San Diego Free Press

Grassroots News & Progressive Views

You are here: Home / Archives for John Lawrence

High School Drop-Out Earns $250 Million

by

This guy didn’t get the memo about dropouts having no future

By John Lawrence

High school drop-out David Karp just sold Tumblr to Yahoo for $1.1 billion. His share of the take was a cool $250 million. I guess nobody ever told him that high school drop-outs are doomed to high unemployment and low wages.

Defying every societal stereotype, none of this propaganda from the education-industrial complex deterred him from going ahead and doing what he wanted which was being a software developer.

Karp is 26 years old. Having not wasted a bunch of time in high school and college, (Karp dropped out of high school at age 15) he instead got on with life, which only goes to show that, if you really know what you want to do in life, high school and college are mainly a waste of time. You can become an expert in any field without having a degree or a diploma.
  [Read more…]

Should the Big Wall Street Banks Have Been Allowed to Fail? – Part 4

by

by Frank Thomas and John Lawrence

Frank has eloquently argued “Yes” here in Part 2 and continued here in Part 3 of our examination of the financial crisis of 2008. Part 1 dealt with Republican economic philosophy over the last 30 years which had produced disastrous results for the economy leading up to the crisis.

This week John argues that AIG should have been allowed to fail and that this would not have affected Main Street banks or the banking activities of average Americans. But the real question is ‘If American taxpayers and the Fed had not given billions of dollars to AIG and the other large banking institutions, would they have indeed failed or would they, on the other hand, have survived quite nicely even without the bailouts?’

What’s clear in the financial crisis of 2008 is that Washington rescued Wall Street while abandoning Main Street.   [Read more…]

Benghazi: the More You Stir a Turd, the More It Stinks

by

by John Lawrence

Determined to make a scandal out of the Benghazi incident, Vista, CA Congressman Darryl Issa has launched an investigation. What else do Republicans have to do?

They certainly aren’t going to pass any legislation that might be on Obama’s agenda. So they’ve got nothing else to do but to launch an investigation.

Here are the facts:

Four people were killed, including US Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens on September 11, 2012. Ten others were injured.   [Read more…]

Should We Have Saved AIG and Other Wall Street Banks? (Con’t)

by

Frank Thomas: The Rescue of AIG in 2008 was the Right Decision, Con’t.

Part 3 of a multipart series,  John will give his “NO” answer in Part 4. Part 2 can be found here 

by Frank Thomas and John Lawrence

Was The Bailout A Success?

Up to the financial crisis in 2008, AIG’s very poor risk management and operational complexity overwhelmed prudent and strictly enforced risk controls. By year-end 2008, AIG had at least a $1.8 trillion exposure in derivative liabilities from 35,000 to 45,000 separate contracts.

As an insurer for 100,000 entities from retirement plans to major firms, AIG was drowning in mortgage-linked derivatives and gambling the entire house on a single pile of hedge fund-like casino debt. AIG was in effect insuring the banks against the default of their borrowers.

Thus, it was in essence using CDS derivatives to speculate on the value and credit risk of the underlying mortgaged assets.   [Read more…]

Should We Have Saved AIG and Other Wall Street Banks?

by

Frank Thomas: The Rescue of AIG in 2008 was the Right Decision

Part 2 of a multipart series, Frank will continue his “Yes” answer in Part 3, John will give his “No” answer in Part 4. Part 1 can be found here

by Frank Thomas and John Lawrence

In his book, The Great Deformation, David Stockman presents a broad “no prisoners taken” indictment of our systemic social-financial-political maladies or ‘deformations.’ I share his view we have descended to a gamed, distorted system where almost “nothing is working”coherently that can save it from the next Boom-Bubble-Bust implosion unless there is fundamental change.   [Read more…]

Is College Really Worth It?

by

Many PhDs Can’t Find Jobs

By John Lawrence

Former Secretary of Education, William Bennett, has written a book, Is College Worth It?  Evidently even education experts are starting to question the value of obtaining a college education especially if it means taking on a mountain of debt, and there is no guarantee that once graduated there will even be a job there waiting so that payments on that debt can even begin.

If not, the college graduate faces delinquency, default and penalties that can add greatly to the original debt making it all but insurmountable and one that will follow the individual for the rest of his or her life.

There seems to be a myth that a college education is part of the American dream and that not having acquired one makes one a loser. However, consider this. Some of the greatest contributors to society and some of the richest people never graduated from college.   [Read more…]

Two Year Old Girl Shot and Killed by Five Year Old Brother Wielding ‘My First Gun’

by

Guns Marketed Directly to Kids!

by John Lawrence

Caroline Sparks, age 2, was fatally shot in the chest by her brother Kristian who had been given “My First Rifle” by his parents. The mother had stepped outside for a minute when the gun went off.

Officials identified the single-shot rifle as a Crickett, which is produced by  Keystone Sporting Arms in Pennsylvania. This is a gun designed specifically for children four to ten years old and comes in hot pink for girls and a variety of other colors including a red, white and blue swirl. These guns are directly marketed to kids just like Happy Meals or Barbie dolls.

The website www.cricket.com has been taken down and they’re not answering their phones.   [Read more…]

Reagan’s Budget Director Excoriates Republican Economic Philosophy

by

David Stockman calls GOP economic policies “bubble finance” and “crony capitalism”

Part 1 of a multipart series

By Frank Thomas and John Lawrence 

David Stockman, an integral part of the Reagan administration, has produced a great book, “The Great Deformation,” in which he blames Republican Presidents starting with Richard Nixon for the sad state of the US economy, but he saves his worst invective for Ronald Reagan and George W Bush for their abandonment of sound economic policy and their wild “deficits don’t matter” spending.

He indicts the Reagan administration for a needless, wasteful military build-up and the creation of what he calls the “warfare state.” He also condemns the fiscal profligacy of Republican economic policy for condoning any and all tax cuts for any reason whatsoever, for coddling Wall Street and for decades of money printing and market rigging by the Federal Reserve.   [Read more…]

How Much Is Your Life Worth?

by

Price of some cancer drugs exceeds $100,000. a year

By John Lawrence

How much is your life worth?

In a free market economy like the US, that question is settled by ability of the individual to pay. If you can’t pay over $100,000 a year for a life-saving cancer drug, your life isn’t worth as much as someone who can.

In a free market economy your life is worth exactly your ability to pay. In countries where the government pays the cost of drugs, they decide how much your life is worth. In Britain it’s $50,000; that’s the price the British government has negotiated the most expensive drugs down to. Is there a moral limit to how much Big Pharma can charge for some life saving drugs?

Some doctors seem to think so.   [Read more…]

Extreme Weather Watch: Records Set as Flooding in Midwest Takes Its Toll

by

By John Lawrence

There was definitely a lot of extreme weather in the Month of April as records were set for rainfall, snowfall, flooding and low temperatures and the month is not even over yet! However, none of it occurred in sunny San Diego so we should appreciate how lucky we are.

In Rapid City, S.D. April 2013 is the snowiest month on record with 39.5 inches. This beats the previous April and all-time monthly snow record of 38.5 inches set in April 1927. For Duluth, Minn. April 2013 is the snowiest month on record with 50.8 inches. This breaks the previous all-time monthly snow record of 50.1 inches set in November 1991. April’s snow total is more than Duluth saw all of last winter!   [Read more…]

Banks Wrongfully Foreclose: Get a Slap on the Wrist

by

Those illegally foreclosed on get a pittance in return.

By John Lawrence

Banks foreclosed on military service members, homeowners who had been approved for a loan modification and even homeowners who were current on their payments. At least 53 homeowners who weren’t behind on their payments were successfully foreclosed on and lost their homes for no reason.

There was widespread criminal behavior on the part of the banks, but in a recent settlement they got off relatively cheap.

A foreclosure settlement between the government and 13 banks on April 9 spread $3.6 billion in cash among millions of borrowers. The consultants who determined how much each homeowner would get happened to be bank employees and will get $2 billion for their efforts.   [Read more…]

A Modest Proposal for Reforming the Health Care System

by

By John Lawrence

The best antidote for a degenerative disease is a regenerative lifestyle

The health care system, what I call the medical-industrial complex, is in reality a disease management system. It does little to promote health and makes money only when people get sick or injured. Doctors only make money when they treat a sick patient. They make nothing for keeping them well. This is the so-called fee for service model and it stinks. It drives up disease care costs. Pharmaceutical corporations create drugs and advertise them on TV in order to get as many people as possible hooked on them. Doctors do little to treat underlying diseases but willingly prescribe drugs to ameliorate symptoms. The big money is in surgery.

Obamacare, aka the Affordable Care Act, while it has placed into law important provisions such as disallowing rescission, disallowing kicking people off of health insurance policies due to preexisting conditions, providing for not quite universal coverage etc, it does little or nothing to actually make health care affordable. Hospitals charge exhorbitant rates according to their Chargemasters. In some cases they won’t accept a patient’s insurance coverage, demanding upfront payment in cash instead. Obamacare does little to keep pharmaceutical costs, health insurance costs or hospital costs down.

I have written a number of critical articles about the health care system. But I don’t want to leave the impression that all I’m doing is to just tear this leviathan down in a critical and negative way and have nothing positive to say regarding the health care system. I do have some positive suggestions about how it could be improved.   [Read more…]

©2010-2017 SanDiegoFreePress.org

Code is Poetry