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02:01:26 05/25/12
Myth McConnell
[LESS INFO] 0 VIEWS | ADDED 02:01:26 05/25/12
In the wake of the debt-ceiling crisis he helped manufacture last summer, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell boasted it was "a hostage that's worth ransoming" which "also is a new template" for the future. As it turns out, those threats were among the few true words McConnell has uttered. Because while he's promising once again to blackmail the White House over the debt ceiling, the Kentucky Republican claimed it's because "we'd like to do something about the nation's biggest problem, spending and debt, which of course is the reason for this economic malaise." Of course, as the data show, it's the very austerity policies here and in Europe which are costing jobs and hurting growth.
But Mitch McConnell's myth-making hardly ends there. On the economy, taxes, deficits, health care and so much else, virtually all of McConnell's talking points are tried - and untrue.
( Click a link to jump to the details for each below ):
* "Obama Made the Economy Worse"
* "No Evidence Whatsoever That the Bush Tax Cuts Actually Diminished Revenue"
* "Punishing Job Creators"
* "We Look a Lot Like Greece Already"
* Public Sector Layoffs Are a "Local" Problem
* 47 Million Uninsured Americans "Don't Go Without Health Care"
* The Public Option "May Cost You Your Life"
* Democrats Are "Sticking It to Seniors with Cuts to Medicare"
"Obama Made the Economy Worse"
For months, Mitch McConnell (for example, here , here and here ) regurgitated the GOP talking point that President Obama " made the economy worse ." Sadly for the trickle-down mythmakers of the Republican Party , the facts and the overwhelming consensus of economists - including John McCain's 2008 brain trust - prove otherwise. President Obama not only did not make the American economy worse; no thanks to obstructionist Republicans in Congress he saved the United States from "Great Depression 2.0" and put the nation on the path to recovery.
Start, for example, with the conclusions of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Despite Republican mythmaking that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) "created zero jobs," in November the CBO reported that the stimulus added up to 2.4 million jobs and boosted GDP by as much as 1.9 points in the previous quarter. As The Hill explained, the CBO has found that "President Obama's 2009 stimulus package continues to benefit the struggling economy": >
The agency said the measure raised gross domestic product by between 0.3 and 1.9 percent in the third quarter of 2011, which ended Sept. 30. The Commerce Department said Tuesday that GDP in that quarter was only 2 percent total...
By CBO's numbers, the $800 billion stimulus added up to 0.9 million jobs in 2009, 3.3 million jobs in 2010 and 2.6 million jobs in 2011.
Mark Zandi , an adviser to John McCain in 2008, was adamant on positive role of the stimulus. Federal intervention, he and Princeton economist Alan Blinder argued in August 2010, literally saved the United States from a second Great Depression. In " How the Great Recession Was Brought to an End ," Blinder and Zandi's models confirmed the impact of the Obama recovery program and other federal interventions dating back to 2008, concluding that "laissez faire was not an option": >
We find that its effects on real GDP, jobs, and inflation are huge, and probably averted what could have been called Great Depression 2.0. For example, we estimate that, without the government's response, GDP in 2010 would be about 11.5% lower, payroll employment would be less by some 8½ million jobs, and the nation would now be experiencing deflation.
"No Evidence Whatsoever That the Bush Tax Cuts Actually Diminished Revenue"
In his version of the Republican myth that " tax cuts pay for themselves ," President Bush confidently proclaimed, "You cut taxes and the tax revenues increase." As it turned out, not so much.
After Ronald Reagan tripled the national debt with his supply-side tax cuts, George W. Bush doubled it again with his own. (Reagan's performance would have been much worse, had he not raised taxes 11 times to help make up the shocking shortfall.) As a share of American GDP, tax revenues peaked in 2000; that is, before the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003. As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities concluded, the Bush tax cuts accounted for half of the deficits during his tenure, and if made permanent , over the next decade would cost the U.S. Treasury more than Iraq, Afghanistan, the recession, TARP and the stimulus - combined .
Nevertheless, as the Republican Party waged its all-out attack in 2010 to preserve the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy , the GOP's number two man in the Senate provided the talking point to help sell the $70 billion annual giveaway to America's rich. "You should never," Arizona's Jon Kyl declared, "have to offset the cost of a deliberate decision to reduce tax rates on Americans." For his part, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell rushed to defend Kyl's fuzzy math: >
"There's no evidence whatsoever that the Bush tax cuts actually diminished revenue. They increased revenue because of the vibrancy of these tax cuts in the economy. So I think what Senator Kyl was expressing was the view of virtually every Republican on that subject."
That may have been a view universally shared by virtually every Republican, but it happens to be wrong.
"Punishing Job Creators"
For years, Senator McConnell has been among the legions of Republicans wrongly arguing that even the slightest increase in taxes for the wealthiest Americans is tantamount to " punishing job creators ." As his colleague John Boehner put it: >
"The top one percent of wage earners in the United States...pay forty percent of the income taxes...The people he's [President Obama] is talking about taxing are the very people that we expect to reinvest in our economy."
If so, those expectations were sadly unmet under George W. Bush. After all, the last time the top tax rate was 39.6 percent during the Clinton administration , the United States enjoyed rising incomes, 23 million new jobs and budget surpluses. Under Bush? Not so much.
On January 9, 2009, the Republican-friendly Wall Street Journal summed it up with an article titled simply, " Bush on Jobs: the Worst Track Record on Record ." (The Journal's interactive table quantifies his staggering failure relative to every post-World War II president.) The meager one million jobs created under President Bush didn't merely pale in comparison to the 23 million produced during Bill Clinton's tenure. In September 2009, the Congressional Joint Economic Committee charted Bush's job creation disaster, the worst since Hoover.
That dismal performance prompted David Leonhardt of the New York Times to ask last fall, "Why should we believe that extending the Bush tax cuts will provide a big lift to growth?" His answer was unambiguous: >
Those tax cuts passed in 2001 amid big promises about what they would do for the economy. What followed? The decade with the slowest average annual growth since World War II. Amazingly, that statement is true even if you forget about the Great Recession and simply look at 2001-7... >
Is there good evidence the tax cuts persuaded more people to join the work force (because they would be able to keep more of their income)? Not really. The labor-force participation rate fell in the years after 2001 and has never again approached its record in the year 2000. >
Is there evidence that the tax cuts led to a lot of entrepreneurship and innovation? Again, no. The rate at which start-up businesses created jobs fell during the past decade.
The data are clear: lower taxes for America's so called job-creators don't mean either faster economic growth or more jobs for Americans .
As Jared Bernstein aptly put it earlier this month: >
"Tax cuts and job growth? They're just not that into each other."
"We Look a Lot Like Greece Already"
As their last round of hostage-taking of the debt heated up last summer, Republicans including Mitch McConnell warned, "We look a lot like Greece."
hile FactCheck.org was quick to conclude that "whatever it 'looks like' through Sen. McConnell's eyes -- the fact is that the U.S. is not yet a fiscal wreck of Greek proportions," its analysis hardly does justice to the scale of the Republican myth-making. The Washington Monthly's Steve Benen summed it up quite succinctly: >
New rule: every time a confused Republican lawmakers compare the United States' fiscal conditions to that of Greece, an angel loses its wings.
Look, the very idea is just crazy. The U.S. has extremely low interest rates and foreign investor are happy to loan us money; Greece has extremely high interest rates and no one is eager to loan the country money. The U.S. has our own currency; Greece has the Euro. We have a great credit rating (for now); Greece has an awful credit rating. We have a manageable debt; Greece has a debt crisis. We're a large country with an enormous economy; Greece is a small country with a small economy. We have one of the world's most stable systems of government (at least until six months ago); Greece's government structure is a little shaky.
For his part, Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has been decrying the " Hellenization of economic discourse " for months. "Greece -- with a long history of fiscal irresponsibility, very high public debt, and a country without a currency -- doesn't bear much resemblance even to the other peripheral Europeans, let alone the United States."
>
Here's debt levels (if you ask me the IMF projections for Greece are too optimistic). >
Plus there's the having your own currency thing, and the fact that the interest rate on US 10-year bonds is 3.11 percent, on Greek bonds 16.82 percent. >
Otherwise we're exactly the same.
Public Sector Layoffs a "Local" Problem
Last fall, Minority Leader McConnell led the GOP opposition to President Obama's proposed $400 billion American Jobs Act. The loss of hundreds of thousands of police, firefighter, teacher and other public sector jobs, he insisted, was a "local" problem.
As it turns out, the 600,000 state and local government jobs already lost since December 2008 is very much a national issue. That " anti-stimulus ," it turns out, has added a full point to America's unemployment rate .
Last month, the Economic Policy Institute noted that the private sector had gained 2.8 million jobs while federal, state and local governments shed 584,000 just since June 2009. EPI concluded that the public sector job losses constituted "an unprecedented drag on the recovery": >
"The current recovery is the only one that has seen public-sector losses over its first 31 months."
Back in March, Paul Krugman expressed the same point , but with some inconvenient historical context for the Party of Reagan. "In fact, if it weren't for this destructive fiscal austerity," Krugman explained, "Our unemployment rate would almost certainly be lower now than it was at a comparable stage of the 'Morning in America' recovery during the Reagan era." >
We're talking big numbers here. If government employment under Mr. Obama had grown at Reagan-era rates, 1.3 million more Americans would be working as schoolteachers, firefighters, police officers, etc., than are currently employed in such jobs. >
And once you take the effects of public spending on private employment into account, a rough estimate is that the unemployment rate would be 1.5 percentage points lower than it is, or below 7 percent -- significantly better than the Reagan economy at this stage.
47 Million Uninsured Americans "Don't Go Without Health Care"
McConnell the " strict obstructionist " was naturally in the forefront of the all-out Republican effort to block health care reform at any cost. As he repeatedly put it in June 2009 , "all of us want reform, but not reform that denies, delays, or rations health care." To prove his point, McConnell didn't merely trot out a Canadian patient who came to the U.S. for special treatment, but insisted to NBC's David Gregory that no American does without health care now. >
GREGORY: Do you think it's a moral issue that 47 million Americans go without health insurance? >
McCONNELL: Well, they don't go without health care. It's not the most efficient way to provide it. As we know, the doctors in the hospitals are sworn to provide health care. We all agree it is not the most efficient way to provide health care to find somebody only in the emergency room and then pass those costs on to those who are paying for insurance. So it is important, I think, to reduce the number of uninsured. The question is, what is the best way to do that?
That President George W. Bush, Tom Delay and Paul Broun among other Republicans also claimed "people have access to health care in America...after all, you just go to an emergency room" doesn't make it any more true. As the numbers show -- 50 million uninsured, another 25 million uninsured, 45,000 unnecessary deaths, one in five Americans "self-rationing" care and 62 percent of all personal bankruptcies being related to medical bills -- the crisis is far worse than the one Mitch McConnell pretends doesn't exist.
The Public Option "May Cost You Your Life"
While Mitch McConnell insisted that the lack of insurance doesn't prevent anyone from getting health care, in 2009 he suggested having coverage could prove fatal . Months before the passage of the Affordable Care Act without the so-called "public option," Minority Leader McConnell said it would be deadly.
That irresponsible fear-mongering came during an appearance on Dennis Miller's radio show in October 2009. Blasting the "opt-out" version of the public option then being considered in the Senate bill, the Senator from the state ranked 45th in health care performance insisted access to coverage could kill you : >
MCCONNELL: Well, it doesn't make any difference frankly whether you opt-in or you opt-out, it's still a government plan. You know, Medicaid, the program for the poor now, states can opt-out of that, but none of them have. I think if you have any kind of government insurance program, you're going to be stuck with it and it will lead us in the direction of the European style, you know, sort of British-style, single payer, government run system. And those systems are known for delays, denial of care and, you know, if your particular malady doesn't fit the government regulation, you don't get the medication. >
MILLER: Right. >
MCCONNELL: And it may cost you your life. I mean, we don't want to go down that path.
As a Harvard Medical School study found, each year the path of no health insurance leads 45,000 Americans to the grave.
Democrats Are "Sticking It to Seniors with Cuts to Medicare"
For two years running, Mitch McConnell has been among the 40 GOP Senator voting for Paul Ryan's House budget plan to privatize and inevitably ration Medicare now used by 46 million American seniors. In the late 1990's, McConnell joined in Newt Gingrich's effort to slash almost 15 percent from the Medicare budget so that the program would "wither on the vine." But when the Affordable Care Act called for savings from the private Medicare Advantage program used by only 15 percent of elderly beneficiaries, it was Mitch McConnell who warned seniors about the mythical danger.
In July 2009, McConnell tried to scare America's 46 million Medicare beneficiaries by declaring, "The administration plans to use Medicare cuts to fund yet another new government program." Hoping to build on the momentum of the GOP's disgusting and demonstrably false " euthanasia " talking point, McConnell cautioned: >
"Some in Congress seem to be in such a rush to pass just any reform, rather than the right reform, that they're looking everywhere for the money to pay for it -- even if it means sticking it to seniors with cuts to Medicare."
That salvo comes just two weeks after McConnell promised to defeat health care reform in the Senate, warning America's highest turnout voting block: >
"They are going to pay for this plan by cutting Medicare, that is cutting seniors."
Those claims, the New York Times pointed out the day after the Republicans' overwhelming triumph in the 2010 midterms elections were misleading at best and false at worst. But, sadly, they worked .
And so it goes.
As Joshua Green documented last year in the Atlantic , "Mitch McConnell is a master manipulator and strategist" whose "relentless tactics have made his party victorious." But that doesn't make him a truth-teller, except on those rare occasions when he reveals his true motivations. During the debt ceiling stand-off last summer , McConnell briefly got weak in the knees at the prospect of U.S. sovereign default not because it would be a disaster for the nation, but because it could damage his Republican Party : >
"I refuse to help Barack Obama get re-elected by marching Republicans into a position where we have co-ownership of a bad economy. ... If we go into default, he will say that Republicans are making the economy worse and try to convince the public -- maybe with some merit, if people stop getting their Social Security checks and military families start getting letters saying service people overseas don't get paid. It's an argument he could have a good chance of winning, and all of the sudden we have co-ownership of a bad economy," he said. "That is very bad positioning going into an election."
Especially an election which marks the culmination of Mitch McConnell's work over the past three and a half years: >
"The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president."
(This piece also appears at Perrspectives .)
0 Views
06:13:19 05/03/12
May Day 2012 Immigrant Worker Justice Throwdown | Occupy Wall Street Video
[LESS INFO] 0 VIEWS | ADDED 06:13:19 05/03/12
May Day 2012 Immigrant Worker Justice Throwdown | Occupy Wall Street Video
Occupy Wall Street's Immigrant Worker Justice Tour takes hundreds of protesters (and a brass band) through midtown Manhattan, calling out companies and bosses at several sites where immigrant workers' rights are threatened. When some of the demonstrators take the street, riot police arrive. But members of the OWS Immigrant Worker Justice Working Group marshall the crowd onto the sidewalks and into block-long picket lines to safely avoid police confrontation. **NOTE**Title at 5:04 should read "Industrial Workers of the World" Picket #1: Shade Global, offices of Sheryl Shade, former employer of domestic worker Patricia Francois. In 2008 Francois, an immigrant from Trinidad, was physically assaulted while trying to protect the little girl she cared for from her father's verbal abuse. When Francois tried to call the police, Matthew Mazar punched the domestic worker in the face and injured her hand while screaming racist, sexist insults at her. Ever since, Francois has been locked in litigation with Shade and Mazar. While they enjoy a swanky 1% lifestyle, Francois has gone without work while bravely battling breast cancer. Picket #2: Praesidian Capital, 295 Madison Ave. Workers at Hot and Crusty bakery on the Upper East Side are facing a vicious anti-organizing campaign from Mark Samson, a managing partner at private equity firm Praesidian Capital. After enduring years of wage theft, discrimination, intimidation and sexual harassment on the job, workers joined together to form ... From: OccupyTVNY Views: 1720 37 ratings Time: 06:27 More in News & Politics
1 Views
18:00:07 04/15/12
Gibbons released into wild - Radio Gibbon - BBC
[LESS INFO] 1 VIEWS | ADDED 18:00:07 04/15/12
Gibbons released into wild - Radio Gibbon - BBC
Chanee and the team work to release a family of gibbons back into the wild. They anxiously wait to see if the family will adapt to life without walls after spending years in captivity. Amazing clip taken from Natural World: Radio Gibbon first transmitted in 2009. Subscribe to the BBC Worldwide channel: bit.ly BBC Worldwide Channel: www.youtube.com Check out the Radio Gibbon playlist: bit.ly Check out the latest natural history clips here: bit.ly From: BBCWorldwide Views: 6887 70 ratings Time: 02:30 More in Pets & Animals
2 Views
02:00:17 03/08/12
Romney Claims His 'Bold' Tax Plan 'Can't Be Scored'
[LESS INFO] 2 VIEWS | ADDED 02:00:17 03/08/12
Two weeks ago, Mitt Romney unveiled what he has repeatedly deemed a " bold " plan to deliver a 20 percent across-the-board tax cut. As it turns out, the plan isn't so bold after all. For starters, it's largely a retread of the 15 percent tax cut scheme Bob Dole rode to defeat in 1996. And after a wave of analyses showed Romney's plan would produce oceans of red ink while giving the rich yet another payday courtesy of the U.S. Treasury, Mitt admitted today that his plan " can't be scored " because "I haven't laid out all of the details."
As The Hill reported today, the GOP frontrunner is now essentially claiming he deserves an "A" because the dog ate his homework : >
"So I haven't laid out all of the details about how we're going to deal with each deduction, so I think it's kind of interesting for the groups to try and score it, because frankly it can't be scored, because those kinds of details will have to be worked out with Congress, and we have a wide array of options."
As Ezra Klein's Wonkblog rightly concluded: >
"Let's be clear on this: A tax plan that can't be scored because it doesn't include sufficient details is not a plan. It's a gesture towards a plan, or a statement of intended direction, or perhaps an unusually wonky daydream. But it's not a plan."
Romney's may not be a plan , but it is a recipe. At a time of record income inequality , the lowest federal tax burden in 60 years , and large budget deficits without listing all of his ingredients, Mitt Romney is just offering a recipe for exploding national debt and a windfall for the wealthy.
As the Washington Post explained in its discussion of an analysis by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, "until the campaign offers a more specific plan, Budget Watch analysts said Romney's entire framework would add about $2.6 trillion to the debt by 2021." That's likely a conservative estimate. As ThinkProgress and the Washington Post's Lori Montgomery and Ezra Klein documented, Mitt Romney's risky new scheme makes George W. Bush look like Karl Marx: >
Romney's claim that his plan would promote job and economic growth while reducing the deficit is also likely false. The Bush tax cuts were promoted under the same guise, only to blow a $2.5-trillion hole in the federal budget that was accompanied by worst performance of any post-war expansion" for growth in investment, GDP, and job creation. Romney's tax cuts are even more expensive, clocking in at a cost of more than $10.7 trillion over the next decade and reducing revenue to a paltry 15 percent of GDP, according to Linden. Balancing the budget on those terms, as Romney claims he will do, would be next to impossible.
And as Klein made clear in his 150 word description of the Romney plan , there's only one place Mitt can look for the money: >
Mitt Romney is promising that taxes will go down, defense spending will go up, and old-people programs won't change for this generation of retirees. So three of his four options for deficit reduction -- taxes, old-people programs, and defense -- are now either contributing to the deficit or are off-limits for the next decade. >
Romney is also promising that he will pay for his tax cuts, pay for his defense spending, and reduce total federal spending by more than $6 trillion over the next 10 years. But the only big pot of money left to him is poor-people programs. So, by simple process of elimination, poor-people programs will have to be cut dramatically. There's no other way to make those numbers work.
The numbers won't work, that is, unless President Romney both savaged federal spending and eliminated deductions for workers, families and businesses that cost Uncle Sam over $1 trillion a year. But in typical Romney fashion, his campaign is refusing to say which loopholes it would close while promising to maintain the ones voters care about most. His economic adviser Glenn Hubbard admitted Romney's cowardice, explaining "it is not his intention to take on any specific deduction or exclusion and eliminate it." And as The New York Times reported, Romney promised last Wednesday his plan would somehow be "revenue neutral" and raise the burden on upper-income taxpayers, even as he balanced the budget.
Two months before Romney rolled out his desperate 20 percent tax cut, the reliably Republican Wall Street Journal essentially labeled Mitt a coward when it came to making the tough choices in his economic plan. Then and now, Mitt admitted that discretion was the better part of valor: >
Amid such generalities, it's hard not to conclude that the candidate is trying to avoid offering any details that might become a political target. And he all but admits as much. "I happen to also recognize," he says, "that if you go out with a tax proposal which conforms to your philosophy but it hasn't been thoroughly analyzed, vetted, put through models and calculated in detail, that you're gonna get hit by the demagogues in the general election."
Those "demagogues," as Mitt Romney calls the American people, just want to see his math. Otherwise, his pledge to "cut, cap and balance" the budget is just a smokescreen. As Klein summed it up: >
So at this point, Romney doesn't have a plan to reform the tax system. He has a statement about what he would like a reformed tax system to include: lower rates for everyone. But that's cake-and-ice-cream stuff. All the hard questions -- which tax breaks to close, for instance -- remain unanswered, and it doesn't appear that he plans to answer them anytime soon.
And there's nothing bold about that.
(This piece also appears at Perrspectives .)
4 Views
02:00:17 03/08/12
Romney Claims His 'Bold' Tax Plan 'Can't Be Scored'
[LESS INFO] 4 VIEWS | ADDED 02:00:17 03/08/12
Two weeks ago, Mitt Romney unveiled what he has repeatedly deemed a " bold " plan to deliver a 20 percent across-the-board tax cut. As it turns out, the plan isn't so bold after all. For starters, it's largely a retread of the 15 percent tax cut scheme Bob Dole rode to defeat in 1996. And after a wave of analyses showed Romney's plan would produce oceans of red ink while giving the rich yet another payday courtesy of the U.S. Treasury, Mitt admitted today that his plan " can't be scored " because "I haven't laid out all of the details."
As The Hill reported today, the GOP frontrunner is now essentially claiming he deserves an "A" because the dog ate his homework : >
"So I haven't laid out all of the details about how we're going to deal with each deduction, so I think it's kind of interesting for the groups to try and score it, because frankly it can't be scored, because those kinds of details will have to be worked out with Congress, and we have a wide array of options."
As Ezra Klein's Wonkblog rightly concluded: >
"Let's be clear on this: A tax plan that can't be scored because it doesn't include sufficient details is not a plan. It's a gesture towards a plan, or a statement of intended direction, or perhaps an unusually wonky daydream. But it's not a plan."
Romney's may not be a plan , but it is a recipe. At a time of record income inequality , the lowest federal tax burden in 60 years , and large budget deficits without listing all of his ingredients, Mitt Romney is just offering a recipe for exploding national debt and a windfall for the wealthy.
As the Washington Post explained in its discussion of an analysis by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, "until the campaign offers a more specific plan, Budget Watch analysts said Romney's entire framework would add about $2.6 trillion to the debt by 2021." That's likely a conservative estimate. As ThinkProgress and the Washington Post's Lori Montgomery and Ezra Klein documented, Mitt Romney's risky new scheme makes George W. Bush look like Karl Marx: >
Romney's claim that his plan would promote job and economic growth while reducing the deficit is also likely false. The Bush tax cuts were promoted under the same guise, only to blow a $2.5-trillion hole in the federal budget that was accompanied by worst performance of any post-war expansion" for growth in investment, GDP, and job creation. Romney's tax cuts are even more expensive, clocking in at a cost of more than $10.7 trillion over the next decade and reducing revenue to a paltry 15 percent of GDP, according to Linden. Balancing the budget on those terms, as Romney claims he will do, would be next to impossible.
And as Klein made clear in his 150 word description of the Romney plan , there's only one place Mitt can look for the money: >
Mitt Romney is promising that taxes will go down, defense spending will go up, and old-people programs won't change for this generation of retirees. So three of his four options for deficit reduction -- taxes, old-people programs, and defense -- are now either contributing to the deficit or are off-limits for the next decade. >
Romney is also promising that he will pay for his tax cuts, pay for his defense spending, and reduce total federal spending by more than $6 trillion over the next 10 years. But the only big pot of money left to him is poor-people programs. So, by simple process of elimination, poor-people programs will have to be cut dramatically. There's no other way to make those numbers work.
The numbers won't work, that is, unless President Romney both savaged federal spending and eliminated deductions for workers, families and businesses that cost Uncle Sam over $1 trillion a year. But in typical Romney fashion, his campaign is refusing to say which loopholes it would close while promising to maintain the ones voters care about most. His economic adviser Glenn Hubbard admitted Romney's cowardice, explaining "it is not his intention to take on any specific deduction or exclusion and eliminate it." And as The New York Times reported, Romney promised last Wednesday his plan would somehow be "revenue neutral" and raise the burden on upper-income taxpayers, even as he balanced the budget.
Two months before Romney rolled out his desperate 20 percent tax cut, the reliably Republican Wall Street Journal essentially labeled Mitt a coward when it came to making the tough choices in his economic plan. Then and now, Mitt admitted that discretion was the better part of valor: >
Amid such generalities, it's hard not to conclude that the candidate is trying to avoid offering any details that might become a political target. And he all but admits as much. "I happen to also recognize," he says, "that if you go out with a tax proposal which conforms to your philosophy but it hasn't been thoroughly analyzed, vetted, put through models and calculated in detail, that you're gonna get hit by the demagogues in the general election."
Those "demagogues," as Mitt Romney calls the American people, just want to see his math. Otherwise, his pledge to "cut, cap and balance" the budget is just a smokescreen. As Klein summed it up: >
So at this point, Romney doesn't have a plan to reform the tax system. He has a statement about what he would like a reformed tax system to include: lower rates for everyone. But that's cake-and-ice-cream stuff. All the hard questions -- which tax breaks to close, for instance -- remain unanswered, and it doesn't appear that he plans to answer them anytime soon.
And there's nothing bold about that.
(This piece also appears at Perrspectives .)
32 Views
02:02:30 02/18/12
OccupytheSEC Pt2: "How Stupid Do the Banks Think We Are?" Enforce the Volcker Rule!
[LESS INFO] 32 VIEWS | ADDED 02:02:30 02/18/12
OccupytheSEC Pt2: "How Stupid Do the Banks Think We Are?" Enforce the Volcker Rule! New York, February 13--At a rally this evening in front of the Federal Reserve, Alexis Goldstein, member of Occupy the SEC, swiftly nails aspects of the Volcker Rule that need to be fixed. Fiery and razor sharp, Goldstein, who worked on Wall Street for seven years, has spent the past three months helping to draft the 325-page comment letter on Volcker (filed to this morning's deadline). Claiming that enforcement of the rule would harm the economy, the banks "got busy with their lobbyists and trade organizations," says Goldstein. "How short do they think our memories are? " Volcker aims to protect the public by stopping banks from engaging in speculative gambling with customers' deposits, also known as proprietary trading. Existing loopholes, however, have allowed the banks to dodge the regulations, leading to the current financial crisis. A final version of Volcker is being written between now and July by the FED, FDIC and the SEC, hopefully taking note of Occupy's comments. See also Pt 1 of OccupytheSEC on this channel. Filmed by Squaring Off. NB Feel free to re-post video in its entirety, but please--don't excerpt without my permission. Thank you. Contact: lizajbear@gmail.com . For an update on SEC's reaction to the comment letter, see www.occupythesec.org . For more info on Volcker, see occupythesec.nycga.net; and on the comment letter, Felix Salmon's blog on Reuters. From: nothingofficial Views: 1 0 ratings Time: 04:46 More in Nonprofits & Activism
27 Views
22:00:20 02/08/12
"There is a little bit of a difference between Occupy Wall Street and the Giants parade"
[LESS INFO] 27 VIEWS | ADDED 22:00:20 02/08/12
"There is a little bit of a difference between Occupy Wall Street and the Giants parade" I attended the Giants parade on 2/7/12. I approached many cops with a couple of simple questions. All of the cops I approached before shooting this video threatened to arrest me if I filmed them so I had to film this without the officers knowing. As you hear in this video, I ask the officers if the Giants parade is delaying the people who work on Wall Street from going to work and they say yes. I asked how is that different compared to the Occupy Wall Street protests delaying the Wall Street workers from getting to work...watch for yourself...gotta play dumb sometimes to get answers. From: 11jcantor Views: 18 1 ratings Time: 01:50 More in Nonprofits & Activism
14 Views
16:00:56 12/29/11
Mitt Romney's Big Promises - and Bigger Lies
[LESS INFO] 14 VIEWS | ADDED 16:00:56 12/29/11
Click here to view this media
In the election of 1928, the Republican Party of Herbert Hoover promised voters "a chicken in every pot and a car in every backyard." (We all know how that turned out.) Now, Mitt Romney is pledging that "If I'm President" every college graduate will be guaranteed a job, Iran will have no nuclear weapons and the United States will dominate the 21st century. And when Romney isn't making fantastic promises about what he'll do when he gets to the White House, he's slandering the current occupant , Barack Obama.
"I Won't Let Iran Get Nukes"
Governor Romney's guarantees start with Iran and its nuclear program . In a November 10, 2011 op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, Romney pledged, " I won't let Iran get nukes ." Or as he put it 10 days earlier during a GOP national security debate : >
"If we re-elect Barack Obama, Iran will have a nuclear weapon. If you elect me as president, Iran will not have a nuclear weapon."
As to how he'll ensure that outcome, Romney explained that "If you want peace, prepare for war." And despite occasionally acknowledging the complexity of a strike against Iran and even the questionable possibility of success, Romney told the Wall Street Journal this weekend how he would get it done: >
So what would he do about it? "I do not have a top secret security clearance at this stage to be able to define precisely what kinds of actions we could take." But he adds that "the range includes something of a blockade nature, to something of a surgical strike nature, to something of a decapitate the regime nature, to eliminate the military threat of Iran altogether."
No U.S. Decline in Romney's "American Century"
Romney's promise to "eliminate the military threat of Iran altogether" is just part of his larger assurance that the 21st century will be another " American Century ." Pretending that the rise of India, China and Brazil doesn't inevitably entail the relative loss of U.S. power and influence, Romney announced in his October address at The Citadel : >
"This century must be an American Century. In an American Century, America has the strongest economy and the strongest military in the world. In an American Century, America leads the free world and the free world leads the entire world...As President of the United States, I will devote myself to an American Century. And I will never, ever apologize for America."
Not content to rest there, Romney accused President Obama of "waving the white flag of surrender": >
"An eloquently justified surrender of world leadership is still surrender. >
I will not surrender America's role in the world. This is very simple: If you do not want America to be the strongest nation on Earth, I am not your President. >
You have that President today."
Two months later, Mitt Romney repackaged his promise and his slander at the December 15 Republican debate in Sioux City, Iowa: >
"Our president thinks America is in decline. It is if he's president. It's not if I'm president. This is going to be an American century."
As for Romney's charge that President Obama "went around the world and apologized for America," the Washington Post Fact Checker deemed it a Four-Pinocchio lie .
A Job for Every College Graduate
At an event in New Hampshire last week, Governor Romney's pandering went from the sublime to the ridiculous. There, Mitt pledged President Romney would deliver full-employment for all American college graduates: >
"What I can promise you is this -- when you get out of college, if I'm president you'll have a job. If President Obama is reelected, you will not be able to get a job. That's the reason I will hopefully get young people who are in college is to say, You know what, I understand what it takes to get jobs in America."
As the record shows , not so much. After all, as the Los Angeles Times recently documented, Romney's "Bain Capital often maximized profits in part by firing workers." That's why FactCheck.org , the Washington Post Fact Checker and Fortune all refused to vouch for Romney's claim that "In those hundreds of businesses we invested in, tens of thousands of jobs net-net were created."
Obama "Has Not Created Any New Jobs"
If Mitt Romney can't prove his boasts about his own job creation record, neither can he justify his blatant lie about President Obama's : >
"25 million people are out of work because of Barack Obama. And so I'll compare my experience in the private sector where, net-net, we created over 100,000 jobs." >
"I'll compare that record with his record, where he has not created any new jobs."
Sadly for Mitt Romney, the Bush recession began in December 2007. As ThinkProgress rightly noted, "The private sector has added 2.3 million new jobs since March 2010, and it took the Obama economy one year to create more jobs than the economy under President Bush did in eight." As The Economist explained earlier, the recession was not at its deepest just as Barack Obama was entering office, but far worse than official statistics revealed at the time. Romney might also want to check with former McCain economic adviser Mark Zandi as well as the non-partisan CBO , who concluded that the Obama stimulus program "added up to 0.9 million jobs in 2009, 3.3 million jobs in 2010 and 2.6 million jobs in 2011."
Obama's Debt Exceeds All Previous Presidents Combined
Mitt Romney didn't just lie about Barack Obama's jobs record. At the Sioux City debate, he got President Obama's contribution to the federal debt all wrong as well: >
"We all understand that the spending crisis is extraordinary, with $15 trillion now in debt, with a president that's racked up as much debt as almost all of the other presidents combined."
Of course, we don't all understand that, because it's not true . After Ronald Reagan tripled the gross national debt and George W. Bush doubled it again, Uncle Sam's red ink totaled almost $11 trillion when Barack Obama took the oath of office.
Obama is "Taking over 100 Percent" of Health Care
In his desperate quest to win over conservative Republican primary voters, Mitt Romney has turned his back on his signature achievement which he once boasted was a health care model for the nation. And to do it, Romney has been lying for months by telling voters "Obamacare is about taking over 100 percent of the people's insurance in this country."
In a September 15, 2011 interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer , Romney made the same charge: >
"The Massachusetts plan was crafted for Massachusetts, for the needs of 8 percent of our population that didn't have insurance, not for the 92 percent that did. Obamacare is a plan that takes over 100 percent of the people in the country and their health care, and that's one of the reasons why people don't want it."
Sadly for Mitt Romney, repetition of a lie doesn't make it any more true.
The Affordable Care Act passed by Congress and signed by President Obama in the spring of 2010 targets the 17 percent of people (over 50 million people) who are uninsured . As Politifact explained in deeming Romney's fraud another "Pants on Fire" lie: >
According to the Census Bureau, the percentage of Americans without health insurance nationally was slightly under 17 percent in 2009, the year Obama began pushing for the bill. According to a Congressional Budget Office estimate, the number was about the same in 2010, when the measure was signed into law. Other estimates have pegged the national number at about 15 percent.
As Henry Aaron, a senior fellow with the centrist-to-liberal Brookings Institution right noted, comparing 8 percent to 17 percent "would have been apples to apples" when it comes to the impact of the individual mandate at the center of both the Massachusetts and national plans. Sadly, Politifact concluded, Romney was guilty of "a felony case of comparing apples and oranges."
Romney "Will Reverse President Obama's Massive Defense Cuts"
During that same "American Century" speech in October, Governor Romney pledged: >
"I will reverse President Obama's massive defense cuts. Time and again, we have seen that attempts to balance the budget by weakening our military only lead to a far higher price, not only in treasure, but in blood."
Sadly for Romney, as Steve Benen pointed out, defense spending has not only gone up every year of the Obama presidency . It is higher than it ever was when George W. Bush sat in the Oval Office.
Of course, Romney's confusion over matters of war and peace are hardly new. In an April op-ed for the Manchester Union Leader, Mitt forgot about the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan as he denounced President Obama for "one of the biggest peacetime spending binges in American history."
Obama's "Equal Outcomes" and "Entitlement Society"
Last week, the Romney campaign rolled out what may well become the meta-theme and meta-lie for the 2012 general election race.
After President Obama declared in his Osawatomie, Kansas address that Republican trickle down economics "never worked," Romney struck back. Just not with the truth: >
"Just a couple of weeks ago in Kansas, President Obama lectured us about Teddy Roosevelt's philosophy of government. But he failed to mention the important difference between Teddy Roosevelt and Barack Obama. Roosevelt believed that government should level the playing field to create equal opportunities. President Obama believes that government should create equal outcomes. >
"In an entitlement society, everyone receives the same or similar rewards, regardless of education, effort, and willingness to take risk. That which is earned by some is redistributed to the others. And the only people who truly enjoy any real rewards are those who do the redistributing -- the government. >
"The truth is that everyone may get the same rewards, but virtually everyone will be worse off."
By raising the mythical red menace of communism and falsely attributing it to Barack Obama, Romney in the words of Paul Krugman had introduced " The Big Lie " into his " Post-Truth Campaign ." While Andrew Sullivan announced "Mitt Romney is a big, fat liar," Steve Benen lamented that "Romney, allegedly the responsible one in the Republican field, has been reduced to lying uncontrollably." And while Greg Sargent in the past had expressed amazement at "Mitt Romney's casual, effortless falsehoods," New York Magazine's Jonathan Chait explained that Romney's red scare rose to a whole new level of duplicity: >
"This isn't just a casual line. In eight sentences, Romney asserts over and over again that Obama wants to create "equal outcomes" and give everybody the "same rewards." This is nuts, Glenn Beck-level insane. Restoring Clinton-era taxes is not a plan to equalize outcomes, or even close. It's not even a plan to stop rising inequality. Obama's America will continue to be the most unequal society in the advanced world -- only slightly less so. The alternative proposals accelerate inequality even further."
Of course, as the proliferating profiles from the Wall Street Journal , the New York Times , the Washington Post and others show, Mitt Romney is no stranger to inequality. Legendarily cheap and analytical , as a Harvard Business School student Romney gave a presentation to his classmates that "proved the value of family time based not on emotion but on yield." Two Romney quotes - " I love business " and " I love data " - seem to sum up the man.
As for loving the truth, that for Mitt Romney is apparently another matter altogether.
(This piece also appears at Perrspectives .)
3 Views
16:02:08 12/08/11
Bed Transitions
[LESS INFO] 3 VIEWS | ADDED 16:02:08 12/08/11
Bed Transitions. Episode 833 is brought to you by BabyBjorn. Parents will freak out about a lot of things, but transitioning from a crib to their own bed doesn't have to be one of them. Most kids make the jump at 1.5 to 3.5 years old, but they will make the transition much easier "when they are ready." So how do you know when they're ready? Size is a great indicator, as well as whether or not they can (and will) climb out of the crib. If they are talking about a 'big kid' bed, they're ready. And night time potty training isn't going to work in a crib either. The next question is what size bed? Again, it depends on the child. Some will move right into a twin bed, some will prefer a smaller "toddler" bed. There are lots of choices in bed styles. There are themes like princess, boat or racecar beds, or simply small versions of larger beds. Convertible cribs/beds can be pricey up front, but the value is in years of use. Gro Furniture has a great model that starts as a crib, transforms easily into a toddler day bed, and finally a nice work desk, all without tools or complicated instructions. Allowing your child to help pick out the bed and the linens will help give them some ownership, and help with the transition process. Safety is still an issue of course. If your child chooses to go with a regular twin bed, rails on BOTH sides of the bed are important, even if it's against the wall. Without that wall rail, they could wedge themselves between the wall and the bed whilst squirming in their sleep. It's also important to take down the crib once the new bed is in place, to eliminate any confusion. Patience is key. Your child WILL wake up and get up in the middle of the night. They may just play in their room, but more than likely they're going to wander to your bed. Helping them back to their own bed each time will be challenging, but eventually, they'll understand and the transition to their own bed will be complete.
1 Views
15:00:01 12/06/11
What 'Occupy Our Homes' Could Change
[LESS INFO] 1 VIEWS | ADDED 15:00:01 12/06/11
Amy Goodman reports on "Occupy Our Homes" for Democracy Now
This week 60 Minutes gave viewers a good look at some of the widespread criminality that created the Wall Street mortgage boom and led to our ongoing financial crisis. They also saw some of the overwhelming evidence of illegal activity on the part of big banks, and were reminded that none of those banks' executives have been prosecuted.
As ugly as the situation is, there is some logic behind the government's actions - and its inactions. They're acting on a tragically incorrect (but internally coherent) set of assumptions that can be summed up in one sentence. It goes something like this:
"To preserve the health of the American economy, banks must be allowed to keep preying on their consumers."
That's it. That's the logic.
But there are two exciting "Occupy" developments this week that could change the equation - "Take Back the Capitol" in the District of Columbia, and Tuesday's "Occupy Our Homes" events around the country. Think of them as complementary actions: One is taking place at the site of our greatest government power. The other is bringing the action to homes where people have been victimized by bankers.
People may not realize it, but there's power in those homes, too.
The Logic of Injustice
Despite their destructive behavior, the people who bailed bankers out and are giving them a free pass for their crimes aren't necessarily evil or corrupt. Well, okay, people like this guy are. But others have merely been so infected by misguided economic thinking that they really believe that the only way to save the economy is to keep shafting consumers and pampering mega-bankers.
The thinking goes something like this: Our largest banks are too big to fail, and since we lack the will or the motivation to break them up or regulate them we must protect them at all costs. We've propped them up with TARP, quantitative easing, and $7.7 trillion in secret Federal Reserve loans, but they're still shaky as hell. If we prosecute any of their executives, their stock prices will fall and they'll collapse again. And they'll take the entire economic system with them.
That leads to some grotesque miscarriages of justice. Nobody at Wells Fargo has been indicted for money laundering, for example, despite the fact that the bank has paid millions to settle charges of laundering cash for the Mexican drug cartels that have murdered more than 35,000 people. As an experienced bank investigator working for the Senate observed, "There’s no capacity to regulate or punish them because they’re too big to be threatened with failure."
The Bailout Nobody Knows
And banks don't just need protection from their own criminality. They also need protection from their own lousy management. Their balance sheets are filled with toxic risks from their long run of incompetence, negligence, and greed. That's where you and I come in. Some powerful folks are afraid the banks will fail if they're forced to write off the bad loans on their books, or to stop profiting from loans sold deceptively or irresponsibly.
TARP may be over, but there's another massive bank rescue going on. Who's funding it? We are. Every time we pay a usurious interest fee on a credit card, we're propping up the banks. Every time we make another month's payment on an underwater mortgage, we're propping them up too. Every time we pay an overpriced consumer loan of any kind, we're making another payment into the consumer-funded bailout that's keeping the big banks afloat.
It would be great if politicians in Washington stopped using American consumers to subsidize banks that shouldn't even exist. But they haven't. That's where "Occupy Our Homes" comes in.
Occupy Our Homes
Tuesday, December 6, has been declared a National Day of Action to Occupy Our Homes . Its goal is to focus attention on the corrupt banking practices that led to the mortgage boom and today's ongoing economic misery for most of the 99 percent.
It's also a day for helping people in our communities who have been victimized by predatory lending, criminal bank forgery, unfair or illegal foreclosure practices, and other bank abuses that victimize the public. Occupy Minnesota has already occupied an illegally-foreclosed home, and plans to do the same thing with another home tomorrow. Here in Los Angeles, where an inspiring victory has already taken place, OccupyLA will help two brave families re-occupy their illegally foreclosed homes .
One of those homes belongs to a three-earner family that includes a gainfully employed woman with cerebral palsy named Ana Wison. Ana's household clearly seems capable of making its mortgage payments, but her bank's foreclosing anyway. And in one of ironies that have become all too common, the bank in quesion is none other than that Mexican drug cartel money-laundering outfit, Wells Fargo.
The Occupy movement hopes to focus the public's attention on people like Ana Wison. In the words of the Dylan song : "Things should start to get interesting right around now."
Demonizing the Victim
Resisting illegal foreclosures is a good first step. It brings attention to Wall Street's criminality, venality, and plain old inhumanity toward the people they call their"customers" - but treat like serfs.
It does something else important: It counteracts the brainwashing, driven by Wall Street and dutifully echoed by the media, which has demonized the victims of bank misbehavior. (We were trying to fight that brainwashing back in 2008, without much luck.) The Occupy movement has already won several battles in that war. If the public's attention can now be focused on people like Ana Wison, that can be a powerful blow against the Wall Street/corporate media "they deserve it" hype.
What about the millions of people who have suffered because of the banks' predatory mortgage lending but aren't behind in payments or in the foreclosure process? We need to re-open the debate about the fairness of forcing any underwater homeowners to pay underwater principal on homes that their banks knew, or should have known, were going to decrease in value. After all, the same conglomeration of banks and corporate media that demonize homeowners as "greedy" and "irresponsible" spent most of the last twenty years convincing people that real estate was a sure-fire investment.
Banks made an extraordinary amount of money off the bubble they created. The total mortgage amount outstanding in this country went from $6.2 trillion in 2002 to $11.9 trillion in 2009, a meteoric rise. And while banks feed off the Federal Reserve's unusually low rates, they've renegotiating very few home loans.
Consumers also owe nearly three quarter of a trillion dollars in credit card debt, much of it being paid at unconscionable rates of 12 percent to 29 percent - while their banks enjoy rates from 0 percent to 3 percent, thanks to the government institutions created by those same consumers.
Occupy Our Homes. Occupy Our Credit Cards. Occupy Our Payday Lending ...
What will happen if consumers stopped blaming themselves? What if they demanded that the banks take responsibility for their irresponsible and/or predatory lending? What if they refused to stop this country's perverse economic role reversal, where customers have become the ATMs while banks keep making the withdrawals?
If 10% of America's homeowners declared a mortgage strike it would rock the banking world. If everybody paying exorbitant credit card interest declared a moratorium on payments all at once, Wall Street would change forever.
Think about it: "Occupy ALL Our Homes." "Occupy Our Credit Cards ... Our Payday Loans ... Our Buy-and-Drive Loans ..." I'm not saying these are necessarily the right tactics, although they very well may be. But what's most important is that we understand that consumers have far more power than we usually realize - provided we act together.
Many of Washington's leaders will cringe at the thought, of course. "That could hurt our biggest banks," they say. It would be tempting to reply, You say that like it's a bad thing. Here's a better response: Then start planning to break them up in an orderly fashion. We're done living a life of indentured servitude just so we can subsidize their greed.
Those are the discussions that we should be having. If powerful people on Wall Street and in Washington aren't worried about Occupy Our Homes , they're not paying attention. But with any luck, they soon will.
______________________
(If you've been a victim of mortgage abuse you can tell your story here . If you want to find an Occupy Our Homes event near you, you can look for one here .)
2 Views
20:29:41 10/24/11
China's Rail Expansion Faces Funding Squeeze
[LESS INFO] 2 VIEWS | ADDED 20:29:41 10/24/11
China's Rail Expansion Faces Funding Squeeze
For more news and videos visit ☛ english.ntdtv.com Follow us on Twitter ☛ http Add us on Facebook ☛ me.lt China's Railways Ministry has been forced to suspend the construction of thousands of miles of rail projects because it doesn't have enough money to complete them. A senior railway company executive said workers have gone months without pay, and there are serious funding shortages due to a tough lending environment. In China, more than 6000 miles of railway work has been suspended due to a funding shortfall. Investors doubt if authorities can manage the unprecedented expansion of the country's high-speed rail network. Deputy Chief Engineer at China Railway Tunnel Group, Wang Mengshu told state and international media that many of the six million migrant workers employed in the railway sector had not been paid for months. The reason is a lack of funding due to the Chinese regime's tight monetary policy of the past year, which has forced banks to keep record high reserves to reign in lending and inflation. Mr. Wang said funding had slowed significantly after the collision of two high-speed trains in July that killed 40 people and left hundreds injured. Observers are questioning whether the Ministry of Railways has been too ambitious with rapid expansion, and if it can manage its surging debt. It reached 2.09-trillion yuan in June according to the Wall Street Journal, or $US 329-billion up from 1.98-trillion three months earlier. The Chinese regime plans to expand its ... From: NTDTV Views: 3 1 ratings Time: 02:06 More in News & Politics
1 Views
01:00:02 10/15/11
Suggestions for Local 'Occupy' Groups
[LESS INFO] 1 VIEWS | ADDED 01:00:02 10/15/11
I've been doing a little bit of work with the Occupy Tallahassee group and have been covering Occupy Wall Street for Crooks and Liars and I thought I'd share a few suggestions based on what I've observed. These protests present an historic moment for people who think the system is broken and who want to really make a change. The protests have brought in thousands of new people across the country who don't like the way things are going and want to do something about it. But the other side has more money and more power and has faced opposition before. In order to avoid losing to them once again, there are some things that local groups need to pay attention to...
1. It's all about attracting more and more people. The way we make change is by gathering together so many people that they can't ignore us.
2. Get information about everyone who shows up. We have to be able to contact people for future events and actions.
3. Give people something to do. Protests and rallies are nice. They get people fired up and they can get some media attention. But they aren't enough. We have to take those people who show up to the rallies and give them something concrete to do that will make a difference.
4. We all, every one of us, have to know what we're talking about. The number one way to lose momentum is for us to allow the media to marginalize us as kooks or crazies. If we are all educated and we only give the media educated, thoughtful responses, then we take away the opposition's major weapon.
5. We have to have a coherent message. The media and the opposition are already trying to paint us as having no real point. If they succeed in convincing the public that is true, the movement will die off. People will go home and nothing will change.
6. We have to walk a thin line when it comes to the law. Civil disobedience is a valid tool and it changes the world. But not if it is violent or disrespectful of the very people the 1 percent are already screwing over. We have to be better than the other side, not fall into their tactics or fall for the traps they are setting for us. And keep in mind that law enforcement and other people who may appear to be our opposition at times are getting screwed over by the 1 percent, too. We should be recruiting them, not antagonizing them.
7. At the end of the day, when the protest is over, we have to realize that just showing up and protesting and occupying isn't enough. It is an amazing start, but protests are never successful if they aren't coupled with actions that can change the world. Lawsuits and elections are the key tools in American history (and beyond) that have changed the way the system worked and created progress. We have to use the mass mobilizations as a way to get politicians elected that will fight the 1 percent (like Alan Grayson and Bernie Sanders, for instance) and we have to fund lawsuits that will enforce laws that already exist that protect our rights. Without these tools we can't win.
8. We have to win the media battle. This isn't going to be easy, because the 1 percent owns the media. But they don't own the Internet. Well they do, but they can't stop us from using it. And we have to use it well enough to force the rest of the media to pay attention and do the right thing. When a reporter lies about how many people were at an event, we need to use the web to tell the truth. When a reporter tries to spin a story to undercut what we're doing, we need to use the web to tell the truth. They won't do it unless we force them to.
This is cross-posted from my blog, Florida Progressive Coalition
1 Views
01:00:02 10/15/11
Suggestions for Local 'Occupy' Groups
[LESS INFO] 1 VIEWS | ADDED 01:00:02 10/15/11
I've been doing a little bit of work with the Occupy Tallahassee group and have been covering Occupy Wall Street for Crooks and Liars and I thought I'd share a few suggestions based on what I've observed. These protests present an historic moment for people who think the system is broken and who want to really make a change. The protests have brought in thousands of new people across the country who don't like the way things are going and want to do something about it. But the other side has more money and more power and has faced opposition before. In order to avoid losing to them once again, there are some things that local groups need to pay attention to...
1. It's all about attracting more and more people. The way we make change is by gathering together so many people that they can't ignore us.
2. Get information about everyone who shows up. We have to be able to contact people for future events and actions.
3. Give people something to do. Protests and rallies are nice. They get people fired up and they can get some media attention. But they aren't enough. We have to take those people who show up to the rallies and give them something concrete to do that will make a difference.
4. We all, every one of us, have to know what we're talking about. The number one way to lose momentum is for us to allow the media to marginalize us as kooks or crazies. If we are all educated and we only give the media educated, thoughtful responses, then we take away the opposition's major weapon.
5. We have to have a coherent message. The media and the opposition are already trying to paint us as having no real point. If they succeed in convincing the public that is true, the movement will die off. People will go home and nothing will change.
6. We have to walk a thin line when it comes to the law. Civil disobedience is a valid tool and it changes the world. But not if it is violent or disrespectful of the very people the 1 percent are already screwing over. We have to be better than the other side, not fall into their tactics or fall for the traps they are setting for us. And keep in mind that law enforcement and other people who may appear to be our opposition at times are getting screwed over by the 1 percent, too. We should be recruiting them, not antagonizing them.
7. At the end of the day, when the protest is over, we have to realize that just showing up and protesting and occupying isn't enough. It is an amazing start, but protests are never successful if they aren't coupled with actions that can change the world. Lawsuits and elections are the key tools in American history (and beyond) that have changed the way the system worked and created progress. We have to use the mass mobilizations as a way to get politicians elected that will fight the 1 percent (like Alan Grayson and Bernie Sanders, for instance) and we have to fund lawsuits that will enforce laws that already exist that protect our rights. Without these tools we can't win.
8. We have to win the media battle. This isn't going to be easy, because the 1 percent owns the media. But they don't own the Internet. Well they do, but they can't stop us from using it. And we have to use it well enough to force the rest of the media to pay attention and do the right thing. When a reporter lies about how many people were at an event, we need to use the web to tell the truth. When a reporter tries to spin a story to undercut what we're doing, we need to use the web to tell the truth. They won't do it unless we force them to.
This is cross-posted from my blog, Florida Progressive Coalition
8 Views
07:00:09 08/26/11
The Best Height For Your Light Switches
[LESS INFO] 8 VIEWS | ADDED 07:00:09 08/26/11
In many houses, there seems to be no rhyme or reason to the placement or height of the light switches. Too often, they are installed where it is convenient for the electrician to run the wiring without much thought for optimizing home owner functionality and visual continuity. Standard light switch height in North America new construction is 48″ to the top of the switch. We think this is too high. At 48″, it is in the primary visual field of the wall and if not perfectly placed, may impede art work placement or just look distracting. We think the standard height should be lowered to 32″ to the top of the switch. This is what we install as standard on all of our projects at Housebrand. While this may seem really low, this height will allow art work to be … Continue reading →
0 Views
04:25:09 08/26/11
The Best Height For Your Light Switches
[LESS INFO] 0 VIEWS | ADDED 04:25:09 08/26/11
In many houses, there seems to be no rhyme or reason to the placement or height of the light switches. Too often, they are installed where it is convenient for the electrician to run the wiring without much thought for optimizing home owner functionality and visual continuity. Standard light switch height in North America new construction is 48" to the center of the switch. We think this is too high. At 48", it is in the primary visual field of the wall and if not perfectly placed, may impede art work placement or just look distracting. We think the standard height should be lowered to 32" to the center of the switch. This is what we install as standard on all of our projects at Housebrand. While this may seem really low, this height will allow art work to be properly placed above any switch. We also think that light switches should be ganged together as much as possible into "control panels" so you are able to adjust all the lighting for an entire room or rooms from a single vantage point.
21 Views
07:23:13 08/22/11
iPad 3 in 2012
[LESS INFO] 21 VIEWS | ADDED 07:23:13 08/22/11
The Wall Street Journal reported that Apple is working on the next generation iPad with an expected release date in early 2012. The iPad 3 is expected to have twice the resolution as its predecessor with a 9.7” screen. Parts suppliers have already received enough orders for 1.5 million iPad 3s. In other news, Verizon announced that the 45,000 employees striking will resume working on Monday without coming to an agreement on the new contracts. The FBI is looking into over 90 acts of sabotage that put some service out from Massachusetts to Delaware. There is no deadline on the contract negotiations. And finally, if you’re looking for an incredibly cheap tablet, HP slashed its prices on the now unsupported TouchPad. The 16GB model is $99, but overwhelming demand sold over 350,000 and temporarily put HP out of stock.
