For-profit disaster relief

Who thinks turning disaster relief over to the private sector is a good idea? Mitt Romney does. No word, however, on what happens when companies deem rescues, rebuilding and delivering supplies to be cost-prohibitive.

TED talk on taxes

Nick Hanauer, sharing some ideas that challenge this country's entrenched interests.

Nothing personal

This is a comment I posted on Facebook in response to a friend's announcement that his "snake in the grass" employer laid off a 47-year veteran of the company.

"Not a personal decision?" So the manager hopes she can remain friends with the victim? That their families can continue to get together for dinner parties? Well, not now that he can't afford dinner parties.

"Not a personal decision" is an empty, meaningless statement. Pure bullshit, about as sincere as, "it's not you. It's me." But, in this situation, at least that statement's true: He's not the one who failed to perform the duties of his job. It's not his failure that landed the company in its current financial situation. It's not his incompetence, it's hers. But it is he who suffers the consequences of her failure, while she gets to keep her job. With a tidy bonus for taking his job away, I might add.

"Not a personal decision" is simply what corporate scum say to avoid confronting the people they've become and how little money they sold their humanity for. It isn't as if the laid-off party feels better knowing that their new joblessness and financial struggles aren't because they are disliked personally. I am sure that, to the person who has just had his livelihood taken away, whether the manager in question liked him personally was irrelevant before the layoff and even more so after. The statement isn't designed to ease the suffering of the victim. If people who use this statement were to be honest about who is comforted by it, they would have to admit, "it's not you, it's me."

The salve that statement offers these people is so great that they either don't know or don't care that they sound like insufferable assholes when they say it.

And, as if all that isn't galling enough, oftentimes companies kick loyal, long-tenured employees to the curb not because they are actually losing money, but to enhance their profit margin. It's not that they couldn't afford to keep the employee, it's simply that they could make more money if they got rid of him. Companies that are losing money don't usually give bonuses to mid-level management.

p.s. I think you owe snakes an apology.

One in two

That's half, folks. Half of all Americans. So it ain't just you.

Squeezed by rising living costs, a record number of Americans — nearly 1 in 2 — have fallen into poverty or are scraping by on earnings that classify them as low income.

The latest census data depict a middle class that's shrinking as unemployment stays high and the government's safety net frays. The new numbers follow years of stagnating wages for the middle class that have hurt millions of workers and families.

"Safety net programs such as food stamps and tax credits kept poverty from rising even higher in 2010, but for many low-income families with work-related and medical expenses, they are considered too 'rich' to qualify," said Sheldon Danziger, a University of Michigan public policy professor who specializes in poverty.

"The reality is that prospects for the poor and the near poor are dismal," he said. "If Congress and the states make further cuts, we can expect the number of poor and low-income families to rise for the next several years."

Congressional Republicans and Democrats are sparring over legislation that would renew a Social Security payroll tax reduction, part of a year-end political showdown over economic priorities that could also trim unemployment benefits, freeze federal pay and reduce entitlement spending.

And in case you think establishment conservatives are unsympathetic to your plight, they are.

Robert Rector, a senior research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, questioned whether some people classified as poor or low-income actually suffer material hardship. He said that while safety-net programs have helped many Americans, they have gone too far. He said some people described as poor live in decent-size homes, drive cars and own wide-screen TVs.

What? Some poor people still have cars they aren't living in? So much more work to do, eh Robbie?

In the meantime, you poor folk should stop complaining and watch that big-screen TV.

UPDATE: I have been kicking this story around in my head for a little while and I wondered why a quote from a Heritage Foundation douchebag is even in the story. I went back to the story and saw no corresponding quote from an advocate for the poor. The closest thing was the quote, included in the snippet above, from Sheldon Danziger, the poverty expert from the University of Michigan. Being an expert in poverty doesn't necessarily mean he is an advocate for the poor, although he may be. It just means he knows what he is talking about.

It's just another example of the MSM's fetish with the bullshit idea of "balance," which in this case apparently means that if you report that nearly half of all Americans are impoverished or low income, you have to find some asshole willing to say that poverty isn't so bad.

I guess the next time the AP reports on a rape, it will have to find someone to say that rape isn't so bad. You know, for balance.

Hey, if you are a reporter writing about a rape and need that "rape isn't so bad" quote to ensure complete, balanced reportage, try this guy. One caveat: The victim has to be Latino.

Cross-posted at Suburban Guerilla.

Take the Bastards Down

Dropkick Murphys, in support of the Wisconsin protesters.



To purchase a limited edition "Take em Down" T-shirt, click here. Proceeds benefit the Workers’ Rights Emergency Response Fund.

Heating aid for the poor

That's among the benefits to the most vulnerable Americans that the Obama budget reportedly will cut, in the spirit of "bipartisanship," a word that apparently has come to mean "selling out the poor to avoid forcing the wealthy to pay taxes they can easily afford."

So when you're freezing your ass off inside your home today, tonight, the rest of this winter in order to conserve whatever heating source you use; when your children complain to you that they are cold while huddled under blankets in your 59-degree home, remember that it's going to get worse, not better.

And remember why it's going to get worse: Because Republicans absolutely refuse to agree to a tax hike to the wealthiest, warmest, most comfortable Americans. (Regardless of what the swine in Washington would have you believe, cutting spending isn't the only way to address a budget shortfall). And because Democrats are too chickenshit to challenge them and help those who need help the most.

I think the revolution just got moved up another week.

Stop illegal foreclosures

Sign the online petition here.

The angry rich

Remember what I've said over and over in this space? That Republicans (and Blue Dogs) don't give a shit about you unless you're rich? Krugman:

The spectacle of high-income Americans, the world’s luckiest people, wallowing in self-pity and self-righteousness would be funny, except for one thing: they may well get their way. Never mind the $700 billion price tag for extending the high-end tax breaks: virtually all Republicans and some Democrats are rushing to the aid of the oppressed affluent.

You see, the rich are different from you and me: they have more influence. It’s partly a matter of campaign contributions, but it’s also a matter of social pressure, since politicians spend a lot of time hanging out with the wealthy. So when the rich face the prospect of paying an extra 3 or 4 percent of their income in taxes, politicians feel their pain — feel it much more acutely, it’s clear, than they feel the pain of families who are losing their jobs, their houses, and their hopes.

And when the tax fight is over, one way or another, you can be sure that the people currently defending the incomes of the elite will go back to demanding cuts in Social Security and aid to the unemployed. America must make hard choices, they’ll say; we all have to be willing to make sacrifices.

But when they say “we,” they mean “you.” Sacrifice is for the little people.

This column brings to mind a post by Athenae that's linked to at Susie's place:

In the second place, in the second paragraph, really. You're really going to tell starving children to go blow because you're mad about your taxes. That's a thing you're going to do. The starving children, natch, having all kinds of influence in Congress, given how everybody's falling all over themselves to help THEM. Those are the people who can do exactly dick about your tax sitch, so I'm sure your brave moral stand will SO TOTALLY get noticed by our decision makers. Shit, stop giving money to politicians if you don't like how they behave, but Toys for Tots did nothing to you to deserve your contempt, and you're doing plenty to earn mine.

Of course, the starving children have no influence on Congress because the only thing congresspeople care about is getting re-elected, that is to say, their own asses. Republican Rep. Steve King of Iowa, for example, would rather shut down the federal government than alienate what he sees as a bumper crop of new potential supporters in the tea baggers.

“We must not blink,” he said, noting that money cannot be spent without the House voting to pass it. “If the House says no, it’s no.”

Their new tea party backers won’t tolerate anything less than a full repeal of the health care law, he said.

“They will leave us if we go wobbly,” he said. “I am worried about that, but that’s why I think it’s got to be a blood oath.”

No word from King about what might happen if the entire nation goes "wobbly" because the House forces a shutdown of the government. But apparently Republican Rep. Steve King of Iowa is not "worried about that." Apparently Republican Rep. Steve King of Iowa is more "worried about" getting Republican Rep. Steve King of Iowa re-elected.

Country first, y'all.

Financial reform

Rolling Stone examines the legislative process that produced the financial reform that the Obama administration is so proud of.

“The bill Congress just passed doesn't go after the criminals where they live, or even make what they're doing a crime; all it does is put a baseball bat under the bed and add an extra lock or two on the doors. It's a hack job, a C-minus effort. See you at the next financial crisis.”

It’s not a C-minus effort. Congress didn’t pass meaningful reform because they weren’t trying to pass meaningful reform. They were trying to pass some bullshit that looked like reform to a public that doesn’t really understand what’s going on and is barely paying attention anyway. They accomplished what they set out to do.

The law does exactly what it is designed to do: It causes no serious threat to the profits of our representatives' biggest financial sponsors, and it gave Democrats something, anything, they can take back to the voters and say, "Look, we reined in Wall Street, we passed financial reform!" In that regard, it's no different than George Bush's Medicare "reform" -- it improves nothing, but allows for lots of self-congratulation.

Of course, it also gives Republicans something they can point to were they to argue that "Democrat" leadership is ineffective. And they'd be right. But, for Republicans, even this Band-Aid on a bullet wound is too much fettering of financial markets. Rather than argue -- correctly -- that this law will do nothing to prevent future financial meltdowns that taxpayers will have to clean up, the GOP will argue that this Marxist-style takeover of our uniquely American free-enterprise system must be repealed, along with healthcare reform, Social Security and, perhaps, the right to vote and own property.

I had a post label that I used for so many Bush-era efforts, "It Just Looks Like Results," that I used when describing the many, many photo-ops and half-assed efforts that replaced actual governing in this country from 2001-2008. Looks like it's time to dust off that label, because the change we were promised during the campaign just ain't coming. Sure, the Obama administration is light years better than the alternative that Republicans half-heartedly threw out there ("OK, the election is unwinnable but, hey, we gotta run somebody, and we're not about to waste a real candidate" [think Bob Dole in 1996 and Lynn Swann's running for the PA governor's seat in 2006]), but the real power in this country doesn't change every four years or even every eight years. It's an entrenched aristocracy whose only interest is maintaining its wealth and power. And it never faces re-election. If Obama were the threat to the status quo that he appeared to be during the campaign, he never would have gotten out of the primaries. Ask Hillary Clinton and John Edwards how the media covered their candidacy.

If you still think real change is possible working within the system, click the link above and see what the system did to the financial reform bill.

The best healthcare in the world

This nauseating affront to basic human decency is brought to you by the free-market, for-profit healthcare system.

Kyler Van Nocker’s story shows that even 5-year-old kids are not exempt from this insurance company abuse. Van Nocker has neuroblastoma, which is a very rare form of childhood cancer that targets the nervous system and creates tumors throughout the body.

Due to successful treatment in 2007, Van Nocker’s cancer went into remission, giving him 12 months of pain-free life. Unfortunately, in Sept. 2008, the cancer returned, and Van Nocker was once again in need of treatment. Unfortunately, his health insurer, HealthAmerica, refused to pay for one form of treatment doctors believe could save his life (MIBG treatment) because they consider it “investigational/experimental” since it has yet to be approved by the FDA.

Yet in April 2008, the insurer approved cheaper treatment for Van Nocker that was also “experimental,” prompting Philadelphia Daily News columnist Ronnie Polaneczky to ask, “So why, pray tell, is HealthAmerica playing the ‘experimental therapy’ card in the case of the MIBG treatment Kyler now needs? Gee, money couldn’t have anything to do with the decision, could it?”

And remember: this child has health insurance. But in 21st century America, there is little difference between having and needing to use health insurance and having no coverage at all.

I have a feeling the revolution just got moved up a day, and that Kyler Van Nocker’s family and friends have just been "radicalized."

Cadmium

Corporations manufacture items in China and then ship them to the United States to sell rather than just make and sell them here for a reason: It's cheaper. They can pay the kind of exploitive wages that would get them thrown in prison here, and they can use whatever cheap shit they want in their products. Sure, the American public finally caught on to lead and now manufacturers are being forced to phase it out, but they were selling their lead-laced shit for years. They had a great, extremely profitable run.

Now they've turned to some shit that's so fucking toxic that we may one day look back fondly on the days when they were poisoing us with something as relatively benign as lead. Say hello to cadmium.

Barred from using lead in children's jewelry because of its toxicity, some Chinese manufacturers have been substituting the more dangerous heavy metal cadmium in sparkling charm bracelets and shiny pendants being sold throughout the United States, an Associated Press investigation shows.

The most contaminated piece analyzed in lab testing performed for the AP contained a startling 91 percent cadmium by weight. The cadmium content of other contaminated trinkets, all purchased at national and regional chains or franchises, tested at 89 percent, 86 percent and 84 percent by weight. The testing also showed that some items easily shed the heavy metal, raising additional concerns about the levels of exposure to children.

Cadmium is a known carcinogen. Like lead, it can hinder brain development in the very young, according to recent research. [...]

Some of the most troubling test results were for bracelet charms sold at Walmart, at the jewelry chain Claire's and at a dollar store. High amounts of cadmium also were detected in "The Princess and The Frog" movie-themed pendants.

"There's nothing positive that you can say about this metal. It's a poison," said Bruce A. Fowler, a cadmium specialist and toxicologist with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. On the CDC's priority list of 275 most hazardous substances in the environment, cadmium ranks No. 7.

Jewelry industry veterans in China say cadmium has been used in domestic products there for years. Zinc, the metal most cited as a replacement for lead in imported jewelry being sold in the United States, is a much safer and nontoxic alternative. But the jewelry tests conducted for AP, along with test findings showing a growing presence of cadmium in other children's products, demonstrate that the safety threat from cadmium is being exported.

A patchwork of federal consumer protection regulations does nothing to keep these nuggets of cadmium from U.S. store shelves. If the products were painted toys, they would face a recall. If they were industrial garbage, they could qualify as hazardous waste. But since there are no cadmium restrictions on jewelry, such items are sold legally.

While the agency in charge of regulating children's products, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, has cracked down on the dangers posed by lead and products known to have killed children, such as cribs, it has never recalled an item for cadmium — even though it has received scattered complaints based on private test results for at least the past two years.

There is no definitive explanation for why children's jewelry manufacturers, virtually all from China in the items tested, are turning to cadmium. But a reasonable double whammy looms: Cadmium prices have plummeted as factories grasp for substitutes now that lead is heavily regulated under the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008.

Nope, no definitive explantion. But do you think that "it's cheaper" reason I mentioned above might have something to do with it?

But it looks like federal regulators have taken notice.

Federal and state watchdogs opened a new front Monday in the campaign to
keep poisons out of Chinese imports, warning Asian manufacturers not to
substitute other toxins for lead in children's jewelry and beginning an inquiry
into cadmium found in the products around the United States.

Regulators reacted swiftly to an Associated Press investigation reporting that some Chinese manufacturers have been using cadmium in place of lead in children's charm bracelets and pendants, sometimes at extraordinarily high levels. Congress clamped down on lead in those products in 2008, but cadmium is even more harmful.

I just hope they plan to do more than warn.

Game of chance

Eat ground beef and roll the dice.

Stephanie Smith, a children’s dance instructor, thought she had a stomach virus. The aches and cramping were tolerable that first day, and she finished her classes.

Then her diarrhea turned bloody. Her kidneys shut down. Seizures knocked her unconscious. The convulsions grew so relentless that doctors had to put her in a coma for nine weeks. When she emerged, she could no longer walk. The affliction had ravaged her nervous system and left her paralyzed.

Ms. Smith, 22, was found to have a severe form of food-borne illness caused by E. coli, which Minnesota officials traced to the hamburger that her mother had grilled for their Sunday dinner in early fall 2007.

“I ask myself every day, ‘Why me?’ and ‘Why from a hamburger?’ ” Ms. Smith said. In the simplest terms, she ran out of luck in a food-safety game of chance whose rules and risks are not widely known.

Meat companies and grocers have been barred from selling ground beef tainted by the virulent strain of E. coli known as O157:H7 since 1994, after an outbreak at Jack in the Box restaurants left four children dead. Yet tens of thousands of people are still sickened annually by this pathogen, federal health officials estimate, with hamburger being the biggest culprit. Ground beef has been blamed for 16 outbreaks in the last three years alone, including the one that left Ms. Smith paralyzed from the waist down. This summer, contamination led to the recall of beef from nearly 3,000 grocers in 41 states.

Ms. Smith’s reaction to the virulent strain of E. coli was extreme, but tracing the story of her burger, through interviews and government and corporate records obtained by The New York Times, shows why eating ground beef is still a gamble. Neither the system meant to make the meat safe, nor the meat itself, is what consumers have been led to believe.

See, the trouble is, testing the beef supply to make sure it's safe and won't kill people who eat it is just so darn expensive. And you know that we like our money more than life itself.

Don't kid yourself: The beef supply isn't monitored closely enough and isn't safe.

Water

Hey all you stupid small-government idiots: Check out the results of relieving polluters of the heavy burden of government regulation.

Jennifer Hall-Massey knows not to drink the tap water in her home near Charleston, W.Va.

In fact, her entire family tries to avoid any contact with the water. Her youngest son has scabs on his arms, legs and chest where the bathwater — polluted with lead, nickel and other heavy metals — caused painful rashes. Many of his brother’s teeth were capped to replace enamel that was eaten away.

Neighbors apply special lotions after showering because their skin burns. Tests show that their tap water contains arsenic, barium, lead, manganese and other chemicals at concentrations federal regulators say could contribute to cancer and damage the kidneys and nervous system.

“How can we get digital cable and Internet in our homes, but not clean water?” said Mrs. Hall-Massey, a senior accountant at one of the state’s largest banks.

She and her husband, Charles, do not live in some remote corner of Appalachia. Charleston, the state capital, is less than 17 miles from her home.

“How is this still happening today?” she asked.

When Mrs. Hall-Massey and 264 neighbors sued nine nearby coal companies, accusing them of putting dangerous waste into local water supplies, their lawyer did not have to look far for evidence. As required by state law, some of the companies had disclosed in reports to regulators that they were pumping into the ground illegal concentrations of chemicals — the same pollutants that flowed from residents’ taps.

But state regulators never fined or punished those companies for breaking those pollution laws.

This pattern is not limited to West Virginia. Almost four decades ago, Congress passed the Clean Water Act to force polluters to disclose the toxins they dump into waterways and to give regulators the power to fine or jail offenders. States have passed pollution statutes of their own. But in recent years, violations of the Clean Water Act have risen steadily across the nation, an extensive review of water pollution records by The New York Times found.

In the last five years alone, chemical factories, manufacturing plants and other workplaces have violated water pollution laws more than half a million times. The violations range from failing to report emissions to dumping toxins at concentrations regulators say might contribute to cancer, birth defects and other illnesses.

However, the vast majority of those polluters have escaped punishment. State officials have repeatedly ignored obvious illegal dumping, and the Environmental Protection Agency, which can prosecute polluters when states fail to act, has often declined to intervene.

But at least those more than half a million violations of the Clean Water Act have led to cost savings that have created thousands of jobs and stimulated the shit out of the economy.

Oh, right.

For a list of the polluters near you and the number of times they have violated the Clean Water Act without having to worry about the burden of fines, prison or any penalties whatsoever because government has wised up and gotten out of the way of free enterprise, click here. And I'm glad that the same government that looks the other way while corporations pollute our water is working hard to deny affordable healthcare to people sickened by filthy, toxic water. And to everyone else, for that matter.

And, in what I'm sure is a completely unrelated story:

Dangerous staph bacteria have been found in sand and water for the first time at five public beaches along the coast of Washington, and scientists think the state is not the only one with this problem.

The germ is MRSA, or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus — a hard-to-treat bug once rarely seen outside of hospitals but that increasingly is spreading in ordinary community settings such as schools, locker rooms and gyms.

I read the news yesterday and came away so depressed by the boundless greed in this country that is completely untempered by even the slightest grain of human decency and compassion. The health insurance industry is spending millions and working tirelessly to deny Americans access to affordable health insurance that won't be canceled the moment they need it, the Supreme Court is about to make it even easier for corporations to tighten their grip on elected officials, and polluters are poisioning our fucking water to save a few bucks while regulators yawn.

With everything that's going on, I am starting to think that raising a family in these conditions is simply irresponsible. And it pisses me off that I might have to leave my fucking country -- MY country -- in order to raise my family in a secure, healthful environment. People who used to say, "If that happens, I'm moving to Canada" used to sound like crackpots. Now they sound like pragmatists.

With all due respect to the late President Kennedy, when is it OK to ask what your country can do for you?

An insider speaks

On Bill Moyers Journal, Wendell Potter, former head of corporate communications for CIGNA, spells out exactly what the for-profit healthcare industry is up to. HINT: It has to do with protecting their profits at the expense of our health.





Click here to read the transcript.

Poor give more

Surprised?

The generosity of poor people isn't so much rare as rarely noticed, however. In fact, America's poor donate more, in percentage terms, than higher-income groups do, surveys of charitable giving show. What's more, their generosity declines less in hard times than the generosity of richer givers does.

"The lowest-income fifth (of the population) always give at more than their capacity," said Virginia Hodgkinson, former vice president for research at Independent Sector, a Washington-based association of major nonprofit agencies. "The next two-fifths give at capacity, and those above that are capable of giving two or three times more than they give."

Indeed, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' latest survey of consumer expenditure found that the poorest fifth of America's households contributed an average of 4.3 percent of their incomes to charitable organizations in 2007. The richest fifth gave at less than half that rate, 2.1 percent.

[...] "As a rule, people who have money don't know people in need," said Tanya Davis, 40, a laid-off security guard and single mother.

To paraphrase George Bernard Shaw, wealth is wasted on the rich.

Carcinogens in ...

Drumroll please ... baby toiletries!

More than half the baby shampoo, lotion and other infant care products analyzed by a health advocacy group were found to contain trace amounts of two chemicals that are believed to cause cancer, the organization said yesterday.

Some of the biggest names on the market, including Johnson & Johnson Baby Shampoo and Baby Magic lotion, tested positive for 1,4-dioxane or formaldehyde, or both, the nonprofit Campaign for Safe Cosmetics reported.

The chemicals, which the Environmental Protection Agency has characterized as probable carcinogens, are not intentionally added to the products and are not listed among ingredients on labels. Instead, they appear to be byproducts of the manufacturing process. Formaldehyde is created when other chemicals in the product break down over time, while 1,4-dioxane is formed when foaming agents are combined with ethylene oxide or similar petrochemicals.

The organization tested 48 baby bath products such as bubble bath and shampoo. Of those, 32 contained trace amounts of 1,4-dioxane and 23 contained small amounts of formaldehyde. Seventeen tested positive for both chemicals.

I am so fucking weary of this all-to-frequent song and dance. An advocacy group -- not a government regulatory agency, mind you. They are too busy staying out big business' way -- discovers harmful chemicals in (insert product here) that have been shown to cause (fill in serious fucking disease here). A mouthpiece for the company or industry, depending on how widespread the contamination is, points out that the amounts of the offending chemicals are "trace," "pose no threat to public health" and are "well within the FDA's accepted limits."

Eventually, if people can avoid being distracted by the Jen-Angelina fued or the current equivalent of must-see Thursday long enough, or -- more importantly -- if sales numbers start to fall, the companies in question will announce that they are removing these chemicals from their products because of their "concern for the health and welfare of each and every one of our valued customers" (no word, of course, on where that concern had been for all these years). This will be followed by some new commercials that point out that the product is now (fill in chemical here)-free.

If only we had a regulatory agency with some fucking teeth, we wouldn't have to go through this shit every couple of months. If only the Bush administration (and the GOP. Make no mistake, George Bush was NOT the abberation Republicans would like you to believe he was. He was a garden-variety conservative, typical of the breed.) hadn't pulled the FDA's teeth in the name of increasing the profits of already rich and powerful corporations, we wouldn't be needlessly exposed to dangerous chemicals in everyday products, or ignorant of those to which we were being exposed.

H/T to Mrs. S.

Stewart to Stanford: 'F you'

Starts at 7:05, after Stewart gets done ripping Rick Santelli and CNBC new ones.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

CNBC Gives Financial Advice

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Joke of the Day

UPDATE: Santelli claims in a blog post that his moronic rant was spontaneous, but he declined to be interviewed by the New York Times and CNBC canceled his appearance on The Daily Show.

Union busting

One last “fuck you” to people who work for a living from the Bush administration.

A little-noticed provision buried in the Bush Administration's $13.4 billion loan package to General Motors will prohibit the United Auto Workers from launching a strike as long as the company receives funds from the federal government.

Not only that, but a strike would give the federal government the power to call in their loan -- putting the loan in default and forcing GM into bankruptcy. The government now has the power to force a bankruptcy if “any labor union or collective bargaining unit shall engage in a strike or other work stoppage.”

January 20 can't get here fast enough.

UPDATE: Some truth, courtesy of Rachel Maddow's Lame Duck Watch.



H/T Susie.

One percenters

Goldman Sachs. The bailed-out company's tax rate, that is.

"With the right hand out begging for bailout money, the left is hiding it offshore."

Boy, the taxpayers sure are going to benefit handsomely from bailing out that company. But I guess being angry at the company, Henry Paulson and the Bush administration for this is sort of like being angry at pigs for acting like pigs.

Recession

Hitting some harder than others.

The chief executive officer of U.S. oil major Exxon Mobil Corp was awarded a $4 million bonus in 2008 and will receive a 10 percent increase in his annual salary in 2009, according to a regulatory filing.

Rex Tillerson, the chief of the world's largest publicly traded company, was also granted 225,000 shares of restricted stock, a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission showed.

As of January 1, the executive's salary will be $2.06 million.

Last year, Tillerson received a bonus of $3.4 million and his salary was $1.87 million. At that time, Tillerson was granted 185,000 shares of restricted stock.

How did you do this year?