Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan on NBC's "Meet the Press" said that Republicans pushing to extend the Bush tax cuts without offsetting the costs elsewhere would create a disasterous situation for the economy. He slammed the idea that tha tax cuts paid for themselves by generating revenue and productivity. He said they did neither. Greenspan also said that we have very few tools left to change the unemployment situation. While jobs will be created, the level of unemployment will remain about the same.
David Stockman, the former director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Reagan and known for "being taken to the woodshed" for his criticisms of Reagan's policies, had a virtual tantrum on the pages of the New York Times in an op-ed entitled "Four Deformations of the Apocalypse." In this lengthy piece, he lays out the Republican economic fallacies of the last four decades. His lead sentence says it all. "If there were such a thing as Chapter 11 for politicians, the Republican push to extend the unaffordable Bush tax cuts would amount to a bankruptcy filing."
David Stockman recalls the days when Republicans used to believe that prosperity depended upon the regular balancing of accounts--in government, in international trade, on the ledgers of central banks and in financial affairs of private hosueholds and busineses,too. The new catchism, Stockman warns, has amounted to little more than money printing and deficit finance--"vulgar Keynesianism robed in the ideological vestments of the prosperous classes."
He argues that this approach has led to the serial financial bubbles and Wall Street depredations that have crippled our economy. He claims that these new policy doctrines have created four great deformations to the national economy.
The first of these he says started when the Nixon Administration defaulted on American obligations under the 1944 Bretton Woods Agreement to balance our accounts with the world. Since then , he says we have lived beyond our means as a nation with a cumulative current-account deficit--the combined sortfall on our trade in goods, services and income--of around $8 trillion. He frontally attacks Milton Friedman on this saying that if the free market set currency rates, then the trade deficits would self-correct. Obviously, that didn't happen since politicians around the world cheapened their own currency.
The second unhappy change in the American economy, according to Stockman, has been the extraordinary growth of our public debt. In 1970, it was about 40% of gross domestic product. When it reaches $18 trillion by 2015, this will be forty times that of 1970. He blames the debt explosion not on Democratic spending but instead on the Republican's embrace of the Dick Cheney motto "Deficits don't matter." He blames the neo-conservatives for pushing the military budget skyward without any revenue base. He notes that the old Republican guard fought through the 1984 election to control the deficit by rolling back 40% of the original Reagan tax cuts. But he said when the time came when Paul Volcker crushed inflation, that a new generation of tax-cutters claimed that the economy would outgrow the deficit if it were plied with enough tax cuts. This is the slogan of congressional Republicans today.
The net effect was that by 2009, the tax-cutters reduced federal revenues to 15% of GDP, lower than they had been since the 1940s. Then he points out That George W waged two wars that were unfinanced,and signed a $420 billion non-defense appropriations, which was a 65% increase from what he had inherited.
The Third change in the American economy has been the vast, unproductive expansion of our financial sector. He blames the Republicans for removing traditional restrictions on leverage and speculation. As a result, combined assets of conventional banks and the so-called shadow banking system grew from a mere $500 billion in 1970 to $30 trillion in September 2008. He says that these trillion-dollar conglomerates are not free enterprises but are wards of the state, extracting billions from the economy with speculation in stocks, bonds, commodities and derivatives. They could never have survived, if their deposits had not been government-guaranteed.
The fourtth destructive change has been the hollowing out of the larger American economy. This I have alluded to in other posts. In the past decade, the number of high-value jobs in goods production and in service categories like trade, transportation, information technology and the professions has shrunk by 12% to 68 million from 77 million. The only reason there has not been a greater reduction in nonfarm payrolls is that low-paying jobs have made up the difference.
Stockman writes that during the last bubble (2002 to 2006) the top 1% received two-thirds of the gain in national income, while the bottom 90 percent got only 12 percent. He claims that this is not the market's fault but that of bad economic policy.
The result Stockman says is the day of reckoning has arrived. Rather than a conventional economic recovery, we will have a long period of debt liquidation and downsizing. He argues that the old Republican virtues are what's called for, not the hyper-trickle down of current congressional Republicans.
If you want to learn about Republican plans for the future, just read Rep. Ryan's "Blueprint for the Future", which the CBO says will deepen deficits for the future and only produce a balanced budget in 70 years. The effect on the country would be to guarantee we would become the world's biggest banana republic.
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Hobo Nation Rises
Tomorrow the Senate is scheduled to vote on a $10 billion bill to save 135,000 jobs in the field of education. Like the previous jobs creation bill, I expect Republicans to block it. At last glance, this would make three separate jobs creating and saving bills they have blocked. Will they pay politically for this?
It depends on the success of the unemployed netroots--a collection of blogs and sites that connect the jobless and update them in detail on Congress' work on unemployment issues. Republicans have taken to attacking the unemployed as hobos, drug addicts, lazy and refusing to take an honest job. This rhetoric worked to attract blue collar workers reacting to welfare. But the Republicans may have stepped on a minefield, since many of the unemployed white collar workers proclaim they have always voted Republican.
The unemployed netroots came to fruition during the eight month battle to extend unemployment insurance, when unemployment soared to 10%. Now that we are approaching mid-terms,these netroots and grassroots organizers are hooking up with formal organizing groups to add power to their effort. Already, a number of unions and other organizations have created dedicated working groups or online organizations for the jobless. Last year, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers founded the Union of Unemployed or U-Cubed, for jobless workers. The AFL-CIO's Working America has launched Unemployment Lifeline. Working America claims to be the "biggest organization of the unemployed", saying they have 500,000 members. Working America is actually conducting door-to-door canvassing to recruit more unemployed members. U-Cubed plans to call out politicians campaigning during the August recess, with plans to visit events in Kansas and west coast states.
The talent pool here is deep. There have been more than 30 million people, who were left without work during the recession and 14.6 million are currently unemployed. As many as 4 million people are the 99ers, who have exhausted the maximum weeks of federal and state unemployment benefits. Unlike teabaggers, who depend on military pensions and other government programs and are upper middle class, these people have become radicalized by experiencing a period of extreme economic insecurity.
Michael Thornton started the biggest sites in the unemployment netroots called LayoffList in 2008. At the Rochester (N.Y.) Unemployment Examiner, he receives more than a million hit on his articles about Congress' deliberations on these matters. He claims that the unemployed are "energized and motvated" for the fall elections. As he said, if only half the unemployed vote, it would swing the elections nationwide.
Let's hope this effort materializes on election day.
It depends on the success of the unemployed netroots--a collection of blogs and sites that connect the jobless and update them in detail on Congress' work on unemployment issues. Republicans have taken to attacking the unemployed as hobos, drug addicts, lazy and refusing to take an honest job. This rhetoric worked to attract blue collar workers reacting to welfare. But the Republicans may have stepped on a minefield, since many of the unemployed white collar workers proclaim they have always voted Republican.
The unemployed netroots came to fruition during the eight month battle to extend unemployment insurance, when unemployment soared to 10%. Now that we are approaching mid-terms,these netroots and grassroots organizers are hooking up with formal organizing groups to add power to their effort. Already, a number of unions and other organizations have created dedicated working groups or online organizations for the jobless. Last year, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers founded the Union of Unemployed or U-Cubed, for jobless workers. The AFL-CIO's Working America has launched Unemployment Lifeline. Working America claims to be the "biggest organization of the unemployed", saying they have 500,000 members. Working America is actually conducting door-to-door canvassing to recruit more unemployed members. U-Cubed plans to call out politicians campaigning during the August recess, with plans to visit events in Kansas and west coast states.
The talent pool here is deep. There have been more than 30 million people, who were left without work during the recession and 14.6 million are currently unemployed. As many as 4 million people are the 99ers, who have exhausted the maximum weeks of federal and state unemployment benefits. Unlike teabaggers, who depend on military pensions and other government programs and are upper middle class, these people have become radicalized by experiencing a period of extreme economic insecurity.
Michael Thornton started the biggest sites in the unemployment netroots called LayoffList in 2008. At the Rochester (N.Y.) Unemployment Examiner, he receives more than a million hit on his articles about Congress' deliberations on these matters. He claims that the unemployed are "energized and motvated" for the fall elections. As he said, if only half the unemployed vote, it would swing the elections nationwide.
Let's hope this effort materializes on election day.
That's Why It's Called Capitalism
There were two must-read articles in the last two days. In Friday's Washington Post, Steven Pearlstein's "The New Division of Labor: Adding profits, subtracting workers"; and in Friday's New York Times Bob Herbert's "A Sin and A Shame". This Great Recession was not a natural consequence of economic cycles but a man-made disaster caused by deregulation,over-leveraging of debt and retooling corporations toward a more efficient use of labor to maximize profits. Recently, the Brookings Institute conducted a series of studies, which demonstrates that without a profound change in our economy, current levels of unemployment will continue for the foreseeable future.
This past week , Princeton's Alan Blinder, a former vice chairman of the FED, and Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics and a former adviser to John McCain's presidential campaign, released a paper showing how the government saved the country from another Great Depression. Using a standard econometric model, they backed out everything the government did to staunch the bleeding of the crisis and stimulate the economy. From zero interest lending. the TARP program, bailing out the auto industry, tax cuts and infrastructure payments and providing the states with money, they concluded the economy would now be 8 percent smaller, with 8 million fewer jobs and a federal deficit this year of $2 trillion, not $1.4 trillion. This tracks with earlier testimony of FED chief Bernanke that without these measures, the unemployment rate would be closer to 30%.
This week President Obama did a victory lap in Motor City, where he visited the auto industry. The use of $86 billion in government funds to bail out Chrysler and General Motors has paid off handsomely. For the first time since 2004,all three major American car companies are operating at a profit and they have repaid up to $8 billion in loans. The auto industry has added 55,000 jobs this year and exports are up 57%. And the industry is rapidly moving to the production of energy efficient vehicles. President Obama deserved his victory lap since the Auto bailout was opposed by virtually every single Republican.
So why can't there be more such programs? Baby-boomer progressives always ask why President Obama with clear majorities can not embark on more aggressive job-creating programs like FDR. Besides the obvious obstructionism of the Republicans in the Senate, we have to realize that the media and the Beltway are immune to the effects of the recession. D.C. lawyers, K Street lobbyists, policy think tanks and employees of the government and Congressional staff inhabit a world immune to the world of the economy.
A recent scandal involving an NGO I once led revealed that salaries of this govermment-funded entity range from 3 to 5 times that of the average American family. If you walk that across the whole Beltway, you are looking at married couples earning a combined income of $200 to $400,000 per year, with retirement plans and medical insurance. The only hit they have taken so far is with 501-Ks. For them, there is no urgency to the economy and no real perceived long-term downside to the economy in their hermetically sealed world. This accounts for the lack of etnhusiasm for letting the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy die, because they would be affected.
Today's Washington is not the sleepy parochial Southern town, which saw the flood of New Dealers hoping to serve the public good. In fact, I would argue the denizens of the Beltway have no sense of the public good.
Then we move to another untouched part of our economy--American corporations. Steven Pearlstein notes the irony of the four giant banners hanging outside the U.S. Chamber of Commerce , which spells J-O-B-S. The private businesses the Chamber purports to represent eliminated 8 million jobs in 2008 and 2009 and have managed to add a scant 600,000 since then. While the jobs haven't returned, corporate profits have been soaring. Today, they are at $1.2 trillion annually, which are now larger than they were at the height of the financial bubble. While Chamber President Tom Donohue says that corporations are holding on to $2 trillion in cash reserves because they are uncertain in this investment climate, the reality is that corporations used the recession to find out ways to produce more with less workers. What used to be the case, funds would go to research and development and investing in new equipment and plants has now changed to spending in faster-growing markets abroad and paying down your debt. As we all know, corporations are not in the business to create jobs, but profits. And there are doing that at a record pace. Why stop and why support any further govermment programs to strengthen job creation?
Bob Herbert's piece follows the logic of Pearlstein by emphasizing how shabbily American corporations have treated workers. His point is that there was absolutely no need for so many men and women to be forced out of their jobs in the Great Recession. Herbert cites the studies of Andrew Sum, an economic professor and director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston, which shows that the carnage in the workplace was way out of porportion to the economic hit that corporations were taking. Professor Sum says that even though the country emerged from the recession early in the summer of 2009, this period of economic recovery "has seen the most lopsided gains in corporate profits relative to real wages and salaries in our history." Citing a figure of $1.84 trillion cash on hand, a 27 percent increase since 2007, Sum notes that as a percent of total company assets, this cash has reached a level not seen in the past half-century.
Andrew Sum backed up to the start of the recession in December 2007 and found that the real aggregate output in the United States as measured by the gross domestic product, fell about 2.5 percent but employers cut their payrolls by 6 percent. The consequence was that by the end of the fourth quarter in 2008, corporate profits exploded and by the time we reach the first quarter of 2010 by $572 billion, But wage and salries will have gone down by $122 billion.
Both Pearlstein and Herbert essentially agree that there can't be a robust recovery as long as corporations are intent on keeping idle workers sidelines and squeezing the pay out of those who remain on the job. Pearlstein thinks the Chamber should change the banners outside their building to T-H-A-N-K-S to President Obama. Herbert ends his piece by noting that ALCOA, which laid off 37,000 workers, will not rehire despite huge profits. "Until we begin to value our workers," he writes," and understand the critical importance of employment to a thriving economy, we will continue to see our standards of living decline."
With America' economic might shrinking relative to the world and the competition sharp for cutting edge technologies, you would think that such a large country would have a national industrial policy. But the sacred commitment to the free market prevents this from happening. This is clear just by the example of the inability to develop a coherent energy policy, when that is essential to future national security. The Obama Administration will steer us out of the Great Recession but not on to safe shores. The question is really how can we transform our economy away from its consumer base to production with the minimum of unrest and upheaval.
This past week , Princeton's Alan Blinder, a former vice chairman of the FED, and Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics and a former adviser to John McCain's presidential campaign, released a paper showing how the government saved the country from another Great Depression. Using a standard econometric model, they backed out everything the government did to staunch the bleeding of the crisis and stimulate the economy. From zero interest lending. the TARP program, bailing out the auto industry, tax cuts and infrastructure payments and providing the states with money, they concluded the economy would now be 8 percent smaller, with 8 million fewer jobs and a federal deficit this year of $2 trillion, not $1.4 trillion. This tracks with earlier testimony of FED chief Bernanke that without these measures, the unemployment rate would be closer to 30%.
This week President Obama did a victory lap in Motor City, where he visited the auto industry. The use of $86 billion in government funds to bail out Chrysler and General Motors has paid off handsomely. For the first time since 2004,all three major American car companies are operating at a profit and they have repaid up to $8 billion in loans. The auto industry has added 55,000 jobs this year and exports are up 57%. And the industry is rapidly moving to the production of energy efficient vehicles. President Obama deserved his victory lap since the Auto bailout was opposed by virtually every single Republican.
So why can't there be more such programs? Baby-boomer progressives always ask why President Obama with clear majorities can not embark on more aggressive job-creating programs like FDR. Besides the obvious obstructionism of the Republicans in the Senate, we have to realize that the media and the Beltway are immune to the effects of the recession. D.C. lawyers, K Street lobbyists, policy think tanks and employees of the government and Congressional staff inhabit a world immune to the world of the economy.
A recent scandal involving an NGO I once led revealed that salaries of this govermment-funded entity range from 3 to 5 times that of the average American family. If you walk that across the whole Beltway, you are looking at married couples earning a combined income of $200 to $400,000 per year, with retirement plans and medical insurance. The only hit they have taken so far is with 501-Ks. For them, there is no urgency to the economy and no real perceived long-term downside to the economy in their hermetically sealed world. This accounts for the lack of etnhusiasm for letting the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy die, because they would be affected.
Today's Washington is not the sleepy parochial Southern town, which saw the flood of New Dealers hoping to serve the public good. In fact, I would argue the denizens of the Beltway have no sense of the public good.
Then we move to another untouched part of our economy--American corporations. Steven Pearlstein notes the irony of the four giant banners hanging outside the U.S. Chamber of Commerce , which spells J-O-B-S. The private businesses the Chamber purports to represent eliminated 8 million jobs in 2008 and 2009 and have managed to add a scant 600,000 since then. While the jobs haven't returned, corporate profits have been soaring. Today, they are at $1.2 trillion annually, which are now larger than they were at the height of the financial bubble. While Chamber President Tom Donohue says that corporations are holding on to $2 trillion in cash reserves because they are uncertain in this investment climate, the reality is that corporations used the recession to find out ways to produce more with less workers. What used to be the case, funds would go to research and development and investing in new equipment and plants has now changed to spending in faster-growing markets abroad and paying down your debt. As we all know, corporations are not in the business to create jobs, but profits. And there are doing that at a record pace. Why stop and why support any further govermment programs to strengthen job creation?
Bob Herbert's piece follows the logic of Pearlstein by emphasizing how shabbily American corporations have treated workers. His point is that there was absolutely no need for so many men and women to be forced out of their jobs in the Great Recession. Herbert cites the studies of Andrew Sum, an economic professor and director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston, which shows that the carnage in the workplace was way out of porportion to the economic hit that corporations were taking. Professor Sum says that even though the country emerged from the recession early in the summer of 2009, this period of economic recovery "has seen the most lopsided gains in corporate profits relative to real wages and salaries in our history." Citing a figure of $1.84 trillion cash on hand, a 27 percent increase since 2007, Sum notes that as a percent of total company assets, this cash has reached a level not seen in the past half-century.
Andrew Sum backed up to the start of the recession in December 2007 and found that the real aggregate output in the United States as measured by the gross domestic product, fell about 2.5 percent but employers cut their payrolls by 6 percent. The consequence was that by the end of the fourth quarter in 2008, corporate profits exploded and by the time we reach the first quarter of 2010 by $572 billion, But wage and salries will have gone down by $122 billion.
Both Pearlstein and Herbert essentially agree that there can't be a robust recovery as long as corporations are intent on keeping idle workers sidelines and squeezing the pay out of those who remain on the job. Pearlstein thinks the Chamber should change the banners outside their building to T-H-A-N-K-S to President Obama. Herbert ends his piece by noting that ALCOA, which laid off 37,000 workers, will not rehire despite huge profits. "Until we begin to value our workers," he writes," and understand the critical importance of employment to a thriving economy, we will continue to see our standards of living decline."
With America' economic might shrinking relative to the world and the competition sharp for cutting edge technologies, you would think that such a large country would have a national industrial policy. But the sacred commitment to the free market prevents this from happening. This is clear just by the example of the inability to develop a coherent energy policy, when that is essential to future national security. The Obama Administration will steer us out of the Great Recession but not on to safe shores. The question is really how can we transform our economy away from its consumer base to production with the minimum of unrest and upheaval.
Friday, July 30, 2010
Does The Arc of History Really Bend Toward Justice?
President Obama is fond of quoting this remark of Martin Luther King, Jr., which originally comes from an abolitionist preacher. Every time he says this, I hope that it is true.Perhaps, these bends come in acts that go little noticed.
This week I celebrated with the Iranian community the July 16th Court Decision by the Appeals Court here in D.C. that recommended the Iranian opposition group, the PMOI, be taken off the terrorist list. The three-judge panel slammed the State Department in what I counted were 9 consecutive pages of criticizing their criteria, the dubious sources of their intelligence, their suppression of exculpatory evidence, the lack of due process accorded the Iranians, and even their sneaky behavior in the court proceeding itself. While foreign policy is the domain of the executive this decision was the toughest I've read that State has to clean up its act. The court decision is also complimented by a House bill that calls for the release of all political prisoners in Iran.
Yesterday, President Obama signed into law the Tribal Law and Order Act, which the First Nations have demanded since the 1990s. Candidate Obama had promised to sign this act as well as take a number of steps to rectify past wrongs against our native American community. Buried in the Healthcare bill are provisions to improve medical services for the reservations, in the sitmulus bill provisions for development in the native American community and after decades his administration settled the Cobell case, which had called for an accounting by the U.S. Government of what is owed the native American community. The payment is now hung up in the U.S. Senate. With his plans for rural internet development,this would be an added bonus to the native American communuity. President Obama also said the United States was currently reviewing the Covenant on Peoples' Rights at the United Nations, which had been rejected by the Bush Administration.
Judge Susan Bolton finally struck down major provisions of Arizona's Immigration Bill, sparking off protests from the Republican Governors' Association. Judge Bolton was recommended for her present position by Arizona Senator Jon Kyl, who said she was "fair and balanced".
Kudos to the AFL-CIO, who is now organizing the unemployed, particularly the 99ers, almost 5 million Americans whose benefits have run out. Could these really be the surge voters of the mid-terms? Called lazy, hobos and drug purchasers by Republican congresspeople, could these people really favor the GOP?
Champions of small business, the GOP has blocked again the loan programs for small businesses--a program that would have created millions of jobs and provided tax cuts for small businesses. Somehow, Republicans are campaigning on the notion that Democrats will be raising taxes on small businesses, when they want to repeal the small business tax breaks in the stimlus package and have blocked small business loans. Will voters fall for this nonsense?
Charles Cook has a piece out tomorrow "A Turning Point for Democrats?", where he argues that the last two Gallup polls indicate that the Democrats may be getting their mojo back. He says these two positive generic polls where Democrats are ahead by 6 and then 4 points indicate it will be a very-very close contest for control of the House. This is a sharp change from his earlier calls that there was a Republican Tsunami coming. Zogby, writing in Forbes this week, warns Republicans they may have peaked too soon. Steny Hoyer told the press yesterday that he doesn't expect Democratic losses to surpass 28 seats and thinks they will do better than that.
This week I celebrated with the Iranian community the July 16th Court Decision by the Appeals Court here in D.C. that recommended the Iranian opposition group, the PMOI, be taken off the terrorist list. The three-judge panel slammed the State Department in what I counted were 9 consecutive pages of criticizing their criteria, the dubious sources of their intelligence, their suppression of exculpatory evidence, the lack of due process accorded the Iranians, and even their sneaky behavior in the court proceeding itself. While foreign policy is the domain of the executive this decision was the toughest I've read that State has to clean up its act. The court decision is also complimented by a House bill that calls for the release of all political prisoners in Iran.
Yesterday, President Obama signed into law the Tribal Law and Order Act, which the First Nations have demanded since the 1990s. Candidate Obama had promised to sign this act as well as take a number of steps to rectify past wrongs against our native American community. Buried in the Healthcare bill are provisions to improve medical services for the reservations, in the sitmulus bill provisions for development in the native American community and after decades his administration settled the Cobell case, which had called for an accounting by the U.S. Government of what is owed the native American community. The payment is now hung up in the U.S. Senate. With his plans for rural internet development,this would be an added bonus to the native American communuity. President Obama also said the United States was currently reviewing the Covenant on Peoples' Rights at the United Nations, which had been rejected by the Bush Administration.
Judge Susan Bolton finally struck down major provisions of Arizona's Immigration Bill, sparking off protests from the Republican Governors' Association. Judge Bolton was recommended for her present position by Arizona Senator Jon Kyl, who said she was "fair and balanced".
Kudos to the AFL-CIO, who is now organizing the unemployed, particularly the 99ers, almost 5 million Americans whose benefits have run out. Could these really be the surge voters of the mid-terms? Called lazy, hobos and drug purchasers by Republican congresspeople, could these people really favor the GOP?
Champions of small business, the GOP has blocked again the loan programs for small businesses--a program that would have created millions of jobs and provided tax cuts for small businesses. Somehow, Republicans are campaigning on the notion that Democrats will be raising taxes on small businesses, when they want to repeal the small business tax breaks in the stimlus package and have blocked small business loans. Will voters fall for this nonsense?
Charles Cook has a piece out tomorrow "A Turning Point for Democrats?", where he argues that the last two Gallup polls indicate that the Democrats may be getting their mojo back. He says these two positive generic polls where Democrats are ahead by 6 and then 4 points indicate it will be a very-very close contest for control of the House. This is a sharp change from his earlier calls that there was a Republican Tsunami coming. Zogby, writing in Forbes this week, warns Republicans they may have peaked too soon. Steny Hoyer told the press yesterday that he doesn't expect Democratic losses to surpass 28 seats and thinks they will do better than that.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
This and That and Beyond
It seems that the Defense Department can't account for $8.7 billion in Iraq for the years 2004-2007. This is more than the entire national secruity budget of Iran--or, maybe then, it actually pays for the Iran defense budget. It is also close to all the funds for pro-democracy programs around the globe by the United States.
Wikileaks has 19,000 more files to unload on the Afghanistan War and have over 150,000 on the Iraq War. My take on the document dump is that it is an accurate portrayal of war, war being waged in our names. There is no sense to sanitize the documents. It's all there--friendly fire,civilian casualties, black ops, a Delta Force assassination team, an ally Pakistan funding the Taliban. The lack of interest in all this here in Washington is amazing. Nothing really new. Ho Hum, this doesn't affect policy or any considerations about the worthiness of the war. Al Jezeera released yesterday footage of our Special Forces trying to go on patrol while their Afghan counter-parts were hitting the bong. Our Special Forces complained that these guys couldn't keep silent but kept giggling when out on patrol. The good news is that we have one more year and it's time to wrap it up. With these leaks and others, it's hard to imagine that the Pentagon can blackmail President Obama in extending the exit dates.
On another sorry note, Mike Love of the Beach Boys announced that there will be no reunion concert for their 50th Anniversary in 2011.
On an even sorrier note, Joni Mitchell suffers from Morgellon disease, which has forced her into seclusion and made her abandon her projects. This is what she said about her condition:"Fibres in a variety of colours protrude out of my skin like mushrooms after a rainstorm: they cannot be forensically identified as animal,vegetable or mineral. Morgellons is a slow, unpredictable killer, a terrorist disease: it will blow up one of your organs, leaving you in bed for a year."
ELECTION MAYHEM
The most covered candidate for the 2010 mid-terms is American hero Alvin Greene, the Democratic candidate for Senate in South Carolina. The unemployed vet inspired a bobble-head at a minor league team and a campaign song "Alvin Greene-He's On The Scene."
John McCain has already spent $16 million in his primary fight with J.D. Hayworth--about 5% of what he spent in the whole presidential election.
Tom Tancredo is running for the Governor of Colorado on the American Constitution Party.
Normally, a mid-year election would provide the opposition party with the ammunition. But this year, Democrats have a target-rich environment and the hits keep coming. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is having a field day going after Rand Paul, Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania, Roy Blunt in Missouri and Linda McMahon in Connecticut. It's like shooting fish in a barrel. The campaign basically says that Republicans will do anything to make President Obama fail but American will pay the price. On the issue side, the DSCC is going after Republicans for opposing: the Jobs Bill, Stopping Corporate Money in Election, Wall Street Reform, Health Care Reform, and the Stimulus Package. The DNC has launched ads on the Republican Tea Party, linking the extreme positions of the teabaggers with the Republicans. And wait until you see it when Republicans try to block the middle class tax break.
For all the theater of people running around with teabags on their head and screaming about Obama as Hitler, it's actually good to see Democrats not fall into their old pacifism when the dirty tricks come. I've worried and still do that in this economic climate the brownshirts might pull out some victories. But with only 99 days to the election, it seems the voters may not be responding to ugly this year as much as the media would like you to believe.
Jack Conway has taken a lead over Rand Paul in the latest poll in Kentucky.
Barbara Boxer has a 49-40 lead over Carly Fiorina and voters prefer her hair to Fiorina. But the key here is that Boxer has a 57-30 lead among moderates.
Governor Moonbeam, who seems to be comatose in his campaign, has a 46-40 lead over Meg Whitman. Here again moderates favor Brown 47-31. California voters are repulsed by Whitman's self-financed campaign and her approval rating is at 30 and her disapproval is at 50, which nowadays is fatal.
Kelly Ayotte,a Republican running for Senate in New hampshire for Judd Gregg's seat, had a large lead over Democrat David Hodes for months. With Sarah Palin's endorsement, she now leads by only 45 to 42. 51% of New Hampshire voters said they are less likely to vote for a candidate endorsed by Palin.
This year has had it's share of outrages but the Republican race in Delaware takes the cake for me. This was an automatic Republican pick-up. Mike Castle, former governor and current representative, had a large lead over Chris Coons, the Democrat. Mike is a moderate conservative, who is a responsible Republican. But that's the problem. Teabagger Christine O'Donnell is challenging Castle because Castle is "a liberal establishment Republican". The Concerned Women of America have now endorsed O'Donnell because Castle is pro-choice, voted in favor of hate crime legislation, and the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. They call Castle "the second coming of Dede Scozzafona", who was forced to withdrew from the race in upstate New York, thereby letting the Democrats win. The National Right to Work group is scheduled to endorse O'Donnell this week. A reminder--Barack Obama's approval rating in Delaware is in the high 60s and the Democrats now represent the largest voting bloc. This is not the Delaware of Pierre DuPont. So move this seat from Automatic Republican to Toss-up.
Pew and the National Journal conducted a poll on the economy and the tax issue. 46% of Americans want to stay with Obama's plans and only 29% support George W's policies, which are now embraced by the Republican leadership. 30% want to keep all the tax cuts in place; 27% want the tax cuts for the wealthy repealed; and 31% want them all repealed. The key here are the demographics for the 65+ and the 55+, which would tend to favor Republicans. More in these two groups want to keep the tax cuts for the wealthy, but still this is a minority position. If the Democrats can move the tax issue, they will have boxed the Republicans in.
State and Local Government
The Republican obstruction of the jobs bill, which was to bail out state and local government, will produce a catastrophe. Cities and States have already cut 200,000 jobs and now they are scheduled to cut 500,000 more jobs this year because relief is not forthcoming. Put it in perspective, muncipal government represents 13% of our GDP. This is sort of like the GOP resistance to the bailout of the auto industry, which put 17% of our economy at risk. 25 states have already requested more Federal assistance on Medicaid, which faces a $84 billion shortfall. This too was stopped by the GOP.
Apropos yesterday's post on the middle class, Michael Lind yesterday on Salon had a piece about whether the American people are obsolete. From today's Republican platform, you would have to think the answer is in the affirmative.
Wikileaks has 19,000 more files to unload on the Afghanistan War and have over 150,000 on the Iraq War. My take on the document dump is that it is an accurate portrayal of war, war being waged in our names. There is no sense to sanitize the documents. It's all there--friendly fire,civilian casualties, black ops, a Delta Force assassination team, an ally Pakistan funding the Taliban. The lack of interest in all this here in Washington is amazing. Nothing really new. Ho Hum, this doesn't affect policy or any considerations about the worthiness of the war. Al Jezeera released yesterday footage of our Special Forces trying to go on patrol while their Afghan counter-parts were hitting the bong. Our Special Forces complained that these guys couldn't keep silent but kept giggling when out on patrol. The good news is that we have one more year and it's time to wrap it up. With these leaks and others, it's hard to imagine that the Pentagon can blackmail President Obama in extending the exit dates.
On another sorry note, Mike Love of the Beach Boys announced that there will be no reunion concert for their 50th Anniversary in 2011.
On an even sorrier note, Joni Mitchell suffers from Morgellon disease, which has forced her into seclusion and made her abandon her projects. This is what she said about her condition:"Fibres in a variety of colours protrude out of my skin like mushrooms after a rainstorm: they cannot be forensically identified as animal,vegetable or mineral. Morgellons is a slow, unpredictable killer, a terrorist disease: it will blow up one of your organs, leaving you in bed for a year."
ELECTION MAYHEM
The most covered candidate for the 2010 mid-terms is American hero Alvin Greene, the Democratic candidate for Senate in South Carolina. The unemployed vet inspired a bobble-head at a minor league team and a campaign song "Alvin Greene-He's On The Scene."
John McCain has already spent $16 million in his primary fight with J.D. Hayworth--about 5% of what he spent in the whole presidential election.
Tom Tancredo is running for the Governor of Colorado on the American Constitution Party.
Normally, a mid-year election would provide the opposition party with the ammunition. But this year, Democrats have a target-rich environment and the hits keep coming. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is having a field day going after Rand Paul, Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania, Roy Blunt in Missouri and Linda McMahon in Connecticut. It's like shooting fish in a barrel. The campaign basically says that Republicans will do anything to make President Obama fail but American will pay the price. On the issue side, the DSCC is going after Republicans for opposing: the Jobs Bill, Stopping Corporate Money in Election, Wall Street Reform, Health Care Reform, and the Stimulus Package. The DNC has launched ads on the Republican Tea Party, linking the extreme positions of the teabaggers with the Republicans. And wait until you see it when Republicans try to block the middle class tax break.
For all the theater of people running around with teabags on their head and screaming about Obama as Hitler, it's actually good to see Democrats not fall into their old pacifism when the dirty tricks come. I've worried and still do that in this economic climate the brownshirts might pull out some victories. But with only 99 days to the election, it seems the voters may not be responding to ugly this year as much as the media would like you to believe.
Jack Conway has taken a lead over Rand Paul in the latest poll in Kentucky.
Barbara Boxer has a 49-40 lead over Carly Fiorina and voters prefer her hair to Fiorina. But the key here is that Boxer has a 57-30 lead among moderates.
Governor Moonbeam, who seems to be comatose in his campaign, has a 46-40 lead over Meg Whitman. Here again moderates favor Brown 47-31. California voters are repulsed by Whitman's self-financed campaign and her approval rating is at 30 and her disapproval is at 50, which nowadays is fatal.
Kelly Ayotte,a Republican running for Senate in New hampshire for Judd Gregg's seat, had a large lead over Democrat David Hodes for months. With Sarah Palin's endorsement, she now leads by only 45 to 42. 51% of New Hampshire voters said they are less likely to vote for a candidate endorsed by Palin.
This year has had it's share of outrages but the Republican race in Delaware takes the cake for me. This was an automatic Republican pick-up. Mike Castle, former governor and current representative, had a large lead over Chris Coons, the Democrat. Mike is a moderate conservative, who is a responsible Republican. But that's the problem. Teabagger Christine O'Donnell is challenging Castle because Castle is "a liberal establishment Republican". The Concerned Women of America have now endorsed O'Donnell because Castle is pro-choice, voted in favor of hate crime legislation, and the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. They call Castle "the second coming of Dede Scozzafona", who was forced to withdrew from the race in upstate New York, thereby letting the Democrats win. The National Right to Work group is scheduled to endorse O'Donnell this week. A reminder--Barack Obama's approval rating in Delaware is in the high 60s and the Democrats now represent the largest voting bloc. This is not the Delaware of Pierre DuPont. So move this seat from Automatic Republican to Toss-up.
Pew and the National Journal conducted a poll on the economy and the tax issue. 46% of Americans want to stay with Obama's plans and only 29% support George W's policies, which are now embraced by the Republican leadership. 30% want to keep all the tax cuts in place; 27% want the tax cuts for the wealthy repealed; and 31% want them all repealed. The key here are the demographics for the 65+ and the 55+, which would tend to favor Republicans. More in these two groups want to keep the tax cuts for the wealthy, but still this is a minority position. If the Democrats can move the tax issue, they will have boxed the Republicans in.
State and Local Government
The Republican obstruction of the jobs bill, which was to bail out state and local government, will produce a catastrophe. Cities and States have already cut 200,000 jobs and now they are scheduled to cut 500,000 more jobs this year because relief is not forthcoming. Put it in perspective, muncipal government represents 13% of our GDP. This is sort of like the GOP resistance to the bailout of the auto industry, which put 17% of our economy at risk. 25 states have already requested more Federal assistance on Medicaid, which faces a $84 billion shortfall. This too was stopped by the GOP.
Apropos yesterday's post on the middle class, Michael Lind yesterday on Salon had a piece about whether the American people are obsolete. From today's Republican platform, you would have to think the answer is in the affirmative.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
The Vanishing Middle Class
The success of President Obama's presidential campaign turned on his focus on how the middle class had lost ground over the past decade. Unlike his competitors--both Hillary Clinton and John McCain--he hammered on this theme until even Bill Clinton complained on the campaign trail about Obama's criticism of his Administration's failure to bolster the middle class. Since taking office, he created the Middle Class Task Force led by Joe Biden and has repeatedly stressed the benefits of his policy initiatives for the dwindling middle class. Linked to this sitaution is the entropy of the union movement, which only represents 6% of private sector employees. As President Obama said," without a strong union movement, we can not have a vigorous middle class." And I might add--a strong democracy.
In the current economic climate, the middle class is actually vanishing and unless drastic steps are taken to reverse the trend, it may die all together. Bernie Sanders in speaking out against extending the moratorium on the estate tax or "death tax" if you are a Republican, charged that supporters of the idea wanted to 'kill the middle class and create an oligarchy." Unfortunately, there is a lot of truth to this as the American workers are now being melded into the global labor pool, which will require them to accept lower wages and only sporadic employment.
Michael Snyder at Business Insider lists 22 facts about how the middle class is dying in America and there are pretty ugly. Since these have been posted on the internet the last week, it's worth repeating them before the posts vanish in the blogosphere.
83% of all stocks are held by the top richest 1% of Americans.
61% of all Americans live paycheck to paycheck. This is up from 49% in 2008 and up from 43% from 2006.
66% of all income growth went to the top 1%.
36% of Americans do not contribute anything to retirement savings plans.
43% of Americans have less than 10K saved for retirement.
24% of Americans have postponed retirement in the last year.
1.4 million Americans have filed for bankruptcy in 2009; 32% above filings in 2008.
Only the top 5% of households since 1975 have earned enough to match the rise in housing costs.
This is the first time in American history that banks owned a greater share of residential housing's net worth than all Americans put together.
In 1950, the ratio of executives' pay to workers was 30-1. Since 2000 alone, the ratio has exploded to 300-500 to 1.
The bottom 50% of all income earners collectively own less than 1% of the country's wealth.
In 2007, the bottom 80% of all households held about 7% of all financial liquid assets.
Wall Street bonuses for 2009 were up 17% compared to 2008.
The average Federal worker now earns 60% more than the average worker in the private sector.
The top 1% own nearly 2 times as much of America's corporate wealth as they did 15 years ago.
The top 10% earn about 50% of our nation's income.
Between 2000 and 2007, productivity rose 20%, yet the average workers' income fell by $2,000.
40% of Americans now work in low-paying service jobs.
40 million Americans are now on food stamps and that is estimated to rise to 43 million in 2011.
The number of millionaires rose 16% to 7.8 million in 2009.
21% of all children are now living below the poverty line in 2010, the highest in 20 years.
The average time now that it takes to find a job has risen to 35.2 weeks.
If you are over 45, your best bet is to be self-employed since employers now seek younger employees.
Basically, no one has been minding the store and all the stock disappeared and all the customers vanished. To begin to reverse this death spiral, the basic fundamentals of the economy must change and given the current obstructionism on the Hill it's hard to see any major initiatives coming forth in the next two years. What Obama is achieving now is through stealth measures sprinkled throughout legislation, which will sow the seeds of future growth but are not apparent to the public.
Maybe this is the Vanishing America John Boehner is speaking about. I don't think he's connected the dots.
In the current economic climate, the middle class is actually vanishing and unless drastic steps are taken to reverse the trend, it may die all together. Bernie Sanders in speaking out against extending the moratorium on the estate tax or "death tax" if you are a Republican, charged that supporters of the idea wanted to 'kill the middle class and create an oligarchy." Unfortunately, there is a lot of truth to this as the American workers are now being melded into the global labor pool, which will require them to accept lower wages and only sporadic employment.
Michael Snyder at Business Insider lists 22 facts about how the middle class is dying in America and there are pretty ugly. Since these have been posted on the internet the last week, it's worth repeating them before the posts vanish in the blogosphere.
83% of all stocks are held by the top richest 1% of Americans.
61% of all Americans live paycheck to paycheck. This is up from 49% in 2008 and up from 43% from 2006.
66% of all income growth went to the top 1%.
36% of Americans do not contribute anything to retirement savings plans.
43% of Americans have less than 10K saved for retirement.
24% of Americans have postponed retirement in the last year.
1.4 million Americans have filed for bankruptcy in 2009; 32% above filings in 2008.
Only the top 5% of households since 1975 have earned enough to match the rise in housing costs.
This is the first time in American history that banks owned a greater share of residential housing's net worth than all Americans put together.
In 1950, the ratio of executives' pay to workers was 30-1. Since 2000 alone, the ratio has exploded to 300-500 to 1.
The bottom 50% of all income earners collectively own less than 1% of the country's wealth.
In 2007, the bottom 80% of all households held about 7% of all financial liquid assets.
Wall Street bonuses for 2009 were up 17% compared to 2008.
The average Federal worker now earns 60% more than the average worker in the private sector.
The top 1% own nearly 2 times as much of America's corporate wealth as they did 15 years ago.
The top 10% earn about 50% of our nation's income.
Between 2000 and 2007, productivity rose 20%, yet the average workers' income fell by $2,000.
40% of Americans now work in low-paying service jobs.
40 million Americans are now on food stamps and that is estimated to rise to 43 million in 2011.
The number of millionaires rose 16% to 7.8 million in 2009.
21% of all children are now living below the poverty line in 2010, the highest in 20 years.
The average time now that it takes to find a job has risen to 35.2 weeks.
If you are over 45, your best bet is to be self-employed since employers now seek younger employees.
Basically, no one has been minding the store and all the stock disappeared and all the customers vanished. To begin to reverse this death spiral, the basic fundamentals of the economy must change and given the current obstructionism on the Hill it's hard to see any major initiatives coming forth in the next two years. What Obama is achieving now is through stealth measures sprinkled throughout legislation, which will sow the seeds of future growth but are not apparent to the public.
Maybe this is the Vanishing America John Boehner is speaking about. I don't think he's connected the dots.
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Arizona Rising
Arizona's ethnic cleansing continues apace. The Los Angeles Times reports that Latino merchants are fleeing the state in droves for fear of the new immigration law. See undocumented aliens tend to buy things from Latino merchants and the shop-owners don't want the police snooping around. Rage Against the Machine is holding an LA-based concert to encourage the boycott of Arizona. Local rock bands in Pheonix think that it might be better for bands to come to the state and openly protest the law. All in all, the tourist business is evaporating much like it did during the boycott over Arizona's refusal during the 1990s not to honor Martin Luther King Day. That boycott cost the state hundreds of millions in revenue. It's likely this one will be even more costly.
Local Arizona television stations are beginning to investigate the assertions of Gov. Jan Brewer about the problem itself and have found almost everything she has said is flat out wrong. She refuses to comment on camera about these little discrepancies. One fine piece of reporting discovered that one group will profit handsomely by the law--the Corrections Corporation, which runs private prisons and detention centers for illegals. They apparently are paid over a $140 million a year for their services in Arizona alone.And the catchy thing about the new law--which its proponents will not tell you is that it ensures undocumented workers will stay longer in the States, even if detained. So who benefits--the chief of staff of the Governor,who was an employee of Corrections Corporation, and his wife, who is a lobbyist for the company, as well as a senior policy aide, who also was an employee of the company. We don't know whether Gov. Brewer herself is on the take for this deal. So rather than run a nice tourist resort or hotel, it's more profitable for you to run a prison for undocumented illegals--a new boom business in the state.
It seems John McCain keeps tripping over himself with his embrace of the Arizona state law. It seems his sheriff for that "Danged Fence" not only appeared willingly on a white power radio station. But he even said that the only politician who really interested him was David Duke. You'll recall I wrote that the real sheriff from the area of the fence was an Hispanic-American who thought the whole thing was ridiculous. The A3P, the new white power group based in California, has donated to the Arizona state legal defense fund to pay to defense the state against all the lawsuits.
So how does one of the chief inspirations for the teabaggers, George Washington, feel about immigration? After all if you are a conservative constitutionalist, you must obey the Founding Fathers. This Founding Fathers thing is not turning out very well for the teabaggers. Washington said," The bosom of America is open to receive not only the opulent and respectable stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted of all nations and religions; whom we shall welcome to a participation of all our rights and privileges..."
Having come from undocumented aliens, it seems to me that white Americans need to be a little humble about this subject. Even the native Americans came from across the Bering Straits so none of us are "from here". Do undocumented immigrants create more crime? Actually, the statistics show they create less for the obvious reason they fear deportation. Do the undocumented take more of our medical services as was argued by the Right during the healthcare debate? A Kaiser Permanente study actually showed that white Americans go to the Emergency Room 20%, while undocumented immigrants represent 13%. Do undocumented immigrants take away from American jobs? Actually the CATO Institute did two studies that show just the opposite--undocumented immigrants add to the economy and their presence in the United States creates jobs. The last Administration had the US Government conduct similar studies, which showed the undocumented immigrants are overall an economic boon to the country. Will the fence stop the traffic of undoumented workers? Apparently, there are studies that show it won't and that politicians even argue it's merely symbolic.
For a very nice essay on all this, read Jorge Ramos' A Country for All:An Immigrant Manifesto (Vintage, May 2010,153 pages). Mr. Ramos, a journalist for Univision, makes the above points but with much more detailed data. After you read Mr. Ramos' essay, you realize that the great immigration problem is totally manufactured--then and now. While he won't say it, it's all about race and ethnicity and has been since the 1920s, when we really started controlling immigration.
America first tried to restrict immigration with the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, which was meant to curtail the Chinese population in California and the Western states. It coincided with the Gold Rush and the flood of Easterners trying to settle in California. And then America didn't return to the issue until 1921 with the Quota Law,which placed numeric limits on immigrants from certain countries and was heavily influenced by the racial studies being done by American groups, who advocated the intellectual superiority of certain groups over others. Then, inspired by JFK, there was the Immigration Act of 1965, which opened the door to immigrants from all over the world. For the last three decades, various groups such as the National Academy of Sciences and the Rand Corporation have done countless studies, which show the immigrant--legal or undocumented--contribute more to our society than they take away. In fact, one study showed that when the Immigration Act of 1986 was passed, that it was the tax revenues from immigrants that stabilized the economy during that time of deep recession.
If you were a member of my political party, The Pragmatist Party, you would legalize the undocumented and call it a day. Instead, we have proposals for immigration reform ,which will be a nightmare for undocumented immigrants already here. They will have to wait 13 years before they can become citizens. And the fence will be created to the tune of about $15 billion and will only interrupt the migration of animals and probably bring a few to the brink of extinction. And all this is if immigration reform passes. If it doesn't, we will see more nativism and racism against Latinos and the deportations will accelerate as they have been durng the Obama Administration.
Of course, you could adopt the Rush Limbaugh solution of shipping all undocumented back to their countries. The Pew Foundation estimates there are 12 million undocumented here. Homeland Security says 10.5 million. These could all be rounded up in the public view of the world and interned in the Glenn Beck FEMA camps and then flown back to their countries. While our own self-image as a nation of immigrants would be destroyed forever and we would have put the final kinife into out world image, at least this program would serve as an economic stimulus for our airlines and as a side benefit then the rest of us could get meals and free baggage again.
So let's check off the Immigration issue as another thng that doesn't concern me. Next issue is Social Security, which is under attack again with the Republicans threatening to raise the retirement age and cut benefits in the holy name of the national debt. The Social Security has literally nothing to do with the national debt. Harry Reid talked at the Netroots Nation conference that he had just received two reports on the state of social security. Both concluded Social Security will pay full benefits until I am 100--not 86 as I wrote before--and then would pay off about 80% benefits after that for about a period of 10-15 years and then to 60%--all this if we do nothing. There is virtually no compelling reason to raise the retirement age to 70, especially if you have any consideration of blue collar workers, which apparently we do not. So anyone telling you Social Security is in trouble, they are simply lying to you. Even my ideas of raising the FICA limit, which I think would be a good idea, was based on me being deluded into actually thinking there was a problem and I am marinated in politics. What is happening to the rest of Americans.
My last note for today concerns the troubling appearance in the teabagger movement of anti-semiticism. We already know about the racism and nativism but I hadn't seen any overt signs of anti-semiticism, although that is part and parcel of the white supremacist groups who have infiltrated the movement. Throughout the Midwest teabaggers are circulated a DVD, which purports to demonstrate that President Obama is in league with the Rothschilds to control the United States and turn it into a socialist country. My gut instinct is that this is the work of the LaRochites who have been trying to play the teabaggers. The motif is as old as the Third Reich. The Rothschilds were said by Hitler to be the ringleaders of the Jewish conspiracy to control the world's economy. Now the threat to the United States is President Obama and Jewish bankers. Sort of like Jewsvelt or Ike the Kike--highlights from our own sordid history of anti-semiticism. Why I flag this is that Countdown ran the results of a survey given GI's in World War II, which revealed an immense amount of anti-semiticism in our armed forces at that time. Then I discovered the appearance of this DVD, which shows the disease is never dead. As one survivor of the Holocaust commented about the teabaggers "the monster never stays in its grave."
Local Arizona television stations are beginning to investigate the assertions of Gov. Jan Brewer about the problem itself and have found almost everything she has said is flat out wrong. She refuses to comment on camera about these little discrepancies. One fine piece of reporting discovered that one group will profit handsomely by the law--the Corrections Corporation, which runs private prisons and detention centers for illegals. They apparently are paid over a $140 million a year for their services in Arizona alone.And the catchy thing about the new law--which its proponents will not tell you is that it ensures undocumented workers will stay longer in the States, even if detained. So who benefits--the chief of staff of the Governor,who was an employee of Corrections Corporation, and his wife, who is a lobbyist for the company, as well as a senior policy aide, who also was an employee of the company. We don't know whether Gov. Brewer herself is on the take for this deal. So rather than run a nice tourist resort or hotel, it's more profitable for you to run a prison for undocumented illegals--a new boom business in the state.
It seems John McCain keeps tripping over himself with his embrace of the Arizona state law. It seems his sheriff for that "Danged Fence" not only appeared willingly on a white power radio station. But he even said that the only politician who really interested him was David Duke. You'll recall I wrote that the real sheriff from the area of the fence was an Hispanic-American who thought the whole thing was ridiculous. The A3P, the new white power group based in California, has donated to the Arizona state legal defense fund to pay to defense the state against all the lawsuits.
So how does one of the chief inspirations for the teabaggers, George Washington, feel about immigration? After all if you are a conservative constitutionalist, you must obey the Founding Fathers. This Founding Fathers thing is not turning out very well for the teabaggers. Washington said," The bosom of America is open to receive not only the opulent and respectable stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted of all nations and religions; whom we shall welcome to a participation of all our rights and privileges..."
Having come from undocumented aliens, it seems to me that white Americans need to be a little humble about this subject. Even the native Americans came from across the Bering Straits so none of us are "from here". Do undocumented immigrants create more crime? Actually, the statistics show they create less for the obvious reason they fear deportation. Do the undocumented take more of our medical services as was argued by the Right during the healthcare debate? A Kaiser Permanente study actually showed that white Americans go to the Emergency Room 20%, while undocumented immigrants represent 13%. Do undocumented immigrants take away from American jobs? Actually the CATO Institute did two studies that show just the opposite--undocumented immigrants add to the economy and their presence in the United States creates jobs. The last Administration had the US Government conduct similar studies, which showed the undocumented immigrants are overall an economic boon to the country. Will the fence stop the traffic of undoumented workers? Apparently, there are studies that show it won't and that politicians even argue it's merely symbolic.
For a very nice essay on all this, read Jorge Ramos' A Country for All:An Immigrant Manifesto (Vintage, May 2010,153 pages). Mr. Ramos, a journalist for Univision, makes the above points but with much more detailed data. After you read Mr. Ramos' essay, you realize that the great immigration problem is totally manufactured--then and now. While he won't say it, it's all about race and ethnicity and has been since the 1920s, when we really started controlling immigration.
America first tried to restrict immigration with the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, which was meant to curtail the Chinese population in California and the Western states. It coincided with the Gold Rush and the flood of Easterners trying to settle in California. And then America didn't return to the issue until 1921 with the Quota Law,which placed numeric limits on immigrants from certain countries and was heavily influenced by the racial studies being done by American groups, who advocated the intellectual superiority of certain groups over others. Then, inspired by JFK, there was the Immigration Act of 1965, which opened the door to immigrants from all over the world. For the last three decades, various groups such as the National Academy of Sciences and the Rand Corporation have done countless studies, which show the immigrant--legal or undocumented--contribute more to our society than they take away. In fact, one study showed that when the Immigration Act of 1986 was passed, that it was the tax revenues from immigrants that stabilized the economy during that time of deep recession.
If you were a member of my political party, The Pragmatist Party, you would legalize the undocumented and call it a day. Instead, we have proposals for immigration reform ,which will be a nightmare for undocumented immigrants already here. They will have to wait 13 years before they can become citizens. And the fence will be created to the tune of about $15 billion and will only interrupt the migration of animals and probably bring a few to the brink of extinction. And all this is if immigration reform passes. If it doesn't, we will see more nativism and racism against Latinos and the deportations will accelerate as they have been durng the Obama Administration.
Of course, you could adopt the Rush Limbaugh solution of shipping all undocumented back to their countries. The Pew Foundation estimates there are 12 million undocumented here. Homeland Security says 10.5 million. These could all be rounded up in the public view of the world and interned in the Glenn Beck FEMA camps and then flown back to their countries. While our own self-image as a nation of immigrants would be destroyed forever and we would have put the final kinife into out world image, at least this program would serve as an economic stimulus for our airlines and as a side benefit then the rest of us could get meals and free baggage again.
So let's check off the Immigration issue as another thng that doesn't concern me. Next issue is Social Security, which is under attack again with the Republicans threatening to raise the retirement age and cut benefits in the holy name of the national debt. The Social Security has literally nothing to do with the national debt. Harry Reid talked at the Netroots Nation conference that he had just received two reports on the state of social security. Both concluded Social Security will pay full benefits until I am 100--not 86 as I wrote before--and then would pay off about 80% benefits after that for about a period of 10-15 years and then to 60%--all this if we do nothing. There is virtually no compelling reason to raise the retirement age to 70, especially if you have any consideration of blue collar workers, which apparently we do not. So anyone telling you Social Security is in trouble, they are simply lying to you. Even my ideas of raising the FICA limit, which I think would be a good idea, was based on me being deluded into actually thinking there was a problem and I am marinated in politics. What is happening to the rest of Americans.
My last note for today concerns the troubling appearance in the teabagger movement of anti-semiticism. We already know about the racism and nativism but I hadn't seen any overt signs of anti-semiticism, although that is part and parcel of the white supremacist groups who have infiltrated the movement. Throughout the Midwest teabaggers are circulated a DVD, which purports to demonstrate that President Obama is in league with the Rothschilds to control the United States and turn it into a socialist country. My gut instinct is that this is the work of the LaRochites who have been trying to play the teabaggers. The motif is as old as the Third Reich. The Rothschilds were said by Hitler to be the ringleaders of the Jewish conspiracy to control the world's economy. Now the threat to the United States is President Obama and Jewish bankers. Sort of like Jewsvelt or Ike the Kike--highlights from our own sordid history of anti-semiticism. Why I flag this is that Countdown ran the results of a survey given GI's in World War II, which revealed an immense amount of anti-semiticism in our armed forces at that time. Then I discovered the appearance of this DVD, which shows the disease is never dead. As one survivor of the Holocaust commented about the teabaggers "the monster never stays in its grave."
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