For the record, I've spent most of my career in management. I have never belonged to a union.
I
have, however, become a stronger and stronger supporter of organized
labor the more I read and understand the facts about them and how the
once mighty American middle class came into being, grew, and prospered
primarily and almost exclusively because of organized labor.
We must be clear on facts.
The
rise and prosperity of the American middle class had precisely nothing
to do with any generosity or leadership principles of management.
Without the labor movement, there would have been no middle class
because there would have been nothing in it for management and the
shareholders to pay workers decent wages, provide for safe working
conditions, and for companies to have to negotiate some portion of the
wealth generated to be shared back with the workers that made goods and
delivered services.
The worker-management relationship
is symbiotic, but the movement in this country was been away from
organized labor for decades. Many would trace it back to Reagan and his
treatment of the air traffic controllers.
Regardless
of when it began, the so-called "righ to work" laws are nothing more
than well-crafted marketing by Big Money and their puppets in state
legislations. It is designed to dupe Americans into believing that such
laws - presumably to give workers the "freedom" or "right to work"
without paying union dues in unionized shops - is what's best for both companies and workers.
That's absurd. Why should
on employee be allowed to benefit from collective bargaining done by his/her co-workers and yet not have to be required to pay their dues to fund the organization that handles the collective bargaining on behalf of all workers. How is that fair?
Right-to-work laws are terrible for the middle
class. The only jobs they are likely to create will be those that
are lower paying with fewer hours and fewer benefits. They will not be the kind
of middle class jobs on which anyone can live or raise a family.
Ask any Walmart worker.
Showing posts with label Reagan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Reagan. Show all posts
Monday, December 10, 2012
Saturday, October 8, 2011
Reagan--No Loopholes For Millionaires
So if the holy man of the GOP said it, and the holy man of the Democrats (who ain't so much what was hoped for after all) is saying it, how come the resistance is almost exclusively from just one side?
Hint: It has nothing to do with facts.
59 seconds of undeniable reality at http://youtu.be/cgbJ-Fs1ikA
Monday, February 14, 2011
The Case for Funding The Corporation for Public Broadcasting
The following is in response to two questions recently raised by a friend who opposes funding public broadcasting. His questions were:
1. Is it really the role of government to support such enterprises?
2. Do you really believe that NPR is unbiased?
Here was my response.
First, I guess I have to take just a little bit of an issue with how you frame your first question. I believe that "citizens" should support public broadcasting. I wouldn't call it government support.
I also would never call The Corporation for Public Broadcasting an "enterprise." For me, that connotes visions of shareholders wanting to know how this quarter's performance will translate into dividends and an increase in the value of their equity. I don't envision the CPB board as having dividend payments and share price on their agenda.
I do think that a civil society ought to appreciate and place enough value on what public broadcasting brings to that society to have about 2 of our tax dollars per year per every man, woman, and child in America spent on funding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. That's just over one-half penny per day per citizen. The DoD's nearly $600 billion budget, on the other hand, costs each of us $2,000 per year, or $5.48 per day. 1000 times different.
IMHO, CPB has proven their worth over the years and many times over. They brought us all the classic programming everyone likes to talk about like Sesame Street, Mr. Roger's Neighborhood, Nova and much, much more. More recent works include http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/reagan/.
It is precisely the non-commercial, non-profit, public service characteristics that they offer that I think are most precious and most important to a civil and well-informed society.
Supporters of public broadcasting can attest to the frequent pleas for donations to make up the difference between what they get from our paltry tax dollars and what it takes to actually employ some 21,000 people (http://www.cpb.org/funding/) who bring us news and programming that simply would not be commercially viable nor nearly as valuable if it had the taint of advertising dollars influencing it. Would we really want our kids watching Big Bird shill for Taco Bell? I admit that I cringe whenever I see Exxon/Mobil thanked for their contribution to programming, and I wonder exactly how much influence they may be exercising over the content. There has been concern expressed about that, but I won't go into it here.
I also think it's important to put their funding into perspective. CPB is asking for $604million for FY2014 after having been, "faced with flat CPB funding for the better part of the past decade." (http://tinyurl.com/4avg34k).
600million sounds like a big number, and it is, until you look at the budget as a whole.
The Department of Defense's budget for 2011 is $548.9 billion (http://tinyurl.com/4f22njv), almost 1000 times greater than CPBs. I won't deny nor debate here the value and the need for a military and the jobs tied to our industrial military complex. I just question whether we need a military that's this big, if it's the right type for the 21st century, and where the logic is in wanting to balance the budget by entirely eliminating the CPB while increasing defense spending?
If we're worried about paying for CPB, I would prefer that we reduce the DoD budget by the equivalent 0.1%. One-tenth of one percent of the DoD budget funds CPB.
It gets even more difficult for me to understand the attraction for eliminating CPB's funding when it's compared to a $3.6 trillion dollar budget. CPB's $0.0006 trillion funding request just doesn't look at all meaningful. It certainly makes no sense to an accounting neophyte like me to be one of the first budget items to eliminate.
As for the question of bias, yes, of course there's bias. We human beings, by our very nature, are biased about pretty much everything. There's no getting around that.
To my experience, the "bias" of people who support public broadcasting seems to be toward a sincere desire for a greater depth of coverage and information that is backed by substantiated and referenced facts than can be found or even reasonably produced, for that matter, in a 22-minute local news broadcast or in the madness of the never-ending race for ratings in a 24x7 cable news world gone mad. There's simply not much chance of big ratings and advertising money in a news story that takes 6 or 7 minutes in a country which seems to suffer from mass-attention deficit disorder and a fixation on all things Khardasian.
So, yes, I proudly profess my "bias" in support of the balance that public broadcasting brings to commercial news. Even more importantly, CPB's work appears to be the last vestige of balance to what masquerades as news these days. I really think, now more than ever, that we need news and programming that isn't filtered or directed out of a concern for advertising dollars, corporate profit, and unabashed political agendas.
Not all of the CPB's efforts and funds are directed to news, of course. As I started out typing this I was listening online to WDUQ's broadcast of a program called Studio 360. They were discussing a book entitled "Spark" about human creativity. It included a discussion of the art, photography, and reflections of the tragedy that was 9/11. Not sure where else I would have heard this. Glad that I did. I then listened to commercial-free jazz before starting the PBS American Experience Reagan documentary. I figure I've already gotten much more than this year's 2 dollars worth of news and entertainment in just one morning.
Where I think we need to try to reduce or eliminate our biases is when we talk about what to do about our federal budget.
Looking at this purely from the financial perspective and through a lens of limited knowledge and understanding of the dark art of accounting, I think we need to start cutting in places that are much bigger than CPB's funding. It is, after all, only 0.0167% of the total budget.
1. Is it really the role of government to support such enterprises?
2. Do you really believe that NPR is unbiased?
Here was my response.
First, I guess I have to take just a little bit of an issue with how you frame your first question. I believe that "citizens" should support public broadcasting. I wouldn't call it government support.
I also would never call The Corporation for Public Broadcasting an "enterprise." For me, that connotes visions of shareholders wanting to know how this quarter's performance will translate into dividends and an increase in the value of their equity. I don't envision the CPB board as having dividend payments and share price on their agenda.
I do think that a civil society ought to appreciate and place enough value on what public broadcasting brings to that society to have about 2 of our tax dollars per year per every man, woman, and child in America spent on funding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. That's just over one-half penny per day per citizen. The DoD's nearly $600 billion budget, on the other hand, costs each of us $2,000 per year, or $5.48 per day. 1000 times different.
IMHO, CPB has proven their worth over the years and many times over. They brought us all the classic programming everyone likes to talk about like Sesame Street, Mr. Roger's Neighborhood, Nova and much, much more. More recent works include http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/reagan/.
It is precisely the non-commercial, non-profit, public service characteristics that they offer that I think are most precious and most important to a civil and well-informed society.
Supporters of public broadcasting can attest to the frequent pleas for donations to make up the difference between what they get from our paltry tax dollars and what it takes to actually employ some 21,000 people (http://www.cpb.org/funding/) who bring us news and programming that simply would not be commercially viable nor nearly as valuable if it had the taint of advertising dollars influencing it. Would we really want our kids watching Big Bird shill for Taco Bell? I admit that I cringe whenever I see Exxon/Mobil thanked for their contribution to programming, and I wonder exactly how much influence they may be exercising over the content. There has been concern expressed about that, but I won't go into it here.
I also think it's important to put their funding into perspective. CPB is asking for $604million for FY2014 after having been, "faced with flat CPB funding for the better part of the past decade." (http://tinyurl.com/4avg34k).
600million sounds like a big number, and it is, until you look at the budget as a whole.
The Department of Defense's budget for 2011 is $548.9 billion (http://tinyurl.com/4f22njv), almost 1000 times greater than CPBs. I won't deny nor debate here the value and the need for a military and the jobs tied to our industrial military complex. I just question whether we need a military that's this big, if it's the right type for the 21st century, and where the logic is in wanting to balance the budget by entirely eliminating the CPB while increasing defense spending?
If we're worried about paying for CPB, I would prefer that we reduce the DoD budget by the equivalent 0.1%. One-tenth of one percent of the DoD budget funds CPB.
It gets even more difficult for me to understand the attraction for eliminating CPB's funding when it's compared to a $3.6 trillion dollar budget. CPB's $0.0006 trillion funding request just doesn't look at all meaningful. It certainly makes no sense to an accounting neophyte like me to be one of the first budget items to eliminate.
As for the question of bias, yes, of course there's bias. We human beings, by our very nature, are biased about pretty much everything. There's no getting around that.
To my experience, the "bias" of people who support public broadcasting seems to be toward a sincere desire for a greater depth of coverage and information that is backed by substantiated and referenced facts than can be found or even reasonably produced, for that matter, in a 22-minute local news broadcast or in the madness of the never-ending race for ratings in a 24x7 cable news world gone mad. There's simply not much chance of big ratings and advertising money in a news story that takes 6 or 7 minutes in a country which seems to suffer from mass-attention deficit disorder and a fixation on all things Khardasian.
So, yes, I proudly profess my "bias" in support of the balance that public broadcasting brings to commercial news. Even more importantly, CPB's work appears to be the last vestige of balance to what masquerades as news these days. I really think, now more than ever, that we need news and programming that isn't filtered or directed out of a concern for advertising dollars, corporate profit, and unabashed political agendas.
Not all of the CPB's efforts and funds are directed to news, of course. As I started out typing this I was listening online to WDUQ's broadcast of a program called Studio 360. They were discussing a book entitled "Spark" about human creativity. It included a discussion of the art, photography, and reflections of the tragedy that was 9/11. Not sure where else I would have heard this. Glad that I did. I then listened to commercial-free jazz before starting the PBS American Experience Reagan documentary. I figure I've already gotten much more than this year's 2 dollars worth of news and entertainment in just one morning.
Where I think we need to try to reduce or eliminate our biases is when we talk about what to do about our federal budget.
Looking at this purely from the financial perspective and through a lens of limited knowledge and understanding of the dark art of accounting, I think we need to start cutting in places that are much bigger than CPB's funding. It is, after all, only 0.0167% of the total budget.
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Right Wing Brainwashing
Give a listen to Episode 424: Kid Politics from This American Life, and especially to Act One: Trickle Down History.
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/424/kid-politics
We invaded Granada because of the threat that island nation represented to the United States? Really?
The staff at the Reagan museum is telling children that a free and vocal press was to blame for the death of 19 servicemen. This isn't history or education, it's brainwashing and reframing, and I find it abhorrent.
But then, that's the modus operandi of the right.
If the press had done it's job from 2001 to 2003 and the years following the invasion of Iraq like it did then and in the Nixon years, I think things most certainly would have been different during W's 2 terms, starting with the greater probability that there wouldn't have been a second term.
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/424/kid-politics
We invaded Granada because of the threat that island nation represented to the United States? Really?
The staff at the Reagan museum is telling children that a free and vocal press was to blame for the death of 19 servicemen. This isn't history or education, it's brainwashing and reframing, and I find it abhorrent.
But then, that's the modus operandi of the right.
If the press had done it's job from 2001 to 2003 and the years following the invasion of Iraq like it did then and in the Nixon years, I think things most certainly would have been different during W's 2 terms, starting with the greater probability that there wouldn't have been a second term.
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Let's Keep Blaming Labor
A friend recently shared a Detroit News video report from 2007 about Camacari, "Ford's most advanced assembly plant," that opened in 2001 in Brazil.
The piece ends with the following claim:
"Sources in Dearborn say privately that this is the sort of facility Ford would love to build in the U.S. if only the UAW, historically adverse to this sort of supplier integration, would allow it."
Let me begin by saying that I've never worked in the automobile industry, although very close friends have. I've never been a member of the UAW, nor any other labor union.
That said, I have to wonder about the kind of thinking and reporting that leaves the viewer with the unchallenged conclusion that it is labor's fault that good paying, middle class jobs like building cars goes overseas because the UAW won't "allow" modern plants in America.
The auto industry is clearly one of the central pillars of our economy, and the web of dependencies that has been created seems completely entrenched and undoable. The reason it will be almost - not quite, but almost - impossible to change any of that and build a broader, more sustainable, diverse, and healthier economy is simple.
Money.
And who controls the money?
This report says it's the unions. Has to be them, right? I mean, the piece ends by saying that Ford supposedly wants to build plants like the one in Brazil in America with automation and JIT suppliers integrated inside and all that but the unions won't allow it.
Really? Unions? Are they the people who decide where to invest capital to build plants? Seriously? Is that really the reason Ford doesn't build plants like that in America?
Or is it possible that it might be because the Brazilian factory worker lives in a country where the minimum wage is less than $300 a month (http://tinyurl.com/24v5l8k)?
Ford's employees in Brazil probably have no health care or other benefits, and while they may be "middle class" in Brazil I'm willing to bet just about everything I have left that they can't even afford to buy one of the cars they make.
This is the kind of bullshit news reporting that really pisses me off, mostly because too many Americans are gullible enough - especially my friends on the right - to believe it. They buy this line of thinking that those poor bastards in the boardrooms and corner offices of corporate America are being held back by labor and government. All those magnanimous and benevolent capitalists want to do is invest more money into more businesses to create more jobs, but labor and the big bad government are keeping them from doing that. What a crock of shit!
It comes down to money. Yes, organized labor has money and power but make no mistake, dear reader. The money that matters and that makes these decisions is the real money - the richest 2% kind of money. GOP kind of money. It's why I'll never understand how middle-class Americans could ever, ever, EVER vote Republican. They're voting against their own economic self-interest. The trickle-down, Randian economic model that was sold by Alan Greenspan and bought hook-line-and-sinker by that moronic B-movie actor and GOP god, Ronny, and his minions in the GOP has proven not to work.
None of those facts seem to matter, though, to the latest crop of defenders of the wealthy and so-called free markets; the tea baggers, the Boehner/McConnell crowd, and the real whack jobs like Rand Paul and his Libertarians. Less regulation, more wealth protection, and even tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans has become religion for them, and that belief system has been perpetuated by liars and haters like Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and others so much so that uninformed and easily-duped Americans actually believe in the magnanimity of the rich, and worse, the fallacy of the American Dream that they, too, can someday be rich.
Devotion, admiration, and even worship for wealth, the wealthy, and the so-called captains of industry is how we got to the sorry-ass state we're in now. Maintaining that devotion and electing devotees of Ayn Rand and Ronny Reagan to high office is how we'll go over the cliff for good, too.
But, hey, not to worry. Our children, grand children, and great grand children will have it better. Unregulated, unfettered, and under-taxed free markets and the absurdly wealthy who run it are making sure that we're going to be a big part of the third world by the end of the century - maybe sooner. Then maybe all those middle class jobs will come back.
How, you ask?
Because we'll be the nation of poor, desperate people willing to do anything for a few bucks an hour.
The piece ends with the following claim:
"Sources in Dearborn say privately that this is the sort of facility Ford would love to build in the U.S. if only the UAW, historically adverse to this sort of supplier integration, would allow it."
Let me begin by saying that I've never worked in the automobile industry, although very close friends have. I've never been a member of the UAW, nor any other labor union.
That said, I have to wonder about the kind of thinking and reporting that leaves the viewer with the unchallenged conclusion that it is labor's fault that good paying, middle class jobs like building cars goes overseas because the UAW won't "allow" modern plants in America.
The auto industry is clearly one of the central pillars of our economy, and the web of dependencies that has been created seems completely entrenched and undoable. The reason it will be almost - not quite, but almost - impossible to change any of that and build a broader, more sustainable, diverse, and healthier economy is simple.
Money.
And who controls the money?
This report says it's the unions. Has to be them, right? I mean, the piece ends by saying that Ford supposedly wants to build plants like the one in Brazil in America with automation and JIT suppliers integrated inside and all that but the unions won't allow it.
Really? Unions? Are they the people who decide where to invest capital to build plants? Seriously? Is that really the reason Ford doesn't build plants like that in America?
Or is it possible that it might be because the Brazilian factory worker lives in a country where the minimum wage is less than $300 a month (http://tinyurl.com/24v5l8k)?
Ford's employees in Brazil probably have no health care or other benefits, and while they may be "middle class" in Brazil I'm willing to bet just about everything I have left that they can't even afford to buy one of the cars they make.
This is the kind of bullshit news reporting that really pisses me off, mostly because too many Americans are gullible enough - especially my friends on the right - to believe it. They buy this line of thinking that those poor bastards in the boardrooms and corner offices of corporate America are being held back by labor and government. All those magnanimous and benevolent capitalists want to do is invest more money into more businesses to create more jobs, but labor and the big bad government are keeping them from doing that. What a crock of shit!
It comes down to money. Yes, organized labor has money and power but make no mistake, dear reader. The money that matters and that makes these decisions is the real money - the richest 2% kind of money. GOP kind of money. It's why I'll never understand how middle-class Americans could ever, ever, EVER vote Republican. They're voting against their own economic self-interest. The trickle-down, Randian economic model that was sold by Alan Greenspan and bought hook-line-and-sinker by that moronic B-movie actor and GOP god, Ronny, and his minions in the GOP has proven not to work.
None of those facts seem to matter, though, to the latest crop of defenders of the wealthy and so-called free markets; the tea baggers, the Boehner/McConnell crowd, and the real whack jobs like Rand Paul and his Libertarians. Less regulation, more wealth protection, and even tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans has become religion for them, and that belief system has been perpetuated by liars and haters like Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and others so much so that uninformed and easily-duped Americans actually believe in the magnanimity of the rich, and worse, the fallacy of the American Dream that they, too, can someday be rich.
Devotion, admiration, and even worship for wealth, the wealthy, and the so-called captains of industry is how we got to the sorry-ass state we're in now. Maintaining that devotion and electing devotees of Ayn Rand and Ronny Reagan to high office is how we'll go over the cliff for good, too.
But, hey, not to worry. Our children, grand children, and great grand children will have it better. Unregulated, unfettered, and under-taxed free markets and the absurdly wealthy who run it are making sure that we're going to be a big part of the third world by the end of the century - maybe sooner. Then maybe all those middle class jobs will come back.
How, you ask?
Because we'll be the nation of poor, desperate people willing to do anything for a few bucks an hour.
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Charley Reese's 545 People
I have no argument with the general sentiments of the email copied in below. It is, however, the victim of present-day and all too typical sets of changes without citations which then appear to belong to the original article.
I admit that I haven't spent a ton of time researching this, but this is what I was able to discover.
The original article was written by Charley, not Charlie, Reese in 1985. You'd think people would at least get the guy's name right.
Ronny-boy was resident at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave in 85. He was, with the same level of intellect and with the same kind of help a kindergartner gets when finger painting, the one proposing federal budgets in 85.
In 85, Dems controlled the House. (The GOP held the Senate.) Dems were clearly responsible for having the balls to tell President Chimp to go f*** himself budgetary-wise. (Any-reason-wise would have been good with me.) True to form, the spineless cowards didn't.
Notwithstanding all the editorial changes and additions too numerous to mention here, the original Reese article ends with the phrase "...have the gumption to manage their own employees." It's our fault for whom we vote into office. Granted, the pickings have never been very good. IMHO, they have degenerated into something almost completely unrecognizable and bordering on inhuman in the GOP. I submit Sharron Angle as Exhibit A.
Reese's article has reportedly been updated by the author from time to time. A 1995 revision, when the GOP controlled both houses of Congress and Slick Willy was proposing budgets, includes the following passage:
"Everything on the Republican contract is a problem created by Congress. Too much bureaucracy? Blame Congress. Too many rules? Blame Congress. Unjust tax laws? Congress wrote them. Out-of-control bureaucracy? Congress authorizes everything bureaucracies do. Americans dying in Third World rat holes on stupid U.N. missions? Congress allows it. The annual deficits? Congress votes for them. The $4 trillion plus debt? Congress created it."
GOP-controlled Congresses, as the article points out, are as guilty as Dems for not acting with fiduciary responsibility.
I found the end of the email to be downright comical. Times were better 100 years ago? Really?
I'd love to see proof that "...our nation was the most prosperous in the world" in 1910. Someone must have forgotten or ignored their history. Everything I've ever read or learned in school attributes our role in WWII as the factor most responsible for our rise to global prominence. Before that, we were wannabes.
"We had absolutely no national debt"
There was national debt in 1910, too. The fact is that there has never - NEVER - been a time when the federal government didn't carry some debt, including during the budget surplus years of Clinton.
"...had the largest middle class in the world"
Really? Someone please provide proof that there was anything even remotely resembling what we would call a middle class in America in 1910 even if it wasn't the largest in the world.
I only wish that my grandparents were still alive to ask. If you have any friends or relatives left who lived through even the Depression and WWII, ask them if they considered themselves to be "middle class" back then. Then ask them to compare it to their standard of living today.
My father (1915 - 1989) and mother (1925 - 2010) grew up in the warm embrace of unregulated, capitalist-driven, middle class status.
They really had it all, those lucky children of immigrants-turned-middle-class-Americans. After all, what's not to like? They enjoyed the comforts and security that could have come only from being serfs to...I mean, the lucky employees of..... kind, benevolent, unregulated, and non-unionized coal companies.
Their lives were replete with all the middle class luxuries we would recognize, and maybe even envy, today.
Middle class luxuries such as....
....outdoor plumbing
....endless, discount-priced shopping opportunities at the company store
....threats, beatings, and sometimes even killings....wait, I mean safe and secure working and living conditions.... courtesy of company-paid private security
....and the one thing that seems to completely resemble today's middle class American - totally oppressive debt, but in their case to the company store instead of big banks and credit card companies.
Sources:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/reese.asp
http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/1995-03-07/news/9503060362_1_blame-congress-passed-by-congress-bureaucracy/2
http://www.ustreas.gov/education/faq/markets/national-debt.shtml
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/117xx/doc11766/2010_08_05_FederalDebt.pdf
http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/histdebt/histdebt.htm
----
"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little"
FDR inaugural address, 1/20/37. http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5105/
The article below is completely neutral, ...not anti Republican or Democrat.
Charlie Reese, a retired reporter for the Orlando Sentinel has hit the nail directly on the head, defining clearly who it is that in the final analysis must assume responsibility for the judgments made that impact each one of us every day.
545 vs. 300,000,000
EVERY CITIZEN NEEDS TO READ THIS AND THINK ABOUT WHAT THIS JOURNALIST HAS SCRIPTED IN THIS MESSAGE. READ IT AND THEN REALLY THINK ABOUT OUR CURRENT POLITICAL DEBACLE.
Charley Reese has been a journalist for 49 years.
545 PEOPLE--By Charlie Reese
Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them..
Have you ever wondered, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, WHY do we have deficits?
Have you ever wondered, if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, WHY do we have inflation and high taxes?
You and I don't propose a federal budget. The president does.
You and I don't have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does.
You and I don't write the tax code, Congress does.
You and I don't set fiscal policy, Congress does.
You and I don't control monetary policy, the Federal Reserve Bank does.
One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president, and nine Supreme Court justices equates to 545 human beings out of the 300 million are directly, legally, morally, and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.
I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered, but private, central bank.
I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason. They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman, or a president to do one cotton-picking thing. I don't care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it. No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislator's responsibility to determine how he votes.
Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party.
What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would have the gall of a Speaker, who stood up and criticized the President for creating deficits..... The president can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it.
The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and approving appropriations and taxes. Who is the speaker of the House? Nancy Pelosi. She is the leader of the majority party. She and fellow House members, not the president, can approve any budget they want. If the president vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto if they agree to.
It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 300 million cannot replace 545 people who stand convicted -- by present facts -- of incompetence and irresponsibility. I can't think of a single domestic problem that is not traceable directly to those 545 people. When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise the power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist.
If the tax code is unfair, it's because they want it unfair.
If the budget is in the red, it's because they want it in the red ..
If the Army & Marines are in IRAQ , it's because they want them in IRAQ
If they do not receive social security but are on an elite retirement plan not available to the people, it's because they want it that way.
There are no insoluble government problems.
Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take this power. Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exists disembodied mystical forces like "the economy," "inflation," or "politics" that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do.
Those 545 people, and they alone, are responsible.
They, and they alone, have the power..
They, and they alone, should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses.
Provided the voters have the gumption to manage their own employees...
We should vote all of them out of office and clean up their mess!
Charlie Reese is a former columnist of the Orlando Sentinel Newspaper.
What you do with this article now that you have read it......... Is up to you.
This might be funny if it weren't so darned true.
Be sure to read all the way to the end:
Tax his land,
Tax his bed,
Tax the table,
At which he's fed.
Tax his tractor,
Tax his mule,
Teach him taxes
Are the rule.
Tax his work,
Tax his pay,
He works for peanuts
Anyway!
Tax his cow,
Tax his goat,
Tax his pants,
Tax his coat.
Tax his ties,
Tax his shirt,
Tax his work,
Tax his dirt.
Tax his tobacco,
Tax his drink,
Tax him if he
Tries to think.
Tax his cigars,
Tax his beers,
If he cries
Tax his tears.
Tax his car,
Tax his gas,
Find other ways
To tax his butt.
Tax all he has
Then let him know
That you won't be done
Till he has no dough.
When he screams and hollers;
Then tax him some more,
Tax him till
He's good and sore.
Then tax his coffin,
Tax his grave,
Tax the sod in
Which he's laid...
Put these words
Upon his tomb,
Taxes drove me
to my doom...'
When he's gone,
Do not relax,
Its time to apply
The inheritance tax..
Accounts Receivable Tax
Building Permit Tax
CDL license Tax
Cigarette Tax
Corporate Income Tax
Dog License Tax
Excise Taxes
Federal Income Tax
Federal Unemployment Tax (FUTA)
Fishing License Tax
Food License Tax
Fuel Permit Tax
Gasoline Tax
Gross Receipts Tax
Hunting License Tax
Inheritance Tax
Inventory Tax
IRS Interest Charges IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax)
Liquor Tax
Luxury Taxes
Marriage License Tax
Medicare Tax
Personal Property Tax
Property Tax
Real Estate Tax
Service Charge Tax
Social Security Tax
Road Usage Tax
Recreational Vehicle Tax
Sales Tax
School Tax
State Income Tax
State Unemployment Tax (SUTA)
Telephone Federal Excise Tax
Telephone Federal Universal Service Fee Tax
Telephone Federal, State and Local Surcharge Taxes
Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Tax
Telephone Recurring and Nonrecurring Charges Tax
Telephone State and Local Tax
Telephone Usage Charge Tax
Utility Taxes
Vehicle License Registration Tax
Vehicle Sales Tax
Watercraft Registration Tax
Well Permit Tax
Workers Compensation Tax
STILL THINK THIS IS FUNNY? Not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago, & our nation was the most prosperous in the world. We had absolutely no national debt, had the largest middle class in the world, and Mom stayed home to raise the kids.
What in the heck happened? Can you spell 'politicians?'
I admit that I haven't spent a ton of time researching this, but this is what I was able to discover.
The original article was written by Charley, not Charlie, Reese in 1985. You'd think people would at least get the guy's name right.
Ronny-boy was resident at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave in 85. He was, with the same level of intellect and with the same kind of help a kindergartner gets when finger painting, the one proposing federal budgets in 85.
In 85, Dems controlled the House. (The GOP held the Senate.) Dems were clearly responsible for having the balls to tell President Chimp to go f*** himself budgetary-wise. (Any-reason-wise would have been good with me.) True to form, the spineless cowards didn't.
Notwithstanding all the editorial changes and additions too numerous to mention here, the original Reese article ends with the phrase "...have the gumption to manage their own employees." It's our fault for whom we vote into office. Granted, the pickings have never been very good. IMHO, they have degenerated into something almost completely unrecognizable and bordering on inhuman in the GOP. I submit Sharron Angle as Exhibit A.
Reese's article has reportedly been updated by the author from time to time. A 1995 revision, when the GOP controlled both houses of Congress and Slick Willy was proposing budgets, includes the following passage:
"Everything on the Republican contract is a problem created by Congress. Too much bureaucracy? Blame Congress. Too many rules? Blame Congress. Unjust tax laws? Congress wrote them. Out-of-control bureaucracy? Congress authorizes everything bureaucracies do. Americans dying in Third World rat holes on stupid U.N. missions? Congress allows it. The annual deficits? Congress votes for them. The $4 trillion plus debt? Congress created it."
GOP-controlled Congresses, as the article points out, are as guilty as Dems for not acting with fiduciary responsibility.
I found the end of the email to be downright comical. Times were better 100 years ago? Really?
I'd love to see proof that "...our nation was the most prosperous in the world" in 1910. Someone must have forgotten or ignored their history. Everything I've ever read or learned in school attributes our role in WWII as the factor most responsible for our rise to global prominence. Before that, we were wannabes.
"We had absolutely no national debt"
There was national debt in 1910, too. The fact is that there has never - NEVER - been a time when the federal government didn't carry some debt, including during the budget surplus years of Clinton.
"...had the largest middle class in the world"
Really? Someone please provide proof that there was anything even remotely resembling what we would call a middle class in America in 1910 even if it wasn't the largest in the world.
I only wish that my grandparents were still alive to ask. If you have any friends or relatives left who lived through even the Depression and WWII, ask them if they considered themselves to be "middle class" back then. Then ask them to compare it to their standard of living today.
My father (1915 - 1989) and mother (1925 - 2010) grew up in the warm embrace of unregulated, capitalist-driven, middle class status.
They really had it all, those lucky children of immigrants-turned-middle-class-Americans. After all, what's not to like? They enjoyed the comforts and security that could have come only from being serfs to...I mean, the lucky employees of..... kind, benevolent, unregulated, and non-unionized coal companies.
Their lives were replete with all the middle class luxuries we would recognize, and maybe even envy, today.
Middle class luxuries such as....
....outdoor plumbing
....endless, discount-priced shopping opportunities at the company store
....threats, beatings, and sometimes even killings....wait, I mean safe and secure working and living conditions.... courtesy of company-paid private security
....and the one thing that seems to completely resemble today's middle class American - totally oppressive debt, but in their case to the company store instead of big banks and credit card companies.
Sources:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/reese.asp
http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/1995-03-07/news/9503060362_1_blame-congress-passed-by-congress-bureaucracy/2
http://www.ustreas.gov/education/faq/markets/national-debt.shtml
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/117xx/doc11766/2010_08_05_FederalDebt.pdf
http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/histdebt/histdebt.htm
----
"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little"
FDR inaugural address, 1/20/37. http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5105/
The article below is completely neutral, ...not anti Republican or Democrat.
Charlie Reese, a retired reporter for the Orlando Sentinel has hit the nail directly on the head, defining clearly who it is that in the final analysis must assume responsibility for the judgments made that impact each one of us every day.
545 vs. 300,000,000
EVERY CITIZEN NEEDS TO READ THIS AND THINK ABOUT WHAT THIS JOURNALIST HAS SCRIPTED IN THIS MESSAGE. READ IT AND THEN REALLY THINK ABOUT OUR CURRENT POLITICAL DEBACLE.
Charley Reese has been a journalist for 49 years.
545 PEOPLE--By Charlie Reese
Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them..
Have you ever wondered, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, WHY do we have deficits?
Have you ever wondered, if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, WHY do we have inflation and high taxes?
You and I don't propose a federal budget. The president does.
You and I don't have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does.
You and I don't write the tax code, Congress does.
You and I don't set fiscal policy, Congress does.
You and I don't control monetary policy, the Federal Reserve Bank does.
One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president, and nine Supreme Court justices equates to 545 human beings out of the 300 million are directly, legally, morally, and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.
I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered, but private, central bank.
I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason. They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman, or a president to do one cotton-picking thing. I don't care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it. No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislator's responsibility to determine how he votes.
Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party.
What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would have the gall of a Speaker, who stood up and criticized the President for creating deficits..... The president can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it.
The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and approving appropriations and taxes. Who is the speaker of the House? Nancy Pelosi. She is the leader of the majority party. She and fellow House members, not the president, can approve any budget they want. If the president vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto if they agree to.
It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 300 million cannot replace 545 people who stand convicted -- by present facts -- of incompetence and irresponsibility. I can't think of a single domestic problem that is not traceable directly to those 545 people. When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise the power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist.
If the tax code is unfair, it's because they want it unfair.
If the budget is in the red, it's because they want it in the red ..
If the Army & Marines are in IRAQ , it's because they want them in IRAQ
If they do not receive social security but are on an elite retirement plan not available to the people, it's because they want it that way.
There are no insoluble government problems.
Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take this power. Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exists disembodied mystical forces like "the economy," "inflation," or "politics" that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do.
Those 545 people, and they alone, are responsible.
They, and they alone, have the power..
They, and they alone, should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses.
Provided the voters have the gumption to manage their own employees...
We should vote all of them out of office and clean up their mess!
Charlie Reese is a former columnist of the Orlando Sentinel Newspaper.
What you do with this article now that you have read it......... Is up to you.
This might be funny if it weren't so darned true.
Be sure to read all the way to the end:
Tax his land,
Tax his bed,
Tax the table,
At which he's fed.
Tax his tractor,
Tax his mule,
Teach him taxes
Are the rule.
Tax his work,
Tax his pay,
He works for peanuts
Anyway!
Tax his cow,
Tax his goat,
Tax his pants,
Tax his coat.
Tax his ties,
Tax his shirt,
Tax his work,
Tax his dirt.
Tax his tobacco,
Tax his drink,
Tax him if he
Tries to think.
Tax his cigars,
Tax his beers,
If he cries
Tax his tears.
Tax his car,
Tax his gas,
Find other ways
To tax his butt.
Tax all he has
Then let him know
That you won't be done
Till he has no dough.
When he screams and hollers;
Then tax him some more,
Tax him till
He's good and sore.
Then tax his coffin,
Tax his grave,
Tax the sod in
Which he's laid...
Put these words
Upon his tomb,
Taxes drove me
to my doom...'
When he's gone,
Do not relax,
Its time to apply
The inheritance tax..
Accounts Receivable Tax
Building Permit Tax
CDL license Tax
Cigarette Tax
Corporate Income Tax
Dog License Tax
Excise Taxes
Federal Income Tax
Federal Unemployment Tax (FUTA)
Fishing License Tax
Food License Tax
Fuel Permit Tax
Gasoline Tax
Gross Receipts Tax
Hunting License Tax
Inheritance Tax
Inventory Tax
IRS Interest Charges IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax)
Liquor Tax
Luxury Taxes
Marriage License Tax
Medicare Tax
Personal Property Tax
Property Tax
Real Estate Tax
Service Charge Tax
Social Security Tax
Road Usage Tax
Recreational Vehicle Tax
Sales Tax
School Tax
State Income Tax
State Unemployment Tax (SUTA)
Telephone Federal Excise Tax
Telephone Federal Universal Service Fee Tax
Telephone Federal, State and Local Surcharge Taxes
Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Tax
Telephone Recurring and Nonrecurring Charges Tax
Telephone State and Local Tax
Telephone Usage Charge Tax
Utility Taxes
Vehicle License Registration Tax
Vehicle Sales Tax
Watercraft Registration Tax
Well Permit Tax
Workers Compensation Tax
STILL THINK THIS IS FUNNY? Not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago, & our nation was the most prosperous in the world. We had absolutely no national debt, had the largest middle class in the world, and Mom stayed home to raise the kids.
What in the heck happened? Can you spell 'politicians?'
Friday, July 23, 2010
American-Bred Terrorists Causing Alarm For Law Enforcement
Everyone saw the headline, right?
American-Bred Terrorists Causing Alarm For Law Enforcement
What do they mean, "law enforcement"???? WTF is that???? I thought we were at war!?!??
WAR ON TERROR!!!!
War means the military, not law enforcement; otherwise, why would we have bothered sending hundreds of thousands of troops and spent hundreds of billions of dollars invading and occupying Afghanistan and Iraq? Think the FBI could do that? The CIA? Give me a break. If this was a matter of concern for law enforcement would we just stand idly by while thousands of American and Allied lives and countless millions of civilians are killed as part of our military exploits and excursions - I mean, protection of our liberties and freedoms!! - if that should have been something for law enforcement??
PLEEEEEEASE.
So when can we expect to see tanks rolling through Fairfax? How else can we "smoke 'em out of their caves, heh, heh?" I mean, seriously, unless I've missed something the last 9 years, WE ARE AT WAR!!! Terrorism isn't a crime, it's an act of war. Call in the friggin' Army, Marines, and Blackwater contractors - the real bad asses.......oops, that's the real rich bad asses!
This is what we've been told since Sept 12, 2001, isn't it? I mean, Duh-bya and Dicky and Rummy and all those good ol' boys wouldn't lie to us, right? We're at war, dammit. And besides, we all know that it's only the sniveling liberal, peace-niks, and spineless Dems who ever lie to us. Not the good patriotic, god-fearing, Ronny-worshipping (notice which gets capitalized - their real god) Ree-pub-lickins.
So, please. Please tell me that this means we'll be invading Virginia next. We needs to "fight over there so's we don't have to fight 'em over here"....in Pennsyltucky, that is!
That's enough.
It's about effing time we started talking about terrorism for what it is - a crime. How come we're not targeting Chesser and his fellow idiot citizens with tanks, drones, and laser-guided missiles like we do in Muslim countries?
How come we send law enforcement to arrest him, but we bomb Iraq back into the stone age?
Fact: seven years after our invasion, and the lights still aren't on and the water still doesn't run like it did before we arrived. (http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2010/0621/First-day-of-summer-in-Iraq-signals-hot-violent-months-ahead)
Could it be that it's because we're a bunch of friggin' xenophobic, hypocritical, frightened, punk-ass, racists who have no problem seeing our military flex its muscle when it's against non-Christian, non-whites in another country?
Here's a clue: all the military muscle in the world won't stop terrorists. It breeds them.
And so we get to witness the next stage in the evolution of the military industrial complex Ike warned us about during our life times. We get to watch what once was a dick-measuring contest against another form of government - communism - and a couple of erstwhile opponents, the USSR and China, now evolve (devolve, if you ask me) into a perpetual and exponentially bigger drag on our economy, the federal budget, and worst of all, the moral character of our society in the name of "Homeland Security" as if we can make our homes more secure by destroying someone else's.
Now on the count of 3, everyone take another big, long, chug of the Kool-Aid. 1.................2..................3.
American-Bred Terrorists Causing Alarm For Law Enforcement
What do they mean, "law enforcement"???? WTF is that???? I thought we were at war!?!??
WAR ON TERROR!!!!
War means the military, not law enforcement; otherwise, why would we have bothered sending hundreds of thousands of troops and spent hundreds of billions of dollars invading and occupying Afghanistan and Iraq? Think the FBI could do that? The CIA? Give me a break. If this was a matter of concern for law enforcement would we just stand idly by while thousands of American and Allied lives and countless millions of civilians are killed as part of our military exploits and excursions - I mean, protection of our liberties and freedoms!! - if that should have been something for law enforcement??
PLEEEEEEASE.
So when can we expect to see tanks rolling through Fairfax? How else can we "smoke 'em out of their caves, heh, heh?" I mean, seriously, unless I've missed something the last 9 years, WE ARE AT WAR!!! Terrorism isn't a crime, it's an act of war. Call in the friggin' Army, Marines, and Blackwater contractors - the real bad asses.......oops, that's the real rich bad asses!
This is what we've been told since Sept 12, 2001, isn't it? I mean, Duh-bya and Dicky and Rummy and all those good ol' boys wouldn't lie to us, right? We're at war, dammit. And besides, we all know that it's only the sniveling liberal, peace-niks, and spineless Dems who ever lie to us. Not the good patriotic, god-fearing, Ronny-worshipping (notice which gets capitalized - their real god) Ree-pub-lickins.
So, please. Please tell me that this means we'll be invading Virginia next. We needs to "fight over there so's we don't have to fight 'em over here"....in Pennsyltucky, that is!
That's enough.
It's about effing time we started talking about terrorism for what it is - a crime. How come we're not targeting Chesser and his fellow idiot citizens with tanks, drones, and laser-guided missiles like we do in Muslim countries?
How come we send law enforcement to arrest him, but we bomb Iraq back into the stone age?
Fact: seven years after our invasion, and the lights still aren't on and the water still doesn't run like it did before we arrived. (http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2010/0621/First-day-of-summer-in-Iraq-signals-hot-violent-months-ahead)
Could it be that it's because we're a bunch of friggin' xenophobic, hypocritical, frightened, punk-ass, racists who have no problem seeing our military flex its muscle when it's against non-Christian, non-whites in another country?
Here's a clue: all the military muscle in the world won't stop terrorists. It breeds them.
And so we get to witness the next stage in the evolution of the military industrial complex Ike warned us about during our life times. We get to watch what once was a dick-measuring contest against another form of government - communism - and a couple of erstwhile opponents, the USSR and China, now evolve (devolve, if you ask me) into a perpetual and exponentially bigger drag on our economy, the federal budget, and worst of all, the moral character of our society in the name of "Homeland Security" as if we can make our homes more secure by destroying someone else's.
Now on the count of 3, everyone take another big, long, chug of the Kool-Aid. 1.................2..................3.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
A Condensed History and Plea for a Better Future
Dateline: October 29, 1929
U.S. stock market crashes. That wouldn't have been such a big deal for most Americans in 1929 except that unregulated banks had invested their depositor's funds into the stock market, too, and without having to tell anyone what they were doing. When the stock market tanked and there no buyers, the banks couldn't sell their holdings either. Some had to close. They no longer had the one thing a bank is supposed to have - money.
Remember, this is an unregulated industry and there was no such thing as the FDIC and deposit insurance. That didn't come along until 1933 (http://www.fdic.gov/about/learn/learning/why/index.html)
Panic about being able to get to one's money, of course, causes the "run" on the banks. Bankers have no money. They lost it all. Oops. Sorry about that.
No money in banks also means no credit for businesses to operate, either. Businesses, naturally, start to worry about preserving whatever remains of their capital so they let workers go. People don't have work so they have no income. Remember, this is before unemployment insurance or any sort of government welfare programs, too. People literally have nothing. No money in the bank and no one working means no one is buying anything, either, so there's no reason for businesses to produce much in the way of goods and services. It certainly doesn't mean there will be any growth and rehiring any time soon. The spiral downward has started, and it's adios amigos to everyone.
Ain't unregulated, unfettered capitalism grand?
And with sincere apologies to some of you, that stupid fucking Russian cunt had the balls to write a few pieces of fiction less than 30 years later and some people like Alan Greenspan either came to believe it was a new religion, suffered severe amnesia about what had happened and why a few decades earlier, simply never bothered to study history at all, or more to what I believe saw then and now that deregulation is the surest way to become filthy rich at expense of ordinary people.
Back to the 30s. So, the federal government creates programs to put people back to work - work that actually benefits society as a whole. My father worked in the CCC program. He and many other young men from PA took care of parts of the Appalachian Trail. So what, you might say. What did that really do for society? Ok. Forget the A.T. Ever hear of the TVA, Triborough Bridge, the Bay Bridge, or Grand Coulee Dam? There's a good chance something where you live that serves you, your neighbors, and the common good - a school, a hospital, or a highway, for example - was built by people employed by BOTH private businesses and the government as a result of the federal government and deficit spending to fund work programs. (See http://americanhistory.about.com/od/greatdepression/tp/new_deal_programs.htm and http://www.pbs.org/wnet/blueprintamerica/reports/the-new-new-deal/public-works-administration/693/)
Let's speed things up a bit. This is getting pretty long.
Lawmakers and citizens alike come to realize that businesses and especially banks are either too stupid or too greedy or both to be completely trusted to regulate themselves. Glass-Steagall is passed in 1932. The "Truth in Securities Act" is passed in 1933 and the SEC and a bunch of other laws are passed beginning in 1934. Banks, at least, are safe and some rules are in place to regulate the financial services industry.
Now it's 1999. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, a GOP disaster euphemistically referred to as the Financial Services Modernization Act (reminds me the so-called "Patriot Act". We should always get very suspicious of legislation given names that sound like sugar coating or the titles of Mel Gibson movies) effectively repeals Glass-Steagall.
Only a few short years later we find ourselves once again in an economy where too little regulation and oversight exists, thanks mostly to Greenspan, the GOP, and weak-kneed Dems.
W drives the final nails into the coffin up by giving away the federal surplus to the rich, invading 2 countries off the books based on total lies (except for the fact that Afghanistan was harboring bin Laden and he proceeded to fuck that up totally by invading Iraq) and running up the biggest debt since - you guessed it - that other GOP nitwit, Reagan. The financial service sector, who had been merrily creating so-called investments out of highly speculative debt, and the real cold-blooded capitalists who were making even more billions on derivatives tied to that shaky debt, have been doing so without regulation or oversight.
When the bubble bursts ON W's WATCH, who pays? We the taxpayers do.
So I get the tea party anger. Honestly, I do. But the anger, frustration, and demand for change needs to be directed where it belongs; at deregulation, failed GOP economic and fiscal polices dating back to Reagan, and the disaster created that forced Bush to have to put TARP in place for Obama to have to accept and implement. Wake up, tea baggers and you Obama-haters. Have you just conveniently forgotten or chosen to ignore how we got here?
Now I can't believe I'm going to say this, but the more I read and listen to people a lot smarter than I the more convinced I am that TARP had to be done to save the economy and that, perhaps, the biggest mistake being made in DC is that the feds are not spending enough.
The parallels all seem to be there to the 1930s. Some experts say that FDR was too concerned about fiscal restraint in the beginning. Had he done more, they say, the Depression may not have lasted as long or required WWII to really pull us out of it. (I'm sorry that I can't find a reference to that and don't have time to keep searching right now as we're going to a grad party. Maybe someone else can find something on it. I only remember hearing it or reading it somewhere; maybe last Sunday on one of the news programs.)
There are people out there a lot smarter than I who can explain all of this a million times better. Here's one.....
http://robertreich.org/post/719313692/my-father-and-alan-greenspan
What got me going on this today was an article in today's NYT. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/11/us/politics/11tarp.html?_r=1&th&emc=th
It's proof to me that Americans really aren't very well-informed. Candidates for public office are probably the dumbest of the lot. Trying to make hay on who voted for TARP is like blaming the iceberg for the sinking of the Titanic (the iceberg didn't do anything). Captain W and his administration steered us into that iceberg. In case you haven't noticed, they and their cronies are long gone in their yachts for life boats.
How refreshing would it be for politicians to stand up to the STYLE OVER SUBSTANCE HYSTERIA IN THE MEDIA and actually educate the voters on what really caused the bottom to drop out of the economy and the fact that....gulp....there was no other choice but to go with W's bailout. I mean, really. What alternative was there?
The real objective ought to be what comes next to keep this from happening......AGAIN!
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Style Over Substance
http://wimp.com/fareedzakaria/
If I may offer my own opinion (and even if I may not), I would begin by saying that our society is rooted in a culture that values style over substance. (There's a bold statement, eh?!?!) We only have ourselves to blame.
Some like me would say that style-over-substance is the only explanation for how Ronny Ray-Gun, Slick Willy, Dumb-ya and even Obama got elected. Yes, even Obama. He was the right guy with the right message and right delivery at the right time. It's refreshing to have a president who speaks in complete sentences and doesn't come off like some dumb ass cowboy who fell out of his saddle one too many times....or in W's case, who has all the right power-base genes but the intellect of a toaster oven.
Frankly, 2 turds could have beaten any GOP ticket considering how bad W screwed things up. That and the fact that the best the party of Lincoln could come up with was a near-senile ex-maverick and a brainless windbag ex-beauty queen who doesn't read a single newspaper and seems pretty proud of her ignorance. The GOP deserved to lose. Some, including me, would cast them - McCain, mostly - in the role of sacrificial lamb. Hell, let's face it. After W's 8-year debacle a GOP ticket of Jesus Christ and Ayn Rand still would have lost.
One thing I think we might all agree on is that "style" has taken over substance. "Style" when it comes to leaders and especially presidents is overrated. I'll bet "style" isn't exactly the first adjective that comes to mind when we think about Nixon, Carter, or George Herbert. Not that any of them were particularly great leaders. Damn, now that I started on this path I have to admit that they all sucked, too. They sucked *AND* had no style. What a trio of losers, eh? Carter, of course, is my favorite among the three but that's only because of what I've learned about GHWB and Jimmy since they left office.
I wonder if any of us will live long enough to see the voting public mature as a society to a point where we focus on facts, the issues, and policies and forget the rhetoric and hyperbole. Sadly, I suspect not. My hope still rests with my children's generation. Ironically, it seems simultaneously easier and harder to fool the digital generation. Clearly, we have done nothing but screw things up royally.
Speaking of screw ups, what a freak show 2012 promises to be if you real Republicans finally and completely surrender your party to the lunatic fringe nut-jobs and Palin is your candidate. If that happens, I can only hope Inhofe or maybe her fellow Faux News celeb, Huckabee, is her running mate. Wwooooooooo-doggies!!!! We're gonna' have us one big ol' Meet the Kardashian-type media circus campaign, you betcha!!! Break out the grizzly jerky and the Good Book, and let's have us some drilling in the ANWR, deportation of anyone who even resembles a Latino, and teaching Creationism in public schools! Hell, let's just have us one big ol' full blown Christian Taliban White House!! If you ain't a white, heterosexual, god-fearing, conservative, lifetime member of the NRA, and deeeee-vout Christian, well then, you're a commie pinko tree-huggin' fagot socialist and we're gonna' show you the door!
You know us middle-class whites - any chance we get to piss on someone below us on the socio-economic ladder and we'll whip it out just to prove that our lord god and savior, Ronny-boy, was right about trickle down!
Enough of that. It's hyperbole, and I'm sure it pisses some of you off. Sorry, but it serves to make the point. We have ourselves to blame.
The media is about eyeballs and advertisers. You've heard it from me before. The media focuses on the president's emotions or lack thereof because that's what we care about and will watch. We don't care about real leadership. Hell, most Americans wouldn't know what that was if it slapped us squarely in the face. When we think of leadership we think of Ben Rothlisberger or Kobe Bryant or John Wayne. We don't think about intelligence and intellect. We don't think about careful contemplation, consequences, inclusion, or long-term consideration for the common good and the general welfare. We certainly don't seem to think about the truth or facts about anything unless, of course, they appear to fit our preconceived notions, beliefs, and desires for what we want and wish the world to be.
What other explanation is there for the ridicule from some quarters of sources like PolitiFact, FactCheck, Snopes, and other unbiased resources?
What other reason can there for Obama's handlers and his political opponents alike to make so much about his "kicking some ass" comments? One side claims it demonstrates his toughness while the other sees it as an indictment of him and his leadership while ogres like Cheney telling legislators to go f*** themselves and that chimp W's stupid flip of the middle finger to a camera like some delinquent ninth grader gets a pass. Oh, then there's that whole inconvenient torture thing, but, hey, we're Americans! We can do whatever the hell we want, whenever the hell we want, and to whomever the hell we want because............well, that's the bully's prerogative.
So, coming from a self-proclaimed flaming liberal, the real crime is that we citizens don't stop and take the time to ask real questions or do our own homework. There simply is, IMHO, no other rational explanation for why things are as they are. We are complicit in the dumbing-down of America, the media, and American politics. Only we can change that. Nothing could have convinced me more of that than seeing a tea party rally with my own eyes.
I don't care that they hate Obama, I really don't. Like most hate, it's out of ignorance. What I care about is that the media pays any attention at all to this lunatic fringe and their lunatic demigod, Queen Sarah. Sharron Angle? Are you effing kidding? How does someone like that rise to any more prominence than with a bunch of local snake handlers without the media and our moth-like reaction to follow the light?
Every second of attention paid by the media to the tea party movement confers a mistaken and misguided sense of credibility they do not deserve and can only win with an uneducated, uniformed portion of the populace who thinks their values are being echoed when all they really are is more fodder for the movement. Moths to the flame; eyeballs to the advertisers.
I get the frustration, I really do. We all have some. But what I saw on July 3rd in my proverbial backyard was the basest elements of what I thought was a democratic society. These people don't care about democracy. They pay it lip service. They don't care about facts or the truth. Listen to their speakers. What they want is a segregationist's America, complete with discrimination against anyone who isn't a god-fearing white face like themselves. What they want is a white man back in the White House; preferably a good Episcopalian, Presbyterian, or Methodist, and in a pinch, a Baptist. No matter what, anyone with a name like Barak Hussein Obama is obviously a Muslim, probably isn't a citizen, and is for sure just a little too tanned for the liking of good ol' fashioned baseball, apple pie, and Chevrolet Americans, goddammit.
And we have ourselves and our feeding of the media-beast to blame for all of this. Why else would the president's emotions - real or staged - seem to get more attention than what caused the disaster in the Gulf and what we're going to do as a nation and as a people to make sure this never, ever, ever happens again anywhere, not just in the USA?
Must be because what we value most is style over substance.
If I may offer my own opinion (and even if I may not), I would begin by saying that our society is rooted in a culture that values style over substance. (There's a bold statement, eh?!?!) We only have ourselves to blame.
Some like me would say that style-over-substance is the only explanation for how Ronny Ray-Gun, Slick Willy, Dumb-ya and even Obama got elected. Yes, even Obama. He was the right guy with the right message and right delivery at the right time. It's refreshing to have a president who speaks in complete sentences and doesn't come off like some dumb ass cowboy who fell out of his saddle one too many times....or in W's case, who has all the right power-base genes but the intellect of a toaster oven.
Frankly, 2 turds could have beaten any GOP ticket considering how bad W screwed things up. That and the fact that the best the party of Lincoln could come up with was a near-senile ex-maverick and a brainless windbag ex-beauty queen who doesn't read a single newspaper and seems pretty proud of her ignorance. The GOP deserved to lose. Some, including me, would cast them - McCain, mostly - in the role of sacrificial lamb. Hell, let's face it. After W's 8-year debacle a GOP ticket of Jesus Christ and Ayn Rand still would have lost.
One thing I think we might all agree on is that "style" has taken over substance. "Style" when it comes to leaders and especially presidents is overrated. I'll bet "style" isn't exactly the first adjective that comes to mind when we think about Nixon, Carter, or George Herbert. Not that any of them were particularly great leaders. Damn, now that I started on this path I have to admit that they all sucked, too. They sucked *AND* had no style. What a trio of losers, eh? Carter, of course, is my favorite among the three but that's only because of what I've learned about GHWB and Jimmy since they left office.
I wonder if any of us will live long enough to see the voting public mature as a society to a point where we focus on facts, the issues, and policies and forget the rhetoric and hyperbole. Sadly, I suspect not. My hope still rests with my children's generation. Ironically, it seems simultaneously easier and harder to fool the digital generation. Clearly, we have done nothing but screw things up royally.
Speaking of screw ups, what a freak show 2012 promises to be if you real Republicans finally and completely surrender your party to the lunatic fringe nut-jobs and Palin is your candidate. If that happens, I can only hope Inhofe or maybe her fellow Faux News celeb, Huckabee, is her running mate. Wwooooooooo-doggies!!!! We're gonna' have us one big ol' Meet the Kardashian-type media circus campaign, you betcha!!! Break out the grizzly jerky and the Good Book, and let's have us some drilling in the ANWR, deportation of anyone who even resembles a Latino, and teaching Creationism in public schools! Hell, let's just have us one big ol' full blown Christian Taliban White House!! If you ain't a white, heterosexual, god-fearing, conservative, lifetime member of the NRA, and deeeee-vout Christian, well then, you're a commie pinko tree-huggin' fagot socialist and we're gonna' show you the door!
You know us middle-class whites - any chance we get to piss on someone below us on the socio-economic ladder and we'll whip it out just to prove that our lord god and savior, Ronny-boy, was right about trickle down!
Enough of that. It's hyperbole, and I'm sure it pisses some of you off. Sorry, but it serves to make the point. We have ourselves to blame.
The media is about eyeballs and advertisers. You've heard it from me before. The media focuses on the president's emotions or lack thereof because that's what we care about and will watch. We don't care about real leadership. Hell, most Americans wouldn't know what that was if it slapped us squarely in the face. When we think of leadership we think of Ben Rothlisberger or Kobe Bryant or John Wayne. We don't think about intelligence and intellect. We don't think about careful contemplation, consequences, inclusion, or long-term consideration for the common good and the general welfare. We certainly don't seem to think about the truth or facts about anything unless, of course, they appear to fit our preconceived notions, beliefs, and desires for what we want and wish the world to be.
What other explanation is there for the ridicule from some quarters of sources like PolitiFact, FactCheck, Snopes, and other unbiased resources?
What other reason can there for Obama's handlers and his political opponents alike to make so much about his "kicking some ass" comments? One side claims it demonstrates his toughness while the other sees it as an indictment of him and his leadership while ogres like Cheney telling legislators to go f*** themselves and that chimp W's stupid flip of the middle finger to a camera like some delinquent ninth grader gets a pass. Oh, then there's that whole inconvenient torture thing, but, hey, we're Americans! We can do whatever the hell we want, whenever the hell we want, and to whomever the hell we want because............well, that's the bully's prerogative.
So, coming from a self-proclaimed flaming liberal, the real crime is that we citizens don't stop and take the time to ask real questions or do our own homework. There simply is, IMHO, no other rational explanation for why things are as they are. We are complicit in the dumbing-down of America, the media, and American politics. Only we can change that. Nothing could have convinced me more of that than seeing a tea party rally with my own eyes.
I don't care that they hate Obama, I really don't. Like most hate, it's out of ignorance. What I care about is that the media pays any attention at all to this lunatic fringe and their lunatic demigod, Queen Sarah. Sharron Angle? Are you effing kidding? How does someone like that rise to any more prominence than with a bunch of local snake handlers without the media and our moth-like reaction to follow the light?
Every second of attention paid by the media to the tea party movement confers a mistaken and misguided sense of credibility they do not deserve and can only win with an uneducated, uniformed portion of the populace who thinks their values are being echoed when all they really are is more fodder for the movement. Moths to the flame; eyeballs to the advertisers.
I get the frustration, I really do. We all have some. But what I saw on July 3rd in my proverbial backyard was the basest elements of what I thought was a democratic society. These people don't care about democracy. They pay it lip service. They don't care about facts or the truth. Listen to their speakers. What they want is a segregationist's America, complete with discrimination against anyone who isn't a god-fearing white face like themselves. What they want is a white man back in the White House; preferably a good Episcopalian, Presbyterian, or Methodist, and in a pinch, a Baptist. No matter what, anyone with a name like Barak Hussein Obama is obviously a Muslim, probably isn't a citizen, and is for sure just a little too tanned for the liking of good ol' fashioned baseball, apple pie, and Chevrolet Americans, goddammit.
And we have ourselves and our feeding of the media-beast to blame for all of this. Why else would the president's emotions - real or staged - seem to get more attention than what caused the disaster in the Gulf and what we're going to do as a nation and as a people to make sure this never, ever, ever happens again anywhere, not just in the USA?
Must be because what we value most is style over substance.
Monday, July 5, 2010
Special Comment: Teabaggers and Racisim.
I went to my first tea party (notice the terminology) rally this weekend sponsored by the Southwest PA Tea Party.
Had to see for myself. Video of the MC (I guess that's who he was) and their featured speaker, some talk show/commentator who fills in for Savage and Doyle (tells you everything you need to know about him) named Jeff Kuhner from DC, are at http://www.youtube.com/user/PeaceIsPatriotic.
I know some of you won't believe this, but I went with an open mind. These people are, after all, locals and neighbors. The event was only a few miles from my home. I wanted to see and hear what was being said. I wanted to find some common ground.
I did. I'm as pissed off as anyone about the state of affairs in this country. I was hoping to hear solutions and rational ideas mixed in with the anger and frustration. Surely, my neighbors weren't the same idiotic racists and blindly loyal conservatives I've seen on TV and the Internet at all the other tea party rallies. Surely, they weren't the stereotypical "tea baggers" with their thinly veiled racism and complete lack of understanding of the facts about how we got to this sorry state in America and whom I've come to hold in utter contempt and disdain.
Not here. Not my neighbors.
Sadly, I was wrong. The common ground was all too thin. The stereotypes are all too true.
This was a gathering of angry white Christian rednecks only. It was sad to see and hear how completely uninformed these people are. They blame Obama for everything; from being a socialist and a Marxist (2 different things, of course), to wanting amnesty for illegals (he doesn't), to the financial and economic crisis (don't even make me say it), to not having capped the oil well. They want people "back on their knees" and praying only to their Christian god (lower case intentional).
It was sad to see this live, in-person, and first-hand. It's sad to see just how easily duped some people are. They hear only what they want and cheer on cue....like at the mere mention of Ronny Reagan.
I have news for you, my neighbors. Chants of "USA, USA" and dressing up in colonial costumes does NOT make you a patriot. You are an embarrassment to me, this part of PA and the real Americans who see you for what you really are.
Monday, February 15, 2010
One Person's Perspective on the Federal Debt as a % of GDP
What's been the history of the Federal debt, what's been happening over time, and who's been in power when it happened?
Initial searches weren't very efficient and it was hard to find a reasonable summary. Here's one of them: http://zfacts.com/p/318.html. The web site owner claims to be an economist who does this in his spare time. Take it for what it's worth.
Ever the skeptic, I decided to check further and to account for Congress and the role they play. I decided to create my own chart. It's attached. The Sources at the bottom include a link to the actual Federal debt tables used to generate the underlying line graph.
Conclusions? Here are mine.
1. Federal debt as a % of GDP went through the roof due to WWII
2. Federal debt marked a steady decline after WWII regardless of who was in the White House and through 35 years of a mostly Democratically-controlled Congress until.......
3. Reagan, a terrific actor (which some mistake for intelligence and oratory skills) and famous co-star to trained monkeys, got elected...yes, I hate the stupid f***...
AND Republicans took control of the Senate
This next point is, IMHO, probably the single most important fact to remember about all of this.
4. The Republican-controlled 106th Congress takes Ronny's "smaller government" religion to its fatal extreme by passing the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in November of 1999 which is signed into law by another RWMF and career politician, Bill Clinton.
For those who need a little history review, GLB repealed many of the regulatory safeguards which had been put into place by the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 which was the federal government's response to the unfettered and unregulated bankers who caused the * FIRST * Great Depression.
Go back further (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/wallstreet/weill/demise.html) and understand how Glass-Steagall was coming under serious attack during Reagan's administration in 1986-1987....at the same time a former J.P. Morgan director and life-long disciple of Ayn Rand, Alan Greenspan, was being made Fed Chairman.
"In the spring of 1987, the Federal Reserve Board votes 3-2 in favor of easing regulations under Glass-Steagall Act, overriding the opposition of Chairman Paul Volcker. The vote comes after the Fed Board hears proposals from Citicorp, J.P. Morgan and Bankers Trust advocating the loosening of Glass-Steagall restrictions to allow banks to handle several underwriting businesses, including commercial paper, municipal revenue bonds, and mortgage-backed securities."
Do you see those words, "mortgage-backed securities"?
5. The upward trend continued on Bush 41's watch and with a Democratically controlled Congress (Dems can be such pussies...or are they just RWMFs of a different stripe? Both, I'd say.)
6. Yes, Clinton was in some ways the benefactor of a booming economy and, yes, some credit for reducing the Federal debt has to go to a Republican Congress
(In case anyone would like a quick primer on how the Federal budgeting process actually works, the roles various branches and departments play, etc., see http://useconomy.about.com/od/fiscalpolicy/p/Who_budget.htm)
7. Finally, it was without a single shred of doubt in my mind or any possibility for any sort of fact-based denial that a Republican-controlled Congress and a half-witted Republican son of a Texas oilman is who put us on this disastrous financial path.
The list of fiscal failures since 2001 is long, but we can start with cut taxes that primarily benefit the wealthiest Americans while waging 2 wars off the books. Add to that, the bottom dropping out of an unregulated financial services sector based too heavily on an overly-speculated real estate market that had so much credit and investment capital tied to it and what did those geniuses think would happen? It leads to a reality in which Wall Street and RWMFs everywhere get all the reward with none of the risk and we taxpayers are left to bail out the whole friggin' mess....
My point is the current pathetic state of our economy and the federal budget is something that began long before Obama came into office, before voters turned Congress back to Dems, and really began when Rs were in charge and is rooted in the desire of RWMFs everywhere to deregulate and get rich.
I have no problem with fiscal responsibility, but to think that a president and Congress can fix the mess of previous administrations over night - or even in a single year - just isn't realistic. And I don't think we'd be in this mess if the justifiable and now obviously needed regulations and oversights of the financial services industry had not been repealed.
If anyone has a better plan than what is being done now, I'd like to hear it. Was allowing all the TARP recipients, GM, and any other recipients of federal money to fail the better plan? In a perfect Randian world, I guess the answer would be, "Yes."
p.s. Snowboard Cross racing at the Olympics is way cool!
Additional Sources
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy10/hist.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122156561931242905.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE60U09L20100131
http://www.factcheck.org/2010/02/the-big-bank-bailout-bill/
http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/subjects/g/glass_steagall_act_1933/index.html
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/background/bush-tax-cuts/ignore.cfm
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/15/business/15atlas.html
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