NY Times Says Unions Will Fight Obama's Excise Tax On Health Care Plans

According to the NY Times, the union heads who will meet with President Obama to discuss his health care reform will remind him that he once opposed his 40% excise tax proposal on employer-provided health care plans that will hit 1 in 4 union workers by 2013 and 19% of all workers (about 30 million) by 2016.

Obama refuses to remove the excise tax on employer-provided health care for a higher income tax on individuals making over $500,000 a year or families making over $1 million.

Apparently he feels his health care reforms should be funded on the backs of people making $30,000-$70,000.

During the 2008 campaign, he criticized John McCain for a similar proposal to raise taxes on employer-provided health care plans.

Now he supports that very proposal

Union leaders plan to tell him if this proposal is enacted as part of the health care reform, union workers will be demoralized and likely not come out to support Democrats in 2010.

Democrats are already expected to lose 30-40 House seats in the 2010 midterm elections, though they may lose only 1 or 2 in the Senate.

A 40 seat House loss would give the Congress back to Republicans.

Here is the tack unions are taking:

In recent days, labor’s strategy has become clear. Unions are urging their members to flood their representatives with e-mail messages and phone calls in the hope that the House will stand fast and reject the tax. The A.F.L.-C.I.O., a federation of nine million union members, has declared next Wednesday “National Call-In Day” asking workers to call their lawmakers to urge them not to tax health benefits. The International Brotherhood of Teamsters is urging members to tell their representatives that “such a tax is simply a massive middle-class tax hike that this nation’s working families should not be forced to endure.”

Many Democrats fear that enacting the tax will hurt their re-election chances.

“This would really have a negative impact on the Democratic base,” said Representative Joe Courtney, Democrat of Connecticut, who has enlisted 190 House Democrats to sign a letter opposing the tax. “As far as the message goes, it’s a real toughie to defend.”

While union leaders would prefer killing the tax, some say privately that they could live with it if the threshold is lifted to $27,000, say, or $30,000. They argue that many insurance policies above $23,000 are typical of the coverage in high-cost areas like New York or Boston, or policies that cover small businesses or employers with older workers.

According to a union survey, one in four members would be hit by a $23,000 threshold, but only one in 14 if the threshold were raised to $27,000.

The only problem with not killing the excise tax is that once it is enacted as part of the "reform," it will be difficult to ever get out. And the point of the excise tax is to make decent employer-provided health care to expensive for employers to continue to provide so that they either drop coverage for employees altogether or switch them to cheaper HMO's.

Can you imagine a Democratic president who has the official policy to raise taxes on middle and working class union members so that they are dropped from their employer-provided health care coverage rather than raise taxes on millionaires?

That's what we have with President Change You Can Believe In.

I'll tell you, the only change I can believe in is when he gets his lying ass kicked back to Chicago in 2012.

Obama, Unions To Meet About Taxing Middle and Working Classes

Sam Stein at Huffingtonpost reports that President Obushma will meet with the heads of major unions to explain to them why he will not budge on his proposal to tax middle and working class Americans 40% on their employer-provided health care plans.

The unions include AFL-CIO, SEIU, CWA and AFSCME.

The unions are expected to tell Obama they will not support his health care bill if the excise tax on employer-provided health care plans remains, but they will not oppose it either.

Therein lies the problem.

They need to tell him in no uncertain terms, if you raise taxes on middle and working class Americans by levying the 40% excise tax on employer-provided health care plans, we will oppose the health care bill, work against it and work against you in 2012.

But they are not doing that. Instead they're saying "Oh, we don't like this, but we'll still support you..."

Like Marianne Williamson wrote a few days ago at Huffingtonpost, when you're in an abusive relationship with a guy who keeps hitting you, you've got to get out of it and stop the madness.

Currently, working and middle class Americans and union members in particular are in an abusive relationship with establishment politicians.

They keep screwing us while bailing out the richest and most powerfully connected.

Until we say "ENOUGH" the abuse will continue.

Apparently the heads of the unions just don't get that.

If this were Bush pushing the excise tax, they'd be screaming about it and opposing it 100% of the way.

But because it's Obama, a "Democrat," doing it to us, they're responding in a wishy-washy "Oh, well, what can you do?" way.

I'll tell you what you can do.

You can write the president and tell him you're sick of his bailing out Wall Street while he's screwing union workers.

You can tell him you will not vote for him in 2012.

And you can tell him you think he's a liar.

Remember, he said during the 2008 campaign that he wouldn't raise taxes on middle and working class Americans.

A 40% excise tax on our health care plans is raising taxes on us, Mr. President.

So as much as it pains me to say this, Joe Wilson (Wingnut - South Carolina), was right - YOU LIE!!!!

I cannot wait to work against Dems in 2010 and 2012.

And I have never voted Republican in my life, but now I really do see there is little to no difference between the parties.

Except that when there's a Republican in power screwing me, the unions tend to fight more than they do when it's Dem.

They rolled for Clinton on NAFTA and they're rolling for Obama on pretty much everything.

Whatever happened to that card-check legislation anyway?

Treasury Timmeh Shills For Financial Firms

From Huffingtonpost:

An arm of the Federal Reserve, then led by now-Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, told bailed-out insurance giant AIG to withhold key details from the public about overpayments that put billions of extra tax dollars in the coffers of major Wall Street firms, most notably Goldman Sachs.

Read the rest of the piece. Treasury Timmeh Geithner made sure AIG's counterparties got 100 cents on the dollar even when they were willing to take a lot less, then wanted to make sure those sweetheart deals were kept secret.

It's clear Geithner must resign from Treasury and President Obama must explain what he knew about Geithner's dealings during the period between November 21, 2008 when Geithner was picked to succeed Hank Paulson at Treasury and Geithner's Senate confirmation on January 26, 2009.

Reports about the 100 cents on the dollar sweetheart deals engineered by Geithner for Goldman, Merrill, et al. weren't made public until March but may have been circulated behind the scenes before that.

At the very least, President Accountability should have asked his pick for the Treasury Department just how he handled the AIG bail-out and why.

So tell us, Mr. President: What did you ask Geithner about his doings in the bailout mess before you picked him to run Treasury, what did you learn about his doings during the AIG bailout and when did you learn that Geithner ensured Goldman, Merrill, et al. would get secret100 cents to the dollar sweetheart deals at taxpayer expense?

The answers better be good, Mr. President.

There are a lot of angry people out there watching you give away the store to Wall Street and the Too Big To Fail firms while you raise taxes on middle and working class Americans.

Obama Raises Taxes On Middle Class Rather Than Rich

From the Huffingtonpost:

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama signaled to House Democratic leaders Wednesday that they'll have to drop their opposition to taxing high-end health insurance plans to pay for health coverage for millions of uninsured Americans.

In a meeting at the White House, Obama expressed his preference for the insurance tax contained in the Senate's health overhaul bill, but largely opposed by House Democrats and organized labor, Democratic aides said.

...

The difference in how the bills are paid for is emerging as among the toughest disputes.

The House wants to increase income taxes on individuals making more than $500,000 and couples over $1 million, which would raise $460 billion over 10 years to pay for the bill. The Senate wants to tax insurance companies on plans valued at over $8,500 for individuals and $23,000 for couples, raising $150 billion. Most analysts say the insurance tax would be passed on to consumers, and organized labor is strongly opposed, as are House Democrats, some of whom contend that the tax would violate Obama's campaign pledge not to tax the middle class.

"We did in our house bill something that protects middle class Americans from having to pay more for health insurance," Rep. Xavier Becerra, D-Calif., a member of the House leadership, said Wednesday. "So far we want to stay to that principle."

House members "have been very clear on that issue and working with the president to stick to what he said when he was campaigning for president, we're trying to make sure this does not affect middle class Americans," Becerra said.

When middle and working class Americans and union members with employer-provided health care plans pay more money for crappier health care, you'll know who to blame.

When employers reduce coverage and increase co-pays and other premiums on employer-provided health care plans, you'll know who to blame.

When people with employer-provided health care have a 40% excise tax passed onto their plans, you'll know who to blame.

It's President Change We Can Believe In.

And it's all to keep from raising taxes on people making over $500,000 a year.

Instead he wants to raise taxes on working and middle class Americans with employer-provided health care plans.

The Corporate President.

Plunge Protection Team

I'm a huge fan of CNBC's morning show.

Watch it nearly every morning.

What I have learned from watching that show in the last half year is that everything is fine and dandy with the stock market.

And if the market's up, well, then all is well with the state of the nation.

And since last March, the markets have been going up.

So all must be well with the economy and the nation , right?

Maybe.

Or maybe someone's funking with the numbers:

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- The massive stock-market rally in the past nine months is mostly due to secret government buying of stock-index futures, a respected stock-market analyst said Tuesday.

Charles Biderman, chief executive of TrimTabs Investment Research, is the latest and most credible person to charge that the Federal Reserve and the Treasury (in league with top Wall Street firms) is rigging the stock market on a daily basis.

In a special report released Tuesday, Biderman said the $6 trillion increase in U.S. stock-market capitalization since March can't be explained by the usual sources of funds flowing into the market -- such as mutual funds, direct retail investment, pension funds, hedge funds or foreign purchases.

The only logical explanation for the extent of the rally, he suggested, is secret buying by a government committee known colloquially as the Plunge Protection Team. It's like the dark matter that astrophysicists conjecture must be there, even if we can't detect it.

The PPT was established by President Ronald Reagan in 1988 after the 1987 stock crash to coordinate the government's response to market meltdowns. It consists of the Fed chairman, the Treasury secretary, the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Biderman acknowledged that he had no direct evidence that the Fed and other agencies have intervened in the stock market. But he worried about what will happen to the market if the PPT has been buying and suddenly stops.

Now maybe the government is doing nothing wrong and maybe they're disclosing all the Treasurys, agency bonds and mortgage-backed securities they've been buying in the fixed income markets.

Or maybe they're printing money at night and buying stock futures in the morning and hiding it from view.

Hard to know since there is no transparency at the Federal Reserve (which is the way Fed chief Ben Bernanke and Bernanke's boss, President Obushma, want it.)

But until the Fed proves differently, I'd lean toward the government buying up a bunch of Treasurys, bonds and securities with freshly minted greenbacks.

Remember, the people who caused last year's near financial collapse are still the ones running the show at the Fed and the Treasury Department.

Lots of good reasons why they'd be operating the Plunge Protection Team overtime these days.

Of course they can put all this tin foil hat stuff to rest by submitting to an audit of the Federal reserve the way Ron Paul and lots of others in Congress want.

Pelsoi: Obama Committed To Taxing Union Health Care

From Talking Points Memo:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi just returned to the Capitol from a health care meeting at the White House. Walking toward her office, I asked her whether the Senate bill's "Cadillac tax" on high-end health care plans, which both the Senate and White House are pushing, would be a hard sell in the House.

"It's not a very popular initiative in the House or in the public," she said. "It's something the President is committed to, and we'll see how it works out."

In case that's not clear, Mr. President.

Pelosi has long-held reservations about the policy, and has even gone as far as ribbing the President for reneging on a commitment not to raise taxes on middle class Americans by supporting it. That said, she's still optimistic that identical reform package will pass the House and Senate.

Great! I get to pay a 40% tax on my health care plan because Obama calls it "high end" even though my union has negotiated many of those benefits over the years in place of monetary compensation.

And this is to fund the piece of #$%^ health care reform bill that forces Americans without health care to buy crappy insurance that will cover little but sure will make the health insurance companies and their stockholders rich.

I can't wait to see Dems get hammered this year in the midterms and Obama thrown out of office in 2012.

Let's be honest here - the only thing worse then getting screwed financially by the powers that be over and over again is getting screwed financially by someone you voted for.

But I won't make that mistake again.

And I wrote the White House today to let them know that.

You should too.

Klein-metic

Mayor Bloomberg says New York City has the lowest murder rate since the Dutch owned the place and it was called New Amsterdam.

Dunno if I believe him.

True, crime rates are down all over the country, but here in New York City we have that special accounting method known as Klein-metic in which only good stats are counted and bad ones are either ignored or suppressed.

Thus New York City has the most edumacated kids in the country even though many can only pass the dumbed-down, in-house graded state tests but not the more rigorous federal tests and graduation rates have been massaged by a credit recovery program that offers failing students a semester credit for reading a Spiderman comic book.

Just as schools are forced to show improved test scores and graduation rates every year or be closed down and replaced by charters, police precincts have to show improved crime stats every year or the city fires the existing brass at the precinct and brings in new brass.

Given the ease with which schools use Klein-metic to massage stats, I just have to wonder if police precinct captains aren't doing the same thing.

You know, like declaring a guy with four bullet holes in his back an "accident victim" ("We think he accidentally shot himself in the back four times...") or just miscounting the number of dead bodies at the end of every week to keep the math nice and neat (i.e., at zero.)

Call me cynical or paranoid, but anything that emanates out of Moneybags' mouth or the commissioners who work for him generally turns out to be self-serving, misleading or an outright lie, and I have trouble with this lowest crime rate since Peter Stuyvesant thing too.

Good Luck With That

Bill Thompson, who ran such a disorganized, lazy campaign against Mayor Bloomberg in 2009 that according to Marc Alomnte he was often late for his own events or simply didn't show up at all, has told NY1 that he plans to run for mayor again in 2013.

Bloomberg only beat Thompson by 51,000 votes even after outspending him $104 million to $6 million on the campaign,.

But that had little to do with Thompson.

New Yorkers were sick of the arrogant Moneybags decreeing himself Mayor4Life and wanted to send a message.

Had Thompson actually run a disciplined, organized campaign, it is possible some of the cowardly city unions might have thrown in on his side and churned up a GOTV effort to beat Bloomberg.

But Thompson ran badly and the cowardly unions stayed cowardly and now we have Mayor4Life Bloomberg for another four years.

So Thompson should follow Mark Green (another horrible campaigner) and get a job as a permanent "wise guy" on NY1's Road to City Hall carnival of cranks and stay out of politics.

Co-Dependent Liberals

Marianne Williamson writes about her disappointment with President Obushma:

It's hard to own the disappointment I feel over our moderate corporate Democratic President. The whole Obama phenomenon brings up memories from my distant past: the good-looking guy who talks real good, whose line you don't buy immediately but whose charm is so dazzling that he gradually convinces you that this time it will be different.

Yeah. Right. Really different.

What the current administration is giving us is minimal change. And not because the President hasn't had the time to do better; if he had truly wanted to make fundamental change, he would have gone in there fast and done his own version of shock and awe in the first hundred days. And not because he didn't realize how mean all those Republicans can be, either; Obama knew what he was getting into, and if he didn't, then he was as unprepared for the job as his opponents said he was. I see so many people now -- many of them men, interestingly enough -- tangled up in an almost school-girlish, co-dependent, apologetic relationship with this President. As though "poor baby" should be tacked onto the end of every description of his failures.

I must admit, I never thought all that much about Obama to begin with. I voted for him because the alternative was unthinkable, but his policies on education reform and health care reform seemed much too corporate-friendly for me (no single payer for health care, pro-merit pay/standardized testing/charter schools in education) and I really had to hold my nose to pull the lever.

But even I didn't think his administration would match the Bush administration in Wall Street bailout dollars, nor did I think he would cave on any meaningful financial industry reform. Couple the pro-privatization tone of the Race to the Top competition (the states that close the most public schools down and replace them with privatized charters win the money), the half-assed mortgage relief act that seems to have caused more harm than good, the jive he has been feeding the gay community on DaDt, and the corporate whores he appointed to the Department of Agriculture (only former Monsanto employees wanted), and you have the makings of a very corporate-friendly administration that pays lip service to liberal causes like health care reform or financial reform, but only if those reforms are corporate-friendly.

I am glad to see Ms. Williamson articulate her disappointment at Huffingtonpost. I do hope the jive turkeys at the White House are reading the blogs, because there are a whole bunch of liberals who voted for this guy in 2008 who intend to stay home in 2010 and 2012.

Why vote for a Democrat when all you get is Republican-lite?

It will be interesting to see how many Daily Kossacks and other liberal shills peel away from President Obushma before the midterms and how many keep apologizing for the same corporate-friendly policies that hammered Bush for.

Talk About Passing The Buck

Ben Bernanke said in a speech over the weekend that low interest rates didn't cause the housing bubble.

Instead he said lack of regulation caused it.

Uh, huh.

As a voting member of the Federal Reserve, Bernanke rubber-stamped ever Alan Greenspan move on money policy. That includes really cheap rates. Now it is true that a slew of financial innovations in mortgages allowing people to borrow money with little to no principle, to lie about their income and never get called on it, or to buy a house with mortgages payments that only pay interest helped bring about the bubble.

But so did really, really low rates. ARM's don't happen when interest rates are high.

Boy, it's a good thing President Obama has reappointed Ben Bernanke to the Federal Reserve for another term.

I mean, who doesn't want a guy who can't take responsibility for his own mistakes in charge of monetary policy for the U.S.

Silly me - accountability is for teachers, not Federal Reserve Open Market Committee members.

Applying Financial "Innovations" To Public Education

Via Barry Ritholtz at The Big Picture, here are six lessons from the collapse of the economy in 2008-2009 that Economics Nobel Laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz says we haven't learned yet:

1. Markets are not self-correcting, and without adequate regulation, they are prone to excess.

2. There are many reasons for market failures. Too-big-to-fail financial institutions had perverse incentives: Privatized gains, socialized losses.

3. When information is imperfect, markets often do not work well – and information imperfections are central in finance.

4. Keynesian policies do work. Countries, like Australia, that implemented large, well-designed stimulus programs early emerged from the crisis faster

5. There is more to monetary policy than just fighting inflation. Excessive focus on inflation meant that some central banks ignored what was happening to their financial markets. The costs of mild inflation are miniscule compared to the costs imposed on economies when central banks allow asset bubbles to grow unchecked.

6. Not all innovation leads to a more efficient and productive economy – let alone a better society. Private incentives matter, and if they are not properly aligned, the result can be excessive risk taking, excessively shortsighted behavior, and distorted innovation.

Notice number six on the list. Stiglitz elaborates:

While the benefits of many of the financial-engineering innovations of recent years are hard to prove, let alone quantify, the costs associated with them - both economic and social - are apparent and enormous.

Indeed, financial engineering did not create products that would help ordinary citizens manage the simple risk of home ownership - with the consequence that millions have lost their homes, and millions more are likely to do so. Instead, innovation was directed at perfecting the exploitation of those who are less educated, and at circumventing the regulations and accounting standards that were designed to make markets more efficient and stable. As a result, financial markets, which are supposed to manage risk and allocate capital efficiently, created risk and misallocated wildly.

President Obama and Mayor Bloomberg are helping to bring the kinds of financial "innovations" Stiglitz is talking about above to public education.

Neo-liberals like Obama and Bloomberg privilege the "free-market" and want to bring "free-market principles" like merit pay, standardized test tracking and the Race to the Top zero sum competition for funds (12 states win, 48 states lose) to public education in order to shake things up and force what they see as entrenched schools and educators to innovate.

But as Stiglitz notes about the financial markets, if unregulated, they bring short-sighted action and greedy behavior that is harmful to individuals and society as a whole. That's the kind of action we're seeing in public education these days as cities and states try all kinds of unproven innovations, like closing whole swaths of schools in cities like Chicago and New York and reopening them as charter schools.

Mayor Bloomberg has closed over 50 public schools in the last three years. He says more closures are to come in the next four years of his third term. He closes these schools for low test scores and low graduation rates as measured by the Department of Education (some schools with lower scores and rates remain open, however, so the process is not very transparent.) President Obama likes that school closure policy and has institutionalized it as part of his Race to the Top zero sum/winner take all education funds competition.

Leaving aside how some of the most recently closed schools in New York City used to have higher test scores and higher graduation rates before hundreds of at-risk students from other schools were dumped on them, let's note that fear of closure will have all kinds of harmful effects on how schools and educators operate.

You can be sure this year's Regents exams will get extra special attention from the graders when grading time comes. You can also be sure that teachers will feel the pressure from assistant principals and principals. For the ELA Regents exam, essays that should be graded a "2" will get a "3" and perhaps even a "4" if a student is right under a 65 score for the test. With the stakes so high, grade inflation will be rife throughout the system. And merit pay creates the same kind of grade inflation/cheating environment that the school closure policy does, only on the individual level for teachers.

Public education needs to be a collaborative enterprise where teachers help each other and schools work together to educate children. But with the Obama/Bloomberg school closure policies, schools will compete to enroll students who are either at or above grade level while finagling to get at-risk students, ELL students, or support services students off their enrollment lists. Why should a school take a chance having test scores and graduation rates drop and have Mayor Bloomberg order them closed when they can simply exclude "problem" students (as so many of the charter schools do)? On the individual level, why should teachers take on "at-risk" students in their classrooms and risk low test scores when their pay is contingent upon the scores? Even worse, why should teachers take on at-risk students if the safety of their jobs is contingent upon scores, as both Obama and Bloomberg want to do by tying standardized test tracking to teacher evaluations?

As for the data being used to evaluate students and teachers, that too is suspect. Stiglitz notes that "When information is imperfect, markets often do not work well – and information imperfections are central in finance." Well, the same can be said for education. Test scores can be a part of the picture of how a student or a teacher is performing, but they are certainly not the whole part. And considering how easily manipulated the current battery of state tests are, I'm not sure they are even a part of the picture at all. Even Secretary of Education Arne Duncan admits that the tests as currently constructed are imperfect and not a terribly good measure of student or teacher performance. But he also says they're the best we have, so we have to use them. The data fetish itself is a troubling thing these days, but the fact that the data fetishists insist upon using the data even though they admit it is suspect is even more troubling.

Finally, paying students merit pay for test scores seems designed to perpetuate the Wall Street mentality that nothing counts as progress unless it goes up every quarter and pays you a bonus. And I think that's the idea behind all these hedge fund managers and financial wizards getting into the public education sphere. It's simply another revenue grab by the robber barons who already own this country, have already been bailed out by middle and working class taxpayers and make ridiculous amounts of money for the task of moving paper around at the nation's most expensive casino on Wall Street.

You would think that after the hedge fund managers and financial wizards created the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, they would be shunned from public policy discussions instead of being given a seat at the education reform discussion table and given another taxpayer-provided punch bowl to devour.

Speaking of Failure...

Nothing like the party that brought us the the Katrina disaster relief, the Iraq war WMD fiasco and Operation Ignore prior to 9/11 coming out of the woodwork to criticize President Obama's response to the Christmas Day terrorist plot over Detroit.

This is especially galling considering how similar the Obama administration's response to the Detroit bombing attempt was to the Bush administration's response to the shoe bomber Richard Reid eight years ago.

Politico notes the hypocrisy:

Eight years ago, a terrorist bomber’s attempt to blow up a transatlantic airliner was thwarted by a group of passengers, an incident that revealed some gaping holes in airline security just a few months after the attacks of Sept. 11. But it was six days before President George W. Bush, then on vacation, made any public remarks about the so-called shoe bomber, Richard Reid, and there were virtually no complaints from the press or any opposition Democrats that his response was sluggish or inadequate.

That stands in sharp contrast to the withering criticism President Barack Obama has received from Republicans and some in the press for his reaction to Friday’s incident on a Northwest Airlines flight heading for Detroit.

...

The similarities between last Friday’s incident and the attempted shoe bombing in 2001 are striking.

This year’s attack came on Christmas. The attempt eight years ago took place on Dec. 22. Obama was on vacation in Hawaii when the suspect, Omar Abdulmutallab, allegedly used plastic explosives in his try to blow up the Amsterdam-to-Detroit flight. Bush was at Camp David when Reid used similar plastic explosives to try to blow up his Paris-to-Miami flight, which diverted to Boston after the incident.

Like the Obama White House, the Bush White House told reporters the president had been briefed on the incident and was following it closely. While the Obama White House issued a background statement through a senior administration official calling the incident an “attempted terrorist attack” on the same day it took place, the early official statements from Bush aides did not make the same explicit statement.

Bush did not address reporters about the Reid episode until December 28, after he had traveled from Camp David to his ranch in Texas.

Democrats do not appear to have criticized Bush over the delay. Many were wary of publicly clashing with the commander in chief, who was getting lofty approval ratings after what appeared to be a successful military campaign in Afghanistan. The media also seemed to have little interest in pressing Bush about the bombing, or the fact that the incident had revealed a previously unknown vulnerability in airplane security — that shoes could be used to hide chemicals or explosive devices.

Do I think Obama should have made a stronger statement on Christmas about the bombing?

From a political standpoint, I do. Knowing that Repubs would jump on this to portray him as weak and ineffectual (i.e.. Jimmy Carter), he should have gone before cameras to say "I'm on top of this, we're investigating and making sure airline security will be safer going forward."

Instead he let Director of Homeland Security chief Janet Napalitano issue her "The system worked..." statement and has been on the defensive ever since.

So two things here - once again, Obama, perhaps in an attempt to break away from the "politics of the past," has allowed an issue to be framed by the opposition party to make him look weak.

Second, Dems are not doing a good enough job pointing out that Bush and Cheney did not respond for days to the Reid bombing, and for that matter, they didn't respond to any of the pre-9/11 intel about an impending attack coming in the U.S. either.

Republicans are very good at lying to the cameras with a straight face - just watch Peter King or Pete Hoekstra on FOX News talk about how responsive the Bush administration was to the Reid bomber and you'll see what I mean.

And Cheney - oh, boy. Five Deferments Cheney, the guy who ran away and hid on September 11, 2001, sure is a tough guy when his fat ass is safe from actual harm. Then he talks about how we're at war and Obama doesn't know we're at war, blah, blah, blah, but when it came to actual effective anti-terrorism policy or creating a system where intelligence agencies actually effectively traded intel, well, that Cheney wasn't so good at.

As you know if you have been reading this blog, I think Obama is an abject failure as president. He's great at demanding accountability from teachers and blaming the education system for the country's ills, but not so great at demanding accountability from the bankers and hedge fund managers who nearly destroyed the economy, the economic policy makers like Bernanke, Geithner and Summers who helped create the economic mess in the first place, or the people in his administration who fail at the very tasks they were put in charge of - like Napolitano at Homeland Security.

But for the party of Bush/Cheney - the people who gave us Katrina, Iraq and 9/11 in the first place - to call Obama incompetent and ineffectual...that's just too much horse#$%* to take.

Too bad Dems aren't calling them on it.

If Napolitano Were A Teacher, She'd be Fired

Make no bones about it, George Bush engaged in Operation Ignore prior to 9/11. He was told in no uncertain terms in an August 2001 presidential daily brief that Al Qaeda was determined to attack inside the United States. He told the official who delivered that PDB, "All right, you've covered your ass...now get outta here!" Then he went back to pulling brush at his ranch while jihadis flew planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Also make no mistake about it that George Bush completely ignored the disaster in New Orleans until his adviser, Dan Bartlett, made a DVD of the evening news broadcasts and showed him that people were dying. Only then did Bush act and even then, it was more about making it look like the government was responding rather than actually doing anything effective to help.

Clearly Mr. Bush was not too effective at safeguarding the United States, no matter what his cheerleaders at Fox News or the Washington Post editorial page said.

Unfortunately neither is the guy who replaced him.

Last Friday, a Nigerian jihadi set his penis on fire trying to bring down a jet plane over Detroit. President Obama was vacationing in Hawaii with his family and rather than make any statements about the incident or the investigation, he let members of his administration, primarily Homeland Security Director Janet Napolitano, do the talking for him while he rode the waves.

Napolitano told CNN on Sunday "The system worked" even though American intelligence agencies ignored a tip from Penis On Fire's father that he had become radicalized and could pose a threat, particularly because he had disappeared. Intelligence agents did not act on the tip and Penis on Fire came close to bringing down a plane.

President Accountability finally put his surf board away yesterday to say "Actually the system didn't work," after he and his administration were ridiculed by critics for their blase reaction to Friday's incident and their inability to accept responsibility for the failure of intelligence agencies.

Today, President Accountability spoke again, saying there had been a "systemic failure" that allowed Penis on Fire to get through two layers of security at airports despite being on a U.S. terrorist watchlist and his father telling U.S. officials his son had become "radicalized."

In education, President Accountability is very big on closing "failing" schools and firing "failing" teachers as part of his vaunted Race to the Top lottery game, but when it comes to his own failure to address national security or intelligence matters or even make it look like he was on top of the mess at the airports this weekend (administration officials said airport security was chaotic, but that would confuse would-be terrorists as much as it angered travelers), he's not so big on taking responsibility or "firing" anybody. Not until the heat gets too tough to take, and only then does he emerge from sand and surf to address the problems.

Unfortunately for President Accountability, it may be too little too late to save his administration. Once a president gets stereotyped, it's hard to get people to think differently. Initially Bush had people fooled that he was on top of things, but Katrina changed all that. Barry the Surf President ran as a competent manager who would bring change to Washington and hold government officials accountable, but all people seem to see is a guy who passes the buck when he or his administration screws up and a guy who seems to screw up a lot.

And the only people he seems to hold accountable are teachers.

Everybody else gets to screw up again and again (think Geithner and Summers on unemployment and the financial bailout, think Bernanke on Fed policy, think Napolitano on "The system worked...") and they get a "heckuva job" pat on the back from him.

Alice's Airport Masacree

The guy who set his penis on fire trying to blow up a jet plane over Detroit was waving all kinds of red flags saying "DON'T LET ME ON THIS PLANE!!!"

He bought his ticket with cash - a one way ticket from Nigeria to Detroit with a change in Amsterdam. He had no luggage, he was on a U.S. "watch-list," and his visa stated that he was visiting the United States for a "religious ceremony," which is apparently code by jihadis for martyrdom.

Now it's possible somebody with the "Going to U.S. for Religious Ceremony" designation on his visa with a one-way cash ticket and no luggage is an okay fellow, but you might want to check him out just a little more before you let him on the plane.

But that didn't happen, neither in Nigeria where government security screened him nor in Amsterdam where secondary security - private security personnel hired by the airlines - screened him again.

So he was able to get on a plane with an explosive secured to his penis.

And the Obama administration said "the system worked."

Uh, huh.

Now let me tell you my experience in the Rochester airport on Saturday, the day after Christmas.

The initial screening was no more rigorous then when we flew before Christmas. Shoes off, bags through security. I kept my contact solution and deodorant in my carry-on bag, nobody said a thing about them. But they were both less than 3 ounces, so I think those are allowed.

Next, we had to walk by an additional security checkpoint with a very important looking guy standing there with his arms folded scrutinizing everybody. That was an added layer of security but again, we got by without incident.

Once we got inside and found our flight had been delayed 3 or 4 hours, we sat and watched these four security goons in blue come out of a door every so often, slap on some plastic gloves and randomly search people stuck in the airport waiting for delayed flights - people who had already been through security.

The searches seemed random - grab a couple of people off a line and pat them down and search their clothes. Scrutinize the chapstick in their shirt pockets. Open their bags and see what magazine they brought for the flight. You know, really important stuff.

As I sat with my girlfriend waiting for our delayed flight to Newark to board, I wondered aloud how I would react if the goons in blue decided I needed to be searched. Already peeved by the flight delay, I didn't think I would react too well. Probably like Arlo Guthrie at the end of Alice's Restaurant:

Security Goon: Sir, would you please stand up so you can be searched.

Me: Officer Obey, you got a lot of damned gall searching me. I mean, I mean, here I am, sitting on the Group W airport bench, waiting for my delayed flight to Newark, drinking the last of my coffee which I cannot replace because the entire god damned Rochester airport shuts down at 8 PM and there is nowhere else to buy coffee, and holding my disgusting Subway sandwich which I had to buy because there is no other vegetarian food option in this rinky-dink airport, and you want to search me because you think I might be a terrorist with an explosive powder strapped to my penis who wants to blow up women, children and Continental Airlines property?

Yeah, I just don't think that rant to security would have gone so well, not even if I was as charming as Arlo or sang it to Officer Obey and the rest of the security goons in four part harmony on the guitar.

And yet, the silliness with which they were randomly picking people to search and the things they were searching for sure did echo the ridiculousness of Officer Obey and Arlo's arrest for littering in Alice's Restaurant.

Another example of American blind justice indeed.

Effective anti-terrorism measures?

Not so much.

And This Will Do What?

Flying home from holiday visiting was a big pain in the ass.

A blizzard in Chicago, fog and rain in Newark, and the idiot in Detroit who set his penis on fire trying to blow up a jet made for a very hectic day.

Took almost 9 hours to get from Rochester to Newark.

Watching the parrotheads and hysteria mongers on TV this morning (CNN has this on the screen: SINGLE ACT OR PART OF A LARGER PLAN?), I keep wanting to headbutt somebody through my TV.

I know it's the media's job to create and hype fear (after all, it's good for both the news business and many of the businesses the corporate conglomerates that own these media outlets run) and it's obviously also good for the politicians both in and out of power (when was the last time you saw a HEALTH CARE REFORM SUCKS story? How long before Cheney emerges from the bunker he dwells in and appears on TV to say I TOLD YOU SO!!!!!! BOMB YEMEN!!!!!!!).

But let's be honest here - none of these security measures that the "terrorist experts" on TV want put in place, nor the measures the administration has put in place already, will keep people 100% safe.

Nor will expanding the WoT to Yemen as Holy Joe Lieberman called for on FOX News this morning.

There is no way to keep one or two crazy people from getting on an airplane and setting their penises on fire trying to blow it up. Doesn't matter how much security you add, how many pat-downs you do, how often you make people bend over and grab their ankles before you allow them on a plane - when you are a corporate power like the United States and you create the kinds of enemies we create by allowing the corporations and the corporate whores that rule us to exploit people all over the world, this kind of stuff will continue to happen.

But you sure can make life hell by adding ridiculous restrictions at airports, on trains and in other public places that do little to keep people safe while continuing to stoke fear in the general public by running hysterical stories like SINGLE ACT OR PART OF A LARGER PLAN? or I TOLD YOU SO!!!!!! BOMB YEMEN!!!!!!!

But maybe that's the point - maybe the idiots who rule us want it this way - keep us on edge, fearful of losing our jobs during the week and our lives when we fly on vacation, so that whatever they want to do they can with little scrutiny or criticism.

Dunno, just feels like the WoT crap will be back in full force after this incident and it's a completely useless exercise unless the idea is to distract Americans from other stuff like why do they have to work longer and harder to make less or why don't they have decent affordable health care that isn't a total giveaway to the health insurance industry or why aren't all the hedge fund managers in jail for fraud?

One last thing: I do think it's interesting that this attack came after President Obushma doubled down on the war in Afghanistan.

Just doesn't seem like the war on Iraq, the war in Afghanistan or the war in Yemen that neo-cons will undoubtedly be drooling for in the coming months is stemming the spread of radicals who want to set their penises on fire trying to bring down airplanes.

Maybe we should try something else?

Should Be Fun

Flying home from Christmas visiting today.

Anything happen over the holidays?

Oh, right:

A Nigerian man tried to ignite an explosive device aboard a trans-Atlantic Northwest Airlines flight as the plane prepared to land in Detroit on Friday, in an incident the United States believes was “an attempted act of terrorism,” according to a White House official who declined to be identified.

The device, described by officials as a mixture of powder and liquid, failed to fully detonate. Passengers on the plane described a series of pops that sounded like firecrackers.

Federal officials said the man wanted to bring the plane down.

“This was the real deal,” said Representative Peter T. King of New York, the ranking Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, who was briefed on the incident and said something had gone wrong with the explosive device, which he described as somewhat sophisticated. “This could have been devastating,” Mr. King said.

I don't want to underplay this. but Peter King, the go-to Congressman for national security leaks when the press needs quotes, thinks everything is the "real deal."

My initial feelings about this "attempted terrorist attack" as the White House is calling it, is that it is fairly serious and more than a little scary, but once again, the so-called Al Qaeda terrorists seem to have more than a little Laurel and Hardy in them when they're trying their attacks.

Think shoe bomber Richard Reid trying to blow up his shoes with matches instead of a lighter (ironically, Reid tried his attack 8 years ago this week.)

While Peter King and other Repub Congressman are linking this incident to Al Qaeda, this could also be some disgruntled crazy guy acting alone.

I guess we'll learn more in the coming days.

But one thing I am sure about today - flying home post-Christmas is going to suck.

Rumor has it they've added proctology exams and stir-ups to the pre-flight security check.

Can't wait.

UPDATE: Fantastic - new flight restrictions, including you're no longer allowed to access carry-on baggage during the last hour of your flight or have personal items on your lap.

You know, none of this crap makes me feel safer. You know what would make me feel safer? An American foreign policy that didn't create enemies by the tens of thousands along with a country willing to invest in effective airport security technology that could detect the kinds of the things that can bring down planes and pay airport security screeners more than the minimum freaking wage.

But I guess that would be asking for too much.

So sir, can you please bend over, touch your toes and spread? We think you're hiding a bomb up there...

Goldman, Morgan Stanley Rob Clients, Make Huge Profits

The Times reports this morning that financial firms like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank and others created mortgage-backed securities made up of bad debt, sold it to clients, and made huge profits while their clients lost billions on securities they were led to believe were solid investments.

The SEC is looking into the matter, especially to see if Goldman and the other firms purposely helped clients select securities that would lose money

But many of the financial wizards and hedge fund managers who made a killing on these toxic collateralized debt obligations are laughing all the way to the bank with their ill-gotten gains.

And of course the firms themselves are Masters of the Universe with so many of the others - like Lehman and Bear Sterns - out of the picture.

With cronies in both the Bush administration and now the Obama administration looking out for them, these predators and vultures at Goldman and Morgan and the other connected financial firms have gamed the system and turned the "free market" into one huge rigged casino - and its investors and the American taxpayer who continue to lose (the stock market had the worst decade ever from 1999-2009.)

But until people start to go to jail for this, nothing will change on Wall Street - the rigged casino will continue.

And now, as has been noted before on this blog and elsewhere, the very boys who created the rigged casino and have stolen billions want to turn their attention and efforts to public education.

And the Obama administration is cheering them on.

What more evidence do we need that taking Wall Street management style and business ethics and transferring them to any other area of life is a bad idea than the piss-poor record of the overall stock market this past decade and the financial collapse that was created by the financial geniuses on Wall Street to enrich themselves and bilk everybody else?

House Dems Will Cave To Ben Nelson and Obama

Politico reports that House Democrats say they will not be steamrolled by the Senate on the health care reform proposal when it gets to committee negotiations.

Nonetheless, with Senator Ben Nelson, the 60th vote for the proposal in the Senate, saying he will vote against any reform bill that replaces the excise tax on employer-provided health care plans with a surtax on people making over a millionaire dollars a year and with even more Dems in the Senate saying they vote no if the public option winds up in the bill, it seems to me House Democrats have already been steamrolled.

House Dems do want to raise the "threshold" on the excise tax on employer-provided health care plans so that only really high end plans get hit with the tax. But the Obama administration wants the level to stay where the Senate put it because that offsets other costs in the reform proposal.

Wanna bet the House gives Obama and Ben Nelson what they want and caves on the excise tax on employer-provided health care plans?

Obama wants this done before January 20th so he can take a victory lap during the State of the Union address.

These negotiations are going to happen fast and Obama will get what he wants.

I maintain that if this "reform" is as big a giveaway to the insurance industry as it seems to be - and there are quite a few people who say this is going to exacerbate the problem with health care, raise costs for everybody and reinforce the power of the already powerful health insurance industry (see here, here, and here) -Barack Obama and the Democratic Party are going to be reviled for a long, long time.

As Arianna Huffington wrote, "as we approach the end of Obama's first year in office, this public subsidizing of private profit is becoming something of a habit" - and it's Obama and the Dem's doing all of it.

Democrats own these bailouts now, they own this 1% vs. 99% economy where the connected and the powerful get paid off and everybody else gets robbed, and when they take a drubbing in the next election, they are going to deserve it.

We need to stop the sell-outs.

Sell-Out

The more I learn about the Senate health care proposal which Obama supports, the worse it seems.

As detailed here, the Obama administration wants to keep the excise tax on employer-provided health care plans as a way to control overall health care costs. The idea is, if your plan costs too much, you will be taxed 40 cents on every dollar your plan costs over $8,000. The cost will be so high that your employer will shift more costs to you or drop your coverage completely.

Rose Ann DeMoro, the Executive Director of the California Nurses Association, says this plan is a fraud devised by health insurance company lobbyists that will continue to allow the health insurance industry to gauge Americans:

Advocates of the current bill say it's most important feature is that it expands coverage to 30 million Americans. But their method for accomplishing what NNU Co-president Deborah Burger calls a "wishful statement" is an individual mandate forcing the uninsured to buy private insurance or be criminalized and subject to fines, in fact symbolizes the power of the insurance industry.

Individual mandate was the top priority of the insurance industry, which also succeeded in fending off meaningful restraints of its predatory pricing practices. The likely outcome is that far too many people will still face health care insecurity or medical bankruptcy due to ever rising out-of-pocket costs, or continue to skip needed medical care because of the high prices.

Indeed, discouraging provision of care as the preferred way to control costs, rather than rein in the pricing practices of the insurance and drug giants, is a central tenet of the insurance industry and conservative policy wonks.

That is also symbolized by the Senate bill's excise tax on comprehensive insurance, deceptively labeled as "Cadillac plans." In practice that tax will push employers to further reduce benefits for workers, and shift more costs to employees. Especially as more and more plans are subject to the tax every year due to the weak price controls on insurers in the legislation.

...

In exchange for lining up millions of new customers for the insurance giants, while failing to stop their price gouging or significantly cracking down on denials of claims they don't want to pay for, we're told that the legislation is historic for "ending" the worst industry abuses by banning exclusions of patients with pre-existing conditions and the shameful practice of dropping people when they become sick.

Yet both of those provisions are seriously marred by gaping loopholes for an industry which has perfected the art of adverse selection and gaming the system.

As the NNU has said in its statement on the bill, the loopholes include:

* Provisions permitting insurers and companies to more than double charges to employees who fail "wellness" programs because they have diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol readings, or other medical conditions.

* Permitting insurers to sell policies "across state lines", exempting patient protections passed in other states. Insurers will thus set up in the least regulated states in a race to the bottom threatening public protections won by consumers in various states.

* Allowing insurers to charge four times more based on age plus more for certain conditions, and continue to use marketing techniques to cherry-pick healthier, less costly enrollees.

* Insurers may continue to rescind policies for "fraud or intentional misrepresentation" - the main pretext insurance companies now use to cancel coverage.

Does any of this sound like real reform? It sounds like a Christmas gift to the health insurance industry courtesy of President Obama and Senate Dems.

The House is going to go along with all of this because Ben Nelson and Holy Joe Lieberman say they'll bail if anything in the Senate bill is changed.

So basically millions of Americans with employer-provided health care plans are going to see their health care plans get worse while their costs increase, or their going to be dropped altogether from the plans, while those without health insurance now are going to be mandated to buy crappy insurance that has no public option competition to keep health insurance industry costs in check.

This is a sell-out, pure and simple. As Lawrence O'Donnell said on MSNBC this morning, this "reform" is going to give liberalism a bad name.

After all this stuff shakes out and people realize their health care has gotten worse but their costs have gotten higher, they are going to PUNISH Democrats for a long, long time in election after election.

And you know what? Democrats will deserve it.

And I am writing this as a person who has only voted for Democrats all my life.

If they pass this abomination and Obushma signs it, I am done with them.

Obama Wants Tax On Union Health Care Plans Over Millionaire Tax

The Senate's health care proposal that levies a 40% excise tax on so-called "Cadillac" employer-provided health care plans that exceed $8,000 a year in cost is estimated by the Congressional Budget Office to hit 58 million people by 2019.

The House version of the bill levies a "millionaire's surplus tax" on people making over a million dollars.

Firedoglake reports that the Obama administration wants the excise tax on employer-provided health care plans rather than the surplus tax on millionaires:

• Excise tax: unions and progressive leaders are pushing strongly for the House’s version of financing, dropping the excise tax on high-end insurance plans that financed part of it and substituting it with a surtax on millionaires. Sen. Debbie Stabenow also noted today that the excise tax should be relaxed or eliminated. The White House has said that the excise tax is a major cost control component of reform, so they’ve staked some of the bill on it. In addition, Ben Nelson has objected to the House surtax on millionaires, saying “that would break” his promise to vote for the bill.

Slate says pretty much all employer-provided health care plans could qualify for the excise tax:

How do I know if my insurance plan is a "Cadillac plan"? Look at the cost. The finance committee defines high-cost or "Cadillac" as any plan with premiums higher than $8,000 for individuals or $21,000 for families. Keep in mind that these figures include everything you and your employer spend on health care except for the deductible: premiums for medical (the portions paid by you and by your employer), dental, and vision coverage, as well as any money you put into a flexible spending account, which allows you to set aside pretax money to cover medical costs. Since your pay stub may show only your personal contribution—not that of your employer—the best way to find out the total cost of your plan is to ask your human resources liaison. Many companies already list their employees' total premiums on their W-2 tax forms. The bill passed by the finance committee would make that mandatory.

What does a "Cadillac plan" offer? The top-of-the-line plans—say, the $40,000-a-year plan offered to Goldman Sachs CEOs—likely have no copayments, no deductibles, few limits on how much you can spend, and no need for prior authorization, i.e., to get special permission before you get treated.

But many not-so-fancy plans also qualify as "Cadillacs" under the finance committee's definition. That's because the term refers to total cost—not a particular set of benefits—and many factors—like the state you live in, the size of your company, and the makeup of that company's work force—can affect costs. Premiums tend to be significantly higher in Massachusetts than in Idaho, for example. (The employer/employee contribution also varies by state.) The smaller the business, the fewer employees who go into the pool, the less leverage the organization has to negotiate lower premiums. And if the workers have an average age of, say, 54, their premiums are going to be a lot higher than if the average is 25.

A lot of basic benefits packages, then, can still qualify as "Cadillacs." (The Senate finance committee has made exceptions for workers with high-risk jobs like firefighters, whose premiums tend to be high.) The Joint Committee on Taxation has estimated that the tax would hit 14 percent of family health policies and 19 percent of individual policies in 2013, when the legislation would take effect. Those numbers would rise to 37 percent and 41 percent, respectively, by 2019, since premiums are expected to rise faster than inflation.

Those above figures are from the Joint Committee on Taxation; as noted earlier, the CBO estimates the excise tax will hit a much larger number of people by 2019 - 58 million.

So there you have it - Obama, the man who was elected with the help of union members and pledged to deliver change we could all believe in from the previous eight years of "Screw the Middle and Working Classes - Pay Off The Wealthy" has decided to tax middle and working class Americans rather than millionaires because he wants to say this health care "reform" plan that essentially forces 33 million people to buy private insurance and provide insurance companies with billions of extra revenue dollars is "revenue neutral."

I can't wait to deliver a message to this corporate shill in 2010 and 2012. Judging by how Dems and liberals are responding to polls these days about the president and the Democratic Party, I know I'm not the only one.