Surprise! The Curmudgeon lives on!
I just have a couple of questions I wanted to ask before the end of the first decade of the Twenty-First Century. It's sort of a short poll.
1. Suppose you had a job that required that: you are married; you travel about 200,000 miles a year and spend about 200 nights a year on the road; your high pressure job required concentration and focus more intense than FAA flight controllers; everyone agreed that you did your job better than anyone in history; on average during the last ten years, every day on the road, about 3-5 incredibly attractive members of the interesting (maybe opposite) sex made it clear that they wanted to have sex with you, do you honestly think that you would have been unfaithful less than 14 times?
2. Do you think that the second decade of the Twenty-First Century will be considerably more peaceful and prosperous because, for about the cost of ten days of hard labor in much of the world, a Snuggie is now available tor your dog?
Happy New Decade! |
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Clear Thinking!
Today, I watched MSNBC’s Hardball to see what it was like without the idiot host Chris Matthews. I saw Brian Bilbray, (R) CA (50th Dist., Oceanside, Camp Pendleton, etc.) defending Joe Wilson (R) SC 3rd Dist, ) who called President Obama a liar during his speech on health care reform. Bilbray said that Wilson thought that Obama was talking about one of the House bills that said that health providers didn’t have to check the status of illegal aliens. Bilbray agreed with Wilson because he said Americans don’t want their tax money providing medical care for illegal aliens! When asked what emergency rooms should do when an illegal alien comes in for emergency life saving care, Bilbray said that they should provide it. When asked who should pay for it. Bilbray said that the Federal government should pay because they are responsible for letting the aliens into the country. Gee, I would think that a duly elected member of the Congress of the United States would know that the government of which he is a part, is supported by the tax payments of Americans. |
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MOB MANIPULATES MED CARE?
Organized crime has taken over the health care industry. They've taken over doctors offices, hospitals and clinics. They force them to pay off under threat of ruining their business if they don't. They intimidate patients into paying them off. Numbers are difficult to obtain, but perhaps as much as 30% of all of the costs of health care—doctors, hospitals, pharmaceuticals, medical equipment, etc.—are skimmed off by these gangs.
Using the same techniques that have been so successful in the past, fear, intimidation and corruption, they now completely control the industry. They threaten patients with economic ruin, bankruptcy and even death. They bribe government officials at every level with "donations." It looks like they have taken over congress which will very soon now force every man, woman and child in the U.S. pay them off. And in typical mob fashion they try to make their activities appear to be legitimate, calling what is clearly a giant, pervasive protection racket "insurance", e.g. "medical insurance" or "malpractice insurance!" |
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4CryingOL! I made the mistake of watching some TV news this morning! Consider the following. There is much evidence to support the following assertions: 1. George W. Bush was not elected President of the United States in 2000 2. He was appointed to be the President by the Supreme Court 3. The deciding vote was cast by Clarence Thomas 4. Clarence Thomas was one of the least qualified Justices ever appointed to the Supreme Court 5. Bush lost the popular vote election 6. Many studies after the election showed that, given a fair count, Gore would have won Florida and the Electoral College election. 7. Dick Cheney was appointed along with George 8. George appointed Donald Rumsfeld and George Tenet 9. The Bush Administration’s best source for information about Iraq was Ahmed Chalabi—a compulsive liar 10. George W. Bush invaded Afghanistan, captured some suspected terrorists and bought others (paid rewards to people who asserted and sometimes lied about the ‘terrorist’) 11. The CIA shipped the suspected terrorists to other countries with less human rights than the US for questioning and then to Guantanamo for years of additional torture and grilling outside of the US 12. George and Dick approved torture and rendition and lied several times saying that they didn’t 13. Dick urged the CIA to use torture to force a prisoner to lie about the connection between Al Qaida and Iraq 14. Waterboarding a prisoner 183 times (about 6 times per day) did not succeed in forcing the prisoner to lie about the connection 15. George Tenet said that the assertion about Iraq having WMD’s was a “slam dunk”—a lie 16. The CIA uses lies as fundamental part of its strategy in many, if not most of its operations 17. The CIA lied to congress about the Iran/Contra affair 18. Dick and George fed Colin Powell the lies that Powell reported to the UN 19. George and Dick knowingly lied about the Al Qaida/Iraq connection and the WMD’s 20.The CIA said that they briefed Senator Bob Graham 4 times on waterboarding prisoners 21. When Graham told them his notes showed only one briefing on “detainee questioning” they checked their records and replied that his notes were ”correct. Their information was in error. There was no briefing on the first three of four dates." 22. Nancy Pelosi says that she was not told by the CIA that they had used or were using waterboarding 23. The CIA said their records show that they did 24. The CIA Director said it’s records on this subject might be wrong 25. Republicans are shouting for an investigation of Nancy Pelosi for calling the CIA liars 26. The most sophisticated, well-financed news organizations the world has ever seen think that whether Nancy Pelosi’s assertion is correct or not is the major news event of the past week
What's wrong with this picture?
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Can You Read This? “Over 80% of preschool and after-school programs serving children from low-income families have no age-appropriate books for their children.” – the Hunger Site If so, you probably didn’t come from a low-income family. Health Insurance Again In response to my note about Health Insurance, in the last issue, I received the following from a reader, Jackie Mcelveny. “Medicare is indeed the MOST effective health care plan in the country. It's exponentially better than any of the others and a much, much higher proportion of available health care dollars go toward......well, um, health care, as novel a concept as that may be. Health care insurance companies sicken me. They would sicken me even if I didn't work in health care, but as you might imagine, I am even more tuned in to their egregious violations of every principle of human decency in search of the almighty dollar! This is not a new feeling for me, I've thought this for at least two decades. I don't know how those people sleep at night. And let me ask: how is it that more Americans don't question the concept of buying insurance (not just health care but any insurance) while having to accept that if it's used (only once in some instances) or overly used (as defined by the insurers) they can then be summarily canceled? How is that INSURANCE?! … And insurance is only the most emblematic of the way that working America has been repeatedly screwed over (forgive the graceless term) by corporate American in pursuit of MORE, MORE, MORE. When are people going to wake up? Obama is trying to change some of this, but my question is why hasn't there been a sense of outrage and rebellion from the PEOPLE? Are we all asleep?” In my reply to her I wrote: You asked: "how is it that more Americans don't question the concept of buying insurance (not just health care but any insurance)…?" Insurance companies ' customers buy insurance to allay their fears. They are afraid not to buy insurance. The greatest motivator of the human animal is fear. So I think they buy insurance for the same reason they support torture and the PATRIOT Act. And with regard to your other question: "why hasn't there been a sense of outrage and rebellion from the PEOPLE", I think we are not yet sufficiently afraid of insurance companies and what they are doing to us. |
| » Volume 7 Number 3 |
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Uninformed Voters Our democracy needs an informed electorate. And we get an informed electorate only to the extent that we educate our populace. And I mean things like teaching physics rather than phys-ed,communication instead of English, how to think rather than how to do arithmetic and problem solving rather than test-passing. “A recent study (included in the Handbook of Early Literacy Research, Vol. 2, edited by Susan Neuman and David Dickinson) shows that while in middle income neighborhoods the ratio of books per child is 13 to 1, in low-income neighborhoods the ratio is 1 age-appropriate book for every 300 children.” – the Hunger Site The First Republicans A friend forwarded the following story to me: “I recently asked my friend's little girl what she wanted to be when she grows up. She said she wanted to be President some day. Both of her parents, liberal Democrats, were standing there, so I asked her, 'If you were President what would be the first thing you would do?' She replied, 'I'd give food and houses to all the homeless people.' Her parents beamed. 'Wow! What a worthy goal’. I told her, 'But you don't have to wait until you're President to do that. You can come over to my house and mow the lawn, pull weeds, and sweep my yard, and I'll pay you $50. Then I'll take you over to the grocery store where the homeless guy hangs out, and you can give him the $50 to use toward food and a new house.' She thought that over for a few seconds, then she looked me straight in the eye and asked, 'Why doesn't the homeless guy come over and do the work, and you can just pay him the $50?'
I said, 'Welcome to the Republican Party.' Her parents still aren't speaking to me. ” This was my reply: “When Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner were doing the 1000 Year-Old Man, they had a bit where Carl asked Mel if they had songs in "the cave man days." Mel said, sure! Carl asked what kind of songs and Mel replied, "anthems!" Carl then asked if Mel's cave had an anthem and if so, did he remember it. Mel said "Of course! Nobody forgets their anthem!" So Carl asked him to sing it for him. And Mel did, "HOORAY FOR MY CAVE, TO HELL WITH YOURS!, HOORAY FOR MY CAVE, TO HELL WITH YOURS!, HOORAY FOR MY CAVE, TO HELL WITH YOURS!, …" Apparently cavemen were the first Republicans. Every study shows that damn few homeless people would rather live on the streets than work. That kind of homeless person is just as rare as the "welfare mother" who would rather have another child than work. If Republicans cared more for the unfortunates, those who received inadequate public school education, who can't afford adequate health care, who are trying to survive on less than a living wage working for union busting companies like Wal-Mart or MacDonalds they might have more than 20% of Americans identifying themselves as a Republican. But, no, they insist on "trickle-down economics" in spite of the fact that it has demonstrably failed—more than once. Even Henry Ford knew that paying his workers 3 times the going wage would allow them to buy a Model A.” Health Insurance? Barack Obama is set to give a speech today about his plans for fixing the health care problems. People seem to agree that lowering health care costs is the most fundamental problem, but corporations (insurance companies, medical equipment companies, pharmaceutical companies and banks) seem to agree that their profits are the most important issue. They have mounted an incredible offensive to keep any “single-payer” or government managed system (e.g. Medicare-for-all) out of the options. Yes, not even an option. But think about it. Health insurance companies have to promote, advertise and sell their insurance and then make a profit. And all of that is just pure overhead on top of the cost of paying for your health care. And then there are organizations like AARP who ‘endorse’ a health care insurance company for a piece of the action. They are being bribed to endorse the company and the bribes increase the cost of the insurance. Insurance is the only industry I can think of which spends a lot of money trying to avoid delivering what they promised to their customers. What do you think a “claims adjuster” does? I work for a very small, not-for-profit, arts organization, which pays $1,700/month on health insurance to cover 7 employees—most are part-time. If you want to really lower the cost of health care, and take a huge burden off of employers (large and small), eliminate profit making insurance companies. Are you worried that a government run health care system will be inefficient, riddled with unproductive employees and waste? Have you ever worked for a large company that didn’t have the same problems? I believe that anyone with access to the real data would find that health care under Medicare is much, much cheaper than any other current approach to providing health care to that many people. But the lobbyists are hard at work, and it looks like we might end up with health care reform that doesn’t even provide the option for government managed or single payer coverage.
May. 11th, 2009 @ 11:15 am
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| » Volume 7 Number 2 |
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A reader asked for an update of the Birth Tax. I was surprised that it had only increased by about 18% since December 2008. The Birth Tax The tax burden assessed by the National Debt to every child at birth in the US is now more than: $ 36,737 At only a 6% fixed rate annual interest, when these children graduate from college (assuming that they didn’t have to get college loans), they will owe: $128,465 And assuming that we neither borrow more money nor pay off any of the debt, the National Debt will then be $39.5 trillion.
The current National Debt, as of Saturday, May 02, 2009 is: $11,245,529,456,905
(7,028,455 ALI) That is an amount now exceeding the total lifetime income of every one of the American men, women, and children living in any one of 38 states working their entire lives to pay off this debt. And that is just to pay off the principal. The debt is increasing by $3.85 billion daily (2,406 ALI daily or 878,281 ALI per year)! See National Debt Clock. For just the cold data see Bureau of Public Debt, and for a very interesting FAQ sheet go to the U.S. National Debt Clock FAQ.
May. 2nd, 2009 @ 11:02 am
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| » Volume 7 Number 1 |
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Hello again everybody. I’ve discovered that Curmudgeons can’t write when they are sitting on the sidelines smiling and applauding. But … Demcon Specter
I just have to point out that the extreme right-wing Republicans drove Arlen Specter out of the Republican Party and now he hopes to start the extreme right-wing of the Democratic Party. I certainly hope that the Democratic Party works hard to put up a decent candidate in the Democratic Primary opposing Stealth Republican Specter. Republicans are losing everywhere and I think Specter would have lost even if he had won the Republican nomination. We can have a moderate or progressive Democratic Senator from Pennsylvania who will vote with his party most of the time instead of once in a while, so why would we want Specter?
May. 1st, 2009 @ 11:03 am
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| » Volume 6 Number 21 |
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Curmudgeonomics 101
For many years I have said that if some university asked me to create their MBA program (I can’t imagine why they would), I would just say: · It’s a two year program divided into 8 quarters, · You pay an initial registration fee of $10,000, · You will use that $10K to play pot-limit poker 4 hours a day, 5 days a week for all 8 quarters, if you can last that long, · If you do last through 8 quarters, you get your MBA, and if not you don’t · If you get your MBA you give me what money you have left including any winnings I think my MBA program teaches a lot about money management, people (psychology), planning, risk management, hard work, concentration, attention, etc. And of course it teaches a lot about gambling. I think that gambling is the heart of the American system of capitalism. I think that laissez faire capitalism is more popular in the US than anywhere else because we are a nation of gamblers. We were founded and built by gamblers, by people who decided to take great and largely unknown risks with a hope of great gains. And it continues to this day—just look at our “illegal immigrants.” Our version of capitalism is dominated by fairly overt gambling. Suppose that you handed me $50,000 and asked me to hold onto it for you and only give any of it back when you explicitly asked for some of it. I might invest it in some stocks and bonds, and since you didn’t say you ever wanted to get more than $50,000 back I could keep the profits. Voila! I’m a “bank.” Or say that you say to me, “I’ll bet you $200 at 20 to 1 odds that I’ll be dead within the next month, and if I win, you have to pay the $4,000 to my wife.” If I accept, I’m an “insurance company”, and I get to invest your $200 each month and keep the investment profits. When I decide to buy some stock in a company, I am betting that the value of the stock will increase and that I’ll make a profit. Of course the price might go down and I would lose money. I’m just gambling—and that kind of gambling is legal in every state, town, and municipality. By the way, why don’t we have a single-payer healthcare system? Because too many gamblers, i.e. insurance companies would be tossed out of the game. And why are healthcare costs so high? Because when the “insurers” lose while gambling with your money (“premiums”) they have to recoup their losses by raising their rates. Oh yeah, and they have to spend a lot of your money trying to make sure that you aren’t cheating, and finding ways to avoid paying off when they lose their bet with you. Now suppose I make a deal with you that you will pay all my bills for me each month and that I will repay you by the 10th of each month. I then make a deal with your creditors that I will pay them by the 20th of each month. So I get to hold your money for 10 days before I have to pay it out. I can do some day trading in market for those 10 days and keep the profit. Wow, I’m a “credit card company!” Boy would I like to find a million or so people who would let me pay their bills that way. That 10 day ride is what people in the banking and credit card business call the “float.” They get to gamble with your money as it floats through their hands. Suppose that you come to me and ask to borrow $300,000 to buy a home, agreeing to pay it back in monthly payments, with interest over a period of 30 years. Since I know you really well, know that you have a good job and will always be able to find job quickly, I might decide that it’s a good bet. But since I know that something awful might happen I ask that you give me your “marker”, an agreement to give me the investment you’ve made in the house if you skip paying me for 1 month. I also might ask you to agree to make another bet each month with someone else that you will get really sick that month and if you win they have to pay my monthly payment. Suppose that I make a deal with an automobile company that I will buy 10 cars a month from them at 90% of their retail value. I then go to my bank and borrow enough to buy 10 cars. Let’s say that they cost me $9K apiece and so I borrow $90K at 12% per annum interest. Now I place a few adds offering the cars for sale at $500 under retail and sell them all in one month or less. I get $9.5K for each car and out of my $500 profit I have to pay the bank at most $90 interest and $9K principal on the loan. So the car I bought cost me $90 and I clear a $410 profit on it. I won a bet that paid over 9 to 1 odds. And I am a “car dealer.” If I own a retail store because the “holiday season” is coming up, I need to buy 2 or 3 times as much product for my store in November than in say February. But I don’t have that much in the bank. So I make a bet with someone, e.g. a “bank”, that I can sell enough product to pay them back, with interest, if they loan me the money I need. If I am a farmer, I probably don’t have enough money to buy all the fertilizer, pesticides, new equipment, etc. that I need for the next season. So I bet the “bank” that I can sell my crop next season for enough to pay them back a loan, with interest and have enough left over to live on. I could go on, but surely you’ve had enough by now. My thesis is that our entire economic system is now built on credit and that credit is just another form of gambling. If you look at all my examples above, you will see that there is some risk and the bettor may not be able to pay off if he or she loses. It is all a gamble! And I’ll bet we are in danger of one of the biggest losing streaks in the history of our country. In Curmudgeonomics 102, we’ll learn how federal legislation can limit the losses of compulsive gamblers so they can always make their house payments. buy groceries and send their kids to school. In Curmudgeonomics 103 we’ll study the worship of market growth and its affects on overpopulation, hunger, pollution and global warming. Cost of the War on Drugs
As of today, Tuesday, December 02, 2008, this year we have spent over Over $46,850,000,000 (29,281 ALI) this year See http://www.drugsense.org/ 678,247 people have been arrested in the US so far in 2008 for marijuana law violations. The Birth Tax
The tax burden assessed by the National Debt to every child at birth in the US is now more than: $34,980 At only a 6% fixed rate annual interest, when these children graduate from college (assuming that they didn’t have to get college loans), they will owe: $118,917 The current National Debt, as of Tuesday, December 02, 2008 is: $10,676,204,479 (6,675,000 ALI) That is an amount now exceeding the total lifetime income of every one of the American men, women, and children living in any one of 38 states working their entire lives to pay off this debt. And that is just to pay off the principal. The debt is increasing by $3.87 billion daily (2,419 ALI daily or 786,100 ALI per year)! See National Debt Clock. For just the cold data see Bureau of Public Debt, and for a very interesting FAQ sheet go to the U.S. National Debt Clock FAQ. Bush's Killing Fields According to the official reports of DoD as of Tuesday, December 02, 2008 4207 US Soldiers killed in Iraq 628 US Soldiers killed in Afghanistan 314 Coalition soldiers killed in Iraq 389 Coalition soldiers killed in Afghanistan See http://iCasualties.org
Dec. 2nd, 2008 @ 11:42 am
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| » Unnumbered Curmudegon Note Numbered 11 |
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 In the middle 1960's I did some work with the Los Angeles Fair Housing Council—tricking racist landlords into a position where they had to rent to blacks. I wonder if their work is done now that we know that a black family will be moving into the White House? Should we start calling it "The House?"
After seeing the results on Proposition 8, I decided to open up my 1st Church of Eclectic Plagiarism to new members. It is the church that I founded years ago when I was ordained as a minister. Up until yesterday it had only one dogma: "Al Irvine is the only allowed member of the church." Yesterday , when reading about the Proposition 8 passage, our 1st Commandment was revealed to me: "Thou shalt know that thou might be wrong about anything." Speaking ex cathedra, I hereby declare anyone who accepts our !st Commandment to be a member of our church.
Nov. 6th, 2008 @ 10:58 am
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