Calling the game by its name: the Government Lockout of 2013

The Republican Party has, over the last 40 years, become experts at the art of framing – tailoring your message to the predispositions of the audiences you are trying to reach.  Between Sarah Palin’s oft quoted (and not quite dead) Death Panels, the Tea Party’s continued focus on federal spending as the source of Great Recession (As opposed to the financial dereliction of Wall Street), and the NRA’s outright lying about the Manchin-Toomey gun control bill, right wing politicians, pundits, and interest groups are more then willing to bend their story to inflame passions when they think it will get them a political victory.

Sadly, the Main Stream Media (MSM) seems to have taken a few pages from te Republican playbook as they describe the . . . dereliction of duty  . . . going on in Washington DC at the moment.  The MSM, the Republicans, and even Democrats keep referring to what happens when the federal government runs out of money as a “Shutdown.”

Bollocks.  What is happening now is nothing less then a classic Management Lockout of labor in a dispute.  Except here, federal workers are not being locked out because they (as labor) are demanding better working conditions or more wages (even as a part of the profits).  No, labor is being locked out of doing its lawful work because Management and owners (here the politicians and the 1% who fund their campaigns) no longer agree on what role is whose, and more importantly they no longer agree on what the outcome of the American Political System is supposed to be.

See, the Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare) does two main things.  First, it brings more people into the health insurance system.  This ultimately drives healthcare costs (and profits) down, since more people will benefit from preventive care and from lower cost treatments.  Second, it mandates how that insurance must care for patients, most importantly by removing the bars on preexisting conditions.  Again, that will eat into the profit margins of health insurance companies.

SO the 1% have deployed one group of their manages to do battle with the others.  The result is labor will be locked out, Americans will suffer, and the 1% will NOT get the comeuppance they deserve. 

That is, until the federal government breaches the debt limit ceiling, and markets tank.  When that happens, locking out labor will no longer be a sufficient tactic to keep the 1% in the level of greed to which they wish to become accustomed.

A Quick Thought- America's culture of violence and the. Navy Yard shooting

As more details emerge about the horror of yesterday, a familiar and too sad picture emerges of a man, no doubt exposed to our collective culture of violence, who had a history of using extreme actions(with guns) to attempt to regain "lost respect."

How us that any different then dozens of politicians and pundits -Serious People all- spending weeks demanding the President defend "American Credibility" by bombing Syria.

Washington Navy Yard Shootings

There's an active shooter situation downtown at the Washington Navy Yard downtown. The President will address it in a pre-planned address. Details are still fluid.

Sad to say, but I expect this to be politicized before sunset.

REBLOG The Fisheries Blog: Is the Kiddie Pool Safe? Pollution in Coastal Fis...

Here's some important fisheries science that everyone needs to read.  Why?  simply this - what we as humans do on land affects our oceans, and with a significant portion of our economy depending on healthy oceans, we all need to think long and hard about how we want to proceed.

The Fisheries Blog: Is the Kiddie Pool Safe? Pollution in Coastal Fis...: By Tobey Curtis Do you take your young kids to a daycare or nursery?  These are places where we expect our children to be, at minimum, saf...

What the interwebs coughed up - EconoSpeak: Why Are We Rushing To Get Rid Of Fannie Mae and Fr...

Given the "success" the banks have had in "banking reform" - where their actual illegalities are whitewashed and they have been freed of any obligation to the American People who bailed them out, it's no wonder they want to can off Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.  Those two quasi public entities represent real, openly state-back competition to banks, and if you are BofA and want to get out of 30 year fixed mortgages, you want them off the table.

Turns out that would be economically . . . shortsighted . . . ill advised . . . unwise . . .  at least according to Barkley Rosser:

 Rather then eliminating them or returning them to their semi-private status where they are supposed to make money, increase the degree of state ownership and mandate them to play the roles that they were set up to play in the beginning (and Fannie goes all the way back to the New Deal), to act as backdrops and stabilizers of the US housing market.  Obama has said he wants to preserve the 30-year mortgage, but Harley hints that this may not happen with any of the currently proposed alternatives.  It is indeed the case that most nations lack such mortgages.  It was Fannie Mae that allowed the creation of them.  So, return Fannie and Freddie to their original functions and increase their backing from the state rather than reducing it.  Heck, their positive profits (at least for now) can even help further lower the budget deficit that most Americans do not even know is declining.

Read more at EconoSpeak: Why Are We Rushing To Get Rid Of Fannie Mae and Fr...:

Failing to Connect the Dots Doesn't Mean You Need More Dots - The Excuse War Heats up for the NSA

In the last few sentences of a report on NPR this morning, the Deputy Director of the FBI is attributed this statement regarding the NSA's electronic surveillance programs:

"You have to have the dots in order to connect the dots."

His implication, of course, is that the NSA' massive, unethical, and hopefully unconstitutional electronic surveillance program is necessary in order to gather data that will allow the discovery and foiling of terrorist plots.

Funny, but the 9/11 Commission's report nearly a decade ago stated clearly that the 9/11 attacks (which were waved in America's face again this week by New Jersey Governor Chris Christie) were not stopped because of a LACK of information, but because of a lack of TRUST between federal intelligence and law enforcement agencies that allowed the information in hand to be USED effectively.  So in other words, the dots were there, but the agencies involved - including the NSA - failed to connect them and then to coalesce around a response strategy they could advocate to the White House.

Thus, trying to make sure they don't "fail America" again, they have built a data mining enterprise like no other - which does nothing to solve the problems that led to 9/11.  Now there's some Waste, Fraud, and Abuse that needs Congressional investigating!

A Trickle Down Econimic Question for Conservatives

So, dear economically conservative fellow citizens, this liberal asks a fundamental, fact based question - if CEO pay went up 16% last year and real labor wages continue to decline (in inflation adjusted dollars) as is widely reported in the MSM these days, how is trickle down economics working, exactly?

I'll be waiting for an answer . . . .