CONGRESS COLLAPSES FROM EXHAUSTION AFTER DOING JOB

Posted by Andy Borowitz

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—The House of Representatives adjourned this evening after the legislative body collapsed from exhaustion brought on by hours of doing its job.

Hundreds of congressmen complained of headaches, dizzy spells, and extreme fatigue after putting in what sources called “a six, maybe seven-hour day.”

With the nation headed over the fiscal cliff, there was no indication when Congress might reconvene, since many of its members had to be hospitalized after what was described as their near-total physical meltdown.

According to Dr. Davis Logsdon of the University of Minnesota Medical School, “Being forced to listen, compromise, and act like adults for minutes at a time was more punishing than these people could bear.”

Dr. Logsdon said that the gruelling ordeal of doing their jobs would likely keep members of Congress in the hospital for weeks.

“I don’t see these people getting back to work until February at the earliest,” he said. “And that’s great news for this country. Happy New Year, America.”

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Photograph by J. Scott Applewhite/AP.

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/borowitzreport/2012/12/congress-collapses-from-exhaustion-after-doing-job.html#ixzz2Ggzzjr2l

This, single page, article is worth your time.  It may not be your cause, it certainly isn't mine, but it makes a very good point, none the less:

http://hackertourism.com/post/39268902391/democracy-is-hard

What's Going On?

It's important to understand that people are different from corporations. Corporations thrive on profits and dividends. People thrive on air, water, and food. Corporations will focus on what keeps them alive and ignore those things that keep people alive. Asbestos, lead, and mercury are examples of things that help corporations alive. Those things kill people. Our United States Constitution starts with "We the people....." but, with the Citizen's United Supreme court decision, we must change the intent of our U.S. Constitution to "We the Corporation......" Our Founding Fathers would not be happy with this change in interpretation.

Bill Moyers gets it!  He is such a thoughtful person.  He is a great interviewer who cuts to the chase and is not afraid to tell it like it is.  Check it out below at:

http://billmoyers.com/episode/on-winner-take-all-politics/

Bill Moyers Gets It!

Check out his show at:
http://billmoyers.com/episode/full-show-plutocracy-rising/


Chrystia Freeland is the editor of Thomson Reuters Digital. She’s written for The Financial Times, The Washington Post, The Economist, and was deputy editor of Canada’s Globe and Mail newspaper. In this video, she explains why she decided to write Plutocrats, and what she hopes Moyers & Company viewers will get out it. She looks forward to talking with you about the book.
The One Percent is not only increasing their share of wealth — they’re using it to spread millions among political candidates who serve their interests. Example: Goldman Sachs, which gave more money than any other major American corporation to Barack Obama in 2008, is switching alliances this year; their employees have given $900,000 both to Mitt Romney’s campaign and to the pro-Romney super PAC Restore Our Future. Why? Because, says the Wall Street Journal, the Goldman Sachs gang felt betrayed by President Obama’s modest attempts at financial reform.
To discuss how the super-rich have willfully confused their self-interest with America’s interest, Bill is joined by Rolling Stone magazine’s Matt Taibbi, who regularly shines his spotlight on scandals involving big business and government, and journalist Chrystia Freeland, author of the new book Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else.
Following the conversation, Bill shares his thoughts on corporate executives who — enabled by the Citizens United ruling — are strong-arming their employees to vote as they say, from the Murray Energy CEO who reportedly made his workers spend unpaid time at a pro-Romney rally; to David and Charles Koch, who sent anti-Obama and pro-Romney materials to the 45,000 employees of their subsidiary Georgia Pacific; to ASG Solutions boss Arthur Allen, who sent an intimidating email to his employees.

This is just a 2 minute video but it says so much!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXUPDAMc_6o&feature=share

How do you make a bill, a law?

It's easy, if you know someone!

Did you know?

It wasn't true then, it isn't true now!

Did you know?

Did you know?

We can do better?

We can, we must Move To Amend our U.S. Constitution.  Our Founding Fathers would not like the direction that corporations and the very, very wealthy has taken our country.  The "Citizen's United Supreme Court ruling is changing the intent of the first words of our constitution to "We the Corporations........."  and away from "We the PEOPLE............."  To give corporations the same legal status as individuals is destroying our democracy.  It is making a mockery out of "one person, one vote" to a situation that equivocates "free speech" with money.  To have the judiciary element of our country legitimize that the more money you have the more "free speech" you have, to elevate the good of the corporation above that of the individual, is taking us on a road we don't want to travel.  Our Founding Fathers would have fought to eliminate the corporate person hood evils that are overtaking our democracy.
Check out Move To Amend at:  https://movetoamend.org/mn-duluth

We can do better!

We can do better!

When Capitalists Cared!

By HEDRICK SMITH
Washington

IN the rancorous debate over how to get the sluggish economy moving, we have forgotten the wisdom of Henry Ford. In 1914, not long after the Ford Motor Company came out with the Model T, Ford made the startling announcement that he would pay his workers the unheard-of wage of $5 a day.

Not only was it a matter of social justice, 

 Ford wrote, but paying high wages was also smart business. When wages are low, uncertainty dogs the marketplace and growth is weak. But when pay is high and steady, Ford asserted, business is more secure because workers earn enough to become good customers. They can afford to buy Model Ts.

This is not to suggest that Ford single- handedly created the American middle class. But he was one of the first business leaders to articulate what economists call “the virtuous circle of growth”: well-paid workers generating consumer demand that in turn promotes business expansion and hiring. Other executives bought his logic, and just as important, strong unions fought for rising pay and good benefits in contracts like the 1950 “Treaty of Detroit” between General Motors and the United Auto Workers.

Riding the dynamics of the virtuous circle, America enjoyed its best period of sustained growth in the decades after World War II, from 1945 to 1973, even though income tax rates were far higher than today. It created not only unprecedented middle-class prosperity but also far greater economic equality than today.

The chief executives of the long postwar boom believed that business success and workers’ well-being ran in tandem.

Frank W. Abrams, chairman of Standard Oil of New Jersey, voiced the corporate mantra of “stakeholder capitalism”: the need to balance the interests of all the stakeholders in the corporate family. “The job of management,” he wrote, “is to maintain an equitable and working balance among the claims of the various directly affected interest groups,” which he defined as “stockholders, employees, customers and the public at large.”

Earl S. Willis, a manager of employee benefits at General Electric, declared that “the employee who can plan his economic future with reasonable certainty is an employer’s most productive asset.”

From 1948 to 1973, the productivity of all nonfarm workers nearly doubled, as did average hourly compensation. But things changed dramatically starting in the late 1970s. Although productivity increased by 80.1 percent from 1973 to 2011, average wages rose only 4.2 percent and hourly compensation (wages plus benefits) rose only 10 percent over that time, according to government data analyzed by the Economic Policy Institute.

At the same time, corporate profits were booming. In 2006, the year before the Great Recession began, corporate profits garnered the largest share of national income since 1942, while the share going to wages and salaries sank to the lowest level since 1929. In the recession’s aftermath, corporate profits have bounced back while middle-class incomes have stagnated.

Today the prevailing cut-to-the-bone business ethos means that a company like Caterpillar demands a wage freeze and lower health benefits from its workers, while posting record profits.

Globalization, including the rise of Asia, and technological innovation can’t explain all or even most of today’s gaping inequality; if they did, we would see in other advanced economies the samehyperconcentration of wealth and the same stagnation of middle-class wages as in the United States. But we don’t.

In Germany, still a manufacturing and export powerhouse, average hourly pay has risen five times faster since 1985 than in the United States. The secret of Germany’s success, says Klaus Kleinfeld, who ran the German electrical giant Siemens before taking over the American aluminum company Alcoa in 2008, is “the social contract: the willingness of business, labor and political leaders to put aside some of their differences and make agreements in the national interests.”

In short, German leaders have practiced stakeholder capitalism and followed the century-old wisdom of Henry Ford, while American business and political leaders have dismantled the dynamics of the “virtuous circle” in pursuit of downsizing, offshoring and short-term profit and big dividends for their investors.

Today, we are all paying the price for this shift. As Ford recognized, if average Americans do not have secure jobs with steady and rising pay, the economy will be sluggish. Since the early 1990s, we have been mired three times in “jobless recoveries.” It’s time for America’s business elites to step beyond political rhetoric about protecting wealthy “job creators” and grasp Ford’s insight: Give the middle class a better share of the nation’s economic gains, and the economy will grow faster. Our history shows that.
Hedrick Smith, a former correspondent and Washington bureau chief of The New York Times, is the author of “Who Stole the American Dream?”

What did the standard bearer of the Republican Party, Ronald Reagan, have to say about including Social Secruity adjustments into budget discussions?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ihUoRD4pYzI#t=0s


http://www.facebook.com/#!/photo.php?fbid=10151294793697908&set=a.91485152907.84764.9124187907&type=1&theater

http://blog.aarp.org/2012/12/19/ronald-reagans-9-wisest-words-about-social-security/?sf8019666=1

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DECEMBER 19, 2012

TIME NAMES MITT ROMNEY MAN OF THE YEAR 1912

POSTED BY ANDY BOROWITZ

NEW YORK (The Borowitz Report)—In an extraordinary gesture of recognition for a losing Presidential nominee, Time magazine today named former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney Man of the Year 1912.

In a press release explaining its decision, Time’s editorial board wrote, “Even though his quest for the Presidency was unsuccessful, Mr. Romney’s ideas about foreign policy, taxation, wealth inequality, and women’s rights typified the year 1912 as no one else has.”

In giving Mr. Romney the nod, Time said that he beat out such other candidates for Man of the Year 1912 as Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, and Edward Smith, captain of the Titanic.

“It was very close between Romney and the Titanic guy, but we gave it to Romney because it took him slightly longer to sink,” Time wrote.

Mr. Romney could not be reached for comment, a spokesman said, because he was travelling around the world visiting his money.

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Photograph by Daniel Acker/Bloomberg/Getty.

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/borowitzreport/2012/12/time-names-mitt-romney-man-of-the-year-1912.html#ixzz2FaIcoZ5r






https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?tab=wm#inbox/13bb43ffbc6d8412https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?tab=wm#inbox/13bb43ffbc6d8412

HERE IS A COMBINATION OF GOOD ECONOMIC NEWS!

It is true, no spin!

Everyone in the U.S experienced an automatic increase in income last month as the cost of living actually dropped, continuing record lows that have never, ever, in the history of the United States, occurred for any first term president! Things are definitely headed in the right direction!

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: Decem...

ber 14, 2012
WASHINGTON (AP) — A steep drop in gasoline costs pushed down a measure of consumer prices last month, keeping inflation mild, the Labor Department said on Friday.
Gas prices fell 7.4 percent, the biggest drop in nearly four years, offsetting a 0.2 percent rise in food prices.
The seasonally adjusted Consumer Price Index dropped 0.3 percent in November from October, the department said.
In another report on Friday, the Federal Reserve said that factory output increased 1.1 percent in November from October as factories rebounded from Hurricane Sandy.
Auto production jumped 4.5 percent last month, the first increase since July. Production of primary metals, wood products, electrical equipment and appliances all showed gains.
Total industrial output at factories, mines and utilities also rose 1.1 percent last month, after a 0.7 percent decline in October.
In the consumer price report, priced ticked up 0.1 percent in November, excluding the volatile food and gas categories. Core prices have risen 1.9 percent in the last year, below the Federal Reserve’s annual target of 2 percent. Higher rents, airline fares and new cars pushed up core prices last month. The cost of clothing and used cars fell.
“In simplest terms, inflation is not a problem,” Jim Baird, chief investment strategist at Plante Moran Financial Advisors, said. Lower inflation “is a real positive that should provide modest relief for households dealing with limited income growth.”
Gas prices have fallen sharply in the last two months after spiking in the late summer. A gallon of gas cost an average of $3.29 nationwide Friday. That’s 15 cents less than a month ago and 50 cents less than in mid-October.
Prices for the broad category of meat, chicken, fish and eggs fell in November.
With inflation in check, the Fed said on Wednesday that it now planned to keep the short-term interest rate at nearly zero until the jobless rate fell to at least 6.5 percent, as long as inflation was not expected to top 2.5 percent.
It was the clearest sign yet that the Fed will keep rates low even after unemployment falls further and the economy picks up.
That is the old news. Here is the news reflecting on the future of our U.S. Economy:
Economic Indicators Bolster Optimism for U.S. Recovery
By REUTERS
WASHINGTON (Reuters) — The number of Americans filing new claims for jobless benefits fell sharply last week to a near four-year low, and retail sales rebounded in November, offering hopeful signs for the United States’ struggling economic recovery.
The New York Times
Initial claims for state unemployment aid fell for a fourth consecutive week, dropping by 29,000 to a seasonally adjusted 343,000, the Labor Department said on Thursday. They are now at their lowest level since early October, and within a hair of territory last seen in early 2008.
Another report suggested consumer spending picked up last month despite fear Washington would fail to avoid harsh austerity measures that could push the nation into recession. Worries over the automatic tax increases and spending cuts that would go into effect if Republicans and the White House cannot reach an agreement on the so-called fiscal cliff hit consumer sentiment hard in early December.
A slow but steady improvement in the labor market has helped support consumer spending, which propped up economic growth in the third quarter when business investment sagged.
However, the economy does appear to be bouncing back after Hurricane Sandy, which made landfall in the East Coast in late October and led to a spike in jobless claims.
The four-week moving average for new claims, which irons out weekly volatility, dropped by 27,000 people.
“The labor market might be improving a bit quicker than expected,” said David Sloan, an economist at 4Cast in New York.
The Commerce Department said retail sales rose 0.3 percent last month, rebounding from October’s 0.3 percent decline. The increase fell short of the forecast in a Reuters poll of economists, but a measure of core sales exceeded expectations.
The core retail sales figure, which excludes automobiles, gasoline and building materials, rose 0.5 percent in November. The government uses this measure to calculate consumer spending.
The Commerce Department also said business inventories, a critical component of economic growth, rose 0.4 percent in October, in line with expectations.

A Lost Civilization

By MAUREEN DOWD

WASHINGTON

MY college roommates and I used to grocery shop and cook together. The only food we seemed to agree on was corn, so we ate a lot of corn.

My mom would periodically call to warn me in a dire tone, “Do you know why the Incas are extinct?”

Her maize hazing left me with a deeply ingrained fear of being part of a civilization that was obliviously engaging in behavior that would lead to its extinction.

Too bad the Republican Party didn’t have my mom to keep it on its toes. Then it might not have gone all Apocalypto on us — becoming the first civilization in modern history to spiral the way of the Incas, Aztecs and Mayans.

The Mayans were right, as it turns out, when they predicted the world would end in 2012. It was just a select world: the G.O.P. universe of arrogant, uptight, entitled, bossy, retrogressive white guys.

Just another vanishing tribe that fought the cultural and demographic tides of history.

Someday, it will be the subject of a National Geographic special, or a Mel Gibson movie, where archaeologists piece together who the lost tribe was, where it came from, and what happened to it. The experts will sift through the ruins of the Reagan Presidential Library, Dick Cheney’s shotgun casings, Orca poll monitoring hieroglyphics, remnants of triumphal rants by Dick Morris on Fox News, faded photos of Clint Eastwood and an empty chair, and scraps of ancient tape in which a tall, stiff man, his name long forgotten, gnashes his teeth about the 47 percent of moochers and the “gifts” they got.

Instead of smallpox, plagues, drought and Conquistadors, the Republican decline will be traced to a stubborn refusal to adapt to a world where poor people and sick people and black people and brown people and female people and gay people count.

As the historian Will Durant observed, “A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within.”

President Obama’s victory margin is expanding, as more votes are counted. He didn’t just beat Romney; he’s still beating him. But another sign of the old guard’s denial came on Friday, a month after the election, when the Romney campaign ebulliently announced that it raised $85.9 million in the final weeks of the campaign, making its fund-raising effort “the most successful in Republican Party history.”

Why is the Romney campaign still boasting? You can’t celebrate at a funeral. Go away and learn how to crunch data on the Internet.

Outside the Republican walled kingdom of denial and delusion, everyone else could see that the once clever and ruthless party was behaving in an obtuse and outmoded way that spelled doom.

The G.O.P. put up a candidate that no one liked or understood and ran a campaign that no one liked or understood — a campaign animated by the idea that indolent, grasping serfs must be kept down, even if it meant creating barriers to letting them vote.

Although Stuart Stevens, the Romney strategist, now claims that Mitt “captured the imagination of millions” and ran “with a natural grace,” there was very little chance that the awkward gazillionaire was ever going to be president. Yet strangely, Republicans are still gobsmacked by their loss, grasping at straws like Sandy as an excuse.

Some G.O.P. House members continue to try to wrestle the president over the fiscal cliff. Romney wanders in a daze, his hair not perfectly gelled. And his campaign advisers continue to express astonishment that a disastrous campaign, convention and candidate, as well as a lack of familiarity with what Stevens dismissively calls “whiz-bang turnout technologies,” could possibly lead to defeat.

Who would ever have thought blacks would get out and support the first black president? Who would ever have thought women would shy away from the party of transvaginal probes? Who would ever have thought gays would work against a party that treated them as immoral and subhuman? Who would have ever thought young people would desert a party that ignored science and hectored on social issues? Who would ever have thought Latinos would scorn a party that expected them to finish up their chores and self-deport?

Republicans know they’re in trouble when W. emerges as the moral voice of the party. The former president lectured the G.O.P. on Tuesday about being more “benevolent” toward immigrants.

As Eva Longoria supersedes Karl Rove as a power player, Republicans act as shellshocked as the Southern gentry overrun by Yankee carpetbaggers in “Gone with the Wind.” As the movie eulogized: “Here was the last ever to be seen of Knights and their Ladies Fair, of Master and of Slave. Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered, a Civilization gone with the wind.”

Gun sales have burgeoned since the president’s re-election, with Black Friday weapons purchases setting records as the dead-enders rush to arm themselves.

But history will no doubt record that withering Republicans were finally wiped from the earth in 2016 when the relentless (and rested) Conquistadora Hillary marched in, General Bill on a horse behind her, and finished them off.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/09/opinion/sunday/dowd-a-lost-civilization.html?_r=0

THERE ARE SOME THINGS THAT REPUBLICANS AND DEMOCRATS CAN AGREE ON!  THEY CAN AGREE THAT:

It's a good thing that inflation has been held at bay over the past 4 years.

It's a good thing that the yearly federal deficit has actually decreased under President Obama.

It's a good thing that the stock market has had it's best run ever for a first term president since over 54% of all Americans share in that success through retirement accounts, individual shares of stocks, and mutual funds.

It's a good thing that unemployment is now decreasing.  It is better than when it was increasing and the U.S. was losing over 700,000 jobs per month.

It's a good thing that the U.S. dollar has remained relatively strong.

It's a good thing that interest rates remain at record low levels.

It's a good thing that the housing market is now improving in 29 of the to 30 U.S. markets.

Middle class tax rates should remain where they are at in order to, at least, maintain our sluggish economy.

As long as women have a right to choose in our country, we do everything we can to keep procedures safe, and as few. as possible. 

Adoption should be encouraged.

It's a good thing that children with pre-existing can now get insurance coverage.

It's a good thing that we are headed in a direction to a time when getting sick is not the number one reason go bankrupt in the U.S.

The emergency room is not the most economical place to treat common, everyday, health concerns.

Tax loopholes that allow businesses, corporations, and individuals to pay no taxes should be closed.

Corporations should not be rewarded when they move jobs overseas.

It's a good thing when public assistance is not needed and our government should do what it can to create an atmosphere where it is not needed.

It is better to teach a person to fish than it is to give them a fish.

"Weather" and "climate" are two different things.

That global climate change is occurring.

It's a good thing that the bond market has remained strong over the past four years.

If we are going to install oil pipelines, that they be installed safely and located where they would do the least environmental damage if they were to break.

Clean air is important.

Clean water is important.

The safety of our food should be monitored and protected by our government.

Good roads, bridges, parks, postal service, rail systems, and public transportation are good for everyone.

Having a strong military benefits everyone in the U.S. and around the world.

It is better if our political leaders can agree to disagree without being disagreeable.

End of life decisions are best made by those most directly involved. Billions of dollars could be saved if we merely told those we love what we want for ourselves once that decision needs to be made and before that decision must be made. 

Both parties support simplifying the regulatory codes as well: Looking through the books, making rules simpler and clearer for businesses to follow and getting rid of outdated or duplicative regulations.

Both parties want Fannie and Freddie Mae gone and a smaller government role in the mortgage market in the future.

Both parties agree with The White House approval of new drilling in the Gulf and the Arctic. 

The national debt is a serious problem that will need to be addressed this year.

Legislation to encourage start-up businesses is a good thing.

Stringent new economic and financial sanctions on Iran are a good thing.

It's a good thing that businesses and corporations have given shareholders the highest dividends in the history of the United States, this year.

The widening gap between the middle class and the very, very wealthy is not healthy http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=241307762617157&set=a.241307759283824.57184.241304559284144&type=1&theater and needs to be addressed.

It's good if every child in America has the opportunity to do his very best in whatever he chooses to do.

It's good if barriers to individuals with handicaps are removed as much as economically possible.

That the intent of our U.S. Constitution's first words "We the people......" be maintained, and strengthened, when it is challenged.

See why middle class taxpayers are having to cover with tax rates from 25-35% for tax rates on the very,very wealthy who pay from 0% to 14%! http://www.facebook.com/#!/photo.php?fbid=241307762617157&set=a.241307759283824.57184.241304559284144&type=1&theater&type=1&theater

or on my political blog at: http://eskoresident.blogspot.com/

You can do something about this by learning about, and possibly joining, Move To Amend at:  https://movetoamend.org/

Please Help!

I have a dilemma and a question! You and I might have a similar bit of a dilemma to deal with, between now and January 1st, 2013. If the congress can't do something about this, before the end of the year, the amount of money you and I can give away, each year, without being taxed on it, is $10,200,000 per couple, per year. If nothing is done about this, you and I will only be able to transfer about $1,000,000 per year, per person, to anyone of our choosing, without paying any taxes on it! That's only $2,000,000 for Lila and I combined! (No, it doesn't have to be a relative.) Damn this "fiscal cliff" thing! What will we do?


A friend may have come to my rescue! Problem solved. All Lila and I have to do is route our teaching profits through Ireland. We can then transfer our money to the Netherlands, tax free! Then, all we have to do is transfer our money to the Cayman Islands, again, no transfer fee, no taxes and set it up as a tax shelter. It is called the "Double Irish With a Dutch Sandwich" - really! Thanks Mitt! With this same wonderful process Apple would have had to pay regular taxes but was able to save 2.4 billion dollars in 2011. What a great deal! You can get the details at:http://www.mastersdegreeonline.org/masters-of-tax-evasion/

How Apple, Amazon & Google Make So Much Money

www.mastersdegreeonline.org

It's simple - they pay less taxes. How much less, you ask? Take a look at this graphic.

The Forgotten Millions

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Let’s get one thing straight: America is not facing a fiscal crisis. It is, however, still very much experiencing a job crisis.

It’s easy to get confused about the fiscal thing, since everyone’s talking about the “fiscal cliff.” Indeed, one recent poll suggests that a large plurality of the public believes that the budget deficit will go up if we go off that cliff.

In fact, of course, it’s just the opposite: The danger is that the deficit will come down too much, too fast. And the reasons that might happen are purely political; we may be about to slash spending and raise taxes not because markets demand it, but because Republicans have been using blackmail as a bargaining strategy, and the president seems ready to call their bluff.

Moreover, despite years of warnings from the usual suspects about the dangers of deficits and debt, our government can borrow at incredibly low interest rates — interest rates on inflation-protected U.S. bonds are actually negative, so investors are paying our government to make use of their money. And don’t tell me that markets may suddenly turn on us. Remember, the U.S. government can’t run out of cash (it prints the stuff), so the worst that could happen would be a fall in the dollar, which wouldn’t be a terrible thing and might actually help the economy.

Yet there is a whole industry built around the promotion of deficit panic. Lavishly funded corporate groups keep hyping the danger of government debt and the urgency of deficit reduction now now now — except that these same groups are suddenly warning against too much deficit reduction. No wonder the public is confused.

Meanwhile, there is almost no organized pressure to deal with the terrible thing that is actually happening right now — namely, mass unemployment. Yes, we’ve made progress over the past year. But long-term unemployment remains at levels not seen since the Great Depression: as of October, 4.9 million Americans had been unemployed for more than six months, and 3.6 million had been out of work for more than a year.

When you see numbers like those, bear in mind that we’re looking at millions of human tragedies: at individuals and families whose lives are falling apart because they can’t find work, at savings consumed, homes lost and dreams destroyed. And the longer this goes on, the bigger the tragedy.

There are also huge dollars-and-cents costs to our unmet jobs crisis. When willing workers endure forced idleness society as a whole suffers from the waste of their efforts and talents. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that what we are actually producing falls short of what we could and should be producing by around 6 percent of G.D.P., or $900 billion a year.

Worse yet, there are good reasons to believe that high unemployment is undermining our future growth as well, as the long-term unemployed come to be considered unemployable, as investment falters in the face of inadequate sales.

So what can be done? The panic over the fiscal cliff has been revelatory. It shows that even the deficit scolds are closet Keynesians. That is, they believe that right now spending cuts and tax hikes would destroy jobs; it’s impossible to make that claim while denying that temporary spending increases and tax cuts would create jobs. Yes, our still-depressed economy needs more fiscal stimulus.

And, to his credit, President Obama did include a modest amount of stimulus in his initial budget offer; the White House, at least, hasn’t completely forgotten about the unemployed. Unfortunately, almost nobody expects those stimulus plans to be included in whatever deal is eventually reached.

So why aren’t we helping the unemployed? It’s not because we can’t afford it. Given those ultralow borrowing costs, plus the damage unemployment is doing to our economy and hence to the tax base, you can make a pretty good case that spending more to create jobs now would actually improve our long-run fiscal position.

Nor, I think, is it really ideology. Even Republicans, when opposing cuts in defense spending, immediately start talking about how such cuts would destroy jobs — and I’m sorry, but weaponized Keynesianism, the assertion that government spending creates jobs, but only if it goes to the military, doesn’t make sense.

No, in the end it’s hard to avoid concluding that it’s about class. Influential people in Washington aren’t worried about losing their jobs; by and large they don’t even know anyone who’s unemployed. The plight of the unemployed simply doesn’t loom large in their minds — and, of course, the unemployed don’t hire lobbyists or make big campaign contributions.

So the unemployment crisis goes on and on, even though we have both the knowledge and the means to solve it. It’s a vast tragedy — and it’s also an outrage.

What Can I Do To Help the 98% !

Do you want to do something about the possible extension of the tax cuts, tax breaks, and tax loopholes for the top 2%?  You can attend this Duluth event on Monday, at 4:30.
What will the impact be on the middle class if they, again, have to cover for all of those loopholes?
You can help spread the word!
Thanks!

The event details are:

Candlelight Campaign Against Cuts
Duluth: MN Power Plaza: Lake & Superior St.
Lake Avenue and Superior Street,
Duluth, MN 55802
Monday, 10 Dec 2012,  4:30 PM

To sign up for this event, click here:
http://pol.moveon.org/event/fiscalshowdown/136350

Race to the Bottom!

Competition among states and cities to lure businesses in hopes of creating jobs is not new, but it has become more fierce in recent years. An investigation by The Times found that state and local governments are giving out $80 billion a year in tax breaks and other subsidies in a foolhardy, shortsighted race to attract companies. That money could go a long way to improving education, transportation and other public services that would have a far better shot at promoting real economic growth.

Instead, with these giveaways, politicians and officials are trying to pick winners and losers, almost exclusively to the benefit of big corporations (aided by highly paid lobbyists) at the expense of small businesses. Though they promise that the subsidies are smart investments, far too often the jobs either don’t materialize or are short-lived, leaving the communities no better off.

The three-part series by Louise Story described how in places like Texas and Ohio, state and local governments have lavished millions of dollars in tax breaks on corporate giants like Samsung and the Big Three automakers — even as they faced budget deficits and were forced to cut spending on critical services. The tax revenues forgone in this giveaway frenzy should concern Congress deeply. After all, federal funds account for one-fifth of state and local budgets.

In one particularly egregious example in Pontiac, Mich., the State of Michigan gave $14 million in tax credits and a state pension fund guaranteed $18 million in bonds to a movie studio that created just 12 permanent jobs. In Texas, Amazon.com, the online retailer, received tax abatements, sales tax exemptions and other benefits totaling $277 million to open a warehouse that promises to employ 2,500 people. Those benefits were granted after the retailer closed another warehouse because of a dispute with the government involving sales taxes.

Many governments don’t know the full value of the subsidies they hand out in the form of tax refunds, rebates, loans, grants and more. And they don’t know if the jobs created would have been created anyway. The fact is, numerous studies show that such incentives result in only a small increase in jobs and that any gains usually come at the expense of other cities and states.

Local governments would be much better off investing tax dollars in education and public works that would deliver long-term benefits to both businesses and workers. California, for instance, is among the least generous of the larger states in doling out tax breaks. It gave out just $112 per capita compared with $759 in Texas, $672 in Michigan, and $210 in New York. Its experience leaves no doubt that investments made in public institutions like the University of California system can remain critically important to economic growth decades later.

The senseless race to give away billions in subsidies is, of course, hard to stop when elected leaders think a pledge of potential jobs might help in their next election. But even when attracting businesses is a legitimate goal, it has to be done in ways that are fair and transparent.

The trouble with targeted incentives is that they are little more than transfers of wealth to a handful of powerful corporations from all other taxpayers, including other businesses. If the problem is excessive tax burdens on businesses in general, then the solution is broad tax reform that also benefits small business owners, who are more likely to stick around if the regional economy weakens and who are unlikely to hopscotch around the country in search of a bigger tax break.