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Today's Top News
Fighting Swine (Geithner) Flu
We don't need a 100-day reckoning to know the score: war, recession, violence in Pakistan and now a global epidemic.
The landscape before us is a pretty tense: more than thirteen million unemployed, falling prospects, rising gun sales, not to mention the foreclosure of probably an additional ten million homes. Many are fearing a long hot summer, the implications of which will be felt across the land. And now there's Swine Flu.
It's funny that when it comes to Swine flu, we get it. When we're talking about the human body, we seem to understand that vulnerable parts put the whole body politic at risk.
In the face of a virus it makes perfect sense: germs don't discriminate. Poisons spread. Switch to the topic of poverty and predatory lending, and we have a problem grasping the basics. Yet exploitation and corruption jump fences too. The epidemic of predatory lending, for example, began by targeting Black, Latino (especially female) borrowers, but predatory practices didn't stay in the 'hood.
On Sunday, as 20 cases of swine flu were confirmed, American health officials declared a public health emergency. After scares from SARS and bird flu a few years ago, international protocols were put in place to deal with global pandemics. At a news conference in DC, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano called the flu emergency declaration "standard operating procedure."
Imagine if we'd declared an Economic Health Emergency after Enron, and the Asian financial crisis of 1997 and the collapse and devaluation of the Russian ruble?
What we need are some standard operating procedures to deal with a plague of killer economics. Reading today's New York Times about the Treasury Secretary's cosy professional and personal relationship with the very industry he was supposed to regulate, it's clear that quarantine would have served us well.
In the case of epidemics, we investigate the causes and isolate the carriers. On the economic front, so far, we've forged forward without virtually no diagnosis -- and promoted the virus-carriers to high office.
So what, now? Well, we'll need more than a face mask to protect us from Geithneritis. And no amount of Theraflu will do.
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17 Comments so far
Show AllLaura, good points.
But, the American narrative over the past 30 years has been that government is the problem. As long as this paradigm is propagated nothing will change.
In fact, for the majority of people, it is government that allows them to control, protect, and determine their future.
After all, in a democratic society, it is government that expresses the collective will of the people.
Let`s not give Geithner all of the credit for the banking mess. Remember it was Bush and Henry Paulson that started the massive giveaway with no strings attached. Paulson was probably more closely involved with the big bankers than Geithner and Bush was always for handing money to the already rich.
Geithner was involved with Paulson from the first. I believe the first two meetings concerning the first bailout were held in his office. He has been totally involved from start to finish and was the poorest choice possible to replace Paulson.
Re Kernelz April 28th, 2009 11:09 am
We have to reach farther back. It was LBJ who put us on the path of spiraling debt by refusing to choose between funding his Great Society programs and the debacle in Southeast Asia.
It was Nixon who first allowed the dollar to float against other currencies.
Reagan torpedoed the unions, sending millions of manufacturing jobs offshore.
And the dismal record of "free trade" deals, destruction of AFDC and decriminaliztion of financial safeguards under Clinton is well-known to regulars of this site.
This is a thoroughly bipartisan screwing we've been the victims of; one which has its genesis in the elite's resentment of FDR and the modest relief he was able to provide to the working class, and which has not abated in the years since.
we conspiracy theorists don’t consider statistics compiled by “scientists” who were educated at universities that get money from big pharma, did their research on grants from big pharma, and either work for corporations or are themselves incorporated, to be “verifiable data.”
We’ve been taken in too many times by drugs that were supposed to help and did more harm, sometimes resulting in children born without arms and sometimes resulting in deaths before the drugs that were marketed based on “verifiable data” were taken off the market.
Have you ever watched the video, The Corporation?
Corporations have a fiduciary duty to maximize profits to their stockholders. If a cost/benefit analysis determines that it is more profitable to market something that kills people and defend against any resulting lawsuits, than to take it off the market, it will be marketed as long as possible.
Black letter business law really is “verifiable data.” Scientific studies funded by corporations are not.
freeyourmind, you nailed it. We have become a corporate empire and the hard fact is the corporations will do whatever they need to do to maintain their power. The only way we can take our country back is with a general uprising, and I think our country is a long way from that. Americans in general are uninformed and have become followers, not leaders. They are being successfully ruled by fear. In other words, fascist tactics are working as intended and the public doesn't even know what is happening.
When the people fear their government there is tyranny,
when the government fears the people there is liberty.
~ Thomas Jefferson
Everywhere there's lots of piggies
Living piggy lives
Eating dinner at the White House
With their piggy wives
Clutching forks and knives
To eat their bacon.
-- affectionate apology to the memory of George Harrison
· Yr Obd't Servant
Air Force One will be renamed Swine Flew I for all the newborn piglets in the executive branch.
With such humongous avariciously inclined pigs sloping about,
___ we're all runts now ___
Perhaps now that 'pigs do fly', we need a new sequel ( see 'em squeal ) for
"One flew over the cuckoos nest" ?
Here in Mexico we are starting to remember the Chupacabras: About 13 years ago when the government wanted to distract the population from the FOBAPROA Bailout (cronyism at its ugliest--very similar to the ineffective bailouts in the US during the past 9 months), and there was no soccer action to speak of they invented the Chupacabras--even planted fake photos of animal victims in the newspapers (the horse and cow victims' were photos taken in the slaughterhouses). Really whipped up a scare--complete with sightings and drawings by supposed eyewitnesses.
As soon as they had rammed FOBAPROA through, the Chupa diasappeared into the fog of history and has never been heard of again.
The Chupacabra migrated to the United States and changed its name to the Chupadupagringopendejocabronembusteroladron. It then Americanized that mouthful simply to George Wanker Bush Cuarenta y tres. Now it's George Wanker Bush Cuarenta y cuatro. Esperanza y cambio!
But the issue of Swine flu is worthy of some attention on its own. Owing to the availability of drugs and appropriate nursing care it is unlikely that mortality rates would be very high in the U.S. and other developed nations. This will not be the case in the teeming refugee camps and impoverished slums, famine and war stressed areas of the world: Shri Lanka, Baghdad, the Congo, Dar Fur, Gaza come immediately to mind. Death rates due to diarrhea from lack of adequate santitation in Africa and India already exceed those due to other diseases like malaria and AIDS.
Despite the billions spent on "Homeland Security" in fact our health care system is in worse shape than ever. Here in New Jersey 3 more hospitals were closed in the last year as New Jersey deals with major deficits ever since Christie Whitman gave herself and her Somerset Estate pals $30,000 a year in tax cuts versus $300 for the middle class. Besides closing, hospitals are either outright cutting Nurses or refusing to hire new nurses to replace those who leave. Of course there would be plenty of money for hospitals and nurses if the 30% of health care dollars wasted on private health insurance were actually directed towards medical care and not CEO million dollar salaries and Insurance company profits. A perfect symbol of the rakeoff of dollars for private profit was the merger of Aetna and US Healthcare some years ago in which the CEO from the merged companies gave himself an additional $100 Million bonus in one year.
While there is a lot of gum flapping about "Homeland Security" and preparing for disasters, in reality when hospitals are closing and healthcare providers are being cut how is there supposed to be the capacity to deal with an mass emergency?
Apparently the CEOs will singlehandledly care for thousands of people sick if there were a disaster ;-)
"A perfect symbol of the rakeoff of dollars for private profit was the merger of Aetna and US Healthcare some years ago in which the CEO from the merged companies gave himself an additional $100 Million bonus in one year".
$100 million bonus? Chump change! Google Dr. William McGuire. He was forced to resign as CEO of United Health Care in 2006 when it was found that he had received stock valued at Approximately $1.7 Billion (projected value at one time)that was backdated to increase it's value. Now that's a payday! He was eventually forced to pay back approximately $400 million but how many people had to have their claims denied to FAIRLY compensate this jerk? Oh yeah, at the same time the company gave a few other top executives backdated stock to the tune of over $2 Billion dollars. Do we really need for profit companies in our future health care plans?
the fdic's sheila bair has proposed just this in a speech this week...
give the fdic the same power it has over the banks - over other institutions - banking & otherwise - "too big to fail" - and otherwise - failed.
s.o.p. walk in. clean house. toss out the garbage. start fresh.
just like they've been doing for years with federally chartered banks and 29 failed banks to-date in 2009.
the share / bond holders take a bath - they should be watching their investments closer. too bad. maybe a little pain spread around for once might mitigate future inflictions of pain.
the gamblers need to take a "haircut" - to use a phrase.
It looks like Kathleen Sebelius has just been confirmed for HHS secretary:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/04/28/sebelius.confirmation/index.html
Anyone in Kansas who can please tell me Sebelius's support for single payer healthcare that could help with all this flu stuff ? I hope she's to healthcare as Solis is to labor.
"The individual whose vision encompasses the whole world often feels nowhere so hedged in and out of touch with his surroundings as in his native land. " Emma Goldman
Brilliant way to phrase it Laura!