brainiac conspiracy

The Worst Persons Ever in The History of This Blog

Anthem Blue Cross.

These evil bastards cancelled my medical insurance last December for noncompliance with the Goldberg Act, then turned around and enrolled me---without my permission---in a plan that I didn't ask for and which is three times more expensive than the new plan I got through Covered California. Since I had online bill pay set up with them, they just helped themselves to $500 of my money last week for coverage I don't need and will never receive. Of course, nobody at Anthem is returning my calls, but at least my bank (Wells Fargo; might as well call 'em out for decent customer service) informed me that future stop payments will be imposed on Anthem starting next month, and that they'll file a claim to see if some of the money can be refunded. (The Wells customer service rep I spoke with said they've been getting "quite a few calls" about Anthem's peculiar business practices.) For what it's worth, I also filed a complaint with the state insurance commission---but man oh man, I am hopping mad over this.

---Baron V

Today's Worst Persons

The Food & Drug persons:

The Food and Drug Administration has continued to allow dozens of antibiotics to be used in feed for livestock, despite findings from its researchers that the drugs could expose humans to antibiotic-resistant bacteria through the food supply, an environmental advocacy group claimed in a new report Monday.

FDA officials reviewed about 30 animal feed additives between 2001 and 2010, rating 18 of them “high risk” of contributing to health problems in humans, according to records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by the Natural Resources Defense Council. The remaining drugs the agency examined did not have adequate data to determine whether they were safe.

According to the NRDC, at least 26 of the feed additives reviewed by FDA researchers---some of which have been in use since the 1950s---did not meet standards set by the agency in 1973, which required companies to submit scientific studies proving the drugs were safe.

This should come as a surprise to absolutely no one since the administration's longstanding policy has been to entrust the majority of food-safety inspections to the same people whose products are making thousands of us sick from foodborne illnesses each year. What awful thing could we ever have done to deserve such terrible leadership?

---Baron V

Nothing's Holding Them Back

Whatever power the administration has to advance its policy agenda via executive order, they've had it for five fucking years. Sternly worded warnings and promises to act unilaterally have been heard before, and should be taken at this point as nothing more than a sop to the liberals who still believe the President's a progressive at heart. I think he's done enough on his own to discredit this notion, but I am guessing it still holds in the minds of his most ardent supporters. I'm happy to be proven wrong on this, but I'll believe it when I start hearing some progressive policy proposals from him.

---Baron V

No Money for Mass Transit or Food-Safety Inspection

Because the price of freedom is eternal wankery:

The National Security Agency and its UK counterpart GCHQ have been developing capabilities to take advantage of "leaky" smartphone apps, such as the wildly popular Angry Birds game, that transmit users' private information across the internet, according to top secret documents.

The data pouring onto communication networks from the new generation of iPhone and Android apps ranges from phone model and screen size to personal details such as age, gender and location. Some apps, the documents state, can share users' most sensitive information such as sexual orientation---and one app recorded in the material even sends specific sexual preferences such as whether or not the user may be a swinger.

I'm sure there was some compelling national-security need---though I have no idea what it might have been!--- at some point in our history that justified the creation of the National Security Agency. But whatever merits it may once have had, the thing is now just a giant money-pit make-work program that, however inadvertently, is creating the infrastructure for turnkey totalitarianism. Perhaps our Spymaster-in-Chief will have more to say about this tomorrow night, but I'm not holding my breath. I will say this: whatever its limitations, I'm happier than ever that I decided to get a new Blackberry last month since everyone knows that nobody makes any decent apps for it.

---Baron V

Our Perfect World Has Turned To Shit

Because you goddamn kids and your goddamn bicycles.

More to the point, people who drive around in 4,000-pound vehicles capable of traveling at speeds in excess of 100 mph claiming that bicyclists on city streets are some kind of public-safety threat are in dire need of a reality check. I can't say I've ever seen a careless cyclist cause a collision, but I've seen plenty of careless drivers cause them! I mean, why is it that so many people in this town feel offended when someone merely asks them to share the roads? We all pay to maintain them, in one way or another, but not all of us own a car or want to drive for short trips. I guess this just proves that Get Off My Lawnism isn't exclusive to suburbia and is a universal humbug.

---Baron V

True Believers

Via Digby today, a helpful reminder for Team Democrat:

Have you ever noticed how conservatives who say the most controversial things imaginable think no one actually disagrees with them?

They will admit that, yes, people might claim to disagree. But they will explain, if pressed, that those who do so are lying, or nuts, or utter the non-truths they utter out of a totalitarian will to power, or are poor benighted folks cowed or confused by those aforementioned totalitarians . . . A genuine right-winger will be so lacking in intellectual imagination—in cognitive empathy—that imagining how anyone could sincerely reason differently from them is virtually impossible.

I encountered this attitude repeatedly at my last corporate job, where the workforce was comprised of a disproportionate number of unregenerate dittoheads. They could utter the most absurd things---which they likely got from Fox or the radio---and if you tied to get them to reexamine their views, they'd look at you as if you were mad. As an example, I remember a conversation with a senior-level colleague who, remarking about a wealthy industrialist who was enthusiastically backing Hillary Clinton for President, said, "I can't believe a guy like that would be supporting such a radical leftist." When I told him that I thought a more accurate description of Hillary would be "center-left corporatist," he gave me a look like I'd just committed blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. I'm only bringing this up because it's the main reason why the administration's attempts at meeting Republicans halfway was doomed to failure from the start---and still is if they insist at attempting it. There's no compromising with people who see you as a Hitler at worst, or as a Chamberlain at Munich at best. People like these see only two possible outcomes to any political struggle: Victory or death. Give them what they deserve next time.

---Baron V

Easy to Blame the Plutocrats

Sure, a lot of them are overindulged assholes, but they would never have been able to amass all their goodies were it not for policy that incentivizes and enables the hoarding of wealth. For that, we must assess responsibility to the people who write tax, trade, labor and banking policy---and yes, that includes Democratic policymakers, too. Our job creators are simply doing what they're hard-wired to do. If their behavior is destructive to the commonweal, lawmakers need only to intervene on its behalf.

---Baron V

Day Late

Dollar short:

I think we are fortunate at the moment that we do not face a crisis of the scale and scope that Lincoln or F.D.R. faced. So I think it’s unrealistic to suggest that I can narrow my focus the way those two Presidents did. But I can tell you that I will measure myself at the end of my Presidency in large part by whether I began the process of rebuilding the middle class and the ladders into the middle class, and reversing the trend toward economic bifurcation in this society.

The time to "begin the process" was five years ago, and it wasn't even discussed. And actually, we do face a crisis that threatens our democracy as much as secession or depression did. Problem is, the President doesn't think it's a crisis at all but an extension of his constitutionial authority.

---Baron V

"Ladders of Opportunity"

They can call it whatever they want, but it can't disguise the fact that the people who would govern us were given a clear mandate to steer the country in a radically different direction in 2008---just as much as the Reagan people were given in 1980---and they failed utterly at the task:

Food stamp participation since 1980 has grown the fastest among workers with some college training, a sign that the safety net has stretched further to cover America’s former middle class, according to an analysis of government data for The Associated Press by economists at the University of Kentucky. Formally called Supplemental Nutrition Assistance, or SNAP, the program now covers 1 in 7 Americans.

The findings coincide with the latest economic data showing workers’ wages and salaries growing at the lowest rate relative to corporate profits in U.S. history.

We needed a Second New Deal. Instead what we got was another Clinton Administration. Better than the Republican alternative, sure, but completely inadequate to address the crises of our day. I'm not quite prepared to assign the Obama administration to the lowest rungs (ahem) of presidential hell, but five years in, my most charitable assessment is, better than Bush, and not much else.

---Baron V

Never Call a Thing By Its Proper Name

Because we must never give the people who elected us what they want:

"What you want to do is focus on the aspirational side of this, lifting people up, not on just complaining about a lack of fairness or inequality," said Paul Begala, a former top adviser to President Bill Clinton who consults with White House officials. "Watch the State of the Union, I'd be surprised if he uses phrases like inequality, which suggests a leveling down. If you talk about the middle class, it suggests a lifting up."

Well, that approach has worked wonders for the last thirty years. By all means, let's double down in it.

More to the point, why are so many of Team Democrat's leading lights so afraid to govern as, you know, Democrats? It's almost enough to make you think that elections are bullshit at this point, that the only salient economic policy differences between the two warring factions is whether the plutocrats get most of what they want, or everything they want. I'm sure Paul Begala thinks this is smart politics---but hey, so did some French people in 1789.

---Baron V

Zero Blogging Day

Because it's been kind of a sleepy day, and napping's more restful than blogging.

---Baron V

A Job Well Done

At this point in our history, it's hard to work up much outrage over our job creators' compensation packages. Bu the standards of his profession, he earned it! Profits were massive, the stock price is up, so the board and the shareholders are pleased as punch. Nobody had to face prison time, and the penalties paid for the wholesale looting of the Republic were pennies on the dollar. Say what you will, dude-bro's an overachiever! A more pertinent question, it seems to me, is why this man, and his colleagues, were allowed to stay at their posts after spectacularly failing at their jobs, and why they have not been subjected to the same rule of law as anyone who robs a liquor store in Koreatown. Because at the end of the day, what ails us isn't really Jamie Dimon---it's his job to steal anything that isn't nailed down, after all---but the policymakers who allow his type to roam free among the populace.

---Baron V

Why We Have Elections

Used to be we held them so we could choose between political parties with widely diverging policy agendas. Nowadays it's more like an academic exercise to give us the impression that the people who lead us still care about us, ere we start building bonfires and barricades:

The 101-year-old club boasts a unique mix of politicians, administration officials, rainmakers, top military brass and corporate leaders from all over the country: Billionaires Warren Buffett, David Rubenstein, Michael Bloomberg, Bill Marriott and Steve Case; Chief Justice John Roberts, White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Sandra Day O’Connor, Colin Powell, Madeleine Albright and Vernon Jordan, to name just a few.

It’s a cross-section of power brokers so influential that almost every president has made a pilgrimage to the annual gathering. President Obama has addressed the group twice: a week after his inauguration in 2009, and again in 2012 when he joked about escaping the White House bubble: “One of my big goals this year was to get out and be among everyday, ordinary Americans---like the men and women of the Alfalfa Club.” Big laugh [...]

“I’ve never seen a dinner like it anywhere else,” said Raul Fernandez, tech entrepreneur and vice chairman of Monumental Sports and Entertainment, the company that owns the Washington Wizards and Capitals. Fernandez will be inducted at the 2014 dinner Saturday in the crop of new members---affectionately referred to as “sprouts”---that includes Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, Sens. Timothy M. Kaine and Kelly Ayotte, Lockheed Martin chief executive Marillyn Hewson, McDonald’s chief executive Donald Thompson, Aspen Institute president Walter Isaacson, former head of General Dynamics Jay Johnson, James A. Baker IV and financiers C. Bowdoin Train and William Grayson.

Yeah, I know, abortion rights, homo marriage, gun safety . . . sure, there are a raft of issues where the parties differ. But when when it comes to challenging the existing economic order in this country, the only freedoms we have are, basically, fake freedoms. There's a reason why income inequality is so terrible, and Team Democrat is nearly as responsible for it as Team Republican.

---Baron V

Helpful Suggestion

If the people who govern us want a fitting site for their presidential library, might I suggest this place.

Snark aside, I can't think of any other constituency that has benefited more greatly from the policies of the Obama administration, can you? Okay, maybe pharmaceutical companies and energy companies and various national-security contractors, too. But none of those other companies set trillions of dollars of wealth on fire, rigged everything from interest rates to currency valuations, destroyed millions of jobs, stole thousands of homes they couldn't prove they owned and were, essentially, rewarded for their efforts by being allowed to stay in business. That's an ugly legacy for a "liberal" Democratic administration to leave behind, but absent wholesale policy changes, that's what they will leave behind.

---Baron V

Got an Easy Answer For That

Yes.

At the rate things are progressing, in the not-so-distant future, there are going to be two types of workers: "Adjuncts", a.k.a. "consultants", a.k.a. "contractors" with no company health care, no pension, no 401(k), etc.; and CEOs, COOs, CFOs, and the various degreed legal, medical and financial professionals who serve them. The future doesn't have to be that way, of course---because it hasn't always been that way---but lawmakers will need to come to the realization that tax, trade and labor policy that gradually impoverishes 90-plus percent of their constituents is not going to make the pie higher for everyone.

---Baron V

Still Too Damn Expensive

A neighbor of mine suffered a health scare recently---heart attack symptoms that turned out to be a false alarm---and had to spend the night in a local hospital undergoing observation. When he received an itemized bill from the facility the next week, he almost suffered a real heart attack when he read the total: $14,500, of which his so-so insurance picked up two thirds and left him to handle the rest. It's kind-of the problem-in-microcosm with our insanely managed health-case system. Namely, everyone in the pipeline charges exorbitant prices, basically because they can. It's also the reason why the jury is going to be out on the Goldberg Act for some time into the future because it relies on the same "market forces" that created this problem to somehow correct themselves. Maybe they will and maybe they won't, but bottom line, you want to control health-care costs, you control health-care costs.

---Baron V

On The Bright Side

When cars become autonomous and there are no more human cab drivers, we shouldn't have to suffer any more Tom Friedman columns. There's a silver lining to everything, no?

(Via.)

---Baron V

Signs of The Recovery

They're busting out all over:

On Tuesday, Sears said that it will shutter its flagship store in downtown Chicago in April. It's the latest of about 300 store closures in the U.S. that Sears has made since 2010. The news follows announcements earlier this month of multiple store closings from major department stores J.C. Penney and Macy's.

Further signs of cuts in the industry came Wednesday, when Target said that it will eliminate 475 jobs worldwide, including some at its Minnesota headquarters, and not fill 700 empty positions [...]

In addition to J.C. Penney---which announced last week that it will close 33 stores---there are about a dozen retailers that still have too many stores . . . Among them: American Eagle, which needs to move some of its aerie lingerie locations into its main stores; Aéropostale, which is on track to close 175 stores over the next few years; and Wal-Mart, which has about 100 stores in the U.S. producing same-store sales declines deeper than 3 percent, Sozzi said.

Nothing has really changed from five years ago, except that the estates of the plutocrats have once again been made whole thanks to generous transfers of our money from our central bank to their stock portfolios. Perhaps policymakers would consider another option? I mean, we already know that millions of American manufacturing jobs are gone and will never come back. What are people supposed to do for work when millions of American service jobs go away?

---Baron V

Everything is Rigged

And I mean everything:

As George Lucas explained, "I always---the rule we had, or the rule that I put down for everybody," was that "we cannot get into a bidding war with other companies because we don’t have the margins for that sort of thing."

One of the things that always busts me up whenever I hear some CEO job creator extolling the virtues of "free market competition" is the fact that anyone who has ever worked in the private sector for more than ten minutes knows that it's all bullshit, that most big companies despise competition because actually having to compete means that they might have to lower their prices and learn to operate more efficiently instead of, oh, destroying fortunes and rewarding themselves with big raises. Collusion's a lot more profitable. Always has been, and that's why we created government agencies to prevent collusion from occurring. I wonder whatever became of hem.

---Baron V

Channel The Zeitgeist

It's not at all difficult to figure out how the crazy people ascended to positions of power and privilege in this country. First, for a variety of reasons, fully a quarter of the voting-age population in America is insane. More to the point, the Teahadis and their moneymen understood something elemental five years ago that Team Democrat didn't: Millions of people were pissed off, and scared, and frightened---about losing their jobs, their homes, their life savings. Team Democrat offered them platitudes about our resiliency and willingness as Americans to make sacrifices, and how it took us many, many years to get into this mess and it'll take us a long time to get out of it. The Teahadis offered them fire and brimstone, with easily identifiable heroes and villains for the here-and-now. Why should anyone have been surprised when they were so spectacularly successful in 2010, and why they're still hanging around now?

It's like this: People are still in need of jobs, and money, and mortgage relief. Give them what they want, and you'll win elections. Don't, and you won't. This ain't rocket surgery, and the fact that people like Chuck Schumer are saying that gee, maybe we should sorta, like maybe, try some of this populist stuff---but not too much!---this late in the game only goes to shows how lame and inadequate Team Democrat's leadership has been all along.

---Baron V