The State of the Union: A New Director of Pork

ST. PAUL, Minn. – Minnesota health executive Lois Quam will lead the $63 billion Global Health Initiative which President Barack Obama in 2009 committed to the program at the U.S. State Department, over six years, aimed at helping developing nations provide more aid for prenatal and postnatal care, improve nutrition, and fight disease. This appointment reunites Quam who had been in the 1990s a senior adviser to Hillary Clinton on Hilary Clinton’s health care task force. A State Department spokesman confirmed Wednesday that Quam will be executive director of the initiative under Secretary of State Clinton.

Lois Quam,of St. Paul is a former UnitedHealth Group executive who co-founded a health consulting firm last year. She was one of the executives who worked under Dr.Bill McGuire grossly enriched by the backdating of hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of stock options at UnitedHealth Group, the private insurance company whose shareholders have been getting rich off the invasion of disease that threatened people’s lives, for which approximately 70 million took out their health insurance. The exit compensation of McGuire was alleged to be around $1.1 billion, when he immediately stepped down as chairman and director of UnitedHealth Group due to his involvement in the employee stock options scandal.

There is something wrong with this picture. As government leaders work to manipulate people, worldwide under the auspices of the United State State Department. No mention is made in the story if the $69 billion is directed at American citizens overseas, and the issues in their lives of prenatal and postnatal care, the nutrition, and disease on foreign soil.

She is married to Matt Entenza, a former state lawmaker who wanted to be governor of Minnesota but unsuccessfully failed in a primary election for the Democratic-Farmer-Labor nomination for governor in 2010. He was not the endorsed candidate of the party. It was alleged that Ms. Quam financed his campaign.

No mention has ever been made about the issue of clawback for the undue profits that came to the team of UnitedHealth management. Clawback is now being used, under a provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, against those who unduly profited in their investments with Bernie Maddoff.

The New Environmental Protection Agency

The anguish that came to those who spent time trying to know your spouse, or rather understand her thinking. The anguish that came to those who spent time trying to know their children who believed the government policy of Smokey the Bear. Only you can prevent forest fires. Or pregnancies. So don’t drink and light matches.

The anguish that came to those who spent time trying to know your neighbor. The ones who had just moved in. Or the folks who had only been here for five years, and still seemed new. Until everyone seemed new after twenty years. In my environmental.

So who was your neighbor? Who was the strange one? How had I been allowed to be looked upon by the younger neighbors as the strange one? Where everyone under thirty years old believed in “Gender Equity.” And I was supposed to. When the concept was soon “grandfathered” in under the administration of the Environmental Protection Agency. Yet when no man was not equal to deliver babies.

The Title 9 World. It was the law of the land. Gender Equity was picked up and spread by European and North American intellectuals as some kind of accoutrement like mustard, unchallenged in this day and age under the auspices of Western governments, spread via internet cafes around the Third World, by NGOs (non-governmental organizations), the European Union, the various U.N. agencies, and the European Parliament of Strasburg. Gender equity was relished in the new post-Darwin environmental science about creation, just as controversial as evolution had once been in the days of Darwin. The Western ideology of gender theory posits “human nature does not exist because the human being is merely the result of culture.” So writes Tony Anatrella. The conflict in the story, in which everyone had a stake, was as much whether there was a God as much as whether or not “masculinity and femininity are mere social inventions.” With the culture acting as the guiding force, directing the New World order. As the media, some powerful voice of media, allowed in our homes, took control. Like the greatest injustice in the world was not hunger, or life in Haiti, or in the devastated Congo, but gender equity. That men and women were the same.

Even if not True, gender theory appealed to more than 50% of the voters. Modern politicians as demagogues could not get elected unless they at least believed in Gender Equity. And narcissistic people took to the cause.

Wrestling with identity. One day after seeing politicians, these same politicians, use the anniversary date of September 11th for their own personal cause, in the name of nationalism. If you did not, there was something wrong with you. And you could not be re-elected. Just as you could not get elected, especially as a Democrat, unless you believed in Gender Equity and abortion. Whatever it is that Gender Equity has come to mean. Somehow equated with the cause of birth prevention, in the days of the Environmental Protection Agency. In the aftermath of September 11th, I had come to recognize some of the things which the non-Western world dislikes about the imperialistic ways of Western media which invades their homes, night and day, without a warrant. When women could be as arrogant as men always had been–on putting chlorine in the water for everyone. Women were now taught to see under the one big umbrella as “reproductive rights,” as if fertility was new invention which came only to those in the west who were politically active. Women who encouraged their sisters to be vigilant, as some kind of modern day Smokey the Bear, instructing Third World countries how to prevent forest fires and children. So population rates could reflect that of Europe, who economies were on the verge of a great downward spiral.

Gender equity. And the future. When civilization relied on women to have babies if a society would continue. When the world was not fair. And so the protest. Over reproductive rights and abortions. When the central focus was one of true meaning. Whether society and civilizations should be allowed to self-destruct. When war alone was inadequate to destroy civilization. (May I add Bud Selig’s name to the sentence about the destruction of civilization?)

Selling your soul. Men had always been allowed to self-destruct. The theme of selling your soul used to apply to men alone. In sport, in business. Have you ever seen the play “Damn Yankees”? As society wrestled with whether women should be so allowed.

It was part of their anguish that came to those who spent time trying to know their distant neighbors. Seeing women wrestle with their identity, with all of the same stages described by Kubler-Ross in her book, ON Death and Dying. The fears and the anger over fertility. The stages of death which had replaced life, in the name of gender equity. The anguish of the young ones whose teeth seemed whiter, whose grass seemed greener, but whose weeds were not visible. Only an acceptance of the forest if not the organic trees.

When civilization had become a woman’s issue. And smart men, who wanted a sense of peace in an anguished environment of clinical depression, just tried to get along and stayed silent. For now. About Gender Equity.

Blog Networking in Real-time

Blog Networking in Real-time

Declarations of Bankruptcy

With the Wednesday anniversary of the $787-billion package of tax cuts and spending in the Recovery Act, in defense of the stimulus, President Obama said, “One year later, it is largely thanks to the Recovery Act that a second Depression is no longer a possibility.” Democratic and Republican leaders in Washington marked America’s legalized corruption by sniping at each other. Bankrupt after 8 years of the leadership of George Bush, Republican lawmakers stepped up their attacks on what was the Paulson-Bush stimulus plan, calling it wasteful and ineffective.

From an article by Simon Johnson in the Atlantic, America’s Legalized Corruption

“The crash has laid bare many unpleasant truths about the United States. One of the most alarming, says a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, is that the finance industry has effectively captured our government—a state of affairs that more typically describes emerging markets, and is at the center of many emerging-market crises. If the IMF’s staff could speak freely about the U.S., it would tell us what it tells all countries in this situation: recovery will fail unless we break the financial oligarchy that is blocking essential reform. And if we are to prevent a true depression, we’re running out of time.”

From the transcript of Frontline on February 16, 2010:

“We didn’t truly know the dangers of the market, because it was a dark market,” says Brooksley Born, the head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission [CFTC] — an obscure federal regulatory agency — who not only warned of the potential for economic meltdown in the late 1990s, but also tried to convince the country’s key economic powerbrokers to take actions that could have helped avert the crisis.

“They were totally opposed to it,” Born says. “That puzzled me. What was it that was in this market that had to be hidden?”

They being the same people advising the current president. Then Assistant Treasury Secetary Lawrence Summers, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, as well as Alan Greespan heading up the Federal Reserve. And who did Timothy Geithner worked for through this all? As Henry Paulson got his start working in the Nixon White House; was it for Erhlichman or Haldeman? He learned under the best of hatchet men.

It had taken 40 years of the media making us all world experts, and this expertise along with the lobbyists had bankrupted American government. It was why I felt uncomfortable having my retirement accounts with Fidelity, with Merrill Lynch, with Morgan Stanley. They all had hijacked the government of the United States, through the Democratic Party and the Republican Party.

One year later, President Obama was sounding a lot like George Bush, announcing victory in Iraq. Or Henry Paulson and Ben Ben Bernanke, with their similar pronouncements all along, when the Bush Administration on July 13, 2008 rescued Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, or Bear Stearns. When that second Depression “was no longer a possibility.”

The Congressional Oversight Panel, chaired by Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren, warned on the same anniversary date that it remains “deeply concerned” that commercial loan losses could jeopardize the stability of many banks, particularly the nation’s mid-size and smaller banks. Highlighting yet one more hurdle for this country’s fragile economy, a wave of commercial real estate loan failures could threaten over the next few years America’s already-weakened financial system. The Congressional Oversight Panel was formed as part of oversight for the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

Blog Networking in Real-time

C-span

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission is underway.

According to a Bloomberg piece by Hugh Son, the Federal Reserve of New York, under the leadership of Timothy Geithner, told AIG to withhold documents and delay disclosures of details from the public about the bailed-out insurer’s payments to banks during the depths of the financial crisis, e-mails over a five month span starting in November 2008 between the company and its regulator show. The New York Fed took over negotiations between AIG and the banks in November 2008 as losses on contracts tied to subprime home loans threatened to swamp AIGr weeks after its taxpayer-funded rescue. The New York Fed ordered the crippled AIG not to negotiate for discounts in settling the credit derivative swaps, crossing out the reference to discussion of a discount of up to $13 billion that tax payers funded, according to the e-mails. AIG excluded the language when an SEC filing was made public on December 24, 2008. This was a backdoor bailout of Goldman Sachs and more than a dozen banks which were owed $62.1 billion of the credit derivatives. The regulator decided that Goldman Sachs and more than a dozen banks would be fully repaid. At the time, Geithner “was recused from working on issues involving specific companies, including AIG.” In a separate statement, a spokesperson said that Geithner, after his nomination for Treasury secretary on Nov. 24, 2008, “began to insulate himself weeks earlier in anticipation of his nomination.”

It is hoped that Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission is as affective as congressional oversight after the Mitchell Report was released for Major League Baseball. This bipartisan commission has been given a critical non-partisan mission. In the cultural atmosphere of Washington, with its campus as a political utopia. With a week or two of producing in video and interactive content creation for C-Span, the media division for both Democrats and Republicans, funded by your cable television payments.

Because what is said to the new media does have a huge impact on reputations and on careers. Or to Congress. In the new cultural atmosphere where everyone has an agent. Even Bob Costas is represented by IMG, when television journalist used the same system as your professional athlete. IMG also represents Tiger Woods through Mark Steinberg, Senior Vice President and Global Managing Director of Golf. IMG which owns half of Ari Fleischer’s company. Fleischer, the former White House press secretary who operates Ari Fleischer Sports Communications.

In the cultural atmosphere, IMG is the global leader in event management and talent representation. “Our media division is one of the world’s top independent producers of sports and entertainment television across multiple genres and is an emerging leader in video and interactive content creation for broadband and mobile platforms.”

In the cultural span of c-span, of sports, of television, of entertainment. With all of its sponsors.

At the Governmental Massage Parlor

That White House state dinner for the Indian prime minister. With the guest list of Katie Couric, Washington Mayor Adrian Fenty, and Tareq and Michaele Salahi. Why? Speaking of caste systems, why were tax dollars feeding more than the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh? Why were 338 people in addition to Tareq and Michaele Salahi being fed? If charges are brought for theft of services against the uninvited guests, maybe an explanation can be given why taxpayers were paying to feed Katie Couric and Washington Mayor Adrian Fenty? With Washington insiders, Hollywood A-listers, campaign donors, prominent figures from the community of the guest prime minister who live in the US, and Obama friends, why were these state dinners continuing in a country without royalty? Wasn’t the last election a statement about change?

Those rubbing of shoulders with Vice President Joe Biden. The official guest list. The official shoulder rub. Governmental massages. The agency charged with protecting the US President and other high-level officials is conducting a comprehensive review of the security breach on Tuesday at the dinner in honor of the Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh. About an unofficial shoulder rub. Received by Tareq and Michaele Salahi of Virginia, who crashed the White House party.

Feeding the system. The American caste system on display at White House state dinners.

In the Shadows of Those Cloakrooms

Twelve months ago, there was talk of a revolution coming in the financial markets, which was financially supported by the 3500 lobbyists in Washington, for both parties. There was a new form of fascism in those stories at the time. That is if “fascism” was a word about comforts, with government offering instruction how all of us could live easier. With the help of former Goldman Sachs officers in government, government was now deciding, 12 months later, who were saved, which among us were rescued, at least amongst financial institutions. The free market had been replaced.

If the revolution in the financial markets was not enough, how did you feel as Congress was coming back from summer recess, from all the dog and pony shows, to address not the health care crisis but how, with a nation with an aging populace, to pay for health care. At a point in time when government through Medicare had not exactly been covering the cost of new technology in hospitals, was not paying a fair share. Yet health care itself had never been better.

In the debate, there are people who desire government to decide all of the issues of health care. How much to pay medical institutions, when government was not, had not been, reimbursing hospitals the true cost of taking care of patients with Medicare. Government now wanted to mandate the amount of reimbursement for all procedures, and somehow distribute the cost throughout the entire population in the form of premiums. People who thought government was honest seemed to support the concept. Did they know about the 3500 lobbyists in Washington who had been working for more than a generation to make sure the system was not fair? How had these health care reform supporters felt about the bailouts? (In the case of my Congressional Representative, Betty McCollum supported both the bailout and health care reform.)

Like in those financial bailouts, government was now deciding, if Betty McCollum got her way, who would be saved, which among us would be rescued, amongst both health care institutions, and their patients. Suddenly aware that government knew it had the power to print money, increase property taxes in the states, and if the need were come, to confiscate everything, now they would decided every health care procedure. We had yet to hear specifics how Washington would replace those Blue Cross Blue Shield claims people to make the same kind of every day decisions with all the love and care I found when I went to renew my license plate tabs.

The timing was not real good in September 2009, less than 12 months after the revolution in the financial markets. Not when this discussion seemed more like elective surgery. With a lot of swine flu around. I hoped the vote might be postponed for 6 to 12 months. Until the patients had a lot more strength. Until the president had the courage to introduce the specifics of a bill himself, with some accountability, rather than rely on Congress or the 3500 lobbyists in Washington to take the citizens to a health care destination. Congress had not done a very good job dealing with triage in the last crisis, but that might have been due to a president who just wanted to get out of office after creating the mess himself rather than actually lead.

I wonder if somewhere in those August dog and pony shows from New Hampshire to Montana, if the president heard someone ask when he might introduce the actual legislation that might work. If Congress had spent the time to approve his appointment so he had enough staff to work on a bill.

Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice

The summer of 2009. In Red Cloud Nebraska. This summer there was a bunch of students from New York University who were putting on a play. Paper Plane Theatre Company, a New York City based troupe of artists, presented a production of Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice to Red Cloud. Who exactly were these guys?

Spending time and money on a production. Then came the critics. People like Frank Rich. Who exactly were these guys?

Critics. And art. And politics. In the summer of 2009.

Community organizers. Who exactly were these guys?

The summer of 2009. The health care reform debated. So was the debate about health care reform or reform how health care would be paid? These pro-choice Democrats who all agreed politics did not belong in the bedroom were now suggesting they belonged in the bed when a loved one was dying?

Those Tea Parties. Who exactly were these people that showed up at town hall meetings. The ones that the community organizer seemed to be promoting. There was a certain irony in all of this. Compared to the Boston Tea Party which was a lot more than a discussion. Compared to community organizers. So thiution?s was an overhaul or a revolution?

Budgets. Spending time and money on a production. Now having to pay attention to the money. Like in Red Cloud, Nebraska. Those art critics neverr paid much attention to the accounting of the cost of a production.

Some of the accounting involved no health care benefits for the illegals. If some kind of bloodless health care bill was going to get through Congress. Yet to me, there was a real sense of irony that these same Tea Party advocates do not question fighting a war, 2 wars, across the sea. There seemed little accounting to the purpose of it all. Taxed incomes to fight wars overseas, seemingly to export democratic values, yet not extending some basic ideals to people within borders on other life and death issues..

Health care according o the elected president in campaign 2008 was a basic human right. Yet so few humans ever had had this basic human right in human history. Anywhere.

The search for identity, when the leader, as an organizer, did not know what to do after he was organized. Community organizers to much beholden to others, without quite knowing his own self. In an era when the foundation of American ideals were shaken. By his predecessor.

Immigrants. Illegals. Critics and art. And politics. In the summer of 2009. When immigration, abortion, bailouts, and accounting departments all came together. In health care reform. With deadlines.

Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice. With no intermission.

A whimsical retelling of the Greek myth of Orpheus, Eurydice is the story of two lovers who strive to love each other as much as they love their ideas. Told from Eurydice’s point of view, this myth becomes real as it tracks the bittersweet passage from father to husband. From boardwalks to the Underworld, wedding receptions to houses made of string, high-rise apartments to the River of Forgetfulness, the profound humanity and sensory spectacle of Eurydice promises to carry us to new worlds. It is quite a show.

The critics seemed to have gone a bit soft, because one of the organizers was one of Nebraska’s own. A lot like Frank Rich in the summer of 2009. About promises to carry us to new worlds. Without a concern for the accounting department.

Those Domestic Situations

The New York Times reports today that the Bush administration in 2002 considered sending U.S. troops into a Buffalo, N.Y., suburb to arrest a group of terror suspects in what would have been a nearly unprecedented use of military power.

According to U.S. Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) and U.S. Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) said that as U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson pushed for the Wall Street bailout in September 2008, he brought up that that the crisis might even require a declaration of martial law, as a worst-case scenario.

The Associated Press notes that dispatching troops into the streets is virtually unheard of. “The Constitution and various laws restrict the military from being used to conduct domestic raids and seize property.”

A 1994 U.S. Defense Department Directive (DODD 3025) allegedly allows military commanders to take emergency actions in domestic situations to save lives, prevent suffering or mitigate great property damage. The Clinton administration had set up the Joint Task Force-Civil Support in October 1999 as a “homeland defense command.”

In 2002 the Pentagon established the U.S. Northern Command, charged with carrying out military operations within the United States. Prior to this, under the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, the U.S. armed forces had been barred from domestic operations, except in specific, limited circumstances.

So that Associated Press note about “dispatching troops into the streets as virtually unheard of” is a historic note. It is a mistake to say the “constitution and various laws restrict the military from being used to conduct domestic raids and seize property.”

Pentagon officials at one point to end 2008 were projecting some 20,000 active-duty U.S. troops to be stationed in the United States by 2011.

Another Minsky Moment

According to Elizabeth Moyer in Forbes in November 2008, fighting the financial crisis has put the U.S. on the hook for some $5 trillion, one report says. According to a report by the inspector general for the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, government’s maximum exposure to financial institutions since 2007 could total nearly $24 trillion. The watchdog overseeing the federal government financial bailout, Neil Barofsky, examined the 50 programs set up by the Federal Reserve as well as by the Bush and Obama administrations, and sent his report to Congress. Barofsky was to give testimony today to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

By the end of October 2008, more than half of the U.S. banks were pretend banks. A failure by the government to support the U.S. financial system could lead to “a depression,” Senator Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat told reporters in September 2008. “To do nothing is to risk the kind of economic downturn this country hasn’t seen in 60 years.” Now, we were all going to have pretend dollars in those pretend banks. Like Citibank and all the other that needed rescue.

Those pretend banks? Providing a broad glimpse at how TARP recipients used federal capital, the report shows 43% of the banks used the money to meet capital or reserve requirements set by regulators. “Absent an infusion of capital [the bank] was unable to continue to meet the needs of its retail and commercial customer base,” one institution wrote.

What was the scale of the problem?

World GDP $47 trillion

World stock valuation $121 trillion

Bond market $85 trillion

Credit derivatives $473 trillion

Bloomberg had reported the total bailout and loan guarantees, the stimulus, totaled $9.7 trillion. As a result of big banks in too many businesses, this republic is threatened. This was not just a sub-prime crisis when people cannot buy homes and cars from a banking system. And the rest of us cannot sell. Where half of the banks are on the brink.

In a world with street smarts, you learned eventually that the “gang” problem had come to a neighborhood near you. Now you learned that the
same thing happened in the world of pretend banks.

With the system of government, why did we let financial institutions concoct a fix to the problem that in their greed they created? It was a worldwide bailout which would take 30 years or more to resolve and end up costing more than $350 trillion in the credit derivatives written, from what I had read.

No one would escape the world of “pretend” banks, where 43% of the banks used the money to meet capital or reserve requirements because there was no money there.

This was the latest version of gang warfare afflicting modern society.

What did you want to own in all of this? China’s reaction to this question, with currency, would determine the next chapter of American history.

Visual Web Search

Summer Recess

The outlook on future economic behavior: One in five people in California who desire full time work are not now working. That rate reached 23.5 percent Oregon this spring,, 21.5 percent in both Michigan and Rhode Island, and 20.3 percent in California according to a New York Times analysis of state-by-state data. The rate was just under 20 percent this spring in Tennessee and Nevada.

Mortimer Zuckerman, the chairman and editor-in-chief of U.S. News & World Report wrote today in the Wall Street Journal: “Unemployment has doubled to 9.5% from 4.8% in only 16 months, a rate so fast it may influence future economic behavior and outlook. How could this happen when Washington has thrown trillions of dollars into the pot, including the famous $787 billion in stimulus spending that was supposed to yield $1.50 in growth for every dollar spent? State budgets are drowning in red ink as jobless claims and Medicaid bills climb. Next year state budgets will have depleted their initial rescue dollars. Absent another rescue plan, they will have no choice but to slash spending, raise taxes, or both. As paychecks shrink and disappear, consumers are more hesitant to spend. The combination of a weak job picture and a severe credit crunch means that people won’t be able to get the financing for big expenditures, and those who can borrow will be reluctant to do so. The paycheck has returned as the primary source of spending. Businesses will not start to hire nor race to make capital expenditures when they have vast idle capacity.”

I would not be buying stocks with this kind of economic forecast. The next 12 months are going to be the hardest in 70 years. And in my view, Congress and the president have the same insight into how to resolve pending current affairs as FEMA did during Hurricane Katrina.