From The Washington Post -- November 2, 2010:
What's behind the Tea Party's ire?
By Eugene Robinson
The first African American president takes office, and almost immediately we see the birth of a big, passionate national movement - overwhelmingly white and lavishly funded - that tries its best to delegitimize that president, seeks to thwart his every initiative, and manages to bring the discredited and moribund opposition party roaring back to life. Coincidence?
First, I'll state the obvious: It's not racist to criticize President Obama, it's not racist to have conservative views, and it's not racist to join the Tea Party. But there's something about the nature and tone of the most vitriolic attacks on the president that I believe is distinctive - and difficult to explain without asking whether race is playing a role.
One thing that struck me from the beginning about the Tea Party rhetoric is the idea of reclaiming something that has been taken away.
At a recent campaign rally in Paducah, Ky., Senate candidate Rand Paul, a darling of the Tea Party movement, drew thunderous applause when he said that if Republicans win, "we get to go to Washington and take back our government."
Take it back from whom? Maybe he thinks it goes without saying, because he didn't say.
On Sunday, in a last-minute fundraising appeal, Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee implored his supporters to help "return American government to the American people."
Again, who's in possession of the government, if not the American people? The non-American people? The un-American people?
There's an obvious answer, but it's one that generally comes from the progressive end of the political spectrum: Americans must fight to take back their government from the lobbyists and big-money special interests that shape our laws to suit their own interests, not for the good of the nation.
That may be what some Tea Partiers have in mind, but the movement hasn't seen fit to make campaign finance reform one of its major issues. And the establishment Republicans who are surfing the Tea Party wave - while at the same time scheming to co-opt the movement - would view the idea of taking money out of politics with horror, if they thought it might actually happen.
So who stole the government? What makes some people feel more disenfranchised now than they were, say, during the presidency of George W. Bush?
After all, it was Bush who inherited a budget surplus and left behind a suffocating deficit - I'm not being tendentious, just stating the facts. It was Bush who launched two wars without making any provision in the budget to pay for them, who proposed and won an expensive new prescription-drug entitlement without paying for it, who bailed out irresponsible Wall Street firms with the $700 billion TARP program.
Bush was vilified by critics while he was in office but not with the suggestion that somehow the government had been seized or usurped - that it had fallen into hands that were not those of "the American people." Yet this is the Tea Party suggestion about Obama.
Underlying all the Tea Party's issues and complaints, it appears to me, is the entirely legitimate issue of the relationship between the individual and the federal government. But why would this concern about oppressive, intrusive government become so acute now? Why didn't, say, government surveillance of domestic phone calls and e-mails get the constitutional fundamentalists all worked up?
I have to wonder what it is about Obama that provokes and sustains all this Tea Party ire. I wonder how he can be seen as "elitist," when he grew up in modest circumstances - his mother was on food stamps for a time - and paid for his fancy-pants education with student loans. I wonder how people who genuinely cherish the American dream can look at a man who lived that dream and feel no connection, no empathy.
I ask myself what's so different about Obama, and the answer is pretty obvious: He's black. For whatever reason, I think this makes some people unsettled, anxious, even suspicious - witness the willingness of so many to believe absurd conspiracy theories about Obama's birthplace, his religion and even his absent father's supposed Svengali-like influence from the grave.
Obama has made mistakes that rightly cost him political support. But I can't help believing that the Tea Party's rise was partly due to circumstances beyond his control - that he's different from other presidents, and that the difference is his race.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Limbaugh Lies Again: Rush Is Right -- For Himself -- And Dead Wrong for America!
From Media Matters for America -- August 31, 2011:
Limbaugh Pushes Myth That Unemployment Benefits Have "No Stimulative Effect"
Rush Limbaugh claimed that "there is no stimulative effect of unemployment benefits." But economists agree that unemployment benefits do have a strong effect on job creation and growth.
Limbaugh: "There Is No Stimulative Effect Of Unemployment Benefits -- None Whatsoever." From the August 30 edition of Premiere Radio Networks' The Rush Limbaugh Show:
This regime, from Pelosi to any number of people, try to make the claim that unemployment benefits stimulate the economy. Jay Carney even said, "Oh yeah, I mean, it really works out there, you putting money in people's pockets that they're gonna go spend, they're not ganna save it. And so, yeah, it'll stimulate the economy."
Where does the money come from? You have to take it away from somebody before you give it to somebody else. It's a wash. There is no stimulative effect of unemployment benefits -- none whatsoever. Whether you borrow the money, or print it, or get it via taxes, you still have to take it from some place in the private sector to give it to somebody else in the private sector. It zeros out. And probably is a net negative because it also has the added benefit of promoting laziness, slothfulness. The longer you pay people to not do anything, the longer they'll not do anything. [Premiere Radio Networks, The Rush Limbaugh Show, 8/30/11]
But Economists Agree That Unemployment Benefits Have A Strong Effect On Job Creation And Growth
Dean Baker: Unemployment Insurance "Stimulates The Economy" By "Put[ting] Money In...[The] Pockets" Of People Who Are "Very Likely To Spend" It. In an email to Media Matters, Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, stated:
UI stimulates the economy for the same reason that tax cuts provide stimulus to the economy, they put money in people's pockets. However, UI benefits will provide more stimulus per dollar because they are going to people who we know are very likely to spend the money. A large portion of money paid out in tax cuts are likely to be saved, especially if they go to the wealthy. [Email to Media Matters, 8/30/11]
Mark Zandi Estimated That Extending Unemployment Benefits Provides Significant Stimulus. In his July 24, 2008, congressional testimony, Mark Zandi, Moody's Economy.com chief economist and a former adviser to John McCain, ranked extended unemployment benefits behind only food stamps in terms of economic "bang for the buck." The Economic Policy Institute created the following graphic based on Zandi's figures:
CBO Scored "Increasing Aid To The Unemployed" As The Highest-Scoring Policy Proposal To Stimulate Economy. In a January 2010 report on "Policies for Increasing Economic Growth and Employment in 2010 and 2011," the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that extending aid to the unemployed would have one of the strongest stimulative effects on the economy:
Policies that could be implemented relatively quickly or targeted toward people whose consumption tends to be restricted by their income, such as reducing payroll taxes for firms that increase payroll or increasing aid to the unemployed, would have the largest effects on output and employment per dollar of budgetary cost in 2010 and 2011.
Limbaugh Pushes Myth That Unemployment Benefits Have "No Stimulative Effect"
Rush Limbaugh claimed that "there is no stimulative effect of unemployment benefits." But economists agree that unemployment benefits do have a strong effect on job creation and growth.
Limbaugh: "There Is No Stimulative Effect Of Unemployment Benefits -- None Whatsoever." From the August 30 edition of Premiere Radio Networks' The Rush Limbaugh Show:
This regime, from Pelosi to any number of people, try to make the claim that unemployment benefits stimulate the economy. Jay Carney even said, "Oh yeah, I mean, it really works out there, you putting money in people's pockets that they're gonna go spend, they're not ganna save it. And so, yeah, it'll stimulate the economy."
Where does the money come from? You have to take it away from somebody before you give it to somebody else. It's a wash. There is no stimulative effect of unemployment benefits -- none whatsoever. Whether you borrow the money, or print it, or get it via taxes, you still have to take it from some place in the private sector to give it to somebody else in the private sector. It zeros out. And probably is a net negative because it also has the added benefit of promoting laziness, slothfulness. The longer you pay people to not do anything, the longer they'll not do anything. [Premiere Radio Networks, The Rush Limbaugh Show, 8/30/11]
But Economists Agree That Unemployment Benefits Have A Strong Effect On Job Creation And Growth
Dean Baker: Unemployment Insurance "Stimulates The Economy" By "Put[ting] Money In...[The] Pockets" Of People Who Are "Very Likely To Spend" It. In an email to Media Matters, Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, stated:
UI stimulates the economy for the same reason that tax cuts provide stimulus to the economy, they put money in people's pockets. However, UI benefits will provide more stimulus per dollar because they are going to people who we know are very likely to spend the money. A large portion of money paid out in tax cuts are likely to be saved, especially if they go to the wealthy. [Email to Media Matters, 8/30/11]
Mark Zandi Estimated That Extending Unemployment Benefits Provides Significant Stimulus. In his July 24, 2008, congressional testimony, Mark Zandi, Moody's Economy.com chief economist and a former adviser to John McCain, ranked extended unemployment benefits behind only food stamps in terms of economic "bang for the buck." The Economic Policy Institute created the following graphic based on Zandi's figures:
CBO Scored "Increasing Aid To The Unemployed" As The Highest-Scoring Policy Proposal To Stimulate Economy. In a January 2010 report on "Policies for Increasing Economic Growth and Employment in 2010 and 2011," the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that extending aid to the unemployed would have one of the strongest stimulative effects on the economy:
Policies that could be implemented relatively quickly or targeted toward people whose consumption tends to be restricted by their income, such as reducing payroll taxes for firms that increase payroll or increasing aid to the unemployed, would have the largest effects on output and employment per dollar of budgetary cost in 2010 and 2011.
It's Time for Conservatives to Apologize for Consistently Lying to America
From Media Matters for America -- August 31, 2011:
Krauthammer Urges GOP To Attack Obama Using Ridiculous Apology Tour Line
Fox News contributor Charles Krauthammer has urged Republican presidential candidates to campaign on the claim that President Obama "apologizes for America," saying "it's a line of attack that Republicans can easily use on the president and ought to use on the president." In fact, the claim has been called "ridiculous" and "not borne out by the facts," and Republicans have been criticized for trying to "invent a storyline that does not appear to exist."
Krauthammer: GOP Candidates Should Use Apology Tour Falsehood In Attacks On Obama
Krauthammer: "It's A Line Of Attack That Republicans Can Easily Use On The President And Ought To Use On The President." On Fox News' Special Report, panelists discussed a speech by Mitt Romney, in which he said of Obama, "Have we ever had a president who was so eager to address the world with an apology on his lips?" From the segment:
SHANNON BREAM (guest host): And you mentioned that he talked about the president today. [In] part of his speech, he said: "Have we ever had a president who was so eager to address the world with an apology on his lips and a doubt in his heart?" Charles, is it time for him to spend more time focused on the president than it is [Rick] Perry for now?
KRAUTHAMMER: Well, I think both in the general and in the Republican campaign, that line is going to succeed. I think one of the things that the president has done when he -- especially when he goes abroad and apologizes for America, it's extremely unpopular.
And look, in relation to what we spoke about earlier about Guantánamo. He went abroad and attacked and denounced Guantánamo as a stain on America. And yet he, himself, has kept it open. So it isn't exactly consistent, and I think it's a line of attack that Republicans can easily use on the president and ought to use on the president. [Fox News, Special Report with Bret Baier, 8/30/11]
In Fact, The Apology Tour Attack Is "Ridiculous" And "Not Borne Out By The Facts"
Associated Press: "Obama Has Not Apologized For America." In June, the Associated Press rejected a similar claim by Romney that Obama "traveled around the globe to apologize for America." The AP wrote that Romney "criticized the president for issuing apologies to the world that were never made," and added:
ROMNEY: "A few months into office, he traveled around the globe to apologize for America."
THE FACTS: Obama has not apologized for America. What he has done, in travels early in his presidency and since, is to make clear his belief that the U.S. is not beyond reproach. He has told foreigners that the U.S. at times acted "contrary to our traditions and ideals" in its treatment of terrorist suspects, that "America has too often been selective in its promotion of democracy," that the U.S. "certainly shares blame" for international economic turmoil and has sometimes shown arrogance toward allies. Obama, whose criticisms of America's past were typically balanced by praise, was in most cases taking issue with policies or the record of the previous administration, not an unusual approach for a new president -- or a presidential candidate. Romney's actual point seems to be that Obama has been too critical of his country.
But there has been no formal -- or informal -- apology. No saying "sorry" on behalf of America. [Associated Press, 6/3/11]
PolitiFact: "It's A Ridiculous Charge" That Obama Has Apologized For America. PolitiFact twice investigated Romney's claims that Obama "apologized" for America and "traveled around the globe to apologize for America." The website found both statements to be false. [PolitiFact, 3/15/10, 6/3/11]
Wash. Post Fact Checker: "The Apology Tour Never Happened." The Washington Post's Glenn Kessler gave the repeated charge that Obama has apologized for America its worst rating of "Four Pinocchios":
The claim that Obama repeatedly has apologized for the United States is not borne out by the facts, especially if his full quotes are viewed in context.
Obama often was trying to draw a rhetorical distinction between his policies and that of President Bush, a common practice when the presidency changes parties. The shift in policies, in fact, might have been more dramatic from Clinton to Bush than from Bush to Obama, given how Obama has largely maintained Bush's approach to fighting terrorism.
In other cases, Obama's quotes have been selectively trimmed for political purposes. Or they were not much different than sentiments expressed by Bush or his secretary of state. Republicans may certainly disagree with Obama's handling of foreign policy or particular policies he has pursued, but they should not invent a storyline that does not appear to exist.
Note to GOP speechwriters and campaign ad makers: The apology tour never happened. [The Washington Post, The Fact Checker, 2/22/11]
Krauthammer Urges GOP To Attack Obama Using Ridiculous Apology Tour Line
Fox News contributor Charles Krauthammer has urged Republican presidential candidates to campaign on the claim that President Obama "apologizes for America," saying "it's a line of attack that Republicans can easily use on the president and ought to use on the president." In fact, the claim has been called "ridiculous" and "not borne out by the facts," and Republicans have been criticized for trying to "invent a storyline that does not appear to exist."
Krauthammer: GOP Candidates Should Use Apology Tour Falsehood In Attacks On Obama
Krauthammer: "It's A Line Of Attack That Republicans Can Easily Use On The President And Ought To Use On The President." On Fox News' Special Report, panelists discussed a speech by Mitt Romney, in which he said of Obama, "Have we ever had a president who was so eager to address the world with an apology on his lips?" From the segment:
SHANNON BREAM (guest host): And you mentioned that he talked about the president today. [In] part of his speech, he said: "Have we ever had a president who was so eager to address the world with an apology on his lips and a doubt in his heart?" Charles, is it time for him to spend more time focused on the president than it is [Rick] Perry for now?
KRAUTHAMMER: Well, I think both in the general and in the Republican campaign, that line is going to succeed. I think one of the things that the president has done when he -- especially when he goes abroad and apologizes for America, it's extremely unpopular.
And look, in relation to what we spoke about earlier about Guantánamo. He went abroad and attacked and denounced Guantánamo as a stain on America. And yet he, himself, has kept it open. So it isn't exactly consistent, and I think it's a line of attack that Republicans can easily use on the president and ought to use on the president. [Fox News, Special Report with Bret Baier, 8/30/11]
In Fact, The Apology Tour Attack Is "Ridiculous" And "Not Borne Out By The Facts"
Associated Press: "Obama Has Not Apologized For America." In June, the Associated Press rejected a similar claim by Romney that Obama "traveled around the globe to apologize for America." The AP wrote that Romney "criticized the president for issuing apologies to the world that were never made," and added:
ROMNEY: "A few months into office, he traveled around the globe to apologize for America."
THE FACTS: Obama has not apologized for America. What he has done, in travels early in his presidency and since, is to make clear his belief that the U.S. is not beyond reproach. He has told foreigners that the U.S. at times acted "contrary to our traditions and ideals" in its treatment of terrorist suspects, that "America has too often been selective in its promotion of democracy," that the U.S. "certainly shares blame" for international economic turmoil and has sometimes shown arrogance toward allies. Obama, whose criticisms of America's past were typically balanced by praise, was in most cases taking issue with policies or the record of the previous administration, not an unusual approach for a new president -- or a presidential candidate. Romney's actual point seems to be that Obama has been too critical of his country.
But there has been no formal -- or informal -- apology. No saying "sorry" on behalf of America. [Associated Press, 6/3/11]
PolitiFact: "It's A Ridiculous Charge" That Obama Has Apologized For America. PolitiFact twice investigated Romney's claims that Obama "apologized" for America and "traveled around the globe to apologize for America." The website found both statements to be false. [PolitiFact, 3/15/10, 6/3/11]
Wash. Post Fact Checker: "The Apology Tour Never Happened." The Washington Post's Glenn Kessler gave the repeated charge that Obama has apologized for America its worst rating of "Four Pinocchios":
The claim that Obama repeatedly has apologized for the United States is not borne out by the facts, especially if his full quotes are viewed in context.
Obama often was trying to draw a rhetorical distinction between his policies and that of President Bush, a common practice when the presidency changes parties. The shift in policies, in fact, might have been more dramatic from Clinton to Bush than from Bush to Obama, given how Obama has largely maintained Bush's approach to fighting terrorism.
In other cases, Obama's quotes have been selectively trimmed for political purposes. Or they were not much different than sentiments expressed by Bush or his secretary of state. Republicans may certainly disagree with Obama's handling of foreign policy or particular policies he has pursued, but they should not invent a storyline that does not appear to exist.
Note to GOP speechwriters and campaign ad makers: The apology tour never happened. [The Washington Post, The Fact Checker, 2/22/11]
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Republican Anti-American Terrorism Is Worse Than Ever
From Think Progress -- August 30, 2011:
Town Hall Turmoil Continues for the GOP
It’s Been a Long, Hot August for the GOP
Republican members of Congress have tried a few tricks to avoid facing their constituents this summer: some held only “pay-per-view” town halls, one put out a “watch list” of local activists , others confiscated cameras from town hall attendees, and many simply refused to hold town hall meetings at all.
Those who did hold town halls, however, heard a few messages loud and clear. Here’s a rundown of the top messages constituents delivered this August.
Where Are the Jobs?!
With the unemployment rate hovering around 9 percent and the House GOP threatening to kill, rather than create, millions of jobs, constituents were not shy about voicing their anger.
Check out this clip from a town hall held by Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI), chairman of the House Energy & Commerce Committee and a member of the super committee, during which his constituents broke out in a chant demanding jobs after one constituent also demanded that the wealthy be made to pay more in taxes:
Some voters, including those in the district of Rep. Randy Hultgren (R-IL), challenged Republicans to provide evidence that tax cuts for the wealthy create jobs, something that proved difficult since the Bush tax cuts ushered in the worst period of job creation since World War II:
Don’t Cut Medicare and Social Security
Anger wasn’t limited to blue states or swing districts. Sen. John Thune (R), who represents deep red South Dakota, said the top message he received from his constituents was “don’t cut my Medicare and Social Security.”
Just yesterday, a constituent received applause and cheers from the audience after asking Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) to raise the payroll tax cap in order to preserve Social Security:
Make the Wealthy Pay Their Fair Share in Taxes
As in previous recesses, one of the most common demands was that the wealthy be asked to pay their fair share in taxes. Sen. Mike Johanns (R-NE), for example, heard an earful from his constituents on this issue.
Many of the loudest voices and waving fingers urged Johanns to include tax increases — particularly applied to the wealthiest Americans — as part of the solution to debt reduction:
“The wealthy just hoard the cash.”
“The old tax rates worked well for the economy under Clinton.”
“Quit listening to the scare tactics, all the crap in the media.”
Jennifer Wendelin, who waited to be recognized by Johanns before voicing her opinion, said additional revenue has to be part of the debt reduction solution along with spending cuts.
“Big corporations and the rich have to pay their fair share,” she said after the meeting had concluded. “If we have to bite the bullet, they do, too.
“We can’t be forced to shoulder the entire burden,” she said.
Many others heard the same message, including Rep. Dan Lungren (R-CA) and Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL).
Pledge Allegiance to the Constitution, Not Grover Norquist
Anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist and his infamous anti-tax pledge , which enjoys almost universal adherence among congressional Republicans, have gained increasing notoriety in recent months. A sentiment echoed across the country, from North Dakota to California , is that representatives need to represent the views of their constituents, who want everyone including the wealthy and Big Oil to pay their fair share, not the views of Grover Norquist, a Washington, DC-based corporate lobbyist.
In One Sentence: Republicans can’t hide from the fact that Americans from coast to coast are demanding jobs, that the wealthy pay their fair share, and that we need to protect Medicare and Social Security instead of pledging to protect giveaways and handouts to corporations and others who don’t need them.
To pour even more Fuel on the Fire, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) won’t support disaster funding for states slammed by Hurricane Irene without cuts to First Responders.
Town Hall Turmoil Continues for the GOP
It’s Been a Long, Hot August for the GOP
Republican members of Congress have tried a few tricks to avoid facing their constituents this summer: some held only “pay-per-view” town halls, one put out a “watch list” of local activists , others confiscated cameras from town hall attendees, and many simply refused to hold town hall meetings at all.
Those who did hold town halls, however, heard a few messages loud and clear. Here’s a rundown of the top messages constituents delivered this August.
Where Are the Jobs?!
With the unemployment rate hovering around 9 percent and the House GOP threatening to kill, rather than create, millions of jobs, constituents were not shy about voicing their anger.
Check out this clip from a town hall held by Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI), chairman of the House Energy & Commerce Committee and a member of the super committee, during which his constituents broke out in a chant demanding jobs after one constituent also demanded that the wealthy be made to pay more in taxes:
Some voters, including those in the district of Rep. Randy Hultgren (R-IL), challenged Republicans to provide evidence that tax cuts for the wealthy create jobs, something that proved difficult since the Bush tax cuts ushered in the worst period of job creation since World War II:
Don’t Cut Medicare and Social Security
Anger wasn’t limited to blue states or swing districts. Sen. John Thune (R), who represents deep red South Dakota, said the top message he received from his constituents was “don’t cut my Medicare and Social Security.”
Just yesterday, a constituent received applause and cheers from the audience after asking Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) to raise the payroll tax cap in order to preserve Social Security:
Make the Wealthy Pay Their Fair Share in Taxes
As in previous recesses, one of the most common demands was that the wealthy be asked to pay their fair share in taxes. Sen. Mike Johanns (R-NE), for example, heard an earful from his constituents on this issue.
Many of the loudest voices and waving fingers urged Johanns to include tax increases — particularly applied to the wealthiest Americans — as part of the solution to debt reduction:
“The wealthy just hoard the cash.”
“The old tax rates worked well for the economy under Clinton.”
“Quit listening to the scare tactics, all the crap in the media.”
Jennifer Wendelin, who waited to be recognized by Johanns before voicing her opinion, said additional revenue has to be part of the debt reduction solution along with spending cuts.
“Big corporations and the rich have to pay their fair share,” she said after the meeting had concluded. “If we have to bite the bullet, they do, too.
“We can’t be forced to shoulder the entire burden,” she said.
Many others heard the same message, including Rep. Dan Lungren (R-CA) and Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL).
Pledge Allegiance to the Constitution, Not Grover Norquist
Anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist and his infamous anti-tax pledge , which enjoys almost universal adherence among congressional Republicans, have gained increasing notoriety in recent months. A sentiment echoed across the country, from North Dakota to California , is that representatives need to represent the views of their constituents, who want everyone including the wealthy and Big Oil to pay their fair share, not the views of Grover Norquist, a Washington, DC-based corporate lobbyist.
In One Sentence: Republicans can’t hide from the fact that Americans from coast to coast are demanding jobs, that the wealthy pay their fair share, and that we need to protect Medicare and Social Security instead of pledging to protect giveaways and handouts to corporations and others who don’t need them.
To pour even more Fuel on the Fire, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) won’t support disaster funding for states slammed by Hurricane Irene without cuts to First Responders.
The Republican "Jobs" Plan: Stop Environmental Regulations
From The Washington Post -- August 29, 2011
The Republican jobs plan: stop environmental regulations
By Stephen Stromberg
In the 2010 midterm elections Republicans ran on a platform of repeal and replace — cancel President Obama’s signature health-care law, and replace it with a GOP plan. After taking the House, the Republican majority passed a repeal of the health-care law, but they haven’t unified behind a proposal to replace it. The status quo before the law, critics rightly point out, is hardly an alternative. The GOP can attack what it doesn’t like, but can it govern?
Now, Republicans have outlined a jobs agenda that mainly consists of eviscerating federal regulations they don’t like, with a particular focus on rules designed to protect the environment. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) released a memorandum to GOP lawmakers on Monday that targets the ten most “job-destroying” regulations in the federal register. Seven of them are rules the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is on track to impose.
But what’s the GOP alternative to EPA restrictions on mercury, acid gases, ozone and greenhouse emissions? Cantor’s memo only talks about delaying and weakening proposed rules, not some different approach to environmental protection. Maybe we just don’t need any more of that?
There are undoubted costs to environmental regulations. But there are also large benefits. Cantor’s document just doesn’t mention any. A recent Office of Management and Budget review found that existing EPA regulations, particularly those dealing with the air, are among the costliest to comply with — but also among the most valuable, with benefits often vastly exceeding costs, dollar for dollar. In fact, part of the reason the price of environmental regulation is known is that EPA must run rigorous cost-benefit analyses on its rules before finalizing them. That’s how it reckons that every dollar spent on some of the measures Cantor is targeting — those cutting cross-state particulate and ozone pollution — will result in $30 in economic benefits from employees taking fewer sick days, a lower incidence of many chronic illnesses, and fewer early deaths. And let’s not even get into climate change.
Nevertheless, Republicans would do the country a service if they made a serious case that the EPA isn’t maximizing the net benefits of its regulations, or if they argued that government standard-setting is an expensive way to achieve the valuable ends of air and water protection, and then proposed an alternative that cut out the bureaucrats. The question of just how the government should intervene to protect air and water isn’t settled. But they explicitly oppose more decentralized, market-based anti-pollution measures, too.
If Republicans block putting a price on carbon emissions or other pollutants, and if they criticize federal money spent on things such as clean energy research, they leave anyone concerned with global warming or ambient air and water quality with few choices but to press for robust executive-branch regulation already allowed under the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts. It might not be pretty, and it might not be cheap. But it’s almost certainly better than doing little or nothing, which seems to be the GOP’s plan.
UPDATE: In response to a question on whether the GOP has an alternative plan for environmental protection, a Cantor spokesperson e-mails: “Regardless of the regulation, House Republicans believe they should be written in a way that will not have a negative impact on the economy or make it harder for businesses small and large to create jobs.”
The Republican jobs plan: stop environmental regulations
By Stephen Stromberg
In the 2010 midterm elections Republicans ran on a platform of repeal and replace — cancel President Obama’s signature health-care law, and replace it with a GOP plan. After taking the House, the Republican majority passed a repeal of the health-care law, but they haven’t unified behind a proposal to replace it. The status quo before the law, critics rightly point out, is hardly an alternative. The GOP can attack what it doesn’t like, but can it govern?
Now, Republicans have outlined a jobs agenda that mainly consists of eviscerating federal regulations they don’t like, with a particular focus on rules designed to protect the environment. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) released a memorandum to GOP lawmakers on Monday that targets the ten most “job-destroying” regulations in the federal register. Seven of them are rules the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is on track to impose.
But what’s the GOP alternative to EPA restrictions on mercury, acid gases, ozone and greenhouse emissions? Cantor’s memo only talks about delaying and weakening proposed rules, not some different approach to environmental protection. Maybe we just don’t need any more of that?
There are undoubted costs to environmental regulations. But there are also large benefits. Cantor’s document just doesn’t mention any. A recent Office of Management and Budget review found that existing EPA regulations, particularly those dealing with the air, are among the costliest to comply with — but also among the most valuable, with benefits often vastly exceeding costs, dollar for dollar. In fact, part of the reason the price of environmental regulation is known is that EPA must run rigorous cost-benefit analyses on its rules before finalizing them. That’s how it reckons that every dollar spent on some of the measures Cantor is targeting — those cutting cross-state particulate and ozone pollution — will result in $30 in economic benefits from employees taking fewer sick days, a lower incidence of many chronic illnesses, and fewer early deaths. And let’s not even get into climate change.
Nevertheless, Republicans would do the country a service if they made a serious case that the EPA isn’t maximizing the net benefits of its regulations, or if they argued that government standard-setting is an expensive way to achieve the valuable ends of air and water protection, and then proposed an alternative that cut out the bureaucrats. The question of just how the government should intervene to protect air and water isn’t settled. But they explicitly oppose more decentralized, market-based anti-pollution measures, too.
If Republicans block putting a price on carbon emissions or other pollutants, and if they criticize federal money spent on things such as clean energy research, they leave anyone concerned with global warming or ambient air and water quality with few choices but to press for robust executive-branch regulation already allowed under the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts. It might not be pretty, and it might not be cheap. But it’s almost certainly better than doing little or nothing, which seems to be the GOP’s plan.
UPDATE: In response to a question on whether the GOP has an alternative plan for environmental protection, a Cantor spokesperson e-mails: “Regardless of the regulation, House Republicans believe they should be written in a way that will not have a negative impact on the economy or make it harder for businesses small and large to create jobs.”
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Obama's Triumph in Libya Has Driven Republicans Back to their Usual Useless, Ineffectual Dithering
From The Washington Post -- August 24, 2011:
Obama can’t win for winning in Libya
By E.J. Dionne Jr.
You have to ask: If unemployment were at 6 percent, would President Obama be getting pummeled for not having us back to full employment already?
The question comes to mind in the wake of the Libyan rebels’ successes against Moammar Gaddafi. It’s remarkable how reluctant Obama’s opponents are to acknowledge that despite all the predictions that his policy of limited engagement could never work, it actually did.
Obama’s critics won’t credit him on Libya.
Let it be said upfront that the rout of Gaddafi was engineered not by foreign powers but by a brave rebellion organized in Libya by its people.
But that is the point. The United States has no troops in Libya, which means our men and women in uniform do not find themselves at the center of — or responsible for — what will inevitably be a messy and possibly dangerous aftermath. Our forces did not suffer a single casualty. The military action by the West that was crucial to the rebels was a genuine coalition effort led by Britain and France. This was not a made-by-America revolution, and both we and the Middle East are better for that.
What NATO and its allies did do, as Karen DeYoung and Greg Miller reported in The Post, was to help the rebels “mount an aggressive ‘pincer’ strategy in recent weeks, providing intelligence, advice and stepped-up airstrikes that helped push Moammar Gaddafi’s forces toward collapse in Tripoli.”
Sounds like a successful policy to me.
Yet no good Obama deed goes unpunished. In the midst of the bracing news, Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham issued a statement saying, well, too bad that Obama got it wrong.
After heralding the rebels’ achievements, they could not resist adding this: “Americans can be proud of the role our country has played in helping to defeat Gaddafi, but we regret that this success was so long in coming due to the failure of the United States to employ the full weight of our airpower.”
Less than six months and no American casualties were obviously not good enough. Should we have done this the way we did things in Iraq?
But perhaps the two Republicans were embarrassed for their party, which was split between those who thought Obama was wrong for not doing more and those who said he should not have intervened at all.
“Once again, we in the United States have not defined what we believe the outcome should be,” Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) said in March. “The fact is we cannot afford more wars now.” Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman recently declared that “we have no definable interest at stake, we have no exit strategy.”
Oh, and who can forget the commentary that Obama was “henpecked” into intervening by “these Valkyries of foreign affairs”? The latter is the memorable phrase that foreign policy writer Jacob Heilbrunn used to describe three women in Obama’s administration — Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice and key adviser Samantha Power — who favored intervention.
Writing on National Review’s Web site, Mark Krikorian concluded that the lesson of Obama’s decision-making was that “our commander in chief is an effete vacillator who is pushed around by his female subordinates.”
In light of this, it’s worth paying tribute to one former Republican official willing to give Obama a little credit.
“I was among those who were critical of the position of ‘leading from behind,’ ’’ L. Paul Bremer III, former President George W. Bush’s envoy to Iraq, told the Los Angeles Times. “I think as a general proposition that’s not a good position for the U.S. to be in. On the other hand, I think the outcome should give the administration some degree of satisfaction. After all, it worked.” Yes, it did.
What should Obama take from this? He needs to learn the difference between middle-ground policies, which flow from his natural instincts, and soggy, incoherent compromises with opponents who will say he’s wrong no matter what happens.
Obama used the greater freedom he has in foreign policy to define the middle ground in the Libyan case on his own terms. “It’s true that America cannot use our military wherever repression occurs,” Obama said in March. “But that cannot be an argument for never acting on behalf of what’s right.”
That made a lot of sense. Obama should remember that steady moderation is very different from continually looking around to see if he can accommodate opponents who won’t be happy until he’s back teaching law school.
Obama can’t win for winning in Libya
By E.J. Dionne Jr.
You have to ask: If unemployment were at 6 percent, would President Obama be getting pummeled for not having us back to full employment already?
The question comes to mind in the wake of the Libyan rebels’ successes against Moammar Gaddafi. It’s remarkable how reluctant Obama’s opponents are to acknowledge that despite all the predictions that his policy of limited engagement could never work, it actually did.
Obama’s critics won’t credit him on Libya.
Let it be said upfront that the rout of Gaddafi was engineered not by foreign powers but by a brave rebellion organized in Libya by its people.
But that is the point. The United States has no troops in Libya, which means our men and women in uniform do not find themselves at the center of — or responsible for — what will inevitably be a messy and possibly dangerous aftermath. Our forces did not suffer a single casualty. The military action by the West that was crucial to the rebels was a genuine coalition effort led by Britain and France. This was not a made-by-America revolution, and both we and the Middle East are better for that.
What NATO and its allies did do, as Karen DeYoung and Greg Miller reported in The Post, was to help the rebels “mount an aggressive ‘pincer’ strategy in recent weeks, providing intelligence, advice and stepped-up airstrikes that helped push Moammar Gaddafi’s forces toward collapse in Tripoli.”
Sounds like a successful policy to me.
Yet no good Obama deed goes unpunished. In the midst of the bracing news, Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham issued a statement saying, well, too bad that Obama got it wrong.
After heralding the rebels’ achievements, they could not resist adding this: “Americans can be proud of the role our country has played in helping to defeat Gaddafi, but we regret that this success was so long in coming due to the failure of the United States to employ the full weight of our airpower.”
Less than six months and no American casualties were obviously not good enough. Should we have done this the way we did things in Iraq?
But perhaps the two Republicans were embarrassed for their party, which was split between those who thought Obama was wrong for not doing more and those who said he should not have intervened at all.
“Once again, we in the United States have not defined what we believe the outcome should be,” Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) said in March. “The fact is we cannot afford more wars now.” Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman recently declared that “we have no definable interest at stake, we have no exit strategy.”
Oh, and who can forget the commentary that Obama was “henpecked” into intervening by “these Valkyries of foreign affairs”? The latter is the memorable phrase that foreign policy writer Jacob Heilbrunn used to describe three women in Obama’s administration — Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice and key adviser Samantha Power — who favored intervention.
Writing on National Review’s Web site, Mark Krikorian concluded that the lesson of Obama’s decision-making was that “our commander in chief is an effete vacillator who is pushed around by his female subordinates.”
In light of this, it’s worth paying tribute to one former Republican official willing to give Obama a little credit.
“I was among those who were critical of the position of ‘leading from behind,’ ’’ L. Paul Bremer III, former President George W. Bush’s envoy to Iraq, told the Los Angeles Times. “I think as a general proposition that’s not a good position for the U.S. to be in. On the other hand, I think the outcome should give the administration some degree of satisfaction. After all, it worked.” Yes, it did.
What should Obama take from this? He needs to learn the difference between middle-ground policies, which flow from his natural instincts, and soggy, incoherent compromises with opponents who will say he’s wrong no matter what happens.
Obama used the greater freedom he has in foreign policy to define the middle ground in the Libyan case on his own terms. “It’s true that America cannot use our military wherever repression occurs,” Obama said in March. “But that cannot be an argument for never acting on behalf of what’s right.”
That made a lot of sense. Obama should remember that steady moderation is very different from continually looking around to see if he can accommodate opponents who won’t be happy until he’s back teaching law school.
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
FOX News and the GOP are using "Class Warfare" to Turn America into the Home of the Homeless and the Land of the Slave
From Media Matters for America -- August 23, 2011
Psst ... Bolling ... "Class Warfare" Is "Emanating" Out Of Fox News
Fox News host Eric Bolling claimed that "class warfare" is "emanating out of the White House." In fact, it is Fox that has repeatedly engaged in "class warfare."
Fox's Bolling: "Class Warfare" Is "Emanating Out Of The White House"
Bolling: "Class Warfare" Is "Emanating Out Of The White House." During the August 22 edition of The Five, co-host Eric Bolling said to fellow panelist Dana Perino: "All right, Dana, what about the class warfare that seems to be, I don't know, emanating out of the White House? Is it only the White House, or is it the right, too?" [Fox News, The Five, 8/22/11]
In Fact, "Class Warfare" Is "Emanating" Out Of Fox News
Fox News Complained That A Proposal To Eliminate Tax Breaks On Corporate Jets Is Unfair. After President Obama cited tax breaks for corporate jets as an example of tax loopholes that could be closed to raise revenue, Fox News personalities criticized the proposal as unfair and accused Obama of engaging in "straightforward class warfare." [Media Matters, 6/30/11]
Fox News Decided Poverty Doesn't Exist If The Poor Own Common Household Appliances. Citing a Heritage Foundation report about the ownership of appliances among the poor in America, Fox News personalities dismissed significant hardships among the poor in securing health care, education, housing, and access to healthy food, claiming instead that a person cannot be poor if they own common household appliances. Bill O'Reilly opined: "So how can you be so poor and have all this stuff?" [Media Matters, 7/22/11]
Fox's Charles Payne Demanded That The Poor Be More Ashamed Of Their Poverty And Joblessness. Fox Business' Charles Payne complained that people "aren't embarrassed" that they need anti-poverty programs including food stamps and unemployment insurance. [Media Matters, 5/19/11]
Fox Business Pitted The "Takers" Of "Government Handouts" Against The "Makers." After a National Bureau of Economic Research study concluded that social safety net programs, including Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, were highly effective at keeping people out of poverty, Fox Business launched a week-long series pitting the "takers" of "government handouts" against the "makers" in the economy. [Media Matters, 5/24/11]
Fox Business Hosts Warned That Increased Use Of Food Stamps During A Recession Could Lead To "Economic Dependence." Fox Business' John Stossel and Chris Cotter warned that an increase in food stamps usage during the recession could lead to "economic dependence." [Media Matters, 8/17/11]
Fox's Byrnes: "What's Unfair" About The Tax Code Is The Earned Income Tax Credit. Fox Business' Cheryl Casone suggested that subjecting the poor to heavier taxation was "a way to solve America's debt crisis," while Fox' Tracy Byrnes said that "what's unfair" about the tax code is the Earned Income Tax Credit for low- and middle-income Americans. [Media Matters, 6/26/10]
Fox's Varney: The Earned Income Tax Credit Is A "Welfare Scheme." Fox Business host Stuart Varney said:
VARNEY: Whenever you've got a cash welfare system you are going to have people gaming that system. What you have not got on the screen is the Earned Income Tax Credit, which is by far the biggest cash -- I'm going to call it a welfare scheme. That is known as the most corrupt government program. [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 6/15/11]
Psst ... Bolling ... "Class Warfare" Is "Emanating" Out Of Fox News
Fox News host Eric Bolling claimed that "class warfare" is "emanating out of the White House." In fact, it is Fox that has repeatedly engaged in "class warfare."
Fox's Bolling: "Class Warfare" Is "Emanating Out Of The White House"
Bolling: "Class Warfare" Is "Emanating Out Of The White House." During the August 22 edition of The Five, co-host Eric Bolling said to fellow panelist Dana Perino: "All right, Dana, what about the class warfare that seems to be, I don't know, emanating out of the White House? Is it only the White House, or is it the right, too?" [Fox News, The Five, 8/22/11]
In Fact, "Class Warfare" Is "Emanating" Out Of Fox News
Fox News Complained That A Proposal To Eliminate Tax Breaks On Corporate Jets Is Unfair. After President Obama cited tax breaks for corporate jets as an example of tax loopholes that could be closed to raise revenue, Fox News personalities criticized the proposal as unfair and accused Obama of engaging in "straightforward class warfare." [Media Matters, 6/30/11]
Fox News Decided Poverty Doesn't Exist If The Poor Own Common Household Appliances. Citing a Heritage Foundation report about the ownership of appliances among the poor in America, Fox News personalities dismissed significant hardships among the poor in securing health care, education, housing, and access to healthy food, claiming instead that a person cannot be poor if they own common household appliances. Bill O'Reilly opined: "So how can you be so poor and have all this stuff?" [Media Matters, 7/22/11]
Fox's Charles Payne Demanded That The Poor Be More Ashamed Of Their Poverty And Joblessness. Fox Business' Charles Payne complained that people "aren't embarrassed" that they need anti-poverty programs including food stamps and unemployment insurance. [Media Matters, 5/19/11]
Fox Business Pitted The "Takers" Of "Government Handouts" Against The "Makers." After a National Bureau of Economic Research study concluded that social safety net programs, including Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, were highly effective at keeping people out of poverty, Fox Business launched a week-long series pitting the "takers" of "government handouts" against the "makers" in the economy. [Media Matters, 5/24/11]
Fox Business Hosts Warned That Increased Use Of Food Stamps During A Recession Could Lead To "Economic Dependence." Fox Business' John Stossel and Chris Cotter warned that an increase in food stamps usage during the recession could lead to "economic dependence." [Media Matters, 8/17/11]
Fox's Byrnes: "What's Unfair" About The Tax Code Is The Earned Income Tax Credit. Fox Business' Cheryl Casone suggested that subjecting the poor to heavier taxation was "a way to solve America's debt crisis," while Fox' Tracy Byrnes said that "what's unfair" about the tax code is the Earned Income Tax Credit for low- and middle-income Americans. [Media Matters, 6/26/10]
Fox's Varney: The Earned Income Tax Credit Is A "Welfare Scheme." Fox Business host Stuart Varney said:
VARNEY: Whenever you've got a cash welfare system you are going to have people gaming that system. What you have not got on the screen is the Earned Income Tax Credit, which is by far the biggest cash -- I'm going to call it a welfare scheme. That is known as the most corrupt government program. [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 6/15/11]
The USA: Home of the Homeless and Land of the Slave
From Common Dreams -- August 23, 2011:
America’s Rampant Inequality Impossible to Deny
by Roger Bybee
The CIA ranks the country 64th, behind Ivory Coast and Uganda—but Fox's banshees still scream 'class warfare' when Warren Buffet wants to tax the rich
For years, America’s super-rich and their allies in Congress and the media have tried to deny that a tiny elite was growing astronomically wealthy at the expense of the vast majority of Americans.
But the vast gaping canyon between the richest 1 percent and Corporate America, on the one hand, and the rest of us on the other, has become so large and well-documented that denial no longer works. The ideological combat gets especially intense when it turns to the relatively minimal taxes that corporations and the rich pay.
What defense can be offered when billionaire investor Warren Buffet admits that he pays a 15 percent capital-gains rate on most of his income, while everyone else in his office (including the secretary) pays a considerably higher rate?
What can the pundits of the Right say when a corporation like General Electric makes $14.2 billion in profits in 2010 and not only pays no federal income taxes, but collects $3.2 billion in tax credits to lower future tax bills? Well, on Fox at least, they go on the offensive, accusing critics of the wealthy of cruel “demonizing."
The Right has a lot to justify: The gap between the top 1 percent and the majority is now so vast that three Citibank analysts in 2005 created a new term to describe the situation: "plutonomy.” (Which Don Peck insightfully explains in The Atlantic.)
The inequalities in income and wealth have become so stark that America is increasingly no longer recognizable as the middle-class society in which many of us grew up. Where Americans once condescendingly mocked the gross inequalities so evident in the “banana republics” of Latin America, the United States is now far more unequal than most Latin nations.
Significantly, the plight of the broad American middle class has been closely linked to the fate of the labor movement as it has come under siege in the last 35 years. While many middle-class people have long resented the gains made by blue-collar workers who often lacked higher education, the fact remains that as labor has lost ground in terms of real wages, so has the middle class.
Prof. Bruce Western of Harvard concluded in a study this month:
From 1973 to 2007, wage inequality in the private sector increased by more than 40 percent among men, and by about 50 percent among women. [...] deunionization—the decline in the percentage of the labor force that is unionized—and educational stratification each explain about 33 percent of the rise in within-group wage inequality among men. Among women, deunionization explains about 20 percent…
Having invested in union-busting lawyers, private police, and anti-union politicians, America's rich benefit immensely from such de-unionization. The most affluent Americans and big corporations have enjoyed a spectacular recovery from the deepest recession in 80 years.
While effects of the recession linger for working-class families in America—joblessness and insecure employment, loss of health coverage, exhausted unemployment benefits, falling home values, the threat of home foreclosure, to name a few—the prosperous and Corporate America have almost entirely avoided this pain. In fact, corporations saw their profits soar 243 percent in 2009 and another 61 percent in 2010. The wealthiest 10 percent now account for 60 percent of all consumer spending.
With most U.S. consumers having little money to spend, American corporations see little reason to crank up production and hire new workers in America. Corporations are sitting on at least $2 trillion in savings (plus another $1 trillion or more stashed outside the country) but have no reason to invest in the U.S. The consumer demand simply doesn’t exist in America, and corporations can sell to the engorged elites of emerging nations like China, India, Brazil, and Mexico.
Perhaps that explains why major corporate leaders seem perfectly complacent with the obstructive hijinks of Congressional Republicans, in whom they invested so heavily with campaign contributions (out-spending labor in 2008 by a ratio of 15-1) and who are committed to crushing any and all programs that might serve as a badly-needed economic stimulus.
When President Obama seeks a modest increase in corporate taxes and the closing of some of the most outrageous tax loopholes, he is cast as a “Third World leader”—with all of its racial and authoritarian implications—and “demonizing” the rich.
Normally, these statements go unchallenged by talk-show hosts or most Democratic politicians, who seem to have a strong masochistic streak. But Jon Stewart’s August 18 Daily Show allowed the Right to run thorugh their string of talking points, followed by the kind of hard-hitting (and hilarious) commentary on U.S. inequality that seems utterly forbidden on major networks:
Sen. Marc Rubio (R-Fla.) said in June: "It's disappointing, it's class warfare, and it's the kind of language that you would expect from a leader of a third world country, not the President of the United States."
Rubio’s comment perfectly set up this acid retort from Jon Stewart, who used CIA figures on income inequality to show exactly where America stands:
It's true, because the United States of America is not a third-world country by any measure, except, perhaps, income inequality... where we rank... (list scrolls down) blabliddyblabliddyblabliddy... worse than the Ivory Coast, worse than Cameroon... 64th! Ahh! In your face, Uruguay, Jamaica, and Uganda! Uganda? Yeah, Uganda. Keep trying, Rwanda. Wow.
Stewart’s skewering of the Right on inequality is a powerful reminder of why labor needs more independent media that are unafraid to slaughter some sacred cows. And it's also a reminder to do the slaughtering with good humor.
America’s Rampant Inequality Impossible to Deny
by Roger Bybee
The CIA ranks the country 64th, behind Ivory Coast and Uganda—but Fox's banshees still scream 'class warfare' when Warren Buffet wants to tax the rich
For years, America’s super-rich and their allies in Congress and the media have tried to deny that a tiny elite was growing astronomically wealthy at the expense of the vast majority of Americans.
But the vast gaping canyon between the richest 1 percent and Corporate America, on the one hand, and the rest of us on the other, has become so large and well-documented that denial no longer works. The ideological combat gets especially intense when it turns to the relatively minimal taxes that corporations and the rich pay.
What defense can be offered when billionaire investor Warren Buffet admits that he pays a 15 percent capital-gains rate on most of his income, while everyone else in his office (including the secretary) pays a considerably higher rate?
What can the pundits of the Right say when a corporation like General Electric makes $14.2 billion in profits in 2010 and not only pays no federal income taxes, but collects $3.2 billion in tax credits to lower future tax bills? Well, on Fox at least, they go on the offensive, accusing critics of the wealthy of cruel “demonizing."
The Right has a lot to justify: The gap between the top 1 percent and the majority is now so vast that three Citibank analysts in 2005 created a new term to describe the situation: "plutonomy.” (Which Don Peck insightfully explains in The Atlantic.)
The inequalities in income and wealth have become so stark that America is increasingly no longer recognizable as the middle-class society in which many of us grew up. Where Americans once condescendingly mocked the gross inequalities so evident in the “banana republics” of Latin America, the United States is now far more unequal than most Latin nations.
Significantly, the plight of the broad American middle class has been closely linked to the fate of the labor movement as it has come under siege in the last 35 years. While many middle-class people have long resented the gains made by blue-collar workers who often lacked higher education, the fact remains that as labor has lost ground in terms of real wages, so has the middle class.
Prof. Bruce Western of Harvard concluded in a study this month:
From 1973 to 2007, wage inequality in the private sector increased by more than 40 percent among men, and by about 50 percent among women. [...] deunionization—the decline in the percentage of the labor force that is unionized—and educational stratification each explain about 33 percent of the rise in within-group wage inequality among men. Among women, deunionization explains about 20 percent…
Having invested in union-busting lawyers, private police, and anti-union politicians, America's rich benefit immensely from such de-unionization. The most affluent Americans and big corporations have enjoyed a spectacular recovery from the deepest recession in 80 years.
While effects of the recession linger for working-class families in America—joblessness and insecure employment, loss of health coverage, exhausted unemployment benefits, falling home values, the threat of home foreclosure, to name a few—the prosperous and Corporate America have almost entirely avoided this pain. In fact, corporations saw their profits soar 243 percent in 2009 and another 61 percent in 2010. The wealthiest 10 percent now account for 60 percent of all consumer spending.
With most U.S. consumers having little money to spend, American corporations see little reason to crank up production and hire new workers in America. Corporations are sitting on at least $2 trillion in savings (plus another $1 trillion or more stashed outside the country) but have no reason to invest in the U.S. The consumer demand simply doesn’t exist in America, and corporations can sell to the engorged elites of emerging nations like China, India, Brazil, and Mexico.
Perhaps that explains why major corporate leaders seem perfectly complacent with the obstructive hijinks of Congressional Republicans, in whom they invested so heavily with campaign contributions (out-spending labor in 2008 by a ratio of 15-1) and who are committed to crushing any and all programs that might serve as a badly-needed economic stimulus.
When President Obama seeks a modest increase in corporate taxes and the closing of some of the most outrageous tax loopholes, he is cast as a “Third World leader”—with all of its racial and authoritarian implications—and “demonizing” the rich.
Normally, these statements go unchallenged by talk-show hosts or most Democratic politicians, who seem to have a strong masochistic streak. But Jon Stewart’s August 18 Daily Show allowed the Right to run thorugh their string of talking points, followed by the kind of hard-hitting (and hilarious) commentary on U.S. inequality that seems utterly forbidden on major networks:
Sen. Marc Rubio (R-Fla.) said in June: "It's disappointing, it's class warfare, and it's the kind of language that you would expect from a leader of a third world country, not the President of the United States."
Rubio’s comment perfectly set up this acid retort from Jon Stewart, who used CIA figures on income inequality to show exactly where America stands:
It's true, because the United States of America is not a third-world country by any measure, except, perhaps, income inequality... where we rank... (list scrolls down) blabliddyblabliddyblabliddy... worse than the Ivory Coast, worse than Cameroon... 64th! Ahh! In your face, Uruguay, Jamaica, and Uganda! Uganda? Yeah, Uganda. Keep trying, Rwanda. Wow.
Stewart’s skewering of the Right on inequality is a powerful reminder of why labor needs more independent media that are unafraid to slaughter some sacred cows. And it's also a reminder to do the slaughtering with good humor.
Sunday, August 21, 2011
In Rick Perry, Right-Wing Ignoramuses Have Found Their Outspoken Champion
From The Daily Beast -- August 18, 2011:
Perry: King of the Know-Nothings
By Michael Tomasky
Liberals called George W. Bush a simpleton, but as Michael Tomasky argues, he was deeply informed compared with Rick Perry, who seems to delight in demonstrating his ignorance.
Dog-whistle politics probably date back at least to Cato the Elder, but in our time the practice was perfected by George W. Bush. Tossing a scriptural reference into a public utterance that would go unnoticed by us heathens but would reassure the touched was a trademark of Bush and his talented speechwriter Michael Gerson. Well, we’re now in a new era. Rick Perry has traded in his dog whistle for an air-raid siren. He wants everyone to hear, loud and clear. His is the most right-wing presidential candidacy by a “serious” contender since I don’t know when (Warren Harding? But he pardoned Eugene Debs!). Have we really reached the point where reveling in conservative hatreds and revenge fantasies can get a man elected president?
Bush—and it leaves me speechless that he’s starting to look reasonable by comparison with the current crop of GOP presidential hopefuls—was hardly apologetic about his political views. But he and Karl Rove did have the sense to know when they were throwing gasoline on the domestic fire, and they did it in smallish doses. You might be able to Google up the odd careless quote from Bush about something like global warming, but in general, and especially on the occasions when he knew his words were being very closely watched, he steered well clear of extremism.
Remember “Clear Skies,” the Bush environmental initiative from 2002? It ended up being laughable, but hey, at least it was an environmental speech. To read it today is astonishing. He acknowledged the importance of protecting the environment. He recognized the existence of global warming. He came out in favor of—ready?—a cap-and-trade plan for reducing emissions. Yes, he spoke those very words, even elaborating: “This approach enjoys widespread support, with both Democrats and Republicans, because we know it works. You see, since 1995 we have used a cap-and-trade program for sulphur dioxide pollution.” The dog-whistle part came in the sentences that proclaimed the science “uncertain,” and in his refusal to acknowledge straight up a human role in global warming.
Now fast-forward to Perry. During his maiden week on the hustings, when he knew every word would be carefully tracked, Perry declared that global warming is a hoax perpetrated by scientists greedy for grant money. This earned him a rare Four Pinocchios from The Washington Post’s “Fact Checker” column, which in PerryWorld is, of course, merely proof about how right he is.
Nearly every day has brought forth a new gem. On Thursday, he told a New Hampshire school-age child that he’s “not sure anybody actually knows completely and absolutely” how old the Earth is. He preceded these with a remark about Barack Obama not being respected by the military. And, of course, there was the infamous statement that Ben Bernanke would be committing “treason” by priming the economy. Not bad—nail the black guy and the Jew in your very first week on the trail!
Michele Bachmann aspires to be the right-wing It Girl. Perry wants to be the movement’s Id Boy.
Michele Bachmann aspires to be the right-wing It Girl. Perry wants to be the movement’s Id Boy. He’ll speak the words that the others won’t quite. Given this assemblage, that is really saying something, but consider: Even Bachmann has stuck largely to an economic script so far. Perry will home in on the darkest corners of the Tea Party mind and work relentlessly to activate the demons that lurk there. It will all be right out in the open. The questions are whether it can succeed, and whether Obama has the backbone to respond. It was, as usual, profoundly discouraging to see Obama’s flaccid response to Perry’s Bernanke remarks. Perry needs to be “a little more careful” with his words? That’s the best the guy could do? And then he remained silent on Perry’s military slam. Yes, I know all the reasons why: Don’t elevate him and so on. But please. That above-the-fray strategy has helped guide the president to his lofty 40 percent approval rating.
Perry may lose the nomination for other reasons, but I think we can be reasonably certain that GOP primary voters will not punish him for expressing extreme views in the language of prideful ignorance, nor for speaking disparagingly of the president. So if he does become the nominee, Obama is going to have to mix it up. He’ll need to do so with any GOP candidate, but this is especially so with Perry, because he will say anything, and he will make it personal. Every few weeks, or days even, something happens that makes me ask myself how much more right-wing this party can get. As long as Perry is in the race, we’re going to keep finding out.
Perry: King of the Know-Nothings
By Michael Tomasky
Liberals called George W. Bush a simpleton, but as Michael Tomasky argues, he was deeply informed compared with Rick Perry, who seems to delight in demonstrating his ignorance.
Dog-whistle politics probably date back at least to Cato the Elder, but in our time the practice was perfected by George W. Bush. Tossing a scriptural reference into a public utterance that would go unnoticed by us heathens but would reassure the touched was a trademark of Bush and his talented speechwriter Michael Gerson. Well, we’re now in a new era. Rick Perry has traded in his dog whistle for an air-raid siren. He wants everyone to hear, loud and clear. His is the most right-wing presidential candidacy by a “serious” contender since I don’t know when (Warren Harding? But he pardoned Eugene Debs!). Have we really reached the point where reveling in conservative hatreds and revenge fantasies can get a man elected president?
Bush—and it leaves me speechless that he’s starting to look reasonable by comparison with the current crop of GOP presidential hopefuls—was hardly apologetic about his political views. But he and Karl Rove did have the sense to know when they were throwing gasoline on the domestic fire, and they did it in smallish doses. You might be able to Google up the odd careless quote from Bush about something like global warming, but in general, and especially on the occasions when he knew his words were being very closely watched, he steered well clear of extremism.
Remember “Clear Skies,” the Bush environmental initiative from 2002? It ended up being laughable, but hey, at least it was an environmental speech. To read it today is astonishing. He acknowledged the importance of protecting the environment. He recognized the existence of global warming. He came out in favor of—ready?—a cap-and-trade plan for reducing emissions. Yes, he spoke those very words, even elaborating: “This approach enjoys widespread support, with both Democrats and Republicans, because we know it works. You see, since 1995 we have used a cap-and-trade program for sulphur dioxide pollution.” The dog-whistle part came in the sentences that proclaimed the science “uncertain,” and in his refusal to acknowledge straight up a human role in global warming.
Now fast-forward to Perry. During his maiden week on the hustings, when he knew every word would be carefully tracked, Perry declared that global warming is a hoax perpetrated by scientists greedy for grant money. This earned him a rare Four Pinocchios from The Washington Post’s “Fact Checker” column, which in PerryWorld is, of course, merely proof about how right he is.
Nearly every day has brought forth a new gem. On Thursday, he told a New Hampshire school-age child that he’s “not sure anybody actually knows completely and absolutely” how old the Earth is. He preceded these with a remark about Barack Obama not being respected by the military. And, of course, there was the infamous statement that Ben Bernanke would be committing “treason” by priming the economy. Not bad—nail the black guy and the Jew in your very first week on the trail!
Michele Bachmann aspires to be the right-wing It Girl. Perry wants to be the movement’s Id Boy.
Michele Bachmann aspires to be the right-wing It Girl. Perry wants to be the movement’s Id Boy. He’ll speak the words that the others won’t quite. Given this assemblage, that is really saying something, but consider: Even Bachmann has stuck largely to an economic script so far. Perry will home in on the darkest corners of the Tea Party mind and work relentlessly to activate the demons that lurk there. It will all be right out in the open. The questions are whether it can succeed, and whether Obama has the backbone to respond. It was, as usual, profoundly discouraging to see Obama’s flaccid response to Perry’s Bernanke remarks. Perry needs to be “a little more careful” with his words? That’s the best the guy could do? And then he remained silent on Perry’s military slam. Yes, I know all the reasons why: Don’t elevate him and so on. But please. That above-the-fray strategy has helped guide the president to his lofty 40 percent approval rating.
Perry may lose the nomination for other reasons, but I think we can be reasonably certain that GOP primary voters will not punish him for expressing extreme views in the language of prideful ignorance, nor for speaking disparagingly of the president. So if he does become the nominee, Obama is going to have to mix it up. He’ll need to do so with any GOP candidate, but this is especially so with Perry, because he will say anything, and he will make it personal. Every few weeks, or days even, something happens that makes me ask myself how much more right-wing this party can get. As long as Perry is in the race, we’re going to keep finding out.
Rick Perry's Vision for America: Of the Wealthy, By the Wealthy, and For the Wealthy
From The New York Times -- August 20, 2011:
Perry Mines Texas System to Raise Cash
By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE and MICHAEL LUO
Two years ago, John McHale, an entrepreneur from Austin, Tex., who has given millions of dollars to Democratic candidates and causes, did something very unusual for him: he wrote a $50,000 check to a Republican candidate, Rick Perry, then seeking a third full term as governor of Texas. In September 2010, he did it again, catapulting himself into the top ranks of Mr. Perry’s donors.
Mr. McHale, a Perry spokesman said after the initial donation, “understands Governor Perry’s leadership has made Texas a good place to do business.”
Including, it turned out, for Mr. McHale’s business interests and partners. In May 2010 an economic development fund administered by the governor’s office handed $3 million to G-Con, a pharmaceutical start-up that Mr. McHale helped get off the ground. At least two other executives with connections to the firm had also given Mr. Perry tens of thousands of dollars.
Mr. Perry leapt into the Republican presidential primary this month preceded by his reputation as a thoroughbred fund-raiser. But a review of Mr. Perry’s years in office reveals that one of his most potent fund-raising tools is the very government he heads.
Over three terms in office, Mr. Perry’s administration has doled out grants, tax breaks, contracts and appointments to hundreds of his most generous supporters and their businesses. And they have helped Mr. Perry raise more money than any politician in Texas history, donations that have periodically raised eyebrows but, thanks to loose campaign finance laws and a business-friendly political culture dominated in recent years by Republicans, have only fueled Mr. Perry’s ascent.
“Texas politics does have this amazing pay-to-play culture,” said Harold Cook, a Democratic political consultant.
Mark Miner, a spokesman for Mr. Perry, said there was no connection between Mr. McHale’s contributions and the grant to G-Con. He said that the purpose of the state money was to create jobs and that it was appropriate for Mr. Perry to appoint people who support his vision and policies to state oversight posts.
“These issues have been brought up in previous elections to no avail,” Mr. Miner said.
Mr. Perry is not the first governor to have taken contributions from contractors or appointees to state commissions and boards, which oversee many of the agencies that in other states are controlled directly by the governor.
But because he has been in office more than a decade, he has had greater opportunity than any of his predecessors to stock the government with loyalists — he has appointed roughly 4,000 people to state posts — while enacting policies that have benefited allies and contributors.
And Mr. Perry has been much more aggressive than any past governor in soliciting money from them. According to a study last year by Texans for Public Justice, a watchdog organization, Mr. Perry has raised at least $17 million from more than 900 appointees or their spouses, roughly one dollar out of every five that he has raised as governor.
Among the state boards that have generated the most campaign contributions for Mr. Perry, the study found, were the State Parks and Wildlife Commission and the board of regents of Texas A&M, Mr. Perry’s alma mater. Those appointees have donated more than $4 million to his campaigns for governor.
“I know that at least some of the people who were initially approached to be regents have been later turned down because they didn’t pass what I would call a loyalty test,” said Jon L. Hagler, a prominent A&M alumnus and a major donor to the university.
Mr. Perry has also drawn scrutiny for two of his signature economic development efforts, the Texas Enterprise Fund and the Texas Emerging Technology Fund. The enterprise fund, which is intended to be a deal-closing tool for the state as it competes for jobs, has dispensed $435 million in grants to businesses since 2003. The technology fund, which has doled out nearly $200 million to companies since 2005, has a similar job creation mandate.
More than a quarter of the companies that have received grants from the enterprise fund in the most recent fiscal year, or their chief executives, made contributions to either Mr. Perry’s campaign dating back to 2001 or to the Republican Governors Association since 2008, when Mr. Perry became its chairman, according to an analysis by The New York Times.
The award to G-Con is just one example of state money paying dividends for Perry benefactors. The company is working with the Texas A&M university system on a pharmaceutical manufacturing effort toward influenza vaccines.
Among G-Con’s officers, according to records filed with the Texas secretary of state, is David M. Shanahan, who also has a significant ownership stake in the company. He is also the founder and president of Gradalis, a biotech firm based in Dallas that received a separate $1.75 million grant from the state’s technology fund in February 2009.
Campaign finance records show that Mr. Shanahan contributed $10,000 to the governor in November 2009. The following month, G-Con filed its application for an enterprise fund grant, said Lucy Nashed, a spokeswoman in the governor’s office. (Mr. Shanahan also donated $5,000 in 2007.)
State records from a network of firms associated with G-Con also list Mr. McHale, the longtime Democratic donor, as an officer.
Patricia Haigwood, a spokeswoman for G-Con, said Friday that Mr. McHale, who did not return messages asking for comment, was one of the original board members of G-Con. But she said he left the company in late April 2010 and had not made an investment in G-Con.
Gradalis, however, controls 10 percent of G-Con, corporate records show. And Mr. McHale and James R. Leininger, a San Antonio businessman who has given more than $230,000 to Mr. Perry, have minority interests in Gradalis, Ms. Haigwood said.
Gradalis’s technology fund grant came under scrutiny last year when The Dallas Morning News revealed that Mr. McHale and Mr. Leininger, both major Perry donors, had significant financial interests in the company.
Ms. Nashed said that grants from both funds must be approved by the speaker of the Texas House and the lieutenant governor and that all recipients go through rigorous reviews.
Mr. Perry has also drawn criticism for his appointees to the board of the Teacher Retirement System, a $110 billion pension fund that is among the nation’s largest. In recent years he has appointed at least four top donors or fund-raisers to the board. Mr. Perry’s trustees leaned on the fund to invest more money with hedge funds and private equity firms, as many public pension funds have in recent years. But in some cases, the appointees appear to have pushed for firms whose investors, officers, or partners were Perry donors.
In 2009 an investment manager at the fund, Michael Green, wrote to a board trustee saying that the fund’s chief investment officer had pressed him and other employees to set aside their objections to such investments, including allocations to two firms whose partners and former partners have donated more than $1 million to Mr. Perry’s campaigns.
When Mr. Green complained about the pressure, a superior dismissed his concerns. Mr. Green’s boss, he wrote to the trustee, told him: “This is the way business is done.” An internal investigation concluded that no rules had been broken.
Philip Mullins, a trustee, said, “I think the concerns that were raised were based on a feeling that the chairman and some other people on the board were trying to set up a fund-raising campaign for the governor of Texas.”
Another instance of political donations to Mr. Perry seeming to dovetail with his policy decisions came in 2005, when the TXU Corporation, a utility based in Dallas, sought permits to build coal-fired power plants. That October, Mr. Perry issued an executive order for a review panel to fast-track the application.
In the months that followed, current and retired TXU executives, as well as the company’s political action committee, sent Mr. Perry more than $100,000 in donations, including one check dated the same day as Mr. Perry’s order. Mr. Perry’s office said at the time that the order was unrelated to the contributions. A state judge later blocked the order, ruling that Mr. Perry had overstepped his authority.
In 2003, after a rash of mold-related lawsuits against home construction companies, Mr. Perry championed the creation of a state board, the Texas Residential Construction Commission. The new commission was a priority of Mr. Perry’s most generous contributor: Bob Perry, a homebuilder who has contributed more than $2 million to the governor over his career. (The two men are not related.)
The legislation creating the board also sharply limited the rights of homeowners to sue contractors for faulty construction, shunting most disputes to the commission. After its passage, Bob Perry and his wife sent two $50,000 checks to the governor’s campaign. Three weeks later, the governor appointed an executive of Perry Homes, Bob Perry’s company, to the commission, which was abolished in 2009.
In 2009, as Mr. Perry was running for re-election, José Cuevas Jr., a restaurateur and the governor’s appointee as chairman of the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission, used a personal e-mail account to solicit donations for Mr. Perry from the owners of dozens of restaurants and bars overseen by the board.
In an interview last week, Mr. Cuevas said he saw nothing wrong with asking the owners, many of them business contacts, for donations. It was important, he said, for Mr. Perry’s appointees to support his broader mission of smaller government.
”When you personally know someone,” Mr. Cuevas said, “and know their abilities and vision, you’re willing to raise as much money as hard as you can for that person.”
Perry Mines Texas System to Raise Cash
By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE and MICHAEL LUO
Two years ago, John McHale, an entrepreneur from Austin, Tex., who has given millions of dollars to Democratic candidates and causes, did something very unusual for him: he wrote a $50,000 check to a Republican candidate, Rick Perry, then seeking a third full term as governor of Texas. In September 2010, he did it again, catapulting himself into the top ranks of Mr. Perry’s donors.
Mr. McHale, a Perry spokesman said after the initial donation, “understands Governor Perry’s leadership has made Texas a good place to do business.”
Including, it turned out, for Mr. McHale’s business interests and partners. In May 2010 an economic development fund administered by the governor’s office handed $3 million to G-Con, a pharmaceutical start-up that Mr. McHale helped get off the ground. At least two other executives with connections to the firm had also given Mr. Perry tens of thousands of dollars.
Mr. Perry leapt into the Republican presidential primary this month preceded by his reputation as a thoroughbred fund-raiser. But a review of Mr. Perry’s years in office reveals that one of his most potent fund-raising tools is the very government he heads.
Over three terms in office, Mr. Perry’s administration has doled out grants, tax breaks, contracts and appointments to hundreds of his most generous supporters and their businesses. And they have helped Mr. Perry raise more money than any politician in Texas history, donations that have periodically raised eyebrows but, thanks to loose campaign finance laws and a business-friendly political culture dominated in recent years by Republicans, have only fueled Mr. Perry’s ascent.
“Texas politics does have this amazing pay-to-play culture,” said Harold Cook, a Democratic political consultant.
Mark Miner, a spokesman for Mr. Perry, said there was no connection between Mr. McHale’s contributions and the grant to G-Con. He said that the purpose of the state money was to create jobs and that it was appropriate for Mr. Perry to appoint people who support his vision and policies to state oversight posts.
“These issues have been brought up in previous elections to no avail,” Mr. Miner said.
Mr. Perry is not the first governor to have taken contributions from contractors or appointees to state commissions and boards, which oversee many of the agencies that in other states are controlled directly by the governor.
But because he has been in office more than a decade, he has had greater opportunity than any of his predecessors to stock the government with loyalists — he has appointed roughly 4,000 people to state posts — while enacting policies that have benefited allies and contributors.
And Mr. Perry has been much more aggressive than any past governor in soliciting money from them. According to a study last year by Texans for Public Justice, a watchdog organization, Mr. Perry has raised at least $17 million from more than 900 appointees or their spouses, roughly one dollar out of every five that he has raised as governor.
Among the state boards that have generated the most campaign contributions for Mr. Perry, the study found, were the State Parks and Wildlife Commission and the board of regents of Texas A&M, Mr. Perry’s alma mater. Those appointees have donated more than $4 million to his campaigns for governor.
“I know that at least some of the people who were initially approached to be regents have been later turned down because they didn’t pass what I would call a loyalty test,” said Jon L. Hagler, a prominent A&M alumnus and a major donor to the university.
Mr. Perry has also drawn scrutiny for two of his signature economic development efforts, the Texas Enterprise Fund and the Texas Emerging Technology Fund. The enterprise fund, which is intended to be a deal-closing tool for the state as it competes for jobs, has dispensed $435 million in grants to businesses since 2003. The technology fund, which has doled out nearly $200 million to companies since 2005, has a similar job creation mandate.
More than a quarter of the companies that have received grants from the enterprise fund in the most recent fiscal year, or their chief executives, made contributions to either Mr. Perry’s campaign dating back to 2001 or to the Republican Governors Association since 2008, when Mr. Perry became its chairman, according to an analysis by The New York Times.
The award to G-Con is just one example of state money paying dividends for Perry benefactors. The company is working with the Texas A&M university system on a pharmaceutical manufacturing effort toward influenza vaccines.
Among G-Con’s officers, according to records filed with the Texas secretary of state, is David M. Shanahan, who also has a significant ownership stake in the company. He is also the founder and president of Gradalis, a biotech firm based in Dallas that received a separate $1.75 million grant from the state’s technology fund in February 2009.
Campaign finance records show that Mr. Shanahan contributed $10,000 to the governor in November 2009. The following month, G-Con filed its application for an enterprise fund grant, said Lucy Nashed, a spokeswoman in the governor’s office. (Mr. Shanahan also donated $5,000 in 2007.)
State records from a network of firms associated with G-Con also list Mr. McHale, the longtime Democratic donor, as an officer.
Patricia Haigwood, a spokeswoman for G-Con, said Friday that Mr. McHale, who did not return messages asking for comment, was one of the original board members of G-Con. But she said he left the company in late April 2010 and had not made an investment in G-Con.
Gradalis, however, controls 10 percent of G-Con, corporate records show. And Mr. McHale and James R. Leininger, a San Antonio businessman who has given more than $230,000 to Mr. Perry, have minority interests in Gradalis, Ms. Haigwood said.
Gradalis’s technology fund grant came under scrutiny last year when The Dallas Morning News revealed that Mr. McHale and Mr. Leininger, both major Perry donors, had significant financial interests in the company.
Ms. Nashed said that grants from both funds must be approved by the speaker of the Texas House and the lieutenant governor and that all recipients go through rigorous reviews.
Mr. Perry has also drawn criticism for his appointees to the board of the Teacher Retirement System, a $110 billion pension fund that is among the nation’s largest. In recent years he has appointed at least four top donors or fund-raisers to the board. Mr. Perry’s trustees leaned on the fund to invest more money with hedge funds and private equity firms, as many public pension funds have in recent years. But in some cases, the appointees appear to have pushed for firms whose investors, officers, or partners were Perry donors.
In 2009 an investment manager at the fund, Michael Green, wrote to a board trustee saying that the fund’s chief investment officer had pressed him and other employees to set aside their objections to such investments, including allocations to two firms whose partners and former partners have donated more than $1 million to Mr. Perry’s campaigns.
When Mr. Green complained about the pressure, a superior dismissed his concerns. Mr. Green’s boss, he wrote to the trustee, told him: “This is the way business is done.” An internal investigation concluded that no rules had been broken.
Philip Mullins, a trustee, said, “I think the concerns that were raised were based on a feeling that the chairman and some other people on the board were trying to set up a fund-raising campaign for the governor of Texas.”
Another instance of political donations to Mr. Perry seeming to dovetail with his policy decisions came in 2005, when the TXU Corporation, a utility based in Dallas, sought permits to build coal-fired power plants. That October, Mr. Perry issued an executive order for a review panel to fast-track the application.
In the months that followed, current and retired TXU executives, as well as the company’s political action committee, sent Mr. Perry more than $100,000 in donations, including one check dated the same day as Mr. Perry’s order. Mr. Perry’s office said at the time that the order was unrelated to the contributions. A state judge later blocked the order, ruling that Mr. Perry had overstepped his authority.
In 2003, after a rash of mold-related lawsuits against home construction companies, Mr. Perry championed the creation of a state board, the Texas Residential Construction Commission. The new commission was a priority of Mr. Perry’s most generous contributor: Bob Perry, a homebuilder who has contributed more than $2 million to the governor over his career. (The two men are not related.)
The legislation creating the board also sharply limited the rights of homeowners to sue contractors for faulty construction, shunting most disputes to the commission. After its passage, Bob Perry and his wife sent two $50,000 checks to the governor’s campaign. Three weeks later, the governor appointed an executive of Perry Homes, Bob Perry’s company, to the commission, which was abolished in 2009.
In 2009, as Mr. Perry was running for re-election, José Cuevas Jr., a restaurateur and the governor’s appointee as chairman of the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission, used a personal e-mail account to solicit donations for Mr. Perry from the owners of dozens of restaurants and bars overseen by the board.
In an interview last week, Mr. Cuevas said he saw nothing wrong with asking the owners, many of them business contacts, for donations. It was important, he said, for Mr. Perry’s appointees to support his broader mission of smaller government.
”When you personally know someone,” Mr. Cuevas said, “and know their abilities and vision, you’re willing to raise as much money as hard as you can for that person.”
Thursday, August 18, 2011
The Tea Party is Heading Back to the Dumpster
From Salon -- August 17, 2011:
Getting to Know the Tea Party
It's the GOP's white conservative base in silly costumes. Why couldn't the media figure that out sooner?
BY JOAN WALSH
Scholar Robert Putnam, best known for his study of American atomization in "Bowling Alone," has produced new data on the Tea Party and it's being billed as a shocker. Sit down before you read this: They are older, white conservative Christians "who were highly partisan Republicans long before the Tea Party was born."
Not surprised? Neither was I, but the research is actually fascinating. Putnam and Notre Dame's David Campbell tracked the role of faith and politics for their last book, "American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us." They went back to look at attitudes toward the Tea Party among 3,000 survey respondents for the paperback edition, and wrote an Op-Ed in Wednesday's New York Times.
Some of their key findings: "Even compared to other white Republicans, [Tea Party backers] had a low regard for immigrants and blacks long before Barack Obama was president, and they still do." They're not a product of the Great Recession, Campbell and Putnam write. "Many Americans have suffered in the last four years, but they are no more likely than anyone else to support the Tea Party." Big government isn't the issue that drives them: "Concern over big government is hardly the only or even the most important predictor of Tea Party support among voters." They are social conservatives who believe religion should play a strong role in politics: 76 percent said our "laws and policies would be better if more elected officials were deeply religious."
It's great to have data, but this is something a lot of us believed all along -- the Tea Party was the Republican base dressed up in silly costumes. Why was the media so quick to declare them a vital new force in politics? Of course there were some innovative twists on the old mix, but those details got less attention than the supposedly spontaneous democratic uprising (against the Democrats, of course). What enlivened the GOP base and made it look brand-new was the cash and savvy of the Koch brothers, Dick Armey and Americans for Prosperity, who quickly noticed small early anti-stimulus rallies and got some of the organizers money and logistical support, so they could spread their Astroturf.
Most important was the role of Fox News, which did energetic publicity for the early Tea Party rallies. Richard Nixon's media aide, Roger Ailes, finally figured out how to turn his supposed Silent Majority into a Noisy Minority. Glenn Beck founded one of the early groups, the 9/12 movement. The San Francisco Tea Party I attended in April 2009 was promoted by the local right-wing radio station KSFO, home of Rush Limbaugh, at one time Michael Savage, and a host of other righties like Melanie Morgan, who whipped the crowd into an anti-government frenzy that day. A man carrying an "Obama = Imposter" sign handed out fliers demanding that Nancy Pelosi begin impeachment proceedings, because Obama, he told me, "is not a natural-born citizen." There were several hammers and sickles; lots of signs warning against socialism and communism; a guy in what seemed to be a coonskin cap carrying a big sign with a gun that read "Reload for the Revolution."
Contrary to the Tea Party’s "origin story," Campbell and Putnam write, in which the new activists were often described as "nonpartisan political neophytes," they were "highly partisan Republicans long before the Tea Party was born, and were more likely than others to have contacted government officials. In fact, past Republican affiliation is the single strongest predictor of Tea Party support today."
The role of race is nothing new. A New York Times survey as well as a University of Washington study found Tea Party members more likely even than other Republicans to say that too much has been made of the problems facing black people, that the Obama administration favors blacks over whites, and to blame black disadvantage on the shortcomings of black people, rather than on the legacy of slavery and discrimination. Is it only about having a black president? Um, that probably doesn't help. But it's worth noting that these are the same people who've been fighting the Democratic Party since the days of the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act and the beginning of the War on Poverty, almost 50 years ago. They associate those long overdue social reforms with giving folks, mainly black people, something they don't deserve. I sometimes think just calling them racist against our black president obscures the depths of their hatred for Democrats, period.
Their far-right religious zealotry is an old story too. We act as though the separation of church and state was a question settled by the Founders, but from the country's earliest days many Americans believed that only white Protestants are qualified for democracy. There's a through-line from the evangelical Protestants who burned down Catholic churches and convents in the 19th century, who believed in a religious test for American citizenship, to Texas Gov. Rick Perry and his evangelical-Christians-only Christapalooza in Houston last weekend. Perry's preacher friends include Catholic bashers who'd make Lyman Beecher proud. We've been fighting this impulse for a long time.
The good news, though? To know the Tea Party is not to love them. CBS/New York Times polls show that disapproval of the Tea Party movement doubled between April 2010 and June 2011, from 18 percent to 40 percent in 14 months. Putnam and Campbell found the Tea Party "ranks lower than any of the 23 other groups we asked about -- lower than both Republicans and Democrats. It is even less popular than much maligned groups like 'atheists' and 'Muslims.' Interestingly, one group that approaches it in unpopularity is the Christian Right." Let's hope Republican politicians, and even our over-conciliatory Democratic president, sees the growing unpopularity of the Tea Party movement, and stop letting them run the country.
Getting to Know the Tea Party
It's the GOP's white conservative base in silly costumes. Why couldn't the media figure that out sooner?
BY JOAN WALSH
Scholar Robert Putnam, best known for his study of American atomization in "Bowling Alone," has produced new data on the Tea Party and it's being billed as a shocker. Sit down before you read this: They are older, white conservative Christians "who were highly partisan Republicans long before the Tea Party was born."
Not surprised? Neither was I, but the research is actually fascinating. Putnam and Notre Dame's David Campbell tracked the role of faith and politics for their last book, "American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us." They went back to look at attitudes toward the Tea Party among 3,000 survey respondents for the paperback edition, and wrote an Op-Ed in Wednesday's New York Times.
Some of their key findings: "Even compared to other white Republicans, [Tea Party backers] had a low regard for immigrants and blacks long before Barack Obama was president, and they still do." They're not a product of the Great Recession, Campbell and Putnam write. "Many Americans have suffered in the last four years, but they are no more likely than anyone else to support the Tea Party." Big government isn't the issue that drives them: "Concern over big government is hardly the only or even the most important predictor of Tea Party support among voters." They are social conservatives who believe religion should play a strong role in politics: 76 percent said our "laws and policies would be better if more elected officials were deeply religious."
It's great to have data, but this is something a lot of us believed all along -- the Tea Party was the Republican base dressed up in silly costumes. Why was the media so quick to declare them a vital new force in politics? Of course there were some innovative twists on the old mix, but those details got less attention than the supposedly spontaneous democratic uprising (against the Democrats, of course). What enlivened the GOP base and made it look brand-new was the cash and savvy of the Koch brothers, Dick Armey and Americans for Prosperity, who quickly noticed small early anti-stimulus rallies and got some of the organizers money and logistical support, so they could spread their Astroturf.
Most important was the role of Fox News, which did energetic publicity for the early Tea Party rallies. Richard Nixon's media aide, Roger Ailes, finally figured out how to turn his supposed Silent Majority into a Noisy Minority. Glenn Beck founded one of the early groups, the 9/12 movement. The San Francisco Tea Party I attended in April 2009 was promoted by the local right-wing radio station KSFO, home of Rush Limbaugh, at one time Michael Savage, and a host of other righties like Melanie Morgan, who whipped the crowd into an anti-government frenzy that day. A man carrying an "Obama = Imposter" sign handed out fliers demanding that Nancy Pelosi begin impeachment proceedings, because Obama, he told me, "is not a natural-born citizen." There were several hammers and sickles; lots of signs warning against socialism and communism; a guy in what seemed to be a coonskin cap carrying a big sign with a gun that read "Reload for the Revolution."
Contrary to the Tea Party’s "origin story," Campbell and Putnam write, in which the new activists were often described as "nonpartisan political neophytes," they were "highly partisan Republicans long before the Tea Party was born, and were more likely than others to have contacted government officials. In fact, past Republican affiliation is the single strongest predictor of Tea Party support today."
The role of race is nothing new. A New York Times survey as well as a University of Washington study found Tea Party members more likely even than other Republicans to say that too much has been made of the problems facing black people, that the Obama administration favors blacks over whites, and to blame black disadvantage on the shortcomings of black people, rather than on the legacy of slavery and discrimination. Is it only about having a black president? Um, that probably doesn't help. But it's worth noting that these are the same people who've been fighting the Democratic Party since the days of the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act and the beginning of the War on Poverty, almost 50 years ago. They associate those long overdue social reforms with giving folks, mainly black people, something they don't deserve. I sometimes think just calling them racist against our black president obscures the depths of their hatred for Democrats, period.
Their far-right religious zealotry is an old story too. We act as though the separation of church and state was a question settled by the Founders, but from the country's earliest days many Americans believed that only white Protestants are qualified for democracy. There's a through-line from the evangelical Protestants who burned down Catholic churches and convents in the 19th century, who believed in a religious test for American citizenship, to Texas Gov. Rick Perry and his evangelical-Christians-only Christapalooza in Houston last weekend. Perry's preacher friends include Catholic bashers who'd make Lyman Beecher proud. We've been fighting this impulse for a long time.
The good news, though? To know the Tea Party is not to love them. CBS/New York Times polls show that disapproval of the Tea Party movement doubled between April 2010 and June 2011, from 18 percent to 40 percent in 14 months. Putnam and Campbell found the Tea Party "ranks lower than any of the 23 other groups we asked about -- lower than both Republicans and Democrats. It is even less popular than much maligned groups like 'atheists' and 'Muslims.' Interestingly, one group that approaches it in unpopularity is the Christian Right." Let's hope Republican politicians, and even our over-conciliatory Democratic president, sees the growing unpopularity of the Tea Party movement, and stop letting them run the country.
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Republicans' Latest Gift to America: A World-Wide Recession
From Common Dreams -- August 17, 2011:
How Austerity Is Ushering in a Global Recession
By Robert Reich
Not only is the United States slouching toward a double dip, but so is Europe. New data out today show even Europe’s strongest core economies – Germany, France, and the Netherlands – slowing to a crawl.
Policy makers be warned: Austerity is the wrong medicine.
We’re on the cusp of a global recession.
Policy makers be warned: Austerity is the wrong medicine.
We all know about the weaknesses in Europe’s “periphery” – Greece, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, and Italy. But the drop in Europe’s core is dizzying.
Germany grew at an annualized rate of just half a percent last quarter, down from 5.5 percent in the first quarter of the year. France didn’t grow at all.
What’s going on in Europe’s core? Partly it’s a loss of confidence due to debt crises in the periphery. But that’s hardly all.
Europe depends on exports – especially to Asia, India, Latin America, and the United States. But exports to China and other emerging markets have been dropping. China, worried about inflation, has pulled in the reins on its sizzling economy. Brazil has been pulling back as well.
And as the United States economy sputters, exports to America have been slowing.
But chalk up a big part of Europe’s slowdown to the politics and economics of austerity. Europe – including Britain – have turned John Maynard Keynes on his head. They’ve been cutting public spending just when they should be spending more to counteract slowing private spending.
The United States has been moving in the same bizarre direction. Cutbacks by state and local governments have all but negated the federal government’s original stimulus, and no one in Washington is talking seriously about a second. The pitiful showdown over increasing the debt limit has produced the opposite: a Rube-Goldberg-like process for capping spending rather than increasing it, and a public that’s being sold the Republican lie that less government spending means more jobs.
Yes, governments on both sides of the Atlantic are deeply in debt. But policy makers on both sides seem to have forgotten that economic growth is the most important tonic.
Public debt has meaning only in relation to a nation’s GDP. When more people are working, more companies are profiting, and economies are expanding, revenues pour into national treasuries.
When economies stop growing or contract, the opposite occurs. Economies can fall into vicious cycles of slower growth, lower tax revenues, spending cuts, and even slower growth.
That’s what we’re seeing now.
What’s worse, nations are so intertwined that when every major economy is slowing the cumulative effect is larger.
With anemic growth in America and Europe, the Japanese economy comatose, and emerging markets (including China) pulling in their reins, the vicious cycle could become worldwide. If global demand for goods and services continues to fall behind the potential supply we’ll see unemployment rise further and growth slow even more — especially in Europe and the U.S.
Central banks may try to reverse this course. Ben Bernanke and company at the Fed have committed themselves to near-zero interest rates for the next two years (not exactly a rousing endorsement of America’s economic prospects in the near term). Given the sharp slowdown in Germany, the European Central Bank might now feel some pressure to lower interest rates there – or at least delay the next increase.
But when growth is slowing so dramatically and unemployment is already high, monetary policy can’t possibly do it alone.
Without an expansionary fiscal policy, low interest rates have little effect. Companies won’t borrow in order to expand and hire more workers unless they have reasonable certainty they’ll have customers for what they produce. And consumers won’t borrow money to spend on goods and services unless they’re reasonably confident they’ll have jobs.
Fiscal austerity is the wrong medicine at the wrong time.
How Austerity Is Ushering in a Global Recession
By Robert Reich
Not only is the United States slouching toward a double dip, but so is Europe. New data out today show even Europe’s strongest core economies – Germany, France, and the Netherlands – slowing to a crawl.
Policy makers be warned: Austerity is the wrong medicine.
We’re on the cusp of a global recession.
Policy makers be warned: Austerity is the wrong medicine.
We all know about the weaknesses in Europe’s “periphery” – Greece, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, and Italy. But the drop in Europe’s core is dizzying.
Germany grew at an annualized rate of just half a percent last quarter, down from 5.5 percent in the first quarter of the year. France didn’t grow at all.
What’s going on in Europe’s core? Partly it’s a loss of confidence due to debt crises in the periphery. But that’s hardly all.
Europe depends on exports – especially to Asia, India, Latin America, and the United States. But exports to China and other emerging markets have been dropping. China, worried about inflation, has pulled in the reins on its sizzling economy. Brazil has been pulling back as well.
And as the United States economy sputters, exports to America have been slowing.
But chalk up a big part of Europe’s slowdown to the politics and economics of austerity. Europe – including Britain – have turned John Maynard Keynes on his head. They’ve been cutting public spending just when they should be spending more to counteract slowing private spending.
The United States has been moving in the same bizarre direction. Cutbacks by state and local governments have all but negated the federal government’s original stimulus, and no one in Washington is talking seriously about a second. The pitiful showdown over increasing the debt limit has produced the opposite: a Rube-Goldberg-like process for capping spending rather than increasing it, and a public that’s being sold the Republican lie that less government spending means more jobs.
Yes, governments on both sides of the Atlantic are deeply in debt. But policy makers on both sides seem to have forgotten that economic growth is the most important tonic.
Public debt has meaning only in relation to a nation’s GDP. When more people are working, more companies are profiting, and economies are expanding, revenues pour into national treasuries.
When economies stop growing or contract, the opposite occurs. Economies can fall into vicious cycles of slower growth, lower tax revenues, spending cuts, and even slower growth.
That’s what we’re seeing now.
What’s worse, nations are so intertwined that when every major economy is slowing the cumulative effect is larger.
With anemic growth in America and Europe, the Japanese economy comatose, and emerging markets (including China) pulling in their reins, the vicious cycle could become worldwide. If global demand for goods and services continues to fall behind the potential supply we’ll see unemployment rise further and growth slow even more — especially in Europe and the U.S.
Central banks may try to reverse this course. Ben Bernanke and company at the Fed have committed themselves to near-zero interest rates for the next two years (not exactly a rousing endorsement of America’s economic prospects in the near term). Given the sharp slowdown in Germany, the European Central Bank might now feel some pressure to lower interest rates there – or at least delay the next increase.
But when growth is slowing so dramatically and unemployment is already high, monetary policy can’t possibly do it alone.
Without an expansionary fiscal policy, low interest rates have little effect. Companies won’t borrow in order to expand and hire more workers unless they have reasonable certainty they’ll have customers for what they produce. And consumers won’t borrow money to spend on goods and services unless they’re reasonably confident they’ll have jobs.
Fiscal austerity is the wrong medicine at the wrong time.
Obama's Stimulus Plan Worked -- The Republican Takeover of Congress in 2010 is Sinking the American Economy Today
From The Daily Beast -- Nov. 1, 2010:
The Big Lie
By Sir Harold Evans
The expected Republican victory on Tuesday will be built on an untruth: that President Obama’s stimulus didn’t work. Sir Harold Evans sets the record straight.
Millions will go to the polls tomorrow deceived by a brilliant propaganda campaign. They may have many reasons to vote against the Obama administration. Many of the criticisms may be justified, many not. Take your pick.
I am concerned only with one. I call it The Big Lie because its acceptance has had a big impact on all our lives and it will continue to have a big impact, like a malign virus that one ingests wreaks progressive damage.
The Big Lie is that the aggressive fiscal and monetary measures by which Obama defended America in the Great Recession were a waste of money, a notorious example of the Democratic appetite for throwing money at any problem.
The summary charge is that “the stimulus did not work.” It has been propagated in a blizzard of television ads, in the slogans of Tea Party rallies, in countless vehement blogs and in print. Mostly this has been argument by assertion, even from such a distinguished writer as George Will. There has been precious little analysis of what effect the money had, and barely any reporting of what serious analysis there has been.
CNN made a valiant effort early on and then seems to have gotten bored–or should we say gored by ratings–and two authoritative reports have been published (I will come to them), but they have been washed over, flotsam on the tide of ignorance. Even this bright Monday morning, the New York Post publishes a Big Lie article by Stephen M. Meister, a partner in the law firm of Meister, Seelig and Fein LLP who writes that from the stimulus “none of the jobs showed up.”
The Obama administration made a tactical error in trying to be precise. It estimated that the stimulus spending would keep unemployment to 8 percent or less. But the commonplace assertion and the widespread notion that no jobs have resulted from the program is off by an order of magnitude that if made in business would instantly bankrupt millions of going concerns.
• Howard Kurtz: Beware the GOP Coronation Contractors, subcontractors and other recipients of stimulus monies were required by law to document each calendar quarter the number of jobs funded through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). Just to take the second quarter of this year, the number certified is 750,000 full-time equivalent jobs. Extrapolating from receipts already in by using reliable mathematical models, the number of men and women put back to work just in the second quarter of 2010 is at least 1.4 million!
• Tina Brown: Obama’s Morning-After PlanThese numbers are contained in a report from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office. Let’s be nice to most of the people saying the stimulus had no effect and presume they never got round to reading the CBO report. That is probably a fair assumption, or otherwise the population of the United States would have an extraordinary number of people with noses as long as the Golden Gate Bridge. But the Republican leaders in Congress could be expected to read Congressional documents they speak about–couldn’t they? They have no excuse for their Big Lie sold time and again to the gullible masses.
Maybe the Congressional liars will come back to say they don’t believe their own budget office, which would be ironical because it would involve them refusing to believe that the same office’s estimate of our deficit is much exaggerated.
But come away from the once-hallowed halls of Congress. The serial retailers of the Big Lie should read the careful econometric report by two independent and distinguished economists, the former Deputy Chairman of the Fed, Alan S. Blinder, professor of economics at Princeton University, and Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s.
Blinder and Zandi examined the effect of TARP and the stimulus using Moody’s Analytical Model of the US economy. They reported, “We find the effects on real GDP, jobs and inflation are huge and probably averted what could have been called The Great Depression 2.0.”
“Without the government response, GDP in 2010 would be about 11.5 percent lower, payroll employment would be less by some 8.5 million jobs, and the nation would now be experiencing deflation.”
It is a tragedy, since if we are to have more refusal to face the effects of the stimulus, as now seems likely, life is going to get a lot more miserable for millions.
They attribute the larger part of this wholly benign result to have been from saving the financial system–something begun under President Bush and completed under Obama. Nonetheless, the effects of the fiscal stimulus alone appear very substantial, raising real GDP by about 3.4 percent, holding the unemployment rate about one-and-a-half percentage points lower, and adding almost 2.7 million jobs to U.S. payrolls.
The Big Lie is a disgrace to all who have uttered it, knowingly or unknowingly. It is worse. It is a tragedy, since if we are to have more refusal to face the effects of the stimulus, as now seems likely, life is going to get a lot more miserable for millions after one of the worst elections I’ve ever seen in many years of reporting.
We were like a man a sinking in a swamp. A good neighbor rushed along and threw us a rope. It just about stopped us sinking. But it didn’t get us out. It was too short, just as the stimulus was too small. Now along comes another man, the local preacher, telling us we are sinking because of our sins (which are many) and will yank the rescue rope away.
The result will not be pretty.
The Big Lie
By Sir Harold Evans
The expected Republican victory on Tuesday will be built on an untruth: that President Obama’s stimulus didn’t work. Sir Harold Evans sets the record straight.
Millions will go to the polls tomorrow deceived by a brilliant propaganda campaign. They may have many reasons to vote against the Obama administration. Many of the criticisms may be justified, many not. Take your pick.
I am concerned only with one. I call it The Big Lie because its acceptance has had a big impact on all our lives and it will continue to have a big impact, like a malign virus that one ingests wreaks progressive damage.
The Big Lie is that the aggressive fiscal and monetary measures by which Obama defended America in the Great Recession were a waste of money, a notorious example of the Democratic appetite for throwing money at any problem.
The summary charge is that “the stimulus did not work.” It has been propagated in a blizzard of television ads, in the slogans of Tea Party rallies, in countless vehement blogs and in print. Mostly this has been argument by assertion, even from such a distinguished writer as George Will. There has been precious little analysis of what effect the money had, and barely any reporting of what serious analysis there has been.
CNN made a valiant effort early on and then seems to have gotten bored–or should we say gored by ratings–and two authoritative reports have been published (I will come to them), but they have been washed over, flotsam on the tide of ignorance. Even this bright Monday morning, the New York Post publishes a Big Lie article by Stephen M. Meister, a partner in the law firm of Meister, Seelig and Fein LLP who writes that from the stimulus “none of the jobs showed up.”
The Obama administration made a tactical error in trying to be precise. It estimated that the stimulus spending would keep unemployment to 8 percent or less. But the commonplace assertion and the widespread notion that no jobs have resulted from the program is off by an order of magnitude that if made in business would instantly bankrupt millions of going concerns.
• Howard Kurtz: Beware the GOP Coronation Contractors, subcontractors and other recipients of stimulus monies were required by law to document each calendar quarter the number of jobs funded through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). Just to take the second quarter of this year, the number certified is 750,000 full-time equivalent jobs. Extrapolating from receipts already in by using reliable mathematical models, the number of men and women put back to work just in the second quarter of 2010 is at least 1.4 million!
• Tina Brown: Obama’s Morning-After PlanThese numbers are contained in a report from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office. Let’s be nice to most of the people saying the stimulus had no effect and presume they never got round to reading the CBO report. That is probably a fair assumption, or otherwise the population of the United States would have an extraordinary number of people with noses as long as the Golden Gate Bridge. But the Republican leaders in Congress could be expected to read Congressional documents they speak about–couldn’t they? They have no excuse for their Big Lie sold time and again to the gullible masses.
Maybe the Congressional liars will come back to say they don’t believe their own budget office, which would be ironical because it would involve them refusing to believe that the same office’s estimate of our deficit is much exaggerated.
But come away from the once-hallowed halls of Congress. The serial retailers of the Big Lie should read the careful econometric report by two independent and distinguished economists, the former Deputy Chairman of the Fed, Alan S. Blinder, professor of economics at Princeton University, and Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s.
Blinder and Zandi examined the effect of TARP and the stimulus using Moody’s Analytical Model of the US economy. They reported, “We find the effects on real GDP, jobs and inflation are huge and probably averted what could have been called The Great Depression 2.0.”
“Without the government response, GDP in 2010 would be about 11.5 percent lower, payroll employment would be less by some 8.5 million jobs, and the nation would now be experiencing deflation.”
It is a tragedy, since if we are to have more refusal to face the effects of the stimulus, as now seems likely, life is going to get a lot more miserable for millions.
They attribute the larger part of this wholly benign result to have been from saving the financial system–something begun under President Bush and completed under Obama. Nonetheless, the effects of the fiscal stimulus alone appear very substantial, raising real GDP by about 3.4 percent, holding the unemployment rate about one-and-a-half percentage points lower, and adding almost 2.7 million jobs to U.S. payrolls.
The Big Lie is a disgrace to all who have uttered it, knowingly or unknowingly. It is worse. It is a tragedy, since if we are to have more refusal to face the effects of the stimulus, as now seems likely, life is going to get a lot more miserable for millions after one of the worst elections I’ve ever seen in many years of reporting.
We were like a man a sinking in a swamp. A good neighbor rushed along and threw us a rope. It just about stopped us sinking. But it didn’t get us out. It was too short, just as the stimulus was too small. Now along comes another man, the local preacher, telling us we are sinking because of our sins (which are many) and will yank the rescue rope away.
The result will not be pretty.
Rick Perry Wants to Bankrupt Most Americans the Way He has Bankrupted Most Texans
From The Washington Post -- August 16, 2011:
The Sad Facts behind Rick Perry’s Texas Miracle
By Harold Meyerson
Rick Perry’s Texas is Ross Perot’s Mexico come north. Through a range of enticements we more commonly associate with Third World nations — low wages, no benefits, high rates of poverty, scant taxes, few regulations and generous corporate subsidies — the state has produced its own “giant sucking sound,” attracting businesses from other states to a place where workers come cheap.
Perry’s calling card in the presidential race is his state’s record of job creation at a time when the national economy floundered. Yes, Texas has created lots of jobs, though that’s partly a reflection of the surge in oil prices, which in turn created tens of thousands of jobs in the oil and gas industries. What Perry touts in his stump speech, however, isn’t the oil boom but, rather, the low-tax, low-reg, handouts-to-business climate that prevails in Texas. It’s the kind of spiel that businesses hear every day from leaders of developing nations — Mexico and, even more, China.
Consider the Texas that Perry holds up to the rest of the nation for admiration. It has the fourth-highest poverty rate of any state. It tied with Mississippi last year for the highest percentage of workers in minimum-wage jobs. It ranks first in adults without high school diplomas. Twenty-six percent of Texans have no health insurance — the highest percentage of medically uninsured residents of any state. It leads the nation in the percentage of children who lack medical insurance. Texas has an inordinate number of employers who provide no insurance to their workers, partly because insurance rates are high, thanks to an absence of regulations.
Perry seems quite comfortable with the state’s lagging performance in what we might term the pursuit-of-happiness index. Consider his indifference toward education: In 2008, the state comptroller found that 12 percent of Texans lacked high school diplomas and that the level would rise to 30 percent by 2040 unless the state’s commitment to education was considerably increased. This year, though, when confronted with a $27 billion budget deficit, Perry did not raise taxes but instead slashed $4 billion from K-12 schools. In this regard, the equation of Perry with China’s leaders is unfair to China: The Chinese understand that the better educated their people become, the more high-skill and high-compensating jobs their nation will attain. No such understanding seems to have permeated Perry’s brain.
In one significant particular, though, Perry’s policies fairly ape the Chinese. Over the past eight years, the state has given businesses nearly $500 million in grants and financial incentives to help them expand. Perry’s economic vision is the kind of race-to-the-bottom mercantilism we’ve come to expect from developing nations in the globalized economy, although, as China, Brazil and India illustrate, many such nations have begun to provide citizens with more schooling and better jobs as they grow wealthier. No comparable developments can be seen in Rick Perry’s Texas.
Now Perry wants to take his model national. In “Fed Up,” his campaign manifesto, he says the federal government has gone too far by passing laws “regulating the environment, regulating guns, protecting civil rights, establishing the massive programs and Medicare and Medicaid, [and] creating national minimum wage laws.” These are all endeavors, he argues, that should be left to the states.
I could understand how a governor with a good record on providing medical insurance, for instance, could argue that his state’s plan is one the nation should emulate. But when the governor of the state with the highest level of medical uninsurance calls for dismantling the national programs and letting states go their own way, that’s industrial-strength chutzpah.
What Perry either ignores or doesn’t know is how greatly Texas has benefited from the investments and regulations of the federal government he despises. He grew up, he tells all who will listen, on a small, hardscrabble Texas farm. But it was Franklin Roosevelt’s Rural Electrification Administration that brought electricity to those farms, which, left to the mercies of the market, would have remained dark for decades. The New Deal threw money at Texas, bringing it dams, highways and schoolhouses. The cumulative effect of policies such as the federal minimum wage has been to diminish the disparity that long existed between the industrialized North and the more poverty-stricken South.
Perry wants to unravel the national social contract and once again have us go state by state, with the low-wage, low-reg states dragging down the others, much as Chinese mercantilism has dragged down wages and living standards across the United States. He is the 21st-century, homegrown version of the Manchurian candidate.
The Sad Facts behind Rick Perry’s Texas Miracle
By Harold Meyerson
Rick Perry’s Texas is Ross Perot’s Mexico come north. Through a range of enticements we more commonly associate with Third World nations — low wages, no benefits, high rates of poverty, scant taxes, few regulations and generous corporate subsidies — the state has produced its own “giant sucking sound,” attracting businesses from other states to a place where workers come cheap.
Perry’s calling card in the presidential race is his state’s record of job creation at a time when the national economy floundered. Yes, Texas has created lots of jobs, though that’s partly a reflection of the surge in oil prices, which in turn created tens of thousands of jobs in the oil and gas industries. What Perry touts in his stump speech, however, isn’t the oil boom but, rather, the low-tax, low-reg, handouts-to-business climate that prevails in Texas. It’s the kind of spiel that businesses hear every day from leaders of developing nations — Mexico and, even more, China.
Consider the Texas that Perry holds up to the rest of the nation for admiration. It has the fourth-highest poverty rate of any state. It tied with Mississippi last year for the highest percentage of workers in minimum-wage jobs. It ranks first in adults without high school diplomas. Twenty-six percent of Texans have no health insurance — the highest percentage of medically uninsured residents of any state. It leads the nation in the percentage of children who lack medical insurance. Texas has an inordinate number of employers who provide no insurance to their workers, partly because insurance rates are high, thanks to an absence of regulations.
Perry seems quite comfortable with the state’s lagging performance in what we might term the pursuit-of-happiness index. Consider his indifference toward education: In 2008, the state comptroller found that 12 percent of Texans lacked high school diplomas and that the level would rise to 30 percent by 2040 unless the state’s commitment to education was considerably increased. This year, though, when confronted with a $27 billion budget deficit, Perry did not raise taxes but instead slashed $4 billion from K-12 schools. In this regard, the equation of Perry with China’s leaders is unfair to China: The Chinese understand that the better educated their people become, the more high-skill and high-compensating jobs their nation will attain. No such understanding seems to have permeated Perry’s brain.
In one significant particular, though, Perry’s policies fairly ape the Chinese. Over the past eight years, the state has given businesses nearly $500 million in grants and financial incentives to help them expand. Perry’s economic vision is the kind of race-to-the-bottom mercantilism we’ve come to expect from developing nations in the globalized economy, although, as China, Brazil and India illustrate, many such nations have begun to provide citizens with more schooling and better jobs as they grow wealthier. No comparable developments can be seen in Rick Perry’s Texas.
Now Perry wants to take his model national. In “Fed Up,” his campaign manifesto, he says the federal government has gone too far by passing laws “regulating the environment, regulating guns, protecting civil rights, establishing the massive programs and Medicare and Medicaid, [and] creating national minimum wage laws.” These are all endeavors, he argues, that should be left to the states.
I could understand how a governor with a good record on providing medical insurance, for instance, could argue that his state’s plan is one the nation should emulate. But when the governor of the state with the highest level of medical uninsurance calls for dismantling the national programs and letting states go their own way, that’s industrial-strength chutzpah.
What Perry either ignores or doesn’t know is how greatly Texas has benefited from the investments and regulations of the federal government he despises. He grew up, he tells all who will listen, on a small, hardscrabble Texas farm. But it was Franklin Roosevelt’s Rural Electrification Administration that brought electricity to those farms, which, left to the mercies of the market, would have remained dark for decades. The New Deal threw money at Texas, bringing it dams, highways and schoolhouses. The cumulative effect of policies such as the federal minimum wage has been to diminish the disparity that long existed between the industrialized North and the more poverty-stricken South.
Perry wants to unravel the national social contract and once again have us go state by state, with the low-wage, low-reg states dragging down the others, much as Chinese mercantilism has dragged down wages and living standards across the United States. He is the 21st-century, homegrown version of the Manchurian candidate.
Monday, August 15, 2011
Republicans' Coddling of the Super-Rich is Bringing the USA Down in Flames
From The New York Times Op-Ed -- August 14, 2011:
Stop Coddling the Super-Rich
By WARREN E. BUFFETT
OUR leaders have asked for “shared sacrifice.” But when they did the asking, they spared me. I checked with my mega-rich friends to learn what pain they were expecting. They, too, were left untouched.
While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks. Some of us are investment managers who earn billions from our daily labors but are allowed to classify our income as “carried interest,” thereby getting a bargain 15 percent tax rate. Others own stock index futures for 10 minutes and have 60 percent of their gain taxed at 15 percent, as if they’d been long-term investors.
These and other blessings are showered upon us by legislators in Washington who feel compelled to protect us, much as if we were spotted owls or some other endangered species. It’s nice to have friends in high places.
Last year my federal tax bill — the income tax I paid, as well as payroll taxes paid by me and on my behalf — was $6,938,744. That sounds like a lot of money. But what I paid was only 17.4 percent of my taxable income — and that’s actually a lower percentage than was paid by any of the other 20 people in our office. Their tax burdens ranged from 33 percent to 41 percent and averaged 36 percent.
If you make money with money, as some of my super-rich friends do, your percentage may be a bit lower than mine. But if you earn money from a job, your percentage will surely exceed mine — most likely by a lot.
To understand why, you need to examine the sources of government revenue. Last year about 80 percent of these revenues came from personal income taxes and payroll taxes. The mega-rich pay income taxes at a rate of 15 percent on most of their earnings but pay practically nothing in payroll taxes. It’s a different story for the middle class: typically, they fall into the 15 percent and 25 percent income tax brackets, and then are hit with heavy payroll taxes to boot.
Back in the 1980s and 1990s, tax rates for the rich were far higher, and my percentage rate was in the middle of the pack. According to a theory I sometimes hear, I should have thrown a fit and refused to invest because of the elevated tax rates on capital gains and dividends.
I didn’t refuse, nor did others. I have worked with investors for 60 years and I have yet to see anyone — not even when capital gains rates were 39.9 percent in 1976-77 — shy away from a sensible investment because of the tax rate on the potential gain. People invest to make money, and potential taxes have never scared them off. And to those who argue that higher rates hurt job creation, I would note that a net of nearly 40 million jobs were added between 1980 and 2000. You know what’s happened since then: lower tax rates and far lower job creation.
Since 1992, the I.R.S. has compiled data from the returns of the 400 Americans reporting the largest income. In 1992, the top 400 had aggregate taxable income of $16.9 billion and paid federal taxes of 29.2 percent on that sum. In 2008, the aggregate income of the highest 400 had soared to $90.9 billion — a staggering $227.4 million on average — but the rate paid had fallen to 21.5 percent.
The taxes I refer to here include only federal income tax, but you can be sure that any payroll tax for the 400 was inconsequential compared to income. In fact, 88 of the 400 in 2008 reported no wages at all, though every one of them reported capital gains. Some of my brethren may shun work but they all like to invest. (I can relate to that.)
I know well many of the mega-rich and, by and large, they are very decent people. They love America and appreciate the opportunity this country has given them. Many have joined the Giving Pledge, promising to give most of their wealth to philanthropy. Most wouldn’t mind being told to pay more in taxes as well, particularly when so many of their fellow citizens are truly suffering.
Twelve members of Congress will soon take on the crucial job of rearranging our country’s finances. They’ve been instructed to devise a plan that reduces the 10-year deficit by at least $1.5 trillion. It’s vital, however, that they achieve far more than that. Americans are rapidly losing faith in the ability of Congress to deal with our country’s fiscal problems. Only action that is immediate, real and very substantial will prevent that doubt from morphing into hopelessness. That feeling can create its own reality.
Job one for the 12 is to pare down some future promises that even a rich America can’t fulfill. Big money must be saved here. The 12 should then turn to the issue of revenues. I would leave rates for 99.7 percent of taxpayers unchanged and continue the current 2-percentage-point reduction in the employee contribution to the payroll tax. This cut helps the poor and the middle class, who need every break they can get.
But for those making more than $1 million — there were 236,883 such households in 2009 — I would raise rates immediately on taxable income in excess of $1 million, including, of course, dividends and capital gains. And for those who make $10 million or more — there were 8,274 in 2009 — I would suggest an additional increase in rate.
My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress. It’s time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice.
Warren E. Buffett is the chairman and chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway.
Stop Coddling the Super-Rich
By WARREN E. BUFFETT
OUR leaders have asked for “shared sacrifice.” But when they did the asking, they spared me. I checked with my mega-rich friends to learn what pain they were expecting. They, too, were left untouched.
While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks. Some of us are investment managers who earn billions from our daily labors but are allowed to classify our income as “carried interest,” thereby getting a bargain 15 percent tax rate. Others own stock index futures for 10 minutes and have 60 percent of their gain taxed at 15 percent, as if they’d been long-term investors.
These and other blessings are showered upon us by legislators in Washington who feel compelled to protect us, much as if we were spotted owls or some other endangered species. It’s nice to have friends in high places.
Last year my federal tax bill — the income tax I paid, as well as payroll taxes paid by me and on my behalf — was $6,938,744. That sounds like a lot of money. But what I paid was only 17.4 percent of my taxable income — and that’s actually a lower percentage than was paid by any of the other 20 people in our office. Their tax burdens ranged from 33 percent to 41 percent and averaged 36 percent.
If you make money with money, as some of my super-rich friends do, your percentage may be a bit lower than mine. But if you earn money from a job, your percentage will surely exceed mine — most likely by a lot.
To understand why, you need to examine the sources of government revenue. Last year about 80 percent of these revenues came from personal income taxes and payroll taxes. The mega-rich pay income taxes at a rate of 15 percent on most of their earnings but pay practically nothing in payroll taxes. It’s a different story for the middle class: typically, they fall into the 15 percent and 25 percent income tax brackets, and then are hit with heavy payroll taxes to boot.
Back in the 1980s and 1990s, tax rates for the rich were far higher, and my percentage rate was in the middle of the pack. According to a theory I sometimes hear, I should have thrown a fit and refused to invest because of the elevated tax rates on capital gains and dividends.
I didn’t refuse, nor did others. I have worked with investors for 60 years and I have yet to see anyone — not even when capital gains rates were 39.9 percent in 1976-77 — shy away from a sensible investment because of the tax rate on the potential gain. People invest to make money, and potential taxes have never scared them off. And to those who argue that higher rates hurt job creation, I would note that a net of nearly 40 million jobs were added between 1980 and 2000. You know what’s happened since then: lower tax rates and far lower job creation.
Since 1992, the I.R.S. has compiled data from the returns of the 400 Americans reporting the largest income. In 1992, the top 400 had aggregate taxable income of $16.9 billion and paid federal taxes of 29.2 percent on that sum. In 2008, the aggregate income of the highest 400 had soared to $90.9 billion — a staggering $227.4 million on average — but the rate paid had fallen to 21.5 percent.
The taxes I refer to here include only federal income tax, but you can be sure that any payroll tax for the 400 was inconsequential compared to income. In fact, 88 of the 400 in 2008 reported no wages at all, though every one of them reported capital gains. Some of my brethren may shun work but they all like to invest. (I can relate to that.)
I know well many of the mega-rich and, by and large, they are very decent people. They love America and appreciate the opportunity this country has given them. Many have joined the Giving Pledge, promising to give most of their wealth to philanthropy. Most wouldn’t mind being told to pay more in taxes as well, particularly when so many of their fellow citizens are truly suffering.
Twelve members of Congress will soon take on the crucial job of rearranging our country’s finances. They’ve been instructed to devise a plan that reduces the 10-year deficit by at least $1.5 trillion. It’s vital, however, that they achieve far more than that. Americans are rapidly losing faith in the ability of Congress to deal with our country’s fiscal problems. Only action that is immediate, real and very substantial will prevent that doubt from morphing into hopelessness. That feeling can create its own reality.
Job one for the 12 is to pare down some future promises that even a rich America can’t fulfill. Big money must be saved here. The 12 should then turn to the issue of revenues. I would leave rates for 99.7 percent of taxpayers unchanged and continue the current 2-percentage-point reduction in the employee contribution to the payroll tax. This cut helps the poor and the middle class, who need every break they can get.
But for those making more than $1 million — there were 236,883 such households in 2009 — I would raise rates immediately on taxable income in excess of $1 million, including, of course, dividends and capital gains. And for those who make $10 million or more — there were 8,274 in 2009 — I would suggest an additional increase in rate.
My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress. It’s time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice.
Warren E. Buffett is the chairman and chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway.
The Republican Mad Dash to the Far Right
If you spent this weekend on a beach or at a barbecue, what you missed was the clearest set of signals we've had yet about the far-right, negative turn the Republican field is taking in this election.
This past weekend as Rick Perry entered the race, we watched Mitt Romney argue that "corporations are people" and Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul -- the two most extreme candidates in the field -- come out on top of the Iowa Straw poll. The Tea Party has all the momentum right now in the GOP primaries, and that's what knocked Tim Pawlenty out of this race. He quit on Sunday.
Disturbingly, the view in the media was that Pawlenty was too "nice" for the Republican voters and "didn't fit with an electorate who wanted confrontation with President Obama at all costs." In other words: You ain't seen nothing yet.
The actual Iowa caucuses are still a half year away, but as the field narrows it's become clear the next six months will feature a divisive cast of Republican candidates and produce a GOP nominee who's pledged allegiance to the Tea Party agenda -- an agenda whose first item is to destroy Democrats no matter the consequences for our country.
Governor Perry's entry adds a new personality into the mix, but not a single new policy.
Like every one of his opponents, from Mitt Romney to Rick Santorum, he's signed on to the Washington Republican plan that essentially ends Medicare, cuts K-12 education, and eliminates hundreds of thousands of jobs. He shares their view that big corporations, not seniors and middle class families, are the ones in need of some relief.
In a field without policy differences, we can be sure that the nomination will be decided by rhetoric -- and the prize will go to the candidate willing to launch the most vicious, negative attack on President Obama, the Democratic Party and basic American principles.
Debt Is Sewage: Right-Wing Republicans Are Not Against Debt -- They Are Against Government Doing Anything to Help Average Americans
Debt Is Sewage
From Alan Grayson -- August 15, 2011:
I received an e-mail this morning from some Koch-funded brainwashing operation. I get them all the time. So does everyone with an e-mail address for sale, it seems. When I have time, I actually read the e-mails. For the same reason that the French leftist Herbert Marcuse said that he read the Wall Street Journal – to see what the enemy is thinking.
Here is what it said:
“Better Way To Look at Debt Ceiling:
“You come home from work and find there has been a sewer backup and you have sewage up to your ceilings.
“What do you do…… raise the ceilings, or pump out the sewage?”
Now, I like a good metaphor as much as the next person. Maybe you’ve noticed. But this one – debt = sewage – suggests to me that Frank Luntz and the other right-wing spin-meisters must be working overtime.
Coming from the right-wing worshippers of the free market, this one does seem odd. Borrowing is a voluntary, “arms-length” agreement between two autonomous beings, which is exactly what the free market is all about. You have some extra capital. I need it, and I’m willing to pay interest to have it. Bingo – a loan.
Actually, borrowing is the third most common transaction in every market economy, after buying and working. 70% of us borrow and buy a home. Many of us borrow to buy a car, borrow to go to college, or borrow from our credit cards. No big deal.
And every economist will tell you that the government has two tools to fight a recession: fiscal policy and monetary policy. When fighting a recession, fiscal policy increases the federal debt. And monetary policy cashes out that federal debt with money, by increasing the money supply.
There is no need to gnash our teeth and rend our clothing over the federal deficit. That deficit is representative government doing its job, trying to end the recession and put people back to work.
Why aren’t our so-called “leaders” explaining this? Make a contribution, and help us to get the word out.
So why would right-wingers equate debt and sewage? Well, this actually is not exactly original thinking. In German, the word “schuld” means both “debt” and “guilt.” As Nazi philosopher Martin Heidegger noted in his book “Being and Time.”
And there is one culture that bans debt completely: Islam, under sharia law. Because the Koran (3:130) says: “O, you who believe! Devour not interest, doubled and redoubled, and be careful of Allah.”
It looks like when those Tea Party legislators introduced bills last year to ban sharia law, this right-wing preoccupation with the evils of debt slipped right by them.
Isn’t this one obvious? They are vilifying the federal debt in order to rationalize cuts in Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, government mortgages, student loans, and other federal benefits.
After spending six years in the White House, Hillary Clinton warned America – on NBC’s Today Show – about the “vast right-wing conspiracy.” Now, 13 years later, we’re receiving e-mails from it. All for the purpose of pushing, pushing, pushing public opinion further and further to the right.
And after all this time, anyone who keeps getting fooled by it must be . . . a fool.
From Alan Grayson -- August 15, 2011:
I received an e-mail this morning from some Koch-funded brainwashing operation. I get them all the time. So does everyone with an e-mail address for sale, it seems. When I have time, I actually read the e-mails. For the same reason that the French leftist Herbert Marcuse said that he read the Wall Street Journal – to see what the enemy is thinking.
Here is what it said:
“Better Way To Look at Debt Ceiling:
“You come home from work and find there has been a sewer backup and you have sewage up to your ceilings.
“What do you do…… raise the ceilings, or pump out the sewage?”
Now, I like a good metaphor as much as the next person. Maybe you’ve noticed. But this one – debt = sewage – suggests to me that Frank Luntz and the other right-wing spin-meisters must be working overtime.
Coming from the right-wing worshippers of the free market, this one does seem odd. Borrowing is a voluntary, “arms-length” agreement between two autonomous beings, which is exactly what the free market is all about. You have some extra capital. I need it, and I’m willing to pay interest to have it. Bingo – a loan.
Actually, borrowing is the third most common transaction in every market economy, after buying and working. 70% of us borrow and buy a home. Many of us borrow to buy a car, borrow to go to college, or borrow from our credit cards. No big deal.
And every economist will tell you that the government has two tools to fight a recession: fiscal policy and monetary policy. When fighting a recession, fiscal policy increases the federal debt. And monetary policy cashes out that federal debt with money, by increasing the money supply.
There is no need to gnash our teeth and rend our clothing over the federal deficit. That deficit is representative government doing its job, trying to end the recession and put people back to work.
Why aren’t our so-called “leaders” explaining this? Make a contribution, and help us to get the word out.
So why would right-wingers equate debt and sewage? Well, this actually is not exactly original thinking. In German, the word “schuld” means both “debt” and “guilt.” As Nazi philosopher Martin Heidegger noted in his book “Being and Time.”
And there is one culture that bans debt completely: Islam, under sharia law. Because the Koran (3:130) says: “O, you who believe! Devour not interest, doubled and redoubled, and be careful of Allah.”
It looks like when those Tea Party legislators introduced bills last year to ban sharia law, this right-wing preoccupation with the evils of debt slipped right by them.
Isn’t this one obvious? They are vilifying the federal debt in order to rationalize cuts in Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, government mortgages, student loans, and other federal benefits.
After spending six years in the White House, Hillary Clinton warned America – on NBC’s Today Show – about the “vast right-wing conspiracy.” Now, 13 years later, we’re receiving e-mails from it. All for the purpose of pushing, pushing, pushing public opinion further and further to the right.
And after all this time, anyone who keeps getting fooled by it must be . . . a fool.
We're Doomed! Thank You, Right-Wing Republican Party
From The Daily Beast -- August 11, 2011:
We’re Doomed!
By Charles R. Morris
Between the crazy markets and gridlock in Washington and Europe, our economic options are increasingly limited, says Charles R. Morris. If we continue on this path, we’ll be facing another major crisis.l
Over the last few days, global markets have been surging and collapsing like a teeny-bopper’s hormones. The Monday swoon was precipitated by the downgrading of the U.S. credit rating by one of the major credit agencies, while the Tuesday resurrection was in reaction to Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke’s promise to keep interest rates near zero in perpetuity if necessary.
Neither of those was a real event. Treasury risk premiums fell after the credit action, and American banks and corporations are already sitting on some $3 trillion in cash that they can’t spend. More free money won’t change anything.
Gloom descended again on Wednesday, this time because of credit worries in Europe, which is at least a real problem. A deeper reason for the high market anxiety, however, is the sad state of financial governance in both Europe and the United States.
The paralyzing standoff between the two major American parties was dramatized by the idiocies of the debt-ceiling debate. President Obama’s Monday speech only added to the nervousness by underscoring how far apart the parties were.
Europe’s incapacities have been exposed by the simmering Eurobond crises along its maritime rim, from Ireland through Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece, and now Cyprus. Continued temporizing could destroy the euro and precipitate another financial catastrophe.
In substance, the American and European problems are quite different. In America, households borrowed against bubble-era housing-price spikes to pay for a consumer import boom. When the housing bubble popped, consumers defaulted en masse, and the crash caught the country with its social safety net down. Unemployment rates that are routine in Europe are disastrous in the U.S.
Everyone agrees that America has to rebalance the share of production and consumption in GDP. But companies won’t ratchet up investment in a time of declining demand. Short-term actions, like a payroll tax holiday and extending unemployment benefits would help. A more substantive response would be heavy public spending on jobs-intensive infrastructure and energy projects—both sorely needed in any case—ideally accompanied by strong "buy American" rules.
The problem is how to finance it. The debt-ceiling catfight has placed a lid on further borrowing, while American all-jurisdiction tax revenues, as a share of GDP, are among the lowest of the major industrial countries. A continuing gridlock around taxes and debt could mean years of economic stagnation. For a glimpse of what that means, just look at Japan.
Most of Europe navigated the crisis in decent shape, despite funneling torrents of cash into their beleaguered banks. The major economies were better balanced to begin with—German household consumption is about 58 percent of GDP, compared with about 73 percent in America (PDF)—and workers were mostly insulated from sharp drops in living standards.
Their problem is a basic flaw in the design of the monetary union. A founding principle was that high-savings countries, like Germany and the Netherlands, would not subsidize the living standards of the more profligate. Each country manages its own budgets and deficits and is responsible for its own debts. The members also pledged to keep their budget deficits under 3 percent of GDP, although there are no enforcement mechanisms.
The mantra that “the government is the problem, not the solution” applies only in good times.
Greece is a true profligate. Recent budget deficits were as high as 14 percent of GDP, taxes are mostly ignored, hairdressers retire on state pensions at age 50. Ireland, by contrast, is a high-productivity, low-spending country that got in trouble from a foolish promise to back the debt of its bloated banks. Portugal is a middle case, with recent deficits of nearly 7 percent of GDP.
But all three of them are saddled with debts they can’t possibly repay. All are imposing rigorous budget cuts—in Greece, the rollback of benefits has been provoking riots. But forced austerity has triggered big drops in national outputs, so the debt burdens become even more unsupportable. The flight from peripheral country bonds has now extended to Spain and Italy. Neither country is in truly bad economic shape, but both would default if they were shut out of bond markets.
The cleanest way to stop the carnage is to unify the Eurobond market—make all bonds the liabilities of all the member countries. But that would require national budgets to be approved by some form of trans-European authority. The peripheral countries would hate that as much as the Germans and the Dutch hate the idea of subsidizing the sun worshipers to the south.
So like the Americans, the Europeans are stuck. Each mini-run on Greece, or Ireland, is met with an expedient—some showy bond purchases, and in Greece’s case, an obfuscatory too-small “voluntary restructuring” of some bonds, which was really a disguised default. This week the central bank has intervened aggressively in all the peripheral country markets, and even in France, which is under attack as well. But without real structural solutions, neither the bank nor a new stability fund has the firepower to beat back a really determined attack. Remember how easily George Soros brought down the pound in a single day in 1992.
A messy Eurobond default, or the breakup of the euro zone, would have consequences on the scale of the Lehman bankruptcy that triggered the long, global, all-market dive in September 2008. And this time, there would be no magic tricks in the Federal Reserve’s or European central banks’ kit bags to pull economies up by their bootstraps.
The mantra that “the government is the problem, not the solution” applies only in good times. With global risk measures flashing redder by the day, we need functioning government on both sides of the Atlantic.
We’re Doomed!
By Charles R. Morris
Between the crazy markets and gridlock in Washington and Europe, our economic options are increasingly limited, says Charles R. Morris. If we continue on this path, we’ll be facing another major crisis.l
Over the last few days, global markets have been surging and collapsing like a teeny-bopper’s hormones. The Monday swoon was precipitated by the downgrading of the U.S. credit rating by one of the major credit agencies, while the Tuesday resurrection was in reaction to Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke’s promise to keep interest rates near zero in perpetuity if necessary.
Neither of those was a real event. Treasury risk premiums fell after the credit action, and American banks and corporations are already sitting on some $3 trillion in cash that they can’t spend. More free money won’t change anything.
Gloom descended again on Wednesday, this time because of credit worries in Europe, which is at least a real problem. A deeper reason for the high market anxiety, however, is the sad state of financial governance in both Europe and the United States.
The paralyzing standoff between the two major American parties was dramatized by the idiocies of the debt-ceiling debate. President Obama’s Monday speech only added to the nervousness by underscoring how far apart the parties were.
Europe’s incapacities have been exposed by the simmering Eurobond crises along its maritime rim, from Ireland through Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece, and now Cyprus. Continued temporizing could destroy the euro and precipitate another financial catastrophe.
In substance, the American and European problems are quite different. In America, households borrowed against bubble-era housing-price spikes to pay for a consumer import boom. When the housing bubble popped, consumers defaulted en masse, and the crash caught the country with its social safety net down. Unemployment rates that are routine in Europe are disastrous in the U.S.
Everyone agrees that America has to rebalance the share of production and consumption in GDP. But companies won’t ratchet up investment in a time of declining demand. Short-term actions, like a payroll tax holiday and extending unemployment benefits would help. A more substantive response would be heavy public spending on jobs-intensive infrastructure and energy projects—both sorely needed in any case—ideally accompanied by strong "buy American" rules.
The problem is how to finance it. The debt-ceiling catfight has placed a lid on further borrowing, while American all-jurisdiction tax revenues, as a share of GDP, are among the lowest of the major industrial countries. A continuing gridlock around taxes and debt could mean years of economic stagnation. For a glimpse of what that means, just look at Japan.
Most of Europe navigated the crisis in decent shape, despite funneling torrents of cash into their beleaguered banks. The major economies were better balanced to begin with—German household consumption is about 58 percent of GDP, compared with about 73 percent in America (PDF)—and workers were mostly insulated from sharp drops in living standards.
Their problem is a basic flaw in the design of the monetary union. A founding principle was that high-savings countries, like Germany and the Netherlands, would not subsidize the living standards of the more profligate. Each country manages its own budgets and deficits and is responsible for its own debts. The members also pledged to keep their budget deficits under 3 percent of GDP, although there are no enforcement mechanisms.
The mantra that “the government is the problem, not the solution” applies only in good times.
Greece is a true profligate. Recent budget deficits were as high as 14 percent of GDP, taxes are mostly ignored, hairdressers retire on state pensions at age 50. Ireland, by contrast, is a high-productivity, low-spending country that got in trouble from a foolish promise to back the debt of its bloated banks. Portugal is a middle case, with recent deficits of nearly 7 percent of GDP.
But all three of them are saddled with debts they can’t possibly repay. All are imposing rigorous budget cuts—in Greece, the rollback of benefits has been provoking riots. But forced austerity has triggered big drops in national outputs, so the debt burdens become even more unsupportable. The flight from peripheral country bonds has now extended to Spain and Italy. Neither country is in truly bad economic shape, but both would default if they were shut out of bond markets.
The cleanest way to stop the carnage is to unify the Eurobond market—make all bonds the liabilities of all the member countries. But that would require national budgets to be approved by some form of trans-European authority. The peripheral countries would hate that as much as the Germans and the Dutch hate the idea of subsidizing the sun worshipers to the south.
So like the Americans, the Europeans are stuck. Each mini-run on Greece, or Ireland, is met with an expedient—some showy bond purchases, and in Greece’s case, an obfuscatory too-small “voluntary restructuring” of some bonds, which was really a disguised default. This week the central bank has intervened aggressively in all the peripheral country markets, and even in France, which is under attack as well. But without real structural solutions, neither the bank nor a new stability fund has the firepower to beat back a really determined attack. Remember how easily George Soros brought down the pound in a single day in 1992.
A messy Eurobond default, or the breakup of the euro zone, would have consequences on the scale of the Lehman bankruptcy that triggered the long, global, all-market dive in September 2008. And this time, there would be no magic tricks in the Federal Reserve’s or European central banks’ kit bags to pull economies up by their bootstraps.
The mantra that “the government is the problem, not the solution” applies only in good times. With global risk measures flashing redder by the day, we need functioning government on both sides of the Atlantic.
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Republicans' Anti-Keynes "Balanced Budget" Voodoo is Bum-Rushing the USA into a Massive Economic Depression
From The New York Times -- August 12, 2011:
G.O.P. on Defensive as Analysts Question Party’s Fiscal Policy
By JACKIE CALMES
WASHINGTON — The boasts of Congressional Republicans about their cost-cutting victories are ringing hollow to some well-known economists, financial analysts and corporate leaders, including some Republicans, who are expressing increasing alarm over Washington’s new austerity and antitax orthodoxy.
Their critiques have grown sharper since last week, when President Obama signed his deficit reduction deal with Republicans and, a few days later, when Standard & Poor’s downgraded the credit rating of the United States.
But even before that, macroeconomists and private sector forecasters were warning that the direction in which the new House Republican majority had pushed the White House and Congress this year — for immediate spending cuts, no further stimulus measures and no tax increases, ever — was wrong for addressing the nation’s two main ills, a weak economy now and projections of unsustainably high federal debt in coming years.
Instead, these critics say, Washington should be focusing on stimulating the economy in the near term to induce people to spend money and create jobs, while settling on a long-term plan for spending cuts and tax increases to take effect only after the economy recovers.
But Republicans in Congress and on the presidential campaign trail refuse to back down.
Economists disagree about the proper balance between spending cuts and tax increases in reducing a government’s debts. Some studies by both liberal and conservative economists suggest that emphasizing spending cuts is better for long-term growth. But there are few if any precedents for paying down such a large debt solely through spending cuts.
Among those calling for a mix of cuts and revenue are onetime standard-bearers of Republican economic philosophy like Martin Feldstein, an adviser to President Ronald Reagan, and Henry M. Paulson Jr., Treasury secretary to President George W. Bush, underscoring the deepening divide between party establishment figures and the Tea Party-inspired Republicans in Congress and running for the White House.
“I think the U.S. has every chance of having a good year next year, but the politicians are doing their damnedest to prevent it from happening — the Republicans are — and the Democrats to my eternal bafflement have not stood their ground,” Ian C. Shepherdson, chief United States economist for High Frequency Economics, a research firm, said in an interview.
As for the longer term, Ethan Harris, co-head of global economics research at Bank of America, wrote this week that “Given the scale of the debt problem, a credible plan requires both revenue enhancement measures and entitlement reform. Washington’s recent debt deal did not include either.”
That is a common assessment, which may explain why Representative Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, was defensive about Republicans’ antitax absolutism in a memo to his colleagues on Monday.
“Over the next several months, there will be tremendous pressure on Congress to prove that S.& P.’s analysis of the inability of the political parties to bridge our differences is wrong. In short, there will be pressure to compromise on tax increases,” Mr. Cantor wrote.
But, he added, “We were not elected to raise taxes or take more money out of the pockets of hardworking families and business people.”
Republican candidates share that fervor: in their Iowa debate Thursday night, all eight participants raised their hands when asked who would reject a long-term debt reduction package that had $10 in spending cuts for every $1 in revenue increases.
Although many forecasters criticize S.& P. for downgrading the United States, they share the company’s disappointment that the budget deal fell short of the “grand bargain” Mr. Obama tried to negotiate with House Speaker John A. Boehner to provide stimulus and cut annual deficits up to $4 trillion over 10 years.
Along with annual caps on discretionary spending for domestic and military programs that ended up in the final deal, Mr. Obama and Mr. Boehner were also exploring short-term stimulus measures and, for the long term, revenue increases and future savings from Social Security and from the Medicare and Medicaid programs, whose growing costs are stoking projections of mounting debt. But Mr. Boehner quit the talks over taxes. And until Republicans budge on revenue, Democrats refuse to consider entitlement cuts.
Of course, Republicans can point to support among some conservative economists. John B. Taylor, a professor at Stanford and an adviser to Republican presidents and presidential candidates, said in an interview that temporary stimulus measures were counterproductive, and for long-term debt reduction, “I would try very hard to make it work without revenues.”
But Mr. Feldstein, who was chairman of President Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers, was among the first in 2008 to call for stimulus spending and recently has advocated raising revenue. He would do so by limiting “tax expenditures,” the costly tax breaks for corporations and individuals that include the mortgage-interest deduction — an idea recommended in December by a majority of Mr. Obama’s fiscal commission and lately by the president.
“I think Republicans should recognize that is a way of raising revenue without hurting incentives by higher marginal tax rates,” Mr. Feldstein said.
S.& P. based its downgrade and its negative outlook for America’s credit rating partly on the assumption that Bush-era tax cuts for high incomes would be extended past their 2012 expiration, “because the majority of Republicans in Congress continue to resist any measure that would raise revenues.” S.& P. said it could change its outlook to stable if the tax cuts ended.
Yet Republicans insist that taxes will not be on the table for the bipartisan Congressional committee created by the deficit deal. The panel must propose additional savings by Nov. 23 to fulfill the deal’s promise of up to $2.4 trillion in savings over 10 years.
Assuming Democrats then refuse to consider entitlement savings, only discretionary spending would be left — less than 40 percent of the budget, encompassing education, research, military, infrastructure and more. Last winter House Republicans forced Mr. Obama to agree to cut such spending by $183 billion over a decade. The deficit deal would cut nearly $1 trillion more.
The prospect of further reductions worries forecasters. Jerry Webman, chief economist of Oppenheimer Funds, wrote in an analysis that while the cuts were not huge this year or next, “they are nonetheless contrary to what would be expected in a fragile economic environment.”
In separate interviews, Joel Prakken, chairman of Macroeconomic Advisers, a forecasting firm, and Laurence H. Meyer, its co-founder and a former Federal Reserve governor, called the reductions “job-killing spending cuts” — playing on Republicans’ mantra against “job-killing tax increases.”
Mr. Prakken said tighter spending would “slow economic growth unless it was offset with lower interest rates through the Fed.” But with interest rates already near zero, the best the Fed could do this week was signal that rates would remain ultra-low well into 2013.
Low borrowing costs, analysts say, are more reason to bolster the economy now.
“At the very least,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics, Congress should renew for another year two measures that expire after 2011 — payroll tax relief for employees and extended unemployment compensation — as Mr. Obama has proposed. If either expired, Mr. Zandi said, that could shave roughly a half-percentage point from economic growth next year.
Republicans are resistant. And Democrats are too cowed to counter much, given polls that show many Americans believe Mr. Obama’s 2009-10 stimulus package did not work, despite studies to the contrary.
A Democratic Congressional adviser, granted anonymity to discuss party deliberations, said: “We’re at a loss to figure out a way to articulate the argument in a way that doesn’t get us pegged as tax-and-spenders.”
In a column in The Washington Post on Friday, Bill Gross, who runs the giant bond-trading firm Pimco, lashed out at Republicans and “co-opted Democrats” for setting aside widely accepted economic theory.
“An anti-Keynesian, budget-balancing immediacy imparts a constrictive noose around whatever demand remains alive and kicking,” he wrote. “Washington hassles over debt ceilings instead of job creation in the mistaken belief that a balanced budget will produce a balanced economy. It will not.”
G.O.P. on Defensive as Analysts Question Party’s Fiscal Policy
By JACKIE CALMES
WASHINGTON — The boasts of Congressional Republicans about their cost-cutting victories are ringing hollow to some well-known economists, financial analysts and corporate leaders, including some Republicans, who are expressing increasing alarm over Washington’s new austerity and antitax orthodoxy.
Their critiques have grown sharper since last week, when President Obama signed his deficit reduction deal with Republicans and, a few days later, when Standard & Poor’s downgraded the credit rating of the United States.
But even before that, macroeconomists and private sector forecasters were warning that the direction in which the new House Republican majority had pushed the White House and Congress this year — for immediate spending cuts, no further stimulus measures and no tax increases, ever — was wrong for addressing the nation’s two main ills, a weak economy now and projections of unsustainably high federal debt in coming years.
Instead, these critics say, Washington should be focusing on stimulating the economy in the near term to induce people to spend money and create jobs, while settling on a long-term plan for spending cuts and tax increases to take effect only after the economy recovers.
But Republicans in Congress and on the presidential campaign trail refuse to back down.
Economists disagree about the proper balance between spending cuts and tax increases in reducing a government’s debts. Some studies by both liberal and conservative economists suggest that emphasizing spending cuts is better for long-term growth. But there are few if any precedents for paying down such a large debt solely through spending cuts.
Among those calling for a mix of cuts and revenue are onetime standard-bearers of Republican economic philosophy like Martin Feldstein, an adviser to President Ronald Reagan, and Henry M. Paulson Jr., Treasury secretary to President George W. Bush, underscoring the deepening divide between party establishment figures and the Tea Party-inspired Republicans in Congress and running for the White House.
“I think the U.S. has every chance of having a good year next year, but the politicians are doing their damnedest to prevent it from happening — the Republicans are — and the Democrats to my eternal bafflement have not stood their ground,” Ian C. Shepherdson, chief United States economist for High Frequency Economics, a research firm, said in an interview.
As for the longer term, Ethan Harris, co-head of global economics research at Bank of America, wrote this week that “Given the scale of the debt problem, a credible plan requires both revenue enhancement measures and entitlement reform. Washington’s recent debt deal did not include either.”
That is a common assessment, which may explain why Representative Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, was defensive about Republicans’ antitax absolutism in a memo to his colleagues on Monday.
“Over the next several months, there will be tremendous pressure on Congress to prove that S.& P.’s analysis of the inability of the political parties to bridge our differences is wrong. In short, there will be pressure to compromise on tax increases,” Mr. Cantor wrote.
But, he added, “We were not elected to raise taxes or take more money out of the pockets of hardworking families and business people.”
Republican candidates share that fervor: in their Iowa debate Thursday night, all eight participants raised their hands when asked who would reject a long-term debt reduction package that had $10 in spending cuts for every $1 in revenue increases.
Although many forecasters criticize S.& P. for downgrading the United States, they share the company’s disappointment that the budget deal fell short of the “grand bargain” Mr. Obama tried to negotiate with House Speaker John A. Boehner to provide stimulus and cut annual deficits up to $4 trillion over 10 years.
Along with annual caps on discretionary spending for domestic and military programs that ended up in the final deal, Mr. Obama and Mr. Boehner were also exploring short-term stimulus measures and, for the long term, revenue increases and future savings from Social Security and from the Medicare and Medicaid programs, whose growing costs are stoking projections of mounting debt. But Mr. Boehner quit the talks over taxes. And until Republicans budge on revenue, Democrats refuse to consider entitlement cuts.
Of course, Republicans can point to support among some conservative economists. John B. Taylor, a professor at Stanford and an adviser to Republican presidents and presidential candidates, said in an interview that temporary stimulus measures were counterproductive, and for long-term debt reduction, “I would try very hard to make it work without revenues.”
But Mr. Feldstein, who was chairman of President Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers, was among the first in 2008 to call for stimulus spending and recently has advocated raising revenue. He would do so by limiting “tax expenditures,” the costly tax breaks for corporations and individuals that include the mortgage-interest deduction — an idea recommended in December by a majority of Mr. Obama’s fiscal commission and lately by the president.
“I think Republicans should recognize that is a way of raising revenue without hurting incentives by higher marginal tax rates,” Mr. Feldstein said.
S.& P. based its downgrade and its negative outlook for America’s credit rating partly on the assumption that Bush-era tax cuts for high incomes would be extended past their 2012 expiration, “because the majority of Republicans in Congress continue to resist any measure that would raise revenues.” S.& P. said it could change its outlook to stable if the tax cuts ended.
Yet Republicans insist that taxes will not be on the table for the bipartisan Congressional committee created by the deficit deal. The panel must propose additional savings by Nov. 23 to fulfill the deal’s promise of up to $2.4 trillion in savings over 10 years.
Assuming Democrats then refuse to consider entitlement savings, only discretionary spending would be left — less than 40 percent of the budget, encompassing education, research, military, infrastructure and more. Last winter House Republicans forced Mr. Obama to agree to cut such spending by $183 billion over a decade. The deficit deal would cut nearly $1 trillion more.
The prospect of further reductions worries forecasters. Jerry Webman, chief economist of Oppenheimer Funds, wrote in an analysis that while the cuts were not huge this year or next, “they are nonetheless contrary to what would be expected in a fragile economic environment.”
In separate interviews, Joel Prakken, chairman of Macroeconomic Advisers, a forecasting firm, and Laurence H. Meyer, its co-founder and a former Federal Reserve governor, called the reductions “job-killing spending cuts” — playing on Republicans’ mantra against “job-killing tax increases.”
Mr. Prakken said tighter spending would “slow economic growth unless it was offset with lower interest rates through the Fed.” But with interest rates already near zero, the best the Fed could do this week was signal that rates would remain ultra-low well into 2013.
Low borrowing costs, analysts say, are more reason to bolster the economy now.
“At the very least,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics, Congress should renew for another year two measures that expire after 2011 — payroll tax relief for employees and extended unemployment compensation — as Mr. Obama has proposed. If either expired, Mr. Zandi said, that could shave roughly a half-percentage point from economic growth next year.
Republicans are resistant. And Democrats are too cowed to counter much, given polls that show many Americans believe Mr. Obama’s 2009-10 stimulus package did not work, despite studies to the contrary.
A Democratic Congressional adviser, granted anonymity to discuss party deliberations, said: “We’re at a loss to figure out a way to articulate the argument in a way that doesn’t get us pegged as tax-and-spenders.”
In a column in The Washington Post on Friday, Bill Gross, who runs the giant bond-trading firm Pimco, lashed out at Republicans and “co-opted Democrats” for setting aside widely accepted economic theory.
“An anti-Keynesian, budget-balancing immediacy imparts a constrictive noose around whatever demand remains alive and kicking,” he wrote. “Washington hassles over debt ceilings instead of job creation in the mistaken belief that a balanced budget will produce a balanced economy. It will not.”
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Michael Moore Details the Destruction of America's Middle Class
From Common Dreams -- August 13, 2011:
Published on Saturday, August 6, 2011 by CommonDreams.org
30 Years Ago: The Day the Middle Class Died
by Michael Moore
From time to time, someone under 30 will ask me, "When did this all begin, America's downward slide?" They say they've heard of a time when working people could raise a family and send the kids to college on just one parent's income (and that college in states like California and New York was almost free). That anyone who wanted a decent paying job could get one. That people only worked five days a week, eight hours a day, got the whole weekend off and had a paid vacation every summer. That many jobs were union jobs, from baggers at the grocery store to the guy painting your house, and this meant that no matter how "lowly" your job was you had guarantees of a pension, occasional raises, health insurance and someone to stick up for you if you were unfairly treated.
On August 5, 1981, President Ronald Reagan fired every member of the air traffic controllers union (PATCO) who'd defied his order to return to work and declared their union illegal. They had been on strike for just two days.
Young people have heard of this mythical time -- but it was no myth, it was real. And when they ask, "When did this all end?", I say, "It ended on this day: August 5th, 1981."
Beginning on this date, 30 years ago, Big Business and the Right Wing decided to "go for it" -- to see if they could actually destroy the middle class so that they could become richer themselves.
And they've succeeded.
On August 5, 1981, President Ronald Reagan fired every member of the air traffic controllers union (PATCO) who'd defied his order to return to work and declared their union illegal. They had been on strike for just two days.
It was a bold and brash move. No one had ever tried it. What made it even bolder was that PATCO was one of only two unions that had endorsed Reagan for president! It sent a shock wave through workers across the country. If he would do this to the people who were with him, what would he do to us?
Reagan had been backed by Wall Street in his run for the White House and they, along with right-wing Christians, wanted to restructure America and turn back the tide that President Franklin D. Roosevelt started -- a tide that was intended to make life better for the average working person. The rich hated paying better wages and providing benefits. They hated paying taxes even more. And they despised unions. The right-wing Christians hated anything that sounded like socialism or holding out a helping hand to minorities or women.
Reagan promised to end all that. So when the air traffic controllers went on strike, he seized the moment. In getting rid of every single last one of them and outlawing their union, he sent a clear and strong message: The days of everyone having a comfortable middle class life were over. America, from now on, would be run this way:
* The super-rich will make more, much much more, and the rest of you will scramble for the crumbs that are left.
* Everyone must work! Mom, Dad, the teenagers in the house! Dad, you work a second job! Kids, here's your latch-key! Your parents might be home in time to put you to bed.
* 50 million of you must go without health insurance! And health insurance companies: you go ahead and decide who you want to help -- or not.
* Unions are evil! You will not belong to a union! You do not need an advocate! Shut up and get back to work! No, you can't leave now, we're not done. Your kids can make their own dinner.
* You want to go to college? No problem -- just sign here and be in hock to a bank for the next 20 years!
* What's "a raise"? Get back to work and shut up!
And so it went. But Reagan could not have pulled this off by himself in 1981. He had some big help:
The AFL-CIO.
The biggest organization of unions in America told its members to cross the picket lines of the air traffic controllers and go to work. And that's just what these union members did. Union pilots, flight attendants, delivery truck drivers, baggage handlers -- they all crossed the line and helped to break the strike. And union members of all stripes crossed the picket lines and continued to fly.
Reagan and Wall Street could not believe their eyes! Hundreds of thousands of working people and union members endorsing the firing of fellow union members. It was Christmas in August for Corporate America.
And that was the beginning of the end. Reagan and the Republicans knew they could get away with anything -- and they did. They slashed taxes on the rich. They made it harder for you to start a union at your workplace. They eliminated safety regulations on the job. They ignored the monopoly laws and allowed thousands of companies to merge or be bought out and closed down. Corporations froze wages and threatened to move overseas if the workers didn't accept lower pay and less benefits. And when the workers agreed to work for less, they moved the jobs overseas anyway.
And at every step along the way, the majority of Americans went along with this. There was little opposition or fight-back. The "masses" did not rise up and protect their jobs, their homes, their schools (which used to be the best in the world). They just accepted their fate and took the beating.
I have often wondered what would have happened had we all just stopped flying, period, back in 1981. What if all the unions had said to Reagan, "Give those controllers their jobs back or we're shutting the country down!"? You know what would have happened. The corporate elite and their boy Reagan would have buckled.
But we didn't do it. And so, bit by bit, piece by piece, in the ensuing 30 years, those in power have destroyed the middle class of our country and, in turn, have wrecked the future for our young people. Wages have remained stagnant for 30 years. Take a look at the statistics and you can see that every decline we're now suffering with had it's beginning in 1981 (here's a little scene to illustrate that from my last movie).
It all began on this day, 30 years ago. One of the darkest days in American history. And we let it happen to us. Yes, they had the money, and the media and the cops. But we had 200 million of us. Ever wonder what it would look like if 200 million got truly upset and wanted their country, their life, their job, their weekend, their time with their kids back?
Have we all just given up? What are we waiting for? Forget about the 20% who support the Tea Party -- we are the other 80%! This decline will only end when we demand it. And not through an online petition or a tweet. We are going to have to turn the TV and the computer and the video games off and get out in the streets (like they've done in Wisconsin). Some of you need to run for local office next year. We need to demand that the Democrats either get a spine and stop taking corporate money -- or step aside.
When is enough, enough? The middle class dream will not just magically reappear. Wall Street's plan is clear: America is to be a nation of Haves and Have Nothings. Is that OK for you?
Why not use today to pause and think about the little steps you can take to turn this around in your neighborhood, at your workplace, in your school? Is there any better day to start than today?
P.S. Here are a few places you can connect with to get the ball rolling:
Main Street Contract for America
Showdown in America
Democracy Convention
Occupy Wall Street
October 2011
How to Join a Union by the AFL-CIO (they've learned their lesson and have a good president now) or UE
Change to Win
MoveOn
High School Newspaper (Just because you're under 18 doesn't mean you can't do anything!)
Published on Saturday, August 6, 2011 by CommonDreams.org
30 Years Ago: The Day the Middle Class Died
by Michael Moore
From time to time, someone under 30 will ask me, "When did this all begin, America's downward slide?" They say they've heard of a time when working people could raise a family and send the kids to college on just one parent's income (and that college in states like California and New York was almost free). That anyone who wanted a decent paying job could get one. That people only worked five days a week, eight hours a day, got the whole weekend off and had a paid vacation every summer. That many jobs were union jobs, from baggers at the grocery store to the guy painting your house, and this meant that no matter how "lowly" your job was you had guarantees of a pension, occasional raises, health insurance and someone to stick up for you if you were unfairly treated.
On August 5, 1981, President Ronald Reagan fired every member of the air traffic controllers union (PATCO) who'd defied his order to return to work and declared their union illegal. They had been on strike for just two days.
Young people have heard of this mythical time -- but it was no myth, it was real. And when they ask, "When did this all end?", I say, "It ended on this day: August 5th, 1981."
Beginning on this date, 30 years ago, Big Business and the Right Wing decided to "go for it" -- to see if they could actually destroy the middle class so that they could become richer themselves.
And they've succeeded.
On August 5, 1981, President Ronald Reagan fired every member of the air traffic controllers union (PATCO) who'd defied his order to return to work and declared their union illegal. They had been on strike for just two days.
It was a bold and brash move. No one had ever tried it. What made it even bolder was that PATCO was one of only two unions that had endorsed Reagan for president! It sent a shock wave through workers across the country. If he would do this to the people who were with him, what would he do to us?
Reagan had been backed by Wall Street in his run for the White House and they, along with right-wing Christians, wanted to restructure America and turn back the tide that President Franklin D. Roosevelt started -- a tide that was intended to make life better for the average working person. The rich hated paying better wages and providing benefits. They hated paying taxes even more. And they despised unions. The right-wing Christians hated anything that sounded like socialism or holding out a helping hand to minorities or women.
Reagan promised to end all that. So when the air traffic controllers went on strike, he seized the moment. In getting rid of every single last one of them and outlawing their union, he sent a clear and strong message: The days of everyone having a comfortable middle class life were over. America, from now on, would be run this way:
* The super-rich will make more, much much more, and the rest of you will scramble for the crumbs that are left.
* Everyone must work! Mom, Dad, the teenagers in the house! Dad, you work a second job! Kids, here's your latch-key! Your parents might be home in time to put you to bed.
* 50 million of you must go without health insurance! And health insurance companies: you go ahead and decide who you want to help -- or not.
* Unions are evil! You will not belong to a union! You do not need an advocate! Shut up and get back to work! No, you can't leave now, we're not done. Your kids can make their own dinner.
* You want to go to college? No problem -- just sign here and be in hock to a bank for the next 20 years!
* What's "a raise"? Get back to work and shut up!
And so it went. But Reagan could not have pulled this off by himself in 1981. He had some big help:
The AFL-CIO.
The biggest organization of unions in America told its members to cross the picket lines of the air traffic controllers and go to work. And that's just what these union members did. Union pilots, flight attendants, delivery truck drivers, baggage handlers -- they all crossed the line and helped to break the strike. And union members of all stripes crossed the picket lines and continued to fly.
Reagan and Wall Street could not believe their eyes! Hundreds of thousands of working people and union members endorsing the firing of fellow union members. It was Christmas in August for Corporate America.
And that was the beginning of the end. Reagan and the Republicans knew they could get away with anything -- and they did. They slashed taxes on the rich. They made it harder for you to start a union at your workplace. They eliminated safety regulations on the job. They ignored the monopoly laws and allowed thousands of companies to merge or be bought out and closed down. Corporations froze wages and threatened to move overseas if the workers didn't accept lower pay and less benefits. And when the workers agreed to work for less, they moved the jobs overseas anyway.
And at every step along the way, the majority of Americans went along with this. There was little opposition or fight-back. The "masses" did not rise up and protect their jobs, their homes, their schools (which used to be the best in the world). They just accepted their fate and took the beating.
I have often wondered what would have happened had we all just stopped flying, period, back in 1981. What if all the unions had said to Reagan, "Give those controllers their jobs back or we're shutting the country down!"? You know what would have happened. The corporate elite and their boy Reagan would have buckled.
But we didn't do it. And so, bit by bit, piece by piece, in the ensuing 30 years, those in power have destroyed the middle class of our country and, in turn, have wrecked the future for our young people. Wages have remained stagnant for 30 years. Take a look at the statistics and you can see that every decline we're now suffering with had it's beginning in 1981 (here's a little scene to illustrate that from my last movie).
It all began on this day, 30 years ago. One of the darkest days in American history. And we let it happen to us. Yes, they had the money, and the media and the cops. But we had 200 million of us. Ever wonder what it would look like if 200 million got truly upset and wanted their country, their life, their job, their weekend, their time with their kids back?
Have we all just given up? What are we waiting for? Forget about the 20% who support the Tea Party -- we are the other 80%! This decline will only end when we demand it. And not through an online petition or a tweet. We are going to have to turn the TV and the computer and the video games off and get out in the streets (like they've done in Wisconsin). Some of you need to run for local office next year. We need to demand that the Democrats either get a spine and stop taking corporate money -- or step aside.
When is enough, enough? The middle class dream will not just magically reappear. Wall Street's plan is clear: America is to be a nation of Haves and Have Nothings. Is that OK for you?
Why not use today to pause and think about the little steps you can take to turn this around in your neighborhood, at your workplace, in your school? Is there any better day to start than today?
P.S. Here are a few places you can connect with to get the ball rolling:
Main Street Contract for America
Showdown in America
Democracy Convention
Occupy Wall Street
October 2011
How to Join a Union by the AFL-CIO (they've learned their lesson and have a good president now) or UE
Change to Win
MoveOn
High School Newspaper (Just because you're under 18 doesn't mean you can't do anything!)
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