The American Dream Co-Opted By Pesky Foreigners

Today marks my re-entry into blogging after a several month long hiatus for a number of personal reasons. Didn't feel like doing it, so I didn't. I figured if my heart wasn't in it, then there was really no point. That being said, I'm glad to be back on (off?) the wagon. It's a new year - an election year no less - and there is bound to be an innumerate amount of issues to write about and discuss.

Issues like this one:

But many researchers have reached a conclusion that turns conventional wisdom on its head: Americans enjoy less economic mobility than their peers in Canada and much of Western Europe. The mobility gap has been widely discussed in academic circles, but a sour season of mass unemployment and street protests has moved the discussion toward center stage.
[...]
At least five large studies in recent years have found the United States to be less mobile than comparable nations. A project led by Markus Jantti, an economist at a Swedish university, found that 42 percent of American men raised in the bottom fifth of incomes stay there as adults. That shows a level of persistent disadvantage much higher than in Denmark (25 percent) and Britain (30 percent) — a country famous for its class constraints.
[...]
While liberals often complain that the United States has unusually large income gaps, many conservatives have argued that the system is fair because mobility is especially high, too: everyone can climb the ladder. Now the evidence suggests that America is not only less equal, but also less mobile.
[...]
In 2006 Professor Corak reviewed more than 50 studies of nine countries. He ranked Canada, Norway, Finland and Denmark as the most mobile, with the United States and Britain roughly tied at the other extreme. Sweden, Germany, and France were scattered across the middle.

Read the whole thing. As the article says, the issue isn't that people don't have money or decent paying jobs (although that is obviously a separate issue) but rather that the American Dream is under assault. That is, it is increasingly statistically difficult, if not impossible, to be born in one economic strata and be able to move to a higher one through sheer force of will and hard work. That was the essence of the American Dream - that anyone that played by the rules and had an exceptional work ethic could become upper middle class, or at least significantly better themselves. Not so anymore, at least in most cases. That fairy tale has been left behind in our collective rear view mirror in the 1950s. And don't be fooled by the financial crisis/recession - this has been decades in the making. 

This is what happens when the de facto economic policy of the US is wildly tilted towards the highest echelons of the economic ladder in hopes that magical fairies and wildly generous and wealthy benefactors will trickle down their gains and table scraps to the rest of us. You'll note that the common denominator here is that the countries in the article with superior economic mobility do not subscribe to such fantasies. They have higher taxes on the high earners/wealth (sorry - the job creators) and don't believe in the infantile fallacy that if you give the wealthy shit for free, they give it away to the rest of us and make it rain because they are just that generous.

Occupy Wall Street is a start, and a good one at that. And people outside the movement are even starting to catch on - despite the abject failure of Washington and both political parties (with heavier blame on the GOP), public opinion wildly favors progressive economic policies. And I would venture to guess that a solid majority of the country would be very pleased with the results of a true progressive tax code and higher taxation on those who have done well if they would simply remove their heads from their collective asses and realize that they themselves are a part of the very statistics that this article details. This is what the 2012 election should be about (but probably won't be). Hopefully this dialog will continue into the future. Our political overlords would be incredibly stupid to ignore the dialog that OWS has started.

We're Putting New Cover Sheets On All the TPS Reports Now

Mother Jones does a great job with some of the visual pieces it runs with various data illustrating our economic stratification. I frequently link to this one about income inequality, because it is simply indispensable for illustrating just how far down the plutocracy rabbit hole we have ventured. But they have another great illustrated feature up called Overworked America that is well worth your time. 

I think one of the most shocking and saddest chart is the one where it shows that most of the African continent requires paid maternity leave. The US still has no such requirement. Parents must take time off through short-term disability and the Family Medical Leave of Absence Act. Short-term disability is an insurance benefit (and not 100% of your salary in most cases), and FMLA is unpaid. It just prevents your employer from firing you while you are out on FMLA approved leave.

So yeah. We are behind Africa in the benefits we afford to new mothers. Africa. You know, that giant chunk of land south of Europe and Asia that doesn't exactly boast a reputation of modern, civilized democracies but more often than not brings to mind images of genocide, famine, sectarian violence, and civil war. That's the continent that affords mandatory paid maternity leave. Not ours.

Say What You Mean, Mean What You Say

I have always thought that the 'flip-flop' label, when applied to politicians, is a little banal and childish. People should be allowed to change their opinions, based on facts of course, and not for political expediency. That being said, this statement from Mitt Romney makes me want to puke and slap him all at the same time:

ROMNEY: I don’t worry about the top one percent. I don’t stay up nights worrying about ‘gee we need to help them.’ I don’t worry about that. They’re doing just fine by themselves. I worry about the 99 percent in America. I want America, once again, to be the best place in the world to be middle-class. I want to have a strong and vibrant and prosperous middle-class. And so I look at what’s happening on Wall Street and my own view is, boy I understand how those people feel…The people in this country are upset.

Not one week ago, when asked of the Occupy Wall Street protests, he said:

“I think it’s dangerous, this class warfare."

So which is it, Mittens?

"Pitting of Americans Against Americans"

In his column from Friday, Paul Krugman discusses what I mentioned previously regarding the establishment media's reaction to Occupy Wall Street:

Nonetheless, Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, has denounced “mobs” and “the pitting of Americans against Americans.” The G.O.P. presidential candidates have weighed in, with Mitt Romney accusing the protesters of waging “class warfare,” while Herman Cain calls them “anti-American.” My favorite, however, is Senator Rand Paul, who for some reason worries that the protesters will start seizing iPads, because they believe rich people don’t deserve to have them. 

Michael Bloomberg, New York’s mayor and a financial-industry titan in his own right, was a bit more moderate, but still accused the protesters of trying to “take the jobs away from people working in this city,” a statement that bears no resemblance to the movement’s actual goals. 

And if you were listening to talking heads on CNBC, you learned that the protesters “let their freak flags fly,” and are “aligned with Lenin.”

I highly recommend this article by Kos for a definitive look at just how hypocritical and odious is Cantor's statement. The GOP makes its electoral living off of pitting Americans against Americans and obfuscating their common ties and values. But Krugman's takedown wouldn't be complete without an explanation of why everyone with a heavy pocketbook is rushing to do their best to marginalize this movement before it continues to spread:

What’s going on here? The answer, surely, is that Wall Street’s Masters of the Universe realize, deep down, how morally indefensible their position is. They’re not John Galt; they’re not even Steve Jobs. They’re people who got rich by peddling complex financial schemes that, far from delivering clear benefits to the American people, helped push us into a crisis whose aftereffects continue to blight the lives of tens of millions of their fellow citizens. 

[...] 

This special treatment can’t bear close scrutiny — and therefore, as they see it, there must be no close scrutiny. Anyone who points out the obvious, no matter how calmly and moderately, must be demonized and driven from the stage. In fact, the more reasonable and moderate a critic sounds, the more urgently he or she must be demonized, hence the frantic sliming of Elizabeth Warren. 

So who’s really being un-American here? Not the protesters, who are simply trying to get their voices heard. No, the real extremists here are America’s oligarchs, who want to suppress any criticism of the sources of their wealth.

The sad thing is that I suspect some of these assholes actually believe that the protesters are the problem here.

Banksters Bounce Back

Remember all the talk of a V-shaped recovery around in the summer of 2010? Some amongst us have had it. Spoiler alert - it wasn't the US economy at large:

The idiot talking heads on Fox and CNN and the other assholes that sneer at Occupy Wall Street are being purposefully obtuse. There is no other way to justify their stupidity other than willful ignorance. That and the fact that they have zero empathy whatsoever and are largely insulated from what the rest of the economy is experiencing. The banksters crashed the economy, they were bailed out with taxpayer money with no strings attached, they roared back to profitability and paid themselves billions of bonuses (some of whom continued to do so while still paying back TARP funds), and they have paid no price for their crimes whatsoever. But somehow all of this makes OWS a bunch of ill informed dirty hippies. 

You tell me who is ill informed and misguided - people finally waking up to the way in which Wall Street has ruined the US economy while paying no price and simultaneously maintaining its stranglehold on the halls of power, or the fuckwits in the media sneering and acting like nothing happened.

Let It Burn

No, the Republicans do not have a jobs or economic platform, and the media and everyone else would do well to wake up to this reality. Their platform is to let people suffer and prolong our economic quagmire as long as possible. Deregulation and tax cuts for the wealthy are not an economic plan - they are rote, stale, and failed GOP dogma.

We Are the 99%

Almost a month ago, I wrote the following regarding the nascent protests on Wall Street:

There is a shortage of true populist protests and activism over what this country has endured at the hands of Wall Street and the way in which government has aided and abetted the banksters in shielding them from any accountability. Obama famously told top bankster CEOs that "I'm the only one standing in between you and the pitchforks." Well, we need to see more pitchforks. Sure people are pissed, but really only in rhetoric and not in action. 

At the time, I assumed (but certainly hope I would be wrong) that the protests would eventually become more than a fringe movement, and a much needed one at that. Needless to say I have been encouraged and elated to see that this has erupted into a nationwide protest over the grotesque income inequality and the economic and social injustice of both the financial crisis and the last three to four decades. 

There's a couple of general notes that I want to make about OWS. First off, it should come as no surprise that those among us with legitimate grievances against moneyed elites would be met with widespread derision and sneering by the very people (the media included) that benefit richly from the status quo. See this Glenn Greenwald piece for a definitive takedown of all the media outlets heaping contempt upon the unwashed masses. Or this one, where he covers the NYT's financial columnist's fealty to an anonymous "top bankster CEO," courageously investigating the OWS protests at his behest. I am sure the Fox News fair and balanced approach to these protests will surprise you very little. When the media isn't busy openly shitting on these folks for having the audacity to be pissed off about having their livelihoods vanquished by the financial crisis while the crooks that caused the same crisis got their asses saved by trillions in tax payer funded bailouts, they are waxing breathless about what is it exactly that OWS wants? They are a bunch of dirty hippies with an incoherent message! What are their demands?! They are irrelevant until they settle on a unified message! And when that isn't the prevailing themes, you have assholes like Mitt Romney calling the "class warfare" being waged by these protesters, "dangerous."

Does anyone recall the tea baggers being subjected to this sort of derision and scrutiny? Certainly they were widely mocked by people like myself and other progressive bloggers, but they were the absolute darlings of the establishment media. There was no chastising of the tea baggers for having a rambling or incoherent message. At its core, the very crux of the tea bagger message was inherently rambling and incoherent, but the establishment media got the vapors over these Very Serious real murkins WANTING THEIR COUNTRY BACK. Here you had a group of mostly educated, older, white dipshits caterwauling about the tyranny of the lowest federal tax burden since the Eisenhower era, a socialistic takeover of government healthcare that was laughably divorced from socialized healthcare or single payer systems, and their collective aversion to government fiscal profligacy despite eight years in which trillions of dollars were spent on tax cuts and foreign wars by the Bush administration, all of this newly and conveniently discovered after the election of a black Democrat. This is the group of people that the media venerated, treated Very Seriously, never questioning their message, their methods, or integrity despite an abiding number of reasons to do so. After all, they were just concerned citizens! A "wholly organic" grassroots movement that were sick of their government making them pay really low taxes and barring insurance companies from discriminating against pre-existing conditions, and trying to spend much needed tax dollars to pull the economy out of an immensely deep crater. They lavished praise and adulation on the group that hoisted grotesquely racist signs bearing all manner of epithets against our President, comparing him to Hitler, proclaiming that they came unarmed (this time), wearing tri-pointed hats adorned with tea bags, and packing pistols and AR-15s at their rallies. They even went so far as to gleefully use their brand to co-sponsor Republican presidential debates. I will let you tell me when you think you will see a CNN/MoveOn debate, a CNN/Daily Kos, or a CNN/Occupy Wall Street debate.

The Occupy Wall Street protests on the other hand? I've already detailed how they have been treated by the media and most of those otherwise unencumbered by petty things like foreclosed homes, unemployment, or the complete economic collapse of their household in general, so consider for a moment the difference between the claims of the tea baggers and those of OWS. Occupy Wall Street seeks to capture the long dormant populist outrage stirred up by decades of tax cuts for the wealthy and financial deregulation being sold to the masses as the panacea for economic prosperity for all, when in fact they have lead to income inequality the likes of which makes third world nations and banana republics blush, a financial crisis that has devastated the already embattled middle class while simultaneously adding millions to the rolls of foreclosures, unemployed, savaged retirement savings, flatlining and stagnant wages, and otherwise economically destitute or unstable. And none of this is conjecture, ideology, or exaggeration. These are facts. The supply side, plutocrat and bankster coddling, wealthy fellating policies of the last three decades have been absolutely devastating for the poor and middle classes, and the financial crisis, catalyzed by rampant fraud and speculation and money whoring on Wall Street, has only exacerbated and compounded the issue. These policies have been an absolute failure for this country. That is, unless you're in the top 1% that controls 40% of the nation's wealth. 

It will be very interesting to see where these protests go from here. I am hoping that they can avoid the same fate as the tea baggers by avoiding being co-opted into the larger party establishment that serves little other than the party's electoral interests. They need to maintain their populist autonomy and independence to truly thrive and have an impact. And they must continue to grow. I'll say it again: it's long overdue, and this is possibly the first opportunity in a long time for much needed progressive change, and a much needed national conversation about the values and policies that we have espoused in this country for so long, and what those policies have wrought for 99% of us.

Or We Could Just Ban It

Once upon a time, the modern derivative/future/forward contract was born, and incredibly useful financial instrument that helps anyone from ordinary farmers protecting themselves against the risk of falling prices at harvest, to airline giants seeking to limit their exposure to ever-rising fuel prices. The forward was a prudent tool, whereby two parties entered into an financial exchange - one party essentially betting that the price of the commodity would rise, while the counterparty expecting that same price to fall. Historically, these contracts actually involved the physical transfer and delivery of the underlying asset. So when that farmer bought a forward contract to sell bushels of wheat at some specified price, the counterparty would actually buy those bushels of wheat from the farmer at the specified date, at the specified price.

But like everything in American and global finance, this has been turned into a giant fucking casino whereby it primarily serves the purpose of funneling around huge sums of money in search of short-term profits while doing very little to actually serve its original purpose. The farmers and Southwest Airlines of the world now make up a very small percentage of these forwards. This makes some people enormously wealthy, while passing on the costs of rampant speculation to the rest of us in the form of rising commodity prices, especially oil.

So here's an idea - how about an outright ban on speculative hedging? It's not like there aren't a million other ways for banksters and "job creators" to slosh around their casino funds. There is some work being done on this now both by the Dodd-Frank act and Sen. Ben Nelson, of all people, but you can guarantee that it won't go far enough or even make it out of the gate with the kind of money this makes. When up to 25% of the cost of a barrel of oil is estimated to be due to this excessive speculation, you would think that it would be a common sense policy to rein it in for the sake of the American economy. Rising oil prices are overwhelmingly detrimental to our consumption based economy. But it's big business for the banksters, so don't expect to see any common sense policy any time soon.

Troy Davis Executed

I have not really been writing about Troy Davis at any length simply because I have been more consumed with the number of economic and tax related news lately. There are number of other good writers who have covered this: see Digby and TNC to name a few.

Before I get to my point, Davis was executed by the state of Georgia this evening despite numerous recantations by corroborating witnesses from his original trial. Davis maintained his innocence up until the moment of his untimely execution. In the days leading up to his execution, there was a veritable torch-and-pitchfork crowd within the right wing media overtly cheering for his execution.

I have never really waded into the social politics of capital punishment, but viewing this unfortunate spectacle has changed that for me. The mere thought of rotting for years on death row, facing down execution for a crime I did not commit is enough to make me want to vomit, let alone imagining any of my friends or family in a similar situation. And that is not to say that I am convinced either way of Davis' innocence or guilt. But as I mentioned before, when several witnesses basically say their original testimony was garbage, it probably bears some serious thought as to whether or not we ought to put this man to death. That was tried in various forms all the way up to the Supreme Court, but being the death-loving, ever macho, dick swinging, executions-are-awesome culture that we are, was ultimately denied. Apparently "beyond a reasonable doubt" is just a flimsy term that we don't let impede the assuaging of our bloodlust. 

I think this shows that in some ways, humanity really hasn't come very far from the days of the Roman Empire. When faced with a man's questionable guilt, instead of taking every precaution to ensure we don't execute an innocent man, we rally the most depraved aspects of our national psyche, cheering for his demise like a bunch of drunken Romans watching  a couple of gladiators swinging axes at each other in the Coliseum. On a similar note, this was also on display at recent Republican debates when audiences cheered enthusiastically at Gov. Rick Perry's record on executions (the most of any governor) and Wolf Blitzer's question as whether a thirty year old, coma stricken, uninsured man should be left to die. This sort of display is disgusting, craven, and has no place in a civilized democracy. You might also say this is why the GOP came unglued at the mention of "empathy" during the Justice Sotomayor confirmation hearings. It's because they have none, and the very idea of it is repellent to them.

But as for the politics of the death penalty, I assume its proponents (especially on the right) use their favored "if you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear" sham of a moral argument. This was popularized during the rise of the Patriot act and the War on Terror as Americans rightly expressed their objections and reservations to the government's ever expanding powers of surveillance over its own citizens. But tragedies like Troy Davis' executions are precisely why we should fear the government having this sort of power. Humans, and by extension their institutions, are inherently fallible. This isn't the first case of a potentially innocent man being put to death, and it won't be the last either.

The Fox News / GOP "Class Warfare" Canard

The political right is absolutely apoplectic right now with Obama's newly found populist stance on taxes and economic. It has been kind of fun watching them implode into a swirling morass of wails of class warfare. I've already written about how incredibly pathetic this talking point is, but I don't doubt that it won't be effective with the low information morons that watch the not-at-all-biased Fox News Channel to begin with. Nevertheless, Obama is not letting it go unanswered:

"This is not class warfare -- it's math," Mr. Obama said from the White House Rose Garden, addressing GOP critiques of his plan head on. 

"The money has to come from some place," he continued. "If we're not willing to ask those who've done extraordinarily well to help America close the deficit... the math says everybody else has to do a whole lot more, we've got to put the entire burden on the middle class and the poor." 

[...] 

"I reject the idea that asking a hedge fund manager to pay the same tax rate as a plumber or teacher is class warfare. I think it's just the right thing to do."

Yup. It's not class warfare, it's common fucking sense. At least it is in every other Western modern democracy, but we are a little behind the times with our social contract here in America. Newly minted Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren also did an excellent job today of taking down this wildly assbackwards falsehood:

“I hear all this, you know, ‘Well, this is class warfare, this is whatever,’” she said. “No. There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. 

“You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did. 

“Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea? God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. 

But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”

Expecting rich people to contribute back to the societies that have rewarded their success so richly? What a commie. 

More of this please. More of all of it. This is the grounds on which I want the 2012 election to be fought. It's a clash of ideals that overwhelmingly favor the Democrats.

Your Modern GOP: Rooting for America's Failure Since 2008

A few days ago, I said the following in response to to Obama's laughably naive presumption that there might be any, even a single Republican that might put their country before electoral politics:

With all due respect: Wake the fuck up, Mr. President.

It doesn't take a political scientist to predict these things:

House Republicans may pass bits and pieces of President Barack Obama’s jobs plan, but behind the scenes, some Republicans are becoming worried about giving Obama any victories — even on issues the GOP has supported in the past.
And despite public declarations about finding common ground with Obama, some Republicans are privately grumbling that their leaders are being too accommodating with the president.
“Obama is on the ropes; why do we appear ready to hand him a win?” said one senior House Republican aide who requested anonymity to discuss the matter freely. “I just don’t want to co-own the economy by having to tout that we passed a jobs bill that won’t work or at least won’t do enough.”

This should be the top story on every major newspaper, cable network, and radio broadcast. These assholes would much rather just let the country suffer and wallow through the Lesser Depression than do anything to improve our economic malaise because...it might help Obama. 

The President and Congressional Dems need to disavow themselves of any further bull shit ideals of bipartisanship and compromise. The GOP doesn't want it. They want nothing to do with any policy that would actually help the economy or unemployment, because they view these things as mutually exclusive to their electoral success. 

It doesn't get much more fucked up and cynical than this. These people can not be allowed to make any sort of significant gains in 2012. Ezra Klein has a piece up today that basically posits that the American public is so stupid and ill informed that they will believe that any potential future Republican acts of government that have nothing to do with the economy or unemployment, such as repealing the Affordable Care Act or rolling back EPA regulations, will be credited for any recovery beyond 2012.

And sadly, he’s right. Which makes it imperative that a Republican does not sit in the White House come January 2013. The last thing this country needs, the last thing this country can afford is to have the failed militant conservative ideology validated by a GOP huckster taking credit for a recovery they wanted nothing to do with and actively sought to prevent.

(via Steve Benen)

Don't Tackle Me Bro

So now we're tackling and arresting senior citizens for their audacity to speak their minds at their congressman's town halls. 

So much for our representative democracy. Congressman Ryan (and many others) are not interested in what the peasants have to say.

(via Digby)