I don't know if anyone pays attention to the generic ballot for Congress, but things are looking up lately for Republicans. The aggregate on Pollster.com shows a generic Republican polling only two points behind a generic Democrat; at several polling outfits, notably Rasmussen Reports, Republicans are ahead substantially in the generic ballot. Coupled with the losses Democrats suffered in the New Jersey and Virginia governors' races this month, you could argue that 2010 is shaping up to be a bad year for the Democratic Party.

Okay, comment of yesterday I'm a bit behind, by i on the ball patriot at Naked Capitalism in response to tan Edward Harrison post (internal block quote markers are mine):

Edward Harrison said:

Barack Obama has now come clean about his thinking on why his administration has decided to focus first on reducing the deficit and next on jobs. He fears a double-dip recession will occur if foreigners lose confidence in the U.S. dollar, causing interest rates to spike.

Open Left:

One of the few - and I sincerely stress the word "few" - concrete legislative successes progressives notched in the Republican Congress under President George W. Bush came on the evening of July 26th, 2002, when they humiliated the House into passing a bill sponsored by Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) banning federal contracts from going to companies that engage in tax "inversions." These are the schemes whereby a corporation that is based in the United States buys a P.O. box in Bermuda and uses it to legally avoid paying American taxes.

Via Avedon Carol, we find that Blue Cross has told regulators one thing and stockholders another. I guess they were too busy dumping stock to get their story straight.

As a testiment to Delaware's secrecy, I barely knew it existed.

Reuters:

Move over Switzerland. The tiny state of Delaware beats the Alpine country in a contest for the most secretive financial jurisdiction, a tax justice rights group said on Saturday.

The United States, led by the eastern seaboard state, took in $2.6 trillion in deposits from non-resident corporations and individuals in 2007, according to a survey of financial jurisdictions analyzed by the Tax Justice Network.

Susie and Atrios have both cried foul on this:

WASHINGTON — Faced with anxiety in financial markets about the huge federal deficit and the potential for it to become an electoral liability for Democrats, the White House and Congressional leaders are weighing options for narrowing the gap, including a bipartisan commission that could force tax increases and spending cuts.

This is disaster capitalism:

step one, pervert the financial system into a kleptocracy, steal everything in sight

step two, use the inevitable crisis as a way of destroying democracy and steal what is left

I think "Department of all the Damn Gall" is an understatement.

AP:

The Food and Drug Administration has allowed drugs for cancer and other diseases to stay on the market even when follow-up studies showed they didn’t extend patients’ lives, say congressional investigators.

A report due out Monday from the Government Accountability Office also shows that the FDA has never pulled a drug off the market due to a lack of required follow-up about its actual benefits — even when such information is more than a decade overdue.

When pressed about that policy, agency officials said they have no plans to get more aggressive.

Reuters:

On the auction block in Detroit: almost 9,000 homes and lots in various states of abandonment and decay from the tidy owner-occupied to the burned-out shell claimed by squatters.

Taken together, the properties seized by tax collectors for arrears and put up for sale last week represented an area the size of New York’s Central Park. Total vacant land in Detroit now occupies an area almost the size of Boston, according to a Detroit Free Press estimate.

A sit in at Humana Headquarters has gotten local media coverage.

It was actually one of the top stories, as building security allowed the protesters to remain inside after the building was locked.

Here's the video.

I didn't get to see the full story, only the recap at the end of the hour. But, this isn't the first single payer activism in my neck of the woods, but this is the first time I've observed any media coverage.

Progress!

Insurance premiums for small businesses are being driven higher not just because of an increase in healthcare costs, but also because Wall Street wants higher returns:

The higher premiums at least partly reflect the inexorable rise of medical costs, which is forcing Medicare to raise premiums, too. Health insurance bills are also rising for big employers, but because they have more negotiating clout, their increases are generally not as steep.

Higher medical costs aside, some experts say they think the insurance industry, under pressure from Wall Street, is raising premiums to get ahead of any legislative changes that might reduce their profits.

Now, you might think with health insurance reform pending in Congress, the industry would be concerned about screwing its customers. But you'd be wrong because Washington doesn't run this country, Wall Street does:

“There’s no one out there who hasn’t had to do a mea culpa to Wall Street,” said Sheryl Skolnick, an analyst for Pali Capital who follows the companies. While the industry is particularly vulnerable now in Washington, she said, “it seems like they’re more afraid of Wall Street.”

Are you going?

I can't, but believe me if I could, I would be there. It's hard not to like stuff like this:

The same financial institutions that caused the economic crisis and took billions in taxpayer bailouts are back to earning incredible profits. Meanwhile, Americans face shrinking pensions, rising foreclosures and unemployment, state budget cuts, predatory lending, outrageous overdraft fees, and sky-high credit card interest rates.

The American people want oversight, accountability and common-sense financial reform NOW. This is the classic David vs. Goliath fight, with Wall Street spending millions and millions on lobbying to defeat reforms that would protect the American people and our economy

The Black Agenda Report has been documenting the atrocities of the Obama education policy, including the traveling sales trio of Gingrich, Sharpton and Education Secretary Duncan. Now, why, you may ask, would Newt Gingrich endorse Obama's education policies? And shouldn't such an endorsement be a huge red flag to anyone who thinks government - and public schools - should and can work since, you know, Gingrich has spent his entire career working to destroy government.

Didn't want to let this one slip by:

In other healthcare news, the watchdog group Media Matters has revealed one of CNN’s regular on-air commentators is on the payroll of America’s Health Insurance Plans, an industry lobbying group opposed to the current healthcare reform efforts. Until yesterday, CNN had never acknowledged Alex Castellanos’s affiliation. Media Matters revealed that Castellanos’s consulting firm, National Media, recently placed over $1 million of TV advertising for America’s Health Insurance Plans. Castellanos’s company has also done work for the Federation of American Hospitals, the pharmaceutical industry group PhRMA, and the HCA Sunrise Hospital.

You won't be surprised to learn of even more change you can't believe in.

Meet the newest addition to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. If you've been reading Mother Jones recently, then you already know quite a bit about Scott O'Malia. Like the fact that he once worked as a top in-house lobbyist for an energy company, Mirant, that manipulated California's market Enron-style. Or that, while on this company's payroll, he lobbied against a bill to expand the CFTC's authority to police derivatives. Or that the Senate Agriculture Committee, which reviewed his nomination, declined to ask him any specific questions about his pro-deregulation lobbying on not one but two occasions.

It's probably just me. But still, of course it makes me wonder. Just now, here at Chez Dyke, a lot of blogs aren't working for me. That is, I can load them, but the comment functions don't seem to be enabled. I'm no intertube expert, I have no idea how this sort of thing happens (or if it is just my old, funky Mac and my unwillingness to "upgrade" to the latest browsing platforms) but I'm always reminded at times like these:

Know the people you "meet" online, and be sure to make contact with them outside of the phone, computer, or other electronic device you usually rely upon. As in, know exactly where your friends live, what they do, where they work, about their lives. Once upon a time, it was normal for Americans to know their neighbors, "in person." Today? I do wonder if that is at all still true.

I'm not trying to be all CT or anything, so much as reminding people that our Revolutionary Technologies of the Future with Flying Cars...well, "we" don't really control all that. And that's on purpose. Any Revolution that relies on the Internets? Doomed, from the start. Just sayin.

You can see all five parts of the video at DKTV.

It's no secret I've not always agreed with Olbermann, but on this, I think he's right. Furthermore, I think he's telling the necessary, if inconvenient, truths that no one else will speak publicly.

Part one introduces the Special Comment on a personal note:

If you haven't seen it yet, go watch all five parts.
If you have,   Read more…

I've tried to draft this post for the past couple of weeks and it isn't working. So I've decided to try stream of consciousness so the readers could do the work for me. Kind of like mad libs Joyce. So here it goes:

We are a country built on paper (mortgages, securities, etc.) We don't make things any more. We make paper. That is by design. It's what our elites wanted, sell off the industrial base, keep the paper.

She had a dream
And boy it was a good one
So she chased after her dream
With much desire
But when she get too close
To her expectations
Well the dream burned up
Like paper in fire
- John Cougar Mellencamp

How do you organize/protest in a country built on paper?

Fire?

iSinglePayer iPhone App Censored by Apple

PALO ALTO, CA –Apple, Inc. has censored an iPhone application promoting health insurance reform in the United States.

iSinglePayer, an iPhone application that advocates for single-payer health care reform was rejected from the App Store by Apple because it is “politically charged.” The application displays charts and bullet points about single-payer health care systems, and it allows users to call members of congress. iSinglePayer even calculates your local congressperson using GPS, and displays the amount of money donated to each congressperson from the health sector.

Oh Barry, don't be so mealy-mouthed:

If the Fed is Wall Street’s bitch, than Congress is the Street’s whore.

Read the whole thing. He forgot to mention the criminal "news" media, but it's still good.

[I've spent a lifetime looking past misogyny fossilized in language, so I'm letting this one go too, almost.]

Deval Patrick’s likely Senate pick raises ‘serious concerns’

The Kennedy-backed pick for interim senator - a Beltway insider who could enjoy a lifetime pass to the Senate floor - has deep ties to special interests, sitting on a board that oversees a health-insurance provider and having lobbied for the pharmaceutical industry, the Herald has learned.

We need a HR 676 co-sponsor to primary this jerk.

Oh Sonia, Sonia, don't toy with me!

"Justice Sotomayor suggested the majority might have it all wrong -- and that instead the court should reconsider the 19th century rulings that first afforded corporations the same rights flesh-and-blood people have.

Judges "created corporations as persons, gave birth to corporations as persons," she said. "There could be an argument made that that was the court's error to start with...[imbuing] a creature of state law with human characteristics."..

Reached for comment at his private manor, concerned citizen Charles Montgomery Burns was not amused:

Health care reform and domestic violence

I applaud your principles of health care reform, Mr. President. I know you're aware that the average American is under an unsustainable burden. I know you've read the letters and emails and heard the accounts told in the town halls of the horrible things our current system imposes on our citizens.

With this I agree:

Finally, our health care system is placing an unsustainable burden on taxpayers. When health care costs grow at the rate they have, it puts greater pressure on programs like Medicare and Medicaid. If we do nothing to slow these skyrocketing costs, we will eventually be spending more on Medicare and Medicaid than every other government program combined. Put simply, our health care problem is our deficit problem. Nothing else even comes close. Nothing else. (Applause.)

I don't even have a quarrel with this:

Then there's the problem of rising cost. We spend one and a half times more per person on health care than any other country, but we aren't any healthier for it. This is one of the reasons that insurance premiums have gone up three times faster than wages. It's why so many employers -- especially small businesses -- are forcing their employees to pay more for insurance, or are dropping their coverage entirely. It's why so many aspiring entrepreneurs cannot afford to open a business in the first place, and why American businesses that compete internationally -- like our automakers -- are at a huge disadvantage. And it's why those of us with health insurance are also paying a hidden and growing tax for those without it -- about $1,000 per year that pays for somebody else's emergency room and charitable care.

But I want proof of this claim, and I want it documented.

Second, we've estimated that most of this plan can be paid for by finding savings within the existing health care system, a system that is currently full of waste and abuse. Right now, too much of the hard-earned savings and tax dollars we spend on health care don't make us any healthier. That's not my judgment -- it's the judgment of medical professionals across this country. And this is also true when it comes to Medicare and Medicaid.

There is much in this speech that indicts Medicare in its present form as unsustainable, and since this President has said elsewhere that Medicare and Social Security reform are tasks he feels he must undertake, and since we know the Republican party remains dedicated, despite its mouthings to the contrary, to the destruction of those programs because they are the working example of the US safety net (aka the hated "entitlements" and "liberal giveaways") I want to be assured, sir, that you are not stealthily helping that indefatigable Republican policy, that you will not fall victim to that cause nor let those in their golden years, to borrow your phrase, or looking forward to them, be bereft of that inestimable gift of security arising out of the work of such laudable presidents as had your bully pulpit in the past.

The only thing this plan would eliminate is the hundreds of billions of dollars in waste and fraud, as well as unwarranted subsidies in Medicare that go to insurance companies -- subsidies that do everything to pad their profits but don't improve the care of seniors. And we will also create an independent commission of doctors and medical experts charged with identifying more waste in the years ahead

Show me the money, Mister President.

Hundreds of billions of dollars in waste and fraud in Medicare? What waste? What fraud? Which experts? Experts like these?

A commenter at The Agonist explains it all in a few well-chosen words:

Henry Ford was a tight old bastard,

but he paid his workers twice what he had to, because he understood the people making the product had to be able to afford to buy it.

The irony here is those squeezing labor, here and in China, are destroying their collective market. Not only the market for manufactured goods, but the investment markets based on manufacturing. The economy has to have a convection cycle of rising assets and precipitating benefits, or it breaks down. Healthy labor is healthy consumers. How hard is that to figure?

Rubber Hose

rescission is such a loathsome practice, i have no idea why the pro-reformers aren't highlighting it more. if you do the math, it means that if you're insured, you have roughly a 50% chance of losing your insurance if you're ever diagnosed with a massively expensive medical condition. it's insane. it means that half of us with insurance aren't really insured against something really bad happening. there's really no way to defend the practice.