Father’s Day
Posted on June 20, 2010
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Father’s Day
Sunday was so very nice in Beverly Hills. The sun was warm, its rays sparkling through the swaying of the elm and eucalyptus trees. It smelled fresh and clean. Early in the evening I decided to ride my bike up to the post office — about a mile away — and maybe cruise on in to the Whole Foods for some fresh vegetables. I put on my riding clothes (paint-stained black Levis, sweatshirt) and riding gloves, adjusted my helmet, carried my bike downstairs, and hopped on it … only to hear a bang — the tire went flat. Cursing, I walked back upstairs.
What to do. I still had some letters to mail, but didn’t want to drive my car anywhere. So I decided to walk to another, closer post office, about five blocks away, on South Beverly Drive. That would be a leisurely journey as the sun went down.
I walked to the post office, mailed my letters, then sauntered up Beverly, stopping at Peet’s for an iced latte (with an add shot for an extra kick). I sat on an outside bench, watching the young marrieds walking by, dragging their kicking kids (”why do we have to walk so fast, daddy?”). Some people were just gathering for dinner now, some ganging up at the local Chipotle or the Mulberry Street Pizza, others just leaving, waiting for their car in front of Ruth’s Chris Steak House. Surprisingly, most places were empty; it was almost 7:30, maybe too late for Sunday dinner on Father’s Day.
I walked North on Beverly to Wilshire, past a couple high-end restaurants that seemed deserted, past a new bar called Honor, with a blaring honky tonk band and hamburgers sizzling on a stove, then traveled east toward Rexford. I started to feel a little sorry for myself, a little lonely. And that’s when I saw it, sitting behind the window at the high-end sports car showroom: a gorgeous, sexy, new-to-these-shores Alfa Romeo 8C (available for just 200,000 euros). Talk about love at first sight.
There’s only been a few cars I’ve ever really wanted so bad I could taste it: a 1963 Sting Ray, a Mercedes-Benz 300SL Gull-Wing, a 57 Chevy two-door, a Cobra, an early Alfa Sprint, my current 2008 Mustang … but this baby, oh my.
I stood there for a couple of minutes, thinking about this beauty, wondering how I could ever, ever earn enough money to buy it, let alone maintain it. Here I was, 64 going on 65, unemployed, looking for work, trying to figure out how to buy a car for a quarter of a million dollars.
I guess you always have to have dreams.
Capitalist Shibboleth #39: Land Is the Basis of All Wealth
Posted on June 2, 2010
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While rummaging through some old file folders I found this advertisement; it appeared in the Los Angeles Times on February 24, 1970 – while the Cold War was still raging.
File Under: The Rich Get Richer
Posted on March 26, 2010
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“The good news for America now is that companies are very competitive, flush with cash and ready to expand,” Joseph Carson, an economist at money management firm AllianceBernstein in New York, told the Times. But, according to the paper, “others worry that the business giants’ clout has increased significantly at the expense of workers — the millions in the ranks of the jobless as well as those who remain employed but must work harder than ever.”
“More and more of the balance of power in society is shifting toward corporations,” said Thomas Kochan, a management professor and co-director of the Institute for Work and Employment Research at MIT in Cambridge, Mass.
According to the Times, “by one prominent measure, major companies had extraordinary success weathering the recession: Industrial companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index, a list that includes such giants as 3M Co., Coca-Cola Co. and United Technologies Corp., ended last year with a record $832 billion in cash and short-term securities on their books, up 27% from a year earlier.”
And while there are signs that some business are beginning to reinvest their overflowing coffers of money, others are taking a wait and see attitude — while workers sweat it out.
San Jose’s Cisco Systems Inc., a leading producer of computer networking equipment, last month said it would add up to 3,000 workers to its worldwide staff of 66,000 employees to keep up with rising demand. At the other end of the spectrum is the FedEx Corp., whose profits more than doubled in the quarter ended Feb. 28 compared with last year’s depressed level. According to the Times, “Although the company early this year reinstated merit-based pay increases, it remains ‘very strict’ on hiring, said Chief Financial Officer Alan Graf Jr. No job can be filled without the OK of a senior management committee.”
A committee that, most likely, will need to give itself seven-figure raises first. But that’s a story for another time.
WellPoint: Profit at the Expense of Consumers
Posted on February 25, 2010
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Under the headline “Lawmakers accuse WellPoint, parent company of Anthem Blue Cross, of profiteering” in the Thursday, Feb. 25 Los Angeles Times, Richard Simon and Duke Helfand report that “Congressional Democrats on Wednesday accused the parent company of Anthem Blue Cross of putting profits ahead of policyholders, saying the giant insurer padded its proposed rates while lavishing generous salaries and benefits on top executives.”
Lawmakers grilled WellPoint Chief Executive Angela F. Braly and WellPoint’s chief actuary Cynthia Miller, who both saw nothing wrong in putting profits over human life. According to the Times, Braly said WellPoint’s individual-policy business lost money in 2009 and was expected to earn less than a 2% profit in 2010. “It is always a challenging issue to raise rates. Our goal is to continue to serve members and have more members.”
“Uncontrolled premium increases lead to soaring profits for insurance company CEOs at the expense of consumers,” Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said in a statement.
According to the Times, “company documents obtained by congressional investigators showed the company paid 39 company executives $1 million or more in 2008 and spent more than $27 million for 103 executive retreats in 2007 and 2008. Company officials said some of the retreats were attended by insurance agents and brokers. In the hearing, Democrats displayed pictures of lavish resorts used by WellPoint for getaways and grilled Braly about executive pay, including her own salary of $1.1 million and stock compensation valued at $8.5 million last year.”
Miller, for her part, was amazingly disingenuous. She told lawmakers that “the average 25% rate hikes were necessary to counter rising medical costs and an exodus of younger and healthier policyholders who are dropping or reducing their coverage.”
Half of that is probably true — medical costs have been rising, but certainly not at 25% — but the second part? Let’s see. Health care costs are too high, so some policyholders drop coverage. So, let’s raise rates to offset the loss. What kind of thinking is that? What other business in their right mind would raise prices on products that consumers aren’t buying because the price is too high to begin with? One with a captive audience — older people who need the product and have to buy it.
File this one — again — under greed.
More About Anthem Blue Cross Greed
Posted on February 23, 2010
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Earlier this month we wrote a post about the despicable actions of Anthem Blue Cross in raising their rates for health coverage. See Healthcare Costs on the Rise. Why? The Los Angeles Times has been vigilant in their coverage of the healthcare giant, and two articles in the Feb. 23 Business Section hit the nail right on the head.
On page B1, in a story headlined “Anthem’s profit shifts scrutinized,” reporter Lisa Girion reports that while Anthem Blue Cross was raising rates supposedly to cover the cost of medical care, “other parts of Anthem reaped a profit … $525 million in Anthem’s earnings in 2009 was shipped to its corporate parent Wellpoint Inc.” And it has been so profitable that “since WellPoint acquired it in 2004, it has contributed more than $4.2 billion to the parent company’s bottom line.” Furthermore, Girion reports, “critics say some of those gains should have been kept in California and used to cover the losses on Anthem’s individual policies,” losses given as the reason they raised rates in California.
But some lawmakers say they are aghast. Former California Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi, now a Democratic congressman from Walnut Creek, said it was unconscionable for Anthem to impose steep premium hikes on individuals when the company as a whole was quite profitable.
“The extraordinary greed of Anthem/WellPoint Blue Cross is a clear indication that this company has put profit before people,” said Garamendi, who as California insurance commissioner presided over the companies’ merger. “People need to be able to get out of the shark pool with a public-option lifeboat.”
Anthem and WellPoint officials, including WellPoint president and CEO Angela F. Braly, are set to be grilled this week by committees of the state Legislature and U.S. Congress.
And on Page B8 of that paper, under a headline that reads “Anthem Blue Cross broke law more than 700 times,” reporter Duke Helfand reports that the insurer failed to pay medical claims on time and misrepresented policies from 2006 to 2009. And, according to California Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner, the firm faces up to $7 million in fines.
Once again, file this under greed.
I once asked a psychiatrist about people who run big corporations and who just don’t care about raising rates and fees, creating Kafkaesque rules and regulations, and basically “screwing” people (bankers, Toyota execs, take note). His reply: they’re sociopaths who have total disdain for most people and only care about the power they have over others.
Kind of makes your blood boil. Oops, can’t have that; it’s not covered by Blue Cross.
Water, Water, Every Where ….
Posted on February 8, 2010
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Southern California has been inundated these past several weeks with rain storms; it’s something we’re not used: There’s flash floods, mud slides, overflowing storm drains and traffic jams.
What’s really scary, though, is an advisory sent out by L.A. County’s environmental health division, advising people to stay out of the ocean because of the possibility that storm runoff could bring disease-carrying bacteria into the water. This is nothing new, however; after every major storm in Los Angeles the beaches become contaminated with sewage and the flotsam and jetsam of urban living.
But just how toxic are the beaches? Is this something out the 1950s and ’60s, when we had to worry about radioactive rain and fallout? Remember all those sci-fi movies about animals mutating into giant creatures because of radioactivity or pollution or scientific experiments gone wrong (”Them,” “Tarantula,” “The Beginning of the End,” “The Flesh Eaters,” to name just a few)? Is this what the future holds?
Where’s the Toxic Avenger when we need him?
Taylor Swift’s Performance Malfunction
Posted on February 6, 2010
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What are we to make of the ongoing controversy over 20-year-old country singer Taylor Swift’s off-key performance at the Grammys last week? The Web world is abuzz with fans and detractors defending or denigrating the singer. MTV News even published an article titled “Why You Shouldn’t Hate On Taylor Swift” in response to the backlash.
We’ll cut her some slack; everyone has a bad night. What’s so troublesome is not her weak performance but what her record label’s response says about the music industry.
According to her label, Swift had a technical issue that made her worry about her performance with Stevie Nicks. “We had a volume problem in the ear. So, she was concerned that she wasn’t able to hear everything in the mix,” Big Machine Records CEO Scott Borchetta said. “That’s just part of live TV. … So you’re going to have difficulties on occasion. Unfortunately, on one of the biggest stages, we did have a technical issue. She couldn’t hear herself like she had in rehearsal.”
In other words, Swift can’t perform unless the electronics are up to snuff? We don’t buy it. Whatever happened to just getting up and performing before a live audience sans earpieces, electronic mixes, etc.? This kind of reminds us of the heyday of manufactured singers in the 1950s and 60s, when the record labels were turning every pretty face or young TV star into a singer — with the aid of echo, reverb, and a host of wonderful studio electronics to improve their voices. Remember Fabian, Paul Peterson, Tommy Sands, Johnny Crawford, Shelley Fabares?
It’s a sad state of affairs when a big star can’t perform live because her electronics are malfunctioning.
Healthcare Costs on the Rise. Why?
Posted on February 5, 2010
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OK, everyone leery of government intervention in our health care system. Take a look at what the L.A. Times reported today under the headline:
Anthem Blue Cross dramatically raising rates for Californians with individual health policies. Policyholders are incensed over rate hikes of as much as 39%, which they say come on top of similar increases last year. State insurance regulators say they’ll investigate.
Anthem Blue Cross is telling many of its approximately 800,000 customers who buy individual coverage — people not covered by group rates — that its prices will go up March 1 and may be adjusted “more frequently” than its typical yearly increases.
The insurer declined to say how high it is increasing rates. But brokers who sell these policies say they are fielding numerous calls from customers incensed over premium increases of 30% to 39%, saying they come on the heels of similar jumps last year.
… the company defended its premiums, even as it tried to strike a sympathetic tone.
“We understand and strongly share our members’ concerns over the rising cost of healthcare services and the corresponding adverse impact on insurance premiums,” the company said in a statement.
“Unfortunately, the individual market premiums are merely the symptoms of a larger underlying problem in California’s individual market — rising healthcare costs.”
Anthem is not the only health insurer imposing double-digit rate increases. Competitors such as Blue Shield of California and Aetna also have raised premiums significantly in recent years, insurance brokers said. But they said the impending Anthem increases are the largest they have seen.
39%. Way ahead of inflation and cost-of-living.
Rising healthcare costs? Too many MRI and CT tests for early detection of diseases? The rising costs of hospital stays, where every item is used once and then thrown away, to be charged to healthcare insurance (This is true — last year in the hospital every time my bandages were changed, the nurse had to throw away the metal scissors for sanitary reasons). The high quality of hospital food? (OK, that’s an necessary dig).
Here’s one reason healthcare costs may be rising: incompetence.
Today I received a cryptic call from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center Business Office. “This is a courtesy call about a medical issue,” the woman on the phone said. “Could you please verify your name and address.” Since I didn’t know if this was really Cedars or a scam, I declined. The woman gave me a number to call to verify that Cedars needed to talk to me, and also gave me a reference number. Figuring a scam call could give me a scam number for “verification,” I called a number on my most recent bill from Cedars (I’m still paying off $xx.00 per month on an $xxx.00 bill left over from emergency surgery in 2008; I have a contract with Cedars for x number of monthly payments).
A woman at the billing number told that the reference number was for a doctor’s office affiliated with Cedars, and I was transferred. After being on hold for 10 minutes, another operator came on, and asked me to verify my name, address and phone number.
“I see you’re paying $xx.00 per month and are up-to-date but apparently there was a change and the bill went to default. But it has been corrected.”
“So I’m current and not in arrears,” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Then why did you call me?”
“That was a courtesy call because the terms changed.”
“But how could the terms change if I have a contract and I’m making the payments every month?”
“Well, that was just a courtesy call. You can just disregard it.”
“Why are you wasting my time?”
Silence.
“Good-bye.”
Of course, the other reason for health insurance carriers raising their rates: GREED
The People Speak: Howard Zinn
Posted on February 4, 2010
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With the death on January 27 of historian Howard Zinn (author of “A People’s History of the United States,” the first book to present American history through the eyes of working people rather than political and economic elites), we wanted to call to your attention the release of Zinn’s DVD “The People Speak” on February 23. Here’s the complete press release:
NOTE: As one of the last projects on which he worked before his passing at 87, acclaimed Historian Howard Zinn couldn’t have been more proud. A long-time labor of love for the best-selling author of “A People’s History of the United States” (among many other books) and professor emeritus at Boston University, THE PEOPLE SPEAK is a legacy of powerful and poignant ideas that shall live on forever. And, given the country’s current ideological situation, it’s a significant program which should be shared by all. Said executive producer Matt Damon, “The message that is so critical to disseminate is that change doesn’t come from the top, but rather from the bottom, and that without everyday citizens pushing to make a difference, there would be no America.”
“Text all your friends not to miss ‘The People Speak’” – The New York Daily News
A DOCUMENTARY 500 YEARS IN THE MAKING: “THE PEOPLE SPEAK”
Based on Historian Howard Zinn’s Best-Selling Books, This Exclusive Extended Broadcast Version Also Features Bonus Programming Including Additional Interviews and a Behind-the-Scenes Featurette
NEW YORK, NY – Presenting 500 years of history through speeches, letters and music performed by today’s most talented voices, THE PEOPLE SPEAK is a stirring HISTORY special paying homage to ordinary citizens whose words and actions commanded extraordinary change in America. Based on historian Howard Zinn’s seminal books “The People’s History of the United States” (first published in 1980 with over 2 million copies in print) and “Voices of a People’s History of the United States” (the primary-source companion to “A People’s History”, edited with Anthony Arnove, who also helped found, with Zinn, the nonprofit Voices of a People’s History of the United States at www.peopleshistory.us), this documentary gives voice to those who spoke up for social change throughout U.S. history, forging a nation from the bottom up with an insistence on equality and justice. From executive producers Matt Damon, Josh Brolin, Chris Moore and Anthony Arnove, this DVD presentation features over 20 minutes of never-before-aired footage as well as two exclusive bonus features for $19.95 from A&E Home Entertainment due February 23.
Narrated by Zinn himself, this groundbreaking doc – which ultimately recounts the rich and vibrant story of social change in America – illustrates the relevance of passionate historical moments to our society today, and reminds us that democracy is not a spectator sport. Journeying from the founding of our country to the civil rights movement and beyond, THE PEOPLE SPEAK harnesses the dramatic and musical talents of an all-star cast of international celebrities and activists to celebrate democracy, echoing the actual words (in letters, songs, poems, speeches, and manifestos) of rebels, dissenters, and visionaries from America’s past and present including Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony, Langston Hughes, Chief Joseph, Muhammad Ali, and unknown veterans, union workers, abolitionists, and many others never highlighted in high school textbooks.
In a labor of love, these dramatic moments from our history have been immortalized by accomplished performers and artists who “bring a full sense of drama and import to the voices of our democracy without turning the production into a pile-on celebrity vehicle.” There’s Matt Damon reading from The Declaration of Independence, Morgan Freeman reciting Frederick Douglass’ chilling speech on the meaning of the Fourth of July and Rosario Dawson as feminist Elizabeth Cady Stanton. There’s hip-hop legend DMC reciting David Walker’s appeal to the slaves to revolt, while, as Cesar Chavez, poet Martin Espada makes an appeal to farmworkers and David Strathairn powerfully steps into the words of World War II hero Admiral Gene LaRocque. Music legends Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen perform the songs of folk icon Woody Guthrie, while THE PEOPLE SPEAK also features additional dramatic and musical performances by: Allison Moorer, Benjamin Bratt, Chris Robinson, Christina Kirk, Danny Glover, Don Cheadle, Eddie Vedder, Harris Yulin, Jasmine Guy, John Legend, Josh Brolin, Kathleen Chalfant, Kerry Washington, Lupe Fiasco, Marisa Tomei, Matt Damon, Michael Ealy, Mike O’Malley, Pink, Q’orianka Kilcher, Reg E. Cathey, Rich Robinson, Sean Penn, Staceyann Chin, and Viggo Mortensen.
Like Zinn’s work as a whole, THE PEOPLE SPEAK on DVD celebrates the extraordinary possibilities for creating social change that ordinary people have realized throughout the course of our nation’s rich but often ignored history of dissent and protest.
More information on Zinn and his work can be found at HowardZinn.org.
New Birthday for 2000 Year-Old Man
Posted on August 14, 2009
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Shout! Factory on November 14 will team with comedians Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks for the release of “The 2000 Year Old Man: The Complete History,” compiling the best of the bits featuring Brooks playing the oldest man in the world, answering questions posed by Reiner about historical events and people. The pair started doing the routine in 1961. The three-CD/one-DVD set contains all five legendary comedy albums released by the duo, including “The 2000 Year Old Man In The Year 2000,” for which they received a Grammy Award in 1998. The DVD features a brand-new interview with Reiner and Brooks discussing the history of the routine, the 1975 animated “2000 Year Old Man” TV special, and vintage clips of the two appearing on “The Ed Sullivan Show” and “The New Steve Allen Show.” The set also includes extensive liner notes, rare photos and tributes from some of the biggest names in comedy.
