Saturday morning, I will not be campaigning for Chad Lauga in Louisiana House District 103. Neither will he. Instead, Chad and I, along with hundreds - possibly thousands - of other serious New Orleans area working people and responsible elected officials will be participating in the March and Rally to "SAVE OUR SHIPYARD." (Save Our Shipyard)
The link cited above provides the relevant information regarding the practical logistics of the event and how you can participate. As for issuing exhortations designed to persuade you that you should participate, I will pass. If the current circumstances of our political-economy, which daily hammer the ever-loving life out of us all and promise the next generation even worse, is not enough to rouse you off your ass and put your feet in the street, I have nothing to say to you.
New Orleans Labor Voice
Friday, September 30, 2011
Thursday, September 29, 2011
The Greater Explanation Of The Great Carnard
This morning, I put up a brief post commenting on the confusion over the implications of raising or removing the income cap on the assessment of the Social Security payroll tax. But more was left unsaid than that which I had the time to say. Unfortunately, early morning time constraints are as demanding and unyielding as an insistent itch. So, this evening, let's take a little while to scratch out a bit of an elaboration.
There are two parts to the confusion. The first is the claim or belief that removing the cap would in and of itself somehow make the payroll tax more progressive than it is already. But the payroll tax is a flat tax, and therefore not progressive at all. Any set percentage tax rate assessed on earnings, both large and small, is regressive by definition. This is simple text book economics. It is so because any percentage taxed from a small income is rightly seen to be far more burdensome than the same percentage levied against a much larger income. Worse, in this particular situation, there is a cap of $106,800 in earnings, beyond which there is no tax taken at all. Only those with small or modest incomes pay on every penny they make. Hence, the current Social Security payroll tax is not only regressive, it is super regressive.
This is all so obvious, one wonders how anyone could think of it any differently. Well, this muddled mindset arises from the fallacy of judging the method of generating the funding stream for Social Security in the context of the perceived performance of the program itself. And, indeed, as we shall see in a moment, this turns out to be not just a single, but a double fallacy.
The second part of the confusion in this matter rests in scoring the overall operation of the Social Security program as progressive. This conclusion mostly results from the fact that the program is both a form of insurance for spouses of prematurely deceased workers and for the disabled, as well as a rather straight forward retirement system. In the aggregate, these beneficiaries receive a greater direct pay-out than their contributions. This is so, but not by much, and it is virtually not so at all when normal retirees are looked at as a discreet group. And here kicks in the argument against raising the income cap on the taxable funding stream. It is made because the resulting much bigger contributors would not receive anything close to a direct proportionately equal benefit as the smaller contributors, and the program would be thereby made more steeply progressive, causing it ultimately to lose support and fall into disfavor. This is a plausible sounding argument, but it is profoundly wrong for the following reasons.
The strict proportionality of direct benefit tied to the requirements of individual participation in the revenue base tapped to satisfy the innumerable and varied needs and demands of the commonweal is not a necessary or usual test of the appropriateness or desirability of any particular governmental operation. Illustrations of this point are endless. Examples would include general taxes for the provision of a national flood insurance program, when only some are directly threatened by floods; for public education, when not everyone benefits directly and equally from its operation; for roads and highways, when some do not directly benefit as much as others who drive on them; for mass transit, when most do not benefit by its use personally; for airport construction and operation, together with the maintenance of an air traffic safety system, when some do not directly benefit by flying. It goes on and on, but that should be enough of that, I think. The point of it all is that in one way or another, directly or not, we all benefit from the sundry undertakings that enhance the quality of life for us as a people.
What is more, in the case of income security for the elderly, that is to say Social Security, the well-off benefit directly as much as, and perhaps even more, than those who receive a proportionately larger monthly check as a return for their contributions. Imagine how much less business and profit there would be for the well-to-do if the younger adult generation were saddled with having to support aging and unable to work parents, while trying to raise their own children and maintain a decent standard of living. Businesses ranging from the Hollywood movie industry to Walmart, restaurants to department stores, as well as toy manufacturers to clothiers, together with every other profitable undertaking in society would experience greatly reduced vitality and suffer significant reduction in revenue.
Prior to the creation of the Social Security program in the 1930s, more than half of the elderly were consigned to destitution and poverty, despite the assistance of family, churches and charities. This occurred not because the aged throughout their lives had irresponsibly refused to provide for their own retirement or hard luck, or that family, churches and charities were unwilling to extend all the relief available, but because in a meanly and demonstrably stratified society, especially one which consists of essentially only two classes - those few with and most without, this outcome is inevitable. A great many individuals will never have the means to lay up a sufficient supply of wealth to carry them through the end of life, past their productive years, without the collective effort of all of us fully.
Clearly, we all greatly benefit by a system which provides the elderly the wherewithal to live out their non-working years in dignity, and with as much independence as possible. Therefore, refusing to eliminate the income cap for assessing the payroll tax to fund Social Security fails to meet any standard: economic or moral.
There are two parts to the confusion. The first is the claim or belief that removing the cap would in and of itself somehow make the payroll tax more progressive than it is already. But the payroll tax is a flat tax, and therefore not progressive at all. Any set percentage tax rate assessed on earnings, both large and small, is regressive by definition. This is simple text book economics. It is so because any percentage taxed from a small income is rightly seen to be far more burdensome than the same percentage levied against a much larger income. Worse, in this particular situation, there is a cap of $106,800 in earnings, beyond which there is no tax taken at all. Only those with small or modest incomes pay on every penny they make. Hence, the current Social Security payroll tax is not only regressive, it is super regressive.
This is all so obvious, one wonders how anyone could think of it any differently. Well, this muddled mindset arises from the fallacy of judging the method of generating the funding stream for Social Security in the context of the perceived performance of the program itself. And, indeed, as we shall see in a moment, this turns out to be not just a single, but a double fallacy.
The second part of the confusion in this matter rests in scoring the overall operation of the Social Security program as progressive. This conclusion mostly results from the fact that the program is both a form of insurance for spouses of prematurely deceased workers and for the disabled, as well as a rather straight forward retirement system. In the aggregate, these beneficiaries receive a greater direct pay-out than their contributions. This is so, but not by much, and it is virtually not so at all when normal retirees are looked at as a discreet group. And here kicks in the argument against raising the income cap on the taxable funding stream. It is made because the resulting much bigger contributors would not receive anything close to a direct proportionately equal benefit as the smaller contributors, and the program would be thereby made more steeply progressive, causing it ultimately to lose support and fall into disfavor. This is a plausible sounding argument, but it is profoundly wrong for the following reasons.
The strict proportionality of direct benefit tied to the requirements of individual participation in the revenue base tapped to satisfy the innumerable and varied needs and demands of the commonweal is not a necessary or usual test of the appropriateness or desirability of any particular governmental operation. Illustrations of this point are endless. Examples would include general taxes for the provision of a national flood insurance program, when only some are directly threatened by floods; for public education, when not everyone benefits directly and equally from its operation; for roads and highways, when some do not directly benefit as much as others who drive on them; for mass transit, when most do not benefit by its use personally; for airport construction and operation, together with the maintenance of an air traffic safety system, when some do not directly benefit by flying. It goes on and on, but that should be enough of that, I think. The point of it all is that in one way or another, directly or not, we all benefit from the sundry undertakings that enhance the quality of life for us as a people.
What is more, in the case of income security for the elderly, that is to say Social Security, the well-off benefit directly as much as, and perhaps even more, than those who receive a proportionately larger monthly check as a return for their contributions. Imagine how much less business and profit there would be for the well-to-do if the younger adult generation were saddled with having to support aging and unable to work parents, while trying to raise their own children and maintain a decent standard of living. Businesses ranging from the Hollywood movie industry to Walmart, restaurants to department stores, as well as toy manufacturers to clothiers, together with every other profitable undertaking in society would experience greatly reduced vitality and suffer significant reduction in revenue.
Prior to the creation of the Social Security program in the 1930s, more than half of the elderly were consigned to destitution and poverty, despite the assistance of family, churches and charities. This occurred not because the aged throughout their lives had irresponsibly refused to provide for their own retirement or hard luck, or that family, churches and charities were unwilling to extend all the relief available, but because in a meanly and demonstrably stratified society, especially one which consists of essentially only two classes - those few with and most without, this outcome is inevitable. A great many individuals will never have the means to lay up a sufficient supply of wealth to carry them through the end of life, past their productive years, without the collective effort of all of us fully.
Clearly, we all greatly benefit by a system which provides the elderly the wherewithal to live out their non-working years in dignity, and with as much independence as possible. Therefore, refusing to eliminate the income cap for assessing the payroll tax to fund Social Security fails to meet any standard: economic or moral.
The Great Carnard
Did you know that 2/3 of all retirees derive more than 50%, and 1/3 more than 90% of their income from Social Security? It's true. What is also true is that with the utter collapse of private pensions, both the defined benefit and defined contribution type, those ratios are on the rise. Without this program, and without its strong and improving support, seniors would be headed for a sad end-of-life sentence of destitution and misery, just like more than half were saddled with in the 1930s, before the New Deal created the program.
That is why I wish that people would stop saying stupid things about Social Security. Even some smart people, like James Kwak (Should Social Security Be Progressive?) fall victim to the mischaracterizations. They actually confuse the relative outcome of the program, which is slightly progressive, with the nature of the tax assessed to fund it, which is decidedly regressive. Unfortunately, they do this in the context of arguing that the income cap tax base for the assessment should not be raised, because this would increase its progressivity. Nothing could be more untrue. The tax rate itself would remain flat, and that is unquestionably a regressive form of taxation, no matter how the proceeds are put to use.
Moreover, arguments, both economic as well as moral, abound that even the outcome of the program, now labeled progressive, is equitably beneficial to all income groups across the board. Hence, the fact that some recipients receive a return of a higher proportion of earnings is not at all relevant to the issue of the nature of the tax itself, and in fact is a dubious standard for judging the overall performance of the program as well. More on this in a later post when I have more time.
That is why I wish that people would stop saying stupid things about Social Security. Even some smart people, like James Kwak (Should Social Security Be Progressive?) fall victim to the mischaracterizations. They actually confuse the relative outcome of the program, which is slightly progressive, with the nature of the tax assessed to fund it, which is decidedly regressive. Unfortunately, they do this in the context of arguing that the income cap tax base for the assessment should not be raised, because this would increase its progressivity. Nothing could be more untrue. The tax rate itself would remain flat, and that is unquestionably a regressive form of taxation, no matter how the proceeds are put to use.
Moreover, arguments, both economic as well as moral, abound that even the outcome of the program, now labeled progressive, is equitably beneficial to all income groups across the board. Hence, the fact that some recipients receive a return of a higher proportion of earnings is not at all relevant to the issue of the nature of the tax itself, and in fact is a dubious standard for judging the overall performance of the program as well. More on this in a later post when I have more time.
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Parasites
They are out of control and eating us alive, literally. They drain off resources which otherwise could be used to fund better health care results for all Americans, with plenty left over to use restoring economic health as well. They are the health insurance companies, and they are killing us. How do I know this?
The World Health Organization and every other credible national and international research entity tells me so. And they have all been consistently reporting this bad news for decades. The United States of America spends more per capita on health care than any nation in the world, and ranks way down the list on overall health outcomes. Some rankings say we come in around 17th place, the rest are all reporting worse results. Our own reporting this morning indicates that health insurance companies are raising premiums by 9% for the coming year. This as Americans in general are accessing care less year after year. That logically means we will be paying even more while getting sicker, many even dying sooner.
And it is all, ALL, the fault of the parasitical health insurance companies. They are a needless burden on the economy, an obstacle to the provision of life-enhancing and life-saving care to all of us. They provide absolutely nothing of value; they only deprive us of our money and better access to health care. All they do is profit themselves and disable us.
The best way to reign in health care costs and improve our health is by eliminating the parasites. We need single-payer universal coverage now. The irony of it is that those who say otherwise are the sickest of us all.
The World Health Organization and every other credible national and international research entity tells me so. And they have all been consistently reporting this bad news for decades. The United States of America spends more per capita on health care than any nation in the world, and ranks way down the list on overall health outcomes. Some rankings say we come in around 17th place, the rest are all reporting worse results. Our own reporting this morning indicates that health insurance companies are raising premiums by 9% for the coming year. This as Americans in general are accessing care less year after year. That logically means we will be paying even more while getting sicker, many even dying sooner.
And it is all, ALL, the fault of the parasitical health insurance companies. They are a needless burden on the economy, an obstacle to the provision of life-enhancing and life-saving care to all of us. They provide absolutely nothing of value; they only deprive us of our money and better access to health care. All they do is profit themselves and disable us.
The best way to reign in health care costs and improve our health is by eliminating the parasites. We need single-payer universal coverage now. The irony of it is that those who say otherwise are the sickest of us all.
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
David Brooks: Socialist
A lot of people do not read the Op-Ed page of the daily newspaper. They just don't know what they're missing. This morning David Brooks is back for his usual weekly appearance in the Picayune. And he makes Oscar Wilde sound like a straight man for Jerry Lewis.
He's fretting over the current buzz to drop the pretense surrounding "amateur" college athletics, and just go ahead and pay these mostly make believe students a decent return for their rich entertainment value. As it stands now, the schools, along with their front-man brokerage firm known as the NCAA, get almost all the loot, right down to the last accountable penny. And it is in the teeming millions. Meanwhile, the students athletes often get all the day-in day-out pain and suffering, long-term disabilities, and short circuited educational prospects.
Mr. Brooks concludes his piece questioning the method by which a pay scale might be established, and issuing this moral and cultural exhortation: "A competitive society requires a set of social institutions that restrain naked self-interest and shortsighted greed." All this from a guy who regularly lauds the benefits of unrestrained "free-market" operations. That is to say, no labor unions - let the market set the scale, and, of course, as little business regulation as existed sometime in the early 1900s.
I have a suggestion for the Picayune, why not print Brooks' column in lots of colors, complete with hand-drawn pictures, so that more people would read and enjoy it like they do the Sunday comics?
He's fretting over the current buzz to drop the pretense surrounding "amateur" college athletics, and just go ahead and pay these mostly make believe students a decent return for their rich entertainment value. As it stands now, the schools, along with their front-man brokerage firm known as the NCAA, get almost all the loot, right down to the last accountable penny. And it is in the teeming millions. Meanwhile, the
Mr. Brooks concludes his piece questioning the method by which a pay scale might be established, and issuing this moral and cultural exhortation: "A competitive society requires a set of social institutions that restrain naked self-interest and shortsighted greed." All this from a guy who regularly lauds the benefits of unrestrained "free-market" operations. That is to say, no labor unions - let the market set the scale, and, of course, as little business regulation as existed sometime in the early 1900s.
I have a suggestion for the Picayune, why not print Brooks' column in lots of colors, complete with hand-drawn pictures, so that more people would read and enjoy it like they do the Sunday comics?
Monday, September 26, 2011
The Wall Street Flamingo
Okay, the title is a little weird, but the subject is not for the birds. It's just another way of saying that there is a risk associated with all investments, some greater than others. Of course you knew that, but you may not have known much about the extreme form of gambling, passed off as investment, which brought on the current financial collapse. Buggsy Siegal would have been jealous.
Buggsy only used a "Tommy Gun" to raise the capital he needed to open the Flamingo Hotel in Vegas. Today's criminal class on Wall Street comes at us armed with far worse than that. To quote Warren Buffett, they are dealing in "financial weapons of mass destruction."
While it is true that many factors contributed to the worldwide financial crash, the market mobsters who brought it on would have us believe that there were far too many for us to ever understand, or for anyone to do anything about. That is decidedly not true. In the short run, most of the mobsters are simply wanting to stay a step ahead of being tarred and feathered, jailed, or both. Eventually, they all just want to be allowed to get back to business as usual. Uhh, that is after they've robbed us stupid coming and going, first by way of public tab bail-outs, and then through wild fire private default and bankruptcy.
It is not an oversimplification to say that the proximate cause of the crash consisted of only two key elements operating simultaneously and in concert. One is something called an Over The Counter (OTC) derivative. This "investment" instrument is nothing more than a side-bet between two parties regarding the future performance of an underlying asset. It can serve as a hedge in the same way a sports wagerer might protect or even beef-up a bet with a counter wager, as the point spread changes. The OTC designation refers to the fact that it is a private deal between the respective parties and is not traded or recorded on any public exchange, a feature of significant consequence which will be apparent in a moment. Worse, these derivatives are highly volatile and damn near radioactive owing to a high degree of leverage, which means they are uncollateralized. The other destabilizing feature of the market which froze and crashed the whole world's financial system was the fact that the banks were permitted to sell 100% of the loans they were making. And lots of these were "no doc (document) loans," which were worth less than the paper they were written on. Nevertheless, they were bundled-up with all the rest to be passed off as AAA rated mortgage securities. And they sold like air conditioners in Florida.
Here's what happened. The banks wrote as many loans as they could push out the door, in order to get paid back their money, along with a tidy profit, real fast. The faster they could repeat the process, the more the profit. And they got pretty damn fast at it. Meanwhile, the brokers and brokerage houses were busy making fast money as well. Most of it in derivatives. Because of the peculiar characteristics of OTC derivatives mentioned above, a tremendous amount of speculative profit was being earned and credited to balance sheets that didn't really exist. In other words, because of "leverage" in a derivative contract, the actual collateral was tiny compared to the stated value of the deal. Hence, at one point when things were really rolling, the actual amount of real money involved in these transactions was about 60 trillion dollars, but the notional (or artificial) amount was somewhere in the neighborhood of 652 trillion. You can see the problem coming, can't you? These side-bets often were "smart money" being laid against the likely performance of all those bad loans, which the banks were profiting from. But only the private parties to the deal knew exactly what was really going on.
Long story made short, the "smart money" was right, but in the end just as stupid as it was smart. The money chalked up to profit in many derivative deals didn't really exist, and so there was a lot of bad paper out there in addition to the mortgages that individual home buyers turned out to be unable to pay. In essence, the world financial system took it on the chin for at least 60 trillion real dollars and about 600 trillion "notional" dollars. Not a light blow, however you count it. But wait, there's more.
First, the Republican right-wing insisted on and got a publicly funded bail-out of the worst financial criminals in history, and now they demand we cut, cut, cut, cut, cut any and all support for what remains of our shattered economic circumstances and prospects. They even are lobbying ferociously to gut the most important aspects of the Dodd-Frank Act, which was passed in the aftermath of the collapse and would require banks to retain a percentage of the loans they write as part of their own reserves. This provision would work to insure banks not write worthless paper and pass it off as a top grade asset. The Act would also end the secretive OTC type derivatives, by having them all trade on a public exchange. This would expose inside operators who would profit by facilitating ill-advised trades, while betting against the outcome of the deal.
These are modest but desperately needed correctives to a truly dirty financial system. But every single stinking one of the candidates for the Republican presidential nomination is pledged to the repeal of the Dodd-Frank Act. Now, I am not crazy enough to suggest we should declare open season on Flamingos, but I sure as hell think all these birds belong in a cage.
Buggsy only used a "Tommy Gun" to raise the capital he needed to open the Flamingo Hotel in Vegas. Today's criminal class on Wall Street comes at us armed with far worse than that. To quote Warren Buffett, they are dealing in "financial weapons of mass destruction."
While it is true that many factors contributed to the worldwide financial crash, the market mobsters who brought it on would have us believe that there were far too many for us to ever understand, or for anyone to do anything about. That is decidedly not true. In the short run, most of the mobsters are simply wanting to stay a step ahead of being tarred and feathered, jailed, or both. Eventually, they all just want to be allowed to get back to business as usual. Uhh, that is after they've robbed us stupid coming and going, first by way of public tab bail-outs, and then through wild fire private default and bankruptcy.
It is not an oversimplification to say that the proximate cause of the crash consisted of only two key elements operating simultaneously and in concert. One is something called an Over The Counter (OTC) derivative. This "investment" instrument is nothing more than a side-bet between two parties regarding the future performance of an underlying asset. It can serve as a hedge in the same way a sports wagerer might protect or even beef-up a bet with a counter wager, as the point spread changes. The OTC designation refers to the fact that it is a private deal between the respective parties and is not traded or recorded on any public exchange, a feature of significant consequence which will be apparent in a moment. Worse, these derivatives are highly volatile and damn near radioactive owing to a high degree of leverage, which means they are uncollateralized. The other destabilizing feature of the market which froze and crashed the whole world's financial system was the fact that the banks were permitted to sell 100% of the loans they were making. And lots of these were "no doc (document) loans," which were worth less than the paper they were written on. Nevertheless, they were bundled-up with all the rest to be passed off as AAA rated mortgage securities. And they sold like air conditioners in Florida.
Here's what happened. The banks wrote as many loans as they could push out the door, in order to get paid back their money, along with a tidy profit, real fast. The faster they could repeat the process, the more the profit. And they got pretty damn fast at it. Meanwhile, the brokers and brokerage houses were busy making fast money as well. Most of it in derivatives. Because of the peculiar characteristics of OTC derivatives mentioned above, a tremendous amount of speculative profit was being earned and credited to balance sheets that didn't really exist. In other words, because of "leverage" in a derivative contract, the actual collateral was tiny compared to the stated value of the deal. Hence, at one point when things were really rolling, the actual amount of real money involved in these transactions was about 60 trillion dollars, but the notional (or artificial) amount was somewhere in the neighborhood of 652 trillion. You can see the problem coming, can't you? These side-bets often were "smart money" being laid against the likely performance of all those bad loans, which the banks were profiting from. But only the private parties to the deal knew exactly what was really going on.
Long story made short, the "smart money" was right, but in the end just as stupid as it was smart. The money chalked up to profit in many derivative deals didn't really exist, and so there was a lot of bad paper out there in addition to the mortgages that individual home buyers turned out to be unable to pay. In essence, the world financial system took it on the chin for at least 60 trillion real dollars and about 600 trillion "notional" dollars. Not a light blow, however you count it. But wait, there's more.
First, the Republican right-wing insisted on and got a publicly funded bail-out of the worst financial criminals in history, and now they demand we cut, cut, cut, cut, cut any and all support for what remains of our shattered economic circumstances and prospects. They even are lobbying ferociously to gut the most important aspects of the Dodd-Frank Act, which was passed in the aftermath of the collapse and would require banks to retain a percentage of the loans they write as part of their own reserves. This provision would work to insure banks not write worthless paper and pass it off as a top grade asset. The Act would also end the secretive OTC type derivatives, by having them all trade on a public exchange. This would expose inside operators who would profit by facilitating ill-advised trades, while betting against the outcome of the deal.
These are modest but desperately needed correctives to a truly dirty financial system. But every single stinking one of the candidates for the Republican presidential nomination is pledged to the repeal of the Dodd-Frank Act. Now, I am not crazy enough to suggest we should declare open season on Flamingos, but I sure as hell think all these birds belong in a cage.
Saturday, September 24, 2011
This Old House And Free Money
I am about to run out the door to go door-to-door with other campaign volunteers and Chad Lauga, our IBEW brother running for the district 103 seat in the Louisiana Legislature. By the way that district covers all of the east bank of Plaquemines Parish, the eastern most part of New Orleans East, and all of St. Bernard Parish. Chad is #54 on the ballot. The primary election is October 22nd. He is tied for first place in the polls, welcomes your help and needs your support. You can learn more at Laugainthehouse.com.
Time only for a quick thought on another matter. Everyone knows there are lots and lots and lots of houses for sale on the market, at ever declining prices. These are almost all individual owner occupied or foreclosed bank owned houses; new single family home construction is dead. Remarkably, there is also nearly an unlimited supply of virtually free money (4% 30 year mortgages) available for loans to purchase these properties. But few potential buyers can access the capital (qualify for a bank loan) because they have too much debt already, are at risk of losing the job they have, are underemployed on a part-time basis for meager wages, or have no job at all.
The private sector at large will not hire the unemployed because the overall economic stagnation has caused a sag in demand for all consumer goods, along with houses. Look for a subsequent post exploring how the greedy bastards on Wall Street and in the banks and boardrooms caused this situation to come about. I can assure you it will not improve for a very, very long time on its own. We have seen this before and know what needs to be done. But there is a lot of anger, fear, and finger-pointing out there which is insisting on all the wrong policies.
Right now the Federal Government also has virtually an unlimited supply of essentially free money available to it (Treasury bonds are only paying 1.03% interest, and are in hot demand) which could and should be used to infuse needed dynamism into the stalled economy. When people get back to work, they pay more in taxes, the money borrowed to get things moving again is repaid, they buy more houses and other things, and the economy returns to health and growth. It's as simple as 1 + 1 = 2, but our enemies insist on imposing the arithmetic operation of subtraction on our standard of living. We need to turn the pencil around and erase the propaganda of the Republican/Teacan right-wing, so things can start adding up in our favor again.
Time only for a quick thought on another matter. Everyone knows there are lots and lots and lots of houses for sale on the market, at ever declining prices. These are almost all individual owner occupied or foreclosed bank owned houses; new single family home construction is dead. Remarkably, there is also nearly an unlimited supply of virtually free money (4% 30 year mortgages) available for loans to purchase these properties. But few potential buyers can access the capital (qualify for a bank loan) because they have too much debt already, are at risk of losing the job they have, are underemployed on a part-time basis for meager wages, or have no job at all.
The private sector at large will not hire the unemployed because the overall economic stagnation has caused a sag in demand for all consumer goods, along with houses. Look for a subsequent post exploring how the greedy bastards on Wall Street and in the banks and boardrooms caused this situation to come about. I can assure you it will not improve for a very, very long time on its own. We have seen this before and know what needs to be done. But there is a lot of anger, fear, and finger-pointing out there which is insisting on all the wrong policies.
Right now the Federal Government also has virtually an unlimited supply of essentially free money available to it (Treasury bonds are only paying 1.03% interest, and are in hot demand) which could and should be used to infuse needed dynamism into the stalled economy. When people get back to work, they pay more in taxes, the money borrowed to get things moving again is repaid, they buy more houses and other things, and the economy returns to health and growth. It's as simple as 1 + 1 = 2, but our enemies insist on imposing the arithmetic operation of subtraction on our standard of living. We need to turn the pencil around and erase the propaganda of the Republican/Teacan right-wing, so things can start adding up in our favor again.
Friday, September 23, 2011
The Ponzi Conspiracy
Imagine that one day you wanted to buy a yacht. But you didn't have a big enough bag of loot in hand at the time to raise sails. So, you asked me for a loan, and I, having done my due diligence regarding past performance and overall reliability, found you to be the best investment option in the world for parking my loose change. I then made a very conservative investment for a modest return, confident I would be able to sleep well as time went on.
You, however, were wide awake and itching to cruise. The next day a "Gone Fishing" sign went up on your store front, and you were off: "Paradise Island Or Bust!" You got paradise alright, on my dime. And I was set-up to go bust.
You closed down the hometown operation, laid off all your workers, exported your capital to the new found party land, hired a bunch of locals at a pittance, and installed yourself as King Kahlua for life. Back in your former homeland, things were allowed to go to seed. Your remaining meager holdings were not growing domestic returns as they had year-in year-out in the past. You fell to constant carping and whining about the need for relief from all your obligations. You demanded and got a free ride from the government on taxes and standards of every kind regarding your economic dealings. Finally, the last border of responsibility was breached when you threatened to default on repaying my loan. You even stooped so low as to blame me for your disappointing circumstances and in-the-red financial status here in the homeland. But I was not the one who told you to buy a yacht and set sail from all honest dealings, that was your choice.
And that is the story behind the Republican right-wing scam blaming the federal debt and deficit on Social Security. They took the money and blew it. Now they are conning the ignorant Tea Party crowd into supporting their conspiracy to renege on their obligations. At least Jesse James and his gang had the decency to use guns when they robbed people.
You, however, were wide awake and itching to cruise. The next day a "Gone Fishing" sign went up on your store front, and you were off: "Paradise Island Or Bust!" You got paradise alright, on my dime. And I was set-up to go bust.
You closed down the hometown operation, laid off all your workers, exported your capital to the new found party land, hired a bunch of locals at a pittance, and installed yourself as King Kahlua for life. Back in your former homeland, things were allowed to go to seed. Your remaining meager holdings were not growing domestic returns as they had year-in year-out in the past. You fell to constant carping and whining about the need for relief from all your obligations. You demanded and got a free ride from the government on taxes and standards of every kind regarding your economic dealings. Finally, the last border of responsibility was breached when you threatened to default on repaying my loan. You even stooped so low as to blame me for your disappointing circumstances and in-the-red financial status here in the homeland. But I was not the one who told you to buy a yacht and set sail from all honest dealings, that was your choice.
And that is the story behind the Republican right-wing scam blaming the federal debt and deficit on Social Security. They took the money and blew it. Now they are conning the ignorant Tea Party crowd into supporting their conspiracy to renege on their obligations. At least Jesse James and his gang had the decency to use guns when they robbed people.
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Funny Stuff
The two jokes formally known as Cal Thomas and Tom Friedman are in the Picayune again this morning. Cal spends his time rubbing off the letters on his keyboard trying to polish the image of Texas and Texans, apparently hoping some of the shine will reflect well on Rick Perry. He anchors his intimate knowledge of the lone star state with the fact that he once lived there for an undisclosed period of time. My guess is for about ten minutes during the Paleolithic period, which those of us familiar with the place know came to an end around 1967. Cal, however, two paragraphs into his riff on explaining the quaint place names and colloquialisms betrays his inability even to spell Nacogdoches, which happens to be the oldest town in the state. What would you expect? For hilarious stupidity, this guy never disappoints.
Speaking of which, we then come to Tom Friedman. Here is a guy with spelling problems of a different kind. He regularly proves he couldn't spell economics if run over by a truck full of dictionaries. He once again calls for cutting Social Security and Medicare to reduce the federal debt. So many things are wrong with those notions time will not allow examining them in full. Here is a rapid run through.
First, the current crippling economic malady is not a debt crisis; it is a dire lack of growth, which minute by minute threatens to slip again into out and out contraction. There is a dearth of private economic activity and spending; if the federal government goes into reverse, it is all over but the hard landing at the end of the next great crash.
Second, Social Security is not a cause of federal deficit spending. It is a creditor of the federal government. It holds 2.4 trillion dollars in Treasury bonds. In other words, it actually pays for many of the outrageously wasteful federal excesses, like immoral wars and tax giveaways to the super rich. Still, it has sufficient assets to be fully funded through 2038, and would stay 100% sound indefinitely simply by having the rich fairly pay in on total earnings, like the rest of us.
Third, Friedman calls for cutting Medicare benefits. He should be calling for reducing the cost of health care. This is done elsewhere in the developed world by reigning in the criminally high prices extorted from us by the major drug companies, and not subjecting medical care costs and decisions to the profitable plundering of parasitical insurance companies. In other words, we need to cut Medicare only in the sense that we should replace it with single payer universal coverage throughout the country. Perhaps then we would cease to be ranked 17th in health care outcomes and 1st in cost, as compared to all the other nations in the world.
Speaking of which, we then come to Tom Friedman. Here is a guy with spelling problems of a different kind. He regularly proves he couldn't spell economics if run over by a truck full of dictionaries. He once again calls for cutting Social Security and Medicare to reduce the federal debt. So many things are wrong with those notions time will not allow examining them in full. Here is a rapid run through.
First, the current crippling economic malady is not a debt crisis; it is a dire lack of growth, which minute by minute threatens to slip again into out and out contraction. There is a dearth of private economic activity and spending; if the federal government goes into reverse, it is all over but the hard landing at the end of the next great crash.
Second, Social Security is not a cause of federal deficit spending. It is a creditor of the federal government. It holds 2.4 trillion dollars in Treasury bonds. In other words, it actually pays for many of the outrageously wasteful federal excesses, like immoral wars and tax giveaways to the super rich. Still, it has sufficient assets to be fully funded through 2038, and would stay 100% sound indefinitely simply by having the rich fairly pay in on total earnings, like the rest of us.
Third, Friedman calls for cutting Medicare benefits. He should be calling for reducing the cost of health care. This is done elsewhere in the developed world by reigning in the criminally high prices extorted from us by the major drug companies, and not subjecting medical care costs and decisions to the profitable plundering of parasitical insurance companies. In other words, we need to cut Medicare only in the sense that we should replace it with single payer universal coverage throughout the country. Perhaps then we would cease to be ranked 17th in health care outcomes and 1st in cost, as compared to all the other nations in the world.
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Stay In Your Seats Or Get Up And Leave
The main purpose of a financial system in a market economy is to provide a transparent, rule governed venue for safely pooling and rewarding society's aggregate savings, and then responsibly lending these funds out at a premium as investment fuel. Prior to the current day, this system last crashed in 1929. That disaster was brought on largely by "devil may care" laissez-faire disregard for regulation and oversight of the major monopolistic players whose greed and overreaching turned a gold mine into a copper penny shaft for most savers and investors. One good thing to come of that catastrophe was strict governmental rule making and enforcement.
Those reforms, along with other major steps to encourage union organization and fair wages, laid the foundation for the rise of the strongest middle class in the world. But the country came to forget the facts of history and fell victim to the propaganda of the plutocrats. The Hollywood stage craft of the Reagan revolution created an illusory and inverted version of the underpinnings of middle class prosperity and upward social mobility. Now we're sitting through the second half of a horror show double feature.
But no one's heading for the candy counter; we haven't the coin for bon-bons, popcorn or cokes. It's time we all hit the door and stepped out into the fresh air and sunshine of reality again.
Those reforms, along with other major steps to encourage union organization and fair wages, laid the foundation for the rise of the strongest middle class in the world. But the country came to forget the facts of history and fell victim to the propaganda of the plutocrats. The Hollywood stage craft of the Reagan revolution created an illusory and inverted version of the underpinnings of middle class prosperity and upward social mobility. Now we're sitting through the second half of a horror show double feature.
But no one's heading for the candy counter; we haven't the coin for bon-bons, popcorn or cokes. It's time we all hit the door and stepped out into the fresh air and sunshine of reality again.
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Suffer, Some Say
Well, there is just nothing we can do about it. The beast will always have its way with us. Try to survive the feasting, it will get its fill and go away. So we are told.
Some people really do believe we are hopeless victims of inevitable pain and suffering. They are fatalists. When problems arise, they are quick to want to shirk their responsibility, to lighten the load, and to lay their own human inheritance down on the side of the road until the troubles run their course. These folks really do not deserve the gifts wrapped up in their own creation, however you may conjure the origin of our species and every individual member of it. Ironically, these tend to be the same hands-in-the-air people who love to invent stories about creation and try like hell to impose them on the rest of us in one form or another.
They also invent stories about the recent past to mislead us about current times and divert us from doing what we should to make things better. David Brooks is one of these people, and he is doing it again today in the Picayune. Brooks says, "Democrats are besotted by the myth that the New Deal ended the Great Depression." No, Mr. Brooks, we are burdened with the responsibility to actively address problems, we are not disposed to lay our brains on the side of the road and throw our hands in the air when times get hard.
There is no disputing the fact that the New Deal had by 1937 rescued a collapsed economy from its death throes. A brief relapse occurred when FDR was pressured to abandon the expansionary New Deal policies in favor of the poisonous contractionary prescriptions which are in vogue again today. Soon enough, WWII brought about a resurgence of expansionary government spending, which finally put the Depression at an end.
The war effort in essence was the New Deal on steroids. It necessitated government spending on a scale never seen before. It was all used not for productive investment, but to hire people to build things other people were then employed to use in order to burn and blow up more things. And it still worked to resurrect a moribund economy.
Some people really do believe we are hopeless victims of inevitable pain and suffering. They are fatalists. When problems arise, they are quick to want to shirk their responsibility, to lighten the load, and to lay their own human inheritance down on the side of the road until the troubles run their course. These folks really do not deserve the gifts wrapped up in their own creation, however you may conjure the origin of our species and every individual member of it. Ironically, these tend to be the same hands-in-the-air people who love to invent stories about creation and try like hell to impose them on the rest of us in one form or another.
They also invent stories about the recent past to mislead us about current times and divert us from doing what we should to make things better. David Brooks is one of these people, and he is doing it again today in the Picayune. Brooks says, "Democrats are besotted by the myth that the New Deal ended the Great Depression." No, Mr. Brooks, we are burdened with the responsibility to actively address problems, we are not disposed to lay our brains on the side of the road and throw our hands in the air when times get hard.
There is no disputing the fact that the New Deal had by 1937 rescued a collapsed economy from its death throes. A brief relapse occurred when FDR was pressured to abandon the expansionary New Deal policies in favor of the poisonous contractionary prescriptions which are in vogue again today. Soon enough, WWII brought about a resurgence of expansionary government spending, which finally put the Depression at an end.
The war effort in essence was the New Deal on steroids. It necessitated government spending on a scale never seen before. It was all used not for productive investment, but to hire people to build things other people were then employed to use in order to burn and blow up more things. And it still worked to resurrect a moribund economy.
Monday, September 19, 2011
Bostick's List
Okay, we all like lists. Simply compiling them helps us focus on items of importance in various areas of our lives. And once compiled, they help us organize things in our minds and make them easy to remember.
So, now that Obama is proposing a minimum tax on gazzillionaires to require that the wealthiest in the country pay at least the same rate as the ever shrinking but still hard working middle class, and the Republicans are saying no, let's make a Republican wish list.
Don't want:
Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, middle class, public schools, food and drug safety standards, clean air and water, safe roads and bridges, mass transit, full employment, ... the list is longer than would be their noses if they all turned into Pinocchio.
Want:
A tiny upper class equipped with greater wealth than any ruling elite in the history of the world, a burgeoning and ever swelling mass of poor people to use as they wish, the absence of any type of political recourse for the common citizen, to never again be bothered by any system of fairness, justice, and decency.
How do I know these things are true? I know it because the exact opposite regime prevailed in our country during the time of strongly progressive tax rates. You can look it up. If you want a decent lifesyle for the average working person again, that is a major part of what it will take.
So, now that Obama is proposing a minimum tax on gazzillionaires to require that the wealthiest in the country pay at least the same rate as the ever shrinking but still hard working middle class, and the Republicans are saying no, let's make a Republican wish list.
Don't want:
Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, middle class, public schools, food and drug safety standards, clean air and water, safe roads and bridges, mass transit, full employment, ... the list is longer than would be their noses if they all turned into Pinocchio.
Want:
A tiny upper class equipped with greater wealth than any ruling elite in the history of the world, a burgeoning and ever swelling mass of poor people to use as they wish, the absence of any type of political recourse for the common citizen, to never again be bothered by any system of fairness, justice, and decency.
How do I know these things are true? I know it because the exact opposite regime prevailed in our country during the time of strongly progressive tax rates. You can look it up. If you want a decent lifesyle for the average working person again, that is a major part of what it will take.
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Reeling ... But Healing
Yesterday started badly, got better, and then fell off a cliff. Today, the climb back up has gotten underway. Hooray.
Early Saturday morning, the Picayune delivered more small-minded nonsense from Cal Thomas. It was the usual blind alley trip to the corner of ignorance and condescension, one that is easily derailed. But my schedule did not allow me to take time with it then. Instead, I was committed to hitting the campaign trail on behalf of Chad Lauga, our union brother running for a seat in the Louisiana State Legislature. That was the better part of the day in terms of time and enjoyment. More on that in a future post. The evening soured, however, most likely as the result of my ravenous disposal of dozens of dubious oysters. Nausea and worse filled the balance of the day and most of the night. Hence, dismissal of that cad, Cal, has had to wait till now.
Inasmuch as the piece ran yesterday and I really do not like looking back in time, this will be brief. Thomas, a self-proclaimed Christian columnist, came to the defense of Ron Paul's ridiculous answer to a question regarding health care in the most recent Republican/Teacan debate. Paul is a devoted acolyte of the radical right-wing atheist founder of libertarianism, Ayn Rand.
Libertarianism, as we all know, is anti-government almost no matter the issue, and so Paul was left to feebly assign the responsibility for the provision of "last resort" life-saving care to our charities and churches. Thomas was all in on this idea. The irony of a political philosophy, founded by a crusading atheist, having always to resort to taking sanctuary in the tender mercies of our churches every time it is stuck for an answer to a tough question is obviously lost on old Christian Cal. But that by far is not the worst of it.
Paul, who is a medical doctor, went on to blame the out-of-reach cost of health care on overreaching government regulations. Specifically, he cited licensing requirements as needless cost drivers. The notion that anyone who wishes to practice medicine should be permitted to simply hang an MD shingle over the door and start selling snake oil and horse lineament to credulous patients places Paul's regard for standards in the field of medicine in line with those last accepted in the U.S. sometime in the 1800s.
As for Christian Cal, his solution to the problem of making people tow the line of personal responsiblity for every need in their lives, including health insurance, is to resurrect an even older set of social norms. He reports having read an intriguing idea from England which would encourage Tories to adopt families of a lower station. The Tory class would then steer the lower class into meaningful employment and more responsible behavior. Cal likes this notion so much that he recommended it be taken up by the rich and well-off here in this country. This places old Cal's thinking in the European feudal period, circa 1000 -1600.
When it comes to inducing a nauseating reeling, bad oysters have nothing on Cal Thomas and Ron Paul. If their backward looking ideas should ever really be taken seriously, a whole lot more than our currently aching and ailing economy would desperately need healing.
Early Saturday morning, the Picayune delivered more small-minded nonsense from Cal Thomas. It was the usual blind alley trip to the corner of ignorance and condescension, one that is easily derailed. But my schedule did not allow me to take time with it then. Instead, I was committed to hitting the campaign trail on behalf of Chad Lauga, our union brother running for a seat in the Louisiana State Legislature. That was the better part of the day in terms of time and enjoyment. More on that in a future post. The evening soured, however, most likely as the result of my ravenous disposal of dozens of dubious oysters. Nausea and worse filled the balance of the day and most of the night. Hence, dismissal of that cad, Cal, has had to wait till now.
Inasmuch as the piece ran yesterday and I really do not like looking back in time, this will be brief. Thomas, a self-proclaimed Christian columnist, came to the defense of Ron Paul's ridiculous answer to a question regarding health care in the most recent Republican/Teacan debate. Paul is a devoted acolyte of the radical right-wing atheist founder of libertarianism, Ayn Rand.
Libertarianism, as we all know, is anti-government almost no matter the issue, and so Paul was left to feebly assign the responsibility for the provision of "last resort" life-saving care to our charities and churches. Thomas was all in on this idea. The irony of a political philosophy, founded by a crusading atheist, having always to resort to taking sanctuary in the tender mercies of our churches every time it is stuck for an answer to a tough question is obviously lost on old Christian Cal. But that by far is not the worst of it.
Paul, who is a medical doctor, went on to blame the out-of-reach cost of health care on overreaching government regulations. Specifically, he cited licensing requirements as needless cost drivers. The notion that anyone who wishes to practice medicine should be permitted to simply hang an MD shingle over the door and start selling snake oil and horse lineament to credulous patients places Paul's regard for standards in the field of medicine in line with those last accepted in the U.S. sometime in the 1800s.
As for Christian Cal, his solution to the problem of making people tow the line of personal responsiblity for every need in their lives, including health insurance, is to resurrect an even older set of social norms. He reports having read an intriguing idea from England which would encourage Tories to adopt families of a lower station. The Tory class would then steer the lower class into meaningful employment and more responsible behavior. Cal likes this notion so much that he recommended it be taken up by the rich and well-off here in this country. This places old Cal's thinking in the European feudal period, circa 1000 -1600.
When it comes to inducing a nauseating reeling, bad oysters have nothing on Cal Thomas and Ron Paul. If their backward looking ideas should ever really be taken seriously, a whole lot more than our currently aching and ailing economy would desperately need healing.
Friday, September 16, 2011
The Whole Bag Of Rocks
A fellow named Jesus once famously cautioned against throwing the first stone. Good advice, for the most part for sure, I would say. But in the case of David Vitter, let 'em fly and empty the whole damn bag!
Yesterday, local television station, WWL, reported that Tulane Medical Center, which is majority owned by the for-profit Hospital Corporation of America (HCA), is negotiating with Ochsner Hospital to unload its aging and unprofitable downtown facility located near the site of the new LSU/VA Medical District. HCA has been running this out-of-date operation at a loss since Hurricane Katrina and is hot to get rid of it. This is the same "white elephant" U.S. Senator David Vitter recently schemed to push off on the tax payers of Louisiana as part of an absurd substitute for the new LSU facility. It would have been a player in a scatter-shot assemblage of second-rate, clinic type health providers around the area, which for the most part would have left the poor and indigent without any hope of decent service, and denied the city the most important economic boost in our history. It is the type of skulduggery for which Vitter might justifiably be awarded the title Chairman of the New Orleans Chapter of the "Let 'Em Die" GOP.
A quick web search reveals that the industry known as "Health Care Professionals" is ranked neck-and-neck with "Oil and Gas" vying for top spot in the list of campaign financial contributors to David Vitter. One site has them on the very top. This proves Vitter's continuing interest in the subject of prostitution, despite his pious disavowals.
It's at least a couple of rocks more than enough to give the entire enterprise a bad name.
Yesterday, local television station, WWL, reported that Tulane Medical Center, which is majority owned by the for-profit Hospital Corporation of America (HCA), is negotiating with Ochsner Hospital to unload its aging and unprofitable downtown facility located near the site of the new LSU/VA Medical District. HCA has been running this out-of-date operation at a loss since Hurricane Katrina and is hot to get rid of it. This is the same "white elephant" U.S. Senator David Vitter recently schemed to push off on the tax payers of Louisiana as part of an absurd substitute for the new LSU facility. It would have been a player in a scatter-shot assemblage of second-rate, clinic type health providers around the area, which for the most part would have left the poor and indigent without any hope of decent service, and denied the city the most important economic boost in our history. It is the type of skulduggery for which Vitter might justifiably be awarded the title Chairman of the New Orleans Chapter of the "Let 'Em Die" GOP.
A quick web search reveals that the industry known as "Health Care Professionals" is ranked neck-and-neck with "Oil and Gas" vying for top spot in the list of campaign financial contributors to David Vitter. One site has them on the very top. This proves Vitter's continuing interest in the subject of prostitution, despite his pious disavowals.
It's at least a couple of rocks more than enough to give the entire enterprise a bad name.
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Mileage
Wow! This will be the third post in a row drawing on the wisdom of Adam Smith. Maybe it's the conservationist in me, I've always gotten a charge out of that kind of high mileage. Then again, maybe it's just the imp in me who likes skewering the right-wing with their own ignorance.
The Picayune this morning has David Brooks once again floundering to understand things which he would already know if only he had ever read and taken on board the intellectual underpinnings of his own philosophical outlook. This time it's a bunch of rambling in the blind trying to come to grips with the amoral wasteland of modern society, specifically as it is reflected in young adults. Brooks cites any number of recent surveys and opinions on the general subject, but never manages to land on the truth.
The irony of it all is that the icon of modern day unregulated free market profiteering, Adam Smith, got it right way back in 1759. Even though today Smith is thought of almost exclusively as an economist, he in fact was a moral philosopher. At that time the term economist either had not been invented or at least had little or no currency; it certainly was not widely concieved. Economics itself was not yet a science in any sense of the word. Therefore, while Smith got many things right concerning the value of free markets, he failed miserably to understand or enjoy any meaningful insight into their capacity to deliver much human carnage and suffering in the absence of sensible and responsible regulation.
However, the subject of morality and its characteristics had by then piled up a long history of study and contemplation. As a result, Smith was at his most perceptive and instructive on that subject. He succinctly and unabashedly proclaimed that all morality derived from our capacity for sympathy with the plight and suffering of our fellow humans. The problem today is that the right-wing has preached vehemently for decades that we are all in it for ourselves, sink or swim, we are not our brothers' keepers. That is why all the cheering occurred the other night at the Republican/Teacan debate when the case was being made to let some unfortunate soul in a coma just die in the absence of the ability to pay for needed care.
The Picayune this morning has David Brooks once again floundering to understand things which he would already know if only he had ever read and taken on board the intellectual underpinnings of his own philosophical outlook. This time it's a bunch of rambling in the blind trying to come to grips with the amoral wasteland of modern society, specifically as it is reflected in young adults. Brooks cites any number of recent surveys and opinions on the general subject, but never manages to land on the truth.
The irony of it all is that the icon of modern day unregulated free market profiteering, Adam Smith, got it right way back in 1759. Even though today Smith is thought of almost exclusively as an economist, he in fact was a moral philosopher. At that time the term economist either had not been invented or at least had little or no currency; it certainly was not widely concieved. Economics itself was not yet a science in any sense of the word. Therefore, while Smith got many things right concerning the value of free markets, he failed miserably to understand or enjoy any meaningful insight into their capacity to deliver much human carnage and suffering in the absence of sensible and responsible regulation.
However, the subject of morality and its characteristics had by then piled up a long history of study and contemplation. As a result, Smith was at his most perceptive and instructive on that subject. He succinctly and unabashedly proclaimed that all morality derived from our capacity for sympathy with the plight and suffering of our fellow humans. The problem today is that the right-wing has preached vehemently for decades that we are all in it for ourselves, sink or swim, we are not our brothers' keepers. That is why all the cheering occurred the other night at the Republican/Teacan debate when the case was being made to let some unfortunate soul in a coma just die in the absence of the ability to pay for needed care.
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Things I Don't Know ... Because They're Not True
Here is something I didn't know and don't accept, because it isn't true. It actually is a follow up comment to the post immediately preceeding this one on the subject of poverty.
The current "official" definition of poverty in the U.S. for a family of four is an annual income less than $22,314, and for an individual it is an annual income less than $11,139. No one who honestly thinks about getting by on those earnings would believe that. An actual and truer hypothetical income level for those two categories would have to be at least double those numbers in order to conform to the more legitimate way of determining impoverishment as rendered by the putative founder of modern free market economics, Adam Smith.
Here is some more stuff not to believe, and it comes from someone who is not ever to be believed. I mean this guy, Cal Thomas, is just full of the stuff, the not true stuff. And he enjoys spreading not true stuff (lies) every time his column appears in the Times-Picayune. He claims to be a very sincere and devoted Christian, always here and there citing a Commandment or two, but I'm not saying this accounts for all the stuff because he may be lying about that, too.
Anyway, this morning he was at it again, flogging his right-wing creed and preaching the gospel of social indifference to the plight of the poor and elderly. He was railing against the satanic federal government and its twin evils of Medicare/Medicaid and Social Security. He raised hell over these programs in the context of a damning attack on Obama's devilish leftist ideology and new jobs bill proposal. In so doing, he made this claim:
There are some stark and gross lies in that quotation. Before Social Security, more than half of all elderly in this country lived in poverty. Before Medicare/Medicaid, even a greater percentage of the elderly received inadequate or no health care. It is simply not true that they were being cared for or that they could care for themselves. Instead, there was great and crying need among the aged, that is why the respective programs were created. Lastly, the notion that kids who were once placed in day care are now dumping their parents in nursing homes is absurd based on simple arithmetic. The widespread service and use of day care resulting from the rise of the typical two earner household has not yet been with us long enough for the parents to have been moved on to nursing homes by these implicitly "neglected" kids.
Mr. Thomas is not only a liar, he is a very stupid liar. Hence, he has never told me anything true that I didn't know already, and the things he has told me that I didn't know have never been true.
The current "official" definition of poverty in the U.S. for a family of four is an annual income less than $22,314, and for an individual it is an annual income less than $11,139. No one who honestly thinks about getting by on those earnings would believe that. An actual and truer hypothetical income level for those two categories would have to be at least double those numbers in order to conform to the more legitimate way of determining impoverishment as rendered by the putative founder of modern free market economics, Adam Smith.
Here is some more stuff not to believe, and it comes from someone who is not ever to be believed. I mean this guy, Cal Thomas, is just full of the stuff, the not true stuff. And he enjoys spreading not true stuff (lies) every time his column appears in the Times-Picayune. He claims to be a very sincere and devoted Christian, always here and there citing a Commandment or two, but I'm not saying this accounts for all the stuff because he may be lying about that, too.
Anyway, this morning he was at it again, flogging his right-wing creed and preaching the gospel of social indifference to the plight of the poor and elderly. He was railing against the satanic federal government and its twin evils of Medicare/Medicaid and Social Security. He raised hell over these programs in the context of a damning attack on Obama's devilish leftist ideology and new jobs bill proposal. In so doing, he made this claim:
"There was a time in America not too long ago when people mostly looked out for themselves and their relatives. Parents cared for their children when they were little and the children returned the favor when their parents got old. Now we dump the kids in day care, and they return the favor by dumping their elderly parents in nursing homes."
There are some stark and gross lies in that quotation. Before Social Security, more than half of all elderly in this country lived in poverty. Before Medicare/Medicaid, even a greater percentage of the elderly received inadequate or no health care. It is simply not true that they were being cared for or that they could care for themselves. Instead, there was great and crying need among the aged, that is why the respective programs were created. Lastly, the notion that kids who were once placed in day care are now dumping their parents in nursing homes is absurd based on simple arithmetic. The widespread service and use of day care resulting from the rise of the typical two earner household has not yet been with us long enough for the parents to have been moved on to nursing homes by these implicitly "neglected" kids.
Mr. Thomas is not only a liar, he is a very stupid liar. Hence, he has never told me anything true that I didn't know already, and the things he has told me that I didn't know have never been true.
A Point On Poverty
Yesterday saw the release of the most recent Census Bureau findings which tell the increasingly pitiful and sad story of poverty in this the richest country on the planet. Yet the the self-righteous right-wing fanatics of every stripe persist in their misrepresentations and hateful ideology. We have all heard the silly criticisms and accusations they spew with such venom at the poor while idealizing and exalting the avarice, greed and gluttonous behavior of the rich.
In case you're wondering, by rich I mean those folks the ring-wing says should not be expected to pay a reasonable tax rate as measured in historical terms, those folks the right-wing wrongly calls job creators, those folks currently sitting on more money than they ever have in history while creating no jobs at all. And by poor I mean those unemployed or desperately low income workers whom the right- wing claims cannot ever be regarded as poor should we find they happen to have a cell phone, color tv, or air conditioning - and God knows don't dare let them have a car.
But let's see what Adam Smith, the fundamental icon of right-wing classical economics and philosophy, actually had to say about the definition of poor in his 1759 Theory of Moral Sentiments and his 1776 Wealth of Nations.
'Nature, when she formed man for society, endowed him with an original desire to please, and an original aversion to offend his brethren. She taught him to feel pleasure in their favourable, and pain in their unfavourable regard. The reason poverty causes pain is not just because it can leave people feeling hungry, cold and sick, but because it is associated with unfavourable regard.'
As he explains:
'The poor man … is ashamed of his poverty. He feels that it either places him out of the sight of mankind, or, that if they take any notice of him, they have, however, scarce any fellow–feeling with the misery and distress which he suffers. He is mortified upon both accounts; for though to be overlooked, and to be disapproved of, are things entirely different, yet as obscurity covers us from the daylight of honour and approbation, to feel that we are taken no notice of, necessarily damps the most agreeable hope, and disappoints the most ardent desire, of human nature. The poor man goes out and comes in unheeded, and when in the midst of a crowd is in the same obscurity as if shut up in his own hovel.'
Adam Smith correctly argued that poverty is not an absolute numerical measurement, but a social standard. He said that to be poor is a function of the society in which one lives, not the degree of absolute deprivation. Therefore, in the past, say during the Great Depression, old-timers report not having had a lot but not knowing they were poor, because no one else had much either. Today is vastly different. Great and ostentatious wealth is on display everywhere, yet all but a tiny sliver of it is denied to the vast majority of folks, through the merciless operation of these right-wing dominated political and economic times. The fact is many, many more are actually poor by Smith's definition than by the sterile but punishing enough numbers the Census reports.
In case you're wondering, by rich I mean those folks the ring-wing says should not be expected to pay a reasonable tax rate as measured in historical terms, those folks the right-wing wrongly calls job creators, those folks currently sitting on more money than they ever have in history while creating no jobs at all. And by poor I mean those unemployed or desperately low income workers whom the right- wing claims cannot ever be regarded as poor should we find they happen to have a cell phone, color tv, or air conditioning - and God knows don't dare let them have a car.
But let's see what Adam Smith, the fundamental icon of right-wing classical economics and philosophy, actually had to say about the definition of poor in his 1759 Theory of Moral Sentiments and his 1776 Wealth of Nations.
'Nature, when she formed man for society, endowed him with an original desire to please, and an original aversion to offend his brethren. She taught him to feel pleasure in their favourable, and pain in their unfavourable regard. The reason poverty causes pain is not just because it can leave people feeling hungry, cold and sick, but because it is associated with unfavourable regard.'
As he explains:
'The poor man … is ashamed of his poverty. He feels that it either places him out of the sight of mankind, or, that if they take any notice of him, they have, however, scarce any fellow–feeling with the misery and distress which he suffers. He is mortified upon both accounts; for though to be overlooked, and to be disapproved of, are things entirely different, yet as obscurity covers us from the daylight of honour and approbation, to feel that we are taken no notice of, necessarily damps the most agreeable hope, and disappoints the most ardent desire, of human nature. The poor man goes out and comes in unheeded, and when in the midst of a crowd is in the same obscurity as if shut up in his own hovel.'
Adam Smith correctly argued that poverty is not an absolute numerical measurement, but a social standard. He said that to be poor is a function of the society in which one lives, not the degree of absolute deprivation. Therefore, in the past, say during the Great Depression, old-timers report not having had a lot but not knowing they were poor, because no one else had much either. Today is vastly different. Great and ostentatious wealth is on display everywhere, yet all but a tiny sliver of it is denied to the vast majority of folks, through the merciless operation of these right-wing dominated political and economic times. The fact is many, many more are actually poor by Smith's definition than by the sterile but punishing enough numbers the Census reports.
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
A World Away
The idea of reducing the payroll tax which funds Social Security and replacing those revenues with General Fund appropriations was first floated during the Clinton Administration. At that time, the budget was not only in balance, but was actually running a surplus, largely thanks to a modest increase in tax rates on upper income earners. Even then, it was a short-sighted, bad idea.
The fiscal condition of the Federal Government was in such good shape, and things were getting so giddy back then, that there were even proposals for using the surplus as seed money to establish new personal savings accounts for all Americans. But that was before George Bush and the outrageous raid on the Treasury by the wealthy and the super-rich, as well as the unfunded and immoral war making in Iraq of that neocon administration. And even though I am no sell-out fan of today's lame Democrats, at least in this case we have a pretty accurate text book example of the difference in philosophy between the two major parties.
But this is not Bill Clinton's world, nor even Obama's really; it remains that of the radical right. And it is screwed up like never before. The 2.4 trillion dollar surplus which the Social Security tax has generated over the years is invested in U.S. Treasury notes. These have long been seen as the strongest and most reliable investment on the planet. But today they are looked upon by the Republian/Teacan party as a significant portion of the overall 14.3 trillion dollar Federal debt which they and their free-loading super-rich supporters are desperate to repudiate, even at the risk of sending the whole world economy into free-fall.
They are dangerously close to wielding sufficient political power to do just that. It is most unwise to put Social Security up as potential fuel for the political burnout of all that is just and right in our system for the average working person. It is bad enough that these deadbeats see nothing immoral about walking away from the debts they have recklessly piled up, it is foolish to expect them to supply new money from the Treasury over time to keep a program they despise solvent. We should not be playing around with this fire.
The fiscal condition of the Federal Government was in such good shape, and things were getting so giddy back then, that there were even proposals for using the surplus as seed money to establish new personal savings accounts for all Americans. But that was before George Bush and the outrageous raid on the Treasury by the wealthy and the super-rich, as well as the unfunded and immoral war making in Iraq of that neocon administration. And even though I am no sell-out fan of today's lame Democrats, at least in this case we have a pretty accurate text book example of the difference in philosophy between the two major parties.
But this is not Bill Clinton's world, nor even Obama's really; it remains that of the radical right. And it is screwed up like never before. The 2.4 trillion dollar surplus which the Social Security tax has generated over the years is invested in U.S. Treasury notes. These have long been seen as the strongest and most reliable investment on the planet. But today they are looked upon by the Republian/Teacan party as a significant portion of the overall 14.3 trillion dollar Federal debt which they and their free-loading super-rich supporters are desperate to repudiate, even at the risk of sending the whole world economy into free-fall.
They are dangerously close to wielding sufficient political power to do just that. It is most unwise to put Social Security up as potential fuel for the political burnout of all that is just and right in our system for the average working person. It is bad enough that these deadbeats see nothing immoral about walking away from the debts they have recklessly piled up, it is foolish to expect them to supply new money from the Treasury over time to keep a program they despise solvent. We should not be playing around with this fire.
Monday, September 12, 2011
3%
As those of us with jobs are about to hit the road on another Monday morning, this seems the right time to put a finer point on the earlier Plantation Economy post. In other words, we offer a second go around to belabor a point about labor.
We in this country just no longer give a damn about work, at least not judging by our political system's response to the lack of it for so vast a number of us and the skimpy manner in which we reward it for those who are hired by the hour, as the few at the top of the economic pile get richer by the minute.
If we gave a damn, considering the great productive capacity of the economy now shut down, we would take up the tools we know can be used to put some vigor in it and get us all back on our feet. Why not go to a 4 day @ 8 hours per day normal work week, pay workers more to keep earnings at current levels, and draw our unemployed fellow citizens back into a productive role in the economy? And don't hand me that rubbish that we can't afford it. You must be kidding, the rich are richer than ever, and have money they literally do not have any use for. It sits idle, like too many of us, as this is being written.
This is not a structural problem; it is entirely political. What's more, if it were structural, the appropriate response would not be to just take the pain and suffer. No, it would be to change the structure. For now, however, let's just remember this problem has occurred before and been addressed effectively, like it was in 1978 with the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act which pegged the acceptable unemployment level for people over 20 years of age at 3%, and directed the federal government to take all appropriate action to hit that target.
For us to allow our political system to ignore this entirely solvable and brutally painful problem is simply immoral. We could all do much, much better, finally seeing the benefits of modern technology and productive techniques in the workplace enjoyed by the broad range of our citizens. Rich folks would still be very, very rich, doubtless even richer as economic growth would zoom in response to increased disposable income in the pockets of average Americans with increased liesure time to use it. Poor babies, the rich it seems will just have to get along always being rich, there's not much we can do to help them with that.
We in this country just no longer give a damn about work, at least not judging by our political system's response to the lack of it for so vast a number of us and the skimpy manner in which we reward it for those who are hired by the hour, as the few at the top of the economic pile get richer by the minute.
If we gave a damn, considering the great productive capacity of the economy now shut down, we would take up the tools we know can be used to put some vigor in it and get us all back on our feet. Why not go to a 4 day @ 8 hours per day normal work week, pay workers more to keep earnings at current levels, and draw our unemployed fellow citizens back into a productive role in the economy? And don't hand me that rubbish that we can't afford it. You must be kidding, the rich are richer than ever, and have money they literally do not have any use for. It sits idle, like too many of us, as this is being written.
This is not a structural problem; it is entirely political. What's more, if it were structural, the appropriate response would not be to just take the pain and suffer. No, it would be to change the structure. For now, however, let's just remember this problem has occurred before and been addressed effectively, like it was in 1978 with the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act which pegged the acceptable unemployment level for people over 20 years of age at 3%, and directed the federal government to take all appropriate action to hit that target.
For us to allow our political system to ignore this entirely solvable and brutally painful problem is simply immoral. We could all do much, much better, finally seeing the benefits of modern technology and productive techniques in the workplace enjoyed by the broad range of our citizens. Rich folks would still be very, very rich, doubtless even richer as economic growth would zoom in response to increased disposable income in the pockets of average Americans with increased liesure time to use it. Poor babies, the rich it seems will just have to get along always being rich, there's not much we can do to help them with that.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
What Needs Saying
The inviolable human honor, humble connection, respect and reverence with which we shall always look upon and remember the innocent lost so horrifically to willful inhuman malevolence on this day ten years ago wants not and will not permit our adornment or ornamentation.
What needs to be said is that we must resolve never again to allow scoundrels like George Bush, Rudy Giuliani, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, and other right wing criminals to exploit our sincere and roiling emotions to further their domestic political and global war making ambitions. Nothing any maniacal terrorist mind could conjure would diminish or harm our nation more than if we again were to fall for such immoral hellish devilment.
What needs to be said is that we must resolve never again to allow scoundrels like George Bush, Rudy Giuliani, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, and other right wing criminals to exploit our sincere and roiling emotions to further their domestic political and global war making ambitions. Nothing any maniacal terrorist mind could conjure would diminish or harm our nation more than if we again were to fall for such immoral hellish devilment.
Thank You Note Catch Up
This belated "Thank You" goes out specifically to my sisters in the construction trades, and by extension to all working women. A week ago today, in the Sunday Times-Picayune, there was an entry I happened to notice on the weekly social calendar announcing the coming Wednesday's 11:00 am meeting of The Metro Republican Women's Club at the Southern Yacht Club. When Wednesday rolled around, I remembered that blurb and found myself thinking about that event while on the job.
I thought about my hard working sisters there with me. I thought about them passing up the chance to start enjoying a milk punch cordial, while all dolled up and languidly gazing out over a lazy lake on that calm day, even before the valet had the Beemer parked. I thought how that newly picked out bauble of bling might glint off their bubbly or martini glasses as they gaily chatted over a shrimp cocktail.
I thought of all this as they trudged through the morning in those rugged and heavy work boots, baggy jeans, faded T-shirts, bandannas and hard-hats. And I thought I should say, Thank You.
I thought about my hard working sisters there with me. I thought about them passing up the chance to start enjoying a milk punch cordial, while all dolled up and languidly gazing out over a lazy lake on that calm day, even before the valet had the Beemer parked. I thought how that newly picked out bauble of bling might glint off their bubbly or martini glasses as they gaily chatted over a shrimp cocktail.
I thought of all this as they trudged through the morning in those rugged and heavy work boots, baggy jeans, faded T-shirts, bandannas and hard-hats. And I thought I should say, Thank You.
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Plantation Economy ... Fighting Words? - Facts!
Herewith a partial report of the sad and immoral facts of our current situation:
The problem is entirely political. The unbridled greed and gross immorality of the wealthy and corporatist class in the U.S. has visited sinful and needless pain and suffering on the vast majority of our citizens, at a time in human history when advancements in medicine and other fields of scientific endeavor could and should be delivering us all into an era of expansive liberation from debilitating illness and the shackling burden of endless toil and labor.
Wealth, sheer wealth, is staggeringly greater than ever. Modernity has seen the development of productive forces unrivaled in history. The capacity to create the wherewithal for the material well-being of all human kind is beyond question. But our sociological relations have fallen far behind technological developments. This has allowed a tiny few to consolidate power like that not seen since monarchical times, to keep almost all of the abundance, comforts, and life sustaining benefits of modern knowledge and advancement for themselves, and to blot out the traditional avenues for upward social mobility, while shrinking the middle class. That leaves the thumpingly vast majority of us on the bottom. Even worse, they are assiduously seeking to knock the bottom out of the bottom.
The radical right wing Republican/Teacaner drive is targeted at destroying the last meager remnants of a social safety net in this country. Lord knows their philosophy has pretty nearly eliminated what once was the most envied middle class life style in the world; it has eviscerated free public education through high school; it has done away with an affordable college opportunity for average kids; it has sent almost all well paying blue collar jobs to slave labor markets; it has virtually erased unions as a viable overall market and political force; it has delivered the democratic process into the hands of the radical corporatist enemy, the destroyers of democracy itself; and it threatens to burn through the last thin boundary of separation between the common citizen and casual cast out.
Now, they are openly and shamelessly after Social Security and Medicare. This insanity is happening at a time in history when human accomplishment and progress in science and medicine could and should translate into earlier retirement, full access to health care, and a better life for all. Instead, a tiny few are literally taking it all. We would have to be crazy to stand for it.
Now you know why I disdain the lame capitulations of today's Democrats and so-called liberals. They are weak. They are intellectually vapid and corrupt. They are appeasers of the immoral and greedy power in this country. They are feeding the beast. We need to stop allowing ourselves to be used as the feed stock. Now.
For God's sake, for your own sake, let's not do Mass'ers and slaves again.
- 400 individual people (400!) in the U.S. own more wealth than the 150 million people ranked economically as the bottom half of the population.
- 40% of all children in the U.S. live in poverty.
- In the last quarter of the year, U.S. corporations raked in more profits than in any other quarter in history.
- U.S. corporations pay a tiny tax; some of the largest and richest pay nothing at all, and often receive a direct federal government subsidy.
- U.S. corporations are sitting on greater cash reserves than ever in history.
- Tax rates on upper income earners are lower now than at any time in over 65 years.
- Wages have been stagnant or in decline for 30 years.
- The U.S. middle class shrunk by 1/3 as measured in just the last generation; the overall decline had already been underway.
- Unemployment stands at more than 9%. It has been standing there for about a year, and shows no sign of movement in a welcome direction.
- Only 8% of the private workforce enjoys union representation. The absence of a union statistically means at least 1/3 less in pay and benefits; it also forecloses any semblance of participatory rights in day to day workplace rules and operations; shut-up and get to work.
- The radical right wing Supreme court has green-lighted the high-jacking of our political system by the money and power of corporations; welcome to the United Corporate States of America.
The problem is entirely political. The unbridled greed and gross immorality of the wealthy and corporatist class in the U.S. has visited sinful and needless pain and suffering on the vast majority of our citizens, at a time in human history when advancements in medicine and other fields of scientific endeavor could and should be delivering us all into an era of expansive liberation from debilitating illness and the shackling burden of endless toil and labor.
Wealth, sheer wealth, is staggeringly greater than ever. Modernity has seen the development of productive forces unrivaled in history. The capacity to create the wherewithal for the material well-being of all human kind is beyond question. But our sociological relations have fallen far behind technological developments. This has allowed a tiny few to consolidate power like that not seen since monarchical times, to keep almost all of the abundance, comforts, and life sustaining benefits of modern knowledge and advancement for themselves, and to blot out the traditional avenues for upward social mobility, while shrinking the middle class. That leaves the thumpingly vast majority of us on the bottom. Even worse, they are assiduously seeking to knock the bottom out of the bottom.
The radical right wing Republican/Teacaner drive is targeted at destroying the last meager remnants of a social safety net in this country. Lord knows their philosophy has pretty nearly eliminated what once was the most envied middle class life style in the world; it has eviscerated free public education through high school; it has done away with an affordable college opportunity for average kids; it has sent almost all well paying blue collar jobs to slave labor markets; it has virtually erased unions as a viable overall market and political force; it has delivered the democratic process into the hands of the radical corporatist enemy, the destroyers of democracy itself; and it threatens to burn through the last thin boundary of separation between the common citizen and casual cast out.
Now, they are openly and shamelessly after Social Security and Medicare. This insanity is happening at a time in history when human accomplishment and progress in science and medicine could and should translate into earlier retirement, full access to health care, and a better life for all. Instead, a tiny few are literally taking it all. We would have to be crazy to stand for it.
Now you know why I disdain the lame capitulations of today's Democrats and so-called liberals. They are weak. They are intellectually vapid and corrupt. They are appeasers of the immoral and greedy power in this country. They are feeding the beast. We need to stop allowing ourselves to be used as the feed stock. Now.
For God's sake, for your own sake, let's not do Mass'ers and slaves again.
Friday, September 9, 2011
Fighting Words?
Yes, of course, I watched Obama last night. But I decided to sleep on it before commenting. Here's why.
First, there was this little matter of a Saints football game. Seemed like a natural pairing with the Presidential address, since football can be fairly described as faux-politics. There are no stakes (unless you bet on it; a really dumb idea, trust me I know) and lots of overblown strategy, adrenalin rushes, and general RA!RA! Problem this morning is that the game left me very agitated and little able to sleep last night, in no small part due to our "brilliant" coach's decision not to score a "gimme" much needed field goal at a crucial juncture. That was a decision right even on the intelligence scale with Obama's choice to negotiate with the hostage holding Republican/Teacaners during the debt ceiling debacle. Which brings us back to the subject at hand.
Actually, the Presidential address didn't kick-off like a football contest. It started more like a real fight, emulating the great Floyd Patterson's "Peek-a-Boo" style. I took that as a good sign. We learned that the 300 billion dollar jolt had been jacked up to 450 billion. Sounded like it was on.
But was it? There really were few encouraging specifics for our corner. Much of the money, about 170 billion dollars can be scored to simply renewing the soon set to expire payroll tax break and extended unemployment benefits. This is needed, but represents simply running in place as opposed to stepping up. What we did learn of new spending was even less heartening. The payroll tax break will be increased by 50% for individual wage earners and also applied to businesses as an incentive to hire. This could indeed help move the employment needle in a positive direction, but it comes at the expense of cutting even deeper into the critical funding stream for Social Security.
Is this really the only or best way to raise money for stimulus, especially when the Treasury can borrow at historically low interests rates, and use what is actually almost free money to get the economy moving again? No. It is, instead, deeply troubling.
Then, we heard once again from the Democratic Party leader that Medicare and Medicaid need to be reformed. Having this mentioned in a jobs bill presentation is deeply troubling as well. It is a clear sign of Obama's continuing desire to appease those who wish to kill Medicare. And we know from earlier negotiations with his golfing buddy, John Boehner, the President's proposal is to raise the eligibility age from 65 to 67. This will keep older workers strapped to the wheel longer and deny new comers job opportunities which would otherwise open for them as a result of retirements occurring at a reasonable age. Just as bad, analysts say it will not save Medicare any money in the long run, as delayed treatments for chronic illnesses will cost more. This is bad, all bad, no matter how you look at it.
Then there were promises of investment which will be paid for by additional generic and unspecified cuts elsewhere. Where is the boost in that? I am not, as you can tell, fired up and ready to go. I am going to wait to hear more, and hope it's not more of the same.
First, there was this little matter of a Saints football game. Seemed like a natural pairing with the Presidential address, since football can be fairly described as faux-politics. There are no stakes (unless you bet on it; a really dumb idea, trust me I know) and lots of overblown strategy, adrenalin rushes, and general RA!RA! Problem this morning is that the game left me very agitated and little able to sleep last night, in no small part due to our "brilliant" coach's decision not to score a "gimme" much needed field goal at a crucial juncture. That was a decision right even on the intelligence scale with Obama's choice to negotiate with the hostage holding Republican/Teacaners during the debt ceiling debacle. Which brings us back to the subject at hand.
Actually, the Presidential address didn't kick-off like a football contest. It started more like a real fight, emulating the great Floyd Patterson's "Peek-a-Boo" style. I took that as a good sign. We learned that the 300 billion dollar jolt had been jacked up to 450 billion. Sounded like it was on.
But was it? There really were few encouraging specifics for our corner. Much of the money, about 170 billion dollars can be scored to simply renewing the soon set to expire payroll tax break and extended unemployment benefits. This is needed, but represents simply running in place as opposed to stepping up. What we did learn of new spending was even less heartening. The payroll tax break will be increased by 50% for individual wage earners and also applied to businesses as an incentive to hire. This could indeed help move the employment needle in a positive direction, but it comes at the expense of cutting even deeper into the critical funding stream for Social Security.
Is this really the only or best way to raise money for stimulus, especially when the Treasury can borrow at historically low interests rates, and use what is actually almost free money to get the economy moving again? No. It is, instead, deeply troubling.
Then, we heard once again from the Democratic Party leader that Medicare and Medicaid need to be reformed. Having this mentioned in a jobs bill presentation is deeply troubling as well. It is a clear sign of Obama's continuing desire to appease those who wish to kill Medicare. And we know from earlier negotiations with his golfing buddy, John Boehner, the President's proposal is to raise the eligibility age from 65 to 67. This will keep older workers strapped to the wheel longer and deny new comers job opportunities which would otherwise open for them as a result of retirements occurring at a reasonable age. Just as bad, analysts say it will not save Medicare any money in the long run, as delayed treatments for chronic illnesses will cost more. This is bad, all bad, no matter how you look at it.
Then there were promises of investment which will be paid for by additional generic and unspecified cuts elsewhere. Where is the boost in that? I am not, as you can tell, fired up and ready to go. I am going to wait to hear more, and hope it's not more of the same.
Thursday, September 8, 2011
Nothing New Under The Sun
David Brooks is back in the Picayune today with the same old head-up-his-rear-end view of things. This time he is using solar power and green tech public investment as a model to discourage the thought that government should step in and create jobs when the economic situation cries out for it. Hmm, picking on relatively new, and to most people exotic, technological undertakings to tar and discard an essential and historically proven method for rescuing a moribound economy from the collaspe occasioned by the excessive greed of the class Brooks worships, is feeding on low hanging fruit. And to screw up even that engenders a case of intellectual indigestion no amount of education could ever quiet.
But here goes. He quotes former World Bank economist Gordon Hughes: "There are no sound economic arguments to support an assertion that green energy policies will increase the total level of employment in the medium or longer term when we hold macroeconomic conditions constant." My italics. And, of course, that is also my point, as well as the point.
If public investment, as it should be, is targeted to producers of jobs in the home market, then jobs here will be created. If, conversely, money is thown at scoundrels who deal in cheap or virtually enslaved labor abroad, as Brooks and his politial crowd always insist should be permitted, then we all get screwed. What a revelation.
Moreover, green tech, as noted above is not an easy sell at this point to a consumer base so accustomed to more traditional energy sources and set-ups. Hence, a greater premium for start-up and conversion on a mass scale comes as no surprise to anyone. And it says absolutely nothing to contradict the undeniable fact that jobs, good jobs, and wide spread benefits are to be had from far more modest premiums, invested in infrastructure and similar social needs, i.e. roads, bridges, schools, libraries, hospitals, drainage and sewer systems, flood protection, water systems, ... well, I could go on and on, but I'm getting late for work, and you get the point. People with these new jobs could then go out and pump up the economy at large and perhaps even explore and experiment with the use of new energy sources.
But here goes. He quotes former World Bank economist Gordon Hughes: "There are no sound economic arguments to support an assertion that green energy policies will increase the total level of employment in the medium or longer term when we hold macroeconomic conditions constant." My italics. And, of course, that is also my point, as well as the point.
If public investment, as it should be, is targeted to producers of jobs in the home market, then jobs here will be created. If, conversely, money is thown at scoundrels who deal in cheap or virtually enslaved labor abroad, as Brooks and his politial crowd always insist should be permitted, then we all get screwed. What a revelation.
Moreover, green tech, as noted above is not an easy sell at this point to a consumer base so accustomed to more traditional energy sources and set-ups. Hence, a greater premium for start-up and conversion on a mass scale comes as no surprise to anyone. And it says absolutely nothing to contradict the undeniable fact that jobs, good jobs, and wide spread benefits are to be had from far more modest premiums, invested in infrastructure and similar social needs, i.e. roads, bridges, schools, libraries, hospitals, drainage and sewer systems, flood protection, water systems, ... well, I could go on and on, but I'm getting late for work, and you get the point. People with these new jobs could then go out and pump up the economy at large and perhaps even explore and experiment with the use of new energy sources.
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
In Appreciation
Gee, damn, but the Republicans are something to behold. Yes, I've been watching the GOP presidential candidate circus on television tonight. I have to admit I find myself somewhat grateful for the reality check.
While I have been and will continue to be unstintingly critical of and angry as hell at our sometime and almost always half-hearted friends, the Democrats, there is this difference: the Democrats are lame, the Republicans are lunatics.
Problem is the insanity they pass off as reasoning resonates with so many today. America seems as near to being a crazy country as it gets. The only thing that the putative Republican front-runner, Rick Perry, didn't do to prove that point was take his brain out and hit himself in the head with it. Texas is literally on fire right now, but Perry hasn't noticed any evidence of climate change. It's fair to say the insanity is exceeded only by the general ignorance. That means you and I have a lot of work to do. We, that is to say, union people, are the only hope the country has left. Period. Full stop.
While I have been and will continue to be unstintingly critical of and angry as hell at our sometime and almost always half-hearted friends, the Democrats, there is this difference: the Democrats are lame, the Republicans are lunatics.
Problem is the insanity they pass off as reasoning resonates with so many today. America seems as near to being a crazy country as it gets. The only thing that the putative Republican front-runner, Rick Perry, didn't do to prove that point was take his brain out and hit himself in the head with it. Texas is literally on fire right now, but Perry hasn't noticed any evidence of climate change. It's fair to say the insanity is exceeded only by the general ignorance. That means you and I have a lot of work to do. We, that is to say, union people, are the only hope the country has left. Period. Full stop.
Ya' Heard Me? Ya' Feel Me? and I Feel To Believe.
You can tell I'm a city boy. Come on and say it, "I heard that." Yeah, you right, that's what I'm talkin' about. I'm here to tell you that there's more juice in some things than others, even though they may seem the same.
The first two street expressions in the title to this little note essentially perform the same role as the ubiquitous "right" and "you know" speech fillers and rhetorical punctuations used by, shall we say, more mainstream speakers, almost every time they open their mouths. The third loosely translates into "here's what I think," which usually comes repeatedly within and at the conclusion of remarks from those same speakers.
But there is a world of difference to the listener. I personally appreciate the street version, it has more life, more step and pep. It tells me more, and that is what speech is all about. Bland speech is just blah, blah, blah, more of the same, wake me up when it's over stuff.
Which gets us to the salient question of the day: When is a stimulus not a stimulus? Well, when it fails to draw a reaction, let alone create a sensation.
Reports are that zerObama is coming out with a 300 billion dollar second shot "stimulus" proposal. Yawn. And that at least 170 billion will be in the form of extending the payroll tax break and unemployment benefits. Snore. Don't get me wrong, both are absolutely essential, but not the least bit sensational or stimulative. Neither of these represent a jolt of juice, they are mere maintenance of the status quo. Worse, they will likely be coupled with down-right counter-productive, out and out stupid calls for cut backs in other spending. The zerO giveth and the zerO taketh away, in the end it comes to zero.
The first 800 billion dollar stimulus was watered down by the same load of back filling material, as opposed to elevating measures. As a result, it only replaced 1.5% of the 6% whack to GDP, which had been occasioned by the housing bust and evaporating consumer demand.
So, when all is said and done, and zerO slides into, "Ya' heard me?" The answer will be, "yawn." And when he asks, "Ya' Feel Me?" I will have rolled over, "snore." All because I feel to believe, or you might say, here's what I think: We are in serious trouble, and this is almost no help at all.
The first two street expressions in the title to this little note essentially perform the same role as the ubiquitous "right" and "you know" speech fillers and rhetorical punctuations used by, shall we say, more mainstream speakers, almost every time they open their mouths. The third loosely translates into "here's what I think," which usually comes repeatedly within and at the conclusion of remarks from those same speakers.
But there is a world of difference to the listener. I personally appreciate the street version, it has more life, more step and pep. It tells me more, and that is what speech is all about. Bland speech is just blah, blah, blah, more of the same, wake me up when it's over stuff.
Which gets us to the salient question of the day: When is a stimulus not a stimulus? Well, when it fails to draw a reaction, let alone create a sensation.
Reports are that zerObama is coming out with a 300 billion dollar second shot "stimulus" proposal. Yawn. And that at least 170 billion will be in the form of extending the payroll tax break and unemployment benefits. Snore. Don't get me wrong, both are absolutely essential, but not the least bit sensational or stimulative. Neither of these represent a jolt of juice, they are mere maintenance of the status quo. Worse, they will likely be coupled with down-right counter-productive, out and out stupid calls for cut backs in other spending. The zerO giveth and the zerO taketh away, in the end it comes to zero.
The first 800 billion dollar stimulus was watered down by the same load of back filling material, as opposed to elevating measures. As a result, it only replaced 1.5% of the 6% whack to GDP, which had been occasioned by the housing bust and evaporating consumer demand.
So, when all is said and done, and zerO slides into, "Ya' heard me?" The answer will be, "yawn." And when he asks, "Ya' Feel Me?" I will have rolled over, "snore." All because I feel to believe, or you might say, here's what I think: We are in serious trouble, and this is almost no help at all.
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
The View From The Rear ... or, last dog pulling the sled
David Brooks has a piece in the Picayune which exemplifies the conservative head-up-the-wrong-part of the anatomy view of the world. Time will not allow full treatment from me this morning, but happily Paul Krugman has already deconstructed this mess for us. Please click on the link below, and enjoy.
The Conservative Hot Tub Time Machine
There are two comments I would like to squeeze in, however. First, Brooks says early in his excretion that "America became great ... because its citizens possessed certain vigorous virtues: self-reliance, personal responsibility, industriousness and a passion for freedom."
Just when did this greatness start to arise, about a hundred years after the Founding, when the slave holders were forced by a war to embrace some of this overstated love of freedom, and when the owners of slaves, like Jefferson and other Founders, could no longer produce red-headed, dark-skinned off-spring by forcing themselves on the enslaved young girls who caught their fancy?
Also, Brooks later claims that American education started to fall behind the world standard about 30 years ago. I don't know where he gets his numbers, probably his rear-end where he gets everything else he commits to writing, but if you accept that timely reference, then recognize that it coincides perfectly with the start of the so-called Reagan Revolution and the end of the era of "big government."
The Conservative Hot Tub Time Machine
There are two comments I would like to squeeze in, however. First, Brooks says early in his excretion that "America became great ... because its citizens possessed certain vigorous virtues: self-reliance, personal responsibility, industriousness and a passion for freedom."
Just when did this greatness start to arise, about a hundred years after the Founding, when the slave holders were forced by a war to embrace some of this overstated love of freedom, and when the owners of slaves, like Jefferson and other Founders, could no longer produce red-headed, dark-skinned off-spring by forcing themselves on the enslaved young girls who caught their fancy?
Also, Brooks later claims that American education started to fall behind the world standard about 30 years ago. I don't know where he gets his numbers, probably his rear-end where he gets everything else he commits to writing, but if you accept that timely reference, then recognize that it coincides perfectly with the start of the so-called Reagan Revolution and the end of the era of "big government."
Monday, September 5, 2011
Sunday, September 4, 2011
Vic Bussie
In these times, a digital keystroke quickly returns an abundance of general information regarding the lives and accomplishments of significant people. Vic Bussie was a such a person. Hence, I will not recite many of the noteworthy facts of Vic's life, which are as easy for any reader to find as this post itself. But on this day, the occasion of his passing, there are a few thoughts and recollections of Vic from my personal experience which an Internet search engine could not produce.
Dignity and presence, those are the characteristics that I would say best described Vic. He was a natural leader. He could be both firery and folksy. I should think the fire was more in evidence in earlier years, when he was successful in campaigning to repeal the first Louisiana state right-to-work law in 1956 (for more on this subject, see earlier post, The Louisiana Bus), than in his later years, when he labored valiantly to persevere despite the dominance of big money anti-union business political operations, which enacted a new right-to-work law in 1976. Through it all he commanded the respect and admiration of friend and foe alike.
Trust, personal trust, was his purchase on the ground he stood. And it bought him a lot of room in which to operate, both nationally and locally. It was a priceless quality that enabled Vic to accomplish many things in the public arena.
It could also task him with a rather surprising chore on occasion. When Governor Earl Long was committed to the mental asylum in Mandeville, he was only able to gain release by firing the Director of that state facility, Jesse Bankston, and appointing a replacement who would give him a clean bill of health. By then, however, the number of people Earl trusted were not terribly numerous, so he called on Vic to come get him and drive him back to Baton Rouge.
Vic was so strong and respected a part of the labor movement for so long, it seems especially poignant and ironic to say good-bye on Labor Day weekend. And while I am not given to reading much into coincidence, honestly, it does kind of tug at me a bit, much like the fact that Thomas Jefferson passed away on the 4th of July.
Dignity and presence, those are the characteristics that I would say best described Vic. He was a natural leader. He could be both firery and folksy. I should think the fire was more in evidence in earlier years, when he was successful in campaigning to repeal the first Louisiana state right-to-work law in 1956 (for more on this subject, see earlier post, The Louisiana Bus), than in his later years, when he labored valiantly to persevere despite the dominance of big money anti-union business political operations, which enacted a new right-to-work law in 1976. Through it all he commanded the respect and admiration of friend and foe alike.
Trust, personal trust, was his purchase on the ground he stood. And it bought him a lot of room in which to operate, both nationally and locally. It was a priceless quality that enabled Vic to accomplish many things in the public arena.
It could also task him with a rather surprising chore on occasion. When Governor Earl Long was committed to the mental asylum in Mandeville, he was only able to gain release by firing the Director of that state facility, Jesse Bankston, and appointing a replacement who would give him a clean bill of health. By then, however, the number of people Earl trusted were not terribly numerous, so he called on Vic to come get him and drive him back to Baton Rouge.
Vic was so strong and respected a part of the labor movement for so long, it seems especially poignant and ironic to say good-bye on Labor Day weekend. And while I am not given to reading much into coincidence, honestly, it does kind of tug at me a bit, much like the fact that Thomas Jefferson passed away on the 4th of July.
Saturday, September 3, 2011
The Zero Man
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
..... from, The Hollow Men, by T.S. Eliot
Well, it's official, the most recent employment statistics show ZERO new jobs were created in August. The acknowledged or admitted unemployment rate remains at 9.1%; honest assessments have it well into the double digits, and climbing. Obama is living down to the performance expectations implied in the nickname (zerObama) I gave him. How I wish I had been wrong, not prophetic. Alas, it was not my choice, it was his.
Meanwhile, word is the so-called "Super Committee," which will deliberate on exactly how to screw this faltering and failing economy even deeper into the ground, is going to start meeting on September 8th. Tragically, no matter what this exercise in faux-democracy produces, growth killing austerity has been foreordained by the process which created it.
Remember, zerObama failed to achieve what he perversely called a "Grand Bargain" with Boehner, so he settled for what can only be dubbed a corrupt bargain. As a result, the best we can hope for from the "Stupor Super Committee" is an agreement to further cripple this already hobbled and job-bleeding economy with cuts that at least do not affect Social Security and Medicare. No doubt we won't get the best outcome. Regardless, some 1.5 trillion dollars in reduced economic activity is coming our way, all thanks to zerObama.
And now we are told the Zero Man will participate in the Detroit Labor Day celebration. We have been provided with an advance version of the remarks he intends to deliver for our appreciation. The attending crowd will be treated to empty gestures and poltergeistic assurances of progress.
It's like the nuns at St. Alphonsus school would admonish us, as they tapped on our talkative heads with a yard stick, "an empty vessel makes the most noise." And, might I add, there's nothing more hollow than zero.
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
..... from, The Hollow Men, by T.S. Eliot
Well, it's official, the most recent employment statistics show ZERO new jobs were created in August. The acknowledged or admitted unemployment rate remains at 9.1%; honest assessments have it well into the double digits, and climbing. Obama is living down to the performance expectations implied in the nickname (zerObama) I gave him. How I wish I had been wrong, not prophetic. Alas, it was not my choice, it was his.
Meanwhile, word is the so-called "Super Committee," which will deliberate on exactly how to screw this faltering and failing economy even deeper into the ground, is going to start meeting on September 8th. Tragically, no matter what this exercise in faux-democracy produces, growth killing austerity has been foreordained by the process which created it.
Remember, zerObama failed to achieve what he perversely called a "Grand Bargain" with Boehner, so he settled for what can only be dubbed a corrupt bargain. As a result, the best we can hope for from the "
And now we are told the Zero Man will participate in the Detroit Labor Day celebration. We have been provided with an advance version of the remarks he intends to deliver for our appreciation. The attending crowd will be treated to empty gestures and poltergeistic assurances of progress.
It's like the nuns at St. Alphonsus school would admonish us, as they tapped on our talkative heads with a yard stick, "an empty vessel makes the most noise." And, might I add, there's nothing more hollow than zero.
Friday, September 2, 2011
When Unions Go Away
Welcome to the last universal work day before our holiday. In observance, a note on perhaps the most important yet often unremarked gift of the labor movement. It was a far more common feature of our employment standards in the past, and has been in steady decline right along with the disappearance of unions in this country. It is no coincidence that when unions go away, so do all the best things about work.
Pensions have all but disappeared from the vast majority of employee compensation packages. In those instances when something is offered as a replacement, it is in the form of some kind of self-funded savings plan, or perhaps an employer assisted savings scheme, with the assistance aspect steadily declining ever since this trend took hold. Most workers get nothing at all.
These 401 type plans have been sold like tickets to an island paradise since at least the early 1980s. And who doesn't want to get to paradise? The problem is that there has been hell to pay for the average worker as a result of the shift from a stable and reliable traditional pension system to the risk of becoming a target in that shooting gallery on Wall Street, while gambling on growing meager savings into an adequate nest egg over the course of a normal working life. Can you say "sucker?"
Unions developed traditional pension plans as a means of providing for a secure retirement income, through the building of an equity stake in the business or industry to which workers contributed skills and time over the course of their productive years. Owners are automatic equity holders, as a function of the capital outlay for start-up. Often, this capital outlay is not just the owners' money, but is borrowed from the aggregate pool of savings in the economy as a whole. However you score it, though, it comes down to our time and their money. Pensions formed a marriage of sorts between the two, so that both partners could share in the rewards of the enterprise over the long haul.
Now, for those without pensions, employers simply divorce them in old age, without the burden of any community property obligation. They give workers an allowance and lunch money, then send them packing when it's time to say good-bye. Employers continue on to paradise, while workers drift off to whatever fate awaits. New workers can always be had to continue the employer's journey. Some are always needed for a business to operate; it's really not anything like God created the universe, set things in motion, went away and let the sun come up and go down everyday on its own accord. No, businesses do need us, they just don't give a damn what happens to us after they've used us up. It reminds me of that old line from the stick-up man, "What will it be, your money or your life?" When it comes to our work, it should not come down to an ultimatum between their money or our life. Both should be rewarded long-term.
If you doubt that this strategy by employers is just that cold and calculating, consider that their next target is Social Security, so they can forever be relieved of any contribution or commitment to our future. When or if unions finally do go away, so will it and everything good in work and a working life in this country.
Pensions have all but disappeared from the vast majority of employee compensation packages. In those instances when something is offered as a replacement, it is in the form of some kind of self-funded savings plan, or perhaps an employer assisted savings scheme, with the assistance aspect steadily declining ever since this trend took hold. Most workers get nothing at all.
These 401 type plans have been sold like tickets to an island paradise since at least the early 1980s. And who doesn't want to get to paradise? The problem is that there has been hell to pay for the average worker as a result of the shift from a stable and reliable traditional pension system to the risk of becoming a target in that shooting gallery on Wall Street, while gambling on growing meager savings into an adequate nest egg over the course of a normal working life. Can you say "sucker?"
Unions developed traditional pension plans as a means of providing for a secure retirement income, through the building of an equity stake in the business or industry to which workers contributed skills and time over the course of their productive years. Owners are automatic equity holders, as a function of the capital outlay for start-up. Often, this capital outlay is not just the owners' money, but is borrowed from the aggregate pool of savings in the economy as a whole. However you score it, though, it comes down to our time and their money. Pensions formed a marriage of sorts between the two, so that both partners could share in the rewards of the enterprise over the long haul.
Now, for those without pensions, employers simply divorce them in old age, without the burden of any community property obligation. They give workers an allowance and lunch money, then send them packing when it's time to say good-bye. Employers continue on to paradise, while workers drift off to whatever fate awaits. New workers can always be had to continue the employer's journey. Some are always needed for a business to operate; it's really not anything like God created the universe, set things in motion, went away and let the sun come up and go down everyday on its own accord. No, businesses do need us, they just don't give a damn what happens to us after they've used us up. It reminds me of that old line from the stick-up man, "What will it be, your money or your life?" When it comes to our work, it should not come down to an ultimatum between their money or our life. Both should be rewarded long-term.
If you doubt that this strategy by employers is just that cold and calculating, consider that their next target is Social Security, so they can forever be relieved of any contribution or commitment to our future. When or if unions finally do go away, so will it and everything good in work and a working life in this country.
Thursday, September 1, 2011
Simple Arithmetic ... or Trumka Does The Math
We're getting closer to Labor Day, the date after which zerObama promised to promise us something to reverse the tragic on-going and worsening jobs crisis. You remember, don't you? Well, maybe not, there really is nothing in a promise to promise is there? So, the upshot is that what comes out of this no doubt will disappoint, but it should not surprise us.
The opening acts took the stage yesterday. I start with AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka. This, I admit, is a little self-indulgent. I've been waiting quite a while for an AFL-CIO leader like this. Some of the criticisms Trumka has leveled at Obama make my "zerObama" characterization almost look like a compliment. I won't repeat them all here, they've been in the news often in recent weeks, and can easily be researched. Essentially, Trumka has been saying about Obama and most of the Democrats what I have for years, to wit: We are sick and tired of making winners of people who turn on us, turn around, and make us losers. That has to stop.
Yesterday, Trumka held a press conference to lay out the AFL-CIO wish list and strategy for getting the country back to work. No doubt this was done to get the jump on the start of the promise-to-promise- us-something zerObama process, and give it a little push. I am wholly on board, especially with the opening paragraph which declares our need and determination to remake our political identity into one which is an "independent political voice that's not beholden to parties or politicians ..." Amen. See the excerpt below.
The nation’s ailing economy needs a prescription powerful enough to heal the jobs crisis and America’s working families need an independent political voice that’s not beholden to parties or politicians, says AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka.
At a Labor Day press conference this afternoon, Trumka unveiled a six-point “America Wants to Work” jobs and economy initiative “that is serious and reflects the scale of the crisis we face.” The plan includes:
Meanwhile, zerObama sent a notice to Speaker Boehner of his desire to address a joint session of Congress on Wednesday night next week, the same time the Republican presidential candidates will be on television debating, and no doubt tearing him up. Well,President Speaker Boehner immediately replied with a change of date to the next night, when New Orleans and Green Bay will be opening the season on national television. Of course, zerObama immediately agreed, after all Boehner is still running and ruining the country, don't you know. And the elected President once again is proving, as he has every other time he's tried anything of significance, that zero times anything equals zero.
The opening acts took the stage yesterday. I start with AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka. This, I admit, is a little self-indulgent. I've been waiting quite a while for an AFL-CIO leader like this. Some of the criticisms Trumka has leveled at Obama make my "zerObama" characterization almost look like a compliment. I won't repeat them all here, they've been in the news often in recent weeks, and can easily be researched. Essentially, Trumka has been saying about Obama and most of the Democrats what I have for years, to wit: We are sick and tired of making winners of people who turn on us, turn around, and make us losers. That has to stop.
Yesterday, Trumka held a press conference to lay out the AFL-CIO wish list and strategy for getting the country back to work. No doubt this was done to get the jump on the start of the promise-to-promise- us-something zerObama process, and give it a little push. I am wholly on board, especially with the opening paragraph which declares our need and determination to remake our political identity into one which is an "independent political voice that's not beholden to parties or politicians ..." Amen. See the excerpt below.
 |
At a Labor Day press conference this afternoon, Trumka unveiled a six-point “America Wants to Work” jobs and economy initiative “that is serious and reflects the scale of the crisis we face.” The plan includes:
- Rebuilding the nation’s transportation and energy infrastructure;
- Reviving U.S. manufacturing and ending the exportation of U.S. jobs;
- Putting people to work in local communities;
- Helping states and local governments to prevent layoffs and cuts to public services;
- Extending unemployment insurance (UI) benefits and helping homeowners keep their homes; and
- Reforming Wall Street so it helps Main Street create jobs.
Meanwhile, zerObama sent a notice to Speaker Boehner of his desire to address a joint session of Congress on Wednesday night next week, the same time the Republican presidential candidates will be on television debating, and no doubt tearing him up. Well,
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