Every good and honest Chinese person, please think: So much public housing has been sold to individuals, so many state-owned enterprises and so much land have been sold, and nearly all state-owned property has been sold off. But where has all the money from these sales gone? It goes without saying that state-owned property belongs to the entire people. But what did the people get? Led by an authoritarian regime, the opaque process of privatization has made a small number of people rich, but what did the vast number of ordinary people get? Every good and honest Chinese person, please think: When Japan, Korea, and Taiwan were in the process of industrializing, they were able to make the overwhelming majority of their people prosperous. Why is it that during China’s industrialization the ordinary people are becoming poorer? Why is it that in just the last few decades China has gone from being a country with the smallest gap between the rich and the poor to one with the largest? It is because the unfair system has made a small number of people incredibly wealthy, and the vast majority of people remain poor. (More here.)
How much respect can you give the media when they fail to condemn this? (Answer: Precious little.)
The corruption traitor that is Scott Walker and how he sold out.
If you don’t agree with this, you are, as a matter of fact, wrong:
The Republican message is bloated government is responsible for the lousy economy that most people continue to experience. Cut the bloat and jobs and wages will return.
Nothing could be further from the truth….
***
The truth that Obama and Democrats must tell is government spending has absolutely nothing to do with high unemployment, declining wages, falling home prices, and all the other horribles that continue to haunt most Americans.
Indeed, too little spending will prolong the horribles for years more because there’s not enough demand in the economy without it.
The truth is that while the proximate cause of America’s economic plunge was Wall Street’s excesses leading up to the crash of 2008, its underlying cause — and the reason the economy continues to be lousy for most Americans — is so much income and wealth have been going to the very top that the vast majority no longer has the purchasing power to lift the economy out of its doldrums. American’s aren’t buying cars (they bought 17 million new cars in 2005, just 12 million last year). They’re not buying homes (7.5 million in 2005, 4.6 million last year). They’re not going to the malls (high-end retailers are booming but Wal-Mart’s sales are down).
Only the richest 5 percent of Americans are back in the stores because their stock portfolios have soared. The Dow Jones Industrial Average has doubled from its crisis low. Wall Street pay is up to record levels. Total compensation and benefits at the 25 major Wall St firms had been $130 billion in 2007, before the crash; now it’s close to $140 billion.
But a strong recovery can’t be built on the purchases of the richest 5 percent.
The truth is if the super-rich paid their fair share of taxes, government wouldn’t be broke. If Governor Scott Walker hadn’t handed out tax breaks to corporations and the well-off, Wisconsin wouldn’t be in a budget crisis. If Washington hadn’t extended the Bush tax cuts for the rich, eviscerated the estate tax, and created loopholes for private-equity and hedge-fund managers, the federal budget wouldn’t look nearly as bad. (Link. Of course, no one who matters listens to Reich.)
Just if you need some proof how completely anti-American Republicans policies and goals are, there’s this.
This won’t stop Walker. Maybe if the Big Media bothered to start sounding the tocsin (actually, they’re misrepresenting things*) that what he’s trying to do is a) fiscally irresponsible and b) the legalization of simple corruption, maybe. On the other hand, these are sick people. Took World War II (and the disaster of the Nazis’ fiscal irresponsibility) to bring down the Nazis. (*And here the Times fails to note that part of the problem with the Wisconsin bill is the fiscally irresponsible corruption.)
Bailing out speculators and cutting public sector spending gets you this is Ireland. Laws are in fact laws, contrary to Republican lies; if it happened like this in Ireland, it’ll happen here:
Unemployment is up to 13.8 percent (it was as low as 4.2 percent as recently as 2005); public spending has been savagely and repeatedly cut since 2008; the deficit has risen to 14.3 percent; and current predictions suggest that 100,000 people will emigrate in the next several years, from a population of 4.3 million. The bill from the struggling banks may, in the end, total upward of $135 billion 100 billion euros, in an economy with a G.D.P. of $220 billion 160 billion euros. (Link.)
Atrios errs again: Hoover was far more progressive than the current Republicans.
Josh Marshall is doubly-wrong here: There are no Republican “first line” candidates for president because the entire party’s pretty much sociopathic and/or completely corrupt and b) history, before it died, said you didn’t have to be a first line candidate to get elected.
Wisconsin: Even worse than you think. First California, then Arizona, now Wisconsin and Florida, not to mention the states with cratered home values — time to rename us the United S***holes of America…:
So the right question — the only question — is whether government workers are getting an overall good deal compared with private-sector workers. Why, then, are we hearing so much about the meaningless contribution comparison?
The answer is simple: it’s because doing the comparison right doesn’t yield the desired answer. The new report by the Times gets the same answer as other studies: low-paid government workers do a bit better than their private-sector counterparts, but others if anything do worse.
Luo and Cooper report this as a “mixed answer” — but in terms of the political debate, it’s a body blow to the union-bashers, whose whole position is that public-sector workers are welfare queens in Cadillacs. They need to show outrageous overpayment, not rough equivalence at best.
And so they turn to a meaningless comparison that, to the unwary, sounds as if it supports their case.
Yes, some public-sector workers are overpaid. So are some private-sector workers. Doesn’t anyone read Dilbert? But the whole idea that union excesses are at the core of state and local fiscal problems is false, and only deliberate obfuscation keeps that from being obvious. (Link.)
Law and order: Actually, the Republicans want lawlessness. Prof. K.:
What’s happening in Wisconsin is, instead, a power grab — an attempt to exploit the fiscal crisis to destroy the last major counterweight to the political power of corporations and the wealthy. And the power grab goes beyond union-busting. The bill in question is 144 pages long, and there are some extraordinary things hidden deep inside.
For example, the bill includes language that would allow officials appointed by the governor to make sweeping cuts in health coverage for low-income families without having to go through the normal legislative process.
And then there’s this: “Notwithstanding ss. 13.48 (14) (am) and 16.705 (1), the department may sell any state-owned heating, cooling, and power plant or may contract with a private entity for the operation of any such plant, with or without solicitation of bids, for any amount that the department determines to be in the best interest of the state. Notwithstanding ss. 196.49 and 196.80, no approval or certification of the public service commission is necessary for a public utility to purchase, or contract for the operation of, such a plant, and any such purchase is considered to be in the public interest and to comply with the criteria for certification of a project under s. 196.49 (3) (b).”
What’s that about? The state of Wisconsin owns a number of plants supplying heating, cooling, and electricity to state-run facilities (like the University of Wisconsin). The language in the budget bill would, in effect, let the governor privatize any or all of these facilities at whim. Not only that, he could sell them, without taking bids, to anyone he chooses. And note that any such sale would, by definition, be “considered to be in the public interest.”
If this sounds to you like a perfect setup for cronyism and profiteering — remember those missing billions in Iraq? — you’re not alone. Indeed, there are enough suspicious minds out there that Koch Industries, owned by the billionaire brothers who are playing such a large role in Mr. Walker’s anti-union push, felt compelled to issue a denial that it’s interested in purchasing any of those power plants. Are you reassured?
David Becker, douchebag of the day. SEC supports money laundering if it’s money in his wallet. (And being a Dem doesn’t make it right. You think I’m a goose-stepper like I’d be if I was a Republican?? Wrong is wrong.)
What we think, or what we know, or what we believe is, in the end, of little consequence. The only consequence is what we do. — John Ruskin
Great. Getting lessons in free, democratic protest from Egypt.
Funny (actually not) how the Big Media can’t make very much of the likely connection between economics — decreased wealth and greatly increasing prices for commodities) and the outbreak of protests in dictatorships with command economies….
“One nation, under Mammon….” Hey, where are the Christofascists supporting their whupped god? Are they okay with a Mammonite theocracy? Or maybe, like Westboro Baptist Church, they’re distracted by a little craziness….
Now Libya, maybe. Our Leaders must be crapping their pants if they think about it — that or drunk with hubris. Of course, to be really scared, they must be aware of and agree with this piece by Michael Schwartz.
This is essentially correct. Fell free to try to demonstrate how it's wrong.
You can see the low level at which Our Leaders debate issues here. Shameful.
…Tea Party governor Scott Walker… handed $137M in tax breaks to the wealthy, declared an emergency budget shortfall of $140M, and decided to cover it by gutting the state’s unions. (Link.) And Professor Krugman explains it all to you here.
Money in general and large amounts of money in particular have become more accepted parts of general American culture than they were when I was a child. It seems quite plausible that this is also changing the way that Americans behave and making the ideology of individual autonomy even stronger than it already was. Which I don’t think is such a good thing.
Why they didn’t: because it was clear enough in the news media that there was at least a serious doubt:
Colin Powell, the US secretary of state at the time of the Iraq invasion, has called on the CIA and Pentagon to explain why they failed to alert him to the unreliability of a key source behind claims of Saddam Hussein’s bio-weapons capability.
Modern Big Media journalism’s complete disconnect from reality; Alex Cockburn:
In any discussion of the role or the internet in fuelling the upsurges across the Middle East, Wikileaks should be central. Tunisians were able to read the unsparing assessment of the kleptocratic regime oppressing them, courtesy of US Ambassador Gordon Gray’s cables, secured by Wikileaks. Egyptians were able to read hitherto secret details of the role of Omar Suleiman in renditions, of Egypt’s abject services for the US and Israel.
The New York Times, to whom Assange made available some of his Wikileaks, repaid him (as did The Guardian ) with a vulgar onslaught by the Times’ editor, Bill Keller, essentially endorsing patently factitious accusations concerning the supposed nature of Assange’s sexual relations with two Swedish women, and also trumpeting the high minded concern of the New York Times with protecting the lives of US personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Don’t you think it might have crossed Keller’s mind to mute that trumpet, given the role played by the New York Times in the attack on Iraq in 2003, with fake story after fake story by its reporter, Judith Miller, about Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction. The Times’ hands have plenty of blood on them. According to Michael Monk’s site, in the Iraq theater for US combat casualties the week ending Feb 15, the total rose to 77,735. That includes 35,540 dead and wounded from what the Pentagon classifies as “hostile” causes and 42,195 dead and medically evacuated (of Feb.7) from “non-hostile” causes.
‘Nuff said:
DAVID: Well, Dylan, I think this is a very revealing move. You know, Aristotle taught us the tyrants first surround themselves with bodyguards who will go after anybody who challenges what they do. We shouldn’t forget that historical lesson. You know, the pensions they want to go after, they’re not very big in Wisconsin. I just calculated the numbers. The average Wisconsin state employee gets $24,500 a year. That’s not a very big pension. The state pension plan, 15% of the money going into it each year is being paid out to Wall Street to manage the money. That’s a really huge high percentage to pay out to Wall Street to manage the money. And what I think is going on here is this is the state as we began where public employee unions were first by law allowed, and if this governor can break these unions then you’re going to see this happen all across the country and further drive down wages. And if you can drive down wages in the public sector, it means private employers can drive down wages in the private sector. (Link.)
It’s cool how Republicans can sell the most awfully destructive policies as some sort of good and people then lap up their s***. Of course, during the last round of prosperity, too many people opted for embracing debt instead of saving so clearly too many people are simply incapable of comprehending why Scott’s decision is so awfully wrong. But, then none of the moderne believers believe in the future anyway.
Atrios is wrong: The post-9/11 era has been about ceaseless horses***.
Retard: S.C.’s Lee Bright. Can’t summarize, you gotta read this.
It brings back memories of Alan Greenspan, who was a stern advocate of fiscal discipline — until a Republican was in the White House, and he suddenly declared that we needed to cut taxes to prevent too rapid a reduction in US debt. (Link.)
Out Of My Mind 