michael Vick would certainly not have gotten his second chance if he had said that he planned to continue hosting dog fights and was proud about it. In other words, if Rush Limbaugh apologized for his offenses (which I list below), and changed the content of his show, no one would be opposed to his owning the Rams.
2) Being that Limbaugh is a radio host, the nature of his show dictates that he only uses words, but the fact is that those words reach the ears of millions of listeners (from my limited research, between 10 and 50 million, so lets just stick with millions), and those people act, argue, and think on the basis of what Limbaugh says, so his words translate to have a far greater cumulative effect on the actions of many than one NFL player's individual actions.
3) Limbaugh has participated and profited (his last contract was worth $400 million) from a conservative movement that has alienated many of its own Republican party members (perhaps even Colin, who claims to be socially liberal and fiscally conservative), and that has totally dissolved the civility and dignity which used to be afforded the political process--moreover, to accomplish this end, he has lied, manipulated information, and misled his listeners to achieve this politically motivated result. He is the figurehead of everything bad about the Republican party, whose aims have been primarily to work against the general good of the American people in exchange for the profits of millionaires, billionaires, and multinational corporations (By the way, if anyone can prove that the above allegations are not factually accurate, I will publish your admonition of my statement).
Cowherd is right to point out that in all probability, many NFL owners are conservative. The difference between them and Rush is that Limbaugh has made a living doing it, and doing it loudly. Owners are just owners--who knows what their views are and why they have them--as long as they aren't made public, it doesn't really matter to the players or the fans.
On the flip side, Rush is a polarizing figure that people either love or hate, and the fact is that he has said racially insensitive things before (Donovan McNabb), and his Republican party continues to basically oppose everything our BLACK president does for completely political reasons.
Maybe he does have a right to buy the Rams franchise, but then so too, do players have a right not to play, and fans have a right not to attend games (though, judging from the Rams record, they may have already started doing that).
Apparently, Colin and the folks as ESPN have failed to consider a few key points:
1) NFL players that commit crimes are forced to apologize for their actions, and are usually punished with fines or jail time--Rush Limbaugh, as far as I know, makes no apologies for his talk show, and plans on continuing his broadcast. Michael Vick would certainly not have gotten his second chance if he had said that he planned to continue hosting dog fights and was proud about it. In other words, if Rush Limbaugh apologized for his offenses (which I list below), and changed the content of his show, no one would be opposed to his owning the Rams.
2) Being that Limbaugh is a radio host, the nature of his show dictates that he only uses words, but the fact is that those words reach the ears of millions of listeners (from my limited research, between 10 and 50 million, so lets just stick with millions), and those people act, argue, and think on the basis of what Limbaugh says, so his words translate to have a far greater cumulative effect on the actions of many than one NFL player's individual actions.
3) Limbaugh has participated and profited (his last contract was worth $400 million) from a conservative movement that has alienated many of its own Republican party members (perhaps even Colin, who claims to be socially liberal and fiscally conservative), and that has totally dissolved the civility and dignity which used to be afforded the political process--moreover, to accomplish this end, he has lied, manipulated information, and misled his listeners to achieve this politically motivated result. He is the figurehead of everything bad about the Republican party, whose aims have been primarily to work against the general good of the American people in exchange for the profits of millionaires, billionaires, and multinational corporations (By the way, if anyone can prove that the above allegations are not factually accurate, I will publish your admonition of my statement).
Cowherd is right to point out that in all probability, many NFL owners are conservative. The difference between them and Rush is that Limbaugh has made a living doing it, and doing it loudly. Owners are just owners--who knows what their views are and why they have them--as long as they aren't made public, it doesn't really matter to the players or the fans.
On the flip side, Rush is a polarizing figure that people either love or hate, and the fact is that he has said racially insensitive things before (Donovan McNabb), and his Republican party continues to basically oppose everything our BLACK president does for completely political reasons.
Maybe he does have a right to buy the Rams franchise, but then so too, do players have a right not to play, and fans have a right not to attend games (though, judging from the Rams record, they may have already started doing that).
Monday, October 12, 2009
The Nobel Prize
Yes, yes, our president won the Nobel prize, and as usual, the right-wing blowhards are all over it, saying that Obama didn't deserve it, that he shouldn't have accepted it, and that it is emblematic of his presidency thus far: all talk and no action. These are the same people that rejoiced when Chicago didn't get the Olympics, and that continue to laud and protect a health care system that leaves 50 million people uninsured while financially bleeding our country dry. We, liberals, were chastised for "hating America" by these same people, who think that an American president, winning the Nobel Peace Prize, is a bad thing.
And while the media continues to hold a circus trying to make Obama the bad guy for winning a prestigious prize on the behalf of our country, all it really does is display the absolute transparency of the Republican party's morality of the late. Everything Obama achieves is bad--everytime he fails, its good. End of story--no matter what.
I know. Its about as complex a strategy as that of a two year old crying in the super market for candy, or an over matched football team hoping the opposition's star running back gets injured before the big game. Of course, in either case, both of them actually have a chance of getting their way--the Republicans, like the fat girl who develops a crush on the heart throb QB, hopes for his girlfriend's demise, and refuses to diet, have none.
As stated previously on this blog, the time when Republicans can win by going negative has passed. It passed in 2008 when Barack Obama won the Presidency. Maybe that is why they are so mad at him. And at this point, all it would take is a fiscally conservative, socially liberal party (in other words, unlike the Greens or the Libertarians, one that was viable) to make the Republican party obsolete, because as usual, other than breeding hate and mud-slinging, they appear to have absolutely no interest in governing this country in a way that benefits the majority of its citizens.
The press may conveniently forget this, but I suspect that voters have not.
And while the media continues to hold a circus trying to make Obama the bad guy for winning a prestigious prize on the behalf of our country, all it really does is display the absolute transparency of the Republican party's morality of the late. Everything Obama achieves is bad--everytime he fails, its good. End of story--no matter what.
I know. Its about as complex a strategy as that of a two year old crying in the super market for candy, or an over matched football team hoping the opposition's star running back gets injured before the big game. Of course, in either case, both of them actually have a chance of getting their way--the Republicans, like the fat girl who develops a crush on the heart throb QB, hopes for his girlfriend's demise, and refuses to diet, have none.
As stated previously on this blog, the time when Republicans can win by going negative has passed. It passed in 2008 when Barack Obama won the Presidency. Maybe that is why they are so mad at him. And at this point, all it would take is a fiscally conservative, socially liberal party (in other words, unlike the Greens or the Libertarians, one that was viable) to make the Republican party obsolete, because as usual, other than breeding hate and mud-slinging, they appear to have absolutely no interest in governing this country in a way that benefits the majority of its citizens.
The press may conveniently forget this, but I suspect that voters have not.
Monday, October 5, 2009
The Economy--Part 1: Health Care
The U.S. currently finds itself in an interesting position--our GDP is just beginning to once again swing upward out of recession (a recession is considered to be two or more consecutive quarters in which the GDP declines), and yet the unemployment rate continues to climb toward 10% (figures currently put the number at about 9.8% nationally)--and as always, this doesn't include people who have given up on finding jobs, or are partially, or under employed (meaning they have jobs, but not the kind of jobs they want or need financially--think Home Depot, or worse, fast food).
There are several primary reasons why our economy is in the dumps and why unemployment numbers are swelling: 1) the tremendous cost of healthcare, 2) the effects of illegal immigration on the labor market, 3) the lack of funding for education, especially higher education, and 4) the shift in wealth from the middle class to the ultra wealthy.
Over the next week or so, I will address each of these factors, and explain why, if we want a strong, healthy economy, our policies must change. We will begin with health care.
Healthcare is the single most controversial issue today in our society, and we have reached a critical point where we have a Democratic party that for the most part is in support of far reaching reforms, and a Republican party adamantly opposed to any action whatsoever. Many of the arguments, as usual, are ideological in nature, and therefore obscure the real problem with the status quo--it is just too damned expensive.
The current U.S. Healthcare system places a huge amount of responsibility on private employers to provide healthcare for their employees. Health care premiums have gone up 131% over the past decade, and are projected to rise 166% over the next decade (about $29,000 per employee). Simply put, the cost of providing employee healthcare is forcing many businesses out of business or overseas.(1) At the very least, they are finding ways around providing health care for their employees, which is one of the reasons that the U.S. boasts nearly 50 million people that do not have any kind of medical coverage.
Much of the tremendous cost of health care is due to bureacratic overhead. According to a Denver Post article published earlier this year, "More than 31 percent of every dollar spent on health care in the U.S. goes to paperwork, overhead, CEO salaries, profits, etc." Compare this to the provincial single-payer system in Canada, which, "operates with just a 1 percent overhead." As the author points out, "It is not necessary to spend a huge amount of money to decide who gets care and who doesn't when everybody is covered."
Continuing with the comparison, Canada's health care system is far less expensive. Whereas the U.S. spends about 17 percent of its GDP on health care to cover 85% of the population, Canada spends 10 percent of its GDP to cover 100% of its population.
So Canadians must pay far more in taxes than Americans to pay for this right? Acutally, the answer is no, as noted in the same article: "Overall, Canada's taxes are slightly higher than those in the U.S., Canadians are afforded many benefits for their tax dollars, even beyond health care (e.g., tax credits, family allowance, cheaper higher education), so the end result is a wash. At the end of the day, the average after-tax income of Canadian workers is equal to about 82 percent of their gross pay. In the U.S., that average is 81.9 percent." (2--this is a great article, by the way, to read on its own)
In other words, universal health care is far more economically viable than the current oligarchic private system. True reform (a single payer system--see the note at the end on this) would put that 7% of the GDP back into the U.S. economy in terms of consumer savings, business profit, and a reduction of operating costs in both the public and private sector. The amount of capital that this would free up for innovation, investment, and the viability of small businesses would be absolutely astounding.
(1)http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/sep2009/db20090915_854650.htm
(2)http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_12523427#
NOTE: It is important to remember, that no matter how hard and long people scream about it, a single payer system is not socialism. As the author of the Denver post article explains,
"Princeton University health economist Uwe Reinhardt says single-payer systems are not "socialized medicine" but "social insurance" systems because doctors work in the private sector while their pay comes from a public source. Most physicians in Canada are self-employed. They are not employees of the government nor are they accountable to the government. Doctors are accountable to their patients only. More than 90 percent of physicians in Canada are paid on a fee-for-service basis. Claims are submitted to a single provincial health care plan for reimbursement, whereas in the U.S., claims are submitted to a multitude of insurance providers. Moreover, Canadian hospitals are controlled by private boards and/or regional health authorities rather than being part of or run by the government."
There are several primary reasons why our economy is in the dumps and why unemployment numbers are swelling: 1) the tremendous cost of healthcare, 2) the effects of illegal immigration on the labor market, 3) the lack of funding for education, especially higher education, and 4) the shift in wealth from the middle class to the ultra wealthy.
Over the next week or so, I will address each of these factors, and explain why, if we want a strong, healthy economy, our policies must change. We will begin with health care.
Healthcare is the single most controversial issue today in our society, and we have reached a critical point where we have a Democratic party that for the most part is in support of far reaching reforms, and a Republican party adamantly opposed to any action whatsoever. Many of the arguments, as usual, are ideological in nature, and therefore obscure the real problem with the status quo--it is just too damned expensive.
The current U.S. Healthcare system places a huge amount of responsibility on private employers to provide healthcare for their employees. Health care premiums have gone up 131% over the past decade, and are projected to rise 166% over the next decade (about $29,000 per employee). Simply put, the cost of providing employee healthcare is forcing many businesses out of business or overseas.(1) At the very least, they are finding ways around providing health care for their employees, which is one of the reasons that the U.S. boasts nearly 50 million people that do not have any kind of medical coverage.
Much of the tremendous cost of health care is due to bureacratic overhead. According to a Denver Post article published earlier this year, "More than 31 percent of every dollar spent on health care in the U.S. goes to paperwork, overhead, CEO salaries, profits, etc." Compare this to the provincial single-payer system in Canada, which, "operates with just a 1 percent overhead." As the author points out, "It is not necessary to spend a huge amount of money to decide who gets care and who doesn't when everybody is covered."
Continuing with the comparison, Canada's health care system is far less expensive. Whereas the U.S. spends about 17 percent of its GDP on health care to cover 85% of the population, Canada spends 10 percent of its GDP to cover 100% of its population.
So Canadians must pay far more in taxes than Americans to pay for this right? Acutally, the answer is no, as noted in the same article: "Overall, Canada's taxes are slightly higher than those in the U.S., Canadians are afforded many benefits for their tax dollars, even beyond health care (e.g., tax credits, family allowance, cheaper higher education), so the end result is a wash. At the end of the day, the average after-tax income of Canadian workers is equal to about 82 percent of their gross pay. In the U.S., that average is 81.9 percent." (2--this is a great article, by the way, to read on its own)
In other words, universal health care is far more economically viable than the current oligarchic private system. True reform (a single payer system--see the note at the end on this) would put that 7% of the GDP back into the U.S. economy in terms of consumer savings, business profit, and a reduction of operating costs in both the public and private sector. The amount of capital that this would free up for innovation, investment, and the viability of small businesses would be absolutely astounding.
(1)http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/sep2009/db20090915_854650.htm
(2)http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_12523427#
NOTE: It is important to remember, that no matter how hard and long people scream about it, a single payer system is not socialism. As the author of the Denver post article explains,
"Princeton University health economist Uwe Reinhardt says single-payer systems are not "socialized medicine" but "social insurance" systems because doctors work in the private sector while their pay comes from a public source. Most physicians in Canada are self-employed. They are not employees of the government nor are they accountable to the government. Doctors are accountable to their patients only. More than 90 percent of physicians in Canada are paid on a fee-for-service basis. Claims are submitted to a single provincial health care plan for reimbursement, whereas in the U.S., claims are submitted to a multitude of insurance providers. Moreover, Canadian hospitals are controlled by private boards and/or regional health authorities rather than being part of or run by the government."
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