First it was the hair, where they slicked it down and back. Then it was the Larry King glasses, and the suits that make him look like Liz Lemon’s man-child agent on 30 Rock. Now they have him booking wingnuts, I guess to make it more of a spectacle. I don’t even watch his show anymore — the thoughtful discussions that drew me in on his weekend show are reduced to sound bites. (I only watched this because someone sent it to me.)
So last night he has on Jennifer Stephano, former “reporter” (i.e TV microphone-holder) and director of PA’s Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity, and she does what she does: Bullies and yells her way through the discussion. She’s a professional victim, and the woman makes my head hurt. She is exactly the kind of “frequently wrong, but never in doubt” conservative who wingnuts love. She’s an egregious bullshitter, and one of the professional IRS “victims” who was asked to document her teabag group’s 501(c) tax status. (Aww! Poor baby had to fill out paperwork. The horror! The oppression!)
We’ve all met people like this. They use the rhetoric of oppression and all the wingnut talking points, and they are often so very, very wrong. And you can’t have a good-faith discussion with them, because to them, it’s theology, not politics. So they turn on a dime, move the goalposts and throw ad hoc attacks.
(I just want to make one thing clear: Although frequently introduced as being from Philadelphia, she lives in Bucks County.) Upper Makefield, to be exact. I used to work there. It’s a hotbed of Republican assholism.
This kind of traveling circus is not going to save Chris Hayes’ show. People used to watch it on the weekends because they’d learn something. What do they learn now? That it’s time to change the channel.
Doesn’t this fall under the category of locking the barn door after the horse is out? And I wonder which is the one company that refused?
Citing a potential threat to public health, the agency in December asked 26 companies to voluntarily stop labeling drugs important for treating human infection as acceptable for use in animal production. The FDA did not name the one company that has not agreed to withdraw or revise its drugs.
The companies will either withdraw the drugs from animal use completely or revise them so they would only be able to be used with a veterinarian’s prescription.
Many cattle, hog and poultry producers give their animals antibiotics regularly to ensure that they are healthy and to make the animals grow faster.
Withdrawing the animal drugs is designed to limit antibiotic-resistant diseases in humans as that resistance has become a growing public health problem. Repeated exposure to antibiotics can lead germs to become resistant to the drug so that it is no longer effective in treating a particular illness.
The U.S. Federal Reserve on Wednesday rejected Citigroup’s planned payout to shareholders because of shortcomings found in its annual check-up of the financial health of the country’s biggest banks, the second time Citi was dealt a blow in the so-called stress tests.
Citi was among five banks that the Federal Reserve blocked from going through with planned payouts because of results from the stress tests.
The Fed also blocked plans for higher dividends or share buybacks submitted by the U.S. units of HSBC, RBS and Santander due to weaknesses in their capital planning processes. Zions Bancorp’s was the fifth bank whose plan were barred, though this was expected because Zions last week was the only bank to miss minimum hurdles for regulatory capital in a first tranche of the stress tests, which simulate a future crisis as severe as the 2007-09 credit meltdown.
… The five banks will not be allowed to move forward with proposed raises in dividends and share buybacks, though they can continue with shareholder payouts at the same pace as they did last year.
Alice with Sen. Fred Dodo, the last remaining elected Democrat who is pro-union
Swamp Rabbit is a big fan of Robert Reich, Secretary of Labor in the Bill Clinton years, long-time economics professor and a high-profile advocate for workers’ rights. I’ve noted elsewhere that Reich often writes variations on the same column and seems to be preaching to the choir, but there’s no denying his knack for spelling out the extent to which contemporary American workers are being robbed by the owner class:
…Fifty years ago, when General Motors was the largest employer in America, the typical GM worker got paid $35 an hour in today’s dollars. Today, America’s largest employer is Walmart, and the typical Walmart workers earns $8.80 an hour.
Does this mean the typical GM employee a half-century ago was worth four times what today’s typical Walmart employee is worth? Not at all. That GM worker wasn’t much better educated or productive. He often hadn’t graduated from high school. And today’s Walmart worker is surrounded by digital gadgets – mobile inventory controls, instant checkout devices, retail search engines – making him or her highly productive.
The real difference is the GM worker a half-century ago had a strong union behind him that summoned the collective bargaining power of all autoworkers to get a substantial share of company revenues for its members. And because more than a third of workers across America belonged to a labor union, the bargains those unions struck with employers raised the wages and benefits of non-unionized workers as well…
But Reich and other prominent labor union advocates aren’t getting through to the people they want to help, even when the stakes are high, as they were a few weeks ago when the United Auto Workers, fighting intense anti-union propaganda, failed to unionize the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, TN. Was the UAW outspent and outsmarted by the owner class, or have American workers simply become too scared to ignore the likes of Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker, the ruthless liar who warned that VW would scuttle plans to build another plant in Chattanooga if the drive to unionize the first one was successful?
And where were the elected Dems — the big guns — who should have been publicly denouncing Republicans for trying to intimidate workers?
Reich hasn’t tried to answer those questions, as far as I know. However, he has suggested he might run for president (!) unless Democrats make income inequality a priority issue in the 2016 presidential race. He said, “I think, though, if we don’t get a candidate or a set of candidates in 2016 who are taking this issue with the seriousness it needs to be taken, I think that there will be a lot of people — Elizabeth Warren, others, maybe even me — who will toss our hats in the ring, because it has to be addressed.”
Swamp Rabbit took a swig of Wild Turkey and said, “I’d vote for Reich, he’s really smart. Him and me’s the same height and we got the same sorta face hair.”
“Reich won’t run,” I replied. “He’s just hoping to get someone elected who will fix things by keeping the government from turning into an oligarchy.”
The rabbit chuckled. “A little late for that, don’t ya think? A handful of plutocrats own most of the capital and almost all the politicians. They done broke the unions and the tax system. Ain’t no jobs, anyway. Who’s gonna fix that?”
“I don’t know, rabbit. What about Hillary Clinton?”
He choked on his bourbon and fixed me with a dirty rodent look.
“Sorry,” I said. “Bad joke. Let’s start over.”
Clarification: Yes, I’m exaggerating. Pro-union Democrats aren’t quite extinct. I’d vote for Warren or Sherrod Brown or Bernie Sanders. (The latter, tellingly, isn’t even a Democrat.) Which high-profile politicians am I leaving out?
Just got home after getting an MRI on my neck. They asked me if I’m claustrophic (I’m not) but I didn’t realize it would be like getting wedged into a horizontal well for a half-hour. Now I know why I see all these ads for open MRIs!
North Korean Dear Leader/monster Kim Jong-Un is now requiring every man in the country to copy his exact haircut. The rule was reportedly introduced in Pyongyang two weeks ago.
Until now, there have been 28 government-approved hairstyles in North Korea—10 for men and 18 for women.
Long hair has been discouraged by North Korean state TV since 2005, when a campaign warned men that too much hair could consume vital nutrients, stunting brain development. The campaign recommended they schedule haircuts every 15 days.
Now the state is going a step further, reducing men’s hair options to one: Kim’s famous center-parted ‘do.
Ever since Cindy Hasz opened her geriatric care management business in San Diego 13 years ago, she has been fighting a losing battle for clients unable to get Medicare coverage for physical therapy because they “plateaued” and were not getting better.
“It has been standard operating procedure that patients will be discontinued from therapy services because they are not improving,” she said.
No more. In January, Medicare officials updated the agency’s policy manual — the rule book for everything Medicare does — to erase any notion that improvement is necessary to receive coverage for skilled care. That means Medicare now will pay for physical therapy, nursing care and other services for beneficiaries with chronic diseases like multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s disease in order to maintain their condition and prevent deterioration.
But don’t look for an announcement about the changes in the mail, or even a prominent notice on the Medicare website. Medicare officials were required to inform health care providers, bill processors, auditors, Medicare Advantage plans, the 800-MEDICARE information line and appeals judges — but not beneficiaries.
