The GOP/T-Baggers have been crying about the “radical” agenda of the evil Obama/Pelosi Kommunist Kabal, and have been doing everything in their power to stop it, ie. filibustering everything in sight.

The Dems, for their part, have made their frustration with the obstructionist Repubican’ts palpable, yet at the same time boast how much they’ve accomplished.  Truly, by historic terms this current Congress and the first half of the first term of the Obama administration must qualify as “transformational.”  Although we’re still in trouble economically, blame for which has not (yet) stuck to this president, the new direction we are heading cements his place in history.

Health care.  That alone would do the trick.  But we also have a student loan overhaul and a boost to Pell Grants, a flawed but first in a generation restructuring of financial regulation, much needed infrastructure investment, shoring up of Medicare, and a new nuclear arms agreement with Russia that would have had Ronald Reagan fans swooning. 

And tax cuts!  Don’t forget tax cuts.  $288 Billion in tax cuts! For the middle class this time.  The Economic Recovery Act (fondly known in Blogtopistan as Stimzilla) really did have something for everyone – except 99% of the Republicans in Congress even though roughly half of the thing was right in line with their supply-side agenda.

So just what are the Republicans running against this year in the midterms?  (They have yet to articulate anything they are “for” in a coherent manner, but they’ve been bitching up a storm about both the status quo and the what the Dems want – what those commies are “for.”) 

Dems: “Can’t get nothing done cuz those damn Republicans won’t let us – but … but … but … Lookie all the crap we got done! Please send cash and reward our accomplishments even though we can’t get anything done cuz we did so much!”

Reps: “Those damn Democrats are screwing everything up and we can’t stop them – even though we’ve filibustered everything we are … FAIL. Please send cash to reward us for doing nothing except trying to stop the Obama/Pelosi agenda, which we can totally do and completely reverse if we gain more seats in the Senate than are up for grabs and get a supermajority to impeach the President which we totally can’t do!”

Progressives: “You guys totally sold us out!”

T-Baggers: “You guys are total sell-outs!”

Media: “If you look closely, you can totally see that the fuzz in my belly-button is more blue than gray, even though my shirt was mauve and …. Look! Shiny!”

Average voter: “Yawn.”

Many Americans assume the new health care reform act will benefit mostly the poor and uninsured and hurt everyone else, according to polls. As Matt Yglesias wrote, “Basically, people see this as a bill that will take resources from people who have health insurance and give it to people who don’t have health insurance.” Those who still oppose the reform say that people ought to pay for their own health care.

We all believe in the virtues of hard work and self-reliance, but these days it’s a fantasy to think that anyone but the mega-wealthy will not, sooner or later, depend on help from others to pay medical bills. And that’s true no matter how hard you work, how much you love America, or how diligently you take care of yourself. The cost of medical care has so skyrocketed that breaking an arm or leg could cost as much as a new car. And if you get cancer or heart disease — which can happen even to people who live healthy lifestyles — forget about it. The disease will not only clean you out; it will leave a whopping debt for your survivors to pay.

And the truth is, we all pay for other peoples’ health care whether we know it or not. When people can’t pay their medical bills, the cost of their health care gets added to everyone else’s bills and insurance premiums. When poor people use emergency rooms as a doctor of last resort, their care is not “free.” You pay for it.

Another common fantasy about medical care is that the “free market” provides incentives for medical companies to develop innovative new drugs and treatments for disease without government subsidy. It’s true that private enterprise is very good at developing profitable health care products. But not all medical care can be made profitable.

For years, the U.S. government has been funding medical research that the big private companies don’t want to do because there is too much cost for the potential profit. This is especially true for diseases that are rare and expensive to treat. An example of a recent advance made possible by government grants include new guidelines for malignant pleural mesothelioma treatment developed by MD Anderson Cancer Center researchers. Another is a blood screening test developed by mesothelioma doctors like thoracic surgeon Dr. David Sugarbaker. The health reform act provides for more dollars for such research, from which even many of the tea party protesters will benefit.

The biggest fantasy of all was that people who had insurance didn’t have to worry about health care costs. But the fact is that in recent years millions of Americans have been bankrupted by medical costs, and three-quarters of the medically bankrupt had health insurance. And yes, insurance companies even dumped hard-working, law-abiding patriots. But the health care reform act will put an end to that, and now America’s hard-working, law-abiding patriots are more financially secure, whether they like it or not.

Gov. Bobby Jindal has signed into law one of the more controversial bills from the recent legislative session, one allowing guns to be carried into houses of worship….[The] bill would authorize persons who qualified to carry concealed weapons having passed the training and background checks to bring them to churches, mosques, synagogues or other houses of worship as part of a security force.

I don’t know about you, but if I know there’s a guy with a gun sitting in the pew behind me, I’ll be skipping services for a long, long, time.

The simple solution to security concerns? Hire an off-duty policeman and be done with it.

Grow up Louisiana.

You can disagree if you like, but if we’ve learned anything from the last two years it’s that you cannot overestimate how b@tsh#t crazy the Republican leadership in Washington really is.

So it might be better to argue that Obama has sold out; but be aware that your protest (non)vote in November may in fact change the course of history — in a very, very bad way.

I won’t be in the history books anyway, only you. Franklin did this and Franklin did that and Franklin did some other damn thing. Franklin smote the ground and out sprang George Washington, fully grown and on his horse. Franklin then electrified him with his miraculous lightning rod and the three of them — Franklin, Washington, and the horse — conducted the entire revolution by themselves.

But the truth is that, when the outcome of the debate for declaring independence still hung in doubt, it was Adams who moved the Continental Congress in the direction of freedom.

This excerpt from the movie captures that moment (followed by a depiction of the first reading of the Declaration of Independence).

I see a new nation ready to take it’s place in the world. Not an empire but a republic — and a republic of laws, not men…

How few of the human race have ever had an opportunity of choosing a system of government for themselves and their children…

My judgment approves this measure and my whole heart is in it. All that I have and all that I am and all that I hope in this life I am now ready to stake upon it.

While I live, let me have a country. A free country!

Happy July 4th and may we keep this Republic we have been given — a republic of laws, not men.

It’s really not that hard.  Paul and Brad and their assorted brethren try to dumb it down for the masses, but too often eyes glaze over at even the mention of marginal rates and unemployment extensions, austerity versus stimulus, deficits and debt, stocks, bonds, markets and credit-default-swaps.

The basics are always the same, whether you’re a Wall Street baron or contemplating a change in your IRA or 401k.  Buy low, sell high.  That goes for investments in real estate, a stamp collection or baseball cards.

My economics professors tried their damnest to confuse and befuddle me with their charts and graphs and technical jargon bordering on a foreign language, but even a child has an instinctive understanding of the basic principle that scarcity leads to an increase in price.  Sandy Koufax baseball jerseys are a rarity and thus you can expect to auction one off for a mint.  However, he only pitched one perfect game, and if you’re planning on bidding on that unique item – the very uniform he wore on September 9, 1965, plan on outbidding the Sultan of Dubai.

The converse is naturally true.  Surplus equals a lower price. It there’s a glut on the market, like what happens when you can poke a hole any old place in the ground and black gold gushers up to the surface (and you manage to collect it instead of just pouring it into the sea), the price goes down. 

A lot of factors go into deflating prices from surplus.  Competition among sellers tends to bid a price lower.  Cost savings from mass production permits an increase in profit, which can be cut without hurting owners/shareholders in order to gain greater market share. (Okay, this is starting to sound like the jargon I used to hate, but bear with me.) 

Economies of Scale also affect prices, where you can afford to buy in bulk at a reduced wholesale cost, divvy the goods up into smaller portions and sell them for more than it cost you per unit originally.  Wall Mart does this on a mammoth scale, but so does your local pot dealer who buys two pound bricks and sells you a couple of joints for the Bon Jovi concert.

In fact, economies of scale, as well as the notion that a surplus won’t last forever leading to price inflation in the market over time, compels an investor to buy items that can be had at surplus pricing before the market reacts.  Some deals won’t last forever.

Grumbling that that things just won’t stay the way they are, Alan Greenspan misses the point, not surpirsingly since from his pampered ivory tower his self-denial and whacked-out priorities always ignore the actual lives in the balance when he ticks off unemployment statistics.  He’s right, though.  Interest rates will not stay as low as they are, and credit capacity (Wall Street Speak for cash available to loan but sitting in a vault instead) will not be as great as it is forever.  But neither will there be a perpetual labor force glut with one in ten of your neighbors looking for work.  At least I hope not.

Right now we have a unique opportunity, a one of a kind, Sandy Koufax jersey moment when it comes to launching this nation into the future or flushing it all down the toilet — missing a once a generation opportunity.  Despite the massive debt rolled up over the post-Reagan era, our government still – miraculously – has excess money it can borrow cheap. 

We can invest in people.  We can invest in jobs.  We can invest in clean energy and infrastructure.  We have a beat up labor force willing and able to work for less, and we can borrow now to pay them knowing they’ll pay back the debt their employment creates with interests if we put them to work in things that will make this nation more efficient, more competitive, more self-sufficient in the future.

Build the Supertrains, the center lane for I-95 all the way from Maine to Miami, the giant windmill and solar farms, hell, even the nuke plants as long as we spend the gazzillion dollars needed to make ‘em safe.  They promised us flying cars, lets build ‘em, and places to park them too.  Tired of your smart phone cutting out as you travel through dead zones in the net?  We can wire the whole nation for high speed internet access, wirelessly.  It won’t be done unless AT&T can figure out how to do it at a profit, or We The People decide it’s worth the investment.  It’ll never be cheaper to do than right now.

Lincoln built the transcontinental railways during the Civil Frickin’ War people — so don’t talk to me about this not being the right time for thinking big.  It was downright bleak during World War I, but we emerged as an economic powerhouse after massive investments in mining and factories, bringing women and African Americans out of the kitchens and farms and creating a modern workforce. FDR pushed through the Alaska Highway during WWII.  Ike built the Interstate Highway system during the hottest part of the Cold War and we paid for it by borrowing and taxing millionaires 80%.

We made this country great through deficits that invested in infrastructure and people, not hand-outs to corporate moguls who we taxed, taxed, taxed instead.

We are, again, a sleeping giant that has been napping for decades.  We CAN do this.  We can if we get off our fat, pampered asses and get to work, insisting our leaders find something for us to do and pay us decently for doing it, ironically, with our own money.

See, economics is simple.  There’s a lot of people who can do a lot of stuff it would have cost too much to do before Bush wreaked the country and put so many workers on the streets.  Right now, you can be bought cheap, cuz there’s a lot of you who’ll do those jobs Americans didn’t want to do.  We need your government to invest in you while you’re cheap.

• Cleveland-Hopkins International Airport
• Parking Facilities
• Solid Waste Collection
• Building Maintenance
• Transit Operations
• Parks Operation and Maintenance
• Libraries
• Public Works and Community Development Services
• Vehicle Fleet Maintenance/Management
• Cleveland Metroparks Zoo Operations and Management

No way, baby. Shareholders want one thing: more profits. And the only way you get that is by generating higher revenues and/or lowering expenses. Nothing else matters.

At least with the present system, if it’s crappy, you can throw the rascals in City Hall out on their ear and put better people in.

Not so with government for the shareholders. You’re stuck with the private, for-profit system UNLESS…you represent a big enough block of shares to toss out the board of directors. That costs money — lots of money — to buy the shares.

So there it is: to get better city services, you have to buy shares AND pay for the services.

OR you can stick with what you have and vote to toss the rascals out. Not necessary to buy shares. Not necessary to pay to vote.
Privatization: Not necessary.

Once upon a time, we actually had government by the shareholders. That’s basically what our country was back in 1789: white property owners had the right to vote. No one else did. That was wrong and, over time, we extended the vote to most everyone else. Now they want to turn back the clock to 1789.

No way.

Apple accused of ‘discrimination’ over iPhone 4

Apple fans flocked…to buy the iPhone 4 after it went on sale on Thursday.

But there have been complaints an antenna in the lower left corner can become masked when held by a left-handed owner, causing a drop in signal strength.

Are you freaking kidding me?

Get a Droid on Verizon. At least you’ll be able to make a phone call. Even with your left hand.

Chris Cillizza:

Petraeus moves from Tampa, Florida — home of U.S. Central Command — to Kabul, Afghanistan. ‘Nuff said.

Anyone know who gets credit for that move? Let me know.