Friday, October 16, 2009

Health Care part....

Found a last week, from Dylan Ratigan that the only business in the whole country that is legally exempt from the antitrust laws is the Insurance industry. hmmm.

The same anti trust laws that were passed by congress to stop one company from taking over too much of the market place, effectivly removing competition and granting the one company the ability to raise rates and cut service, exactly what we have right now running rampant in the Health Care Industry. ]

So why are Republicans still going on telivision and arguing that insurance companies are not the problem the real problem is out of control lawsuits. Sure it is.

So while the health inusrance industry basically threatened to raise rates this week if any type of public option was passed, the Democratic Leader in the Senate Harry Ried finally grew a pair, and threatened to cancel the anti trust exemption given to the health insurance industy. How do you like. Dems have somewhat of a spine after all.

Dylan Ratigan

He is a new anchor on MSNBC, a channel you cannot watch if you subscribe to Verizon cable services because their competition have an exclusive contract,blah blah blah. Dylan has been tearing it on his show recently, introducing new ideas and ways to look at the recent economic collapse triggered by Wall Street.

He points that on Wall Street their are two mindsets. One is to gather money for investment in business, to drive business growth and innovation. This was the original idea behind Wall Street. A business begins to sell stock so they have some extra money on hand to build a second factory or buy more machines to increae output.

The second philosophy is to gamble like you do in Vegas. So hedge funds have popped up gathering large sums of money and placing huge bets, not on stocks but on things like risk. With the so called subprime mortgage crash we saw Wall Street gambling on peoples mortgages, would they be able to pay or not, there is also bets on credit card debt.

Dylan does not like the second philosophy because you taking large sums of money away from companies that would use that money to grow, to expand and to innovate.

Makes sense. Especially when you look at all the companies that were short on money when the crash happened. Also makes sense when you try to find our exactly what America makes anymore.

Friday, October 9, 2009

It must be an early april fools joke

President Obama won the nobel peace prize today, yet there is nothing peaceful about him except for his rhetoric. This is a man who has continued two illegal wars on some of the poorest people of the world in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is a man who continues the illegal Bush policies of rendition(shipping suspected terrorists off to countries that are known to torture prisoners). This is a man who continues the illegal Bush policy of keeping suspected terrorists locked up without rights. And to top it all off, we were informed this week that he bombed the moon. The moon people. Who wins a peace prize after they bomb the moon. What could anyone have against the moon. Whats next bombing the sun?

Living in the twilight zone people. Wake up. If this action does not say the whole world is Alice in wonderland than you will never see it.

Update;
Just listened to a Bill O'rielly segment where he told viewers his choice for the Nobel would have been General David Petraues. Thats right a General. The man in charge of the many deaths and abuses that have occured inside Iraq. Bills reasoning was that he did the groundwork for peace. No matter that he killed people and destroyed lives to do it. This way oif thinking is just mind boggling to me. In order to create peace its ok to kill. In order to stop a murderer we must murder. We must all become terrorists to stop the terrorists. Doesnt bill see a problem with this line of reasoning. Eventual the word terrorist just defines what side you are on. To Americans Osama is a terrorist. To the people of Iraq George Bush was the terrorist. Who is right who is wrong? Are both right. Both Osama and George killed people to create peace. Both say they are justified in their killing. I say both are wrong. I say peace cannot be built on top of murdered human. Call me crazy.

Al Franken vs. Rape supporting Republicans

Al Franken passed his first ammendment this week as a Senator that will hold contracters working in war zones like Iraq or Afghanistan responsible for criminal acts, like say if 5 male employees working for haliburten decide to rape a female coworker working for haliburten, and when theh female employee tells her boss they lock her up and tell her if she ever wants to go home she shoudl shut up. Right now the five males who raped and basically kidnapped this women, holding her against her will, in a foreign land, are in a grey zone of the law. Al Franken proposes a law to punish Americans who rape and kidnap other Americans in a war zone, and some Republicans actually voted against this. Fucking amazing. I cant wait to read the spin they try to put on this shit. Links and names to follow

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/15/jon-stewart-takes-on-30-r_n_321985.html

We can do it too;

If you dont support universal health care than tell us why you hate Americans?

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

PR blitz Vs. News

David Sirota has a great column up at http://inthesetimes.com/article/4912/mad_men_2.0
where he discusses how hard it is to find real facts and information about issue in todays world beause for every scientists you have showing actual facts and data you have a team of corporate lawyers and lobbyists deny these facts.

In a related story Rachel Maddow of msnbc (which i cannot get on my cable tv service(verizon in NY) because it seems verizens competition, cablevision, and an exclusive contract), had a segment on the other day where she spoke with an industry expert who owns a well established PR firm, who has websites trying to convince us that transfats are not bad, there is no mercury in fish, sun tanning beds are safe, high fructose corn syrup is safe, and many many more, he does this all with a straight face.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/07/rachel-maddow-confronts-n_n_312334.html

And finally it seems in the face of untruthful corporate dominated cable news a real news castor working for America has snuck through the gates, who is doing real reporting but is beating up anyone who comes on his show who attempts to do an information for whoever they are working for. A sidenote, it seems every pundit, or expert that appears on corporate run cable news acts more like they are doing an informatial for whoever own them, instead of being a true industry expert who goes on the news trying to clarifying a complex issue. One of my favorite authors David Sirota has talked about the lack of transparency on these news shows so that you will rarely be told by say, fox news, that their military expert giving a supposed candid opinion on afghanistan is really a paid pr specialist hired by the pentagon, makes a difference to know this, eh?

Anyway Dylan Ratigan is kicking some major ass at msnbc and anyone interested in real, old school, muckraking journalist should check him out,
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31510813/ns/msnbc_tv-morning_meeting
anyone looking for the same old, canned talking points, with no substance, being yelled back and forth, and lies should check out Fox news, cnn, abc, nbc, and cbs.

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Dont trust the balance sheets

The FDIC, a branch of the US government responsible for the soundness of the banking industry has been doing internal tests of banks to test their stablility. This past quarter 416 lenders made the list for failing the FDIC's stability test, a 15 year high. Many of these lenders have superb financial statements. Which leads me to my point. Their are millions of ways to make a financial statement look sound when in fact the lender or business is not.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aHU4bso2L2aE

Saturday, October 3, 2009

Tennessee

I am currently writing something on the Tennessee coal power plant that kept a pool of toxic sludge called fly ash in a landfill, and when the wall to the landfill burst open toxic sludge flooded the town, this happened in december of 08' but 1)its still not clean yet and 2) it is the largest pollutiion disaster in the history of the United States.

Just wanted to share with you a highlight of the story so far. The toxic pool of sludge is not regulated by the EPA because it is classified as nto hazerdous, yet the sludge is pollution from the coal burning power plant that previoulsy was pushed into the atmosphere as smoke. So why isnt it still released as smoke you ask? Well the EPA called the smoke hazerdous and didnt want to pollute the air anymore. So bingo, lets grab the smoke and make it ash, add water and create a pool of toxic sludge called fly ash and call it, uhhhhhhh, not hazerdous. Because we both know mercury cadmium, asrsenic and lead dont count as hazerdous when they are in sludge form.

So the toxic non hazerdous sludge burst out of its home (pool next to power plant) and in an effort to be free it covers the town in sludge. So why is the TVA( tennessee valey authority, the owners of the power plant) spending millions buying out all the homes in the area and cleaning up the mess? It makes no sense. Why clean up toxic non hazerdous material. I mean non hazerdous is non hazerdous. If i spill a glass of water in the street I wouldnt clean it up like I would clean up glass, now thats hazerdous.

The other story i wanted to share was a child with asthma who was rushed to the hospital. You see him and his mother walked on non hazerdous toxins in the dirt in town and than walked all over their house. Kid plays on floor with dirt, kid gets really sick. Doctor blames toxins and poisons found in non hazerdous sludge and tells the mom she should not go back to her home until it is cleaned out or child will stay sick. The TVA being nice and understanding and wantin to help the town they have shit on decide to put the mother and child up in a hotel room. But the child is still sick. hmmm. Could it be the TVA got the mother and child a hotel room in the same hotel occupied by those workers cleaning up the spill sit, and who have been tracking in mud and dirt from the spill site all over the hotel? Yes it can.

So in the last brain dead move of the year, the TVA buys mom and child their own home, too bad it was upwind of the spill site, and dust and toxic non hazerdous particles are blowing into the new house. Thanks but no thanks.