Warning from Public Citizen on the extent of the plutocracy

I received this mass emailing today from Public Citizen:

Warning from Public Citizen (from a mass emailing I just received). These numbers are stunning: Here’s something rather alarming to consider. Forbes recently updated its list of billionaires. Each of the notorious Koch Brothers — Charles and David, the 6th and 7th richest men alive — are now estimated to be worth $40 billion. That’s up $6 billion each from just a year earlier, which was up $9 billion each from just a year before that. I guess it really does take money to make money. If you have billions to begin with. But wait, there’s more. Total spending in the 2012 federal election — for the White House and every open seat in Congress — was $6.3 billion. It was the most expensive election ever. Yet the Koch Brothers could have easily covered that record-smashing tab all by themselves just with the amount their already vast wealth increased in a single year. Let me say that again: The Koch Brothers alone could pretty much fund every candidate for federal office without even eating into their unimaginable fortunes. Then there’s casino magnate and funder of the far-right, Sheldon Adelson. And Karl Rove’s dark money Crossroads outfits. And the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. And Exxon Mobil, Goldman Sachs, Comcast and all the other mega-corporations that “are people too.” We face this basic choice: democracy or plutocracy. I know where I come down, and where you do, too. It’s time to roll up our sleeves. Nobody is doing more than Public Citizen — that’s YOU — to defend democracy from billionaires and Big Business. We ARE the front lines in the battle for the very heart and soul of this country.

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Letter from Bernie Sanders

Today I received this mass-emailing from Bernie Sanders. This is as detailed as it is passionate. Sanders sees things more clearly than most politicians, and is one of the few to show a willingness to speak frankly: Thank you so much for the support that, over the years, you have given me. As Vermont's senator and the longest serving Independent in American congressional history I am helping to lead the fight in Congress to protect the middle class and working families of our country against the greed and recklessness of Big Money interests. In that struggle you have been with me step by step, battle after battle - and I appreciate all that you have done. In the midst of the most severe economic and political crisis in the modern history of our country, I am once again writing to ask for your political and financial support. The unprecedented struggle that we're engaged in now against the Billionaire Class is not just about preserving Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, or whether we create the millions of jobs our economy desperately needs. It's not merely about whether we raise the minimum wage, make college affordable, protect women's rights or take the bold initiatives we need to reverse climate change and save our planet. It's not just about creating a health care system which guarantees health care to all as a right, or addressing the abysmally high rate of childhood poverty. THE STRUGGLE THAT WE'RE ENGAGED IN RIGHT NOW IS MUCH MORE THAN ALL THAT. IT IS WHETHER WE CAN PREVENT THIS COUNTRY FROM MOVING TO AN OLIGARCHIC FORM OF SOCIETY IN WHICH VIRTUALLY ALL ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL POWER RESTS WITH A HANDFUL OF BILLIONAIRES. I know that some of you think I am exaggerating when I say that. I'm not. In my view, there are now three major political forces in this country. The Democratic Party, the Republican Party and the Koch brothers led Billionaire Party. As a result of the disastrous Citizens United Supreme Court ruling which regards corporations as people and allows the super-rich to spend as much as they want on elections, the Billionaire Party (aligned with the Republicans) is now the major political force in the country. [More . . . . ]

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A personal perspective on Obamacare

My family just signed up for an extremely expensive "Bronze" policy with Obamacare. It is shameful that there are only two companies "competing" for our dollars in St. Louis (it's worse than shopping for a phone company). It's shameful that none of the policies in the bronze or silver range include Barnes Hospital (St. Louis' premium teaching hospital) in their network. It shameful that even though we are paying $1,000/month for a family of four, that the annual deductible is in the range of $4,300 for indiv and $8,600 for family, with annual out-of-pocket deductible for our family being $12,700. There is no real competition here, and I have yet to see the any reason to believe that the ACA will pressure providers to lower their costs. In America, we pay many times the amount for basic services (e.g., MRI scan) than people in other countries. Our economic side of our hospitals, including "non-profit" hospitals, are a joke, with their executives getting exorbitant salaries while they are on a shopping spree to buy up the local medical practices so that there is no meaningful competition, even your local doctors. I recognize that the ACA forces insurance companies to provide certain minimum coverages and that they can no longer cherry-pick patients based on pre-existing conditions, which was rampant and immoral. The ACA is certainly better than nothing. The most shameful thing of all, however, is that even with the faults of Obamacare, the Republicans want to destroy the modest protection it offers many of us, and the substantial protection it offers low-income families. They propose to replace it with nothing at all. The Republican proposals I have seen would send all of us back to ravages of the dog-eat-dog for-profit health market where cherry-picked customers pay unregulated prices, where premiums have been skyrocketing for decades, where many folks are offered paltry coverage that they have no way of paying for, and where many people are deemed "uninsurable." If politicians can only convince us to keep watching lots of sports events and movies, maybe we will never force them to enact meaningful reform. We need single-payor coverage, like most other civilized countries. For more on the dreadful situation we currently have, check out Stephen Brill's excellent article. I'll end with this somber reality from Brill's article:

The health care industry seems to have the will and means to keep it that way. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the pharmaceutical and healthcare product industries, combined with the organizations representing doctors, hospitals, nursing homes, health services and HMO’s, have spent $5.36 billion since 1998 on lobbying in Washington. That dwarfs the $1.53 billion spent by the defense and aerospace industries and the $1.3 billion spent by oil and gas interests over the same period. That’s right: the health-care-industrial complex spends more than three times what the military-industrial complex spends in Washington.

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Fake Payday Loan Reform

Missouri and Utah are among the states in which legislators are proposing fake payday loan reform, per "States’ Attempts To Reform Payday Lending Are Often Just Smoke & Mirrors." Here's an excerpt:

Sen. Mike Cunningham, who sponsored the Missouri bill . . . says it will protect consumers from some of the practices payday lenders have utilized for so long. Missouri’s proposed reform comes less than two years after a group called Missourians for Equal Credit Opportunity helped put an end to a ballot initiative that would have allowed Missouri residents to vote for or against capping the state’s interest rate at 36%. The current proposed bill does not feature any kind of rate cap, meaning interest for a typical two-week payday loan can balloon to more than 1,000%.

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