I have heard a rumor that former KCK mayor Carol Maranovich is considering a run for the House of Representatives in the 3rd Congressional District. I don’t know how true this is, but it should scare the bejesus out of the Johnson County Republicans. I say, let’s cheer her on!
Monthly Archives: December 2009
LET’S THANK DENNIS MOORE FOR HIS VOTE ON THE INHERITANCE/WEALTH PASSING TAX
As it is now, you can inherit about 3.6 million dollars (six million for a couple) without paying an inheritance tax of 45%. The tax was due to undergo a one-year repeal beginning next month. The U.S. House voted to extend the tax permanently. Congressman Dennis Moore voted for the extension of the tax. Thanks to Congressman Moore!
DAVID BURRESS’S LETTER TO THE JW EDITOR TODAY
Economist David Burress wrote an excellent letter to the JW, which was published today. If you missed it, here it is:
Ken Meier says shrinking state and local government is good medicine during a recession (12/5/09 letter). A substantial majority of economists disagree. That’s because spending government money to put people to work actually puts people to work—and then those workers spend money and put additional people to work. That’s exactly what Obama’s stimulus package was supposed to do—and an emerging consensus among economists says it succeeded. Even among members of the rather conservative Association of Business Economists, an August poll found 73% expecting the stimulus to increase 2010 GDP by at least 1/2%, with almost half expecting at least 1%.
Admittedly, things are a bit different at state and local levels because of balanced budget requirements. Usually those requirements make sense, but during a recession they’re perverse. Falling revenues are forcing most government units to cut back, leading to reductions in demand that offset the stimulus package. If those governments had been able to borrow money to keep their operations level, unemployment would be falling right now, instead of holding flat.
Even without borrowing money, it turns out that local economies can benefit if local governments increase taxes to keep their workers employed. According to an accepted principle known as the “balanced budget multiplier,” government expenditures can add more demand to the economy than taxes remove. My back-of-the envelope estimate suggests a $1M property tax increase spent on local government employees would create around 10 Lawrence jobs on net. I urge the city to fund a full study.
David Burress
Lead economist, Ad Astra Institute
CUTTING MEDICARE BENEFITS AND JEOPARDIZING POOR CHILDRENS’ HEALTH CARE: WHY ARE WE EVEN HAVING THESE CONVERSATIONS?
I have to ask myself, “Why, in this rich country, are we even talking about cutting the Medicare program for assisted daily living, which keeps the elderly and disabled in their homes?” And “Why is the Senate talking about ending a health care safety net for poor children?” However, having closely watched the United States political-social-economic system evolve from the vibrant capitalism and Great Society programs of the 1960s to its current form of decadent plutocracy, I am not surprised that the U.S. Congress is about to cut benefits for the elderly and end the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIPS).
Benefits for keeping the elderly and disabled in their homes through home health care currently comprise 3.7% of the Medicare budget. Under the current Senate health care reform proposal, this program is slated to absorb 10% of cuts in Medicare. Medical device manufacturers, drug companies, and insurance companies, will continue to scam the health care system at a rate that renders any home health care benefits trivial in the overall scheme of things.
The Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIPs) would be repealed under current proposals (as passed by the House and as debated in the Senate). Poor families would be forced to buy health insurance in the health insurance exchange likely to emerge from a final health care bill. Good luck with that! According to Marian Wright Edelman of The Children’s Defense Fund, “Children by the millions are going to be worse rather than better off.”
CLAIRE McCASKILL’S VOTE ON THE CLASS ACT WAS CLASSLESS
Ghandi was once asked what he thought of Western Civilization. He thought about it for a moment and then replied, “It would be a nice idea.” What can we say about a society that pours unlimited amounts of money into war and won’t provide adequate support for a decent program to keep elderly and disabled citizens in their homes in lieu of institutionalization? Senator Claire McCaskill could have done something decent and civilized on Friday. She could have voted for the Community Living Assistance Services & Support Act (CLASS). It was a pet project of Senator Kennedy. It did pass, but it passed with Senator McCaskill and eleven other Democrats voting against it.
Instead of joining the Democratic majority and voting for it, she voted with that cabal of mean-spirited, hypocritical group of Senate Democrats such as Kent Conrad of South Dakota. She voted against a bill providing for a voluntary, modest premium by workers to be paid into a fund to provide services should they become disabled and unable to meet their daily living needs but with some assistance can stay in their homes. Senator McCaskill thinks this would be a “drain” on the federal budget. In fact, the impact of this humane program on the U.S. budget would be, at worst, de minimus.
I like Claire McCaskill. That is why I find her vote on the CLASS Act inexplicable. I expect this narrow-mindedness from Ben Nelson, Blanche Lincoln, Kent Conrad, and a few other Democrats in the Senate. But I think Senator McCaskill is better than that. That is why I am willing to drive over to Missouri and walk door to door for her. I understand that Missouri is a tough place for Democrats, but she wouldn’t have been hurt by voting for this bill.
I wonder if the readers of this blog are as fed up with the health care deficit hawk grandstanding of some of these Democrats as I am. Claire McCaskill’s phone numbers are:
Washington, DC: 202 228 6326 Kansas City, MO: 816 228 6326
The Importance of Health Care to the Kansas Economy: Why the Kansas Republican Campaign Against Health Care Reform is a Job Killer
We need to let ultra-conservative Kansas legislators such as Brenda Landwehr, chair of the House Health & Human Services Committee (if you can believe that), know that government health care dollars are good for our economy and good for the sinking middle class. Ms Landwehr has been on the Koch billionaire (“Kochtopus”) bus traveling across Kansas with other members of the evangelical, right-wing (of the anti-choice-anti-life variety) legislative delegation in an attempt to keep federal health care dollars out of Kansas (see my e-mail of 11/21, entitled “Mean-Ass Kansas Republican Health Care Proposal”).
Please direct Ms Landwehr’s and her Republican cohorts’ attention to a report issued by the Kansas Hospital Association entitled “The Importance of the Health Care Sector to the Kansas Economy.” The report can be accessed at http://www.kha-net.org/Communications/MediaReleases/32164.aspx.
Perhaps readers of this blog would think that a report that discusses social accounting matrix analysis (SAM) is a real eye glazer and only for policy wonks of the highest order. But it isn’t – really, honestly. Take my word for it. It is quite fascinating. The first paragraph should make it clear that the Republican campaign to keep health care dollars out of Kansas is a “job killer.” It states the following:
“Though the connection between health care services and local economic development are often overlooked, there are at least three important relationships to be recognized. A strong health care system can attract and maintain business and industry growth, attract and retain retirees, and also create jobs in the local area.” (page 1)
The report can be boiled down to this: the health care industry is approaching 20% of GDP across this nation and in Kansas. It accounts for a very large payroll in Kansas and every other state. How large? The health care industry in Kansas provides 177,585 direct Kansas health care jobs and, due to a multiplier effect, accounts for a total of 290,728 jobs. Employees of hospitals, nursing homes, clinics, and other health related institutions purchase goods and services from other businesses. This is the multiplier effect.
In a state with a work force of slightly less than 1.8 million, a 290,728 (16.4%) job producing segment of the economy is a big deal. When these Republicans start messing with it, they should be called to account.
It is my intention to gin up a campaign to not only save but to increase jobs in Kansas by supporting health care legislation that would increase federal tax dollars directed toward coverage of the uninsured and underinsured citizens of this state. We can most certainly count on Marci Francisco – who receives my post notices – but we need to support her and insure that all Democrat and reasonable Republican representatives (i.e. Tom Sloan) are aware of our concern about this.
My Thoughts About President Obama
Even though I disagree with some of President Obama’s decisions, and although I find myself disappointed at times with lack of progress toward cherished, progressive goals, I believe he is the best thing that has happened to the Democratic Party since the administrations of John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. He has inherited an ungodly mess from the worst administration in U.S. history. Furthermore, the Republican Party, backed by right-wing billionaires, now has a single-minded purpose, which is to make this president fail.
President Obama has an almost impossible mission. Never in the history of this country has one political party, after leaving messes of crisis proportion, mobilized so totally, thoroughly, and energetically for no other purpose than to make the presidential administration of the other party fail. The right wing in this country has no interest in supporting any programs of President Obama – even if those programs are in the best interests of the American people and are badly needed to stop deterioration in our quality of life.
I do not want to hear my progressive brothers and sisters talk of a Henry Wallace-Eugene McCarthy-Bobbie Kennedy type of primary challenge in 2012. That would be self-destructive and self-defeating. Jean and I expect to be holding our annual celebration of President Obama’s election through 2016.
President Obama’s War Speech
President Obama ended his war speech tonight by saying, “We as Americans can come together behind a common purpose.” He also said our “cause is just” and “our resolve is unwavering.” If these phrases are more than soaring rhetoric, I have a few questions:
When will this military venture become something more than a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight?
Working class men and women fighting these wars (Iraq and Afghanistan) are either killed or broken mentally and physically through repeated deployment to these god-foresaken battlefields. I don’t see the upper classes and politicians who are making war decisions sending their children to this particular war. If Afghanistan is so important to our national security, then we need to begin the draft now. I am increasingly disgusted by the sentimentalizing, romanticizing, and patronizing of our “brave men and women in uniform,” many of whom are in uniform because they needed a job. Does this self-indulgent society really care all that much about the mental and physical damage and stress experienced every day by the troops on the ground in Afghanistan? Or is it “out of sight, out of mind?”
When will the upper classes begin paying their fair share of taxes so that our quality of life can stop its decline due to war spending?
If the middle classes and working classes continue to pay a disproportionate share of the taxes needed to fight this war, and the upper classes continue to profit while bearing a lower tax burden, that won’t seem to me to be “coming together behind a common cause.”
What happens if an Afghan Army and Government are not able to pick up the fight in 18 months?
There is an old labor movement refrain to promises from politcians: “We will get pie in the sky when we die by-and- by.” It is likely that we will attempt to buy off villagers (the Petraeus approach), sacrifice the lives of several hundred American troops and god knows how many of the villagers. We will have hundreds of Americans with severe injuries that most of us will never see…and wouldn’t want to look at anyway. At the end of 18 months, we will be coming out. Yea right.
Fight Privatization of Kansas Government!
Beware of Privatization of Government Services
In response to today’s editorial, “Privatization caution,” I submitted the following letter to the Lawrence Journal World:
A move is under way to privatize government services and jobs in Kansas. The so-called Reason Foundation (heavily funded by the Koch Billionaires of Wichita) is pushing this irrational idea. In pushing their wacky form of right-wing libertarianism, the Koch oil magnates and other far-right billionaires will claim that their purpose is economy and efficiency in government. Don’t fall for this.
Privatization has historically cost taxpayers more than services provided by government employees and has essentially lined the pockets of executives and investors. If you don’t believe this, just consider the costs of outsourced defense/war functions. Logistics and food services provided by KBR are far more expensive than when these services are provided by the military. One small example: The Army Times reported on their website on Nov. 1, 2009, that Pentagon auditors are attempting to deal with KBR’s “disjointed processes” and “weak accounting practices.”
While troop levels are dropping off in Iraq, KBR’s level of employment has remained at the January 2008 level (17,000 employees). During my service in the Marine Corps in the 1960s, I paid the same dues as every other Marine had paid up to that time. I served on mess duty. Cooking and other food services were provided by sergeants, corporals, and privates. You can bet that this was done far cheaper than it would have been done by KBR.
Consider Medicare Part C (Medicare Advantage Plans). According to the Center for Medicare Services, the federal government pays private insurance companies on average 14 percent more for providing coverage to Medicare Advantage beneficiaries than it pays for the same services to beneficiaries in the traditional Medicare program (20 percent more in some parts of the country).
Examples of these types of rip-offs of taxpayers abound. The right-wing, anti-government libertarianism promoted by the Kochs has, as its primary objective, the destruction of government programs. Furthermore, the main result of privatization is transfer of wealth from the bulk of U.S. taxpayers to the top 5 percent of wealth and income classes.
Legislators are being irresponsible when they hand your government, and in effect your taxes, over to the likes of Halliburton, Cigna Insurance, and the Correction Corporation of America. One Republican legislator was quoted in the Journal World on Nov. 30 as telling the Reason Foundation representative, “You had me at hello.” This is a mindless bending to the will of a powerful private interest with selfish motives that are contrary to the best interests of the people of Kansas.