I gotta say, I’m seeing a lot more things to like out of Obama’s second term:
US gov’t to crackdown on spending by tax exempt groups (via AFP)
The Obama administration Tuesday pledged to crack down on campaigning by tax exempt groups, which spent millions in the 2012 election, by narrowing the definition of who can claim the special status. Over the past several years, a number of groups have…
The Washington Post has done a poll that shows lower-income workers are terrified they will lose their awful jobs. Then it interviewed one of those workers, who commutes three hours a day for $5.25 an hour:
“I can’t save money,” he said recently, “to buy the things I need to live as a human being.”
Happy Thanksgiving, America. Try not to think about the “unprecedented economic anxiety”that we’re suffering [emphasis added]:
More than six in 10 workers in a recent Washington Post-Miller Center pollworry that they will lose their jobs to the economy, surpassing concerns in more than a dozen surveys dating to the 1970s. Nearly one in three, 32 percent, say they worry “a lot” about losing their jobs, also a record high…
Are you one of the perpetually vocationally insecure? It’s far more acute among workers who make less than $35,000: A majority of those low-earners seriously fear for their jobs, which is 46 percent more than were worried in similar polls during recessions in 1992 and 1975. Higher earners are more insecure than they used to be, too. Just less so than the poorer.
What does it mean to “lose a job to the economy,” exactly? It sounds like a natural mechanism, as if the laws of science ordain it: action, reaction. Interest rates move this way, earnings move that, and the shifting between them sheds jobs, like the earth sighing out hot liquid rock when tectonic plates bump.
But the economy doesn’t fire anyone; executive boards and operations officers and middle managers do—people who either are under orders to lay off company-building paycheck-earners for “the good of the company,” or are members of the elite cadre that gets to define “the good of the company,” usually in terms that ensure not economic survival or long-term growth, but maximized shareholder value.
Somehow, along the way, America’s poorest, hardest-working, least-secure citizens accepted this elision: Their jobs are endangered not by the avarice of the management or investors who exploited them in the first place, but by periodic indigestion in the mysterious guts of this cosmic clock known as The Economy. This economy, man. It’s the economy, stupid. Can’t anyone fix this economy?
I’m not surprised that it happened (after all, power corrupts). I’m surprised that he was actually charged:
PHILADELPHIA – November 26, 2013 (WPVI) — Action News has learned the former chairman of the Montgomery County Republican Committee is in police custody in connection with a sexual assault investigation.
Robert Kerns is facing sex charges and a drug charge related to an alleged assault that happened October 25th.
More details on Kerns’ arrest were expected at a news conference later Tuesday.
Kerns resigned as the chairman of Montgomery County’s Republican Committee back on November 14th amid reports that an investigation was underway.
At the time, the executive director of the committee said in a statement the committee had “no comment on media reports related to a possible criminal investigation of Mr. Kerns unrelated to his duties as chairman.”
Kerns is also a lawyer and a partner at Kerns, Pearlstine, Onorato and Hladi.
A widely held view in elite circles is that the rapid rise in inequality in theUnited States over the last three decades is an unfortunate side-effect of technological progress. In this story, technology has had the effect of eliminating tens of millions of middle wage jobs for factory workers, bookkeepers, and similar occupations.
These were jobs where people with limited education used to be able to raise a family with a middle class standard of living. However computers, robots and other technological innovations are rapidly reducing the need for such work. As a result, the remaining jobs in these sectors are likely to pay less and many people who would have otherwise worked at middle wage jobs must instead crowd into the lower paying sectors of the labor market.
This story is comforting to elites, because it means that inequality is something that happened, not something they did. They won out because they had the skills and intelligence to succeed in a dynamic economy, whereas the huge mass of workers that are falling behind did not. In this story, the best we can do for those left behind is empathy and education. We can increase opportunities to upgrade their skills in the hope that more of them may be able to join the winners.
That’s a nice story, but the evidence doesn’t support it. My colleagues Larry Mishel, John Schmitt, and Heidi Sheirholz, just published a papershowing that the pattern of job growth in the data doesn’t fit this picture at all. This paper touches on a wide variety of issues related to technology and wage inequality, but first and foremost, it shows that the story of the hollowing out of the middle does not fit the data for the 2000s at all.
Since 2000, the increase in employment has occurred almost entirely in low-wage occupations. There has been a decline in relative employment for both workers in middle wage and high wage occupations. If this “occupational shift story” explained trends in wages we should expect to see sharply rising wages for retail clerks, custodians and other workers employed in low-paying occupations.
Of course, we see the opposite. Workers in these occupations continued to lose ground in the 2000s as they did in the prior two decades. Their wages barely kept pace with inflation over the last three decades.
The paper makes an impressive case that technology is not the main explanation for the rise in inequality that we have been seeing. In fact, even MIT economics professor David Autor, the leading proponent of the occupational shift story concedes this point. He was quoted in a New York Times column saying of the view that technology explains inequality:
It can suck all the air out of the conversation … All economists should be pushing back against this simplistic view.
Given the evidence compiled by Mishel et al, it would be difficult to maintain that technology has been the main culprit in the upward redistribution of income that we have seen.
http://youtu.be/FlShdx4hODg
Via Mondoweiss, the AIPAC handmaidens are preparing to do whatever they can to undermine the new agreement with Iran. For our sake, I hope they fail:
New York Senator Chuck Schumer was his usual hawkish self on Sunday evening. In an address to the OHEL Children’s Home and Family Services gala, Schumer railed against the deal the Obama administration struck with Iran and vowed that Democrats and Republicans would work to pile on more economic pressure on the country.
“Democrats and Republicans are going to work together to see that we don’t let up on these sanctions…until Iran gives up not only its nuclear weapons, but all nuclear weapon capability, all enriched uranium,” Schumer said. ”Every time the Arab world, the Palestinians, have risen against us, we have risen to defeat them. The one existential threat to Israel’s existence is a nuclear Iran.”
The Democratic Senator made the remarks to attendees at a fundraiser for OHEL Children’s Home and Family Services, an Orthodox Jewish welfare organization. Video of Schumer’s remarks were uploaded by Jacob Kornbluh, a New York-based reporter.
Schumer’s speech was a preview of the potential difficulties the Obama administration will have in convincing the most hawkish Senators and Representatives that sanctions should be held off.
President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry were successful in pressuring Congress to hold off on new sanctions before last weekend’s Geneva negotiations. During the talks, Kerry reportedly warned that new sanctions would be coming down the pike if no deal was struck to pressure Iran.
But a deal was struck, and now the Obama administration has to watch out for new Congressional efforts to sanction Iran–which would scuttle the deal reached to curb Iran’s enrichment program in exchange for some relief from economic pressure.
In a previous statement, Schumer said that the “disproportionality of this agreement makes it more likely that Democrats and Republicans will join together and pass additional sanctions when we return in December.” Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid called the Iran deal an “important first step” but did not fully close off the possibility that new sanctions would be enacted before the six-month deal with Iran is up.
You’d think somehow that the Senate was composed of frail, delicate flowers who are shocked and hurt by the filibuster change:
Fascinating Biil Moyers interview with Henry Giroux, especially where Giroux talks about the political tactic of “individualizing the social” and blaming people for systemic failures:
In his book, Zombie Politics and Culture in the Age of Casino Capitalism, author and scholar Henry Giroux connects the dots to prove his theory that our current system is informed by a “machinery of social and civil death” that chills “any vestige of a robust democracy.”
This week on Moyers & Company, Giroux explains that such a machine turns “people who are basically so caught up with surviving that they become like the walking dead – they lose their sense of agency, they lose their homes, they lose their jobs.”
What’s more, Giroux points out, the system that creates this vacuum has little to do with expanding the meaning and the substance of democracy itself. Under “casino capitalism,” the goal is to get a quick return, taking advantage of a kind of logic in which the only thing that drives us is to put as much money as we can into a slot machine and hope we walk out with our wallets overflowing.
A cultural and social critic of tireless energy and vast interests, Giroux holds the Global TV Network Chair in the English and Cultural Studies Department at McMaster University and is a distinguished visiting professor at Reyerson University, both schools in Canada.
This is very, very long — but very perceptive.
November 23rd, 1963
A speech by Fidel Castro
Always, when something very important has happened, national or international, we have thought it desirable to speak to the people, to express our opinions. And in every such case to express the orientation of the Government, the orientation of our Party, so that each one of us all know the attitude we should adopt in each one of these situations.
It is true that we are somewhat accustomed to various types of unexpected events, important, serious events, because since the victory of the Revolution our country has had to face a series of problems, a series of situations that have prepared the people to carry forward their victorious revolution.
Therefore, because of the events of yesterday in the United States in which the President was murdered, because of the repercussion these events can have, because of the role that the United States plays in the problems of international policy, because of this, we believe that we should make a specially objective and calm analysis of these events and of their possible consequences.
The government of the United States, the former administration of Eisenhower and the Kennedy administration, did not practice precisely a policy of friendship toward us. The policy of both administrations was characterized by its aggressive, hostile, and implacable spirit toward our country.
Our country was the victim of economic aggressions intended to cause the ruin of our economy and the starvation of our people; it was the victim of all kinds of attacks that caused bloodshed; hundreds of our compatriots have lost their lives, defending themselves from attacks of U.S. imperialism, and not only this. The hostility and the aggressiveness of U.S. imperialism toward our country took us to the brink of war which was fortunately avoided, took the world to the brink of thermonuclear war.
And even when we were not facing a situation like the crisis of October, and the time of the invasion of Giron [Bay of Pigs], we — were all perfectly aware that if the plots they were planning against our country had been carried through, that is to say, if imperialism had been able to establish a beachhead on our shores, that struggle would have cost our people tens of thousands, and perhaps even hundreds of thousands of lives.
We have been victims of the constant hostility of the United States And among the rulers and the leading men of the United States, there falls on Kennedy an important responsibility in these events.
Nevertheless, the news of the murder of the President of the United States is serious news and bad news. We should analyze it thoroughly in order to understand it; above all, analyze it serenely and dispassionately, as revolutionaries should analyze these things.
I say it is bad news, leaving aside the human question, in that the sensitivity of man, any man, is affected by an act of this nature, by a crime, by a murder. I say that leaving these questions aside, I always react and I am sure that this is the reaction of the immense majority of human beings — we always react with repulsion toward murder and toward crime.
We cannot consider this to be a correct weapon of struggle — no, we cannot consider that. Above all under the conditions in which it happened, because — like all these things — it is always necessary to consider the atmosphere, the things, the circumstances.
In other settings, under other circumstances, whatever they may be in a normal situation, in a peaceful situation, a deed of this nature is never justifiable. Especially in the middle of a crowd, in the presence of women, all these things, which above all — I say — are the circumstances that lead us to take a condemnatory attitude toward something, even though some deeds of a political nature, some crimes of a political nature, may or may not be justified.
In the circumstances that surrounded the assassination of President Kennedy, we believe it has no justification.
But analyzing the question from the political, objective point of view, I also said it was serious news, bad news.
Continue reading “Concerning the facts and consequences of the tragic death of President John F. Kennedy”
Senate just voted to change the rules for most nominees.
Although this is Arizona and Florida we’re talking about, I don’t think they can pull this off. Too many people are pissed off at the Republicans:
WASHINGTON — Americans for Prosperity, the political group backed by the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, is targeting three of the most vulnerable Senate Democrats who are up for re-election next year. The group’s efforts are part of a new $3.5 million attack advertising campaign that hammers lawmakers for supporting President Obama’s health care law.
The senators — Mark Begich of Alaska, Kay Hagan of North Carolina and Mary L. Landrieu of Louisiana — are all from conservative-leaning states that voted to elect Mitt Romney in 2012. The ads will start running in those states on Wednesday.
Americans for Prosperity is also targeting three Democratic members of the House who are in danger of losing next year: Ron Barber of Arizona, Joe Garcia of Florida and Patrick Murphy, also of Florida.
With the health care law’s flaws now front and center, Republicans and their allies have been trying to ratchet up the pressure on Democrats, especially where voters are most likely to respond negatively to the Affordable Care Act.
