Boogie Man Journal

Obamacare: Explained like you're a five year-old

noreply@blogger.com (Boogie Man Journal) — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 15:34:00 +0000

Okay, explained like you're a five year-old (well, okay, maybe a bit older), without too much oversimplification, and (hopefully) without sounding too biased:

What people call "Obamacare" is actually the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (abbreviated to PPACA or ACA). However, people were calling it "Obamacare" before everyone even hammered out what it would be. It's a term that was, at first, mostly used by people who didn't like the PPACA, and it's become popularized in part because PPACA is a really long and awkward name, even when you turn it into an acronym like that. Barack Obama has since said that he actuallylikes the term "Obamacare" because, he says, "I do care".

Anyway, the PPACA made a bunch of new rules regarding health care, with the purpose of making health care more affordable for everyone. Opponents of the PPACA, on the other hand, feel that the rules it makes take away too many freedoms and force people (both individuals and businesses) to do things they shouldn't have to.

So what does it do? Well, here is everything, in the order of when it goes into effect (because some of it happens later than other parts of it):

(Note: Page numbers listed in citations are the page numbers within the PDF, not the page numbers of the document itself)

Already in effect:

It allows the Food and Drug Administration to approve more generic drugs (making for more competition in the market to drive down prices) ( Citation: An entire section of the bill, called Title VII, is devoted to this, starting on page 766 )
It increases the rebates on drugs people get through Medicare (so drugs cost less) ( Citation: Page 235, sec. 2501 )
It establishes a non-profit group, that the government doesn't directly control, PCORI, to study different kinds of treatments to see what works better and is the best use of money. ( Citation: Page 684, sec. 1181 )
It makes chain restaurants like McDonalds display how many calories are in all of their foods, so people can have an easier time making choices to eat healthy. ( Citation: Page 518, sec. 4205 )
It makes a "high-risk pool" for people with pre-existing conditions. Basically, this is a way to slowly ease into getting rid of "pre-existing conditions" altogether. For now, people who already have health issues that would be considered "pre-existing conditions" can still get insurance, but at different rates than people without them. (Citation: Page 49, sec. 1101, Page 64, sec. 2704, and Page 65, sec. 2702 )
It forbids insurance companies from discriminating based on a disability, or because they were the victim of domestic abuse in the past (yes, insurers really did deny coverage for that) ( Citation: Page 66, sec. 2705 )
It renews some old policies, and calls for the appointment of various positions.
It creates a new 10% tax on indoor tanning booths. ( Citation: Page 942, sec. 5000B )
It says that health insurance companies can no longer tell customers that they won't get any more coverage because they have hit a "lifetime limit". Basically, if someone has paid for health insurance, that company can't tell that person that he's used that insurance too much throughout his life so they won't cover him any more. They can't do this for lifetime spending, and they're limited in how much they can do this for yearly spending. (Citation: Page 33, sec. 2711 )
Kids can continue to be covered by their parents' health insurance until they're 26. ( Citation: Page 34, sec. 2714 )
No more "pre-existing conditions" for kids under the age of 19. ( Citation: Page 64, sec. 2704 and Page 76, sec. 1255 )
Insurers have less ability to change the amount customers have to pay for their plans. ( Citation: Page 47, sec. 2794 )
People in the "Medicare Part D Coverage Gap" (also referred to as the "Donut Hole") get a rebate to make up for the extra money they would otherwise have to spend. ( Citation: Page 398, sec. 3301 )
Insurers can't just drop customers once they get sick. ( Citation: Page 33, sec. 2712 )
Insurers have to tell customers what they're spending money on. (Instead of just "administrative fee", they have to be more specific).
Insurers need to have an appeals process for when they turn down a claim, so customers have some manner of recourse other than a lawsuit when they're turned down. ( Citation: Page 42, sec. 2719 )
Anti-fraud funding is increased and new ways to stop fraud are created. ( Citation: Page 718, sec. 6402 )
Medicare extends to smaller hospitals. ( Citation: Starting on page 363, the entire section "Part II" seems to deal with this )
Medicare patients with chronic illnesses must be monitored more thoroughly.
Reduces the costs for some companies that handle benefits for the elderly. ( Citation: Page 511, sec. 4202 )
A new website is made to give people insurance and health information. (I think this is it:http://www.healthcare.gov/ ). ( Citation: Page 55, sec. 1103 )
A credit program is made that will make it easier for business to invest in new ways to treat illness by paying half the cost of the investment. (Note - this program was temporary. It already ended) ( Citation: Page 849, sec. 9023 )
A limit is placed on just how much of a percentage of the money an insurer makes can be profit, to make sure they're not price-gouging customers. ( Citation: Page 41, sec. 1101 )
A limit is placed on what type of insurance accounts can be used to pay for over-the-counter drugs without a prescription. Basically, your insurer isn't paying for the Aspirin you bought for that hangover. ( Citation: Page 819, sec. 9003 )
Employers need to list the benefits they provided to employees on their tax forms. ( Citation: Page 819, sec. 9002 )
Any new health plans must provide preventive care (mammograms, colonoscopies, etc.) without requiring any sort of co-pay or charge. ( Citation: Page 33, sec. 2713 )

1/1/2013

If you make over $200,000 a year, your taxes go up a tiny bit (0.9%). Edit: To address those who take issue with the word "tiny", a change of 0.9% is relatively tiny. Any look at how taxes have fluctuated over the years will reveal that a change of less than one percent is miniscule, especially when we're talking about people in the top 5% of earners. ( Citation: Page 837, sec. 9015 )

1/1/2014

This is when a lot of the really big changes happen.

No more "pre-existing conditions". At all. People will be charged the same regardless of their medical history. (Citation: Page 64, sec. 2704, Page 65, sec. 2701, and Page 76, sec. 1255 )
If you can afford insurance but do not get it, you will be charged a fee. This is the "mandate" that people are talking about. Basically, it's a trade-off for the "pre-existing conditions" bit, saying that since insurers now haveto cover you regardless of what you have, you can't just wait to buy insurance until you get sick. Otherwise no one would buy insurance until they needed it. You can opt not to get insurance, but you'll have to pay the fee instead, unless of course you're not buying insurance because you just can't afford it. (Note: On 6/28/12, the Supreme Court ruled that this is Constitutional, as long as it's considered a tax on the uninsured and not a penalty for not buying insurance... nitpicking about wording, mostly, but the long and short of it is, it looks like this is accepted by the courts) ( Citation: Page 164, sec. 5000A, and here is the actual court ruling for those who wish to read it. )

Question: What determines whether or not I can afford the mandate? Will I be forced to pay for insurance I can't afford?

Answer: There are all kinds of checks in place to keep you from getting screwed. Kaiser actually has a webpage with a pretty good rundown on it, if you're worried about it. You can see it here.

Okay, have we got that settled? Okay, moving on...

Medicaid can now be used by everyone up to 133% of the poverty line (basically, a lot more poor people can get insurance) ( Citation: Page 198, sec. 2001 ) (Note: The recent court ruling says that states can opt out of this and that the Federal government cannot penalize them by withholding Medicaid funding, but as far as I can tell, nothing is stopping the Federal government from simply just offering incentives to those who do opt to do it, instead)
Small businesses get some tax credits for two years. (It looks like this is specifically for businesses with 25 or fewer employees) ( Citation: Page 157, sec. 1421 )
Businesses with over 50 employees must offer health insurance to full-time employees, or pay a penalty. (Citation: Page 174, sec. 4980H )

Question: Can't businesses just fire employees or make them work part-time to get around this requirement? Also, what about businesses with multiple locations?

Answer: Yes and no. Switching to part-time only won't help to get out of the requirement, as the Affordable Care Act counts the hours worked, not the number of full-time employees you have. If your employees worked an equivalent of 50 full-time employees' hours, the requirement kicks in. Really, the only plausible way a business could reasonably utilize this strategy is if they currently operate with just over the 50-employee number, and could still operate with under 50 employees, and have no intention to expand. Also, regarding the questions about multiple locations, this legal website analyzed the law and claims that multiple locations in one chain all count as a part of the same business (meaning employers like Wal-Mart can't get around this by being under 50 employees in one store - they'd have to be under that for the entire chain, which just ain't happening). Independently-owned franchises are different, however, as they have a separate owner and as such aren't included under the same net as the parent company. However, any individual franchise with over 50 employees will have to meet the requirement.

Having said that, the ACA only requires employers to offer insurance to full-time employees, so theoretically they could get out of this by reducing all employees to 29 hours or fewer a week. However, if any employees' hours go above that, their employer will have to provide insurance or pay the penalty. And also, this is putting aside how an employer only offering part-time work with no insurance will affect how competitive they are on the job market, especially when small businesses with 25 or fewer employees actually get that aforementioned tax credit to help pay for insurance if they choose to get it (though they are not required to provide insurance).

Insurers now can't do annual spending caps. Their customers can get as much health care in a given year as they need. ( Citation: Page 33, sec. 2711 )
Limits how high of an annual deductible insurers can charge customers. ( Citation: Page 81, sec. 1302 )
Health insurance cannot discriminate against women on pricing or plan availability ( Citation: Page 185, sec. 1557 )
Reduce costs for some Medicare spending, which in turn are put right back into Medicare to increase its solvency. Most notably, this bill reduces the amount that Medicare Advantage pays to be more in line with other areas of Medicare ( Citation: Page 384, Sec. 3201 and Page 389, Sec. 3202 ), and reduces the growth of Medicare payments in the future ( Citation: Page 426, Sec. 3402 ). The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that between 2012 and 2022, this will amount to $716 Billion in reduced spending ( Citation: CBO Estimate ). Also being cut is $22 Billion from the Medicare Improvement Fund, most likely because the PPACA does a lot of the same stuff, so that spending would be redundant ( Citation: Page 361, Sec. 3112 ).
Place a $2500 limit on tax-free spending on FSAs (accounts for medical spending). Basically, people using these accounts now have to pay taxes on any money over $2500 they put into them. ( Citation: Page 820, sec. 9005 )
Establish health insurance exchanges and rebates for the lower and middle-class, basically making it so they have an easier time getting affordable medical coverage. ( Citation: Page 107, sec. 1311 )
Congress and Congressional staff will only be offered the same insurance offered to people in the insurance exchanges, rather than Federal Insurance. Basically, we won't be footing their health care bills any more than any other American citizen. ( Citation: Page 100, sec. 1312 )
A new tax on pharmaceutical companies.
A new tax on the purchase of medical devices.
A new tax on insurance companies based on their market share. Basically, the more of the market they control, the more they'll get taxed.
Raises the bar for how much your medical expenses must cost before you can start deducting them from your taxes (Thanks to Redditor cnash6 for the correction!).

1/1/2015

Doctors' pay will be determined by the quality of their care, not how many people they treat. Edit: a_real_MD addresses questions regarding this one in far more detail and with far more expertise than I can offer in this post. If you're looking for a more in-depth explanation of this one (as many of you are), I highly recommend you give his post a read.

1/1/2017

If any state can come up with their own plan, one which gives citizens the same level of care at the same price as the PPACA, they can ask the Secretary of Health and Human Resources for permission to do their plan instead of the PPACA. So if they can get the same results without, say, the mandate, they can be allowed to do so. Vermont, for example, has expressed a desire to just go straight to single-payer (in simple terms, everyone is covered, and medical expenses are paid by taxpayers). ( Citation: Page 117, sec. 1332 )

2018

All health care plans must now cover preventive care (not just the new ones).
A new tax on "Cadillac" health care plans (more expensive plans for rich people who want fancier coverage).

2020

The elimination of the "Medicare gap"

Aaaaand that's it right there.

The biggest thing opponents of the bill have against it is the mandate. They claim that it forces people to buy insurance, and forcing people to buy something is unconstitutional. Personally, I take the opposite view, as it's not telling people to buy a specific thing, just to have a specific type of thing, just like a part of the money we pay in taxes pays for the police and firemen who protect us, this would have us paying to ensure doctors can treat us for illness and injury.

Plus, as previously mentioned, it's necessary if you're doing away with "pre-existing conditions" because otherwise no one would get insurance until they needed to use it, which defeats the purpose of insurance.

Of course, because so many people are arguing about it, and some of the people arguing about it don't really care whether or not what they're saying is true, there are a lot of things people think the bill does that just aren't true. Here's a few of them:

Obamacare has death panels!: That sounds so cartoonishly evil it must be true, right? Well, no. No part of the bill says anything about appointing people to decide whether or not someone dies. The decision over whether or not your claim is approved is still in the hands of your insurer. However, now there's an appeals process so if your claim gets turned down, you can challenge that. And the government watches that appeals process to make sure it's not being unfair to customers. So if anything the PPACA is trying to stop the death panels. ( Citation: Page 42, sec. 2719 )

What about the Independent Medicare Advisory Board? Death Panels!: The Independent Medicare Advisory Board (which has had its name changed to Independent Payment Advisory Board, or IPAB) is intended to give recommendations on how to save Medicare costs per person, deliver more efficient and effective care, improve access to services, and eliminate waste. However, they have no real power. They put together a recommendation to put before Congress, and Congress votes on it, and the President has power to veto it. What's more, they are specifically told that their recommendation will not ration health care, raise premiums or co-pays, restrict benefits, or restrict eligibility. In other words, they need to find ways to save money without reducing care for patients. So no death panels. In any sense of the (stupid) term. ( Citation: Page 426, sec. 3403 )

Obamacare has health care rationing!: "Rationing" is just a fancier way of saying "Death Panels". And no, it doesn't. (See above).

Obamacare has an un-elected panel of people who will decide what kind of care I can get!: Yet another way of saying "Death Panels", albeit a softer way of saying it. It's true that the IPAB is appointed, not elected. However, they are expressly forbidden from reducing or rationing care. (Again, see above).

Obamacare gives free insurance to illegal immigrants!: Actually, there are multiple parts of the bill that specifically state that the recipient of tax credits and other good stuff must be a legal resident of the United States. And while the bill doesn't specifically forbid illegals from buying insurance or getting treated at hospitals, neither did the laws in the US before the PPACA. So even at worst, illegals still have just as much trouble getting medical care as they used to. (Citations: Page 141, sec. 1402, Page 142, sec. 1411, Page 144, sec. 1411, Page 151, sec. 1412 )

Obamacare uses taxpayer money for abortions!: One part of the bill says, essentially, that the folks who wrote this bill aren't touching that issue with a ten foot pole. It basically passes the buck on to the states, who can choose to allow insurance plans that cover abortions, or they can choose to not allow them. Obama may be pro-choice, but that is not reflected in the PPACA. ( Citation: Page 64, sec. 1303 )

Obamacare forces churches/taxpayers to pay for women to have free birth control!: This claim refers to Page 33, sec. 2713, which says that health insurance must include preventive care for women supported by the Health Resources and Services Administration. And that Administration, on the recommendation of the independent Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Science, has determined that preventive care for women should include access to well women visits, domestic violence screening, and, yes, contraception. So insurers do have to provide these services, and no, they cannot require their insured to pay for them. This is because birth control, particularly its effects on hormones and stuff, are very important to the health of some women. "But what if I, as a taxpayer, don't want to pay for it?" you ask? You don't. It's provided by the health insurance company, not the government. "But what about employers who provide employee plans? Does that mean a church would have to pay for the birth control of its clergy?" you ask? The answer is "no". On February 10, 2012 (or February 15th, if you go by the header in the document), the Department of Health and Human Services issued this document, detailing its enforcement of that section of the ACA. Kaiser has given their own interpretation of this. The short version is, churches and houses of worship are exempt from this rule, period. Other religious employers (like Catholic hospitals) are also exempt until August 2013, by which time insurance providers are to have created special plans specifically for them, that put all the costs of contraception on the insurer, with none on the employee or the employer. So not one cent of taxpayer money is going towards contraception, nor is a single cent of a church's money paying for contraception either. Birth control is to be provided to women by the insurer.

Obamacare won't let me keep the insurance I have!: The PPACA actually very specifically says you can keep the insurance you have if you want. ( Citation: Page 74, sec. 1251 )

Obamacare will make the government get between me and my doctor!: The PPACA very specifically says that the Secretary of Health and Human Services (who is in charge of much of the bill), is absolutely not to promote any regulation that hinders a patient's ability to get health care, to speak with their doctor, or have access to a full range of treatment options. ( Citation: Page 184, sec. 1554 )

Obamacare has a public option! That makes it bad!: The public option (which would give people the option of getting insurance from a government-run insurer, thus the name), whether you like it or not, was taken out of the bill before it was passed. You can still see where it used to be, though. ( Citation: Page 111, sec. 1323 (the first one) )

Obamacare will cost trillions and put us in massive debt!: The PPACA will cost a lot of money... at first. $1.7 Trillion. Yikes, right? But that's just to get the ball rolling. You see, amongst the things built into the bill are new taxes - on insurers, pharmaceutical companies, tanning salons, and a slight increase in taxes on people who make over $200K (an increase of less than 1%). Additionally, the bill cuts some stuff from Medicare that's not really working, and generally tries to make everything work more efficiently. Also, the increased focus on preventative care (making sure people don't get sick in the first place), should help to save money the government already spends on emergency care for these same people. Basically, by catching illnesses early, we're not spending as much on emergency room visits. According to the Congressional Budget Office, who studies these things, the ultimate result is that this bill will reduce the yearly deficit by $109 billion ( Source ). By the year 2021, the bill will actually have paid itself and started bringing in more money than it cost.

Obamacare is twice as long as War and Peace!: War and Peace is 587,287 words long. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, depending on which version you're referring to, is between 300,000-400,000 words long. Don't get me wrong, it's still very long, but it's not as long as War and Peace. Also, it bears mention that bills are often long. In 2005, Republicans passed the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users, 2005, which was almost as long as the PPACA, and no one raised a stink about it.

The people who passed Obamacare didn't even read it!: Are you kidding? They had been reading it over and over for a half a year. This thing was being tossed around in debates for ages. And it went through numerous revisions, but every time it was revised, it was just adding, removing, or changing small parts of it, not rewriting the whole thing. And every time it was revised, the new version of the bill was published online for everyone to see. The final time it was edited, there may not have been time to re-read the entire thing before voting on it, but there wasn't a need to, because everyone had already read it all. The only thing people needed to read was the revision, which there was plenty of time to do.

Pelosi said something like, "we'll have to pass the bill before reading it"!: The actual quote is "we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of controversy", and she's talking about all the lies and false rumors that were spreading about it. Things had gotten so absurd that by this point many had given up on trying to have an honest dialogue about it, since people kept worrying about things that had no basis in reality. Pelosi was simply trying to say that once the bill is finalized and passed, then everyone can look at it and see, without question, what is actually in the thing (as opposed to some new amendment you heard on the radio that they were going to put in).

Obamacare was signed quietly in the middle of the night!: This is stretching the truth to the breaking point. The House version of the bill was signed on October 8, 2009 at 12:15 in the afternoon, and the Senate version was signed on December 24, 2009 at 7:05 in the morning. The only vote that you could argue came close to "the middle of the night" was the House vote on the changes made in the Senate version of the bill, which took place at 10:49 p.m... on March 21, 2010, a whole three months later. It wasn't a vote on anything anyone hadn't seen before, but on the version of the legislation passed in the Senate. 431 of the 435 men and women in the House of Representatives voted on it. (citation: govtrack.us ).

Obamacare is a government takeover of the health industry!: What do you mean by "takeover"? Like, for example, do you believe that because the FDA regulates food to make sure that it's safe to eat, that we've had a government takeover of food? By the same right, the Affordable Care Act adds a lot of regulations saying how health insurers should do business, in order to make sure that more people have insurance and that their insurance works in a way that's fair and reliable... but the government themselves isn't taking over insurance. They're not selling us that insurance - the Public Option, which would have made a government-run insurance plan to compete with private plans, never got passed. So government isn't taking over your insurance any more than they've taken over your food.

Obamacare cuts $700 Billion dollars from Medicare!: Not really. What the Affordable Care Act actually does is brings Medicare Advantage costs back in line with regular Medicare ( Citation: Page 384, Sec. 3201 and Page 389, Sec. 3202 ), limit the growth of certain parts of Medicare where our spending is outpacing what we're actually required to spend ( Citation: Page 426, Sec. 3402 ), and replaces some parts of Medicare with better, more cost-effective substitutes ( Citation: Page 361, Sec. 3112 ). These accusations are based on a report by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office showing the reduction of Medicare costs from 2012-2022. However, the accusations fail to mention that those "cuts" will not result in reduced care, reduced enrollment, or reduced anything really, other than reduced costs to the taxpayers... which both Democrats and Republicans agree is a good idea (so much so that Republicans like Paul Ryan even included those exact same "cuts" in their own budget plans).

Obamacare takes money from Medicare to pay for Obamacare!: It absolutely does not. Every penny saved by changes the Affordable Care Act makes to Medicare goes back into Medicare. The bill itself specifically says that any of these savings must be used to increase Medicare solvency, improve its services, or reduce premiums ( Citation: Page 481, Sec. 3601 ).

Obamacare is going to make hospitals drop support for Medicare and Medicaid!: Some doctors and hospitals are worried about some of the big changes being made to how they're paid. Specifically, that Medicare and Medicaid are changing from compensating them for the number of patients they see to compensating them for how well they treat those patients. Some doctors have even threatened to stop accepting Medicare and Medicaid. But these threats seem weak when you realize that, according to the American Hospital Association, "Medicare and Medicaid account for 56 percent of all care provided by hospitals. Consequently, very few hospitals can elect not to participate in Medicare and Medicaid." Now, granted, reimbursements to hospitals under Medicare are in many cases less than the cost of care, but much of what the ACA does is to seek to reduce the cost of care, particularly by reducing recidivism (patients going back to the hospital to be treated for the same thing because they didn't get the right treatment the first time). And alarmists warning about "cuts made to Medicare" can look back above - it's not being cut, it's having its growth rate reduced, and any savings go back into Medicare.

Obamacare allows Barack Obama to create a secret health care army!: I swear, I did not make this one up. There are actually people out there claiming this. It is pertaining to Page 562 of the bill, specifically sections 5209, 5210, and 203, which reduce limits on the United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, and creates the Regular Corps and the Ready Reserve Corps. What the claim gets right is that these are enlisted uniformed services. However, what these Corps do is respond to disasters like hurricane Katrina and the Haiti earthquake. They are enlisted medical professionals that can be called up in a time of crisis. In fact, the United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps was involved in the assistance with both of those emergencies... but at that time, it was limited in size to only 2800 people. This section of the bill removes those limits so we are better-equipped to respond to emergencies like this in the future.

Also, please be sure to check out my Obamacare Point-By-Point to see a breakdown of each section of the bill

noreply@blogger.com (Boogie Man Journal) — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 13:45:00 +0000

Government takes pity on worker who farted too much. http://t.co/VKrInK3z

Aesthetically Pleasing NSFW

noreply@blogger.com (Boogie Man Journal) — Sat, 22 Dec 2012 14:50:00 +0000

Never Trust a Skinny Cook: Cooking Advice From YouTube

noreply@blogger.com (Boogie Man Journal) — Sat, 22 Dec 2012 14:45:00 +0000

Fourteen Years Later, Looking Back at a School Shooting

noreply@blogger.com (Boogie Man Journal) — Sat, 22 Dec 2012 13:49:00 +0000

Watch The Killer at Thurston High on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

More than a decade ago, FRONTLINE set out to understand how a troubled young man with no history of violence could become a random killer in the halls of his high school. What clues in his background, experience or medical condition might help make sense of a senseless crime?

On May 20, 1998, 15-year-old Kip Kinkel shot and killed his mother and father. The next morning he opened fire on students at Thurston High School, killing two and wounding 25. Kinkel is serving a 111-year prison sentence in Oregon. Now 30, he has filed several appeals claiming that inadequate legal counsel kept him from pursuing an insanity plea.

The Killer at Thurston High, which first aired on Jan. 18, 2000, examines Kinkel’s childhood in a nurturing family in suburban Oregon and his transformation from a shy, lonely teenager into a methodical killer. The story draws on excerpts from Kinkel’s writings, his psychologist’s notes and interviews with his sister, schoolmates and family friends.

What explains Kinkel’s attack? As in the case of Adam Lanza, the consequences of the shooting are indelible while its causes remain largely opaque. And it is unknown whether the perpetrators of such crimes share much more in common than the indiscriminate toll in suffering they inflict.

But Kinkel, unlike Lanza, survived the shooting, and left an audio confession recorded by police. While not definitive and perhaps peculiar to his case, his testimony provides rare glimpse into the thinking and emotions of someone who would carry out such an attack.

Source

Sonny Boy's Christmas Blues

noreply@blogger.com (Boogie Man Journal) — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 20:47:00 +0000

Why aren't Americans mad?

noreply@blogger.com (Boogie Man Journal) — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 20:43:00 +0000

by Macdoogles

A few years ago we started to see the rise of Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party movements, both of which I believe tapped in to anger among the working class over inequities and injustices in American society but those things seem to be dying down and I just can't understand why the average American isn't angrier then they are. Some pretty ridiculous things have been happening recently:

Yet another banking giant, this time HSBC, has gotten a pass on criminal charges further proving that the US has a two tiered justice system where the rich can do whatever they want while the rest of the public pays the price. HSBC execs admitted to laundering billions of dollars in Mexican drug cartel and terrorism money, yet won’t see a single criminal charge for it. Instead, the bank agreed to pay $1.9 billion to the feds last week, which is about five months of revenue. The reason given was that putting executives from a ‘systemically important institution’ in jail for drug money laundering would threaten the stability of the financial system. source. For the rest of us who aren't "too big to jail", criminal drug offenses could result in the seizure of all of your property and long prison sentences. The US has the largest prison population in the world, with almost 700,000 more people in prison than it's closest competitor China, despite having a population that is 4 times smaller.
In less than two days a lame duck government in Michigan passed anti-union laws in a state that has traditionally been a union stronghold, inciting massive protests. Regardless of your position on "right to work" legislation what's clear is that the law was clearly unpopular which is probably why the bill was pushed through so quick, disallowing any time for debate or political action. Even more disconcerting is that it was passed during a lame duck session in which 52% of the party that supported the bill lost. Many politicians said they didn't have enough time to read it with one Democrat claiming "this is where democracy goes to die." Some of the politicians, Governor Rick Snyder in particular, had previously said they wouldn't sign such legislation. The law makes it difficult for unions to match political donations from corporations and wealthy individuals. It has been said that one of the biggest reasons for the decline of unions is government legislation. Sorry to take sides on this issue, but I did find this map of "right to work" states vs. this map of former slave states a bit sobering.
EDIT: I forgot to mention that the emergency management plan also in Michigan. The pubic voted it down through referendum but, in a lame duck session where the politicians who supported were also on their way out, put it back in place. Again, putting aside the details of the actual legislation, what seems most troublesome is the lack of respect for the democratic process. It certainly appears that these politicians are not interested in respecting the will of the people.
Talks about the US "fiscal cliff" continue. Regardless of what solution is adopted, if any, austerity measures are probably coming. The last I heard Obama was ready to increase the the income level of those who he wants to raise taxes on from $250k/yr to $400k/yr while reducing "future cost of living" increases in social security and some other cuts. Source

And it's not like any of this stuff is new. Corporations and governments doing stuff the people don't like seems to be the norm now. Over the years we've seen unpopular health care changes, unnecessary wars, wiretapping and a growing surveillance state, massive student, consumer and home owner debt and even torture. At what point do Americans start getting mad?

The HoTTness of Santa's Helpers NSFW

noreply@blogger.com (Boogie Man Journal) — Sun, 16 Dec 2012 03:21:00 +0000

Morgan Freeman's response to the shootings. Probably the most accurate insight heard yet.

noreply@blogger.com (Boogie Man Journal) — Sun, 16 Dec 2012 03:12:00 +0000

"You want to know why. This may sound cynical, but here's why.

It's because of the way the media reports it. Flip on the news and watch how we treat the Batman theater shooter and the Oregon mall shooter like celebrities. Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris are household names, but do you know the name of a single victim of Columbine? Disturbed people who would otherwise just off themselves in their basements see the news and want to top it by doing something worse, and going out in a memorable way. Why a grade school? Why children? Because he'll be remembered as a horrible monster, instead of a sad nobody.

CNN's article says that if the body count "holds up", this will rank as the second deadliest shooting behind Virginia Tech, as if statistics somehow make one shooting worse than another. Then they post a video interview of third-graders for all the details of what they saw and heard while the shootings were happening. Fox News has plastered the killer's face on all their reports for hours. Any articles or news stories yet that focus on the victims and ignore the killer's identity? None that I've seen yet. Because they don't sell. So congratulations, sensationalist media, you've just lit the fire for someone to top this and knock off a day care center or a maternity ward next.

You can help by forgetting you ever read this man's name, and remembering the name of at least one victim. You can help by donating to mental health research instead of pointing to gun control as the problem. You can help by turning off the news."

Paul Krugman: This is worth repeating: We’re not having a debt crisis. What we’re having is a political crisis.

noreply@blogger.com (Boogie Man Journal) — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 11:27:00 +0000

By PAUL KRUGMAN

We are not having a debt crisis.

It’s important to make this point, because I keep seeing articles about the “fiscal cliff” that do, in fact, describe it — often in the headline — as a debt crisis. But it isn’t. The U.S. government is having no trouble borrowing to cover its deficit. In fact, its borrowing costs are near historic lows. And even the confrontation over the debt ceiling that looms a few months from now if we do somehow manage to avoid going over the fiscal cliff isn’t really about debt.

No, what we’re having is a political crisis, born of the fact that one of our two great political parties has reached the end of a 30-year road. The modern Republican Party’s grand, radical agenda lies in ruins — but the party doesn’t know how to deal with that failure, and it retains enough power to do immense damage as it strikes out in frustration.

Before I talk about that reality, a word about the current state of budget “negotiations.”

Why the scare quotes? Because these aren’t normal negotiations in which each side presents specific proposals, and horse-trading proceeds until the two sides converge. By all accounts, Republicans have, so far, offered almost no specifics. They claim that they’re willing to raise $800 billion in revenue by closing loopholes, but they refuse to specify which loopholes they would close; they are demanding large cuts in spending, but the specific cuts they have been willing to lay out wouldn’t come close to delivering the savings they demand.

It’s a very peculiar situation. In effect, Republicans are saying to President Obama, “Come up with something that will make us happy.” He is, understandably, not willing to play that game. And so the talks are stuck.

Why won’t the Republicans get specific? Because they don’t know how. The truth is that, when it comes to spending, they’ve been faking it all along — not just in this election, but for decades. Which brings me to the nature of the current G.O.P. crisis.

Since the 1970s, the Republican Party has fallen increasingly under the influence of radical ideologues, whose goal is nothing less than the elimination of the welfare state — that is, the whole legacy of the New Deal and the Great Society. From the beginning, however, these ideologues have had a big problem: The programs they want to kill are very popular. Americans may nod their heads when you attack big government in the abstract, but they strongly support Social Security, Medicare, and even Medicaid. So what’s a radical to do?

The answer, for a long time, has involved two strategies. One is “starve the beast,” the idea of using tax cuts to reduce government revenue, then using the resulting lack of funds to force cuts in popular social programs. Whenever you see some Republican politician piously denouncing federal red ink, always remember that, for decades, the G.O.P. has seen budget deficits as a feature, not a bug.

Arguably more important in conservative thinking, however, was the notion that the G.O.P. could exploit other sources of strength — white resentment, working-class dislike of social change, tough talk on national security — to build overwhelming political dominance, at which point the dismantling of the welfare state could proceed freely. Just eight years ago, Grover Norquist, the antitax activist, looked forward cheerfully to the days when Democrats would be politically neutered: “Any farmer will tell you that certain animals run around and are unpleasant, but when they’ve been fixed, then they are happy and sedate.”

O.K., you see the problem: Democrats didn’t go along with the program, and refused to give up. Worse, from the Republican point of view, all of their party’s sources of strength have turned into weaknesses. Democratic dominance among Hispanics has overshadowed Republican dominance among southern whites; women’s rights have trumped the politics of abortion and antigay sentiment; and guess who finally did get Osama bin Laden.

And look at where we are now in terms of the welfare state: far from killing it, Republicans now have to watch as Mr. Obama implements the biggest expansion of social insurance since the creation of Medicare.

So Republicans have suffered more than an election defeat, they’ve seen the collapse of a decades-long project. And with their grandiose goals now out of reach, they literally have no idea what they want — hence their inability to make specific demands.

It’s a dangerous situation. The G.O.P. is lost and rudderless, bitter and angry, but it still controls the House and, therefore, retains the ability to do a lot of harm, as it lashes out in the death throes of the conservative dream.

Our best hope is that business interests will use their influence to limit the damage. But the odds are that the next few years will be very, very ugly.

Source

Feats of Strength

noreply@blogger.com (Boogie Man Journal) — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 03:34:00 +0000

The cost of gerrymandering

noreply@blogger.com (Boogie Man Journal) — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 03:03:00 +0000

House D cands won 51% of vote, took 46% of seats. In 40 yrs, only 1 other time, 96, did maj party get House minority http://t.co/...
— @jonathanweisman via Tweet Button

Here's a look at some of the most gerrymandered Republican states:

The GOP got outright House majorities despite statewide losses in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin, roughly getting twice as many seats as their statewide vote would suggest. The Democrats didn't manage that anywhere in the few states where they control the full redistricting process:

Democrats squeezed out modest advantages, particularly compared to the Republican gerrymandering efforts above. Meanwhile, non-partisan efforts produced the most equitable results:

Republicans lost the House vote yet managed a significant House majority. Given demographic changes, it's increasingly difficult for Republicans to win absent 1) calamitously low Democratic turnout, like 2010, or 2) rigging the system to provide systemic advantages. Democrats need to work toward eliminating both of those.

In case you are wondering, the very same gerrymandering that created those Republican-heavy districts also created heavily gerrymandered state legislative districts. So we've got quite the hole to dig out of.

Source

Aesthetically Pleasing NSFW

noreply@blogger.com (Boogie Man Journal) — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 02:37:00 +0000

‘Shared Sacrifice’: Hostess Used Employee Pensions to Fund Itself, While paying millions to its executives

noreply@blogger.com (Boogie Man Journal) — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 02:32:00 +0000

By: Sarah Jones

See if you can spy the “shared sacrifice” in this story.

While paying millions to its executives, Hostess took the money that was supposed to go into employees’ pensions and used it for other things.

Hostess just went bankrupt and got a judge to allow them to pay $1.75 million in bonuses to 19 of their executives. Yet… It turns out that Hostess took the money that was supposed to go into employees’ pensions and used it for other things. They say they spent it on company operations, but court records show them asking for permission to pay their CEO and other executives a lot of money.

Yahoo reported:

Hostess hasn’t previously acknowledged that the foregone wages went toward its operations.

The maneuver probably doesn’t violate federal law because the money Hostess failed to put into the pension didn’t come directly from employees, experts said.

“It’s what lawyers call betrayal without remedy,” said James P. Baker, a partner at Baker & McKenzie LLP who specializes in employee benefits and isn’t involved in the Hostess case. “It’s sad, but that stuff does happen, unfortunately.”

The main baker pension fund alone is missing $22.1 million. Because the money didn’t come directly from employees, it may not technically be illegal (theft), even though the employees agreed to have a certain part of their wages turned into pension funds by the employer. See, it’s not just the employer contribution, but also employee wages earmarked for the pension fund. Wages.

In February, Hostess asked the bankruptcy judge to approve a base annual salary of$1.5 million, plus cash incentives and “long-term incentive” compensation of up to $2 million for its then chief executive. Furthermore:

If Hostess liquidated or Driscoll were fired without cause, he’d still get severance pay of $1.95 million as long as he honored a noncompete agreement.

Shared sacrifices?

Even as Hostess blamed the unions, creditors accused Hostess of manipulating executive salaries in an attempt to get around bankruptcy laws, with then-chief executive Brian Driscoll’s salary going to $2.55 million from around $750,000 while “other executives’ salaries were increased by from 35% to 80%.”

It’s hard to see how this is not embezzlement, but apparently this happens so often that award-winning investigative reporter for the Wall Street Journal Ellen Schultz wrote a book about it called “Retirement Heist: How Companies Plunder and Profit from the Nest Eggs of American Workers.”

“Schultz uncovers decades of widespread deception during which employers have exaggerated their retiree burdens while lobbying for government handouts, secretly cutting pensions, tricking employees, and misleading shareholders. She reveals how companies: Siphon billions of dollars from their pension plans to finance downsizings and sell the assets in merger deals (and) Overstate the burden of rank-and-file retiree obligations to justify benefits cuts while simultaneously using the savings to inflate executive pay and pensions.”

I don’t see any shared sacrifice. I see the workers sacrificing, or rather, sacrificing while unknowingly being robbed at the same time by the CEOs.

But the CEOs get theirs and then some. They got rewarded for bankruptcy. No one took their salaries away; in fact, their salaries were increased.

Mitt Romney was just the poster boy for what’s wrong with corporate America. The theft from the people continues unabated, this time from Twinkies, Ho-Hos and Wonder Bread.

Source

Coolness: Amazing and Beautiful Flooded Meadow

noreply@blogger.com (Boogie Man Journal) — Sun, 09 Dec 2012 15:10:00 +0000

Gimme Shelter | Playing For Change

noreply@blogger.com (Boogie Man Journal) — Sun, 09 Dec 2012 15:05:00 +0000

How much of an idiot I was before

noreply@blogger.com (Boogie Man Journal) — Sun, 09 Dec 2012 14:26:00 +0000

by Hennsomm

So I used to be a hard line conservative. I watched FOX news as my main source of information, nearly daily and I ate it all up. I hate to admit it but I used to love the (I honestly cannot think of the name to save my life... angry yelling man show). I followed Bill O'Reily constantly and would scoff at people with differing opinions on the channel. But this all changed on day when I heard them talking about Muslim Extremists and the "9/11" mosque.

I am not a Muslim, nor do I follow any religion, but I found it amazing that these people said that the Muslims were making a show out of 9/11 by building a Mosque, which they made it seem like it was on Ground Zero. So I decided to take a break from Fox and turned to the BBC and CNN for my news for what I expected to be a week or two.

Now two years later I am an American registered to the Green Party with belief that completely counters my beliefs from when I was younger. So I get to FOX for shit and giggles, and I am amazed at how I feel. The poor allure to this (imo) is that these hosts out yell dissent and use the Founding Fathers as figure heads and if you don't agree 100% with them 'god' help you.

This isn't meant to be a conservatives suck post, but more of a US news broadcasting overall sucks. The BBC, RT, The Economist and Al Jazeera (not a terrorist group like FOX taught me) actually do their jobs and don't fear monger for views.

Rest of the world I thank you for taking my ears away from the yelling!

The Gerber Baby — Then and Now (She’s 85!)

noreply@blogger.com (Boogie Man Journal) — Sun, 09 Dec 2012 14:14:00 +0000

Ann Turner Cook’s face became the iconic image of Gerber in 1928…

White HoTTness NSFW

noreply@blogger.com (Boogie Man Journal) — Sun, 09 Dec 2012 13:48:00 +0000

The 6 Economic Facts of Life in America That Allow the Rich to Run off with Our Wealth: Do you ever wonder why it takes the average family 47 years to make as much as a hedge fund honcho makes in one hour?

noreply@blogger.com (Boogie Man Journal) — Sun, 09 Dec 2012 13:40:00 +0000

The 6 Economic Facts of Life in America That Allow the Rich to Run off with Our Wealth

Do you ever wonder why it takes the average family 47 years to make as much as a hedge fund honcho makes in one hour?

By Les Leopold

Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com

Does it bother you that in 2010, after the crash, the top 25 hedge fund chiefs made as much as 685,000 teachers who educate 13 million children?

Are you worried that cutting government debt means raising your social security eligibility age and cost of living adjustment, so that you have to work longer and receive lower retirement benefits?

Have no fear. The super-rich are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to sell you their economic fabrications. Why so much inequality? They say because the rich have the most important skills and you don't. Why so much unemployment? They say it's because our skimpy unemployment insurance keeps people from looking for work. Why so much government debt? They say it's because you have too many "entitlements." Why the Wall Street crash? They blame poor people for buying homes they couldn't afford.

In short, the super-rich want us to believe that any effort to tax them a bit more or control Wall Street will only kill more jobs and harm our economic well-being. And most of all they don't want us to know the six economics facts of life that explain how the super-rich are running away with our nation's wealth.

1. The super-rich are stealing our fair share of productivity. The U.S. economy is enormously productive. Since 1947, the amount of goods and services we produce per hour of labor has risen by nearly 300 percent. That's because as a nation, we blend together a potent mix of effort, skills, technology and organizational capacities. Our enormous productivity is why we are the richest nation on earth.

Yet, why don't we feel that rich? Why are we told we must tighten our belts?

Until the mid-1970s, the more productivity increased, the higher the real wages of the average working person (after taking out the impact of inflation). As a result, our standard of living doubled in 25 years. But, as you can see from the chart below, after the mid-1970s, productivity (the red line) continued to boom, but the average wage stalled.

Click to enlarge.

It wasn't an accident, or market forces, or an act of God. It was a result of human polices designed by and for the rich. Tax cuts for the rich, financial deregulation, support for moving jobs overseas and union-busting combined to give the super-rich more and more of our economy's productivity gains. In 1970, the top 100 average corporate executive earned $45 for every $1 earned by the average worker. By 2006 it had jumped to a whopping $1,723 to $1. That's the very definition of greed run wild.

Click to enlarge.

Think about this: If the average wage had continued to rise along with productivity as it did after WWII, your real wage today (after inflation) would be twice as high!

We've been had.

2. Americans really want a wealth distribution more like Sweden's. Here's a nightmare fact of life the super-rich don't want you to know. Two researchers recently tried to find out just how much economic inequality Americans were comfortable with. Michael Norton of Harvard Business School and Dan Ariely of Duke University conducted a nationwide poll with more than 5,000 respondents to see how Americans saw our current level of equality, and what level they wanted to see. (“Building a Better America – One Wealth Quintile at a Time”)

The results were startling. First, virtually all Americans greatly underestimated the degree of inequality in our economy today. They had no idea how extreme the U.S. wealth distribution really is -- which goes to show you what a good job the super-rich have done in mis-educating us.

Second, when asked to construct an ideal distribution of income, 92 percent of Americans preferred radically more equality – on a par with the social democratic state of Sweden! What’s more, it didn’t matter whether the respondent was a Republican or Democrat, rich or poor, black or white, male or female. Everyone wanted more economic fairness.

Imagine that! Americans, even Republicans who voted for Romney and Ryan, would rather live with the Scandinavian distribution of wealth. Little wonder that the super-rich and their minions do all they can to belittle so-called "Euro-socialism." They don't want us to know that maybe we are hard-wired for fairness instead of the staggering inequality that helps no one but the super-elites.

3. Everything we hear about government debt is wrong. Right now, the biggest target of public mis-education is the government debt debate. And the biggest spender on the mis-education of the American public is billionaire Pete Peterson (who personally has added to the government's debt by dodging hundreds of million in taxes through the 15 percent "carried interest" loophole that blessed his private equity fund). Having no sense of shame, he and other super-elites want to convince us that government spending and debt will ruin us all. Unfortunately, very little of what they claim is true:

China owns our all our debt? Wrong! There's a chilling ad put out by a Peterson front group that features a Chinese lecturer in the year 2030 addressing (with English subtitles) a packed audience of Chinese students about the rise and decline of the U.S. The confident, smirking teacher describes how the U.S. abandoned its principles as it "tried to spend and tax its way out of a great recession" and then crumbled beneath its "crushing debt." He then provides the kicker: "Of course we owned most of their debt...ha ha ha, and now they work us," he says to the raucous laughter of the students. The ad is a complete Peterson lie. China owns only 8 percent of our debt. Most of our debt is actually owned by our own quasi governmental agencies like the Federal Reserve and Social Security.

Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are bankrupting the country?Wrong! The current deficits are the result of two unfunded wars, the Bust tax cuts for the super-rich and the Wall Street crash of the economy that killed 8 million jobs, and led directly to the ensuing bailouts, lost tax revenues and increases in unemployment insurance payments.

We will become like Greece if we don't balance our budget? Wrong! Greece can't print money to pay back its debt because it no longer has its own currency (and neither does Mississippi). The United States does. Also, our economy is more than 50 times larger that Greece's. The chances of the US ending up in a Greek debt crisis are about the same as finding a Martian in your bathtub.

We have to solve the "debt crisis" right now or the economy will crash?Wrong! We have an unemployment crisis, not a debt crisis. Interest rates are at all-time lows because the world wants to park its money here in dollars. In fact, this is the time to borrow more to put our people back to work by rebuilding our crumbling, fossil fuel-dependent infrastructure and educating our children. If our people go back to work, the economy grows, unemployment costs go down, tax revenues rise, and the debt ratio shrinks without paying back one penny of it.

Why so many lies? Because financial elites like Peterson don't want to pay their fair share of taxes. They don't believe in funding a safety net for all Americans. They don't want to the government to help put Americans back to work. Instead, they want an economy by and for the elites.

4. We are under-taxed, not over-taxed. The super-rich want us to believe that taxes are too high and that those taxes are harming job creation and economic growth. It's a fabrication. First of all, taxes for most Americans have declined, according to a recent New York Times analysis:

..... most Americans in 2010 paid far less in total taxes — federal, state and local — than they would have paid 30 years ago. According to an analysis by The New York Times, the combination of all income taxes, sales taxes and property taxes took a smaller share of their income than it took from households with the same inflation-adjusted income in 1980.

Second, we have much lower tax rates that our chief European competitors. For example, Germany, an economic powerhouse, has an average tax rate of 40.6 percent while the U.S. rate is only 26.9 percent. Germany uses that money to rebuild its infrastructure, invest in education and find creative ways to nearly eliminate unemployment.

Third, the super-rich use a sleight of hand to make middle-class taxpayers believe that lower-income people are moochers. Like Mitt Romney, they are found of saying that 47 percent of Americans don't pay income taxes and that the rich pay most of those taxes. But income taxes are but a small portion of the tax bite on lower-income people who pay through payroll tax deductions, sales taxes and property taxes.

Finally, because our taxes are declining, it means that our public services are decaying as well. This creates a downward spiral the super-rich want to encourage: the more services decline, the less we want to pay in taxes, the more services decline. If you're really wealthy you don't care about public services since your life is entombed in private services -- private schools, private airports, private planes, private gated villas and so on.

5. Government jobs are just as good as private sector jobs. Another major con job concerns the attack on public employees. The greedy rich are trying to pit public and private sector workers against each other in large part because public employees still seem to have benefits the rest of us have lost (and they have unions and vote mostly Democratic). Corporate greed demands that we snuff out those benefits so workers won't demand them in the private sector. To further denigrate government, elites want us to believe that a private sector job is somehow more righteous that a public one -- that public employment is sort of like being on the dole because government workers are immune to the rough and tumble of competitive pressures that drives the private sector.

It's another hoax.

The truth is that some jobs are better done by government on behalf of the public. We learned almost 200 years ago that it didn't make sense to have competing fire and police departments. We also learned that if we wanted the average person to go to school, we needed public school systems, and not just private ones. Most countries (but not ours) have learned that much of the healthcare system runs better when it's publicly financed and controlled -- that for-profit hospitals and clinics do not provide the best care. In short, every modern economy is a combination of private and public sector jobs that are valuable to our society.

6. Wall Street needs to be shrunk (until we can drown it in a bathtub). The function of finance is simple: moving our savings into productive investments. By doing so, money supposedly moves to where it will do the most good for our economy. This function is considered so simple that most economics textbooks ignore Wall Street entirely.

However, when Wall Street is left to its own devices, it tends to create vast casinos that dramatically increase financial profits at the expense of the real economy. Worse still, as the speculative casinos grow and grow, the economy as a whole is endangered. Wall Street's grew rapidly just before the great crash of 1929 and just before the Great Recession of 2008-'09. It was stock manipulation during the 1920s and it was the housing casino over the last two decades. But in both cases it happened because Wall Street was deregulated and got too damn big. As the chart below shows, Wall Street is gobbling up more and more of our country's profits.

Click to enlarge.

We learned after 1929 that economic stability required severe financial regulation. We sat on Wall Street for nearly 50 years and it worked beautifully, especially between WWII and the 1970s. There were virtually no financial crashes anywhere in the world. But once we deregulated finance again, all hell broke loose as the world suffered through more than 150 smaller financial crashes. Finance grew and grew until it took down the entire U.S. economy. Along the way, Wall Street offered the easiest path to great riches for the few.

The simplest solution is the one hated by the super-rich: a small sales tax on each and every financial transaction involving stocks, bonds and every kind of derivative. By taxing the casino, we shrink its size and make it less dangerous to the rest of the economy. We also create new revenues for our economy, nearly all of it coming from the top fraction of the top 1 percent. No wonder they don't want us to know that.

Is Knowledge Power?

It's not enough for the greedy rich to buy politicians. They also need to buy our minds. That's why they pay for all this misleading economic education. But if we master the basic economic facts of life, we won't get conned. And we will have a much better chance at building a more just and healthy economy.

Les Leopold is the executive director of the Labor Institute and Public Health Institute in New York, and author of The Looting of America: How Wall Street's Game of Fantasy Finance Destroyed Our Jobs, Pensions, and Prosperity—and What We Can Do About It

Source

"Breaking The Taboo" Documentary on the War on Drugs narrated by Morgan Freeman featuring former presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton [Full, Free, and Legal]

noreply@blogger.com (Boogie Man Journal) — Sun, 09 Dec 2012 13:32:00 +0000

Robert F. Kennedy Jr: Fox News Has Divided Country In A Way Not Seen Since Civil War

noreply@blogger.com (Boogie Man Journal) — Sun, 09 Dec 2012 13:25:00 +0000

State of the Union: How we Arrived at this Moment of Poorly Funded Public Services and Widening Economic Inequality.

noreply@blogger.com (Boogie Man Journal) — Sun, 09 Dec 2012 02:45:00 +0000

One armed fighter wins XFC lightweight championship.

noreply@blogger.com (Boogie Man Journal) — Sun, 09 Dec 2012 02:30:00 +0000

Climate Change: Arctic Report Card 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Boogie Man Journal) — Sat, 08 Dec 2012 15:03:00 +0000

Arctic Report Card: Update for 2012 - Tracking recent environmental changes, with 20 essays on different aspects of the environment, by a international team of 141 scientists from 15 different countries, with an independent peer-review organized by the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme of the Arctic Council. More information and PDF of entire report at http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/reportcard