Has the Huffington Post Jumped the Shark?

Back in my high school days, I remember taking a study break in the school library when a friend notice something unusual for the setting.

"They're playing Metallica on the radio," he said.

It would have seemed unfathomable: heavy metal in a high school library! Alas, this was 2000. It wasn't 1992 anymore. Once something becomes mainstream, it loses some of edge.

Do you want your tax dollars paying for this nonsense?

The same can now be said of the Huffington Post. What started as a combination of sledgehammer headlines about the major news stories of the day, coupled with new left commentary, is slowly but surely joining the ranks of the mainstream media that it for so long has protested.

It's not just the merger with AOL or the birth of Huffington Post television that marks this occasion. Rather, it is quality of Huffington Post's new found homegrown reporting that recently has made a disturbing editorial statement.

In an exclusive write-up, Huffington Post's Lia Shapiro covered a story about the State of California's decision to outlaw gay therapy. Fair enough. It would seem that anything advertised as a "medical treatment," yet provided absolutely no value, should be illegal. The fact that gay "conversion therapy" results is numerous suicides is even more cause for condemnation.

But that's not quite how Ms. Shapiro sees it. "There aren't any scientific studies showing that the practice [gay conversion therapy] actually causes harm" opines Shaprio.  Yet in the following sentence, she contradicts herself: "Anecdotal reports of depression, even suicide, abound, and a task force convened by the American Psychological Association found the practice to be both harmful and ineffective. "

Harmful. Ineffective. Might cause sudden death. If gay conversion therapy were a consumer product, the public would be screaming to take it off the shelves. But hey, if Huffington Post is going mainstream, it has got to present both sides of the story. 

I can only wonder if Ms. Huffington, herself once a prominent political conservative before she discovered that her husband of 11 years was bi-sexual, believes that gay therapy is the harmless practice that should be unregulated. All I can say, I sincerely hope not.

Fund Medicare with More Jobs

Jobs are good for the economy. This fundamental tenant is so basic, that it is beyond my comprehension that anyone could think otherwise. Sadly, many people do, and some of them are in positions of power. In the midst of an election for the Office of President, now would be a good time to state the obvious in hopes we can get our country on the right track.

A job creates many jobs. That is the reality of the marketplace. We are all based on a system of interdependence. Working together to solve problems creates prosperity. One such system that we have is Medicare.

Jobs are a good thing. Let's not lose sight of this.

Medicare works on the same tenant as Social Security: younger workers pay into a general fund, and that fund becomes available to them once they retire. Various cost-saving measure, some prudent (Obama's), some nefarious (Ryan) are the topic of discussion right now, but a policy that would be both a necessity to the viability of Medicare would be to simply add more people to the workforce.

The premise is simple. Right now, the unemployment rate is 8.3 percent. By most accounts, approximately 14 million Americans are looking for work. If the Federal Government were to seriously make an effort providing jobs, such an effort would not be onerously difficult.

Our highways are literally falling apart. Our mass transit is dysfunctional in most of our major cities--if a city even has any form of mass transit at all. Even in New York City, home to its iconic subway system, is not without its flaws.

Take construction of the Second Avenue Subway. Not only is this project a full seven decades behind schedule, but once complete, it will provide a lower level of service than the elevated train lines it was meant to replace! Not only are we plagues with high unemployment now, but simply getting to and from work in this country is a disaster!

This is a problem of which we, as a society, have direct control over. We can increase our budget allocation to hire workers to fix bridges, plug potholes, and yes, update our crumbling mass transit system to something that was at least good as what we had at the turn of last century.

14 million jobs should be a major campaign issue. The median annual income for the American worker currently stands at $26,363. If 14 million people were to be added to the workforce, it would add an extra $369 billion into workers pockets. At current tax rates, these new workers would increase Medicare receipts by over $10.7 billion annually. Projected over 10 years, this would over $100 billion to Medicare.

With more workers, we could actually build this stinkin' thing!

And that's merely projecting the median salary. Most jobs created by government pay substantially more than that, much to the ire of today's modern conservative. Most workers employed in such a massive, large scale jobs program would make more than a paltry $26k per year. If we project the same number of jobs with a salary that is typical for said job, amount of money earned would likely to double, to nearly $540 billion in salary, and an extra $22 billion into Medicare per year.

How would the Feds finance such a program? Well, we may have to raise taxes on job creators like Lindsay Lohan and Alex Rodriguez, but I'm sure they will find it in their infinite wisdom to deal with it. And in the meantime, the rest of us can enjoy getting to work on fixing America.

As Michael Jordan would say, Just Do It!

Dick Cheney's backtrack on the Disaster from Alaska: Why it's good for society that Sarah Palin stays in the news

Ah, Sarah Palin, how we've missed you.

Not for your views on government, not for your television shows, or your ghastly ghost-written memoirs.

No, we miss you because every time we see you, we are reminded as to what a total laughingstock the Republican Party has become.

 Please--don't retire from whatever it is that you supposedly do.

Laughingstock, like Woodstock, but instead of Hendrix, the Who, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, you've got Romney, Boehner, and Palin. The very notion that any Republican could win a national election with their outwardly extremist views and cartoonish public personas is laughable.

Lobbyists may have succeeded in preventing Federal action on climate change, meaningful financial reform and instilling a progressive income tax, but when Dick Cheney is afraid to speak ill about Sarah Palin, at least we have something to laugh about.

Yes, Palin. The half-term Governor of Alaska who hasn't held elective office in some time--and most definitely won't ever again. If she were to run, George McGovern would steamroll her in a landslide.

That probably won't happen. But it's fun to see her straw-man character in the news. After all, it makes great fodder for satire. I spoke with Hal Ruzal, a legendary CBGB's rock 'n' roller who currently fronts Kilifax. He told me that his band will play his "Sarah Palin" song at his next  show on August 17th at Fontana's. The original CBGB's may be long gone, but Fontana's is in the heart of the Lower East Side, located on  Eldrige Street between Delancey and Grand. I strongly urge all fans of satire and music to attend.

Am I plugging Kilifax? Heck, I just think everyone should share the joy--the joy of mocking the disasta' from Alaska!

That's Friday, August 17th. If you've already made plans, change 'em!

In the meantime, see if you can figure out why this video didn't go viral back in 2008. Maybe it just needed better recording quality? You be the judge!

America needs jobs, jobs and more jobs.

Want to fix the deficit? How about our national health care fiasco? What about persistently high unemployment? High crime rates in our inner-cities? Can anything be done about our poor performing public schools? What about student loan debt after graduation?

The answer to all of these problems is the same: jobs, jobs and more jobs.

I am sick and tired and also fed up financially with the bogus right-wing talking point that government spending does not produce jobs. That is silly. Government spending produces many jobs.

Here is one small example. Take Rosie the Riveter. Government Spending created her private sector job as manufacturing technician. So, Rosie has a job.

From the Rosie's Rivets to Rockwell's canvas: jobs are good for everybody.

Rosie's job also supports other jobs: it enables her to buy essential items like food, rent and utilities. That's money for the grocer, the banker, the electric company, and the gas company. And those companies have employees, who, thanks to Rosie and the government, have jobs.

That same government that produced Rosie job has helped produced other jobs: the engineering crew to design and test the airplane that she helps build, the managers who supervise her, and the janitors who wash the floor every day. Thanks to to the government, all of these people have jobs.

And then there's the king of American illustration, Norman Rockwell. Thanks to the government, he's got a job. Well, in his world, it's more like a gig. But it's a paying gig. None of this work for free "exposure" nonsense.

Right now, America needs jobs. Millions of them. These jobs are not luxuries. This country has work that absolutely needs to be done.

Many of our schools suffer from overcrowding. Studies show that classroom effectiveness declines precipitously if there are more than 23 students per classroom. So, make it a federal law. From this day forward, no primary or secondary school shall have a student-to-faculty ratio greater than 23 to 1. If a school district can't afford the extra staff, the federal government will pick up the tab. Bam. 250,000 teachers. Hired. A quarter million new jobs.

Moving on, I am fed up and disgusted when hear news reports about unemployed veterans. That is absolutely inexcusable. How many police officers does Detroit need? Or Chicago? What about Camden, New Jersey? Despite what Tom Brokaw says, our returning Veterans are more than skilled for the modern work force. What employer wouldn't want somebody who had the skills to do the job assigned to them from day one? Lock and load another 100,000 or so jobs. Again, if local districts can't absorb the extra cost, the federal shall pick up the tab.

Some people who are reading this might be thinking, wait a minute, Kevin, how is the Federal government going to pay for all this? To that I say, I understand your skepticism. Certain Federal spending projects have failed to create wealth and instead, made money simply disappear. We can help our country return to fiscal sustainability by reversing the damage caused by such boondoggles.

One such financial government calamity was the Cross-Bronx Expressway. Undertaken in 1953, the project required untold billions of dollars and a full two decades to complete a mere six and half miles of highway.  This highway removed business and apartments. As a result, a six and half mile stretch of revenue producing commerce and residential areas became a persistent revenue money hole. And no, it does not enable motorists to get across the Bronx any faster than local roads.

Never a good way to get around. But we do have a better option.

But should we give up? Should we surrender and begrudgingly accept the aforementioned problems? Nay, we should double down. Our mass transit system lags behind that of every industrialized and industrializing country in the world. As a result of our congested freeways and inefficient mass transit, American businesses lose billions of dollars in lost productivity, while motorists collectively waste approximately two billion gallons of fuel every year sitting in rush-hour traffic. It is past time to pay any cost, bear any burden, and provide whatever critical updates to our national infrastructure by any means necessary. And if that means bitch-slapping the corpulent Chris Christie into accepting money for mass transit from New Jersey into Manhattan, so be it. (I doubt will come to that, but like I said, any means necessary).

This is work that absolutely, positively, needs to be done. This is the work that was poorly articulated, and often insufficiently funded during the American Recovery and Re-Investment Act of 2009. The scale was to small, the need poorly articulated, and nearly 1/3 of the funds were not "stimulus dollars" but tax cuts. And tax cuts, while sometimes beneficial, can cause financial hardships when directed towards the wrong group of people.

In order for the United States, and by extension, the global economy to recover, the United States most adopt a progressive tax code. Income inequality causes financial hardship, as lower and middle-income earners are unable to have the necessary funds to participate in the economy, economic growth evaporates. When a small group of people have far too much purchasing power, and the majority; too little, the consumer price index is thrown of kilter. Housing prices in Manhattan illustrate this trend perfectly: The average rent on that island is over $3,400 a month. Who can afford that? No one earning less than $100,000 a year, that's for sure.

So things need to change. Now. Not only do the Bush tax cuts need to expire, but America must adapt a similar tax rate to what we achieved in the Johnson administration. He may have made a terrible mistake paying for a war that never should have been started, but under Johnson's leadership, this country enjoyed sustainable, bubble-free economic growth and a balanced budget.

President Obama is going to win, if for now other reason than the fact that Mitt Romney is a loser. That much is clear. What is sad is that Obama will set a dangerous precedent. If an incumbent can win re-election with 8 percent unemployment, what motivation does any sitting politician have to do anything about our unemployment crisis?

Economic forecasters are predicting, as they have been since 2009, that unemployment will remain persistently high for the next four years, and unless this country enacts major policy change, the naysayers will be correct. The best of course action? Take 'em out to dinner and win them over. That seems to work for Goldman Sachs.

Here's to hoping that Barack Obama feels emboldened with his recent Supreme Court victory and doubles down against his anti-jobs opposition. Based on the lukewarm support this blog as been getting for its chosen candidate, Obama may after all be a stronger candidate than George McGovern.