About time

This is something I think those of us who travel a lot want to hear almost daily. This from Time Magazine:

Kids will be kids, but one cranky 2-year-old was acting too much his age for a Southwest Airlines flight crew who kicked him off a plane getting ready to leave for San Jose.

Pamela Root says she was confident her son Adam's screams of "Go! Plane! Go!" and "I want Daddy!" would subside once the plane took off Monday in Amarillo, Texas.

But she says the plane taxied back to the gate and the pair was escorted off.

The 38-year-old stay-at-home mom wants an apology and compensation for the portable crib and diapers she had to buy for the extra night away from home.

Southwest spokeswoman Marilee McInnis says removing a crying child from a flight is unusual, but crews have leeway to resolve situations.

McInnis says the airline is looking into the incident.

50 Billion

The United States taxpayers spent about 50 billion dollars bailing out General Motors last year. Now the people own about 61 percent of the company, which seems like about the worst deal possible.

Banks that were bailed out last year have actually been paying back some of the money used to bail out their terrible investments and strange financial investment strategies.

Poor management in the giant businesses are the obvious targets for taxpayer anger. In fact, they are completely responsible for running banks and car makers into the ground. What is hard to understand is why we continue to bail out companies that are probably not really in a long range forecast. The world is changing and the problem with GM is that it is not trying to do anything for the future, it still remains focused on a time when gas was cheap and people drove everywhere.

The money wasted on GM and many of the banks too big to fail would have been better spent looking to the future and how to build the type of economy that will be profitable in that near future. Things we all know, the gas engine will become too expensive to run, so for starters, why not spend a billion or 2 on companies that are developing a future mode of transportation that is not based on a fuel source that is almost played out.

One thing I always find frustrating is when a city faces an expensive fix for a road or bridge, and here I am thinking of the "big dig" in Boston, the bridge in Minneapolis that fell into a river and the Viaduct in Seattle that is about to fall apart, and how these cities always choose to just build or rebuild the exact same car-centric travel option. Great cities that have been great for a long time and will probably be great for a long time have systems that transport thousands of people via train or metro. This serves a city in a variety of ways, not the least of which is keeping cars out of the core of the city. What are these city "leaders" thinking when they spend billions on rebuilding a failing road system?

One of the sad aspects of American thinking is always reacting in the face of tragedy or danger, and never thinking proactively before they face terrible choices. Example? 9-11 security. Only after planes started crashing into buildings did airports start getting serious about making sure passengers did not carry materials or weapons onto planes. Guess what? The next terror attack will be doubtfully involve planes. We reacted in an absurd manner to justify security that will no longer keep us any safer.

That same backward thinking is true in bailing out banks and car companies. First, the banks wounds were self inflicted. Idiocy and greed ruled the day and instead of letting these idiots suffer, the Bush administration decided that the too big to fail tag would justify hundreds of billions in short sighted bail outs. When it comes to GM there really is no justification for bailing out this ailing car company. The few jobs that were saved will be gone because the management and design teams in place will not be gone soon enough. The idiots are the same as the bankers, as long as they get bailed out they will not be forced to learn from the mistakes.

By the way, at the height of its profitability, General Motors was valued at 57 billion dollars. Which means, obviously, that when it was just about to go out of business, the American taxpayers paid top dollar and more for a company that can probably never turn itself around and become an industry leader. Think to yourself for a minute, when was the last time you considered a GM vehicle as a possible purchase? For me, I have never thought GM made a good car that I would be proud to own.

d o u c h e

Recovery at long last

Labor department is spinning the latest unemployment figures with the strangest language possible. "The number of people claiming jobless benefits for the first time dropped less than expected last week, evidence that the labor market remains weak even as the economy is recovering."

Dropped less than expected? So, experts expected more people to file for unemployment, but fewer did, and that is a signt he economy is turning around? "I was a little less pregnant than you may have expected, otherwise, I remain pregnant."

This jobless recovery every economist seemed to be yammering about is interesting. The economy is showing signs of life after months of record breaking foreclosures and a hardly breathing GNP. Here is what I think the economists from the ivory towers of New York City may not be aware of, a jobless recovery is no recovery at all. Sure, the people investing after the market fell below 6000 may be raking in profits, but the people who lost their homes and their jobs and are finding a jobless recovery means just that are not celebrating the billions in profit reported by Bank of America.

Jobless means all sorts of things, but if you describe yourself as jobless the very last thing you want to hear is that the national economy is celebrating you. These are getting to be desperate times for many people. The experts looking at real unemployment nationwide hovering around 10 percent and reporting that the economy is getting stronger are not living in the real world. You can not report one week that more people are homeless and going without meals and have no healthcare and then try to spin that story about how as long as bonuses are being dolled out on Wall Street, people just barely surviving should be smiling.

Health care joe

Found this explaination about senator Joe Liebermans latest betrayal to the democratic leadership. I think it fits the shmuck.

Back when establishment Democrats (like Obama!) were trying to convince us loony internet liberals not to campaign against Joe Lieberman, you heard a lot about how Lieberman is only a conservative on foreign policy, and not domestic issues. (How his full-throated support for any bombing campaign against any Muslims anywhere in the world is supposed to be not as big a deal as the fact that he doesn't want to publicly execute gays or whatever has always been beyond us, but that is what we were told.) Now he's pissed that distinction away.

We all know that Vinegar Joe Lieberman is a sanctimonious, thin-skinned, self-satisfied monster. And a pious, amoral scumbag. And a narcissistic, deluded underminer who represents everything that is wrong with the United States Senate. And a war-mongering, concern-trolling religious zealot. And, generally, a bastard. And probably a racist. But why would this weasel-human hybrid who is actually literally slowly receding into his own asshole a little bit every day suddenly pipe up on health care reform with a position at odds with most Connecticut residents and a vast majority of the Democrats he claims to represent?

Because no one had been paying attention to him! (And also because he is owned by the various insurance companies of Connecticut. Like he is literally Aetna's personal offensive Jeff Dunham puppet. Well, they have to share him with AIPAC.)

This is the thing, Joe. The opt-out public option is a conservative compromise. It is a compromise from a non-opt-out public option, which is a compromise from a non-opt-out public option tied to Medicare rates, which is a compromise from a non-opt-out public option tied to Medicare rates and open to everyone, which is a compromise fromsingle-payer. You would like a further compromise, to "no health care reform, at all, unless the Democrats all kneel down and blow me, as I will demand they do whenever they might need my vote, from now until I finally decide to caucus with the Republicans, which will only happen if the Republicans take the majority and the Democrats stop blowing me periodically."

And, obviously, his literal, stated objections to the bill are not based in any way on reality.

So the question basically is, what is his end-game here? What the fuck is he doing?

Whether Joe Lieberman will run for reelection in 2012 is currently a mystery. He has $1.4 million in the bank, which is a lot, but not as much as he had in 2006.

He also is polling rather terribly in Connecticut, where Democrats and independents both prefer real Democrats. He could run as a real Republican, but, as we said, those independent voters he needs to win do not like him, at the moment.

So our "what is Joe Lieberman doing" possibilities are:

• He is just following the golden path of his own of self-delusion, thinking he will be remembered as a mavericky hero who bucked the status quo once he retires in 2012.
• He's going all-in as a Republican in the desperate hope that a 2012 GOP landslide will win him one more term.
• He is just trying to sink health care completely for his insurance company friends, who will give him a lucrative post-Senate job.
• He is just trying to force Harry Reid to pay him fealty once again, because it makes him feel nice.
• He is just a prick.

Weirdly, Lieberman said he'd vote to bring the bill to the floor, and then he'd support a GOP filibuster. A GOP filibuster is decidedly not a sure thing, though it certainly moves one step closer to a sure thing every time Joe Lieberman opens his mouth. Christ, what an asshole.

How much does it cost?

Two House Democrats are planning to introduce amendments Tuesday to exempt small- and medium-sized companies from a key post-Enron reform. Consumer advocates and investor groups say that the proposed exemptions would severely undercut protection for investors and increase the chances for financial fraud.
Reps. John Adler of New Jersey and Carolyn Maloney of New York will attempt to amend the Investor Protection Act of 2009 -- a bill designed to beef up investor protection -- by adding in provisions that will undermine the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the 2002 law designed to increase investor confidence that was enacted after accounting scandals at Enron and WorldCom rocked investors. The law was supposed to improve the accuracy, reliability, and transparency of corporate financial reporting by requiring firms to audit their financial statements and internal controls.
Adler, a member of the pro-business New Democrat Coalition, is proposing to exempt publicly-traded firms with market capitalization less than $700 million from a provision of Sarbanes-Oxley mandating an external audit of the firm.
Specifically, Adler's provision calls for "less stringent requirements" for these firms, and would require the Securities and Exchange Commission -- the federal watchdog overseeing the capital markets -- to develop rules that would ease the "burden" on these firms. But until the SEC developed those rules, firms worth less than $700 million would be completely exempt from mandated external audits.
"With the nation once again suffering the devastating effects of a financial scandal in which poor financial reporting played a significant role, investors should be able to trust that their representatives in Congress will pursue reforms that strengthen, rather than weaken, investor protections," wrote Barbara Roper, director of investor protection at the Consumer Federation of America, in a letter to Adler obtained by the Huffington Post. In addressing Adler, Roper writes, "Your...amendment fails that test."
A former high-ranking official at the SEC was even more blunt.
"What Adler is really doing is dialing for dollars," said Lynn E. Turner, chief accountant for the SEC from 1998 to 2001. "He's got a job that he wants to keep, and he has to run for that job every two years. So this is probably a strong indication that Adler couldn't care less about investors, and cares much more about getting the money so he can keep his job."
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has been fighting for just such a reprieve for its member companies for years, arguing that one such post-Enron provision -- requiring public companies and their independent auditors to publicly disclose the effectiveness of the company's internal controls -- has been implemented in a way that creates "extraordinary and unnecessary burdens that are disproportionate to identified benefits."

Feeling sick

Here is something to chew on. For the fourth time in 3 months I am back at the emergency room. First, this is a great hospital and the crew all seems very qualified. That is not the reason I am back here. What is interesting to me is that every time I have been here it has been because I actually needed to see a doctor pronto.

Except today. Today I am here for other reasons.

What is fascinating is the waiting room for the emergency room is packed. When people discuss the American healthcare system I think they fall into a couple of categories. One is the type of person with full coverage probably associated with a job that offers benefits. Those sorts of jobs are becoming increasingly less possible to find. The second group are people that believe the propaganda that America has the best healthcare system in the world. The final group are people without insurance and they find themselves in need of care. Right now I am surrounded by the last group.

First off, if you have great insurance then emergency room visits are likely hardly happening unless, you know, you have an emergency. What these overly insured people have are doctors who actually answer their phones, or have someone who does. So when they need a quick check up and medication, someone is there to handle it. These people think the system works like this for everyone. They are wrong. Then again, these are the same people who believe that the 700 billion spent on bailing out idiot bankers was justified, but 2 billion to pay people to turn in junk cars for new fuel efficient cars was a waste of government money.

America really does not have a great health care system by almost any standard. The doctors in most triage facilities are grossly overworked and underpaid. The doctors at the top levels are overly paid and pampered for no reason other than the luck of the draw. There is nothing wrong with these doctors, they are there to service the rich and insured. In their secluded little world the healthcare system really does work. They are wrong on a variety of levels.

The poor and uninsured are the ones who are in trouble. Not only have they not been raised to believe that doctors should respond to their needs, they have no expectations of any care. They get seriously sick and have no options for care. Want an example? A month ago I was in the emergency room after being beaten in the streets of Pittsburgh. In the room next to me a man and his wife were told that he needed surgery the next day, otherwise some sort of growth on his intestine could explode and leave him in a deadly spiral. The doctor left them to discuss the options. He, the man in need of surgery, told his wife that he could not afford the time off work. Her argument was that if this growth was to explode, he could die. Sadly, his personal economics won out and they both walked out of the hospital that night.

How did the richest country in the history of the planet get to the point that a necessary surgery is postponed because of finances? There is something seriously wrong with this sort of choice. While the fat cats and paid for politicians are debating public options and Medicare for everyone and anything in between, people are sick and desperate. Our legislators are bought and paid for by big business, the same business lobby that gets tax breaks for the wealthy and the richest corporations. No one lobbies for the poor and unnecessary. This is America.