More Votes Bought
My previous post was about the influence of money on politics. This is along the same lines but is a case of Democrats customizing the tax code to benefit their union base. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus has been advocating taxing our health plans in order to pay for universal health care, or at least health care reform. His proposed policy is to tax “gold-plated” health insurance plans, defined as those better than a the health plans for federal employees. Examples given by supporters of the plan are commonly highly paid company execs. But as Bloomberg.com points out, $11/hr employees of Zappos would also be taxed as they have good insurance benefits.
Guess who else has “gold-plated” benefits. All those union workers that Democrats count on for votes. But they don’t have to worry, Senator Baucus is proposing that health insurance in collective bargaining agreements won’t be taxed. That’s right, the tax code is based upon who you work for.
The Bloomberg article includes many good reasons for not applying the tax to union agreements. But that’s a straw man to the real point – each and every one of those arguments applies to each and every other working stiff and is a reason not to tax them either, they aren’t reasons to tax non-union people.
I’m not sure what to be more pissed at:
- The Democrats, at least the ones proposing the exemption think they can get away with this blatent attempt to financially reward votes.
- That our politicians now think it’s OK to base taxes on who you work for. They don’t want to tax the companies, this money will be deducted from your paycheck.
- That our politicians think health care reform means taxing the people with good health insurance. Let’s face it, they aren’t taxing the “gold-plated” insurance of a few.
- That “reform” simply means spreading insurance to those who don’t have it and not lowering costs and improving service for us all. Because the health-care industry makes money off us being sick and companies are resisting price increases, reform is simply an attempt to bring in new customers and get others to pay.
I’d like to hope I’m wrong about one of those points, but with the broken system have today I rather doubt I am.
Dollar Politics
NPR is running a series called Dollar Politics. I’n not sure I could make it through the entire series without losing it completely if the following quote from the staff of my favorite senator is an example:
As for Dodd, his spokesman wrote an e-mail: “Campaign contributions do not and never have influenced Senator Dodd’s agenda and priorities. His work is always and has always been about representing the interest of the people of Connecticut.”
Campaign contributions have never influenced Senator Dodd? No wonder it was said in an email, it’s not something that can be said with a straight face. There can’t be a senator or congressman would can make that claim. A statement like that shows a complete lack of respect for the people of Connecticut and continues the Dodd tradition of crafting answers to pretend a problem doesn’t exist rather than address the actual problem. Is there anyone out there that doesn’t think money influences politics and politicians? Hell, the New York state legislature was thrown into chaos because a campaign contributor felt he was dissed. Maybe some newly elected politians haven’t yet been tainted, but that will only last until the re-election campaign starts.
NPR was also the only news organization (at least that I’ve seen) that turned the camera away from the Senators working on a health care bill to the crowds that were watching. They posted the picture and have started to identify lobbyists in the crowd. Only 7 so far, but I suspect it’s not senators who are identifying the people in the crowd. How many lobbyists do you know?
New Blog Launched – Elect Chris Dodd
If I posted here every time I read something about Senator Dodd that ticked me off this blog would become all Dodd all the time. I didn’t want that. So I decided to publish another site that would be all Dodd all the time. So without further ado I’m proud to announce Elect Chris Dodd.
It’s I site where I can document the reasons to elect Chris Dodd, at least as I see them. They may not be good reasons to elect a Senator, but they are the reasons. So feel free to head on over and give it a look.
Wahoo! I invested in General Motors
According to the Planet Money blog I just invested $192 in General Motors. Wonder if that employee/owner discount will cover the money I expect to lose on the investment.
Amazon Gives, Let’s Random House Take It Back
It looks like Amazon (at the behest of Random House) has begun to disable the text to speech feature in some Kindle books after they’ve already been purchased. I have to admit I don’t use text to speech and it’s not a key reason I bought the Kindle, yet this bothers me a lot. It just shows that in DRM world we don’t own anything and the big companies can change things on a whim, even if we think we bought it. It would be one thing if they disabled the feature on new purchases (and said it was disabled up front) but they’ve disabled it for people who bought that functionality when they bought the book.
Test to speech (TtS) has been around on computers for a long time and it’s not much different on the Kindle. I also listen to audion books a lot (although a lot less now) and wouldn’t consider the Kindle TtS as a alternative. The only thing I’d envision TtS for is to finish a chapter or article if I have to run out of the house before I finish. I’ve done that exactly never.
Random House is too big for me to say I’ll never buy another one of their books (if I could even keep track of all their imprints), but I will certainly think twice before buying (in reality renting) one of their books.
Portuguese Water Dog
The big news today is that the Obama’s have a new dog. A Portuguese water dog. Buried in the article is news that Senator Kennedy also has a Portuguese water dog. You can’t make this stuff up.
Following Dodd’s Stories Are Exhausting
The lead for the story on the Hawaii Reporter website was:
It’s exhausting trying to follow Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd’s story about how and why a loophole was slipped into last month’s stimulus bill that facilitated the scandalous bonuses at AIG.
And it truly is. I can’t say which story is the truth, or if any of them are. Senator Dodd has been a politician so long he no longer bases his statements on the truth and he’s losing track of the lies. What does seem apparent is the Senator Dodd was in the room and agreed to remove an amendment that would have limited AIG bonuses.
That doesn’t fit his political posturing and own self-interest. Truth be damned. Is the man even capable of making a decision simple because it’s good for the country or the right thing to do?
Share your thoughts..