Surely the best plan possible for getting money out of a country deep in debt is to make sure it makes no money:

short answer

yes

long answer;

this is by design, its what their “new world order” needs done, create the labor force of the many for the luxery class to do nothing for the rest of their lives, their kids lives, the remaining time of man kind

they WANT a robber baron society and this is one of their tools toward that goal

What I know about Greece I learned from Costa-Gravas’ Z. I guess I’ll have to watch it again to see how the oppression of the Greek civil society sets in.

“Some drugs are now in short supply.” Have heard of the same thing happening here.
It’s a shame neither party can offer nothing but empty suits. The 1% have their candidates, the rest of us have none.

It’s really up to the people, about how much (abuse, poverty) they’re willing to take. Not just in Greece, but worldwide at this point. We’re being squeezed dry and kettled, prevented from saving ourselves — It seems perfectly plain for anyone to see at this point.

Between this and this,where this is all heading seems obvious.

morning all,

When the only solution is to go French they’ll be sorry then .

As for now let the Greeks eat cake.

Yet they doggedly, almost mindlessly pursue austerity at every turn. As usual, the policies that help the people with money keep the money are pure poison for the rest of the population. This is exactly why communism looked so good to so many people in the early part of the twentieth century.

The 1% have their candidates, the rest of us have none.

And we can rest very assured that the rich will never find their access to health care restricted or drugs to be in short supply.

Good morning, pups. We’ve got Kristof and Collins today. Mr. Kristof looks at “The New Haven Experiment” and says teachers’ unions have often been an obstacle to efforts at school reforms. But, in New Haven, they are showing that they can be part of the solution. Ms. Collins says “Congress Has No Date for the Prom,” but that while our legislators on Capitol Hill are currently very unpopular, there’s good news, people! They seem to be hearing our complaints about partisan gridlock.

Here they are.

The coffee, tea and hot chocolate are ready, and I’ve got apple walnut muffins that are still warm. Have we all been good enough boys and girls to deserve a huge floor fight at the Republican convention? Fingers crossed… Have a grand day.

Good morning all.

Hope everyone is enjoying shock doctrine before they turn the voltage up.

Absolutely, Margaret. No one ever hears of a wealthy person dying because they have no health insurance.

I can remember a time when abortion was illegal, yet wealthy women just hopped on a plane and went somewhere to get the needed solution. While poor women bled to death in back alley abortions.

So Sarah and Jeb are “running” without actually running, and hoping for a brokered convention. A Bush-Palin ticket would be popular with the wingnuts, sad to say. Not winnable in the general, unless the economy really tanks or Obama adds a new dimension to stupidity.

Boxturtle (Obama is sure lucky he got the clown car to run against)

In our case, the reason is much colder. There’s no money to be made of a drug once it goes generic and if there’s not a lot of demand the generic companies won’t produce it.

The cheap Chemotherapy drugs are in short supply, like trexate. The expensive ones still under patent protection are easily available. And so on.

Boxturtle (Naturally, the solution is to extend patent protection. *snort*)

It’s all part of the plan.

The precise date when pharmaceuticals’ prices started increasing faster than the overall rate of inflation was 1981, when Waxman got generic drug legislation passed.

I can remember a time when abortion was illegal, yet wealthy, almost exclusively Christian women just hopped on a plane and went somewhere to get the needed solution.

Fixed it for ya.

Teachers unions, at least in Ohio, HAVE been an barrier to school refore. In fact, they’ve been so bad that a large part of the charter movement is by people wanting teachers to be held accountable for their classes success or failure. The Ohio teachers union would make it so difficult to fire a bad teacher that folks finally just went around them. And the GOP was only too happy to oblige.

Between the above, the courts, finances, the school boards not bowing to Christianity enough or the school boards bowing to Christianity too much, people have lost faith in Public Education. Most parents remember the idea is to educate the children.

Boxturtle (We’re better off fixing public education than flushing it)

Shock doctrine assumes a sanity that I really don’t see evidence of. Honestly, it looks like blind clinging to an ideology that’s proven to be disaster, but the alternative and rational course is the one the PTB have spent a lifetime rejecting as librul, and they just can’t behave rationally. imho

Yep. Having painted themselves into a corner, they have been reduced to screaming that they aren’t really trapped and that it’s somebody else’ fault they are in the position they’re in..

All teachers who are not above average teachers will be fired.

All students who are not above average students will be failed.

So what’s the solution, do you think? Extend patent protection like the companies want? Legislation to force certain drugs to be producd in sufficient supply? Orphan drug rules where the government picks up part of the tab for drugs that will never be moneymakers? Nationalize the drug companies? Insurance companies refuse to cover the more expensive drug if there’s a cheaper generic?

There isn’t one thing I typed above that doesn’t come with a “But if we do that…”.

Boxturtle (I guess lean toward forcing companies to produce needed but not profitable drugs)

Between the above, the courts, finances, the school boards not bowing to Christianity enough or the school boards bowing to Christianity too much, people have lost faith in Public Education. Most parents remember the idea is to educate the children.

All part of the plan to eliminate public education. Can’t be educating the poor little ragamuffins with the one percent. They might succeed and get some of that already distributed wealth!

That was the unions position. But when you’ve got teachers CLEARLY incompetent who can’t even be removed from the classroom, the union’s position in public opinion weakened. The football coach/social studies teacher where I went did most of his teaching via video taped TV programs. In a neighboring district, a teacher just had his students read the text, asked for questions, and moved on. And so on.

Boxturtle (Parental involvement in education is the solution, not unions or charters)

I have always thought businesses should have to be licensed to practice in the U.S. and take away profit, and licenses should be given only to the businesses that operate in a way that benefits the public.

The 1% don’t mind public education, but they really don’t care about it. We can have public education, as long at the 1% doesn’t haveto help pay for it. Why should they have to pay for public education when their kids are in private schools, after all?

Boxturtle (The property taxes on a McMansion are impressive)

I lean republican on that subject. Give tax credits to businesses that are socially responsable. But lean is relative, i also think we should increase taxes on those businesses that aren’t.

Boxturtle (Ben and Jerry would be almost tax free. Monsanto would have trouble paying a dividend)

You both have the same goal in mind, just the means are different.
Licensing is about taxation.

x2

“the reason is much colder”….profit based health care.

Wow. Just, wow.
Greece is suffering austerity, because other nations have decided that propping up Greece isn’t worth the cost. Any money lent Greece will never be returned.
This isn’t a game, this isn’t a conspiracy. In the real world, all one has to trade on is one’s reputation.
Behavior has consequences. The Greeks did this to themselves.

Yes, indeed-y. Thanx.

In my book, licensing is about minimum professional standards. But it the real world, a license is little more than a tax. You pay for your drivers license every four years, but here in Ohio the only thing they do to renew your license is an eye test. That’s a tax.

Otho, if you’re an exterminator, the license has continuing education requirements and such. That’s a license.

Boxturtle (Bankers should have to pass an ethics test before they accept a single deposit)

Isn’t it amazing how many problems a government single payer health care system would solve?

Boxturtle (But it would really hurt the fundraising of any president who backed it)

Interesting that you used the phrase “new world order.” This phrase was coined by the administration of President George H.W. Bush, who, while generally viewed today as a moderate, was in his own way as harmful a president as his son W. Towards the end of the Reagan administration and at the very beginning of H.W.’s administration, during approximately the years 1986-1989, there was a brief period of great optimism in world affairs, as the Soviet Union thawed under the leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev, Eastern European nations one by one broke out of the Soviet orbit, and the U.S. and U.S.S.R. dramatically ceased their Cold War hostilities in a series of friendly meetings between the American and Soviet leaders.

As arch-conservative as Reagan was domestically, there were some very progressive aspects of his foreign policy. He was the only president since World War II who evinced an apparently genuine desire to abolish nuclear weapons (despite his “Star Wars” idiocy).

H.W. made sure this hopeful era ended. He and his top advisers, notably Secretary of State James Baker, cared only about the hegemony of world capitalism under the control of the U.S. government. The 1991 Gulf War marked a definitive break with the hopeful Reagan-Gorbachev era, and ushered in the world we live in today.

In all seriousness luck has nothing to do with it.

Obama has served our owners well and will be reselected.

The “clown car” simply serves as an instrument of terror for pressuring the 99% to vote for Obama and as an excuse for post-2012 Obama to “pivot” his nose ever more sharply towards the “center”… the center of the nearest billionaire ass-crack.

I agree that much of the economic problems Greece is facing are a result of their shooting themselves in their own feet. Greece has refused for years to collect taxes – tax avoidance has become a national sport. But Greece also suffers from a lack of exports. They haven’t tried to grow the industries that would lend themselves to export markets – how much olive oil can the world buy? – and tourism is not an exportable commodity, although it does earn them some Euros. And those are about the only sources of income the country has.

So between not collecting taxes and not having an export market, Greece has been living off the strength of the Euro. I don’t believe austerity ever grows an economy out of an overwhelming debt situation, and worse, Greece now faces a debt owed in a currency the country does not control.

Defaulting on their debt, dropping out of the Eurozone and going back to the drachma may turn out to be their only choice, but whatever happens, the people of Greece are going to suffer terribly.

Leaving … no teachers and students.

Nationalize generic drug production and a Tobin Tax.

They did it to themselves is lazy, authoritarian parsimony. Whoever calculated the capitalization in Greece either did a poor job or they did a bad job. But the calculating promote “black swans” and write their own pardon.

Calculating capitalization should require triple damages if crisis is produced. But then, who could be a capitalist?

This is what globalization looks like!

Oops, doesn’t have the rhythm.