Random Thoughts on Other Notable Headlines of the Day — Issue XLIV

October 12, 2009  

Hail to the Bankers! – They Never Give Up

Back in May of this year I posted New Credit Card Bill Allows for Continued Theft — and the banks haven’t let me down. I’ve been proven right on several occasions. In that post I questioned why our lawmakers wanted to wait nine months to implement a new law that would restrict credit card companies from ripping off consumers. Then I offered an answer: Give the credit card companies time to go into high gear to rip off consumers before the new law took affect. Among many other examples I could offer, this one is the latest.

How about raising the interest rate on existing loans before the new law takes affect even though the signed agreement said the rate would always be the same? And at the same time tripling your monthly payment? This is the latest scam by Chase Bank. While some banks have volunteered to freeze interest rates, Chase saw an opportunity to vault ahead before being forced to freeze theirs. If new rates are already in affect when the new law is implemented, then Chase and others like them are in the clear. No laws broken. Hail to the bankers!

A Very Interesting Take from E.J. Dionne, Jr. On “Anti-Obamaism”

The outrage here in America over President Obama simply because he’s black and/or a Democrat can’t be denied. No time in our history has a sitting President been so viciously attacked from within our own ranks. Asked why they hate him, you would get a wide array of answers from his opponents. But E.J. Dionne has looked at data that offers a different view.

Dionne says it’s “Status Anxiety”:

“These Americans are sometimes written off as ‘angry white men’. In analyzing anti-Obama feeling, commentators have taken to rummaging around the work of historian Richard Hofstadter during the 1950s and ’60s, focusing on his theory that ‘status anxiety’ helps explain the rise of movements on the far right. The idea is that extremism takes hold in groups that feel their ‘status’ is threatened by new groups on the rise in society. The problem with status-anxiety theory is that it focuses on feelings and psychology, thus easily crossing into condescension”.

Dionne suggests that the real problem stems from the high loss of jobs over the past year, especially from middle-income men who don’t have a collage degree. After having “made it” to the ranks of the real middle-class then finding themselves without a job and loosing all they’ve worked for, this group adopted a more aggressive stance in attacking someone. By analogy, think about those multi-millionaires and billionaires last year that saw they were about to loose that status. They became so outraged that they were the only ones who got any attention. It’s only been in the past few months that those of us below that level has been acknowledged even thought we were more harshly affected. And the sad thing is that those millionaires and billionaires are still millionaires and billionaires, but the majority of the working class can not claim their old status.

Are We Supposed to Put Any Credibility in What Health Insurers Say?

Today health insurers are saying the new Democratic health reform bill would raise rates. They claim that by 2019 a typical family’s premium could cost $4,000 more than projected. The referenced article points out that this report comes just “one day before a critical Senate committee vote on the legislation”. The report is going to be circulated on Capital Hill and is highly advertised. Naturally this report was paid for by America’s Health Insurance Plans, which is an industry trade group, who claims to “support bipartisan reforms”. But if you research and study their site, you find that they are really against any kind of meaningful consumer reform.

Sadly, true or not, millions of Americans are going to believe this report, which of course is their objective. But what most Americans are not going to consider is the hundreds of billions of dollars at stake here for the industry. They have propagated so many lies and so much disinformation on health reform that they have absolutely no credibility left, yet they will be believed.

In an earlier post I said the opponents to reform know they can’t win by simply using a single argument to discredit health care reform. As such, they are coming out weekly with “all the things that are going to destroy health coverage”, in hopes that enough will stick for them to win. Quite frankly, I have no doubt they will.

While the Rest of the World Shuns Honduran Coop Over Ouster of Democratic Elected President, Republicans in America Befriend Them

Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, a Democratic elected President, was forced out of office and the country by a group opposed to Zelaya’s leftist views. Immediately President Obama and the rest of the world denounced the coop. But since then the de facto government has spent $600,000 lobbying American Capital Hill lawmakers, favoring Republicans. And the Republicans have responded in kind with Senator Jim DeMint leading the pack.

So here we have two problems:

• If we here in America are to condone this act, will we accept the same response from our own political opposition when the ideology take-over is reversed in one of these countries? Rules are rules, and everyone should play by them. Not doing so says we are in favor of democracy but only if “our side” wins.  
• Documenttation that once again our lawmakers are for sale to foreign dictatorships.

If the situation were reversed in that a Republican President was in office and a duly elected rightist President of a foreign country was ousted and Democrats engaged in the same sort of activity, there would be all hell to pay from the right here in our country. Again, a change of rules as the situation suits us.