Costume ?

Political Cartoon is by Steve Sack in The Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

Economy Hurting Apartment Rentals

A year ago, apartment owners thought the economy and the large number of home foreclosures would create a boon in apartment rentals. The National Apartment Association predicted a rise in the demand for apartments because of "the combination of a stagnant, recessionary-like economic environment, a shift toward renting, weak job reports, declining payrolls and general uncertainty."

Well, it doesn't seem to have worked out that way. They were right about the economy and jobs, but it has not resulted in a higher demand for apartments. In fact, the apartment occupancy rate has actually gone down. The national occupancy rate currently rests at 92.2% -- the lowest since 1986.

Here in Texas, it's even worse. Apartment owners here would probably be pretty happy to equal that national rate. Here are the rates in some Texas cities:

Amarillo..........89.8%

Lubbock..........90.2%

Abilene..........92.0%

Dallas/Ft. Worth..........87.7%

Austin..........89.3%

There are a couple of reasons for this. The federal governments tax credit incentives for first-time home buyers has caused apartments to lose some of their renters. But the main cause is the huge loss of jobs the country has suffered.

If a person can't make a mortgage payment because of a job loss, the chances are very good that they can't make a rent payment either (especially with rents as high as they currently are). So where have these people gone? They've either moved in with family, or they've joined the growing number of the homeless.

Since the Great Depression, we've had a number of recessions -- but they were short-term and the recovery was quick. Our current recession is different. It has done serious damage to our economy that will take years to recover from, and the recovery hasn't started yet (and may not for a couple of years or more).

The Victim

Political Cartoon is by John Darkow in The Columbia Daily Tribune.

Vegan / Carnivore

Found at the blog of Yellowdog Granny.

Juvenile Official Suspected Of Smuggling

Just last month, Governor Rick Perry appointed Catherine Evans, a former Dallas County juvenile court judge, to be the ombudsman for the Texas Youth Commission. The ombudsman's job is to be the representative of the incarcerated youth of the Texas Youth Commission (TYC) and make sure the rights of those youth are not being violated.

But after only a month on the job, Ms. Evans has already got herself in serious trouble. She was caught trying to enter the Crockett TYC facility with a weapon. Her office admits in a recent report that the also successfully entered a Beaumont TYC facility near the end of September with a weapon, prescription drugs and $300 in cash (all are prohibited).

This is serious. It is a felony offense to enter a TYC facility with contraband such as this. Any other TYC employee that tried to do this, would have been fired and charged with a criminal offense. So far, the agency just says Ms. Evans is being investigated. While she is temporarily barred from entering any TYC facility, she can still go in to her office and is still drawing her state salary.

It's beginning to look like she's going to try to claim she was just checking on security at the facilities. That story is ridiculous. It is not her job to check facility security. And the law doesn't say you can't smuggle items into a facility unless you're checking security procedures. It just says it's a crime to enter a TYC facility with contraband or weapons.

Evans violated Texas law. She should be terminated from her job and charged with a crime (just like any other TYC employee). But don't be surprised if Perry steps in to save his appointee. There is a campaign going on, and that is more important to Perry than truth or justice.

A Medicare Reality

Political Cartoon is by Bob Englehart in The Hartford Courant.

Financial System Is Still Shaky

A few months ago, the stock market was cratering and our entire financial system was on the brink of collapse. The federal government pumped billions of dollars into some of the largest financial institutions in an effort to keep them from failing and taking many others with them.

Since then, the market has rebounded, and the bailed-out entities are doing better and once again wanting to hand out ridiculously large bonuses (to the same people who nearly sunk them in the first place). So our financial industry has been fixed, right? Well.....NO!

The giant banks who received billions of our tax dollars may be doing OK, but there are hundreds of other banks that are not doing well at all. As of yesterday, 106 banks have folded this year and been taken over by the FDIC. That's the largest number of bank failures since 1992, when 120 banks failed after the savings and loan crises ( and we still have two months to go before the end of the year).

And that's not the worst of it. The federal government has identified at least 416 more banks that are in serious risk of failure. The feds have been trying to slow down the takeovers of failed banks, to keep the public from panicking. The hope is that a rebounding economy could save some of these banks.

But that's a futile hope at this time. With tons of jobs still being lost every month, our economy is a long way from rebounding. With the pundits predicting the job market won't start producing more jobs than it loses for at least another year, we can expect to see hundreds more banks fail.

Rich folks and giant banks may think the recession is over, but workers, small businesses and small banks know they are still in the middle of an economic disaster. And it could be years before things get significantly better (just look at how long the Great Depression dragged on).

(NOTE - Cartoon is by Jeff Parker in Florida Today.)

More Like Vietnam Every Day

Political Cartoon is by R.J. Matson in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Size

From the hilarious blog of Pundit Kitchen.

California To Ban Divorce ?

Sometimes the right-wing can be amazingly stupid, and I believe this may be one of those cases. A man named James Marcotte has proposed to alter the California constitution to ban divorces in the state. Yesterday, Secretary of State Debra Bowen announced that Marcotte has 150 days to gather the required signatures to get the initiative on next year's election ballot.

The nut has until March 22 of 2010 to collect 694,354 signatures (or 8% of the total votes cast for governor in the last state election). Here is the initiative as worded by the state attorney general:

ELIMINATES THE LAW ALLOWING MARRIED COUPLES TO DIVORCE. INITIATIVE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT. Changes the California Constitution to eliminate the ability of married couples to get divorced in California. Preserves the ability of married couples to seek an annulment. Summary of estimate by Legislative Analyst and Director of Finance of fiscal impact on state and local government: Savings to the state of up to hundreds of millions of dollars annually for support of the court system due to the elimination of divorce proceedings. (09-0026.)

Supposedly, he has suggested the initiative as a way to save the state some money. If you don't have divorce, then you don't need divorce courts and judges. That's ridiculous. There are many other ways to save money or to raise money. This sounds like just another volley in the right-wing fundamentalist war against equal rights for women.

What's going to happen to the thousands of women in the state who must get a divorce because of their physical or psychological abuse (or the abuse of their children)? Is saving the state a little money a good enough reason to abandon these women?

Of course, it won't affect the rich or upper middle-class. These people can just go to another state to get their divorce, because they have the money to establish residency in the new state. But what about poor and working-class women? They will be condemned to live with abuse -- very possibly life-threatening abuse.

This is just a real bad idea. Hopefully, Marcotte will not be able to raise the required number of signatures to get it on the ballot, or it'll be defeated in the next election by Californians. But then I thought the same thing about proposition 8 in the last election.

Pain And Nausea

Political Cartoon is by Jimmy Margulies in The Record (New Jersey).

Republicans Not Very Popular

The Republicans are counting on taking some seats back from the Democrats in next year's elections. And they seem to think the way to do it is just to say no to everything President Obama proposes.

The party out of power does usually take back a few seats in the mid-term elections, but frankly, it looks to me like the Republicans are bound and determined to change that tradition. How do they think opposing a well-liked president is going to increase their popularity?

They'd better change their policy of being nothing but the "party of no". If we are to believe recent polls, it's simply not working. While President Obama still retains majority support, the public perception of Republicans just keeps getting worse.

Take the CNN/Opinion Research poll that was just released yesterday for example. The poll was taken October 16-18, and the sampling error is plus or minus 3 points. Here are the numbers regarding the public's perception of both Republicans and Democrats:

Republicans..........favorable 36%..........unfavorable 54%

Democrats............favorable 53%..........unfavorable 41%

Those are not good numbers for Republicans. You can subtract the full 3-point sampling error from the Republican unfavorable rating, and there is still a majority of people with an unfavorable view of the party. Also, you can subtract that same three points from the Democrats favorable rating, and still half of all Americans view them favorably.

Obviously, just being the "party of no" is not working for the Republican Party. If they don't turn these numbers around soon, the 2010 mid-term elections could be another disaster for the Republicans. If their numbers fall much further, they'll enter Whig Party territory (and you know what happened to that party).

The only thing saving Republicans right now are the blue dog Democrats. A majority of the American people like President Obama, and they also want to see the president successfully pass health care reform legislation. They know the Republicans won't support the legislation, and their becoming disillusioned with the Democrats (especially those siding with the Republicans).

The failure to support the president and pass health care reform legislation has the public upset with both parties in Congress. When asked if they approve of the way Republican and Democratic leaders in Congress are doing their jobs, here are the numbers:

Republicans..........approve 33%..........disapprove 66%

Democrats............approve 38%..........disapprove 59%

Right now, I don't think I'd want to be a Republican or a blue dog in the 2010 elections.

Too Scary

Political Cartoon is by Bob Englehart in The Hartford Courant.

David Van Os On The Hogs At The Trough

A few days ago my newspaper contained a heart-wrenching article about a young woman who died of cancer after her insurance company denied a treatment that her doctors recommended. We have all heard of or personally observed such tragedies. The denial of doctor-recommended treatment to persons who have health insurance coverage is one of the greatest causes of public outrage about the greed of bean-counting insurance companies. You would think that any health care reform legislation would do something about this problem, right? Wrong. The bill that recently passed the Senate Finance Committee does not regulate treatment coverage. You would also think that any health care reform legislation would regulate how much insurance companies can charge for health insurance. After all, it is the high cost of premiums that is the main obstacle for individuals who do not have health insurance - they simply cannot afford it. And it is the high cost that deters small businesses from purchasing group health insurance for their employees. However, the current approach of both the President and the Congress does not regulate the cost of health insurance. The bills do provide financial assistance for those who cannot afford health insurance. But in the long run what good is that without direct regulation of the premiums charged by the insurance companies? If the insurance companies are free to raise costs as much as they like whenever they like, the need for government assistance will simply keep going up and the ever-increasing cost to the federal treasury will continue being a football in a political game that the people who most need assistance cannot win. Several days ago an Obama administration spokesman stated during an NPR radio interview that the administration "hopes" the system envisioned in the health care legislation will control costs. In fact hoping is all anyone can do, because the bills don't regulate what health insurance companies can charge. In fact the bills regulate very little about health insurance industry conduct. The fundamental flaw in the current approach to health care "reform" from both the White House and the Congressional leadership is that it is market based. You would think that after the proven failures of the cult of the "free market" at the big business level our political leaders would have finally stopped worshipping at the false altar of this relic of the failed Reagan-Bush era. But they have not. The entire thrust of the present Washington approach to so-called health care "reform" rests on the premise that the insurance "market" will reform itself if lawmakers provide the right incentives and disincentives. Even the "public option" - which I support as the most preferable alternative in the present deplorable context - is based on the idea of providing competition so that the "market" will work according to the assumptions of corporate Reagan-Bush dogma. What the current approach will really do is make the insurance industry cartel even stronger than it is today, which will be an amazing accomplishment considering it is already one of the dominant oligopolies disrupting our Constitutional democracy. If you think the health insurance industry charges too much money for its products today, you haven't seen anything yet. Just wait until these hogs are handed the ultimate captive market of the government compelling every person to purchase their products. They won't just be wallowing in the trough; they will own the trough and everything in it. Entrepreneurial free enterprise is one of the greatest strengths of our society because it promotes invention, creativity, risk-taking, resourcefulness, talent, and individual freedom. But monopoly corporate power is not free enterprise. It is the opposite. It stifles individual freedom through control and domination. Maybe that is why the magnificent original Bill of Rights of the Texas Constitution declares in Article 1, Section 26 that monopolies are contrary to the genius of free government and will never be allowed. The real solution to the health care crisis is not to rely on corporate free-market dogma. Giving the health insurance barons even more oligarchy power than they already have will in broad terms only worsen the severe socioeconomic crisis threatening the egalitarian underpinnings of Constitutional democracy; and in specific terms, it won't cure the health care crisis. The real solution is to apply a concept that is much simpler and much more straightforward than the bills that are being considered today. Rather than merely hoping to control costs, why don't we actually do it? Why aren't we talking about direct regulation, pure and simple? As far back as the 19th century we Americans have regulated big business when the public interest so dictated. At the state level we Texans also regulate automobile and homeowners insurance (though very poorly under Slick Rick Perry). Every outrage imposed on people by the giant health insurance companies, from charging unaffordable premiums, to blocking doctor-recommended treatments, to relying on pre-existing conditions, to denying insurance coverage could be addressed through direct regulation. The same goes for the outrages of the pharmaceutical companies and other health care related robber barons. While writing such legislation would entail all the complexities of the lawmaking process, with a host of details to be resolved, the fact is that enacting regulatory legislation is a normal activity for the U.S. Congress. While they are at it, an important piece of such legislation would be to repeal the exemption from antitrust laws that Congress gave the health insurance industry in 1946 in a particularly bad display of corporate welfare. The biggest thing standing in the way of the direct regulatory approach is the lack of political courage to confront the corporate free-market propaganda that has dragged we the people ever deeper into the economic mud over the last 30 years or so. At this very moment, various public interest organizations are encouraging their followers to flood Congress with phone calls for "real health care reform", but without specifying what "real" reform should consist of. This may be misplaced energy. The essential problem is that the "market-based" philosophy favored by the free-market cultists who surround President Obama and the congressional leadership is NOT reform. REAL reform would be to regulate the economic behavior of the health insurance and health care industries just like many other industries are and have been regulated. REAL reform would be not to try to sweet-talk the hogs out of the trough, but to evict them and lock them out.

David Van Os david@texas-patriot.com