2010 archive
The Entitlement Society 0
Too much is not enough.
In Germany, a bank goes under and gets taken over by another bank. The new bank decides not the reward employees of the failed bank for their failure with bonuses.
Now bankers from the failed bank are suing for their bonuses.
Dresdner “was entitled to take the actions it did in relation to Dresdner Kleinwort employees’ discretionary bonuses in light of the market deterioration in the investment bank’s performance,” according to a spokesman at Commerzbank, who declined to be identified citing company policy. “The bank will be defending any claims vigorously in the courts.”
You can’t make this stuff up.
We Need Single Payer 0
Country club memberships (emphasis added):
“You see, these insurance companies have made a calculation,” Obama said in prepared remarks released by the White House. “They’re OK with people being priced out of health insurance because they’ll still make more by raising premiums on the customers they have. And they will keep doing this for as long as they can get away with it.”
UPS and Downs 0
A veteran UPS driver, with a 25-year safety record, reflects:
“Distractions are the big culprit,” McAllister says, “and it’s definitely gotten worse.”
He is constantly amazed by “the blatant violations of traffic laws as well as the laws of physics and common sense.”
It’s the electronic age. They used to prop books and memos on the steering wheel. Now it’s laptops.
Furrfu.
Swampwater 0
Commence Operation Scapegoat (emphasis added):
After two workers, including a Virginia Beach man, shot and killed two Afghan civilians last year, the Moyock, N.C.-based Blackwater was thrown off its $25 million subcontract, but not without a fight, the documents reveal.
The supervisor of the two men was specifically identified in e-mails and letters as fostering such an environment. And even after the killings last May, Blackwater – which now calls itself Xe Services – tried to keep him on the job and distance itself from the shootings.
The functions in question should have been performed by United States employees beholden and subject to the United States, not by mercenaries.
The outsourcing of military functions is bogus. It makes the official military budget look a little smaller (or more accurately not as big), while funneling money into private hands not beholden to the United States except on payday to perform the same functions with less efficiency, less effectiveness, undoubtedly less discipline, but at much greater expense.
It’s the hand-in-the-pocket thingee again.
Meta: Why the Category Is “Political Economy” 3
Because all politics is economics. Anything else is a red herring.
The magician prattles on about magic powers and beautiful assistants so you don’t watch his hands in his pockets.
The Republicans prattle on about family values for the same reason. The difference is that their hands are in the country’s pockets.
It’s a Fetish 0
That is, an unwholesome fixation on one thing, like ladies’ shoes.
Joseph Stiglitz on “deficit cut fetishism”:
Read the whole thing, particularly the paragraph towards the end in which he points out
America’s financial industry polluted the world with toxic mortgages, and, in line with the well established “polluter pays” principle, taxes should be imposed on it.
America’s financial industry has shown that it subtracts, rather than adding value and that incompetence is not its own reward; rather, incompetence deserves ginormous bonuses. And country club memberships.
Its advice should be discounted.
The Galt and the Lame 0
One of the myths treasured by the rightwing is that private industry always does a better job than government “bureaucrats.”*
It just ain’t so, but it does funnel a lot of government money in private hands:
Consider the bomb-sniffing dogs: The Navy contracted out their training. The dogs failed the tests after training (they couldn’t sniff bombs); after thinking about it a while, the Navy decided to buy the dogs and train them itself:
But what they found when they arrived was shocking, according to internal Navy e-mails: dirty, weak animals so thin that their ribs and hip bones jutted out.
(snip)
In fact, the Navy said later, at least two of the dogs did not survive. Several others were deemed too sick to ever be of use. Nearly a year after they were supposed to have begun working, the remaining K-9s still are not patrolling Navy installations as intended.
The contractor says the Navy owes it $6,000,000.00.
I hope the guv’mint protected itself by including in the contract a performance bond.
_______________
*As if large private companies somehow do not qualify as “bureaucracies”; case in point: try calling Verizon for a telephone repair and see how long it takes to reach a real live human being.
It took me an hour and six phone calls–Verizon dropped two of them and three others ended up in Menu Hell. Once I got to them, the real live human beings were polite, knowledgeable, and efficient (afterthought: probably because they were hungry for human interaction), but Verizon’s 800-number horror show is one of the reasons I would not contract with Verizon for anything other than basic land line service.
Skip the Interminable Boring Hollywood Self-Love Fest Oscars
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“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 1
For two years, in between carpools, I transferred between the bus and the subway at the Pentagon subway station in Arlington, Va., where yesterday some yahoo with a gun cut loose.
Just to be clear, I am against prohibiting firearms. I like shooting and I’m pretty good when I’m in practice. Guns are neither inherently good nor bad. At the same time . . . .
Prudescence 1
Honest to Pete, someone has a real problem, and it’s not the family that sculpted the snowwoman.
Words fail me, because this is too stupid for words.
“Hold the Pickle, Hold the Lettuce” 0
Special orders don’t upset us.
Scam Alert II 0
Cramming is back:
This week, the FTC filed charges against two San Francisco brothers, accusing them of fraudulently billing people for services supposedly provided by numerous companies with names such as GoFaxer.com, Global YP and Inc21. A federal judge issued an injunction halting operations by the businesses while the men await trial.
Crammers use a wide variety of ways to stick consumers with charges they never approved.
More of that fee hand of the market that righties are so fond of talking about.