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Why Howard Dean is right

Wednesday, November 25th, 2009 at 5:36 pm  
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We have not talked about health care for a while on this site. But this I cannot ignore. We have said it for a long time and this time I am being echoed by Governor (Dr.) Howard Dean months later : No public option; Kill the Bill!

In a segment with the ever so boring Dylan Ratigan, Governor Howard Dean basically threatened to stop sending in money to the respective Democratic committees in Congress if they do not have a bill in it that has a public option.

Looking back, we know that not nominating him is the biggest mistake that the Democrats ever made. They overlooked a governor that is a proven success and a person that is well informed in 2004, and they picked a long-jaw douche-bag named Senator John Kerry. So not only are the politicians pathetic, their far left voting base in the primaries are pathetic too.

Coming back to health care, I stress that this is the most important part of health care reform : the public option. The biggest problem with the health care cost in our country is cost. That should be the primary objective. And yet, our politicians came up with just one solution to curb costs : public option. (For Republican readers, I would explain in paragraphs below why their idea of buying across state lines would not work.)

Without the public option, there would be a mandate for the public to have health insurance to drive up demand and there is no other counter measure to keep the cost down. Therefore, we are literally throwing our money to the insurance companies with the Bill.

With the public option, there would be pressure to keep the price of the insurance down. If the insurance companies charge us too much, people would switch their plans to the public option which is non profit. It is not very difficult to understand the public option actually.

The Republican proposal of allowing customers to buy across state lines would not work. For it to work, there need to be national rules and guidelines. For example, in football, the rules in Saint Louis is the same as that in Dallas. If you cannot spit at the referee in Dallas, you cannot do it anywhere else.
The rules need to be the same, else you would have all the companies flocking to the state with the lowest amount of regulation. That is the case for the Credit Card companies.

So why can’t there be a national rule: The tenth amendment which guarantees states rights. With that, the federal government cannot force local governments to conform with other states on these issues. Even if our politicians want it, it would be very tricky. I also do not want it to go down that path as I think states rights are very important in our country.

A way around the Republican proposal is the idea that we in ST put up months ago. Allow the foreigners to flood the market. If the Japanese can make cars here, they can also sell their insurance, which is much more cheaper than ours, here. If Indian companies can create for us computer programs, they should also sell their insurances over here. Then let the competition begin!

Though, I hate it when politicians make threats when they can, in this case I am with Governor Dean. The Democrats should not receive any party donations if they cannot fulfill what the people want. A health care bill without the public option would wreck our country and make our lives much tougher than it already is.

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Executive compensation reform

Wednesday, October 21st, 2009 at 8:26 pm  
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Companies that were taking our tax-payers money a year ago are paying shameful amount of compensation for their CEOs and other executives. Of course this is wrong, but there should be a line not to cross. We cannot allow the government to control our pay too.

The following are 3 examples of people that owe taxpayers money up to a year ago. So in other words, they were being paid with our money for screwing up:
AIG – $165 million in bonuses.
American Express – paid her CEO Kenneth being compensated $42.8 million
Citigroup – CEO Vikram Pandit, got $38.2 million (2008)

Firstly, lets get back to the basics. A bonus is a job well done. A bonus should only be paid out when there is money made. It is as simple as that. It is not that these CEOs are being paid nothing. They have six figure annual salaries. Is that not enough for them? If they have done well with the company earning tons of profit, they deserve a share and a bonus.

The other aspect is that of some banks. Some have taken loans from the government, paid them back, but their consumers are still the suckers and are still not feeling any better. Small businesses are still finding it hard to get loans and our credit card rates are jacked up. Wasn’t it to free credit that we loaned the banks the money?

So should something be done, yes! The question is what? Should the government step in and control executive pay? No. It has been a failure in the past. President Nixon, Reagan and Clinton all failed in doing limiting pay. In fact the more they tried, the bigger the backfire.

Also, if the government start to step in and tell Wall Street how much they should make, what else can they do next? Can they tell us what to think and wear? It is a step too far. So I think controlling pay in general is not a good option at all.

The first step that we need to take is to reign in those companies that still owe us money. Firstly, they are not to be paid any bonuses but stock options. In fact, CEOs earn more from stock options than they earn from everything else put together. And half of that should go back to pay off the debt to the Federal government. Salaries should be capped at $400,000 a year. Perks should not be allowed at all. These companies would complain about talent retention, well that is life! When you are down, talent do not want to come to you!

After these companies have paid back the money they owe us, we should tax their profit higher for the next three years. Hey, they are back because of us, shouldn’t we be entitled to some of the money? Some are making obscene profits while we are struggling. Let them help us now!

Next, we need to do pay reform. We do not need to cap it, but we need ban bonuses if companies are making a loss. If it is the situation where we are right now where small businesses cannot get loans while banks are back to being fat cats, lets tax the profit and lend money to the small businesses. In effect, we are doing the jobs that the banks are supposed to do.

Of course, it is easy for me to just write these ideas out, when the only experience I have is to run a small company that only has 4 employees including myself. So I would understand the criticism that would arise. But I stand by my opinion and would like to hear better ones if there are any out there.

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NYC findings on gun shows; ST suggestion

Thursday, October 8th, 2009 at 5:46 am  
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New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg launched a sting operation on gun shows and it came back with disturbing results which we should have expected all along : Gun owners would not care who they sell their guns to if they could not be caught. What this means is that there are a lot of crazy people out there that could get their hands on guns when they are not supposed to.

Firstly, I think that this mentality is not only open to the gun industry alone. It happens everywhere all the time. If a seller could sell liquor to underage kids and get away with it, they would. If a seller could sell drugs without being caught, they would. It is human nature to supply the demand, be it legal or illegal.

What this sting does though is that it exposed a loophole in guns legislation where people at private gun sales are not required to have background checks. If a hardcore criminal or even a terrorist wanted to get guns, they can just go to one of these gun shows and obtain it. That could end up with guns in wrong hands and body bags to be filled up.

It is also of my opinion that there should be extremely stiff punishment to all gun dealers that do not do a background check. I feel that should a person who was not supposed to get a gun, used the gun to murder someone else, the gun dealer should be charged with involuntary manslaughter. I feel that it is because of the gross negligence of the gun dealer that lead to the victim being dead, hence the involuntary manslaughter.

I know that there would be people who think that this is a step too far. “If death is a direct result of the omission of one to perform a duty, the person guilty of such omission is chargeable with manslaughter; but if such omission or duty was wilful or malicious the crime is murder.” Even though causing death was not the intent of the gun dealer, it was his or her failure of duty that led to a person being dead.

I do not think that we should take these people lightly. I have once drawn criticism for suggesting that the death penalty should be applied to Drinking Under Influence offenders regardless whether someone died as a result of their actions. Though I have since mellowed, I still think that DUI offenders are getting away with it too easily. I equate DUI offenders with these irresponsible gun owners that sell guns without a background check. Both should suffer the consequences of involuntary manslaughter should a death result from their negligences.

Sticking to the topic of negligences, why is New York City doing this and not Chicago, where there are lots of kids are shot dead? I like Mayor Bloomberg who happens to be Independent, not because he is. It stuns me to compare the competency of Mayor Bloomberg and Mayor Richard Daley. But doesn’t it seem that those politicians with an (I) behind their names are the ones that are really doing their jobs?

Lastly, President Obama’s administration must be criticized for not doing enough on gun regulation. The Democrats have just collapsed again and again on this front. They have allowed guns to be in parks as part of a credit card bill, allowed assault weapons on trains when it was banned under the President Bush administration, and I think would crumble soon to allow assault weapons in airplanes.

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Guns on trains : Disgrace!

Thursday, September 17th, 2009 at 4:37 am  
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President Obama’s administration has caved in to the Republicans on guns yet again without giving a fight. This time, it is the administration caving in on gun’s owners right to carry firearms on Amtrak.

Carrying firearms was one of the measures the Bush administration took to prevent future terrorist attacks in America or as they would put it “keep America safe.” You have to wonder what made it okay today when it was a not 8 years ago.

Granted, this is as not bad as the law that allows guns on domestic flights. Passengers carrying guns on flights is absolutely no go for me. The reason is that to kill every one on the plane, a terrorist or a deranged person would only one shot that can cause an explosive decompression. Therefore, I think that it is a no-brainer not to have guns on planes.

Forget about a “Counter Strike” like fight with terrorists on a plane. That is the mentality that I find very dangerous. These people think that the only way to prevent terrorists from killing people is that if they themselves have guns so that they can fight back with them.

That is really laughable! What “la-la” land are they living in? Look at the last 8 years, with tighter gun controls on plane, not even a single terrorist high-jack took place. Let guns through, and you got a clown high-jacking a plane to tell the President of Mexico that an earthquake is coming! Prevention is always better than the cure. No guns means terrorists are prevented from taking the plane hostage.

The casualty would not be as large on trains as it would be on planes. But isn’t the solution to look into better measures of preventing guns on trains? Not according to the administration of President Obama. They rather allow guns to come on trains and let people die; so that they don’t have to face the monster haunting them, the Right wing.

Already there is the ridiculous inclusion of “guns in parks” amendment in the Credit Card bill of rights that was passed earlier this year. Now this? President Obama made the promise that he would deal with the guns issue in his political campaign. He said that there would not be M16s and AK47s in the street. What have you done so far on those fronts Mr President? Nothing!You just made the streets less safer.

I know there would be some people thinking that I am a liberal. I am not.. I am still an Independent. On some issues like abortion and especially guns, I am with the Left. On issues like the death penalty and tort reform, I am with the Right. Above all, I want things to be done smartly and ensures that bills get the job done.

This is not a smart bill at all. It was passed in the Senate with there being absolutely no chance of it getting vetoed by President Obama. Bad bills are bad bills. With the public option all but out, HR3200 is next to gun down on my agenda. I never supported it, but without the public option it is going to burn a huge hole in our pockets.

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