Just Keep Pluggin' Away

Repubs lost big last month, but you wouldn't know it by their behavior lately.  Right now, they're concentrating on The Fiscal "Cliff" - which I'm sure you already know is really more of a gentle incline, but hey, we need something to angst about so let's pump up the high school fuck-around drama to maintain some level of interest.  If We The People aren't tuned in on the issues, then the politicians have to admit the thing's a bit of a scam.  But if we "really know what's going on", then we'd be able to see for ourselves what a scam it is, and that's even worse.  So Politicians and Press Poodles come up with ways of framing the issues and reporting the proceedings that keep voters lined up in support of one side or the other.  Red Pols need to point at their numbers to make their claims of "the American people are with us..." and the Blue Pols do basically the same from their side.  The big difference here is that the Red Pol Supporters are almost always on board with bullshit - Climate Change is a hoax; Eric Holder is confiscating guns; tax cut equals tax revenue increase; democracy is threatened because too many people are voting; etc.  Repubs haven't stopped promoting all that crap because The Big Lie works, and we're seeing it in action.

I guess we should expect more of the same as the fight for party control in the GOP continues.

The problem, of course is that we'll be presented various choices from the menu of "very serious GOP intellectuals" who have to carry several tons of Tea Party baggage (which they won't be allowed to offload any time soon), and who'll have to pretend all that dead weight is actually a good thing because it represents good old American Values blah blah blah - which means they'll either never get out of The Bubble, or by the time they're allowed to talk about what they really wanna do, we'll know they don't really know what the fuck they're talking about anyway.  Reality can really harsh your mellow.

Enjoy a little Krugman right now:

As Jonathan Chait points out, Bobby Jindal — who is supposed to be one of the intellectual leaders of his party — has just published an op-ed on the cliff that sure looks as if he has no idea whatsoever what the cliff is about. There’s nothing in that piece even hinting that the looming problem is spending cuts and tax increases that will shrink the deficit too soon; and his big policy ideas would actually make the lurch to austerity worse. It’s not just the idea of a balanced budget amendment, which would force harsh austerity every time the economy goes into recession; putting a cap on spending as share of GDP would do the same, because you’d have to cut spending whenever GDP went down.

Once Upon A Time

The Krugman

I don't like feeling I'm becoming kinda captured by a slanted narrative (just sayin' that one straight out), but I'll try to contain my discomfort (for a while anyway) because Paul Krugman seems always to be trying to talk some sense into us.

And he keeps coming up with real info about real events that we need to weigh against all the fantastic predictions of doom coming from the Austerity Freaks.

But what about the brief but nasty slump in 1927? That wasn’t caused by spiking interest rates; it was, instead, caused by fiscal austerity, by the measures taken to stabilize the franc.

So even when we look at the closest thing I can find to the scenario the deficit scolds want us to fear, it doesn’t play out at all as described.

It’s quite remarkable: our policy discourse remains largely dominated by fears of an event that the fear-mongers can’t explain in theory, and for which they can offer no historical examples in practice.

Pushing Forward

The point is that The Market works, and when properly guided and regulated, it can do nearly exactly what we need it to do.  It's when we leave it completely alone or (more to the obvious) exclusively in the hands of "the elite" that we start to get real problems.



It seems we may be seeing more of a positive shift.  Where before, the Big User/Abuser could force us into thinking we only had 2 choices: feeding our families or starving to death while saving a few "insignificant plants and animals".

It's becoming clearer even for the rubes who hear nothing but what's on DumFux News that we have to ensure the overall health of our surroundings if we expect to have any jobs at all; and in fact, we can build an economy (that's almost outsourcing-proof) based on the principles of sustainability that all those "mush-brained hippies" have been trying to get us to understand for a very long time now.

I like thinking we're finally getting to where we can make some of the connections we need to make to change the way we do things - eg: understanding the moral imperative of not making it impossible for somebody else to feed his family while pursuing the means to feed my own.

A Quick Tho't

I'm hearing way too much whining from people like John Schnatter et al about what difficulties they find themselves in, now that Obummer's been made King of Fuckamericastan.  Poor Papa; it's quite possible he'll be unable to afford the upkeep on his richly deserved 40-room house and personal golf course.  To that we can add the increasing volume of grumbling from those accursed unions and the under-employed.  Here's a shocker: I can't help but feel more inclined toward the people who're actually doing the work.

BTW - a brief aside:  Papa John's stock has been dropping since his little public tantrum - down something like 9%.  So lemme see.
9% of a company worth $1.09 Billion is $98,000,000.
Papa John's "Obamacare cost" = about $6,500,000.
Question:  Why are stupid people like John Schnatter in charge of these things?

I've posted before about an American Working Class that continues to get beat down while the Owner/Investor Class fattens up by getting a shrinking Management Class to work ever harder to maintain the status quo (ie: a continuation of the siphoning upward of as much wealth and power as possible).  And my only problem right this very second is that I can't find those posts, so maybe I just dreamed how great a thinker I am - not that my talking about the whole Class-Fuck thing makes me a great thinker in any case; shit, everybody's talked about that one.

So any-old-way.  I'm coming to realize that the overarching failure of US Government in the last 30 years is that they've done almost literally nothing to protect the American worker's standing as a major contributor to the success of American business - even while they've said almost nothing except how great the American worker is.  Really?  If you love us so much, why do you treat us like such shit?

Here's CNN/Forbes trying to spin the death of Hostess Brands into a cautionary tale about what happens when "the unions" are all intractable and/or stuck in the 70s or whatever.  It tries hard to do the Plenty-Of-Blame-To-Go-Around thing, but it's all about how the bad guy unions wouldn't let poor old Hostess continue to poison Americans with food that isn't really food do what a good entrepreneurial business knows it should do in a truly moral free market universe - which of course is ship all the jobs to Mexico blah blah blah.  And the kicker is that they use this one case to illustrate how nice it is for a Democrat Hedge Fund guy to try to help out and all, but he's just being too touchy-feely and the grownups need to step in to get it straightened out.

So far, in a courtroom near Manhattan and in a negotiating room in downtown Washington, they haven't come close, although a deal could happen even as you read this. The dramatis personaeare impressive: the Teamsters; two large hedge funds, Silver Point Capital and Monarch Alternative Capital; and the private-equity firm Ripplewood Holdings. In an acrimonious behind-the-scenes war -- refereed by a federal judge -- they wage hostilities over who will get what crumbs from a disintegrating corporate cookie; whether that business can and should be resuscitated; the degree to which fabulous pension plans are anachronistic; whether promises made in collective bargaining ought to be sacrosanct; and just how important it is to save 15,000 union jobs. "There aren't great options here," former U.S. House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt told Fortune. Gephardt is now a lobbyist and consultant with connections to Hostess and the Teamsters. "People will have to pick the one that's a little bit better."

For me, Obama's whole tenure will be a ridiculous success if he does nothing else in the next four years but get our thinking turned around on how to bolster the fortunes of American labor while not flipping over into full-blown Protectionism.

A Favorite Trick

From Addicting Info:

While the right-wing blamed the collapse on favoritism, and that the company was doomed from the start, checking on the history of the commodities market reveals another story. In 2006, when Solyndra applied for its loan, the cost of materials for the various types of solar panels was rather stable. What happened next, however, is what caused the whole system to collapse.

Guys with lots of money (and therefore lots to gain or lose depending on how things go) are always looking for ways to game the system.  Nobody doesn't know that.  If you think otherwise, please - having even a shred of decency or regard for humanity left in your being - avoid the use of tools and don't drive.  Stay inside at your computer until you learn enough not to be dangerous to the people around you.

These guys make big contributions to (ie: investments in) Congress Critters, and one of the perks they're paying for is access to inside information regarding markets and opportunities - as well as having a hand in shaping the policies that have huge effects on those markets and opportunities.

BTW - Free Market Competition?  Good for thee but not me, bumpkin.

So, you can stall the movement towards renewable energy and you can score points for the Red Team by making Obama look bad, and you can rake in a big pile of dough doin' it.

There is no soul and no honor in any of this.

Gettin' It Done - 26

26. Improved Food Safety System: In 2011, signed FDA Food Safety Modernization Act, which boosts the Food and Drug Administration’s budget by $1.4 billion and expands its regulatory responsibilities to include increasing number of food inspections, issuing direct food recalls, and reviewing the current food safety practices of countries importing products into America.

Seems like your basic no-brainer, don't it?  Here's the problem with letting a free market take care of these things:  dead people.  

It makes perfect sense that any company is going to do whatever it can do to protect its reputation.  There's a solid incentive to do things right and to try to ensure the safety of your customers - the thinking is that if your product causes harm to your customers, you won't have customers for very long, and so the problem fixes itself.  But every time we've decided it's not necessary to be proactive about these things, we end up with the same result - dead people.

All these smart business guys keep reminding us how smart they are, but they seem totally unaware of one of the absolute rock-hard fundamentals of the production process - no matter what it costs or how long it takes, doing it right the first time is always quicker and cheaper than having to go back and do it again.  And it's no different when you apply it to product safety.  Prevention is far more cost-effective than remedy.

But here's the kicker:  BizGuy knows his math, and he actually is fully aware of the Prevention-vs-Remedy Formula.  He's walked himself thru the exercise and he's decided to attack the problem of Remedial Cost by purchasing a few Coin-Operated Politicians, who'll simply block the consumer's path to the remedy.  PR, De-Regulation and Tort Reform make for a winning combination.

Throw in some Union Busting and we're right back where we started 240 years ago.

Colbert

(hat tip = Crooks & Liars)

Disparity Sucks

The usual way of things is for fewer and fewer people to gather more and more of the available power and wealth; while more and more people have less and less.  Eventually, the "lower classes" are left with nothing more to lose, which is when they turn into the mob and simply show up inside your gated communities to take what they want.

It's the "natural order"; Darwinian principles at work; that's just the way it is.  'Twas ever thus, and ever thus 'twill be.

Everywhere else in the whole world, and for as long as there's been even the barest hint of social structure, we've seen the same pattern play out over and over and over again.

But not here.  We're supposed to be the exception.

From The National Journal, via US Uncut:

Income inequality in America has reached levels not seen since the Gilded Age. As Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, noted in June, “America has the highest level of inequality of any of the advanced countries — and its gap with the rest has been widening.”

Well Well Well

Maybe this one should be filed under: About Fuckin' Time, Dude.

via The Agonist, a story out of New York's Office of the AG with the beginnings of details on pending prosecution of some of the crooks at JP Morgan:

Earlier this year, JPMorgan’s reckless trading strategy cost investors $5.8 billion. The embarrassment from investor losses was compounded by Morgan’s vast understatement of the original amount of the losses.. Chairman Dimon commented, “We learned a lot. I can tell you this has shaken our company to the core.” Apparently, there’s a prosecutorial learning curve in place regarding the broad pattern of civil and potentially criminal violations by JPMorgan and the other made men of The Money Party.

A recent survey of trust in financial institutions showed just 23% of the public trusted the big banks like Morgan and only 15% had any trust in the stock market. Schneiderman should have a favorable audience with just about any jury he chooses. The low opinion of big banks and the latent anger at the lack of prosecutions for those who caused the financial collapse will explode given the slightest opportunity.

Even before this indictment, Janet Novack of Forbes characterized the most recent culprit in the title of her Forbes article, America’s Trust in Banks Falling: Thank You, JPMorgan.” JPMorgan’s record and reputation precede the firm into any court.

Another distinct advantage for the AG is the law used to prosecute Morgan.

And remember that these high-level prosecutors almost never bet on anything that isn't real close to a sure thing.

Of Growing Concern And Connecting Dots

When the American Conservative agrees with Rolling Stone (pay wall - which isn't working for me right now, goddam hippies) anyway, when those two agree, we may be seeing a monumental shift in political tectonics.

(hat tip = JG)
The American Conservative:

To some degree the rich have always secluded themselves from the gaze of the common herd; their habit for centuries has been to send their offspring to private schools. But now this habit is exacerbated by the plutocracy’s palpable animosity towards public education and public educators, as Michael Bloomberg has demonstrated. To the extent public education “reform” is popular among billionaires and their tax-exempt foundations, one suspects it is as a lever to divert the more than $500 billion dollars in annual federal, state, and local education funding into private hands—meaning themselves and their friends. What Halliburton did for U.S. Army logistics, school privatizers will do for public education. A century ago, at least we got some attractive public libraries out of Andrew Carnegie. Noblesse oblige like Carnegie’s is presently lacking among our seceding plutocracy.

A book review (LA Times) of The Betrayal of the American Dream, by Don Bartlett and Jim Steele that ran in The San Jose Mercury News:

Since the 1980s, a host of politicos, both Republican and Democrat, have sold their business-friendly reforms to the American people in the name of economic efficiency: Corporate America saves, and we all save! But the real winner, Bartlett and Steele argue, is the American "ruling class." Among other things, the economic elite have quietly, methodically and ruthlessly restructured the tax code on behalf of the wealthiest Americans, the authors say. Tax cuts on unearned income and carried interest allow the richest of the rich to pay less income tax with each passing year.

Put that together with NPR producing a whole segment around it:

"Everyone loves Apple. Apple makes nothing in this country anymore," Bartlett tells NPR's Steve Inskeep as an example. "But then, look over here on the other side and you have Intel, and their plants are massive, and they are good-paying jobs. They continue to invest in this country. And what we need in this country now are more Intels and fewer Apples."

For models of how to boost manufacturing and job growth in the U.S., Barlett and Steele look abroad. "Germany has had a fairly good record in recent years," Steele says. When the global financial meltdown happened, Germany adopted a policy that subsidized companies in order to help them keep employees on the rolls. "It's one of the reasons the German unemployment rate is much lower than in this country," he says.

Is anybody still really wondering why it just feels like there's something wrong goin' on?
 

And that graph is the rather generous way of looking at the disparity of income growth after taxes.  There's plenty of data suggesting Real Income has gone down for a huge percentage of American workers - especially when you look at the number of people who've been shifted into Salaried positions, and who're putting in longer hours and getting no overtime pay for it.

Here's a fun fact:
In 1979, there were more Americans employed in manufacturing - in this country - than there had ever been before or have been since then.

We're gettin' fucked with our pants on, guys.

Maybe Someday

...they'll make something useful out of me.

(Father John Misty, with a hat tip to Balloon Juice)


I guess it's all part of what I see as our evolution.

Periods of transition are always dangerous and exciting and interesting and confusing and frightening and and and.

Thank You, Dr Chomsky

I was never a big fan, but the simple fact that so much scalding vitriol is aimed in his direction requires me to look for myself.



Special Bonus: David Frum at about 8:30.

I'm good with it until near the end (about 1:15:00) when he starts talking about the new "Libertarian Socialism" which will lead us to a spiritual transformation.

First, as soon as you tack that "ism" on the end of a set of philosophical tenets, you're well on your way towards the logical extreme, which means you've begun the slide into the abyss of self-cancellation.

Second, never bet against human nature.  If your system requires people to behave as anything other than people, then your system just ain't gonna work - not any time soon anyway.

But third, maybe it's more of a chicken-or-the-egg proposition.  Maybe it does work the way Chomsky imagines it working, where if you take the idea of Libertarian Socialism, and mash it up together with the need for a spiritual transformation, you nudge the evolutionary process - the philosophy and the transformation serve to carry each other forward.  I like that one better.

Butter Up And Bend Over

You have to drill down and look deep to get the "whole story", but when it looks this kinda stark it's pretty clear just how fucked we are.

hat tip = TPM

Yikes

I really do try to stay positive, but this kinda thing keeps popping up and I'm right back to  thinking it's just not gonna end well.

Romney Is As Romney Does

via Wonkette:



We've been told for a very long time that 'creative destruction is the natural order of things'; that if we go against the forces of the Free Market we'll only get bad results from our good intentions.

(I realize giving Romney et al the benefit of the doubt here is a huge strain on credulity, but I need to bypass the demonization for a moment.  Besides, I imagine it'll be a good long time before we see a shortage of opportunities to call him names.)

Anyway - the intent was not to stiff these guys and put them out of work.  The intent was to make the company more efficient - more competitive in a global market, to help it evolve, and thus at least to survive long enough to hire these guys back; or to thrive in a way that pumps enough dollars into the local economy so other companies could hire them.  That's how it's supposed to work.  That was the intent.

But I can't look at what actually happened to the people who made up that company and then make any credible claim that 'capitalism didn't fail those people, they failed capitalism'.

So if our intentions were good, and we got bad results anyway, then we have to examine our Methods and Practices to find better ways of doing things.

Something To Watch For?

I've been wondering when the smart guys on Wall Street would wake up and start to see the Occupy thing as a customer service issue, and apparently, some of them are doing just that.

From Mother Jones:

Founded in early October by former British diplomat Carne Ross, the 60-person Alternative Banking Group has become a repository for OWS-friendly financial insiders. It includes current and former investment bankers, traders, and lawyers for the securities industry, but also many laymen—including housewives, people who used to sleep in Zuccotti Park, and guys with piercings who wear Che Guevara T-shirts. The group shares Occupy Wall Street's website, its nonhierarchical structure, and its distaste for partisan politics. "I'd say the one thing that everybody agrees on is that the system isn't working," O'Neil says. "And there is nothing about being a Republican or a Democrat in that statement."

Early in the piece, there's a reference to a reform proposal put out by Jon Huntsman that I think has some merit - which prob'ly means the Wrong Wing Media will never let it see the light of day.

Closed Loop Sustainability

hat tip = nonny mouse at Crooks and Liars

The Tyranny Of Capitalism

Separation of Powers was the great new idea that made the US Constitution one of the best things ever.  Here's a pretty good look at how easy it is to slide back into a system that has always ended up having to be overthrown by violent rebellion.

Part 1(at about 5:30 - the main point): Part 2 isn't up yet. Watch for it at The Real News.

Somethin's Up

I'm not a big fan of either Dennis Kucinich or Ron Paul, but when they're both singin' the same tune on a particular issue, I start to get the feeling I should pay a little more attention to what they're trying to say - at least on that one thing.