Category Archives: Business/Economics

Business/Economics, International

Class War: Israeli Doctors & Nurses walk out of hospitals, protest Israeli government

“We want to make a decent living as doctors in Israel….We have a great public health system and you have to invest money and funds and the government is just letting the health system collapse.”-Doctor Shuli Swetitzki,  Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv

She said a lot of doctors sought to leave either Israel or their profession “because it is so hard to get by.”

Israelis have been protesting the high costs of living and social injustice over the recent months. The largest anti government protest by Israelis took place on September 3, when around one million Israelis held protest rallies in at least 50 cities.

 

Business/Economics, U.S.

What Economic Recovery? Is the U.S. Congress stealing U.S. Postal Service money?

The United States Postal Service does not make money off taxpayers, they are solely funded by the postage they charge.  The U.S. Congress controls what the USPS can charge, and, according to testimonies by the U.S. postmaster general, Patrick Donahoe, and Fredric Rolando, president of the National Association of Letter Carriers, the U.S. Congress has forced the USPS to over pay into several federal funds.

Remember, the money made by the USPS does not come from taxes, and yet they’re being forced to over pay into federal funds.

Postmaster Donahoe has asked Congress to refund the over payments and they refused!  Congress is also refusing to allow the USPS access to it’s own money in the other funds.  Why?  Can it be that the U.S. Congress is using the non taxpayer Postal funds to pay for the day to day operations of the Congress?  Afterall, the U.S. government is broke, and they sure haven’t had any problems stealing from the taxpayer funded Social Security accounts!!!

Business/Economics, U.S.

What Economic Recovery? U.S. Congress wants to shut down U.S. Postal Service, why else are they restricting USPS access to their hard earned money? 9 million jobs lost?

September 6, PBS Newshour’s Gwen Ifill interviewed U.S. postmaster general, Patrick Donahoe, and Fredric Rolando, president of the National Association of Letter Carriers.  They both pointed out that the U.S. Congress is holding back on money earned by the USPS, and that was a primary reason the Postal Service is in trouble.

FREDRIC ROLANDO: “I’m here to tell you that the Postal Service is not broke. The Postal Service just needs access to its own money. And Congress needs to get busy and give them that access.”

“The $20 billion-plus dollars that you read about in losses is nothing more than a congressional mandate that requires the Postal Service, required the Postal Service to take all of their cash and put it into a pre-funding account.”

“The Postal Service actually has somewhere between $50 billion and $125 billion in their other funds that is not taxpayer money. They haven’t used a dime of taxpayer money in over 30 years! And the Congress just needs to act responsibly and quickly to give them access to that — those funds.”

PATRICK DONAHOE: “Fred is exactly right around the issues that we have faced in the last few years.”

“In that same time, we have been required [by Congress] to prepay employee retirement funding.”

GWEN IFILL: “What does Congress have to do with that? When you say that Congress needs to make changes to get you access to this cash, what can Congress do?”

PATRICK DONAHOE: “There are two proposals on the table, the one Fred referred to, where we would get money back. The other proposal is the Postal Service taking over our own retirement system, operate it just like a private business. And we would no longer need that pre-funding.”

“…we have overpaid [forced by Congress] into our other retirement fund $6.9 billion. We want all that money back right now.”

FREDRIC ROLANDO: “What Congress needs to do is give the Postal Service access to, like I said, between $50 billion and $125 billion…”

“There’s $50 billion to $75 billion in surplus pension funds. There’s about $42 billion in the future retiree health benefit funds, again, all postal funds, no taxpayer money involved.”

“…this is just cash money that the Postal Service needs access to. We’re not looking to in any way diminish what needs to be done for future pensions or future retirees.  It’s just that you don’t have to do 75 years worth of pre-funding in a 10-year period. You could re-amortize what needs to be done.”

“…because any business wouldn’t put $20 billion of cash into future pre-funding, nor would they leave $50 billion to $75 billion of pension surplus in that account, when they’re going through the transition that the Postal Service is going through right now.”

“If Congress doesn’t act, the postal industry, about nine million jobs are in danger…”

PATRICK DONAHOE: “We will be out of cash next August. That’s the issue.”

 

The United States Postal Service does not make money off taxpayers, they are solely funded by the postage they charge (prices are controlled by Congress, not the USPS), and other products they sell.  The cuts being made to the USPS will have no affect on U.S. government debt.

Business/Economics, U.S.

United Police States of Corporate America: People with mental problems thrown in prison, unwritten crime of being mentally ill, big money maker for Corporate Prisons

“When I became a judge I had no idea that I was becoming a gatekeeper to the largest psychiatric facility in the state of Florida – the Miami-Dade Jail.”–Steve Leifman, Miami-Dade County judge

Not only does the United States have the most people in prison, in the whole world, but it also has the most people with mental problems in prison.

A National Public Radio report says that the University of South Florida looked at who was the most frequently jailed people in the Miami-Dade County prison system.  It turns out that people with mental problems are the most frequently jailed people: “Over a five-year period, these 97 individuals were arrested almost 2,200 times and spent 27,000 days in the Miami-Dade Jail. It cost the taxpayers $13 million.”-Steve Leifman, Miami-Dade County judge

Most states don’t use mental health facilities, no thanks to former President Ronald Reagan’s decision to cut funding in the 1980s, so most people who commit crimes because of their mental problems end up abused in prisons.

“It seems to me that we have criminalized being mentally ill.”-Greg Hamilton, Travis County Sheriff, Texas

Sheriff Hamilton says because there is little funding for hospitals to care for mental patients, the prison system becomes the default ‘treatment’ center.

The amount of time a person with mental problems stays in a Travis county jail is between 50 and 258 days.

According to a 2009 Corrections Today interview with Judge Leifman, 90% of U.S. hospital beds for mental health patients have been closed, and there’s been a 400% increase in the mentally ill offenders entering prison!

According to a May 2011 Daily Kos posting: “There are three times as many men and women with mental illness in U.S. prisons as in mental health hospitals.”

“The costs of keeping a mentally ill individual in a penitentiary are three to six time what it costs to treat them at an outpatient mental health center.”

“The U.S. prison system had become the largest mental health provider in the country – with nearly 50% of inmates reporting mental health problems.”

“According to the most recent survey by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 81% of mentally ill inmates currently in state prison, 76% of mentally ill inmates in federal prison, and 79% of mentally ill inmates in local jails have prior convictions.”

“Mentally ill prisoners are more likely than others to end up housed in especially harsh conditions, such as isolation, that can push them over the edge into acute psychosis.”

“…there are powerful economic drivers to keep locking more and more of them up. In fact incarceration and detention has turned into a multibillion dollar growth industry.”

“…the [privately run Corporate] prison industrial complex is primarily motivated by economics, such that a formidable amount of prison industry capital is devoted to creating prisoners…”

In other words the exploding growth of Corporate run prisons demands more prisoners, so that the Corporate run prisons can make the money to pay back investors.  Mentally ill people are easy targets.

 

 

 

Business/Economics, International, U.S.

What Economic Recovery? U.S. Postal Service problems having domino effect on Corporate America

Some people don’t think much of the USPS (United States Postal Service), many people, including main stream journalists, don’t know that the USPS does not get any taxpayer money!  How about the fact that dozens of U.S. and European corporations rely on the USPS for business?

I’m not talking about shipping their products.  Corporations actually have major contracts to provide the USPS with products or services.  Now they’re feeling the pinch of the collapsing USPS budget.

Here’s a list of major companies being directly affected by the problems at the USPS: Fed Ex, Siemens, Northrop Grumman, Pat Salmon & Sons and Campbell-Ewald, to name a few.

Fed Ex is the biggest contractor with the USPS, in 2010 they were paid $1.4 billion for their service to the USPS (that’s only 3.5% of Fed Ex’s total revenue): “FedEx values its alliance relationship with USPS, both as a supplier and a customer.”-Maury Donahue, FedEx spokeswoman

Northrop Grumman made $495 million off their USPS contract.

The German company Siemens made $135 million in 2010: “We’re affected by their budget and their spending, It causes us to react and adjust.”-Daryl Dulaney, CEO of the Siemens Industry division New York

Siemens was involved with mail processing equipment, until this recent announcement by the USPS: “…will not be buying mail processing equipment, period.”-Sue Brennan, USPS spokeswoman

Privately held Pat Salmon & Sons trucking made $143 million in 2010.

Shipping contractors, like Fed Ex and Pat Salmon, have been hit hardest by the USPS budget crisis.  According to David Hendel, with postal contracting specialist Husch Blackwell LLP, the USPS is asking truckers to essentially work for half pay: “If the contractor will not agree to this, the Postal Service is threatening to terminate their contract.”

The only company that seems to be making more money off the USPS budget crisis, is advertiser Campbell-Ewald. The USPS has poured money into an advertising campaign trying to promote their service.

Basically the U.S. Postal Service wants to end Saturday mail delivery, cut 220,000 jobs by 2015 and close at least 3,700 post offices.  As you can see the cuts will affect far more than just Postal employees and customers.

The United States Postal Service does not make money off taxpayers, they are solely funded by the postage they charge (prices are controlled by Congress, not the USPS), and other products they sell.  The cuts being made to the USPS will have no affect on U.S. government debt.

 

Business/Economics, International

A true entrepreneur: Chinese man to grow Green Tea with Panda Crap, justifies charging outrageous prices for it

A teacher at southwest China’s Sichuan University learned that Panda’s use only 30% of what they eat, so that means 70% of what they crap is still full of wholesome nutrition.

An Yanshi, the university teacher, is so convinced that he could get people to pay insane prices for Green Tea grown in Panda crap that he even got a patent for his idea!

An Yanshi thinks he can get people to pay as mush as $34,422 for half a kilogram (one pound) for the Panda Manu Tea!!!  I wounder if this guy is smoking the tea instead of drinking it?

An official with the China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda, pointed out that the university teacher needs to do a study to see if Panda crap will actually make a difference in how Green Tea grows, before he starts charging people sky high prices.

 

 

Business/Economics, International, U.S.

Closer to a one world government: Super Sovereign Credit Agency to be created

“We hope that the agency will gain a leading position in the global rating market within the next five years. We’re fully aware that a globally recognized organization can never be propped up by one agency, so we will bring in more countries.”-Guan Jianzhong, CEO of Dagong Global Credit Ratings

China’s Dagong Global Credit Ratings will play a key role in the new global super-sovereign credit rating agency.

It will be established by Europe, the United States and the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa).  Its headquarters will probably be based in Europe.  Details will be finalized in Frankfurt later this year.

Initial plans include representatives from National Information & Credit Evaluation in South Korea, the Scope Group from Germany, and RusRating from Russia.

There are currently 152 rating agencies worldwide, but recent actions by the “big three” credit raters (downgrading governments, like the United States) has led many governments to decide to create one single credit rating agency.

Ahmed Sule, a strategist for Diadem Capital in United Kingdom, said any new credit rating agency would have to prove itself: “The agency would have to be independent and autonomous; this could be a challenge but the agency would have to work toward this independence if it is to be accepted by the international capital market.”

In July, a French magazine, Capital, revealed that a single European credit rating agency was in the works.

 

Business/Economics, International, U.S.

Think the people of the United States lead the world in hatred of Immigrants? Nope, try moving to tiny Belgium!

In a survey done by Ipsos Mora y Araujo, citizens of 24 countries were asked how they viewed immigrants.  The United States did not lead the way with immigrant haters, still more than half of U.S. citizens hate immigrants.

The Ipsos survey asked various questions regarding immigrants, but basically most European and American residents don’t like immigrants, which is ironic considering that most European and American countries are made up of immigrants.

The country that leads the way in hatred of immigrants is Belgium, with 72% of respondents saying immigrants are bad for their country.  Argentina, United Kingdom and United States are on the same wavelength, with about 61% of their citizens hating immigrants.

50% of Australians and 41% of Canadians say immigrants make it harder to find a job.  One Canadian respondent explained their view of immigration as ‘yes, you can move here, but just not where I live’.

So where to move, now that it’s becoming clear that the United States isn’t a place where you can achieve your dreams?

47% of Brazilians say immigrants are good for their economy, and 49% say immigrants make Brazil an interesting place to live.  Could explain Brazil’s exploding population numbers.  Brazil now has the 5th largest population in the world.  Officially 192 million people live in Brazil, that’s almost equal to all the other South American country’s populations combined!