Jimmy Hoffa as he appeared before a Senate hearing. August 22, 1957, Washington, DC.
Begging for Contempt of Congress, by the look see of it.
The story is Jimmy was getting grilled by Bobby Kennedy who was the chief counsel of the 1957–59 Senate Labor Rackets Committee under chairman John L. McClellan. On this day in 1964, Hoffa, then Teamsters Union President, was sentenced to five years in federal prison for defrauding his union’s pension fund. In 1971, President Richard Nixon commuted his sentence.
How did lobbying as we know it today get its start in the United States?
Lobbying had always existed in the United States, even before its independence, thriving in local governments. When crafting the constitution and the Federalist Papers, James Madison saw commerically motivated “factions” as threatening to the general will. He tried to neutralize that threat by making them compete against each other. Even though the First Amendment protects the right to petition, Madison hypothesized that special interest groups would often negate each others powers, thus preventing any possibility of tyranny. Since the federal government did not deal with many economic matters throughout most of the nineteenth century, lobbying occured only at a state level. However, the onset of the Gilded Age and increased federal intervention in fiscal matters also brought a heightened scale of lobbying as we know today.
Adolf Hitler and his German Shepard (“Blondi”) on the balcony of The Berghof; ca. May 1942
Aww, that’s kind of cute. Maybe Hitler wasn’t so bad after all, eh? Let’s see what Wikipedia says:
“Hitler expressed doubts about the cyanide capsules he had received through Heinrich Himmler’s SS. To verify the capsules’ potency, Hitler ordered Dr. Werner Haase to test them on his dog Blondi, and the dog died as a result.”
NEVERMIND THEN.
When some proud Son of Man returns to Earth, Unknown by Glory, but upheld by Birth, The sculptor’s art exhausts the pomp of woe, And storied urns record who rests below. When all is done, upon the Tomb is seen, Not what he was, but what he should have been. But the poor Dog, in life the firmest friend, The first to welcome, foremost to defend, Whose honest heart is still his Master’s own, Who labours, fights, lives, breathes for him alone, Unhonoured falls, unnoticed all his worth, Denied in heaven the Soul he held on earth – While man, vain insect! hopes to be forgiven, And claims himself a sole exclusive heaven. Oh man! thou feeble tenant of an hour, Debased by slavery, or corrupt by power – Who knows thee well must quit thee with disgust, Degraded mass of animated dust! Thy love is lust, thy friendship all a cheat, Thy tongue hypocrisy, thy heart deceit! By nature vile, ennobled but by name, Each kindred brute might bid thee blush for shame. Ye, who perchance behold this simple urn, Pass on – it honors none you wish to mourn. To mark a friend’s remains these stones arise; I never knew but one – and here he lies. Lord Byron [1788-1824], Epitaph to a Dog.
National Socialist propaganda photo of the ideal “Volkssturmmann”. The Volkssturm was the last ditch “People’s Militia” effort employed by the NSDAP. A militia of old men; ca, December 1, 1944
The original idea for the Volkssturm was something called the Landssturm, which was meant to be an actual paramilitary fighting force, meant to not only supplant the Wehrmacht but to hold its own when things got really bad. It was hijacked by the Party and they turned it into a fanatic show-off ring.
For example, men in the Volkssturm, instead of being taught how to fire a rifle and proper fighting tactics, were taught how to salute properly and how to present arms.
When the Party let the generals who could do the job (Rommel, Hoth, Guderian, Model, Manstein, etc) play their parts, then Germany did very well. A lot of the Wunderwaffen, for instance, that the Germans invented came from the Party, who had an extreme hardon for all things ‘cool.’
The front-line units despised all the new-fangled technology and Guderian stated in his memoirs that, had he been in charge of armaments production, he would’ve stuck to the same reliable technology which had been proven in battle instead of making a new tank model every six months.
The rarely seen back of the Hoover Dam before it filled with water; ca. 1936.
With the way Lake Mead is shrinking, we’ll get to take this shot again pretty soon.
The Enola Gay landing after dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, August 6, 1945
Imagine being there. Seeing the plane leave, and then come back, not really knowing what it did.
History of Abortion
The following is an excerpt from the “Abortion” chapter of Our Bodies, Ourselves for the New Century.
HISTORY OF ABORTION
Over several centuries and in different cultures, there is a rich history of women helping each other to abort. Until the late 1800s, women healers in Western Europe and the U.S. provided abortions and trained other women to do so, without legal prohibitions.
The State didn’t prohibit abortion until the 19th century, nor did the Church lead in this new repression. In 1803, Britain first passed antiabortion laws, which then became stricter throughout the century. The U.S. followed as individual states began to outlaw abortion. By 1880, most abortions were illegal in the U.S., except those “necessary to save the life of the woman.” But the tradition of women’s right to early abortion was rooted in U.S. society by then; abortionists continued to practice openly with public support, and juries refused to convict them.
Abortion became a crime and a sin for several reasons. A trend of humanitarian reform in the mid-19th century broadened liberal support for criminalization, because at that time abortion was a dangerous procedure done with crude methods, few antiseptics, and high mortality rates. But this alone cannot explain the attack on abortion. For instance, other risky surgical techniques were considered necessary for people’s health and welfare and were not prohibited. “Protecting” women from the dangers of abortion was actually meant to control them and restrict them to their traditional child-bearing role. Antiabortion legislation was part of an antifeminist backlash to the growing movements for suffrage, voluntary motherhood, and other women’s rights in the 19th century. *For more information, see Linda Gordon’s Woman’s Body, Woman’s Right, rev. ed. (New York: Penguin Books, 1990).
At the same time, male doctors were tightening their control over the medical profession. Doctors considered midwives, who attended births and performed abortions as part of their regular practice, a threat to their own economic and social power. The medical establishment actively took up the antiabortion cause in the second half of the 19th century as part of its effort to eliminate midwives.
Finally, with the declining birth rate among whites in the late 1800s, the U.S. government and the eugenics movement warned against the danger of “race suicide” and urged white, native-born women to reproduce. Budding industrial capitalism relied on women to be unpaid household workers, low-paid menial workers, reproducers, and socializers of the next generation of workers. Without legal abortion, women found it more difficult to resist the limitations of these roles.
Then, as now, making abortion illegal neither eliminated the need for abortion nor prevented its practice. In the 1890s, doctors estimated that there were two million abortions a year in the U.S. (compared with one and a half million today). Women who are determined not to carry an unwanted pregnancy have always found some way to try to abort. All too often, they have resorted to dangerous, sometimes deadly methods, such as inserting knitting needles or coat hangers into the vagina and uterus, douching with dangerous solutions like lye, or swallowing strong drugs or chemicals. The coat hanger has become a symbol of the desperation of millions of women who have risked death to end a pregnancy. When these attempts harmed them, it was hard for women to obtain medical treatment; when these methods failed, women still had to find an abortionist.
Illegal Abortion
Many of us do not know what it was like to need an abortion before legalization. Women who could afford to pay skilled doctors or go to another country had the safest and easiest abortions. Most women found it difficult if not impossible to arrange and pay for abortions in medical settings.
With one exception, the doctors whom I asked for an abortion treated me with contempt, their attitudes ranging from hostile to insulting. One said to me, “You tramps like to break the rules, but when you get caught you all come crawling for help in the same way.”
The secret world of illegal abortion was mostly frightening and expensive. Although there were skilled and dedicated laywomen and doctors who performed safe, illegal abortions, most illegal abortionists, doctors, and those who claimed to be doctors cared only about being well rewarded for their trouble. In the 1960s, abortionists often turned women away if they could not pay $1,000 or more in cash. Some male abortionists insisted on having sexual relations before the abortion.
Abortionists emphasized speed and their own protection. They often didn’t use anesthesia because it took too long for women to recover, and they wanted women out of the office as quickly as possible. Some abortionists were rough and sadistic. Almost no one took adequate precautions against hemorrhage or infection.
Typically, the abortionist would forbid the woman to contact him or her again. Often she wouldn’t know his or her real name. If a complication occurred, harassment by the law was a frightening possibility. The need for secrecy isolated women having abortions and those providing them.
In the 1950s, about a million illegal abortions a year were performed in the U.S., and over a thousand women died each year as a result. Women who were victims of botched or unsanitary abortions came in desperation to hospital emergency wards, where some died of widespread abdominal infections. Many women who recovered from such infections found themselves sterile or chronically and painfully ill. The enormous emotional stress often lasted a long time.
Poor women and women of color ran the greatest risks with illegal abortions. In 1969, 75% of the women who died from abortions (most of them illegal) were women of color. Of all legal abortions in that year, 90% were performed on white private patients.
The Push for Legal Abortion
In the 1960s, inspired by the civil rights and antiwar movements, women began to fight more actively for their rights. The fast-growing women’s movement took the taboo subject of abortion to the public. Rage, pain, and fear burst out in demonstrations and speakouts as women burdened by years of secrecy got up in front of strangers to talk about their illegal abortions. Women marched and rallied and lobbied for abortion on demand. Civil liberties groups and liberal clergy joined in these efforts to support women.
Reform came gradually. A few states liberalized abortion laws, allowing women abortions in certain circumstances (e.g., pregnancy resulting from rape or incest, being under 15 years of age) but leaving the decision up to doctors and hospitals. Costs were still high and few women actually benefited.
In 1970, New York State went further, with a law that allowed abortion on demand through the 24th week from the LMP if it was done in a medical facility by a doctor. A few other states passed similar laws. Women who could afford it flocked to the few places where abortions were legal. Feminist networks offered support, loans, and referrals and fought to keep prices down. But for every woman who managed to get to New York, many others with limited financial resources or mobility did not. Illegal abortion was still common. The fight continued; several cases before the Supreme Court urged the repeal of all restrictive state laws.
On January 22, 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court, in the famous Roe v. Wadedecision, stated that the “right of privacy…founded in the Fourteenth Amendment’s concept of personal liberty…is broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.” The Court held that through the end of the first trimester of pregnancy, only a pregnant woman and her doctor have the legal right to make the decision about an abortion. States can restrict second-trimester abortions only in the interest of the woman’s safety. Protection of a “viable fetus” (able to survive outside the womb) is allowed only during the third trimester. If a pregnant woman’s life or health is endangered, she cannot be forced to continue the pregnancy.
Abortion After Legalization
Though Roe v. Wade left a lot of power to doctors and to government, it was an important victory for women. Although the decision did not guarantee that women would be able to get abortions when they wanted to, legalization and the growing consciousness of women’s needs brought better, safer abortion services. For the women who had access to legal abortions, severe infections, fever, and hemorrhaging from illegal or self- induced abortions became a thing of the past. Women health care workers improved their abortion techniques. Some commercial clinics hired feminist abortion activists to do counseling. Local women’s groups set up public referral services, and women in some areas organized women-controlled nonprofit abortion facilities. These efforts turned out to be just the beginning of a longer struggle to preserve legal abortion and to make it accessible to all women.
Although legalization greatly lowered the cost of abortion, it still left millions of women in the U.S., especially women of color and young, rural women, and/or women with low incomes, without access to safe, affordable abortions. State regulations and funding have varied widely, and second-trimester abortions are costly. Even when federal Medicaid funds paid for abortions, fewer than 20% of all public county and city hospitals actually provided them. This meant that about 40% of U.S. women never benefited from liberalized abortion laws.
During the late 1970s and early 1980s, feminist health centers around the country provided low-cost abortions that emphasized quality of care, and they maintained political involvement in the reproductive rights movement. Competition from other abortion providers, harassment by the IRS, and a profit- oriented economy made their survival difficult. By the early 1990s, only 20 to 30 of these centers remained.
Eroding Abortion Rights: After Roe v. Wade
When the Supreme Court legalized abortion in 1973, the antiabortion forces, led initially by the Catholic Church hierarchy, began a serious mobilization using a variety of political tactics including pastoral plans, political lobbying, campaigning, public relations, papal encyclicals, and picketing abortion clinics. The Church hierarchy does not truly represent the views of U.S. Catholics on this issue or the practice of Catholic women, who have abortions at a rate slightly higher than the national average for all women.
Other religious groups, like the Mormons and some representatives of Jewish orthodoxy, have traditionally opposed abortion. In the 1980s, rapidly growing fundamentalist Christian groups, which overlap with the New Right and “right- to-life” organizations, were among the most visible boosters of the antiabortion movement. These antiabortion groups talk as if all truly religious and moral people disapprove of abortion. This is not true now and never has been.
The long-range goal of the antiabortion movement is to outlaw abortion. Their short-range strategy has been to attack access to abortion, and they have had successes. The most vulnerable women–young women; women with low incomes, of whom a disproportionate number are women of color; all women who depend on the government for their health care–have borne the brunt of these attacks on abortion rights.
The antiabortion movement’s first victory, a major setback to abortion rights, came in July 1976, when Congress passed the Hyde Amendment banning Medicaid funding for abortion unless a woman’s life was in danger. Following the federal government, many states stopped funding “medically unnecessary” abortions. The result was immediate in terms of harm and discrimination against women living in poverty. In October 1977, Rosie Jimeaanez, a Texas woman, died from an illegal abortion in Mexico, after Texas stopped funding Medicaid abortions.
It is impossible to count the number of women who have been harmed by the Hyde Amendment, but before Hyde, one-third of all abortions were Medicaid funded: 294,000 women per year. (Another 133,000 Medicaid-eligible women who needed abortions were unable to gain access to public funding for the procedure.) Without state funding, many women with unwanted pregnancies are forced to have babies, be sterilized, or have abortions using money needed for food, rent, clothing, and other necessities.
Although a broad spectrum of groups fought against the Hyde Amendment, countering this attack on women who lack financial resources was not a priority of the pro-choice movement. There was no mass mobilization or public outcry. In the long run, this hurt the pro-choice movement, as the attack on Medicaid funding was the first victory in the antiabortion movement’s campaign to deny access to abortion for all women.
Young women’s rights have been a particular target of the antiabortion movement. About 40% of the one million teens who become pregnant annually choose abortion. Parental involvement laws, requiring that minors seeking abortions either notify their parents or receive parental consent, affect millions of young women. As of early 1997, 35 states have these laws; 23 states enforce them. In some states, a physician is required to notify at least one parent either in person, by phone, or in writing. Health care providers face loss of license and sometimes criminal penalties for failure to comply.
Antiabortion forces have also used illegal and increasingly violent tactics, including harassment, terrorism, violence, and murder. Since the early 1980s, clinics and providers have been targets of violence. Over 80% of all abortion providers have been picketed or seriously harassed. Doctors and other workers have been the object of death threats, and clinics have been subject to chemical attacks (for example, butyric acid), arson, bomb threats, invasions, and blockades. In the late 1980s, a group called Operation Rescue initiated a strategy of civil disobedience by blockading clinic entrances and getting arrested. There were thousands of arrests nationwide as clinics increasingly became political battlefields.
In the 1990s, antiabortionists increasingly turned to harassment of individual doctors and their families, picketing their homes, following them, and circulating “Wanted” posters. Over 200 clinics have been bombed. After 1992, the violence became deadly. The murder of two doctors and an escort at a clinic in Pensacola, Florida, was followed by the murder of two women receptionists at clinics in Brookline, Massachusetts. A health care provider spoke about the impact of the violence:
The fear of violence has become part of the lives of every abortion provider in the country. As doctors, we are being warned not to open big envelopes with no return addresses in case a mail bomb is enclosed. I know colleagues who have had their homes picketed and their children threatened. Some wear bullet-proof vests and have remote starters for their cars. Even going to work and facing the disapproving looks from co-workers–isolation and marginalization from colleagues is part of it.
The antiabortion movement continues to mount new campaigns on many fronts. Most recently, it has aggressively put out the idea that abortion increases the risk of breast cancer. In January 1997, the results of a Danish study, the largest to date (involving one and a half million women), showed that there is no connection.s3 Unlike previous studies, this one did not rely on interviews and women’s reports but instead used data obtained from population registries about both abortion and breast cancer. Despite the lack of medical evidence and the fact that the scientific community does not recognize any link, the antiabortion movement continues to stir up fears about abortion and breast cancer.
Legal but Out of Reach for Many Women
We have learned that legalization is not enough to ensure that abortions will be available to all women who want and need them. In addition to a lack of facilities and trained providers, burdensome legal restrictions, including parental consent or notification laws for minors and mandatory waiting periods, create significant obstacles. A minor who has been refused consent by a parent may have to go through an intimidating and time-consuming judicial hearing. Mandatory waiting periods may require a woman to miss extra days of work because she must go to the clinic not once, but twice, to obtain an abortion. If travel is required, this can make the whole procedure unaffordable. In other words, for millions of women, youth, race, and economic circumstances together with the lack of accessible services–especially for later abortions–translate into daunting barriers, forcing some women to resort to unsafe and illegal abortions and self-abortions.
WEAKENING THE CONSTITUTIONAL PROTECTION FOR ABORTION
When in 1980 the Supreme Court upheld the Hyde Amendment, it began eroding the constitutional protection for abortion rights. Since then, there have been other severe blows. In Webster v. Reproductive Health Services (1989), the Court opened the door to new state restrictions on abortion. In Hodgson v. Minnesota (1990), the Court upheld one of the strictest parental notification laws in the country.
These trends were further codified in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, a 1992 decision upholding a highly restrictive Pennsylvania law that included mandatory waiting periods and mandatory biased counseling. Two frightening themes emerged in the Casey decision. First, the Court sanctioned the view that government may regulate the health care of pregnant women to protect fetal life from the moment of conception so long as it does not “unduly burden” access to an abortion. Second, the Court showed little concern for the severe impact of state restrictions on women with few financial resources.
In the aftermath of Casey, many states have passed similar restrictions, which have the effect of limiting access to abortion, especially for women with low incomes, teenage women, and women of color.
These infringements on abortion access have curtailed the abortion rights of millions of women. In the face of the unrelenting efforts of the antiabortion movement, those of us who believe that women should make their own reproductive decisions will have to become involved in the ongoing struggle to preserve and expand abortion rights.
REPRODUCTIVE FREEDOM VS. POPULATION CONTROL
While most women’s health groups see the fight for abortion rights in the context of defending the rights of all women to make their own decisions about reproduction, not all advocates of abortion rights share this understanding. Some view legal abortion and contraception as tools of population control.
Advocates of population control blame overpopulation for a range of problems, from global poverty to ethnic conflict and environmental degradation. Historically, this type of thinking has led to a range of coercive fertility control policies that target Third World women. These include sterilization without a woman’s knowledge or consent; the use of economic incentives to “encourage” sterilization, a practice that undermines the very notion of reproductive choice; the distribution and sometimes coercive or unsafe use of contraceptive methods, often without appropriate information; the denial of abortion services; and sometimes coercive abortion. For example, HIV-positive women in the U.S. (who are overwhelmingly women of color) are often pressured to have abortions, though only 20 to 25% of their children will be HIV-positive and new treatments during pregnancy have reduced the likelihood even further.
Women with few economic resources, especially women of color in the U.S. and throughout the world, have been the primary targets of population control policies. For example, although abortion has become increasingly less accessible in the U.S., sterilization remains all too available for women of color. The federal government stopped funding abortions in 1977, but it continues to pay for sterilizations. During the 1970s, women’s health activists exposed various forms of sterilization abuse (see section on sterilization in chapter 13, Birth Control). Since the 1980s, advocates have fought against new policies that coerce women with low incomes into using Norplant, a long-term hormonal contraceptive.
In the Third World, in addition to the widespread unavailability of desired contraceptives, there is a long history of coercive fertility control, primarily funded and inspired by developed countries, especially the U.S. (see chapter 26, The Global Politics of Women and Health, for the international dimensions of population control).
The right to abortion is part of every woman’s right to control her reproductive choices and her own life. We must reject all efforts to coerce women’s reproductive decisions. The goals of reproductive rights activists must encompass the right to have children as well as the right not to.
ABORTION ACCESS IN THE U.S.
- It is conservatively estimated that one in five Medicaid-eligible women who want an abortion cannot obtain one.
- In the U.S., 84% of all counties have no abortion services; of rural counties, 95% have no services.
- Nine in ten abortion providers are located in metropolitan areas.
- Only 17 states fund abortions.
- Only 12% of OB/GYN residency programs train in first-trimester abortions; only 7% in second-trimester abortions.
- Abortion is the most common OB/GYN surgical procedure; yet, almost half of graduating OB/GYN residents have never performed a first-trimester abortion.
- Thirty-nine states have parental involvement laws requiring minors to notify and/or obtain the consent of their parents in order to obtain an abortion.
- Twenty-one states require state-directed counseling before a woman may obtain an abortion. (This is often called “informed consent”; some critics call it a “biased information requirement.”)
- Many states require women seeking abortions to receive scripted lectures on fetal development, prenatal care, and adoption.
- Twelve states currently enforce mandatory waiting periods following state- directed counseling; this can result in long delays and higher costs.
- (Seven more states have delay laws which are enjoined–i.e., not enforced due to court action at the federal or state level.)
Note: for sources on these statistics, please consult the book’s notes at the end of this chapter.
ABORTION WORLDWIDE
Unsafe abortion is a major cause of death and health complications for women of child-bearing age. Whether or not an abortion is safe is determined in part by the legal status and restrictions, but also by medical practice, administrative requirements, the availability of trained practitioners, and facilities, funding, and public attitudes.
While it is difficult to get reliable data on illegal and unsafe abortion, several well-known organizations and researchers, including the World Health Organization, the Alan Guttmacher Institute, and Family Health International, make the following estimates:
- Worldwide, 20 million unsafe abortions are performed annually. This equals one unsafe abortion for every ten pregnancies and one unsafe abortion for every seven births.
- Ninety percent of unsafe abortions are in developing countries.
- One-third of all abortions worldwide are illegal. More than two-thirds of countries in the Southern Hemisphere have no access to safe, legal abortion.
- Estimates of the number of women who die worldwide from unsafe abortions each year range from 70,000 to 200,000. This means that between 13 and 20% of all maternal deaths are due to unsafe abortion–in some areas of the world, half of all maternal deaths. Of these deaths, 99% are in the developing world, and most are preventable.
- Half of all abortions take place outside the health care system.
- One-third of women seeking care for abortion complications are under the age of 20.
- About 40% of the world’s population has access to legal abortion (almost all in Europe, the former Soviet Union, and North America), although laws often require the consent of parents, state committees, or physicians.
- Worldwide, 21% of women may obtain legal abortions for social or economic reasons.
- Sixteen percent of women have access only when a woman’s health is at risk or in cases of rape, incest, or fetal defects.
- Five percent have access only in cases of rape, incest, or life endangerment.
- Eighteen percent have access only for life endangerment.
Capital Dome restoration c. 1960
In late 1959 through 1960, the Capitol Dome underwent a significant repair and restoration effort and at the end of 1959 the exterior of the Dome was surrounded by scaffold.
During the work, workmen using special pneumatic hammers removed paint from the iron, which was then sandblasted. Since bare iron rusts quickly it had to be treated with a red protective rust inhibiting coating within five hours of paint removal. Corroded and cracked metal was repaired or replaced where necessary, loose bolts were tightened, and missing bolts replaced. New bronze window frames were installed in the tholus and the interior bracing in the Statue of Freedom was reinforced. Repairs were made to the drainage system and flashing, and the Dome was completely inspected and repaired using stainless tell wherever extra strength was needed. The work also put in additional lightning and bird protection.
More: www.aoc.gov/capitol-buildings/capitol-dome
This official Architect of the Capitol photograph is being made available for educational, scholarly, news or personal purposes (not advertising or any other commercial use). When any of these images is used the photographic credit line should read “Architect of the Capitol.” These images may not be used in any way that would imply endorsement by the Architect of the Capitol or the United States Congress of a product, service or point of view. For more information visit www.aoc.gov.
Life in America isn’t too bad if you don’t mind drinking fracking fluid:
(RANT)
The fundamental issue many Americans fail to realise is the POLITICAL distinction between the United States as a sovereign nation on the world stage – and the United States as a domestic entity filled with Americans.
The US, to Americans, is all about the flag, freedom, cherry pie, democracy, patriotism, supporting the troops, democrats vs republicans, blah blah you get the message.
The United States to the rest of the world is a 100% corporate entity driven almost exclusively by the profit motive and power backed by a brutal military which acts almost solely in the interests of its commercial corporate interests and almost always against humanitarian interests, freedom etc and on the vast majority of cases if it is not the instigator of the crisis is backing the despotic regime behind the crisis.
The Republican Party is almost entirely driven by a corporate agenda – few would dispute this and none would HONESTLY dispute it.
The number one priority of corporations over the past 50 years has been to assume control of the public purse – it is by far, by FAR the greatest prize in financial history as well as the ultimate power grab – it is the absolute destination of all capitalism.
The surest, most definite, reliable pathway to usurping the public domain to private corporate control is by destroying the publics capacity to resist (making them stupid and poor) leaves them entirely reliant on the private sector, please see Victorian England – the dream time, and MOST IMPORTANTLY destroying the public finances of the state, preferably by transferring the wealth to the private sector, which allows them to point the finger at the state and claim it has failed – the only possible solution to this ongoing failure of the public system is to privatise it.
It absolutely BLOWS MY FUCKING BRAIN OUT that people do not realise that this is what is going on.
When people vote for Republicans, or advocate the private sector over the public social sector they are succumbing to a long term strategy to transfer the wealth, power and control of the public state to private hands.
Now lets be VERY, VERY clear about what this means – it is the ABSOLUTE NORM in history for the state to be owned and controlled by private interests instead of the public – remember that, its important. THE VAST majority well over 90% of historical state control has been in the hands of private individuals and companies and NOT public democracies. Public democracies and republics are very, very new and very very rare (despite their origins in Ancient Rome and Greece).
Almost every European state was a feudal principality controlled by a prince, a kingdom, feudal land holdings controlled by aristocracy with white slaves working the land, PRIVATE COMPANIES such as the West /East Virginia companies, the Dutch West Indies Company , the British East India Company, Emperors, Kings and Queens or even entire countries forged for private Individuals such as Rhodesia and Saudi Arabia.
So the destruction of the United States as a public democracy and the transfer of it into private hands would not be some OUTRAGEOUS extreme blip in history contrary to all norms, quite the opposite, it would be a RETURN to the normal, predominant methodology and ruling system of all of history – it would be an end to this extremely rare outlying occurrence of rule by democracy for the benefit of the greater society and populace and a return to the norm of history – private rule of all of society by private individuals with the public having no powers, no rights and no life.
That is what you are voting for when you vote for Republicans.
History does not lie – go read it.
Mr. Conservative
The modern conservative movement isn’t about being conservative at all, its about pandering to religious groups, saying you oppose anything the Democrats do while spending just as much money. There are no conservatives in Washington. A true conservative believes in the constitution. They would support the separation of church and state, the freedom of speech, the right to bear arms. They would support equal legal protections for all, meaning they would support a woman’s right to choose, and gay marriage. But again, there are no true conservatives in Washington, only partisan hacks using abortion and gay marriage as wedge issues to stay in office and keep raking in that sweet sweet lobbyist cash.
Barry Goldwater in a contemplative pose.
Here are three things Barry “Mr. Conservative” Goldwater said during his life as a politician:
“On religious issues there can be little or no compromise. There is no position on which people are so immovable as their religious beliefs. There is no more powerful ally one can claim in a debate than Jesus Christ, or God, or Allah, or whatever one calls this supreme being. But like any powerful weapon, the use of God’s name on one’s behalf should be used sparingly. The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom. They are trying to force government leaders into following their position 100 percent. If you disagree with these religious groups on a particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten you with a loss of money or votes or both.”
“I’m frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in “A,” “B,” “C” and “D.” Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me? And I am even more angry as a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the Senate. I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of ‘conservatism.'”
“Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they’re sure trying to do so, it’s going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can’t and won’t compromise. I know, I’ve tried to deal with them.”
The Historians’ Case Against Gay Discrimination
Two historical propositions important to the legal analysis of discrimination of the LGBT community: (1) no consistent historical practice singles out same-sex behavior as “sodomy” subject to proscription, and (2) the governmental policy of classifying and discriminating against certain citizens on the basis of their homosexual status is an unprecedented project of the twentieth century, which is already being dismantled.
In colonial America, regulation of non-procreative sexual practices – regulation that carried harsh penalties but was rarely enforced – stemmed from Christian religious teachings and reflected the need for procreative sex to increase the population. Colonial sexual regulation included such non-procreative acts as masturbation, and sodomy laws applied equally to male-male, male-female, and human-animal sexual activity. “Sodomy” was not the equivalent of “homosexual conduct.” It was understood as a particular, discrete, act, not as an indication of a person’s sexuality or sexual orientation. Not until the end of the nineteenth century did lawmakers and medical writing recognize sexual “inversion” or what we would today call homosexuality. The phrase “homosexual sodomy” would have been literally incomprehensible to the Framers of the Constitution, for the very concept of homosexuality as a discrete psychological condition and source of personal identity was not available until the late 1800s. The Court in Bowers v. Hardwick misapprehended this history. Proscriptive laws designed to suppress all forms of nonprocreative and non-marital sexual conduct existed through much of the last millennium. Widespread discrimination against a class of people on the basis of their homosexual status developed only in the twentieth century, however, and peaked from the 1930s to the 1960s. Gay men and women were labeled “deviants,” “degenerates,” and “sex criminals” by the medical profession, government officials, and the mass media. The federal government banned the employment of homosexuals and insisted that its private contractors ferret out and dismiss their gay employees, many state governments prohibited gay people from being served in bars and restaurants, Hollywood prohibited the discussion of gay issues or the appearance of gay or lesbian characters in its films, and many municipalities launched police campaigns to suppress gay life. The authorities worked together to create or reinforce the belief that gay people were an inferior class to be shunned by other Americans. Sodomy laws that exclusively targeted same-sex couples were a development of the last third of the twentieth century and reflect this historically unprecedented concern to classify and penalize homosexuals as a subordinate class of citizens.
Since the 1960s, official and popular attitudes toward homosexuals have changed, though vestiges of old attitudes – such as the law at issue here – remain. Among other changes, the medical profession no longer stigmatizes homosexuality as a disease, prohibitions on employment of homosexuals have given way to antidiscrimination protections, gay characters have become common in movies and on television, 86 percent of Americans support gay rights legislation, and family law has come to recognize gays and lesbians as part of non-traditional families worthy of recognition. These changes have not gone uncontested, but a large majority of Americans have come to oppose discrimination against lesbians and gay men.
More Awesome from Harry Reid:
Harry Reid is spreading gossip and I could not love him more. He’s been ratted out as the gossip starter behind the rumor that Rep. Pete Sessions told Barack Obama, to his face, in the White House, “I cannot even stand to look at you.”
But why do I believe Harry Reid? Besides because “I want to”?
Remember back in the campaign when Harry Reid was all like : “A little bird told me Mitt Romney never paid a tax in his life, why doesn’t Mitt release his tax returns and prove me wrong?” and everyone was all like YOU ARE A LIAR HARRY REID until the day the RNC accidentally confirmed he’d been right all along? Good times.
So Harry Reid says he was told about Sessions’ Southern Gentleman act by a White House aide who was at the meeting with the GOP leadership and the President. And then Harry Reid got on a threeway call with his whole Democratic caucus about it. And then they told two friends, and they told two friends, and Dick Durbin put it on his facebook and the rest is history. The history of Harry Reid being an awesome gossip with excellent sources, the end.
(I hope Barry Obama writes one scortcher of a book when he’s out of office, when he doesn’t have to take this crap anymore, and tells the truth about these CRAZY ASSHOLES that he has been dealing with him for the past 8 years. But instead, he’ll probably take the high road, which he has done all his life. Ugh! Maybe he can get Biden to ghost-write it, in which case it’ll just be the word “FUCK” repeated for 400 pages.)
Obamacare vs. The World
Imagine the president of the United States saying they have a military target in their sights. If the US destroys this target it would save the country hundreds of billion dollars and tens of thousands of lives every single year. The target also appears to be vulnerable, there is little chance it could not be defeated. In fact, in recent decades other countries have defeated the same target with ease and great success. This mission would surely have the backing of the American people and be an immediate go. So what is the target? Is it North Korea? Iran? No, it is the private health insurance industry.
The US is the only rich country in the world without universal healthcare. This privatization of medicine causes the US to have the highest per capita medical costs and inferior outcomes. John Boehner stated in 2012 that America has “the best healthcare in the world.” Many Americans would agree with this statement but reality paints a much darker picture. The United States healthcare system was ranked 38th in 2000 by the World Health Organization. A 2012 report by the National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine ranked US dead last among 17 developed nations. Among these 1st world countries the US had the highest infant mortality rates, the shortest life expectancy, most injuries, most homicides and most disabilities. (So at least we’re #1 at something.) A Harvard study attributed 45,000 annual US deaths to a lack of health insurance. Families USA came to a more conservative estimate of 26,000 deaths from no insurance between the ages of 21-64. At the very least this is equivalent to suffering eight September 11th attacks, except these atrocities are self-inflicted and repeated every year. (3,000 Americans died from the 9/11 attacks so : 26,000/3,000= 8.67)
Let’s look at the economics of the issue. The US spent $8,233 per capita in 2010 according to OECD (Organization of Economic Cooperative Development) and $8,680 per capita on health annually in 2011. (Probably over $9,000 as of today – August 2013) For comparison Canada spent just under $4,500 per person in 2010. Our northern neighbors spend about half as much on healthcare and achieve superior results. The US spends 17.6% of it’s GDP on healthcare and the OECD average is 9.5%. This 8.1% differential in a 15 trillion dollar US economy amounts to over 1.2 trillion dollars. Routine operations frequently cost thousands of dollars more in the US than in other industrialized countries and we have the highest prices for pharmaceuticals. For example a coronary angioplasty average costs is $14,378 in the US and $5,547 is the average in Finland. Hip replacements are $5,000 cheaper on average in Canada and C-sections cost half as much in Germany. ($3,732 vs $7,449)
The health and lifestyle of Americans is similarly in terrible disrepair. The US has 5% of the world’s population and consumes two-thirds (67%) of the world’s anti-depressants. (Zolaft, Prozac) One in ten Americans are on these anti-depressant medications and the number of prescriptions is steadily climbing. The US also ranks at the top of the lists for anxiety disorders with over 40 million Americans being affected. Not surprisingly the lion’s share of the anxiety medication also get’s sold here. Our collective mental health is atrocious and our physical health isn’t much better. The US is always in the running for the world’s fattest country. Almost 70% of the US population is overweight and 30% of the population is obese. Heart disease, diabetes and high-blood pressure are frequent medical ailments costing hundreds of billions of dollars per year. The US has low rates of tobacco usage and yet still manages to have high cancer rates. As mentioned earlier, the US has the highest infant mortality rates, the shortest life expectancy, most injuries, most homicides and most disabilities among developed countries.
Implementing universal healthcare like every other industrialized nation is the obvious solution. It’s a political non-starter however. Bill Clinton chose to prioritize NAFTA over healthcare in 1993. He used up too much political capital getting the free trade bill passed and was unable to pass his healthcare bill. Fifteen years later Barack Obama was elected president and one of his first comments from the white house was that, “the public (healthcare) option is off the table.” Obama was able to get a health bill passed, The Affordable Care Act. The bill, dubbed Obamacare, does have some definite improvements. It will ensure greater coverage for Americans, end some of the insurance companies most exploitative practices and stem the tide of rampant medical inflation. Just as important though, the bill provides hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies to health industries and leaves the root of the problem, privatized health insurance, intact.
Several studies have been conducted on implementing universal healthcare in America. Virtually all the studies have predicted colossal savings if the US were to adopt such a plan. Physicians for National Health Program have estimated annual savings at $400 billion dollars per year. In another estimate economist Gerald Freidman concluded single-payer healthcare would save $570 billion dollars annually. Among other nations Norway was the second biggest per capita spender in 2010 at $5,388, if the US could match this it would save almost 900 billion dollars per year. ($8,233-5,388= $2,845 per capita savings x 315,000,000 Americans = $896,175,000,000) This would be about 6% of US GDP. In actuality the US spends 17.6% of it’s GDP on healthcare which also the highest in the world. In second place is the Netherlands at 12.0%. If the US could just match this it would save 840 billion dollars per year. (17.6% – 12.0% = 5.6%) (5.6% x 15 trillion dollar US GDP = 840 billion dollars) The potential savings are enormous and are approaching a trillion dollars annually.
In addition to direct medical savings a single-payer system would eliminate the practice of medical bankruptcy. Medical bankruptcy is the number one cause of bankruptcy in the US despite the fact such a concept doesn’t even exist in other advanced countries. 60% of all US bankruptcies are from medical bills, affecting over 2 million Americans each year. Medical bills are attributed to 60% of all bankruptcies in the US and 25% of senior citizens will declare bankruptcy due to medical costs. Other benefits from universal care would be harder to quantify but just as real. Higher life expectancy, lower obesity rates, improved psychological health and improved infant mortality rates would all come along with lower costs. We’d also prevent tens of thousands of people from dying each year because they can’t afford treatment.
Let’s flip the script. Instead of trying to convince America to adopt universal healthcare imagine trying to convince a country with socialized medicine to Americanize their system. Really think about going to Japan and saying, “I understand that your country has a high life expectancy, low obesity rates and spends a little over $3,000 dollars per capita on healthcare. But as an American I see huge room for improvement. For starters you just can’t insure everybody, it makes people lazy and dependent. The poorest and unhealthiest 20,000 or so of your citizens should just be left out to die every year. There’s no profit to be made in treating them and hey we all gotta go sometime right? Even with them gone you’re still insuring too many people, it’d be best if you let about the bottom 1/6th of your population have little or no insurance at all – it’d be efficient and teach them personal responsibility. Also, your medical system has too little bureaucracy and is too easy to understand. Having everything under a single government payer is too streamlined with almost no overhead. You really want to break that up into several private insurance companies that deny as much coverage and claims as possible.” The Japanese would believe you are either joking or a complete psychopath, the system you are preaching for would seem like a sick joke.
For decades now a majority of Americans have wanted a single-payer system. Yet if a politician embraces single payer healthcare they are denounced as a left wing extremists. Obama was lambasted as a socialist for his modest reforms. In other countries this situation is reversed, only the extremists are opposed to single-payer healthcare. The health systems of western Europe are very popular with their citizens and rightfully so, they provide superior service at a lower cost. The US not only lags behind in cost and outcomes but also lags chronologically. South Korea had universal care in 1988. Denmark had it in 1973, Canada 1966 and Norway in 1912.
I can see a path from the Affordable Care Act to a universal single-payer health care system. Its psychological. As a nation, we are committed to making sure that every person receives health care affordably. If that’s the frame, then single payer starts making the most sense. The previous frame was that health care is an individual responsibility and if you didn’t have it then that was your problem. That’s a big difference. And I think that in politics, framing is key. How the population views an issue affects how they vote on it.
The Affordable Care Act is bad, but it’s so much better than what the previous system was. Children were dying because they hit their lifetime caps on insurance coverage before they were six. The Affordable Care Act fixed a lot of stuff but it didn’t go far enough. It’s not what the American people deserve but it’s what we could get.
***{( Their is a difference between the types of systems; here is some of them, along with the advantages/disadvantages and the challenges of adopting those types of systems in the US:
Single-payer insurance (Canada)
In this model healthcare remains provisioned by private parties but the government takes over the role of the insurer. This is the currently proposed alternative system in the US but the proposed version is very different to the Canadian model; In Canada doctors typically do not work for hospitals (they operate on a fee-for-service or time-fee basis as contractors to the Canadian government) and while hospitals are privately operated most of the buildings are provincially owned, neither of these are present in the proposed US model. This system can be free at point of use.
The health outcomes of this type of system are relatively good, although with some capacity issues which cause wait time issues. Short term such a switch would produce a saving of between 4% and 11% over the current system but the savings achieved would likely be reversed by an increase in consumption. This type of system also does nothing to address the wider problem of healthcare delivery.
While the contract based doctor provision is entirely achievable currently the way hospitals operate would not currently be possible, we don’t have the capital or borrowing capacity to purchase a sufficient number of hospitals off their owners and the constitution does not permit us to simply confiscate them without fair compensation.
Centralized Single-payer healthcare (UK)
In this model the central government controls facilities (although not always owns them, the UK has been experimenting with financing new facilities via PPP), personnel and financing with a central tax for healthcare provisioning. All doctors other then PCP’s typically work for the government (PCP’s are fee-for-service or time-fee). The UK is currently the only example of this in the developed world. This system is free at point of use.
Health outcomes of this type of system are average with significant capacity issues. There is no accurate prediction regarding the operating costs of this type of system in the US but it will certainly be smaller then current combined public & private spending and likely significantly so.
The problems with this type of system in the US would be numerous. Firstly centralized systems respond very poorly to regional changes in healthcare needs, this is one of the trade-offs for lower costs, and we would have to accept a lower standard of care (for those who do not currently have accessibility problems) then the current system overall in exchange for universal coverage and the lower costs (this is primarily why the UK system has not been repeated elsewhere). The problem with purchasing facilities is the same as with single-payer insurance.
Regional Single-payer healthcare (All the Nordic countries)
In this model the central government mandates the level of care regional authorities are required to offer and those regional authorities are responsible for raising the revenue and providing the services. As with centralized single-payer the facilities are generally owned by the government and doctors generally work for the government. This system is free at point of use.
Health outcomes of this type of system are good with few capacity issues. As with centralized single-payer it is not possible to accurately predict the operating costs of this type of system but they would also be lower then our current system while higher then centralized single-payer.
The only special problem with this type of system in the US is that its success lays in the relatively small size of its regional health authorities. The equivalent in the US would be the federal government mandating the service and a county taxing for the service and providing it, this would not currently be constitutional. Same facilities issue as the previous systems here.
Basic Single-payer healthcare (Australia)
Functions much the same as the Canadian example with the exceptions it is not always free at point of use (government pays between 75% and 100% of costs), the government does not cover most electives and there are a number of privately owned hospitals that treat public patients on a fee-for-service schedule.
Multi-payer (France, Germany etc)
Multi-payer systems differ from single-payer systems in numerous ways. Firstly healthcare is not supported from general tax revenues, the majority of healthcare is paid for via insurance or withholding specifically targeted at healthcare. Secondly the government generally neither owns nor operates the facilities, the overwhelming majority are privately owned and often operated for a profit (in the case of Germany nearly half the hospitals are operate for-profit compared to 12% in the US). Thirdly its not possible for the government to set a fixed healthcare spending level, single-payer systems establish how much they want to pay for healthcare and then distribute resources accordingly while multi-payer systems establish which services people are permitted to consume & the level of subsidy they will receive and spending is simply however much is consumed at those levels. This type of system is not generally free at point of use.
Health outcomes of this system vary but are generally very good and there are no capacity problems. It would be cheaper (how much depends on the exact form) then our current system while more expensive then the single-payer systems. There would be no particular problem replicating this type of system in the US but the tax and regulatory changes required could be challenging. This type of system would also be far more “free market” then the mess we currently have.
Third-party-payer (USA)
Absolute shit.
Account-payer (Singapore)
In account-payer systems patients pay for the majority of the healthcare out of pocket with a government subsidy applied (in effect if you are poor your heart transplant costs $50 while if you are wealthy it costs $50k), payments are made from savings accounts individuals are required to contribute to. This is not a free at point of use system.
Health outcomes of this type of system are very good and there are no capacity problems. Cost wise this would be the “best”, we would be able to fund a universal healthcare system while reducing current public healthcare spending. This type of system would also be far more “free market” then the mess we currently have.
(Universal and Single-payer are not interchangeable.)}***
So the USA pays approx DOUBLE the OECD average and yet manages not to have Universal Health Care. It’s a hell of an achievement. How can Americans pay for a Rolls Royce and yet take delivery of a Chevy with a puncture?
The USA needs to find the solution every other Western nation has found. Universal Health Care free at the point of delivery.
Why hasn’t it?
This is why. The Medical-Industrial Complex has donated $833,259,267 directly to members of Congress. Not counting the huge amounts of money given to presidential candidates like Obama, McCain and Kerry, the biggest donations have gone to the 3 worst industry shills who have been well-paid to make sure there will never be effective, robust health care reform:
Arlen Specter (R-D- PA- $4,026,933)
Max Baucus (DLC- MT- $2,833,731)
Mitch McConnell (R-KY- $2,758,468)
And when you just go right to Big Insurance, the non-presidential candidates who got the biggest legalized bribes were the 7 senators who have been tasked with the job of killing effective health care reform and keeping Healthcare Insurance alive in the USA
Ben Nelson (DLC-NE- $1,196,799)
Max Baucus (DLC- MT- $1,184,113)
Joe Lieberman (DLC- CT- $1,036,302)
Arlen Specter (R-D- PA- $1,035,530)
Mitch McConnell (R-KY- $929,207)
Chuck Grassley (R-IA- $884,724)
( This is a great resource for checking who’s funding your politician)
Citied Web Sources:
- Health Care In America
- The USA pays as much out of the public purse from taxes as the average OECD nation, more than nations like France, Germany, the UK, Sweden, yet unlike the average OECD nation does not have any form of universal coverage
- World health care Organization rankings by per capita spending
- World Health care Organization rankings by performance
What will probably happen in Europe if USA goes in default?
What will probably happen in Europe if USA goes in default?
This post will be structured in 2 parts:
Who owns the debt by the government
What would the effects be of defaulting
The US defaulting on its debts has both internal and external effects. The total of US government debt is over $ 16.7 trillion. Of that debt, $ 4.8 trillion is owned by governmental agencies.
This includes agencies such as the social security (holds over $2.5 trillion dollars).
Of the public debt, $5.7 trillion is owned by foreign investors.
Keep in mind this is just the actual government debt, effects of a default would be much bigger
Now, what would happen in case of a default? Let’s assume you own a $1000 bond by the US government. You might think it’s just paper, but that’d be wrong. After all, you paid for that paper. Just like an iPod is worth $500 or whatever because that’s what you paid for it. Bonds are means of (safe) investment.
Now, government defaults. You, the owner of the government bond are unsure about whether you will actually ever get your money back, so you’re freaking out. Then some dude comes to you and says “hey, I’ll pay you $500 for that bond!”. You figure “better be sure” and accept it (this 50% depreciation is completely arbitrary).
Now, let’s assume everyone reacts like you do (which is entirely unlikely but let’s assume so for sake of simplicity). Consequence: the value of the government debt drops by 50% for the owners of that debt. Social security loses over $ 1 trillion, other government agencies or internal investors lose a combined $3 trillion.
To put this in perspective, this is roughly $10 000 per American for a 50% drop. Even assuming just a 1% drop, it’d still be $200 for every American out there. Family with 3 kids? Well shucks, you just lost $1000 (in actual assets or in government benefits, this is on a macro level).
Foreign owners of the debt would see the same effects: the value of their assets would fall. China owns $1 trillion in debt, so loses $500 billion. Same with Japan. Both countries have been rumored of being on the verge of an economic crisis, and this would definitely trigger it.
Worldwide, about $3 trillion in assets would disappear. Again, assuming a 50% value drop which, again, is really unlikely.
Now, let’s look at the much major second-order effects. The dollar would drop in value… really hard. Since the dollar is basically the global reserve currency, a lot of foreign companies (be it from India, Bulgaria, Ecuador… you name it) have dollar bank accounts.
Since the dollar would drop in value versus basically every other currency, a lot of those companies would lose a lot of their assets too. Same (and especially) with the banks.
A whole lot of the global economic system is basically based on the stability of the dollar as a reserve currency. The US defaulting would have an effect on the entire global economic system.
I don’t want to sound like a doomsday prophet here, but if shit actually hits the fan a default would likely lead to a domino effect of banks going bankrupt. Remember when that happened with Lehman Brothers and how hard that one single bank going bankrupt shook the global financial system? We avoided a financial collapse at that point by letting the governments bail them out. Thing is, in this scenario the most (powerful) governments wouldn’t be able to bail them out either.
Then you get to the third-order effects. Banks go bankrupt. Before you all start shouting “YEAH, FUCK THE CAPITALISTS!!!”, this means that everyone who has an account with a bank (savings account, investment account or whatever) will lose their money. Companies, but the average family too.
***I will stress again that this is all worst-case scenario. Just keep in mind that the EU did everything it could to avoid Greece going bankrupt, and then consider the difference between the Greek economy and the US economy on a global scale. Should give you an idea of how bad it could be. This would be far worse than the Lehman Brothers collapse (many people still don’t realise how close we were to a global collapse of the economic system).
Shutdownghazi Day 14 (Oct. 14th)
This meaningless shutdown of the United States Federal Government has entered day 14 and we are still careening towards this coming Thursday’s economic default. So I guess I’ll keep annotating this international embarrassment of a continuing crisis in our government:
Thursday is not the day we hit the debt ceiling. That day, when treasury cannot authorize any additional debt, has already passed. Starting on Thursday, the treasury department can no longer guarantee that they can pay out all incoming bills.
See, for all the complaining about the government not acting like a business…it is actually surprisingly close in terms of accounting. Businesses have accounts receivable (money coming in), just like the government does with its tax revenues, and businesses have accounts payable, and so does the government with its obligations to pay interest on its debt, pay social security, federal workers paychecks, etc…
When a business has more money to pay out then it has coming in, it has three choices: 1. Take on debt to pay the difference 2. Renegotiate the debts/cut its spending 3. Go into default.
Where the business/government comparison splits is in how much easier it is for the government to choose option one or two over option three. Because a business might not be able to take out more debt (if the market doesn’t think it is credit worthy), and negotiating over its outstanding debt is incredibly difficult given the advantages creditors have in bankruptcy proceedings. Cutting spending as a business is also hard because market forces tend to make businesses run as lean as possible to begin with, so there isn’t much “fat” to cut.
The government, on the other hand, has complete control over how much it has to spend. Even if they are “legally” obligated to pay things like social security or medicare, they are also the ones who get to define what they are legally obligated to pay. So in short, if they passed a law saying they no longer have to pay social security checks…then they don’t have to pay that debt anymore.
And as far as issuing debt goes…if you are a country (like the United States) that controls its own currency…you can (short of a law saying you cant) ALWAYS take on more debt to pay your bills. The Federal reserve is obligated by law to buy whatever debt the gov’t sells it even if there is no other commercial buyers. And the Fed is able to do this because they have infinite money…ie they are the ones who “create cash”.
Both of these facts have, up until the past couple years, made US debt the absolute safest place on earth to put your money. Because if you control what you owe, and you control the money supply, then theoretically you should never have to go with option three…ie Default. And with a recessed global economy where there is more of an emphasis on a return “of” capital rather than a return “to” capital…ALOT of people/mutual funds/banks/government put their cash in US debt.
Let me insert another key concept that markets and economics depends on…the concept of the rational actor. It says that, all else being equal…people/companies/markets/governments aren’t stupid. They will choose what is best for them over other worse options. This key concept makes markets stable, because it makes all of the actions of actors in that market more predictable.
We know that Goldman Sachs wont light all of their cash on fire…because that’s bad for Goldman Sachs. We know that Toyota won’t intentionally make an exploding car…because that would be bad for Toyota.
And up until Thursday, the market knows that the US government wont intentionally not pay its bills when the penalty for doing so is so much more severe than the other options presented to it. The penalty for cutting spending is political, the penalty for issuing debt is economic but manageable (given a long list of time tested tools we have to control inflation)….the penalty for outright refusing to pay your debts are catastrophic.
So in short, what happens on Thursday when the US declares that it wont/cant honor its debts? I don’t know…what happens when Goldman Sachs decides to liquidate all of its assets and burn, literally light on fire, all of its cash?
But whatever it is….we know its not good.
Boehner Land
Is this dude ever sober? I think not.
Of course, if I had to deal with douche bag politicians all day every day, I’d be a drunk too; or in prison for mass murder.
Weeper of the House
Senator Harry Reid should have punched John Boehner in the throat, that’ll give him something to cry about…
A Thought:
I really want to see John Boehner and Barack Obama fight in THUNDERDOME!!!
Two men enter, one man leaves.
Alternative Solution?
Congress should pass the ‘Battle Royale’ act, where all our elected officials in the House of Representatives are locked in a room, all lines of communication with the outside world will be severed, and they are left in there until an agreement can be reached (or they can just kill each other off until only one remains, then that person gets to choose policy for the year.)
***The Pay Per View revenue alone would clear the deficit.***
Yuck.
Rep. Eric Cantor reminds me of that douche bag that’s in every 80’s movie for some reason…
Government Shutdown-Oct 5th
One thing that I think is getting overlooked a lot in this debate is what the actual purpose of the CR is supposed to be about.
The CR has nothing to do with the Obamacare. the ACA is not stopped, delayed, or defunded by shutting down the government. It is a completely separate issue that has nothing to do with the CR. What the CR is supposed to be about is the budget, and at what levels of spending the government should be funded for the following year. That’s what the debate is supposed to be about, that’s what negotiations are supposed to involve, and it’s on that matter that compromises are supposed to be taking place.
On that matter, Democrats have already given in to republican demands in almost every conceivable way. They agreed to republican levels of spending in the CR across the board with absolutely no fight or argument. They gave republicans 98% of the Paul Ryan budget, and never asked for anything other than the CR to be passed with no additional unrelated add-ons.
I think that there is a false narrative, or a false equivalency, going around that the democrats are equally responsible for this shutdown, that they are just as unwilling to compromise as republicans. That is simply not true. The republicans are demanding every bit of their agenda, and offering up not a single item on the democrats agenda. And beyond that, they are asking for the delay of the Presidents signature piece of legislation, which has nothing to do with the budget resolution in question. Refusing to take a deal in which your opponent gets everything they want and you don’t get any of what you want is not a failure to compromise. It is standing up for yourself.
And while I gladly welcome disagreement and debate, I kindly ask that you read the link I provided before making any counterpoints. Thank you.
Government Shutdown- Oct 2nd
The issue is not the substance of the Republicans’ argument, it’s the tactic. There’s an established procedure for putting in place a law – it passes both Houses of Congress, and is signed off on by the President. Once a law has been passed, it can be repealed or amended through the same procedure. Everybody playing by that set of rules helps keep arguments fair and procedures somewhat predictable.
What the Republicans are doing now is to say – we can’t win both Houses of Congress and the Presidency (which is what it would take to overturn a law that already was passed by all three institutions), but what we can do is use control of the one house that we do have to refuse to fund the government until the President and the Senate change the health care law.
The reason that the President and the Democratic Senate are refusing to negotiate (and should continue to refuse to negotiate) is that they don’t want the House of Representatives to get in the habit of shutting down the government everytime there is some law they disagree with. It’s essentially the exact same argument for why it’s generally considered inadvisable to negotiate with terrorists. There’s a legitimate way for a party in Congress to get its way – through the normal procedure of writing bills, and through the election cycle – and there is an illegitimate way to do so – by holding the government’s operating budget hostage.
I hope to be remembered for my atrocities! 
