National Health Care

As the health care debate rages on up in DC., a few companies are giving the rest of us their two cents worth. Of course, these companies are not in favor of any real health care reform, so their ideas are not in line with the reforms that the Obama camp is proposing. No big surprise there.
shellac from http://www.dailykos.com has an open letter to one of those companies, Whole Foods.

My letter to the Nashville Whole Foods management
by shellac
Fri Aug 14, 2009 I am a Nashville area surgeon and a loyal
customer of the Nashville Whole Foods ever since it first opened. This is true
no longer. I was stunned and deeply disappointed to read Mr. Mackey's right-wing
propaganda piece in the WSJ. He has his right to speak his point of view. I have the right to take my money elsewhere.
This is the letter I wrote in the feedback page at my local Whole Foods store's website.I am a Vanderbilt physician and a loyal customer of Whole Foods for years now. It is with some degree of remorse that I write this letter, but I feel I have no choice.Your CEO Mr. Mackey's ill-informed article does tremendous harm to the cause of health care reform. His solutions, e.g. high deductible plans, are simply ridiculous. These things are part of the problem, not the solution. As the country spirals further into debt from health insurance costs, lining the pockets of health insurance company CEOs along the way, and America falls further and further behind other developed nations in all leading health indicators, Mr. Mackey has the audacity to point to Medicare as the problem. Of course his solutions are silly--they are simply right-wing talking points.
Hypocrites like him are the same people who would not bat an eyelash at sending troops to Iraq, causing the deaths of many Iraqis and Americans, and then footing the massive bill. Yet they balk at the idea of paying for health care reform, something that has the ability to save millions of lives. I truly do not understand this.
Mr. Mackey has the right to speak his point of view. We customers similarly have a right to support those businesses whose political support will not be detrimental to society. I realize that the employees in the Nashville store may not agree with Mr. Mackey, but I would be in violation of my Hippocratic Oath and my duties as a physician if I continued to support Whole Foods. For those employees who may suffer as innocent bystanders, I am truly sorry.Good luck.
I truly do not understand what is going through this cretin CEO's mind when he penned this op-ed. Does he not know that Americans are dying for lack of proper health care? Or does he not care?
Whatever. I will never step foot in that store again.

"Never Pay It Back "...

... is a website promising that you can get a $2500 grant from some rich folks which you will never have to repay. This is a SCAM people, so avoid this ripoff!

The following is what a few people in this country have discovered when checking into this con game:http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r22622553-Scam-Never-Pay-it-Back-com

cheryllj: Hi,For about the past month there's been a very hot add running on some Portland, OR radio stations. It states that private philanthropists want to help citizens in need so they're willing to give $2500 to an individual, the application only takes 1 minute to fill out & you "never pay it back"!!!Well, being curious I wanted to check the website out & here I am....after being taken to:»http://www.govgrantstudy.info/?gclid=CMLp0sSFrJsCFSMSagodwDrlCA, then when you try to exit the page you may be taken to another page at:»www.govgrantstudy.info/c2m.php?sub=EXITwhich states that this government grant study program has been featured on ABC, NBC, CBS & FOX networks. The only cost to you is $2.95 for shipping.
MGD: ALL ADVERTISEMENTS FOR GOVERNMENT GRANTS WHICH REQUIRE YOU TO PROVIDE CREDIT OR CHECKING DATA ARE SCAMS, NO EXCEPTIONS !!, and that is not just my opinion: »http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/alerts/alt134.shtm You should contact your local media who are accepting commercials from these scammers and complain. In fact in this case they could become a party to a potnetial class action:govgrantstudy.info is a paid affiliate which redirects to Grants360.com as well as other scam sites.
Go to this site to read further opinion about this scam.

The locals here in Tampa have this scam site being pushed on one of the local radio stations, but I've not yet been able to get the stations call letters. I found out about this site by way of a friend who heard it on the radio and wanted me to check into it. Stay away from this scam folks! Any company and/or group who that wants your credit card number or checking account number is up to no good, especially if they are claiming to be giving away cash or whatever. You've been warned!!

" Cash for Clunklers" Breaks Down..

... and this is going to be somewhat of an embarrassment for the Obama administration.
The " cash for clunkers " program had just gotten started this past Monday, with some $950 million dollars of taxpayer cash and the cash has already been used up! I guess that the government hadn't counted on the program being so popular as it is.
This leaves the Obama team having to search for some more cash in order to keep the program active. Auto dealers have let the government know that the funds are gone and this little problem also has the dealers concerned because they are worried that the funds will not be around in order to complete some of the deals that are already in the works.

Calls to suspend the plan came after auto dealers warned the government
that it was in danger of losing count of how many trades had been made. Since
the program was to run as long as there was money left in the $950 million pool,
dealers have been concerned the fund could run dry before they were
reimbursed for all their deals — which require them to junk the clunker.
The plan offering owners of old cars and trucks $3,500 or $4,500 toward
a new, more-efficient vehicle has proven wildly popular, with 22,782 trades
certified by federal officials since Monday. But the National Highway
Traffic Safety Administration told dealers Wednesday that a vast majority of
transactions submitted were being rejected for incomplete or illegible
paperwork.

A survey of 2,000 dealers by the National Automobile Dealers
Association, the results of which were obtained by McClatchy Newspapers,
found about 25,000 deals not yet approved by NHTSA, or about 13 trades per
store. With 23,005 dealers asking to be part of the program, auto dealers
may have already arranged the sale of more than the 250,000 vehicles that federal officials expected the plan to generate. http://www.tampabay.com/incoming/article1023508.ece

Several Michigan lawmakers have vowed to press for more money for the program, which had originally been set for $4 billion. But Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., has said she would block additional money unless the program was changed to boost the gains in fuel economy between old and new models.

Maybe the Congress could take back some of the casg given to the big brokerage firms and hand it over to this program. This would be a stimulus that the people of America can live with, seeing that the cash is actually going in at the bottom and then working its way up throughout the economic chain.

Economy

Okay, here's the deal people. I'm at a library on one of their computers. I have a fifteen minute time limit on this thing so there will not be a post today. One more week and my own stuff will be ready to go again. YES!
I'll have a few things tomorrow to say about Obama's health care plan, and it will not be to nice.
Have a great day!!

Tampa Economy: Unemployment Up...

...and that comes as no surprise to me and many others trying to make a living in this over sized town.
The unemployment rate for June was 10.6% statewide,and the rate sits at 10.7% for the Tampa/Hillsborough County area. That is up some 0.5% from May.
Some more numbers of notice:
392,800
Number of jobs Florida has lost over the past year

88,500 Lost jobs in professional and business services

86,300 Lost jobs in trade, transportation and utilities

80,400Lost jobs in construction

10,000 Added jobs in health care and social assistance, the state's only growing sector

$100M Amount in extended unemployment benefits paid out to Floridians as of Friday

31,513 Number of Floridians expected to exhaust extended unemployment benefits through September.

131,893 Number of Floridians expected to exhaust extended unemployment benefits through December.

Sources: Florida Agency for Workforce Innovation; Florida Employment Law Project

The government and other agencies which keep track of such things keep telling you and I that this recession is easing up a bit. That may be true in other areas of the United States, but that isn't happening in the state of Florida. It appears to be getting worse here as the weeks go by, and many of the residents of this state are paying the price.
Unless you are one of those wealthy retiree's that the state is catering to, stay the hell out of this state. You will not find any real work here if you are an hourly worker. You will certainly not be able to live here in any manner to which you may be accustomed. Times are very tough in this area. You'll do better elsewhere.

Riches For The Corrupt, Crumbs For The Rest Of Us

From ( http://www.alternet.org/workplace/141275/we_offer_riches_and_perks_for_corrupt_cronies%2C_and_crumbs_for_everyone_else/)

We Offer Riches and Perks for Corrupt Cronies, and Crumbs for Everyone Else

By Chris Hedges, Truthdig. Posted July 14, 2009.
If you defraud banks and customers of billions, you get taxpayer money. But if you are poor like Tearyan Brown of Trenton, N.J., you are in trouble.
Tearyan Brown became a father when he was 16. He did what a lot of inner-city kids desperate to make money do. He sold drugs. He was arrested and sent to jail three years later for dealing marijuana and PCP on the streets of Trenton, N.J., mostly to white kids driving in from the suburbs. It was a job which saw him robbed at gunpoint and stabbed in the chest. But it made him about $1,400 a week.
Brown, when he got out after three and a half years, was done with street life. He got a job as a security guard and then as a fork lift operator. He eventually made about $30,000 a year. He shepherded his son through high school, then college and a master’s degree. His boy, now 24, is a high school teacher in Texas. Brown would not leave the streets of Trenton but his son would. It made him proud. It gave him hope.
And then one morning in 2005 when he was visiting his mother’s house the cops showed up. He saw the cruiser and the officers standing on his mother’s porch. He hurried down the block toward the home to see what was wrong. What was wrong was him. On the basis of a police photograph, he had been identified by an 82-year-old woman as the man who had robbed her of $9 at gunpoint a few hours earlier. The only other witness to the crime insisted the elderly victim was confused. The witness told the police Brown was innocent. Brown’s friends said Brown was with them when the robbery took place.
“Why would I rob a woman for $9,” he asks me. “I had been paid the day before. I had not committed a crime in 20 years. It didn’t make any sense.”
He was again sent to jail. But this time he was charged with armed robbery. If convicted, he would be locked away for many years. His grown son and his three young boys would live, as he had, without the presence of a father. The little ones—11-year-old twins and a 10-year-old—would be adults when he got out. When he met with his state-appointed attorney, the lawyer, like most state-appointed attorneys, pushed for accepting a plea bargain, one that would see him behind bars for at least the next decade. Brown pulled the pictures of his children out of his wallet, laid the pictures carefully on the table in front of the lawyer, looked at the faces of his children and broke down in tears. He shook and sobbed. It was a hard thing to do for a man who stands nearly 6 feet tall and weights 210 pounds and has coped with a lot in his life.
“I didn’t do nothing,” he choked out to the lawyer.
He refused the plea bargain offer. He sat in jail for the next two years before getting a trial. It was a time of deep despair. Jail had changed since he had last been incarcerated. The facilities were overcrowded, with inmates sleeping in corridors and on the floor. The gangs taunted those who, like Brown, were not affiliated with a gang. Gang members knocked trays of food to the floor. They pissed on mattresses. They stole canteen items and commissary orders. And there was nothing the victims could do about it.
“See this,” he says to me in a dimly lit coffee shop in downtown Trenton as he rolls up the right sleeve of his T-shirt. “It’s the grim reaper. I got it in jail. I was so scared. I was scared I wouldn’t get out this time. I was scared I would not see my kids grow up. They make their own tattoo guns in jail with a toothbrush, a staple and the motor of a Walkman. It cost me $15, well, not really dollars. I had to give him about 10 soups and a package of cigarettes. On the street this would be three or four hundred dollars.”
Under the tattoo of the scythe-wielding, hooded figure are the words “Death Awaits.”
He had a trial after two years in jail and was found not guilty. The sheriff’s deputies in the courtroom said as he was walking out that they “had never seen anything like this.” He reaches into his baggy jeans and pulls out his thin brown wallet. He opens it to show me a folded piece of paper. The paper says, “Verdict: Defendant found not guilty on all charges.” It is dated Jan. 31, 2008.
But innocence and guilt are funny things in America. If you are rich and guilty, if you have defrauded banks and customers and investment firms of billions of dollars, as AIG or Citibank has, if you wear fancy suits and have degrees from elite universities that cost more per year than Brown used to make, you get taxpayer money. You get lots of it. You maintain the lavish lifestyle of jets and spas and million-dollar bonuses. You live a life of unchecked greed and have too much in a world where most have too little. If you are moral scum in America we take care of you. But if you are poor, if you are, say, Tearyan Brown and African-American and 39 years old with four kids and no job and you live in the inner city, you are in trouble. No one comes to help you. You don’t get a second chance. This is what being poor means.
Brown found that life had changed when he got out. He had lost his job as a fork lift operator. And there were no new jobs to be found. He had faithfully paid child support until his arrest but, with no income, he could not pay from jail and now he was being hauled into court by the state every few weeks for being in arrears for $13,000. The mother of his three youngest boys goes to court with him. She explains that he paid regularly while he had work. She explains that when she works on the weekends Brown takes the kids. She asks that he be forgiven until he can get a job and begin paying again. But there are no jobs.
“I would not be in arrears in child support if I had not been incarcerated for something I didn’t do,” he says. “I will never get above ground owing $13,000. How can I pay $120 a week when I don’t have a job?”
Brown lives on $200 a month in food stamps and $40 in cash. Welfare will pay his apartment for another four months. He is barely making it. I ask him what he will do when he loses the rent subsidy.
“I’ll be homeless,” he says.
“My son says come down to Texas,” he adds. “Start a new life with me. But what about my three little boys? I can’t leave them. I can’t leave them in Trenton. They need a father.”
Brown works out every day. He does calisthenics. He is a vegetarian. He volunteers at a food pantry. He attends the Jerusalem Baptist Church with his little boys. “They are church kids,” he tells me proudly. “They are pretty much raised by the church.”
He is trying to keep himself together. But he lives in a world that is falling apart. The gangs on the streets of Trenton carry Glock 9-millimeter pistols and AK-47 assault rifles. When the Trenton police stop a car or raid a house filled with suspected gang members, they approach with loaded M-16s. A local newspaper, The Trentonian, reports the daily chronicle of crime, decay and neglect. The lead story in the day’s paper, which Brown has with him, is about a young man named James Deonte James, whose street name is “Lurch.” James was charged in the death of a 13-year-old girl during a gang shooting. He is reputed to be a “five star general in the Sex Money Murder set of the Bloods street gang.”
In another story, an ex-con and reputed mobster, Michael “Mickey Rome” Dimattia, was arrested in his car after a woman behind the wheel was seen driving erratically. “Mickey Rome,” dressed in a black bathrobe with a red scarf around his neck, was found to be wearing a bulletproof vest, with three guns stuck in his waistband, and had a crack pipe, crack cocaine and prescription pills in his pockets. He had been convicted in 1990 of killing a 17-year-old boy with a shotgun blast to the head. He served less than three years for the murder.
A feature story on Page 4 of the paper is about a man with AIDS who raped his girlfriend’s son 55 times and infected the boy with the virus. The boy was 9 when the rapes took place.
“There are thousands more guns out there than when I was on the street,” Brown says. “It is easier to buy a gun than get liquor from a liquor store.”
He says he rarely goes out at night, even to the corner store. It is too dangerous.
The desperation is palpable. People don’t know where to turn. Benefits are running out. More and more people are out of work.
“You see things getting worse and worse,” he says. “You see people who wonder how they are going to eat and take care of themselves and their kids. You see people starting to do anything to get food, to hustle or rob, to go back to doing things they do not want to do. Good people start doin’ bad things. People are getting eviler.”
He pauses.
“All things are better with God,” he says softly, looking down at the tabletop.
He is reading a book about the Bible. It is about Jesus and God. It is about learning to trust in God’s help. In America that is about all the poor have left. And when God fails them, they are on their own.

© 2009 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.

I bring this up to your attention because the preceding article ties into the post which I have been doing on the economic problems which the poor in Tampa have been going through as of late. I've been focusing mostly on the working homeless, and I'm now going to add into the equation the problems which these workers have with the Tampa Police Department constantly harassing them and writing tickets for "open container" violations. This practice is a total waste of taxpayer money. More on this next time araound.

Tampa Economy: Wasted Taxpayer Money...

....and I'm sure that the idiots who run the City of Tampa's courts and police departments will love this post.
First off, I should make it clear that I do not drink alcohol with the exception of very rare reason of celebration. I do have a problem with the city of Tampa and their "open container law' enforcement, or their over use of the law in trying to deal with homelessness and those who drink out in public.
Let me point out a few things here. Someone gets a ticket for having an open container of beer or wine, or whatever. The ticket gives the offender a court a date, at which time the offender will be given a fine of something like $135, give or take. I'm okay with things up to this point. What I'm not okay with is...
Said offender maybe has a warrant out on them because they have been arrested or ticketed for the same offense on previous occasions. Obviously, they haven't paid the past fines so now they face either 5 or 10 days in the Falkenburg Jail, depending on the mood of the presiding judge. So, that $135 fine that hasn't been paid is now going to cost the taxpayer $370.20 to keep the offender in jail for 5 days, or $740.40 for a 10 day visit. This is a waste of money which could be better spent on other things in Tampa and Hillsborough County.
I have also noticed that the majority of those getting tickets are in fact the homeless and/ or the day labor workers. I'm not for just letting these offenders off of the hook, but the city/county is never going to collect any of the fines from this group, and locking them up has not been a deterrent either.
$74.04 per day to lock one of these people up. That is cash which is basically going up in smoke. Money out the window! Gone, for nothing. That lost cash is not helping the local economy in the least. Come up with another idea Tampa. there are other ways to pad the officers arrest record.

State Of The Economy: Tampa

As you are all aware of by this time, the economic state for many lower income residents of Tampa is in a major degree of shambles. sure, the minimum wage is at a whopping $7.21 per hour, but with rises in the price of food, drugs ( legal ones ), and tobacco, that wage increase has been totally snuffed out of existance.
Want to have a really shitty time trying to live on minimum wage in this area? then might I suggest that you get sick for a week? That is what I did from the 4th up till now. I went and caught a bad case of pneumonia. Is there a good case? This illness has set me back almost to the starting point once again!
On Monday the 6th, I had just a bad headcold, which I could live with. On Monday, after going to a temp service and getting only a few hours of work per week, I finally got a decent job with 10 hour days, six days per week. Yippeee?! After spending Monday going from the high heat and humidity into a nice ice-cold truck on a regular basis, I got a little bit more sicker. Tuesday? Forget about it! I couldn't even move!the lungs were aching,the muscles were sore, and I'm not sure what the rest of me was doing. I'm a type 1 diabetic, so this shit did not help me much. So imagine. No income coming in, and plenty of income going back out. Needless to say, the job was taken over by someone else. Another one bites the dust!
There are many more people in even worse situations than I, and I do not see how they manage to pull living off on a regular basis. Perhaps this is why so many of the poor in the Tampa area drink and do drugs. I guess that the escape, even though temporary, is a means of management for the people here.
I'll have more on this after my illness is finished with me.

State Of The Economy II: Tampa Florida...

...and it got just a little bit worse for those low income, hourly workers today. This would be concerning the new Florida excise tax on cigarettes which went into effect on July 1,2009. Another blow to smokers and tobacco dealers everywhere.
Yesterday I wrote that I would be introducing you to some of the cast of character's who actually have to resort to all kinds of tricks in order to feed themselves since the work environment here in Tampa is the pits. That will have to wait for another day.
The state of Florida has added an excise tax of $1 to each pack of cigarettes sold in the state.Rolling tobacco such as "Tops" and "Bugler" are also hit by this tax.So why is the state doing this? The excuse as of last week was that the state has to come up with the cash somewhere because the state's tax revenues are down. The state is not making any money so let's just raise smoker taxes and fuck them even more!
The better off will grumble and grip about the increase, and a few may even decide that it is time to quit. Those who are not so well off will feel the increase the most. Granted, some will opt to give up the habit. Great for them!
This tax increase will definitely be a burden to those who are working at the minimum wage level. Let's look at the price increases on a few brands of smokes.
"Remington" brand of little cigars. This brand is the low-budget, generic brand of smokes that anyone could afford, whether homeless or not. This is the last resort brand for smokers in the Tampa area. The price per pack on June 30,$1. Price on July 1,$2.25 at one nearby store.
"Winston" brand from RJ Reynolds, my personal favorite. June 30,$3.89 per pack. July 1,$4.99. "Marlboro"? Forget about it! June 30,$4.89 per pack. July 1,$5.99.
This is at a store in my neighborhood. I have seen some selling for as much as $6.99. This is ridiculous! Tampa has a bad enough problem with folks getting robbed by crack-heads and other druggies, not to mention people who just plain need the money. I'm wondering how long that it will take before we are getting held up for cigarette money or the smokes themselves.
Though I now believe that smoking is not so good for the person, the state should not be placing the cost of their ineptitude on the lower-wage workers who just happen to smoke.
As an after thought, I should note that Cigars are exempt from the excise tax. I would guess that since most cigar smokers are just a little bit better off than most of us, it just wouldn't be fair to tax them along with you and I.

State Of The Economy: Tampa Florida ( Continued )

Maybe I should clarify a few things before continuing on with this topic.
When dealing with the " state of the economy " here in Tampa Florida, I am talking about the economy of the hourly worker. I'm not concerning myself with salaried workers at this time because they seem to be not suffering as much as the hourly employee is.
I am also concerning myself with those hourly workers who now happen to be living on the streets behind some building, or who are sleeping in cars, Salvation Army centers, or other homeless shelters, ect.
Many of you readers will think of the homeless as that group of people who are to lazy to work or who are either drug addicts or alcoholics. While it is true that a few of the individuals that I have hung out with are one or both, most are actually hard-working and have ended up on the streets because they could no longer afford to live the way in which they were accostumed to living, because of company downsizing or whatever.
So. Are we all on the same page now? I hope so, because the reader is about to get educated on how life is in the world of reality. Stay tuned folks because this could very well be you in our currant economy, and in that which is still to come.
Tomorrow you will meet a few of the players in this saga, and in the days to follow I will take you out with them in their daily struggles to find even temporary work in order to put food in their mouths.

State Of The Economy: Tampa Florida...

...and it is not a pretty picture here in the " sunshine state."
It is reported that the unemployment rate here in the Tampa area is 10.2%, while the state's rate is at 10.6%. These numbers would be higher if not for the fact that many of the unemployed have left the state in droves and this trend is continuing.
I lived here back in the late early 2000's, and things have certainly gone downhill since my last stay as compared to this currant stay. In 2000, you could walk into a temporary service or a day labor service and you'd be working the very next day, if not the same day. That ain't gonna happen again anytime soon. I walked into a temp service which I use to frequent in the past, and I sat in the place everyday for a week before I was finally sent out on a job. An eight hour day? Not hardly. It was a half-day of work. Thus far this June, I've logged in 54 hours of work. For the record, I've shown up at the office every day looking for something.
Thus far while making my rounds, I've discovered that there isn't much work in my particular field, which would be "data recovery" or "data extraction" depending on who wants the work completed for them.
So what has my work consisted of? Funny that you should ask! 90% of the jobs which I have completed have been dealing with moving. Basically, unloading furniture out of moving vans and carrying the stuff into the homes of the new owners. Some of these have been apartments, which has required carrying the belongings up two or three flights of stairs. No easy task, especially in this hot Florida heat and humidity. Pay-rate? How about 8 dollars an hour? Not very much in this day and age. There is a bright side though. I've gotten some great tips from not only the home-owners, but from the van drivers as well. Throw in the tips, and the hourly rate averages something like $33.50. Now if I could just manage to get two of those per day. I have managed to unload these trucks in under three hours in most cases, which does help make the money look better. ( continued )

Mark Sanford See Mistress On Taxpayer's Dime?

What interesting times we live in!
First, Mark Sanford,Governor from South Carolina, tried to reject the stimulis money that the feds were offering the state. The South Carolina Supreme Court said that the state had to take the cash. Now we hear that Governor Sanford has a mistress down in South America and that it is possible that the man used some of the stimulis money to go and visit his slut down south!
Now, it seems that there has been talk of impeachment in the South Carolina state capitol!

The governor’s trip – taken together with the bitter intraparty battles over the budget in South Carolina and Sanford’s profile as a potential GOP presidential contender – is raising questions about whether he committed “serious misconduct” as chief executive, which is an impeachable offense under South Carolina’s constitution.

Complaints are that the governor turned off his cellphone without making plans for succession and that he apparently misled his staff about his whereabouts. According to his office, he had told them he was going hiking on the Appalachian Trail and instead traveled to Argentina, where he’s said to have taken quiet drives along the beach.

This man was considered an actual contender for the Republican Presidency in 2012? Sure, right up there with Sarah Palin, right?

Obama And The Federal Reserve

Published on Friday, June 19, 2009 by The Nation
Don't Cede More Economic Authority to Unaccountable Fed
by John Nichols

The reviews are in on Barack Obama's plan to address the crisis of Wall Street speculation and casino capitalism that has dramatically increased the gap between working Americans and the rich, created pressure for the deindustrialization of the United States and depression of wages and income for workers and farmers and created a nasty banking crisis.

Though even Obama acknowledges that this is the big one –- the issue that as much as anything led Americans to elect him last fall –- his "financial overhaul plan" did not merit above-the-fold coverage on the front page of The New York Times, the country's "newspaper of record." Two stories from Tehran and one on a poll about health care reform held the top spots. The overhaul merited only a feature suggesting –- correctly -- that there was "only a hint of Roosevelt" in Obama's plan.

In other words, for the great mass of Americans there will be no new "New Deal." To be sure, there's some good stuff here: creation of a new agency to help protect consumers of "financial products" and some stronger transparency requirements, a few more rules regarding banks and mortgage-backed securities. "But," as Times writer Joe Nocera notes, "it's what the plan doesn't do that is most notable." Nocera focuses, appropriately enough, on the failure of the administration to do much about the problem –- for taxpayers and for democracy –- of banks that are "too big to fail."

But the real concern ought not be focused on what this seemingly tepid plan fails to do.

The real concern is what it does.

The plan dramatically increases the authority and reach of the Federal Reserve, an already too powerful and unaccountable institution that will -- to the delight of the administration's "Fed men": Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and administration economic adviser Lawrence Summers -- become what the Wall Street Journal says will be "the nation's most powerful financial overseer."

"The proposal, if passed into law, would represent one of the biggest changes ever in the Fed's role," explains Journal writer Sudeep Reddy. "The central bank would win power to monitor risks across the financial system, and sweeping authority to examine any firm that could threaten financial stability, even if the Fed wouldn't normally supervise the institution. The nation's biggest and most interconnected firms would be subject to heightened oversight by the central bank."

In announcing the plan, President Obama claimed "that lines of responsibility and accountability are clear" with regard to the new authority being placed in the Fed's hands.

That is a ridiculous statement.

The Fed is famously unaccountable and resistant to transparency. Even Geithner acknowledged in his Thursday morning session with the Senate Banking Committee that there is a need to look at reforming the Fed's lax governance structure.

But don't expect Geithner of others in the administration to take a lead when it comes to fixing the Fed, an agency that zealously guards –- for logical reasons, as its track record is one of frequent missteps and failures on an epic scale. As Senate Banking Committee chair Chris Dodd said after reviewing the central bank's significant flaws, "There's not a lot of confidence in the Fed at this point, and I'm stating the obvious."

What should be obvious to everyone is that Congress needs to get a grip on the Fed –- which is structured in a manner so that it faces little or no congressional oversight -- before it allows Obama's proposal to advance.

So says Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich, the dissident Democrat who responded to Obama's plan by declaring that: "Before Congress gives the Fed any new authority, we must thoroughly examine the Fed's response to our current economic crisis."

Noted Kucinich:

Since August 2007 the Fed has intervened in the economy in an extraordinary way, as a result ballooning their balance sheet from $847 billion to more than $2 trillion. Yet, we still don't know what the Fed has done or who got the money. That is why I introduced the bipartisan HR 2424, which would grant the GAO the authority to audit the Fed's response to our nation's economic crisis, a response that has dwarfed the $700 billion TARP program by more than 2 to 1.
Before we grant the Fed any new authority, we must demand greater transparency from the Fed; an earnest and open audit of the Federal Reserve's response to the economic crisis would be a significant step in the right direction. We can't continue to let the Fed operate within a black box.

Kucinich has proposed HR 2424, a piece of legislation that would amend United States Code "to authorize reviews by the Comptroller General of the United States of any credit facility established by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System or any Federal reserve bank during the current financial crisis, and for other purposes."

Several progressive Democrats and old-right Republicans, including Texas Congressman Ron Paul, have cosponsored Kucinich's measure. Additionally, Paul has proposed H.R. 1207, which would amend the bill "to reform the manner in which the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System is audited by the Comptroller General of the United States and the manner in which such audits are reported, and for other purposes."

A majority of House members –- 234, so far, ranging from the most progressive Democrats to the most conservative Republicans -- have signed on as cosponsors of this necessary legislation.

This is one of those issues that makes sense to any honest representative, no matter what the party or what the ideology. Our elected and reasonably accountable federal officials cannot cede more control over the U.S. economy to the unelected and unaccountable Fed without auditing, reviewing and reforming how the Federal Reserve System operates.

© 2009 The Nation
John Nichols is Washington correspondent for The Nation and associate editor of The Capital Times in Madison, Wisconsin. A co-founder of the media reform organization Free Press, Nichols is is co-author with Robert W. McChesney of Tragedy & Farce: How the American Media Sell Wars, Spin Elections, and Destroy Democracy - from The New Press. Nichols' latest book is The Genius of Impeachment: The Founders' Cure for Royalism.

© Copyrighted 1997-2009
www.commondreams.org

Presidential Tracking Poll

According to Friday's Rasmussen polling, President Obama has the approval of 34% of Americans who strongly approve of the way that Obama is performing his duties as President. On the other side of the fence, 33% of Americans strongly disapprove of the way in which Obama is running his show.

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Friday shows that 34% of the nation's voters now Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Thirty-three percent (33%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of +1. Only once (two weeks ago) has his rating been lower (see trends).

Seventy percent (70%) of Americans say they will not be impacted by the closure of GM and Chrysler dealerships. Only 9% are Very Likely to feel the pain.

State of the Economy

What a dreary day in the united States! To start the day off, an American icon ( General motors ) went and filed for bankruptcy. This puts many workers on the unemployment line and it will not help our economy in any short order. Not soon after GM filed, the NYSE delisted the firm. If you still happen to own stock in GM, I do, then it's possible that we may never get our money back out of the company. My bet is that in the longer term, I'll recoup my investment with a very decent return. Can't do any worse than i've been doing with Microsoft.Time will tell, I guess.
I'm wondering if I can now buy a GM vehicle at one of those major dealer discounts that I've been hearing about? Not happening in Tampa,Florida, yet.

Employee Free Choice Act: Maine's Republican's Get It

With the EFCA finally starting to come to light in our government offices, it's so nice to see a few Republican's coming out in favor of this bill/law.
Two of those GOPers are from the state of Maine. They would be James J. Campbell Sr. and Penni Theriault. James Campbell serves on the Health and Human Services committee, while Penni Theriault is owner of Lots of Tots Child Care, and both of these persons favor the Employee Free Choice Act.

We write as a state legislator and a small business owner who share Mainers' deep concerns about the state of our economy.
Historically, no institution has been as effective at improving the quality of life for working families as membership in a union.

Union members earn better wages, have better health-care coverage and can count on a more secure retirement than non-union workers.

As current and former union members ourselves, we know that unions work.

Who brought us the weekend? Unions. Who rose with unions? The middle class. It just makes sense. Tens of millions of workers would join a union if they could. The problem is that if they try, and their employer resists, workers have only about a 20 percent chance of success.

This is because the current system for forming a union is unfairly tilted in the employer's favor.

That's just wrong. It's un-American and one more example of greed and power run amok.

Not all of the business owners in the United States are morally fucked up when it comes to their employees.

That is why we believe it is essential for Congress to pass the Employee Free Choice Act, which will help Maine's economy get back on its feet by removing barriers to union membership and allowing workers, not just CEOs, to share in the economic success they help create on the job.

The bill would enable workers to form a union when a majority of their co-workers sign cards indicating they want one. This puts the choice of how to form a union in the hands of workers, not corporations.

Just as importantly, the act ensures that workers can freely choose to form a union without intimidation or harassment from their employers.

The final word?

We are also both Republicans and some in our party oppose this bill. However, we do not view this issue through a partisan lens.

We believe enabling more workers to form unions is about justice and fairness – bedrock principles that have guided our nation since its birth.

For too long, big corporations have shunned these ideals and enriched themselves at the expense of America's working families. Today, the average CEO makes 344 times more than the average worker. So it is not surprising that CEOs and their Washington lobbyists oppose employee free choice.

On another note, my blogging software is still not working on my new system, as you can tell. Hopefully this will be corrected soon. Just in case the link for this doesn't show as it is supposed to: pressherald.mainetoday.com and you'll find the article.