Education Speeches, Viaticals & Other Outrages (If You're Not Paying Attention . . .)

**Please contribute to my PayPal account if you possibly can. I am in dire financial circumstances and need help now. Thank you in advance for your kindness!** Faux Snooze is so busy every day doing good, spreading peace and light (as well as the faux-snooze pretenders - all the rest of the mainstream media) . . . and if you wondered about the subconscious suggestion that "death panels" embody, read on. One site I've become attached to reading recently (check out the cute, subtly funny analogies on the About page) has a logical, compelling explication of exactly what the furor about Obama's education speech to the nation's schoolchildren portends. She also has hundreds of commenters I recommend that you read for your greater enjoyment.

Seriously, read this whole speech. It’s inspiring, wonderful, and designed to inspire kids to stay in school, accept the responsibility of the education, learn things, and then go and and do good for the world.

Of course, there is a lunatic fringe in this country who will go ballistic about Obama no matter what he does; these are the ones saying the speech is indoctrinating children into accepting his socialist health care plan that will mutilate puppies and convert our elderly into Soylent Green. These people may be rabid racists, or simply mentally unbalanced, but we know for a rock solid fact that these people are utterly, completely wrong. Whatever you want to call them, it’s clear they are so far from the norm of the American people that they can’t even see the horizon from where they are. Simply reading the speech transcript shows that simply and clearly. But it’s also a fact that this subset of the population will always be with us.

But you know what? That doesn’t mean we have to give them a voice in the mainstream press. They have a right to their speech, but that doesn’t obligate anyone to pay attention to them, especially on the platform of national TV. I’m looking you right in the eye, Fox News. Not only do you give these people — factually wrong and provably so — a voice, you reiterate their comments and use your own voice to back them up.

This sort of thing mainstreams a view that is charitably called crazy. Again, I urge you to read Obama’s actual speech. It’s awesome, and something every kid should see and hear.

From our well-informed sources at FireDogLake we learn about the latest abomination from Wall Street: Securitized Viaticals. (And, yes, it's not surprising or even new that they have a death casino operating at full speed now. I guess no one on Wall Street gets sick or dies horribly anymore as they all have that great insurance that we keep hearing that people will lose under Obama's plan.) (Emphasis marks added - Ed.)

The geniuses of Wall Street have decided that the next big thing is betting on death. Yes, Wall Street will be rooting for sick people to die right away, at least as soon as the dying sell them their life insurance policies. It’s the latest version of a Death Panel: it gives investors a reason to stop health care reform.

Here’s how it works. Sick people need money. Most folks have term policies that aren’t worth anything to them while they live. They can’t pay for health care with money that won’t be there until they die. So, they sell their policies to Wall Street firms for something less than the face value but a good bit more than nothing. Wall Street wizards package them into bonds.

They found a rating agency ready to assign them AAA ratings. Of course, DBRS, and its math whiz with a degree in nuclear physics, have figured out that one needs to diversify to spread the risk:

A bond made up of life settlements would ideally have policies from people with a range of diseases — leukemia, lung cancer, heart disease, breast cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer’s. That is because if too many people with leukemia are in the securitization portfolio, and a cure is developed, the value of the bond would plummet.

That’s right; diversity is the spice of Vulture Bonds.

Once rated, brokers have a new product to market, just like those collateralized mortgages that were so successful at pouring fees into the pockets of the rich. Then they wait like the Himalayan Vultures they are for the sick to die, as soon as possible, thank you. The earlier they die, the more money investors make. Heaven forbid people should linger for a long life, that would reduce their profits.

And just like with CMOs, investors don’t even have to own the bonds to bet on death:

Goldman Sachs has developed a tradable index of life settlements, enabling investors to bet on whether people will live longer than expected or die sooner than planned.

Does anyone think we should give those creeps an incentive to stop health care reform? When investors have a financial stake in people dying, they sure don’t want their subjects to have health care. Even more of the rich will have a reason to kill reform so people will die immediately. It even gives rich investors a reason to demand the right to euthanasia.

This is Wall Street's idea of innovation. Aren’t we lucky to have carrion birds roosting high on Wall Street? Aren’t they really worth the billions they take out of our pockets?

And gems found in the comments:

PriscillaQOB :Well hey now, they’ve pretty much maxed out the profits on sickness itself. People who don’t own houses or make a good living or have affordable credit available anymore are not a good pool of suckers to rob. You can’t milk much more out of utilities and goods either, what with the falling incomes and high unemployment. What else is there to capitalize but death?

Give ‘em an A+ for creativity. And an A+ for chutzpah for being able to find yet another way to take advantage of desperate, dying Americans who probably won’t realize that they are signing away the last little bit of economic power they own in order to buy that pain medication. And then there’s the possibility of losing money if enough of the dying don’t really die but actually recover to live another few years.

It’s a plan that only sane human beings with an ounce of compassion would object to and we all know that kind has no clout in today’s America. And just think, if the health care reform bill is really crappy then that will cause these things to skyrocket in value since more and more Americans will be guaranteed death instead of recovery. It’s a win-win for every investor and congress critter!

tinman 1967: Viatical investments have been around for a number of years but they tended to focus on just one policy (person) at a time. That wasn’t really all that efficient plus you were putting all your eggs in one basket. If the person ended up being healthier than originally believed you had to wait a long time for a return.

The bundling of many life policies is the key to viaticals new popularity. It’s a great investment as long as someone doesn’t come along and find a cure for cancer or something (or someone doesn’t come along and pass a major health care reform bill).

Mommybrain: Does anyone else see how this might lead to a lack of private funding for, oh, say, cancer research or hypertension cures?

Dakine01: Are we setting up the scenes for the dark sci-fi? What will they call this era? The Crazy Years? The Idiot Interregnum?

Sharkbabe: We’re all Afghans at a wedding now.

Frank 33: Gol(d)man Sachs is buying Pharmaceuticals and Health Insurance companies. These predators want a centralized, health care system, run by corporations. Medical care givers will be required to give the treatments approved by Goldman Sachs.

. . . A “public option” would be very costly to Green Soylent. But we know Paulson and Blankfein were on the phone to each other more than teenagers in puppy love. That got GS 700000000000000 or so.

So I am thinking that GS will not allow a Public Option or national health care under any circumstances.

Hugh: I saw this story when it came out and at the time I thought it showed how unreformed the financial system remains. The old and sick, and the rest of us too, should not have to sell off our wealth, our estates and legacies just to purchase healthcare or medicines. But it is typical that Wall Street would seek to profit from it. I can see already how they will spin this as some form of altruism on their part.

Solerso: And now the market has a vested interest in NOT finding a cure for lukemia, or aids, or whatever.

Margot @ 15: It is my understanding this was being done on a smaller scale during the beginning years of AIDS, but then the prognosis changed and not so many people were dying. Ha, they lost money. This time around they’ll include many more diseases to spread the risk. I hope someone in DC picks up on this and NIXES it ASAP, if they can.

Gitcheegumee: Electronic medical records and Goldman Sachs:

. . . Emdeon latest to jump after IPO Deals IPOs ReutersAug 12, 2009 … N), Goldman Sachs & Co, (GS.N) UBS Investment Bank (UBSN. … by two private equity firms, General Atlantic Partners and Hellman & Friedman, …www.reuters.com/article/……..9220090812

Emdeon IPO Rises 6.6%, Ending Off Day’s High - WSJ.comAug 13, 2009 … Investors flocked to the IPO of Emdeon Inc., driving up shares of the medical-billing … added to the deal — were sold by private-equity firm General Atlantic LLC. … Goldman Sachs Group Inc.( GS ). 162.97, 1.31, 9/4

Emdeon IPO: Healthcare Reform Beneficiary (EM) – 24/7 Wall St.Aug 12, 2009 … If Emdeon sounds familiar, that is because General Atlantic Partners … Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, UBS, and Barclays Capital are listed …247wallst.com/…/emdeon-ipo-healthcare-reform-beneficiary-em/

Incidentally, General Atlantic Partners had extensive investments in United Health Care at one time, and one of the GAP execs on the West Coast had previously worked at Goldman Sachs.

Nathan Aschbacher: This creates a OMGFINGXBOX-HUGE problem in the propensity for self-dealing and bad faith investment; doesn’t it? Where somebody’s actual health insurance policy is the original asset, and the life insurance policy becomes tantamount to credit default swap to hedge against the payouts on the health policy? If there is ever a situation where there isn’t impossibly strict separation of interests between those two policy providers, these won’t be “death panels;” what you’ll have would be tantamount to private for-profit death squads. Literally hunting people down to capitalize on their death.

zarf@37: People need health insurance to maintain their good health. The(y) may need ‘life insurance’ policies as part of their financial planning, but no one needs to enable a system whereby it is profitable for Wall Street to make more money through ‘more, more frequent deaths’ than by helping people remain healthy and productive.

This is one of those milestones, in which it is clear that the system of debt capitalism is not working. After all, any economy that finds itself in such desperate straits that it creates ‘financial instruments’ to bet on the early deaths of people is not sustainable over time.

Phylter: I’ve got a name for them . . . Soylent Investment Corp. Were Josef Mengele alive, he could have been the CEO. The Nazis made one mistake, they didn’t send the murdered Jews to meat packing plants.

What a nightmare world we live in, I wanna get off.

I agree. Taste the whole enchilada here. And finally, on the winning of the Iraq war (yes, we won) and why don't we come home like George Will has newly discovered that we should (as William Rivers Pitt sees clearly in With Friends Like These): The commenter "asb" notes:

From one important perspective, the war is won: it will be a long time before Iraq's vast oil reserves will again threaten Saudi oil prices. We are on the downhill slope in terms of supply but on a ride to the stratosphere in terms of profits -- and the game in oil is not to own it, but to control it; and if that's impossible, to deny its control to its owners. It is time to prosecute those individuals and interest groups who initiated and prosecuted this war - and look into their actions in the years leading up to it.

David Brookbank (not verified) What is truly dangerous about Will's arguments, which is being forwarded around the world and to U.S. congressman to convince them to get the U.S. out of these two genocidal, illegal, criminal invasions and occupations, is what it also advocates. Will argues that "America should do only what can be done from offshore, using intelligence, drones, cruise missiles, airstrikes and small, potent Special Forces units, concentrating on the porous 1,500-mile border with Pakistan, a nation that actually matters." As Rivers sums it up, "This should be done ... so no more valorous American soldiers die over there." As I see it, Will sees the U.S. having created unsalvageable fiascoes (which they are) and advocating getting out while the getting is good so that we can be prepared to use these other methods wherever necessary in the world. Wash our hands of blood and turn death, genocide, collateral damage and war crimes over to the covert action boys, special forces, and remote computer and satellite controlled gunners. And this would not just happen at the Pakistan border, as Will suggests, but anywhere on the planet (Venezuela, Iran, Palestine, North Korea, Nicaragua, Cuba, Somolia, etc, etc., etc, ) that the likes of a Wolfowitz, or Gates, or Rumsfeld, or McChrystal, or other warmongers decided. Beware the Trojan horse named George Will. Lee Veal (not verified) If the right is for it, then Will is for it. If the left is for it, then Will is against it, unless he's for it for different reasons. 'It' can be whatever issue you want to plug in. rjt (not verified) Now, that Obama has gotten America bogged down in Afghanistan and is sticking to Bush’s Iraqi withdrawal schedule; Will's switch to supporting immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan and Iraq, is simply a magnification of the inner workings of the of right-wing ideology mindset we see on every issue. If democrats do it, “it's bad”, if republicans do it, “It's good". Will is just blazing the trail for the gullible right-wing sheep to follow. Stay tuned for more republican war critics. Anonymous Will's sudden change of opinion is clearly a tactic, and his sanctimonious expressions about not losing any more "valorous Americans" (innocent people on the other side of the world can die as a result of our bombs, however) are immoral. Why is it we cannot call him on the immorality of his new call for withdrawal? Pathetic.

To say the least. Suzan _______________

Spectre Wins (Presently) But Schechter Triumphs By Exposing Bankster Plans

Can your heart stand the pressure of knowing the truth about the insiders' view of the "Bankster Power Scandal?" Danny Schechter hopes so and he enumerates the ways the citizenry has been yanked back and forth by media misrepresentations (and their Congressional representatives) as to what is really going on with your money (and your future). Only the strong need read on. (That means you.)

Last week, a Zogby poll found that a majority of the public believes the press made things worse by reporting on the economic collapse. Not only is that blaming the messenger, it also overlooks the fact that much of the media was complicit in the crisis by not covering the forces that caused the collapse when it might have done some good. . . . Usually, the people who pull the strings stay in the background to avoid too much public exposure. They rely on lobbyists to do their bidding. They prefer to work in the shadows. They may back certain politicians, but coming from a world of credit default swaps as they do, they hedge their bets by putting money on all the horses. They have so much influence because they have been reengineering the American economy for decades through "financialization," a process by which banks and financial institutions gradually came to dominate economic and political decision-making. Kevin Phillips, a one time Reagan advisor and commentator, says our deepest problem is "the ascendancy of finance in national policymaking (as well as in the gross domestic product), and the complicity of politicians who really don't want to talk about it." . . . The team of Tim Geithner and Larry Summers has been carrying Wall Street's water as Robert Rubin did before them. No wonder that Obama's Attorney General Eric Holder told the Street last February, "We're not going to go on any witch hunts." That was before we learned that Wall Street forced US regulators to delay the release of stress test results for the country's 19 biggest banks until next Thursday, because some of the lenders objected to government demands that they needed to raise more capital. They are trying to rig the results. That was also before the public learned of the obscenely huge bonuses the firms benefiting from the TARP bailout were shelling out to their executives. That was before we saw how the bankers with help from Democrats, including new convert Arlen Spector, managed to kill a bill to help homeowners stop foreclosures. . . . In this past week, we also saw how a few hedge funds undermined the attempt to save Chrysler from bankruptcy by holding out for more money even after the unions and big banks agreed to compromise to save jobs. The President was furious but apparently powerless: "A group of investment firms and hedge funds decided to hold out for the prospect of an unjustified taxpayer-funded bailout," Obama said. "They were hoping that everybody else would make sacrifices, and they would have to make none. Some demanded twice the return that other lenders were getting." Explains the blog Naked Capitalism, "the banksters are eagerly, shamelessly, and openly harvesting their pound of flesh from financially stressed average taxpayers, and setting off a chain reaction in the auto industry which has the very real risk of creating even larger scale unemployment than the economy already faces. It's reckless, utterly irresponsible, over-the-top greed." . . . "The Senate on Thursday rejected an effort to stave off home foreclosures by a vote of 51 to 45. It was an overwhelming defeat, with the bill's backers falling 15 votes short - a quarter of the Democratic caucus - of the 60 needed to cut off debate and move to a final vote. Across the United States, the measure is estimated to have been able to prevent 1.69 million foreclosures and preserve $300 billion in home equity." Commented the Center for Responsible Lending, "Instead of defending ordinary Americans, the majority of Senators went with the banks. Yes, the same banks who have benefited so richly from the TARP bailout." . . . Will they be allowed to get away with it? A "captured" Congress is doing their bidding. There is no doubt that class antagonism is stewing, says the editor of the blog. He expressed a fear of a reaction that will go way beyond flag-waving tea parties. . . . "... I am concerned this behavior is setting the stage for another sort of extra-legal measure: violence. I have been amazed at the vitriol directed at the banking classes. Suggestions for punishment have included the guillotine (frequent), hanging, pitchforks, even burning at the stake. Tar and feathering appears inadequate, and stoning hasn't yet surfaced as an idea. And mind you, my readership is educated, older, typically well-off (even if less so than three years ago). The fuse has to be shorter where the suffering is more acute." One is reminded of the title of that movie, "There will be blood." Rather than show contrition or compassion for its own victims, Wall Street is hoping to jack up its salaries and bonuses to pre-2007 levels. The men at the top are oblivious to the pain they helped cause. And so far, they've only occasionally been scolded by politicians that have mostly enabled, coddled, bankrolled, funded, rewarded, and genuflected to their power. Wall Street's behavior may be predictable, but how can we account for the silence of so many organizations that should be out there organizing the outrage that is building? Knock, Knock, Obama supporters, bloggers, trade unionists, out of work workers and fellow Americans. Will we fight back or roll over? Pitchforks anyone?

Read the whole sorry story here by a courageous and gifted writer. William Rivers Pitt, on the other hand is into comedy. (Emphasis marks added - Ed.)

As the news of Arlen Specter's defection to the Democratic Party rolled across the news waves yesterday, I kept hearing Bill Murray from the movie "Meatballs" in my head: "It just doesn't matter! It just doesn't matter! It just doesn't matter!" Which is not entirely true, of course. The fallout after Specter woke up on the left side of the bed on Tuesday has been entirely entertaining, largely hilarious and just significant enough to warrant a little serious attention ... but that's just politics, which is also the entire reason Specter jumped. "I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans," claimed Specter, but that's a lot of hooey; as a Republican, Specter consistently supported several of the most extreme right-wing pieces of legislation ever presented before the Senate. No, Specter flipped for one simple reason: He was facing an insurmountable primary challenge from his right flank, in the guise of conservative House member and former Club For Growth president Pat Toomey. Down by double digits in the polls, Specter did the simple math, figured his chances of re-election were far stronger if he campaigned under the Democratic banner, and ran into the waiting arms of his colleagues across the ideological aisle. For the GOP and its supporters, the defection brings yet another shock to an already decimated Republican system; this was rough news for them and no mistake about it. A parade of long Republican faces and clenched Republican jaws have been marching across television screen since the announcement to denounce Specter, the Democrats, President Obama, and pretty much anything else that came into their sight. "A lot of people said, well Specter, take McCain with you, and his daughter," growled Rush Limbaugh after the news came out. RNC Chairman Michael Steel said in a statement, "Let's be honest. Senator Specter didn't leave the GOP based on principles of any kind. He left to further his personal political interests because he knew that he was going to lose a Republican primary due to his left-wing voting record." With Specter's departure, goes the media refrain, the last vestiges of so-called "moderate" Republicanism are on the verge of being swept away entirely. But is Arlen Specter actually a moderate, and does his departure actually change anything? "Consider Specter's most significant votes over the last eight years," wrote Salon's Glenn Greenwald on Tuesday, "Ones cast in favor of such definitive right-wing measures as: the war on Iraq, the Military Commissions Act, Patriot Act renewal, confirmation of virtually every controversial Bush appointee, retroactive telecom immunity, warrantless eavesdropping expansions, and Bush tax cuts (several times). Time and again during the Bush era, Specter stood with Republicans on the most controversial and consequential issues." "Arlen Specter," continued Greenwald, "is one of the worst, most soul-less, most belief-free individuals in politics. The moment most vividly illustrating what Specter is: prior to the vote on the Military Commissions Act of 2006, he went to the floor of the Senate and said what the bill 'seeks to do is set back basic rights by some 900 years' and is 'patently unconstitutional on its face.' He then proceeded to vote YES on the bill's passage." Specter's ideological inconsistency even extends to the act of switching parties, as evidenced by his reaction when James Jeffords (I-Vermont) dumped the GOP in 2001 and briefly handed majority control of the Senate to the Democrats. "Specter said then-Vermont Sen. Jim Jeffords' decision to become an independent was disruptive to the functioning of Congress," reported The Los Angeles Times on Wednesday. "He proposed a rule forbidding party switches that had the effect of vaulting the minority to majority status in the middle of a congressional session. 'If somebody wants to change parties, they can do that,' Specter said at the time. 'But that kind of instability is not good for governance of the country and the Senate.'" Pretty funny stuff right there. The supposedly big deal for Democrats is the fact that, once Al Franken finally wends his way past Republican roadblocks and takes his Minnesota Senate seat, the addition of Specter to the Democratic caucus lifts their majority to the much-ballyhooed number 60, which is the number of votes needed to thwart GOP filibusters and pass legislation unimpeded. This would seem to be an important victory for the Democrats - for the first time in 30 years, one party controls the White House and Congress with a supermajority in the Senate - but really, it's just a little more theater for the masses to enjoy and the media to misinterpret. "While the move would create what is likely to be the Senate's 60th Democratic vote, potentially enough to withstand Republican filibusters," reported The Boston Globe on Wednesday, "it would not necessarily change the chamber's legislative dynamics. Democratic successes at expanding their caucus have made it less unified ideologically, and Specter - one of only three Republicans in Congress to back Obama's $787 billion economic stimulus bill - said he expected to defy his new party as readily as he did his old one." Thus, the idea that Democrats have achieved some lofty threshold of power is almost entirely chimerical; Specter is no more likely to caucus with the Democrats just because he is one than he was likely to caucus with the GOP back when he had an "R" after his last name. Even if Specter took some kind of blood oath to always provide that 60th vote for the Democratic caucus, the threshold itself is largely a media/right-wing confabulation. For decades, the filibuster was considered a weapon of last resort; the use or threatened use usually only came into play when the Senate had a controversial Supreme Court nominee up for consideration. During George W. Bush's Reign of Error, the Republican-controlled Congress was able to pass all kinds of insanely anti-constitutional legislation between 2002 and 2006 needing just a simple majority to win, because the Democrats never took the filibuster club out of their bag. Only when majority power in Congress changed hands after the '06 midterms did the filibuster become a daily part of governance on Capitol Hill, because the GOP used it against everything that moved. The news media, with its absolute lack of context and inability to remember anything more than a day old, has acted and spoken ever since with the incorrect idea that only a 60-vote majority can get anything done in the Senate. This is simply nonsense. No, the Democrats have had the power to pass just about whatever they want with 51 votes ever since 2006, but have only recently begun to make noises about doing so now that health care reform is on the table. President Obama, unwilling to deal with the 60-vote-threshold fiction, is pushing his allies in the Senate to do away with the rules that give a 41-member minority the power to gum up the works. Senate Democrats could have done this three years ago, and adding Specter to the equation does not change that arithmetic one bit. Besides, what does it say about a Democratic Party that is so willing to embrace a former Republican who has voted with the far right on so many occasions? "The idea that Specter is a 'liberal' Republican or even a 'moderate' reflects how far to the Right both the GOP and our overall political spectrum has shifted," continued Glenn Greenwald on Tuesday. "Reports today suggest that Democratic officials promised Specter that the party establishment would support him, rather than a real Democrat, in a primary. If true, few events more vividly illustrate the complete lack of core beliefs of Democratic leaders, as well as the rapidly diminishing differences between the parties. Why would Democrats want a full-blooded Republican representing them in the blue state of Pennsylvania? Specter is highly likely to reprise the Joe Lieberman role for Democrats: a 'Democrat' who leads the way in criticizing and blocking Democratic initiatives, forcing the party still further towards Republican policies." Senators Bayh, McCaskill, Nelson, Lieberman and now Specter represent a core problem within the ranks of the Democratic majority in the Senate. These individuals amount to a cadre of faux-"centrists" who have been, and likely will continue to be, the main line of resistance against Obama's legislative agenda and the improved welfare of the American people. They are the ones most empowered when everyone inaccurately believes the Democrats need 60 votes to pass anything. The annihilation of this fiction will go a long way toward removing these obstacles from the path of progress. Let them vote their consciences, if they have such a thing, without allowing them to hold the entire process hostage.

Not really so funny now is it? Read the rest here. And put your head between your legs . . . . Suzan ________________________