This Is Why We Have Occupy Wall Street!

President Obama’s Christmas and New Year’s Greeting

Well, we have now put Christmas day behind us with new years approaching and our Obamadier had enjoyed his Christmas holiday with his family. Most Americans have been handed canned rations, while our president feasted upon the famous White House Christmas dinner served up by the White House cook and staff. How nice.

New Year’s celebrations will bring merriment and joy as The Obamadier toasts to the delusional optimistic fantasies that float about in his sugarplum brain. Chaos will likely be the legacy of 2011.

The past week has shown us that Barack Obama has been bitten by the rabid dogs of Congress, once more, certifying that he now has a full-blown case of rabies. Our president is a rabid Democrat who has been filled with the toxic venom of the Grotesquely Outrageous Psychopathetics-GOP-engaged in a planned demolition of the lives of many working Americans trying to keep from drowning in their pool of personal debt.

It is a sad day for a Democratic president, although it is in name only, and not by action, when a rabid GOP pundit, Charles Krauthammer, says that he has made centrist decisions of which he approves.  Mr. Krauthammer is a contributing editor of the Weekly Standard and has been proclaimed as the centrist voice for conservatives.

The joke is what counts for centrist in America today was considered radical rightwing around 30 plus years ago. But now, the right has moved so far right that they should be called the American Reichwing. Obamadier has leaped into the GOP’s regressive sliding scale of insanity and austerity-building programming on one end, and with an American style fascism on the other. So, where does centrism fit in?

This is the HOPE and CHANGE he has delivered to all of those who dedicated time and energy into electing him to the Office of President of the United States. It was a major con-job. It was an attack upon Democrats by The Obamadier, who has been praised by the likes of those who supported LilBoyBush and his introduction into an American-style fascism.

I have been saying this for 10 years, now, and little has changed. For nearly 20% of working Americans, it has gotten worse, throughout most or all of the states making up this union of American states by those Neoconclastics living among us.

Neoconclastics - I will define my new word as the deliberate destruction of the working class culture, which relies upon social safety nets, as well as, worker’s rights, environmental protections, local sovereign rights by community residents, and the overall protections amassed by average Americans and held up as democratic icons over the centuries. This planned destruction has been moved forward by plutocrats for the sole purpose of protecting and enriching the regressive elite corporate and greedy members within the government and society.

What is currently evolving is a movement by them to move the nation and the rights of citizens away from democracy.

Here is one example, as stated by Karl Denninger, in the piece called Recission Under Fire by the Fed (12-17-10, Market-ticker):

“Fraud…is a business practice. And protecting fraud is the primary function of The Fed:

Consumer groups and industry lawyers say a rule under consideration by the central bank would make it harder for borrowers to exercise their right of “rescission,” which forces a lender to relinquish a lien on a mortgaged property. They said the number of rescissions have grown in recent years as a result of the foreclosure crisis and allegations that mortgage documents were fabricated or processed improperly.

Ken Markison, regulatory counsel at the Mortgage Bankers Association, said the change would save lenders money. “Greater clarity will help avoid unnecessary litigation and reduce costs.”

Nowhere is the point made that the reason these “costs” show up is that the lender screwed the borrower in the first instance. What The Fed proposes to do is to force the principal repayment to happen before the lien is released. This effectively destroys the remedy, since without the ability to pledge the collateral for the new loan it will be impossible to obtain a new loan.” (End)

We have a Fed, and those who support the economic crime syndicate’s banker-Ben Bernanke- believing that the foreclosed-upon homeowner has no right to demand the fraudulent banksta prove he/she actually holds the mortgage paperwork!!

As Ben Bernanke says out loud to the mirror whenever he trims his beard, “We don’t need no stinkin’ paperwork!”

The Neoconclastics are hard at work to kill YOU!

The President [and his team] also chose to cover up the economic crimes. “Not only has the greatest wave of financial fraud in our history gone largely uninvestigated and unpunished, the government and this administration with its stress tests (which were fakes), its relaxation of accounting standards which permitted banks to hold toxic assets on their books at far higher prices than any investor would pay, with its failure to make criminal referrals where these were clearly warranted, with its continuation in office—sometimes in acting capacities—of some of the leading non-regulators of the earlier era, has continued an ongoing active complicity in financial fraud. And, the perpetrators, of course, prospered as never before: reporting profits that they would not have been able to report under honest accounting standards and converting tax payer support into bonuses; while at the same time cutting back savagely on loans to businesses and individuals, and ramping up foreclosures, much of that accomplished with forged documents and perjured affidavits.

Could the President and his administration have done something? Yes, they could have. Where was the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation? Why did they choose not to implement the law—the Prompt Corrective Action law—which requires the federal government to take into receivership financial institutions when there is a significant risk of large taxpayer losses to the insurance fund? Where were the FBI and the Department of Justice? Did the President do anything? No. Is he doing anything now? No. Why not? The most likely answer is that he did not want to.” (James K. Galbraith: Whose Side Is Obama On?, Alternet. Org, 12-10-10).

Yet, The Obamadier wants to demonize unions and public government employees who have representation through a union. He wants to finger wag at workers who have been severely damaged, economically, by those who he has given a Green-Light-GO—those inside and working for the economic crime syndicate. He has listened to the likes of Larry Summers, Timmie Geithner, Gensler, Rubin, Bernanke and others when they told him that it was all under control, so forgetaboutit!

Right.

‘It was all under control’ meaning that the criminals, fraudsters, shysters, bankstas, conartists whose pockets are filled with the free money handed out to them, are now under the Government Protection Program.

Here is what Paul Krugman said in his NYT piece, “Humbug Express”:

“If you listen to the recent speeches of Republican presidential hopefuls, you’ll find several of them talking at length about the harm done by unionized government workers, who have, they say, multiplied under the Obama administration. A recent example was an op-ed article by the outgoing Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty, who declared that “thanks to President Obama,” government is the only booming sector in our economy: “Since January 2008” — silly me, I thought Mr. Obama wasn’t inaugurated until 2009 — “the private sector has lost nearly eight million jobs, while local, state and federal governments added 590,000.

Horrors! Except that according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, government employment has fallen, not risen, since January 2008. And since January 2009, when Mr. Obama actually did take office, government employment has fallen by more than 300,000 as hard-pressed state and local governments have been forced to lay off teachers, police officers, firefighters and other workers.

But anyone paying attention knew why public employment had risen — and it had nothing to do with Big Government. It was, instead, the fact that the federal government had to hire a lot of temporary workers to carry out the 2010 Census — workers who have almost all left the payroll now that the Census is done.

There has not, however, been any visible effort to retract those erroneous claims. And this isn’t the only case of a claimed huge expansion in government that turns out to be nothing of the kind. Have you heard the one about how there’s been an explosion in the number of federal regulators? Mike Konczal of the Roosevelt Institute looked into the numbers behind that claim, and it turns out that almost all of those additional “regulators” work for the Department of Homeland Security, protecting us against terrorists.”

Mr. Obamadier has joined the ranks of the Neoconclastics who want to cut your Social Security but privatizing it and reducing benefits, cut Medicaid and Medicare, ie.- to kill you, outsource more of your jobs, steal your retirement, jack up the price of your health care, take more of your wages, and hijack your democracy!

The Obamadier scam continues. What is clear is that he, nor his TeamingWeenings want us to know the economy is failing. He claims that tax cuts for the rich are required to bring back jobs, when in fact, those tax cuts will be used to defeat liberal and progressive Democrats, and moderate Republicans in 2012. The tax cut for the rich will become a taxpayer funded subsidy campaign contribution for those running as Reichpublicans.

Who and what is responsible for the lousy economy? Robert Reich says this:

 “Story A: Big government, bureaucrats, and the cultural and intellectual elites that back them.” [This is the Republican and Obama tale of woe as they place blame on the easy marks.] “Story B: Big business, Wall Street, and the powerful and privileged who represent them.” [A more accurate account of the culprits.]

Reich continues by saying, “In reality, the lousy economy is due to insufficient demand—the result of the nation’s almost unprecedented concentration of income at the top. The very rich don’t spend as much of their income. And since the housing bubble burst, the middle class hasn’t had the buying power to keep the economy going. That concentration of income, in turn, is due to globalization and technological change—along with unprecedented campaign contributions and lobbying designed to make the rich even richer and do nothing to help average Americans, insider trading, and political bribery.

[Story] A is the story President Obama is telling, indirectly, through his deficit commission, his freeze on federal pay, his freeze on discretionary spending, and his wavering on extending the Bush tax cuts for the rich.

[Obama] “He’s telling story A. Making a big deal out of the deficit—appointing a deficit commission and letting them grandstand with a plan to cut $4 trillion out of the projected deficit over the next ten years--$3 of government spending for every $1 of tax increase—is telling story A. Announcing a two-year freeze on federal salaries—explaining that “I did not reach this decision easily—these are people’s lives”—is also telling story A. What the public hears is government bureaucrats are being paid too much, and that if we get the federal payroll under control we’ll all be better off. Proposing a freeze on non-discretionary (non-defense) spending is telling story A. So is signaling a willingness to extend the Bush tax cuts to the top.” And so, is [the likely appointment] of a Wall Streeter to be his top economic advisor another confirmation that story A is The Obamadier’s agenda? (Robert Reich, The Big Economic Story, and Why Obama Isn’t Telling It, 12-1-10).

And, if this isn’t enough for ya.

“Nine firms—five of them foreign—were able to borrow between $5.2 billion and $6.2 billion in U.S. government securities, which effectively act like cash on Wall Street, for four-week intervals while paying one-time fees that amount to the miniscule rate of 0.0078 percent. This was all done with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The program, called the Term Securities Lending Facility ensured that the firms had cash on hand to lend, invest, and trade.” (Shahien Nasiripour, Huffingtonpost, Money For Nothing: Wall Street Borrowed from Fed at 0.0078 Percent, 12-1-10).

Paul Krugman wrote, “Last week, reports Shahien Nasiripour of The Huffington Post, all the Republican members of the [Financial Crisis Inquiry] [C]ommission voted to exclude the following terms from the[ir] report: “deregulation”, “shadow banking”, “interconnection”, and, yes, “Wall Street”.”

He also stated, “This bubble was inflated by irresponsible lending, made possible both by bank deregulation and the failure to extend regulation to “shadow banks”, which weren’t covered by traditional regulation but nonetheless engaged in banking activities and created bank-type risks. It turned out that Wall Street had created a web of interconnection nobody understood…”

Krugman stated in his “Wall Street Whitewash” (NYT, 12-16-10), with quote:

“Last week, Spencer Bachus, the incoming G.O.P. chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, told The Birmingham News that “in Washington, the view is that the banks are to be regulated, and my view is that Washington and the regulators are there to serve the banks.”

Now Reuters wrote that “The plan agreed to by President Barack Obama and Republican leaders last week could push up debt levels, increasing the likelihood of a negative outlook on the United States rating in the coming two years, the ratings agency said.”

Holy shit! A downgrade from A to Aaa could cause a serious blow to US Treasuries, which are barely paying anything at all, and wound what is considered to be the only safe security for many Americans.

Reuters also said that “After Obama announced his plan, Treasury prices fell sharply in volatile trade last week and yields have hit a six-month high, in part due to concerns over the effect the package will have on government debt levels. If the bill becomes law, it will "adversely affect the federal government budget deficit and debt level," Moody's said.”

The Obamadier appears to be listening to his Neoconclastic regressive henchmen who are out to behead the working class American. Is this his HOPE AND CHANGE?

If it were not for Jon Stewart, maybe the 9/11 responders would have ignored by the Reichpublicans, once again.

This Neoconclastic ideology is what took the economy down the rabbit hole, which will end up getting deeper for many Americans.

Such a plutocracy (those in political control of the state by an oligarchy of the wealthy) is filled with Regressive evildoers who have been elected by the American sub-literates, and who thus far haven’t realized that they are being dope-slapped and robbed by the very people they elected to represent them.

Happy New Year!

Thanks for reading, jerry

http://eye-on-washington.blogspot.com 

A Public Option Health Care For All Who Want It?

I am writing this from Washington, DC, although it will be posted later. I attended the rally/protest attended by around 250 people who came as far as California, Arizona, Minnesota, Illinois and Pennsylvania supporting single-payer and public option health care. The day was sunny and hot, but was held in the partially shaded Upper Senate Park a stone’s throw from the senate office buildings. The opulence surrounding the city’s taxpayer funded government machine was very blatant. The over abundance of black SUV limousines used for the security industrial complex and by the highly paid legislators who receive the nation’s best retirement and health insurance plans were lined up all over the senate office complex.

I wore a button stating that I was representing a young man, 24 years young, who died just days before from an undetected heart condition. He died in his sleep. He had no health insurance.

The speakers ranged from Senator Bernie Sanders, Congressman John Conyers, and those in the medical profession, including President Obama’s personal physician, and those hardworking individuals running single-payer lobbying organizations.

President Obama’s personal physician is in support of a single-payer health care system for this country, as well as other representatives of physician groups stating their case for the need of a single-payer system. The private health insurance system operating in the United States, currently, has become the most expensive health care system in the world, yet it delivers a very low quality of care relative to the high costs. It ranks only one notch above Slovenia in the quality of care delivered, while embarrassingly below Costa Rica. It ranks number 37 in the world based on statistics taken in 2000. Also, 50 people die every day in the United States as a result of not having health care.

The most important point I came away with from listening to all the voices speaking for a single-payer system was that the insurance companies in this country are parasites sucking out the nation’s personal wealth for themselves. The tens of billions of dollars they drain from the economy every year gets channeled into networks guaranteeing that their profit-making pariah tentacles remain fully intact without interruption. Their parasitic reach has paid out trillions of dollars over the past decade to lobbyists who influence legislation by contributing millions to both parties, $126.8 million, as well as assisting lawmakers in the process of writing bills, and more, some of which could be called influence peddling.

The top three Blue Dog Democratic recipients of health care industry contributions were Rep. Earl Pomeroy (N.D.), with $1.5 million, and Tennessee Reps. Bart Gordon and John Tanner, both of who collected over $1.2 million from the industry and its employees.

The probability of Democrats voting for a public option plan based upon insurance industry contributions can be viewed through this link.

The health industries have also steadily increased their lobbying campaign from $448.1 million in 2007 to $484.4 million in 2008. Senator Max Baucus, who collected $3 million from the health and insurance sectors from 2003 to 2008, has backed away from supporting the public option. Could it be that his insurance industry influence peddler’s got to him?

They also exist as the wall between patient and doctor. This is done by excessively micro-managing the medical decisions doctors make on behalf of their patients. Because of such oversight, patients may not get approved by their insurance companies for critically needed tests, procedures or medications required for the maintenance of personal health and wellness.

With a single-payer system it would eliminate the middleman allowing a closer relationship between doctor and patient. It would also take out the $17.8 billion per year sucked out of the economy by the top twelve private insurers, which if applied to a single-payer system would bring down the actual cost of insuring every American. The administrative costs are around 20% under the private insurance system. In contrast, under the public system of Medicare, those administrative costs are under 6%. Health care spending amounts to 17% of the nation’s GDP.

You might find the Kaiser Family Foundation data page worth reading.

The public option plan, and not to be confused with the Blue DogShit Coalition’s insurance give-away called the Co-op Plan, would empower Americans to lower the private insurer’s premium costs, and prescription drug costs by having the plan negotiate better bulk purchases. The public option is better than continuing with the proprietary system we have now with over 1500 different health insurance companies and just as many rules, restrictions and obstacles.

The public option would allow individuals to seamlessly carry their health plan wherever they go: from job to job, state to state, or when transitioning as an employee to becoming self-employed. The opposition does not understand that the public option is NOT a socialized system, but a public-private partnership, since private insurance plans would remain intact, while a single-payer system would actually be Medicare for all.

Medicare has been a life-saving system over the last 44 years helping to keep seniors out of poverty by covering their health care needs; otherwise, many seniors might be forced to choose between other daily life essentials and paying for their personal health care. Even today, many seniors are choosing between heating in the winter and cooling in the summer over their nutritional needs. Now, if they had to pay for their health insurance, many would go without and use hospital emergency rooms as their primary care doctors.

Even William Kristol, senior editor of the extremely conservative publication called the Weekly Standard, said on the Daily Show, hosted by Jon Stewart, that the Veterans Administration’s public health care system is the best in the country, therefore he reluctantly had to agree with Stewart that the government is very capable of delivering the best health care system in the country if properly funded!

So conservatives, it has been said by one of your own that a single-payer or public option health care system would be the best system in the country if passed by Congress and signed into law by President Obama. He relented into agreeing that the government is more than capable of providing a quality insurance system, if properly funded.

The month of August is the time to personally lobby your Congressperson on behalf of the public option without the insurance industry gift called health care co-ops. Call or send a hard copy letter to your senator(s) and House member letting them know what kind of system you want them to support when it comes up for a vote. Time is running out. In addition, you might also write a letter to President Obama stating that you don’t want him to sign a watered down bill, but a strong and solid bill empowering patients/citizens through a quality public option health care plan.

Let me conclude with the names of some of the Congressional whores who have taken much from the health care industry. These Congressional prostitutes act as if they are the representatives for the various health care corporations instead of the voters who elected them. Here are a few. Let us begin with the Republican whores and how much they got from the corporations:

----Senator John Thune: $1.2 million

----Representative Ginny Brown-Waite: $369,000

----Senator Mitch McConnell: $3.1 million

----Representative Joe Barton: $2 million

----Senator John McCain: $1.6 million

Here are a few of the Blue Dogshit Democratic whores and how much they took:

----Senator Max Baucus: $3.8 million

----Representative Mike Ross: bought and paid for for only $929,000

----Representative Bart Gordon: sold out for $1 million

And, President Obama received $18 million.

I guess it is up to the public to decide if they believe that health care is a right and not a privilege. It would be my belief that the young man, who I knew personally, would have said that health care was a right. Had he had health care, he might have lived to see his dreams and aspirations come true. It appears that the Congressional whores owned by the health care industry don't believe so.

Thanks for reading, jerry