20.4 - Mass marches in April

Mass marches in April

It has been an encouraging, even exciting few weeks recently, as masses of people were prepared to prove by their presence that despite what some have said, the resistance is not "fading."

April 15

First there was April 15, traditionally Tax Day, and on this one tens of thousands of people marched to demand that Donald TheRump release his tax returns as well as for increased transparency in governance and a fairer tax system that does not favor the wealthy.

Actions were planned in 192 cities and towns spread across 44 states and Washington, DC.

The two largest turnouts were 25,000 Washington, DC and 20,000 people in New York City. With several other places reporting crowds in the hundreds or even thousands, the prediction of organizers that 100,000 people would take part nationwide could well be on the mark.

Then there was the one that was sort of a surprise in that it was generated by an unusual constituency for mass public action: scientists.

What was originally billed as the "Scientists' March on Washington" grew within a few weeks from a single post on Reddit to a coalition of around 100 organizations, many of them devoted in some way to the sciences, education, or the environment, calling for a "March for Science."

April 22

So on April 22, Earth Day, people took part in over 600 marches and events, including 200 outside the US, to express support for scientific research and the scientific method.

And again, the turnout was impressive. Based on news accounts, there were at least 10,000 in Washington, DC, 10,000 in Philadelphia, 15,000 in San Diego, thousands in Seattle, thousands more in Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York, thousands marching in St. Paul, Minnesota and Santa Fe, New Mexico, more than a thousand in Gainesville, Florida, hundreds in Nashville, Tennessee and Montpelier, Vermont.

Hundreds, scores, dozens, in other places in a worldwide celebration of knowledge and against the rejection of science.

And if April 22 didn't convince you the resistance is alive and well, April 29 damn well should have. More than 200,000 showed up in Washington, DC for the Peoples Climate March, far outstripping the organizers' predicted turnout of 50,000-100,000.

The march began at 12:30pm, and by 2:00pm, organizers had succeeded in their goal of completely surrounding the White House. It was so large that people who had been at the very front of the march were beginning to drift away from the event by the time the people at the end of the march got started.

And even though the focus of the organizing was on getting people to go to DC, there were hundreds of events across nearly all 50 states, from the Aleutian Islands to Miami.

April 29

Early estimates were that more than 50,000 people marched or rallied in addition to those in DC, a number than may well be conservative, with marches in all the major cities, such as Seattle, Boston, San Francisco, Chicago, San Diego, and Los Angeles as well as major tunouts in smaller cities.

More than 2,000 Augusta, Maine. Some 2,000 in Traverse City, Michigan and 500 in Palm Beach, Florida.

Hundreds in Denver, hundreds in Ithaca and Glens Falls, New York, large crowds in Honolulu, Salt Lake City, Dallas, in Frederick Maryland and Grand Marais, Minnesota, in Tampa, Florida and Montpelier, Vermont.

And that doesn't include the masses of people who turned out around the globe: Japan, the Philippines, New Zealand, Uganda, Kenya, Germany, Greece, United Kingdom, Brazil, Mexico, Costa Rica, The Netherlands, Switzerland, Portugal, Ireland, Sweden, the list goes on, all coming together to say in what could be the informal slogan of the event, "There is no planet B."

The resistance lives and it grows.

242.5 - Drug war used to demonize poor people

Drug war used to demonize poor people

Well, plus ça change. In more recent times, drugs have served not so much to attack hippies or the antiwar left - probably in good part because there aren't a lot of hippies around and the antiwar left seems to evaporate whenever a Democrat is in the White House. But they have still proved politically useful to demonize a different group: poor people, who are usually envisioned in the racism-infused public mind as African-Americans, so it's kind of a two-fer.

Patron saint of welfare "reform"

It was in 1996, during the presidency of - and with the urging of - the sainted Bill Clinton, that the US enacted a welfare "reform" law that among other abominations placed a lifelong ban on receiving welfare on people convicted of drug felonies. No other sort of felony was subject to this lifelong ban - not murder, not assault, not armed robbery, not arson, none of them. Nothing except drugs.

As a direct result, to this day, many men and women exiting prison after doing their time don't have access to certain forms of government assistance, including TANF, or Temporary Aid to Needy Families, what we used to call welfare, and SNAP, still commonly known as Food Stamps.

It has gotten somewhat better with regard to SNAP: Eighteen states have abandoned the federal prohibition on drug offenders receiving Food Stamps and 26 more, most recently Alabama, have eased the restrictions, allowing benefits under certain conditions. Three more states - Georgia, Indiana, and Nebraska - are considering doing the same.

But six states - Alaska, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, West Virginia, and Wyoming - still bar anyone with a drug felony from receiving any Food Stamp benefits and need be damned.

"Need be damned" is even more true of TANF benefits. Thirteen states continue to fully prohibit anyone with a drug-related conviction from getting welfare benefits, and 23 others maintain a partial ban. Only 14 have lifted the ban and treat people who have done their time the same as they do anyone else.

The Marshall Project, which collects this data, suggests that the difference is that, unlike Food Stamps, states have to foot part of the bill for TANF. Put another way, the frequent attitude is, "Sure, you can have benefits on the same basis as everyone else - provided we don't have to pay for it."

But even if there has been some improvement in the possibility of those with drug convictions being able to obtain aid if they need it, there is still an on-going effort to use the specter of drugs to demonize the poor. Only the means, not the intent, has changed.

The means now is drug-testing of applicants or recipients of public aid, of making it a requirement for obtaining or continuing to receive assistance.

State after state after state - 13 states, in fact - have instituted some form of drug-testing regimen for those in need of aid, with 19 more considering it. And it's always, always, always, done on the claims that this will save money and we don't want the tax dollars or hard-working citizens to be subsidizing the drug habits of those poor people and besides we're actually helping poor people because this will force them to get off drugs and get a job!

That stigma of the poor as being druggies, and as being poor because they are druggies, drives the entire enterprise, an enterprise pushing the idea that we are somehow doing poor people a favor by treating them all as suspected criminals who have to prove the purity of their bodily fluids to their governing overlords, those who hold in their hands the power to decide if the accused gets any help with food or shelter or health care for themselves or their children.

So state after state after state has pursued this notion - and state after state after state has shown it to be a fantasy.

Florida tried it and found only 2% of recipients of public aid used drugs, in a state where the rate of drug use among the population as a whole is estimated to be 8%.

Utah tried it and found a rate of drug use among benefit recipients to be just 0.2%. In Tennessee, it was under a quarter of a percent.

In Arizona, more than 87,000 welfare recipients went through drug testing and only one person tested positive. Not one percent, one person.

Kansas, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, all with similar results.

And now North Carolina has joined the list. According to the state's Department of Health and Human Services, a mere 0.3% of the approximately 7,600 applicants and recipients screened for drug use tested positive.

But none of this has stopped states from doing testing and it hasn't stopped other states from considering doing the same. How many failures does it take to add up to failure?

Unless - unless it actually wasn't a failure. Unless the drugs were never the issue. Unless the actual intent is to, as I said at the top, demonize the poor, mark them as somehow different, alien, as "not us," and so as undeserving of our concern.

That stigma of the poor as druggies, which drives the entire drug-screening idea, is just one more obstacle faced by those who economically struggle every single day, with all that entails for, again, necessities such as food and clothing and shelter and health care and more, who struggle every day to try to escape the trap of poverty but who find that stigma of them as drug abusers that follows them even as they try to find work, that demonization of their condition, that assumption of their moral inferiority, that classism, our contempt for the poor, is just one more mountain for them to climb.

For the sake of maintaining our sense of class superiority, we have made the poor into more victims of our failed war on drugs.

But I have to add, footnote, whatever, that the stigma goes beyond the false idea of the poor as druggies. It goes to the core of our entire social attitude about poverty.

Consider, for example, how many states have precise rules as to what Food Stamps can be used to buy, in one case going right down to the size and type of canned beans you can buy. Consider how often any sort of treat for a child, a soda, candy, whatever, is on the banned list. Consider how many states have similar rules about TANF, with long lists of things for which welfare assistance can't be used, ranging from the absurd (jewelry, cruises) to the mundane because God forbid if you are poor that you should be able to take your kid to a movie.

Consider, particularly, how often we put demands on the poor that we would never dream of putting on others who are not poor but who are getting public benefits.

CalWORKS is California's welfare program. Everyone who applies for aid and is accepted must agree to have their homes be preemptively searched for evidence of fraud at a time of the agency's choosing, which of course they do not tell you in advance because then you could hide the evidence of fraud of which they assume you are guilty - and if you're not there when they come, obviously unannounced, you can be declared "uncooperative" and denied aid. In short, the Fourth Amendment does not exist for you and neither does innocent until proven guilty - because you are poor and need help.

Can you even conceive of someone who declares their children as deductions on their tax return being told they have to agree to have their home preemptively searched to prove those kids really live there and really are dependent on them? Remember, that deduction is a benefit, a tax benefit that by cutting their taxable income puts extra money in their pocket just as surely as does any cash aid to a poor person. But can you even imagine anyone being told they have to surrender their Fourth Amendment rights in order to claim that benefit?

You know, some of those drug-testing regimens not only want you to be drug-tested to get benefits, they want you to be tested on a regular basis to keep them.

Can you even imagine, can you even conceive of, someone declaring a home mortgage deduction on their income taxes being told that every year that they do so that they have to submit to a drug test to prove that they are not using the benefits we are providing to them to get high?

Of course you can't. It seems absurd. But you can imagine such being done to a poor person; in fact, you know it does and it happens to them every single day.

None of this is about helping the poor. Rather, it is all about being able to say that because you are poor, because you are in need of help, because you are struggling, therefore you are no longer a full human being, therefore you are morally inferior, therefore we have the right and the power to judge you, to look down on you, therefore we have the right and the power to shape you, to correct your (to we superior sorts) obvious failings, to demand that you behave as we tell you to, we have the right and the power to humiliate you, to demean you, to strip away your rights, and you will kowtow and tug at your forelock and kiss our ring or you can just damn well go hungry and cold.

I say it again: None of this, none of this, none of this is about helping the poor. It is about our contempt for the poor, our classist assumptions that those who are poor are simply inferior in some way, morally, ethically, or both, that it's simply a matter of personal failings and they somehow deserve their condition rather than being just the most obvious victims of the economic injustice that has turned too many of us into economic throwaways as power and wealth become more concentrated.

I have in the past referred to classism as our greatest unacknowledged evil. And so it remains.

Sources cited in links:
http://www.aol.com/article/2016/03/17/should-people-with-felony-drug-convictions-have-access-to-food-s/21328901/
http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2016/02/alabamians_with_drug_convictio.html
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2016/02/04/six-states-where-felons-can-t-get-food-stamps?ref=tsqr_stream#.8s7hSzmEc
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2015/02/1939-outrage-of-week-drug-testing-poor.html
http://www.aol.com/article/2016/02/18/States-tested-their-welfare-recipients-and-the-results-w/21314760/
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2015/10/2237-states-continue-to-demonize-poor.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2015/07/2112-our-worst-unacknowledged-evil-part.html
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/2/22/1489251/-The-Republican-war-on-poor-people-s-grocery-lists-continues
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/3/20/1501544/-Punishing-the-poor-is-not-going-to-end-poverty

230.6 - Corporations and the rich are usually scumbags

Corporations and the rich are usually scumbags

I'm going to spend a couple of minutes here, just so we don't forget, on a couple of reminders that most rich people and most big corporations - no, not all, but most - are self-serving scumbags.

A new rule to combat water pollution by extending Clean Water Act protections to millions of acres of wetlands and streams was finalized this year. And of course a lot of corporations want to see it overturned. Obama has pledged to veto any Congressional attempt to overturn the regulation, so trying to insert such a provision into the omnibus budget bill would have attracted a lot of attention.

Note I say "would have." The right-wing-dominated Congress is expected to include a provision to block Syrian refugees from entering the US. In a conference call held the week before Thanksgiving, lobbyists representing a number of polluting industries such as electric utilities, the American Forest and Paper Association, and others agreed among themselves that this, the fight about Syrian refugees, that this is great news for them.

Why? Because it takes the focus off them, giving them the cover they need to slip under the radar and attach a legislative rider to roll back the new rules.

Up to 10,000 refugees, hoping to escape the violence and insanity of the Syrian civil war and resettle in the US, their hopes being slammed against brick walls by xenophobic religious bigots attacking them as mere conduits for terrorists if not terrorists themselves, and the only thing these cretins can think about is how it will help them continue to pollute streams and wetlands.

Scumbags.

Martin Shkreli

Next up, you surely remember Martin Shkreli, the smirking little prig of a man who raised the price of a drug used by HIV patients among others to fight a parasitic infection by some 5000%, up to $750 per pill. After a massive outcry, he said he would reduce the price. Remember?

He hasn't. And he's not going to.

The day before Thanksgiving, his company announced it would drop prices for hospitals, create smaller bottles with 30 pills, and provide free starter packs in 2016. The problem? The discounts only apply to bulk orders. The list price of the drug remains the same: $750 a pill.

And Martin Shkreli remains a smirking little prig. And a scumbag.

Last but by no means least, and the thing that prompted me to do this, you unquestionably heard all the raucous fawning over Mark Zuckerberg, the megabillionaire co-founder of Facebook, when he and his wife announced they would donate 99 percent of their worth, the vast majority of which is tied up in Facebook stock valued at $45 billion today.

Mark Zuckerberg

But contrary to what you likely heard, they not donate $45 billion to charity. Nope. Not even close.

What Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, did was set up a limited liability company, an LLC, one which he controls, and then "donated" the stock to it. In effect, Zuckerberg moved his wealth from one bank account to another.

If instead they had set up a charitable foundation, it would have been subject to rules and oversight, it would have to allocate to charity a certain percentage of its assets every year, and it would have to meet transparency requirements. An LLC has none of those requirements. It can invest in for-profit companies. It can make political donations. It can lobby for changes in laws. In short, Zuckerberg can do exactly what he wants with his money, precisely like before.

What this does do is create wonderful tax benefits for him. Here's how it works without getting into the weeds of tax law: The LLC donates appreciated shares - remember, its assets are shares in Facebook - to charity. He gets a tax deduction equal to the fair market value of the shares but owes no tax on the transaction because the shares were donated, not sold, so there is no capital gain.

The bottom line is that Mark Zuckerberg has amassed a fortune valued at $45 billion and he may never pay a penny in tax on it. Yes, it is all legal, but that makes it no less scummy, especially when he allows himself to be described as a great philanthropist who "gave away" his fortune.

He would better be described as a scumbag.

Sources cited in links:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-lux/christmas-tree-oh-christm_b_8687648.html
https://theintercept.com/2015/11/24/lobbyists-refugee-crisis/
http://www.aol.com/article/2015/11/26/martin-shkreli-wont-cut-individual-daraprim-price-after-all/21273557/
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/nov/25/martin-shkreli-hiv-drug-daraprim-turing
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/12/04/business/dealbook/how-mark-zuckerbergs-altruism-helps-himself.html?_r=0

192.4 - Update on right-wingers changing the rules

Update on right-wingers changing the rules

Next up, this I suppose is more of an expansion on something I talked about last week rather than an update.

Last week's Outrage of the Week involved the plan by House GOPpers to attack the federal Disability Insurance program by changing the rules in a way that makes it extremely difficult to keep the program fully funded.

Well, that's not the only example we have of right-wingers trying to change the rules in ways to guarantee themselves a win. Here's another:

It's a new rule adopted by the House of Representatives - henceforth to be known around here as The Asylum - that will require what's called "dynamic scoring" in gauging the budgetary effect of changes in taxes or spending by the federal government.

What the rule does is require that more macroeconomic effects be taken into account when analyzing the cost estimate of "major legislation," work now done by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation. Put more simply, what the GOPpers want to do is to be able to assume that tax cuts will make the economy grow so much that the cuts will pay for themselves in increased revenue from a growing economy.

And if that sounds somehow familiar to some of us older folks, it's because it's what Ronald Reagan's people called "trickle down economics" in the early 1980s before it drove us into one of the worst recessions of the 20th century and ballooned annual federal deficits to six times what they had been before the Reaganites got in. Tragedy, then farce.

If that's not enough, here's another example: a series of bills to hinder the federal rule-making process, particularly on matters involving the environment; the EPA, like Social Security, having been on the right's hit list ever since it came into existence.

One such bill would loosen restrictions on corporate-backed scientists being members of scientific review panels by redefining what constitutes a conflict of interest - a redefinition which would at the same time bar panelists from advising the agency on matters “directly” or “indirectly” involving their own work, which essentially means that the people who actually did the research the panel is considering would not be allowed to defend their work as members.

Other bills would serve to drown the EPA in paperwork or an endless round of industry-inspired lawsuits over every detail of every proposed regulation, delaying such rules for years - if indeed they were ever finalized at all.

As always, those who push these bills say it's all about "accountability" and "transparency" and "fairness." And as always, they are lying through their teeth.

Sources cited in links:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/06/congress-dynamic-scoring_n_6425926.html?utm_hp_ref=politics
http://www.care2.com/causes/the-gops-new-plot-to-eliminate-science-from-lawmaking.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/01/28/the-gops-plan-to-stop-environmental-protections-attack-science/

Left Side of the Aisle #154

Left Side of the Aisle
for the week of April 10-16, 2014

This week:

Outrage of the Week: Climate deniers suppress paper linking them to conspiracy nuts
http://pss.sagepub.com/content/24/5/622.short
http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/21/unlocking-the-conspiracy-mindset/
http://www.desmogblog.com/2014/03/20/science-journal-retracts-paper-showing-how-climate-change-sceptics-were-conspiracy-theorists-after-sceptics-shout
http://www.salon.com/2014/03/21/academic_journal_bows_to_pressure_from_climate_deniers/
http://websites.psychology.uwa.edu.au/labs/cogscience/Publications/LskyetalRecursiveFury4UWA.pdf

Link to Lewandowsky's second paper:
http://websites.psychology.uwa.edu.au/labs/cogscience/Publications/LskyetalRecursiveFury4UWA.pdf

Domestic spying: How they get away with it
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/03/27/fact-sheet-administration-s-proposal-ending-section-215-bulk-telephony-m
http://rt.com/usa/white-house-nsa-proposal-633/
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/22/technology/between-you-and-me-4-74-degrees.html?_r=1&
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Act
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Court
http://epic.org/privacy/wiretap/stats/fisa_stats.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_degrees_of_separation
http://theburglary.com/
http://news.yahoo.com/obamas-nsa-overhaul-may-require-phone-carriers-store-222010492--sector.html
http://rt.com/usa/nsa-overhaul-telecom-metadata-425/

Clown Award: District Court Judge Rosemary Collyer
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/04/obama-drone-strikes_n_5093782.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosemary_M._Collyer

Congressional Progressive Caucus proposes a budget, media ignores it
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2014/03/1507-clown-award-rep-paul-ryan.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/01/paul-ryan-budget_n_5069608.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/federal_government/gop-budget-would-amount-to-pay-cut-for-federal-employees/2014/04/01/906b47ec-b9a9-11e3-96ae-f2c36d2b1245_story.html
http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/politicsnow/la-pn-paul-ryan-budget-20140401,0,2127070.story#axzz2xgALCyAS
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-04-01/paul-ryan-s-budgetary-fantasy
http://cpc.grijalva.house.gov/hot-topics/progressive-caucus-unveils-the-better-off-budget1/
http://cpc.grijalva.house.gov/uploads/The%20Better%20Off%20Budget.pdf
http://cpc.grijalva.house.gov/uploads/Back%20to%20Work%20Budget%20-%20Executive%20Summary.pdf
http://www.thenation.com/blog/173348/truly-progressive-budget-vision
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/117135/qa-rep-keith-ellison-cpcs-better-budget
http://truth-out.org/news/item/22921-ryan-vs-progressive-caucus-competing-visions-on-the-federal-budget
http://inthesetimes.com/article/16419/fighting_inequality_one_budget_at_a_time
http://www.ctj.org/taxjusticedigest/archive/2014/03/progressive_caucus_budget_we_c.php
http://www.foreffectivegov.org/node/12986
http://www.epi.org/publication/budget-analysis-congressional-progressive/
http://touch.latimes.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-79604810/?related=true
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/pat-garofalo/2014/03/12/finally-a-washington-plan-for-jobs-and-the-debt
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/karen-dolan/want-to-be-better-off-get_b_4950896.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-l-borosage/common-sense-takes-courag_b_4948854.html?view=print&comm_ref=false
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/17/paul-ryan-budget-vs-congressional-progressive-caucus
http://www.msnbc.com/now-with-alex-wagner/watch/better-off-budget-set-for-release-193403971839
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/3/12/congressional-progressivecaucusbudget.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2012/10/left-side-of-aisle-76-part-4.html
http://www.salon.com/2014/03/28/revealed_the_u_s_militarys_next_shadow_war_partner/
http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/2014/04/05/obama-exceeds-million-mark-deportations/7340419/
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2012/09/left-side-of-aisle-75-part-4.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2012/09/left-side-of-aisle-73-part-4.html

Examples of the divide between us and them
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-09/gm-workers-who-built-defective-cars-fret-about-recall.html
http://www.salon.com/2014/04/03/must_see_morning_clip_it_took_gm_more_than_10_years_to_recall_a_deadly_malfunction/
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/major-events-gms-recall-26m-small-cars-23142695
http://time.com/54382/general-motors-ignition-switch-recall-fine/
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/ups-threatens-fire-250-protesting-workers
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/queens/exclusive-ups-dismisses-250-queens-drivers-protest-article-1.1742718
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/queens/ups-union-discuss-fate-250-fired-drivers-article-1.1750103
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/queens/ups-fires-17-queens-drivers-ongoing-labor-dispute-article-1.1749171

Left Side of the Aisle #103 - Part 3

What's good about 7.6% unemployment?

One of the reasons I wanted to do the Outrage of the Week now is because I wanted to talk some about the economy, which I haven't done in a while.

Of course, one of the big bits of economic news over the past couple of weeks was the unemployment figures, as it always is when the monthly figures come out. According to the Labor Department, the unemployment rate in March was only 7.6% - that's a full 0.1% drop from February. If you think you detect some sarcasm there, I'd only say what do you mean "some?"

It's amazing to me, it's intolerable to me, that this is supposed to be acceptable, that we're supposed to go "isn't this just great news, aren't things just fine." We're all supposed to play Pollyanna's "glad game" and go "We're glad that it's not 10% like it was in the summer of 2010!" Which, yes, is something to be glad about, it's good that unemployment has come down a couple of percentage points, but it's rather like being glad you have skin cancer because it's not lung cancer or being glad  you have six months to live because at least it's not three months.

Well, yeah, but at least we can be glad unemployment is creeping down, right? At least it didn't go up!

Except it probably should have. There were a measly 88,000 new jobs created in March, considerably less than half the 190,000 predicted, when it takes about 150,000 a month just to absorb new workers entering the job market. So why did the rate go down? Because nearly 500,000 workers left the labor force. Now, some of those people were new retirees and some may have been people returning to school, but the fact is a lot of them, quite possibly most of them, are people who had been out of work so long that they just gave up looking because work had been so hard to find - and who, quite possibly, found themselves, whether or not they were aware of it, targets of the unemployment discrimination I mentioned a couple of minutes ago.

As a result of the growing number of discouraged workers, the labor participation rate, the percentage of the civilian working-age population that is in the labor force, that is, either working or looking for work, dropped to its lowest level in over 30 years.

But don't worry, it's all good, nothing to see here, move along, don't worry be happy and even the dismal number of new jobs doesn't faze the happy-talkers, as we have Rachel Maddow merrily chirping that such numbers always get revised. Which is true - and sometimes they get revised downward.

So look, 7.6% unemployment. It could be worse, it has been worse and not that long ago. But that doesn't mean it's good. It doesn't mean things are going well, it doesn't mean "prosperity is right around the corner" - especially not when first-time unemployment claims for the week ending March 30 went up 28,000, much more than expected.

So to sum up that rant: 7.6% unemployment. It's been worse. But the idea that this is some kind of new normal, the unemployment of 7-something percent is a level we're supposed to take for granted, to be satisfied with, is obscene.

And it's not going to get a whole lot better any time soon: The Federal Reserve predicts that the unemployment rate will stay above 6.5% for at least two more years. They predict unemployment will still be nearly 7.5% at the end of this year and no less than 6.7% to 7% at the end of 2014.

The jobs simply aren't there. Corporations simply are not hiring. Oh, they're posting the jobs: Job postings went up 11% last year to the highest rate in 5 years. But they're not filling the jobs. They're not hiring. It's not because they can't, it's not because they can't afford it. Corporate profits are at an all-time high and are going up at nearly 20% per year. Those profits represent the largest share of total national income in over 60 years while the portion that's going to salaries and wages is at its lowest level in nearly 50 years. Wages now account for the smallest portion of the Gross Domestic Product since the end of World War 2, which is when they started keeping records. That's nearly 70 years.

And even as corporate profits rise, corporate taxes drop: The tax burden, if you can call it that, on corporations is now equivalent to just 1.5% of the GDP. Another way to measure that is to note that in 1952, the corporate income tax accounted for about one third of of all federal tax revenue. Now it's less than 9 percent.

The fact is, we are hurting and we continue to hurt. And it's not just the unemployed, of course, it's also the employed - or at least those of us who are not part of the elite.

We often hear about income inequality in the US, but not a lot of us know just how extreme it is. Let me show you something.

A couple of years ago, researchers at Duke University and the Harvard Business School did a survey of Americans in which they asked people what they thought was the distribution of wealth among people in the US. The the middle bar in the chart to the left. It indicates that people think that the richest 20% of the population owns about 55% of the wealth. Something notable about the results is that people across all three of the survey's income categories (less than $50,000 per year, $50,000-$100,000 per year, and over $100,000 per year) were very similar in their estimates.

The researchers also asked those same people what they thought would be the best, the fairest, distribution of wealth.The bottom bar in the graph shows what they said. It's much more equitable than what they think the actual distribution is; the wealthiest fifth get about a third of the total wealth, with the poorest fifth holding about 10 percent of the total. Again, all three income groups offered much the same answer: Although there was some variation across income groups, with the portion the wealthiest should have rising with income, the differences were just not that large, with the proposed portion for the richest ranging only from 30 to 40 percent.

The top bar is the actual distribution.

The richest fifth of our population possesses nearly 85% of our total national wealth. Note that the bottom two categories, the bottom two-fifths of the population, barely register on that graph.

This is not new. This has been going on for decades, going on since the 1970s. The average American worker, the average American family, has lost ground since the late 1970s. The average American family is worse off that it was 35 years ago. Thirty-five years of work has gotten you precisely nowhere.

And not only has it been getting worse, it's even accelerating. During the Clinton-era economic recovery, 45% of the gain in national income went to the richest 1% of the population.

During the Bush-era recovery, 63% of the gain in national income went to the richest 1% of the population.

During the Obama-era recovery, an eye-popping 121% of the gain in national income went to the richest 1% of the population.

How is that even possible? It comes from research done by University of California economist Emmanuel Saez, who found that not only did all of the income gains from 2009 to 2011 go to the top 1%, the incomes of the bottom 99% fell by 0.4%. It's no longer even that the top 20% are gaining or the top 10% or even the top 5%, it's the top 1% who are sucking up all the gains and leaving the rest of us further and further behind.

That is the economic reality we are facing. And what the politicos and pundits across both parties are proposing to do about it is exactly the wrong thing. I'll talk about that next week.

Sources:
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.a.htm
http://jobsanger.blogspot.com/2013/04/unemployment-rate-drops-but-its-not.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bhyKS_SWPM&feature=youtube_gdata
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-jobs-gain-in-march-lowest-in-10-months-2013-04-05
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-gongloff/labor-force-participation-rate_b_1865027.html
http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5063
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/20/unemployment-fed-forecast_n_2916986.html
http://www.ydr.com/business/ci_22986440/us-companies-post-more-job-but-fill-them
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/03/04/1665281/corporate-profits-worker-income/
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/12/03/1270541/corporate-profits-wages-record/
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/12/10/1308981/chart-corporate-profits-skyrocket-while-corporate-taxes-plummet/
http://articles.latimes.com/2013/mar/06/business/la-fi-hiltzik-20130306
http://www.epi.org/publication/economy-built-profits-not-prosperity/
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/02/yes-virginia-the-rich-continue-to-get-richer-the-1-got-121-of-income-gains-since-2009.html
http://www.scribd.com/doc/125269359/Getting-Richer-Edmund-Saez

Left Side of the Aisle #84 - Part 1

Outrage of the Week: CEOs preaching austerity

Contrary to my hopes, I'm not going to get to a long discussion of the so-called "Grand Bargain to avoid the Fiscal Cliff." But since this will be debated for a few more weeks anyway, I still have time. So here I'm just going to repeat what I said last week: It ain't grand, it ain't no bargain, and there ain't no cliff.

However, this week's Outrage of the Week will give you a taste of some of the nonsense being cooked up over this.

Last week, when CBS Evening News wanted to ask someone about what to do about the so-called "fiscal cliff," who did they pick? Why, the CEO of Goldman Sachs, obviously! Who else?

His name is Lloyd Blankfein, and in case you can't tell, he's the one on your right.

They may have picked Blankfein to interview because he's been pushed out there as a point man by this thing called the Campaign to Fix the Debt. It's essentially a bunch of corporate CEOs whose companies have received trillions in federal war contracts, subsidies, and bailouts, as well as special tax breaks and loopholes that virtually eliminate the companies' tax bills and who themselves are paid tens to hundreds of millions of dollars a year - and who are now going to tell everyone else what they have to give up.

You know what that is, I don't even have to tell you: Cut - meaning slash - the programs that help you while maintaining or increasing those that help them. The big three - Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid - are all on the chopping block along with assorted programs of "low-priority spending."

What constitutes "low-priority spending" is not explained, but last spring, House GOPpers showed how they defined the term by what they included in the Ryan budget: It meant, among other things, cut Food Stamps, cut school lunch programs, cut employment and training programs, cut the Child Tax Credit, and eliminate the Social Services Block Grant, which provides services to 11 million children as well as supporting Meals on Wheels and community-based care for the elderly.

On CBS, Blankfein described what in the CEOs minds had to be done: "lower people's expectations. The entitlements, and what people think that they're going to get - they're not going to get it." In other words, the message should be "You're gonna be poor. Get over it."

For example, how to deal with Social Security? Raise the retirement age, cut benefits, cut cost-of-living-allowances. We have to do this, he said, because, after all, "Social Security wasn't devised to be a system that supported you for a 30-year retirement after a 25-year career."

Excuse me? Maybe this should have been the Clown Award rather than the Outrage of the Week. A 25-year career? Yeah, maybe, if you started working at 42. A 30-year retirement? Sure, if the average person lives to 97.

At the same time they are spewing this bilge, the group is pushing for what they call a "territorial tax system" that would exempt their companies' foreign profits from taxation, netting them about $134 billion a year in tax cuts. And another of these bozos, Honeywell CEO David Cote, is saying the corporate tax rate should be as low as possible - ideally, he said, it should be zero.

And don't expect them to be lowering their own expectations or to forgo federal money or pay a higher tax rate on their personal income. Instead, they argue for "comprehensive tax reform which broadens the base - ideally by enough to also lower tax rates."

You do realize what "broaden the base" means, yes? It means people who now do not have enough of an income to owe federal income tax would pay it - increasing revenue enough, they hope, to lower tax rates. So they are bluntly hoping to have the poor pay more taxes so that they will pay less and corporations pay nothing at all.

And if that doesn't strike you as outrageous, I can't imagine what would.

Sources:
http://www.fair.org/blog/2012/11/20/you-think-youre-getting-social-security-but-youre-not-says-multimillionaire-banker/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/25/deficit-reduction-council-fiscal-cliff_n_2185585.html
http://www.thenation.com/blog/167842/week-poverty-republicans-define-lower-priority-spending
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/11/squirming-hawks/