Political Economy category archive

This is kind of scary.

That (description of moving a 1,000 pound woman to an ambulance–ed.) was an extreme example of something city ambulance crews here and around the country are seeing more of: super-heavy patients.

To help accommodate them – and to cut down on the rash of back injuries suffered by paramedics and firefighters trying to lift them – agencies have invested in costly equipment and modified some of their practices.

Portsmouth (Va,) in recent years has replaced its standard gurneys with battery-driven hydraulic “power stretchers,” said Capt. Paul Hoyle, Emergency Medical Services manager. They’re rated to safely hold 700 pounds and lift at the touch of a button, at nearly the cost of a small car: $8,000 apiece.

Virginia Beach rescue squads added electric lifts to fewer than a dozen of their stretchers, said Bruce Nedelka, EMS division chief.

Medical Transport, a private ambulance service, has added eight oversized stretchers to its statewide fleet, four of them in South Hampton Roads, said Elizabeth Beatty, district field supervisor. Her company also operates an oversized ambulance, based in Virginia Beach, that gets requests from across Virginia.

I’m sort of torn here. When I watch the antics of those who want to turn being 10 pounds overweight into a pre-existing condition for health insurance premiums, I scream, “Blaming the victim!”

Nevertheless, 700 pounds plus is slightly more than 10 pounds overweight. Although there can be physiological or genetic causes, they do not seem to explain the explosion of obesity, but in numbers and amount.

All it takes to see that is a walk down the street.

Frankly, I think it has more to do with making Cheetos, Big Macs, and Super-Sizing part of the American Way of Life than with anyone’s personal culpability.

Full Disclosure: I hate Big Macs. I like Cheetos. In fact, I like anything that tastes like cheese, no matter how artificial and no matter how orange it leaves my fingers. I like real cheese even better.

A windfall tax on the banksters’ obscene bonus “pay for attendance” culture:

Government must take on a new strategic authority to build the economy of the future. Its first step must be to end the power of the banking oligarchy and reassure the public that its capture of the political elite is over. The Compass campaign for a windfall tax on bankers’ bonuses is an essential first step in reasserting democracy and bringing the business elite to account. A windfall tax would mark the start of the longer term transformation of the banking sector which will be necessary to meet the challenges of future economic development.

Republican Economic Theory at work:

Defaults by small and medium-sized U.S. businesses on the loans, leases and lines of credit they use to finance capital equipment investment rose in September as lenders remained reluctant to extend fresh financing, PayNet Inc reported on Friday.

The fee hand of the market at work:

Consumer advocates say companies are taking advantage of the recession and the growing number of uninsured people — 1 in 5 American adults under age 65 — to sell “health coverage” that evaporates when customers try to use it, or provides far less than promised.

Just last month, Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson sued two out-of-state companies for allegedly misleading customers with phony claims about their health plans; and ten more investigations are underway, she said.

Via Atrios.

Matt Browner Hamlin (emphasis added):

The hypocrisy of how the contracts of Wall Street executives are being treated versus those of union workers is simply stunning. All I want to see in an economic crisis is fairness. If contracts are inviolable, they are inviolable for everyone, regardless of whether they are between blue collar workers in factories, white collar workers in office complexes, or the multi-millionaire executives on Wall Street. If the economic crisis demands that auto workers take a haircut on their pay, benefits, and pensions, Wall Street executives must be held to the same standard. Conversely, if the contracts between big banks and investment firms and their top executives simply cannot be changed, then it’s time to go back and honor the contracts between the auto industry and organized labor. It’s that simple.

If you slurp at the public trough, expect public strings. Frankly, it’s about time (or even much too late) that these bozos realized our money kept them in country club memberships:

The Treasury Department yesterday ordered seven companies that received billions of dollars in government bailouts to halve total compensation for their top executives. But the big reductions will not apply to pay earned before November.

Kenneth Feinberg, the Treasury official leading the pay review, said average salaries for the top 25 executives would be cut 90 percent starting next month.

The action will apply to the top executives at Bank of America Corp., American International Group Inc., Citigroup Inc., General Motors Co., GMAC L.L.C., Chrysler L.L.C., and Chrysler Financial.

Aside: Am I the only person who finds the expression “take a haircut” to refer to taking a loss somewhere on a continuum between stupid and fatuous?

Hamlin link via Eschaton.

(The) International Paper Co. mill that has been the been Franklin’s (Franklin, Va.–ed.) heart for generations will close, perhaps as soon as next spring.

“It’s a travesty, a real travesty,” (Mayor) Councill said. “We have 1,100 families to take care of. We want to help, sustain and find work for these people.”

My high school played Franklin in sports, which required a two and a half hour trip across the Bay to get to the games. And. when I was a young ‘un, we drove through Franklin twice a year on the way to visit my grandmother in South Carolina back.

We would always joke that the smell of the mill was the smell of money. Back then, it was still Union-Bag Camp Paper Co.

Franklin was a neat, well-kept little town on U. S. 58 out in the country (since then, the suburbs of the Hampton Roads area area have marched relentlessly towards it and it is no longer out in the country).

I guess it will no longer have the smell of money.

Read more »

Still over half a mil. What’s missing from the snippet on continuing claims is how many persons had their unemployment insurance expire.

Initial claims for state jobless insurance increased 11,000 to a seasonally adjusted 531,000 in the week ended Oct. 17 from a revised 520,000 the prior week, the Labor Department said, after declining for two consecutive weeks.

(major snippage)

There were more encouraging signs, with the number of people collecting long-term unemployment benefits dropping 98,000 to 5.92 million in the week ended Oct. 10, the latest week for which the data is available.

That was the lowest level since March and it was the first time that continuing claims fell below the 6 million mark since April.

I’m making no claims about the supernatural pro or con, but this sure applies to the adherents of the Republican orthodoxy.

Contrary to what Republicans say, a trip to the emergency room does not constitute health care coverage.

Because health insurance and employment go together, this year’s devastating job losses have likely increased the ranks of the uninsured by four million people, including nearly 200,000 in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

The new age rage:

Growing numbers of Americans who have lost houses to foreclosure are landing in homeless shelters, according to social service groups and a recent report by a coalition of housing advocates.

Only three years ago, foreclosure was rarely a factor in how people became homeless. But among the homeless people that social service agencies have helped over the last year, an average of 10 percent lost homes to foreclosure, according to “Foreclosure to Homelessness 2009,” a survey produced by the National Coalition for the Homeless and six other advocacy groups.

Check those C-Notes:

I suspect that the poll results cited below are not atypical.

Persons think that government is able to give them something for nothing.

From a poll in Virginia:

Most Virginians are adamant about not wanting to raise taxes to address transportation problems, but depending on where they live, they disagree about whether fixing urban congestion is a regional or a state responsibility, according to a new poll.

Almost one of every four likely voters indicated that if the state needs to make more budget cuts, they want to start with transportation spending.

In other words, if it’s broke, don’t ask me to help fix it.

Even though I use it every day.

In other news, for example:

In 2008, 25.9 percent of Virginia’s bridges were functionally obsolete or structurally deficient, placing the state at 29th lowest in the nation for percent of deficient bridges. (Note: Functionally obsolete or structurally deficient bridges are not necessarily unsafe.) Virginia’s rate was higher than Tennessee’s 20.2 percent, but lower than that of either North Carolina or Maryland, which had 28.7 and 26.3 percent functionally obsolete or structurally deficient bridges, respectively. Arizona was the leading state at 11.2 percent; the national average in 2008 was 25.2 percent.

Many have theorized that one reason the Bush administration gave so much TARP money to so many banks, including those who protested that they didn’t need it, was that the Treasury Department didn’t want to reveal who was in the biggest trouble. (For example, follow this link and listen to Hour One, October, 6, 2009, or click here to listen to the mp3.)

If this were indeed the case, I guess now we have a hint who they were protecting:

Bank of America Corp., the biggest U.S. lender, posted its second quarterly loss in less than a year, unable to shake off effects of the economic contraction that drove the company to take two taxpayer bailouts.

There’s one less bank in the San Jaoquin Valley:

San Joaquin Bank, Bakersfield, California

I’ve been to the San Jaoquin. Having seen it is one reason why I never understood the fascination persons have with Lalaland.

Still over half a million. The press seems to defining “less bad” as “good.”

The department also said initial claims for state unemployment aid fell 10,000 to 514,000 last week, a second straight weekly drop that hinted at some easing in the pace of layoffs.

Still over half a million:

The number of Americans filing first- time claims for unemployment benefits fell last week to the lowest since January, a sign the labor market is deteriorating more slowly as the economy emerges from the recession.

Applications fell by 33,000 to 521,000, lower than forecast, in the week ended Oct. 3, from a revised 554,000 the week before, Labor Department data showed today in Washington. The total number of people collecting unemployment insurance dropped in the prior week to the least since March.

In other news, John Cole looks at news from the commercial real estate market and concludes:

. . . it is going to be both tragic and funny to watch Atrios and the rest of the DFH crowd be right about a double-dip recession.

California continues to crumble:

Hotel foreclosures in California more than tripled in the first nine months of this year as business travelers and vacationers cut spending.

Foreclosures climbed to 47 in January through September from 15 a year earlier and properties in default more than quadrupled to 259, Irvine, California-based Atlas Hospitality Group said in a statement. Atlas specializes in selling hotels. The survey didn’t include states other than California.

Warren Bank, Warren, Michigan

Jennings State Bank, Spring Grove, Minnesota

Southern Colorado National Bank, Pueblo, Colorado

In other news, the commercial real estate market is less than desirable.

The Balloon Juice dictionary becomes required reading.

An excerpt:

No One Could Have Predicted– Used by members of the Bush Administration, especially Condolezza Rice, about situations that anybody with an IQ above room temperature could (and frequently did) predict. Thus, “In May 2002… Condoleezza Rice said, ‘I don’t think anyone could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center.’”—although the World Trade Center had been attacked by terrorists in 1993, and GWBush had been given an official briefing in August 2001 titled “Osama bin Ladin determined to Strike within the United States.” Became an object of ridicule after Hurricane Katrina, and is frequently employed by bloggers and commenters about situations that were easily predicted, such as “No one could have predicted that electing a black man would drive some people crazy…”

Reuters:

A report from the Labor Department showed new claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly fell 21,000 to a seasonally adjusted 530,000 last week. Analysts polled by Reuters had expected initial claims to rise to 550,000.

530,000 + 21,000=551,000, or it used to in my day.

Interestingly, the initial figure reported for last week was 545,000.

Reuters’s analysts also blew it last week guessing high. Who are they anyway?

Home sales also dropped.