The Great Capitulator

On January 1, 2011, the Bush tax cuts for the super rich end, and the Obama tax cuts for super rich begin. There are no spending cuts and another $800 billion will be added to deficit, with Republican encouragement and support. This is not the first time he has said one thing and done another, that started before the election, but few noticed.

Mr. Obama may not like it, but here is how people everywhere judge see things: if you promise much and deliver little, we don't want you to start telling us that we expect too much. Your promises set our expectations, that is why we hired you and not someone else who promised less, but more than you have produced. Calling the people who hired you "stupid" or "not realistic" is not the way to keep your job, especially when we don't see you making any effort to do what you promised. Waiting for a deal to show up is not the same as proposing a deal that is good for us, and then making it come true. Call it the "audacity of results."

There are many examples of promising much and delivering little, here are a few:

1) Mr. Obama said that he wanted to review NAFTA, a program that has cost U.S. workers many good paying jobs and has created low paying jobs unloading boxes stamped, "Made in Mexico". After the Canadians complained, an emissary was dispatched to tell Canadian officials it was just campaign rhetoric. There was no review after he was elected, it was just rhetoric.

2) Mr. Obama did not have a health care plan until he noticed that Hillary Clinton was getting a lot of traction from having one, so added one, but said that it would not cover everyone (meaning that you could get sick and then start paying for health care - an impossible condition, like buying auto insurance after you have a wreck). Once elected, he was unable to clearly layout what a health care plan would look like,so he waited while many plans were proposed, and the public option, the only one that would have constrained costs, was eliminated by more than 300 lobbyists. His final solution included fines for not getting coverage, starting very small (less than $2 a week); too small to have any benefit, and large enough to anger people.

3) During this campaign, Mr. Obama ran an ad, showing a typical young middle class family, and promised that he would work to see that their jobs were not outsourced. Within weeks he received $7.8 million from CEOs of body shops seeking more visas to bring low wage workers to the USA, taking jobs away from U.S. citizens right here. What difference would it make to that couple if they lost their jobs to worker in India,or the same worker brought to the USA? After election, with unemployment running high, Obama invited the (mostly Indian) CEOs to the White House to assure them that they would be able to continue replacing US citizens with low wage workers from India and China. He did not invite the 50% of college graduates who can not get a job requiring the degree they are still paying for, to reassure them.

4) Once elected,Obama appointed a BP executive to hlp run the government regulation of off-shore drilling. We know how that worked out.

5) In the rescue of GM and Chrysler, Mr. Obama insisted that union worker,s making $28 per hour, accept the same wages as non-union workers earning $24 per hour; wiping out benefits of thirty years paying union dues. (compare to item below)

6) When he supported the bailouts of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, he supported salaries greater than $5 million, paid from the taxes of workers earning an average of around $30,000.

7) Mr. Obama was too modest in his stimulus package,giving in to Republican demands, and ended up with spending in 2010 of around $250 billion, which has a very small effect on an economy of about $15 trillion; chump change, but he told the American people it would be enough to reduce unemployment. Telling the American people that the stimulus package is enough, when it is too small is like a mechanic fixing your car and telling you that it will get you home. When it breaks down on the way, you do not think that you are dealing with a quality mechanic. In designing a too small stimulus, Obama ignored the advice of liberal Nobel laureates in economics Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz, and took the advice Republicans who had been wrong about the housing bubble meltdown. Ignoring guys that have been right time and again is risky, and those two were correct one more time; the stimulus was too small. Saying it would work was an error in judgment, leading to higher unemployment and anger.

8) Mr, Obama deferred to Wall Street in his financial reforms, leaving us with reforms that experts and voters are not convinced will prevent another bank bail out.

9) Mr. Obama convinced the house to pass a poor (and poorly understood) cap-and-trade bill that most of the public did not like (why not a just a simple tax on pollution, and give the money collected back to those who buy cars getting better mileage?). The cap-and-trade vote looked like a giveaway and its handling cost many representatives their seats. High unemployment and incompetence do not win campaigns.

10) After months of discussion, Obama was too weak to stand up to the generals on Afghanistan, sending in 30,000 more troops, costing the US taxpayers $1 million each per year. We can't afford it, and most Americans know that Afghanistan next year will be pretty close to what was like last year, a see of corruption and wasted lives.

11) Mr. Obama freezes the wages of public workers without any discussion with union leaders, and without any concessions from taxpayers with incomes over $1 million. So much for shared sacrifice.

Today (7 Dec 2010) Mr. Obama lashed out at at liberals and independents who are unhappy with his leadership by saying that he had done, or tried to do, everything that had promised in his campaign. Many of his supporters, enough to cost him re-election in a campaign against Mitt Romney, do not agree. In fact, he is making George W. Bush look like he may lose the title of the nation's worst president ever. Mr. Obama said:

“I’ve said before that I felt that the middle-class tax cuts were being held hostage to the high-end tax cuts,” Mr. Obama said. “I think it’s tempting not to negotiate with hostage-takers, unless the hostage gets harmed. Then people will question the wisdom of that strategy. In this case, the hostage was the American people, and I was not willing to see them get harmed.”

First, calling Republicans hostage takers is not reaching across the aisle, and second, our government runs (sadly) on bribes and deals. If you want to fix that, we support you, otherwise learn to make a deal that benefits your supporters. Third, giving the middle class, and the very wealthy, a tax break now, added to deficit, to be paid back later, is not a huge favor for the middle class. Most people accept shared sacrifice, but think that very rich are not sharing. What Obama did in making this deal causes many to think that those who benefited from running up a huge deficit never will pay. And that does not give confidence to the middle class. A week ago you were telling us that the deficit was harming us, and now you and your Republican posse say that more deficit means less harm.

William Edwards Deming, an expert on value, said that most of us see high quality as delivering at least a little bit more than you promise. He defined low quality as delivering a little less than you promise. Mr. Obama may not like the verdict, but the truth is that he has delivered much less than was expected, and that is how you lose elections.

APR II - The March on Washington, Part 2

On the 30th of April, 2011, we will join together in Washington, DC, to impress upon congress that the business of this nation must now be to correct the earmarks and abusive legislation that have denied the vast majority of Americans a real raise in income for the last 30 years; a period in which the productivity of the American worker more than doubled as did the share of income received by the top 1% of tax payers, a 30 year period when congress cut the taxes on the top 1% and 0.1% of taxpayers by more than 50%, and increased the burden on working families. A period of time when congress "borrowed" over $2.5 trillion from the Social Security Trust Fund to hide the tax cuts for the top one tenth of one percent of society. Because congress has been indifferent to condition of working families of every creed and color, to honor the legacy of A. Phillip Randolph, and to express our common demand that our elected officials stand up for those who have produced so much wealth, we will march on Washington on the weekend 30 April/ 1 May 2011. Our goals are the same as those championed by Mr. Randolph and Dr. Martin Luther King in August 1963, we will be marching for jobs, and reduction in the huge income inequality that grips this nation, is strangling our economy, and trashing the American Dream. It is time to tell those who have saved the banking industry so many times, that have set up Potemkin agencies that protect industry at the expense of voters, that it is time to save the American family. This nation, known in the 50's, 60's, and 70's for the vastness of its opportunity, is now the world's largest debtor, has lost the most industry of any nation, and leads the industrialized world in inequality of wealth and opportunity. Such a nation can perhaps maintain the wealth of a few, but can not offer prosperity to the majority of its citizens; such a nation will fail. We will go to Washington to tell our representatives to make a real start at fixing problems, or come on home.

Topics:
Election reform: tear down the House of Bribes, design publicly funded elections that work.

End Right-To-Work laws that deny workers the benefits of organizing while expanding the benefits of corporations to do the same thing.

Wage Reform: quit socializing the cost of labor with food stamps and HUD housing. Make a living wage the minimum.

Income tax reform: No taxes, not payroll or income taxes on those earning less than $25,000

Fair trade: tariffs , on products sold in the USA when less than 50% made in the USA.

Income inequality: Commit to programs to reduce the 20:20 score of the USA to less than 4:1.

Health Care: A public option costing (and providing services) equal the value of the system in the Netherlands. (note: Republicans want to discuss Obama care; so do we.)

Education: Not more money, not more programs, but more involvement in the three basic things we require; good teachers, involved parents encouraging home study, and the reward of jobs that pay a wage showing the respect of society and the right to live in decent conditions.

National security: protect our industry and provide a diverse environment that employs more of our citizens in occupations they are best suited for. 50% of our college graduates can not find jobs requiring a college education, while congress encourages industry to bring in low wage immigrants to do the work work our children trained for.

The Environment: clean it up, make it like our parents found it. It won't cost more than we are willing to pay.

Undo the activist ideological Supreme Court that thinks that Monsanto is a man.

Invited Speakers:
Congressman John Lewis, 5th District,Georgia, recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Clarence B. Jones, Scholar in Residence, Martin Luther King, Jr. Institute at Stanford University
Richard L. Trumka, President of the AFL-CIO
Larry Cohen, president of the Communications Workers of America
Senator Bernie Sanders (Vermont)
Representative John Conyers Jr.(Michigan)
Senator Bob Graham, author "America, An Owner's Manual"
Representative Rosa DeLauro (Connecticut)
Representative Marcy Kaptur (Ohio)
Paul Krugman, Nobel Laureate in economics
Representative Jan Schakowsky, (Illinois) Member of Obama's deficit commission
Andy Stern, former president, SEIU, Member of Obama's deficit commission
Joseph Stiglitz, Noblel Laureate in economics Author "Making Globalization Work", "Freefall"
Elizabeth Warren, Harvard Law School, Chair of Oversight Panel on Banking Bailout
Rebecca Elgie. League of Women Voters and Healthcare NOW! board member
Robert B. Reich, Professor of Public Policy, University of California
Edward N. Wolf, Professor of Economics, New York University Author "Top Heavy"
Dr. Norman Matloff, professor of computer science at the University of California at Davis, "Debunking the Myth of a Desperate Software Labor Shortage"
Richard Wilkinson & Kate Pickett, authors "The Spirit Level"
Jacob S. Hacker & Paul Pierson, authors "Winner Take All Politics"
Bob Herbert, Columnist NY Times
Thom Hartmann, progressive radio host.
Salomeh Keyhani, M.D., M.P.H. Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York
Michael Pollan, author "In Defense of Food"

Marching with us will improve the lives of more than 90% of all Americans. You can not make better use of a weekend.Make plans now to be there, and ask your family and friends to join you. This is all about families.Marching makes a difference and it is something we all can do. Don't miss the chance to tell your representative to get to work for you, in numbers they can not ignore. You make the difference, be there. There won't be any hanging chads,you show up and your vote will be counted, for sure.

Smothering Social Security

I have been wondering why Republicans keep mentioning social security, since it is part of the budget but it is self supporting. The answer is pretty clear of you look at the numbers. Working families have "put aside" $1.2 trillion in the social security trust fund between 2000 and 2009. The brings the social security trust fund to $2.5 trillion, every penny of which has been borrowed by the congress to support tax cuts for the wealthy. If social security is not "reformed", that money will have to be paid back to working families. That means that instead of "borrowing" more and more from people with average incomes of less than $28,000 a year, hedge fund managers earning over $1 billion a year and now getting over $100 million tax breaks under the Bush (and Clinton) tax cuts, may start having to pay the taxes that were normal when Richard Nixon was president, and everyone was doing a lot better than working people are today. Paying lower taxes when you borrowing money from working families (and just as much from China) is not fun at all when you have to pay both back. Best idea is to trick them out of being repaid; tell them that asking for their money back is asking too much.

The chart shows the growth of assets in the social security trust fund, now roughly twice what we owe China, but George W. Bush once called it "just pieces of paper", apparently meaning that workers had contributed $2.5 trillion, but since he and congress had spent it, all that the trust fund actually has are the same sort of "pieces of paper" that the government of China holds. This link will open a page in a new tab, showing the yearly contributions of workers to the trust fund, over $100 billion surplus each year from 1998 to 2009 and every penny of it spent by congress, a congress that calls any request for repayment, an "entitlement" as though you inherited a title rather than you are asking for the return of your own money. Note that the top 25 hedge fund managers in 2009 had incomes of (average) more than $1 billion each, and they got tax rates, 15%%, less than the full cost of social security to workers, and nobody denigrated those tax breaks by suggesting they were not earned, even though neither Clinton nor Bush ever explained how those tax breaks would be paid for. It was enough for those two guys that billionaires would be helping them (with speaker's fees), after they left office.

Asking poor people to work to 69 before they start asking for their money back, is a good idea if you have been getting big tax breaks you don't want to give up. Never mind that our health care is such that many poor people don't live until they are 69, or only live a year or two after they start collecting social security, never getting back half the money they put in.

Nobel Laureate in economics Paul Krugman has his own take on this:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/01/destroying-retirement-in-order-to-save-it
December 1, 2010, 10:48 am
Destroying Retirement In Order To Save It

Bowles-Simpson, the revision, is out. It has not improved.

I think it is worth pointing out that like so many proposals from that side of the political spectrum — for this is, very much, bipartisanship as a compromise between the center-right and the hard right — this one involves a fundamental piece of strange logic. Namely, it argues that in order to head off the dire prospect of future cuts in Social Security benefits, we must … cut future Social Security benefits.

Also: in response to the point many of us have made about raising the retirement age — that only the affluent have seen life expectancy rise faster than the retirement-age rises already in the law — the plan promises special exemptions for those with physical hardships.

Let’s think about that. Right now we have a retirement system that has the great virtue of not being intrusive: Social Security doesn’t demand that you prove you need it, doesn’t ask about your personal life, doesn’t make you feel like a beggar. And now we’re going to replace that with a system in which large numbers of Americans have to plead for special dispensation, on the grounds that they’re too feeble to work for a living. Freedom!

Tax Breaks, or Unemplyment Benefits?

The latest data shows employment increased by less than 40,000 new hires in November. Over the last 12 months, the number of people working has increased by less than one million. Just to account for the growth of our population, we need about 120,000 new hires every month, and to make any dent in the 15 million citizens currently out of work, hiring must be at a rate of 300,000 a month for at least a year (that would only rehire 10% of those out of work, and absorb those joining the workforce upon graduation from high school and college), so we need many years of job growth at 300,000 a month, not less than 40,000. In addition, 50% of those graduating from college do not get jobs requiring a college education (most jobs don't), and those that fail to get a job using the skills they learned in college end up with jobs paying (on average) 40% less than those who get jobs requiring a college education. For many people who have heard politicians and Bill Gates say that we don't have enough college graduates and we need to bring in low wage workers from India and China, the job market is a huge disappointment, leaving them with tens of thousands of dollars in debt, years spent in college when they could have been working their way up the job ladder, and, upon graduation, no job. Firms today are increasing profits, not by hiring workers and making more product, but by laying off workers and getting those left to work harder, often for reduced pay or benefits. If you are a Republican, or bailed out banker, you have so much money you need a tax break. If you are worker, you need job.

At this time, with unemployment at almost 10%, with 15 million out of work, with five or six job applicants for every open job, Republicans first priority is more tax cuts for the rich, in fact, every Republican signed a letter to the President saying that they will block every bill before the senate until every millionaire, every billionaire, gets an Obama tax break (the Bush tax breaks expire this month, new tax breaks will be the Obama tax program for the wealthy and Republicans insist that the Obama tax cuts not be paid for, that they be added to the deficit.

http://www.speaker.gov/newsroom/pressreleases?id=1948

Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, "“We’re here at a time where a lot of issues are on the table and they’re not unrelated. You hear talk about extending tax cuts to the wealthiest people in America. And those tax cuts we are told, should not be paid for. $700 billion in tax cuts to the top 2 percent in our country and our Republican colleagues say we should do that and we should not pay for it, we should add that $700 billion to the deficit. But when it comes to unemployment insurance and just the renewal we want to have, it costs $18 billion — $700 billion vs. $18 billion — they’re saying that has to be paid for. Have to pay for unemployment insurance, we don’t have to pay for tax cuts for the rich. Tax cuts for the rich do not create jobs. They haven’t throughout the Bush Administration. Unemployment insurance creates jobs; does not add to the deficit. And the Republicans insist that that be paid for. "

Republicans want to preserve tax breaks of over $100 million each (average) for the top 25 hedge fund managers, and cut off (say) $250 a week in unemployment benefits to long term unemployed workers who had no part in creating this recession. It is not that workers are lazy or don't want to work, it is that there are no jobs, and the hedge fund managers that congress wants tax breaks for, had a hand in creating this mess.

The Bush tax cuts were never paid for, they contributed hundreds of billions of dollars to the deficit, and not one single Republican demanded that they be paid for. Not one single Republican insisted that any part of the $3 trillion invasion of Iraq be paid for, Republicans now insist that there be $700 billion in new tax breaks, large breaks for the rich, and they insist that they be added to the deficit without any compensating taxes being collected, or cuts be made. But for the $18 billion needed to continue unemployment benefits, they demand that cuts be made in programs benefiting the middle class who did not benefit from the trillions in deficit spending during the Bush years.

Republicans always insist that tax cuts not be paid for, that they be added to the general deficit that all taxpayers are responsible for, because they know if they, or Obama, identifies how the tax cuts will be paid for, those paying will revolt and the bill will never get passed, the reason for that is simple: those getting the breaks will not be those who lose the benefits or pay higher fees to replace the money. Just as every action has an equal and opposite reaction, every tax cut leads to increased deficit, higher taxes on someone else, or cutting the benefits that someone else gets. Republicans want to make sure that the "fool in the room" is not warned who will be paying. Note: Warren Buffet has said, that if you do not know who the fool is, then it is you.

Red State Death Panel, Already In Action

After complaining that a public, non-profit option to our bloated, way too expensive private for-profit system would lead to rationing and "death panels", a Republican state, Arizona, has shown exactly how they would work; we have them now. Note that cuts discussed below were passed by the Republican controlled legislature before the new health care bill was passed, so blaming them on cuts by "Obama Care" (as some have tried to) is incorrect.

Arizona Cuts Financing for Transplants Full article

"December 2, 2010
Arizona Cuts Financing for Transplant Patients
By MARC LACEY

PHOENIX — Even physicians with decades of experience telling patients that their lives are nearing an end are having difficulty discussing a potentially fatal condition that has arisen in Arizona: Death by budget cut.

Effective at the beginning of October, Arizona stopped financing certain transplant operations under the state’s version of Medicaid. Many doctors say the decision amounts to a death sentence for some low-income patients, who have little chance of survival without transplants and lack the hundreds of thousands of dollars needed to pay for them.

“The most difficult discussions are those that involve patients who had been on the donor list for a year or more and now we have to tell them they’re not on the list anymore,” said Dr. Rainer Gruessner, a transplant specialist at the University of Arizona College of Medicine. “The frustration is tremendous. It’s more than frustration.”

"Organ transplants are already the subject of a web of regulations, which do not guarantee that everyone in need of a life-saving organ will receive one. But Arizona’s transplant specialists are alarmed that patients who were in line to receive transplants one day were, after the state’s budget cuts to its Medicaid program, ruled ineligible the next — unless they raised the money themselves.

"Francisco Felix, 32, a father of four who has hepatitis C and is in need of a liver, received news a few weeks ago that a family friend was dying and wanted to donate her liver to him. But the budget cuts meant he no longer qualified for a state-financed transplant.

...
"If the Legislature does decide to reconsider the cuts, one of the affected people, a plumber and father of three named Randy Shepherd, 36 (photo below), who has an ailing heart and needs a transplant, plans to attend the debate.



“I’m trying not to take it personally,” he said of being cut out of the program. “None of the politicians had heard of me when they made their decision. They didn’t say, ‘Let’s kill this guy.’ ”
Full article