Hypocrisy is literally killing me, and I am not alone.
I have so had enough. I am going to have to take a short break from some of my volunteer advocacy efforts, because if one more Republican tells me there isn't enough money for the minor fixes in some complex disability-linked-with-healthcare programs that would save my life and the lives of others, I could go postal. Or at least puke in their lap.
Supposedly there has not ever been enough money, any single time that I have asked for these small but important changes, since I started trying to bring about change in these programs in 1988! And yet -- when Wall Street whistles, the moneybags come out by the truckload. Hypocrites, PLEASE take the logs out of your own eyes.
"If we don't fix Wall Street now, the market will crash." Well, that may be. I am carefully studying what the economists have to say on this and am not finished with the research, so I do not have an informed opinion on this yet. I do wonder how others are coming to this conclusion so fast. There is a lot to consider before making an informed decision. Of course, lawmakers could be privy to information I do not have that might make the decision easier. I cannot know yet if this is the case, or if this is instead just another rush job by those who would benefit from the borrowed lucre.
But let's assume for the moment that the bailout is necessary. Ok, then I really think we-the-people deserve to have our questions answered, since we-the-people and our descendants will be paying the bill. Here are a few of my questions:
* why is there even a debate about CEO compensation?
Here in California, the Republican governor proposed to slash the pay of all state workers to minimum wage until a budget was passed. The state workers have NO ability to get a budget passed; this power lies with the elected legislature. But Republicans were ok with throwing these people and their families into the sudden and dangerous chaos of being unable to pay their mortgage payment or rent, pay their other monthly bills, pay for food and clothing for their families...and even ok with the predictable effects on the state economy that would result from so many people having their wages cut at once. Oh, and they were also ok with a budget that heavily borrows, yet again, from future generations, rather than permitting even the smallest of temporary tax increases for our generation to pay our own way for once, in this case to get out from under the mortgage crisis we are experiencing here and its effect on state revenue. (I'm not sure why no one figured out in time that betting the farm on housing prices staying so high that they were far out of range of the average family income was not a safe thing to do, but that's a topic for another day.)
Another example of cruelty plus stupidity from here in my home state is from our Medicaid program, for which I personally originally qualified but, because there is always "no money" to fix glitches in government programs, for which I lost my eligibility due to receiving a tiny cost of living increase in my SSDI check. There is never any money to make the small change to protect people on one of the federal disability programs, SSDI (the one for folks that paid into the system such as myself), from being harmed by small annual cost of living increases in their monthly benefits. Another similar disability program, SSI, for the indigent, does in fact protect its beneficiaries from harm from these small cost-of-living income increases. (Yep. One program, but not its twin. Makes no sense. Totally insane.)
What I do qualify for now is the "share of cost" program, which would give me a whoppingly generous $600 a month to live on, with any other income I might have forcibly applied to my massive monthly medical bills. Um. You can't even rent a room here for $600/month, much less have food and housing and pay for your noncovered medical care and buy a sweater for the winter. Why are we punishing sick people this way? Oh right, "no money".
I could go on and on. Veterans not getting needed health care. Heck, soldiers not even getting needed body armor. Poor people being permitted to freeze to death in the winter. Homeland insecurity--no money to defend us right here at home. The National Guard cannot do everything. No money for more cops or more firefighters; the states and counties and cities are broke, too. Schoolchildren without books or pencils or paper or lunch. So many kids living in poverty. Kids without health coverage. The elderly trying to decide which is more important, food or their meds. (I myself went on an involuntary no-money-no-food fast last month, with terrible results for my health status.) Katrina. Rita. All the dead who didn't have to die. People still displaced and in "temporary" homes. The aging, dangerous power grid. The lack of an energy source ready to go online now to get us off of foreign-owned, planet-harming oil (when were we warned about this problem? Jimmy Carter? how did we manage to waste 30 years?). No money to fix health care, to fix infrastructure, to fund more scientific research, to help our citizens in serious poverty, to do anything for any citizen who isn't super-rich. No money to reduce the massive debt we already owe and to reduce the amount of basically wasted money we have to use to finance the debt.
But, money for invasion of another country that has resulted in a total debacle, a massive blow to our position in the world, and which hasn't even landed us the long-term oil contracts we probably expected? Sure! Heck, we'll even pay for Iraqi health care, and they hate us! And now, money for Wall Street? Check in the mail! No questions asked!
So, of course we should pay already insanely wealthy CEOs massive salaries out of borrowed taxpayer money as a reward for totally screwing up? Um, how about NO, for a change? Just where does the buck stop, exactly...? Why not let them eat minimum wage? Wouldn't their souls benefit from the experience? Or how about making the median American income the salary limit? Let them join the ranks of, well, most of US. I personally want to see how they would do on the $600 a month I'm supposed to be ok with. I could use some expert advice on how to live on that and surely these brilliant folks could show me the way.
* Next question: why is there no oversight planned for the Treasury's new power to manage all of this borrowed money?
Why is there even any kind of debate about this one? Shouldn't somebody be kissing the ground in gratitude that taxpayers would even consider going even farther into the deficit black hole to fix what some very stupid, selfish, and greedy people did, and our radical right-wingers in government let them do? Won't anyone please give us as many guarantees as possible that no more stupid people will run amuck, whether in private industry or in government, with our borrowed billions? It frankly smells that there is opposition to this. WHY is there opposition? What is going on in the Treasury that wants to be kept a secret? Now I really want to know, actually. Suspicions awakened.
Another case I know of personally is that of a legally blind person who was on disability and got a good job in the computer field. Because his vision is so poor, and because he has an unusual appearance as an albino, and because he has other health problems, he has had many bad experiences with employment and prays he will keep his present job, which he feels he was lucky to get. But, getting a federal attachment to his wages is probably not a great way to endear him to the corporate part of the company that pays his salary but doesn't oversee his individual work.
And yet, that is just what the Social Security Administration did to him, with no notice given to him, in order to recoup what they have decided was an "overpayment" on their part based on his reports of his earnings (which started in 2005, but they only reacted now, and somehow that is his fault). "Oh, we shouldn't have sent you those checks after all; we're going to take what we think you owe us back; we don't care that we totally confused you when you first reported your earnings by telling you that you qualify for programs that permit you to keep getting a check from us while you work".
This "overpayment" scheme is a common practice of SSA, so common as to have become a significant work disincentive which scares people from trying to work at all. This poor guy is now supposed to come up with over $20,000. They enclose an envelope for him to remit the funds! Like we all have that in our checking accounts. He is going to have to pay for an attorney to try and get rid of the wage attachment. Somehow. Attorneys are not cheap.
Oh and by the way, he made a small mistake on his 2006 taxes due to his vision problems. So he had agreed to allow the IRS to take what they needed for complete repayment of the 2006 tax owed from the tax refund he was getting for the 2007 tax year. No contesting; honest mistake; happy to pay the correct tax on a missing 1099 form. But again without notice, SSA grabbed all of his tax refund before he even got to see it. Surprise! So he had to borrow money to pay the IRS. All this with also having to borrow from friends to pay his monthly bills in the immediate term, since he now has to restructure his life to adjust to what SSA is ripping out of his wages until such time as that can be stopped.
Folks, I am not saying that government agencies can do no good. They can be the best way to get things done in many cases, due to the enormous economies of scale involved in not trying to do everything locally. And they can protect us from what can be dangerous and personally frightening local corruption (hmm, see Alaska?). BUT THEY NEED OVERSIGHT. THEY REALLY, REALLY NEED IT.
* Third and final question for the moment: why is there resistance to equity sharing? The taxpayers are supposed to foot the bill but not get back any of the money that could be made resulting from the rescue?
Excuse me? Who dreamed that one up? Someone who was promised a kickback from money that will be made? Or someone who is so stupid they will sign anything their corporate benefactors highlight and recommend that they sign? I really do not get it. Of course the taxpayers should get something back on this massive, and dangerous because it is borrowed, investment. Taxpayers should DEMAND it. Sheesh! No-brainer here. If you lent money to your profligate relative who then started a business which made a profit, you wouldn't ask for him/her to start paying you back? What if you were so generous as to have lent him money you borrowed and were paying interest on?
So, anyway. I have had my life wasted. I'm stuck in poverty in order to qualify for the "special help" for Medicare Part D, since my state Medicaid program doesn't seem to have any way to ever get the funds to update that $600/month living allowance to something approaching what it really takes to live on for someone who is ill. No money at the state or federal levels. Never any money.
Naturally, there is also no money to eliminate the potentially devastating copayments I could have to pay without that "special help" for Medicare Part D (want to see what the copayment would be for my chemotherapy?) or to eliminate that "doughnut hole" coverage gap that could kill me, and many others.
We already spend more per capita on health care than any other country, but we just can't seem to fix gaps in coverage. Or even maybe require insurance companies to each take a percentage of the expensive pre-existing condition cases like yours truly--and/or to add on those citizens who are uninsured now. Or to reject these companies as poor stewards of our health care and switch to the cost-saving single payer option. We also let an estimated 22,000 Americans per year DIE due to lack of health coverage. We are ok with their deaths.
We are ok with people like me being trapped and unable to try out something as simple as a few home-based, sickbed-based businesses. The stress of poverty has been shown in studies to make my particular illness much worse, so we do of course end up paying for my hospitalizations, instead of taking me out of poverty or even letting me try to climb my way out. No money to fix penny-wise, pound-foolish policies. All thinking is restricted to the immediate short-term, so if a cent should be spent now to save a dollar later...it just can't happen..
We are fine with the amazing, large-scale health care ripoff. We care more about preserving executive compensation for health care insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies than we do about providing health care for the sick. We drank the Kool-Aid.
We are also just fine with the poor and the middle class all struggling really hard to get by while the top 1% of incomes have enjoyed an enormous transfer of wealth that has cruelly and falsely been labeled a result of the "free market--can't touch it, sorry". This is a lie. But we swallow the lie.
We are fine with our politics being corrupted by the need to pay for pricey media time to win elections...and thusly with an enormous advantage given to candidates who pander to wealthy individuals and corporations. This has resulted in things like the guy who would give the middle class and the poor tax relief being successfully challenged by the guy who wants to continue most of the disastrous polices that got us into these dangerous and uncharted economic waters...and, by the way, whose solution to the health care problem is to tax your employer-provided health care benefits.
Folks.
This is madness.
Special message to former Hillary supporters: the poll that came out today better not be the true state of affairs! You can't possibly be voting for McCain instead of Obama. If you are, please take another long look at McCain. He's not a maverick. He's not a moderate. His voting record is hard right. His VP choice was hard right.
McCain admitted to wanting to overturn Roe v. Wade and to not knowing much about economics. He has a record of treating women rather badly, from the "joke" he used to tell about Chelsea Clinton (horrible thing to do to a young girl IMHO), to calling his wife the c-word in public, to leaving his disabled wife for a wealthy skinny young blonde, to admittedly "womanizing" in the past, to an actual video I saw of him talking down very harshly to a woman who was trying to advocate for families who have loved ones still missing as possible POWs. He's got a woman on his ticket, sure, but an antichoice woman who does things like making rape victims pay for their rape exams, and yet spend money happily on things like the bridge to nowhere.
If you don't vote for Obama, this does not help Hillary. Making our country crash and burn doesn't help any future Presidential candidate, or any of our citizens. Hillary is, naturally, smart enough to know this, and is campaigning for Obama.
Special message to Republicans: I was a Republican. I know what it is like to be called a "traitor" by family members who are clinging to the past. But this crazy year, you know who the Republican is? OBAMA.
Obama wants to move away from the Bush borrow-and-spend insanity. He also wants to at least TRY (the big bailout is going to make any new President have to revise their plans; a little parting gift from GW Bush) to give tax cuts to anyone making under $250,000 a year. He's the churchgoing family man with the family values.
McCain has chosen to align himself with the robber barons who have hijacked the Republican party. They are not my father's Republicans. They are not your grandfather's Republicans. They are milking our country for all it was once worth, for their own benefit and that of their small cabal of superwealthy friends. It's a con job.
Whoever it was that gave us the precious gift of the secret ballot foresaw this kind of chicanery. If you have people in your life who cannot see through the complex smoke and mirrors these modern-day pirates have tossed up in the air to hide their thievery, then vote for the real Republican, OBAMA, in secret.
Borrow-and-spend and mistakes like invading the wrong damn country and sending our young soldiers to war without proper armor and denying them good health care when they come home are destroying this country.
Look at the national debt clock long and hard : http://zfacts.com/... .
Whatever McCain promises, he has already stooped to lies, to flip-flopping, and doesn't seem to even realize that his voting record speaks loudly and clearly enough to drown out his words. McCain is more of the same. The failed and radical Bush policies. Obama is the moderate.
Use your secret ballot. I can't believe this election is even close. I can't believe anyone would vote for these RINOs now. Someone needs to write out 700 billion with all the zeroes and carry it around on a sandwich board to wake people UP. Is it $700,000,000,000 ? I'm not even sure myself.
In closing...
Well. I'm not afraid to be called an elitist any more. I'm elitist and proud, if "elitist" now means that I value intelligence and achieved educational levels in presidential candidates.
President Bush, please excuse the elitist Latin: Ave, Caesar, morituri te salutant.
I am pretty sure health care and the disability programs won't be fixed in time for me, now. I will eventually get COLA-ed out of the Medicare Part D "special help", and then no more diaries from me. Without being able to pay for my long list of medications for more than one difficult diagnosis, I will kick the proverbial bucket. I wonder what they do with the bodies of the insolvent where I live. Guess I'd better find out if I can afford to be buried decently or not.
What a mistake I made, getting a terrible chronic disease diagnosed just as I was coming off of my parents' health insurance. Couldn't I have timed it better?
Newt Gingrich said people like me should "amass wealth." I was too sick to amass. And for some reason, not everyone gets to be wealthy. Sort of a not enough to go around kind of thing. Idiot. Remember Newt? On the national stage when all of this voodoo economics started?
What a mistake I made, being born in the USA instead of Canada. Just showing up at the wrong latitude resulted in a wasted, stress-filled, crisis-ridden, physically and emotionally painful life.
I never even got to marry, thanks to the way disability programs are structured. I still have the beautiful bride dolls I played with as a child. I am saving them for my niece. I pray she never, ever gets sick while a citizen of this country.
And now, I probably don't even get to live very long.
So if those Wall Street cowboys get their expected golden parachutes, I will probably just lose the plot and sit in a corner and babble to myself about derivatives and economic multipliers and evil flourishing like the green bay tree.
Won't you please save a life? Save a lot of lives! Please, please vote Obama/Biden.