unusualmusic_lj_archive

The nation's largest insurers, hospitals and medical groups have hired more than 350 former government staff members and retired members of Congress in hopes of influencing their old bosses and colleagues, according to an analysis of lobbying disclosures and other records.

...
Nearly half of the insiders previously worked for the key committees and lawmakers, including Sens. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), debating whether to adopt a public insurance option opposed by major industry groups. At least 10 others have been members of Congress, such as former House majority leaders Richard K. Armey (R-Tex.) and Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.), both of whom represent a New Jersey pharmaceutical firm.

The hirings are part of a record-breaking influence campaign by the health-care industry, which is spending more than $1.4 million a day on lobbying in the current fight, according to disclosure records. And even in a city where lobbying is a part of life, the scale of the effort has drawn attention. For example, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) doubled its spending to nearly $7 million in the first quarter of 2009, followed by Pfizer, with more than $6 million.MORE

Suppressing your instinct to trust a former chief of staff and legislative director is a hard thing to do. Refusing to return the calls of favored staffers and colleagues goes against every social grain in our bodies. It should be easy to separate professional responsibilities and personal feelings. But it isn't.

Journalists consistently use this to our advantage: When you hear that someone is well-sourced, it generally means they have good personal relationships that make it more likely that insiders will tell them things. A big part of the job is leveraging social pressures to gain access to protected information. And, somewhat amazingly, it works. But the relationship between a journalist and a longtime source is nothing compared to the relationship between a senator and a longtime staffer. One of the secrets about lobbying in Washington is that money doesn't buy access. It buys people who already have access. And that makes it much more insidious.MORE

You have to be rich to be poor.

That's what some people who have never lived below the poverty line don't understand.

Put it another way: The poorer you are, the more things cost. More in money, time, hassle, exhaustion, menace. This is a fact of life that reality television and magazines don't often explain.

So we'll explain it here. Consider this a primer on the economics of poverty.

"The poor pay more for a gallon of milk; they pay more on a capital basis for inferior housing," says Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.). "The poor and 100 million who are struggling for the middle class actually end up paying more for transportation, for housing, for health care, for mortgages. They get steered to subprime lending. . . . The poor pay more for things middle-class America takes for granted."

Poverty 101: We'll start with the basics.

Like food: You don't have a car to get to a supermarket, much less to Costco or Trader Joe's, where the middle class goes to save money. You don't have three hours to take the bus. So you buy groceries at the corner store, where a gallon of milk costs an extra dollar.

A loaf of bread there costs you $2.99 for white. For wheat, it's $3.79. The clerk behind the counter tells you the gallon of leaking milk in the bottom of the back cooler is $4.99. She holds up four fingers to clarify. The milk is beneath the shelf that holds beef bologna for $3.79. A pound of butter sells for $4.49. In the back of the store are fruits and vegetables. The green peppers are shriveled, the bananas are more brown than yellow, the oranges are picked over.

(At a Safeway on Bradley Boulevard in Bethesda, the wheat bread costs $1.19, and white bread is on sale for $1. A gallon of milk costs $3.49 -- $2.99 if you buy two gallons. A pound of butter is $2.49. Beef bologna is on sale, two packages for $5.)

Prices in urban corner stores are almost always higher, economists say. And sometimes, prices in supermarkets in poorer neighborhoods are higher. Many of these stores charge more because the cost of doing business in some neighborhoods is higher. "First, they are probably paying more on goods because they don't get the low wholesale price that bigger stores get," says Bradley R. Schiller, a professor emeritus at American University and the author of "The Economics of Poverty and Discrimination."

"The real estate is higher. The fact that volume is low means fewer sales per worker. They make fewer dollars of revenue per square foot of space. They don't end up making more money. Every corner grocery store wishes they had profits their customers think they have."

According to the Census Bureau, more than 37 million people in the country live below the poverty line. The poor know these facts of life. These facts become their lives. MORE

Monsanto, a corporation, might be more powerful than the nation of Germany!

Germany has banned the cultivation of GM corn, claiming that MON 810 is dangerous for the environment. But that argument might not stand up in court and Berlin could face fines totalling millions of euros if American multinational Monsanto decides to challenge the prohibition on its seed.

So let me get this straight. A nation cannot simply ban Monsanto's product, even after said nation decides that it's bad for the environment? Even though EU law says that they, indeed, can ban such things? Wow.

...

1,500 farmers commit mass suicide in India

Over 1,500 farmers in an Indian state committed suicide after being driven to debt by crop failure, it was reported today.
The agricultural state of Chattisgarh was hit by falling water levels.
"The water level has gone down below 250 feet here. It used to be at 40 feet a few years ago," Shatrughan Sahu, a villager in one of the districts, told Down To Earth magazine.

I'm sure there's no connection between the crops failing due to a water shortage, and GM crops being planted that require twice as much water as the traditional varieties. MORE

What's happening now is that legal processes have been instituted that are all but guaranteed to cause a rapid outflow of those poor blacks from the eastern interior, while at the same time a new wave of commercial developers will float in on a cloud of government largess. The mechanism here is an uneven application of new safety guidelines for residential homeowners, passed quietly alongside a colossal tax break for commercial investors. It's a high-stakes hand of real-estate poker, and the casinos, the condo developers and contractors like Halliburton are the ones drawing extra cards.
The scam in East Biloxi centers around flood maps, and it mirrors what is likely to be a similar fiasco in New Orleans. New guidelines called Advisory Base Flood Elevations, or ABFEs, issued quietly and unilaterally by FEMA late last year, place the average suggested elevation above sea level for house construction in most of peninsular East Biloxi at eighteen feet. In order to qualify for any federal assistance in rebuilding your home, you must rebuild according to these guidelines.
Currently, most houses in the neighborhood are at about nine feet or less. [...]
Around the time that FEMA was issuing its ABFEs for East Biloxi, Congress was passing the Gulf Opportunity Zone Act of 2005, colloquially known as the GoZone Act. When President Bush signed the law on December 21st, he made it sound like a relief program for the little guy. "It's a step forward to fulfill this country's commitment to help rebuild," he said. "It's going to help small businesses, is what it's going to do."
Well, not exactly. GoZone does an important thing. It provides a first-year bonus depreciation of fifty percent for commercial real-estate investors within the designated areas, which include East Biloxi and most of the lower parts of Mississippi, Louisiana and western Alabama. What this means, essentially, is that investors who bought into large projects after August 28th, 2005, will pay a fraction of the usual taxes in the first year of the investment.
The GoZone law is just another hand job for the rich, of the sort that has become a staple of the Bush administration's post-Katrina strategy. If the strategy for keeping public money from reaching the poor is to force people to first stand upside down and sing "Come On Eileen" backward and blindfolded, the strategy for giving money to the rich is a little more subtle. First, you give them tax breaks for indulging in the same activity you told the poor was dangerous, then you issue aid packages that only find their way down to needy recipients long after the value has been torn from the package's spine by a string of rapacious subcontractors, each taking their cut, who of course never had to enter into a competitive bid for their trouble. Carrying charges, my boy, carrying charges!MORE

What if education were available without tuition charges to every resident meeting admissions criteria, as a right, at any public, post-secondary educational institution in the United States? Is this idea feasible? Is there potential public support for it? What would be its likely effects if implemented? What would such a commitment cost? How could those costs be met? These questions are not on the radar screen of American public discourse today. In fact, they are virtually unthinkable in the current consensus that sets the boundaries of acceptable policy debate.

Yet paying for higher education is a major concern for most Americans. In 2000, polls indicated that respondents included education, along with the economy, as one of the two highest priority issues in choosing a presidential candidate. Although much of this expressed concern is centered on the quality of pre-collegiate schooling, Americans are also worried about access to post-secondary education. Legitimately so, for post-secondary education is increasingly a prerequisite for effective labor force participation, for any hope of a relatively secure, decent job. If that is the case, shouldn't society have an obligation to provide universal access to such an essential social good? Why should we accept a putative consensus that preempts consideration of an issue so important to so many Americans?

Universal access to higher education is not entirely unprecedented in recent American history. The most dramatic approximation to it was the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, popularly known as the GI Bill, under which a generation of Second World War veterans received what was usually full tuition support and stipends (up to nearly $12,000 per year in 1994 dollars) to attend post-secondary educational institutions. By 1952, the federal government had spent $7 billion (nearly $39 billion in 1994 dollars) on sending veterans to college. This amounted to 1.3 percent of total federal expenditures ($521.8 billion) during that period. A 1988 report by a congressional subcommittee on education and health estimated that 40 percent of those who attended college under the GI Bill would not otherwise have done so. The report also found that each dollar spent educating that 40 percent produced a $6.90 return (more than $267 billion in 1994 dollars) in national output due to extra education and increased federal tax revenues from the extra income the beneficiaries earned.MORE

quinacridones

Me, I'm just flabbergasted by today's news. All those things Obama's saying to Detroit, a city of working people left devastated, about sacrifice and restructuring - why isn't he saying them to Wall Street, too?

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama on Monday will reject requests for almost $22 billion in new taxpayer bailout money for General Motors Corp. and Chrysler, saying the car makers have failed to take steps to ensure their viability.
[...] A senior administration official, briefing reporters late Sunday night on the condition of anonymity in order to speak freely, said Obama will call for more sacrifice from carmakers, their investors and automotive unions.

Billionaire bankers (and their investors) walk away from the table with their pockets stuffed with taxpayer cash while members of the auto workers union are told they'll have to sacrifice even more - in this case, the Obama administration wants the companies to get rid of "old liabilities" - i.e. retiree pensions. (You know, while bankers complain about having to sell the house in the Hamptons.)
No, Obama's not talking about the insolvent banks. He's talking about Detroit. Could he make it any more obvious that the wealthy are a protected class?

"If they're not willing to make the changes and the restructurings that are necessary, then I'm not willing to have taxpayer money chase after bad money."

Funny, that's just how I feel about Citibank!MORE

debunkingwhite

A new experimental program at a nonconventional “lifestyle medicine” center is targeting pregnant women who are Black and Hispanic minority, poor and fat. These women are being enrolled into a free health program which tells them it will benefit them and their unborn babies and make their babies healthier.

No mention is made in the patient literature that, by the soundest clinical evidence to date, compared to the standard of care, the program’s alternative interventions have been shown to lead to poorer chances of survival for babies, higher rates of spontaneous preterm births, and to put babies at greater risk for serious physical and neurological health problems and learning disabilities. There is no indication that these underprivileged minority women are giving their informed consent or are aware they are participants in human experiments that could endanger their unborn babies.

Why has no one cared to notice? The answer to that question is even more disquieting….MORE

In pouring rivers of cash into states and school districts, Washington is using a tangle of well-worn federal formulas, some of which benefit states that spend more per pupil, while others help states with large concentrations of poor students or simply channel money based on population. Combined, the formulas seem to take little account of who needs the money most.

As a result, some districts that are well off will find themselves swimming in cash, while some that are struggling may get too little to avoid cutbacks.

...

Democrats in Congress decided to use the formulas to save time, knowing that devising new ones tailored to current conditions could require months of negotiations.
...

Still, the occasional mismatch between educational needs and emergency financing can be striking.

Utah, where a $1.3 billion budget deficit has threatened deep school cuts, will get about $655 million in education stimulus money, or about $1,250 per student, according to the federal Department of Education. Wyoming, which has no deficit and has not cut school budgets in many years, will get about $1,684 per student.

North Dakota, which also has no budget problems, will receive $1,734 per student. California, which recently closed a $42 billion budget gap through July 2010 partly through deep spending cuts, will get $1,336 per student.MORE

By LYNNLEY BROWNING

While the American International Group comes under fire from Congress over executive bonuses, it is quietly fighting the federal government for the return of $306 million in tax payments, some related to deals that were conducted through offshore tax havens.

A.I.G. sued the government last month in a bid to force it to return the payments, which stemmed in large part from its use of aggressive tax deals, some involving entities controlled by the company’s financial products unit in the Cayman Islands, Ireland, the Dutch Antilles and other offshore havens.'MORE

After years of unprecedented boom a financial firestorm, sparked in the US, is sweeping through much of the world.

In a special programme Al Jazeera's Samah el-Shahat charts the roots of the financial crisis and visits Iceland, one of the high-profile casualties where jobs are being lost and lives destroyed.

( It wasn't as simple as the reporter makes it seem. however... )

Diligent readers of the newspaper business section learn about these deals all the time. A new auto assembly plant receives hundreds of millions of dollars from a Southern state. One city offers a major corporation huge tax breaks to entice it to move its headquarters. Another city gives similar breaks to another company to prevent it from leaving. A major retailer is allowed to keep a large portion of property or sales tax revenue associated with the creation of yet another big-box store.

Most of these are what are known as discretionary subsidy deals--ones that are negotiated with individual companies, supposedly to influence an investment decision. These are distinct from entitlement-type subsidies (such as investment tax credits) that are automatically available to all companies that meet certain criteria. What makes discretionary subsidies so controversial is not only their fiscal impact but the fact that there are often no specific guidelines for determining which companies get them. These deals pit communities against one another, forcing them to engage in an ill-advised bidding war for the investment; or, a company may concoct a phony threat to move out of an area in order to extort subsidies for staying put.

Good Jobs First is a leading monitor and critic of company-specific subsidy deals. We track which companies go most often to the public trough for assistance, and we critique egregious giveaways. In this section of the website, we have company profiles of some of the leading over-users and abusers of economic development subsidies, including household names such as Boeing and Dell. We summarize their major deals and provide resources for additional information. Given that the terms of discretionary subsidies are often not completely disclosed, the information available may unavoidably be incomplete. MORE

Dell Inc.

Dell is as aggressive in seeking subsidies as it is in marketing personal computers. In a 2004 deal in North Carolina, Dell pulled off an unusual feat by getting much more in subsidies--up to $267 million--than it was planning to invest in a new assembly plant.
...

Round Rock, Texas: 20 years of property tax abatements, $50 million in tax-exempt industrial revenue bond financing, and 40 percent of sales tax revenues collected by Round Rock on Dell's sales. 1993

In 1999 Dell announced plans to locate its first manufacturing facility outside Texas somewhere in the area of Nashville, Tennessee. The plan, which set off a scramble among local cities and counties, was expected to create thousands of jobs. The winner of the competition was Nashville itself, which offered Dell a package including:

Nashville, TN:
*free land for the site worth $6.5 million;
*40 years of property tax abatements;
*$20 million in infrastructure improvements
*one-time credits of $2,000 per employee against state franchise and excise taxes
*Metro Nashville tax credits of $500 per employee for 40 years
*industrial machinery state tax credits
*$4,000 per employee to pay for job training costs (refundable after workers were hired).

Some observers estimated the cost of the incentives over the life of the Nashville agreement would be more than $200 million. However, in February 2002, Dell announced that it was eliminating all manufacturing operations at the Nashville facility.MORE

HIDDEN TAXPAYER COSTS. In addition to the explicit subsidies granted to companies in the name of economic development, taxpayers may end up subsidizing business inadvertently. For example, the failure of many larger employers to provide adequate health insurance benefits to their workers means that many of those workers turn to public programs such as Medicaid and Children's Health Insurance for coverage. The availability of these programs, which were not intended to be used by people working at big companies, means that taxpayers are in effect enabling employers to avoid substantial healthcare costs.

This issue of hidden taxpayer costs has become a matter of growing controversy. To highlight the dimensions of the problem, more than a dozen states have disclosed the names of the employers with the largest number of workers (or their dependents) using programs such as Medicaid. We present a summary of these disclosures.

The fourteen-acre community garden at 41st and Alameda in South Central Los Angeles was the largest of its kind in the United States. Started as a form of healing after the devastating L.A. riots in 1992, the South Central Farmers created a miracle in one of the country’s most blighted neighborhoods. Growing their own food. Feeding their families. Creating a community.

Then, 12 years later, real estate developers and bulldozers moved in - poised to level the 14-acre oasis. Why was the land sold to a wealthy developer for millions less than fair-market value? Why was the transaction done in a closed-door session of the LA City Council? Why has it never been made public? The documentary film is The Garden, and it's just been short-listed for an Academy Award.

Tonight on GRITtv ARUN GUPTA, MARION NESTLE, and PETER HOFFMAN discuss the politics of food, why what we eat matters, and how community gardens are changing the urban landscape. You can see the full program, including a taste of The Garden at 8 pm.

( Read more... )