Cloward-Piven strategy in plain view: bring the cattle-masses to their knees so they have no place to turn but the leviathan state. And, of course, the leviathan state has no actual money to shore the program up, and then the cattle-masses realize this, and then there's revolution.CHICAGO - Obamacare would save families $2500 per year and they could keep their doctors, President Obama promised time and time again. After a few years in place, the story about the Affordable Care Act's cost is changing dramatically.Health insurance premiums for Illinois residents who buy coverage through the Affordable Care Act’s marketplace could increase by as much as 45 percent according to proposals submitted by insurers and made public Monday.The leading insurer on Illinois’ exchange, Blue Cross Blue Shield, is proposing increases for 2017 ranging from 23 percent to 45 percent for individual health care plans, according to proposals posted by Healthcare.gov. Another insurer, Coventry Health Care of Illinois, proposed rate increases as high as 21 percent.More at Chicago Sun-Times
Wednesday, August 3, 2016
More "A"CA fail
Affordable, my ---:
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This is all a byproduct of corporate oppression and suppression. That's what the revolution will be about.
ReplyDeleteThat being said, there is no question that Obamacare has failed and, without admitting this, there is no hope for fixing it. Repeal and replace! Replacing it with what will be the grand debate to look forward to.
ReplyDeleteI hear this term"corporate oppression" from thehard left all the time and I seriously haven't idea what it means.
ReplyDeleteFor starters, the 1099ing and accounting fraud.
ReplyDeleteHow does 1099ing oppress anyone? Any kind of work arrangement - being an employee, an independent contractor, or other - is something someone undertakes of one's own volition. People make the choices in life they want to make. Particular arrangements suit particular people.
ReplyDeleteAccounting fraud . . . It's not like it's rampant. Most business structured as corporations have pretty sound books. Even if it were rampant, how would that constitute "oppression"?
3. factory farms; 4. WalMarting of America
ReplyDelete1099ers even have to pay double into OASI, no insurance, not even work comp. individually liable for what might happen during work for the corp .
ReplyDeleteEverything about Walmart - its coming into a given community and buying land and building a store, its hiring people to work there, its serving customers who shop there - is the product of voluntary exchanges between buyer and seller.
ReplyDeleteHow do factory farms oppress anyone?
Not everyone wants to be insured through the workplace. If we can ever get to an actual free market for insurance, it will be best for people to shop on their own for a suitable situation.
Re: paying double into OASI: How about if we get rid of OASI?
ReplyDeleteYou continually rail about post-America and its clueless cattle. I agree, this is not the America I once knew either, we have rampant idleness and rampant alcoholism and drug abuse. Small businesses have been run out by the corporate dogs, family farms run out by these vipers too. If you want to know how factory farms oppress anyone, ask Willie, Neil & John. Tell me, how many workers are going to turn down insurance furnished at their workplace. If not everyone wants to be insured at the workplace they can defer and get theirs elsewhere, but I doubt there are that many takers. Why would there be? That is a weak answer if I ever heard one. Your actual free market works best with drugs and other black market goods, actually dude. Get rid of OASI? Go ahead and try. Polls show it's a loser to try to dump it, as over 60 per cent are in favor of keeping it as it is. That's when you call them clueless cattle. You are so goddamned theoretical dude, wake up and smell the garbage that America has become. But not for the reasons you cite. Where are folks to turn for their insurance, their pensions, sometimes their food and lodging if the corporate monolith is going to continue to reduce the American work force? Tough titties, eh?
ReplyDeleteAnd you are upset about the EPA closing down the coal plants. There would not even be an EPA had not corporations totally fouled our air and water in cities large and small across America. Who to blame for the EPA? You know. he EPA was proposed by President Richard Nixon and began operation on December 2, 1970, after Nixon signed an executive order.
ReplyDeleteBy the early 1970’s, Corporate America was on the defensive as strong movements for racial justice, a cleaner environment, safer consumer products, women’s rights, and worker protections successfully pressured Congress to pass major legislation. Corporate power was being limited in areas of racial, gender and age employment discrimination, polluting the environment, selling unsafe and unhealthy consumer products, and keeping workplaces needlessly unsafe and unhealthy. This was the second major wave of reform in less than 40 years that further limited the power of corporations and expanded greater economic and social justice.
ReplyDeleteThen the corps fought back like Nixon fought back with nigs & Mexicans by ignoring his own commission's conclusion that marijuana was safer than alcohol and making it a Schedule I drug and then instituting the failed drug war, 40 years on and still failed, with a witch hunt and a single-minded mission to blame government for all that ails us, when much of what ails us continues to be them.
ReplyDeleteOh, for cryin' out loud, can it with the sweeping generalizations about the early 70s and "racial justice" and "safe consumer products" and all the rest of it that you obviously lifted from some book. The other side of that coin is figures like Ralph Nader, who made a career out of trying to convince the public that corporations didn't care about quality of life and didn't care if the air and skies were filthy. The result of all that legislation you mention was idiotic initiatives like fuel standards, OSHA, affirmative action and "community lending standards." And save the Nixon reference. He's hardly any conservative hero. And save that shit about drugs for those easily sidetracked into trivial issues.
ReplyDeleteI guess I had no idea how deeply you'd bought into the hard-left worldview.
I guess you never went through Gary, Cleveland and Pittsburgh while you were isolated in your little industrial town that's changed a whole bunch too. So Cummins did not downsize, outsource, offshore all throughout the last quarter of the 20th century bringing us to a town filling up with Mexicans working in the factories that are left and all those Indians and Chinese walking around downtown with their back packs? What about the family farms in the area, how are they doing? And the retail businesses outside of the big stores? And the restaurants? It's a chain run world, bloggie. I bought in deeply to my own conclusions, kind sir. You have not answered my question about where Americans are to turn when the corps take away their health insurance, their pensions and, most importantly, their sense of identity gained from the world of work and being part of something bigger than themselves. As for drugs, I see where you were celebrating the birthday of the deceased Milton Friedman. He, along with one of your heroes, was against the drug war. You can minimize it all you want. I call it misjudgment, misperception and misplaced blame.
ReplyDeleteThe one of your heroes is WFB, also deceased.
ReplyDeleteAnd if taxes are such a goddam burden, how come barely half of us cattle even pay them? Wouldn't you like to see the Trumpster's returns? http://www.marketwatch.com/story/45-of-americans-pay-no-federal-income-tax-2016-02-24
ReplyDeleteOr is he not the corporate you so stubbornly defend?
ReplyDeleteThe 1970s and 1980s saw an explosion of corporate-oriented think tanks: The Heritage Foundation was founded in 1973; The Cato Institute (1974); The Manhattan Institute (1978); Citizens for Sound Economy (1984) founded by the Koch Brothers; State Policy Network (1986) which has 59 affiliated state think tanks. The long established American Enterprise Institute grew from 10 to 100 staff between 1970 and 1980. There are others.
ReplyDeleteWith the idea machine well-funded, Corporate America and their intellectual and political allies unleashed a decades-long war of ideas. They triumphed with the election of Ronald Reagan, the Great Communicator, who promised a new day in America.
http://www.markmmcdermott.com/2012/12/21/corporate-americas-counterattack-against-the-people-1970s-forward/
He must be a better writer than I am for you to have picked up on me quoting him. You gotta admit, I usually cite my sources, which you usually proceed to shoot down.
ReplyDeleteJust tell me where the cattle go when they are cut loose from the corporate ranch. Where do they go for their insurance, their retirement, even their daily bread? Huh? Oh, big bad gummit.
ReplyDeleteCummins sure did downsize and down source, which allowed it to remain viable in the long term through all the economic twists and turns of the last four decades.
ReplyDeleteAnd bringing up Cummins raises an interesting point. Over that same time period, we have seen a real trend of corporations acquiescing to the hard left. They have all set up "diversity" initiatives and go in for making their operations "sustainable." Cummins is at the forefront of this. Consider all the Indiana companies- Cummins, Lily, Ball, Angie's List, to name a few - that took a stand - the wrong one - in last year's RFRA dustup.
And the think tanks you cite above are the true heroes of the last four decades, championing economic liberty and the way to real opportunity and growth for all.
Okay, and now allow me to answer your question about where folks are to turn for insurance and their pensions (I'll deal with identity separately): We go to an actual free market for those things. A person just shops around, talks to local agents for various types of insurance and buys policies that suit him or her. Ah, you say, but they don't get paid enough to afford even the cheapest policies they look at. To which I say, remember the premise: we move toward a real free market, so that the person's wage or salary reflects what is needed to maintain a standard of living that includes buying insurance - and insurance, by the same token, does not price itself beyond what potential customers can afford. And then re: pensions: every person just saves money. I know, sounds awfully simple, doesn't it? But that's how it would work. A person would just budget for his or her sunset years as he or she went through his working years.
Re: family farms: they're just not as efficient as the larger-scale operations that keep our food so cheap and plentiful. But I can tell you first hand there are still plenty of viable family operations in this area - working land their great-grandparents bought in the 1800s.
Which is a good way to segue into that sense of identity: What we must not do here is lapse into the kind of sentimentality one finds in sings like that country tune "They're Shuttin' Detroit Down," or Billy Joel's "Allentown." Let us remember that the whole period of big factories powering American communities' economic lives was actually fairly brief in the overall sweep of history.
We must all take Joseph Schumpeter's concept of creative destruction into account as we embark on our participation in the world of work.
Guess we all got to man up in the bloggie's world. His prescription is to return to the days of the Wild West I guess, an actual free market, well isn't that special? That means we rid this country of crony capitalism. You can't be a crony with no money. I love you Money Money, Mo Mo Money. Still plenty f viable family farm ops? 99 per cent of America does not work on a farm now. You know as well as I do, they paved paradise and put up a parking lot. There's a hole in a lot of souls. Why are so many of us so frigging fat? The results of whatever it was we did are evident today. You blame government. I blame corporations. The pendulum always swings back. Everybody saves? Simply put, everybody does not save. Pensions now are reserved for union workers. And the funds are failing. Down here in Jax there is a referendum to increase the local sales tax by .05% to save the public employee pensions. That means cops too. Why do your heroes in the military retire with huge pensions? Hmm, everybody saves huh? The Mammon machine touted by the crass advertisers mesmerizes us to consume. And that we do. Also, since the whole period of prosperity we grew up in was brief, we should just let it go and accept the table scraps now? Sentimentality? I see. Daddy got his pink slip, momma works for peanuts, da man, he so nice, he smile as he tips his pittance, boarding a jet plane to somewhere else to work his miracles. No dere ain't no man. Brother can you spare a smoke? No no no no nobody can do marketplace like I can. A well respected man about town, doing the best things so con serv a tive lee.....
ReplyDeleteSchumpeter was an economic theorist. Economics is one of the most inexact "sciences" out there. Theories and opinions are all over the map. It's a social science.
ReplyDeleteSo let's move on: 5. Crony Capitalism; 6. The Military-Industrial Complex Lincoln, then Ike warned about and then railed against.
I don't see anything in that last rant / ramble that constitutes an actual addressing of my points.
ReplyDeleteRe: your Jax example: you're making my point. Public-employee pension funds are the main source of cities' financial woes all over the nation. (In Detroit, UAW pension fund was a big factor,too.)
ReplyDeleteRe: "everybody does not save": well, now, those are individual choices, and as we know, choices have consequences.
ReplyDeleteBut as for this stuff about "da man" and jets and peanuts and the military-industrial complex, I honestly don't know how to have a productive exchange about public policy or even culture about sweeping generalizations.
ReplyDeleteI might make a stab at two points: one, about the executive leaving on his jet. That hypothetical person made a particular set of decisions in life - to study certain things, do internships in college. Such a course of action is available to anyone.
Two, re: consumption and love of money: yes, our society is pretty spiritually unhealthy, but disparaging the "corporate world," which has brought us incredible advances in medicine, transportation, personal comfort and convenience doesn't address what we need to do. It only paves the way for the argument for more government control.
Gregor Mendel lit the fuse for genetic engineering. He was a monk. Don't lecture me. I know all the crap you're spewing too. I even worked my way through undergrad and grad with a little help from my grants. I often chose to write creatively. A computer can do what u do now and so it better.
ReplyDeleteAI algorithms are now writing the news. Those with pensions aren't too keen to give them up are they?
ReplyDeleteI know that you've spent a lot of verbiage making an ineffective argument for the existence of "corporate oppression."
ReplyDeleteYa think? Therefore you is!
DeleteDon't bother me to waste verbiage. You?
ReplyDeleteTechnical writer Steven Levy, writing for Wired Magazine, has penned an excellent article on automatic writing and the future of journalism entitled: "Can an Algorithm Write a Better News Story Than a Human Reporter?" He discusses how the programmers are learning how to make the algorithm figure out things faster. Writing restaurant reviews, for example, requires that the algorithm look at the database of restaurant information and zero in on certain critical metrics like high review scores, good service, good food and a couple of customer reviews. Within hours, according to Levy, the database could crank out pithy little articles like “The Best Italian Restaurants in Atlanta” or “Great Sushi in Milwaukee.” Does this remind you of a HubPages article or a Textbroker assignment? Levy talks about a competitor of Narrative Science that began as a company known as Statsheet, which concentrated on reporting sports contests. As the excitement unfolded, the company founder changed its name to Automated Insights. Levy quotes Robbie Allen, the founder, about its previous thinking that the company would limit its mission to data-rich industries: "Now I think ultimately the sky is the limit." https://owlcation.com/misc/Artificial-Intelligence-and-Automatic-Writing
ReplyDeleteBasically I weep no tears for corporations and certainly do not object to raising their taxes to fund a whole lot of shit, including wars they profit from.
ReplyDeleteCan't do it. They'll automate, offshore and shut their doors.
ReplyDeleteThey already have.
ReplyDeleteAnd increasing their tax burden is going to reverse the trend?
ReplyDeleteNothing will reverse the trend until they've rid themselves of that pesky last human. History has proven that.
ReplyDeleteAnd the beat goes on, and on and on and on, look what they've done to our farms, boy:
ReplyDeleteHundreds of large hog facilities have been constructed across Illinois in recent years, using a factory-like system to grow thousands of pigs and put inexpensive pork on your plate. But a Tribune investigation finds all that cheap meat is coming at great cost to rural communities.
Sickening odors imprison people in their homes. Vast lagoons of manure leak into streams and ponds, killing fish. And weak Illinois laws put few restrictions on pork producers who want to build and expand.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/watchdog/pork/ct-pig-farms-illinois-met-20160802-story.html
Would you care to answer my question? Let me repeat it: Will increasing the corporate tax burden reverse the trend of corporations automating, outsourcing and deciding to go out of business?
ReplyDeleteNo. I thought I already said the damage done over the past 40 years will continue regardless. Got it now ? Whatever benefits the owners will be the primary consideration. I see no need to kiss their asses. Rather, we need to make life miserable for th as they have done us. Trump and Cruz were saying essentially the same thing about Carrier leaving Indy when they were here pandering for votes.
ReplyDeleteFollow your own " logic" on this: There will be even less hiring , more wage stagnation and more communities drying up.
ReplyDeleteAnd allow me to reiterate a basic point: Showing owners a return on investment is the only real reason a corporation exists.
ReplyDeleteYou say you want a revolution
ReplyDeleteFealty to the stakeholders has only been predomInate since Neutron Jack Ass @ GE in the late 70s followed by 8 years of Wreck Em Ron
ReplyDeleteNo, it's been the only real reason for forming corporations since the joint-stock companies of the 1500s.
ReplyDeleteDon't u like my writing, bloggie? What's yours gonna be worth?
ReplyDeleteBut Great Day in the Morning, beautiful and glorious, this, from WaPo says you're a winna, no more cattle to herd, they have low expectations. Once you're ilk is rid of us you're home free baybee!
ReplyDelete"Older workers have the misfortune of wanting to work longer just as a new generation is trying to get an economic foothold. In a weak economy, companies are sometimes all too happy to dump veteran employees, with their higher health-care costs and legacy pensions, for younger ones who expect neither."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/baby-boomers-are-taking-on-ageism--and-losing/2016/08/03/43d6664c-120c-11e6-8967-7ac733c56f12_story.html
That is, of course, until, at some point in the not too distant future, these too will largely be dumped in favor of a machine that has little or no ongoing upkeep liability. It's sure gonna be interesting, what part of it we live to see.
ReplyDeleteFacebook founder Mark Zuckerberg once said “young people are just smarter.”
ReplyDeleteAnother thing that has made it late in the day that is not government's fault, I wonder, wonder, wonder, who, is the rise of the working mothers. Viva stakeholders! Now you blame government for trying to grant some relief. Gee, it was really really great to make less money and leave the kids to be allright raised by someone else. Your ilk even mocked the "it takes a village" meme because it was spouted by a Dem's wife, now the first female candidate for President, running in one of the biggest stakeholders eva, that winna, the Trumpster, who's now going to put a chicken in every pot and a gerbil up our ass when we are sleeping. You dug the "just say no" prescription though. How'd that work for ya?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.livescience.com/45476-working-mom-history.html
ReplyDeleteThe proportion of working moms in the United States has gone up a whopping 800 percent since 1860, according to a new analysis by Ancestry.com, the genealogy website. In that year, 7.5 percent of mothers were in the workforce, according to the examination of U.S. Census records, compared with 67 percent in the 2010 Census.
The 150-year-long time span allowed Ancestry.com to track the growth of the maternal workforce over time. World War II brought about rapid increases in the percent of employed moms, given the fact that so many men were sent to war. But the biggest annual boost in workforce participation came in 1980, a year that saw a 12.6 percent growth rate for working women and brought the percentage of working moms to 52 percent, Ancestry.com reported. [Top 12 Warrior Moms in History]
You say you want a revolution. Careful what you wish for, bloggie.
ReplyDeleteIf the age of the stakeholder ushered in free market prosperity,why do so many fail to feel it?
ReplyDeleteIt is not a proper function of government to "grant some relief".
ReplyDeleteRe: why so many don't feel it: because we have a very distorted imitation of an sctual free market.
ReplyDeleteYou might as well be talking about pie I'm the sky fella. This territory has already been trodden after the Great Depression which I understand you and your loony ilk claim was prolonged by FDR's responses.
ReplyDelete