Ya Gits Whatcha Pays Fer

Ah, yes. let the screaming begin over the gas line explosion in San Bruno. However, here’s the reality. If PG&E had spent the money needed to keep all their gas lines updated and in good repair, replacing the miles and miles of old, out of date pipes, they’d have to go to the PUC and get permission to raise their rates and the public would SCREAM!

If the government felt PG&E wasn’t keeping their lines in good repair, they’d pass laws and regulations spelling out exactly what needed to be done, PG&E and the public would SCREAM about too much government regulations!

And when those regulations required PG&E to raise their rates to cover the costs of all that repair, the public would SCREAM!

And if the government felt PG&E wasn’t operating safely and properly and turned the company into a not-for-profit (government-run) municipal utility, with profits plowed back into rebuild, repair and top notch maintenance, the public would SCREAM about socialism and communism!

Until their rates went down because munis often offer cheapter rates for their customers than for-profit operations. So, everybody, shush up. Seven to 10 people dead is about the going rate to continue business as usual.

Ya Gits Whatcher Pays Fer, Part Heh-Heh.

This from David Savage, reporting for the L.A. Times. “The conservative counterattack on President Obama’s overhaulof health insurance will take center state in the courts this week when Republican state attorneys general and leading small-business groups urge a federal judge in Florida to strike down the law before it can take effect.

“They contend Congress does not have the power under the Constittuion to require all Americans to have health insurance. They also say states cannot be pressured to spend more to cover low-income families.”

Oh, I hope the judge rules to dump the whole health care law. It will make millions of Americans very, very happy when we go back to the days of people being denied coverage for pre-existing conditions, or being dropped entirely right in the middle of their battle with cancer, for example, over some minor clerical oversight on their insurance applications made years previously. Their kids will be off their family policies at age 18, rates can continue to rise unfettered and millions can continue to be forced into bankruptcies over medical bills. And the overall government deficit will continue to rise into bust-the-bank levels as health care costs rise along with the unbridled and obscenely lush profit levels for the insurance companies. No longer will they have to spend 80% of their income on actual health coverage.

It’s just too, too perfect and it’s what Americans desperately want – lousy and/or unaffordable medical coverage, or, better yet, no coverage at all! So I can hear the joy in Mudville even now. Yes!

Ya Gits Whats Ya Pays Fer, Part Trey

For over twenty years, our tax and trade policies have been deliberately structured to benefit corporations. Corporations have no country. They go where the profits are. Thus, while promising all boats would float and all money would trickle down, American’s manufacturing base was carefully eroded and destroyed, the factories shuttered and the manufacturing jobs shipped overseas, thereby gutting first the working class jobs and then the managerial white/pink collar jobs.

Now, with President Obama’s proposals to re-boot America with R&D tax credits and other tax incentives, the full irony is about to come home to roost. R&D, which is still America’s greatest asset (we’re a nation of very, very clever immigrants) will result in tremendous benefits – to corporations holding patent rights and to people living overseas. Which is where all the innovative stuff thought up in the US will actually be made, because American policy has destroyed its manufacturing base. So, while we can invent stuff like crazy, we can’t manufacture it here to benefit our own citizens. Plus, because of our trade policies, it remains cheaper to send it all to China to be made and then imported here, thereby worsening our overall trade imbalances.

It’s a perfect two-for one, with Americans the losers – Trickle down Reaganomics at its finest! Congratulations, America. You got exactly what you asked for.