Post election open thread–thank goodness! No more election commercials. Fimian is giving his good night speech. It is/was a very close race. Will there be a recount? Did he concede? Not really.
Fimian thanked Corey personally. Hmmmmm…is Corey Fimian’s new bff?
I expect there will be a post mortum. I would be interested to hear what ideas people have rather than what they hate.
Connolly is in the lead but not by much.
@Formerly Anonymous
Well, what I get from the Fed release is that they’re buying the short end of the curve, which would at least in theory enable the banks to lock in short term money against long term lending. In other words I think it’s designed just about as well as it could have been.
What worries me more is wondering what is it exactly that the Fed sees that I don’t. The data has been getting steadily better since the end of August, and the jobs report today was quite good (as was ISM) so I have to wonder why they feel an additional 600B of QE is necessary. (if not an outright attempt to break the peg, monetize the debt, etc.)
Ultimately though, all QE does is put very cheap money in the hands of a select group of people who then turn around and invest in things like commodities. As of Wednesday the Fed had increased the money supply 10% in about 8 months so to put it bluntly at some point that’s going to be a 10% tax on everything you need to buy with 60% of your discretionary income (food, gas, clothing) or a 10% devaluation of your savings. Oil, grains, cotton – all ripping limit up at the open every single day from the moment the crooks at the NYMEX punch in.
A talking head on CNBC last night put it best: “I feel like I’m driving in a gasoline truck at a 100 mph and towards an brick wall, and Ben Bernanke just lit a match. I can’t help but worry that this ends badly.”
Indeed.
“Ultimately though, all QE does is put very cheap money in the hands of a select group of people who then turn around and invest in things like commodities.”
You just answered your own question. THAT is why. Everything the Fed and gov’t has done helps only the connected and politicians.
And if everyone were that cynical, the country would have ceased to exist years ago.
and I thought my comment was simple!
My interwebs are going slow so I appologize if I’m late to the game on this but two things;
1. Ms. Perlosi is running for Minority Leader (YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEES!!!)
2. Keith Olbermann has been suspended without pay from MSNBC.
Today is a good day. I think I’m going to splurge and eat pudding. 🙂
Why did Olbermann get suspended? Now there is a story.
Pelosi was predictable. Marin, why are you glad?
I don’t care much for her but you have to admit she was damn good at her job. She got it done. Take no prisoners.
Olbermann got suspended for violating his employer’s rules. He donated to three Democratic campaigns.
Now there’s something other networks would NEVER do. [coughsputterchoke]
@Moon-howler The issue is that he donated to the campaigns without disclosing that fact to viewers foolish enough to believe in journalistic impartiality.
Sorry, yes. He got suspended for violating his companies rules (re. campaign donations). HPost is up in arms about it. You’ll probably be amused by this MH but outside of the contract he has with MNSBC I actually side with Olbermann and I’ll tell you why. He’s not a journalist and no one should pretend to think that he is one. He’s a commentator not unlike Papa Bear or Glenn Beck. If it was Dara Brown (msnbc) I’d have an issue with it. Olbermann? He’s a partisan so who cares.
But, he has an employment contract (which makes things different) and if his employment contract spells out that ‘thou shall not be partisan or thou shall not make a partisan contribution’ than he’s toast for violating his word to his corporate masters.
I think it’s more about Mr. Olbermann and Mr. Phil Griffin’s personalities, but I’m just an observer. 🙂
As for Ms. Pelosi.. God please deliver her as the Minority Leader. Please, please, please, please, please, PLEASE…
Slow,
Reality check, no one, I mean no one, in a civilized society is going to allow their fellow man to to suffer and die due to an inablility to pay for health care. Let’s start our discussion from a subset of reality at least 😉
Actually, I think the contributions weren’t all that big of a deal. Is anyone actually shocked that Olbermann would donate to campaigns? What he SHOULD be suspended for is all the diarrhea that comes out of his mouth.
@Slow–No more so than Hannity should be suspended. Seriously, have you listened to Sean Hannity or Glenn Beck? `
The contributions are a big deal if that is part of that network’s standard.
Oh, man, I’m gonna miss Keith. Watch Countdown’s ratings go up now.
keith overbite got suspended cause his ratings are in the toilet. all of a sudden mslsd is concerned about journalistic objectivity? ha
The wording of the Pledge reads:
Cut Government Spending to Pre-Stimulus, Pre-Bailout Levels: With common-sense exceptions for seniors, veterans, and our troops, we will roll back government spending to pre-stimulus, pre-bailout levels, saving us at least $100 billion in the first year alone and putting us on a path to begin paying down the debt, balancing the budget, and ending the spending spree in Washington that threatens our children’s future.
http://pledge.gop.gov/resources/library/documents/pledge/a-pledge-to-america.pdf
It doesn’t say anything about CBO 10-year projections … besides, isn’t the CBO the non-partisan arm of the legislative branch that said the stimulus saved millions of jobs and health care reform will reduce the deficit?
I’m sorry, dear, but that’s the funniest thing I ever heard. Have you been to any inner city lately? Do you think homeless people don’t die in this nation every day due to lack of health care? I’m sorry that your “reality” can’t be enlightened, but there is suffering all over this nation every single day and every single night, and often, people are only annoyed that they have to step over the body.
I get it….MSNBC’s Standards. Ha Ha Ha. Like Jumbo Shrimp.
This might be interesting with Pelosi. She’ll be a nice big PIA for Obama, and her Botox-riddled face will be around to remind people in 2012 why they should vote for conservatives. Also, it will cause many Democrats to have severe heartburn during the leadership election. So we have Pelosi’s “Our work to destroy the Democratic Party isn’t done”, Obama’s “People just adore our agenda and policies, they’re just too dumb to understand them”, and the election. All in all, a good week! Say, where’s Justin? Hiding?
Hey, I got a question for everyone. Harley Davidson’s made in India. How’s that gonna go over?
@e
It had nothing to do with his ratings or his objectivity. Seriously, does anyone think he is objective? He isn’t a journalist. However, those are NBC’s rules.
The fact that there is a Republican channel that contributes to party and who hires people who will be candidates makes me sick. Have you no shame?
Olbermann got suspended for violating company policy. Why lie about it.
Too bad some other news channels don’t have similar rules. They don’t. So Hannity gives to Michelle Bachmann. Different standards for different companies.
Slow, are you suggesting that Fox has higher standards than NBC?
Fox has no restrictions on its commentators contributing to political campaigns or organizations. NBC, parent company of MSNBC does.
@Moon-howler
I’m NOT suggesting Fox has higher standards than any other network. I am suggesting the term “MSNBC Standards” is an oxymoron. And, let’s agree that MSNBC has a corporate policy against making contributions to political campaigns. It clearly isn’t paying dividends.
Standards can be high or low. MSNBC really can’t hold a candle to Faux News for being biased. It isn’t my favorite network to watch, by far. However, to suggest somehow they are worse than Fox baffles me.
I do like Joe Scarbough and Morning Joe (other than MIka). They have an interesting crew on there that I feel is balanced. They even have Pat Buchanan.
MSNBC has a few rogue bears. Faux News might as just change its name. Shep Smith doesn’t show bias. I feel I can stop there.
@Moon-howler
Well I think we’ve summed up our disagreement there! Not much farther we can go with Fox vs. MSNBC.
Hannity and Beck are employed by the programming division, not the news division, so they are entertainers and not journalists. They are akin to Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert … they put on a show, not a newscast. It’s like Orson Wells “War of the Worlds” — some simpleminded dupes go into a panic over an entertaining pack of lies …the kind of people who look down their noses at elitist stuff like capitalization and punctuation.
Mr. Davis. I agree with you. Didn’t know that they were actually employed by the programming division but had assumed some such system existed.
I think Olbermann should come back as long as he can work out his policy violation with his employer.
I do find it interesting that many conservative commentators are backing Olbermann (I see Maddow on the front page of HPost saying the same). The liberal media had no issue with throwing an NPR reporter to the wolves but the conservative media will fight for Olbermann. That’s integrity. 🙂
The above is not to say I agree with Olbermann at all. I think he’s a brash bore that much like our President uses a teleprompter to sound smarter than he really is; but this is America and I have no problem with Olbermann contributing to campaigns as long as he and MSNBC acknowledge that he ain’t a newsman.
@Slow–yea…this one is going no where. I agree.
@Moe, bwaaahahahaha…elitist stuff. Too funny.
@Marin, I am not sure who you think from the liberal pack threw Juan Williams under the bus. Most people I am familiar with thought he was not treated right. I think that is a sweeping generalization. I don’t know all the liberals…granted.
I found that most in the media had distain for what happened to Juan Williams. He got universal support from many corners of the profession.
MH is absolutely correct about the difficulty of making large cuts to the federal budget.
Do you ever wonder why there is no longer enough money to build roads or to invest in the space program? That’s because 64% of all federal outlays now go to individuals (social security, medicare/medicaid, retirements for federal workers). Individual outlays were only 46.7% of the federal budget in 1990 and 26.2% in 1960 ( http://www.dailymarkets.com/economy/2010/09/20/more-americans-tapping-into-entitlement-programs-increases-budget-deficit/ ).
If you include entitlements/retirements for state and county workers, teachers, etc, it is truly astounding how many people receive payments of some kind from some level of government and how few are actually paying for it. These payments are crushing economic growth and there are no longer enough people to pay into the system to keep it going.
This is one big reason that I was against Obamacare and Prescription Drug Benefits under Bush. It’s sad that people cannot afford healthcare and prescriptions, but there are not enough productive workers in the U.S. to keep adding and paying for entitlements.
Maybe we need to start looking at why there are so many people who are on medicaid. Where does this money come from?
Prescription drugs for seniors is a real problem. The urban legends about people taking half doses and eating cat food to have medicine really wasn’t a myth in some cases. A monthly medicine bill could have easily been more than a social security check. So what do we do? I still like the idea of importing from Canada in bulk but…that never flew.
I think too many things are opposed simply because they do not impact us directly. How do you afford pensions? Maybe now is the time to start easing in partial payment from the employee. The one thing you don’t do is pull the rug out from under people who have been playing by the rules–otherwise you are going to get a whole new poverty layer.
This might also be the time to speed up some of the immigration paperwork so there is a whole new field of workers out there to pay in to the system.
Be sure to mix some wet food in the the dry food. All dry cat food can cause crystals in the urinary tract.
Moon, I generally agree with your last para in #36. We badly need to get together from all points of the political spectrum and agree on both a guest worker program and an improved immigration program which actually work. Moreover, we have to find a way to do this without causing endless internal angst by carefully targeting both programs toward places where workers are truly needed and avoid situations where they become involved in a willy-nilly domestic battle over who gets the available jobs. Contributions to the “system” can be a bonus. My son recently showed me his latest device — an Iphone? — which seems to be able to do everything except pick your nose and wipe your behind. Any country which can think up something like that ought to be able to focus on a final and equitable solution to the immigration problem.
Uh, oh. I just read an ABC News account of those two al-Qaeda bomb packages intended for synagogues in Chicago. Interesting description of the bombs inside those computer printers. Looks like bets are now on Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri, reputedly the top al-Qaeda bomb maker in Yemen. He is believed to be the technical guy involved in the Christmas Day incident in Detroit. Just as I figured. They looked at the failures in Detroit and Times Square, readjusted their tactics, and concentrated on improving their explosive devices. It appears now that they may have been intent on bringing down planes in U.S. territory rather than attacking the synagogues per se. We reportedly got a tip from the Saudis on this. Nevertheless, it took five countries and two days before we could catch up with the bombs in transit. Several near misses. It sort of has the makings for a script for a new Janes Bond movie. I’m telling you, this kind of work is not easy; and the margin for error is very small. As good as your defenses may be, there will be the times inevitably when they are breached. We cannot afford to forego the offensive in this battle, no matter how much it costs and how much it takes. Mr. President, go get those bastards!!
@Wolverine,
Why we are on this subject, we need to look at prison outreach. Some of you all may know that I have a very good friend whose son is in prison, in Virginia. He is smart and won some sort of grant to take classes while in prison. It is NOT a pell grant. He will come out with an AA. Meanwhile, the only course he could take where there wasn’t a scheduling conflict was Intro to Islam. Prisons are feeding grounds for militant Islam. How convenient that there is always a course in Islam to take when nothing else fits. Many instructors don’t want to go in to the prisons to teach. (and I don’t blame them) However….it seems that there is always Islamic outreach. Is this an elective and who knows about this course in prisons? Is it strictly academic or is it evangelism?
I want to know more but I have no idea where to begin my search. I would have no problem with comparative religions of the world.
I am not sure that we could take in enough immigrants to keep entitlements afloat. However, I am always in favor of new LEGAL immigrants due to their infusion of ideas and enthusiasm as new citizens.
@Moon
You ask if it is academic or evangelism, and without deep research, I presume it is just a Philosophy course offered at that particular prison because of interest in the subject. The place to start would be with Dept. of Corrections Educational Division (which by the way, has its own School Board operating Adult & Juvenile schools. I’ll put the website below, and there is a web-based contact page where you can ask the question.
http://dce.virginia.gov/
@Raymond Beverage
Thanks. I have read where much of the radical not-so-nice version of Islam is coming out of US prisons so I perked up my ears. I hope it is just a philosophy coursen and not something else.
about Guest Workers and improved immigration:
Noticed the discussion on it, and wanted to point out in the Prince William Area we have an excellent example of a guest worker visa program. Birmingham Green (aka District Home) is one such case…there are 26 languages spoken on that campus; a fact the CEO Dave Rumford is very proud of.
These folks have come from around the world with a good chunk from Africa and the Carribean area. Classes are offered in English with emphasis on healthcare literacy, and training leads to becoming a Certified Nursing Assistant in the Commonwealth. If the individual, at the end of the alloted guest worker visa time, chooses to apply for to become a US Citizen, assistance is offered in the application process.
The folks can either remain at the Green and there is a career ladder, to include progression to LPN or RN. If they move, that CNA designation is accepted across the US. This is one program where, with leadership making the emphasis on complying with the law, the system actually works quite well!
Medicaid…oh boy, the real thorny wicket.
Medicaid is NOT social insurance (Medicare, on the other hand, is a government-run health insurance program and tied to Social Security). Medicaid is a social welfare program, just like Temp Assistance to Needy Familys (TANF) and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) which is the new name for the old “Food Stamps” program. States can either participate in Medicaid, or opt out of not doing it; but every State & Territiory has done it since back in ’82.
Moon, you ask where the money comes from and that is a nice math factor. None of the funding comes from a person’s payroll deduction – those pay into Social Security and Medicare credits. Our regular payroll taxes for Fed and State pay for Medicaid just like we pay for all the other programs & services.
The Feds give part to the States, and the States make up the balance based on a percentile factor determined by the Feds. Virginia puts up 50% of the funding, the Feds 50%. Of course, if there has to be a reduction because of budget (like we almost had this Fiscal Year), it is the State side that gets reduced.
That’s the gist of where the money comes from. Being a social welfare program is why I said it is a sticky wicket.
The above brought to you by your friendly neighborhood City of Manassas Member of the Prince William Commision on Aging!
That is very informative Mr. B. So we all pay in to social security via FICA and to medicare on the paycheck marked medicare?
The medicaid comes from general funds from state and federal taxes. Do I have it right?
Does anything else come out of social security and medicare that we do not know about? What about the money that goes to kids with a dead parent?
That’s a good question MH. I know that when I get that social security statement thingy in the mail yearly, it states what my spouse/children would receive in death benefits should I die, so I’m assuming that comes out of what I paid into social security over the years. Where I’m confused is when I have students that have had physical and/or mental disabilities and the parents mention that they get disability benefits for their child from social security. Since the child has not put money into they system, whose money are they getting? Their parent(s)? And why do some get disability for their children but not all do? Is it based on income? I ask because I don’t know, but am curious to know.
Moon, you got it right on where the money comes from to the pay for the programs.
DB is right about the death benefits…Social Security which we paid into has a “survivor benefit” clause, and the spouse and children (while in school) can receive it. The annual statement we get explains it pretty clearly suprisingly for something out of the Feds. By the way, the original name for the Social Security Act was “Old Age, Survivors, and Disablity Insurance Program”.
Disability payments are come in two forms: Social Security Disability related to when a person is injured on the job, paying into Social Security and cannot work for a year or more. One of the toughest things to apply for since how they define disabled and even frequency of doctor visits all come into play. Once a person reaches retirement age, the disability payment flips into the retirement payment under Social Security.
Disabled Children are getting what is called “Supplemental Securtity Income” or SSI. This is not the same as Social Security, and did not come around until 1974. Its roots came out of President Johnson’s “Great Society”. Funded by general tax revenues, it is a program for the aged, blind, disabled and those in poverty. It provides a monthly payment to meet the basic needs for food, clothing and shelter – and is means tested.
Goal of SSI is to also to continue education and, within limits of the disability, become employed (think of Didlake, ARC and other organizations which provide this assistance/employment). For a child in school, tied into the Social Security Act is the Rehabilation Act of 1973 which gave us Special Education.
DB, why some get it and why some don’t has lots of factors including level of disability, income, assets (hence the means test), length of disability, type of disability and on and on and on. Pages of criteria. Since SSI was primarily designed to benefit first the low-income family with disabled child/adult, that is the first step in the means test.
Moon, to end this now, you asked what else is tied into the Social Security Act of 1935…and it is one great big spider web (as I call it to illustrate the point) of interconnected laws. Housing, Education, Welfare-to-Work Programs, Community Action Program, Older Americans Act, Nursing Home Reform, HIPAA, the ADA, and the list just keeps growing. That is why when talk of Social Security reform gets bog down, I just shake my head. So much is anchored back to the SSA of 1935, it sometimes is hard to sort it out all out.
Mr. B,
Are the disabled children getting the SSI from FICA? Don’t people without disabilities get SSI also?
I am so confused.
Moon, you have every right to be confused – it took me almost five years to be able to get this right when I talk about it, and once in the weeds, it is even more confusing.
FICA has nothing to do with SSI. FICA is a dedicated Regular payroll taxes to the Fed’s general fund we make goes into the pot that pays for everything else, and funding of SSI is pulled from it.
Yes, people receiving Social Security Disability payments can also receive SSI if the means test says they need the additional funding for the basics. For example, the disability monthly payment is covering a person’s doctor visits, therapy, costs of tranportation back and forth to doctors, and medication. Paying all that means they have no money for food or more money is needed to pay the rent. SSI could be approved to help pay for those items.
Moon, you have every right to be confused – it took me almost five years to be able to get this right when I talk about it, and once in the weeds, it is even more confusing.
FICA payments has nothing to do with funding SSI. FICA is a dedicated Regular payroll tax for. Our other payroll taxes go to the Fed’s general fund going into the pot that pays for everything else, and funding of SSI is pulled from it.
Yes, people receiving Social Security Disability payments can also receive SSI if the means test says they need the additional funding for the basics. For example, the disability monthly payment is covering a person’s doctor visits, therapy, costs of tranportation back and forth to doctors, and medication. Paying all that means they have no money for food or more money is needed to pay the rent. SSI could be approved to help pay for those items.
All this confusion is why Virginia runs a program called VICAP – Virginia Insurance Counseling & Assistance Program. Paid staff and volunteers who get trained on cutting through all the rules and regs to make sense of it. Lots of lawyers also make a nice fee for helping people get through it.
DANG! skip the #50….that was the draft I was working on…LOL…and #51 is the right one!
See? even someone working with this stuff gets confused!!