May 25, 2012

My health insurance costs

I am 55 and have put in 21 years of service where I work (public works).
My wife is 53.

We have the ability now to retire except for one thing...health insurance cost.
I have no retirement health benefits except for the ability of staying enrolled at full cost in my workplace's plan.
Since we both have had, and have, medical issues that prohibit us from venturing outside that "umbrella" due to insurance corporations denying us coverage for preexisting conditions.

I am hoping the SCOTUS does not screw up "Obamacare" and that he is reelected with a Dem majority in Congress or else I guess I work until my wife reaches 65?

We own a modest townhome and a bit of savings we do not want to risk by going uninsured.

This country's lack of affordable access to health care is sickening and I am not sure how, even with the reform enacted, that will change too much. I'd love to "get out of the way" and make room for other's at work to move up.


Here is what we are looking at if we retire now...and that cost goes up every year:


Rates for 2012 (per month) based on employee plus 1 dependent; they expire on 11/30/2012:

Retiree

Anthem POS .......$1,986.59

Anthem HMO .......$1,714.64

Kaiser .......$1,538.31

Blue Card (out of area) .......$1,947.25



COBRA

Anthem POS.......$1,305.76

Anthem HMO.......$918.90

Kaiser.......$951.17

Blue Card (out of area).......$2,434.28

May 24, 2012

Crashing the economy

The banksters win either way. If the economy crashes they still win plus with the potential bonus of getting more of their Repub buddies in office because a large section of the American people are willful idiots who listen to FOX and radio talkshows for their views. It's a struggle between the private corporate sector and our dwindling public service sector. 30 years of corporate media's blaming "government" is taking it's toll. The banksters are winning and they won't be denied their profit margins, for their investors, off the backs of our tax dollars.

All the focus by the rightwing on "deficits" when they didn't give a rat's ass about it while running up two credit card wars of choice, tax cuts for the wealthy, and Medicare part D.

Austerity (cutting government) is counter-productive to economic expansion but this is going to be a heavy lift of understanding for the braindead masses to grasp due to the constant barrage of propaganda from the finance/bankster/insurance sectors who own the airwaves and much of our political system.


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May 20, 2012

Private Sector Job Growth Under President and Party 1961-2012

On May 8, Bloomberg News published an article by Bob Drummond about how more jobs have been created while Democrats were in the presidency from 1961-2012. This article, which was also discussed on dailybeast.com on May 10, not only references the recent growth in jobs, which have been less than expected, but also looks at the past. Clinton’s presidency is the main focus when Drummond examines the past. Bloomberg News created a graph like the second one below. However, we wanted to take the news outlet’s idea one step farther. Below you will see a bar chart where the number of private jobs created during each presidency is in sequential form, but separated by party. There is also a pie chart that shows the total number of private jobs created during Democrat and Republican presidencies from 1961-2012.

SOURCE

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May 3, 2012

Financialization and gas prices

http://www.alternet.org/news/155193/how_wall_street_drives_up_gas_prices_--_ripping_us_off_and_killing_jobs/

April 26, 2012

Pat Robertson must be devastated

April 26, 2012

Hague court convicts Taylor of war crimes in Sierra Leone
(Reuters) - A United Nations-backed court convicted former Liberian president Charles Taylor of aiding and abetting war crimes and crimes against humanity, the first time a head of state has been found guilty by an international tribunal since the Nazi trials at Nuremberg.

Taylor, 64, had been charged with 11 counts of murder, rape, conscripting child soldiers and sexual slavery during intertwined wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone, during which more than 50,000 people were killed.

The first African leader to stand trial for war crimes, Taylor was accused of directing Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels in a campaign of terror to plunder Sierra Leone's diamond mines for profit and weapons trading.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/26/us-warcrimes-taylor-idUSBRE83P0J720120426


2009

Pat Robertson Slams Bush On Liberia

By Joel Roberts
Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson accused President Bush of "undermining a Christian, Baptist president to bring in Muslim rebels" by asking Liberian President Charles Taylor, recently indicted for war crimes, to step down.

"How dare the president of the United States say to the duly elected president of another country, 'You've got to step down,'" Robertson said Monday on "The 700 Club," broadcast from his Christian Broadcasting Network.

http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-201_162-562915.html

April 19, 2012

For He’s a Jolly Good Scoundrel

Posted on Apr 18, 2012
By Robert Scheer

How evil is this? At a time when two-thirds of U.S. homeowners are drowning in mortgage debt and the American dream has crashed for tens of millions more, Sanford Weill, the banker most responsible for the nation’s economic collapse, has been elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

~snip~

Weill is the Wall Street hustler who led the successful lobbying to reverse the Glass-Steagall law, which long had been a barrier between investment and commercial banks. That 1999 reversal permitted the merger of Travelers and Citibank, thereby creating Citigroup as the largest of the “too big to fail” banks eventually bailed out by taxpayers. Weill was instrumental in getting then-President Bill Clinton to sign off on the Republican-sponsored legislation that upended the sensible restraints on finance capital that had worked splendidly since the Great Depression.

FULL ARTICLE HERE
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/for_hes_a_jolly_good_swindler_20120418/


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April 13, 2012

To all you Ann RMoney haters:

Cracking the whip on the maids, making sure the nannies have washed and fed the kids, all the while keeping track of the gardeners for the various RMoney estates is more than a fulltime job for Ann.

Have some compassion please you haters.

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April 12, 2012

The "Reagan Rule"

“We’re going to close the unproductive tax loopholes that have allowed some of the truly wealthy to avoid paying their fair share. In theory, some of those loopholes were understandable, but in practice they sometimes made it possible for millionaires to pay nothing, while a bus driver was paying 10 percent of his salary, and that’s crazy. It’s time we stopped it.”

--Ronald Reagan

#!

According to Republicans when Ronald Reagan argued for the Buffett Rule it was a high point in the history of capitalism, but when Barack Obama makes the exact same argument, it is socialism. Why wasn’t it socialism in 1985 when St. Ronnie of Jellybean was advocating for it?

It appears that Republicans have forgotten half of Ronald Reagan’s message. The then president did sell the fulfillment of the American dream through tax cuts, but he didn’t want to cut taxes for everyone. Reagan was also a wealth redistributor. He championed the virtues of lowering taxes for everyone but the super-rich. Ronald Reagan raised taxes eleven times, and in seven of the eight years that he was in office. In contrast, President Obama is the biggest tax cutter in American history.

As Republicans get set to vote on the Buffett Rule, they would be wise to revisit their roots and win one for the Socialist.

http://www.politicususa.com/reagan-buffet-rule/

April 7, 2012

When Jimi played the National Anthem...

...at Woodstock he did it as a veteran (Army Airborne).

When Ted Nugent did it in 2009 on FOX Noise, at the Alamo with Glenn Beck, he did so as someone who left shit in his pants for a week to get out of going to Vietnam.

Tell this to your RW family members and friends but be prepared for head explosions...lol.


just sayin'

April 7, 2012

Bin Laden’s Personal Debt to Bush

Excerpt:

Just six months after 9/11 and three months after bin Laden evaded capture at Tora Bora, Bush personally began downplaying the importance of capturing al-Qaeda’s leader. “I don’t know where he is,” Bush told a news conference. “I really just don’t spend that much time on him, to be honest with you.”

Yet, with bin Laden at large, Bush enjoyed an advantage. He could use the specter of bin Laden as an all-purpose bogeyman to scare the American people. A living bin Laden allowed Bush to create a plausible scenario for additional al-Qaeda attacks inside the United States and thus the justification for Bush to assert unprecedented powers as Commander in Chief.

Bush also cited the continued threat from bin Laden to stampede the American people and Congress into supporting the invasion of Iraq. One of Bush’s key arguments was that Iraq’s Saddam Hussein might share weapons of mass destruction with bin Laden’s operatives. Most Americans weren’t aware that Hussein, a secularist, and bin Laden, a fundamentalist, were mortal enemies in the Islamic world.

Bush kept the American people in line as his administration touched off periodic panics over terrorism by pushing the color-coded warnings up the threat spectrum.

[url]http://consortiumnews.com/2012/04/04/bin-ladens-personal-debt-to-bush/[/url]