2015 | The Bitchy Pundit - Part 6

Sheriff Richard Mack

February 27, 2015 by Bitchy

I don’t normally post about the situations of individual people because I just don’t find those stories very useful in understanding the big picture. I’ve always maintained that anecdotal stories are not evidence of anything other than what someone perceives they saw at a specific moment in time. More often than not, they’re completely fabricated bullshit, created to advance a narrative that can’t be advanced by using facts. That’s why I always insist on data.

I imagine that by now you intuit a story of an individual that I’m going to share with you in order to advance a narrative. You would be correct. There will, however be no hypocrisy on my part if you stick with me.

So there’s a retired sheriff in Arizona who has fallen on hard times. He and his wife both suffered some major medical issues within weeks of each other. At this point, you should be thinking, "Good thing they’re in Arizona, where the medicaid expansion component of Obamacare was embraced by the governor, resulting in a 4% drop in the rate of uninsured because affordable coverage is now available to Arizonans." Yes, being in a state that took the medicare expansion would be a good thing, if you weren’t opposed to Obamacare, and didn’t get yourself any insurance.

Here’s what the hero of my little story had to say about Obamacare;

The States can stop every bit of it! That’s right, the individual States can stop "Obamacare" and all other forms of out-of-control federal government mandates and "big brother" tactics. If Arizona, Hawaii, New Hamshire, Texas, etc. want nothing to do with National Healthcare as proposed by Barack Obama or Congress, then all they have to do is say "No!"

So now he’s a massive pile of medical debt that’s growing, and a long road to recovery ahead of him but thank god he didn’t let big brother force him into taking responsibility for himself! So what do you do when you’re an irresponsible man in his 50s or 60s who didn’t think that insurance was a thing that you might need? Panhandle on the internet, of course! He set up a Go Fund Me page to beg people to donate to his irresponsible ass so that he can pay those medical bills he didn’t have to incur. He’s raised a little over 16k in almost five weeks. I’m pretty sure he’s nowhere near raising what he needs to pay for just his heart surgery, let alone the hospital stay and ongoing care that he needs.

We’ve seen this movie before with Ron Paul’s freedom loving campaign manager, Kent Snyder who was in exactly the same situation. He also tried to panhandle his medical bills away, subsequently leaving his mother with $400,000 in medical bills to deal with. So it seems like the panhandling thing doesn’t really work as well as insurance does.

This jackass former sheriff, like Ron Paul’s campaign manager has a higher profile than most people, and can therefore raise more money than the average middle aged couple can. The jackass sheriff is an oath keeper so he’s got a community of racist vigilantes he can tap, and an active member of the ammosexual community so he also has those whackadoodles to hit up. And all of that community activism probably hasn’t raised enough money to pay for just the medications that were administered to him in the hospital. To be fair, I don’t know that for sure, but I’m making an educated guess based on medical bills I’ve seen posted online.

So either his kids, who clearly won’t be going to college will be paying his and his wife’s medical bills for their entire lives, or everyone else in Arizona will be paying them. But yay FREEDOM! No jackbooted government thug told him he had to do the responsible thing by getting the affordable insurance they made available to him, and that’s what’s important here!

I did a quick search for plans in Arizona. I looked in Phoenix, which should be the highest priced area in the state. I put in a household income of $80,000 for a family of four (that would be 30k above the median household income, but I’m trying to get the highest premiums I can). I was trying to put in an income that didn’t qualify for a subsidy but apparently an income of 80k for a family of four still gets you a premium subsidy of $146.05 per month so we’re going to go with that. The cheapest plan is a bronze level HMO which costs $541 per month after the subsidy. So that’s $6,492 in annual premiums. This plan has a $10,000 annual deductible, with an annual out of pocket maximum of $13,200 (the maximum allowable by Obamacare). So had the jackass sheriff gotten himself some insurance, he and his wife would have been on the hook for a total of $19,692 for her medical issue and his heart surgery.

That’s enough about this irresponsible asshole. Let’s get back to what’s really important: me. I promised you that I wasn’t going to be a hypocrite by sharing the type of anecdotal story I always reject from others. This story demonstrates the foundation for how and why Obamacare works for all of us, and is therefore not anecdotal. It’s one of the actual data points used in the mathematical analysis upon which Obamacare is based.

The subsidies that some claim they’re paying for would total $1,753.00 per year for jackass sheriff. The lowest estimate I’ve ever seen for the premium surcharge on everyone with insurance, to cover the uninsured is about $400 per year, for an individual or $1,000 per year for a family. The smaller the number of uninsured becomes, the smaller that hidden tax placed on those with insurance gets. That’s where the savings are coming from, and that’s how it’s possible for you not to be paying for anyone else’s insurance coverage. Those surcharges cost more than the subsidies do.

This freedom loving asshole is going to foist a couple of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of medical bills on every single insured person in the country. The good news for Moochy McFreedom is that he can still get insurance to cover future bills, since he can’t be denied insurance for his preexisting insurance. Thanks to Obamacare, even being an irresponsible dumbass won’t prevent you from obtaining health coverage.

I don’t know if this asshole has reflected on the error of his ways or not, but I wanted to share his story to serve as both a cautionary tale, but also to let you know that Obamacare is the best way we have at this point, to insure that you’re not paying for anyone else’s health insurance. Well, anyone other than Sheriff Richard Mack and his family of freedom loving deadbeats.

Jesus “Chuy” Garcia and 2016

February 26, 2015 by Bitchy

As most of you know, on Tuesday night, Rahm Emanuel became the first incumbent mayor of Chicago to fail to defeat a primary challenge. Followers of this blog or my social media pages know that I was delighted. I think Rahm is the embodiment of all that is wrong with the democratic party today.

He’s the very picture of the "republican lite" bullshit that democrats tried to foist on us in the 2014 election. He’s a republican minus the batshit. And that’s something that no one wants. Republicans don’t want their candidates to lack the batshit that makes a republican a republican. Democrats certainly aren’t excited by "republican lite" candidates, and since democrats aren’t like republicans, they’re not going to show up to vote for any piece of crap with a "d" next to their name. Simply removing the batshit from the republican isn’t going to excite and mobilize democrats to vote.

You wanna know what excites democrats? Progressive candidates. Elizabeth Warren wasn’t ever supposed to be able to beat the senator from Wall Street. She was never supposed to raise more money than Scott Brown. And yet, a progressive ground swell put her in that senate seat, which she will keep for as long as she wants it. Bill de Blasio was never supposed to beat Mike Bloomberg’s heir apparent. I started volunteering for his campaign when he was polling in fourth place in the primaries. He subsequently succeeded in getting enough votes to avoid a runoff all together. Zephyr Teachout, who ran as a third party candidate in New York’s last gubernatorial election took 35 points away from Andrew Cuomo. She literally only had tens of thousands of dollars, versus his millions of dollars. Fourteen days before the election, her campaign hadn’t printed out a single piece of literature to hand out, and didn’t have lists of registered democrats to call during phone banking sessions. And yet, she still managed to take 35 points away from Cuomo on an essentially word-of-mouth campaign.

Every time a progressive dark horse wins, or leaves a serious mark on an election, we are sending a message to the DNC. Not only that, but we’re motivating more progressives to run. I don’t live in Massachusetts, but I donated hundreds of dollars to Elizabeth Warren’s campaign because I knew that helping to get her elected was good for progressives all across the country.

This mayoral race in Chicago may be more significant that the Warren victory, whether you live in Illinois or not. Defeating the former Chief Of Staff to the president, and high profile career politician will send a very loud message to the party and to progressives who are considering getting involved in politics. This would be a huge national progressive victory because of who Rahm Emanuel is.

This mayoral race is important to progressives all across the country. It’s not just about Chicago. It’s about 2016, and the slate of candidates that the democratic establishment ends up supporting. Nothing will shake the DNC to its core, like seeing one of their golden children crushed by a relatively unknown progressive candidate. We all have a vested interest in this election.

So, if you’ve ever donated to a political campaign and can afford it, now is the time to chip in ten bucks to help Garcia beat Rahm, who is about to dump several metric tons of money into this campaign. This race matters to all of us, and if we band together, we can win it.

50 Shades Of Me Not Caring

February 16, 2015 by Bitchy

So this showed up in my Tumblr feed:

All I could think was, "wasted activism" and "who cares?" We’re spending time in theaters, protesting a movie based on a book that millions of women read? These books weren’t flying off the shelves because men couldn’t get enough. Women made these books a thing. Do these protesters think that women can’t tell the difference between erotic fantasy and oppression?

I’m just irritated by this because this is the type of absurd outrage and over sensitivity that makes it easy for some people to mock liberals. To be clear, I’m a liberal. I think that you should be able any damned thing you want, as long as it affects no one else. And when the things you want to do start to adversely affect the public, we need to weigh your freedom against the public good. But in your home, in your body, and in your freaking bookstore, you can do whatever you damned well please.

These protests are predicated on the same thing the anti-choice movement is predicated on: that women don’t know better. Let me repeat: women were the ones who bought millions of copies of these books. Are these protesters saying that those women are too stupid to know what oppression looks like?

I haven’t read these books. I heard that the writing was terrible, and the word "hack" came up a lot when these books were mentioned. I don’t like poorly written books. I don’t care what the subject is; if it’s poorly written, I’m not interested. I didn’t choose not to read these books because I equate bondage fantasies to oppression. I’m not that stupid and simple minded. I have a well written set of books that apparently take the fantasy and the bondage much further than this trilogy took them (yes, I’m referring to the Sleeping Beauty series by Anne Rice). Fantasies are not oppressive.

Fantasies are normal and healthy, and we don’t need the PC police turning them into something else. Wanna know who has fantasies about being completely dominated? Everyone. Men, women, men who like women, men who like men, women who like men, and women who like women. We’re not all advocating for the oppression of women. We’re being human. I knew someone who earned a living dominating (no, there was no sex) men. Really, really rich and powerful men who paid thousands of dollars to be completely dominated for a couple of hours. Are either she or her customers participating in the oppression of women?

Come on, give me a break with this. Surely there are better things that these people can be doing with their lives, than telling women that they’re assholes for buying these books and for going to see this movie. In the process of "liberating" women, they’ve ended up shaming them. There’s nothing shameful or oppressive about fantasies. Stop making people feel shitty about having them. If we were more open and less obtuse about sexual fantasies, women wouldn’t have to resort to buying sophomorically written books. The fact that these crappy books sold so many copies tells me that women are less oppressed than ever. That’s actually not entirely true. They still have to resort to reading crap. If we stopped shaming sex and sexual fantasies, maybe better writers would start writing what there’s obviously a big market for.

I know that you’re all well intentioned, but I need you to stop shaming people over sex. And most of all, I need you to stop being mockable liberals.

Rand Paul’s Insane Freedom Turrets

February 4, 2015 by Bitchy

So apparently it’s the 19th century and we’re debating whether these new fangled vaccine thingies are safe. Oh, and also FREEDOM. Here, watch Rand Paul explain (don’t worry, you can stop the suffering at 2:55):

Sigh. This moron is going to run for president. And in my opinion, right now, at this very moment, he has a better chance than almost any of the other republican clowns who plan on running. Let me be clear: that is not a prediction. I have no fucking clue who the nominees on either side are going to be because I don’t have a functioning crystal ball, and therefore cannot accurately tell you what’s going to happen nearly two years from now. But that’s a whole other post.

This one is about Rand Paul and his simple minded, childlike view of the world. He lives in a world where he and his pet unicorn, Ayn are free to roam about the country doing as they please because FREEDOM trumps public safety. He wants to do this while enjoying all of the perks of living in a developed country, where the roads are built for him, the water is cleansed of all brain eating amoebas for him, planes aren’t crashing on his head, ebola isn’t running rampant, fires are magically being put out, buildings aren’t collapsing, and the internet just spontaneously appeared one day. Oh, and it’s all in technicolor, like The Wizard Of Oz.

You see, little Rand doesn’t care what your question is because the answer is always FREEDOM! A person who thinks that one answer applies to all (or most) questions is a child, incapable of handling complexities.

When you live in a first world country, you have entered into a social compact. That social compact provides you with millions of things you don’t even realize you’re getting, which is why I made sure to include brain eating amoebas earlier. That’s a thing that no one thinks about, is aware of, and doesn’t realize is being taken care of for them. You are not free to do as you please in that technicolor libertarian dream because you have to give up a little FREEDOM to have nice things.

Obion County Tennessee is a place with the kind of FREEDOM that Rand Paul’s underdeveloped little mind loves. They don’t have their own fire department. It’s a small town who relies on the fire department from a neighboring country to come out and deal with their fires, since they’re too small to viably create their own fire department. So a neighboring town offers them firefighting services for a voluntary fee of $75.00. It’s not a tax, so there’s no one to just take the money. Residents of Obion have to voluntarily send in a check every year if they want firefighters to come to their burning house to put out the fire. Yay FREEDOM, right? Most of you who aren’t afflicted with the libertarian suppression of emotional and intellectual growth disease can see where this is going. But let me tell the story for the unicorn owners. Four years ago, a home in Obion County caught fire. That home owner forgot to send in his voluntary (yay FREEDOM) fee so when he called 911, they told him that they couldn’t help him since he hadn’t paid the fee. The homeowner pleaded with the 911 operator, offering to pay all of the costs of putting out the fire. But that didn’t work, cause FREEDOM means "no pay, no spray". Good news though, the fire department did eventually come out to spray the house next door, who had paid their fee. So that’s awesome for the neighbors whose home was protected from burning down. Of course, they now have a burned down shell of a structure next door to them. But don’t worry, I’m sure that isn’t affecting the property values for all of the homeowners on the block.

So the same thing happened a year later in Obion. Fire…..no fee…..FREEDOM rings….no spray…..everyone watched the house burn down, and their property values with it. But hey, those neighbors should obviously just suck it up, cause [think Big Lebowski] it’s like, freeeeedom, maaaaaaan. So after two of these giant bonfire incidents, Obion county legislators, who still don’t want to raise taxes, have decided that the firefighters should be held personally responsible if:

someone is trapped in a deadbeat house and dies because the fire wasn’t put out or
the fire department makes a clerical error and refuses to put out a fire because they mistakenly had it on the deadbeat list.

So that’s awesome. Obion county legislators are problem solving while still preserving FREEDOM for their residents. Not so much for the firefighters but hey, it’s like, freeeeedom, maaaaaaan.

Wanna know what the FREEDOM killing, public interest protecting cost would be if Obion County residents paid for fire protection through their taxes? 0.13 (go to page 51 on that link) of a cent on each household. Sure, that doesn’t sound like a lot of money, but that’s another 0.13% of a penny of FREEDOM killing!

And we can’t have that, because Rand Paul doesn’t care what the question is because the answer is always FREEDOM. Why did I go all the way to Tennessee to make my point? Because that’s my favorite of dozens of stories that clearly depict that if you want nice, first world things, you don’t have the freedom to do anything you damned please, at the expense of public safety.

Public safety trumps freedom in the developed country 100% of the time. And that, kiddies, is why libertarians can never give me a real world example of a time or a place in history where the FREEDOM unicorn shit out a rainbow of prosperity and bestowed it upon all the people.

Yes, vaccinations should be mandatory. Your batshit crazy, scientifically devoid beliefs do not trump the interests of public safety. I cannot believe this shit needs to be explained.

Oh, but ladies should know that Rand’s FREEDOM-loving ends at your uterus’ edge. He doesn’t think you should ever be allowed to have an abortion. But good news, when you give birth to the child you may or may not have wanted, you’re FREE to cost your community, productivity, the health of others, and the profit margins of businesses who have to shut down because of the plague your unvaccinated child has bestowed upon them.

Let FREEDOM ring!

The Real Presidential Primary

January 28, 2015 by Bitchy

That would be the one that you don’t get to vote in. It’s the one that picks who you get to "choose" from when it’s your turn to have some democracy. It’s the primary that happened last weekend when you were busy having heated discussions about ballgate.

The Koch brothers held their first round of auditions to determine who you get to choose from next year, when it’s your turn to nibble on the scraps of democracy that trickle down to you from their table. The contestants who put on their prettiest gowns and tiaras on, and did their prettiest twirl for the Koch brothers in round one were Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz.

You won’t be deciding on whether to give Mitt Romney a third bite at the apple because the Kochs have already decided they’re not interested in any more Mittens. But don’t despair, he can still get in the game if he can land himself a Sheldon Adelson, who hasn’t held his primary yet. Or Mitt could land himself Mitt, although Mitt seems to greedy and risk averse to invest in someone like Mitt so that’s not really likely. Mitt likes to invest in sure things, what with being a vulture capitalist and all. That’s too bad, cause the people who think that losing twice means you have no chance at all really don’t know much about Ronald Reagan. Third time was a charm for that two time loser. But he finally won on his third try, which subsequently led to the rest of us losing. But I digress.

The Kochs have budgeted 889 million dollars to buy the 2016 elections with. That’s not just the presidential race, that’s congress too. That 889 million dollars of democracy they’re going to enjoy is roughly equal to what each party has to spend on the elections. So two guys who inherited a fuckload of Stalin money from their sugar daddy (literally) have one third of the total cash in the coffers to fund the next American election. Isn’t freedom of ~~money~~ speech great? If you have a problem with this form of speech, let me give you some words of wisdom from Mitt Romney; just go get some ~~money~~ speech from your parents so that you can level the playing field.

When I said, "If you have problem with…" I meant, "you obviously have a problem with this form of speech. It doesn’t matter what you call yourself; democrat, republican, independent…you all have a problem with it.

Wanna know who that 22% of republicans who love the money talks system are? Here are some quotes I compiled for you to peruse so you can see for yourself.

“All Citizens United did was to level the playing field for corporate speech…. We now have, I think, the most free and open system we’ve had in modern times.” – Mitch McConnell

“The exposure to this group and to this network and the opportunity to meet so many of you — that really started my trajectory." – Joni Ernst

“I’m really proud of this Supreme Court and the way they’ve been dealing with the issue of First Amendment political speech.” – Mitch McConnell

“I believe in freedom of speech: I think that political spending and political activism is a form of protected speech,” – Marco Rubio

"[The Citizen’s United verdict}a big win for the First Amendment" – John Boehner

"Judicial activism occurs when judges abandon constitutional or statutory meaning and impose their policy preferences instead. A decision that faithfully applies the First Amendment is not activism but rather a proper exercise of the judicial responsibility to keep Congress within its constitutional bounds." – Anthony Dick writing for The National Review

"A vote to oppose these reforms is nothing less than a vote to allow corporate and special interest takeovers of our elections. It is damaging to our democracy. It is precisely what led a Republican President named Theodore Roosevelt to tackle this issue a century ago." – Barack Obama

"Today’s U.S. Supreme Court decision on campaign financing is a shameful step backward toward big money special interests exercising too much influence over American political campaigns." – Senator Mark Begich (D-AK)

"The Supreme Court’s decision represents a step backward for the American people and our nation’s political process." – Nancy Pelosi

"Allowing corporate influence to flow unfettered into federal campaigns will only undermine the confidence the American people have in their government, and serve only to stack the deck further in favor of special interests at the expense of hardworking Americans." – Senator Michael F. Bennet (D-CO)

"With this ill-advised spate of judicial activism, five Supreme Court justices have struck down the distinction between individuals and corporations in election law and opened the floodgates to a hostile corporate takeover of our democratic process." – Representative Rosa L. DeLauro (D-CT)

"The Supreme Court in essence has ruled that corporations can buy elections. If that happens, democracy in America is over." – Alan Grayson (D-FL)

"Today’s Supreme Court ruling is yet another nod to the wealthy corporate interests in this country. This ruling now allows big corporations to spend large amounts of money to influence elections far beyond the ability of individual Americans. The free market free-for-all announced by these justices makes me wonder, ‘What’s next?’ If today’s ruling isn’t legislating from the bench, I don’t know what is." – Mazie K. Hirono (D-HI)

"Today’s decision by Supreme Court is a triumph for special interest and judicial activism at its worst. Overturning the ban on corporate spending on political campaigns opens the floodgates for the corrupting influence and the dominant hand of special interest groups." – Senator Richard Durbin (D-IL)

"I think we need a constitutional amendment to make it clear once and for all that corporations do not have the same free speech rights as individuals." – John Kerry

"The effects of the decision will be to undermine existing law, flood the airwaves with corporate and union advertisements, and undercut landmark reforms that I and many others fought to secure to put elections back in the hands of the American people. In short, today’s decision was a serious disservice to our country. – "Senator Olympia Snowe (R-ME)

"The best long-term solution is a constitutional amendment that would prevent the Court from overturning sensible campaign finance regulations." – Senator Tom Udall (D-NM)

"[The] activist element of the Supreme Court struck down key protections of our elections integrity, overturned the will of Congress and the American people, and allowed all corporations to spend without limit in order to elect and defeat candidates and influence policy to meet their political ends. The consequences may well be nightmarish." – Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)

"The ruling will, to a significant degree, give control of the political process in the United States to the wealthiest and most powerful institutions in the world and the candidates who support their agenda. Instead of democracy being about one-person one-vote, it will now be about the size of a company’s bank account." – Senator Bernard Sanders (I-VT)

Do you see a pattern here? No you don’t, cause everyone knows that both parties are exactly the same. There is no difference between them at all, right?

At this moment, democrats are being outspent by republicans to the tune of two to one. What do you think they’re going to have to do to level the "speech"? Could declining to prosecute a single banker for tanking the world’s economy perhaps be the only path forward?

Look, I don’t know how many democrats are earnest in their desire to give us back our democracy, but I know that we’ll never find out until we actually get money out of politics. I’m not going to attribute things like Obama’s inaction on regulating Wall Street to corruption, until we see him actually make a choice. You cannot call democrats hypocrites until they are in a position of making a choice to serve corporations, rather than the people. They don’t have a choice right now so we can’t really tell how many of them are genuinely corrupt (there are a significant number who are, I’m not kidding myself about that) and how many are just forced to play the ~~money~~ speech game.

Or maybe both parties are exactly the same and you should not bother looking for differences or even voting. Become a libertarian……………like the Koch Brothers. Oh, wait.

Greece Vs Wall Street

January 26, 2015 by Bitchy

So this is going to get interesting. The results of the election in Greece are in. The Greeks voted for killing austerity and renegotiating their debt with (basically) Wall Street vultures. This also puts the new Greek government at odds with Angela Merkel, who basically is the EU. But I believe that the Merkel clash is being overestimated and won’t be the standoff that some media outlets are predicting.

Here’s a recap of what happened in Greece. The country incurred massive debt. This is very different from what happened in Spain or the US, where the people incurred massive debt even though the result was the same, and the creditors were the same. In Greece’s case, it was the government who borrowed massively. Here’s how banking worked in the olden days of Glass Steagall: banks would assess a borrower’s ability to repay debt and decide whether extending a loan was viable, and setting the percentage rate based on viability. This made banks more prudent in who they loaned to because the goal was to get repaid with a little interest. See the interest was calculated using a formula whose two primary goals were to cover the bank’s total exposure (meaning all they loans they had made) and to create a profit for the bank. But then something horrible happened that wasn’t unforeseen, since it had happened before; banks assigned value to debt. And yes, that’s as crazy as it sounds. They took the projected profit (if everything went swimmingly) from the debt and let investors buy a piece of of that imaginary profit in the form of securities. In the interest of keeping things simple and getting to the point of this post, securities are basically trade-able debt. So now this money that doesn’t actually exist is worth something. Glass Steagall used to separate the banking assets of a bank from their investment assets. The need to do this should not have to be explained. If a bank puts these securities on its balance sheets as assets, they can sell them and still be insured against those losses in the form of the FDIC insurance that real assets (your deposits) have. When a bank can inflate their assets by making insane loans without worrying if those loans are actually viable, what do you think happens? If you guessed that they make loans to anyone and everyone they can, with no regard to viability so that they can sell those "assets" and create a profit stream out of literally nothing, you win a cookie because you’re right.

The Wall Street vultures did this anywhere they could. To the government of Greece, the homeowners in Madrid and the US, and all over south America. They did not care if the loans they made were viable because it didn’t matter to them at all. There was nothing to lose. The money that was repaid became profits, and the money that wasn’t repaid became either someone else’s problem, a repossession, or a fixed (meaning nonnegotiable) debt. That’s what happened in Argentina. A crooked judge made a chunk of Argentina’s debt nonnegotiable when the vultures decided they weren’t going to to along with all of the other creditors who accepted a certain percentage on the dollar (I can’t remember what the percentage was). These vultures demanded 100 cents on the dollar, plus all of the interest on the incredibly risky loans they had made. When only the profit, but none of the risk is an investor’s concern, they’re no longer an investor. They’re a vulture. Argentina subsequently overrode the corrupt judge’s ruling, cleared all of their debt, and are doing just fine now, after a decade of dicking around with the vultures

Greece is still wrestling with the vultures. Since they don’t control their own currency, the EU (Germany, really) decided that they were going to "belt tighten" Greece by implementing austerity measures. Here’s the thing about austerity; when you take money away from people who can’t afford to have it taken away, the whole economy suffers. You can’t shrink the consumer base and think it’s going to work out well for the economy. So Germany, who makes and sells a lot of stuff, austered the shit out of both Greece and Spain. And predictably, there were far fewer people in Spain and Greece who had the money to buy Germany’s stuff. Neither Greece nor Spain have really "recovered" financially, despite the pain that was foisted on the poorest among them. Who could have seen that coming?

Anyway, back to the newly elected government. They were elected on a platform of ending austerity and renegotiating the debt, which is exactly what fucking needs to happen in order for them to ever recover. I don’t think that Merkel is going to be as big an obstacle to all of this, as some people think. She did fuck Germany a little with the loss in sales with the austerity crap she insisted on. No, the big showdown is going to be between the Greek government and the Wall Street vultures. Needless to say, I’m rooting for Greece.

Here’s the thing; you can’t be allowed to do business without accepting any liability for your risks. Some people think that the homeowners, and the governments are to blame for over borrowing. Those people would be republicans, libertarians, or idiots. But I repeat myself. This would be like putting a box of cookies out on the counter and blaming the children who ate them all for being irresponsible. Of course they ate the cookies. They’re not in charge of cookie portioning. Knowing how many cookies should be consumed is not their area of expertise any more than knowing how much money to borrow is the expertise of the borrower. No, that’s the job of the bank. And when the bank is spinning a load of crap telling you that you’re totally within reasonable parameters of debt, you listen to them because that is their area of expertise and you want the money. There is no reason to become a subject matter expert when the experts are telling you that you can have what you want. Creating amortization tables for debt is not something that most people know, or should be expected to know how to do. It’s incumbent on the person with the cookies to determine how many cookies they should give out. I cannot believe this needs to be explained. When a kid pukes from eating too many cookies, the bank needs to clean that shit up. They overloaded Greece with debt, and they should write down their losses.

Not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because it’s the right thing to do for you. Why you? What do you have to do with the debt in Greece, or your neighbor’s upside down mortgage? When Greece or your neighbor are working their assess off to pay the vultures with their money, they’re not putting money into the economy, which puts your job in jeopardy. Let me put it to you another way: paying off the vulture debt means giving your paycheck over to the 1% instead of to the 99%. That’s how this fucking income inequality happens. The dumbest and the greediest among us will have you believe that you need to buck up and bootstrap all of your money over to the people who stacked the deck against you.

That’s bullshit. The 1% will not own a full fifty percent of all of the global wealth this year because they’re all that. This happens when the game is rigged, and anyone with an iota of sense can see that.

So I say, GO GREECE! We need your money more than the vultures do so go get em!

Trickle Down Bites The Dust

January 22, 2015 by Bitchy

We have what might be the final blow to the ridiculous economic theory that Ronald Reagan made fashionable. The last thirteen years of the lowest effective corporate tax rate made it clear that trickle down is bullshit. But if that wasn’t enough evidence for you, we have the final nail in the trickle down coffin (it was your coffin by design). The plummeting gas prices have given us decisive data to demonstrate that economies grow from the bottom up.

Let’s go through it. According to gasbuddy.com, we’ve been seeing a steady drop gas in prices since last June. CNBC just published a story detailing what the drop in prices means in terms of monthly savings, as well as what people are doing with those savings. The data was collected by Cardlylics, a company that tracks your credit card usage and sells those analytics to different brands. According to their data, the average savings per person was $18.00 per month.

What did Americans do with that money? They spent it. Here’s what they spent it on:

2 gallons more per month of gas
10.3% increase in e-commerce
8% increase in fast food
6.8% increase on full service restaurants
6.2% increase on home and garden improvements
5.7% increase in grocery spending 4.5% increase in auto service and products
3.7% increase in quick serve light fare
3% increase in health and beauty
1.4% increase in bars

Americans actually spent more money than they saved on gas. They spent $27.00 per week. This is what people refer to when they poll "optimism" about the economy. Perception is in fact reality to some extent.

These increases in spending increase what is referred to as "economic activity". Economic activity is (for example) the total impact on the economy when you buy an extra loaf of bread. That includes the jobs created (stock clerk, truck driver, farmer, etc). This is what economists mean when they tell you that every $1.00 spent on food stamps creates $1.72 of economic activity. Every dollar that you spend helps to create demand, which creates jobs.

Here’s what does not create economic activity:

giving a millionaire $18.00 per month

They’ve got a few million in the bank already, and therefore have no immediate need to spend the $18.00 so giving it to them created no economic activity since it ends up in an offshore bank (or any bank).

Here’s what doesn’t create a job:

a tax cut to a corporation whose demand hasn’t increased enough to warrant hiring more people

The only circumstance under which a company hires more people, is when demand dictates that they need more bodies to keep up with that increased demand.

All that bullshit republicans have sold you about tax cuts for the "job creators" is crap designed to get you to support their greed. That crap that you were told starting on January 21st, 2009 about how government needs to reign in spending during a recession is crap. When you don’t have any money, and your neighbor doesn’t have any money, and Mitt Romney is keeping all his money in the Cayman Islands, the spender of last resort is the government. Recessions are precisely the time when the government needs to spend money on social programs to help you create some economic activity which keeps your neighbor employed. And when the government is borrowing at a 2% interest rate (that’s where it was before the republican shut downs), it’s complete madness to suggest that they shouldn’t borrow to keep money in your pocket.

Trickle down was always a crock of shit, but now it’s a demonstrable crock of shit. Believe your own lying eyes instead of your own lying politician or billionaire.

Civil Asset Forfeiture

January 20, 2015 by Bitchy

If you’re not familiar with what civil asset forfeiture, let me fill you in because it’s pretty bad. Civil asset forfeiture is an Orwellian term that refers to the government taking your stuff and keeping it. This isn’t a new thing. It’s been around for centuries, but the Reagan and Bush 2.0 administrations put it on steroids. Civil asset forfeiture is when cops of any flavor (state, or local) find your stuff during a search, and keep in. It doesn’t matter if you’re guilty of anything.

So let me walk you through it with a scenario. Your house is a suspected meth lab, and the police successfully manage to get a warrant to search your house. So the cops come in, search your house and find nothing related to meth production, or any illegal activity drug or otherwise because they got the wrong house. But they do find $50,000 in cash under the floorboard in your kitchen. There’s no more reason to believe that you obtained the cash illegally, as there is to believe you’re a paranoid survivalist who doesn’t trust the banks. But the reason for the cash being under the floorboard is irrelevant. It could have been in a safe in your bedroom. The police can just take it. This is called "civil asset forfeiture", not to be confused with "criminal asset forfeiture". Criminal asset forfeiture would be if they found the money and the meth lab in your house in which case, your stuff is clearly a product of your criminal activity, and that’s why they’re taking it. I think that the fact that they actually have a different term for when they take your stuff when you’re not a criminal is pretty telling.

We haven’t gotten to the really outrageous part yet. When cops take your stuff, you have virtually no hope of getting it back. In a civil asset forfeiture case, the state proceeds with a case against your stuff. The cases are actually against the money so United States vs. $32,820.56 is an actual case. You can read about the case here. Or there’s the comical sounding United States v. Approximately 64,695 Pounds of Shark Fins. Nope, I’m not making that one up either. Because the case is against the stuff, you’re a third party who is tasked with proving that your stuff is innocent of all criminal involvement. I’m not kidding. Proving that your stuff is "innocent" can be difficult and expensive. You have to spend money on a lawyer to prove that your money wasn’t gotten through criminal means.

As if all of that weren’t bad enough, the government is incentivized to take your stuff. Police forces all across the country actually add your stuff to their budgets because they want to buy nice things for themselves with it. Did I mention that they get to split the proceeds with the federal government? This is a lovely practice called, "equitable sharing". Since 9/11, local and state cops have equitably shared 2.5 billion dollars from just motorists and warantless searches. So if you get pulled over because a cop thought he smelled marijuana coming out of your car, and finds $20,000 in cash while unsuccessfully searching for the pot, the cop gets to take the cash. Let me rephrase that; the cop needs to take the cash because his police force is holding a fundraiser to buy that up armored hmmwv that they need in case peaceful protests break out in their town of 6,000 residents.

The Supreme Court actually gave their blessing on all of this in 1996 in a lovely case, Bennis v Michigan. This one is really going to steam your beans. Detroit police arrested John Bennis after observing him engaging in sexual activity in his car, with a prostitute. The state subsequently decided that they wanted to take the car that this heinous crime was committed in cause, you know, fundraiser! Anyway, Mrs Bennis challenged the forfeiture because she was a co-owner of the car and her life was already fucked up enough by learning that her husband was paying for hookers, that she didn’t need to lose a car on top of everything else. Well, Tina Bennis got to experience the joy of being reminded of her husband and the hooker for years, as the case worked its way up to the Supreme Court. The conservative Rehnquist court agreed that the state had a right to take the car. By the way, the dissenters were Ginsberg, Stevens, Souter, and Breyer. You know, the liberals plus Stevens. But I digress. Why an

I writing a piece about civil asset forfeiture now? Because that fascist jack booted thug, Eric Holder has barred local and state police forces from taking your stuff except in a few cases. He carved out some exceptions for illegal firearms, ammunition, explosive devices, and property associated with child pornography. This is the only move I can think of that has ever actually reigned in government in my lifetime. If anyone can think of anyone else, please share because I can’t think of any.

The irony is that this nearly unheard of shrinking of government powers was done by a jack booted thug, appointed by an America-hating Kenyan usurper. Both democrats who did the opposite of what two republican presidents did. That’s right, Reagan and Bush 2.0 made civil forfeiture the new black during their presidencies cause, "war on drugs!" and "terrorists!"

Yes republicans, the "small government" you so cherish is being given to you, in the only form it’s ever been brought to you, by a democratic administration. The odd thing is that I haven’t seen any right wing media outlets cheering for this. Strange.

Do You Have A Fox News Poopy In Your Pants?

January 16, 2015 by Bitchy

So the world exploded in collective laughter and mockery of Fox News after they had a "terrorism" expert Steve Emerson on to scare the crap out of their audience by telling them about the super dangerous Muslim-only no-go zones. They’re "no go" because if you’re not a fundamentalist Muslim, you aren’t welcome. Here’s the clip that started the whole world’s collective laughter;

Did you catch that? Muslim density! Police don’t go in! A caliphate within a particular country! That was just France, where sectors of Paris have been overrun. The situation was much more dire in England, where all of Birmingham fell. And in parts of London, there are Muslim religious police that beat and wound anyone who doesn’t comply with Sharia law!

This idiocy birthed a hashtag that dominated twitter for a couple of days. #foxnewsfacts. Here are just a couple of my favorite posts that came out of that;

You get the idea. David Cameron even chimed in to call Emerson an idiot.

Emerson then did an interview on the BBC, where he apologized for his "mistake".

He said that it was his bad for not checking his otherwise very reliable source. He refused to share who the source for this absurd information was. He also curiously didn’t know Fox News’ reaction to his completely bullshitty claims about France and England. That was weird, right? Not at all. He didn’t want to tell the public what Fox thought of his make-believe scary Muslim cities within European cities because he didn’t fuck up. He did exactly what Fox instructed him to do; scare the crap out of their audience. Fox’s goal is, and has always been to keep their audience pooping in their pants with fear, so they don’t notice that JP Morgan Chase has a hand in their pocket. Emerson didn’t make a mistake. He did what he was told to do. That wasn’t actually the first time he spewed that nonsense on Fox. He was on Hannity’s show earlier peddling the same crap.

In this clip, he claims first hand knowledge from when he was in Brussels a year earlier, and the police were too afraid to take him into their Muslim no-go zones. Seriously? Other countries who are falling to the Caliphate are Belgium, Sweden, Netherlands, and Italy. The focus on the fear for Hannity’s audience seemed not to be Muslims, but all immigrants and loose immigration laws. One funny part of that clip is when Hannity claims that there’s a prayer rug in every hotel room in Paris. Yes, cause how outrageous is it to put a religious rug, garment, or book into hotel rooms all across a country?

Here’s one thing you need to know about cable news shows; when "experts" like Emerson come on once or twice a month, they’re not employed by the network. In fact, they very rarely get paid to appear. They’re independent of the network, and they’re ostensibly brought on to speak on the topic in which their expertise lies. I’m not sure that this is the case on Fox. Why? Because they had another "expert" on another show who curiously had the same bad information. Here’s Nolan Peterson, another "expert" to talk about precisely the same bullshit scenario that Emerson vomited all over a few different Fox News shows;

Oh, I forgot to mention that this clip was shown on a French tv show, who went on to mock Fox for 6 minutes. When the first #foxnewsfacts broke out, I said that Emerson wasn’t going to be reprimanded or banned because he did what he was told to do. The additional segments make that point abundantly clear.

If that wasn’t enough evidence for you, Kenneth-the-page Jindal is going to give a speech in London, in which he doubles down on the bullshit. Oh Piyush, Piyush, Piyush (that’s his real first name). Do you want some of that "he’s a complete idiot" love from David Cameron? Is that what you’re trying to do here? I guess that when he said that the GOP needed to stop being "the party of stupid", he left out the last part, "so that we can escalate to being the party of complete idiots".

This is not a stupid thing that one idiot said on Fox. This is a directive to push a scary story. All of these people didn’t accidentally get the same completely fabricated information. No, they got a memo and they’re going to keep trying to advance this, and other completely fabricated scary stories for as long as they need to because nothing distracts people from the fraud being perpetuated against them by Mitch McConnel, John "tobacco checks" Boehner and Citibank, like the noxious smell of one’s own poopie pants.

I Hope The NYPD Temper Tantrum Lasts

January 4, 2015 by Bitchy

So I came across a story in the (I know, I know) NY Post a few days ago. They took a look at police activity during the course of the week that Pat Lynch’s promised a "slow down" of cops doing their damned jobs. They looked at the week of December 22 through December 29th and compared a few statistics to the same week last year. Here are the things they looked at:

Overall arrests – down by 66%
Traffic citations down by 94%
Summonses for low-level offenses (public drinking, urination, etc) down by 94%
Parking violations down by 92%
Drug arrests down by 84%

When asked what the fuck they thought they were doing, police officials cited "safety concerns" as the reason for the pseudo strike. Safety concerns? While writing parking tickets? Are you worried about accidentally slipping on a discarded bagel, falling on your pen and slicing open your jugular vein?

Well I say BRAVO! I hope they can keep this up for another 3 months or so. Why? I have a few reasons.

For one thing, I’m not interested in wasting resources on drug arrests. I’d prefer that our cops fight actual crime, rather than clogging up the court system with this nonsense. Each time they arrest someone for something like drugs or selling loosie cigarettes, they get to spend half of a shift booking that wanton criminal. So basically, we end up with a cop on the clock, basically standing there with his dick in his hand for 4 hours. That doesn’t really seem to me like it serves the greater good.

Another good thing to come out of all of this is that these bullshit offenses that are in place to generate revenue, rather than keep our city orderly are largely hurting low income people who end up sitting in jail because they can’t afford to bail out. I say great! I don’t need 3/4 of our jail population being comprised of people who couldn’t raise $100 bail for a public drinking offense.

But my biggest reason for wanting this to continue is that it will debunk the unicorn known as "broken windows policing" that some obnoxious mayors had embraced in the past. The purely unproven theory is that if you crack down on low level criminals, you will deter them from becoming more serious, career criminals. Bullshit. From 2001 – 2010, when New York City was broken-stop-and-frisk-windowing, violent crime dropped by 29%. That sounds awesome, only if you don’t think critically and ask for context. If you do a little research, you’ll find out that during that same period of time, big cities that weren’t harassing people suspected of being low level offenders were experiencing much larger declines in violent crime.

Los Angeles – 59% drop
New Orleans – 56% drop
Dallas 49% drop
Baltimore (yeah, the one from The Wire) 37% drop

One piece of data without context is meaningless but the people that want to manipulate you know that most people will take one data point and run with that in order to create a whole ideology behind it. Three months of this pseudo strike should be enough to debunk the theory of broken windows policing, or at least make it seriously questionable. Violent crime will continue to drop. Why am I so sure? Because it’s been dropping steadily all across the country for 20 years now. Regardless of the policing practices, and independent of reductions or increases in police force size, crime is going down. I have no reason to believe that’s going to change. If I’m right, we will not only debunk this vehicle for acceptable racist practices, but we can start looking at how many cops are too many cops in New York City.

I have to wonder if the revenue they’re generating by writing these pointless tickets and making these petty arrests can’t be offset by shedding some salaries, pensions, and civil suit settlements through a reduction in force. So you keep up the temper tantrum, NYPD. Keep disrespecting the mayor and stay on strike while still cashing your paychecks while you can because this childishness may come back to bite you in the ass. And then perhaps you’ll see your fearless leader, Pat Lynch for the small minded idiot that he really is.