Elizabeth Warren stands her ground

Go read Charlie Pierce for the elegant analogies on Elizabeth Warren's inspiring appearance on CNBC. All I'm going to add is: every time I see her do this stuff, I really wish she was our POTUS.

Good for something government

Krugman is worth reading today on the lessons of the BP leak in the Gulf. This is the quote of the day:

Yet antigovernment ideology remains all too prevalent, despite the havoc it has wrought. In fact, it has been making a comeback with the rise of the Tea Party movement. If there’s any silver lining to the disaster in the gulf, it is that it may serve as a wake-up call, a reminder that we need politicians who believe in good government, because there are some jobs only the government can do.

I've been trying to drive this point home to my tea party readers at DetNews for a long time now. Bitching about government "theft" of "their money" fails to recognize the benefits of the spending. Not like there's no money wasted or that there aren't any stupid laws or regulations, but to condemn the whole entity on the basis of its flaws is kind of like saying you should ban all motorized transportation because they break down sometimes.

[More posts daily at The Detroit News]

I blame the conspiracy theorists

What's up with the price of tin foil? I don't use it much so a 25 foot roll lasts me a long time. Maybe a year. The last time I bought some I paid a little over two bucks on sale. I was shopping a couple of days ago and discovered that 25 feet is now almost five bucks for the store brand. You go for the top grade Reynolds and it was almost ten bucks for the 100 foot roll.

I recall hearing something about the rise in price for aluminum leading to a rise in property crime, with people stripping siding off any building that isn't under armed guard but this is crazy. I'm wondering if after 8 years of Bush making nearly everyone a conspiracy theorist, whether it was all those extra tin foil hats that led to the shortage.

[More posts daily at The Detroit News.]

A very consumer Christmas

In what is becoming a Black Friday tradition, once again two people died over 'doorbuster' specials at Walmart.

The unidentified worker, employed as an overnight stock clerk, tried to hold back the unruly crowds just after the Valley Stream store opened at 5 a.m.

Witnesses said the surging throngs of shoppers knocked the man down. He fell and was stepped on. As he gasped for air, shoppers ran over and around him. [...]

Jessica Keyes was among the shoppers. She told the Daily News she saw a woman knocked down just a few feet from the dying worker.

"When the paramedics came, she said 'I'm pregnant,'" Keyes said.

Paramedics treated the woman inside the store and then, according to Keys, told the woman:

"There's nothing we can do. The baby is gone."

The 200 or so crazed shoppers literally took the doors off the building in their rush to get that $600 wide screen TV. The store should be held criminally responsible for the deaths for creating the shopping frenzy and failing to provide proper crowd control. Sending a couple of underpaid, overworked stock clerks to hold back the mob is nothing short of negligent homicide.

Update: The latest reports say there were actually 2000 people waiting outside the store by the time it opened and they had been lining up since 9:00pm on Thursday. It was clear by opening time that crowd control would be a problem. There's no excuse for Walmart to have failed to call in more security.

Also it appears the pregnant woman thankfully did not lose her baby.

[More posts daily at The Newshoggers and The Detroit News.]

Deregulation - corporate gain, consumer's bane

By Libby

I remember when the cable industry was pushing for deregulation way back in 1996, we were told this would be a boon for consumers. They told us that we would enjoy a vastly greater variety of choices and that competition would force prices down. Unsurprising they lied. It didn't save us money then and all we received in return were hundreds of more stations that aren't worth watching but we're forced to buy as part of a service package. Today, over ten years later, the cost increases are even greater and farther removed from any inflationary explanation.

They told us the same thing about electricity deregulation and that turned out to be an even bigger disaster. At least the cable companies upgraded their equipment. The electric companies raised rates and allowed the infrastructure to deterioate in favor of short term profits. We won't appreciate the full scope of this until the system fails, which seems to be a matter of not if, but when.

Keep this in mind when people tell you that all regulation is bad and to trust the free market.

No free market for farmers

By Libby

The free market capitalists keep telling me that government intervention is bad when it comes to regulating corporations. The logic being that consumers will punish corporate behemoths for bad behavior by refusing to buy their products. I don't see how that theory holds up when consumers don't get a choice.

Take for instance fresh fruits and vegetables. Consumer demand is rising so quickly for locally grown produce that farmers don't have enough acreage to fulfill the demand. So this farmer rented some acres from another farm. However, since the other farmer had been taking subsidies for corn, they were all punished for giving the people what they want.

The commodity farm program effectively forbids farmers who usually grow corn or the other four federally subsidized commodity crops (soybeans, rice, wheat and cotton) from trying fruit and vegetables. Because my watermelons and tomatoes had been planted on “corn base” acres, the Farm Service said, my landlords were out of compliance with the commodity program. [...]

I’ve discovered that typically, a farmer who grows the forbidden fruits and vegetables on corn acreage not only has to give up his subsidy for the year on that acreage, he is also penalized the market value of the illicit crop, and runs the risk that those acres will be permanently ineligible for any subsidies in the future. (The penalties apply only to fruits and vegetables — if the farmer decides to grow another commodity crop, or even nothing at all, there’s no problem.)

What's driving this ridiculously counter-productive approach? Corporate farms of course. The huge monoliths who truck in most of the country's 'fresh' produce from California, Florida and Texas have successfully lobbied Congress to enact anti-competition/anti-consumer measures in order to protect their own profits. The only thing free about that is the ride the corporations receive for lining the campaign coffers with their political donations.

Charlie dealt in pharmaceuticals...

By Libby

...He sold those expensive drugs
I gave Charlie all my money
What the hell was I thinking of?
~Warren Zevon

Cernig finds the latest story on corporate welfare that relates to this piece I didn't get around to blogging about yesterday. The latter link is from TNR that explodes the myth that the 'free market' pharmaceutical industry is driving innovation in medicines. That is of course a crock. All the pharmas have done in the recent past is slightly alter existing drugs whose patents are about to expire and market them as 'new and improved' products when in fact they often don't work as well as the derivatives that are about to go generic. In truth, it's private researchers in academic settings that drive most of the innovations we benefit from and they're funded by the NIH, which is in turn funded outside of present government health care spending.

As the article Cerning points to notes, the pharma corps do everything possible to keep those generics off the free market and in fact pay off the companies who would market them to withhold the product, something our Congresslizards are actually addressing. There's legislation pending that would ban such manipulations and the pharmas have invested multi-millions in trying to defeat it.

It will be interesting to see where the votes fall on this. I'm betting the politicians will once again vote to protect their deep pocket contributors rather than prevent them from picking our pockets but I would be more than willing to eat those words if only the Congresslizards would for once, prove me wrong.

The Jungle

by Capt. Fogg

We're counting the days until Bush becomes just another bad memory but that memory may well live on and on in the dismantled rubble of what was supposed to be a government of, by and for the people. The dismantling of most regulation and of the law itself continues as though Bush's 8 year Reich was intended to last for a thousand and his overwhelming lack of support seems only to have strengthened Bush's disregard for the well being and the will of the people.

Concern for tainted food, dangerous toys, contaminated products of all kinds is being hyped in the media constantly and denunciations of the FDA and Consumer Product Safety Commission for their incompetence are rampant. It's being portrayed as a failure of government, but it's a mark of the success of Bush's unitary rule that the already emasculated agencies that serve to keep the dangers Upton Sinclair scared the hell out of America about are being further depopulated, and de-funded.

The latest stunning violation of common sense and governmental responsibility is to demand that congress do nothing to rebuild the CPSC. According to the New York Times today, Nancy A. Nord, the acting chairwoman of the commission has asked lawmakers in two letters not to approve the bulk of new legislation that would increase the agency’s authority, double its budget and sharply increase its dwindling staff. Ms. Nord, is on record as being critical of banning lead from toys, the argument being that product safety lawsuits eat into profits.

Supporting the American people, of course is anathema to the "Support the Troops" crowd. The sole exceptions to the "government is bad - corporations are good" Republican ethic are War is Peace and Freedom is Slavery and although the Orwellian antinomy thing is wearing thin, it continues to be apt.

Regulating imports, regulating food quality, regulating the marketplace, regulating air and water supplies: these things are still marked for elimination, but regulating the government that was designed to be regulated by the citizens, is not only frowned upon, but nearly treasonous. No price is too high to pay to gain control over the oil, but any price to keep America's Children alive, to keep the lethal bacteria out of our food or dangerous chemicals out of our food, water and air is out of the question. Bechtel needs the money, Halliburton, Blackwater and the Bush family need the money.

I don't see anything in sight that can change it. I see no light at the end of the tunnel, not in 2008 or ever. I see only a long dark road to hell.

Cross posted from Human Voices