Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year to savor the very finest music from all corners of the earth. There's the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Chanticleer. And the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus.
And then there's the fabulous mezzo soprano Melissa Davis. Oh Lordy...how the woman can sing. Enjoy!
“Insurance companies were often “just one step ahead of the sheriff.’’ -Sen. Sherrod Brown
“The industry lacks a moral compass.’’ -Sen. Dianne Feinstein
Miserly Trickle Down Economics of the Season
North Dole, USA – HO! HO! HO! Just in time for Christmas!This Grinch of a glitzy, corporate welfare land grab health care “reform” bill passed the Senate today. Roll out the Wassal! Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, (D) Rhode Island said the business model of the health insurance industry deserved to die:
“It deserves a stake through its cold and greedy heart.”
Cold and greedy? Is that what the people of this nation have become? I don't know about the rest of you, but this Christmas, I am asking Santa to deliver a moral compass to Barry's stocking to help guide him in the New Year during his much ballyhooed eleventh dimensional chess game. But hey, who ever said trickle down economics was dead? This health care scam bill is IT – gift wrapped in a sterling silver C.O.D. bow just for you, dear plebs!
Copenhagen – New reports indicate that the Copenhagen Summit is cutting corners on climate change safeguards. While this shindig is arguably all about spreading the wealth around as in “trickling up”, read Al Gore's thoughtful, Yeatsy climate change poemhere that defies the critics and explains its true mission. Then read The Gay Swami's “View from the Vassals” literary masterpiece below to help plug any leaky gaps.
The Gay Swami's Climate Change Poem
One fat January soon
A sinking Kingdom blows
And moons its limp people
Vapors spread as
Heat torches Hopenhagen's acid tongue
Far from the mouth of my hazy portfolio
Snow jobs crash the airwaves
Ice mother fuc*ers scramble
A stiff noodle comes quickly
Then Viagra is generic (NOT from Canada, but China)
ObamAgenda Health Care Bill Exposed by Howard Dean
Blame it on Rham, but it's time to kill the Democratic sponsored health care bill. All of it. Scrap it. Start over.
But wait – they're in charge, as Glenn Greenwald at Salon reaffirms what many of us have known all along about Rahm's placebo health care bullet, Congressional Democrats' and RhamBama's number one goal of this health care bill scam: suck up to big pharma and the insurance industry and then cash out. Although Greenwald reports that Obama never had any intention of including a robust Public Option, his article doesn't emphasize (much less mention) the key motive behind the RhamBama health care bill – which is a mandate to force everyone to buy cost-prohibitive insurance from a mafioso industry that would bankrupt America's middle/upper middle class. With the impending passing of their health care bill, are the Democrats the Victim or the Crime?
Now, a fresh crop of instant Obama critics are starting to fall out of the trees, including the ones who stomped and voted for him. They're shocked about the “betrayal” - even ones like David Sirota who used to write books about the great heart of darkness within the One Big Party of Money. As Greenwald notes, the fate of this horrible health care bill from the Democrats has a chorus bleating about how the Democrats are the VICTIMS of big monied interests and how Lieberman is the spoiler in getting this bill passed. Pass the Rolaids.
Let's hear a huge round of applause for former DNC chairman, Dr. Howard Dean who is now fed up (a little too late?) and is finally standing up for the majority of Americans who will be hurt by this deadly insurance industry giveaway bill. The good doctor Howard Dean has been sidelined and marginalized long enough by this party. Good for him for FINALLY telling us that this damn health care bill is not worth passing and that we should “start over.”
But is the current One Big Money Party system “tragically ungovernable” as Greenwald cites such Obama followers including MattYglesias, Ezra Klein and Steve Benen who claim it to be? Ungovernable? What does this imply? Isn't this supposed to be a Democracy by and for the People? Right. By and for the People with the “I Got Mine” bumper stickers and tee-shirts for fawning sycophants. Greenwald explains how the ObamAgenda has succumbed to “centrist compromises” that don't include America's middle class:
“In an ideal world, Congress would be -- and should be -- an autonomous branch of government, exercising judgment independent of the White House's influence, but that's not the world we live in. Does anyone actually believe that Rahm Emanuel (who built his career on industry support for the Party and jamming "centrist" bills through Congress with the support of Blue Dogs) and Barack Obama (who attached himself to Joe Lieberman when arriving in the Senate, repeatedly proved himself receptive to "centrist" compromises, had a campaign funded by corporate interests, and is now the leader of a vast funding and political infrastructure) were the helpless victims of those same forces? Engineering these sorts of "centrist," industry-serving compromises has been the modus operandi of both Obama and, especially, Emanuel.”
But that's been the ObamAgenda when it comes not only to this health care bill but to job outsourcing/insourcing. The two are intrinsically linked, with the expressed goal of extracting every last penny from America's dying middle/upper middle class by forcing them to finance unaffordable health care insurance for themselves and for unnecessary, imported labor that Corporate America should be taxed and charged to cover instead.
Look at what the ObamAgenda is doing to kill jobs(h/t Patrick Thibodeau) for Americans in addition to trotting out the loathsome and dangerous Alan Greenspan, who dictates that the H-1B visa cap would make dreadful, educated, middle class Americans a “priveleged elite.” Fuck Alan Greenspan. Yes, the Democrats are still down with this, too? Shame on them all, these self-important fools now tumbling out of the trees who support selling out our jobs to the third world. HilBama was a false choice from the get-go, and now media wannabe's are choosing sides, like driveling weasels without courage and conviction. Where are their apologies? Whether too stupid or too insufferable, this ilk of media whores who support the ObamAgenda of mandated health insurance and job outsourcing/insourcing should move to the third world countries they are propping up by not standing up for the rights of America's middle class citizens to build better lives and support our infrastructures right here. If the Obama administration wants to open up the floodgate for MORE imported labor when there are not enough jobs for Americans, how does this mandatory insurance get paid? Is it the intention for the Democrats to build a huge underclass on the dole? It's looking that way, and the Democrats want to own that feudal serf lord political action as James Carville predicts in his book 40 More Years.Welfare at the bottom and corporate welfare at the top, all around!
A so-called public option without access for all to quality health care that Single Payer would provide (and was never on the table) is NOT an option. It can't be, when the ObamAgenda is committed to selling out middle class jobs so American citizens can't even afford to pay for it. The Democratic party is hell-bent on competing with the GOP to create a huge welfare state. While middle class Americans need to have access to affordable health care and good paying jobs to pay for it, this health care bill deserves to to be buried. Along with the greedy sponsors it rode in on.
Are the Democrats the Victim or the Crime? Dick Durbin yesterday said that he doesn't expect the party to lose supporters over this sick bill. What has he been smoking? Patience is running out on these cheap-labor junkies in the White House and Congress from millions of Americans, Left and Right.
What a mess.It's a rare day (as in when hell freezes over) that yours truly agrees with anything that leading flatworlder doctrinaire, Tom “Fingernails on the Blackboard” Friedman has to say. Whether it's climate change or globalization, he has unexpectedly earned himself another PARTIAL temporary stay out of 2Truthy's doghouse for at least being on the same page for his understanding of global warming science.
In today's Seattle Times Op-Ed column, Friedman registers his take on the current Copenhagen climate change summit disaster dubbed “Climategate" that has turned on the fire hose at credible scientific global warming research, threatening to dampen the burgeoning, global cap and trade carbon market momentum. Depending upon which camp you fall it into, when it comes to the volatile subject of global warming and climate change, the yea and nay camps both have much to gain or lose when looking at the debate through an economic prism.
Shrouding his thoughtful (or manipulative) message in a hawk (pro-war) and dove (pro-environment) analogy, Friedman begins by describing Cheney's 1% doctrine of logic when he declared the best strategy to “confront” a new, unprecedented type of threat, a "low-probability, high-impact event." Cheney explained:
"If there's a 1 percent chance that Pakistani scientists are helping al-Qaida build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response." Cheney contended that the United States had to confront a very new type of threat: a "low-probability, high-impact event."
This assertion, of course, was and is cold comfort to anti-war activists. Then Friedman compares Cheney's 1% doctrine to legal scholar Cass Sunstein's “one percent principle”, observing that Cheney “seemed to be endorsing the same "precautionary principle" that also animated environmentalists.”
War bad, environmentalism good. But true to Friedman form, what starts out at the beginning of his article as sober analysis falls as flat as the big, fat, flat world hoax the King of Globalization himself has choked on. Friedman concludes that even if global warming is proven to be a “hoax”, we at least should work towards building “a clean-power economy” which would “raise our energy costs”. What's this? Invoking the Royal “We”? Aye, and here lies the rub. Now "we" US taxpayer plebs are all “we”...Whenever the next big bubbles roll out, leave it to the wealthiest 1% to cook up ways to stick the bill on the growing numbers of poor who, through disastrous labor and trade policies from the same ilk, have destroyed the lives of millions of middle class American citizens. Group hug time?
At least he gets it right on the science and the desire to clean up this place. But he fails to address, as usual, the players behind the curtain and how, in an ungreedy global flat world, the wealthiest 1% have no proclivity to contribute in mighty, unprecedented ways to start covering the “clean power economy” costs by halting US job outsourcing (which he champions) and reforming lousy trade deals. And maybe it doesn't even matter if the science is right. What does matter is the growing divide between this US have and have-not society that he and his insider BFFs don't seem to ever want to change.
Whichever side you are on when it comes to the climate change debate, it is crystal clear that these two very wealthy, beltway tied, ex-vice presidents Dick Cheney and Al Gore have no shortage of corporate oil industry experience and have both invoked the 1% doctrine. Let's hope that the spoils don't trickle up to the wealthiest 1%, as they tend to always do – because for all of the “global warming denier” bluster out there, a conservative guess would bet that 98% of it is coming from an increasingly alarmed population which is increasingly being left out in the cold by the wealthiest 1% doctrinaires who scream “Let them eat coal.”
And for all of the urgency involved to “get the job done” over the sham of a “health care” bill, so it goes at the Copenhagen Summit as President Obama has once again hummed the same mantra. Chris Floyd atEmpire Burlesque couldn't convey my thoughts on the climate change debate any better in this fine, timely essay entitled Boiling Point: Hijacking the Planet for Power and Privilege:
“The Copenhagen talks have become captive of what we might call the "Reform Syndrome"; i.e., the absolute, urgent imperative to put together a crappy deal that gorges the rich and hobbles the poor in egregious ways -- but which can be palmed off on a compliant media and a diverted public as some kind of "reform." The important thing is that an illusion of positive action be created -- while the same-old same-old keeps grinding on behind the scenes.”
It's a status-quo thing, I know, and for what it's worth, I hate to see guys like Gore serving as the hubris stuffed, corporate Neo-frat boys dupe (or duper) in this bubble. Either way. The very best outcome of rolling ahead with a cap and trade carbon trading market is that if the US can't innovate and manufacture anything around here anymore and continues selling our jobs to the third world under the ruse of a Great Labor Shortage, at least it warms the cockles (what are those?) to know that the 1% who make the rules that play the fools will have pulled off another derivatives beast bonanza. US Plebs, get over yourselves!
Like Floyd says, the “same-old keeps grinding” and at least we can be certain that the beat goes on, blowing snows or sinking sands.
Click HEREto Watch Old Dogs Official Theatrical Trailer
SYNOPSIS: "Two best friends -- one unlucky-in-love divorcee and the other a fun-loving bachelor -- have their lives turned upside down when they're unexpectedly charged with the care of seven-year-old twins while on the verge of the biggest business deal of their lives. The not-so-kid-savvy bachelors stumble in their efforts to take care of the twins, leading to one debacle after another, and perhaps to a new-found understanding of what's really important in life."
Travolta & Williams? Alrighty then, this is what I am going to see tonight. And hey, I'll watch anything with Matt Dillon in it - although I still maintain he did his most outrageously, tragically black, hilarious work in Drugstore Cowboywith a masterful turn by Kelly Lynch starring as the depraved wife.
Washington – President Obama rolled out his jobs summit or possible PR stunt today to review the nation's growing unemployment crisis, where Vice President Joe “Middle Class Czar” Biden addressed an audience of corporate CEOs from General Electric, Boeing, Google, Xerox and others, along with several “prominent” economists and labor leaders. While the government faces mounting pressure from labor unions and professional guilds regarding corporate America's role in kicking millions of educated US citizens to the curb in favor of cheap foreign labor, there is much that corporate America's CEOs could do to make the Obama administration's job a whole lot easier. For an excellent list of action items to create a successful American citizens jobs program, please read our good friend Rob Oak's excellent, laser-focused list of bullet-proof solutions at The Economic Populist here. Some of the mandatory highlights include:
Cancel all State and Federal offshore outsourced contracts. Bring those jobs back.
Immediate freeze on all guest worker Visas.
Mandatory Expansion of Nursing Schools with above market value Professor Salaries. Students must be permanent residents, U.S. citizens.
Let's start with one of the business leaders at the summit, CEO of Xerox, Ursula Burns. Earlier this fall, Xerox announced plans to acquire Dallas-based Affiliated Computer Services, an outsourcing firm for $63 per share -- about 33 percentovermarket value. Since the acquisition announcement, the Xerox share price has tanked by 12 percent, but this couldn't possibly stop ACS chairman from grinning all the way to the bank, could it? Just last week after a Xerox filing with federal regulators, the ACS chairman can stand to pocket a modest $41.3 million severance package resulting from the takeover deal PLUS $17.4 million more to foot the taxes on the severance deal. But wait – there's more - he'll ALSO stand to collect a whopping $800 million upon the finalization of the ACS stock sale to Xerox, according to this footnoted.org article. But in order to make the deal pay, will heads at Xerox have to roll to secure “cost savings” of between $300 to $400 million a year? Peter Bendor-Samuel, CEO of the Everest Group Dallas Business Journal explains:
“Through the acquisition, Xerox said it will establish annualized cost savings in the range of $300 to $400 million in the first three years after the transaction. The companies did not say anything about potential layoffs.
“You have some (job losses) coming from somewhere,” Bendor-Samuel said. “ACS is a very well-run and lean company. There’s not a lot of fat (in ACS).”
Aside from Burns' impressive record of working her way up through the ranks at Xerox to earn the distinction of becoming the company's first black female CEO, she was also appointed by President Obama “to help lead a national program aimed at honing students' skills in science, technology, engineering and math” according to this Daily Record report. I hope more American students will consider the STEM fields, as these kids have watched our government collude with greedy corporate executives to sell off the jobs of their computer scientist and engineering fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts and neighbors to the lowest third world bidder under the ruse of a Great Labor Shortage. (h/t David Sirota.)
Leave it to Biden who has a way with words, as he characteristically cuts to the chase with the business and “thought leaders" below:
"Your presence is welcome, but quite frankly it's not as important as your input. Without you, it will not become a reality.
Our task together is obviously not an easy one. And while the $787 billion stimulus package had helped kick-start the process, the government's capacity is still somewhat limited."
United States Neo-Frat Boy Government Gives Whores a BAD NAME
In today's Afghanistan, things are not all poppies and roses.
President Obama has decided to send over 35,000 more US troops to ostensibly “stabilize” their country, begging the question what needs stabilizing over there by the United States? In a perfect world, Afghanistan is the kind of place one could visit to enjoy the company of kind and decent locals, enjoy great food and centuries of strong tradition that is not exactly patterned after Disneyland. Far from it. Obama has declared open season on the people of Afghanistan and America's middle class by diverting US taxpayer dollars to kill Afghanis and US middle class citizens by not spending the money on single payer health care and restoring middle/upper middle class jobs to US citizens that were given to imported Indian workers.
Strategery, Bush 2.0. In his speech last night, Obama said “the only nation I am interested in building is our own.”Is someone's nose growing? If ONLY this were true, as his actions continue to betray his words on every single policy stance his Manchurian fingers (h/t Dave Lindorff) have touched in his award winning role of POTUS. From job outsourcing/in sourcing US jobs to India, disastrous health care “reform”, casino climate change cap and trade, and this latest Afghanistan foreign policy fiasco, it is important to recognize these four convergent points ALL hinge on selling out American middle class jobs and livelihoods to imported, cheap workers and shoring up an insiders playground of global elites determined to profit from ridding the US of any traces of a prospering and truly democratic middle class society through labor arbitrage.
Killing off national pride and sovereignty is the first place to start, and the corporate run US government is hellbent on spreading its hubris disease to the AfPak region in order to strengthen its US/Indian alliance with its “strategy” of integrating US military forces while it grows its corporate presence into their population “as long as they are needed on the ground.” Hmm, like indefinitely? Sounds like a grand recipe of taking US taxpayer funds to shore up US/India interests over there from guns to butter, if you want to ask me...and while the US economy is in the shitter, why not spend billions of dollars over there so we don't have to spend them over here to create new jobs and improve our own infrastructures? (h/t Tony Wikrent at Economic Populist.)
What I want to know is this: why is Obama so concerned about stabilizing someone else's country when he can not even stabilize his own? (Presuming of course, that he really IS a US citizen.) For the past twenty years, US citizens have watched their jobs and salaries disappear and erode as greedy politicians like Bill and Hillary Clinton figured out to a way to hack away at middle class jobs and create a delightful have and have-not neo-feudal frat boy society in this country by importing cheap workers from India under the lie that Americans are too uneducated to work and that there are not enough of them. Hey, go tell that to over one hundred million US citizens with degrees from the finest universities in the world – American -- who are now unemployed and underemployed because a few US corpo-political sociopaths have no regard for human life and local civility. With his latest let them eat cakism, hey, goes the thinking, why not just export this distinct US brand of ''hate thy neighbor' over to the AfPak region, too?
So why not turn Afghanistan into a serfy police state and get them to protect US corporate interests against a few of the local, uppity bad guys? I mean, how many American soldiers DOES it take to weed out a few bad guys and then go home? Maybe as many Secret Service guys it takes to weed out a couple of terrifying party crashers? India has looked to the US as a strategic partner to not only siphon American jobs but to shore up their own interests in the AfPak region against Muslim Pakistan. This is a country which could arguably be considered a virtual mecca of perpetual destabilization by the US in order to create more foment, wars and profits for a few sociopathic corporate and political elites.
And now, not only are US government officials fond of employing a disproportionate mix of Indian cybersecurity “experts” to run everything from its IT infrastructure to agriculture with Obama's recent appointment of this USAID Czar (with ties to Google 'Monopoly Man' Al Gore), it is hardly a stretch to imagine Afghanistan becoming Big Ag's new bitchwith this accelerated troop increase to protect profits for the few who will gain. And it won't be the ordinary Afghanis, the ones whom the US government insists will benefit from our deadly and hateful brand of “democracy” spreading.
Obama said the goal of sending 35,000 more troops into Afghanistan is based upon the need to help train their military on how to police certain elements of their society who would threaten “democracy” but the reality is that it has bug eyes on expanding the neo-frat boy corporate state over there whether they like it or not. Current TV (Al Gore's company) explains Big Ag's role in “the real war agenda” in Afghanistan:
“In this Briefing, we look at how the US's agricultural reconstruction work in Afghanistan and Iraq not only gives easy entry to US agribusiness and pushes neoliberal policies, something that has always been a primary function of US development assistance, but is also an intrinsic part of the US military campaign in these countries and the surrounding regions.
Seen together with the growing clout that the US and its corporate allies exercise over donor agencies and global bodies - such as the World Bank, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) centres, which influence the food and farm policies adopted by the recipient countries - this is an alarming development. These are not unique cases born from unusual circumstances, but constitute a likely template for US activities overseas, as it continues to expand its "war on terror" and pursues US corporate interests.”
In the true spirit of giving, as we enter the most joyous of holiday seasons and celebrate Christmas, isn't it redeeming to know that someone is profiting wildly from the spread of Islamaphobia? (h/t Chris Floyd at Empire Burlesque.) With Obama's commitment to more killing and destruction in the name of “democracy” in Afghanistan, let us not forget that those billions of dollars spent on this Surge 2.0 in Afghanistan and their destruction diverts US funds from paying for universal health care and a real US jobs program to restore stolen American jobs that this US/India “strategic alliance” cooked up in order for a few elites to wildly profit from. This Sodahead article observes:
“In order to increase profits,companies outsourced American jobs to China, Korea, Taiwan, India, etc. This has cost many Americans their jobs, and by doing so they cannot buy the products the companies they used to work for produce, as well as insurance, cars and homes. All the company needed to do was ask for money and it was given, by a government they bought and paid for. They stayed rich as the middle class worker joined the ranks of the impoverished.”
If this is what Obama meant by his promise of transparency, isn't it a relief to know that he and his neo-frat boy sycophants are spending US taxpayer dollars killing people in other lands with guns and bombs over there while they oh-so-discreetly kill off educated US citizens here by denying universal health care coverage and jobs? Like many people here and around the globe, during this Christmas and holiday season, I'll be praying for the people of Afghanistan. And like the peace loving dove that I am, I know Obama's deadly Afghanistan troop surge is more smoke being blown up the pants of corporate crooks and war hawks to blur the truth about this war against America's middle class, dressed up in a burqa and smoking a hookah pipe.
The persistent questions Barack keeps receiving about the true whereabouts of his birth are really getting annoying to him. That would be like me going into my favorite chorizo place in Redwood City and asking the owner, server and dishwasher, Pepe, to show me his visa every time I went in there. And I go there a lot.
What's so exciting this Thanksgiving is that the nation's favorite insider stock tip criminal and diva of delectable dishings, Martha Stewart, served up a skewered Sarah Palin on a silver platter of roasted foibles. When asked why people think Sarah Palin is so polarizing to people, Martha spared no cleavers:
“She's a dangerous person, she's very boring (when) she speaks, she's so confused...anyone in government like that is a REAL PROBLEM.”
Well, ok. Martha's right! The most dangerous thing about a politician is that when they're boring, nobody even wants to listen to them. Of the two of them, which one do you think has more Native American ancestry? It doesn't matter. Even if Martha IS Polish, she pulls off the whole “Mayflower Madame” thing a whole lot better than Sarah Palin, so that' s why I think she is so polar-bear-ized.
Martha ALSO said everybody should give back with services and money or with “guidance” and that's why I am writing her a letter to thank her for giving back to us with this delightful Palin dish on this Thanksgiving Day. I'm not sending her any money, since her well-greased stock tip turkey baster is going to be filled to the brim once this cap and trade bill gets passed.
Today, I am also pondering the parable of the wolf and the hawk, which is very important to me since I just found out that I am one forty second Cherokee! This really has me hoping that I will resolve my issues over whether or not it is ethically suitable to eat vegetables that have been cooked in clay pots next to the other white meat.
Well, make sure to celebrate your Native American roots, even if you don't have any because that's what this day is supposed to be all about and for giving thanks for being able eat as much as you can without being hauled off to the hospital in an ambulance for porking up like that guy in LIFE OF BRIAN.
Silicon Valley – It's the Derivatives Beast, Stupid! Get over yourselves and embrace the politics of eco-guilt and its elitist fraternal twin, cap and trade.
Climateer Investing reports that Shell Oil is pushing for an “unfettered” carbon trading market, along with BP Plc. Both support cap-and-trade, while Exxon Mobile Corp. prefers a more environmentally and consumer friendly carbon tax scheme. LWOH readers will recall that even the world's flattest and not-so-hottest NYT opinionator trashed cap-and-trade BEFORE he was for it.As yours truly has suggested, when former billionaire Tom Friedmanis following the money, it's time to take a closer look at who's behind the next bubble. After all, if the U.S. can't keep its intellectual property safe from the Chinese or make stuff here anymore, what do Americans do for jobs? Time to tap George Soros and trot out the Goldman Sachs investment bankers. So...
Bend Over, Here it Comes Again!This from Climateer:
“Remember, just as economists using the tools of science (mathematics) doesn't make economics a science, artificial constructs like cap-and-trade using the tools of markets doesn't make the racket "market based".”
For moreLWOH cap-and-trade market analysis, there are also voluntary cap-and-trade programs such as the one operated by the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX), whose inbred and humble roots began with the current POTUS along with an all-too familiar, all-star caste.
In other exciting news, Al Gore'sKleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers VC funded 25 or so person start-up Hara Software, which came out of stealth mode a few months ago, has been described as a “hot commodity.” Their product is meant to track the carbon footprints of large corporations and to identify or police “a business' entire environmental impact from laptop to long-haul truck.” Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers invested $6 million in venture capital with recent follow on investments from JAFCO Ventures and Nth Power. Fast Company explains Hara's noble rot or “low-hanging fruit” identification scheme:
“Hara CEO Amit Chatterjee says the software, "is focused on understanding organizational metabolism, the input and output of natural resources and energy." Hara--"Fresh green" in Sanskrit--tracks use of electricity, water, chemicals, and gas, and compares it to outputs of waste water, greenhouse gas, and solid waste. The software identifies the "low-hanging fruit", or the simplest ways to cut energy use and waste, along with longer-term goals.”
Hara has also managed to attract Rupert Murdoch to help his media company, News Corp clean up their emissions, or whatever it is that they drag around in their canvas bags for lunch.News Corp go carbon neutral by 2010. It's one thing to ask the local steel mill to go all carbon neutral, but an office full of self-satisfied, upwardly-urban, literate neophytes? Aren't these people already heeding the climate change memo by wearing more sweaters in the winter, turning the lights off, recycling their empty ale bottles and cooling it on the A/C during hot summer days like the rest of the world's eco-serfs?
News Corp’s manager of Energy Initiatives, Vijay Sudan, said in the company's report that News Corp had looked “at numerous solutions” and chose Hara “due to the intuitive nature as well as the breadth and depth of the Hara solution.” Given the sheer size of News Corp, Hara has bagged a very large win for such a small, newbie firm. Back in 2007 Murdoch describedthe impact of News Corp going carbon neutral as similar to “turning off the electricity in the city of London for five full days.”
There we have it. In a million, climate change wracked years, London would not ever stand for the electricity being turned off for a five full days. And with Hara's low-hanging fruit detection technology, let's hope that Murdoch's noble soldiers on the front lines will not end up losing the war on climate change, and that a good time will be had by all. After that, at least a few investors will collect their checks and go back to their country houses or Westminster flats.
“The obvious hysteria of the people pushing us into the fatal carbon trading market scheme has alerted many people who already are not prone to trust bankers, into digging in heels over global warming. And thus, we are set on the path to another mega-confrontation that will not be based on science by EITHER side of the issue but will be mostly emotional.”
About those emails, while one can reasonably conclude that although the science of global warming is real, a current cooling trend is here. One of the emails indicated that one scientist had to hide and bury the current cooling trend in the data INSTEAD of explaining or clarifying it with regards to “global warming.” Supkis correctly points out that the emails do not disprove global warming, but rather show that “scientists can be stupid or difficult like other people.” She truly understands the science behind global warming and the political and economic motivations prompting the urgency going into Copenhagen:
“Global warming was NOT embraced by the ruling elites until it was connected to the Derivatives Beast. Then and only then, did it take off like a rocket. Only, the sun didn’t cooperate, did it?”
November 20 -- If this isn't my favorite movie evah, it's right up there...
Let's enjoy this old, timeless classic as we celebrate Jimmy Woods & Sean Young in The Boost. These two are the Spencer & Tracy of blow movies, bar none, and make Michelle Pfeiffer & Al Pacino look like Chip n' Dale.
New York -- "Oracle of Omaha" Warren Buffett has announced that he is "teaming" with Goldman Sachs to provide assistance to 10,000 small businesses in the U.S. through a$500 million charitable effort:
"The newly created “10,000 Small Businesses Initiative” will be guided by an advisory council co-chaired by Blankfein, Buffett and Harvard Business School’s Michael Porter. The council will include George Boggs, president and CEO of the American Association of Community Colleges, and Dan Danner, president and CEO of the National Federation of Independent Business.
The program will contribute $200 million to local community colleges, universities and other institutions to provide small- business owners with practical business education. Goldman Sachs will invest $300 million through a combination of lending and philanthropic support to community development financial institutions."
The article states that the initiative "aims to provide assistance -- ranging from counseling to obtaining funding -- to 10,000 businesses." Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. is the largest shareholder in New York-based Goldman Sachs. Counseling and obtaining funding? For $500 million, that's got to be some kind of gold-plated counseling for those unnamed 10,000 small businesses along with access to obtaining funding...
Good to know that Buffett and Lord Blankfein feel the need to "do the right thing" by helping all of those charitable and philanthropic GS venture-backed portfolio companies (small businesses) to potentially get their newly minted guest worker/student visa holdersup to speed by packing them off to community colleges. No mention was made as to whether or not unemployed/underemployed American engineers will be eligible for participation.
(Very Special Thanks to the Amazing Leonard Cohen)
Silicon Valley -- Everybody knows. Wander around the halls of this valley's once great corporations and VC funded, neo-frat boy start-ups and you will find all you need to know about the causes for rising rates of American unemployment and underemployment. Whether it's Sun orAdobe, these "best and brightest" bean-counter powered executives have sold out the livelihoods of US engineers along with product/service quality for a quick cash-out to India under the ruse of a US skilled great labor shortage. And yet, US cheap labor junkies are STILL heading for the Hill to buy off another round of politicians to supply them with their fix while Obama plans a summit on job creation next month.
LWOH readers know that yours truly has written extensively on the wholesale sell-out of US white collar jobs and has provided the solutions with which to correct the problem of rising unemployment/underemployment by reforming CEO cheap labor lobby practices. It's not rocket science. Sometimes, my dear, a banana is just a banana...
In this excellent 2007 article by Alison Overholt at Fast Company entitled The Labor Shortage Myth,the author debunked the thesis that "When boomers start to retire, the theory goes, we'll see a job boom" by asserting "Too bad it won't happen." Overholt suggests that CEOs have manufactured the myth of a US labor shortage where none will exist, and cites this Wharton study by Peter Capelli, as yours truly has previously discussed:
"The labor-shortage alarmists underestimate the capability of younger generations. Peter Cappelli, another Wharton professor and director of the school's Center for Human Resources, notes that even though boomers outnumber busters overall, "the cohort of college grads didn't shrink. We've just pulled more kids up into the system," he says. Some 930,000 bachelor's degrees a year were conferred at the height of the boomers' run through college -- while the smallest graduating class for busters produced 1.16 million grads. Now college-educated members of the "Echo Boom," a group close in size to the boomers themselves, are starting to enter the workforce. No evidence there of a shrinking skilled labor pool."
In addition to Capelli's thorough research, he has been one of the most consistent yet dismissed scholars on the war on America's educated middle class. Overtholt references the following quote:
"But the coming labor shortage? The job boom? They're myths, kept alive mostly because they allow employers easy solutions. "A lot of companies got whacked around in the 1990s when the economy heated up and the labor market tightened. They learned it's easier to lobby for more Indian engineers on H-1B visas than to address their own retention policies and training programs," Cappelli says."
Everybody knows. Millions of educated Americans are now unemployed and underemployed due to the flood of imported cheap workers that do not need to be here. We have been played by cheap labor junkies and it's time to throw them out. The H-1B temporary work visa program has kept workers in the US when they should have been sent back years ago. Now, Compete America, the cheap labor lobby (see above link) wants MORE of them? What is the matter with the people of this country? This is nuts.
Overholt's article inspired the visionary scenario into what CEOs across the country might do to bring back the millions of professionals they kicked to the curb by sending back the millions of temporary visa holders whom our unemployment statistics prove corporate America no longer needs. She queries the "pro-worker" reality that educated boomers (and their kids) need those jobs back here:
"With retiring age being pushed off and Social Security at risk, will labor conditions turn pro-worker at any point in the future?"
How to heal this problem? Like the crack whore it is, Corporate America and their lusty political enablers are addicted to imported cheap labor like a sex rehabilitation client is to a daily quickie with the Swedish therapist. Sending millions of temporary work visa holders home so that our citizens can get back to work may not be a sexy topic, but it can no longer be ignored or swept under the carpet as "politically incorrect." Asyours truly reported here, in 2007 Bill Greider also predicted that the US would have to ostensibly stop the great American jobs giveaway:
"At the moment, there's a great yawn about all this, but one day when everything collapses, people will ask: Why didn't we do anything about this?"
Indeed, Overholt got it right about corporate America's dependencies on "demographic crutches":
"The real solution, of course, is more difficult. It requires companies to invest in the right technologies and in their own employees in order to stay ever more productive. It's not as sexy as a demographic crutch. It just happens to be the right answer."
So let's help Obama with his jobs summit next month by demanding that the cheap labor junkies detox from their fixes of imported labor by sending them back and getting educated Americans back to work again. This H-1B/green card visa scam has been propped up by the lie of an American skilled labor shortage myth. Now we are in a depression, and US citizens need jobs. This is no longer a secret.
Washington -- Obama has today named a 36-year-old doctor, Rajiv Shah to head the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), filling what lawmakers and aid experts had called a "glaring vacancy" on a key foreign-policy front. His impressive seniority and in-depth track record is noteworthy, suggesting deep, deep reaches into even deeper pockets. Not only has he served as undersecretary of agriculture since June, but he previously worked for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the world's largest private charity headed by Bill "Give Me Infinite H-1Bs" Gates.
The highly seasoned professional even has ties to Al Gore, Obama's very special sponsor:
"Shah, whose family emigrated from India, holds an MD and a master's in health economics and gained political experience advising Al Gore's presidential campaign on health-care policy. He was deeply involved with international vaccine efforts at the Gates Foundation and led Agriculture Department efforts on the Obama administration's food security initiative, part of a global campaign to help small farmers get more food to the hungry."
But wait...there's more! Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is said to be deeply interested in this development, "wanting to link it more to diplomacy." This worries some aid groups, which fear that projects with little short-term political payoff may be short-changed.
Obama is pledging to double foreign assistance to $50 billion a year and make non-domestic economic development a pillar of his strategy in Afghanistan and to "push for a $20 billion program in conjunction with other countries to fight hunger."
Very Special Thanks to Sesame Street and the Amazing Loretta Lynn
In celebration of our friends over at Sesame Street who have dispensed laughter, joy and communismto us and our precious cargo for forty years, we were going to feature Loretta Lynn's timeless “Coal Miner's Daughter” but decided “Don't Come Home a Drinking'” would work better with our exclusive photos and captions.
Click herefor lyrics to yours truly's “Everybody is a Czar”
-2Truthy (Special thanks to Sly and the Family Stone)
Middle Class Czar Joe Biden on Stripping American Dignity
Washington – Vice President Joe “Middle Class Czar” Biden hosted a live webcast today with a panel of scholars to discuss the demise of American middle class citizens. Biden is chairman of the White House Task Force on Middle Class Families, established by President Barack Obama earlier this year. The task force was created “to ensure the administration’s economic recovery effectively raises the living standards of middle-class families and those aspiring to be in the middle class.” The site invites questions for the Czar, and LWOH has a few below. (Yours truly likes Joe Biden and hopes he will succeed by using his gilded pulpit to not only give himself something self-important to do but to actually getresults for the greater good of the non-hubris class...some of whom might actually take his Czar position in all of its grand regalia seriously.)
During the speech, Biden observed that “people have been stripped of their dignity” but insisted that the administration is not interested in redistributing wealth.(h/t Sam Stein.) Hmm. Is he talking about more labor arbitrage to”level the playing field” by reducing middle class incomes for educated citizens to cap at the paltry $40,00 per year range instead of doing the smart thing by reinstating the 91% tax rate and relieving us of U.S. corporate cheap labor junkies? Queried the Middle Class Czar:
"We aren't talking about income redistribution," he said. "We are talking about a fighting chance to make a decent income... it's about fairness. It is about simple fairness. It is about an equality of opportunity. At least that's what we are searching for. We are searching for that Holy Grail. How do we establish that level playing field?"
Back to the pressing questions for the Middle Class Czar. Let's start with electronic health records (EHRs) and the Democrats' curious refusal to bring Single Payer to the table and worse, their lust for sticking it to middle class Americans via a cost prohibitive mandated health insurance scam that will, in the words of Obama, stop middle class Americans who don't have insurance because they can't afford it from “gaming the system.” Why is the Obama administration so hell bent on forcing Americans to buy unaffordable health insurance and to subsidize the same corporate technocrats who pander to the cheap labor lobby that refuses to hire educated Americans in favor of cheap imported labor? Read more on this research from yours truly in this recent article Electronic Health Records (EHRs) No Cure-All.)
There's a gold rush in them thar hills, and a few technocrats smell a big, fat taxpayer-funded bonanza at the insufferable elitist BBQ pit – at the expense of the jobs and health of educated America's beaten down middle class. The creation and taxpayer subsidization of half-baked venture backed technologies is nothing new, but when it comes at the expense of health and jobs for middle class Americans, its forced expansion into the domain of health care providers has raised concern from some of the nations finest physicians and organizations. Indeed, the shake down on the nation's physicians is so mighty that even the Huffington Post's “Investigative Fund” has teamed with American University's Investigative Workshop in today's post entitled Stimulus fuels Gold Rush for Electronic Health Systems.(h/t Fred Schulte.)
What could Biden really do to represent middle class Americans? As U.S. taxpayers bankroll or subsidize private electronic medical records technology firms (many whose employees and contractors arenot U.S.citizens but imported workers), a few elementary questions for Czar Biden include: “So, to the tune of an estimated $50 billion, where is our Single Payer health care bill?” And “Does Biden represent the portfolio class of corporate technocrats whose business plans revolve around kicking America's educated white collar middle class to the curb via offshoring/onshoring U.S. jobs to foreign workers?” Naturally, the next question is “What are you doing to stop these corporations from importing cheap labor so Americans can get back to work to pay for this craptastic, cost-prohibitive mandated coverage?” Finally “Since most doctors don't want these EHRs, why are you meddling?”
Of all the pressing needs that middle class Americans face today, access to a non-mandated, universal health care system and good paying jobs for its citizenry displaced by imported workers are most critical. Both issues are intrinsically related. Now that the Huffington Post's tentacles have finally gripped the ongoing research of yours truly regarding the stealth taxpayer funded EHRs diverting money from universal health care coverage for all, the corporate sponsored nature surrounding the “health care debate” appears to have much more to do with taxpayer funded, private corporate welfare sponsored growth than preserving health and avoiding financial ruin via a much overdue Single Payer health care system.
Schulte describes the voracious corporate sales push to hustle the same physicians that American middle class citizens depend upon to provide them health care here:
“A super group of major tech firms has banded together and hit the road with what they call a "stimulus tour" to boost sales. So far, the tour, which includes officials from Microsoft, Dell and Allscripts-Misys Healthcare Solutions, has played in more than 30 cities. It stops at local convention centers and hotels, where it holds seminars for doctors. Those who attend receive a "customized stimulus analysis of how much money your practice could earn in federal incentives."
Perhaps Czar Biden, in his role of middle class protectorate can explain how to bust up the toga party between this taxpayer funded, consumer driven private health care medical industrial complex and its evil twin, the American job sacking machine(h/t to EndH1B.com) to restore community and civility to our country's broken, for-profit government run by neo-frat boy corporate elites. Until Biden proves otherwise, that's the group our Middle Class Czar appears to represent.
