Category: Economy

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

If you wait long enough, they will come but not necessarily to join you.

Glenn Greenwald Tweets the media hypocrisy

The corrupting effects of journalistic “objectivity” and Occupy Wall Street: http://is.gd/QuxYmY Paging @jayrosen_nyu

America’s future rallies near Wall Street- Lend them an ear!

t’s hard to walk in lower Manhattan without noticing a dense police presence. At first a passerby is likely to think that the NYPD is there to protect the 9-11 Memorial, but soon they’ll realize that it’s something else. There’s a protest happening nearby.

A few blocks away  there are about 1000 young people assembled- they’re playing instruments, dancing happily and carrying signs that say things like The American Dream is a Pyramid Scheme, Stop Wall Street Greed, Americans Against Bankster Parasites and so on…

“We’re peacefully protesting economic injustice,” says seventeen year old Lucas Vazquez, “We don’t believe that politicians from either party are going to make things better for us.”

The “we” he’s referring to is a movement that goes by names like “General Assembly” and  “Occupy Wall Street”.  Vazquez says its aim is to create a participatory democracy.

Should Blacks Answer Obama’s Call To March By Joining ‘Occupy Wall Street’?

N A ROUSING SPEECH delivered at the 41st Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s Annual Legislative Conference, President Obama urged African Americans to keep the faith as African Americans struggle against a 17 percent unemployment rate and 40 percent poverty rate for their children.

snip

Obama said he was “going to press on for the sake of all those families who are struggling right now… [but] I expect all of you to march with me and press on. Take off your bedroom slippers, put on your marching shoes. Shake it off. Stop complaining, stop grumbling, stop crying. We are going to press on.”

As it happens the most potent protest to occur in recent decades is occurring at this moment in New York where ‘Occupy Wall Street’ is calling attention to the U.S.’s “corporate greed and corrupt politics.” Eighty protesters were arrested Saturday.

‘Occupy Wall Street’ Protesters Regroup at Liberty Plaza With Pizza, Tales of Battle

The Observer arrived at Liberty Plaza-the site of the camps, kitchen and “media tent” holding up the backend of the “Occupy Wall Street” protest that has been going for six days-just after 3:30 p.m.

Today’s march, which started on Wall St. and headed up to Washington Square Park and then to Union Square-was winding its way back, having lost a few dozen good men to police custody, a.k.a. an out-of-service MTA bus. A protester, Josh Lewis, is tweeting from zipties on the bus, which he reports made its way eventually to 1 Police Plaza.

If you can’t be there in person: DONATE

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

The silence of the traditional media on the Wall St. protest that has been going on for a week is deafening. As Keith Olbermann and Michael Moore point out of this were the Tea Party, it would be all over TV and the papers. Last, Mr. Moore expresses his outrage of over the murder of Troy Davis by the State of Georgia and his support of the Innocence Project and Get Out the Vote in Georgia.

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

From Greg Sargent @ The Washington Post

   Republicans are planning to paint Warren as a liberal Harvard elitist – they’re already referring to her as “Professor Warren” – because they believe that she will have trouble winning over the kind of blue collar whites from places like South Boston that helped power Scott Brown’s upset victory.

   But as this video shows, Warren is very good at making the case for progressive economics in simple, down-to-earth terms. Despite her professorial background, she sounds like she’s telling a story. She came across as unapologetic and authorative, without a hint of the sort of defensiveness you hear so often from other Democrats when they talk about issues involving taxation and economic fairness. This is exactly what national Dems like about Warren.

Transcript via rumproast:

   I hear all this, you know, “Well, this is class warfare, this is whatever.”-No!

   There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody.

   You built a factory out there-good for you! But I want to be clear.

   You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for.

   You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate.

   You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for.

   You didn’t have to worry that maurauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did.

   Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea-God bless. Keep a big hunk of it.

   But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.

“Nothing differentiates people as much as their respective attitudes to the circumstances in which they live. Those who opt to make history and change the course of events themselves have an advantage over those who decide to wait passively for the results of the change.”

Over and over, I see commentary asserting we are stuck with our current cultural norms. The “rational” people of the world patiently explain to me how I am too idealistic. I am naïve and believe too deeply in the good nature of most people. Yet, the rational people only have their assertions to stand on. History is fraught with examples of people who fought for and won real change. People like the Basques in Mondragon. They created lasting change under deplorable conditions. Even a cursory review of history shows change occurs when and where people decide to change. You don’t live in a feudal monarchy rife with slaves and infanticide-all well ingrained institutions the Ancient Greeks considered necessary evils of civilization-because people decided to change.

In the first part of this series, I described how a Jesuit priest named Don Jose created a Basque cooperative–Mondragon. He could hardly have started from a more impossible position. Basque was severely oppressed, poor and under a harsh dictatorship. His Church considered him a pariah, and he was a poor speaker and sermon writer. Yet, he refused to dwell on his disadvantages, concentrating on finding Basque strengths, instead.

In part two, we examined Don Jose’s unique genius in organizing his local society. He felt it was never necessary for someone to win while someone else lost. That scenario showed a lack of ingenuity. He examined problems until he saw a solution allowing the common good for everyone.

Some argue Mondragon arose from Basque because a specific set of non-reproducible circumstances existed. To me, that sounds like rationalization to let ourselves off the hook for not seeking to better our world. While I agree Mondragon originated in Basque due to a specific set of circumstances, clearly those factors are not needed to reproduce cooperative society.

What may be necessary is a certain environment in order to affect positive change. This post will look at some of the factors influencing people’s willingness to change during the creation of Mondragon and how to use those factors to enable change in our own culture.

When you look out at the bay and notice all the water has been drained its usually a sign there is a large wave coming.

Last week BofA, one of the many TBTF, increased their NOD’s (Notice of Default) filings by 33% m-2-m. After several months since the robo-signing scandal the banks appear now poised to start moving on many of these non-performing assets. Some of which have not had a mortgage payment made in one to over two years.

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

In his speech Monday, President Barrack Obama actually started to sound like a president. His threat to veto any deficit cutting legislation that did not include revenue producing tax increases was praised by everyone left of Attila the Hun as “progressive”. It gave these critics some kind of new “hope” that Obama had finally drawn a line in the sand with the “my way or the highway” tea party Republicans.

Really? Were any of them listening to what he did say? What did most everyone from Michael Moore on Rachel Maddow’s show to Markos Moulitsas and Move-On.org miss? Anyone with half a functioning brain can see that what Obama offered was just more of the same insanity, piled higher and deeper that and was being covered with his new found veto power.

What should have caught their attention was what Jon Walker at FireDogLake pointed out:

In fact,  in his only veto threat Obama made it clear he would accept Medicare benefit cuts if they were accompanied by new tax revenue from the rich by saying, “I will veto any bill that changes benefits for those who rely on Medicare but does not raise serious revenues by asking the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations to pay their fair share.” That “but” is a very important clause that means there are scenarios in which Obama would sign a bill that significantly cuts Medicare benefits.

Hello? Did anyone besides a very few of us on the left not hear this?

Obama’s communications director, Dan Pfeiffer said, “we are entering a new phase.” And just what “phase” would that be? “Chief Negotiator” to “Chief Hostage Taker” to get his right wing Republican agenda past this extremist congress?

Obama is now using the social safety network that protects our most vulnerable citizens to con the electorate that he has changed and to reelect him.

What bilge.

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Yes, the Republicans are partly correct in saying that the President’s newest proposal to increase revenues by adjusting the tax rates on top earners to make sure they pay their fair share is class warfare:

WASHINGTON –  Republicans on Sunday decried the notion of a new minimum tax rate for millionaires as “class warfare,” saying the proposal by President Obama may be intended to portray Congressional Republicans who resist it as being callously indifferent to the hardships facing many Americans.

They just have the wrong class on whom that war has been declared:

WASHINGTON – President Obama on Monday will call for a new minimum tax rate for individuals making more than $1 million a year to ensure that they pay at least the same percentage of their earnings as middle-income taxpayers, according to administration officials.

With a special joint Congressional committee starting work to reach a bipartisan budget deal by late November, the proposal adds a new and populist feature to Mr. Obama’s effort to raise the political pressure on Republicans to agree to higher revenues from the wealthy in return for Democrats’ support of future cuts from Medicare and Medicaid.

Mr. Obama, in a bit of political salesmanship, will call his proposal the “Buffett Rule,” in a reference to Warren E. Buffett, the billionaire investor who has complained repeatedly that the richest Americans generally pay a smaller share of their income in federal taxes than do middle-income workers, because investment gains are taxed at a lower rate than wages.

Mr. Obama will not specify a rate or other details, and it is unclear how much revenue his plan would raise. But his idea of a millionaires’ minimum tax will be prominent in the broad plan for long-term deficit reduction that he will outline at the White House on Monday.

Sure, Obama may look like he’s being more “confrontational” with Republicans but the reality is he is still selling out the most vulnerable of our citizens.

Cross Posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

A lot worse. This should make you sick and most likely you will.

This report from the Center for Budget and Policies Priorities via digby:

Today’s Census report shows that in 2010 (pdf), the share of all Americans and the share of children living in poverty, the number and share of people living in “deep poverty,” and the number without health insurance all reached their highest level in many years – in some cases, in several decades – while median household income fell significantly after adjusting for inflation. The data also show that many of these grim figures and the level of hardship would have been much worse if not for key federal programs such as unemployment insurance, the Earned Income Tax Credit, food stamps, and Medicaid. Without unemployment insurance, for instance, 3.2 million more Americans would have fallen into poverty, Census said. All of that raises the stakes for the decisions that President Obama and Congress will make in coming months about whether to extend initiatives that were designed to address hardship during the recession, as well as whether to abide by a principle that the Bowles-Simpson commission report established that deficit-reduction plans should not increase poverty and thus should shield basic low-income assistance programs.

Specifically, today’s report shows that:

   In 2010, the share of Americans living in poverty reached 15.1 percent while the share of children in poverty hit 22 percent – both the highest levels in 17 years – while the number of people living in poverty hit 46.2 million, the highest level on record with data back to 1959.

   Both the number and percentage of people living in “deep poverty” – with incomes below half of the poverty line – hit record highs, with these data going back to 1975. Some 20.5 million Americans had cash incomes below half of the poverty line (below $11,157 for a family of four, and below $5,672 for a non-elderly person living alone) last year.

   Median household income fell 2.3 percent, or $1,154, in 2010, after adjusting for inflation, and those at the bottom of the income scale have lost far more ground than those at the top. Since median income hit its peak in 1999, income (adjusted for inflation) has fallen 12.1 percent for those at the 10th income percentile but only 1.5 percent for those at the 90th percentile. The income gap between those at the 10th and 90th percentile was the highest on record. These data go back to 1967.

   The number of Americans without health insurance climbed by 900,000 to 49.9 million, another record, with data back to 1999. The percentage of Americans without insurance remained statistically unchanged at 16.3 percent. Nearly one of every six Americans was uninsured.

(emphasis mine)

Americans turned to public health insurance in 2010

(Reuters) – More Americans became reliant on public health insurance and lost coverage sponsored by their employers in 2010, the U.S. government said on Tuesday.

The U.S. Census Bureau’s annual report on income, poverty and health insurance coverage showed that more people turned to state and federal programs as employer-based plans became more expensive and as unemployment levels stayed stubbornly high.

About 1.5 million fewer Americans got their health insurance plans covered by their employers in 2010, while 1.8 million more joined government insurance plans.

snip

Healthcare programs, which account for a large percentage of the federal budget, are also expected to get a close scrutiny from a bipartisan congressional “super committee” that aims to slash at least $1.2 trillion from the U.S. deficit over 10 years.

snip

The number of people covered by Medicaid, the government program for the poor, increased 1.5 percent to 48.6 million, and Medicare, the government program for the elderly, 2.1 percent to 44.3 million.

Employers remained the biggest source of insurance coverage, with 169.3 million Americans covered by employer-based plans in 2010. That number, however, has been on a steep decline since 2000, when it reached 181.9 million, as such plans get more and more expensive.

The ACA does not fully kick in until 2014. From Jon Walker at FDL

Elections are often referendums on the general state of the economy. The electorate tends to decide whether or not to remove the incumbent party from power based on how well the economy is doing. Americans voters, for the most part, decide whether or not to keep a president based on the answer to a simple question like, “Are you better off than you were four years ago?”

Since January of 2009, when President Obama took office, the American people as a whole are noticeably worse off financially. This is a serious problem for the Obama campaign, and why they desperately need strong economic growth between now and the election.

So much for electoral victory.

  Too often commentary on the European debt crisis has been like handicapping a horse race (“this country is leading the race to default, but this other nation is catching”).

  While interesting, it is useless in trying to figure out how this relates to the average person.

 The first thing you have to understand is who the players are and how they are connected.

When the Senate notoriously voted down both the President’s budget (unanimously) and the House-passed Ryan plan in May, it also rejected a proposal by freshman Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) by a tally of 42-55. With Toomey recently named to the so-called “Super Congress”, we chose to examine his proposal in this week’s episode.

This proposal represented the Tea Party-aligned right flank of the Senate Republican Conference, a group ostensibly led by Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), and it aimed to improve upon perceived structural flaws in the plan of ideological ally Paul Ryan. As a result, while this budget leaves Medicare and Social Security largely intact, it contains many close similarities to the Ryan budget. Most notably, its claims of debt reduction rely heavily on draconian budget cuts (without accounting for economic fallout) and tax cuts that spur very optimistic economic growth projections over the next decade. In other words, this budget reflects the supply-side fundamentalism of Toomey and his brethren. It will be interesting to see whether Toomey will push for tax cuts on the Super Committee in order to actually raise revenue.

Also notable in the Toomey budget is its repeal of the coverage increases in the Affordable Care Act while leaving the Medicare cuts, cuts candidate Toomey actively campaigned against, in place.

Without further ado, here’s episode 20: the Toomey Budget.

   The next big shock to the world’s financial system could happen as soon as Monday morning.

  How do I know this? Because the world’s financial leaders are expecting something really bad, and have publicly announced their intentions of preventing the consequences of something that they have proven unable to fix.

 It started on Friday, when Germany gave up on Greece.

 Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government is preparing plans to shore up German banks in the event that Greece fails to meet the terms of its aid package and defaults, three coalition officials said…

  Greece is “on a knife’s edge,” German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble told lawmakers at a closed-door meeting in Berlin on Sept. 7, a report in parliament’s bulletin showed yesterday. If the government can’t meet the aid terms, “it’s up to Greece to figure out how to get financing without the euro zone’s help,” he later said in a speech to parliament.

 When it comes to unofficial leaks like this, I tend to fall back on the wisdom of Otto von Bismarck when he said, “Never believe anything in politics until it has been officially denied.”

 Then, right on cue, both Greece and Germany officially denied it. Thus making it true.

 What is really scary is the two developments that immediately followed this news.

 The G7 stepped up and promised their support in defending the financial status quo.

 Central Banks stand ready to provide liquidity to banks as required. We will take all necessary actions to ensure the resilience of banking systems and financial markets.…

  Excess volatility and disorderly movements in exchange rates have adverse implications for economic and financial stability. We will consult closely in regard to actions in exchange markets and will cooperate as appropriate.

 Why would they bother to announce this unless they suspected that people questioned either their resolve, or their ability?

 To conclude all these official declarations that “there is nothing to worry about” and “everything is under control”, the IMF also promised to step in if necessary.

 The International Monetary Fund will likely re-activate a $580 billion resource pool in coming weeks to ensure it has funds to help cover Europe’s worsening sovereign-debt crisis, according to several people close to the matter….

  According to the IMF, the pool of supplementary resources are only to be activated when “needed to forestall or cope with a threat to the international monetary system.”

 The IMF has been beefing up this fund since shortly before the European debt crisis reached this new crisis level. It’s almost as if they knew something like this was inevitable.

  The problem is that politics often works more slowly than bankers.

 The board of governors agreed in December to roughly double quotas from around $375 billion to around $750 billion. But out of the 187 member countries, only 17 have legally accepted the increase, including Japan, the U.K. and Korea. Most of the countries with the biggest quotas, such as the U.S., China and Germany, haven’t yet gone through the legal process, such as parliamentary or congressional approval, need to hand over their promised dues.

 While the American media focuses on opening week of football, handicapping the presidential race, celebrity gossip, reality TV, or talking about the latest electronic gadget, the financial markets are preparing for crisis in ways that we haven’t seen since early 2008.

  If the worst happens, the American public will be caught by surprise again because the news media failed us yet again.

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

President Obama is going to lay our his jobs plan before Congress on Thursday night and most will not even bother to listen. Why? it seems the President has a credibility gap. He says one thing and does another. His plan to pump $300 billion into the economy with tax cuts, infrastructure spending and direct aid to state and local governments.

WASHINGTON — The economy weak and the public seething, President Barack Obama is expected to propose $300 billion in tax cuts and federal spending Thursday night to get Americans working again. Republicans offered Tuesday to compromise with him on jobs – but also assailed his plans in advance of his prime-time speech.

snip

According to people familiar with the White House deliberations, two of the biggest measures in the president’s proposals for 2012 are expected to be a one-year extension of a payroll tax cut for workers and an extension of expiring jobless benefits. Together those two would total about $170 billion.

The people spoke on the condition of anonymity because the plan was still being finalized and some proposals could still be subject to change.

The White House is also considering a tax credit for businesses that hire the unemployed. That could cost about $30 billion. Obama has also called for public works projects, such as school construction. Advocates of that plan have called for spending of $50 billion, but the White House proposal is expected to be smaller.

Obama also is expected to continue for one year a tax break for businesses that allows them to deduct the full value of new equipment. The president and Congress negotiated that provision into law for 2011 last December.

Though Obama has said he intends to propose long-term deficit reduction measures to cover the up-front costs of his jobs plan, White House spokesman Jay Carney said Obama would not lay out a wholesale deficit reduction plan in his speech.

The majority of the tax cuts are payroll tax cuts that will siphon off more from the social safety net feeding the Republicans rhetoric that the big three are broken and adding to the deficit. The rest of the plan would only put less than $50 billion into jobs.

Does any of this sound familiar? As Atrios puts it:

The problem that arises is that if you start beating the deficit drum, then you haven’t made voters “trust you” on the deficit, you’ve made the case to voters that they should elect the Republicans who will be better on this very important issue … If you make the case that Republican issues are important, you’re making the case for … Republicans.

Much like Matt Taibbi: “I just don’t believe this guy anymore, and it’s become almost painful to listen to him”

There’s a football game you can get ready to watch instead.