NYT: Greece’s Economic Salvation Can Only Come ByPrivatizing Health Care and Laying Off Thousands Of Unneeded Government Workers…

Louisa Gouliamaki/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Really?

What makes Greece so damn lucky?

Lucky in the sense that they can benefit from such changes, whereas we in the United States are apparently required to do the precise opposite.

Actually, the NYT isn’t endorsing this plan (as the linked analysis at Hot Air suggests); it’s just reporting, neutrally, that this is the austerity plan forced on Greece by the IMF, EU, and European Central Banks.

Still: I’m sure the NYT doesn’t notice the irony that the program it urges for America is the exact program which must be undone in Greece to keep the country from going bankrupt.

As unions denounced the cost-cutting measures and pledged to take to the streets over the weekend and go on strike on Wednesday, Prime Minister George Papandreou said Greece must quickly adopt the international aid plan. “Today, the top priority is the survival of the nation,” he told Parliament on Friday. “This is the red line.”Greek officials close to the discussions said the deal would include as much as 130 billion euros in aid over the next three years at reasonable interest rates. In return, the I.M.F. asked Greece to cut public sector spending by 8 billion euros in the 14 months after the plan was adopted. Economists called that provision crucial because past reform programs by the government have relied too much on overly optimistic assumptions about the collection of unpaid taxes.

Union and government officials said Greece had also pledged to raise its value-added tax to 25 percent, to freeze civil servants’ wages and to eliminate public sector bonuses amounting to two months’ pay. They said the government intended to increase taxes on fuel, tobacco and alcohol.

Among the most significant features of the plan, a Greek government official said, would be a measure making it easier for the government to lay off some of the many thousands of public sector workers, whose low levels of productivity and high wages are a big contributor to Greece’s debt problem. Until now, the government has not been able to lay off civil servants, whose employment rights are in effect constitutionally guaranteed.

In America, they’re not constitutionally guaranteed per se, but they are politically guaranteed — one party is dedicated singlemindedly to expanding the government workforce and jacking up its already-generous compensation.

FACTBOX-Oil companies rally to help in Gulf cleanup…

May 3 (Reuters) – The spread of a huge oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has rallied energy companies to work together in the cleanup effort.

A blown out undersea oil well owned by BP Plc (BP.L) is spilling about 5,000 barrels (210,000 gallons or 955,000 liters) a day, creating a slick measuring at least 130 miles (208km) by 70 miles (112 km).

Below is a list of what oil companies have done to assist in the cleanup effort:

Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L):

- Given BP use of Shell’s Robert Training and Conference center in Robert, Louisiana, for use as headquarters for coordinating cleanup efforts.

- Following BP’s request, given the company access to Shell’s ocean cleanup experts. Shell could not say how many are currently assisting BP.

ExxonMobil (XOM.N):

THE SECOND COMING…W.B.Yeats~thoughts

Posted by ansman007

W.B. Yeats

THE SECOND COMING

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Yeats wrote this in the aftermath of WW I and there are many interpertations of it. I like it and given the genuflections of the pseudointellectual class of recent date, thought appropriate to drag this masterwork forth once more.

Just to scare you a bit – Yeats was quite the mystic, as I read this, it has the obvious religious overtones but deep within, it is a warning and not a threat.

If all is sacrificed at the alter of reason, the abyss is the reward. The bands that hold burst reeking havoc on a less than perfect world. Science is simply a tool, nothing more yet to see the justification as ‘science says or current findings are’ with a certainty that borders on fanaticism is simply the last refuge of the scoundrel. New findings or paradigm shifts alter our understanding and knowledge … but should never be mistaken for the ‘truth’ for progress always leads to new findings and deeper understanding.

To believe anything different is theorical folly and the path to peridition.

With the celebration of perversity and decadent mythos of openess, one can look for continued confusion and blather when the policies of enlightment only lead to darkness.

In other words, folks, we have gotten our tickets punched…

Humor from the ranks…

“Your e-mail refers to the Albanian currency as being made from dried pounded out goat p***. You, of course, are referring to the Zloty. This currency was, in fact, goat p*** and was most favored by the former regime. The Zloty was used only in foreign exchanges and then was only translatable into sugar turnips. This was great fun for the Chinese (who think that goat p*** has properties akin to Viagra or an aphrodisiac if worn about the neck), the Russians (who think that goat p*** is a great food additive, see borscht) and the Cubans (who realized that sugar turnips and goat p*** made for great low cost explosives). Since the former regime had ties (paisley print and pokie dot, mostly) with only these three countries, things went swimmingly. The law of comparative advantage worked wonderfully as nobody could produce more goat c*** than the Albanian Nubile (it is a multi-purpose goat breed). The Albanian crack team futurist planners saw the collapse of these benevolent relationships coming and decreed that the Zloty to be considered dried goat droppings suitable for heating fuel and spicing up the local delicacy, Splzity (don’t ask) and hence forth an anathema to the Albanian caught with sugar turnip on his breath. Needless to say, the commodity markets took a hickey that quarter. Turnip futures had none. There were rumors that radishes would be the next to fall (a Bulgarian item). Turmoil, tumult, tachycardia and other words that start with t. T’was a grime day and one not soon forgotten.The pyramid boys in Tiara have announced since then that the local currency, the Zumlaut, had surpassed the Zloty in popularity and can be exchanged for old KC and the Sunshine Band 8-tracks or Serbian dud artillery rounds, your pick. So as you can infer from the above, the exchange rate between the Albanian currency and the US currency is highly problematic. Since differential equations to the fourth degree are not a strong point for yours truly, I don’t have a clue as how the dollar, the yen and the Zumlaut (or Zloty, for those who got stuck in the ruble meltdown) measure up but given the exchange commodities, I would bet a lot of booty shakin’ would be goin’ on.

Remember this: There is nothing so loathsome as a man in the depths of a ether binge.