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truedelphi's Journal
Or the end of Democracy? A recent court case is going to allow Prop 14 to be on the ballot. This means, I suppose, that should it be passed, it will be held as Constitutional.
If passed on election day in June of this year, Prop 14 would see to it that only the top two
vote getters in any primary race are allowed to run for that office.
Now looking back at history, had this been in effect when Phil Angelides was the pick for the Democratic gubernatorial spot, even though the voters had chosen Steve Westly, party politics could not have trumped the will of the voters.
So then party politics would not have consigned Steve to the dustbin of history and Phil Angelides to a situation in which his lackluster campaign attempted to face down Ahnold.
Instead, Westly would have been able to run, and to heck with what Di Fi wanted (Possibly what she really wanted was to ensure that the spot of governorship be held for her.)
So maybe Prop 14 is a good thing?
On the other hand, letters to the editor insist that it is the end of democracy. For instance, in a recent San Jose Mercury story on this issue, Green Party members clearly oppose this reform effort:
FROM THE ARTICLE: "And the Green Party will continue opposing Proposition 14 being on the June ballot. The initiative would establish a single primary open to all registered voters. The party believes it would doom its statewide and congressional candidates.
Stumping for votes is hard enough, said Jane Rands, a former state Assembly candidate from Orange County.
"The No. 1 thing people say is, 'I agree with everything you stand for, but I'm not going to vote for you because you are not going to get elected." (END OF SAN JOSE MERCURY article quote.)
Some headlines on Google show that both Democratic and Republican party leaders are not fond of Prop 14.
Also, Ralph Nader, leading advocate for third-party candidate and full voter rights, stated, “Unless defeated, Proposition 14 would establish a two-party tyranny that prevents other candidate choices
for California voters from the November election ballot. In short, Proposition 14 wants to shut you up if you disagree with the arrogant, big two-party politicians.”
Nader continues, “I am pleased that Tobin is taking the lead on stopping this legislation with the Stop Top Two website.”
I am hoping to hear what others may think and know about this situation.
And their efforts to keep those of us who are in the inner circle as prosperous as we wanna be.
Paulson, Kashkari and Geithner and Bernanke have stood resolute against such nasty and small minded criticism that demands that they ignore the bonds of loyalty toward the very company that has mentored them - and by that company, I mean AIG.
It was by studying the AIG model of financial firms that we at Vichy Care came to understand that by offering the American people health care insurance for only $ 1 per person a year that we could become as successful as any market manipulator.
What, you say? Health Care for only $ 1 a year per person? But surely you cannot compete with the services of the Big Boy Insurers, like Aetna, or Well Point or United or BCBS. Surely you will be slower to deny us needed treatments, or less willing to invoke the rights of an Insurer to rescind a policy holder.
No, no my interested customer base. Although our premiums are extremely low, and will enable you to comply with the about-to-be enacted mandates, we will be just as able as the Bigger Firms to see that you are denied needed medical treatments. And we will rescind policies at rates that are competitive with the Big Players.
Vichy Care. We take your premium dollars so the Other Insurers cannot have them!
(Let's make sure we all understand who the REAL Obama is)
The new Giveaway Legislation to Help Big Insurers, Obama has shown that he has pledged NOT to meet with someone like Dennis.
His most important appointees have ties either to Big Insurance, AIG and Goldman Sachs or to Monsanto.
He has met with some of the more conservative Republican Senators from Southern states, Republicans, over forty five times last summer.
He has continually entertained those who are allied with the Big Insurers.
He has carefully set things up so that Rahm is the one establishing the Pro Corporate patterns of this Administration, so that when/if people finally do wake up and realize that this President is great at empty and glib (although mesmerizing) speeches, he can point to Rahm and say, "Oh woe is me. If only I had not been betrayed by Rahm." And then he can fire Rahm and pretend that NOW he will be the Progressive that he ran as back in Oct of 2008. (The YouTubes exist to prove how riveting and Progressive a candidate he was.)
The Pledges that Obama has made to his Corporate Masters will not ever be broken, but the pledges that he has made to us voters always will be. Though from time to time, like last week on HCR, he will switch gears and bring out the great progressive Obama, always when it is too late to affect one F__King thing.
We would have had a ground breaking piece of legislation that guaranteed that people of color had a right to not be lynched as long as they paid a monthly protection fee.
With work arounds for any segregationists that thought that that was going too far. (As long as those segregationists were able to make huge campaign donations, of course.)
Bill.
Tiny revolution has a point. Obama has made it possible for this snarly Giveaway to the Big Insurers to become the Law of the Land.
Long Live Obama! Long Live Bob Dole!
I mean, what's not to like. At the very least, the one hundred and sixty eight billion dollars of penalties collected from the American people as penalties between 2013 and 2019 will pay for our expanding wars.
So long live the MIC too!
Is such a completely awful, loathsome piece of maggot-infested
and rotting give aways to the Big Insurers, that it is almost as if it was written by the Big Insurers themselves.
Oh, wait a minute, it was!
It now includes not the original 2% of a person's annual wages as penalties, but a 2.5% seizure of one's wages. Curiously that figure will totally pay for the One Hundred and Sixty Eight Billion dollars for the expansion of the Two Wars, as the Senate voted in its budget hearings during mid-December.
And that One Hundred and Sixty Eight Billion bucks worth of penalties will come about in only six years - 2013 to 2019, if I remember my reading of the pertinent passages.
Nowhere in the bill is there any relief for those who are penalized by Big Insurers because of pre-existing conditions.
And of course, if this bill is passed, don't be expecting any type of roll backs on the 29 to 74% increases that many households have noted in terms of their insurance premiums over the last two to three years. (In fact Anthem was busy sending out its 29 to 74% increases just in the last three weeks.)
Nor is there any set of regulations and stipulations as what we can expect for our paying the big insurers our 15 to 20 percent of our paychecks.
Back when paying for health care for myself and my spouse, we paid an amount equal to our rent - $ 957 a month for insurance, $ 1,000 a month for rent. Did that prevent Kaiser Permanente from mis-diagnosing my spouse and causing him to suffer with temporary blindness for six months?
Nope, it didn't.
Did it prevent the same HMO from stalling me on needed treatments, and when they finally gave in and said, "You do need treatment," the treatments prescribed were totally bogus.
Many on this board, will be saying, "Not my concern - the employer will be paying my premiums." Well, think again - if the employer cannot afford your health care, you may be reduced to part time, and find out that once working fewer than 20 or 25 hours a week, you are no longer covered.
But hey, at least Obama did not grandstand for a position he held earlier - that Universal Single Payer Health Care for all was the only logical response to the broken Health Care System.
And thank goodness for that, because boy I tell you, I would sure hate to wake up sometime soon to find out I was living in a socialistic empire driven by the needs of its parasitic citizenry!
How our Democratic "Stateswomen and men" PRETEND to care abt us
Kabuki's theatre's All consuming production of "Good Cop! Bad Cop! Or how I destroyed my nation's Democracy while pretending the "Other side" was preventing me from being a Decent Statesman(or Woman)"
The whole article can be found here.
http://psychcentral.com/lib/2010/cyberbull... /
I am amazed at the indifference that many HS and Junior highs have about the issue of bullies. Here are the first four paragraphs of the article: Tragically, this is leading to increasing numbers of suicides among our teens. In 2006, suicide was the third leading cause of death for young people ages 15 to 24, just behind car accidents and homicide. It’s estimated that for every completed suicide, there are 5 or more attempts; attempts that could have been fatal but for the luck of miscalculation about the means or the luck of someone walking in on time. Kids who make attempts are kids in pain. Attempts are not bids for attention or the use of drama to make a point. These kids don’t necessarily want to die. They want the pain to end and can’t figure out any other way to do it. When teen impulsivity and emotional extremes are added to the mix, the result can be (and too often is) fatal. What can we do? Watch for distress in our own kids. Kids who are chronically angry, who easily lose it, who are visibly upset about going to school or who refuse to go, are actively sending out signals of distress. Kids who are withdrawn and depressed; who spend hours holed up in their own rooms; who claim not to be interested in kids their own age; whose grades plummet – these kids are in more quiet but equally dangerous despair. Parents and teachers can and should talk to them, listen respectfully, and offer help. It’s important to be mindful that unless bullying is handled carefully, the situation can be made worse. Careful cooperation between home and school can make the difference. Talk to our kids who don’t seem distressed. Unfortunately, kids don’t always tell us or show us that they are upset. The young girl in the introduction to this article was close to her parents, was pretty, smart and sociable, and seemed to have many friends. Recent arguments about dating turned vicious, then tragic. The lesson for us as parents is how critical it is to talk about bullying whether or not the kids bring it up. It’s important for our adolescents to know that we understand how awful the teen years can be and how unfairly sometimes kids treat each other. We can help them understand that the opinions of others don’t have to be a matter of life and death. Even the kids who seem most secure and mature need to be reassured that if they ever feel so depressed and hurt that they even consider suicide, they have sympathetic and helpful support at home.
i am even posting it to my Journal
usanetwork.com
(So I can watch TV on the computer)
And stated up front, "Look everybody, I know you expected some real change from me, but the reality is I like having the money that the Big Insurers and that Big Pharma will be sweetening my re-run for the Presidency with.
"So I am not going to ask that Congress do anything other than mandate that everybody pay for the inflated policies and terrible health covereage that they are now getting. I'd like change as the next person, but I am only the President.
"So rather than wasting a lot of everybody's time over the matter, we will at least see to it that our promise of transperency is met. The Health Care Reform Act will be only four pages long and its most salient facts will be these:
"All Americans are mandated to purchase insurance from the usual suspects.
"All Americans are expected to endure the usual shitty service.
"And if you don't like it, you and your family can still, while the Patriot Act and Homeland Security allows for it, fly off to Mexico, Canada or European nations to receive real medical care."
Who has kept me well instructed, but it would probably embarrass them. However the lights for me didn't go on till some 3 weeks after my vote was cast of the man who duped us.
But Tolkien said it fairly well decades ago "One ring to rule them all, and in the darkness bind them."
Of course he didn't know that the darkness would include endless hours of reality TV and little analysis of real news events.
You cannot bring about a totalitarian state unless you keep people misinformed. (And thus in the dark.)
Coming soon: Cap and Trade Bill, that will continue to tax the little people while offering Trillions for mechanical "trees" that are supposedly more efficient at carbon dioxide transformation, and the end to real trees. (Wish I was making this up, but the geo-engineering of our planet is at hand, and real trees, bushes, crops etc are a thing of the past if we let the One Big Money Party continue in its duplicity.)
California's P G & E has paid for volunteers to get signatures so that it can have a referendum on the coming election cycle's ballot. Although the initiative will be worded in such a way as to allow the Consumer to think that voting for this matter will ensure the safety of the planet and also protect their pocket book, in fact, this initiative will put the brakes on solar and wind energy. Here is a recent story regarding this carefully strategized legislation  from http://www.sfbg.com/2010/02/03/pge-kicks-p... ) It sounded like a great story: a representative of Pacific Gas and Electric Co. agreed to a public debate over the merits of a ballot initiative the company essentially had paid to place on the California ballot. The measure seeks to curtail public power and clean energy in the state. And so far, PG&E has been loathe to discuss it in any open forum. But on Jan. 27, PG&E's political consultant, David Townsend, was scheduled to square off with state Sen. Mark Leno, a staunch foe of the measure, before what sounded like a great audience: the Northern California Power Agency, which represents 17 public power providers across the state.
At Sacramento's Doubletree Inn, I headed to the lobby of the California Ballroom, where I found a woman sitting at a table adorned with the logo of the NCPA. "I'm a reporter here to cover the debate between Sen. Mark Leno and a representative from PG&E," I said. "Would this be the right place?"
She smiled politely. Sorry, she said, you have to be an NCPA member and registered for the conference. "I was invited by the senator," I told her. "Then you will have to wait until he gets here," she said curtly. I walked upstairs to the front desk — and just then, Leno walked through the main lobby's sliding doors. I introduced myself, walked with him to the conference room, and quickly slipped in with some other attendees. Within three minutes, a man sitting next to me was called to the side by a steward who whispered something to him, and then just as quickly, returned to his seat. He turned to me.
<snip> Now the full story can be found here:
http://www.sfbg.com/2010/02/03/pge-kicks-p...
My household recently stopped eating wheat. In the last twomonths,w e have given up the costipation (and its opposite) we have traded our fatigue for energy, we have discovered that it ws not our age that was limiting our healthiness but the food staple we were consuming: Wheat. What is going on with this? Here is one explanation What's Wrong with GMOs?
Written by Winston Kao I have asked numerous people to define the term GMO and I have yet to come across one person who could give a totally correct answer, so I thought it was time to give some space in a newsletter explaining it. GMO stands for Genetically Modified Organisms. When a plant’s genes are manipulated by the Biotech industry, the result is no longer a plant, due to animal, fungus, and chemical induced genes mixed into it. It is an “organisms.” Disregarding the basic laws of nature, scientists crossbreed plants to animals, fungus, parasites, viruses, antibiotics, petro-chemical fertilizer, fungicides, & herbicides, creating results that can no longer be recognized by Mother Nature as plant or animal. Now you understand what Frankenfood, GE food (Genetic Engineering), & GMO’s are. A good example is wheat. It has flounder genes (fish), ergot (fungus), petro-chemical fertilizer, herbicide (Round Up) and synthetic hormones…etc which make up the gene composition of your modern GMO wheat. This is why you may not call it a wheat plant because it is not a plant, having multiple organisms’ genes. What does Mother Nature think of GMO wheat? “Well, let’s see,” she scratches her head in bewilderment. “It resembles a plant I created called wheat, but a plant doesn’t contain fish genetic material, nor fungus material, nor chemicals in its genes. The end product is esoteric, bizarre, never ever seen before sugars, proteins, starches… etc. So what do I do with all this weird, basically unrecognizable stuff that you have eaten? I use what I can, then throw a big hammer, called sulphuric acid, to try to break it down, and then the rest creates allergies, disease, and cancer.” You wonder why so many people are allergic to wheat and so many other common foods? Or why they are becoming more acid? Wonder no more. Two year old information from the Organic Consumers Association ( http://www.organicconsumers.org /) stated that lab tests and industry disclosures indicate that 60-70% of all non-organic supermarket food tests positive for the presence of genetically engineered (GE) ingredients. The actual percentage is much higher because there are no labeling law requirements for GMO food. The wholesalers, when purchasing grain, will usually mix non-GMO product with GMO product so the presence of GMO ingredients is probably in the high 90%. <snip> You can read the rest of his piece at http://ow.ly/155Rd
It is the biggest coup of the history of nations. A huge transfer of wealth from the middle incomed to the upper one percent.
We had a solid democracy and then it happened in the eighties: the very managed spread of BS doctrines like the RW's careful perversion of Milton Friedman's Supply side markets' theory.
This new doctrine was viewed as being infallible and became the tool that put American jobs over seas. (Why keep jobs here if the main principle of economics becomes 'Jobs are not important - low prices on goods overrides that.'??)
Then Greenspan was utilized by both Bush the Elder, the Clinton Administration, and Bush Junior to nudge our economy into being totally dependent on created bubbles.
The housing bubble was created via Greenspan/Paulson insistence on low interest rates. Jobs at that point no longer were in abundance - but hey - everyone in the nation was being issued credit cards and if someone wanted a mortgage they got it. People were told "Don't worry - Just be happy."
And tackling the huge role that financial de-regulation and elimination of Glass Steagall would require another few paragraphs.
Now Bernanke/Geithner are just taking the economy again to the edge.
And sure, Geithner and Obama are now once again talking about the importance of instituting regulations.
But Obama has been talking about that since October 2008. And yet he never ends up doing any thing other than scolding the Banksters.
Although apparently, after the fourteen trillion has already been offered by Bernanke/Geithner to the Biggest Banksters, the WH is now working on a White Paper re: the financial mess.
Of FDR's first year, those banks failed across the board. He did not set up a system that kept only the top Biggest Banks and Financial Institutions from failing - the markets did the leveling, not this ersatz inner circle of Goldman Sachs connected officials deciding who gets what, with none of it trickling down to Main Street.
Also, he was not having to fund two very expense war efforts, such as we are undertaking with Iraq and Afghanistan. And of course, while WWII would have the huge support of most Americans, most Americans in poll after poll do not at all want us to be in Afghanistan. (I do concede this - perhaps right now, half the money going to Iraq is being used to pull people out.)
In letting fourteen trillion bucks of our money evaporating from those digitized coffers of the Federal Reserve, into the coffers of the Upper Elite of the Banking world, we are already seeing the style of money management that FDR was forced to employ mid-way through WWII...
However one big difference between FDR having to spend 153% of the annual USA economy during just one of those war years and what Obama's money policy experts are doing is this - the war efforts employed almost every able bodied American. While the current 100% expenditure of the domestic economy - 14 trillion - being slightly more than the annual GDP - differs from FDR's war year expenditures is that very few people are receiving jobs in return.
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