Different Day, Same Shit.

In just about every corner of the world, hitting at killing someone with a vehicle would be cause for a court date and a possible jail sentence, more so if that person happens to be a police officer. Dragging a police officer under your wheels for 200 meters and fleeing the scene afterwards would be cause for a massive manhunt and, in some corners of the world, a "last stand" or a "furtive move" possibly resulting in worst case of "suicide" anyone's seen.

And yet Vorayuth Yoovidhya would have been spared the remote possibility of going to jail after his literal run-in with the law if it wasn't for public outrage and a bright light shone on the double standards those with sufficient wealth enjoy:

Vorayuth Yoovidhya, a grandson of the late founder of Red Bull, billionaire Chaleo Yoovidhya, had initially fled the scene but later confessed to hitting the policeman, police said. He was released hours later on 500,000 baht ($16,000) bail. Though Vorayuth has yet to appear in court, there seemed little faith among the public that justice would be served. "Jail is only for the poor. The rich never get punished. Find a scapegoat," said one of a stream of comments posted on the popular Thai website, Panthip.com. Another on news site Manager.co.th read: "He'll probably just get a suspended sentence. What's the cost of a life?" Suspended jail terms do seem to be the norm for politically powerful or well-connected Thais.

It's not just well-connected Thais who enjoy the special kid-gloves treatment given to them. Hollywood celebs are notorious for engaging in all sorts of stupid, dangerous and illegal activities that would have the average person placed under the jail. It's no secret that having obscene levels of wealth and plenty of high-placed connections offers the potential for someone to either buy their way out of a criminal case or have a few people who know people pull some strings for them. It's how Lindsay Lohan can rack up slaps on the wrist and visits to detox centers for drunk driving, drug abuse and a myriad of other criminal acts while two ordinary black women wind up with life sentences for allegedly helping three teens steal $11. Having piles of money and plenty of pull with the right people does have its perks after all.

“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.

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 last time I worked for anyone "for free" was back in college, when I was fulfilling my internship requirements at the university's public relations department. Even then it wasn't necessarily "free" - in exchange for an extra helping hand and a number of professionally-made promotional pieces, I received the necessary credits needed to move on in my undergraduate career. The "Georgia Works" program resembles something of the sort, but there are a few things that made it stand out to me.

The program "works" like this: if you're a currently unemployed individual drawing benefits from the state, you have to undergo "workforce training." To fulfill this requirement, you spend up to eight weeks with a willing employer participating in the program. You get to "show your stuff" to what could be your future bosses and fulfill the "workforce training" bit. The employer gets eight weeks of "free labor" from the state, with no obligation to hire anyone from the program. If they do, they save time and money on training. The "intern" still draws unemployment benefits and receives a $240 stipend for transportation, child care, etc,. It's unclear whether that's $240/week or just $240 for the entire period, period.

The reason it stood out to me was because it smacked of "free labor," in the sense that participating employers enjoy what is essentially "free labor" - they don't have to pay these people because the state is taking care of that for them. No benefits, either, unless you consider Medicaid/Medicare one. And when the period is over, the employer has the luxury of dismissing their "intern" for a fresh face and another eight weeks of "free labor." Granted the "intern" can only work under 24 hours per week, but if there was a way to increase the number of required hours per week, you can bet your bottom dollar they would be increased.

"Georgia Works" seems like a win-win situation, except:

• Job seekers are tied down with a single potential employer for up to eight weeks, when they could be spending their time applying for multiple employers for an increased chance of landing a job.
• Job seekers are still "working" for peanuts -- those unemployment checks are not as glamorous as the hardened Teabagger conservative makes them out to be. Compared to a genuine job with a paycheck and benefits, they're still barely getting by.
• Single-parents are once again burdened the most by the program -- it's the hassle of locating and securing daycare arrangements for their kids that makes this program a bitter pill to swallow, and a $240 stipend doesn't go that far when it comes to child care.

The national economy is still suffering from a failure of balance. Attempts are on-going to make banks and other major players within the financial sector "whole" with billions upon billions of dollars in financial aid. Meanwhile, most Americans find themselves unable to cover a $1000 emergency if need be. Profits are going up while wages and benefits are going down. This is becoming less of a failure of balance and more of one end of the balance scale being cut off with a pair of bolt cutters.

The blame could be laid directly at the feet of the bankers and the government, but more than enough's been done on that end by so many others that it would just feel like an effort in duplication, if not outright plagiarism. Instead, focus will shift onto the average Dick and Janes of America, most of whom seen the economic damage done by a highly unregulated and insanely well-heeled force and perhaps felt it first hand, but can't quite or don't want to comprehend the need for outright revulsion against it.

"Outright revulsion?" No, it's not some commie/socialist/marxist tactic that exhorts equal redistribution of income according to one's need or such tripe. There are a vast number of Americans who can get pissed off at a multi-faceted corporate entity for taking their money, but go doe-eyed the moment they see the CEO driving the latest Reventon or living it up on the yacht with models in tow. This is very much the country of MTV's "Cribs" and "Real Housewives," where people live vicariously through the voyeuristic displays of other people's wealth. Americans may hate their banks, but they still love their money.

Most Americans are not only star-struck and doe-eyed by the wealthy and the trappings of their wealth, but they also see themselves as being wealthy one day. As such, they want all the advantages and breaks bestowed upon the current wealthy to remain in place for when they, the average Dicks and Janes, eventually arrive, if they ever. Of course, they never do, as the wealthy are wont to make sure no one else gets a chance to climb the ladders of extraordinary success.

Meanwhile, average Dick and Jane are too exhausted from working 50 to 80 hour work weeks for a declining salary/wage and little to no benefits to comprehend any of this. They're too busy wondering how to stretch their budgets to cover ever-increasing bills and ever-rising costs of ordinary food and household items to give this any thought. Spending hours on Facebook or plopping themselves down on the couch for 30 to 45 minute respites from their immediate reality saves them from dwelling on how well they're being fucked by groups of people who could care less about their overall well being.

In the end, you really can't get rid of the "soon, I too shall be among ye" mentality most Americans share when attempting to commiserate with the wealthy unless there is either an immediate pain or a long, drawn out process that slowly beats or breeds this attitude out of them. The former is a great depression that finally hits enough Americans in the wallet for them to illicit immediate correction of their current circumstances or else. The latter involves Americans spending three or more generations under an aristocratic oligarchy, where all of the avenues for the average Dick and Jane "striking it rich" are coldly and cruelly cut off, full stop. It's a world where the only wealth floating around will be generational wealth at the hands of the new gilded class and corporate wealth at the hands of multinational corporate concerns. Sadly, the small business owner, a.k.a. "merchant class" will still ignore reminders that he'll never be fit to be a part of the wealthy. At least he'll still be wealthier than his utterly impoverished contemporaries, which gives him a nice big punching bag to wail on out of arrogance and vanity.

In my personal opinion, the worst thing George W. Bush did during his attempts to sooth the national shock of 9/11 was to tell ordinary Americans to "go shopping." From that moment on, consumerism became the balm that soothed the nation's wounds, aside from always being a reason for being as far as many Americans were concerned -- it's been that way ever since the late 1940s. In a race to achieve that dream of "arriving," many Americans tried to "arrive" on credit -- it's how you get "$30k millionaires" living in mass-produced $700k houses bought with $0-down robo-signed mortgages, driving $50k Corvettes and taking vacations financed by adding another $200k worth of debt on top of the mortgage. Not enough people understood that many of the wealthy got where they are today either with ruthless business dealings, careful and calculated long-term investing or a flat-out inheritance. Trying to "arrive" on credit only results in your card being declined at the swanky restaurant, to your unending embarrassment.

I'm not here to place all of the blame on ordinary Americans for this current financial clusterfuck, but to highlight some of the attitudes that played a part in bringing us to where we are.

As an aside, a lot of the debt problems people are being faced with should be solved with debt forgiveness, if only to prevent the reappearance of generational debt and the looming possibility of debtor's prisons and bonded labor being implemented to recoup unpaid debts alongside garnishments. Corporations wouldn't mind seeing debt criminalized if it meant a swift and effective way of pressuring people into working themselves to death to pay back their debts, and a way to gain access to extremely low cost labor via prison labor without having to depend on today's criminal statues. Most people in this country aren't criminals right now, but with the criminalization of debt...

Student loans are a pet peeve of mine, if only the fact I'm paying mine off at this moment. Many will argue that changing the non-dischargeable nature of student loans will open the floodgates to intentional defaults and bankruptcies, but that problem pales in comparison to the inability of graduates to pay their loans back in a reasonable amount of time, the inflationary nature of student loan aid on university tuition and the havoc student loans play on peoples' credit scores. The ability to discharge a student loan based on a strict criteria of conditions and the willingness of the loan recipients to abide by probationary conditions set during the discharge period, with the understanding that future options may be somewhat limited for the next few years could go a long way towards getting people from under that debt. Either that or the U.S. finally wises up and makes secondary and continuing education completely state-funded and free for all Americans. I doubt that latter option will ever make it on any legislative agenda during this century.

I could blog about how John Boner Beaner Boehner punked the President into moving back his jobs speech a day or so, or how he got snubbed by 5 4 NASCAR drivers after extending invitations to a White House reception.* Or I could spend an entire post wondering if Obama's cool, calm, conciliatory demeanor is sending all the wrong signals. Or perhaps how the resident blowhards are calling on his resignation yet again and how people he thought would be on his side are calling him a "straight bitch."

Nah, that's not interesting to me. At least not right now. Hard to make a blog post about things you're rather dispassionate about. Instead, let's talk about how people are dealing with the current, fucked-up state of the U.S. economy:

On June 25, 2010, Frederick Deare punched out for the last time from his job driving a forklift at the Old London factory in the Bronx. That summer, everyone at the plant was being laid off: the oven operators, the assembly-line packers, the forklift drivers, the sanitation workers. Total jobs lost: 228. Old London, the snack manufacturer that invented the Cheez Doodle, was moving its operations to North Carolina. At 53, Mr. Deare, known as Freddy or Teddy Bear to his co-workers, would have to find a new job...

...he got an interview, and the supervisor he met with sounded optimistic about his chances of being hired. But there was no formal offer. Day after day went by. For three weeks the wait stretched on. This time, however, he got the job. And it was a union job, with benefits. He started on April 11 — 290 days after Old London laid him off.

“You’re speaking to a happy man,” he said after his first day. “I am in my glory. I mean, today was wonderful.” 

There was only one downside: The work paid $10 an hour, 40 percent less than he had made at Old London. After taxes, his paycheck was even less than the unemployment benefits he had been collecting. But he tried not to dwell on this. “I don’t let it bother me that I’m getting less, because of the simple fact I have something, and a lot of people have nothing,” he said. “You have to crawl before you can walk.” Four and a half months later, he is still on the job.

This is the new reality ordinary people are dealing with - being "downsized" or "right-sized" out of a decent-paying job and being left to stare into the economic abyss, and if you do manage to find other employment, it's for a fraction of the money you were paid at your old job for doing twice or three times the work, with no health care benefits. A lot of people with masters degrees and doctorates working service industry gigs. And a lot of people who are "independent contractors" or "temporary workers." Lots and lots of people trying to figure out how to survive in the shadow of record profits and record billionaire net worth.

People are figuring out new ways of surviving:

According to Workamper.com, a workamper is “an adventurous individual who has chosen a wonderful lifestyle that combines ANY kind of part-time or full-time work with RV camping. If you work as an employee, operate a business, or donate your time as a volunteer, AND you sleep in an RV (or on-site housing), you are a Workamper. Workampers generally receive compensation in the form of a free campsite, usually with free utilities (electricity, water, and sewer hookups) and additional wages.”

Calling it a “wonderful lifestyle” seems a bit over the top for some workampers. After communicating with Suzann for more than six months and observing the Ellingsworth’s ups and frequent downs, it’s obvious that workamping is not all fun and games, at least for those who hit the road in need of a job to survive.

Most workamper jobs are of the minimum-wage variety. Workampers generally don’t receive unemployment insurance benefits, severance pay or any warning that a job is about to end. Workampers face many of the same job insecurity issues as the millions of Americans who have been downsized due to job outsourcing, financial mismanagement and slow consumer demand for products and services, except workampers are purposely more nimble and have been conditioned to pack up and move to where the jobs are. “We have to be mobile to land a job,” said Suzann. Those who become jobless and live in traditional stationary homes aren’t usually able to move to another city on a moment’s notice.

Since workamping is a nomadic lifestyle, it’s difficult to collect a headcount. Steve Anderson, president of Workamper.com, said the most recent workamper survey is from KOA, but it is dated: “Nearly 10 years ago the KOA Corporation gave an estimate that 750,000 were living the workamping lifestyle. Their data was questioned then and at best was an estimated guess. Over the years we have seen our membership remain in the 14,000 range with thousands of others in the dreaming stages of workamping. It is very transitional lifestyle, meaning folks begin and end the lifestyle every day.”

After being "downsized," "right-sized" or laid off from a decent-paying job with health benefits, after spending months winging it on unemployment, odd temporary jobs and family charity, and after all of the bills, debt collection notices and nights of feeding your family from the food bank and dollar store, you finally land a stable job. Except that the job pays damn-near minimum wage and there aren't any health benefits tied to it. But you're thankful, nonetheless - you have to be in a climate where jobs are few and far between.

You're scared you might lose your job again, so you do anything and everything your employers want. Unpaid overtime, non-existent vacation time, zero health benefits and increased production schedules and work loads that border on superhuman. But you do it anyway, because it's either this or you take another long, painful look into the abyss.

Most major corporations are quite happy with this arrangement, if the record profits are any indicator. That's what happens when you can wring out twice the productivity from your workforce while no longer having to invest much money in them.


*"Scheduling conflicts?" Usually when the President of the United States invites you over for dinner and a photo op, all of your prior engagements fly out the fucking window. It's the ultimate doctor's excuse -- "Sorry boss, can't come into work today - the President's called me over for a few drinks. *hands boss official embossed White House invite*"


**And yes, I know most people have varying definitions of what "comfort" is, but let's not nit-pick over that for now.

History is a literal "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe" guide when it comes to things that any normal human being should see coming, but usually don't until is well too late. People may read about history, but they don't really learn anything from it unless it happens to be something immediately tangible they can get out of it like financial gain, and even then they end up dooming themselves thanks to the inevitable greed that comes over them. In short, people are forever stuck in the remedial classes, repeating history because they slept through it and failed hard when it came time for the test.

The socioeconomic elite, mainly the wealthy individuals and families who spend their time in the pursuit of money and power whenever they're not pursuing leisure, always allow greed to overcome their best judgment and forget (or don't care) how continuous hording of 99% of the monetary and physical resources, combined with continuous extortion of that last 1% from the 98% who are flat broke always results in said people rebelling against the elite in the worst ways possible. Sometimes the elite manage to escape to various boltholes prepared for such a purpose. Sometimes they earn a spot on the guillotine or gallows. At any rate, desperate people who are eating shit sandwiches while seeing the elites live high on the hog will snap and get their piece of the action by all means at their disposal.

Which brings me to this fellow by the name of Robert Rector, a gentleman in the loose sense of the word who believes that America's poor are living to high on the hog themselves to be technically poor. Granted, America's sky-high standard of living allows our poor to have more material things than poor people in other nations. Actually, that's the point Rector tries to make.

The overwhelming majority of the public do not regard a family living in these conditions as poor. For example, a poll conducted in June 2009 asked a nationally representative sample of the public whether they agreed or disagreed with the following statement: “A family in the U.S. that has a decent, un-crowded house or apartment to live in, ample food to eat, access to medical care, a car, cable television, air conditioning and a microwave at home should not be considered poor.”[42] 

A full 80 percent of Republicans and 77 percent of Democrats agreed that a family living in those living conditions should not be considered poor.

Cutting out those "entitlements" will take care of the whole "lazy minority" problem that some Americans are still fascinated with. No more of those black "Welfare queens" loading lobster and filet Mignon purchased with state-issued EBT cards into their Cadillac Escalades on 26-inch wheels. Without those "entitlements," they have to go back into the factories and fields, taking up the work their "illegal immigrant" counterparts left behind thanks to those new state-issued immigration laws, as God apparently intended for them and theirs.
Zero corporate taxes, near zero capital gains taxes, an extremely low top marginal tax rate and a number of different loopholes that promote zero taxation. Apparently this is the ideal condition for corporations and the extremely wealthy. Without any "noblesse oblige" to worry about, since the average American is fending for themselves in accordance to the "rugged individual" fantasy, the wealthy are left only with the task of aggrandizing themselves with ever increasing amounts of wealth, something akin to Uncle Scrooge swimming around in a pile of gold coins in his vault. Except that ol' Scrooge has twelve of those vaults scattered around the globe, with plans on a thirteenth vault. The vaults themselves are surrounded 24/7 with armed security, and the compound itself is surrounded by ordinary citizens in incredible poverty, most whom have come to understand that said poverty is merely a failure in personal character and that it's their own fault they're in poverty in the first place.

The nation is run on tax revenue, and it will come from somewhere if this nation plans on existing in its current form. With a 0% corporate tax, it may be the middle and working classes that once again have to bear the load of fiscally holding this nation up.

Tall boots may have a tab, loop or handle at the top known as a bootstrap, allowing one to use fingers or a tool to provide greater force in pulling the boots on. The saying "to pull yourself up by your bootstraps" was already in use during the 19th century as an example of an impossible task. Bootstrap as a metaphor, meaning to better oneself by one's own unaided efforts, was in use in 1922. This metaphor spawned additional metaphors for a series of self-sustaining processes that proceed without external help. (Wikipedia)

If anyone's noticed, bank after bank is dispensing with their "free" checking services, in favor of accounts with a monthly service fee. One of my "free" checking accounts started charging fees a couple of months ago, while the other will start charging fees this fall. Meanwhile, Wells Fargo is testing out a $3/month fee for using their ATM/Debit cards, on top of the $2.95 most ATMs charge for withdrawals.

The only way anyone can be exempt from these fees is if you keep a $1500 monthly average balance in the account or if you have your employer direct-deposit your paycheck into the account. In other words, you'll need a steady income stream coming into your account, so the banks can have more money on hand to lend out to other customers, since they make a bigger profit on the lending side of banking than they do on the accounts.

In short, if you aren't making the banks money, then they're taking their pound of flesh from you in any other way they can.

This is all coming on the heels of recently-enacted financial regulations that not only cap how much banks can charge retailers per debit card transaction, but also put an end to overdraft fees on ATM and one-time debit card transactions, among other things. And since the banks stand to lose hundreds of millions of dollars in such fees, they have to get their money back somehow.

If you're the type of person who leaves $3.25 in their checking account, you might want to pad that a bit more from now on. If you use debit cards extensively, you might want to stick with cash from now on. If you're looking for somewhere to open a new checking account, try a smaller local/regional bank or a credit union.

I just might try the credit union route. I resisted thanks to the lack of branches in my area, but with online banking, I should be just fine.

- Rick Perry doesn't cotton to the idea of printing more money to keep the U.S. economy afloat, warning Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke to expect some "pretty ugly" treatment down in Texas if he did between now and November. More tough talk for the Teabaggers to get eargasms over.

If this guy prints more money between now and the election, I don’t know what y’all would do to him in Iowa, but we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas. Printing more money to play politics at this particular time in American history is almost treacherous, or treasonous, in my opinion.

This, coming from the same guy who often advocated succession of his state from the U.S.

- Speaking of which, "neo-confederate fuck melon". Yeah, I'm taking a look at this guy's blog now.

- Parents of the Rio Rancho School District and others the nation over should take a closer eye at what the lunch personnel feed their children. I know most of these folk were just following "unofficial policy," but I bet you dollars to donuts they always sent their kids sack lunches. Gotta love this gem of a comment:

The school system is not there to feed nor raise your children.

And it's not there to feed the kids moldy food, dipshit.

- People in Washington, D.C. have a much rosier outlook on the economy than most folks nationwide, at least according to the Gallup Economic Confidence Index. D.C. earns a +11 while the 50 states score in the negatives. You gotta wonder if they polled inside or outside the Beltway.

- Someone tells us what we already know. Those "job creators" just aren't creating jobs. Cue the saps and suckers to tell us otherwise and why ordinary Americans should slit their wrists for corporations.

- "The Help" grossed $25.5 million this past weekend. Well, there's always a market for movies depicting blacks in their proper "places." Driving Miss Daisy, anyone? 

And for those in the Southeast, careful with that ground beef. As a frequent meat eater, this really cramps me in what I can eat (without worry). All the more reason to go vegetarian?

The above comes from former Massachusetts governor and current GOP nomination candidate Mitt Romney, as he was being heckled during one of his campaign stops in Iowa. Beautiful bean footage found below, for your viewing pleasure:

After negotiations between the telecommunications company, the Communications Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers fell through, more than 45,000 employees on the East Coast went on strike. It's only the second day and there are already reports of violence on both sides.

Verizon is looking to tie pay increases to performance review and require union workers to contribute to health-plan premiums. The company is also seeking to freeze pensions at the end of the year, eliminate the sickness and death benefit program, cut in half the sickness disability benefits from 52 weeks to 26 weeks and reduce sick time, according to a memo signed by William Huber, president of IBEW, Local 827.

The concessions equate to $1 billion if the loss of sick days and other benefits are factored in, Johnson said. That’s roughly $20,000 per worker.

Asking employees to throw in a bit on their health plan premiums may seem reasonable until you realize how shifting more and more contributions onto employees is a great way for companies to weasel out of funding their health plans. And these other cuts may seem reasonable until you remember that nearly every company that scaled back in this regard ended up making record profits.

The CWA said the concessions are unjustified and harsh, given that Verizon is highly profitable – the company's revenue rose 2.8 percent to $27.5 billion in the second quarter. Its growth was largely attributed to its wireless business.

Meanwhile, the Dow dropped 634 points, as a result of the fallout from the S&P credit downgrade. Gee, I thought those Teabaggers were trying to shrink government enough to drown in a bathtub, not the economy.

Yesterday, Standard & Poors followed up on their threat to downgrade the United States' vaunted "AAA" debt rating. America's current debt rating stands at a mere "AA+".

Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake has not just one, but two blog posts that lay it all out for viewers, so go there.

Shit could hit the fan, or nothing much but a bit of dented pride could happen, if other credit rating bureaus don't follow S&P's lead.

- Spooked by the previous round of Teabagger asshattery, the Dow Jones Industrial fell over 500 points, causing traders and investors to shit their pants in anticipation of a double-dip recession:

U.S. stock markets tumbled today amid fears of a weakening U.S. economy. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down more than 500 points, the biggest one day drop since December 2008. The volatility index (VIX) was up 26 percent.
At close, the Dow was off 512.76 points, or 4.31 percent, to 11,383.68, the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index was down 60.27 points, or 4.78 percent, to 1,200.07. The Nasdaq was down 136.68, or 5.08 percent, to 2,556.39. 

 At least the U.S. gets to keep its AAA debt rating, for now.

- Marvel's newest Ultimate Spider Man, is half-black and half-Latino. Those of Tea Party mindsets guffaw at this latest revelation. Others point out his uncanny resemblance to Tiger Woods.

- Representative Doug Lamborn (R-Colorado) crafts a "tar baby" of his own making. Meanwhile, Pat Buchanan tries to get hip and talk about your boy Obama in front of Al Sharpton:

“My what?” Sharpton asked. “My president, Barack Obama? What did you say?”

Buchanan, using a boxing analogy, replied that Obama was “your boy in the ring.”

“He's nobody's boy,” Sharpton said. “He's your president, he's my president, and that's what you have to get through your head.”

Needless to say, Sharpton was not impressed with Buchanan's blunderous attempt to stereotypically reach out to what most whites imagine the black community to be.

- Here's a pretty good reason for people to mind their own business while riding the bus. Not that it excuses the shit that went down here. People could have been killed. And I hope the four people being charged get bitch-slapped with the book, let alone having one thrown at them.

See, this is the kind of shit the courts should be prosecuting. Not this. Or this.

Hope you all are enjoying your sugar-coated shit....ahem..."Satan" sandwiches. You might want to add some hot sauce to spice it up a lil bit. At least it's better than eating turkey.

Today, President Barack Obama signed off on the Revised Budget Control Act of 2011, narrowly averting a situation where the United States would have effectively defaulted on its $14.3 trillion worth of debt obligations. Too bad it hasn't convinced Wall Street from having the U.S. government's "AAA" credit rating knocked down a peg.

It seems the only one who came out clean on this one is Obama -- by resolving the crisis now via bipartisan wrangling, he saves himself from being tarred and feathered over taking "unilateral action" by raising the ceiling with his own executive powers. By merely signing the bill as it is, Obama is also momentarily inoculated from accusations of him being a "tax-and-spend Liberal." And with the last round of debt ceiling raises possibly occurring after November 2012, this issue no longer becomes something the GOP can hang around his neck during his re-election campaign. For someone who's sometimes seen as "spineless," this guy can be one crafty son-of-a-bitch.

Meanwhile, the charade has gone on long enough for people to finally take notice and be pissed at Congress. Congress job approval ratings have gone in the toilet. The GOP is paying for being led around and subsequently mauled by the political equivalent of pitbulls. The Tea Party's done the GOP no favors in its single-bloody minded drive to vanquish the congressional landscape of Obama, his fellow Democrats and any Republican who is deemed to be not enough of a "true believer" by Tea Party standards. Didn't Mitch McConnell himself confirm the true aspirations of the Tea Party?

"The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president."

The fact that Obama's still willing to engage in bipartisan governance with these people tells me that he's either horribly naive or extraordinarily patient and resolute.

And now since all of this nonsense is out of the way, perhaps we can get a jobs bill on the table. You know, to give some of the 20,000,000 current unemployed some jobs and kick-start the economy. Isn't that what we should be focused on now?

The hastily-revised proposal for resolving the debt ceiling "crisis" (also known as the Revised Budget Control Act of 2011) passed through the House of Representatives like a broken-up kidney stone -- 269 to 161. Looks like Boehner managed to get some of his fellow reps' asses in line, after all.

Today, the Senate casts their vote on the proposal. Chances are the Senate will go through this bit of Kabuki theatre and pass this proposal, for "the sake of the nation" (or Wall Street -- hard to tell these days), in spite of what's in it:

• $900 billion in deficit reduction over a 10 year period via discretionary spending caps, with $350 billion coming out of the Pentagon's hind quarters.
• A $2.1 trillion bump in the debt ceiling through 2013 via some rather frantic hoop-jumping -- more on that in a bit.
• The creation of a bi-partisan "super committee" consisting of 12 members picked by House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., tasked to locate $1.5 trillion in deficit cuts by Nov. 23. Their findings will be sent to Congress for a vote.
• $1.2 trillion in automatic cuts in domestic and defense spending, on the condition that Congress fails to pass the "super committee" proposals. Social Security, Medicare and programs serving low income earners are left off the chopping block.

And the methods for enacting that $2.1 trillion debt ceiling bump border on the Rube Goldberg-esque:

• The president certifies the U.S. government is within $100 billion of losing its shit and is immediately given authority for a $400 billion bump.
• That bump triggers an automatic request for another $500 billion bump, only this time Congress has the opportunity to vote it down. Of course, the president can simply veto the vote, and if Congress fails to override the veto, the president gets the $500 billion bump.
• If the "super committee" comes up bupkis on deficit reduction or if Congress doesn't pass their proposals, the president can then bump the debt ceiling up another $1.2 trillion, after the whole song and dance between him and Congress.
• If the "super committee" finds between $1.2 to $1.5 trillion in cuts and Congress passes it, the president can then raise the debt ceiling by an equal amount without any opposition from Congress.

The House even brought in Gabrielle Giffords in to cast a "yea" vote. No offense, but who knows how many sympathy votes that brought.

I'm not all that happy about blogging what is essentially a fake crisis designed to keep the president on the hook for "fiscal mismanagement", especially when there are a number of real, actual crises that could use a bit of attention.

One crisis to focus on is how the economic downturn more than doubled unemployment rates for blacks with four-year college degrees and widened median wealth disparities between black and white households. The common refrain is when whites catch a cold, blacks catch pneumonia. Well, with whites battling an economic pneumonia, blacks are experiencing impending organ failure with a side of septic shock.

The numbers? According to the Pew Research Center's figures, the median wealth for white households in 2009 was $113,149. The median wealth for black households? $5,677. Hispanic households fared slightly better with $6,325 in median wealth. And while 2.9% of whites with four-year college degrees are out of work, 6.5% of blacks are currently in the same boat.

The median wealth of a single black woman? $5.

In any other venue, there would be quips about how blacks brought this upon themselves, with their penchant for high crime, adversity towards education, willingness to sponge off of government assistance instead of lifting themselves by their bootstraps and overall laziness. At least Georgia knows how to put its lazy knee-grows to work.*

That's why I can't be bothered to blog about a fake crisis with a more-or-less predictable ending. There are real issues we should be focused on.

*That was "sarcasm", folks.

You gotta hand it to President Obama. Keeping the cool, calm and conciliatory tone when faced with the wrath and obstinence of hundreds of petulent assholes and "True Believer" types is nothing short of amazing, especially when dealing with a deadline for American financial solvency. It feels like any other president would have dropped kicked a congressman or two just for appearances sake over something of this magnitude.

But a lot of people are pointing out that this conciliatory, compromising nature of his is his biggest weakness. They want him to grow some of those minerals (for all you "Snatch" fans) and start breathing down some necks, or at least go out on his own and effect policy that momentarily resolves the debt ceiling issue. The level-headedness of the president isn't gonna impress or help someone who relies on SSI disability checks for income, or job-seekers using the last of their unemployment benefits to keep things at home afloat. These people want to see some action on part of the president, and I don't blame them.

Meanwhile, you gotta hand it to the ever-present Tea Party contingent of the GOP for "staying the course", or whatever they call it these days. They have a goal, and it is to use this current (manufactured) crisis to not only hang a failure over Obama's neck like so many dead Albatrosses and send him packing come November 2012, but also to drive the country over the fiscal edge right now and into a genuine depression, one that may or may not rival that of the Great Depression that kicked off in late 1929 and didn't let up until sometime near the end of WWII. The whole idea behind this plan is to trigger a moment of weakness in American history where they can finally present and implement their socioeconomic policies and make their ideology the "gold standard" among Americans.

And not for lack of trying. So far, they've made it clear that "compromise" is out of the question -- either Obama can accept their policies in whole or he can deal with the upcoming shitstorm, with the Tea Party apparently secure in the knowledge that Obama will end up shouldering the blame for "inaction" or "not acting enough". Either way, they believe they have a win -- Obama caves to them in order to save the country or people turn their backs on him on Election Day.

These policies are more of the same "cut spending, cut taxes, cut services" spiel that's done nothing to stimulate the economy, except this time, the policy comes from a group of people whose fervor and conviction that these things work rivals that of the Evangelicals and Jehovah's Witnesses. They just know, deep down in their hearts, that these things will work and they will make them work. Reality? Please. These guys will ignore reality -- they've managed to create their own reality where they see themselves as the heroes that Americans don't want, but need and even deserve to have. When you have that much fanaticism within the party, you're bound to have problems. (More after the break)

Earlier today, House Speaker John Boehner finally managed to pass his proposal for raising the debt ceiling, in exchange for numerous spending cuts. The bill was pushed through with a 218-210 vote, with 22 Republicans opposing the measure and no Democrat support.

Now the proposal has to go through the Senate, where Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid vowed to shit-can the proposal in favor of his own, which needs at least 7 Republican votes to pass to avoid filibuster.

The differences between Reid's and Boehner's plan?

Boehner's plan, which has since been revised, proposed generating a total of $917 billion in savings while initially raising the debt ceiling by $900 billion. The speaker has pledged to match any debt ceiling hike with dollar-for-dollar spending cuts.

(Reid's) plan, however, would require a second vote by Congress to raise the debt ceiling by a combined $2.5 trillion -- enough to last through the end of 2012. It would create a special congressional committee to recommend additional savings of $1.6 trillion or more.

As for Reid's plan, it would reduce deficits over the next decade by $2.2 trillion. Democrats have promised that the final version of the plan will contain additional savings -- enough to match any required debt ceiling hike through 2012.

Reid's plan would cut spending by $1.8 trillion, including $1 trillion in savings based on the planned U.S. withdrawals from military engagements in Afghanistan and Iraq.

A small debt ceiling bump matched with pound-for-pound dollar amount cuts designed to starve "unwanted" programs and have the president crawling back for a second ceiling bump plea months down the road, vs. a larger bump that gives the U.S. more fiscal breathing room for a longer period of time, with more substantial cuts coming from areas that actually need spending cuts (military spending), as opposed to leaving those areas sacrosanct while taking bites out of "social net" programs (Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, etc).

EDIT: As of 8:31 this evening, that proposal's been tabled, 59 to 41. Unless the Democrat-led Senate decides to bring it up again, it's stone dead.  And now there will be weekend negotiations to seek a solution to avoid a sovereign default come August 2nd.

This one comes courtesy of FT Alphaville. According to Citigroup’s Willem Buiter and Ebrahim Rahbari, there are five possible scenarios that the government could go with in regards to the impending August 2nd debt ceiling deadline:

Scenario 1 (60% likelihood): The Federal debt ceiling is raised in time. There is a small bipartisan fiscal package. The US sovereign long-term rating is downgraded to AA.

Scenario 2: The Federal debt ceiling is raised in time. There is a large bipartisan fiscal package, which is backloaded and not credible (33% likelihood). The US sovereign long-term rating is downgraded to AA, but maybe not initially.

Scenario 3 (5% likelihood): The Federal debt ceiling is not raised in time and the US sovereign defaults.

Scenario 4: The Federal debt ceiling is raised in time. There is a large bipartisan fiscal package, which is frontloaded (1% likelihood). There is no downgrade.

Scenario 5: The Federal debt ceiling is raised in time. There is a large bipartisan fiscal package, which is backloaded and credible(1% likelihood). There is no downgrade.

But there is a Scenario 6 that Obama could pursue: unilaterally lifting the debt ceiling, citing the 14th Amendment, Section 4 as reason enough to raise the debt ceiling or even ignore it entirely:

Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

You know what's ironic about the 14th Amendment? It also includes the Citizenship Clause in Section 1. You know, the one that overturned Dred Scott vs. Sanford. And today, there's the possibility of a half-African U.S. president having to cite the 14th Amendment to pull America's fat out of the fiscal fire. Ain't life grand?