Cosmogenium

Paul Approved Racist Newsletters

2012-01-27T14:38:00.000-05:00

Paul Approved Racist Newsletters: Ron Paul has denied writing racially-charged pamphlets he published during the 1990s but the Washington Post reports "people close to Paul's operations said he was deeply involved in the company that produced the newsletters, Ron Paul & Associates, and closely monitored its operations, signing off on articles and speaking to staff members virtually every day."

Said a former secretary in his company: "It was his newsletter, and it was under his name, so he always got to see the final product... He would proof it."

The Top 10 Middle-Class Acts of Congress

2012-01-19T12:05:00.000-05:00

The Top 10 Middle-Class Acts of Congress:

As members of Congress ponder President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address this year, they should reflect on how, at critical junctures in our nation’s history, Congress made the decision to strengthen the American middle class, which proved instrumental in the country’s growth and prosperity.

Previous Congresses passed legislation that increased access to health care and education, expanded home ownership, protected the savings of average Americans, and ensured the rights of Americans in the workplace and beyond.

The current Congress would be well served by looking at their predecessors’ record when considering how to strengthen the middle class in the 21st century.

Homestead Act of 1862 and the Morrill Land-Grant Act of 1862: Together these two acts helped grow the American middle class, especially in the central and western parts of the country. The Homestead Act allowed citizens to lay claim to federal lands if they lived on the land and improved it. Thus, instead of large swaths of the country being sold off to the highest bidders, creating a region of wealthy landowners and impoverished tenant-farmers, those lands ended up in the hands of farmers who underpinned a strong, growing, middle class among the farmers and in the communities that flourished with them. The Morrill Act created the land-grant colleges that developed agricultural improvements and created educational opportunity for a broader cross-section of Americans.

Glass-Steagall Act of 1933: Passed in the wake of the Great Depression, Glass-Steagall, among other things, created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the government agency that insures commercial bank deposits. The FDIC insures that the savings of average Americans are not lost if a bank fails. This made banking secure and viable for the middle class and offered a means for maintaining and growing savings. Although portions of this act have been repealed, the FDIC continues to fulfill this important role today.

National Housing Act of 1934: The creation of the Federal Housing Administration helped make the 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage a pillar of the American mortgage market. The loans allowed middle-class Americans to become homeowners with stable and predictable payments. Homeownership became a key source of middle-class wealth creation over the next few decades and the FHA continues to increase homeownership among Americans.

Social Security Act of 1935: One of the signature achievements of the New Deal, this act created Social Security, the unemployment insurance system, and other assistance programs. An update to the law passed in 1939 added dependent and survivor benefits to Social Security, and a disability insurance benefit was added in 1956. These programs created the foundation of the modern American social safety net. Social Security is the basis of the American retirement system while unemployment insurance cushions the blow of unemployment as well as boosting the economy in downtimes. Both of these programs have kept Americans in the middle class in retirement and between jobs.

National Labor Relations Act of 1935 and the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938: These acts created many of the workplace protections that modern Americans depend upon. The NLRA, also known as the Wagner Act, created modern American labor law and eased the way to union membership and collective bargaining, keys to creating a strong middle class. The act also established the National Labor Relations Board, which oversees union elections and adjudicates labor law. The FLSA created several labor market protections including the minimum wage, overtime regulations, and restrictions on child labor.

G.I. Bill (the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944): After World War II, many returning veterans were able to attend college and other postsecondary programs thanks to the G.I. Bill. The program helped veterans receive grants to pay for higher education, which in turn increased the number of college graduates. Expanding access to college education simultaneously boosted the competitiveness of the United States and opened up a path to well-paying, middle-class careers to millions of Americans. A similar benefit was extended to veterans of the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the post-9/11 era.

Social Security Act of 1965: The creation of Medicare and Medicaid expanded health insurance coverage to elderly, the poor, and the disabled. This was accomplished through amendments to the Social Security Act and surely ranks as one of the most important middle-class policies. Assuring that Americans have access to health insurance in old age and when they fall on hard times has helped bring an important level of security to the middle class. Medicare and Medicaid also paved the way for later reforms that increased health insurance coverage.

Civil Rights Act of 1964: The expansion of civil rights for communities of color, religious minorities, and women allowed them not only to fight back against discrimination in society writ large, but in the workplace as well. The CRA created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which insures that no one is discriminated against on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, or sex. Fighting back against discrimination increased the ability of many Americans to become more fully part of the workforce and the middle class. While this effort is not yet over, the Civil Rights Act was a major step forward increasing the size of the middle class. Later laws increased the rights of the elderly and the disabled.

Higher Education Act of 1965 (the creation of Pell Grants): Increasing access to a college education is a critical way of strengthening the middle class. Pell Grants are need-based financial aid that allows students to pay for postsecondary education that might otherwise be out of reach. Like the G.I. Bill before it, expanding the pool of college students, including those who couldn’t afford it before, has significantly helped the American middle class.

Affordable Care Act of 2010: The ACA will, when fully in effect, constrain the cost of health care for middle-class individuals and families, ensuring that it is available and affordable to all Americans. It will also make it more affordable for a broad range of businesses to offer health coverage to their employees.

As Congress debates how to build our economy back up, these laws serve as a reminder that helping the middle class helps everyone and leads to robust growth for our country.

Nick Bunker is a Special Assistant with the Economic Policy team at the Center for American Progress.

Santorum’s Tax Plan Would Increase The Deficit By $1.3 Trillion

2012-01-19T11:59:00.000-05:00

Santorum’s Tax Plan Would Increase The Deficit By $1.3 Trillion:

Rick Santorum, who following a recount may very well have been the winner of the Iowa caucus, has released a tax plan that, like those of all his competitors, would overwhelmingly aid the wealthy while doing next to nothing for the middle class. In fact, 40 percent of the benefit of his plan would go to the richest 1 percent of the country.

Not only that, but as the Tax Policy Center found, Santorum’s plan would blow a $1.3 trillion hole in the budget, gutting federal revenue by about 40 percent:

The Santorum plan would reduce federal tax revenues substantially. TPC estimates that on a static basis, the Santorum plan would lower federal tax liability by about $1.3 trillion in calendar year 2015 compared with current law, roughly a 40 percent cut in total projected revenue. Relative to a current policy baseline, the reduction in liability would be about $900 billion in calendar year 2015.

“I was surprised at how large the revenue losses were,” said TPC’s Roberton Williams. “It’s a lot of rate cuts and doesn’t get rid of anything to help pay for that.”

The average tax cut for a millionaire under Santorum’s plan would be nearly $448,000. For the richest 0.1 percent of the country, the tax cut would be worth $1.3 million annually. Santorum often complains that the deficit “is exploding,” but his plan would do nothing to turn around the nation’s budget woes, instead spending trillions to cut taxes for those at the very top of the income scale.

2nd wife: Gingrich asked me for "open marriage" so he could keep sleeping with mistress, now 3rd wife

2012-01-19T11:57:00.000-05:00

2nd wife: Gingrich asked me for "open marriage" so he could keep sleeping with mistress, now 3rd wife:

Cheryl Casey / Shutterstock

ABC News has the interview with Gingrich's second wife of 18 years, Marianne (he's on his third now). But the Daily Beast does a nice summary of the interview, without having to be submitted to ABC's obnoxious auto-on videos that were very au courant in 1996.

Newt Gingrich’s ex-wife told ABC News that the Republican presidential candidate lacked the proper moral character to be president. In an interview that will Thursday night on Nightline, Marianne Gingrich said her ex-husband had sought an “open marriage” when he admitted that he was having a six-year affair with his current wife, Callista. Marianne said Gingrich conducted his affair from “my bedroom in our apartment in Washington” and during the time he led the impeachment proceedings against President Bill Clinton—a time when Marianne defended his ethics. She said Gingrich proceeded with the divorce only months after she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, when a doctor had advised she not have any stress. At the time of the divorce, Marianne said Gingrich told her that Callista was “going to help him become president.”

Keep in mind that Gingrich met his first wife when he was in high school and she was his teacher, his second wife by cheating on his first, and his third by cheating on his second. Here's the timeline. So any pretensions about Gingrich being a family values kind of guy flew out the window decades ago.

Marco Rubio Jumps Protect IP Ship Amid Internet Blackout Protest

2012-01-18T12:38:00.000-05:00

Marco Rubio Jumps Protect IP Ship Amid Internet Blackout Protest:

WASHINGTON -- With thousands of websites large and small blacked out Wednesday in protest of the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act, a House bill, and its Senate counterpart, the Protect IP Act, another co-sponsor of the legislation has withdrawn his support -- Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.).

Home to the Disney World and Universal Studios theme parks, Rubio's Florida may be the most Hollywood-centric state outside California, and Rubio had been one of the first senators to sign on in support of Protect IP when Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vt.) introduced it this past spring. In a frank statement posted to his Facebook page on Wednesday, Rubio hinted at a Beltway truth that many other wavering Protect IP and SOPA supporters have been hesitant to admit: More than one lawmaker signed on to the legislation without understanding its technical workings and potential problems, believing it to be an uncontroversial, bipartisan bill that would support American industries.

"Earlier this year, this bill passed the Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously and without controversy," Rubio wrote. "Since then, we've heard legitimate concerns about the impact the bill could have on access to the Internet and about a potentially unreasonable expansion of the federal government's power to impact the Internet. Congress should listen and avoid rushing through a bill that could have many unintended consequences."

An open letter to the people who hate Obama more than they love America

2012-01-09T21:52:00.001-05:00

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Mon Jan 09, 2012 at 01:57 PM PST

An open letter to the people who hate Obama more than they love America

by MinistryOfTruth Follow
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I meet you all the time. You hate Obama. You hate gay people. You hate black people, immigrants, Muslims, labor unions, women who want the right to make choices concerning their bodies, you hate em all. You hate being called racist. You hate being called a bigot. Maybe if you talked about creating jobs more than you talk about why you hate gay people we wouldn't call you bigots. Maybe if you talked about black people without automatically assuming they are on food stamps while demanding their birth certificates we wouldn't call you racist. You hate socialism and social justice. You hate regulations and taxes and spending and the Government. You hate.

You like war. You like torture. You like Jesus. I don't know how in the hell any of that is compatible, but no one ever accused you haters of being over-committed to ideological consistency. You like people who look like you or at least hate most of the things that you hate. You hate everything else.

Now, I know you profess to love our country and the founding fathers (unless you are reminded that they believed in the separation of church and state), but I need to remind you that America is NOT what Fox News says it is. America is a melting pot, it always has been. We are a multi-cultural amalgamation of all kinds of people, and yet you still demonize everyone who is not a rich, white, heterosexual christian male or his submissive and obedient wife.

You hate liberals, moderates, hell, anyone who disagrees with Conservative dogma as espoused by Fox News and Rush Limbaugh. You hate em.

Well, here are the facts, Jack. If you hate the Government then you are unqualified to manage it. If you hate gay people more than you love America than you should take your own advice and get the hell out. There are several countries that are openly hostile to gay people, but they are full of brown people and you don't like them much either from what I understand. It looks like you are screwed, but that's not what I am here to tell you.

More rant below the fold . . .

Now that you have thrown everything and the kitchen sink at President Obama and it still hasn't worked you are panicking. Obama's approval ratings are still near 50% despite your best efforts to undermine the economy and America's recovery at every step you can. You tried to hold the American economy hostage to force America into default on its' debts, debts that YOU rang up under Bush, so you could blame it on Obama and it failed. You've used the filibuster more than any other Congress ever, going so far as to vote against providing health care access to 9/11 first responders. You remember 9/11, don't you, it's that thing you used to lie us into a war in Iraq, and then when Obama killed Bin Laden and ended the war in Iraq you told people that he hates America and wants the troops to fail. You monsters. You hate Obama with a passion, despite the fact that he is a tax cutting, deficit reducing war President who undermines civil rights and delivers corporate friendly watered down reforms that benefit special interests just like a Republican. You call him a Kenyan. You call him a socialist. You dance with your hatred singing it proudly in the rain like it was a 1950's musical.

Frankly, you disgust me. Your hatred nauseates me. Your bigotry offends me. Your racism revolts me.

Dear haters, I am openly questioning your patriotism.

I think you hate gays, Obama, black people, poor people, all of us, women, atheists and agnostics, Latinos, Muslims, Liberals, all of us, I think you hate every one who isn't exactly like you, and I think you hate us more than you love your country.

I think you hate gay soldiers more than you want America to win its' wars.

I don't even think you want America to win wars, you just want America to have wars, never ending wars and the war profiteering it generates. You love that kind of spending, you love spending on faith based initiatives and abstinence based sex education (George Carlin would have loved that one), you love spending on subsidies for profitable oil corporations, you spend like drunken sailors when you are in the White House, but if it is a Democrat then suddenly you cheer when America doesn't get the Olympics because it might make the black President look bad. But oooh you love your country, you say, and you want it back. Well listen here skippy, it isn't your country, you don't own it, it is our country, and America is NOT the religiously extremist Foxbots who hate science, elitist professors and having a vibrant and meaningful sex life with someone we love if Rick Santorum doesn't approve of it. Rick Santorum isn't running for America's fucking high school dance chaperone, he should probably just shut the hell up about sex, but he can't because he has nothing else to run on.

Republicans can NOT win on the issues. They've got NOTHING. All they have is a divide and conquer class war that pits ignorant racist and bigoted people against the rest of us in a meaningless battle of wedge issues and the already proven to fail George W. Bush agenda again of tax cuts for the rich, deregulation, privatization and war profiteering and nothing else, so all they can do is blame black people, gays the government, anybody and everyone else for their own failings. The party of personal responsibility, my ass.

But they love multi-national corporations, just ask a gay hating and racist religious extremist if they think Corporations are people and they will gladly agree, but if you ask them if gay people are people they aren't so sure.

Dear haters, you are the cruel, heartless misinformed assholes who would sell America out to Haliburton in a heartbeat, you would rather pay ZERO taxes than you would see a newly born baby get access to quality health care, you cheer when we discuss denying health care to young people with preventable diseases, and you boo when we discuss the First Ladies plan to cut back on childhood obesity. You are a cross to carry and a flag to wrap yourself in away from being the people who Huey Long warned us about, but I guarantee that if Fox News told you to dress that way you would, because you are the same blind, ignorant and closed minded dunces who drove this country into a civil war years ago because you are bound to the notion that some men are more equal than others. In short, the reason I proudly wear my union army hat is because of seditious sell outs like you who constantly fuck over working class Americans so a foreign entrepreneur like Rupert Murdoch can get a bigger tax break. If corporations are people, they are neither American patriots nor capable of love. Just like you.

So stop wearing your hate with pride. Stop celebrating your anti-science, anti-math ignorance. Stop using code words to mask your bigotry like "family values", especially when you hate my family and when you stand on the same stage as a guy who has had three marriages or if you share a seat in the Senate with a guy who cheated on his wife with hookers while wearing diapers. You should be ashamed. I know that you are just doing this to motivate your misinformed hate cult base because if they actually knew that your ideas will make them poorer than they are now, they would never vote for you. You are doing your best to impoverish your countrymen so rich people can get bigger tax breaks and you can keep on delivering corporate welfare to the special interests who have bribed you, and I am disgusted by the way you gleefully parade your hatred with aplomb. I don't think you do love America. At least, not as much as you hate everyone in America who isn't exactly like you.

You should think about that, and maybe get some help.

And for the record, I do not hate you. I am embarrassed by you and nauseated by your cruel and thoughtless behavior and your all consuming greed, but I don't not hate you. I forgive you and I hope you can change someday, but I don't hate you. You have enough hate in you for the rest of us as it is.

You can follow me on twitter @JesseLaGreca

Originally posted to MinistryOfTruth on Mon Jan 09, 2012 at 01:57 PM PST.

Also republished by ClassWarfare Newsletter: WallStreet VS Working Class Global Occupy movement and Street Prophets .

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Occupy Baltimore's Stop Foreclosure Rally to Prevent Deutsche Bank From Evicting Woman
>Since I last visited the Occupy Baltimore site at McKeldin Square on November 26, 2011, that group was suddenly evicted from that site (like ...
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Why I’m leaving the Republican Party…and Endorsing President Obama
Why I’m leaving the Republican Party…and Endorsing President Obama. by: Jeff Wartman http://jeffwartman.com/why-im-leaving-the-republican-party-and-endorsing-pres... I’m leaving the ...
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via dailykos.com

Pretty much says it all. This is the same fellow who pwned Fox Propaganda at OWS a couple of months ago. I hope someday to meet him.

The Shocking, Graphic Data That Shows Exactly What Motivates the Occupy Movement

2011-10-24T12:03:00.001-04:00

October 23, 2011 |

What are the Occupy Wall Street protesters angry about? The same things we’re all angry about. The only difference is the protestors turned their anger into public action. Occupy Wall Street lit the embers and the sparks are flying. Whether it turns into a genuine populist prairie fire depends on all of us.
Now is not the time for wonky policy solutions, as the media meatheads are calling for. Rather, it’s time to air our grievances as loudly as possible, which is precisely what Wall Street and its minions fear the most. Here’s a brief list of why we should be angry and the charts to back it up.
1. The American Dream is imploding...

via feeds.feedblitz.com

Is A Flat Tax Fair?

2011-10-21T13:40:00.001-04:00

Conservatives are always pushing for a "flat tax." It sounds so simple: One easy rate, so we all pay the same, easy to calculate... Get rid of deductions and lower the tax rates. So simple, but it turns out it is a simple trick, a scam to enrich the 1%, like so much else that conservatives are selling. Don't fall for it -- it means taxes will go up for the 99% of us who aren't really, really rich. See if you can guess what happens if you are in the top 1%. Or, just scroll down and see the the chart.

What We Have Now

We have what's called a "progressive' tax system. This means as you make more you pay more taxes. The first "bracket" of $XX dollars you make is taxed at a low rate. The next $XX dollars are taxed at a higher rate, and so on. Many people think if you "go into a higher bracket" you pay more on all the money you make, but that is not how it works. If a bracket starts at $1 million, and you make $1 million plus $1 you only pay the higher rate on the $1 that is in that bracket. Yes, that means that a 5% increase on taxes over $1 million would mean that person pays a nickel. Yes, all that screaming by Republicans is over a nickel. Screaming is what they do best.

The reason we have a progressive tax system is because we have a democracy. People who make more do so because of the investment in governent that We, the People make. We, the People pool our money collectively and use it to build the infrastructure that lets people make so much money. That's the roads, schools, police, courts, etc. -- they whole system -- that provides the foundation for our businesses to go out an compete in the world. And when our businesses do well, we ask them to pay back a dividend to the rest of us for enabling that to happen.

No Deductions

Conservatives always call for getting rid of deductions, because they are complicated. Get rid of deductions, they say, simplify the system, and you can lower tax rates. Here is the game they are playing. Suppose you have a small businesses, a grocery store. Suppose you buy $100,000 inventory and sell it for $130,000. If you get rid of deductions that means the small-grocery-owner pays taxes on $130,000 because that is the income of the store.

If you say the business owner should be allowed to "deduct" the amount paid for inventory we're back to deciding which deductions to allow. So we are right back where we started, except now the conservatives have lowered tax rates (at the top) and their big corporate sponsors will be gaming the system to give themselves more and more and more deductions just like they already do.

What Happens With A Flat Tax?

Conservatives object to the idea of the rich paying back more. They say that taxes are theft -- government confiscating money that people have earned, ignoring that our democracy enabled them to earn it in the first place. They call taxation "redistribution" of wealth. Of course, as AlterNet's Joshua Holland points out, redistribution is the core job of government. He points out that when government collects taxes and builds a sidewalk that everyone can walk on -- or homeless people can sleep on -- that is redistribution. Courts, schools, police, ports, airports -- all of it is redistribution of wealth.

So conservatives call for a "flat tax." Most notably Republican Presidential candidates Rick Perry and Herman are calling for various forms of this. Cain This means everyone pays the same tax rate as everyone else, regardless of income. Because this is about scrapping democracy's progressive tax system this necessarily means that the rich will pay a lot less. Guess who pays more to make up for that? A good example of this effect is the 9-9-9 tax plan.

The 9-9-9 Plan

The Tax Policy Center takes a look at Repubican candidate Herman Cain's "9-9-9" tax plan, in a post titled, Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 Tax Plan

Herman Cain’s plan would eliminate the current individual income tax, corporate income tax, payroll tax, and estate and gift tax and substitute three taxes imposed at a 9 percent rate: 1) a 9 percent “national sales tax” 2) a 9 percent “business flat tax”, and 3) a 9 percent “individual flat tax.”

They have a table here that shows how people's taxes would change under the 9-9-9 plan. Jared Bernstein made a chart illustrating these numbers in his post 9-9-9 in One (Really Long) Graph.

So here you have it: the change in tax liabilities, compared to current tax policy, under 9-9-9, for different income groups, in one incredibly unsettling graph.

In the following chart the blue lines that are above zero illustrate how much more most of us will pay. The red lines below zero show how much less the rich and really rich will pay. The blue lines -- representing taxes on most of us -- go up. The red lines -- representing taxes on the top few -- go ... well, see for yourself.

via ourfuture.org

And there you have it: more for the already rich, less for the rest.

Socialistic Hitler Fascist Death Panel WMD Terrorist Job Killing Kenyan Muslim Regulation Tyranny

2011-10-18T15:16:00.001-04:00

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Tue Oct 18, 2011 at 07:11 AM PDT

Socialistic Hitler Fascist Death Panel WMD Terrorist Job Killing Kenyan Muslim Regulation Tyranny

by MinistryOfTruth Follow
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permalink 155 Comments

From now on, people who have used these words in the past or present to dismiss a conversation or hijack it should no longer be taken seriously.

I'm done with wasting time in a dishonest debate.

I'm done with having serious conversations about our nation's future being hijacked by paid shills into some absurd conspiracy theory claim of advancing communism or a gay agenda or hippies. I'm tired of debating the guy who wants to raise taxes and "free market" costs on 99% of America while the other 1% lives better than ever in a debate he can NOT win on facts. I'm tired of watching this guy invoke scary meaningless talking points while shrieking about the unfair fearmongering of unamerican liberty denying freedom hating divisive partisan class war wealth redistribution job killing over regulated higher taxes government tyranny they did this to the jews it's people, #OccupyWallStreet is people!!!!!

I'm done with it. It is wasting our time at a moment in history where we have no time to waste. Our future is at stake, and the guy rambling about socialism who fell for death panels and other nonsensical lies isn't allowed to hijack the conversation anymore. I'm not going to let them hijack our future for tax cuts for corporations or for never ending wars or whatever other sociopathic lunacy the wealthy exploiters of the other 99% have ginned up. I will not go silent as their shock doctrine wrenches away the last glimpse of democracy and hands it over to lobbyists and entrenched corrupt industry.

If you support torture, I don't want to hear about Hitler from you.

If you support subsidies for extremely profitable oil companies I don't want to hear about wealth distribution from you.

If you support the never ending wars at all costs I don't want to hear about deficits from you.

And if you insist on hijacking honest debates about our future by calling it Socialistic Hitler Fascist Death Panel WMD Terrorist Job Killing Kenyan Muslim Regulation Tyranny you should no longer be taken seriously. We don't have time for your dishonesty. You are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem. Consider #OccupyWallStreet a nationwide intervention, because some people are drunk on greed and power.

Here's to celebrating the first month of #OccupyWallStreet. Cheers.

For more info

1. Get this message out there. Get the word out about these protests of Wall Street's greed to everyone you know. Raise awareness, even if it is via word of mouth, every little bit helps.
2. Use the twitter hashtags #OccupyWallStreet and follow us on facebook and twitter accounts related to the ongoing protests. Help put this video on your facebook pageand any other social media that you use. Make it viral.

3. Make a donation to WeAreTheOther99%'s media fund. They need funding to stay active, and without huge corporate interests backing us up like the Teabaggers have, the only way this works is with your small donations.

4. Go to OccupyWallSt.org and make a donation to our General Fund to support the ongoing protests.

5. To send care packages to Liberty Square, go to OccupyWallSt.org for more information. WE NEED WATER.

Info from http://occupywallst.org/

MAIL
The UPS Store
Re: Occupy Wall Street
118A Fulton St. #205
New York, NY 10038
Money orders only please, cannot cash checks yet. Non-perishable goods only. We can accept packages of any size. We're currently low on food and water.

6. Find out if there will be an #Occupation event in your neighborhood and participate and contribute there if you can't come to NYC.

7. Be a better person to your brothers and sisters around you.

You can follow me on the series of tubes they call Twitter @JesseLaGreca

Originally posted to MinistryOfTruth on Tue Oct 18, 2011 at 07:11 AM PDT.

Also republished by Class Warfare Newsletter: WallStreet VS the Working Class Occupy movement. and Team DFH.

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The Al-Awlaki Slippery Slope: U.S. Drone Now Killed Innocent 16-Year-Old AMERICAN Son
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by Jesselyn Radack 597 comments 147 Recs

What’s Wrong With Wall Street: Mitt Romney and Pirate Capitalism. Give your own example here!
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Bwa-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha
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Marine vet scolds/puts NYPD in their place(AMZNG VID!)Now w/Olbermann interview!
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The Foxification Of CNN: New Management Pushes The Network Into Crazy Territory
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Breaking: 30 Citibank customers arrested for closing their account [With Citibank Statement Update]
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OccupyBerkeley. "All Day, All Week, Occupy Berkeley." The 99% March.
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#OccupyWallSt WeAreTheOther99 Liveblog. Standoff in Washington Square Park.
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Images of Occupy Wall Street Everywhere – A Stunning Photo Diary of the World's 99% Rising Up
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WeAretheOther99: LIVE Blogging @ Times Square - Massive protest
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I just love this guy! And he is soooo right!

The Nihilist Party: Republicans Who Believe in Nothing

2011-10-18T11:53:00.001-04:00

Some people's only exposure to nihilism comes from the German gang in The Big Lebowski who said things like "We are nihilists, we believe in nothing" and "Tell us where the girl is or we cut off your johnson, Lebowski." Or the nihilist humor of comedian Brother Theodore, who liked to say things like "I looked at the void, the void looked back - and neither of us liked what we saw."

That's exactly how I feel when I watch the Republican Presidential debates.

The void that looks out through their eyes is the absence of any underlying principle, ideology, or ideas, especially on economic issues. It's not that their beliefs are different than yours or mine. It's that, as now seems clear, they don't actually believe in anything - anything, that is, except greater power for themselves and greater wealth for their financial backers.

Nothing in nihilism's long intellectual history has prepared the world for its latest incarnation as the 21st century Republican party, or in its ultimate flowering in the likes of Mitt Romney and Herman Cain.

Void, Meet Void

ni*hi*lism a: a viewpoint that traditional beliefs and values are unfounded and that existence is senseless and useless.
- Merriam-Webster Online

Matt Bai has a piece in today's New York Times Magazine subtitled "The G.O.P. Elite tries to take its party back." It's well worth reading. But it doesn't point out that neither side of that struggle represents a coherent worldview. Today's G.O.P. has no core beliefs. In both its policies and its politics it has devolved into a set of actors without core beliefs, fighting for domination on the ruthless and bloody stage of soulless nature.

We're not nostalgic or sentimental or naive. The pursuit of power has always driven politicians on both sides of the aisle. But there was once an underlying ethos, and it's gone. Once Republicans believed in certain things, like the importance of business as part of society, a smaller role for Federal government, and states' rights. But the new Republicans are nihilists. They believe in nothing.

And when it comes to Medicare and other Great Society programs, they're even willing to cut off the country's "Johnson" to prove it.

Whatever It Is, We're Against It

ni*hi*lism b: a doctrine that denies any objective ground of truth and especially moral truths

The Tea Party was built around burning rage, which billionaire-funded Republican operatives channeled for their own uses like it was geothermal energy. It's possible to sympathize with their anger while recognizing that the movement's only ideology is destruction - of government, and of anyone or anything it believes to be its enemy.

But the party "establishment" Matt Bai writes about doesn't have an ideology either. It did, back in the Reagan days. But then came Newt Gingrich, whose pole star was the use of language to win elections. His ascension to the Speakership in 1994 marked the beginning of the end of Republican ideology.

From that moment on, winning was the only thing that mattered.

Whatever Democrats propose, Republicans oppose. Republicans passed and signed a $286 billion infrastructure spending bill under George W. Bush. (Boehner's predecessor, Denny Hastert, was on hand to celebrate the spending for bridges, roads, and mass transit.) Today they oppose all such spending. Why? Because it's proposed by Democrats.

The GOP abandoned states rights when it began overriding states on social issues, and then when it pushed to strip the states of the ability to regulate businesses. It abandoned free-market principles when it pushed for bank bailouts and other corporate subsidies.

And balance-sheet executives like Mitt Romney and Herman Cain are even willing to abandon the inexorable logic of numbers when it suits their purposes.

Less Than Zero

Cain chaired the Board of Governors for the Kansas Federal Reserve and has an undergraduate degree in mathematics, so he's capable of performing basic arithmetic functions. Yet his "9.9.9" program (in German that's "Nein! Nein! Nein!") is, among other things, bad arithmetic. It doesn't reflect a different economic philosophy than yours, or mine, or Joe Stiglitz's. It's just gibberish.

Ten years after George W. Bush dropped our highest tax rate to 35%, the country's in shambles. The combination of lost tax revenue, upward distribution of wealth, and the stagnating wages and buying power of the middle class has most of the country locked in permanent recession. In the midst of this chaos, Cain's proposing to drop the top marginal tax rate to 9% - which is 1/10th of what it was at one point under Republican President Dwight Eisenhower.

Maybe he just really, really hates taxes? No. He wants to raise them dramatically on some people, by imposing the same 9% Federal tax rate on those people the goofy, would-be "53% movement" complains about - people who don't pay Federal income tax, like the working poor.

A radical tax cut for the wealthiest Americans can't be offset by imposing a taxes on our lowest earners. It doesn't add up.

Republicans For Higher Taxes

Cain also wants to add a 9% Federal sales tax to ... well, everything. That's economic insanity, since our crisis was brought on by a lack of demand which this would make much worse. But it's not just insane - it's also a tax hike. Sure, wealthy people would have a net cut, but everybody else's taxes would go up.

The Republican front-runner would raise taxes for most Americans.

His 9% corporate tax rate is staggeringly low. But corporations are already sitting on $2 trillion in cash. What would make them spend that money? Demand. And what would kill demand even more than it's been killed already? A Federal sales tax - like Herman Cain's.

Besides holding opinions that one of his fellow Governors considered "in step with Fed policies of the time," Cain was a successful CEO. He didn't get that successful by misreading financial information. So when he wrote that "Current projections indicate that Medicare will go bankrupt by 2017" he almost certainly knew he was lying. Killing or gutting Medicare would be a symbolic emasculation of Lyndon Johnson, but it would also relieve a source of government spending that's increasing the demand to raise taxes on the wealthy.

There's no internal logic to Cain's economic positions except this: They would benefit the wealthy and corporations, and they're handy gimmicks for getting publicity. That's not ideology; it's cynicism.

59 Ways to Leave Your Values

During the last debate Cain asked Romney if Romney could list all 59 points in his economic plan, and Romney laughed. He's not expected to know what's in his own proposal - or to care.

Romney begins his proposal by observing that "In 1947, the year I was born, unemployment was 3.9 percent. In 1968, when I turned 21, it was 3.6 percent." What he doesn't say is that the top marginal tax rate in 1947 was more than 86%, and that in 1968 it was 75%. Today it's 35%, and Romney wants to drive it down even more.

The Romney plan would make it even easier for companies to send jobs overseas. It would lower their taxes and remove the regulations whose removal led to the meltdown of 2008. It would accelerate the destruction of the middle class by taking away collective bargaining rights and cut all government spending - include the kinds that create jobs and keep us safe on the highways and in the air.

Economically, Romney's as radical as Cain. He just hides it better.

Economic Nihilism

ni*hi*lism c: a doctrine or belief that conditions ... are so bad as to make destruction desirable for its own sake, independent of any constructive program or possibility

When Republicans rejected Obama's jobs act last week, their alternative proposal was ... nothing. Their sole motivation appeared to be not letting Obama succeed, even if millions of Americans suffered as a result. Obama's infrastructure proposal was much more modest than the one signed by George W. Bush, during a period when it was much less needed. But they rejected it anyway.

There's no common thread here except self-interest - and the fact that they all help wealthy individual and corporate donors. This dovetails nicely with the Tea Party's "Disco Inferno" attitude toward government: "Burn the mutha on down." That's smart, from a purely opportunistic point of view. But it leaves no room for negotiation.

As for Romney and Cain, they both understand numbers. They can both read a spreadsheet. And they have the added advantage of not being trained economists, so never undergoing what my friend Mike Konczal calls " by far the most ideologically indoctrinating class I've ever seen" - an introduction to graduate-level macroeconomics.

That's why I'm so certain they know they're speaking nonsense. As good business people,they know how smart it would be to borrow money at today's historically low rates and then invest it in jobs, growth, and infrastructure. But that wouldn't serve their interests or those of their patrons, so they're not going to tell you that.

Blood Oaths

Who trusted God was love indeed/And love Creation's final law/Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw ... shriek'd against his creed.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson

A creed - any creed, however flawed - has as its base the greatest good for all. Without that, people are just reflecting that bloody side of nature that is without belief or principle. And there's no point negotiating with people whose sole objectives are their own pursuit of power, which involves your destruction, and to serve their paymasters' interests as efficiently as possible.

The "values" party has none - certainly none that would be recognizable in any religious tradition.

The "bipartisan" school of political thought finds this kind of thinking heretical. Everybody has their point of view, the thinking goes, so we just need to find "common ground ..." But when your opponents' sole goal is to win, that becomes impossible. There's no common ground on scorched earth.

Sure, the Democrats have often been weak and vacillating, diluting their own values and echoing some of thir opponents' nihilistic anti-government rhetoric. And there's a raging ideological war in that party, too, between those who believe in the role of government and those who support the right-leaning Clinton/Obama economics represented by Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, and Tim Geithner.

But the Democrats still seem to have, or at least want, a core set of beliefs. The natural (and usually admirable) desire to negotiate and find peace is one of them. But it conflicts with another value, one that's even more central to our democracy: to point out the differences between you and allow the public to choose. If the Democrats aren't up to the task, another group will step in - or democracy will fail.

Nothing

"Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name thy kingdom nada thy will be nada as it is in nada."
Ernest Hemingway, A Clean, Well-Lighted Place

For what it's worth, I wish things were different. I wish there was an honorable if misguided GOP to be dealt with like the Republicans of old. Whatever their faults, those Republicans managed to build the national highway system (under Eisenhower), proposed a guaranteed national income (under Nixon), and negotiated honestly if conservatively over Social Security (under Reagan.)

You could negotiate with those Republicans because they had an ideology. They had beliefs and values. Half a loaf was better than none for them, because compromise served a greater goal. It would be a better world if today's Republicans were like that. But today's Republicans can't be negotiated with. They can only be defeated. Defeated, or forced to change by intense political pressure.

The problem is that these Republicans don't have a greater goal. Their actions are simply reflections of a baser nature, red in tooth and claw and shrieking against any creed that seeks the just and the humane. They live only to serve their wealthy and powerful sponsors. They believe in nothing.

They are nihilists.

via ourfuture.org

Income Inequality

2011-10-16T13:15:00.001-04:00

via inequality.org

Lots of charts showing what's been happening, especially the contrast between what was happening to incomes prior to 1979 versus what's happened since. By influencing public opinion and government via mass media, lobbying, campaign contributions, etc., the top 1% has essentially taken the money and run with it while leaving the rest to squabble for scraps. This is not representational government. This is capitalism run amok, i.e., fascism, corporatism, plutocracy.

This Fluid Fly-By Video Is the Most Astonishing View of Earth I've Ever Seen [Video]

2011-09-22T13:57:00.001-04:00

This weekend NASA published an awesome time-lapse flyby of planet Earth taken from the International Space Station. Awesome, but jerky—until now. Someone interpolated the original frames to achieve this smooth as silk motion film. It'll leave you stupefied.

Probably created with the magical Twixtor, the new video runs at 30 frames-per-second. Check out the lightning storms and the lights. Absolutely out of this world, pun intended.

Make sure you watch it at 720p and full screen! [Thanks Angel!]

via feeds.gawker.com

Prepare to be entranced and amazed...

CareerBuster.com: More Discrimination Against The Unemployed

2011-09-21T16:18:00.001-04:00

via ourfuture.org

Despicable. That's the only word I can use to describe this, despicable.

Bloomberg’s cops go Soviet on Wall Street protesters (MUST-SEE)

2011-09-20T17:23:00.001-04:00

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Limitless hydrogen from microbes

2011-09-20T12:52:00.001-04:00

via bbc.co.uk

This is awesome. The future is now.

“The Coming Collapse of the Middle Class”, ca. 2007

2011-09-18T16:54:00.001-04:00

via balloon-juice.com

Elizabeth Warren knows her shit, and she isn't afraid to tell it like it is. I sure do hope she's a senator soon. We need more like her.

A Riddle that Brings Joy to Mega Rich Hearts

2011-09-17T22:20:00.001-04:00

The Census won't count it. The IRS won't tax it, at anywhere near full freight. What is it? It's enough, all by itself, to keep grand fortunes constantly soaring.

Can we start the century over?

Economically, new Census Bureau income stats released last week suggest, our 21st century so far rates as the worst century in American history. We are hurtling backwards — at an alarmingly rapid rate.

The typical American household income, $53,164 in 2000 after adjusting for inflation, stood at just $49,445 last year. Incomes for the typical working-age household — under 65 — have dropped over 10 percent since 2000.

The number of Americans living in poverty, meanwhile, is rising. In 2000, 11.3 percent of Americans rated as officially poor. Last year, 15.1 percent fit the poverty definition — under $22,314 for a family of four — and almost half those in poverty, 44.3 percent, had incomes less than half the poverty threshold.

What about households at the other end of the income spectrum? The annual Census Bureau figures on incomes at our tippy top have never been particularly helpful. Census statisticians, to protect the confidentiality of the households they survey, “topcode” income categories — at $1.1 million.

We know, as a result, exactly how many American households made under $10,000 last year or between $50,000 and $60,000. But we have no clue, from the annual Census figures, how many made over $5, $10, or $20 million.

The even bigger shortcoming with the annual Census stats: The Census income survey doesn’t count “capital gains,” the profits from the sale of stocks, bonds, and other assets. Capital gains just happen to make up the single biggest category of income America’s super rich pull in every year.

In fact, as the Washington Post reminded us last week, capital gains make up nearly 60 percent of the income that goes to America’s 400 highest-earning taxpayers. Since the early 1990s, over 80 percent of all capital gains have gone to America’s richest 5 percent — and almost half to the richest 0.1 percent.

None of this capital gains income shows up in the new Census income figures released last week, the prime reason why the Census data show the average income of America’s top 5 percent, adjusted for inflation, down over the past decade, down even more sharply than incomes in America's statistical middle.

Top 5 percent households took home an inflation-adjusted $320,000 in 2001, according to the Census figures out last week, and only $288,000 in 2010.

But these totals bear only a passing resemblance to the sums households in the top 5 percent have actually been raking in. We know that for a fact, thanks to statisticians at the IRS. Their IRS annual reports do include capital gains income.

What sort of difference does this inclusion make to America's income picture? A quite substantial one.

Between 2001 and 2008, the IRS stats show, the top 5 percent's share of America's national income rose from 31.99 percent to 34.74 percent. The Census Bureau annual data have the top 5 percent share, for these same years, falling from 22.4 percent to 21.5 percent.

A distressing irony lurks in all these numbers. The Census Bureau doesn't count capital gains income. The IRS doesn't tax it — at anywhere near the tax rate that applies to ordinary income. In real life, this preferential treatment for capital gains serves to make the super rich ever richer.

The world of professional baseball offers a particularly vivid example. In 2010, all Major League players will pay a 35 percent tax on any salary over $373,650. Any Major League owner who sells his franchise this year, by contrast, will pay just a 15 percent tax on the capital gains mega millions he makes on the sale.

That's not, of course, the fault of the IRS. Over the past three decades, Presidents and members of Congress, both Democratic and Republican, have opted to lower the capital gains rate — and kept it low.

Still, capital gains only make up part of our national inequality story, and the latest Census figures, even without any capital gains data, do have important inequality stories to tell.

One such story: According to the new Census stats, the nation's income divide between households at the 95th percentile — that is, households making more than all but the nation’s top 5 percent — and households at the 20th and 50th percentiles has, in modern times, never been higher.

Back in 1968, households at the 20th percentile made an inflation-adjusted $18,251. Households at the 95th percentile that year took home $156,316. In 2010, 20th-percentile households had incomes only slightly higher, just $20,000. The much more robust 2010 income at the 95th percentile: almost $181,000.

Overall income inequality, the new Census Bureau annual income report concludes after presenting stats like these, definitely “is increasing.”

Much, much faster, unfortunately, than the Census stats show us.

Sam Pizzigati edits Too Much, the online weekly on excess and inequality published by the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Policy Studies. Read the current issue or sign up at Inequality.Org to receive Too Much in your email inbox.

via ourfuture.org

House GOP Rejects Tax Cuts For Middle Class

2011-09-17T22:16:00.001-04:00

via thinkprogress.org

Because tax cuts are only good for the rich, of course. We peons wouldn't know what to do with that money, anyway. We'd probably just spend it and maybe increase employment and the number of middle class families.

Poll: Just 12% happy with Congress

2011-09-16T11:40:00.001-04:00

via feeds.cbsnews.com

Sort of says it all, doesn't it?

Making Us Stupid

2011-09-15T19:05:00.001-04:00

If you want to know why we are so screwed as a nation, you can probably find a couple of dozen good reasons. But this, I say, is right at the top of the list.

From MSNBC, with Chuck Todd filling in for Andrea Mitchell:

Richard Stengel, managing editor of TIME magazine: I think [Rick Perry's] on to something. Do Americans really realize that there is no such thing as a social security trust fund? That it's a pay as you go program and when there are fewer paying in than what you get out? Are they're any people under 35 in America who believe that Social Security is going to be there as it is and was for their parents? So I think he's hearing something that maybe the other candidates aren't hearing.

Right. He's hearing you, spouting misinformation that's been spread by the financial services industry to make people believe that the Social Security system is going broke.

Yes, there is a trust fund. It's been conservatively invested in US treasury bonds. Current contributions and those bonds will keep the checks coming at their current levels for another 35 years --- at which point it will only be able to pay out about 80% of what it's paying today unless we do the only intelligent thing and ask people who make over 100k to pony up the same percentage of their income that everyone else does. That's it. That's the crisis.

If people under 35 think it won't be there for them it's because journalists like Richard Stengal don't do their jobs. Yes, he's accurately reporting what people inaccurately believe. He just forgets to present the real facts and correct their misapprehensions. And then goes on to praise presidential candidates for being savvy enough to flog the same misinformation.

We have a very serious problem with epistemology in this culture and a huge part of it is due to the press. I don't know how to fix it. But until we do, our politics are going to be distorted and dysfunctional.

via ourfuture.org

Bioethicist Bets Bachmann $10,000 She Can’t Find Anyone Who Became ‘Retarded’ From HPV Vaccine

2011-09-15T18:11:00.001-04:00

via thinkprogress.org

When I first heard her say that some mother had approached her after a debate and said that her child had become "mentally retarded" after receiving the vaccine, my first thought was that the "reporter" doing the interview should have asked for the name of the woman (you hear me, Matt?!) since one would think that this was a big story if true (and almost as big if not). Since the talking heads on most of the TV "news" shows don't know how to ask questions they aren't given in writing ahead of time, this wasn't going to happen. So I'm very glad that some socially conscious scientists are taking up the slack some here. Of course, the damage has already been done and Bachmann won't be challenged on this any time soon. Too bad she won't be in the running much longer, either. She was one of the most entertaining of the GOP candidates.

Morning Smoke: Hiring Private Contractors Wastes Billions, Study Finds

2011-09-13T22:48:00.001-04:00

« New Report Says IRS Slacking on Whistleblower Claims | Main | Industry Self-Regulation Is No Substitute for SEC Oversight »

Sep 13, 2011

Morning Smoke: Hiring Private Contractors Wastes Billions, Study Finds

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MORNING SMOKE

Where there's smoke, there's fire. POGO's Morning Smoke is a collection of the freshest investigations, scoops, and opinions related to the world of government oversight. Have a story you'd like to see included? Contact POGO's blog editor.

Contract Oversight

Use of Private Contractors Doesn't Save Government Money, Study Finds
Ron Nixon, The New York Times

Nuclear Issues

NRC Staff: Reassess Earthquake Risk at Nuke Plants
Matthew Daly, Associated Press

Missing: Tons of US-Supplied Nuclear Weapons Material
Adam Weinstein, Mother Jones

Nuclear Miscalculation: Why Regulators Miss Power Plant Threats from Quakes and Storms
Susan Q. Stanahan, iWatch News

Revolving Door

Study Shows Revolving Door of Employment Between Congress, Lobbying Firms
T.W. Farnam, The Washington Post

National Security

Militants Attack U.S. Embassy in Kabul
Alissa J. Rubin and Jack Healy, The New York Times

House Armed Services Committee to Lead Crusade Against Defense Cuts
National Defense Magazine

Defense Spending Must Have Credit Limits
Walter Pincus, The Washington Post

DHS Insider Hacking Case Reveals Serious Network Security Vulnerabilities
NextGov

Predator Drones Go to Work on Domestic Front
Brian Bennett, Los Angeles Times

Open Government

Majority of 9/11 Commission Records, Including Bush and Cheney Interview Transcript, Remain 'Indefinitely' Sealed
Public Intelligence

Whistleblower Issues

MSPB Won't Reconsider Air Marshal Whistleblower's Firing
Stephen Losey, Federal Times

Posted at 10:01 AM in Morning Smoke | Permalink

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Death by poverty, fuck yeah!

2011-09-13T22:42:00.001-04:00

« “Fundamentalists, Cynics, and Sheep”

Most died of TB, the rest went insane »

Death by poverty, fuck yeah!

by Big Baby DougJ

Okay, Sully had the best blow-by-blow and noticed my favorite part, where people shouted “yeah” when Wolf Blitzer asked if we should let uninsured people die from lack of access to health care:

I am more surprised at the cheering of someone dying because he couldn’t afford intensive care. Yes, the GOP is now not only cheering executions; they are cheering people dying because thay cannot afford any health insurance. Cheering death by poverty. “Yeah!” came the cry at the thought of a twentysomething dying because he didn’t have insurance. I didn’t think I could be more shocked by the instincts of those in the Republican base, but I just was.

Update. As many of you have pointed out, the Wolfman stipulated that the dying person could have afforded insurance and chose not to buy it.

September 12, 2011 11:06 pm Posted in: Burkean bells 109 Comments

via balloon-juice.com

Remember that Sermon on the Mount thingy when Jesus said, "Blessed are the poor, for they will be left to die in the streets?" No? Me neither. What about the part where he said, "Blessed are the rich, for they shall pay no taxes and add to their assets without restraint?" Me neither. How about, "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the debt of their forefathers." Classics!

A Year Before 9/11, Military Intelligence Unit Determined World Trade Center, Pentagon “Most Likely Buildings to Be Attacked”

2011-09-12T13:22:00.001-04:00

via feedproxy.google.com

I REJECT THE CONTRACT

2011-09-10T14:23:00.001-04:00

via pefproud.blogspot.com

The idea that the terrible (15% real loss of wages over 5 years) PEF contract in NY will save jobs is ludicrous. Next year, when the budget again falls short, due to the fact that we have a regressive tax system in both the country and the state, the powers that be will invoke "emergency" contingency plans and lay off thousands anyway. The union has no teeth, and rejecting the contract probably won't lead to a better one, but we have to send a message. Budgets, federal, state and local, won't be balanced until the tax system becomes progressive once again as it was when America was number one in jobs, education and innovation. We have become an aristocracy, the very thing the U.S. was formed to end. Until we rebel, it will stay such. This is one baby step in that direction. I vote NO!

Why Inequality is the Real Cause of Our Ongoing Terrible Economy

2011-09-06T14:19:00.001-04:00

THE 5 percent of Americans with the highest incomes now account for 37 percent of all consumer purchases, according to the latest research from Moody’s Analytics. That should come as no surprise. Our society has become more and more unequal.

When so much income goes to the top, the middle class doesn’t have enough purchasing power to keep the economy going without sinking ever more deeply into debt — which, as we’ve seen, ends badly. An economy so dependent on the spending of a few is also prone to great booms and busts. The rich splurge and speculate when their savings are doing well. But when the values of their assets tumble, they pull back. That can lead to wild gyrations. Sound familiar?

The economy won’t really bounce back until America’s surge toward inequality is reversed. Even if by some miracle President Obama gets support for a second big stimulus while Ben S. Bernanke’s Fed keeps interest rates near zero, neither will do the trick without a middle class capable of spending. Pump-priming works only when a well contains enough water.

Look back over the last hundred years and you’ll see the pattern. During periods when the very rich took home a much smaller proportion of total income — as in the Great Prosperity between 1947 and 1977 — the nation as a whole grew faster and median wages surged. We created a virtuous cycle in which an ever growing middle class had the ability to consume more goods and services, which created more and better jobs, thereby stoking demand. The rising tide did in fact lift all boats.

During periods when the very rich took home a larger proportion — as between 1918 and 1933, and in the Great Regression from 1981 to the present day — growth slowed, median wages stagnated and we suffered giant downturns. It’s no mere coincidence that over the last century the top earners’ share of the nation’s total income peaked in 1928 and 2007 — the two years just preceding the biggest downturns.

Starting in the late 1970s, the middle class began to weaken. Although productivity continued to grow and the economy continued to expand, wages began flattening in the 1970s because new technologies — container ships, satellite communications, eventually computers and the Internet — started to undermine any American job that could be automated or done more cheaply abroad. The same technologies bestowed ever larger rewards on people who could use them to innovate and solve problems. Some were product entrepreneurs; a growing number were financial entrepreneurs. The pay of graduates of prestigious colleges and M.B.A. programs — the “talent” who reached the pinnacles of power in executive suites and on Wall Street — soared.

The middle class nonetheless continued to spend, at first enabled by the flow of women into the work force. (In the 1960s only 12 percent of married women with young children were working for pay; by the late 1990s, 55 percent were.) When that way of life stopped generating enough income, Americans went deeper into debt. From the late 1990s to 2007, the typical household debt grew by a third. As long as housing values continued to rise it seemed a painless way to get additional money.

Eventually, of course, the bubble burst. That ended the middle class’s remarkable ability to keep spending in the face of near stagnant wages. The puzzle is why so little has been done in the last 40 years to help deal with the subversion of the economic power of the middle class. With the continued gains from economic growth, the nation could have enabled more people to become problem solvers and innovators — through early childhood education, better public schools, expanded access to higher education and more efficient public transportation.

We might have enlarged safety nets — by having unemployment insurance cover part-time work, by giving transition assistance to move to new jobs in new locations, by creating insurance for communities that lost a major employer. And we could have made Medicare available to anyone.

Big companies could have been required to pay severance to American workers they let go and train them for new jobs. The minimum wage could have been pegged at half the median wage, and we could have insisted that the foreign nations we trade with do the same, so that all citizens could share in gains from trade.

We could have raised taxes on the rich and cut them for poorer Americans.

But starting in the late 1970s, and with increasing fervor over the next three decades, government did just the opposite. It deregulated and privatized. It cut spending on infrastructure as a percentage of the national economy and shifted more of the costs of public higher education to families. It shredded safety nets. (Only 27 percent of the unemployed are covered by unemployment insurance.) And it allowed companies to bust unions and threaten employees who tried to organize. Fewer than 8 percent of private-sector workers are unionized.

More generally, it stood by as big American companies became global companies with no more loyalty to the United States than a GPS satellite. Meanwhile, the top income tax rate was halved to 35 percent and many of the nation’s richest were allowed to treat their income as capital gains subject to no more than 15 percent tax. Inheritance taxes that affected only the topmost 1.5 percent of earners were sliced. Yet at the same time sales and payroll taxes — both taking a bigger chunk out of modest paychecks — were increased.

Most telling of all, Washington deregulated Wall Street while insuring it against major losses. In so doing, it allowed finance — which until then had been the servant of American industry — to become its master, demanding short-term profits over long-term growth and raking in an ever larger portion of the nation’s profits. By 2007, financial companies accounted for over 40 percent of American corporate profits and almost as great a percentage of pay, up from 10 percent during the Great Prosperity.

Some say the regressive lurch occurred because Americans lost confidence in government. But this argument has cause and effect backward. The tax revolts that thundered across America starting in the late 1970s were not so much ideological revolts against government — Americans still wanted all the government services they had before, and then some — as against paying more taxes on incomes that had stagnated. Inevitably, government services deteriorated and government deficits exploded, confirming the public’s growing cynicism about government’s doing anything right.

Some say we couldn’t have reversed the consequences of globalization and technological change. Yet the experiences of other nations, like Germany, suggest otherwise. Germany has grown faster than the United States for the last 15 years, and the gains have been more widely spread. While Americans’ average hourly pay has risen only 6 percent since 1985, adjusted for inflation, German workers’ pay has risen almost 30 percent. At the same time, the top 1 percent of German households now take home about 11 percent of all income — about the same as in 1970. And although in the last months Germany has been hit by the debt crisis of its neighbors, its unemployment is still below where it was when the financial crisis started in 2007.

How has Germany done it? Mainly by focusing like a laser on education (German math scores continue to extend their lead over American), and by maintaining strong labor unions.

THE real reason for America’s Great Regression was political. As income and wealth became more concentrated in fewer hands, American politics reverted to what Marriner S. Eccles, a former chairman of the Federal Reserve, described in the 1920s, when people “with great economic power had an undue influence in making the rules of the economic game.” With hefty campaign contributions and platoons of lobbyists and public relations spinners, America’s executive class has gained lower tax rates while resisting reforms that would spread the gains from growth.

Yet the rich are now being bitten by their own success. Those at the top would be better off with a smaller share of a rapidly growing economy than a large share of one that’s almost dead in the water.

The economy cannot possibly get out of its current doldrums without a strategy to revive the purchasing power of America’s vast middle class. The spending of the richest 5 percent alone will not lead to a virtuous cycle of more jobs and higher living standards. Nor can we rely on exports to fill the gap. It is impossible for every large economy, including the United States, to become a net exporter.

Reviving the middle class requires that we reverse the nation’s decades-long trend toward widening inequality. This is possible notwithstanding the political power of the executive class. So many people are now being hit by job losses, sagging incomes and declining home values that Americans could be mobilized.

Moreover, an economy is not a zero-sum game. Even the executive class has an enlightened self-interest in reversing the trend; just as a rising tide lifts all boats, the ebbing tide is now threatening to beach many of the yachts. The question is whether, and when, we will summon the political will. We have summoned it before in even bleaker times.

As the historian James Truslow Adams defined the American Dream when he coined the term at the depths of the Great Depression, what we seek is “a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone.”

That dream is still within our grasp.

[I wrote this for today’s New York Times]

via robertreich.org

Perry’s Jobs Miracle: From 2009 To 2010, Texas Had Largest Growth In State, Local Government Jobs

2011-09-01T12:04:00.001-04:00

via thinkprogress.org

In other words, he created more jobs through government spending than in the private sector; a lot more. Not exactly what the Rabid Right would call fiscally conservative.

How the Surveillance State Protects the Interests Of the Ultra-Rich

2011-08-29T16:11:00.001-04:00

August 29, 2011 |

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In the aftermath of the riots that rocked London this summer, the Conservative prime minister's first response was to call for a crackdown on social networking.
Despite data collected by the Guardian showing a strong correlation between poverty and rioting, the government denied that its brutal austerity policies contributed to the desperation and rage of its young people. A researcher found that the majority of rioters who have appeared in court come from poor neighborhoods, 41 percent of them from the poorest in the country—and 66 percent from neighborhoods that have gotten poorer between 2007 and 2010.
Of course, we don't have widespread rioting in the US yet. But even at a relatively calm, peaceful protest in San Francisco, Bay Area Rapid Transit shut down cell phone towers in the subway system in order to stymie a mass action planned after another shooting by a BART police officer. (It was the police killing of a young man that kicked off London's riots as well.)
The techniques that were roundly decried by Western leaders when used by Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak against his people's peaceful revolution are suddenly embraced when it comes to unrest at home. Not only that, but techniques honed in the “war on terror” are now being turned on anti-austerity protesters, clamping down on discontent that was created in the first place by policies of the state.
Glenn Greenwald noted this connection in a recent piece, writing:
“The last year has seen an incredible amount of social upheaval, not just in the Arab world but increasingly in the West. The Guardian today documented the significant role which poverty and opportunity deprivation played in the British riots. Austerity misery -- coming soon to the U.S. -- has sparked serious upheavals in numerous Western nations. Even if one takes as pessimistic a view as possible of an apathetic, meek, complacent American populace, it's simply inevitable that some similar form of disorder is in the U.S.'s future as well. As but one example, just consider this extraordinary indicia of pervasive American discontent, from a Gallup finding yesterday.”
That Gallup finding was that only 11 percent of Americans are content with the way things are going in the country.
Greenwald's point, that the surveillance state is actually designed to protect the interests of the ruling class, is supported by Mike Konczal's point, in this July piece:
“From a series of legal codes favoring creditors, a two-tier justice system that ignore abuses in foreclosures and property law, a system of surveillance dedicated to maximum observation on spending, behavior and ultimate collection of those with debt and beyond, there’s been a wide refocusing of the mechanisms of our society towards the crucial obsession of oligarchs: wealth and income defense. Control over money itself is the last component of oligarchical income defense, and it needs to be as contested as much as we contest all the other mechanisms.”
Social networking sites are considered wonderful boons to commerce as long as they're collecting user data to be turned over to advertisers; but when Twitter or Facebook are used to coordinate protests or send warnings about police to fellow activists, they're suddenly dangers to civilization that must be stopped. And a young activist whose only crime was downloading journal articles from behind JSTOR's paywall to make them available to all faces 35 years in prison and up to $1 million in fines.
While corporations and banks collect data on all of us, they strongly oppose revealing any of their information to the public, even when they're quite happy to spend the public's money. As Bloomberg pointed out in a piece titled “Wall Street Aristocracy Got $1.2 Trillion in Fed's Secret Loans,” information is just now coming to light about how much money was lent to Bank of America and Citigroup by the Federal Reserve back in 2008.
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The New Retirement Plan: No Retirement

2011-08-22T14:40:00.001-04:00

From Rachel Ensign at the WSJ: For Many Seniors, There May Be No Retirement

Already battered nest eggs took another beating this month with the market's wild swings. With interest rates essentially at zero since 2008, income from Treasurys and certificates of deposit is pretty paltry. ... On top of that, housing prices [leave] homeowners with much less equity to tap.
Here is the survey mentioned in the article: The New Retirement: Working

• The survey found that for many Americans, the foundation of their retirement strategy is simply not to retire, to work considerably longer than the traditional retirement age, or work in retirement:
–39 percent of workers plan to work past age 70 or do not plan to retire
–54 percent of workers expect to plan to continue working when they retire
–40 percent now expect to work longer and retire at an older age since the recession
• Workers’ greatest fears about retirement include “outliving my savings and investments” and “not being able to meet the financial needs of my family.”
• Most workers will continue working out of financial necessity:
–Workers estimate their retirement savings needs at $600,000 (median), but in comparison, fewer than one-third (30 percent) have currently saved more than $100,000 in all household retirement accounts
–Most workers, regardless of age or household income, agree that they could work until age 65 and still not have enough money saved to meet their retirement needs
–Of those who plan on working past the traditional retirement age of 65, the most commonly cited reasons are of need versus choice
–Many workers (31 percent) anticipate that they will need to provide financial support to family members
Earlier:
• Summary for Week ending August 19th (with plenty of graphs)
• Schedule for Week of Aug 21st

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Dylan Ratigan’s Righteous Rant

2011-08-10T18:36:00.001-04:00

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Somebody had to!

Another Take

2011-08-02T11:53:00.001-04:00

From TPM Reader RW ...

Let me get this straight. The President kept revenues on the table, did not touch the sunset provisions in the Bush tax cuts, ensured that military cuts keep the GOP honest, protected Medicare by adding in only provider cuts in the trigger, made the reduction apparently enough to stave off a debt downgrade, got the debt ceiling raised, wounded Boehner by demonstrating to the world that he is controlled by the Tea Party caucus, took out the requirement that a BBA be passed and sent to the states and got the extension through 2012? What exactly is wrong with this deal?

The fact that there are cuts? If people don't like that, why in God's name didn't they turn out to vote and bring back our Congressional majority? Once these nut jobs were in there, it was inevitable that this crap was going to happen. Whether or not it is advisable to cut spending, what exactly was going to stop this from happening? My experience is that the primary factor in all negotiations are the facts on the ground. The complaints center on a ridiculous notion that if the President had only said "no" harder, that these guys would have caved in. This isn't negotiating over who gets the side of the bed near the A/C. This is a complex matter involving 3,000 members and staffers. Negotiations in these situations don't work like this. That's why I'm irked by the constant parade of people comparing the negotiations to movies and card games. These comparisons obscure more than they reveal.
The GOP came out of this looking unreasonable--I've been getting E-mail messages from friends saying they are back with the Democrats because the Tea Party is "destroying this country." Nate Silver tweeted last week that local conservative talk radio in Kansas was filled with callers attacking the Tea Party! The Wall Street Journal ran two editorials which called the GOP delusional and "childish." The vaunted GOP message discipline broke down--I read stories all over the "inside baseball" papers here in DC where GOP House members went on the record after the Friday vote wondering out loud if the party had been damaged! I don't know if you noticed, but John Boehner spent last week negotiating with himself. No new proposals came out from the Dem side, but he produced two proposals, one of which he had to pull after he didn't have votes. A congressional Dem staffer told me his dad, an urban Catholic who voted for Nixon over Kennedy and has always voted Republican suddenly thinks the GOP is out to lunch and supports the President.

Hey, we all hate the pain, but this is an ongoing process. They are going to try this again with a government shutdown. When that happens, I'm pretty sure that the country will be resoundingly against a repeat of these types of hijinks.

On a better note, we know that Boehner has the votes if Mitt Romney "sticks his neck out" opposing the deal.

via feedproxy.google.com

I find this to be a very astute take on the whole debt-aggedon crisis and deal. Let's hope the "middle" remembers all of this come November of 2012. It will probably take another crisis caused by the Tealibans (almost guaranteed to happen late this year of early next) to reinforce the lessons here, and that will seal the deal if the Dems can keep their heads above water and the national dialogue focused on the intransigence and ideological fixation of the Right. That's a big "if," but one that is at least possible after what has already happened.

Israel's secular middle class strikes back | Carlo Strenger

2011-08-02T11:39:00.001-04:00

via guardian.co.uk

Not getting much press here, but the majority in Israel are expressing their discontent with the high costs of living and increasingly repressive legislation passed by the right-wing coalition in their government. It all started with a Facebook post by a young woman who was sick and tired of trying to pay her ever-climbing rent without comparable increases in pay. Now, it has grown to include complaints about loss of civil liberties and simple social services. Are Israelis the new canary in the mine for right-wing policies? I'm looking at you, Florida! And you, Arizona! And Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio...!

Bloomberg reports that Boehner and Republicans voted for all the Debt they now Blame on Obama

2011-07-27T12:10:00.001-04:00

via crooksandliars.com

We knew this, but it's good to see at least one lame-stream media outlet do some actual investigative (Google?) reporting; especially when it accurately reports the lying and posturing of Right Wing demagogues who think they can say anything and get away with it because their followers only listen to their own propaganda! All right, that last part is wishful thinking, since I'm pretty sure the the Faux News followers wouldn't even recognize the Bloomberg Report as anything but a Liberally-biased noise source, even though it is mostly a Conservatively-biased news source. Still, good on Bloomberg for actually reporting some facts instead of mindlessly repeating the lies coming from Washington.

The Clinton Era and Revisionist Economic History: Why Fiscal Austerity Will Fail [Mike the Mad Biologist]

2011-07-25T12:15:00.001-04:00

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Justice Dept. Close to Subpoenaing News Corp.

2011-07-22T13:21:00.001-04:00

via gawker.com

Go, team, go! I hope this is a serious investigation with serious consequences. We'll see.

Never Play Poker With Republicans

2011-07-17T01:04:00.001-04:00

That’s actually not fair. You can play poker with them, as long as you make sure you get the money from them up front. If you let them play on credit, you’re going to get fucked. They’re never going to pay you what they owe you.

Think I’m being unfair? Let me give you the basis for that advice.

All of this talk about not raising the debt ceiling is bullshit. And frankly, I don’t even know why congress has to vote on whether to raise the debt ceiling. It’s a bullshit vote. They already voted in the affirmative to spend the money that necessitated raising the debt ceiling. If they were concerned with government spending, they should have voted “NO!”

But they didn’t. They voted for all of the crazy ass spending that added to our debt. They voted for “emergency supplementals” to keep two wars going, they voted to spend money on medicare part D, and they voted to pass obviously bogus budgets that didn’t include these expenditures, year after year.

They voted to spend the money. So when the debt ceiling issue comes up for a vote, they’re basically voting on whether to welch on their debt.

Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. This is about whether or not they want to honor their word. Period. It’s not about spending more money, and it’s not about “making sacrifices”. They spent the money, and they did it with every single entitlement they now want to cut in the budget. As an aside, they’re called “entitlements” because it’s your money. You’re entitled to get it back, exactly as you were promised you would. Anytime a republican uses “entitlement” as if it were a dirty word, you should set them straight. Let them know that you’re damned well entitled to get your money back, and they should be entitled to theirs too.

And don’t let an idiot republican tell you that we shouldn’t raise the debt ceiling. If they try, let them know that they’re deadbeat welchers that won’t ever be allowed to play poker with you, unless they show you the money first.

See how simple this issue really is?

via bitchypundit.com

I just love the bitchy pundit! She can boil down an issue and nail it like nobody's business.

Bachmann Preemptively Ditches Her Church To Avoid Association With Its Radical Views

2011-07-17T00:39:00.001-04:00

via thinkprogress.org

I'd say it's a bit late for that, but we'll see....

ALEC-- The Biggest Threat To America Since The Nazis... And A Very Similar One

2011-07-15T12:31:00.001-04:00

ALEC-- The Biggest Threat To America Since The Nazis... And A Very Similar One

Lately we've been doing a lot of reporting on the history of American fascism in the '30s and '40s and how the far right's activism back then planted the seeds for current developments in the Republican Party. Wealthy families, business and media groups, phony churches and political committees today can trace their roots directly back to antecedents who helped facilitate the rise of Hitler and Mussolini and who worked for their success, some even after the U.S. went to war against Germany and Italy.
On Saturday, for example, we looked at the power of the one of America's preeminent fascist dynasties, the DuPonts, and how they used one of their fascist front groups, the National Manufacturers Association, to push an anti-union, anti-regulatory, anti-family agenda that sounds exactly like the kinds of programs being pushed by current fascist-oriented Republicans like Scott Walker (R-WI) and John Kasich (R-OH). Walker and Kasich are both prominent alumni of today's most fascist-oriented GOP front organizations, ALEC (the American Legislative Excahnge Council), a private legislative organization responsible to no one but... the Koch Bros. Never heard of it? It's a much bigger threat to you and your family than al Qaeda ever was or ever will be. The website that tracks ALEC uses this warning as their introduction:
Through the corporate-funded American Legislative Exchange Council, global corporations and state politicians vote behind closed doors to try to rewrite state laws that govern your rights. These so-called "model bills" reach into almost every area of American life and often directly benefit huge corporations. Through ALEC, corporations have "a VOICE and a VOTE" on specific changes to the law that are then proposed in your state. DO YOU?

This week's Nation features an important exposé on ALEC by John Nichols that every American should read.
“Never has the time been so right,” Louisiana State Representative Noble Ellington told conservative legislators gathered in Washington to plan the radical remaking of policies in the states. It was one month after the 2010 midterm elections. Republicans had grabbed 680 legislative seats and secured a power trifecta-- control of both legislative chambers and the governorship-- in twenty-one states. Ellington was speaking for hundreds of attendees at a “States and Nation Policy Summit,” featuring GOP stars like Texas Governor Rick Perry, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. Convened by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)-- “the nation’s largest, non-partisan, individual public-private membership association of state legislators,” as the spin-savvy group describes itself-- the meeting did not intend to draw up an agenda for the upcoming legislative session. That had already been done by ALEC’s elite task forces of lawmakers and corporate representatives. The new legislators were there to grab their weapons: carefully crafted model bills seeking to impose a one-size-fits-all agenda on the states.
Founded in 1973 by Paul Weyrich and other conservative activists frustrated by recent electoral setbacks, ALEC is a critical arm of the right-wing network of policy shops that, with infusions of corporate cash, has evolved to shape American politics. Inspired by Milton Friedman’s call for conservatives to “develop alternatives to existing policies [and] keep them alive and available,” ALEC’s model legislation reflects long-term goals: downsizing government, removing regulations on corporations and making it harder to hold the economically and politically powerful to account. Corporate donors retain veto power over the language, which is developed by the secretive task forces. The task forces cover issues from education to health policy. ALEC’s priorities for the 2011 session included bills to privatize education, break unions, deregulate major industries, pass voter ID laws and more. In states across the country they succeeded, with stacks of new laws signed by GOP governors like Ohio’s John Kasich and Wisconsin’s Scott Walker, both ALEC alums.
The details of ALEC’s model bills have been available only to the group’s 2,000 legislative and 300 corporate members. But thanks to a leak to Aliya Rahman, an Ohio-based activist who helped organize protests at ALEC’s Spring Task Force meeting in Cincinnati, The Nation has obtained more than 800 documents representing decades of model legislation. Teaming up with the Center for Media and Democracy, The Nation asked policy experts to analyze this never-before-seen archive.

There are 5 analyises of those documents available through The Nation, blueprints for a corporatist takeover of the United States; that's a polite way of saying a fascist takeover:
“Sabotaging Healthcare,” by Wendell Potter
“The Koch Connection,” by Lisa Graves
“Rigging Elections,” by John Nichols
“Business Domination Inc.,” by Joel Rogers and Laura Dresser
"Starving Public Schools,” by Julie Underwood
Happy Bastille Day!
Labels: ALEC, fascism, Koch

posted by DownWithTyranny @ 2:00 PM
1 comments | Reddit

via downwithtyranny.blogspot.com

The reason history repeats itself is that there are always people who think the course of history has gone wrong when it comes to the defeat of, say, fascism, Nazism, or the Confederacy. These people, when left in power (i.e., not tried and jailed, etc.), can continue to plan and conspire for decades until they rise again to try to enslave and control the majorities by any means possible. They are the reason for the repeated fall of once great societies and cultures because their policies are unsustainable and detrimental to all but themselves.

Mitch McConnell: We Must Rewrite The Constitution Because ‘Elections’ Haven’t ‘Worked’

2011-07-13T15:13:00.001-04:00

via thinkprogress.org

Shorter McConnell: The People keep speaking, and we need them to STFU!

BBC News - Austrian driver's religious headgear strains credulity

2011-07-13T11:26:00.001-04:00

13 July 2011 Last updated at 10:42 ET

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Austrian driver's religious headgear strains credulity

Having received his driving licence, Niko Alm now wants to get pastafarianism officially recognised

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'Intelligent design' teaching ban

An Austrian atheist has won the right to be shown on his driving-licence photo wearing a pasta strainer as "religious headgear".

Niko Alm first applied for the licence three years ago after reading that headgear was allowed in official pictures only for confessional reasons.

Mr Alm said the sieve was a requirement of his religion, pastafarianism.

The Austrian authorities required him to obtain a doctor's certificate that he was "psychologically fit" to drive.

The idea came into Mr Alm's noodle three years ago as a way of making a serious, if ironic, point.

A self-confessed atheist, Mr Alm says he belongs to the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, a light-hearted faith whose members call themselves pastafarians.

A medical interview established the self-styled 'pastafarian' was mentally fit to drive

The group's website states that "the only dogma allowed in the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is the rejection of dogma".

In response to pressure for American schools to teach the Christian theory known as intelligent design, as an alternative to natural selection, the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster wrote to the Kansas School Board asking for the pastafarian version of intelligent design to be taught to schoolchildren, as an alternative to the Christian theory.
Straining credulity
In the same spirit, Mr Alm's pastafarian-style application for a driving licence was a response to the Austrian recognition of confessional headgear in official photographs.

The licence took three years to come through and, according to Mr Alm, he was asked to submit to a medical interview to check on his mental fitness to drive but - straining credulity - his efforts have finally paid off.

It is the police who issue driving licences in Austria, and they have duly issued a laminated card showing Mr Alm in his unorthodox item of religious headgear.

The next step, Mr Alm told the Austrian news agency APA, is to apply to the Austrian authorities for pastafarianism to become an officially recognised faith.

via bbc.co.uk

Touched by his noodly goodness!

BREAKING: Undercover Investigation Confirms Bachmann Clinic Provides Discredited, Damaging ‘Ex-Gay’ Therapy

2011-07-09T09:39:00.001-04:00

via thinkprogress.org

Shocker.