Is there room in the market for another print publication? Image from Flikr.com.

Did I just read this New York Times commentary correctly? It says a new quarterly magazine called National Affairs started yesterday (Monday). David Brooks says that National Affairs magazine is meant to continue the work of The Public Interest, a magazine that shut down in 2005.

Brooks writes that National Affairs magazine aims to occupy “the bloody crossroads where social science and public policy meet matters of morality, culture and virtue.” Whew, I am glad they are not in this to make money. The newspaper, magazine and general printed publication industry has been steadily tanking for years — that is, until the recession began, when it took a sharp nosedive.

The one that came before

Apparently mortgage loan restructuring was not an option for The Public Interest, which lasted 40 years, from 1965 to 2005. The Public Interest Closed when the last of the original editors retired. Brooks writes:

Their idea was that the great ideological clashes between socialism and capitalism were in the past. In the age of consensus what was needed was a policy journal that would pragmatically weigh costs and benefits.

It really is a lovely, peaceful idea. Unfortunately, I think humans have shown that they will always be politically polarized. Politicians will always use disdain for the opposing party as a unifying element. But the people running National Affairs magazine have more faith than I do, apparently.

What is at this crossroads?

According to Brooks, the first essay in National Affairs magazine focuses on how we can tackle the recession. Brooks writes:

Creating a new and sustainable middle-class social contract isn’t only an accounting matter. It’s also a question of responsibility.

He says this essay states that the nation’s leaders have made a series of “lavishly unaffordable promises.” Brooks also points out the flaw in logic behind the first essay in National Affairs magazine. The essay says the nation’s leaders should skip special interests and hand power directly to the people. However, Brooks points out this strategy was implemented in California, and now that state’s budget is a total disaster.

Thoughts on National Affairs magazine

With newspapers and magazines shutting down at alarming rates, I think it’s a very bold move for editor Yuval Levin and his colleagues to give National Affairs magazine a shot. Perhaps they should get one of those motivational posters that says “you never fail until you stop trying.”

After all, its predecessor, The Public Interest, didn’t seem to make a whole lot of progress in shaping public policy. In its 20th anniversary edition, James Q. Wilson wrote:

At root, in almost every area of public concern, we are seeking to induce persons to act virtuously, whether as schoolchildren, applicants to public assistance, would-be lawbreakers, or voters and public officials.

Is there no way to control spending?

Brooks points out that we’re not at a point, as a country, where we can decide whether we should control spending, we must decide how to control spending. After explaining all of the catastrophes that resulted from direct democracy in California, Brooks says concentrating power among public-policy professionals doesn’t work either.

So what’s the answer, Mr. Brooks? Apparently, he says, National Affairs magazine’s job is to figure this out. Good luck!

(Photo: flickr.com)

Stop the presses. There is a connection between the racist, inflammatory Obama Joker socialism posters used to protest the president’s plans for the necessary overhaul of the health care system and the lost presidential candidacy of Democratic Congressman Dennis Kucinich. I rather liked the man and would have voted for him if he’d stuck around, but he’s wistful and thinks outside the box. Apparently that makes him an easy target for being labeled “crazy” or “unbalanced,” which is an unjust spin game in itself. As I see it, any politician who would propose the Baseball Fan Protection Act has interesting things to say. Unfortunately he supports squeezing legitimate lenders of payday loans and installment loans via “tightening up” the Truth in Lending Act (TILA), but nobody’s perfect.

First the Obama Joker poster

According to the Examiner, the poster was created by a 20-year-old college student from Chicago, Firas Alkhateeb. He is of Palestinian decent and – interestingly enough – is rather liberal in his politics. But here’s the Dennis Kucinich connection: Alkhateeb says he would have preferred him to Obama. As time goes on, I begin to agree.

“After Obama was elected, you had all of these people who basically saw him as the second coming of Christ,” he said. “From my perspective, there wasn’t much substance to him.”

Which is the same problem I have

The more Obama talks, the more it seems that he’s a promise maker with less drive to make those promises a reality. How can he let the single-payer option go, claiming it is “not the most important thing?” It’s ridiculous. Plus, his recent stance on the Defense of Marriage Act flies in the face of his support for gay and lesbian couples. And what about the wars in the Middle East? Shouldn’t we be close to withdrawing from that quagmire by now?

Alkhateeb is frustrated with Obama, as are many others. That’s why he fired up Photoshop and made a Joker out of the president. Then he posted it to his Flickr page. At that point, someone else unrevealed stole the work and gave it the socialism tag. In Alkhateeb’s assessment (and mine), that’s an “immature” take on what Obama is trying to accomplish with health care reform. But it’s a convenient buzz word that the right can use to frighten the uninformed masses.

So who is Dennis Kucinich?

Congressman Dennis Kucinich of Ohio’s 10^th District has been praised by Ralph Nader as being a “genuine progressive.” He firmly is in support of a single-payer health care system, one for which all Americans have a right to qualify for care. Like President Obama, he recognizes that the current system in place works for only a minority of consumers and a majority of large insurance corporations. As there are far too many who lack coverage altogether and costs continue to rise as corporate greed goes unchecked and Medicare fraud continues to run rampant, Dennis Kucinich is one of those who believe that Americans deserve something he likes to call “Medicare For All.”

Medicare for All

Kucinich, along with Congressman John Conyers (D-MI), introduced Medicare For All as HR 676. This bill would provide citizens necessary care at a high standard of quality, as well as free choice of provider. There would be no co-payments, premiums or deductibles.

Where would the money come from?

Because we know it doesn’t grow on trees. Customers of payday loans and installment loans know this all too well. Funds come from a variety of sources, according to Dennis Kucinich. From Congressman Kucinich’s Web site, they are as follows:

• Savings from a vast reduction of paperwork
• Existing government spending on healthcare
• Savings from rational bulk procurement of medications
• Tax on the top 5 percent of income earners
• A small tax on stock and bond transfers
• A phased-in payroll tax that is less than what employers currently pay on average for less complete employee health coverage

How has this bill been doing?

Dennis and Elizabeth Kucinich (Photo: commons.wikimedia.org)

HR 676 (aka the Conyers/Kucinich bill) “is the signature national health insurance bill currently before Congress,” according to Kucinich’s Web site. The number of political co-sponsors is growing, and there are at least 14,000 physicians and several thousand more nurses who support the measure. Its supporters include 14,000 physicians, several thousand nurses and many others. When Congress considered the most recent national budget resolution, Medicare For All was included among those bills that made up the Progressive Caucus’ “Alternative Budget” resolution. It is very real and could become the driving force behind real health care reform.

Unpopular decisions? He’d make them and make them work

That’s what I think. Check out Dennis Kucinich and see what you think. I have to hand it to him, however. After marrying someone like Elizabeth, surely he could become the President of the United States (see the video). Perhaps she has a soft spot for payday loans and installment loans on the legitimate side of the TILA blind.

Related Video:

Apparently, this is what the healthcare industry does in its spare time (Photo: bedlammagazine.com)

If you live in Los Angeles, you may have seen them already. If you surf the World Wide Web for your news, you’ve likely seen it by now. It’s the Obama Joker poster, seen here. Many people will think this is funny; personally, I don’t find illiteracy and a general lack of reading comprehension to be humorous.

If you’ve seen Heath Ledger’s performance as the Joker in “The Dark Knight,” you know that the Joker’s platform was one of anarchy. He simply wanted to sit back and watch the world burn, as Alfred Pennyworth puts it. He’d sooner set fire to a mountain of money instead of distributing the wealth, simply because he can. Money means little to him, or just as much as a hammer and nails would to someone with a home repair job to do. For normal people, no fax payday loans and cash advances serve a purpose. I do not advocate burning them.

Socialism isn’t anarchy

Governance is order, even if we’re referring to self-government or something else along the lines of libertarianism. The Joker relishes disorder, particularly the pain and confusion it can cause. If the most beneficial type of socialism is geared to keep the most harmful elements of human behavior in check for the good of the whole, then we can easily see that the Joker is not a socialist. He hungers eternally for maximum damage.

No joke – change is needed

A writer for the Examiner wonders where this Obama Joker poster came from. It’s been appearing on freeway off-ramps and underpasses in the Hollywood area of Los Angeles. Some are outraged, others are simply confused (which the Joker would have loved), but what seems quite clear is that this is a protest against President Obama’s movement toward universal health care for Americans.

In general, Obama’s wants health coverage for the uninsured while keeping health care spending in check.

Preparing to battle the misinformation

Sheryl Stolberg and David Herszenhorn report for the New York Times that Obama and Democrats in Congress are entrenching themselves for a major offensive against the campaign of anti-health care reform misinformation. Clearly the machine is broken when it comes to the greatest number of people having adequate or affordable coverage in America, so change is necessary. Yet those who oppose Obama’s plans of late offer little to nothing in the way of change. Or at best, they would suggest stopgap reforms to health insurance while laying off the necessary reform to the health care industry as a whole. Why? Because health insurance companies have deep pockets!

If you need to fill your pockets, no fax payday loans and cash advances are available. Apply here today!

Check your humanity at the door, GOP!

Obama, says the NY Times, wants to make it clear that attacking the entire diseased system will “protect consumers by ending unpopular insurance industry practices, like refusing patients with pre-existing conditions.” Senior Obama advisor David Axelrod says that the president wants to convey that “this is going to give people who have insurance a degree of security and stability, the protection that they don’t have today against the sort of mercurial judgments of insurance bureaucrats.”

Republicans say this will be too expensive to institute, but how do they suggest change without expense? Perhaps they think no change is better, as families continue to suffer? I hope the insurance giants are paying the Republicans well to abandon their humanity.

Inciting to riot, which is in fact a felony

Large health insurance industry trade groups like America’s Health Insurance Plans are calling for sheeple to “confront Democrats at public meetings,” for the sheer purpose of distraction. No healthy debate, just sent people in to make noise and cause a ruckus. I’d hitch my star to such idiocy any day! Seriously, no.

America needs civil conversation. But that conversation needs to be based on fact rather than innuendo. Republicans are mobilizing, attempting to argue that quality of care will go down while costs will skyrocket. Republican Representative Mike Pence of Indiana claims that Obama’s proposed coverage will include “more than $800 billion in new tax hikes” and offer up “harmful cuts” to Medicare. That’s a big one that health insurance industry Republican cronies are using to scare the aging baby boomers. Yet how do those claims gel with the Health Insurance Consumer Protections the White House is promising? They don’t. Somebody’s lying to you here with trumped up statistics.

Speaking of trumped up statistics, consider the source

The status quo is not good enough. It never was. (Photo: southernstudies.org)

There are polls somewhere that indicate that the American public is “growing uneasy” with the debate over reforming health care. A recent New York Times/CBS News survey indicates that Obama still has support, but it is waning somewhat. No doubt the Republican scare campaigns and Obama Joker posters have something to do with that. But let’s consider the discussion in the video below.

Republicans who site statistics that supposedly prove that Obama’s plan will backfire appear to cite the same source each time for their information: the Lewin Group. This is supposedly an independent think tank, but the truth is that the Lewin Group is in fact funded by UnitedHealth Group – one of America’s largest health insurers. Talk about maintaining the status quo! Here’s a tidbit about UnitedHealth Group, courtesy of the Washington Post. It has to do with data used to determine how much (or in this case how little) consumers are reimbursed for out-of-network care:

In January, UnitedHealth agreed to a $50 million settlement with the New York attorney general and a $350 million settlement with the AMA, covering conduct going back as far as 1994.

Settlements and payment of this nature don’t typically burden honesty companies. Republicans, do you seriously want to take your information against Obama’s health care plan from a convicted wrongdoer – from the belly of the beast?

Anti-health care reform Republicans are the real jokers here

And I mean that in the most sickeningly hyper-capitalist way possible. Massive profit, minimal payout – the way of America’s health insurers – was never good enough for America. Now that we have the opportunity to institute change, people make Obama joker posters. Striking idea in clown makeup, but you misunderstand the concept of socialism, the concept of anarchy – and you simply waste the time of people who have brains and know how to use them.

Related Video:

The Obama administration has garnered some praise and faced significant heat for the way in which it has handled cash advance bailouts and faced down executive bonuses. I hope they’re prepared for citizen revolt and the necessity for martial law soon, however.

That’s what they’ll get if the Pay For Performance Act of 2009 legislation makes it through as it is currently conceived. All of you know what will break loose. Clarice Feldman blogs for American Thinker that the United States government wants to regulate ALL pay levels, not just those of executives. She cites Byron York’s recent piece in the D.C. Examiner:

The House Financial Services Committee, led by chairman Barney Frank, has approved a measure that would, in some key ways, go beyond the most draconian features of the original AIG bill. The new legislation, the “Pay for Performance Act of 2009,” would impose government controls on the pay of all employees — not just top executives — of companies that have received a capital investment from the U.S. government. It would, like the tax measure, be retroactive, changing the terms of compensation agreements already in place. And it would give Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner extraordinary power to determine the pay of thousands of employees of American companies.

The measure is not limited just to those firms that received the largest sums of money, or just to the top 25 or 50 executives of those companies. It applies to all employees of all companies involved, for as long as the government is invested. And it would not only apply going forward, but also retroactively to existing contracts and pay arrangements of institutions that have already received funds.

In addition, the bill gives Geithner the authority to decide what pay is “unreasonable” or “excessive.” And it directs the Treasury Department to come up with a method to evaluate “the performance of the individual executive or employee to whom the payment relates.

Bailed out? Big Brother controls your pay rate now!

Boehner

Republicans are once again throwing around the s-word — that’s right, socialism.

Of course, the rhetoric is aimed at President Barack Obama’s budget plans. With $410 billion dedicated to spending on government programs and a push for universal health care, it’s to be expected.

Harsh words

It’s been shown already that Democrats have control in congress. The stimulus bill passed without a single Republican vote in the House. So Republicans know that if they want to win a fight, they have to pull out the big guns. And it shows.

John Boehner, Republican leader in the House of Representatives, on Friday called Obama’s new budget proposal and recently passed economic stimulus plan “one big down payment on a new American socialist experiment.”

Loud voices, minimal effect

It’s likely that the Republicans’ ranting won’t amount to much as far as blocking the budget from passing. After all, the gigantic economic stimulus package passed with only three Republican votes.

Every little bit

But there were those three, and it needed those three to pass. From my point of view, it seems the “socialism” battle cry is aimed at making sure that every single Republican is on the same page regarding the budget.

And it appears it might be working. Those three Republicans who voted for the economic stimulus package have already expressed reservations about the budget proposals.

Tug of war

No one on either side of the aisle is denying that the budget plans are expensive. Some Democrats are showing reservations, too.

“While President Obama inherited much of the deficit he’s battling, his budget has eye-popping numbers, and its size and scope concern me. In particular, I’m not sure raising taxes is the best way to go in these times,” Democratic Senator Ben Nelson said.

Predictions

Nelson

As we all know, the budget will go through plenty of changes before it’s passed.

I predict we’ll see a situation similar to what happened with the stimulus package. The president’s version was $825 billion. The Senate version ended up being $838, and the version the House signed off on was $819. The final, signed, sealed, passed version was considerable less than both of those, at $787 billion.

Payday loans are for living. Zombie banks are mythological husks of a dying economy… right?

Greg Robb of MarketWatch reports that Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve are denying that the government has seized control of any banks, or that this will ever be necessary. There is no such thing as “zombie banks,” he says. The term “zombie” as it applies to banks, says Robb, indicates that a bank still exists but is only alive because the government has taken complete control.

“That is not an accurate description” for top U.S. banks now, says Bernanke. “They all have substantial franchise value. They are all lending — all active. All have substantial international franchises.” In particular, Bernanke objects to zombie terminology. Perhaps because it implies there no control over the institutions. They lumber along, much like a spastic denizen of the walking dead – with the prerequisite motor skills of a lump of Jello.

Pumping up dead profit margins

Just how damaged American banks are right now is uncertain, as rumors of mounds of toxic “off-book” debt won’t go away. Things still look grim, despite the fact that Presidents Bush and Obama have signed off on pumping billions into them for “partial” ownership stake. There may be much more pumping up to come. How much is anyone’s guess. A loan until payday, anyone?

As always, the idea of nationalization is avoided like so much necrotic tissue. Bernanke insists it would do more harm than good,  “destroying the franchise value and creating high legal uncertainty.” He believes the Fed has enough supervisory oversight to get banks to do what the government wants to create profit.

But does the government have the power?

According to Robb, regulators do not have clear authority to shut them down. “We’re following the law. We just can’t go shut down a bank … that meets capital standards,” Bernanke said. Yet he acknowledges the need for serious, immediate action. “The implications for market confidence would be enormous.”

At some point, Bernanke believes that private capital will come out of hiding and return to banks. When America gets there, the economy may live and breathe again. Until then, consumers can rely upon payday loans in emergencies and banks can struggle to re-enter the living, waking world.

Don’t count on it

Have you ever heard of “planned obsolescence?” Essentially, mass-produced products are designed to either become obsolete or non-functional after a certain amount of use. This is very useful to the party that controls the means of production, as it creates a never-ending stream of demand for their products after things fall apart.

Things are falling apart now, America

Planned obsolescence has historically played a huge role in the American automobile industry. General Motors, one of America’s “Big Three” auto makers, has consistently operated under the principle of “What’s good for GM is good for America.” While this may have been appropriate during World War II, when GM’s involvement in the defense effort provided many jobs for hard-working civilians, it is an antiquated idea now. What’s “good for GM” may no longer be good for the American people.

For a lighter look at planned obsolescence in action, check out this classic 1940 short film, “Hired!” This is actually Part 2 of the film, but you’ll get the idea. The disposable punch line comes around at about 8:04 – these auto salesmen are hoping to sell a gentleman his next 10 cars. You’d need a heck of a fast cash advance for that!

Consumers are wiser now

They’ll buy sturdier, more economical foreign cars. And despite the current call for greener vehicles with lower emissions, America has taken a rather lackluster approach to this over the years. Don’t expect this to change anytime soon, as building big trucks and SUVs is the “American way” that has enabled the CEOs of America’s big auto makers to become obscenely rich.

The CEOs will take down America to save their own skins

As film director Michael Moore recently said on “Larry King Live,” the Big Three CEOs have no real interest in the capitalist ideal. “Go Capitalism! Free Market! Free Enterprise!” Really? It seems that the handout you’re crying to the government for - $25 BILLION – is their own Socialist safety net. Is what’s good for GM still good for America?

Perhaps not.

You’d think companies like GM, Ford and Chrysler that were losing money hand over foot would make the right kind of adjustments into order to right the ship. Right?

Wrong. Mass layoffs are imminent, yet the Big Three CEOs refuse to work with the government for the benefit of the American people. Didn’t Spock say that “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few?”

Capitalism doesn’t work if it means the rich get rich and the poor get trampled

When individuals are ruled by impersonal, irrational abstractions that make up a capitalist system in its purest form, the little people lose. People will be laid off because the CEOs don’t want to give up this kind of money:

• GM CEO Rick Wagoner: $5,000,000 per annum total salary, with the potential to receive a $15,000,000 golden parachute
• Ford CEO Alan Mulally:$22,000,000 earnings the past year
• Chrysler GEO Robert Nardelli: $22,800,000 total earnings

They are being paid this kind of money while workers are being laid off. While they are begging the government for a $25,000,000,000 handout. Cash advance loans, but without that “loan” part written into the deal.

How much money are the companies losing while CEOs sop up cash?

According to Moore when he was on with Larry King:

• Ford: $2,000,000,000
• GM: $39,000,000,000
• Chrysler (not mentioned by Moore): $662,000,000 in the second quarter of 2008 alone!

The end of capitalism as we know it?

And I think, really, what we’re seeing now — with them, with the banks — we’re seeing the end of capitalism. The end of capitalism as we know it and I say good riddance. It hasn’t helped the people or the planet.” – Michael Moore on Larry King Live, Wednesday, November 19th, 2008

Are you listening, government? We can’t give $25,000,000,000 to men who will use it to give themselves great bonuses, vacations, bigger jets and biggers yachts. We have to take a stand now.

Mr. Moore suggests that Obama step in as President Franklin Delano Roosevelt did during the Great Depression and WWII. He told the automakers what to do: build what America needed. Today, if the automakers can employ their workforce in the service of bettering mass transit, hybrid vehicles and more things that will help improve this country’s infrastructure, we’ll be on the road to recovery.

That’s a cash advance in the direction of a modified form of Socialism that the people of this nation can use. A strong nation is what we need. By repairing the economy and our infrastructure, we will achieve. That’s the American way.

In President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Annual Message to Congress on January 6, 1941, the Democratic icon delivered his famous “Four Freedoms” speech. In addition to the essential freedoms of speech, worship and freedom from fear of war, Roosevelt outlines an economic idea that Democrats still carry into battle. It is their blessing and their burden, once which current Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama knows all too well. In Roosevelt’s words:

The third is freedom from want – which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants-everywhere in the world.

What does it mean to be free from want?

In order to frame the answer to this question, and eventually lead into a discussion regarding payday loans, consider what was happening in the United States when FDR outlined the “Four Freedoms.” The country had just recently emerged from the Great Depression, and the general populace was afraid that loved ones would be sent abroad to fight in World War II. Patriotism was high, but much uncertainty about the state of world affairs hovered above, ominous dark clouds sounding out a warning in blasts of thunder.

This “freedom from want” is clearly economic in nature. A “healthy peacetime” meant prosperity, where the free market economy granted businesses the tools to compete and thrive. Credit began was beginning to flow again, and consumer confidence was on the mend. If the words of FDR’s campaign song “Happy Days Are Here Again” weren’t completely in line with the state of America at the time, they weren’t too far off.

But not everyone was free

Women and minorities in America weren’t quite so lucky. When economic prosperity began to take hold in the 1950s under President Dwight Eisenhower, the underrepresented continued to face grave injustice. This was before the days of the fight for payday loans. In the words of Martin Luther King as recorded in his “Letter from Birmingham Jail“:

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

Enter Obama

It isn’t hard to argue that Barack Obama is the most eloquent and engagingly popular African-American statesman to blaze across the American consciousness since Martin Luther King. In many ways, he carries on King’s ideals, as well as the policies of Franklin Roosevelt, who is on the short list of the most beloved Democratic presidents in American history.

Obama is very much a candidate who favors a government of and for the people. He seeks to make it easier for people to get involved. He favors what he has at times called an “iPod government” that can achieve its aims by presenting choices more simply. For example, Medicare would be required to present its prescription drug plans more clearly, to cut down on the number of people who sign up for a more expensive plan than they need.

Easy socialism. Not that there’s anything wrong with that…

Such a government would be one of “ease, convenience and usability.” he said, came from a couple of sources – his time as a community organizer in Chicago, where he frequently saw people struggle to understand their economic choices, and his own experience analyzing his own 401(k) plan. This ease of use is Obama’s intended path toward a country that is both free from want – borrowing Roosevelt’s ideal – and guided by a sense of social justice for all, in the spirit of Martin Luther King.

Under Obama, freedom from want and the need for social justice shall be the path on which the people may walk. When it comes to the economic choices to help them get there, the operative word is indeed choice. That is why, when it comes to economic choice, Barack Obama supports the consumer lending option known as payday loans. To be continued in PART II !