TODAY'S TOPICS: Sexism, Election Victories, Story of Broke, Populism, Transaction Tax, Romney, Generational Divide?
“You capitalize on dividing Americans, claiming that people
that disagree with you are unpatriotic and you promote discrimination. You
parade as a grassroots candidate but your campaign is funded by Americans for
Prosperity, a group that takes advantage of legalized money laundering. You
cater to the 1 percent. You oppose paying hardworking Americans a living wage
and refuse to promote realistic solutions to economic problems. We are the
99%.!”
- OWS group Protesters to Michelle Bachman at a campaign event (shouted her down!)
Outrageous American Sexism
I’m not going to belabor this point as I’ve got too much else
to try and post today…but I’m blown away about just how sexist the right wing,
and our media, remains in this country. As one woman after another is found to
have been sexually harassed – and assaulted – by Herman Cain we’re still in the
“women ask for it” or “women always lie about it” mindset…with the premise being that
the man is the victim.
What a crock of shit. And the fact that Republicans in the
crowd at the debate actually booed the one question to Cain about ethics should
really tell you all you need to know about this party and its base. How ANY
woman could EVER vote Republican is beyond me…but to see the way Cain and his
defenders talk about, and treat these women is truly reprehensible.
Tuesday’s Election: Good News…But Keep in Perspective
I want to briefly provide some context to what were clearly
some important “victories” on Tuesday. But, let’s remember, as has been the
trend for over 30 years now, what qualifies as a left wing victory is simply
stopping something horrible and outrageous, rather than say, gaining something
truly important and beneficial to the people.
For examples of what I mean, let me go through a few of the
major Tuesday “victories”, and what a “real” victory, at least that I will
celebrate, would look like instead.
Let’s begin with the most important: Ohio overturning a law that
would completely strip public employee unions of the right to collective bargain.
Granted, the fact that 62% of Ohio voters rejected this is heartening. More
importantly was the way Ohio voters did it…by immediately getting enough
signatures to put the measure on the ballot and then successfully overturning a
rogue Governor and his fascist cohorts in the GOP. In that sense, it’s a victory
for organizing itself, but not so much for labor...unless its BUILT ON.
Remember how the right wing operates. They go SO EXTREME
that they always keep us on the left on the defensive. In this case, even when
they lose, they are keeping the focus on unions having “too much”…rather then
where the focus should be: workers deserve more. The last thing we want to
start “celebrating” is simply the prevention of the worst of the GOP attacks,
and the preservation of what little is left for workers, and unions, in this
country. So yes, this is a good victory, but a REAL victory in my mind will be
when we pass a card check law so its easier for workers to organize, and
Taft-Hartley is repealed, allowing unions the right to strike.
IN other words, let’s keep things in perspective, and start
going on the OFFENSE.
Similarly, there was the case of Mississippi, where voters
rejected GOP attempts to define life at conception – essentially making most
forms of birth control illegal. This, obviously is good…but, just as with Ohio,
this is INSANE that we’re even having this discussion in the 21st Century. A
real victory for women in this country to me will be when an Equal Rights
Amendment is passed and signed, and women start receiving the same pay for the
same work as men, and abortions will be COVERED by government health insurance
just like ALL OTHER legal medical procedures are.
Again, let’s keep things in perspective, and start going on
the offensive.
Then there was the successful recall of racist Arizona State
Senate President Russell Pearce, architect of the draconian immigration law
there (by the way, in states that are doing this entire FIELDS are dying
because of the lack of workers that will pick). This again is a victory, but he
was replaced by a Republican (a better one of course), not a progressive.
Similarly, the attack on Latinos and undocumented workers continues unabated…which
is a waste of resources (Obama has deported record numbers), designed to play
on xenophobic fears to keep people from focusing on the REAL culprits
(corporations, super rich, corrupt election system, etc.), and HURTS the
economy.
So, real victories in my mind will consist of not just
recalling nut jobs, but electing progressives and instituting immigration
reform that includes a path to citizenship.
And finally, in Maine, voters restored
a four decade-old law that allows for same-day voter registration,
repealing a Republican-passed bill changing that law.
This too was a victory worth noting. But, real change, and
real victories would be, again, when we go on the offense and actually achieve
POSITIVE things, not just stop negative ones. In these cases that would be real
election reforms, like ridding ourselves of e-voting machines, allowing a
holiday for election day (or a weekend), ending voter id laws, and making it
easier to register (like on the internet) to vote.
Polling Reaffirms Populist Messaging Success
For years I’ve been making the case for a populist platform
with populist messaging. One thing the Occupy Wall Street movement has provided
is a blueprint for this, and it is being picked up on by more Democrats. Now,
we find that the two “frames” that were MOST effective with voters were
precisely this kind of populism…in fact, in some cases over 80% agree!
See here…and keep an eye out for how many Democrats start
using this kind of language (but more importantly is if they ACT ON IT):
Q.65 Now I am going to read you a few statements about the
American economy and government. After I read each one, please tell me whether
you agree or disagree.
Question: The big banks got bailed out but the middle class
got left behind. Our economy works for Wall Street CEOs but not for the middle
class. America isn't supposed to only work for the top one percent.
................................
Strng Agree 54
Smwt Agree 21
Smwt Agree 21
Question: Young people are coming out of school saddled with
student loan debt, most of which is financed by big banks who make billions in
interest on this debt. This generation already faces high unemployment. They
will never be able to get on track unless we reduce young people's debt
burden.....................
Strng Agree 50
Smwt Agree 23
Smwt Agree 23
Addressing Poverty: A Moral Imperative
Another issue that is FINALLY cracking the Matrix is poverty.
And, the good news, for lack of a better term, is that the US Census Bureau
changed its formulation of poverty for the first time in over fifty years (something
I’ve been advocating for here for years), taking into account reductions in the
cost of food while including rising costs in health care, child care, housing
and transportation. In addition, non-cash government aid like food stamps and
tax credits were finally included in the formulation.
The bad news is this will inevitably show poverty is WORSE than we thought. Consider how bad these numbers are (not even taking into
account the number who are on the verge of poverty or living month to month…which
is approximately 60% of ALL Americans)…and then consider why, in the face of a
deficit CAUSED by tax cuts for the rich, Wall Street crimes, and wars/military,
we’re looking to decimate programs that help people avoid poverty, and survive
it.
The fact is, addressing poverty is paramount to addressing
our economic crisis…and is the very epitome of justice. Here are the numbers:
The ranks of America’s poor is now 49.1 million — or 16
percent — due to rising medical costs and other expenses that make it harder
for people to stay afloat, according to new census estimates.
Moreover, in 2006, interest payments on consumer debt had
already put more than four million people, not officially in poverty, below the
line, making them “debt
poor.” Similarly, if childcare
costs, estimated at $5,750 a year in 2006, were deducted from gross income,
many more people would be counted as officially poor.
AS David Dayen notes, “Nor are these catastrophic levels of
poverty merely a temporary response to rising unemployment rates or reductions
in take-home pay resulting from the great economic meltdown of 2008. The
numbers tell the story and it’s clear enough: poverty was on the rise before
the Great Recession hit. Between 2001 and 2007, poverty actually increased for
the first time on record during an economic recovery. It rose from 11.7%
in 2001 to 12.5% in 2007. Poverty rates for single mothers in 2007 were
49% higher in the U.S. than in 15 other high-income countries. Similarly,
black employment rates and income were declining before the recession
struck.
The biggest increase in poverty rates came from elderly
Americans aged 65 or older. It was always a point of pride that the combination
of Social Security and Medicare drastically reduced elderly poverty. Under the
old statistics, just 9% of seniors were seen as living in poverty. However,
because the new formula takes into account out-of-pocket medical costs,
particularly rising deductibles and prescription drugs, that number has jumped
by 2.7 million, and now represents 15.9% of all seniors, roughly 1 in 6. This
is consistent with the rest of the population.
This is an important finding. What we’re seeing is that
Social Security and Medicare are NOT ENOUGH to keep millions of seniors out of
poverty. This comes at a time when the elites in Washington are trying to find
ways to cut Social Security benefits or phase
out Medicare. These new poverty statistics should stop that dead in its
tracks. But it won’t.
Frances Fox Piven elaborates, “…It’s amazing that this is
only known intuitively – as seen in the Occupy Wall Street protests – and it
not the only basic set of statistics every American should have handy to
recite. The story goes that Wall Street destroyed the economy with excessive
risk and inflation of a housing bubble, destroyed the lives and jobs of
millions of Americans when it all came crashing down, got nursed back to health
by a pliant set of government bureaucrats, spending taxpayer money to
rehabilitate them, and now they are doing as well as or better than any sector
in the economy.
The poor -- and blacks -- were an endlessly useful
rhetorical foil, a propagandistic distraction used to win elections and make
bigger gains. Still, the rhetoric was important. A host of new think
tanks, political organizations, and lobbyists in Washington D.C. promoted the
message that the country’s problems were caused by the poor whose
shiftlessness, criminal inclinations, and sexual promiscuity were being
indulged by a too-generous welfare system.
Genuine suffering followed quickly enough, along with big
cuts in the means-tested programs that helped the poor. The staging of
the cuts was itself enwreathed in clouds of propaganda, but cumulatively they
frayed the safety net that protected both the poor and workers, especially
low-wage ones, which meant women and minorities. When Ronald Reagan entered the
Oval Office in 1980, the path had been smoothed for huge cuts in programs for
poor people, and by the 1990s the Democrats, looking for electoral strategies
that would raise campaign dollars from big business and put them back in power,
took up the banner. It was Bill Clinton, after all, who campaigned on the
slogan “end welfare as we know it.”
The Economic Policy Institute has more on the REAL victims
of this economy, reporting that the typical working-age household, which had
already seen a decline of roughly $2,300 in income between 2000 and 2006, lost another $2,700
between 2007 and 2009. And when “recovery” arrived, however uncertainly,
it was mainly in low-wage industries, which accounted
for nearly half of what growth there was. Manufacturing
continued to contract, while the labor market lost 6.1% of payroll
employment. New investment, when it occurred at all, was more likely to
be in machinery than in new workers, so
unemployment levels remain alarmingly high.
Banks and Need for Financial Transaction Tax
This is an idea I’ve been pushing for a few years too, and
its an example of going on the offense, as I feel we must do more of. And thankfully, in part due to OWS, the idea is gaining steam (and has been implemented in the UK already).
Let’s remember the reality of the bank bailout and its
effects. A recent
study by Ran Duchin and Denis Sosyura of University of Michigan shows that
banks did not increase their lending after getting bailed out by the government
after the crisis. Similarly, the economy did not come roaring back to life
after the crisis, and is now stuck at an unacceptable level of unemployment.
Clearly, we are in desperate need of new revenue, and where
better to get it than from the EXACT kind of stock trading that was responsible
for the bubble bursting in the first place?
The idea is simple: Every time someone buys or sells a
stock, bond, or derivative, a tax of 0.03% is applied to the transaction. This
is a minuscule tax in real terms. If someone gave you $100,000 in stocks or bonds
as a gift, it would cost you thirty bucks. It would only cost $300 if they gave
you a million dollars' worth. You'd spend more than that on dessert when you
went out to celebrate that night. This would generate as much as $350 BILLION a
year.
Again, the concept is economic justice: Criminals should pay
for their crimes. The wealthy should pay their fair share. The ones who ruined
the economy should help bear the cost of fixing it. And we must make sure that
this sort of reckless greed is brought under control once and for all.
As Richard Eskrow notes, "Electronic traders make their money
from billions of high-speed trades, most of which are conducted without human
intervention. These aren't reasoned judgments about the worth of a stock or the
state of the world economy. They're mob panics, conducted at high speed, where
software programs try to figure out who's buying and selling and getting ahead
of the wave -- without ever knowing what it means in real-world terms. These
trades don't contribute anything of value to society. They don't create jobs or
growth, and they don't create wealth - except for the traders, who are draining
money out of the productive economy with every mindless, robotic mass trade.
It's gambling, pure and simple, and the financial transactions tax will slow
this electronic fun fair down once and for all. It will apply a touch of the
brakes to the Wall Street Crazy Train.
That might, just might, help prevent the next financial
disaster. And it will bring much-needed money into the Treasury."
The fact is the largest banks are larger than they were when
Obama took office and are nearing the level of profits they were making before
the depths of the financial crisis in 2008, according to government data.
Wall Street firms are doing even better. They earned more in the first
21 / 2 years of the Obama administration than they did during the eight
years of the George W. Bush administration, industry data show.
Behind this turnaround, in significant measure, are
government policies that helped the financial sector avert collapse and then
gave financial firms huge benefits on the path to recovery. It’s obviously WAY PAST time to start making the banks work
for the people, not the people work for banks.
Corporate Tax Dodgers and the Estate Tax
This from an action alert I received from Roots Action: A
new report finds that during the past three years, GENERAL ELECTRIC paid a tax
rate of negative 45%. Among 30 major corporations paying negative taxes
(they are richer after taxes than before, often receiving rebate
checks) were WELLS FARGO and VERIZON.
Big corporations want the rights of “persons” but don’t want to pay any taxes. Instead, they get the public – actual persons – to pay their taxes and subsidize them . . . even as these businesses amass huge profits.
Corporations are supposed to pay 35% in taxes. But Wells Fargo received $17.9 billion in tax breaks. Verizon got $12.3 billion. G.E. took $8.4 billion."
Big corporations want the rights of “persons” but don’t want to pay any taxes. Instead, they get the public – actual persons – to pay their taxes and subsidize them . . . even as these businesses amass huge profits.
Corporations are supposed to pay 35% in taxes. But Wells Fargo received $17.9 billion in tax breaks. Verizon got $12.3 billion. G.E. took $8.4 billion."
As for attempts to eliminate the estate tax (and successful
efforts to cut it), another way of redistributing wealth to the rich, despite
Republican mythology about family farms and businesses being lost to the
so-called "death tax," by 2009 only 0.24 percent
of estates even paid the levy. And that was before the December 2010
compromise.
Now, the Tax
Policy Center calculated, only 0.1 percent of estates are impacted.
Only 50 family farms and small businesses will be affected, and they contribute
"less than one tenth of 1 percent point of the total revenue the tax will
collect."
Again, we AREN'T BROKE, there's plenty of money out there...the question is priorities...
Super Committee and The Benefits of Failure
I have said, over and over, that we should all be praying the
supercommittee fails, because at least in the case of the so called “trigger”,
there’s more defense cuts in it, and, the fact is, if Congress doesn’t have the
stomach for those trigger cuts, they can simply not enact them...which is also
a better option.
Remember, ANY agreement by the SuperCommittee necessarily
means at least one Republican AGREES with it…and of course, they vote in unison…thus
it would have to be something they’d likely all support, which means disaster,
particularly for Medicare and Medicaid.
As for influence, consider this: According to a September
2011 report by Public Campaign and National People’s Action, the 12 members of
the Joint Committee on Deficit Reduction have received $41 million from the
financial sector during their time in Congress and at least 27 current or
former aides for the committee members have lobbied on behalf of financial
firms.
As Robert Borosage notes, “the misbegotten offspring of the
summer’s debt ceiling deal, is charged with reducing the deficit by a minimum
of $1.2 trillion over 10 years by cutting spending or raising taxes….If it
fails, then $1.2 trillion in automatic cuts in discretionary spending, split
between domestic and Pentagon budgets, kick in.
In fact, the economy already faces a severe hit from the
folly of the deficit hawks. Republicans have obstructed every portion of the
president’s modest job plan. Spending from the Recovery Act is ending. The
first of the enforced spending cuts from the deficit deal are kicking in.
Extended unemployment insurance is due to expire at the end of the year, as is
the payroll tax cut. JP Morgan Chief U.S. Economist Michael Feroli estimates
those measures will cut gross domestic product by about 1.7 percent in 2012,
virtually driving the U.S. into recession. With companies sitting on $2
trillion in profits looking for customers, there is no indication the private
sector will replace the jobs or demand.
The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities noted that the
deal offered Republicans was about 6 to 1 in spending cuts to tax hikes, and far
to the right of even the Senate’s bipartisan gang of six proposals. Inevitably,
committee Republicans rejected the proposal out of hand, refusing to consider
any tax increases or defense cuts, offering a smaller alternative plan of some
$2.2 trillion, featuring deep cuts in Social Security and Medicare and a token
figure of $4 billion in tax cuts.
If this is success, failure looks more attractive. If the
Committee fails to agree automatic cuts kick in on the discretionary side of
the budget—$1.2 trillion over ten years, split between the military budget and
domestic programs beginning in 2013. In the first year, $54 billion will be cut
from each, or about 9 percent from core budgets.
Exempted from the domestic cuts are many of the core social
programs the most vulnerable rely on—Social Security, Medicaid, veteran’s
benefits, Pell grants, food stamps, children’s health (CHIP), and child
nutrition. Cuts in Medicare payments to providers are limited to a 2 percent
cut in payments to providers. The cuts in other programs—public health,
education, the environment, renewable energy, disease prevention, health
research and more—would be brutal. But the programs for the poor and vulnerable
are likely to fare better in event of failure, than in event of a grand bargain.
The Defense Department would similarly face cuts of about 9
percent, which added to the trimming already in Pentagon projections, would cut
nearly $1 trillion from the department’s ten-year budget. This leads generals
to fulminate about “catastrophic” and “doomsday” measures. “We talking
hundreds of airplanes and thousands of people” warned Air Force Chief of Staff
Norton Swartz. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has vowed this “won’t happen on
my watch.”
But coming at the end of two wars, cuts in the military are
long overdue. In fact the reductions include savings on the wars that could
easily amount to $700 billion or so over 10 years. And the Pentagon’s core
budget has doubled since 2001. As the Project for Defense Alternative report
noted, the Pentagon would suffer a cut, in inflation-adjusted terms, from $5.99
trillion over 10 years to $5.18 trillion. This would return it, in real
dollars, all the way back to its fiscal 2007 budget, hardly unilateral
disarmament. We would still be spending on the military almost as much as the
rest of the world combined.
VIDEO SECTION
You’ve got to LOVE Elizabeth Warren!! This is the future of
the Democratic Party…if it has one at all:
The Story of Broke: The United States isn’t broke; we’re the
richest country on the planet and a country in which the richest among us are
doing exceptionally well. But the truth is, our economy is broken, producing
more pollution, greenhouse gasses and garbage than any other country. Watch!
FROM C&L: Ed Schultz talked to USPS letter carrier and Rep. Joe Walsh
(i.e. TEABAGGER) constituent Melissa Rakestraw about her encounter with Walsh
at a recent meeting he had where he basically melted down and started screaming
at Rakestraw and some of the others who were unfortunate enough to be attending
that event.
Rachel Maddow on Herman Cain as a "performance artist
and "the practical joke no one is getting"…
FROM C&L: musicians David Crosby and
Graham Nash made an appearance (AFTER PLAYING AT OWS) on Democracy Now and treated the audience there
to another a cappella performance of Crosby's new song, "What Are Their Names"
in studio.
ARTICLE SECTION
Why Mitt Romney's Entitlement-Privatization Plan is Crazy,
by Matt Taibbi
A FEW CLIPS:
Your typical Medicare/Social Security recipient might
already have been ripped off three different ways in this era. He might have
been sold a crappy mortgage or a refi by a Countrywide-type firm (which often
targeted the elderly). He might then also have unwittingly become an investor
in such mortgages and seen the value of his retirement holdings devastated
(many of the banks sold their crappy mortgage-backed securities to state
pension funds). Lastly, if he paid taxes, he saw part of his tax money go to
pay off the bets the banks made against these same mortgages.
So now that Wall Street has ripped off this segment of
society three times, it makes all the sense in the world that Mitt Romney – a
former Wall Street superstar who was a chief architect of
the modern executive-compensation-driven corporation – is coming back
and telling us that we need to cut their Medicare and Social Security benefits
in order to defray the cost of the previous three scams.
SNIP
We’ve just witnessed an episode of industry-wide financial
mismanagement that surely has no parallel in history. From Lehman Brothers to
AIG to Goldman and Morgan Stanley (which in 2008 needed the unprecedented
emergency granting of a commercial bank charter to avoid bankruptcy) to
Citigroup (which needed a $25
billion bailout and $300 billion in federal guarantees to survive) to
Bear Stearns (dead) and Merrill Lynch (dead) and so on, virtually every single
one of America’s leading financial institutions from the last decade is either
already out of business or functionally insolvent and living off government
life support and cheap cash from the Fed.
SNIP
So the mere hint that these banks might be denied
future bailouts caused a company as massive as Bank of America to be downgraded
to just above junk status. That means, in other words, that without the
implicit promise of government aid, Wall Street considers these banks to be
junk or below-junk businesses. Evaluated purely on their own merits, without
the implicit attachment to the taxpayer, these companies actually have negative trustworthiness.
And these are the people we want managing the nation’s
Social Security accounts? If there wasn’t such a very real chance that this could
happen, it would be worth laughing about, but unfortunately it’s no joke. It’s
a testament to the tenacious idiocy of our national media that an idea like
Social Security privatization could continue to be publicly contemplated, in
the wake of a disaster on the scale we’ve just gone through.
Pew Report on Young-Old Wealth Gap is Misleading and
Divisive; Could Fuel Intergenerational Class War, By Joshua Holland
A FEW CLIPS:
As a result, whereas older families had 10 times the
accumulated wealth of those headed by people under 35 back in 1984, that ratio
has now risen to 47-to-1. The authors acknowledge that people accumulate wealth
as they get older, and that young people didn't have a lot of it back in 1984,
but economist Dean Baker told AlterNet that this fact renders the finding
little more than a bit of trivia. “The idea of using a ratio is really
problematic in this context,” he said. “Young people have no wealth. They had
no wealth in 1984 and they have no wealth now. The fact that the ratio of the
wealth of older households to younger households has increased hugely tells us
almost nothing.”
It tells us even less because, as Baker noted, the study
contains a serious flaw. Back in the 1980s, traditional, employer-managed
pensions were the primary means of saving for retirement in the United States,
but during the intervening years there was a huge shift toward 401(k)s (and
similar accounts), which now represent over
80 percent of private retirement savings. Traditional pensions weren’t
counted as part of a household’s net-worth, but 401(k)s are. So comparing the
wealth of older households that didn’t include their nest-eggs in 1984 to
those in 2009 which count the money people have socked away as part
of their net worth is like comparing apples to oranges.
SNIP
Most of the difference between older and younger families'
net worths relates to housing wealth. Half of homeowners over 65 bought their
homes before the run-up of the housing bubble began in the late 1990s, while
many younger families with homes bought while the bubble was inflated and were
badly hurt when it popped. Almost two-thirds of those over 65 who have a home
own it free and clear with no mortgage.
So, stripping away the sensational headline numbers, what
you get is that the median household headed by people 65 and over saw the
values of their homes increase by about $50,000 over the past 25 years, but
were able to accumulate little in the way of other assets. Somewhat buried in
the study is the fact that when you exclude housing wealth, the median net
worth of households headed by older Americans is a third lower today than it
was back in 1984.
SNIP
The real story here is that younger families in the middle
of the pile have fallen way behind, as those
at the top have grabbed an ever-increasing share of the nation's income. As
Dean Baker put it, “the ratio of the wealth of the top one percent to the rest
of the population has risen by much more than that of people over 65 and those
under age 35.”
The way these findings are being interpreted can only stoke
young people's sense of resentment and divide the vast majority of Americans
who are suffering through the same economic catastrophe. It can only feed the
politics of grievance, which is ultimately just what the “granny-bashers” want.
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