Different Day, Same Shit.

The following comes courtesy of Lane Crothers, a.k.a Politicalprof, a professor of politics and government at Illinois State University, in Normal, IL.:

I remember when the lottery for higher education passed in SC. Every student that went to college received a voucher for x amount of dollars. So what do you think happened to the cost of higher education in SC. The tuition increased by the same amount as the voucher.

This is a valid concern. There is no doubt that many universities have taken the increased availability of student loans and/or support programs from state and local governments and used them to raise their tuitions to meet the monies available. Thus, rather than economize, they saw opportunities to build “up charges” into their pricing, and get “extra” money (beyond the money cut by the state) into their budgets.

On the other hand, as the article I linked to noted, this was more common at major research universities than it was at “mid-level” universities like mine. At places like mine, tax replacement more or less accounts for current tuition rates.

Moreover, it seems to me that our understandable focus on tuition has left us incapable of seeing the real complexity of running a campus. Because of budget cuts in the 1980s and 1990s, for example, most campuses have huge backlogs of what we call “deferred maintenance”: the operating costs required to maintain, repair and replace aging buildings and infrastructure. When the states started chopping funding (again) in the 2000s, lots of campuses (like mine) were filled with buildings where plumbing, electric systems, roofs and other components were deteriorating quickly. So, yeah: lots of campuses took “extra” money and used it on buildings. Indeed, in some cases they used it to fix roofs; in others, they built climbing walls in elaborate student rec centers.

I get that people feel squeezed 87 ways to Tuesday. I was unspeakably blessed to have gotten through higher ed when I did, and I am — frankly — worried at how even someone with the advantages I have will pay for college for my children when they get there … many, many years from now. I do really, sincerely, get it.

The plain truth is that society no longer considers higher education a public good that the public should subsidize through taxes. Rather, society considers college a private good individuals should pay for on their own. This transition is occurring at a time when the existing architecture of higher education — lots of physical campuses spread around states — is aging, but no credible alternative has emerged to replace it. (Online just has too many problems to work for most people.)

So this generation is getting squeezed on both ends: they have to pay to maintain the old system even as the public bails out. It’s not pretty.

Sometimes I get sad.

In 2008, the United Nations estimated America's total wealth, including human capital, at around $118 trillion. Dr. John Rutledge, economist and former Bush administration tax policy advisor, estimated the U.S. economy's total assets at $188 trillion. The World Bank tallied America's national wealth as of Q4 2011 at $57.4 trillion. Filmmaker and outspoken activist Michael Moore found that the total net worth of the Forbes 400 in 2009 was $1.27 trillion, while the bottom 60% of households held only $1.22 trillion of $53.15 trillion in calculated national wealth for 2009.

According to a study by G. William Domhoff of the University of California at Santa Cruz, 35.4 percent of all privately held wealth in the U.S. is in the hands of only 1 percent of the nation. The mean household financial wealth of that 1 percent was $15,171,600 in 2010.

The U.S. currently has $16 trillion of national debt. The nation's current GDP stands at nearly $15 trillion.

Why the numbers? Because whenever people hear that the U.S. is deep in debt, its $16 trillion of debt obligations are always juxtaposed with its current GDP. It's a nice parlor trick that makes the folks with thousands of dollars in credit card debt see U.S. debt in the same light as their own debt, thereby making them more sympathetic to neo-conservative prescriptions of fiscal austerity. Put that together with instances of wasteful spending and the appearance thereof in a number of government sectors and you have a ready-made argument for taking a chainsaw to programs perceived as wasteful and unnecessary.

However, there's a big difference between national debt and personal debt. Personal debt is personal debt to the average American, unless they're absolutely adroit at precariously juggling credit cards and loans for profit. Unlike most nations, they don't have the power to print currency, backed by their own full faith and credit, in hopes of satisfying debt obligations if need be. Nations use debt instruments to finance their growth, make investments in trusted, secure currencies and even rely on their own reputation and others' hope of long-term gain in exchange for overlooking short-term debt.

When the average American defaults on their debt, they're usually subject to devastating reductions in their personal credit score (which has an ever-growing importance on financial well-being, these days) in addition to wage garnishments and asset liquidation, unless they manage to get from under their debt via bankruptcy. Even then, it's usually a seven-year wait in the fiscal wilderness as they're practically barred from anything other than lending instruments offering usurious borrowing rates.

Things are a bit different for a nation facing a sovereign default:

Defaulting on sovereign debt can be more complicated than defaults on corporate debt because domestic assets cannot be seized to pay back funds. Rather, the terms of the debt will renegotiated, often leaving the lender in an unfavorable situation, if not an entire loss. The impact of the default can thus be significantly more far-reaching, both in terms of its impact on international markets and of its effect on the country's population. A government in default can easily become a government in chaos, which can be disastrous for other types of investment in the issuing country.

It's unlikely that the U.S. is so hard-up for money that it'll go the road of, say...Greece or perhaps Spain. Uncle Sam doesn't have to worry about harassing debt collection phone calls the same way the average American does.

On the other hand, Jerome Hudson, God bless him, is one of those folks who's firmly in the column of people who thinks Uncle Sam has good reason to keep his phone off the hook:

This is obviously a manufactured mantra. There are over sixteen trillion reasons why America is broke. We are a debtor nation. We blow through roughly seven million dollar every minute and about four hundred million dollars every hour. Heck, even the homeless person you pass on the street is in better financial shape than the country is because at least that guy is flat broke and doesn't owe a trillion dollars to the Bank of China.

A few weeks ago, Zimbabwe only had $212 to its name after paying all of its bills, so you'd presume they are in better shape than the U.S., right?

Come to think of it, the Bank of China would be hard-pressed to liquidate America's assets in the event of a default. Unlike someone who missed one too many car payments or skipped out on the Rent-to-Own bills, you just can't send in the repo man. Well, you could, but the consequences could be nasty. Threads-grade nasty.

Nevertheless, conservative leaders are hell-bent on perpetuating Hudson's narrative in hopes of convincing ordinary Americans to dispense with "expensive" social and financial safety nets and accept the prescribed privations of fiscal austerity as the new normal. The narrative sounds good to Americans who see their taxpayer dollars being spent on the wrong people and the wrong things. The push for fiscal austerity, in combination with the GOP's creative sabotage and obstruction of certain social programs, has left America's infrastructural, educational and social systems rotting on the vine.

In the meantime, the proceeds saved from that shared sacrifice aren't directed to things Americans actually need and appreciate - repaired roads and highway infrastructure, education funding, healthcare access, etc. Instead, the proceeds are funneled towards satisfying financial instruments that were largely the cause of America's current recession and obeying the constant demands of global business leaders for more tax breaks and greater monetary incentives.

It's no coincidence that the net worth of wealthy Americans has risen throughout the recession period. There's a quiet, yet noticeable transfer of wealth going on, where ordinary Americans are expected to hollow themselves out and willingly resign themselves to a lower quality of life, only to see what little wealth absorbed by parasitic financial instruments and gifted to a select few "captains of industry." This is deemed proper and fitting and besides, you should have worked harder if you don't like seeing CEOs enjoy filet mignon while you figure out the best way to make the most of your Spam and ramen noodle dinner.

America only has a spending problem in the eyes of conservatives and the investor/rentier class. In their view, America is spending its money on the wrong things (social programs, infrastructure, minimum wage, access to healthcare, a financial safety net in old age, etc.) and not enough money on the correct things (defense, tax breaks, financial rewards for the investor/rentier/industry captain class). The narrative will continue long after Americans accept a complete lack of healthcare, poverty in old age and little to no opportunity for socioeconomic mobility as their new reality.

We only consider the country in debt because we are constantly being told it is, which will make the upcoming sequestration in March a sight to behold. At this rate, we'll keep carving ourselves up until there's nothing left to carve up, all because the conservatives and the investor/rentier class demand it of us.

"Why should I work? President Obama will take other peoples shit and give it to me." - The 47% #tcot #p2 #teaparty
— TheRealAnchovy (@TheRealAnchovy) September 19, 2012

This is the meme wealthy folks like Mitt Romney love hearing their poorer conservative relations spout off. "Why that good for nothing negro's giving people who won't get a job free shit! Why can't hardworkin' folks like me get any breaks? Why give all the lazy bastards/spics/nig*CLANG* all the breaks?"

If anyone's wondering, helping Americans remain on their feet and their heads above water isn't "taking other peoples shit," nor is money-making a zero-sum game, where giving to the poor unfairly takes from the wealthy. But the GOP knows how to twist the issue just to rile up people who can't stand their fellow poor or those blacks or Mexicans down the street getting freebies while they struggle and scrape by*.

I think the main issue is that many wealthy Americans see taxation, especially for the purpose of assisting the poor, as a literal robbery of their fortunes. As they see it, they should be the only ones to decide when, where and how to dispense alms to the poor as they see fit and only if the poor successfully meet their beneficiaries' carefully constructed definition of poverty. For many, Americans would have to march deeper into a Dickensian existence before receiving any hopes of charity.

Speaking of charity, eschewing government welfare for private charities isn't all that's cracked up to be. Charity giving fluctuates with the economy and this previous recession put a big dent in charitable giving:

The stock market may be rebounding, but for charities the negative impact of the recession has only deepened over the past year, according to a survey released this week by the Bridgespan Group, a nonprofit consulting group in Boston.

Ninety-three percent of charity leaders said their organizations are feeling the effects of the economic downturn, according to the survey, which updates similar surveys of more than 100 charity leaders that Bridgespan conducted in November 2008 and May 2009. A year ago, the share of charity leaders reporting that their groups had suffered from the downturn was 75 percent.

Eighty percent of the charities surveyed last month said they had lost financial support, compared with 52 percent in 2008.

Even as the economy showed signs of improvement this summer, many charities continued to struggle. More than 40 percent of charity leaders said their group's financial situation had worsened over the past six months. Only 15 percent said their financial status was improving.

Charity executives have been forced to make some tough decisions. Nearly half said they had dipped into reserves to cope with declining revenue. More than 40 percent said their groups had laid off staff members, compared with only 28 percent in the 2008 survey.

"For many nonprofit groups, the bulk of their costs are employees," says Sarah Sable, a Bridgespan consultant and a co-author of the report. "When you have cuts of greater than 20 percent, you can only do so much on the program side. Ultimately, you'll be forced to make some cutbacks in your staff."

Rising demand and dwindling resources have put many charitable organizations against the wall. Without government welfare around, you can imagine the flood of needy Americans rushing in, only to see a damn-near dry pool of scant charity resources.

And let's not go into religious charitable organizations. Many have prerequisites and conditions that many people might not be comfortable with.

*Nevermind how many of these conservatives freely and quietly accept Social Security Disability payments, Medicaid subsidies and other forms of local and state assistance. The largest group of people currently on welfare today? White women. Even people with advanced college degrees are finding themselves with EBT food stamp cards.

There are two kinds of republicans...millionaires and suckers. -Redeye

It never fails to amaze me how Republicans on the lower end of the economic scale can consistently vote against their own interests. These are the people who need things like universal healthcare, Social Security, favorable economic reform and other societal safety nets. However, they're always quick to vote for people dedicated solely to the cause of garroting these programs, with the intention of picking the resultant bodies clean of any valuables, just because.

Whether it's the specter of "socialism," fear of federal government or the distaste/hatred of the eponymous "lazy" negro or Latino, conservatives are always willing to join forces with their moneyed, empowered representatives on Capitol Hill to help dismantle these and other programs that don't represent a hard-assed ideology that leaves countless Americans out in the cold, with no one to turn to. Republicans on the wrong side of the $250,000 income bracket are the literal suckers and soft touches of the GOP universe.

Once again, I bring you this footage of Mitt Romney confiding in his well-moneyed supporters what he thinks about 47 percent of Americans:


The takeaway from all of this is that 47 percent of Americans don't pay income taxes. Therefore, this percentage can be assumed to be freeloaders and welfare cases who want endless entitlements and represent a lockstep vote for President Obama as a result.

Of the 47 percent who were spared federal income taxes, over two-thirds were still on the hook for payroll taxes, most of which go towards Social Security and Medicare. Only 18 percent of that 47 percent figure managed to avoid federal income taxes, according to data from the Tax Policy Center.

Most of the people who avoid federal income taxes are hardworking heads of household relying on low-wage jobs to take care of one or more offspring. Being the head of household is one major deduction on tax returns and having dependents in the form of children or disabled adult relatives are also major deductions, and for good reason. Factor in various credits and adjustments, and you wind up getting the majority of your payroll taxes back in the form of a refund. For a struggling single mother with mouths to feed*, that income tax refund is the one thing they can look forward to between early February and May.

Meanwhile, over 20,000 households earning over $200,000 per year avoided paying federal income taxes, according to data from the IRS. Of those 20,000, over 4,000 were millionaires:

So how does someone in the top 3 percent of America’s income earners finagle their income tax burden down to zero? For the majority of them, it’s all about donating to charity, investing in local and state governments, earning money overseas and writing off doctor bills.

In Hendricks’ Wisconsin case, ABC Supply switched from an ”S” corporation, which passes all of its profits and losses through its owner to be taxed under personal income, to a “C” corporation, which stands independently of its owner and whose income is subject to corporate taxes.

Scott Bianchini, ABC tax director, told the Journal-Sentinel that the switch was a “substantial part” of why Hendricks had no state income tax liability. Bianchini noted that while Hendricks’ tax burden was minuscule this year, the billionaire has paid more than $10 million in taxes since 2005.

The wealthy have a variety of methods at their disposal to avoid federal income taxes. Mitt Romney himself should know, with his Swiss bank accounts and investments in the Cayman Islands. Yet and still, its the people making under $50,000 without paying federal income taxes that conservatives claim to champion yet simultaneously castigate.

Conservatives see no issues with wealthy entrepreneurs and major corporations using tax dodges to reduce or even eliminate their tax burden, as it would be exactly what less well off conservatives would do if they themselves were wealthy. Seeing struggling single mothers and other people near the poverty line go bereft of substantial tax burdens is something that pisses conservatives off - after all, poverty is considered a shameful defect and positive proof of general laziness among people who should quit with the entitlements, pull up bootstraps and get back to work like normal, regular hardworking Americans with incomes above $200,000.

A near-fanatical hatred of those worse-off and a near sycophantic devotion to the wealthy is a linchpin of conservative ideology. If you're not doing well for yourself, then something is obviously wrong with you, never mind any other factors that could easily plunge someone into poverty. The wealthy love seeing middle and low-income conservatives do their dirty work for them - having these people blindly attack welfare and entitlement means future opportunities to satiate Republican bloodlust draconian regulation or outright cancellation of helpful assistance programs, save for the ones that directly help their base. It also means future opportunity for the wealthy to shove what was once Social Security or Medicare money into their own pockets via speculative market investments and other vehicles that are supposed to be "better" than Social Security.

Mitt Romney thinks 47 percent of Americans are hopeless "welfare cases" who slavishly follow President Obama in hope of undeserved crumbs and trinkets here and there. That 47 percent should speak loud and clear what they think of Mittens come November 5. And despite all of the above evidence of Romney and Co. not really giving a flying toss about middle and low-income conservatives, they'll still vote for the man, if only to see the imaginary "welfare queen" get hoisted up by her bootstraps.

*Along with Buy-Here-Pay-Here car lots, tax return preparers specializing in "advances" and pretty much any retailer who loves seeing the influx of taxpayers with wads of cash burning holes in their pockets.

Our plutocracy now lives like the British in colonial India: in the place and ruling it, but not of it. If one can afford private security, public safety is of no concern; if one owns a Gulfstream jet, crumbling bridges cause less apprehension—and viable public transportation doesn’t even show up on the radar screen. With private doctors on call and a chartered plane to get to the Mayo Clinic, why worry about Medicare?

Mike Lofgren of the American Conservative happens to be one of the increasingly rare conservatives who are less concerned about maintaining the lockstep Tea Party insanity or garnering votes from constituencies who are best swayed by ever-increasing extremism and charged rhetoric, and more concerned about the damage being caused by the country's wealthiest and consequently, most powerful people. It's not every day that you find yours truly nodding in agreement with a conservative, but his article puts paid to what's wrong with cheerleading and, in effect, worshiping the wealthy and their money.

Come to think of it, that's what today's Republican party is all about. Hardworking Americans are guilt-tripped into believing that they aren't worth the waste defecated from the anus of a rich celebutante's Shiatsu unless they're rich, that all rich people are smart and hardworking, and that their ever-growing piles of money are proof positive of their smarts and work ethic, never mind if they made that money through the financial equivalent of three card monte or simply inherited the money from a wealthy relative who actually worked hard for it. It's easier for today's Republicans to have their poor constituents dreaming about becoming wealthy than to actually commit to any reforms or projects that could actually lift everyone's standard of living.

The average hardworking American genuinely believes his interests somehow align with those of the wealthy, as it's what he or she's been told for the past 30 to 40 years by the GOP and wealthy individuals. Whenever the issue of tax increases comes up, the wealthy are more than content to let these people do their work for them - Americans have been trained to become hyper-reflexive against any sort of tax increase and not just the ones that don't make sense or ones that happen to be screaming cash grabs.

Make no mistake - America's so-called "super-wealthy" have no allegiance to this country or any other country. As Lofgren explains, it's precisely why a corporate maverick would have no qualms about outsourcing tens of thousands of jobs to overseas locations. The economic ramifications are less of a concern than the immediate boost in profits and, most importantly, stock value. This is why I'm concerned about the Republicans rallying behind a presidential candidate who is hailed for his "business experience," yet displays all of the traditional hallmarks of a sociopathic being who is, by virtue of his personality and wealth, disconnected from the rest of America. He's already shown willful disregard for the well-being of "lesser" Americans through his business dealings and if made president, that willful disregard will become even more apparent.

It is no coincidence that as the Supreme Court has been removing the last constraints on the legalized corruption of politicians, the American standard of living has been falling at the fastest rate in decades. According to the Federal Reserve Board’s report of June 2012, the median net worth of families plummeted almost 40 percent between 2007 and 2010. This is not only a decline when measured against our own past economic performance; it also represents a decline relative to other countries, a far cry from the post-World War II era, when the United States had by any measure the highest living standard in the world. A study by the Bertelsmann Foundation concluded that in measures of economic equality, social mobility, and poverty prevention, the United States ranks 27th out of the 31 advanced industrial nations belonging to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Thank God we are still ahead of Turkey, Chile, and Mexico!

None of this disturbs the super wealthy. As Lofgren mentioned, they are truly in the world, but not of it. Therefore, the ordinary concerns of average folk don't concern them. After all, when you rely on private security for protection, send your children to private learning institutions, live in gated enclaves that are isolated from the rest of the world and vacation to far-flung locales that most people would never dream of imagining, let alone actually going, the concerns of those common people are of no concern to you. So when you have reports of America's highway infrastructure crumbling to nothing, it doesn't concern the super wealthy. As long as there's an idling Leer jet waiting, they can bounce from a crumbling America and rest their head at practically any location they wish.

The one danger of the super wealthy being completely aloof to the turmoil happening around them is being caught up in the blowback that comes from ignoring the ever-increasing pain of being destitute in a country that holds wealth as the highest and holiest standard to follow. Squeezing the blood of productivity from overworked turnips and rolling over ever increasing amounts of money in ethereal financial instruments while ignoring or even participating in the active destruction of the country's social safety nets is something that can't go on forever. Let's just say that history is full of examples where entire nations reached the breaking point for endless looting and there will come a time when that idling Leer jet will suddenly go up in flames.

We all know exactly what Mitt Romney stands for. Now, my question is, come Election Day, will Mike Lofgren march in lockstep with his fellow conservatives and mark a ballot in Mitt Romney's favor out of sheer party loyalty?

VOTER TO REP. C.W. BILL YOUNG (R-FLA.): Jesse Jackson Jr. is passing around a bill to increase the minimum wage to $10 an hour. Would you support that? REP. C.W. BILL YOUNG (R-FLA.): “Probably not.” VOTER: “It’s $10 bucks an hour. It would give us a living wage.” YOUNG: “How about getting a job. Why do you want that benefit? Get a job.” VOTER: “I have a job, but it’s not enough to get by on.” REP. YOUNG TURNS AWAY

Even if the current Florida state minimum wage of $7.67 an hour isn't enough for many people to get by, it doesn't matter to guys like Rep. Young. They're wondering why these folks don't quit whining and just get a better job. Or two jobs. But they'll be damned if they sign anything that might have the appearance of taking more "hard-earned money" from them and theirs.

“I’m against very wealthy ­people attempting to or influencing elections, but as long as it’s doable I’m going to do it.”

The above quote belongs to Sheldon Adelson, a big-time casino mogul who is currently the eight-richest man in the world. He's read the writing on the wall and now he's betting a cool $10 million on the RMoney Team after spending a fortune on Newt Gingrich. For a man with a net wealth of $20 billion, handing the pro-Romney super-PAC "Restore Our Future" and the Congressional Leadership Fund a total of $10 million is like giving those nice Girls Scouts $10 for a box of shortbreads. His wife also kicked in a cool $12.5 million to Restore Our Future, along with another $2.5 million to the CLF, for a total of $15 million. The amount of money being thrown around by well-heeled conservative interests is nothing to laugh off.

If Citizens United gave the moneyed 0.1% the green light to influence American elections with pallets of cash, then the recent, hard-bought victory of Scott Walker in Wisconsin was akin to the first car pulling away from the intersection. If progressives are still wondering why Cory Booker kept close to his well-heeled Manhattan friends or why President Obama seems reluctant to piss off the Wall Street crowd, now you know why. Politics was always an arena where you had to pay to play, but Citizens United raised the cost of admission. Those who can afford to pay do while those who can't are stuck on the outside looking in.

So what is this Adelson feller all about?

A college dropout raised in Boston by poor Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, Adelson pursued various business ventures before striking gold in the computer trade show industry. He used that money to revive the Sands Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. He helped turn the Strip into a major convention destination and now owns resorts in Macao and Singapore.

Adelson started out life as a Democrat. But in the 80s and 90s, as his wealth grew and he clashed with unionized hotel workers, he became a loyal Republican. He also supports conservative politicians and causes in Israel, where he owns the newspaper Israel Hayom. He also donates millions to charity, in particular medical research.

 This seems like an interesting turning point that's worth studying. You have to wonder what about the unions stuck in Adelson's craw so badly that he flipped from donkey to elephant:

Adelson clearly loves both Romney and Gingrich’s fealty to the policies of Israel’s hard right government. But it’s also important to note that Adelson hates unions about as much as Ahab hated that white whale (except Adelson is sort of the white whale, too…never mind). Over 90% of the rooms on the Las Vegas Strip are unionized. The union, Culinary 226, is, arguably, the most powerful local union in the country, beloved by its membership, primarily, of housekeepers, and tolerated by the large game companies that dominate the strip.

And like many billionaires, when it came to what seemed like a bunch of leeches siphoning off his hard-earned wealth, Adelson sought to get rid of this "problem" once and for all. Culinary 226 members earn 30-percent more than the national average and even non-union workers enjoy roughly the same wages thanks to their clout. You can imagine how much he'd save on this bottom line by making union membership a thing of the past.

Adelson's penchant for playing sugar daddy to well-known politicians doesn't stop at the U.S. border. He's also well-known for being sweet on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. As mentioned before, he also owns Israel Hayom, a Hebrew-language paper that's ardently pro-Netanyahu. The paper hasn't made a profit in years, unless you consider being a shameless promotional rag for Bibi while helping to turn Israeli political thought thoroughly conservative to be profit enough. And for a bit of schadenfreude (or Stockholm Syndrome), it's liberal paper Haaretz that's largely responsible for printing hard copies of Israel Hayom. Approximately 20 percent of Haaretz's revenue comes from Israel Hayom payments. What's more, 20 percent of the company's shares were purchased by former Yukos vice-president and right-winger Leonid Nevzlin.

Well-heeled billionaires with world-wide ties influencing national elections and policies for their own advantage. It's something that puts the average citizen who wants to make a difference at a distinct disadvantage on the state and federal front. The recent wave of voter disenfranchisement is working its magic across numerous states, insuring that even local elections wind up skewed in favor of candidates most willing to carry multinational corporate water. Sheldon Adelson is just one among many well-heeled figures who are slowly but surely tilting the playing field in their favor and to the everlasting detriment of the rest of us.

Meanwhile, a comment from the Las Vegas Sun article exemplifies what's wrong with America's mindset when it comes to the actual functions of unions:

Station employees DON'T WANT a union! They got the same wages and better benefits of unionized joints. Why would they want to pay dues to these crooks? I go to Station because they are NOT union and avoid places that play footsies with these thugs.

Because once the unions go away, so will the wages and benefits. Then you'll be dealing with places that hire real thugs instead of merely playing footsie with them, as the quality of employees will take a nosedive, along with service.

I believe many people readily conflate unions with Jimmy Hoffa, mobsters and surly Teamsters hailing from Long Island and New Jersey. Others see unions as a group that's gotten fat and greedy on $75.00/hr wages while "the rest of us" get by with non-union jobs paying $10/hr or less. Some believe that if unions simply went away, employers would be magnanimous enough to raise their pay a little bit in response. These fallacies, combined with the constant anti-union drumbeat of conservative politicians, corporations and media outlets, help keep nationwide union support at an all-time low. People are convinced that they don't need unions to represent them and that the company will take care of them.

Well, you can look to Wal-Mart as an example of how companies take care of their workers. Or you could look at how Amazon treats their workers. Here's a closer-to-home example of how companies take care of their workers, sans union representation.

People don't realize what they have until it's gone. It'll happen with education, genuine electoral representation, voting rights and of course, unions. People will have to go back to selling their souls to the company store before they realize how good they had it and how stupid they were to give it all up.

Many people want to praise Mitt Romney for being a "job creator," although he hasn't done much of that during his time at Bain Capital. After all, his job was really generating profits, not jobs. Keep in mind this same guy once expressed how he loved "being able to fire people":

"I like being able to fire people who provide services to me," Romney said at a Monday breakfast in New Hampshire, when talking about health care. "You know, if someone doesn't give me a good service that I need, I want to say, 'I'm going to go get someone else to provide that service to me.'"

Now that we've established that Mittens prefers changing out his cogs with better...cogs, here's Mittens expressing his love for a fellow "job creator":

“I wish Californians had elected Meg Whitman. She would have been more successful and explained to Californians the need to cut back on spending and eliminate unnecessary programs.”

You have to wonder if he heard about Whitman's plans to cut 30,000 workers from Hewlett-Packard's workforce:

Hewlett-Packard’s chief executive, Meg Whitman, plans to cut 30,000 or more jobs next week, according to officials familiar with the plan. Her goal, they said Thursday, is to spend the money she saves on increasing the efficiency of the company’s sales force and on creating new products.

The executives, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak for the company, said that H.P. would seek layoffs and voluntary retirements from across the company. The total could be as much as 10 percent of H.P.’s 324,000-person work force. China, which is one of H.P.’s highest growth areas, will probably be spared, as will its research and development efforts.

I thought Whitman was no longer with HP. Apparently, previous CEO Léo Apotheker's plan to take the company completely out of the personal computer business didn't sit well with shareholders. Don't feel bad for the guy -- he walked away with nearly $10 million in severance pay and bonuses.

Whatever Apotheker's plans for HP were must have been so bad they were willing to try out someone who already brought the company to damn-near ruin for a second go around. Funny how those things work in the corporate world.

I wonder what the sudden show of love for Whitman's coming from. You don't think he's finally found that special someone to play running mate with, did he? At least Meg doesn't exude the batshit crazy of Michele Bachmann or the "aww shucks" dingy hucksterism of Sarah Palin. Nope, just the cold-blooded reptilian mind for disposing companies and personnel who've outlived their usefulness to them. Birds of a feather, indeed.

I went through school, I worked my way through, it took me seven years, I never borrowed a dime of money. He borrowed a little bit because we both were totally on our own when we went to college, totally. [...] I have very little tolerance for people who tell me that they graduate with $200,000 of debt or even $80,000 of debt because there’s no reason for that. We live in an opportunity society and people are forgetting that. I remind folks all the time that the Declaration of Independence says “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” You don’t have it dumped in your lap.

The above quoted belongs to House Representative Virginia Foxx (R-NC), who probably didn't notice (or care to notice) how student tuition has risen over the past decade. Still, you have to admire someone who has the brass ovaries to deliver the most viciously polite form of "fuck you, got mine" to date. Very brassy for a woman who has a minimum of $500,000 in mortgages on two houses, according to her 2010 financial disclosure statements.

States have cut their higher education funding. The federal government's considering cuts to Pell Grants. Colleges everywhere are raising their tuition rates and employment opportunities remain scarce. Unless you luck out and get a scholarship or have your parents/endowment/inheritance/sugar daddy/corporate sponsor helping you out, student loans are your only port of entry on the voyage of college education.

Virginia Ann Foxx graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill back in 1968 with a bachelors degree and attained her Masters degree in 1972. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the average cost of a four-year university during 1968-1969 was around $1,245 per year. Adjusted for inflation, that amounts to $7714. Today, it'll cost you $20,660 for a year of full-time study (including room and board) if you're a N.C. resident and over $41,000 if you're not. Meanwhile, Harvard tuition costs add up to $53,000 per year, $36,000 if you cut out room and board. Little wonder some people are walking around with over $200k of student loan debt.

Foxx says she worked her way through school. With the average cost of tuition and the wages offered by most part-time jobs, students who go at it that way will be lucky to pay for food and books. It's possible to cut corners here and there, but it doesn't add up to much. I lucked out with Pell Grants, cheap in-state tuition and cut out the room and board costs by staying close to home for the last two years of college. I also had a part-time job that didn't do much against my overall tuition bill, but it helped with food and books. If you split the apartment rent with roommates, eat beans and rice and refrain from silly shit like iPads, spinning rims* and the like, you'll be able to survive. Barely.

You'll still need student loans for the vast majority of your tuition costs, unless you find spending five years of less-than-part time matriculation at a community college for a two-year associates degree to be more your thing. Not that there's anything wrong with that**.

If Foxx thinks having $200k of student loan debt is unacceptable, then perhaps she could do her part to help lower the cost of college tuition around the country. After all, she happens to chair the House Subcommittee on Higher Education.

* I've seen students take the leftovers of their student loans and buy some of the silliest shit imaginable.
** Most jobs require a bachelors degree, at minimum.

The New York Times has a rather thorough article on the Jefferson County, Alabama bankruptcy and the sewer debacle that started it all. I covered this in a previous blog post, which also contains a link to the even more detailed Rolling Stone article authored months ago. I guess since the NYT had its content ripped by those bastards over at Fortune, they had to make up for lost eyeballs with a quick rehash of old news.

Meanwhile, governments all over the globe are responding to economic crises with resounding cries of Austerity™. In a quaint three-bedroom villa on the outskirts of the European Union suburbs, Daddy Germany and Momma France want Greece and its fellow PIIGS siblings (Portugal, Ireland, Italy and Spain) to eat a piping hot, value-sized portion of Austerity™ for dinner, on the auspices of it being healthy for them. Greece set itself on fire at the kitchen table in protest, while the rest of the PIIGS went to their rooms without supper. But seriously, Greece is hurting in a bad way. Deep in debt, with no way of practicing their traditional solution of currency devaluation (because Euro) and with tax evasion a national pastime, the Greek government is busy cutting whatever scraps of fat they can find to stay afloat, even with Germany secretly wanting the country to emancipate itself declare bankruptcy and get the hell out of the house Euro.

Austerity™, according to conservative fixtures who fancy themselves as being learned in economic matters, supposedly works by drastically cutting worker pay and benefits, social services deemed unnecessary and even essential services to the bone, not to mention helpful programs that are considered "entitlements" by the conservative set. Spending is drastically lowered, while taxes are also lowered or at least held at the same rates. In other words, it's the government pretending to budget like an ordinary household of five.

In the case of the United States, it's a household of five where the hubby only spends his money on guns and countless rounds of drinks for his wealthy buddies from the office. Apparently, if he shows he can flash a little cash and kisses enough wealthy buddy ass, he thinks they'll let him in the country club and they'll all be BFFs 4eva. Meanwhile, the wife works, but nearly every single dime she makes winds up in hubby's hands. They barely have enough for the necessities and niceties like new clothes for the kids or a decent night out for the wife are deemed "entitlements." The family trucks no handouts and despite scraping by on the thinnest margins, sincerely believes that if it just cuts back on the food and the utility usage, they'll be able to put back enough money to get themselves back on track again, despite hubby getting his paycheck cut once again and all of their savings going towards more guns for hubby's collection and more rounds of drinks for the wealthy boys back at the pub.

So what does Austerity™ have to do with a county that's knee-deep in debt accrued from what turned out to be a massive fraudulent subprime loan?

Well, when you think about it, the later stages of Austerity™ involve the family selling off the prized family silver and jewelry. For countries, those jewels are public infrastructure, already built and just waiting to be sold to creditors and private interests for literally pennies on the dollar. In other words, Austerity™ eventually turns a country into a glorified estate sale.

For Jefferson County, that may involve selling off portions or even the entirety of the Jefferson County sewer system. Now there's a public asset that a private company can use to make money hand over fist. And that's the whole point - a private entity taking hold of a formerly public asset that features a built-in captive consumer base and a license to literally print money. It's Comcast (or AT&T) sipping a steroid/crack smoothie infused with meth crystals for added punch.

Conservatives are happy about how this shit is well on its way to hitting the proverbial fan, as it supposedly validates the continuing cries for "small government," which, if you're reading the news these days, turns out to be a government that funds moral busybodyism (banning abortion and gay marriage), wealth worship (more tax cuts to wealthy individuals and corporations, with looser or nonexistent regulations) and unbridled aggression (see our military funding sometime) while condemning and defunding things that actually help people (national healthcare, social programs, etc). It's a government run on the Just World fallacy with Dickensian logic. Many of the suburban and rural collapse fetishists are banking on the county keeling over (and the city of Birmingham along with it*) just for the validation of their world view such an event would bring - "the county was a liberal shit pool that blew up because it wouldn't follow the hallowed way of conservative 'small government'."

A hat tip to blogger Jill Klausen, because without her Twitter post, I wouldn't have seen this timeline (from PBS's Frontline) of the slow but successful decommissioning of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, enacted to prevent rampant speculation by separating commercial and investment banking functions. In short, the act prevents banks from playing shell games with commercial bank funds to place bets on speculative investments. If the banks crap out on those investments, the eventual ramifications could spell a spectacular collapse on both sides.

It took over 20 years and $300 million in lobbying efforts for bankers to get back to the shell games. The results speak for themselves.

PBS Frontline: The Long Demise of Glass-Steagall

If you happen to be among the many who still believe the whole "I am the 99%" thing is just horsepucky and still believe corporate America has your best interests at heart, take a look at Joe Nocera's NYT op-ed, or better still, the photos.

Yeah, mocking people who've been bounced out of their homes and onto the streets due to the deceptive practices of your home mortgage lender clients is never a good look. Not even when done in "jest" at a Halloween party.

These photos were taken back in 2010 at the law firm of Steven J. Baum, which represents JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Bank of America, just to name a few. Heavy hitters in the mortgage lending arena.

"It has been suggested that some employees dress in… attire that mocks or attempts to belittle the plight of those who have lost their homes," a statement read in response to the publication. "Nothing could be further from the truth."

The spokesperson went on to describe the column as "another attempt by The New York Times to attack our firm and our work."

Right. Exposing a lack of professionalism and empathy is now considered an "attack." What a bunch of assholes.

The Urban Brookings Tax Policy Center crunched the numbers from Herman Cain's "9-9-9" tax plan. Once you get past the glossy exterior and tricked-out trim, things don't look so good under the hood:

A middle income household making between about $64,000 and $110,000 would get hit with an average tax increase of about $4,300, lowering its after-tax income by more than 6 percent and increasing its average federal tax rate (including income, payroll, estate and its share of the corporate income tax) from 18.8 percent to 23.7 percent. By contrast, a taxpayer in the top 0.1% (who makes more than $2.7 million) would enjoy an average tax cut of nearly$1.4 million, increasing his after-tax income by nearly 27 percent. His average effective tax rate would be cut almost in half to 17.9 percent. In Cain’s world, a typical household making more than $2.7 million would pay a smaller share of its income in federal taxes than one making less than $18,000. This would give Warren Buffet severe heartburn.

As Howard Gleckman explains, Cain's "9-9-9" plan is actually "a 25 percent flat-rate consumption tax—not all that different from the FAIR tax that he says is his ultimate goal." Hmm...a flat tax doesn't seem all that bad, does it? Well, let's put those figures on an easy-to-understand graph.


Don't like what you see? That's probably because your income comes nowhere near the $200k-$500k threshold where the pain of Cain's plan turns into a bountiful bonanza of tax cuts. After all, someone's gotta pay for this stuff.

Cain’s triple tax would replace payroll and estate taxes as well as the corporate and individual income taxes as we know them. All deductions, exemptions, and credits (except for charitable gifts) would be eliminated from the individual tax. Because businesses could deduct all their capital purchases, capital income would be tax free. But wages would be taxed—again and again and again. First, directly through the individual flat tax and then, because firms can’t deduct wages as an expense, twice more through the business tax and the sales tax.

Because employers would be taxed on wages they pay, economists figure the levy would result in lower salaries. Not only would the combination of lower incomes and higher taxes reduce the current standard of living for many middle-class households, those lower wages would also result in lower Social Security benefits down the road.

Damn. Those working-class folk just can't catch a break, can they?

In protest of the presence of the "Kenyan Marxist Occupier in Chief" in the Oval Office and his desire to impose socialist measures such as "Obamacare" on the hapless American people by dictatorial decree, business owner and Tea Party supporter Melissa Brookstone is going on strike!

But she won't be toting picket signs in front of her own place of business or taking bus trips to D.C. to protest against the Brownish Usurper. Instead, she resolves not to hire a single person until Obama and the Democrats concede defeat in the war against her businesses and others throughout the U.S. And she's encouraging her fellow Teabaggers to join her!

Too bad she'd probably fire her employees if they ever decided to go on strike. And with jobs being few and far between, people who are lucky to have them can ill afford to lose them over a strike. Seems like the only people who can afford to dabble in workers' rights are the people with the power to hire and fire others, and rest assured they're not doing this on behalf of those who need jobs, no matter what they say to the contrary.

Whenever I think about the various conservative movements, such as the Tea Party and others throughout the years, I can't help but notice how the interests of the so-called "small town America" conservatives seem to dovetail neatly with those of corporate America. Lower taxes, looser (or nonexistent) regulation, greater military involvement, less government welfare and the ability to dictate social morality and enforce religious doctrine on a national scale (except when it inconveniences the Powers That Be™). Okay, so the last two aren't exactly things you'd see corporate America cosigning to, but stranger things have happened.

I hate it when small business stand behind their larger corporate brethren, thinking those lowered taxes are going to benefit them instead of allowing Wal-Mart and others to either run them out of business or buy them out. Ditto for small town Americans who think the entire country can be run on the same shoestring budget faced by their own small municipalities. These same taxpayers shit themselves when their "hard-earned taxpayer dollars" go to help the homeless, but have absolutely nothing to say when those same dollars are poured into law enforcement or military expenditures. When it comes to government functions that specialize in beating, maiming or killing undesirables as a matter of policy, you'll either hear cheers or crickets. The aforementioned social morality issues serve as distractions from the issue of consolidated and concentrated wealth.

It doesn't surprise me the least to see Tea Swillers stand up for the same things that corporate America want. Lower sales and corporate taxes equal higher profits and larger bonuses. Larger budgets for law enforcement insure a standing force better equipped to enforce the laws that largely apply to the "little people" and not the "job creators." The push to get rid of welfare and other "entitlements" gives the self-righteous another social windmill to tilt it, while freeing up federal and state funds for kickbacks and other pet projects. The death of Social Security in exchange for a "stock market-based free market solution" for pensions and retirement provides financial markets with more taxpayer capital to gamble away on Wall Street. The whole self-reliance bit is meant to invoke the country's past as a nation full of rugged individualism, but in reality, it subconsciously prepares Americans for a period of time where the only service available to ordinary Americans is the ghost of Dick Cheney telling you to "go fuck yourself."

Yesterday, Robert Reich posted a straightforward piece outlining the true motives of those behind the general conservative movement, including where conservatives and corporate America want the nation to regress to.

They’d like to return to the 1920s — before Social Security, unemployment insurance, labor laws, the minimum wage, Medicare and Medicaid, worker safety laws, the Environmental Protection Act, the Glass-Steagall Act, the Securities and Exchange Act, and the Voting Rights Act.

In the 1920s Wall Street was unfettered, the rich grew far richer and everyone else went deep into debt, and the nation closed its doors to immigrants.

In truth, if they had their way we’d be back in the late nineteenth century — before the federal income tax, antitrust laws, the pure food and drug act, and the Federal Reserve. A time when robber barons — railroad, financial, and oil titans — ran the country. A time of wrenching squalor for the many and mind-numbing wealth for the few.

Very few people have a working memory of what life was like before Social Security, worker's rights, minimum wage and other protections were put into place. Ordinary Americans who genuinely believe the nation could do without these things have no idea what it would be like for them if the nation did just that.

Rather than conserve the economy, these regressives want to resurrect the classical economics of the 1920s — the view that economic downturns are best addressed by doing nothing until the “rot” is purged out of the system (as Andrew Mellon, Herbert Hoover’s Treasury Secretary, so decorously put it).

The only people who'd benefit from "doing nothing" about economic downturns are those who stand to benefit greatly from said economic downturns. The Carnegies, Mellons and Morgans of the world benefited from low tax rates and economic policies that allowed them to not just hold the vast majority of the nation's wealth, but also make even greater fortunes through interest payments and other forms of rent seeking, while extracting the maximum amount of labor from average Americans for the least amount of money possible. The end result is an impoverished nation that works for pennies while the moneyed men and women profit from their deeply discounted sweat equity. Their successors currently have over 42% of the nation's financial wealth and 34.6% of the nation's net worth.

Latent filial piety among small town Americans and their employers and the idea that ordinary Americans will someday be the next Andrew Carnegie through sweat equity are the only explanations I can come up with as to why conservatives like to line themselves up with the Carnegies and the like. The former is something I've seen in the Deep South -- essentially, if you do right by the company, then the company will do right by you. This could explain part of why unions aren't particularly welcome in these parts -- if you piss off the company, the company will take a good, long piss on you. This works, in the reference of small-to-medium-size companies where the bosses know the workforce, but at huge, multinational corporations, the idea of filial piety towards an employer becomes something of a joke. These huge companies couldn't give a good fig about you or yours.

The latter implies that with enough hard work, you too could be up there with the big boys. Or at least have a very comfortable lifestyle. Once upon a time, this was possible to pull off, with decent wages and low barriers to entry when it came to starting your own businesses or just methodically saving your money (with interest, even). Today, most of those avenues are closed, and unless you hit a huge lottery jackpot, you're not going to have much chance of being up there with the big boys.* Yet some conservatives hold on to this hope. Others fancy themselves to already being in the comfortable 1%, when they're really just a couple of bad days and bad decisions away from falling from grace.

Then there are those who genuinely believe that if they keep rewarding the wealthy by giving them everything they want, they themselves will be rewarded with "a seat at the table," or at least a few crumbs thrown their way. Social Darwinist doctrine offers this while tapping into America's "inner asshole":

Listen carefully to today’s Republican right and you hear the same Social Darwinism Americans were fed more than a century ago to justify the brazen inequality of the Gilded Age: Survival of the fittest. Don’t help the poor or unemployed or anyone who’s fallen on bad times, they say, because this only encourages laziness. America will be strong only if we reward the rich and punish the needy.

Have you ever felt the urge to be an asshole to someone just because? Or better still, be an asshole to someone perceived as beneath your own social standing in order to reaffirm and validate said standing? This is what Social Darwinism essentially offers. It exploits the average person's base desire to not want to appear weak or accommodate what could be perceived as weakness. The wealthy represent the strong, talented and successful, while the poor are derided as being weak, stupid and generally worthless. These beliefs benefit the wealthy, as there are a few challenges to their wealth and nothing but a public outpouring of support by the masses who are enamored and even somewhat jealous of their wealth and power. It encourages Americans to become sycophants who curry favor with and avoid doing any sort of harm to the most powerful and successful among them, while showing great disdain to those seen as weak and useless.

Apparently, that's the America conservatives want, whether they say so outright or not. That America runs counter to the general principles of the America envisioned by the Founding Fathers.

Corporate America has little to no interest in helping conservatives usher the "small government America" they've envisioned unless it is to the financial benefit. Conservatives will be disappointed to see the "job creators" strip everything of profit away from them after they've gleefully helped corporate America do the same to liberals and others outside of the conservative ideology.

The Carnegie Corporation and other similar foundations came about only because those people felt they were duty-bound to give something back to the American people. Can anyone say the same for the latest batch of CEOs and CFOs?

*Even the lottery winners are hit hard with federal and state taxes, not to mention the winners' own spending habits. Unless you're careful in how you manage and invest your money, chances are your dreams of being with the 0.5% won't come true any time soon.

The whole concept of the "just-world hypothesis" is interesting. It's essentially a coping mechanism that shields people away from the feeling of overall vulnerability, in order to maintain the mystique that you're in control of your own affairs and that you and yours aren't susceptible to the slings and arrows that seem to plague others. Whether it's poverty, discrimination, sexual assault or even death, if you can believe that those are things that happen to other people for some reason that they could control, you won't feel so vulnerable.

The economy is still circling the shitter, for all intents and purposes, and with the growing number of unemployed and the domino effect unemployment has on people's finances and social lives, it's no wonder the just-world hypothesis is catching on with people who don't want to see what's happening to their fellow Americans happen to them and theirs.

That could explain the following. Or perhaps it's just a case of Michigan Republicans being assholes, again:

An undetermined number of Michigan's nearly 2 million food assistance recipients will lose the help under new eligibility requirements the state will begin using in October.

Michigan has determined food assistance eligibility based only on income for roughly a decade. A new policy will include a review of certain financial assets starting Oct 1. The requirements will affect new applicants right away and existing recipients when their cases come up for review, which typically happens once every six months.

Those with assets of more than $5,000 in bank accounts or some types of property would no longer be eligible for food assistance. Other assets that would count against the cap include vehicles with market values of more than $15,000 and second homes, depending on how much is owed on the properties.

Apparently this is Michigan governor Rick Snyder's attempt to get those freeloading Cadillac-driving welfare queens off the public assistance rolls. For those who're already living on the bleeding edge of poverty or somewhere close to it, it's not gonna affect them much. These people thrive on paid-for beaters worth $500 to $2000, dream about owning second homes and the only time they'll have more than $5k in the bank is during tax season.

But this is gonna suck for those once-well-off middle class families who fell on hard times and need a helping hand, as opposed to a boot to the face. Unless you're willing to sell off your car and other assets, and then drain away your bank account, you're out of luck as far as the Rickster is concerned. If you have $5k in the bank, then you don't need food stamps until you've run through that $5k feeding yourself and your family. Then and only then will you become worthy enough to be blessed with a helping hand from a government that would rather not lend one.

And conservatives will go along with this. Combine the just-world hypothesis with America's unique Puritanical views on poverty and sense of achievement, and you have a situation where being poor is seen as a moral defect in which the poor are perfectly capable of controlling at their leisure. In fact, poverty is sometimes seen as a leisure activity, with the poor being "lazy" and whatnot. Sometimes I get the feeling these folks actually think the poor enjoy being in poverty.

For those deep in the just-world hypothesis shit, if you can wail on those poors with austerity-minded legislation that instead transfers wealth under your dull noses and into the bank accounts and investment portfolios of your "betters" (the ones whom deserve all of your praise, with wealth equaling smarts and ambition and drive and whatnot), then you can keep on feeling somewhat impervious while satisfying the bitter asshole that lies in just about every person on Earth.

Some assets, such as primary residences and 401k accounts, would not be considered for determining food assistance eligibility.

Gee, well isn't that swell. Most people can tell you the value of their 401k accounts with only one hand, at best. If they're lucky to have a 401k. I guess the 30,000 college students who were recently kicked off the food stamp rolls wished they had 401k accounts. The ones that actually do happen to be legacy students in Ivy League institutions.

Food assistance benefits came under some scrutiny earlier this year when it was revealed a Michigan man had continued to get food aid from the state despite winning a $2 million lottery jackpot.*

There are a number of people out there who believe if the government's dumb enough to give out "freebies," they're gonna take the government for all they can. Outside the financial and military contracting sectors, this particular philosophy isn't all that it's cracked up to be. But it's like the fine folks in Texas who took away those last meals from death row inmates on account of one stubborn fella -- it's any excuse to bring the hammer down on everyone for the transgressions of a select few.

*To be perfectly honest, $2 million isn't a whole lot of money, especially if that amount happened to be pre-tax. No wonder that person stayed on food stamps.