from THE NEW YORK TIMES

MORE FROM LOUIS UCHITELLE !!!

[excerpted from Louis Uchitelle's editorial feature story]

"The Stronger It Gets, the Sweatier the Palms"

[...] ALAN GREENSPAN, the Federal Reserve chairman ... told Congress last month that the economy "appears stretched in a number of dimensions." That, on top of his insistence last September that America CANNOT remain an "oasis of prosperity". Or hear out Warren E. Buffet, the celebrated stock market guru, who said on national television not three weeks ago: "The level of SPECULATION is high by any historic standard. And you know that doesn't go on forever."

Or worry with Robert M. Solow, a Nobel laureate in economics, who said in an interview last week: "We have had three awfully good years now, and an incredible fourth quarter. But any SETBACK can start the DOMINOES FALLING. Who knows what's next?"

The nervousness, in fact, may be appropriate. This is hardly a standard, predictable boom. Normally, there is a beginning, middle and end ... But the boom that started in late 1995 broke this pattern.

[...] As stock prices have shot up ... millions of people are putting up their HOMES AS COLLATERAL, but with the thought, lenders and economists say, that they can sell stock to repay debt if necessary.

"The stock market has become a way of EXTRACTING equity from housing," said Wynne Godley, an economist at the Jerome Levy Institute.


[...]

FORTUNE magazine ranked the PHARMACEUTICAL

business as the MOST PROFITABLE of all industries last year when measured by returns on equity, sales and ASSETS.

[...] "Many industrialized countries DO control prices, but we don't think the solution is to emulate those practices," says JUDITH BELLO, executive vice president of the PHARMACEUTICAL Research and Manufacturers Association [lobbyists].

[...] After her mastectomy four years ago, Ruthmary Jeffries got a tip from her oncologist: BUY PRESCRIPTION DRUGS IN CANADA!!!"


JUST A FEW COUNTRIES THAT HAVE A NATIONAL HEALTH CARE SYSTEM: Australia; Canada; France; Germany; Italy; Japan; Netherlands; Sweden; and many many others.

"Richest" Country on Earth that has ABSOLUTELY NO KIND OF NATIONAL HEALTH CARE SYSTEM and yet the GREATEST PROFITS:

"the united states of america"



from the New York Times

[excerpted from an article by David Cay Johnston]

"[...] Representative Rob Portman ... says ... "We need to try something new because the system we have isn't working and we need to get more people covered."

But even the bill's co-sponsor acknowledges that it may not do that. Critics say the bill is actually little more THAN COVER FOR A PLAN TO SHOWER new tax benefits ON THE RICH.

One provision would allow businesses to CUT PENSION BENEFITS by as mush as ONE-THIRD for workers making LESS than $160,000 annually without reducing benefits for those earning more.

[...] Norman Stein, a University of Alambama Law School pension specialist who analyzed the PORTMAN-CARDIN plan, said it "should be called the RETIREMENT REDUCTION ACT."

[...] Dianne Bennett of Buffalo, president of Hodgson, ... a pension specialist, cited examples from retirement plans that she has drafted for clients to show that most of the benefits already flow to a few highly paid employees, a situation that she said WOULD WORSEN drastically if the proposals were enacted.

She added that "MANY OF MY CLIENTS WILL NOT LIKE WHAT I AM SAYING OR THAT I AM SAYING IT."

[...] The provision that most concerns critics would ... let highly paid business owners increase their own pension benefits by 47 percent without raising benefits for employees earning less than $160,000 ... [and] would allow a business owner to collect the same number of dollars for himself, while cutting retirement benefits by up to one-third for everyone making less than $160,000 a year."



[Editor's note: Recall the old

HR 1891 "Staffing Firm Benefits Act of 1997",

of which both Congressmen Rob. Portman, R-OH, Ben Cardin D-MD were prominent. Generally stated, this bill allowed staffing firms to be treated as the employer for purposes of providing health and pension benefits to workers hired through their services. This bill had been incorporated also into H.R. 3788, the "Retirement Security for the 21st Century Act," a bi-partisan retirement legislation cosponsored by Portman and Cardin last year.]


click here MICROSOFT uss temps to avoid shelling out PROFITS!!!

from The New York Times

GIULIANI ENCOURAGES CORPORATE WELFARE!!



"The Giuliani Administration has struck a tentative deal to give Bertelsmann AG a $25 million package of tax breaks.

[...] Tax incentives or subsidies have become so common under the city's so-called JOB RETENTION PROGRAM that some of the city's largest corporations no longer bother to threaten to pull out of Manhattan before seeking a reduction in sales taxes as well as LOW COST ELECTRICITY from the State Power Authority.

[...] "It's a form of blackmail by the companies and a clear case of CORPORATE WELFARE by the politicians."

[...] Once a critic of SPECIAL TAX BREAKS, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani has been cutting deals at a steady clips since 1994." +++++++

from the NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

Letters to the Editor

RALPH K. QUILLMAN of Seattle writes:

"... Jason DeParle expresses puzzlement when Newman accuses American society of assigning low-wage workers "the untouchable status of the Indian low castes".

[...] The facts ... are these:

The minimum wage buys 29 percent less today than it did in 1968. Millions of poor children still do not have health care. In 1970, the top 1 percent of the population owned 13 percent of the wealth. Today the top 1 percent owns 38.5 percent ... If this is not testament to society's scorn and apathy, I do not know what is."

Office Employment Temp Agencies get 49% to 55%, on average, of the wages paid by the corporate client for the use of the leased out temp resource (an uninsured human), for only a 3-minute call!

It's such a gravy train that temp "counselors" who "outsource" their packaged temp resources like frozen beef patties, are under lots of pressure by their managing directors and owners to never pay out to the temp more than 44% of the wage paid out by the client, and to try to stretch it to 55% in the agency's pockets, whenever possible [lying is not prohibited].

Thus, the typical temp in America who does some receptionist work, is getting paid $7/hour, while the client is most probably paying about $15 per hour to the temp agency [lobbyists have ensured that TAXES are minimal for the agency, and DISABILITY payments reserved for temps are KO'd by Lousville Slugger loopholes].

To make matters better, our Department of Labor COUNTS one of these unemployed Americans, who fell through the cracks and must temp to stay alive, if even having worked only a few hours during the ENTIRE year, as GAINFULLY EMPLOYED in the labor statistics. Isn't it great what a wonderful world we live in??

Hats off to our hard working politicians in the Beltway of our nation, Washington, DC. And a big hearty wrestler's neck hold to the lobbyists who have stripped citizens of their rights to represent themselves in the "free" labor market.

This same process is taking place in the world of PRESCRIPTIONS and PHARMACEUTICALS. Ask any doctor -- "would you stand up to an HMO and protest?"

The answer is a resounding "NO!" They are to the last one of them beholden like little shrimps to the entire monolithic framework that has even doctors and specialists with their butts to the nightstick. They are probably even more terrified than the more than 43 million uninsured Yanks, or anybody over 45 with a part-time job, partial medical insurance, or a shaky job with an ominous air of doom, or the temping NURSES, who are a number-one priority for many temp agencies today!

It's a BRAVE NEW WORLD, and proudly America is setting the way and establishing trends for Europe -- and the World!

At least we are a pioneer of something again, besides episodes of SEINFELD [no canned laughter here]!!

The Feds of DC have sent legions of Federal Enforcement agents to the Mexican border to forcibly and prejudicially BLOCK Americans from returning to the US from Mexico with CHEAPER prescription and non-prescription drugs, from Mexico. Many Yanks can't afford their pharmacy's exorbitant rates nor their extortionary tactics, and more and more drugs are being yanked off of the approved lists of insurers and HMOs. Many director's of medical accreditation boards also sit on the Board of Directors of HMOs and huge pharmaceutical combines, like Pfizer, Wellcome, you name it! So it would be suicidal for a physician to turn activist. He or she would have nothing to do but look at a million dollar debt for med school and zero accreditation, -- NO JOB!!

If you don't believe us, just make a few phone calls, ask your friends, or instead of watching BAY WATCH, go and stand in the back of a chain drugstore near the pharmacist and witness the mayhem and negativity of human events. Listen a little and learn, don't negate the truth breathing down your back.
======

[...] Jesse P. Schaudies, General Counsel for RANDSTAD North America, a subsidiary of the DUTCH company that owns OFFICE SPECIALISTS, said "we have no basis for believing there was anything improper" in its dealing with the Pension Agency."

Editor's Note: Randstad also owns now ACCUSTAFF, so watch your BIG BROTHER's Ass ... cause Office Specialists, Accustaff, and hordes of other temp megaliths are all under ONE Monolith now!!!



click here for HOMEPAGE

CLICK HERE TO GO TO 2nd of THREE part series --- you have just read Part III !!


Relevant links:
FILMSCRIPT
Cassandra's Crossing
Temp Slavery
Kubrick vs. Spielberg
HMOs are Out to KILL You!!!
John Michel's Sculpture of George Washington
Time Travel on May 5, 2000
CURRENT HEADLINES in the news
Ezra Pound discusses GLASS STEAGALL ACT
Viral Demons