Month: February 2011

Bipartisan Bankruptcy

by digby

I don’t mean to make this day a non-stop trip down Hullabaloo memory lane, but what with this news dday discusses here about how the heinous bankruptcy bill of 2005 exacerbated the housing meltdown, I had to pull up this post from when it was passed to remind everyone of how the Democratic moderates and centrists jumped on board that train and how they got their poor little feelings hurt when they were called out for it by the liberals:

Atrios has already issued the call to action on the sensitive, delicate Democrats of the NDC who were swooning over the coarse, indecorous criticism they received for voting for the Bankruptcy bill, so I’ll just send you there for the information.

However, I’d like to make one little suggestion. When you obstreperous partisans write your e-mails you might want to ask them what exactly they mean by this:

“The center [CAP] could have made the argument on the merits, but it chose to do so in a personal way,” said Schiff, one of roughly a dozen lawmakers who attended the meeting.

“The [NDC] wanted to say, ‘We’re all under the same flag here, and let’s not forget that,’” he said

[…]

“The unfortunate thing about the e-mail is that it questioned the good faith of the Democrats who support the bankruptcy bill. Whenever you question the good faith, that’s problematic,” he [Artur Davis(D-Ala)] said. “But I certainly don’t blame John for that e-mail. I don’t think it was authorized.”

“Certainly there is a disagreement over the bankruptcy bill,” he said.

(Oh my stars, it was rude to get so personal and all, wasn’t it? How ill-bred.)

Without upsetting their fragile nerves, when you send your e-mails you might want to ask politely why any Democrat would think that the bankruptcy bill would be good for their constituents who are, after all, who they actually represent. Are they creating jobs by doing this? Are they creating a more dynamic economy? Why would it be “pro-business”, as Democrats define that term, to enable just one business — the credit card companies — to reap ever higher profits while they charge usurious interest rates to average Americans?

If it isn’t that they’ve whored themselves out to such an extent that they are now the credit card companies’ bitches, (pardon my french!) what exactly is the reason they support it?

It’s always good to take a look back and realize that you can hit your head against a wall for many years and not suffer serious brain damage.

.
*Also, If you click the link to Atrios’ post above, you’ll see that the centrists got their sad because of something David Sirota wrote for CAP. I guess CAP got the message.

Update: Speaking of Sirota, read what he wrote in 2008 on this topic.
.

Tit for Tat and Hack for Hack

by digby

Well well. A private security firm that preened to the FT that it had obtained the names of the key members of the hacking group Anonymous got hacked and their emails were revealed to the public. What they say is fairly amazing:

After a tip from Crowdleaks.org, The Tech Herald has learned that HBGary Federal, as well as two other data intelligence firms, worked to develop a strategic plan of attack against WikiLeaks. The plan included pressing a journalist in order to disrupt his support of the organization, cyber attacks, disinformation, and other potential proactive tactics…

What was pointed out by Crowdleaks is a proposal titled “The WikiLeaks Threat” and an email chain between three data intelligence firms. The proposal was quickly developed by Palantir Technologies, HBGary Federal, and Berico Technologies, after a request from Hunton and Williams, a law firm that currently counts Bank of America as a client.

The law firm had a meeting with Bank of America on December 3. To prepare, the firm emailed Palantir and the others asking for “…five to six slides on Wikileaks – who they are, how they operate and how this group may help this bank.”

Hunton and Williams were recommended to Bank of America’s general council by the Department of Justice, according to the email chain viewed by The Tech Herald. The law firm was using the meeting to pitch Bank of America on retaining them for an internal investigation surrounding WikiLeaks…

In less than 24-hours, the three analytical companies created a presentation filled with publically available information and ideas on how the firms could be “deployed” against WikiLeaks “as a unified and cohesive investigative analysis cell.”

On January 2, The New York Times wrote about a late night conference call held by Bank of America executives on November 30. The reason for the call was to deal with a statement given by WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange on November 29, where he said that he intended to “take down” a major American bank. The country’s third largest financial institution needed to get the jump on WikiLeaks, so they started scouring thousands of documents, and auditing physical assets.

Check out what they recommended BofA do:

The proposal starts with an overview of WikiLeaks, including some history and employee statistics. From there it moves into a profile of Julian Assange and an organizational chart. The chart lists several people, including volunteers and actual staff.

One of those listed as a volunteer, Salon.com columnist, Glenn Greenwald, was singled out by the proposal. Greenwald, previously a constitutional law and civil rights litigator in New York, has been a vocal supporter of Bradley Manning, who is alleged to have given diplomatic cables and other government information to WikiLeaks. He has yet to be charged in the matter.

Greenwald became a household name in December when he reported on the “inhumane conditions” of Bradley Manning’s confinement at the Marine brig in Quantico, Virginia. Since that report, Greenwald has reported on WikiLeaks and Manning several times.

“Glenn was critical in the Amazon to OVH transition,” the proposal says, referencing the hosting switch WikiLeaks was forced to make after political pressure caused Amazon to drop their domain.

This is funny, since Greenwald had been reporting on Wikileaks for many months and is a staunch supporter of the concept of free speech (duh), but I doubt very much that he was an official “volunteer.” Anyway, they targeted him:

I love the cynical view that “professionals” like Greenwald will always opt for professional survival over a cause. They’re probably right in most cases. But Glenn has spent his life fighting for free speech. That is his profession.

Here’s what they planned to do:

One part certainly worked: the media lemmings all ran toward the shiny object without even considering the effect on their own profession and its alleged mission to expose the truth. I would wonder if the “professional pressure” they planned to exert on supporters was brought to bear on some of the most powerful journalists in the country who seemed to be offended by the very idea that governments and wealthy institutions should have their lies exposed to the public, but sadly, I doubt it. Those people clearly behaved instinctively, siding with the powerful with whom they identify. The governing elites have nothing to fear from the mainstream press.

The fact that they focused on Greenwald pretty clearly proves that, don’t you think?

Read the whole article. It’s like something out of a spy novel. But I have to say that the plan seems somewhat banal. Blackmail? Sabotage? What else is new?

Update: Emptywheel has more.

.

“Not Everyone is A Fan of Reagan”

by digby

It’s funny that you have to say that nowadays. When Reagan was in office it was perfectly obvious. The fact that Tip and Ronnie made back room deals didn’t used to indicate that the whole country was in agreement on Reagan’s policies but today it’s taken as an article of faith that we all just loved the old guy.

Dylan Ratigan featured an entertaining rant yesterday begging to differ:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

This year of Reagan worship is going to be tough to take, but I keep telling myself that once it’s over Reagan will start to fade away. After all people who were born in the year Reagan took office are now over 30. They are as far from Reagan as I was from Eisenhower. Of course, people didn’t spend millions to consciously create the Eisenhower Legacy in the mode of Lenin either.

I’m not sure that everyone’s aware of how Ronnie became one of our “greatest presidents.” It’s certainly not being discussed in this glorious celebration of all things Reagan. Here’s a post I wrote about this back in 2003:

The Reagan Cult

It may be apocryphal, but the bin Laden family’s good friend and everybody’s favorite Leninist right wingnut, Grover Norquist, is reported to have said back in the 1980’s:

“We must establish a Brezhnev Doctrine for conservative gains. The Brezhnev Doctrine states that once a country becomes communist it can never change. Conservatives must establish their own doctrine and declare their victories permanent…A revolution is not successful unless it succeeds in preserving itself…(W)e want to remove liberal personnel from the political process. Then we want to capture those positions of power and influence for conservatives. Stalin taught the importance of this principle.”

I think he’s been damned successful so far. You can’t fault the guy for thinking small.

Inspired as he is by all things totalitarian, Norquist went on to do a number of things that Uncle Joe would be proud of, one of which was The Legacy Project.

Here’s what Mother Jones had to say about it:

Win one for the Gipper? Hell, try winning 3,067 for the Gipper. That’s the goal of a group of a powerful group of Ronald Reagan fans who aim to see their hero’s name displayed on at least one public landmark in every county in the United States.

A conservative pipe dream? The intrepid members of the Ronald Reagan Legacy Project don’t think so. Launched in 1997 as a unit of hard-line antitax lobby Americans for Tax Reform, the project’s board of advisers reads like a who’s who of conservatives; it includes, among others, staunch GOP activist Grover Norquist, supply-sider Jack Kemp, and Eagle Forum chief Phyllis Schlafly. To this crew, the Great Communicator is the man who almost singlehandedly saved us from the Evil Soviet Empire, made Americans proud again, and put the nation on the road to prosperity through tax cuts that helped the poor by helping the rich help themselves.

Buoyed by an early success in having Washington National Airport renamed in Reagan’s honor in 1998, the project started thinking big. In short order, they convinced Florida legislators to rename a state turnpike. From there, it was a logical step to the push for a Reagan memorial just about everywhere. “We want to create a tangible legacy so that 30 or 40 years from now, someone who may never have heard of Reagan will be forced to ask himself, ‘Who was this man to have so many things named after him?'” explains 29-year-old lobbyist Michael Kamburowski, who recently stepped down as the Reagan Legacy Project’s executive director.

[…]

…it was the Gipper’s ho-hum performance in a 1996 survey of historians that apparently triggered the right’s recent zeal to enthrone him in the public eye. It was in that year that presidential historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., in The New York Times Magazine, asked 30 academic colleagues and a pair of politicians to rank all US presidents, and when conservatives saw their undisputed hero languishing in the “average” column, they were aghast. Appearing on the heels of Clinton’s landslide victory over Bob Dole, the Schlesinger article seemed a slap in the face, a challenge to the GOP to stake its claim on recent history.

The charge was led by the Heritage Foundation — a conservative think tank that helped devise the Republican Contract with America. In the March 1997 issue of the foundation’s magazine Policy Review, the editors charged that Schlesinger’s survey was stacked with liberals and New Deal sympathizers, and presented opinions from authors more appreciative of the Gipper. (The 40th president has always fared better with the general public than with the pointyheads: In a recent Gallup poll, respondents rated Ronald Reagan as the greatest American president, beating out second-place John F. Kennedy and third-place Abraham Lincoln.)

Two issues later, for its 20th anniversary, Policy Review ran a followup cover story: “Reagan Betrayed: Are Conservatives Fumbling His Legacy?” For its centerpiece, the magazine invited soul-searching by prominent Reagan acolytes including senators Phil Gramm and Trent Lott, representatives Christopher Cox, and Dick Armey, then-Christian Coalition head Ralph Reed, Gary Bauer, and Grover Norquist. Soon after the cover story appeared, Norquist launched the Reagan Legacy Project as an offshoot of Americans for Tax Reform, which he had founded a decade earlier to further Reagan’s fiscal policies.

And tonight, Grover won the very first Ronald Reagan Award. from the Frontiers of Freedom Foundation. Check out the sponsors, a veritable who’s who of GOP luminaries.

How sweet it must have been for these lovers of freedom to be able to celebrate successfully repressing a “docu-drama” about their Dear Leader without even having seen it. After all, “a revolution is not successful unless it succeeds in preserving itself.”

I have no doubt that they all stood up at the gala tonight and proudly proclaimed “Thank You Comrade, Norquist!”

I seem to be alone in appreciating the irony in Norquist’s sincere appreciation for Soviet tactics and his highly successful use in service of the great anti-communist Ronald Reagan’s legacy. This is one of the conservative movement’s finest achievements and for some reason it’s one that liberals seem unable or unwilling to challenge. Of course, the top leadership of the Democratic party seem to be just as enthralled by Reagan’s phony legacy as the right wingers are, so perhaps they don’t feel any need.

.

Cokie’s Law is in effect

by digby

Atrios has this right:

Because we’re stupid, once you inject “underage sex” into the conversation, and manage to hold someone at fault for that in any way even illogically, you’ve won.

Liberals continue to assume that logic and reason are meaningful in these sorts of “scandals” but they aren’t. They have salience because they piggy back on old scandals and ancient rumors and a general sense that something’s wrong. They don’t have to prove anything because Cokie’s Law is in effect:

“At this point,” said Roberts, “it doesn’t much matter whether she said it or not because it’s become part of the culture. I was at the beauty parlor yesterday and this was all anyone was talking about.”

This latest gambit probably didn’t succeed in taking down Planned Parenthood, but they got what they needed. I’d guess that next time they’ll challenge their creative boundries and use a madame rather than a pimp, but they got their talking point out there and that’s all that matters.

.

Deer season

by digby

They used to call animal control in these situations and they would tranquilize the animal. Nowadays they taser them when they’re already on the ground. They treat them the same way they treat humans.

.

Well that worked out well

by digby

Who could have ever predicted?

-In 2003 Californians recalled Gray Davis and elected Arnold Schwarzenegger. Now they say oops. 42% of voters in the state say that Davis was the superior Governor to only 32% who remain in Schwarzenegger’s camp. Democrats, at 56%, are a lot more sold on Davis having better than Republicans, at 48%, are on Schwarzenegger. Beyond that independents go for Davis by a 40/33 margin as well. It would be hard to claim that Davis is a popular figure at this point- but he’s certainly not as disliked as Schwarzenegger and his 25/65 favorability rating is.

It was always such a good idea to recall a duly elected governor and install a cartoon character in his place. How could anyone have ever known that it wouldn’t go well?

.

Bionic Gramps

by digby

I guess some people think that there’s no limit to human life expectancy. Either that or bionics are just around the corner and we’ll all be rebuilt as cyborgs or something:

A week after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) declared that cutting Social Security is off the table, a leading Republican senator proposed increasing the Social Security retirement age “every several years.”

Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, the top Republican on the banking committee and a senior member of the appropriations committee, told a breakfast gathering held by the Institute for Education on Tuesday to expect a fight — rather than bipartisan agreement — over the budget.

Shelby said he considers deficit reduction to be the top issue on the congressional agenda.

“We’re on the road to financial destruction,” he warned. “Can we get our hand around this problem without bringing everything to the table? No.”

And Shelby indicated that entitlements are very much on his budget-cutting agenda. He mocked the recommendation of President Barack Obama’s deficit commission, which he said would raise the Social Security retirement age in 2025 (actually, not until 2027).

“America will be burned by then — and a lot of us will be dead,” he said.

His preferred solution is to “up the age every several years,” he said — the net effect of which would be tantamount to one benefit cut after another.

I’m sure Shelby doesn’t care about reality, and neither do most politicians who are dying to put social security on the chopping block so they can preen about “sacrifice” while planning their own cushy retirements on the public dime, but anyone who cares to know the truth, should read the CEPR report on life expectancy and social security, which is nicely synthesized here:

The liberal Center For Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) has reported [pdf], with good documentation, that increasing the retirement age will not only be difficult for many who work in physically demanding jobs, but it would shorten the retirements and lives of many of those workers.

Using data based on the census and the Occupational Information Network, the CEPR said that “in 2009, 6.5 million workers age 58 and older had physically demanding jobs, while 5 million workers age 58 and older were employed in difficult jobs” that were physically demanding or with difficult working conditions.

In addition, many of the most physically demanding or difficult jobs were also poorly paid and most were held by Latino workers (54 percent), blacks (53 percent), Asian Americans (50 percent) and whites (43 percent).

Even higher percentages of Latinos and blacks in the most demanding jobs were much older than 58 and would be especially hurt economically by a raise in the retirement age.

The survey found that

“raising the retirement age is particularly concerning for near-retirement age workers with physically demanding jobs. Despite the fact that the retirement age increase is supposed to encourage workers to work longer, many workers would be physically unable to extend their work lives and they would most likely be left with no choice but to receive reduced benefits.”

Or, after a life of hard work and paying taxes, they would go on welfare.

But that would not be the worst of it for CEPR found, in a companion survey, that many retirees from difficult jobs don’t live long enough to collect benefits. Those who, like Ryan, intend to support raising the retirement age argue that life expectancy has increased and therefore the retirement age should likewise be increased.

Perhaps it doesn’t occur to Ryan and his allies that Medicare and Social Security are largely responsible for increased longevity (which still lags behind other nations). Perhaps this will be the Republicans’ “death panels.”

As CEPR reported,

“The average length of retirement has increased consistently since the program (Social Security) was started in 1937. However, the increase in the normal retirement age from 65 to 67 that is being phased in…largely offsets the increase in life expectancy. As a result, workers who work long enough to collect their full benefits will see little gain in the expected length of their retirement.”

Graphs and charts in CEPR’s paper illustrate the growing income inequality and life expectancy between minorities in difficult jobs and the rest of workers, especially those in white collar jobs that are less demanding.

“If the recent trend of growing inequality in life expectancy continues through the next three decades, these workers in the bottom half of the wage distribution can anticipate substantial reductions in the expected length of retirement, if the normal retirement age is increased…

A male worker born in 1973 retiring at age 70 can expect to live a full year less than the expected length of retirement for a worker born in 1912.”

The study’s conclusion:

“If the normal retirement age is increased to 70 over the next 25 years, as advocated by many policymakers, then the rise in the retirement age will continue to offset most of the increase in life expectancy….The expected years of retirement (meaning the years until death) will be less for the 1973 birth cohort than it was for the 1912 birth cohort.”

For all the propaganda that’s out there about how people usually died before they were 65 when social security was first hatched, so nobody ever anticipated that they would have to support all these geezers in the system (completely untrue, by the way)the truth is that the 1983 deal to raise the retirement age already took care of the rising life expectancy. Now they are just trying to cut away at the system so that people born in the 1970s live their longer lives in penury.

But as Shelby says, we’ll all be dead. So they are calling for “sacrifice” among the younger generation — many of whom have been led to believe the system will pay them nothing so they think they have nothing to lose. Sadly, it’s not true.

.

Kabuki Revival

by digby

There are very few people with whom I almost always agree, but it seems Robert Kuttner is one of them. This review of Eric Alterman’s new book Kabuki Democracy: The System vs. Barack Obama and Richard Wolffe’s insufferable fluff job, Revival: The Struggle for Survival Inside the Obama White House is so on target I am reluctant to even characterize it here. Suffice to say that he is complimentary toward Alterman’s thesis while taking him to task for being far too easy on Obama for failing to challenge the prevailing institutional bind.

Kuttner’s critique of Obama is on the money — in my view, if there was ever a president who had the economic circumstances and political mandate to challenge the prevailing wisdom, it was him. But for reasons about which we can only speculate, he didn’t do it. I agree with Alterman that the deck is stacked against progressives, but it always is. Money never welcomes the hippies into the country club. But it’s a rare president who has a huge mandate for change, a once in a generation economic crisis, a reputation for rhetorical brilliance and a congressional majority. I just don’t agree with the conventional wisdom that Ben Nelson had more power over policy than he did.

As for Wolffe — my God. I read the book in about an hour and a half and then had to take some Pepto-Bismol.I haven’t read anything this treacly and sycophantic since “Bush Country: How George W. Bush Became the First Great Leader of the 21st Century—While Driving Liberals Insane” I guess we are supposed to be very impressed by this:

[Obama] admits to Wolffe that he was acting when he stormed out of a meeting with Democratic leaders in the House and Senate after Nancy Pelosi shot down the Senate’s proposed $15 billion cut to the health-care plan. “I wasn’t really that frustrated,” Obama said of the scene, in which he sputtered, “Dammit, folks, this is history,” and stormed out of the room, telling Rahm to “clean it up.” “The truth was we were very pleased that it was going as well as it was. There are certain points during negotiations where the big issues have really been settled. Everybody knows where the agreement is going to be, and people are then dickering over stuff that is not worth another hour or two of lost sleep.”

That’s kabuki of another sort altogether, isn’t it? The kind where the outcome is preordained and all the “negotiations” are playacting. The question is who made the real deal?

You’ll notice that he’s talking about House Democrats there, not Republicans and Conservadems in the Senate — who won that round, by the way. And even Wolffe admits in the book that the cost of it was some very bad feelings and even more difficulties going forward.

More importantly, I don’t believe Obama was telling the truth. As Wolffe described the event, it was eleven o’clock at night and Henry Waxman had just pretty much capitulated to Obama’s kabuki deal when Pelosi stepped up and said, “Henry, you don’t speak for the House.” That’s when Obama got mad and

“clenched his jaw and raised his voice in righteous indignation — an extraordinary sight for members of Congress.” “Dammit folks, this is history,” he sputtered, “we’re this close to history.We’re 15 billion away. This is outrageous.I’m leaving this to Rahm. I’m going to bed. Good night. I’m out of here. You guys figure it out.” He promptly marched out of the room.”Rahm,” he said on his way out,” clean this up.”

I think it’s very convenient for the president to later claim that he was only acting to “knock their heads together” to make a deal. But let’s just say I’m skeptical. The White House had long before accepted that the Republicans would never negotiate so he was irritated that Pelosi was being equally stubborn. And isn’t that the crux of the problem in almost everything?

The deals were all crappy by that time, with months of GOP preening and Senate Dem foot-dragging so any presidential hagiography around that negotiation isn’t going to sound very convincing to me. At that point it was purely a salvage operation.

In any case, save yourself the money and just read Kuttner’s review and buy Alterman’s book. Both are well worth the time. Wolffe’s will only give you heartburn.

Update: MSNBC has Wolffe on right now extolling the White House as he does every day. To call him a stenographer is to be insulting to the profession of stenography.

.

Welfare Reform for the whole country

by digby

What could go wrong?

…Obama and House Republican leaders share this much in the coming budget wars: Both are racing to catch up with the train. And just as the president must contend with panicky Democrats, Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) faces tea party freshmen wanting to more than double the $32 billion in reductions now proposed by the GOP for the last seven months of this fiscal year…

As now drafted, the House bill promises pro-defense lawmakers in both parties stable funding for the military — not unlike what Democrats proposed in December as part of their own omnibus measure. And while the domestic spending cuts are deep and controversial, Senate Democrats voted by a 2-1 margin just last week in favor of an amendment cutting $44 billion from unobligated funds to pay for a small-business-backed amendment to the health care law…

Running close to two hours and hosted by [Obama lieutenant]Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) in his third floor Capitol offices, the meeting had an equal mix of Democrats—Durbin, Conrad, and Virginia Sen. Mark Warner—and Republicans: Sens. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, and Mike Crapo of Idaho.

Durbin, Conrad, Coburn and Crapo are all veterans of the commission while Warner and Chambliss—an old friend of Boehner’s—have joined forces in an effort to advance the same agenda.

The goal is to revive — in either legislative form or the spring budget resolution — major elements of the commission’s plan to narrow future deficits by nearly $4 trillion over the next 10 years. Appropriations cuts would be part of the strategy but so would entitlement and tax reform. And if the senators can show enough political strength, the hope is that this would give Boehner and Obama enough cover to join them.

“If we keep addressing micro parts of the issue we’ll never do anything,” Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) told POLITICO. “We can’t touch Social Security, or we can’t touch the mortgage-interest deduction. What you’ve got to do is address it in the macro sense. Kind of a shared sacrifice approach and also over time.”

Make that “shared sacrifice for everyone but rich people who will not feel any of this personally.” Let’s try to be accurate.

But I think the Obama administration may have found a comparison that will make the Villagers’ eyes roll back in their head as they moan with ecstasy:

The political stakes in any such bargain are huge. And for Obama it could be the equivalent of Bill Clinton’s famous welfare reform deal — only on steroids. Just as that compromise angered the left but helped Clinton win reelection in 1996, a deficit deal could do the same for Obama.

Ohmygodohmygodohmygod. Calling Social Security cuts “welfare reform” is just brilliant. Gloria Borger will have to be taken to the hospital when she hears it. What could be better than “Welfare Reform Part II: The Greedy Geezers”? And it looks like Democrats have joined the cast:

At the same time, Democrats admit their own frustration that the president has not been more forthcoming in addressing the debt issue.

For example, “The Easy Cuts Are Behind Us” was the headline for a weekend op-ed by White House Budget Director Jack Lew promising that Obama’s 2012 budget will “look beyond the obvious” in cutting spending. But Lew is already months behind his fellow Democrats on one of his prime examples — cuts from the Great Lakes restoration initiative.

Lew listed other more significant new cuts –totaling $650 million–from community development and community service block grants. But none of these comes close to the desperate tone of last week’s 81-17 Senate vote on the small-business amendment, in which panic-driven Democrats virtually turned over the keys to the White House to cut whatever it wanted from unobligated appropriations, as long as they met the $44 billion target.

The article goes on to discuss how Republicans are facing some of the same issues. But let’s face it. It’s always going to be easier for the GOP to sign on to spending cuts. If the Democrats lead the way, I suspect they’ll be able to set aside their differences. Where they fall out is on tax hikes, but from what I can tell that’s not on the table. So it looks like Welfare Reform for the old and sick is on.

.