Puget Sound Liberals Weekly Newsletter #202
Enhancing Freedom, Opportunity and Cooperation in
Through informing and networking Liberals and Liberal Organizations.
Our vision is hundreds of thousands of well-informed
Our Website Our Editor To Unsubscribe Table of
Contents * Featured Articles Calendars of Events Communication with Our Members Opportunities Petitions Commentaries from Our Members Sharon Abreu: Read This to Understand Controlling Health
Care Costs Eileen Cody: Slate Gordon Wrong about Health Care Reform Rick Bender: Labor Will Only Support Legislators who Support
Worker’s Rights** Liberals and Democrats Links to the Beef State and Local Links
to the Beef Exposing BIAW’s War against State Government** Featured Advocacy Group: Progressive States Network Nation and World Links to the Beef Comments on Proposal to Reduce Health Care Costs Our Liberal Spirit Our
Political Priorities ·
Fair Clean
Elections and Open Government ·
Fair Taxes and
Competent Spending ·
Investment for
Productivity ·
Quality
Health, Education, Jobs, Income ·
Environmental
Protection and Energy Independence ·
Security and
Equal Rights ·
Justice and
Peace Everywhere ·
International
Cooperation and Leadership Conservatives oppose all of these Let’s
End Our National Nightmare
Let’s
Restore Our American Dream More on Conservative opposition to our
American Dream Washington State’s 5 Major Needs · Federal Funding for Health and Education · Substituting
a Progressive Income Tax · Replacing
Conservative Legislators Quote of the Week Five Minutes of Fame Andy Warhol
Calendar of Events
Thursday, October 29 at 5:30 PM at Town Hall Seattle
(1119 Eighth Avenue, Seattle) - 2nd
Annual Puget Sound Sage Vision for Justice Dinner. $70.
Communication
with Our Members
We May Be Progressing
We May Be progressing with reforms to
reduce obstacles to enabling our state government.
·
Public campaign
financing may be adopted, at least regarding Supreme Court justices.
·
Some type of tax
reform may be adopted to make our tax system fairer and increase state
revenues.
·
BIAW may be
forced to return retro rebate moneys, such that it won’ t have funds to continue
its attacks on state government.
House Speaker Frank Chopp hinted at the
first two. The third may result from
David Spring’s research. I hope that our
newsletter’s promotion of these reforms is partly responsible for their progress.
Opportunities
Useful
Websites: contacts, maps, community organizing tools, and more.
Petitions
Tell
President Obama to attend the Copenhagen global climate meeting to push for
action.
Tell
the EPA to support standards to increase gas mileage for new cars.
Commentaries
From Our Members
Sharon Abreu: Read This to Understand Reducing
Health Care Costs
Letter to President Barack Obama urging four elements
be included in health reform legislation to control costs By Alan M. Garber,
Victor R. Fuchs, Kenneth J, Arrow
Dear Mr. President, As the full Senate prepares to
debate comprehensive health reform legislation, we write as economists to
stress the potential benefits of health reform for our nation’s fiscal health,
and the importance of those features of the bill that can help keep health care
costs under control. Four elements of the legislation are critical: (1) deficit
neutrality, (2) an excise tax on high-cost insurance plans, (3) an independent
Medicare commission, and (4) delivery system reforms.
Including these four elements in the reform
legislation – as the Senate Finance Committee bill does and as we hope the bill
brought to the Senate floor will do – will reduce long-term deficits, improve
the quality of care, and put the nation on a firm fiscal footing. It will help
transform the health care system from delivering too much care, to a system
that consistently delivers higher-quality, high-value care. The projected
increases in federal budget deficits, along with concerns about the value of
the health care that Americans receive, make it particularly important to enact
fiscally responsible and quality-improving health reform now.
In developing our analysis and recommendation, we
received input and suggestions from Administration officials, including the
Office of Management and Budget and others, as well as from economists who
disagree with the Administration’s views.
The four key measures are:
Deficit Neutrality
Fiscally responsible health reform requires budget
neutrality or deficit reduction over the coming years. The Congressional Budget
Office (CBO) must project that the bill be at least deficit neutral over the
10-year budget window, and deficit reducing thereafter. Covering tens of
millions of currently uninsured people will increase spending, but the draft
health reform legislation contains offsetting savings sufficient to cover those
costs and the seeds of further reforms that will lower the growth of spending.
Deficit neutrality over the first decade means that, even during the start-up
period, the legislation will not add to our deficits. After the first decade,
the legislation should reduce deficits.
Excise Tax on High-Cost Insurance Plans
The Senate Finance Committee’s bill includes an excise
tax on high-cost health insurance plans. Like any tax, the excise tax will raise
federal revenues, but it has additional advantages for the health care system
that are essential. The excise tax will help curtail the growth of private
health insurance premiums by creating incentives to limit the costs of plans to
a tax-free amount. In addition, as employers and health plans redesign their
benefits to reduce health care premiums, cash wages will increase. Analysis of
the Senate Finance Committee’s proposal suggests that the excise tax on
high-cost insurance plans would increase workers’ take-home pay by more than
$300 billion over the next decade. This provision offers the most promising
approach to reducing private-sector health care costs while also giving a much
needed raise to the tens of millions of Americans who receive insurance through
their employers.
Medicare Commission
Rising Medicare expenditures pose one of the most
difficult fiscal challenges facing the federal government. Medicare is
technically complex and the benefits it underwrites are of critical importance
to tens of millions of seniors and Americans with disabilities. We believe that
a commission of medical experts should be empowered to suggest changes in
Medicare to improve the quality and value of services. In particular, such a
commission should be charged with developing and suggesting to Congress plans
to extend the solvency of the Medicare program and improve the quality of care
delivered to Medicare beneficiaries. Creating such a commission will make sure
that reforming the health care system does not end with this legislation, but
continues in future decades, with new efforts to improve quality and contain
costs.
Delivery System Reforms
Successful reform should improve the care that
individual patients receive by rewarding health care professionals for providing
better care, not just more care. Studies have shown that hundreds of billions
of dollars are spent on care that does nothing to improve health outcomes. This
is largely a consequence of the distorted incentives associated with paying for
volume rather than quality. Health care reform must take steps to change the
way providers care for patients, to reward care that is better coordinated and
meets the needs of each patient. In particular, the legislation should include
additional funding for research into what tests and treatments work and which
ones do not. It must also provide incentives for physicians and hospitals to
focus on quality, such as bundled payments and accountable care organizations,
as well as penalties for unnecessary re-admissions and health-facility acquired
infections. Aggressive pilot projects should be rapidly introduced and
evaluated, with the best strategies adopted quickly throughout the health care
system.
As economists, we believe that it is important to
enact health reform, and it is essential that health reform include these four
features that will lower health care costs and help reduce deficits over the
long term. Reform legislation that embodies these four elements can go a long
way toward delivering better health care, and better value, to Americans. Sincerely,
Dr. Henry Aaron, The Brookings Institution
Dr. Kenneth Arrow, Stanford University, Nobel Laureate
in Economics
Dr. Alan Auerbach, University of California, Berkeley
Dr. Katherine Baicker, Harvard University
Dr. Alan Blinder, Princeton University
Dr. David Cutler, Harvard University
Dr. Angus Deaton, Princeton University
Dr. J. Bradford DeLong, University of California,
Berkeley
Dr. Peter Diamond, Massachusetts Institute of
Technology
Dr. Victor Fuchs, Stanford University
Dr. Alan Garber, Stanford University
Dr. Jonathan Gruber, Massachusetts Institute of
Technology
Dr. Mark McClellan, the Brookings Institution
Dr. Daniel McFadden, University of California,
Berkeley, Nobel Laureate in Economics
Dr. David Meltzer, University of Chicago
Dr. Joseph Newhouse, Harvard University
Dr. Uwe Reinhardt, Princeton University
Dr. Robert Reischauer, The Urban Institute
Dr. Alice Rivlin, The Brookings Institution
Dr. Meredith Rosenthal, Harvard University
Dr. John Shoven, Stanford University
Dr. Jonathan Skinner, Dartmouth College
Dr. Laura D’Andrea Tyson, University of California,
Berkeley
Eileen Cody and Karen Keiser: Slate Gordon Wrong
about Health Care Reform
Published by Seattle Times on 11/20/2009
Former Sen. Slade Gorton’s recent guest commentary in
The Seattle Times erroneously argued that the health-care reforms being debated
in Congress would raise premiums and hurt families. His most misleading claim is that health
reform will cause insurance premiums to increase 53 percent for individuals.
Without reforms, premiums would likely increase more than 100 percent over the
next decade. They’ve already gone up more than 100 percent since 2001. When health reform is enacted, reduced
administrative duplication, increased competition of a public option and
payment reforms will help control costs. People will no longer see 20- and
30-percent premium increases a year.
Gorton compared the congressional reform proposal to
Premera Blue Cross’ high-deductible individual plan, which provides very poor
coverage. Premera’s plan provides no maternity or prescription drug coverage
and requires a $2,500 deductible. Comparing
the cost of a limited high-deductable plan to a quality, comprehensive
health-care plan is like comparing apples and oranges. An honest comparison
would compare similar plans with similar benefits.
Gorton tried to bolster his case by referring to the
effects of so-called flawed state reforms in 1993, but the legislation was
repealed and never implemented. Scare
tactics have no place at the health-reform discussion table. Karen
Keiser and Eileen
Cody
Rick Bender: Labor Supports Legislators who
Support Worker’s Rights
Published by Seattle Times on 11/20/2009
A SHIFT in the political strategies of organized labor
here in Washington seems to have exposed the reality of The Times editorial
board's corporate agenda: dominance over a subservient work force
["Washington state's labor leaders don't get it," editorial, Nov.
15].
The labor movement makes no apologies for our mission
to help workers find their voice in the workplace. We will continue to be a
leader supporting progressive politics that give rise to better conditions for
workers, including a strong minimum wage, defined benefit pensions, quality
affordable health care, and safety in the workplace. We believe that our fight is even more
crucial in the face of the shaky moral compass with which business directs
itself today. The huge disparity of income rising from the obscene salaries of
executives, the collapse of the financial industry, the structure of corporate
greed, and the destruction of our middle-class security exposed the business
mantra — the end justifies any means, no matter who gets left behind.
Our political involvement is a way to inject fairness
into the process. For years the Democratic Party stood beside us in our quest
to help workers prevail over corporate interests. But over the past few years
the Democratic caucus has watered down its positions on worker rights, and has
tossed aside its responsibility to stand strong for the little guy. We refuse to join them in the race to the
bottom. We believe that what we have here in our state is good for workers and
good for business and we won't give up our fight to keep it that way.
The Times is out of touch with the reality of the
business climate here in Washington State. At the national level, we have
consistently been recognized as a great place to do business. But locally, the
business community and its lobbyists in Olympia ignore those high rankings and
instead want our Legislature to follow South Carolina's lead. South Carolina's low wages and lack of
unionization were the primary lures for Boeing when the company chose to locate
its second 787 production line there. If business climate had anything to do
with it, the choice would have been different.
In the same Forbes Magazine poll, which ranks
Washington as the second-best state in the nation for business, South Carolina
was ranked 26th. The unemployment-insurance system in South Carolina — the
linchpin of survival for a laid-off worker — is bankrupt. The education system
ranks near the bottom of the nation. And when reading about scandals from the
offices of South Carolina's governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general,
it seems the state's political leadership is bankrupt as well.
This is not the path that we at the Washington State
Labor Council choose for the workers of our state. That is why we have made a
change in our political program — why our affiliates have opted to evaluate our
legislators according to how they champion the rights of working people — not
merely by the "D" or "R" next to their names. And that is why we will support champions of
our values instead of giving in to corporate dominance over a subservient work
force. Rick Bender, president, Washington State Labor Council.
Liberals
and Democrats
Government Watch
Also go to Whitehouse.gov.
Health Care Reform
The
Senate procedure is to first get 60 Senators to vote to allow consideration of
the bill crafted by Speaker Harry Reid. This
occurred Saturday evening when 60
Senators voted to allow consideration of the bill. For
more. Then various amendments will
be discussed and voted upon, with the Republicans doing everything they can to
delay the process. Hypocritical
Republicans who complain about increasing government deficits passed the
Medicare Part D bill which increased government deficits more. Read
some of the provisions in the bill that will now be considered. Hopefully before Christmas break, 60 Senators
will vote for cloture to end a Republican filibuster. Then at least 50 Senators must vote to pass
the bill.
A
bill merging the Senate and house bills will probably not pass until
January. This will break the log jam
which has prevented addressing global warming, labor, glbt, immigration and
other issues.
Stimulating More Jobs
President
Obama will soon hold a jobs summit to consider ideas for further action beyond
the stimulus-recovery package to stimulate more jobs. It is crucial to reduce the number of
unemployed and underemployed and to deal with the other issues noted above to obtain
support in the 2010 election to increase the number of Liberal Democratic
congress members. With more Liberal
Democratic congress members, cloture can be easily approved for stopping
Republican filibusters.
Asia Trip
President Obama achieved
more during his Asia trip than our commercial media pundits gave him credit
for.
Winning without Confrontation
When
threatened by the McCarthy Committee, John Kenneth Galbraith said that one must
counter attack if possible to make the initial attack to expensive. This has become the conventional wisdom, with
which I agreed.
But
President Obama has virtually never confronted any of the parties which seek to
stop health care reform. Instead he has
attempted to co-opt them in passivity at least until too late for them to mount
credible attacks. His strategy has been
quite successful.
However,
I believe that at some point he will have to attack the lobbying system which
protects corporate abusers and which wastes enormous amounts of money on
unneeded military and other expenditures.
One Bridge Too Far
Many
have criticized President Obama for not attempting to implement a larger
stimulus-recovery package and making stronger energy and financial
reforms. But even though his victories
have been slower and weaker than one might like, none of his initiatives have
failed. If he had pushed for more, he
might have failed. I believe that so
far, President Obama’s strategy has served us well. For
more.
Dean Baker Is Vindicated
Dean Baker has
often shown his contempt for those (including the commercial media pundits) who
failed and still fail to recognize the bubble and necessary steps to stop it
from continuing or reoccurring. He has
also made various proposals, which now appear to be gaining support by various
government bodies:
·
Allowing people whose mortgages are
foreclosed to continue as renters (Fannie Mae)
·
Establishing financial regulatory
bodies independent of the Federal Reserve (Christopher Dodd)
·
Reestablishing the Glass-Steagall
separation of commercial and investment banks
·
Breaking up large financial
companies until their parts aren’t too big to fail (Bernie Sanders) More.
·
Regulating derivatives
I hope that
Dean Baker will present a comprehensive description of the reforms that he
would recommend. And indicate the extent
to which various congressional committees, congress members and other
government bodies are considering or supporting these reforms. Sort of a report card on the progress of Dean
Baker’s recommendations.
Here’s the Beef
Health care reform foes repeat same
arguments used against Social Security and Medicare
State
and Local
Our Exposure of BIAW’s War against State Government
Adequate School Funding Requires BIAW Changes
BIAW
Contributes Big Bucks to Conservative Candidates
Some Democratic Legislators Support BIAW
BIAW
Wins. Labor, Education and our Public
Lose.
Lawsuit against BIAW Alleges Violation of Trust
David Spring: It’s Time to End BIAW Corruption
David
Spring: Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna’s $1 Billion Error
David
Spring: BIAW Has Used Tax Money to
Ruin Our Education
David
Spring: Case Law Confirming No Time Limit to Recover Money
David
Spring: BIAW’s Political Consequences
David Spring:
Recovering Retro Money over Time
David Spring: State
Must Recover BIAW Rebate
David Spring: L &
I Ignored Known Rebate Error
David Spring: Is Rob
McKenna Incompetent or Corrupt?
David Spring: Facts
about BIAW and Rob McKenna
Featured Advocacy Group
--------------------------- Progressive States Network
-----------------------------
The Progressive
States Network (PSN) provides coordinated strategic support for a network
of state legislators, their staffs and advocacy groups, in order to equip them
with coherent logistical and strategic advocacy tools necessary for advancing
key progressive economic and social policies.
PSN provides a range of Strategic Services
to legislators and advocates, including drafting legislation, hosting
multi-state conference
calls and Events nationally and in states, issuing Legislative Alerts on innovative
legislation, distributing Issue Updates on key issue areas, and
conducting Action Campaigns to mobilize
grassroots support.
Progressive States Network to
provide day-to-day support to state legislators and community organizations in
each state to help make that happen. This accompanying package of issues is not
designed to be an exhaustive set of policies but instead strategically focuses
on those that can attract support from disaffected voters and thereby
"wedge" those rightwing politicians whose allegiance to campaign
contributors clashes with the desires of many of the voters who put them into
office. And Progressive States as an organization has committed to providing
legislative support to campaigns in states advancing these policies.
· Wage
Standards and Workplace Freedom – assuring
that American workers receive a decent wage and the freedom of speech in the
workplace to stand up for their own interests.
· Balancing
Work and Family – helping create a more family-friendly workplace and
society through better family leave policies, paid sick days, support for child
care and access to contraception.
· Health
Care for All – extending health care coverage to all Americans, while
helping cut costs for those currently receiving health coverage.
· Smart
Growth and Green Jobs – promoting energy independence and job growth
through new transit options, smart development to strengthen our communities,
and new energy technologies.
· Broadband
Build Out and Technology Investments – promoting universal and affordable
Internet broadband, networking energy, health care & education systems,
investing locally in technology jobs, and promoting diverse voices in local
media.
· Tax and
Budget Reform – creating more equity and accountability in state tax
systems, economic development subsidies, and public contracts.
· Fair and
Clean Elections – eliminating corruption in lobbying, establishing public
financing for elections, protecting voting rights, and promoting reforms like
national popular vote to assure that every vote counts.
PSN has also established a State Immigration Project
to help provide legislators with the resources to respond to anti-immigrant
attacks and instead promote policies to more effectively integrate immigrant
families into our communities.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here’s the Beef
To
obtain a balanced state budget, some
taxes may be increased and tax loopholes eliminated.
Governor
Gregoire says state revenue must be increased. For more.
Private
insurers are cheating Swedish Medical Center and other medical care
providers.
Nation
and World
Comments on Proposal to Reduce Health Care Costs
In response to the proposal to include four elements
in health care reform to control costs, someone offered the following
commentary:
For socially conscious health care reform advocates,
the primary goal of reform is to see that every individual receives the health
care that he or she needs. But what has really driven the reform process has
been the concern over the very high costs of health care that have challenged
individuals, employers and the stewards of our government health programs.
In this late phase of the reform process many have
expressed doubts over the adequacy of the various policies in the reform
proposal that allegedly are designed to control health care costs well into the
future. In response, 23 of the nation's most distinguished economists have
signed on to this letter addressed to President Obama expressing support for
four elements that they believe are of critical importance and should be
included in the reform legislation. Let's look closer at these four elements.
Deficit neutrality
The economists call for budget neutrality initially,
to be followed by deficit reduction. Of course they are referring only to the
federal government budget and not to private sector spending. The great risk of
limiting consideration to public spending is that, in the absence of
effectively controlling actual health care costs, the government budget can be
controlled only by shifting the costs to the private sector. Individuals and
businesses certainly do not want to see an increase in their health care
spending, especially while the government is reducing its spending in the later
phase, that of deficit reduction.
Isolating health care spending for budget neutrality while continuing
with deficits in other government programs (war, financial institution
bailouts, interest on the debt, expanding our prison population, etc.) does not
seem just. Appropriate use of debt is fundamental to any business, and there is
no reason that reasonable debt should not be a part of the government's
management of its financial obligations to health care.
That said, our total government debt is the result of prior devious
efforts to reduce revenues (i.e., taxes) in order to force the reduction in
funding of government programs. With inadequate revenues and with exploding
debt, deficit hawks in Congress can be relied upon to underfund crucial
programs such as health care, but theirs is a pathological process since they
only look at spending and refuse to consider revenues.
Those who argue that taxes collected for government health care spending
remove money from the economy are flat out wrong. Health care is one of the
most important and beneficial components of our economy, constituting over 17
percent of our GDP (Gross Domestic Product). Those taxes are moved back into
our economy.
Those who scream that we are being taxed to death need another dose of
reality. The average total tax revenues of OECD nations (Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development) were 35.9 percent of GDP in 2006. For the
United States, the total tax revenue was 28.0 percent of GDP, placing us near
the bottom of OECD nations. (OECD Tax Database - link above)
Suppose we increased our tax revenues to the average
of OECD nations, which would still be far, far short of those nations with more
highly socialized systems. At 7.9 percent (35.9 average minus 28.0 U.S.) of our
GDP of about $13.8 trillion, that would increase government revenues by about
$1.1 trillion in a single year, ten times the amount they are considering for
health care reform. Our entire federal spending is under $3 trillion. We could
eliminate entirely the deficits and provide surpluses while keeping tax
revenues at well below the OECD average, if only the deficit hawks would look
at the revenue side of the ledger.
Excise Tax On High-Cost Insurance Plans
Why would any health insurance plans have very high
premiums? One reason is that insurers use medical underwriting to assess high
premiums for individuals with preexisting disorders. It would be unfair to tax
those premiums for an individual with other burdens, but with adequate
regulatory reform medical underwriting should be eliminated anyway.
The more common reason for high premiums is that the
plan covers other services and products such as dental care, eye care,
maternity benefits, mental health services, and pharmaceuticals. Applying an
excise tax to these premiums would result in eliminating such benefits from the
plans and shifting these expenses to the individual in the form of greater
out-of-pocket spending. The proposals under consideration place a cap on
out-of-pocket expenses for covered services, but that cap is unaffordable for
many, and these expenses would not apply to the cap. Thus they would impose an
even greater financial burden.
Since the excise tax would discourage access to these
important health care services, it should be rejected as the flawed policy
concept that it is.
Medicare Commission
Although the Medicare Commission purportedly would be
to improve quality and value, its primary purpose would be to limit spending
within the Medicare program. Medicare has already served as a leader in
innovations to reduce health care spending, with the private insurance industry
following. In fact, many providers believe that Medicare has been too
aggressive, often resulting in lower reimbursement rates than in the private
sector. Granting the Commission more power to use newer innovations to further
reduce spending will inevitably increase the animosity held towards Medicare by
the providers. A decline in willingness to accept Medicare beneficiaries could
further impair access.
This is not to say that the concept of a commission is
a bad idea. If the commission worked with the entire health care delivery
system in applying potentially beneficial innovations, higher quality and
greater value are possible. If the commission became too aggressive, the
push-back by providers and their patients would moderate their excesses.
If the power of the Medicare Commission were limited
only to Medicare, then there is a potential that cost-cutting aggressiveness
might threaten to convert Medicare into a quasi-welfare program not unlike
Medicaid, a transformation that would not please our Medicare beneficiaries. It
is more likely that the Commission simply would be enmeshed in studies of
relatively ineffectual measures that would have little net impact on costs.
We would need a universal Medicare for all program for
the Commission to have a real impact that would be both beneficial and cost
saving.
Delivery System Reforms
These economists recommend that we reward health
professionals for providing better care. The problem is that we don't know how
to do that. They recommend funding research into what tests and treatments work
and which ones do not, as if that isn't what research has been all about
anyway. Maybe it would be helpful to directly compare expensive patent drugs to
generics, but the overall spending impact will be modest since this year's
patented drugs are next year's generics.
They also recommend bundled payments, accountable care organizations,
plus penalties for re-admissions, hospital acquired infections and other PACs
(potentially avoidable costs). In my message two days ago I already discussed
the reasons why these measures cannot be relied upon to reduce health care
costs (Bundled payments and ACOs - link above).
Is this really the best that these noted economists can come up with?
They have made the same mistake as the politicians. Their perception of reform
is to build on our existing dysfunctional financing system (an egregiously
flawed concept that you would think our leading economists would understand).
If we had an improved Medicare for all we could have 1) deficit
neutrality through global budgeting, 2) rational tax policies that are
equitable, 3) public administration using the guidance of commissions as
appropriate, and 4) our own beneficent monopsony that can realign incentives to
promote the delivery system reform that we need. And, oh yes, every single
person would be included. It doesn't take an economist to understand that.
Here’s the Beef
A
national infrastructure bank would create jobs with little addition to our
government deficit.
More
information on San Francisco’s approach to providing coordinated health
care.
Many companies are
violating worker’s rights.
Stopping
oppression of women today is the moral equivalent of stopping slavery in
the 19th century.
Anti-Taliban
tribal militias are being encouraged, which will reduce need for NATO
troops.
U.S. should give more
assistance to non-corrupt effective governors and ministry officials
instead of to Hamid Karzai.
Our
Liberal Spirit
Our Fleeting Minutes of Fame
One can obtain fame briefly
by doing a very good or a very bad thing, with the latter being much
easier. Is there any reason for Liberals
to seek such fame? If they obtain such
fame, what should they do with it?
There is only negative value
in obtaining fame by doing a very bad thing.
Such as the recent shooting of soldiers at Fort Hood.
If a Liberal obtains fame by
doing a very good thing (such as the pilot who successfully landed a disabled
plane on the Hudson River, the occasion can be used to demonstrate any relevant
values of increased freedom, opportunity, equality, competence and
compassion. Such demonstration should be
subtle, just a gentle framing of the actions which produced the fame.
Recommended Books – See our list of books for liberals
Les Leopold,
2009, The Looting of America. How Wall Street’s Game of Fantasy Finance
Destroyed Our Jobs, Pensions and Prosperity.
And What We Can Do About It.
Unlike most other books about our housing-credit bubble and
collapse that I have reviewed, this book does not present many details about
its history. Les Leopold focuses upon
how fraudulent mortgages were securitized and with unregulated derivatives used
to create a speculative casino. Major
financial companies then lured naïve municipalities, mutual, pension and
charity funds and people with 401(k) funds to take risks in order to obtain
higher returns. Some gained at first,
but then the collapse cost them much of their gains and even much more than
they had gained.
I strongly recommend this
book to under stand the
basics of what happened. Unfortunately,
Les Leopold is not so specific about what should be done: such as
·
a
transactions tax to render much speculation unfeasible
·
restricting
derivatives to protecting from loss
·
increased
margin requirements
·
breaking
up large financial companies and regulating them
separating commercial and investment banks
These reforms would reduce the stock market to enabling investors to recover their money, eliminating the majority of present transactions which are only speculative.