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2/25/2009

Who is this schmuck, anyway? Governor of Louisiana? Well.

Jinal thinks that Obama's stimulus plans are irresponsible.

I believe that irresponsible is refusing to accept stimulus money for your state because you want to "stand on principle." Jindal, the republican party's newest lapdog, believes that democrats in congress have been blocking efforts by republicans in congress to enact republican plans to "save the world." This is like Lex Luther suddenly developing a Superman complex. Absurd.

I think I can tell Jindal what irresponsible is, though. Abandoning one's state in order to perpetuate the self-indulgence that the republican party actually has any plan for anything beyond tomorrow's junket down to the newest Carribbean resort. This is what Jindal has done in refusing federal funding for Louisiana, which can certainly use the money. He has abandoned his state.

Remember that last hurricane to threaten to ram through the gulf and sock New Orleans again? Remember the fear emanating from that bedraggled city during those few days before, and then during the hurricane? The hurricane fizzled, but the fear of another is still very real. Why?

Why was everyone scared senseless last summer when Katrina threatened to re-visit from the grave? Because everyone knows that those levies will fail again.

Jindal might be better served by shutting his trap, and paying attention to the problems his own state faces, rather than indulging in fantasies that the republican party might rise again. Problems such as what if another class 3 or class 4 hurricane smacks into New Orleans this summer?

Like the South, the GOP is dead. Oh, sure, sour vestiges, pale reminders of it, will persist for a hundred years or more, but Bush II and the era of the giant lie known as "compassionate conservatism" drove the final 16penny into the coffin for the GOP. And they still don't get it.

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2/24/2009

AM2PAT, Inc., a company that produced heparin and saline syringes, was shipping contaminated syringes. 5 people dead, hundred sickened. Dushyant Patel, owner, is missing and wanted by prosecutors to stand trial for fraud and selling adulterated medical devices. He is presumed to have fled back to India.

Fraud and Selling Adulterated Medical Devices?

How about some murder charges here? Or at least manslaughter?

Backdating of records for supplies that were not even tested for sterilization, all in an attempt to deceive inspectors from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which we saw during the peanut revelations recently, isn't all that difficult to do.

I'll be writing to President Obama, to urge him to beef up the USDA and FDA, which were gutted throughout Bush II's tenure, because this is getting out of control. We cannot trust what we buy at the grocery store, and we cannot trust that injection we receive when we are at the doctor or hospital.

This is not India, where this type of corner-cutting happens regularly in the drug and medical industry. This is the USA, where we have the resources and ability to keep just these types of dangers to society from happening in the first place. It is time to fix this failed, but necessary system of checks and balances on two of our most important industries - medicine and food production.

So, yes indeed, I will be shooting off that letter to 1600 Pennyslvania Avenue tomorrow. I heard yesterday that the new President receives a folder every day, which contains ten letters from the average american citizen. I heard that he actually reads those letters. Which is more than we got for the past 8 years from Bush II.

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2/23/2009

Microsoft. They laid off 5,000 people. A "software glitch" made a computing error and paid too much severance pay to some of those layoff-ees.

Microsoft then sent those over-paid layoff-ees letters telling them to payup in two weeks. That was enough to earn Microsoft the turkey of the week. But wait, it gets better, to about 4 dimensions worth of betterness:

Those letters. Gee, how they ever wound up on the INTERNET I guess we'll just never know. Seems Microsoft finally realized that this doesn't really look so good to the general public right about now, and maybe even realizing (although I am doubtful) that there is superior open-source software that outperforms Office 9 times over, decided that the layoff-ees could "keep the money."

How big of Microsoft. Funny, though, how they couldn't think of that until they were SHAMED in the public arena. Funny how none of these power-mongering mega-corporations seem to realize just what turkeys of the week they are, until the public reminds them. Dennis Leary's song was comedic satire, you moron upper management turkeys, not a how to manual!

And here's where it gets even better, even if I am speculating: Who wants to lay a wager that whoever was in charge of calculating the severance pay for these layoff-ees was using Excel on Vista??

Ain't it grand?

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2/22/2009

The Bee took a couple-3 days off to celebrate her birthday. I'm old. That's all any of you need to know, so don't ask! (wink wink nudge nudge) So, to keep my own spirits up in the facedown with impending old age, I ignored the news for a few days.

Only to come back and find that somebody has finally been tagged in the murder in Rock Creek Park of Chandra Levy. Chandra was intern to and mistress of the failed House Rep Gary Condit. Turns out it's some wacked in the head Salvadoran who likes to attack young women in secluded areas of Rock Creek Park. There goes my theory that Condit had her killed because she was going to talk to the press about the affair. Damn, I hate to be wrong. Not that I'm fully convinced that I am actually wrong.

Then I find that the Army Charity, which, on paper at least, is not actually part of the Army, even though it is housed by, overseen by, and ruled by, the Army, has been hoarding over $100 million in money that is collected by coercion from Army members, and is supposed to be doled out to those who hit on hard times, and really need the money to feed the kids and wife. The Army charity hasn't been giving out the funds though - it has been stockpiling it against some unforeseen future disaster (like the current economic meltdown??) and loaning it out to soldiers. Loans that come with the expressed or implied loan terms of: You don't leave the Army, you don't get transferred, you don't get promoted, until you pay back the loan. Newsflash, Army: Pay those men and women a living wage, and you won't have to worry about them being in hock to their eyebrows and therefore posing a security risk. And enough with the loan sharking with charitable donations.

According to the Center for American Progress, 4 million americans have lost their health insurance since the recession began. That's on top of the 48 million who already didn't have any. 14,000 a day continue to lose their insurance.

It is time to nationalize the health care industry, and provide care to everyone. This can be done: take the best parts of the European and Canadian models, and there you go. The republicans will bitch and moan, but who really gives a rip what they think anymore? They are just afraid that someone who isn't wealthy might get a break, and that kills them, because it goes against their entire ideology of "screw the poor! screw the middle class!" So be it. If we have it, we might get used to it, and might decide we like it, and don't want to give it up. Kind of like Social Security. That's what the republicans fear, but so what? They will just have to be afraid, because we out here on Main Street are getting tired of being told we need to be constantly afraid of every perceived boogeyman the republicans can dream up. The monsters under the bed just don't scare me anymore, and that is that, and there you go.

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February 17, 2009

And the turkey of the week award will be split between GM and Chrysler. Why?

Because both are asking for billions more in taxpayer subsidies, while pledging to layoff thousands more workers. Chrysler will layoff 3,000. GM will layoff FORTY-SEVEN THOUSAND. Five US plants will be shut down.

Turkeys! You got the money to stay afloat, and you're still dying. If you're going to layoff your US workforce, GM, maybe you should be allowed to die.

And Chrysler: WTF?? You have to enter into a non-binding alliance with...FIAT?? Fiat, of all companies, to garner their "small car technology?" Are you kidding?

Hello, Chrysler. Remember the K-Car? Yeah, that was you. I know, it was Iacocca, but the man's not dead yet, and I'm willing to bet he could still give a little advice. The K-Car was not the slickest looking or smoothest ride around, but that one helped pull you out of the toilet in the 80's. So, Chrysler, give me a break. You've made small cars before: Neon, Shadow, the Horizon. Perfectly fine, perfectly functional vehicles. And small. Good mileage. I had these vehicles. Still have the neon. And next to the 65 mustang I drove when I was 17, the Shadow was my favorite car. Dodge electric blue, with a nice wide pink pinstripe down the sides and a sunroof. Great mileage, and one of the quickest little 4-cylinder engines you'll ever drive.

Did these car companies really get so off the track, that they don't even have a few engineers to come up with a viable small car? That is quite simply embarassing.

And GM, you can keep trying to blame all of your woes on the UAW, but I don't think the UAW told you to put all your eggs into the SUV behemoth basket, so get off their backs already. The Bee has never, ever been a fan of the GM line, be it the Chevy Corvette (way over-rated, IMHO), or that crap-assesd useless little "retro" truck they pushed a few years ago, which looked like it couldn't even haul a la-z-boy.

Enough is enough. Plow some money into Chrysler, tell them to get the brain-cells knocking around again, and let GM die. GM is already on life-support, and if it's just going to cut tens of thousands of american jobs anyway and tank in April after the first quarter numbers come out, then to hell with it. Maybe we should take that extra 30 billion GM wants, and sink it into a government owned car company making electrics and boosted hybrids exclusively - and re-hire some of those 47,000 workers that GM is going to layoff. Maybe Chrysler can pick up the rest.

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February 14, 2009

High dollar fatcat financiers and investors are dropping like flies, according to this article. Suicide, failed faked-death attempts, running from the law. These seem to be the "way out" for some men who got fabulously rich off the gigantic ponzi scheme known as the Financial Market.

Robert Chew, bilked for millions by Bernie Madoff, said ""We all knew it was a risk, we were told to make sure we were diversified, blah blah, but my God, it had been going strong for so long and with such fantastic returns, we had to get in...We deluded ourselves into thinking we were smarter than the others."

I believe that pretty well sums up most of the investor mentality. What people like Chew are learning now is a lesson that most of us little people learned a long time ago: Free rides just don't exist in reality-land, and there is no such thing as a sure thing. But like Chew said, they deluded themselves into thinking they were smarter than the others.

Some legitimately were taken by con-men. Some were the con men, such as Marcus Schrenker, who neglected to tell investors in his funds of the six-figure fees, so he tried to fake his death by jumping out of his small plane and letting it crash. He was found shortly after in a Florida campground where he had tried to kill himself the old fashioned way - by wrist-cutting.

Some actually succeed in committing suicide after losing their fortunes.

But still...it is extremely difficult for the Bee to feel sympathy for these men. They never produced anything to help the world, or anyone else in it, they only produced money on paper. Not even actual money, mind you, but rather numbers on a spreadsheet that ultimately meant nothing when the stock market crashed and the real estate crashed and the entire world economy crashed last September.

Chew went on to say ""We don't know what we're going to do...We find ourselves at night, with the lights out, crying, asking, `What are we going to do?"'

Welcome to the reality of life for 98% of the population of the U.S., and 99.8% of the population of the world, Mr. Chew. Most of us live our entire lives asking just that question: What are we going to do?, because we live our entire lives at the whims and mercy of the ultra-rich and the Big Corps, who get the ear of our government far more often than we do, and therefore garner themselves de-regulation so that every get-rich-quick scheme that comes along can come to fruition and ultimate ruin, so that men like Chew can hire tax planners who can tell them how to hide their assets and their money so they don't have to pay for their share of the american pie, and the rest of us will pay it for them. Men like Mr. Chew and the others just don't get to live off of the taxpayer-paid welfare they have been living off of for decades, and that's just a crying shame.

The new buzzword in the republican cadre of the delusional and mentally imbalanced is "generational theft." This is what they call any provision of the stimulus act that called for long-term growth in the economy, or god-forbid money toward educating our youth or providing affordable healthcare to the average Joe. What I call generational theft is the long-held republican mantra that free-market privatization and de-regulation will solve all of the worlds problems. Because, in the end, all it did was thieve and steal from a couple of generations of hard-working americans who can barely make ends meet. Ideology that deprived a couple of generations of american kids the top-notch education they need and demand. Ideology that allowed HMOs to form and pick the american middle-class wallet through thievery and chicanery and just letting people die rather than pay a claim. The ideology that said "turning a profit" is more important than educating our future scientists, and teachers, and engineers and explorer. That "turning a profit" is more important than providing quality healthcare to those who need it, for the simple reason that we are the wealthiest country in the world, and it is an embarrassment to be #47 in the developed world in healthcare and education. Ideology that said it is just hunky dory for Big Box Banks to engage in predatory lending practices that served in large part to bring the entire WORLD to its knees.

THAT is the true generational theft.

I have very little sympathy for the wealthy, who took advantage of the situation, to the detriment of all of the rest of us. I have very little sympathy for the very wealthy who didn't have even the sense to sock away enough cash to last them their lifetimes, even though they had millions, and in some cases, billions in assets. My family at least has enough cash in reserve to last us a couple-3 months if one of us loses our job, and we make a less-than-single-digit percent of what these fatcats made in their bad years. Does that make us smarter than the formerly wealthy fatcats?

Yeah, I guess it does.

So, yes, it is very, very difficult for me to have sympathy.

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February 10, 2009

Geithner, the new Treasury Secretary, rolled out the plan today to get the banks to detract their thumbs from their arses and get back to what they obviously don't do best - lending. The program is huge - potentially $1.5 trillion. $500 billion will go toward buying "toxic assets," i.e., real estate, for the most part, and noone has a clue how much its value may be, but real estate is real estate and like someone once said, "they aren't making any more of it."

I am not opposed to this. Geithner proposes that private investors pick up the slack, or at least those who can still afford to do so. The government presumably will pick up the rest. The thing about it is this: I would much prefer if the government bought it all, at fire-sale prices. Why? Because the banks holding de-valued real estate on their books have to either write those losses off, or carry the "assets", and noone in their right mind wants to carry that kind of asset in the banking world. Notice I said "noone in their right mind" which obviously the banks are not in their right mind, or they would be trying to re-negotiate those crappy ARM loans they sold for the past 10 years, just so they wouldn't have to foreclose and take an even bigger hit. The problem is mentality: The Banks all still have the "you can't pay? You're a deadbeat, and we'll take the deed back." This is pretty much the mentality they had during the Great Depression, too. Just goes to show, noone really learns anything except us students of history, and noone listens to us.

Why fire-sale prices, and why not the premiums as proposed earlier in the year? Because Geithner is in a unique position: He has the Bank's feet to the fire. BofA, Wachovia, CitiGroup, all the biggest offenders and biggest losers, are in a tight spot, and at least the real estate would be off their books, and not dragging them down in the mud of depreciated assets. At the same time, the government would be getting a whole lot of land, cheap, to...just sit on, and wait for values to rise to the point where it can sell off the land, in an improved economy, and make a few bucks to give back to us taxpayers. Or, it can turn some of the land into National Parks. Or, it can use some of that land for building solar and wind power "farms" on, and get some of us off the Exxon teat.

There are so many uses for cheap land, it truly boggles the mind with the possibilities. I do not believe this will actually happen, though. Why? The republicans wouldn't like it. You see, a plan like this, while a pinch in the short term, could pay off long-term dividends to the american people, and that is exactly what the republicans do NOT want to happen. In fact, they seem pretty content to let us all be laid off and go jobless and homeless. They figure, that if we do sink to the bottom, then they can come in with a bunch of promises and "I told you so's" (even though they were the obstruction to any type of improvement in the economic health of the company all along), and they will win themselves back into power, where they can shamelessly and without a shred of concience rape and pillage the financial network that is America (and the rest of the world) all over again to their hearts content, until we're all forced to eat the mystery meat...as in Soylent Green.

Of course, Wall Street swallowed the whole bottle of tylenol in its first suicide attempt since...last week, and tanked almost 400 points on news that the big 21st century Robber Barons wouldn't be allowed to continue with business as usual.

Rep. Scott Garrett, republican, NJ (and how the hell did that happen?) doesn't like Geithner's plan because he wonders if there would be enough governmental oversight.

Well, that all falls flat when we look at Garrett's own voting record. Seems he voted no to a bill to try to regulate the sub-prime mortgage industry.

And also, he evidently likes to keep poor people in their place, because he also voted NO to a bill to try to revitalize some public housing in decrepit, unliveable conditions. What a great big heart this turkey has!

House Minority Leader Boehner said about Geithner's plan that he didn't like that it didn't have an exit strategy. Someone should tell him not to mention the "exit strategy" after he made clear, in his own words in 2007, that he did not support an exit strategy for Iraq. Glass houses, buddy, glass houses.

Maybe later this week I'll out a couple of other republicans who have been complaining about "lack of governmental oversight" and "exit strategies" when they should really be keeping their fat traps shut.

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February 6, 2009

People die. From deadly bacteria.

You have all heard by now of the massive peanut-product recall. I pulled a list last week that was 31 pages long, and contained names from WalMart to Keebler. And it's packed with salmonella.

Now we know that this wasn't just one batch of bad peanuts, this has been ongoing for at least two years. Two years of salmonella-laced nabs. Two years of salmonella-laced frozen cookie dough. Two years of salmonella-laced "everything with peanut products in it" produced by Peanut Corp of America, which continued to not only produce tainted products after FDA required testing came back positive for salmonella, but continued to sell them, as well.

And people have died. 8 confirmed. Probably many more, going back two years. 574 horrendously sick, but again, probably many more going back two years.

And it's not just Salmonella filling for peanut butter crackers and cookie dough that the Peanut Corp of America was putting out. In 2001, FDA inspectors found insecticides tainting the companies products.

Somebody needs to go to jail for murder. Perhaps George Bush. It was, after all, George Bush who for the past eight years gutted the FDA, gutted it's budget, hampered it to the point where, obviously, it and its required testings were absolutely useless. Because this food manufacturer did the required testing - and when the tests came back positive for an intestinal bug deadly to the young and the very old, they just got more testing until they got the results they wanted. Sometimes. Sometimes this company just went ahead and sold the tainted product anyway.

Meanwhile, all these tests that the FDA required clealy were worth the paper they were written on, because there was no oversight of this company, no requirement that when a product comes back positive for a deadly bug that the plant be immediately shut down until further testing of all products could be performed. The FDA, gutted and understaffed and underfunded as it is, could not take it upon itself to shut this plant down, because they didn't even know about it until the dying started. The USDA had been performing inspections, but the USDA used "'contract auditors' who are 'number crunchers'... who know nothing about peanuts. They only visited to review records...."

And the USDA didn't talk to the FDA. And the FDA didn't talk to the USDA. Sound familiar? It should, as this is the same problem that occurred in the lead-up to 9/11, when Justice didn't talk to the FBI who didn't talk to the CIA who didn't talk to the NSA who didn't talk to...whoever it is they talk to.

Reagan said that government cannot solve the problems, because government is the problem. I disagree, and I suspect that the loved ones of the confirmed 8 who have died because of the heinously malicious and predatory business practices of the Peanut Corp of America. I disagree because of the even more aggregious gutting of the FDA by republican presidents who could care less that people in what is still the wealthiest, cleanest and safest country in the world died of salmonella poisoning as a direct result of deregulatory ideology. The same deregulatory free-market-solves-all-ills-and-socialism-is-evil philosophy that led to the biggest economic meltdown of all time (and it keeps being compared to the great depression, but in sheer dollars, rubles, yen, pounds, etc., this one is the mother of all economic meltdowns.) No, Big Government isn't the problem - Government with no teeth and no care at all is the problem.

Free Market, unfettered by those pesky rules that keep sociopathic companies from murdering people simply does not work. It never has, and it never will. From the Bay City power company to Peanut Corp of America, from Pfizer to the mega-farms with their cows that if you saw one close up you wouldn't even recognize, to the war on middle america being waged right now by the Big Box Banks, deregulation really is the root of all evil.

Society has rules for a reason. We, whether conciously or sub-conciously, for the most part accept a certain social contract. We do not kill each other. We do not try to run one another down with large machinery. We do not run naked through the streets, except on certain special occasions. We do not hang people from the courthouse lawn flagpole. We do not lynch people, or starve them to death. When we do in fact do these things, we are made, usually, to pay a price.

The problem with Free Market Ideology is that it utterly abandons the social contract, and is the equivalent of a deranged ax murderer bolstered by tons of money, the best lawyers and a congressional rep in each pocket.

This is the change we need: Freedom from the tyranny of a failed "free market" ideology which has been allowed to run unfettered and un-punished, unrestricted and unrepentant. It has become Dr. Frankenstein's monster run amok, and it must be put back into its restraints before it destroys the entire village.

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February 3, 2009

GM has offered ALL of its hourly employees a buyout offer.

ALL. They have until March 24 to decide whether or not to take the buyout offer. The offer is targeted mainly at retirement-age hourly workers, but GM says any union employee can take the offer.

Read between those lines. This is a war of attrition.

Remember a few weeks back when the Big 3 appeared before Congress, and got their asses handed to them on a platter for flying in private jets to beg public money to keep their companies afloat? Remember what the republican response was? "When the UAW makes more concessions, we'll consider it."

This was widely seen as simply an attempt to further drive the nail in to the coffin of the Unions, and it worked. The UAW had to make concessions, even though it had made concessions every single time before when GM, Chrysler & Ford got themselves in trouble with poor planning and poorer management. Since 1975.

Attrition. The reduction of a workforce with no intention of replacing them.

This could mean a couple of things. This could signal a liquidation attempt by GM. Or, it could signal an attempt to do away with the UAW entirely by "buying out" those union hourly workers who accept the buyout offer, with the implicit understanding that to not take the buyout offer means an outright layoff soon thereafter.

Just because GM doesn't intend to replace union workers doesn't mean it doesn't intend to replace workers at some point. Just not union workers.

Stay tuned, because Ford and Chrysler may very well make a similar annoucement in the near future.

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