Frightening statistics . . .

-- Between 1977 and 2007, the top 1% earners' share of national income jumped from roughly 9% to 23.5%, a level only bested once in our history -- in 1928.
-- The CEO-to-worker pay ratio has also skyrocketed: At the start of the 1980s, CEOs made roughly 40 times as much as bottom-rung workers; by 2010, they took home between 300 and 400 times as much.
-- The divergence is even greater among the super-rich: The top 0.1% (roughly 150,000 families) now make roughly 10% of the nation's total income -- so they're pulling away even from the rest of the rich themselves.

Great Reprint from another blog

Murdoch won't open FOX News type stations in Canada--Harper unable to allow lying on broadcasts!

Wed, 03/02/2011 - 10:57am — jawbone

Murdoch's news propaganda empire will not expand into Canada due to Harper being unable to pass legislation to remove from Candian law a provision stating:

“a licenser may not broadcast … any false or misleading news.”

Lying while broadcasting is...clearly frowned upon in Canada! What a concept! Who wants a Fairness Doctrine when a simple, direct statement about only broadcasting what is factually known to be true would work? When saying what is known to be untrue could get a license lifted? Actually, I guess, the broadcasters are enjoined from broadcasting what is known to be false or misleading. But, there goes FOX's business plan. Eh?

When Stephen Harper moved to abolish the anti-lying provision of the Radio Act, Canadians rose up to oppose him fearing that their tradition of honest non-partisan news would be replaced by the toxic, overtly partisan, biased and dishonest news coverage familiar to American citizens who listen to Fox News and talk radio. Harper’s proposal was timed to facilitate the launch of a new right-wing network, “Sun TV News” which Canadians call “Fox News North.”

What an elegant, simple solution: Just say no to lies in broadcasting!
And, apparently, it works quite well in Canada.

Where's My Trickle?

Years ago, in the heady Pro-USA days of Ronald Reagan's first term, we were introduced to a new kind of political term: Supply-Side Economics. According to this theory: lowering marginal taxes would improve private sector incentives, spur productivity, and jack up the economy. In the immortal words of Big Ron Reagan, cutting taxes on the highest earners would spur the economy to such a degree that the rest of us would, eventually, benefit through being "trickled down on." Take the bonds off of the top two percent and they would, in turn, reinvest their new-found wealth in Amerika. Years and years later, the Common Man would reap the benefits because . . . well, the economy would be robust. Or something.

Big Ron has nearly been canonized in Amerika these days, but it's interesting to note:
 
The supply-side idea is a simple one, and makes a popular political message. However, it is interesting to note that mainstream economists -- even conservative ones -- almost universally reject supply-side theory. In the early 80s, the influential and multi-partisan American Economics Association had 18,000 members. Only 12 called themselves supply-side economists.¹ In American universities, there is no major department that could be called "supply-side," and there is no supply-side economist at any major department.² This is significant, because academia in the 70s was dominated by conservative economic theory, and conservative economists normally welcome any ideas that make the case against government intervention. The fact that they scrutinized supply-side theory and rejected it wholesale gives eloquent testimony to the theory's bankruptcy. When candidate George Bush called it "voodoo economics" in the 1980 presidential campaign, he was doing so with the full backing of America's economic community. 
 
Where does this leave our Tea Party? Because it seems to me that what they desperately want to do is return us to the Ronnie Reagan Years of blind Supply Side economics: cut taxes on the wealthiest, reduce funding to enough government agencies that they wither away, yet continue to outspend the rest of the world combined on military gadgetry and hardware. In other words: take in fewer tax dollars, but continue to spend like crazy to fund the military.

I'm constantly amused by these emails that I receive from concerned conservative friends, the ones that feature a phony dollar with Obama's face on it and multiple, multiple zeros indicating the growth of the deficit - this from the same people who laud Ronald Reagan - the man who jacked our deficit higher than any previous president due to his Supply Side economics, Voodoo economics. The problem with Obama, as I see it, is that the Supply Side Tea Partiers stepped in just in time to short circuit a key part of the President's economic plan: raise taxes on the top two percent of earners in the US, while keeping Bush era tax cuts for the Middle Class. This massive amount of money would have gone a long way towards paying for . . . well, a whole helluva lot of things.

Because we want our services in this country, dammit: education, police, street lights, etc. We just don't want to have to pay for them. In that - as in so many things - we're a population that is collectively and permanently pre-pubescent. We want! We want! We just don't want to pay. And so currently we pay less in taxes than any other industrialized nation on earth and yet we worry that our education system is in the shitter. We're constantly decrying the need for taxes at all! Let's do away with taxes, the hard-liners tell us, or let's introduce something like the Fair Tax or the Flat Tax - systems that have proven their worth in . . . well, really only in Russia, the world's largest mafia state. And the success they've had there is merely in regaining taxes that were owed.

Are my taxes too high? I'm a lower middle class teacher. I own a home and two cars. It's a complicated question. I pay less in taxes than anyone in Sweden or England or Canada. At the same time, I watch the education system to which I have hitched my wagon, crumble helplessly: less funding, larger classrooms, poor pay. Not that I want to pay more in taxes, mind you - but, seeing as how my tax rate is much, much lower than any where else in the civilized world, I'm constantly aware of how poorly my tax dollars are being utilized. And this is the crux of the matter.

Currently, out of every dollar I pay in taxes sixty-seven cents goes towards the military. It is the vast, blood sucking Big Government Nightmare that the Libertarians and Tea Partiers rail on about. All that money! And why? Are we Israel, surrounded by hostile nations who want to destroy us? Do we fear an invasion by the Canadians who want to over-run us and enforce their Canadian Way of Life upon us? Are we at war in two hemispheres like we were during WWII? Are we On The Brink? No.

This vast arsenal of ours did not keep us safe on 9/11. This massive war machine, geared towards mechanized warfare on an outdated European battlefield, has been ineffective in stopping insurgents everywhere we run into them. All the money we invest in Nato and our Asian alliances has not endeared us to them in any way whatsoever, nor has it been money well spent in terms of addressing a pressing need. We subsidize their defense so they can invest in their economy and schools and whatever they want to. Investment in Nato is ridiculous. The Soviet Union is no more. Europe is a Big Boy now, somewhat unified and capable of spending plenty of Euros on protecting themselves. The people there have not appreciated our sacrifices on their behalf. All those doubloons spent on nothing.

Supply Side Economics did not work under Reagan's mantle. The deficit ballooned enormously. Yes, many people will point out that the economy recovered in the eighties, but was that due to Reagan's economic policies? Most economists say no, it was not. This from Princeton professor Paul Krugman:

the rapid growth after 1982 proves nothing: a severe recession is usually followed by a period of fast growth, as unemployed workers and factories are brought back on line. The test of tax cuts as a spur to economic growth is whether they produced more than an ordinary business cycle recovery. Once the economy was back to full employment, was it bigger than you would otherwise have expected? And there Reagan fails the test: between 1979, when the big slump began, and 1989, when the economy finally achieved more or less full employment again, the growth rate was 3 percent, the same as the growth rate between the two previous business cycle peaks in 1973 and 1979. Or to put it another way, by the late 1980's the U.S. economy was about where you would have expected it to be, given the trend in the 1970's. Nothing in the data suggests a supply-side revolution.
At what point in contemporary American history was our economy at its most robust? During the Clinton years when Big Bill raised taxes on the rich. Period. It didn't hurt me, it didn't hurt you - though the conservatives waited confidently for the Other Shoe to Drop. You'll see, they said. Raise taxes on the Rich? The economy will collapse!

They waited and it never happened.In fact, the economy grew at a reasonable pace through Clinton's first term, while the deficit and the unemployment rate went steadily down. And then the news got even better: unemployment fell to its lowest level in decades without causing inflation, while productivity growth accelerated to rates not seen since the 1960's. And the budget deficit turned into an impressive surplus.

 So what are we going to do? Obama's plan, following the Clinton pattern, was to pay for investment in America through raising taxes on the top two percent of earners. This would still put them at a lower tax rate than anywhere else, other than Russian - and I don't think anyone wants to emulate Russia's economy. This would go a long ways towards shrinking the deficit. And the rest? Well, the Tea Party wants to shrink the Big Government, but the they won't touch the biggest part of our government: like many Arab nations we have a ridiculous sentimentality attached to our military. We'll starve every other aspect of our infrastructure but we love the Big Dick of having stealth fighters and main battle tanks and air craft carriers. Reminds me of the rednecks that live all around me here in Chicken City. They live in shithole houses but drive fantastic trucks. The best investment for their money would be to buy a home and at least make money on simple appreciation. Instead they rent a shit-hole and push their dollars towards a zero sum investment - in fact, no investment whatsoever. That big 4X4 is depreciating the minute you drive it away.

That's where we are. The Redneck nation. Don't invest in infrastructure, invest in Big Dick items. That truck with its chrome and big tires and jacked up suspension is ridiculous. Your trailer home is a shambles.

Let's Give the Working Man What He Wants!

 

 

Thanksgiving for me is usually a summary missionary experience with the Church of Libertarians - i am preached to by bright eyed, feverish sorts whose sermons - like any religious ideas - are positive and one sided and absolutely ungrounded in fact.

This is where I usually quibble with Libertarians - at least with Conservative Republicans you have a concrete grounding of history and data to give and take with. But Libertarians live in the air! You can't criticize them . . . well, you can - but for every criticism they have a ready and prepared answer. It doesn't matter what your criticism is, their answers are general and broad enough to cover all conflicting thoughts - and that's because there is not one single place on earth where Libertarianism exists. If you want to discuss Capitalism or Socialism or Marxism you have thousands of Real World examples and facts and data at your disposal. You can see how the glossy ideals lose some of their gloss when they are actually put into practice. Which is okay, of course. That's reality.

But there is not one country, city, county or small town that exists as a working example of Libertarianism. It's all theory, and theory can always be dressed up or excused with more theory. You don't have the boring, pedestrian examination of Real Facts to get in the way with your discussions. Libertarian theory is just that: theory. It's about as constructive as arguing about Revelations.

 You'd think that after all this time of unbridled Common Man anger that the Libertarians would have managed to convince at least one small town in the Heartland, where their support is strongest, to at least try to create a small, working version of Utopia.

Is there anywhere? If you're reading this Blog please make comment so that we can look at it.

People don't seem to be buying it, however. They don't want to play. Perhaps deep down inside the Working Man has some vestigial memory of the fact that it was they themselves who rolled up their sleeves and marched on the capitals and demanded the very regulation that the Libertarians want to strangle off. It wasn't the Liberal Elite of the Eastern Seaboard - it was the farmers and the factory workers of Small Town America who joined the Populist Party and demanded that something be done with the predation and rape of Big Railroad and the Slaughterhouses and Big Oil. Which, I think, is just fine with the Libertarians. It gives them a zealot's fire to preach, preach, preach without ever fearing their ideas will ever be judged on their own concrete merits.

In a lot of ways, it reminds me of the way Republicans have been able to galvanize that same Heartland Population to vote into place economic theories that undermine their security by attaching it to Fire and Brimstone Moral Outrage about all kinds of things - and then they - the Republicans - take control of the Congress and the Presidency, as they have repeatedly since the 1970s - and they do absolutely nothing to further those ideals: e.g. Abortion is still legal. There has been no real assault on fire-arm ownership. Nothing has been proposed by those leaders that will actually help out the family. They talk about it and talk about it, but when the time comes, the Republican Party is a one trick pony: lower taxes for everyone and deregulation. 

Which is fine, I suppose - but how come the voting public doesn't hold them accountable for these empty promises that seem to be at the center of the platform. They don't even try to work this Moral Legislation.

Because they know it will never happen. But they can sound True Blue by railing against a Straw Giant like everyone's David facing Goliath . . .

Again, if anyone reading this blog can quote me an example on the contrary side, please submit it in the comments.

 

 

 

The Tea Party Doesn't Know Shit About the Constitution.

Keep in mind, you Fundamentalists, the Constitution was designed to tell us what is legal and illegal not what is right and wrong. The Constitution does not delineate morality.

Also, the only mention it makes vis-a-vis God/Religion is prohibitory - it tells us what those things can't do in terms of our society. Thus Glenn Beck's belief that Liberals want to "separate us from our Constitution and God" is in fact combining two things as if they are always in tandem, like peanut butter and jelly and salt and pepper. They are not. They are not mutually exclusive but to suggest that they naturally go together is to be guilty of what is referred to in Logical Fallacies as an illegal use of the "And Operator" - commonly known as the "Complex Question".

Beck believes that certain shithead progressives forsook the "faithful Christian Founders" and forced the country to adopt a slew of unconstitutional measures that triggered our long decline into Obama-era totalitarianism. If the Founding Fathers and framers of the Constitution were, in fact, Christians, I might be less inclined to choke on Beck's stupidity.

In fact there's a lot of strange mingling of biblical phrases and preachy sermon language when these Tea Partiers get together. Sarah Palin says that our country has entered into a season of "constitutional repentance". It seems to me that their frame of reference is essential Christian Fundamentalism. Like those folks, they seek a Sacred Text that is faultless and changeless and which represents a Golden Age. Like any Fundamentalist, they see in their good book, only what they want to see: confirmation of their preexisting beliefs. Like other fundamentalists, they don't sweat the details and they ignore all the ambiguities. And of course, in the long tradition of Christian Fundamentalists, they demonize and scathe those who disagree with their doctrine.

If these people were at all conversant in the way the Constitution works, there might be some room to negotiate with them. But, like all Fundamentalists - Christian, Muslim, Jewish - they see things only their way and ignore whatever exists that contradicts their purity of thought.

Thus we can have someone like Tea Partier Sharon Angle can assert that "Separation of church and state is an unconstitutional doctrine." Of course it's clearly stated in the Constitution that the opposite is true, but that doesn't matter.

Ms. Angle also tells us that "Government isn't what our Founding Fathers put into the Constitution." Which seems a bit odd when the Sacred Document itself establishes the power "to lay and collect taxes" in a Federal Government, and to "provide for the common defense and the general welfare" of the people. I don't know what Constitution Ms. Angle is reading. Perhaps she has a special one.

Nevertheless, the Tea Party movement has been extremely clear about one thing: the Constitution should be followed exactly, and it should always regulate our nation. Except when it doesn't work out the way they want it to. Then they begin to customize.

Ron Paul: America should stop automatically granting citizenship to "native born children of illegal immigrants". Which would violate the 14th Amendment.

Also by Paul: he would like to prevent federal contractors from lobbying Congress - a likely violation of their First Amendment right to redress.

Sarah Palin, when asked about Roe vs. Wade, was quoted as saying that the Constitution  does, in fact, guarantee "an inherent right to privacy" but then she suggested that such a thing would be better handled at the state level  - which clearly violates Amendment 14.

The Tea Party are Constitutional purists, all right. Like the Christian and Muslim Fundamentalists they oppose any change or modernized viewing of their Sacred Texts as being sacreligious. They decry modern additions to the Constitution as "progressive" and thus evil - as if the Constitution itself did not enshrine the very concept of the Amendment process because the Founding Fathers knew that time goes on and things change. But then they go about and begin lobbying for their own self serving amendments that do, in fact, violate the Constitution. Michell Bachhmann has suggested more than forty additions to the Constitution, including:
1. an amendment to ban flag burning, which violates the First Amendment.
2. a balanced budget amendment
3. a parents' rights amendment
4. a supermajority to raise the taxes amendment
5. an antiabortion amendment
6. an anti gay marriage amendment

etc. etc. etc. Most of these attempt to legitimize her own personal morality instead of understanding that the Constitution is a legal document that was meant only to create a Governmental Philosophy and Legal Document to frame what shall be "legal" vs. what shall be "illegal".

They need to go back to school or drop the idea that they're in any way riding on the coat tails of our Founding Fathers. They are not.

An Open Letter to the Tea Party

Whatever other failings you have, can you all please stop referring to the Founding Fathers, the framers of the Constitution, as God Fearing Christians? Because nothing could be further from the truth. Those who were not abject atheists were at best Deists: people who believe that there's probably a divine power and creator, but that it's no way concerned with humanity.

James Madison: 

 

"Ecclesiastical establishments tend to great ignorance and corruption, all of which facilitate the execution of mischievous projects." 

John Adams:  

"As I understand the Christian religion, it was, and is, a revelation.  But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends, have been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that ever existed?"

 

"I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved-- the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced!"
                            -letter to Thomas Jefferson

.

"The divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity.  Nowhere in the Gospels do we find a precept for Creeds, Confessions, Oaths, Doctrines, and whole cartloads of other foolish trumpery that we find in Christianity."

 

"This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there  were no religion in it."

Thomas Jefferson: 

 "Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced an inch towards uniformity.  What has been the effect of coercion?  To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites.  To support roguery and error all over the earth."
                             - "Notes on Virginia"

     "On the dogmas of religion, as distinguished from moral principles, all mankind, from the beginning of the world to this day, have been quarreling, fighting, burning and torturing one another, for abstractions unintelligible to themselves and to all others, and absolutely beyond the comprehension of the human mind."
                              - to Carey, 1816

                "I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature."

 

"We discover in the gospels a groundwork of vulgar ignorance, of things impossible, of superstition, fanaticism and fabrication ."

George Washington: while President Washington was a deeply private man, still those who knew him best said he was No Christian -

"Gouverneur Morris had often told me that General Washington believed no more of that system (Christianity) than did he himself."
                                -Thomas Jefferson, in his private journal, Feb. 1800

Benjamin Franklin:

"I wish it (Christianity) were more productive of good works ... I mean real good works ... not holy-day keeping, sermon-hearing ... or making long prayers, filled with flatteries and compliments despised by wise men, and much less capable of  pleasing the Deity."
                                  - Works, Vol. VII, p. 75

"Lighthouses are more helpful than churches." 

"In the affairs of the world, men are saved, not by faith, but by the lack of it."

Thomas Paine: 

"Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half of the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we call it the word of a demon than the word of God.  It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind. "

"Take away from Genesis the belief that Moses was the author, on which only the strange belief that it is the word of God has stood, and there remains nothing of Genesis but an anonymous book of stories, fables, and traditionary or invented absurdities, or of downright lies." 

"All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit."
                                 .

Jesus: There's Plenty of Him to Go Around

In my brief forty-six years of existence I have found my way into many a Christian church, most of which contain a multiplicity of pictures of Jesus H. Christ. We have him in many action poses and with a variety of facial expressions, most of them of the Why the Fuck did You Do That variety. Some are a bit alarming in His interaction with children - this is not a good time for Church Leaders to be seen frolicking with the young.

One of the best things about Jesus is how amorphous he is. Since no one has actually seen him in the flesh - or no one I know - we can make Jesus be whatever we want him to be - although most historians are pretty much in agreement that he was a Jew, and thus of a certain pallor and hair color.

Nevertheless, Jesus becomes what you want him to be, in a way that you feel comfortable . . .

. . . Thus, the Jesus one finds in Baptist churches makes him look like a Country singer from the seventies - the kind of guy who likes his fried chicken and is not out of place at a NASCAR event, or wearing a large belt buckle with a bull on it.

Now clearly, the blond hair and blue eyes look is distinctly Anglo-Irish. There's no way that Mr. Christ looked this way - but then look at the people who go to these churches. This is how they want him to look.

Catholic churches have differing Jesii based on what ethnic group makes up their congregations: the catholic church I grew up in was made up mostly of Italians and Portuguese and Basques. Thus, the Jesii in that church looked like someone you might find bussing tables at a local spaghetti house. He loves ya, of course, but don't fuck with him.

The Irish in my town went to a different Catholic church. Whenever i went there, as a youth, I was disconcerted to see that their Jesus was whiter and more Irish looking than our Dago Jesus. It caused a great spiritual angst in me. It was one of my first moments of doubt.

Several years later I found myself in the unenviable position of waiting in a bus station in Indiana, waiting for a connecting bus to Atlanta. A young black male sat next to me and preached his own angry version of the gospel, one that included a brutal Black Jesus that was gon' kick yer white ass, boi.This was the kinda Jesus you can imagine goin' ape-shit in the temple.




















Over time I've seen Native-American Jesii and Latino Jesii - he's everywhere, and he's always one of us!