FW: Theatre Does Palin (tonight only); insightful transcripts; Women's stake in health care reform

[Dave]

Four segments below: 
Tonight-only theater. 

Two very insightful transcripts from PBS Now (healthcare and financial neutron bombs claim millions). 

KC Star article links.

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Too bad they don’t do more performances (if someone sees it, maybe suggest it to them?).  Should be a fun evening of creative theater. 

 

See the Daily Show segment last night?  It’s interesting to see the stacked-deck “news” story of the long line at her book signing compared with the NYC book store that ordered only 8 copies of her book (with clerk expecting that none will sell, maybe not even when they discount them).

FW: The Fishtank Theatre In Kansas City Does Sarah Palin

From: TueFunBunch

 

 

 

 

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http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/545/transcript.html  Transcript: Interview: David Sirota

…SIROTA: … We've seen eras in history where the public's anger through organized politics has pushed a kind of change that people recognize as real change.

 

…SIROTA: … some of them are demoralized… saying, "I voted for change already. Why do I have to vote for change again? Didn't I already vote for change in 2008?" …people are wondering whether this President is committed to taking the risks to create the change. Rather than merely taking risks to create hope. There's a difference between hope and change. Change means making enemies.

 

…BRANCACCIO: …grassroots efforts to hold the President's feet to the fire on these policy issues. There is work being done out there.

SIROTA: … it's more incumbent than ever for that work to get done. Because we're learning that the President is a little bit more passive than we might have thought he was gonna be when he get—got into office. That is to say that Franklin Delano Roosevelt's old adage, "Make me do it." Right? He had a bunch of people come in. They said, "Here's what we want you to do, Mr. President." He said, "Well, you've convinced me. But go out and make me do it." I think President Obama's first year has taught us that that principle is more important than ever. That for him to create change requires us to force him to make change. He is not going to lead us to change. He is going to be forced kicking and screaming to make change. And I should say, I don't want to pick on him, right? Because most Presidents that's the way it worked. The idea that Lyndon Johnson himself passed Civil Rights legislation. The idea that Franklin Delano Roosevelt passed the New Deal himself. That's ridiculous. These people were forced, kicking and screaming, to make this change. The real challenge is to actually put enough pressure on him to make that change.

 

…SIROTA: .. danger of that is creating a government-backed situation …institutions on Wall Street feel like they can continue gambling with the implicit guarantee that taxpayers will bail them out.

 

…SIROTA: …When you don't crack down on Wall Street, you create the conditions for a Wall Street meltdown. …when you let your trade policy be written by lobbyists… When you don't have a government that's willing to take on the insurance industry, you're gonna have a health care industry that rips off consumers and drives them into the poor house. …To change that paradigm, you've got to change the politics. You've got to have a politics that takes on that status quo…

 

…SIROTA: …patience is the wrong—virtue. It's not a virtue in politics. And we know this, for instance, from Ronald Reagan. Most of the Reagan revolution, legislatively, was passed—in the first year of Ronald Reagan's Presidency.

 

…SIROTA: … Can we maximize the opportunity? I think we can. Is it gonna take a heck of a lot of effort? A heck of a lot of work? That's unpleasant? That's unglamorous? And that's gonna make the status quo angry? Yeah, that's what we need to do.

 

…SIROTA: … For months, the insurance industry, and at times the Obama Administration has tried to shove the public option off the table. And there has been a grassroots effort—to pressure as many Members of Congress as possible to take a concrete position in support of the public option. That's a victory that we're still now talking about the public option. That the Senate in its bill that's gonna move to the floor is gonna include a public option.  …

 

…BRANCACCIO: Well, how did it work as a practical matter? How did grassroots politics keep that possibility of a public option alive?

SIROTA: It's—it's not glamorous stuff, right? It's people showing up to town hall meetings. It's people calling their Member of Congress, asking them to take a concrete position. It's grassroots groups, at times, airing ads pressuring their member of Congress to take that position. It's people making pledges that they will vote against their Congress person if they don't take and fulfill that concrete position. This is not, you know, rocket science. This is basic stuff that actually works. It's hard work. It's not altogether fun work. But it can work.

 

…SIROTA: … What's really going on. That if Democrats do not pass the bulk of what they promised on health care, on Wall Street reform, and on rebuilding the economy through—stimulus package, for instance. Then that will make the Republicans more successful. Good politics for Democrats is good and fast policy, as soon as possible. Not backing off.

 

…BRANCACCIO: Columnist David Sirota is author of The Uprising: the Unauthorized Tour of the Populist Revolt That's Scaring Wall Street and Washington.

 

 

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Consider the huge cost of war, financial fiascos, and healthcare (and lack thereof) mess in lives, grief/suffering, dollars, and mis-aligned/displaced priorities.  Consider the 3 card monte game going on with your tax dollars (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3_card_monte).  Consider that war and dirty politics has for millennia been a political tool of power, distraction, and simultaneously profiting special interests.

Why are politicians so willing to go all-in for terrorists 9/11-killing 3000 but look the other way and

distracting you from when their cronies/lobbyists/future-employers repeatedly set off financial and healthcare

neutron bombs that claim millions per year?  

(Second transcript below has POV on the above question.)

 

Costs?  Dollars fly from your wallet to large accounts/interests.  Many people get higher prices/unemployment/foreclosure/reduced home values, while a few get record bonuses and shop for larger mansions.  Huge debts reduce current standards of living AND also get passed on to subsequent generations.  Profound costs like current and planned retirements evaporating AND simultaneous producing the first generation in US history that will have poorer health and be financially worse off than their prior generation.

 

It takes a special kind of obscene disregard to pull off that many multi-generational whammies upon whammies.    

 

Since it’s your wallet that’s lightened by these DC shell games, only hope is standing together and the disquieting/less glamorous work of doing and supporting actual change (vs. the centuries of hope-change campaigns).  Though it’s not easy, there is hope.  http://groups.google.com/group/hoaprogressives?hl=en

You can let them know you still care that candidates do what they sell you when they’re campaigning, and that they put honest public service ahead of lobbyists, special interests, and their future employment.  You have the power to invite them to truly take advantage of this limited time historic opportunity to policy shift and realize the inescapable karma of a nation/world being in it together.  http://www.usa.gov/Contact/Elected.shtml

 

Best always to you and yours,

Dave

=)

 

 

 

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http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/546/index.html  Transcript: Elizabeth Warren on the Economy  11-13-09

 

BRANCACCIO: Lets figure out this economy? We read of a Dow up 25%, from the lows of last fall. And those tidy—if not gigantic—banker's bonuses are back. But at the same time unemployment has skyrocketed. Federal figures show that one out of every six workers is unemployed or underemployed - that's the highest figure since the great depression.  Elizabeth Warren is … the Harvard professor heading up the congressional oversight panel overseeing how the bailout money is being spent.  …

 

…WARREN: … the things that drove us here are still here. And most importantly, the rules, the regulatory rules of the road, what you can and can't do on Wall Street, in financial institutions, have not changed.

 

…WARREN: Well, we did make one big change. And that is we now know that the government will race in to rescue large financial institutions. And this is really important because it has changed the whole economic market. The part that has changed is that now we see the government as either an explicit or an implicit guarantor of huge parts, big, of the big part of the financial institution's system. And that means pricing is distorted. And it means we live in a world of moral hazard, squared.    …the business plan now for—a financial institution, a big bank that has a government guarantee behind it. In effect, they can say to the investors, "Hey, come invest with me. And I'm gonna take it all to Las Vegas, and I'm gonna bet it on red 22. And if it comes in, we are rich. And if it doesn't come in, the taxpayers will pay you back."

HINOJOSA: So, this is capitalism for dummies, and the US taxpayer is the dummy?

WARREN: …government either explicitly or implicitly says, "We will throw as many taxpayers under the bus as we need to, to keep these large financial institutions afloat."

 

…WARREN: …Things are looking good at the top because they have fabulous guarantees, because we have pumped literally hundreds of billions of dollars into these largest institutions. And if that's not enough, we guaranteed them. …Why wouldn't their stock be up? Look at the message here. The—the problem is the rest of us, the real economy, what's happening with unemployment, what's happening with foreclosures, whether or not we really have a plan, and frankly—whether or not our government is behind the rest of us, rather than seeing us as someone who will pay the bill for those other guys. Are we working on government plans and—and—and government ideas to support the middle class, the working class, to support the real families in America?

 

…HINOJOSA: …soldier …just come back from Iraq. …unable to find a job. …three children…surprise in the mail. The minimum monthly payment on one of her cards had jumped from $90 dollars to $270 dollars. …interest rate went from seven percent to 30 percent.

…HINOJOSA: …gotten worse for consumers with credit cards. Listen to Congressman Barney Frank last week.

FRANK: "They have retained the right unilaterally and retroactively to raise the interest rate on what you already owe them. It is the single unfairest economic transaction I can think of that doesn't involve a pistol!"

 

…WARREN: …there's no one to stop them. They are raking in… And they're lobbying Washington really hard to try to keep that in place.

 

…WARREN: There are fees for people who pay on time. There are fees for people who don't carry balances. There are fees for being inactive with your credit card. Because the whole point is to—is to customize the product around every single family, to figure out how to wring every last dollar out of them. That's the business model.

 

…WARREN: I'm not anti-credit card. … I am anti-tricks and traps. …I wanna see credit card agreements that are a page and half long.

 

…CLIP: BRANCACCIO: …15 by 15 block map of part of Minneapolis. Each one of those dots represents the misery of a house or apartment or building in foreclosure. …dot on this map represents a completed foreclosure for 2008. Over the past nine years, foreclosure hit nearly one in ten households in the county. …

LOCKWOOD: Every one of these houses is a failure. Somebody went bankrupt. Somebody got sick. Sixty percent of the people that we run into are losing their houses—have been ill. Broke a leg. Had a heart attack. Something. And it—it suspended their income.

BRANCACCIO: …foreclosure wave has been the financial equivalent of a neutron bomb. People disappear but the structures are left standing. Each of the personal tragedies behind foreclosure has a ripple effect on neighbors, neighborhoods and surrounding cities and towns. That means this is your problem too, even if you're doing fine with your own mortgage at your own bank.

 

…CLIP: AUCTIONEER: once, twice, third and final call. Sold $58,000.

BRANCACCIO: On the streets of Baltimore, in front of the courthouse, it's a frigid January day. There is no bailout here. 100 foreclosed homes are being auctioned off. Each transaction the end of someone's American dream. The same scene plays out here day after day.

AUCTIONEER: Third and final call...sold back to the lender.

…Congressman CUMMINGS: …insult to injury is that it's their tax dollars that are bailing out Wall Street.

 

…WARREN: …the investors in these mortgages, who can be forced to absorb some of their losses. …foreclosure, on average, costs the investors about $130 thousand dollars. So, every time we get somebody who gets to stay in their house because they've worked out some arrangement, the investors have not suffered a big hit they otherwise would've suffered. So, bringing those two together ought to happen, even without lots of government dollars in between. Right now, too many of those investors are sitting on the sidelines, saying, "I'm not gonna work with families in foreclosure. I'm gonna wait for the government to come and bail me out because that's really what they want to see."

 

…CLIP: CHARLES GIBSON (ABC NEWS): The twenty largest bailed-out banks received 283 billion dollars in tax payer money and today we learned the executives running those 20 troubled banks still received enormous paychecks.

MSNBC: You can't tell me that 119,000 people on Wall Street just happen to qualify for a quarter of a million dollar bonus here?

REUTERS: REPORTER: Goldman Sachs reported near record third quarter profits and appeared on track to pay bonuses topping the $20 billion mark.

CBS AXELROD: Could the go-go days be back already?

 

…WARREN: … truly amazes me, that these folks who are supposed to be the smartest folks in the room, believe that they can take taxpayer money and save their businesses from complete destruction, and still continue to reward themselves as if—they had earned it all. It's as if they don't understand the world changed when you had to take money from the taxpayers to stay alive.

HINOJOSA: But did the world really change for them?

 

…WARREN: They (Goldman) paid back the Tarp money, but they're still operating with government guarantees. They still are counting on the taxpayer to back stop them. And I believe that gives the taxpayer a seat at the table in decision making over executive compensation. It's our money. The key has to be that congress needs to rewrite all of the rules on executive compensation. And we need a special set of rules for any company that's relying on any kind of taxpayer back stop.

 

…WARREN: No, this is not capitalism. That's the whole point. This is socialism. This is the part where they're using taxpayer guarantees and taxpayer support in order to eek out some kind of private gain. And this is just wrong.

HINOJOSA: So, it's—it's socialism for—socialism for rich people?

 

…HINOJOSA: … triple A rated CDO's are now considered central to the global financial crisis.  One year later now, are these credit rating agencies doing the right thing?

WARREN: The rules are the same. Nothing has changed. The laws have not changed. They continue to run their credit rating agencies in the way that they believe will best enhance their own profits and revenues.

 

 

…WARREN: You know, I—I hate to say it. I know something like regulatory reform sounds so boring that I may fall asleep when I say it. But the reality is, congress is about to write the rules of our economic system that will guide us for the next 50 years. If they get it right, we're good. If they get it wrong, the country we knew will be gone.

 

HINOJOSA: And so, what do you want our viewers—what should they be doing?

WARREN: They need to be on their—representatives in congress, their senators. This is democracy. And if we, the people, don't insist that those—who are in Washington, represent us, then they'll go back to the same rules that benefit the same large financial institutions. And frankly, at that point, then we're all just working for the big banks.

 

…WARREN: …boy are the lobbyists in business. They are thundering through Washington—in numbers that we've never seen before. …congress is moving and they are going to write a new set of rules. The only question is, will those rules be written to benefit ordinary, hard-working American families, what I think of as the real economy? Or will those rules be written to benefit a handful of giant financial institutions?

 

 

 

 

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http://www.kansascity.com/618/story/1474364.html   Women's stake in health care reform  9-27-09 
(note: KC Star articles are often only available free online for a week)

Women — and men who care about women and our future generations — should be involved in the health care debate in Washington, D.C.  There are many reasons why. 
…system makes it more difficult for women to get and afford needed health care services. …system does not work well for our female population.

 

 

http://www.kansascity.com/keithchrostowski/story/1574174.html  A simple — and radical — solution to health care  11-16-09

 

.. Call it “limited universal coverage.” You would no longer have to worry about pre-existing conditions or about high medical costs destroying your retirement nest egg or driving you into bankruptcy.

…Goldhill’s proposal, or should I say thought experiment, will never happen. It’s both too simple and too radical, especially for our political parties, one of which is stuck in the 19th century and the other of which is stuck in the 1960s.