[Originally posted on goofyblog 11.30.06]
Ok, I’ve been reading “Hostile Takeover: How Big Money and Corruption Conquered Our Government–and How We Take It Back and got much of my material for Rollback 1 from Chapter 1 of the book. Though it was written last year, it is chock-full of facts de-bunking the myths we’ve been sold by bought-off legislators and pundits and suggesting ways to take back our country from this “takeover.” I was going to write about each chapter, but time and events are moving quickly, so I’ll just summarize the remaining points below. Also check Take This Job and Ship It: How Corporate Greed and Brain-Dead Politics Are Selling Out America another dead-on tome regarding being sold down the river.
Do the following: extend unemployment benefits beyond 26 weeks, stop taxing unemployment benefits as income, make unemployment statistics truthful, make job training as available as public education and stop subsidizing American corp’s efforts to ship our jobs off shore.
Do the following: restore bankruptcy protections and give states back their rights, which were taken away by the Fair Credit Reporting Act of 2003, which permanently restricts any state’s ability to enact stronger consumer protection and privacy laws.
Other measures: don’t let corps rip off their workers’ retirement as a way to cut costs, prevent executives use of golden parachutes for their own salaries when a company is going down, and other protections for pension plans for workers in private businesses that have been curtailed or cut by the Federal government in recent years.
Further: regulate malpractice insurance prices on doctors, regulate health insurance prices like any other utility if single-payer does not go through. As it is now, “We have a bunch of bought-off frauds pretending to care about ordinary Americans but really only interested in protecting the health of one thing: the health care and insurance industries’ bottom lines.”
How this happened and what exactly did happen is detailed extensively in the books. There are hundreds of footnotes in each chapter, most of them with their own hyperlinks to the supporting documents for this information. Check it out.
“When I graduated from college in the 1960s, the average CEO made 20 times what the average worker made. Today, that CEO makes 400 times as much. Working Americans have been repeatedly seduced at the polls by emotional issues such as the predictable mantra of “God, guns, gays, abortion and the flag” while their way of life shifted ineluctably beneath their feet. But this election cycle showed an electorate that intends to hold government leaders accountable for allowing every American a fair opportunity to succeed.”And in Japan, executives make about 10 times those of their average employee. In most of Europe, it’s in the high teens and low twenties.
-Newly elected Senator Jim Webb of Virginia[Big Business’s objective is] “ideally [to] have every plant you own on a barge.”
Jack Welch, ex-CEO, General Electric
Ok, I’ve been reading “Hostile Takeover: How Big Money and Corruption Conquered Our Government–and How We Take It Back and got much of my material for Rollback 1 from Chapter 1 of the book. Though it was written last year, it is chock-full of facts de-bunking the myths we’ve been sold by bought-off legislators and pundits and suggesting ways to take back our country from this “takeover.” I was going to write about each chapter, but time and events are moving quickly, so I’ll just summarize the remaining points below. Also check Take This Job and Ship It: How Corporate Greed and Brain-Dead Politics Are Selling Out America another dead-on tome regarding being sold down the river.
#2: raise the minimum wage
Do it now. The richest country on earth has a minimum wage that is below the poverty line. The argument that raising the minimum wage hurts low-income workers or raises prices is a lie. When the minimum wage was raised by 90 cents in 1996-7 for about 9 million works inflation remained undetectable.
#3: stop the job drain
“Free trade” is not a winner for America. We are losing manufacturing, service, tech and even white collar jobs to nations that pay their workers a small fraction of the pay scale required to live here in the US. The losses are enormous and are and will cause disastrous changes in our way of life. These losses are not being replaced by other work.Do the following: extend unemployment benefits beyond 26 weeks, stop taxing unemployment benefits as income, make unemployment statistics truthful, make job training as available as public education and stop subsidizing American corp’s efforts to ship our jobs off shore.
#4: rollback draconian debt laws
Bankruptcy protections were gutted by bi-partisan legislative action last year while most Americans go deeper and deeper into debt to support a vanishing lifestyle. Even Americans in their 20s are in deep debt mostly to finance an increasingly costly higher education, believing in the promise of a lucrative payback in the future as, perhaps, a lawyer, doctor or some other profession. Feds have cut or restricted many grants and scholarships formerly available in place of more loans.Do the following: restore bankruptcy protections and give states back their rights, which were taken away by the Fair Credit Reporting Act of 2003, which permanently restricts any state’s ability to enact stronger consumer protection and privacy laws.
#5: protect pension system(s)
Corporate hypemen are trying to convince us there’s a crisis in Social Security. No one disputes that Social Security will pay out full benefits until 2041. Congressional researchers project it will pay full benefits until 2052. That’s right, folks: the only disagreement right now is when Social Security will go down to maybe 3/4th payments: 35 years from now or 45 years from now. In that time period, many, many things can happen and can be done to shore up and preserve things. Ending senseless wars and rolling back tax cuts to the wealthy are just 2 things that could be done right now that would immediately end any problems with Social Security.Other measures: don’t let corps rip off their workers’ retirement as a way to cut costs, prevent executives use of golden parachutes for their own salaries when a company is going down, and other protections for pension plans for workers in private businesses that have been curtailed or cut by the Federal government in recent years.
#6: fix health care
Fact: Thousands of Americans suffer and die each year because they can’t afford adequate health care. Fact: Even if you don’t care about those people, the for-profit health care system is hurting our country by forcing us to spend billions of dollars on an inherently wasteful system, thus creating a huge drag on our economy that affects everyone. Single-payer health care would save in excess of $200 billion a year mostly in excess administrative costs, which is far more than the cost of covering those now uninsured.Further: regulate malpractice insurance prices on doctors, regulate health insurance prices like any other utility if single-payer does not go through. As it is now, “We have a bunch of bought-off frauds pretending to care about ordinary Americans but really only interested in protecting the health of one thing: the health care and insurance industries’ bottom lines.”
#7: end prescription drug cartel ripoffs
Briefly: repeal laws that give away billions to drug corps, let Medicare negotiate lower prices, as every other business is allowed to do, if taxpayers pay for drug r&d, don’t let the corps benefiting from such largesse by charging us the highest prices in the world, and let Americans buy medicines at world market prices.
And in closing…
There’s more in the book (on energy, unions and legal rights), but you get the picture. There’s been an astonishing (to me, at least) increase in corporate influence in the Federal government. The influence is not restricted to Republicans. It is dangerous to our health and economic well-being, to our very way of life and our living standard.How this happened and what exactly did happen is detailed extensively in the books. There are hundreds of footnotes in each chapter, most of them with their own hyperlinks to the supporting documents for this information. Check it out.
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