Bill Moyers- Plutocracy Rising

Create A Crisis For The Super Rich

Steve Lerner of SEIU

Obama’s Speech, His Banks, Our Jobs

By Nomi Prins

Before tomorrow's 2012 pre-election speech in which President Obama's vocal elocution will be earnest, and results - to put it mildly - tepid, about how he could create jobs dammit, if only the Republicans would behave, it's interesting to note who's supporting Obama keep his job.
A cursory look at the early stages of his campaign fundraising reveals that the same group of people that benefitted from policies (bi-partisan) that lavished them with cheap money, secret loans, debt guarantees and other forms of perks not available to the average citizen, are backing him for President. Big Time.
And whereas it's true, Obama's most recent poll numbers look as abysmal as any President (save FDR who he will never, ever be) facing a depressed economy and a near double-digit 'official' unemployment rate (worse if you get beneath its massaged surface), this isn't effecting his most important support, the financial kind. To date, Obama's Presidential bid dosh comes largely from - wait for it - the financial sector.
Yes, the same sector that screwed the country over, and that, despite some unpleasant lawsuits they will likely settle,  remains as powerful, unrepentant, unaccountable, selfish and Main-Street-destabilizing as before Obama took office. No wonder he's been able to keep Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner by his side - someone has to allay Wall Street concerns that true retribution or meaningful regulatory repercussion will befall them.

Austerity: Why Capitalism Is Choosing Plan B | Common Dreams

Austerity: Why Capitalism Is Choosing Plan B | Common Dreams

A good explanation from economist Richard Wolff.

The President proposes more jobs - its about time

The President’s Bold Jobs Bill (Maybe)The President is sounding like a fighter these days. He even says he’ll be proposing a jobs bill in September – and if Republicans don’t go along he’ll fight for it through Election Day (or beyond).That’s a start. But read the small print and all he’s talked about so far is extending the payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits (good, but small potatoes), ratifying the Columbia and South Korea free trade agreements (not necessarily a job-creating move), and creating an infrastructure bank.

An infrastructure bank might be helpful, depending on its size. Which is the real question hovering over the entire putative jobs bill – its size.

Some of the President’s political advisors have been pushing for small-bore initiatives that they believe might have a chance of getting through the Republican just-say-no House. They also figure policy miniatures won’t give aspiring GOP candidates more ammunition to tar Obama as a big-government liberal.

But the President is sounding as if he’s rejected their advice.

That’s good policy and good politics.

Why do the Koch brothers want to end public education?

See how the oligarchy subverts public schools.

Stiglitz: more stimulus needed

Optimists argue that the short-run macroeconomic
impact of the deal to raise America's debt ceiling and
prevent sovereign default will be limited-roughly $25
billion in expenditure cuts in the coming year. But the
payroll-tax cut (which put more than $100 billion into
the pockets of ordinary Americans) was not renewed, and
surely business, anticipating the contractionary
effects down the line, will be even more reluctant to
lend.

'The end of the stimulus itself is contractionary. And
with housing prices continuing to fall, GDP growth
faltering, and unemployment remaining stubbornly high
(one of six Americans who would like a full-time job
still cannot get one), more stimulus, not austerity, is
needed-for the sake of balancing the budget as well.
The single most important driver of deficit growth is
weak tax revenues, owing to poor economic performance;
the single best remedy would be to put America back to
work. The recent debt deal is a move in the wrong
direction.'

Economist Joseph Stiglitz
Sydney Morning Herald
August 9, 2011
http://tinyurl.com/3jgxg4r

Credibility, debt, and the downgrade

Credibility, Chutzpah and Debt

By PAUL KRUGMAN

To understand the furor over the decision by Standard & Poor’s, the rating agency, to downgrade U.S. government debt, you have to hold in your mind two seemingly (but not actually) contradictory ideas. The first is that America is indeed no longer the stable, reliable country it once was. The second is that S.& P. itself has even lower credibility; it’s the last place anyone should turn for judgments about our nation’s prospects.

Let’s start with S.& P.’s lack of credibility. If there’s a single word that best describes the rating agency’s decision to downgrade America, it’s chutzpah — traditionally defined by the example of the young man who kills his parents, then pleads for mercy because he’s an orphan.

America’s large budget deficit is, after all, primarily the result of the economic slump that followed the 2008 financial crisis. And S.& P., along with its sister rating agencies, played a major role in causing that crisis, by giving AAA ratings to mortgage-backed assets that have since turned into toxic waste.

The Ideological Crisis of Western Capitalism. Joseph Stiglitz.

Sunday 10 July 2011

by: Joseph E. Stiglitz, Project Syndicate | Op-Ed

Just a few years ago, a powerful ideology – the belief in free and unfettered markets – brought the world to the brink of ruin. Even in its hey-day, from the early 1980’s until 2007, American-style deregulated capitalism brought greater material well-being only to the very richest in the richest country of the world. Indeed, over the course of this ideology’s 30-year ascendance, most Americans saw their incomes decline or stagnate year after year.

Moreover, output growth in the United States was not economically sustainable. With so much of US national income going to so few, growth could continue only through consumption financed by a mounting pile of debt.

I was among those who hoped that, somehow, the financial crisis would teach Americans (and others) a lesson about the need for greater equality, stronger regulation, and a better balance between the market and government. Alas, that has not been the case. On the contrary, a resurgence of right-wing economics, driven, as always, by ideology and special interests, once again threatens the global economy – or at least the economies of Europe and America, where these ideas continue to flourish.

The Big Lie must be exposed

 The big lie must be exposed.  The lie the rightwing has been perpetrating for nearly a generation. The lie that now almost all politicians in  the state have swallowed.  The lie claims the power of tax cuts to unleash entrepreneurialism, create jobs, grow the economy and generally improve everything but sliced bread.

    What happened in the economic crisis?  How did we get into this financial meltdown at a cost of over $20 trillion that cost many people their savings, their jobs, and  their homes.   And, why are we still suffering?  The film Inside Job : How Wall Street Became a Criminal Enterprise and Took Over Government, does a good job of answering these important questions in a comprehensible manner. 

  Anti tax radicals, promoters of  the lie, resist reasonable budgets at the state, county and city levels. The anti tax radicals repeat and repeat their slogans. They post endless comments on news stories.  Republicans in the California legislature continue to push this lie in order to protect their economic patrons  and they base their opposition to passing  a state  budget on this myth.

City and country budgets have lost tax revenues as property taxes, sales taxes, and utility taxes have declined.   As hundreds of jobs are lost,  the budget cut approach is making the recession worse.

This week we marked the 10th anniversary of the Bush tax cuts. Watching the corporate news this week, you might have missed the analysis that proves the only economic indicator that grew with the $2.5 trillion Bush giveaway was the gap between the rich and poor.

The Peasants Need Pitchforks

The Peasants Need Pitchforks/By Robert Scheer

A “working class hero,” John Lennon told us in his song of that title, “is something to be/ Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV/ And you think you’re so clever and classless and free/ But you’re still fucking peasants as far as I can see.”

The delusion of a classless America in which opportunity is equally distributed is the most effective deception perpetrated by the moneyed elite that controls all the key levers of power in what passes for our democracy. It is a myth blown away by Nobel Prize winner Joseph E. Stiglitz in the current issue of Vanity Fair. In an article titled “Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%” Stiglitz states that the top thin layer of the superwealthy controls 40 percent of all wealth in what is now the most sharply class-divided of all developed nations: “Americans have been watching protests against repressive regimes that concentrate massive wealth in the hands of an elite few. Yet, in our own democracy, 1 percent of the people take nearly a quarter of the nation’s income—an inequality even the wealthy will come to regret.” 

That is the harsh reality obscured by the media’s focus on celebrity gossip, sports rivalries and lotteries, situations in which the average person can pretend that he or she is plugged into the winning side. The illusion of personal power substitutes consumer sovereignty—which smartphone to purchase—for real power over the decisions that affect our lives. Even though most Americans accept that the political game is rigged, we have long assumed that the choices we make in the economic sphere as to career and home are matters that respond to our wisdom and will. But the banking tsunami that wiped out so many jobs and so much homeownership has demonstrated that most Americans have no real control over any of that, and while they suffer, the corporate rich reward themselves in direct proportion to the amount of suffering they have caused. 

Instead of taxing the superrich on the bonuses dispensed by top corporations such as Exxon, Bank of America, General Electric, Chevron and Boeing, all of which managed to avoid paying any federal corporate taxes last year, the politicians of both parties in Congress are about to accede to the Republican demand that programs that help ordinary folks be cut to pay for the programs that bailed out the banks.

Why We Must Raise Taxes on the Rich - Reich

Why We Must Raise Taxes on the Rich, ASAP!

America's wealthiest are paying a pittance in taxes, while the country is chipping away at its central foundations to meet budget shortfalls.

 It’s tax time. It’s also a time when right-wing Republicans are setting the agenda for massive spending cuts that will hurt most Americans.

Here’s the truth: The only way America can reduce the long-term budget deficit, maintain vital services, protect Social Security and Medicare, invest more in education and infrastructure, and not raise taxes on the working middle class is by raising taxes on the super rich. Even if we got rid of corporate welfare subsidies for big oil, big agriculture, and big Pharma – even if we cut back on our bloated defense budget – it wouldn’t be nearly enough.

The vast majority of Americans can’t afford to pay more. Despite an economy that’s twice as large as it was thirty years ago, the bottom 90 percent are still stuck in the mud. If they’re employed they’re earning on average only about $280 more a year than thirty years ago, adjusted for inflation. That’s less than a 1 percent gain over more than a third of a century. (Families are doing somewhat better but that’s only because so many families now have to rely on two incomes.)

Yet even as their share of the nation’s total income has withered, the tax burden on the middle has grown. Today’s working and middle-class taxpayers are shelling out a bigger chunk of income in payroll taxes, sales taxes, and property taxes than thirty years ago.It’s just the opposite for super rich.

Sacramento Teach In- National Teach In- on the economic crisis

On Tuesday, April 5, over 100  universities,  schools and community groups will participate in a teach-in on debt, austerity and how people are fighting back hosted by Cornel West and Frances Fox Piven from 11Am- 2PM.  A national teach-in will be streamed live from New York City, followed by local teach-ins and strategy discussions around the country.

Our Sac State  event will be in the Foothill Suite  of the  University Union from 11am- 2pm, April 5. Sponsored by DSA and the Campus Progressive Alliance.

It will be used to build for CFA day of Class Action on April 13.

Please see http://www.fightbackteachin.org for more information. 
and  http://talkingunion.wordpress.com/2011/03/29/national-teach-in/


Wall Street Banks, American corporations and their political allies have declared a one-sided war on the American people. This war is being waged at our schools and colleges, the workplace and in our communities.
 
Today, we are all  working harder and earning less while corporate profits soar .

Please encourage your friends, colleagues, co-workers and students to participate.

 For more information contact Duane Campbell at campd227@pacbell.net. Or see our blog at 

http://progressiveforum07.blogspot.com/.

The legacy of Cesar Chavez and the economic crisis of 2011

Cesar Chavez and Duane Campbell,1972

 César Chávez:

By  Duane E. Campbell

On March 31, 2011, California and ten  other states will celebrate the life and work of labor organizer Cesar Chavez.  State workers will have the day off.  Ironically, however, farm workers will not.  It is interesting that these states take a day off to recognize the contributions of a labor leader while cutting vital services for poor people.   Meanwhile the spirit of Cesar Chavez lives on in the struggle for union rights and justice in the fields of California, Ohio, and Florida as well as  in the struggles for union rights and workers dignity in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana and Pennsylvania.  What can we learn from the creation of the UFW that is useful today?

 Along with Dolores Huerta, Philip Vera Cruz, and others, César created the United Farm Workers  (UFW) the first successful union of farm workers in  U.S. history.  There had been more than ten prior attempts to build a farm workers union.

            Each of the prior attempts to organize farm worker unions were destroyed by racism and corporate power. Chávez chose to build a union that incorporated the strategies of social movements and community organizing  and allied itself  with the churches, students,  and organized labor.  The successful creation of the UFW changed the nature of labor organizing  in the Southwest  and contributed significantly to the growth  of Latino politics in the U.S. The UFW has shown unions that immigrants can  and must be organized.   

        César Chavez, Dolores Huerta,  Philip Vera Cruz, and others deliberately created a multiracial organization, Mexican immigrants,  Mexican American, Filipino, African-American, Dominican, Puerto Rican and Arab workers, among others, have been part of the UFW.  This cross racial organizing  was necessary in order to combat the  prior divisions and exploitations of workers based upon race and language. Dividing the workers on racial, language lines and immigration status  always left the corporations the winners.

Local School Districts face financial trouble

We are told this morning that each of the major school districts in the county are in financial trouble. Last year, when Natomas was in trouble, the Sacramento Bee and County Superintendent David Gordon opined that the Board of Education was financially irresponsible. However, realistically, the economic troubles were caused by the state and national economic crisis. The state has provided schools with $18 billion less in state aid over the last three years- thus the local districts are going broke.
Note to Sacramento Bee.  It wasn't the School Board, it was the economic crisis!
How did we get into this fix? Well, first was the economic collapse caused by the bankers and the real estate fraud artists. That took 13 Trillion from the economy crashing the U.S. and the international economy. That produced a dramatic drop in sales tax and property taxes and a California economic crisis. School funding reveals the nature of crisis. We have larger classes and fewer teachers. School reform has stopped- except for the politicians hot air. School funding makes up a total of 30% of the state budget. Any crisis in the state budget and any cuts in the state budget will make school budgets worse. The crisis will get worse.
Politicians and editorial writers discuss the economic crisis as if the crisis is a neutral act, or as if a natural act. Like rain or snow. The school budgets are a disaster not because of some natural phenomena. The crisis was created by people and policies of our government and of the financial system.

"The reality is that we got into this mess because of an overwhelming excess of greed and stupidity on the part of the Wall Street bankers and the people deciding economic policy. We continue to face excessive rates of unemployment because of a continuing reluctance to pursue policies that can restore the economy to health.”says economist Dean Baker.

California will need to extend the current taxes to fund the schools and to repair the social safety net. Anti tax radicals and Republicans oppose any tax increases and they oppose allowing these issues to be placed on the ballot so the people can vote.