Outraged by the Washington corruptocracy? You'd better read this.

At the time of the Anthony Weiner scandal, business magazine columnist, blogger and direct marketing guru Denny Hatch got fed up more than most of us with the way things work in Washington. He wrote the piece that follows, which  I suspect he fleetingly intended for his blog, Denny Hatch's Business Common Sense. (He didn't say that. I infer that.)

Once he got it out of his system, he decided his justifiable fury wasn't right for what he calls his marketing crowd. But he has kindly permitted me to print it here. And that is something I do with cranky pleasure. I do not agree with absolutely everything Denny has to say. Nevertheless, his gist is horrifyingly on target.  Read it and see for yourself. (Fair warning: you may retch at what goes on in Washington.)

The Great Congressional Payola

Anthony Weiner: Casualty of a Crazed, Schizoid Lifestyle

By Denny Hatch

  

IN THE NEWS

Anthony Weiner’s Judgment

The scandal raises issues that transcend one man's personal indulgence.

In one of the most unbearable news conferences ever seen, Congressman Weiner admitted his week of lies about his lewd online relationships, apologized to all and sundry, but said he will not resign. We'll leave the last point to his constituents, but Mr. Weiner's ambitions to be mayor of New York City are finished and his credibility in national politics after this is next to nothing. . .

     Anthony Weiner now joins a disturbing list of elected officials in our time who've lost any sense of self-discipline. If there are others out there wandering in the confused ethers that trapped Anthony Weiner, we have a request: Get out now. Spare the rest of us.

—Editorial

  The Wall Street Journal, June 7, 2011

Anthony Weiner was best congressional catnip of 2011.

The problem starts with all members of Congress having one single, overarching personal agenda: Get re-elected.

No matter what members of the House and Senate believe in their deep heart’s core, all speeches, votes, interviews, town meetings, confirmation hearings and individual encounters with the media, industry leaders, lobbyists, foreign envoys, voters and members of the executive branch—all must be seen through this prism of desperation for re-election.

Why is nothing is getting done in terms of the deficit, national debt, health care, Middle East wars, Pentagon spending, global warming/environment, and jobs creation?

All 435 house members and 100 senators are terrified of double-crossing the 140 top benefactors—from ActBLue ($52,443,515) and AFSCE ($45,237,515) to Bear Stearns ($3,374,125) and Club for Growth ($1,535,979)—who spread a total of $1.97 billion throughout Congress from 1989-2010.

Follow the Money

“The ideal employee,” said children’s book publisher Franklin Watts, “is one who feels overworked and underpaid.”

Underpaid? Congresspersons are far richer than the electorate.

A few in congress are very, very, very rich. Among them:

Member                                                   Avg. Net Worth

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA)         $303,575,011

Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA)         $293,454,761

Sen. John Kerry (D-MA)         $238,812,296

Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA)         $174,385,102

Rep. Jared Polis (D-CA)          $160,909,068

Sen. Herb Kohl (D-WI)         $160,302,011

Rep. Vernan Buchanan (R-FL)         $148,373,160

Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX)         $137,611,043

Sen. James E. Risch (R-ID)         $109,034,052

Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV)         $  98,832,010

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)         $  58,436,537

However, many members of Congress are woefully underpaid and living in financial hell. Base salary is $174,000 per year plus health care, up to 64 round trips home, retirement benefits and a $3000 tax credit on D.C. living quarters.

To Jane and Joe Lunchbucket, this is a lot of money. But for the majority of members—those beyond Virginia and Maryland—it means maintaining a second residence in Washington—the eighth most expensive city in the America. A decent wardrobe is essential. Those members with alimony and a kid in college at $20,000 per semester are gasping for air. Hence the parade of members caught in such no-nos as bribes, money laundering, illegal financial gifts, free plane rides and junkets, and funneling campaign money into personal accounts. Among the recent perpetrators (in alphabetical order):

Barbara-Rose Collins – Randy (Duke) Cunningham – Tom DeLay – Walter Fauntroy - Newt Gingrich – Carroll Hubbard - William J. Jefferson – Buzz Lukens - Nicholas Marvroules - Bob Ney – Carl C. Perkins - Charlie Rangel – Dan Rostenkowski - Rick Renzi - Ted Stevens – Robert Torricelli – Jim Trafficant – William R. Tucker

Last January, CBS News reported that to save money while in Washington, D.C., one-fifth of the House freshmen planned to sleep in their offices. Others that are living away from home share the squalor of dorm-like facilities. From The New York Times, May 30, 1994:

For Representatives Sam Gejdenson of Connecticut, Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, George Miller of California and Charles E. Schumer of Brooklyn, Washington life is not all beer and roses. It's more like beer and frozen soy burgers, stale tortilla chips, lost laundry, monthly trips to Price Club and weekly commutes to their districts and families back home.

Sam cooks, Dick cleans, George collects the rent and Chuck raids the refrigerator. Weeknights, they shoot the breeze in their underwear in the Capitol Hill town house where two of them sleep in unkempt beds in the living room like so many superannuated frat boys, and check to see if anyone they know turns up on "Nightline."

In order to economize on food and drink, many in Congress likely mooch at every public and private buffet breakfast, lunch and dinner to which they can wangle an invitation. At Washington events—with spouses hundreds of miles away and where loneliness and hormones kick in—it’s easy to go from focusing on laws to focusing on attractive singles on the prowl. Hence the plethora of serial infidelities and sex scandals by members that have included (in alphabetical order):

Bob Barr – Larry Craig – John Ensign - Mark Foley – Newt Gingrich – Gary Hart - Henry Hyde – Chris Lee - Bob Livingston – Eric Massa – Jack Ryan – David Vitter – Anthony Weiner             

When members of Congress do return to their districts—where spouses likely must have a job to help meet expenses—they are vilified at town meetings, besieged by jobless constituents whose homes are being foreclosed and are scared to death of having to pay for Obamacare or losing Medicare. This hostile environment is hardly conducive to savoring the comforts of home and conjugal bliss.

Forced to Buy Their Jobs

Imagine not only working for a living, but also having to repurchase your job for millions of dollars every two or six years.

The current average cost of a congressional campaign is $1.3 million. This means the average member of the House must raise $9,000 a week every week during the two-year election cycle in order to stay in office. Once re-elected, the manic scramble for campaign cash starts all over again. This is made complicated by the House Ethics Manual that states:

House rooms and offices are not to be used for events that are campaign or political in nature, such as a meeting on campaign strategy, or a reception for campaign contributors.

With the average senate race costing $7.5 million, each senator must raise $24,000 a week during the six-year cycle. A filthy rich opponent can up the ante exponentially. For example, in the 2010 California senatorial race, former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina spent $21.5 million, forcing her opponent (and winner) Barbara Boxer to raise and spend $29.5 million. 

A senator that needs $29.5 million for a campaign must raise $94,550 a week, every week during the six-year election cycle.

In other words that crucial part of a legislator’s career—campaign strategy, fundraising or talking to contributors—can only be conducted away from the office and out of the building. This means if an urgent call comes in from a top benefactor, the legislator must scurry outside and call back on a cell phone.

The Great Congressional Payola


Payola: The paying of cash or gifts for radio play, and is a combination of the words “pay” and “victrola”, which stands for LP record player.

—Erika Cox

  “Rewind the Fifties”

Payola was a huge scandal that broke in the late 1950s. Record companies bribed radio disc jockeys to play their latest releases over the airwaves causing them to move up the Billboard charts and generate sales. In 1975, United States Attorneys in New York, Newark, Philadelphia and Los Angeles issued 19 indictments—six of them against record company presidents—alleging income tax evasion, fraud and interstate transportation of stolen property.

Now illegal in the entertainment industry, Payola is a way of life in Congress.

Congressional Payola: How It Works

One of the many 800-pound gorillas breaking the financial back of the country is Medicare Part D—prescriptions drugs for seniors. According to Reason’s Nick Gillespie, Medicare Part D will cost taxpayers $62 billion this year.

Unlike the Veterans Administration, which saves an average of 40% on drugs by negotiating for lower costs with the pharmaceutical companies, the Medicare program is forced to pay the full retail rack rate.

If Medicare obtained the same drug prices as the VA, it would save a total of $24.8 billion per year.

This is not a Democratic or Republican or Independent issue. It’s the right thing to do for America—save $billions a year and help trim the deficit.

Since Part D was passed, a small group of senators and representatives routinely introduce a bill enabling Medicare to negotiate with the drug companies.  On January 25, 2011 S. 44: The Medicare Prescription Drug Price Negotiation Act of 2011 was introduced by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and co-sponsored by Mark Begich (D-AK), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Daniel Inouye (D-HI), Bernard Sanders (I-VT) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH).

According to OpenSecrets.org, not one of these folks received significant—if any—campaign contributions from the Pharmaceutical Industry.

If passed by the senate and the house, the bill would represent a loss to pharmaceutical companies of billions of dollars a year. After being logged in, it was sent to the Senate Finance Committee for action.

The members of that committee received campaign and private PAC contributions of $5,822,782 from the Health Professionals Industry and $3,656,494 from Big Pharma for a grand boondoggle of $9,473,276.

What are the chances of a bill reaching the floor of the Senate that would allow Medicare to negotiate prices with the Pharmaceutical Industry?

Zero. Zip. Nada.

“I seen my opportunities and I took ‘em,” said Tammany Hall politician George Washington Plunkitt ((1842–1924).

“An honest politician is one who, when he is bought, will stay bought,” said Lincoln’s Secretary of War Simon Cameron (1799-1889).

Anthony Weiner—just the latest of a long line of congressional miscreants

Suddenly, in this bizarre and surreal existence that members of Congress endure, Rep. Anthony Weiner went off the rails. The media played his siren song on its 24/7 Mobius loop. The friends, colleagues and punditorcacy wrung their hands, shook their heads in disbelief and called for his ouster. Only his constituents wanted him to stay; according to a Politico.com poll, Weiner garnered a 56% approval rating.

The congressman initiated an aggressive cover up by lying to the media, lying to the public and lying to his colleagues in Congress. Caught in the lies, he tried a “mea culpa” press conference and stonewalling, but the pressure from all sides was too great. He held another press conference and resigned.

“And of course I want to express my gratitude to my family,” he said in closing. “To my mother and father who instilled in me the values that have carried me thus far. . .”

Hustler publisher Larry Flynt shared Weiner’s values and promptly offered him a job at $209,000 plus medical benefits and moving expenses to Los Angeles.

Welcome to Congress, the most do-nothing, duplicitous, dyspeptic and dishonest political culture in the free world.

Takeaways to Consider

*The ideal employee is one that feels overworked and underpaid.”

—Franklin Watts

* Who are the real constituents of Congress? Are they the voters and taxpayers? Or are they the 140 top “heavy hitters”—from ActBLue ($52,443,515) and AFSCE ($45,237,515) to Bear Stearns ($3,374,125) and Club for Growth ($1,535,979)—who spent a total of $1.97 billion buying off Congress from 1989-2010?

* Should not members of Congress be paid a decent wage—say $1 million a year—so they can afford to move their families to D.C? They could also have a life after politics were they to vote for what’s right (rather than what’s profitable) and lose their seats in the process.

* Should not members of Congress be given a free place to live in D.C. just like the president and vice-president?

* “I seen my opportunities and I took ‘em.”

—George Washington Plunkitt ((1842–1924)

  New York Tammany Hall politician

* “An honest politician is one who, when he is bought, will stay bought.”

—Simon Cameron (1799-1889)

  Secretary of War, 1861-1862

* Every time the media cover a member of Congress speaking out or voting on an issue, the related cash gifts to his or her campaign committee should be included in the story as a balance.

* "The American Republic will endure, until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money."

— Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859)

Related Websites

Denny Hatch is founder and creator of the monthly blog www.businesscommonsense.com, launched in 2005. A writer, designer and consultant in the field of direct marketing, he is the author of six books on marketing and three novels. Living and working in Philadelphia, Denny can be reached at www.dennyhatch.com or dennyhatch@yahoo.com.

How to tell if Chief Justice Roberts (and Mitt Romney) are correct when they say a corporation is a person

You can  blame a good part the present disgusting state of political affairs on the five- member majority of the Roberts Supreme Court who, in the Citizens United Case, declared that corporations are people. 

They opened the floodgates of corporate “free speech money” that in some of the primaries (and guaranteed in the coming Presidential election) drown out any voice that isn’t as rich as America’s richest corporations.

Now Willard (“Mitt”) Romney has joined the chorus, declaring in Iowa, “Corporations are people, my friend.” Well, anyway, it’s looking as if the corporations are Romney's friends.

But are corporations really people? Here’s a simple three-step test you can perform with the corporation nearest you:

1. Stand the corporation up against a wall.
2. Blindfold it and offer it a cigarette.
3. Shoot it through the heart. 

If it falls down, bleeds and dies, it’s a corporation. If it doesn’t, it isn’t.

Lower court judge overrules higher court, saying the government can secretly check out who you’re writing to, and who writes to you

This is weird on several counts.

• In Federal Appeals Court, Twitter is appealing an order from U.S. prosecutors to turn over account information belonging to a member of the Icelandic parliament, a dutch activist and a computer security researcher. Their awful “crime?” They once supported WikiLeaks publicly on Twitter.

• So the prosecutors took their case to a lower court – where U.S. District Court Judge  Liam O’Grady ruled that whether the case is under appeal or not, Twitter has to turn over the information. “Litigation of these issues has already denied the government lawful access to potential evidence for more than a year,” said the judge, according to an article in E.week.com.

• Of course, if Twitter turns over the information, the case before the Federal Appeals Court asking that Twitter not be compelled to do so becomes meaningless. And there goes the litigation.

• The case, in which people are investigated for having an opinion on a matter, and a lower court judge jumps in and snatches a case away from a higher court, is being pressed by the Obama administration’s attorney general. So much for Obama’s civil rights credentials. The only person I can imagine doing worse in the White House would be a Republican. Almost any Republican.

Worst of all, if this ruling by a single judge stands, it means that the government can decide, in secret, to in effect hack all your electronic accounts and find out out what you read, to whom you’re writing, and who those people are associated with. And the government doesn’t like what you’re reading or writing, you become, in effect, "a person of interest."

The government has also been pressuring Twitter to shut down the accounts of people and organizations it doesn’t like. As one person quoted in the article said, “If the U.S. were to pressure Twitter to censor tweets by organizations it opposes, even those on the terrorist lists, it would join the ranks of countries like India, Azerbaijan, Syria, Uzbekistan, all of which have censored online speech in th name of ‘national security.”

When the president’s people act like an arm of the Assad government, and judges decide cases by thumbing their noses at higher courts, we’re all screwed. (Note to the G-man reading this post: screw you, too.)

The Iowa Straw Poll, murky political muck, and the magical “Mushiness Index”

So, uh, according to all the news, George Romney won the Iowa straw poll by eight – count ‘em folks, eight! – votes.

Meanwhile, Rick Santorum and Ron Paul are yapping at his heels. Newt Gingrich is grumbling (justifiably) that Romney is a liar who, if you’ll pardon my own awful metaphor, is stabbing him in the back with clubs. Or clubbing him over the head with stilettos. Something like that. And Michelle Bachmann and Rick Perry seem about to crawl back into the murky caves from which they emerged and call it a day. Oh wait a second. After crawling into his gave to rethink his candidacy, Perry crawled out again, to lose again another day.

What’s it all mean?

It don’t mean a thing – and not only because all those candidates ain't got that swing.

To explain the mucky murk:

the old “Mushiness Index”

Back in the 1980s, there used to be a polling and market research company called Yankelovich, Skelly and White. It had since disappeared, although it first metastasized into two separate rival companies that are still doing business, one called Yankelovich; the other called DYG, which claimed to have the real Yankelovich as a co-founder. But I’m getting off track here.

A now-deceased woman at Yankelovich, Skelly and White named Florence Skelly invented something called the “Mushiness Index.” This purported to measure not the things or people that individuals like you and me are for, but how intensely we are (or aren’t) for them.

For example? Ask me if I prefer ice cream or chocolate cake and I’ll tell you ice cream. But my preference is really rather “mushy.” At any time I might change my mind, and go for the chocolate cake if I’m in the mood. Or next Wednesday, mindful of my diet, I might say to hell with both the ice cream and the cake and go for jello. Although I've picked a dessert at your request, my preference is anything but firm.

I have a deep, abiding suspicion, that every last candidate in the Iowa Republican Straw Polls, including the one who just shot her own candidacy in the head, has a following that is largely mushy to the point of being downright squishy. Sort of like stepping into eight inches of mud with shoes that only go two inches up your ankles.

Yes, the voters went for Romney over Santorum by something like a mushy 1.0008 to 1 – on Tuesday of this week, at any rate. Next week things might go just the opposite way. Or, as we’ve seen, the votes might instead go to Ron Paul, or Newt Gingrich, or Rick Perry if he doesn't change his mind about running again, or John Huntsman or, for that matter, the man in the moon. Or the troll under the bridge.

Are Democrats "mushy" too?

All this would be good news for the Democrats, if not for the fact that I suspect we Democrats, at least some of us, are furiously mushy ourselves.

President Obama made the mistake of playing diplomat to a bunch of Republican barbarians, preferring “consensus,” or some damn thing like it, to victory. As a result, Republicans walked all over his face. Obama compromised away the public option, leaving forced purchase of commercial health insurance as the key means of covering Americans for health expenses, rather than chancingf “Medicare for all.” Or at least for all who wanted it. The Republicans loved – trust me, loved – the opportunity that this compromise gave them to generate political hysteria. Obama next compromised away environmental safeguards when he opened the gulf to offshore drilling – just in time for the BP disaster.

It goes on. Budget compromises. Limiting how much he really should have demanded to kick start the economy. Laying Social Security and Medicare on the table for negotiations that never happened anyway. And other gross insults to the base who once supported the president.

As we’ve seen, the one time Obama stood firm – on the two month payroll tax-relief and unemployment insurance extension for the middle class – the Republicans folded as quickly as you'd fold a poker hand containing a pair of jokers.

Unfortunately, Mr. Obama learned too late. That’s assuming he learned anything

These days I’m getting bombarded by increasingly desperate-sounding e-mails threatening “deadlines” to cough up three bucks for Obama. Sorry pal, I ain’t coughing. Not even a paltry three bucks. And neither are thousands of other once-devoted Democrats, judging from the frantic tone of the e-mails.

Yes, there is a moral 

The moral is, don’t betray your own base, or they’ll give you as much support as a lump of jello will give a highway bridge.

Does that mean I want any Republican to win? Nope. But neither do I want to go out of my way to support Obama any more, after he betrayed my Democratic ideals and some of the policies he ran on.

So call me mushy, but as far as I’m concerned, Mr. Obama, you’re on your own.  Speaking of which, I’ll have the Boston cream pie. Nope, come to think of it, maybe the banana fudge ice cream. Well, if you don’t have any more banana fudge, do you have any rice pudding? No? 

Well then, is Hillary still around?

Is the New York Times about to collapse into a miasma of inefficiency, bollixups, and obscene pay for screwup executives?

As Janet Robinson departs the New York Times, $15 million richer – for having quartered shareholder value, gotten rid of many valuable people, and frozen the pensions of Times employees abroad who literally risked their lives for the paper – a new problem emerges.

Seems the Times can't even get its subscription operations straight.

A few hours ago, a notice popped up in my e-mail inbox. I quote it in full:

Dear Home Delivery Subscriber,

Our records indicate that you recently requested to cancel your home delivery subscription. Please keep in mind when your delivery service ends, you will no longer have unlimited access toNYTimes.com and our NYTimes apps.

We do hope you’ll reconsider.

As a valued Times reader we invite you to continue your current subscription at an exclusive rate of 50% off for 16 weeks. This is a limited-time offer and will no longer be valid once your current subscription ends.*

Continue your subscription and you’ll keep your free, unlimited digital access, a benefit availableonly for our home delivery subscribers. You’ll receive unlimited access to NYTimes.com on any device, full access to our smartphone and iPad^® apps, plus you can now share your unlimited access with a family member.^†

To continue your subscription call 1-877-698-0025 and mention code [redacted code numbers] (Monday–Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m.; Saturday, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. E.D.T.).

There's just one small problem. I'm not a home delivery subscriber. I'm a digital subscriber. And I certainly didn't want my digital subscription cancelled.

So I called the 877 number in the notice and got a mechanical brushoff. The system is to effin' busy to take my call. It tells me I can call back later. Or write a letter and fax the damn thing someplace or other.

No thanks.

And by the way, New York Times: If you by mistake cancel my digital subscription, don't expect me to renew.

Yours very crankily,

The New York Crank

Update: I just came across this article, indicating that what at first was thought to be the work of a spammer or a spoofer is indeed actually caused by a massive goof at the Times itself.

Second Update - "Pay no attention to the e-mail we sent you": At approximately 4:55 p.m. today I received the following e-mail from the Times:

Dear New York Times Reader,

You may have received an e-mail today from The New York Times with the subject line “Important information regarding your subscription."

This e-mail was sent by us in error. Please disregard the message. We apologize for any confusion this may have caused.

Sincerely,

The New York Times

Final (I hope) update: Dec. 28, 10:45 p.m.

As you'll discover if you click on the comments, twenty-something readers chose to comment on this post, a good many of them saying, or implying, that I'm an idiot for not recognizing that all I received was some malicious spam.

Not so fast, dumdum. According to an article now on the Times website, written by Amy Chozick, "

"The New York Times mistakenly sent an e-mail on Wednesday to more than eight million people who had shared their information with the company, erroneously informing them that they had canceled home delivery of the newspaper.

"The Times Company, which initially mischaracterized the mishap as spam, apologized for sending the e-mail. The people who received the message represented a cross section of readers who had given their e-mail addresses to the newspaper, said Eileen Murphy, a spokeswoman for the Times Company..."

You can read the whole story here. So take that, you idiot shoot-from-the-hip nincompoops who implied that I hadn't checked this out and didn't know spam from Shinola! Look who's up to their necks in Shinola now.
.

Beat up, shoot and try to murder America’s heroic war veterans – one tactic used again the Occupy movement. What’s next? Maybe outlawing snow suits.

Sitting here in New York City, it's pretty easy to lose sight of the fact that the Occupy movement is happening all over America, not just on Wall Street. The 99 percent is mad as hell at Republicans and bankers from sea to shining sea.

What initially brought this to my attention was an e-mail from Brian Sonnenstein at Firedog Lake about what's been going on in Erie, PA. He wrote:

"The police are trying to drive occupiers out of the park by seizing their blankets and sleeping bags, so they've asked Occupy Supply for arctic lined coveralls to keep them warm at night..."

So I went web surfing and found the Occupy Erie website, where I learned that the Erie protesters are examining instances of police brutality against occupiers from Erie to California. Said the Erie occupiers:

"Excsssive use of force toward those in the Occupy movement has led to arbitrary arrests, a fractured skull for one veteran and a reputured spleen for another...[and all these actions] have been deployed against peaceful U.S. Citizens."

So great. You go to war for your country. You get shipped halfway around the world on one, two, maybe even three or four tours of duty, dodging bullets, IEDs and car and truck bombs. And when you get back, some cop feels duty bound to beat the crap out of you or try to shoot you to death. Is this the greatest country in the world or what?

Here's one example:

Then there was the vet in Erie who got shot in the face with a teargas cannister, resulting in a fractured skull.

Of course, if all else fails, the town fathers of Erie can get rid of the demonstrators by outlawing their arctic coverall snowsuits that the occupiers are starting wear when they sleep outdoors since the cops confiscated their sleeping bags.

And I suppose the cops will claim that they're not really blocking free speech for arresting people for wearing snow suits, because the Occupy protestors will still be free to stay out in the freezing winter of upstate News York and demonstrate, so long as they're naked.

WORK SWAMPS CRANK'S BOAT, DRIVING CRANKY BLOG INTO CRABBY HIATUS

What is it with my business clients? Well, I'll tell you what it is.

It's the end of the year and if they don't blow their budgets by December 31, some corporate uberfuhrer will say, "Well, obviously we allocated too much money to you in 2011, so we're cutting your budget for 2012."

In other words, it's use it or lose it time. Which means hapless scribblers like me get called out to produce great stuff, in great gobs, under great pressure, until the end of the year.

Where were all these guys in September when I needed them? Shepherding their budgets, of course, so that they wouldn't get caught short in case an unexpected, umm, situation came along that would demand a big expenditure.

For the top guys in American business, it's all about stuffing their pockets with huge wads of cash that would otherwise fall into the hands of their employees, or their stockholders, or in the form of lower prices to their consumers.

But for the poor shlubs in middle management it's about playing Goldilocks and the Three Bears. They spend not too much, not too little, but just right – until the end of the last quarter when they dump their budgets like a drug dealer pursued by a police car, desperately throwing bags of cocaine out the window.

Listen, I'm not complaining about the middle guys. Thanks to them, I've survived for the past 20 years living on the crumbs that fall off corporate America's table.

Same as the middle management guys and all the rest of us, come to think of it.

So I'll see you when I'm back to complaining that I'm not getting any work.

Why should the New York Crank badmouth Newt Gingrich when I can get Ron Paul to do it for me? (Be sure to scroll down and see the video.)

Republicans have an odd habit of worshipping losers, liars, lunatics, and lunkheads.

Among their company is Newt Gingrich, whose star is now on the ascendancy after Herman Caine’s fell, owing to what used to be called “wimmin troubles.” Before that was Michelle Bachmann and Governor Tex Whatzisname, who could stick their own feet in their mouths while standing up ramrod straight with their lips tightly shut.

Now one of the lunatic fringe candidates – no I take that back. He’s not on the fringe. He’s batshit crazy. Anyway, looney tunes Doctor Ron Paul has decided that Newt is a serious threat to his own candidacy, and has taken his case of the vapors to the Internet to denounce Newt.

Of course, in my own cranky opinion, Newt deserves denouncing. It’s just that I wish Doctor Ron wouldn’t blame the fall of western civilization on Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac, when they were mere bit players. Fanny and Freddy followed after the big boy players in the mortgage meltdown, from Bear Sterns (remember them?) and Lehman Brothers (and remember them too – and also Countrywide Financial?) to the still-standing Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and other Wall Streeters who are occupied with their bonuses rather than the troubles they’ve caused America.

That said, without further ado, I turn my blog piece for today over to my guest blogger, Ron Paul, who sent me the following screed in an e-mail (he thinks I’m a conservative libertarian for some reason) along with this video denouncing Newt. Take it away, Ron:

]

Dear [Another name for the New York Crank],

You might have seen recently that Mr. Gingrich traded on his former political office to land a $1.8 million lobbying contract with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Why is this so disturbing?

Because while these out-of-control federal agencies were ruining the housing market and causing millions of homeowners to lose their homes and life savings, Newt Gingrich was earning millions advising them.

At that same exact time, I was publicly declaring they needed to be stopped before they ruined the economy.

I guess Newt Gingrich and I have a different idea of what to do with federal bureaucracies. I fight to rein them in and shut them down before they can do harm. He pads his personal bank account while they wreck our economy.

While I was fighting environmental extremists, the out-of-control EPA, and the Soros-funded green movement, Newt Gingrich was filming commercials with Nancy Pelosi.

While I was fighting government bailouts, Newt was saying he would have voted FOR them.

Don't be fooled by the words candidates use when they are running for office. Look hard at their records. My record is one of true limited government, anti-Washington, D.C. conservatism.

Newt Gingrich has a long record of liberal appeasement, flip-flopping on key issues, and lobbying for insider millions.

Millions. That's right. Remember the individual mandate I mentioned earlier that Newt supported? His healthcare group received nearly $40 MILLION in contributions from the healthcare industry.

I have rarely seen a candidate who represents so much of what is wrong with Washington and what is wrong with our political system.

We can and must demand better.

We must demand REAL conservative values. We must demand a person who puts faith, family, and freedom ahead of all else. And we must demand a candidate who has remained true to principle his entire career.

I believe I am that candidate, and I ask you to take a look at my Plan to Restore America at www.ronpaul2012.com.

You can tell I mean every word in it -- just as I've meant every word I have said in public life. And that's something that everyone will admit, whether they agree with all of my positions or not.

With me, what you see and hear is what you get. Wouldn't that be a nice change?

I am the only true conservative in the top tier of candidates running for the GOP nomination. And I ask for your support.

Together we can stop the counterfeit conservatives AND the liberals in the White House. We can take back and Restore America Now.

For Liberty,

Ron Paul

P.S. Whether it's flip-flopping on TARP, supporting the individual mandate that served as a model for "ObamaCare," joining with Nancy Pelosi in support of the global-warming crowd's radical agenda, or making millions off of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as they helped destroy our economy, Newt Gingrich is trying to pull the wool over our eyes.

He's what I call a "counterfeit conservative."

Here's an ad my campaign put together explaining his record of supporting liberal policies. Please take a moment to watch it.

And, if possible, contribute to my campaign as generously as you can to help me run this ad and get my message of liberty out with mail, internet advertising, and an all-out media blitz.

Paid for by Ron Paul 2012 Presidential Campaign Committee

“The devil made me do it. Oh, wait a second, actually it was Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.”

The folks who have been sinking America can be lovely companions – good conversationalists, charming dinner company, amusing raconteurs – the kind of affable folks you’d want as pals. Just so long as you steer clear of politics and what they do for a living.

I was an invitee sitting across a dinner table from one of those delightful people this Thanksgiving. He was an investment bank institutional securities salesman. The two of us were doing absolutely fine, on the verge of becoming BFF’s, until he asked me how I make my living.

I went through my litany of stuff-I-do-for-money and then I made the mistake of mentioning a non-income-producing sideline of mine, this blog.

“Blogger?” he asked, sounding just a bit suspicious, as if I had told him I’m an assistant university football coach who also leads a cub scout troop and that I occasionally indulge in a bit of playful shower-room towel snapping with the little boys.

“One of those left-wing bloggers?” he asked. As if right-wing bloggers, political neuters and recipe publishers were somehow absent from the blogosphere, if not the entire Internet.

I told him, as I tell everyone, that I’m a 1950’s middle-of-the-road Democrat who has been standing politically pat for over half a century. Meanwhile, the rest of America forgot its roots and its own needs and has begun a long, mad hike to the right. So that today, for example, some people are willing to bargain away – or let the Obama Administration bargain away – a good part of their own old-age Social Security and Medicare benefits in exchange for a minor upward adjustment in taxes for the wealthiest Americans. And that increase would be a small fraction of the rates the rich paid half a century ago.

Before you could say “financial crisis,” we were knee-deep into a mortgage meltdown fracas. “It’s all the fault of the U.S. Government,” he insisted. “Fannie Mae was selling mortgages to people who weren’t qualified.”

I’ll spare you ninety percent of the impassioned back-and-forth wonkery that followed. Suffice it to say that the guy across the table absolved every financial entity on the planet for the mortgage crisis – Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac excepted. He put the blame squarely on Congress and its insidiously destructive secret agents, Fanny and Freddy, for encouraging as many Americans as possible to be homeowners, in part so they’d have a direct stake in the financial stability of America.

I in turn pointed out that it was the mortgage originators who were encouraging liars loans ­– and putting pressure on borrowers to go for adjustable rate mortgages rather than long term fixed rates – and that this was neither the law nor the intent of Congress. And that it was Lehman, and Goldman-Sachs, and Citi Corp, and Bear Sterns, and Merrill Lynch, and on and on who were peddling bad mortgage securities. Not to mention the role of AIG, the firm that insured the junk without the reserves to pay the insurance claims if they ever came due.

The securities guy, in turn, assured me that Ace Greenberg, the former CEO of AIG, and Sandy Weill, the former CEO of Citicorp had enough “skin in the game” (money invested in their own institutions) that they would have never let this happen had they been in charge.

(Bullpoop! The banks were packaging and trading mortgage crapola, and AIG was insuring it, while Ace and Sandy were still wallowing in the cash from their annual incentive bonuses, set by the boards of directors they helped to appoint. Oh, not to mention Jimmy Cayne, the CEO at Bear Sterns whose “skin in the game” didn’t stop him from allowing his now-defunct company to become a major player in the mortgage derivatives market.)

As for not doing due diligence on mortgage applications, or robo-signing foreclosure orders, or packaging baroque tranches of mortgages into securities that were virtually impossible to evaluate, well, my almost-BFF insisted, that was because there were too many mortgages to process, y’see. And besides, those people who got foreclosed on shouldn’t have had mortgages in the first place.

What it all came down to was, it was everybody’s fault except the financial industry’s for in effect “forcing” the industry peddle that worthless stuff.

Betcha didn’t know that before!

And to think I naively thought the devil made them do it.

The U.S. constitution guarantees freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. (Except in front of the Bloomberg mansion.)

Less than a week ago, I posted on No More Mr. Niceblog a suggestion that the Occupy Wall Street Movement occupy East 79^th Street, in front of multi-billionaire Mayor Bloomberg's personal, private mansion.

Well whaddya know! That’s just what they did earlier today (Sunday, November 20^th). Or at least they tried.

But when hundreds of Occupy Wall Street marchers arrived at East 79^th Street, they found that the entire block between Fifth and Madison, the block where the Emperor Bloomberg lives, had been blocked off by cops who work for, umm, lemme see now. Oh yes, that's right – they work for Michael Bloomberg.

His majesty The Emperor-Mayor evidently didn’t want to look out of his window and see any damn protestors. So instead of occupying East 79^th Street, cops shunted the protesters around the corner to Fifth Avenue between 79^th and 80^th Streets at the edge of Central Park. His Royal Bloombergness couldn’t see them from there, although Elliott Spitzer, who lives just across that stretch of Fifth Avenue from the park, probably could.

That high-handed treatment of the marchers, plus the civil rights brouhaha that is brewing thanks to the efforts of a State Senator, a civil rights lawyer, and others who are furious at the way occupiers were evicted from Zucotti Park last week, should have made prime time news. But the mayor wasn’t worried. He had a little diversion up his sleeve.

Evidently, the cops for weeks had been investigating and following a “home grown terrorist” who is also "an Al Quada sympathizer." Well, he’s either that or a homicidal lunatic who needs to be locked up, if police and his His Bloombergship’s reports are true. No disputing that. It's the rest of it that has a bit of a problem passing the smell test.

The person in question, a a 27-year-old (Hispanic, not Arab or Persian or Pashtun or Pakistani) named Jose Pimentel, had been reading Al Quada websites and was building bombs, said the Emperor and his police commissioner. To prove the point, the cops showed off a model that they themselves had made of one of the bombs. Heaven only knows why they weren't showing off the actual weapon. But let's give the cops and the emperor a little leeway here.

It's possible Pimentel, if accurately accused, might have killed somebody. But an Al Quada agent he evidently wasn’t, at least not according to any evidence so far disclosed. Which may explain why the FBI and other Federal authorities were having nothing whatsoever to do with this. Their absence from the press conference had me scratching my head.

But what’s even more curious is that Pimentel was under surveillance for months, but only arrested yesterday when Occupy Wall Street’s plans to occupy East 79^th Street were announced. And then His Royal Slipperyship and his police commissioner held their press conference at 7:30 p.m. – that's prime prime time folks – just when the local news otherwise would have been focusing on the cops rousting the demonstrators from in front of Il Bloombergche's own house and sending them over to bother the Spitzers instead.

Why do I think that if the cops who raided Zucotti Park get really, really out of hand one of these days ­– say by committing wholesale clubbing of demonstrators and maybe even shooting a few – the Mayor’s going to hold a press conference to announce he plans to compete on America’s Got Talent?

That, or he’ll declare his engagement to Kim Kardashian.

Occupy East 79th Street? Read all about it on No More Mister Nice Blog.

As a favor to somebody I truly admire, I've put my latest post up on No More Mr. Nice Blog.

Click here now, then hurry over and read the piece.

“We are Penn State?” Actually, you are a bunch of unfeeling, heartless, self-centered, violent, and pro-violence imbeciles.

Memo to those Penn State students who are angry at the dismissal of Joe Paterno: you are living evidence that no Penn State student or recent graduate deserves an iota of respect, much less a job upon graduation.

It’s no secret what happened. Over a period of some fifteen years, several little boys were raped by a member of the coaching staff. Another member of the coaching staff reported it up the line in the athletic department, but failed either to call police or to intervene while the rapes were happening to stop them.

And the beloved head football coach, “Joe Pa” Joe Paterno turned out to be Joe Enabler, also failing to put a stop to the matter. He won a lot of games for you? Good for him. But he didn’t report the physically injurious and deeply psychologically damaging anal rape of little boys, thus allowing the rapes to continue?

He belongs in prison with the guy who reportedly did it. Prison is where he he might experience a little of what he previously ignored and learn why stopping child rape is so important.

As for the Penn State students who rioted in the streets, turned over news trucks, started fires – and for their fellow students who think what they did is proper – don’t be surprised to learn that you have dragged your university and its reputation through the mud. I haven't seen or heard about a single mass demonstration on behalf of the raped little boys. Your priorities and your morals – to say nothing of your sympathies – belong in a cesspool.

Nor should you be surprised if any recent or near-future graduate of Penn State turns out to be suspicious or damaged goods to prospective employers. That even when the recession ends, there will be minimal interest in giving many of you – or perhaps any of you – a job.

Thanks to you, Penn State has become Scum State.

Post Script: About six hours after this post went online, I saw a television news report saying some Penn State students are planning a march, in part to express sympathy with the raped boys. Well hallelujah! It's about time.

What the guilty verdict in the Dr. Conard Murray case tells us about Medicare

I feel sorry for Dr. Conrad Murray. With crowds of Michael Jackson fans cheering like the crowd at Place de la Concorde whenever a head rolled during the French Revolution, Murray was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in the death of Michael Jackson, according to the Orlando Sentinal, which was reporting on the TV reporting.

(It’s a sad state of affairs when newspaper staffs have been decimated so badly to cut costs, that in a breaking story of national interest, the reporter covering the story can only tell you what he saw on TV. But that’s for discussion some other time.)

No, I don’t think Dr. Murray deserved to walk. Nor should he keep his medical license if he used it to support the demands of a performer who was, essentially, a prescription drug addict. All the same, I think Murray was a victim of the job (which he chose for himself), rather than any kind of malevolent medic.

One of the facts that emerged from the network coverage was that Michael Jackson paid Dr. Murray $150,000 a month. If you haven’t done the math, that comes to $1.8 million a year. That’s quite a premium given that the median income for cardiologists in the United States is about $219,000-and-change, and even the most successful cardiologists max out somewhere around $450,000 a year. Or at least so says Healthcare Salary Online, which gets its numbers from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

By comparison, Dr. Murray was getting paid like an investment bank bond trader on a rocket-powered trip to the financial stratosphere.

Which brings us around to Medicare

Thanks to our skinflint, anti-entitlements Congress, Medicare reimbursements for doctors are pathetically low. The Republicans in Congress have every intention of pushing them lower still, in an effort to destroy Medicare.

Consider the cost of training a doctor: A doctor has to do well at a good four year college, which can leave him or her in debt for $200,000 or more in college loans – and then go on to medical school for four years. Figure medical school at twice the cost of college.

After that, there’s a year of internship, a year or more of residency, specialty training, endless continuing physician education, the cost of setting up an office with all the high tech equipment it takes to practice cardiology these days … well, you get the idea. It takes many doctors years to get to the point where their loans are paid off and they can begin to have a life.

Forcing doctors out of Medicare

The truth is, this nation should be paying doctors the way we pay bankers, and bankers the way we pay shoe salesmen. By putting the financial squeeze on doctors in the name of cost-saving, Congress is forcing more and more doctors out of the Medicare system. These days, the first time senior citizens call a doctor for an appointment, they usually have to ask if the doctor even accepts Medicare. More and more don't. You can thank the Republicans for that.

Between the ever increasing cost of a lengthy medical education, and the steadily eroding reimbursements both from Medicare and private insurance companies, it’s little wonder that some doctors start refusing to take Medicare. Or insurance.

Enter "concierge medicine," the medical care hogs

Instead, some doctors join organizations offering concierge medicine, which are based in well-heeled towns like Greenwich, Connecticut, and charge a flat $5,000 to $10,000 a year (depending on the applicant’s current age and heath.) Concierge medicine offers basic medical services, appointments on short notice, and even house calls in some cases.

A successful doctor practicing concierge medicine will take care of many fewer patients and earn up to 60 percent more than colleagues who take Medicare and other insurance reimbursements.

So instead of earning $219,000 a year, or maxing out around $450,000 a year if you're a top doc, a run-of-the-mill cardiologist can earn $464,000 – considerably more than his or her highly paid counterpart. Which would you do if you were a doctor?

Exactly. And that’s why there are fewer and fewer really superb doctors accepting Medicare. This is putting medical stress on 99 percent of the population while the top one percent calls a concierge doc for a case of the sniffles and demands that the doctor come right over “because I feel too achy to come into the office.”

But even more piggy of medical services than concierge customers, a few of the super-super-rich, Michael Jackson for example, become the sole employer of a doctor. The doctors travel with their patients and the patientss families, administering to their aches, pains, immunizations – and occasionally, as in Dr. Murray’s case, feeding their addictions. And here, too, one can sympathize with the doctors.

When doctors become slaves of their only patient

If you’ve given up a normal practice for a chance to make big bucks for a single patient, that patient owns you. Refuse some nutty or drug-addled demands, say for Profocol, and you could be out on your butt, your income down from nearly two million bucks a year to zero, with little prospect of similar future employment. So the tendency is to give the patient whatever the patient wants, even if it’s dangerous or against the law.

The Murray case should serve as a warning about single-patient medicine not only to other physicians, but also to the rest of us. Society needs to pay doctors enough to reward the cost, hard work and time it took them to become doctors and specialists. If Medicare doesn’t do this, pretty soon there won’t be any Medicare.

But doesn’t Medicare have to cut costs?

No, not the cost of paying doctors (or for that matter, hospitals.) If need be, uncap current Medicare payroll deductions to help pay the freight. And if we have Medicare for all, the cost per-patient will go down, simply because younger Medicare recipients will need less medical and hospital attention than the 65-plus crowd.

That’s why the “public option” that President Obama walked away from was so important, and why his abandoning it was so unforgivable.

As for the Republicans who would destroy our healthcare system and leave in its place healthcare for the rich only, they are beneath contempt.

Who ratted out Herman Cain? The thick plottens.

Aw c’mon. You’ve seen it on TV. You’ve heard about it on radio. You read it in the New York Times. And on 100 zillion blogs. Do you really need more than one link ­– if that – to know what’s with Herman Cain?

He’s charming. He has this crazy plan to “flatten” taxes by making everybody pay a nine percent tax on everything from their income to their babies' infant formula and their blood pressure pills, and he’s pulled ahead of the Mad Doctor, the Dumb Texan who likes to execute people, and Clueless-About -History Michelle, and is now running neck and neck with Mitt (what kind of a name is Mitt? Have you ever met another Mitt?) …anyway, with Mitt Romney.

Then from out of the blue come revelations that way way, back, sometime in the 1980s when Herman was running a restaurant association, he was accused of sexual harassment of not one, not two, but at latest count three women. And, in the course of crafting a response to these revelations, Herman has forgotten that the truth is the only reliable guide to keeping your story straight.

He didn’t remember it, he first declared. Then he sort of remembered it. Then he misremembered it. There was no settlement paid. Well there was something paid, but it wasn’t a settlement, it was an agreement or something. But he didn’t touch her. Well he may have made some gesture relating to showing one of the women the height of his wife. Well…

Yikes! I’m not going to go through all of it. I have a bigger question.

This has all the makings of

a trite detective novel

I keep hearing that some Republicans are saying the Democrats leaked the story, but that makes no sense at all. At least not yet. It is to Barack Obama’s advantage to have all the sharks in the Republican presidential pool going after one another as long as possible, spilling each others’ political blood, wrecking one-another’s images, smearing each other so that the Democrats won’t have to and can take the high road instead, come the presidential elections.

We ought to have a movie with a scene in which a great detective hauls into the library Herman the Hermanator, and Slippery Mitt, and Texas Rick the Executor, and the Newt Man, and Michelle the Misinformed, and Mad Doctor Ron, and Santorum from the Sanitarium, and whoever else the Republicans can haul in from their comic book cast of characters.

“One of you tried to kill the Hermanator,” says the great detective, “and none of you is leaving until we have the guilty party. Now let us begin.

“Mitt Romney, you have the most to gain. You were in the lead, and now the Hermanator is neck-and-neck with you, and if opposition research knocks the Hermanator off his pedestal, you stand the most to gain.

“Rick Perry, you were number one in the straw polls against Mitt until you proved in debate you’re so dumb that if they made you dog catcher, you’d fill the pound with hot dogs. Besides, CNBC on the evening of December 2nd, was rife with rumors that the agents who leaked the news about Herman's harassments was you. So maybe you’re leaking on Herman to get him out of your way so you can be one of the ones in the lead again. You’re ignoring warnings that even if you pull ahead, your Republican opponents are going to start a whispering campaign. You know, if they said it in Texan it would be, “That good ole boy is dumber than a box of rocks.”

“Michelle, don’t you worry. I’ll explain to you later what a rock is. And also what a gay person is, since you obviously wouldn’t know one if you stumbled over him at a wedding.”

Well, you can see where all this goes. Finally it comes around to Herman.

Did Herman rat out himself?

“Herman, you’re a suspect, too. You’re in over your head. Somebody may have sat down with you and showed you that the vast majority of people who will vote in the presidential elections is saying “Nein, Nein, Nein!” to your nine-nine-nine plan. The best way for you to get out of the mess you'd be in if for some reason you became president is to say you’re not playing any more with people who dredge up thirty year old scandals to smear you with, so you’re taking your bat and ball and you’re going home.”

So who did do it?

A little birdie told me it’s those stiletto-smooth guys in the Romney camp. But what do I know?

Have some madeira m'dear

Here, sit next to me on the bed and have a glass of this. I wouldn't think of trying to get you drunk, sweetheart. I'm merely trying to help your heart.