February 2009

Or Republican Governor refuses stimulus money because of some failed far right ideology:

When President Obama signed the Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Act last week, it included three different provisions to benefit unemployed workers. The first provided funding to states that allowed for a $25 per week increase in benefits. The second extended the Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC) program which gives 20 weeks of federally-funded unemployment benefits to individuals “who had already collected all regular state benefits,” while the third provision widened the pool of people eligible to receive unemployment benefits.

Today, however, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal announced his intention to oppose changing state law to allow his Lousiana citizens to qualify for the second two unemployment provisions. Jindal said the state would only be accepting money to increase the unemployment insurance payments for those who currently qualify</a> for unemployment insurance.

Back around 96-97 I worked for a local plumbing company. We were the largest new construction plumbing company in the greater Cincinnati area, an area seeing a huge boom in new construction at the time. When I started with this company, my job was service technician. I would go to new homes we had done construction on and fix any problems that may have popped up after the new owners moved in.

During that time, we developed a phrase called “10 cent millionaires”. These were people who basically stretched themselves so thin to live in this new house that they couldn’t afford anything else. It was amazing, you would walk into a $250,000 house (which is upper end in Cincinnati). They would have two nice cars in the driveway, but inside the house was basically empty. It wasn’t that they hadn’t moved in yet – it was because they couldn’t afford much in the ways of furnishings.

One story really comes to mind. One day I got called out to one of these houses. The people wanted their icemaker hooked up. We charged $25 for this service, basically enough to cover our costs. When presented with this price, the homeowners were in shock. They quickly told me how there was no way they could afford this, as they have a big mortgage to pay now. As I left, I kept thinking to myself “well what are they going to do if a car breaks down, or someone gets sick?” It wasn’t like they had to give me cash, we gladly accepted every credit card and would even bill these people on a net-30 basis. I informed the couple of these payment options, and they still couldn’t muster up the $25.

The entire UBS mess is getting even uglier, and by uglier I mean better:

The curtain is being peeled back on the infamous secrecy of Swiss banks.

The largest bank in Switzerland, UBS, agreed Wednesday to reveal the names of wealthy Americans whom the authorities suspect of using offshore accounts to evade taxes.

The change in policy is the result of UBS' admitted role in conspiring to defraud the Internal Revenue Service. As part of the agreement, the bank will pay $780 million in damages, and also close all offshore accounts of its American clients.

It is not clear how many names will be divulged, but the Feds have been looking into roughly 19,000 accounts, according to the New York Times.

So we are going to see which rich bastards have been abusing the system. This is a thing of beauty and could end up becoming a massive clean up in our financial sector.

Now I really wonder how much money the U.S. has lost because of this?

How much lower could our taxes actually be, because the rich has been screwing the system?

Hopefully this is the start to the end of offshore banking and these kind of scams. I don’t care if your worth $30 billion, you need to follow the same rules as the person worth $30 thousand.

Michelle Bachmann is back in the news, this time lying about the stimulus. She is making the false claim that ACORN will get $5 billion from the stimulus while under indictment. Again – a flat out lie.

So I was just thinking about this. If this was even true, then why hasn’t Bachmann voiced outrage over KBR getting another contract in Iraq while being under investigation for faulty wiring which lead to the deaths of as many as 18 of our soldiers? Even a colleague from her own state is questioning that, but Bachmann is silent.

I guess to Bachmann the troops just aren’t worth it. That’s pretty sick, but again she is a symbol of the right wing of this country.