Breaking Down Obamacare, Or: Everything You Wanted to Know About the ACA but the Inept News Media was too Incompetent to Tell You

As per usual, partisan differences leave citizens caught in the middle.

Last week, the House passed a bill to repeal Obamacare. The Congressional Budget Office was unable to evaluate the bill so it is unclear how many people will be negatively impacted if the bill in its current form passes the Senate and is signed into law.

Source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patient_Protection_and_Affordable_Care_Act#

While Obamacare has problems. repealing it, absent any comparable replacement, would be a disaster. This is because Obamacare remedies some major flaws in the health care system. And although our health care crisis did not cause the economic collapse of 2008, it has been a major factor in recovering from what was the deepest recession since the Great Depression. Continue reading for the full breakdown...

I. Funding

Tax Increase On the Wealthy

In my opinion, the biggest flaw of Obamacare is that the subsidies that allow poor and middle class Americans to afford health insurance is partly funded by taxes paid by wealthy people (through taxes on Cadillac health care plans, which is currently delayed, and other taxes as well as cost savings). This means that the law will always be a target for repeal because wealthy people, like the rest of us, generally want their taxes to be as low as possible. [A brief history: the wealthy people of today succeeded in part due to the opportunities afforded our generations by the generations of wealthy
people before us. We all for the most part succeeded because of their generosity, vision and patriotism. We were able to build a country that had the best school system in the world. We had the best infrastructure in the world. Healthcare, manufacturing, agriculture; we were Number One at just about everything. But the wealthy people of today don't want to pay the kinds of taxes that can sustain what we once had and what we once were. Their taxes have been radically reduced over the past few decades, leaving the middle class with the burden of making up the gap while losing services due to lack of funding.]

The political influence of today's wealthy people in our politics is so substantial that Republican politicians have spent over $50 million of our tax dollars holding votes on bills to repeal the ACA. The repeal bills never had any hope of being signed into law, so you and I and everyone we know paid $50 million for Republican politicians to declare to their wealthy campaign donors that they were strongly against Obamacare. It was simply a way of ensuring that they would be showered with campaign cash in upcoming elections. When it comes to health care, Republicans have refused to lead, follow or even get out of the way.

II. Performance

State-by-State Variances
Obamacare's performance differed widely by state. States like Kentucky and California that embraced the law, expanded Medicare and set up state-wide insurance exchanges saw a large decrease in the rates of uninsured citizens and a reduction in the rate of rise of insurance premiums. Other states have experienced less success. Nationwide, Obamacare helped to slow the rate of increase to insurance premiums. People who got their health insurance from their employers, rather than through Obamacare, seemed to enjoy a slight reduction in actual health care costs.

Source: http://www.consumerreports.org/personal-bankruptcy/
how-the-aca-drove-down-personal-bankruptcy/

Personal Bankruptcies
One of Obamacare's largest positive impacts was effectuating an astonishing 50 percent decrease in personal bankruptcies. While Obamacare is not likely to be the only reason for the reduction in bankruptcies, experts believe that it is likely to have been the largest driver of that trend. When people got access to affordable health care, they were able to get needed medical treatment and pay their other essential bills. Unfortunately, I don't know how to evaluate the broader economic impact of preventing nearly 800,000 bankruptcies in the country but it would almost certainly mean a reduction in dependency on government services like food stamps and welfare. It would also mean avoiding a negative impact on productivity and our GDP. It certainly seems like fewer bankruptcies would mean a stronger economy overall.

III. Republican Attacks

Repeal Votes
While Republicans have attempted to say that Obamacare is collapsing under its own weight, the truth is that they have made every imaginable attempt to undermine the law. Had Republicans not wasted $50 million voting on bills that aimed to repeal it, that money could have been used to help solve deficiencies with the law or to fund more subsidies for those who cannot afford their insurance premiums.

Advising to Pay Penalties
When the law first passed, Republican politicians and pundits recommended that their constituents and followers pay the fine and get nothing rather than buy insurance through the ACA and actually have health insurance. This was not because they thought it would be the better choice for the individual. It instead was another tactic to undermine the law. They knew that the more people that signed up, the more likely it would succeed. There is something very disgusting about wealthy people who have great health care trying to achieve their political ends by telling people to forego health care coverage.

De-funded Risk Corridors

The fatal blow to Obamacare may have been delivered by Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), when he snuck an amendment into an unrelated bill that de-funded the risk corridors. There is some debate about this issue so I will break it down as I understand it: the risk corridors were set up to make sure that insurance companies didn't lose money by offering coverage to poor and sick people. In the past, those people simply would not be able to secure insurance coverage for themselves so the risk corridors were a way of bringing insurance companies into the program and to allow the poorest and sickest among us to finally get health care.

Democrats said that the risk corridors were going to be self-funded. Meaning that if Highmark made $5 million of net profit in the exchange selling policies to people in California and Humana lost $1 million selling policies to people in New Jersey, Highmark would share some of their profits with Humana so that Humana would not lose money by participating in the exchange. The amendment required that the risk corridors be self-funded, as the Democrats said they would be. This means that the government could not step in with money from other programs to pay the insurance companies if there was not enough money in the risk corridors to compensate all of the losses. In the first few years of the law's existence, it is extremely difficult for insurance companies to know how much to charge customers for premiums because there was no way of knowing how many sick people and how many healthier people would be signing up. Requiring that the risk corridors be self-funded meant that if the insurance companies were incorrect about their cost estimates, they would lose money in the exchange and they may not get compensated. [FYI: all of these insurance companies are incredibly profitable overall, but the challenge of figuring out how to make a profit by offering insurance to poor people is obviously difficult.]

Ramming it Down
Republicans said that Democrats had rammed the ACA down American's throats. This was a way of reinforcing a negative opinion of the law with citizens but it was never really true. Democrats held over 30 bipartisan hearings and allowed dozens of amendments to the law, in a process that took fourteen months. In the end, it passed with no Republican votes but the Republicans' fingerprints were all over it. Democrats started with the compromise position of using two conservative principles as the foundation of the law: the individual mandate and the private insurance exchange. Republicans railed against the individual mandate, even though it was their own invention. [Once, while reading Vultures Picnic by Greg Palast, I encountered a passage that said that the Koch brothers came up with cap-and-trade as a way of using free market constructs to get corporations to pay for the environmental damage that their businesses cause. I had to set the book down to contemplate why the Kochs would propose this solution, then fight it so vociferously years later. It suddenly occurred to me that it was a stall tactic. A successful one. Democrats worked to figure out ways to implement this system and how to make it work and when they are finally ready to pass legislation, the conservatives reverse their position, proclaiming that such a law would be un-American and would destroy the economy. Republicans have successfully stalled any further regulation of pollution for more than fifteen years. The same stall tactic seems to have been used to oppose the ACA.]

IV. Democratic Failures and Incompetence

Bad Optics

Who was health care reform intended to help?

Many of Obamacare's problems are undoubtedly the result of corruption and incompetence of Democrats and of Obama. The health insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies and hospital associations were invited to have input on the drafting of the bill which smacked of corruption and therefore tainted people's opinion of the law.

Poor Messaging
Democrats did a poor job of selling Obamacare to the nation. They allowed Republicans to get out in front of them and brand the legislation and set the framing for it. Republicans called it a government takeover of health care which isn't really true. They system never departed from the concept of citizens paying private insurance companies to manage health care provided by private health care providers. Government involvement only comes into play when a person cannot afford to pay their private health insurance premiums. The government gives subsidies in such cases. While some people embraced Obamacare, many opposed it, either because they didn't want government involvement in health care or because they felt that the law should have done more to provide health care to people and to cover more people.

The Invisible Three-Pronged Approach

In the book Confidence Men, Ron Suskind wrote that Obamacare was a way of tackling three major problems with a single action. We would put some of the eight million people that had lost their jobs in the economic collapse back to work in the health care delivery industry and create new demand therein by providing access to health care for many of the 50 million people who were without it. At the same time we could reform the health care system so that it was more efficient, more accountable to patients and would not leave people without access to needed services. It was a way of killing three birds with a single stone but Democrats are too incompetent to convey that message. Instead, they were always on the defense as they tried to shoot down ludicrous notions such as the law having "death panels". The soundness of the three-pronged strategy may have been convincing for many voters but they were unlikely to know anything about it if they didn't read Suskind's book. In the hundreds of articles about Obamacare that I've read over the years and in the many interviews with politicians I've seen, only in Confidence Men did I learn anything about this three-pronged approach.

Source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patient_Protection_and_Affordable_Care_Act#

Job Creation
So how well did the job creation aspect of Obamacare work? In an analysis, it was determined that more than one million of the new jobs created after passing of the law were in the health care industry. And Obamacare created compliance and advisory jobs in other industries as well. It would have been very difficult to reduce the unemployment rate by 5.6 points without some very large initiative such as health care reform. I certainly never heard any other plan from a politician that could have come close to being the jobs engine that Obamacare became. (The one other plan was Obama's Green Energy initiative but that was stalled in Congress. Trump's infrastructure plan may also result in a substantial employment increase but there has been little action on it and few details about the plan.)

Disastrous Rollout
The rollout of Obamacare was a disaster due to the web site for patients to sign up constantly crashing and being unable to handle the traffic. Many people tried for hours and could not complete their registrations. This was an unexpected and embarrassing failure because Obama got elected in large part to his campaign's embrace of technology and use of social media. Technology was skillfully wielded to get an advantage during the campaign but when it came to actually doing the people's business, the administration seemed incompetent.

Keeping Your Doctor and Insurance Plan

As we watched the debate over health care unfold, Obama did something unexpected and befuddling. With constituents across the country angry over the health care bill and misinformed by Republican lies about death panels and that undocumented residents would be able to access benefits from the program, Obama emerged to reassure everyone that if they liked their health care plan, they could keep it. And if they liked their doctor, they could keep their doctor. The statement was a bit like promising someone that you will never die. A grandfather clause in the law stipulates that people can keep their health care plan if they want to (even if it doesn't comply with the basic requirements of coverage in Obamacare). But there is nothing in the law that requires an insurance company to continue to offer a plan that a customer wants to keep. Nor is there anything in the law that prevents doctors from leaving an insurance network, retiring or dying.

My guess is that Obama wanted to convey the true fact that there is nothing in Obamacare that takes away anybody's insurance plan or prevents them from seeing the doctor they like. I also believe that Obama was intentionally misleading with his statements and that he understood that people would believe that they could not lose their doctor or insurance plan under any circumstances. I think that Obama sunk to this low and ill-advised position because he was exasperated by all of the lies that were being told by Republican politicians and conservative pundits about the law.

Obamacare gave small business employers the ability to get out of the practice of providing health care for their employees. Many small businesses relieved themselves of the burden but the change up in payers meant that many of these people would lose the coverage they had and would be forced into another plan. Their preferred doctor may not be in the network of the new insurance company so many lost access to their preferred doctor as well.

The Individual Mandate
The individual mandate is undoubtedly the most despised part of the Affordable Care Act. It requires that all citizens have health care coverage or pay a penalty. The penalties started at just $90 but increased over time. It is a slap in the face to every person who cannot afford health care coverage. Thousands of people ended up having to pay fines of a few hundred dollars simply because there were no affordable health care insurance options available for them. Especially in states where the Affordable Care Act was not supported by politicians, few insurance providers bought in to the program and therefore there were few options and little competition for health care plans.

V. My Personal Experiences

Doctors and Insurance Companies Denying Coverage
I supported Obamacare because when I was 22 years old, I was denied an MRI exam by my HMO doctors because they knew that they could get bonuses and other financial incentives to deny me care and save the insurance company money. This is an absurd situation that no American should be subjected to but there were millions of us that were. Many of them died from their inability to get the health care benefits covered by the insurance plans that they paid for.

If Republicans had come up with legislation that prevented this from happening to more people, I would have supported that legislation. But Republicans did not care about the millions of patients harmed by the practice. Insurance companies are the constituents of the Republican Party and they weren't complaining about the situation so Republicans had no interest in addressing the problem.

When Republicans had the opportunity to "repeal and replace" Obamacare--as they campaigned on doing in the 2016 election--they had nothing with which to replace Obamacare. After seven years of attacking and trying to destroy the law, they had not taken a single step to draft legislation to address any of the serious health care failures that Obamacare corrects.

~R. Charan Pagan
information systems technologist, musician, writer, filmmaker
Los Angeles, CA 90017
http://www.reclaimingourbirthright.blogspot.com/

What Happened to Three Strikes?

The banking giant, HSBC has been in the news a lot. They've had to pay fines in the billions over the past few years. And it's upsetting me a bit that this corporate "person" has committed some very serious crimes and for some reason is not subject to the three strikes rule. Don't we still have a three strikes rule? If so, then HSBC should be given a life sentence, by the letter of the law.

Now, I know that an attorney could easily talk his way around that argument in our court system. But I mean to simply state--and there is no way to really overstate--the absurdity of what goes on in our country. Some of the most devastating, horrific and even treasonous crimes have been committed by this corporate "person". But that "person" is still free to exist and carry on as if no crime had been committed because they gave the government a cut of the profits. If you are a flesh and blood person, you are likely to see a much harsher and more permanent application of the law.

What has HSBC done that is so bad?

The Devastating: In a recent case, HSBC was fined for illegally foreclosing on 112,000 people's homes. In some of these cases, these practices not only illegally took houses away from decent people and caused them grievous financial harm, but it also helped to further depress the housing market. When the proper title to homes are in question, title insurance companies are reluctant to insure them, making houses risky and nearly impossible to sell.

[Photo has been pixelated due to the graphic image]
Sign English translation: ATT: EL CHAPO
DO NOT FORGET THAT I AM YOUR FATHER

The Horrific: HSBC laundered drug money for Mexican drug cartels. So, when you hear of all of the people in Mexico who are found brutally murdered, know that HSBC has played a vital role in helping the murderers conduct business.

The Traitorous: HSBC conducted illegal business with Iran that was forbidden due to economic sanctions on the authoritarian country. Think about this for a moment... when the United States and our ally nations were trying to negotiate a deal with Iran to prevent them from being able to build a nuclear weapon, HSBC was undermining the strength of our bargaining position so that they could make a buck! This is not just an offense against the US government, but it is an offense against all of the people of the world!!!

Iranian nuclear facilities

Republican politicians criticized President Obama, saying that the deal with Iran was "weak". President Obama said that the US got the best deal that we could get. But no politician of either party will point the finger at HSBC and say that they were responsible for undermining our position in the negotiations. With HSBC violating the sanctions against Iran, Iran was under less pressure than they would have been. They certainly would have been willing to give up more for relief if HSBC wasn't already providing some relief from the sanctions, illegally.

When corporations commit horrible crimes, the executives who made the decisions to act illegally need to face criminal charges! Otherwise, the criminal and extremely destructive behavior will continue. When the mortgage crisis was reaching its pinnacle, it was discovered that politicians who were supposed to be keeping an eye on the banks to make sure their operations were above board, were asleep on the job... and getting below market rates on their on personal mortgages from the banks. Those politicians--who acted criminally and failed to perform their job duties--never faced any consequences either.

Considering that corporate crime is extremely costly, destructive and nefarious, would citizens be wise not to make it a primary focus of their efforts? But how can We the People ensure that corporate criminals are held accountable when their cronies in government want to let corporate criminals shirk any accountability? A Citizens' Congress could impose ethics rules on federal politicians that are so strict, that no politician would dare to violate them. And if a politician did violate the stricter ethics rules, they would immediately be removed from office, per a Citizens' Congress established Zero Tolerance policy on corruption.

If you haven't heard of the Citizens' Congress, it's because it doesn't yet exist. But hopefully this article has made a good argument for why we should have a Citizens' Congress. A Citizens Congress could feasibly be formed and operational with just a few months of effort. The continued decline of our country and increased depravity and criminality in government and in business are clear indications that We the People need to engage in politics in different ways in order to effectuate the change we desire but that politicians have consistently failed to deliver on. We need innovative approaches so that our efforts in reforming government can be successful. A Citizens' Congress is one innovative idea that can deliver on major reforms. The old model of supporting and donating to political parties and politicians  has proven to be ineffective.

~R. Charan Pagan
information systems technologist, musician, writer, filmmaker
Los Angeles, CA 90017
http://www.reclaimingourbirthright.blogspot.com/

The truth About the "Takers"

Who is the real burden on society?

According to the right wing, the country is broke because there are too many "takers" in society. According to the right wing, these "takers" will vote for whichever candidate offers the most "free candy"--by which they mean welfare, food stamps, unemployment insurance, etc. When in these conversations, I first concede that entitlement spending is out of control and is unsustainable. I also usually find it necessary to point out that the low income people in our country are not the only people after "free candy". For every hundred low wage workers who gets $120 a month in food stamps, there's a big corporation that gets billions of dollars in tax breaks, subsidies and other "free candy" from the government every year. Even politicians, are helping themselves to free taxpayer money.

Mitt Romney was one of the worst candidates that the Republican Party could have picked as their presidential nominee in the 2012 election because his company, Bain Capital, often made money by being one of the biggest takers in the country. They would see a company that employed hundreds of people, giving them capital to spend in the community, which created an environment where other businesses could thrive, and where a healthy community could exist. Bain bought some of those companies and took out huge loans on the companies' credit so that they could pay themselves hundreds of millions of dollars in "management fees". Often times the companies could not pay back the enormous loans and the companies went out of business, the workers were laid off and the entire community took a big hit. Even though the Bain people made out quite well, I'm sure some of the workers lost homes and had to resort to unemployment insurance, food stamps and other forms of government assistance to get by. So, who were the takers in this scenario? It seems to me that he laid-off workers had something taken from them and Bain did the taking.

What's worse is that we, the taxpayers, had to pay for Bain's greed/poor management by providing assistance to the workers that were laid off. As for Bain, they got sweetheart tax rates on their profits because--due to successful lobbying efforts--the government has apparently been convinced that their business model is somehow good for the country. It is the new American business model: collect the profits while leaving the taxpayers responsible for losses and the costs of collateral damages.

Of course, Bain is just one private equity (aka "vulture capital") operation. There are others. And there are banks that illegally foreclosed on peoples' homes, banks that invested peoples' life savings and retirement funds in schemes the banks knew were worthless. All so they could make enormous profits and pass on the bill for the damages to the taxpayers. Now, they call anyone who needs assistance as a result of their schemes a "taker" while they enjoy the title of "job creator". And they are appalled when anyone suggests that they pay back some of their ill-gotten gains by way of higher taxes.

I assume that it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to figure out a way to fairly raise taxes on just the institutions that acted unethically. But I know that every thinking American would agree that carried interest profits should be taxed at the same rate as workers' wages. There is no stimulative effect to the economy from these special tax breaks and it rewards private equity firms for destroying jobs.

So, do you wonder why the pundits on TV who claim to have our best interests in mind don't scream about this issue and urge you daily to call your representatives to eliminate this subsidy for job loss? Could it be that they are paid millions of dollars to create controversy rather than find solutions to problems? Should we stop getting our information and talking points from them and assess for ourselves what issues deserve our immediate, focused attention? Only if we want to improve our country and economy, I suppose.

~R. Charan Pagan
information systems technologist, musician, writer, filmmaker
Los Angeles, CA 90017
http://www.reclaimingourbirthright.blogspot.com/

How the 1% is Hurting the Country (part 1)



Can you afford a lobbyist? Will you get a fair shake without one?

I would like to share a link to a single article that I believe every American should read. The article puts some intellectual firepower behind the discontent of the 99% movement, which they themselves could not articulate and most did not fully understand: that the country has become a plutocracy which harms democracy, justice and fairness. Furthermore, the greed of the 1% and the income and wealth inequality that currently exists in the US is not only harming the country and many in the 99% but it is harming the 1% as well. Since people in the 1% control almost all of the news media in the country, they were able to mis-characterize the 99% movement as lazy free-loaders. Similarly, they re-directed the anger of the TEA Party movement from the abuses of big banks to instead demanding from government that the taxes on the rich can never be raised. The article brilliantly explains why our current economic structure is bad for everyone, including those currently benefiting from it.

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/2012/05/joseph-stiglitz-the-price-on-inequality

~R. Charan Pagan
information systems technologist, musician, writer, filmmaker
Los Angeles, CA 90017
http://www.reclaimingourbirthright.blogspot.com/

Bill O'Reilly Finally Gets it Right (sort of)

Get your free stuff here!

Following President Obama's reelection, Bill O'Reilly seemed baffled by the voters' rejection of the Republican establishment candidate. Flummoxed by Americans' preference for the guy who couldn't fix the economy over the guy who helped to destroy the economy, O'Reilly offered his assessment of the phenomena declaring that people voted for Obama because they want free stuff and Obama is the candidate most likely to give it to them.

This was the first time I can recall that O'Reilly actually got something right (sort of). As someone who voted for Obama in this election, I will enumerate some of the things I want from the government and believe that Obama is more likely to provide that Romney would have been:

1. When I pay for health insurance, I want to actually receive treatment, not just be a donor to the wealth of insurance companies and doctors (as was previously the case).
2. I want the people who are appointed to regulatory agencies to have the public interest in mind, rather than to merely be former executives from the industry. [Obama gets a failing grade in this category but I believe that Romney would be much worse.]
3. I want the people who head government agencies such as FEMA to be competent and proactive.
4. I want my political voice and influence to have no more and no less weight than every other American, rather than being drown out by billions of dollars worth of political advertisements sponsored by a few special interest groups.
5. I want our country to go to war as a last resort, and in the event of war, I would like the war to be conducted intelligently.
6. I want a country that gives everyone opportunities to succeed rather than being rigged to offer excessive advantages to those who already have.

Forgive me for being selfish but I voted for the guy who is most likely to give me the things I want. I wonder what the people who donated millions of dollars to the Romney campaign want. Somehow, I think their objectives are counter to mine. Bless democracy!

~R. Charan Pagan
information systems technologist, musician, writer, filmmaker
Los Angeles, CA 90017
http://www.reclaimingourbirthright.blogspot.com/

Mitt Romney's Investors

The Wealthy Few or the Welfare of the Nation?

Mitt Romney got himself into trouble a few weeks ago when a secretly recorded video of him was leaked to the press. In this video, Romney made his infamous "47%" comments as well as a bunch of other erroneous, insulting and insensitive comments about the citizens he intends to lead. Without a doubt, these comments were intended for a narrow group of his supporters and something that the Romney campaign wished would never have seen the light of day. But Romney has made other comments that I found to be far more revealing about him and those comments got little to no scrutiny by the press. The comments and their tone were perhaps less overt than the remarks revealed in the clandestine video and were therefore less worthy of attention from the sensationalist journalism pieces produced by our dysfunctional news media. So let's look at some of Romney's words and see if they reveal what his true positions are...

To me, the most damning statement Romney has made in his entire political career came in 2008 as he was running for the Republican nomination. All the Republicans were trying to make light of the economic downturn and looming financial collapse so as not to cast doubt on the efficacy of the Republicans' handling of the economy during the Bush years. George Bush famously stated: "I don't think we are headed to a recession...", while John McCain claimed that "The fundamentals of our economy are strong." Mitt Romney added that "People need to realize that this is a great time to buy." [Romney's quote went largely unnoticed so it is extremely difficult to find references to it. The web page linked to (above) is the only one I could find after about an hour of searching. Although it is not a "reliable source" it does prove that I didn't just imagine the quote, and the author of the article seems to have the same opinion I do.]

A great time to buy? Was Romney really suggesting that people who had lost their jobs and were finding it difficult to pay their mortgage go out and sink the rest of their money in the stock market? Or maybe he was suggesting that they use the remainder of their credit card balances to get into the stock market game? I presume not. He was really saying: "Rich people are in a great position to become richer still. So what's the problem?" To me, it was a pretty clear declaration of his domestic economic policy: to help rich people make more money. And if the poor and middle class can somehow find a way to be rich, then he'll help them too.

Granted, it is a lot of assumption to lay upon a single off-the-cuff statement made by Romney. But it did prick up my ears, so to speak. I've since been reading articles about the man, and although there are stories about Romney's generosity and humanitarian endeavors, they seem far fewer than the atrocities that he committed while at Bain Capital. Those stories support my initial assessment of the man.

Romney always made money for his investors, even when businesses they acquired failed, all of the workers were fired and their pensions they paid into were cancelled. Even in tragic cases such as those, Romney's investors turned handsome profits of hundreds of millions of dollars. So, in his role at Bain, the investors did very well but everyone else did horribly bad.

Now that Romney is running for president, one must ask him/herself an important question: who are Romney's investors? Those are the people that will do well in a Romney presidency. Will Romney consider himself to be the agent of the American people? Or will he consider people like Sheldon Adelson, who pledged to contribute $100 million to get him elected, and the Koch brothers to be among his primary investors? Once you determine whom his primary investors are, you have to wonder what their goals are. Will they recommend that Romney invest in schools, roads, bridges and programs that will benefit all citizens? Or with they suggest that Romney pay more attention to issues that really matter to them? Continued tax breaks, tilting the free market system to eliminate their competition, reducing regulations to allow business to increase profits by polluting the air and water?

If you did not give $100 million to the Romney campaign, then you are probably not going to be given the same attention as those that did. The issues you care about will likely languish while the very wealthy become wealthier still. Banks may go back to over-leveraging themselves at a ratio of 40 : 1, risking the greater economy. Then they'll take their profits offshore so they don't have to pay taxes to the US government that has given them much of their wealth since 2008. Yes, after the bailouts, your tax dollars went to make those banks wealthier through the Fed's "discount window". And we're still bailing out the banks through quantitative easing measures. And Romney himself has profited greatly from government bailouts.

As I see it, this election is really about which person will, as President, will best serve the entire country rather than cater to special interests. I hope that some of the information in this article will help to fill in the gaps of information that will help people to make a more-informed decision.

~R. Charan Pagan
information systems technologist, musician, writer, filmmaker
Los Angeles, CA 90017
http://www.reclaimingourbirthright.blogspot.com/

Why Manipulating the Tax Code Won’t Fix the Economy and My Blueprint for Fixing the Federal Government

A 21st Century Continental Congress?

Republicans believe that there are a lot of wealthy people out there who are deciding whether or not to hire someone. They’re contemplating whether or not increasing their workforce will help them succeed in their businesses. And if we cut their taxes, it will increase the likelihood that these “job-creators” will be able to add new workers and create jobs.

If any of the above came out sounding sarcastic, it is unintended. There certainly must be some validity to this theory. It makes a great deal of sense. Anyone on the fence about creating a job will absolutely create more jobs if there is a bit of risk taken out of it. Lowering their taxes will give them more capital in their pockets to decide in favor of expanding their enterprise.

Democrats believe that if you shift that tax burden from the rich to the poor, the middle class and lower class will not have the purchasing power to create a demand for products that would drive that side of the economic engine. Claiming that wealthy individuals will not create jobs unless there is a demand for the products they are producing.

Again, if anything I’ve written sounds sarcastic, it is not intended. Certainly in the last few decades the tax burden has been shifted away from the wealthy and toward the middle class. And as for the poor, even if you don’t earn enough money to have to pay a federal income tax—you know, you’re elderly, a student, a handy-capped individual, etc.—you still pay a lot of state and local taxes, sales taxes and then there are the fees. Proportional to their income, the poor pay a great deal of tax leaving them with little money to purchase goods and services from others.

I think that both sides are correct but their arguments are eroding. What I see occurring daily is most wealthy people invest their money in foreign markets and store it in offshore tax havens. Then they fly to the Bahamas to enjoy mojitos on the beach. I don’t mean to make every wealthy person to be an evil, maniacal, greed-consumed person. But again, there has certainly been more of this going on in the past few decades. It is one of the results of globalization. And although not all wealthy people are consumed by greed, every person is aggressive with their money. Even the liberal anti-corporate crusader, Michael Moore, I’m sure has accountants who manage his money and will put it where it makes the most economic sense. Even if in places that are not necessarily good for America. And as consumers, we buy from China rather than products made in in the US because we want to save a dime so that we can make our money go further. We’re doing it too!!!

The goal seems to be to get the most bang for your buck, whether it hurts America or it helps America, which is a great economic drain on the country. We can favor the wealthy with the tax code and they will fund sweatshops in China, or we can favor the middle class, who will flock to buy Chinese products. Either way, America loses. Now we can ask the lower and middle class people to buy American and be willing to work harder to complete globally. But we have to cut the tax loopholes for the wealthy as well. For instance, the common rate of tax on so-called “carried interest” is about 15%. This is a cut of interest earned from investing someone else’s money. There is no stimulative benefit to giving a tax break on those earnings. Why should they be taxed at roughly half the rate of the wages of someone who shows up to work every day to drive a truck?

The point of all this is that we’re all to blame. So you can stop blaming our economic woes on the other side. We’re all pretty complicit. What we have to do is start thinking about how we correct it or adapt to the new economic reality. You see, nobody set out to destroy our nation. We all just drifted that way by our common human emotion: self-interest.

People, this is going to be a tough riddle to solve. While we are all fighting about who’s to blame, we are losing precious time to fix the nation’s problems. Moving forward is going to take concessions from both sides. And we may have to do a few more things that will hurt America in the short term.

Are there any adults left in the country to sit down and work out the country’s problems? How about a movement to appoint a short-term delegation that would direct Congress (no person having previously run for public office shall qualify). Candidates would have to be willing to compromise and get rid of any wasteful spending program or useless tax loophole. I can imagine a procedure much like the framing of our Declaration of Independence and The Constitution. Hopefully, without bloodshed. As groups of citizens, we’d establish a 21^st Century Continental Congress and work out the details for a reformed government in a civil manner. Then demand that our representatives do as we ask (with enough citizens backing the delegation). Positions on the delegation would be voluntary and strict rules would be in place to prevent any corruption. Our panel would work with the president to make the changes that make sense. And the body would have the ability to direct its constituents to vote out the president if his/her actions are deemed sufficiently counter to the demands of the delegation. Current politicians could either remain in their positions, with pay, or retire. Elections to fill vacant seats would commence when government reforms are complete. The delegation would dissolve at that time. It would be direct democratic action in the purest sense. And there is no reason that this can’t work openly and transparently with the cooperation of the government. If we all demand it, politicians will comply. They would have no choice. If politicians oppose our 21^st Century Continental Congress they would casting themselves in the roles of King George III and England.

But you know what, people? You may have to turn off American Idol and put some effort into it. And it may take years. No zapping it in the microwave for this thing.

So, do we have the strength, wisdom, courage and convictions of our forefathers who fought for this country’s independence? The rugged men who built this country? The steadfast citizens that led the Abolitionist Movement, the Women’s Suffrage Movement and the Civil Rights Movement? The soldiers that defeated the Nazis? The people that put us on the moon and have placed our technological footprint on the outer reaches of the galaxy? This is our moment and we are floundering. Our last, best hope of fixing this country is not in a voting booth. It is in the palms of our hands. Will we have the wisdom to seize it?

~R. Charan Pagan
information systems technologist, musician, writer, filmmaker
Los Angeles, CA 90017
http://www.reclaimingourbirthright.blogspot.com/

Here's Why (the rich need to pay more taxes)

Are you paying your fair share?



I assume that most people who are in favor of a totally flat tax (every citizen pays the same dollar amount in taxes) find the flat tax fair because each person basically uses the same government services. But I disagree. Here’s why:

First off, the flat tax would pose a problem because to raise enough revenue, the amount of taxes the low and middle class taxpayers have to pay would need to increase significantly. Most low and middle class individuals and families are out of work or working but already struggling to pay their bills. What will we do when those millions of citizens are unable to meet their tax obligations? Prisons are already full in increasing the ranks of the homeless and destitute by such a large margin would not be good for the country. What would that image do to the strength of our T-bill and our credit rating?

So let’s examine the concept that all citizens use the same amount of government services. I recall my situation during my “college years” (quotes used because I spent most of my college years not going to college). I was struggling to find my way in the world and I was earning $10,000 - $18,000 per year during that time. I didn’t travel because I couldn’t afford time off for vacation, let alone a trip anywhere. I did not need the services of the FAA or the TSA. I wasn’t making any road trips so I wasn’t using the state, interstate and federal highways.

These days I earn a comfortable living and find myself on an airplane several times each year. I enjoy taking road trips to my friends’ houses and to visit with family. I certainly use the FAA, TSA and highway system, and I’m glad the highway patrol is there if I need them. It is easy to see that for these services it is fair that I should pay more in taxes than I did during my “college years”.

For any wealthy person that enjoys boating: would you feel safe on the open seas and continue boating if there was no Coast Guard to assist you if something hit the fan? Have fun out on the water. But recognize that for you to enjoy that luxury safely requires a great deal of government resources and taxpayer dollars.

Think of any person that started a business in this country and achieved great success and wealth. Did they ship products through the US mail or on the highway system? Did they send bills and receipts through the mail? Did they utilize the intranet to advertise, take orders and process sales? Did they utilize US airspace or waterways? Did they get a public school education or government backed student loans? All of these things were provided by and/or developed by the government. How can they now say that they don't want to help provide the same opportunities for the next generation? Don’t such companies and individuals owe something back to the government, beyond the empty promise to create jobs if they’re given more tax cuts?

The flip side, of course, is that poor many people get food stamps, welfare, housing and transportation assistance, etc. How do these government services stack up monetarily against the government resources used by the wealthy? I haven’t done the math so I couldn’t say. But government services aren’t provided to poor people out of a sense of fairness or “entitlement”. It has always been done because people in this country have traditionally been unwilling to stand by idly while their neighbors starve to death. In our nation’s past, we have wanted to have a safety net, for ourselves--in the event that we find ourselves in need--and also for members of our communities that may need assistance. Are we now becoming a country that would prefer to turn its back on needy children, the mentally handicapped, single mothers and schizophrenics?

That brings us to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: does anyone really believe that we invaded those countries for national security? Those wars were (and are) government-sponsored corporate ventures. The invasion of Afghanistan secured a lucrative pipeline deal for U.S. corporations and taking over Iraq was intended to grant U.S. oil companies access to Iraq’s oil reserves. Haliburton sure profited handsomely from the invasions, as did Blackwater (now Xe). And everybody got a cost plus 10% deal from the government which rewarded them for wasting U.S. taxpayer dollars, which they did in no small measure. I’m sure companies in other industries were also excited about the prospect of opening new markets in the Middle East. War profiteering companies got far wealthier while our soldiers shed blood and lost lives. And our citizens were burdened by increased gas prices, the reduced value of the dollar and the effects of a shaky economy. I certainly feel that those who benefited from the travesty of the wars owe a debt to the rest of us.

 
Finally, we subsidize the wealthy to support their hobbies, vanity and whims. Didn’t know that? Every time someone donates $10 million to some bogus charity like a religious organization that’s already richer than god or a wealthy university that will erect a building in the name of the donor, they avoid paying taxes on that income. Each time you send you child off to an under-funded school, just pray that they can somehow get into Columbia or Harvard because only then may they reap the benefits of our broken tax system.

~R. Charan Pagan
information systems technologist, musician, writer, filmmaker
Los Angeles, CA 90017
http://www.reclaimingourbirthright.blogspot.com/