March 8, 2019: Sounding The Depths, Boiling Point, This Cat Don't Bounce

Polling of the American electorate, regularly conducted by Quinnipiac University, paints a bleak outlook for our intrepid Disgustus. The Quinnipiac ( pronounced KWIN-uh-pe-ack) poll is considered by polling guru and prognosticator Nate Silver as one of the best, if not the best, in the country. It is not an outlier, but comes closest of any to an actual snapshot of what the country thinks and where it stands. Consider the results of a poll taken late last week and released on March 5:

By a 64 to 24 percent margin, Americans believe that tRUMP had committed crimes before he became president. Less than half of Republicans, 48 percent, say that he did not commit any crimes, but a full 33 percent or 1/3 of people who still identify themselves with his party say that he did.

The country is about evenly divided, certainly within the margin of error, concerning the question of whether tRUMP has committed crimes while in office. A full 45 percent say he has, while 43 percent say he has not. This is stunning, coming on the heels of the 'Stormy Daniels' scandal where the president and his minions are accused of illegally covering up illicit sexual liaisons by paying hush-money. With more certainly to follow, including violations of emoluments clause of the Constitution, bribery, insurance and bank frauds, tax evasion, money laundering, racketeering, and outright sedition involving hostile foreign actors, the pending congressional hearings most certainly means that the the number of Americans totally convinced of his corruption will rise. The fact that already—over mere peccadilloes—half the country views him as guilty can only mean that the Constitutional crisis will soon reach a boiling point.

As it stands right now, Americans do not favor impeachment by a 59 to 39 percent margin. But Disgustus can take little comfort here. It is worth noting that nearly 40 percent—at this stage of the inquiries—do favor at least the beginning of the impeachment process. And, tRUMP should take note, by nearly the same margin 58-35 percent, Americans tell the pollsters that Congress should “do more to investigate 'Michael Cohen's claims about President Trump's unethical and illegal behavior.'” (1)

So far, according to the poll, voters by a 41-36 percent margin approve of the way the Democrats are conducting the hearings, while they disapprove the way the Republicans are conducting themselves by a whopping 51-25 percentage points. If you are a Republican, you know its been a tough week when only a quarter of your base supports your behavior and half the party faithful don't like what they see.

But what commandeered the headlines was the finding that more American voters believed Cohen than the president of the United States. More Americans believed a convicted felon and perjurer than believe the president of the United States. This despite only a narrow plurality of only 44 who said that Cohen told the truth to 36 percent telling pollsters that he did not. So less than half of those polled say Cohen told the truth but, tellingly, 50 percent say they nevertheless believe Cohen than the mere 35 percent who hold to their belief in tRUMP.

“The answers to two survey questions deliver a double-barreled gut punch to the honest question,” said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll. “'When two-thirds of voters think you have committed a crime in your past life, and almost half of voters say it's a tossup over whether you committed a crime while in the Oval Office, confidence in your overall integrity is very shaky,” Malloy added. 'Add to that, Michael Cohen, a known liar headed to the big house, has more credibility than the leader of the free world.'” (3)

It is this question of credibility that will be the undoing of our Caesar. As noted in previous posts, the president of the United States has little constitutional power. Rather, beyond his roll as commander-in-chief of the armed forces, the power exerted by the chief magistrate is one of persuasion. He is, and must be, in the end, a master salesman. As his administration drones on, he is finding himself more difficult to sell, because he has twitted away his credibility beginning on his very first days in office over the nonsense surrounding crowd size at the inauguration.

Credibility, knows every mother's son, is built on a foundation of honesty. And therein, lies the Achilles heel of this great and powerful OZ. Approaching three quarters into his term, a full 55 percent of voters view his job performance negatively, compared to only 38 percent who still approve of him.

These are numbers he will find difficult to change, and the polling tells why:

• By a 65-30 percent margin voters say that “Trump is not honest. His worst grade ever on this character trait.” Moreover, “(H)e gets negative grades on other traits:
• 39-58 percent say he has good leadership skills;
• 39-58 percent that he cares about average Americans;
• 22-71 percent that he is a good role model for children. 

Trump gets mixed or negative grades for handling key issues:

• 49 percent approve his handling of the economy and 45 percent disapprove;
  Negative 38-56 percent for handling foreign policy;
• Negative 40-58 percent for handling immigration issues.(4)

When it comes to diffusing tensions on the Korean peninsula, our Caesar has done anything but instill confidence into the American people. In fact, the country narrowly disapproves of his handling of the situation by a 45-44 margin, but by a 52-42 percentage margin voters “do not have confidence in Trump to handle the situation.” While by a 54-34 percentage margin Americans approve of tRUMP's attempts to “create a close relationship with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un is a good idea,” (5) they are divided 42-42 percent as to whether it has been a success. This before he returned from Hanoi empty-handed with reports that the North Koreans have begun work on restoring a missile launching site.

Things are, indeed, bleak as this maladministration careens out of control. At no time, including the run-up to the election, has our Caesar Disgustus polled above 50 percent of the electorate. He has always tread, in a word, “under water”. Comparisons have been made to other presidents and other administrations who have overcome such overall deficits and won re-election but those men had polled, at sometime in their presidencies a clear majority of respondents. More importantly, they were, on balance, trusted.

Already the party is deserting him. Votes this week on the declaration of emergency on the Southern Border have already gained the disapproval of the House, with the Republican led Senate sure to—by albeit a narrow margin—follow. The Congress has repeatedly voted to impose sanctions on Russian oligarchs and is threatening and may soon do so with Saudi Arabia as well. There is growing unrest within the administration over soaring trade imbalances—now reaching a record 891 billion last year alone, along with a the federal deficit skyrocketing 77 percent over the year before. Conservatives are clinging to tRUMP but are finding that embracing this skunk is not without consequence.

This, now, is a crippled presidency. Crippled by the corruption and mendacity of a vile and corrupt creature who has squandered whatever good faith he had by twitting away his credibility. Former presidents would rise in popularity and yet go down to defeat. They could even, as the phrase goes, experience a 'dead cat' bounce, as in George H.W. Bush's soaring popularity of near 90 percent in the wake of the Gulf War. A popularity, it transpired, a mile wide and an inch thick. An approval that quickly evaporated. Our erstwhile Caesar hasn't even given us that, for this cat don't bounce. He just lays there stinking up the Executive Mansion awaiting to be buried in the dust bin of history.

In the meantime, the country reels from the stench as the Democrats form a circular firing squad.

“An Br'er Putin, he jus' laugh and laugh”

Impeach and Imprison.

___________

1. See http://www.poll.qu.edu/national/release-detail?ReleaseID=2603
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid
4. Ibid
5. Ibid. 1120 voters were polled with the poll having a margin of error of +/- 3.4 percentage points.

Trump's decision to try to create a close relationship with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un is a good idea, voters say 54 - 34 percent.

Voters are divided 42 - 42 percent on whether the president's meetings with Kim Jong- Un have been a success or a failure.

From March 1 - 4, Quinnipiac University surveyed 1,120 voters nationwide with a margin of error of +/- 3.4 percentage points, including the design effect.

The Quinnipiac University Poll, directed by Douglas Schwartz, Ph.D., conducts gold standard surveys using random digit dialing with live interviewers calling landlines and cell phones. The Quinnipiac University Poll conducts nationwide surveys and polls in more than a dozen states on national and statewide elections, as well as public policy issues.

Visit poll.qu.edu or www.facebook.com/quinnipiacpoll

September 13, 2015: Principle Prevaricator, Burnishing his Legacy, Disingenuous to Say the Least

 

“I'll tell you exactly why. I think that politicians—particularly now, in the aftermath of this crash—fear that anything they do will be held against them later if anything bad happens. Look at all the grief I got for signing the bill that ended Glass-Steagall. There's not a single, solitary example that it had anything to do with the financial crash. And in fact, a study done afterward said that the unified banks were actually slightly less likely to fail than either the commercial banks that overloaded on subprime mortgages, or the investment banks, like Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and others.” (1)

Bill Clinton, the principle prevaricator and serial fornicator-in-chief, has recently been about the business of burnishing his legacy. Faced with criticism that actions taken by himself and his administration materially contributed to the economic crisis of 2007-08, Clinton has taken to defacing the historical record. First, as Wallace Turbeville, noted in his blog demos.org, “Owning the Consequences: Clinton and the Repeal of Glass-Steagall”:

“The financial crisis occurred because banks involved in trading had become massive, concentrated and interconnected in response to the repeal of Glass-Steagall’s separation…There were only five notable investment banks left in early 2008. Of those, two went down, a third (Merrill Lynch) survived only by a forced merger into Bank of America, and the fourth and fifth—Goldman and Morgan Stanley—were threatened with failure when they were converted overnight to universal banks. Converting to universal banks qualified them for FDIC insurance and the implicit support of the US government.  The facts, such as they are belie the spin, the massive financial institutions proved if anything more vulnerable and those that survived did so only with the help of massive federal bailouts.” (2)

But more importantly was the blanket statement that “there’s not a single, solitary example that it had anything to do with the financial crash."  Turbeville, who worked for Goldman Sachs and worked assiduously in the period leading up to repeal to save the New Deal law, thinks otherwise.  But even granting the validity of the former President’s assertions Clinton, perhaps intentionally, quite misses the point entirely.

Even if you grant the assumption that repeal didn’t cause the crash, repeal did, for the first time since Glass-Steagall was enacted in the 1930’s, produce a financial crisis.  That is, the recession and resulting dislocations put commercial banks at risk resulting in hundreds of banks closing down or selling out in a further concentration of economic power.  Wells Fargo purchased Wachovia, Guarantee Bank folded and was bought out by Compass Bank as two noted examples. 

It has amazed me, in recent years, how graduates of the most illustrious and celebrated universities in this country have been able to apply so limited a knowledge of our historical record.  Prior to the Great Depression, as any cursory student of American History will attest, economic recessions or depressions were consistently accompanied by financial crises, each worse than the preceding, finally ending with the denouement of 1929.   To remedy this the New Dealers built a firewall between commercial and investment banks so as to prevent the vicissitudes of Wall Street from eviscerating Main Street. The result was that for nearly 7 decades this country had experienced great prosperity punctuated by the occasional hard times as the ‘business cycle’ did its inevitable work.  At no time, however, did the hard times bring on a financial crisis threatening the very foundations of the banking system.   That, of course, changed.

One would have thought that, being a ‘Boomer’, and, therefore prone to short-term memory, that the Savings and Loan crisis in the late eighties would have sufficed to advise caution.  But no, spurred by the Conservatives and eager to establish a ‘legacy’ Clinton went about ‘triangulating’ the Middle Class by repealing one of the signature bulwarks of the New Deal.

Clinton apologists would have us believe that old Bill, too busy or too distracted by scandal, was somehow dragged into this, finally presented with a bill that was so overwhelmingly approved by both houses of congress as to be veto-proof.  This too is a besmirching of the historical record for as noted previously in these columns, once agreement was reached with the Republican majority, Clinton’s White House enthusiastically pushed the bill, declaring its passage upon signing to be one of the most significant pieces of legislation passed in decades.   Oh Bill was out there, alright, repeating the usual palaver that this was a dawn of a new age, and that the antiquated old rules didn’t apply anymore to the ‘new economy’.   Scoundrels always make those arguments as we serially come to believe that the old rules governing economics no longer apply.  When these arguments hold sway, you must believe that certain attempts at financial levitation are soon at hand.  And so it was.  It took about a decade, about the mean time for these things to fully mature and, as predictable as the rise of the morning sun, Wall Street was soon knocking at the door hat in hand. 

It is disingenuous to say the least for Clinton to parse the language, a propensity for which he has repeatedly demonstrated a remarkable talent. But with Hillary now on the hustings seeking the presidency in her own right, it is important for Clinton to burnish the record for Hillary, joined as she is at the hip, cannot put much distance between her candidacy and the legacy of the country’s first experiments with a Clinton in the White House.  To now own that legacy is the challenge, even if it means not letting the historical record get in the way.

--------
1.     http://www.demos.org/blog/9/11/15/owning-consequences-clinton-and-repeal-glass-steagall

2.     Ibid.

June 8, 2016: Clueless in Washington, Political Myopia, Pretend to Serve

“In the basement of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, 63-year-old Charles Gladden works alongside some of the nation’s most powerful people. For eight years, he has greeted senators, staffers and lobbyists in the hallways and the cafeteria, at exclusive banquets and special functions. He reflects fondly on some of the warmer colleagues who he says got the boot too soon.

But unbeknown to any of these bigwigs, or even to his employer, Gladden is homeless. He works in the Senate cafeteria, and he has not had a fixed address for the past five years.” (1)

In the opinion pages of the April 22^nd edition of The Washington Post Catherine Rampbell reported the story of Charles Gladden, one of the many invisible people laboring beneath the very noses of Washington’s elite. 

“The reasons are complicated”, she informs us, “He said he has made decisions he regrets — not least leaving George Washington University, where he’d been studying fine arts on a scholarship. (Truancy and trouble with the law landed him in a juvenile institution as a teenager; he got the scholarship after winning second place in an art show.) After dropping out, he spent years in low-paying jobs: painting houses, laying bricks, delivering food.”

He also contributes what he can to his daughters and family who likewise struggle beneath the radar of our political leaders.  “I want to provide for them,” he says of his family, “not burden them.” 

“Gladden also, of course, does not make very much money.

"For a week’s work at the Senate cafeteria — sweeping floors, mopping bathrooms, cleaning dishes, composting leftovers, transporting laundry — he says his take-home pay is about $360. And while he takes enormous pride in serving the country’s public servants, he is not sure these public servants are returning the favor.

“Our lawmakers, they don’t even realize what’s going on right beneath their feet,” he says. “They don’t have a clue.”’(1)

So, in an attempt to “give them a clue”, he participated in a one day strike protesting that our government, the “single biggest (indirect) creator of low-wage jobs in the country, doesn’t require the companies it does business with to pay what he considers a living wage.” It is an indirect rather than a direct culprit in this piece because, like so many laboring for the “people”, Charlie’s job has been outsourced to a private contractor. 

“His case is, he knows, atypical. But he says his story illustrates the limited choices and daily instability facing low-wage workers, including those lucky enough to work full time and those lucky enough to work in what, to outsiders, looks like a cushy government job."

"Gladden, like many low-income people, suffers from chronic illness. He was diagnosed with diabetes over a decade ago. As his vision dimmed and he developed problems in his feet and hands, he decided to find less physically taxing work. So he sought out a food-service job on Capitol Hill.

But after Congress privatized its dining services, Gladden says, his new employer, Restaurant Associates, shrank the employee head count and worsened hours. Some days, when he got roped into special events, he says he clocked in at 10 a.m. and out at 3 a.m. (Restaurant Associates declined to comment on personnel matters for this column.)

The extra pay is helpful, but Gladden’s diabetes has made it difficult to stay on his feet for so many hours a day. He shuffles a bit when he walks, having had three toes amputated in the past year and a half. The missed work due to hospital stays has been devastating, and in the months since he was last discharged, he’s had trouble coming up with the co-pay for his insulin. Sometimes he panhandles, on the weekends and when he effectively gets laid off for weeks because the Senate is in recess.

The biggest challenge, though, is finding a safe place to store his insulin.

“I tried to live in a shelter, but guys kept stealing my medication because they think they can get high off of it,” he said.

Hence his nights at the McPherson Square Metro Station, about 2,000 feet from the White House. He knows his nearby neighbor has signed an executive order requiring new government contract bids to promise to pay at least $10.10 an hour, less than Gladden earns. Gladden thinks President Obama, and the senators he sees every day, can do more. That perhaps they will do more, once they learn what his life is like.

“But first,” he says, “they need to know.”(1)

Indeed they do.  We have all missed opportunities and made decisions that we regret.  We all have families and responsibilities and, as we age, we all suffer from the ravages of work and time.  These too are part of the ‘cost of living’.

As Charlie slowly slips back into the night, the voice of Mitch McConnell drifts into McPherson Station.  Appearing on Faux News, the Senate Majority Leader assures the nation that the biggest problem facing this country is not homelessness, nor assuring a livable wage.  It is, McConnell assures us, Overregulation.

The political myopia afflicting Washington is producing a complete disconnect between the leadership of this country and the people it pretends to serve. Mr. Gladden, like so many of the people they pretend to represent is seen but not seen; heard but not heard.  Clearly Mr. Gladden is doing a much better job of serving our public servants than they are serving him. 

But the pretense is wearing thin.  Hillary Clinton, making one of her photo-op stops at a fast-food joint was asked by one of the ‘associates’ for her order.  “I want some economic justice and fairness in the marketplace” she reportedly said to which the young lady taking her order replied, “Do you want fries with that?”

------------

1.http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/what-federal-washington-needs-to-know/2015/04/22/730f2e52-e90f-11e4-aae1-d642717d8afa_story.html

 

March 30, 2015: When Will the Greed End?, Telling and Troubling Statistics, A Place Called “Hooverville”

It has been nearly half a decade now since the “Lion of the Senate” fell silent.  Ted Kennedy, tribune of the people, could be relied upon to take the senate floor and thunder at the forces of avarice and gluttony.  Confronted with economic injustice he would bellow “When will the greed end”?  The answer, of course, is that it never ends; but it is the purpose of government–this government-- to reign in on it.(1)

To put things into perspective, Bill Moyers recently posted on his website “Moyers and Company” an essay written by Paul Buchheit  in November, 2014 entitled “Infuriating Facts About Our Disappearing Middle Class Wealth” revealing a number to telling and troubling statistics.

According to data from the Credit Suisse Global Wealth Databook, for instance:“Each Year Since the Recession, America’s Richest 1 percent Have Made More Than the Cost of All US Social Programs”.  The lowest estimate of the amount the top 1 percent raked in (2.3 trillion annually) “is more than the budget for Social Security (860 Billion), Medicare (524 Billion), Medicaid (304 Billion), and the entire Safety Net (286 Billion) for SNAP, WIC, [Women, Infants and Children], Child Nutrition, Earned Income Tax Credit, Supplemental Security Income, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and Housing”.  In fact the top 1% are raking in, at the lowest estimate 115% of the entire social services budget, and that’s the best face one can put on it.  At 5.7 Trillion Dollars annually, (the highest estimate by the study) the richest 1percent take home over two and a half times as much (285%).

Moreover, according to the article, almost none of this wealth led to technological innovations or jobs.  “Over 90 percent of the assets owned by millionaires are held in low-risk investments (bonds and cash), the stock market and real estate. Business startup costs made up less than 1 percent of the investments of high net worth individuals in North America in 2011. A recent study found that less than 1 percent of all entrepreneurs came from very rich or very poor backgrounds. They come from the middle class.” (2)

“On the corporate side,” the report continues, “ stock buybacks are employed to enrich executives rather than to invest in new technologies. In 1981, major corporations were spending less than 3 percent of their combined net income on buybacks, but in recent years they’ve been spending up to 95 percent of their profits on buybacks and dividends.” (2)

In addition, as has been widely reported elsewhere, in the United States 47 wealthy individuals own more than 50% of the country’s population or about 60 million households with median wealth below “about $53,000.”

It is no wonder that the middle class now controls less wealth than at any time since the 1920's and is rapidly losing political power as the moneyed interests  take over the electoral process in the wake of the Supreme Court’s “Citizens United” decision. It is increasingly possible for the ruling elite to force through widely unpopular initiatives because they can rely on vast sources of campaign financing as the ‘money’ buys the elections.  With reckless impunity the ruling elite, insulated from public fury by fat campaign chests and gerrymandered districts, are daily busy turning the screws; assaults on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the Safety Net, or pushing through trade agreements that promise yet another savaging of the middle and lower classes. Increasingly nothing stands between the trough and the swine.
 
As wealth gets concentrated into fewer and fewer hands; as this wealth is increasingly used to feed only itself, the question remains where will it end?  The answer to this question is that we know where it will end, we have been there before.  It’s a place called “Hooverville”.
 _______________

1. James Madison arguing for the adoption of the U.S. Constitution in Federalist No 10 said that one of the benefits of creating a large federation is that the country is less likely to be dominated by one economic interest, or a small group of economic interests.  He also argued elsewhere in the Federalist Papers that the single most important reason to adopt the constitution is to regulate commerce.

2. http://billmoyers.com/2014/11/04/infuriating-facts-disappearing-middle-class-wealth/

March 29, 2015: Minimum Wage; Maximum Myth, Dog-Eared Objections, Into the Abyss

About every decade or so, after the minimum wage has lost about 30% of its purchasing power, the Democratic Party proposes to raise the minimum wage in an effort to shore up what is left of the tattered ‘safety net’. Every time the Democrats propose an adjustment, the political wrong drags out its hoary, shopworn, arguments in favor of doing nothing; or, as in the case of a Jeb Bush argue that the minimum wage should be done away with altogether, with workers relying instead upon the tender mercies of their capitalist benefactors.

First, they contend that the minimum wage benefits mostly teenage workers or workers who are not really in the workplace and who can afford to work for less. In fact, according to the United States Department of Labor, "88 percent of those who would benefit from a minimum wage increase are age 20 or older, and 55 percent are women" (1)

Secondly, opponents of the minimum wage can reliably be expected to trot out the old bromide that establishing a ‘false floor’ on the cost of labor costs the economy jobs. It follows, according to these lights, that increasing the minimum wage will cost millions of jobs, the kind of jobs most desperately needed by the lower classes. In fact, "a review of 64 studies of minimum wage increases found no effect on employment." Additionally, according to the Department of Labor,

"more than 600 economists, seven of the Nobel Prize winners in economics, have signed onto a letter in support of raising the minimum wage to $10.10 by 2016." (1)

Thirdly, opponents contend, the federal requirement puts an undue hardship on small businesses and they cannot afford to pay additional wages. Accordingly, it is widely predicted every time an increase is proposed that main street will shed a fraction of its workforce if the Liberals have their way. The facts are otherwise. According to the Department of Labor "A June 2014 survey found that more than 3 out of 5 small business owners support increasing the minimum wage to $10.10. Small business owners believe that a higher minimum wage would benefit business in important ways: 58% say raising the minimum wage would increase consumer purchasing power. 56% say raising the minimum wage would help the economy. In addition, 53% agree that with a higher minimum wage, businesses would benefit from lower employee turnover, increased productivity and customer satisfaction." (1)

Fourth, the argument is presented that increasing the tipped wage for restaurant workers would be detrimental to the industry. This argument has historically been persuasive as when Herman Cain, former Republican candidate for President, headed the lobbying effort the last time the Federal Government raised the minimum wage. Cain signed off on a compromise getting his industry to support an increase in exchange for an understanding that Congress would not impose such an increase on his industry. As a result, the non-tip federal minimum wage lingers at a meager 2.13 an hour, a standard set in 1991 which demonstrates the historically low standard set for the industry.

It transpires, however, that this objection to raising the standard is likewise bogus. The Department of Labor informs us that, in California for instance,"employers are required to pay servers the full minimum wage of $9 per hour - before tips. Even with a recent increase in the minimum wage, the National Restaurant Association projects California restaurant sales will outpace the U.S. average in 2014." (1) : and, when San Francisco required employers to pay its workers 10.74 per hour--"before tips"–the industry has reported subsequent job growth. (1)

Sixth, opponents contend that minimum wage earners are typically part-time employees. Wrong again, about 53 percent of minimum wage earners are full time workers.

Seventh, raising the minimum wage is bad for the economy. In fact the minimum wage has been raised 22 times since it was established in the 1930's and real GDP has increased.

These are a few of the old, tired, dog-eared objections trotted out every time the nation puts the minimum wage on the ‘front burner’. None of these arguments hold water but the idiot-wrong can be relied upon to dig them up and drag them out for public consideration nonetheless.

Of late other objections have emerged, belittling the effort by Congress to enact a remedy. One encounters, for instance, the objection that only 3.6 million workers are eligible, so raising the benchmark wouldn’t have much impact and is, therefore, a waste to time–time better spent by this Rescumlican congress repealing ObamaCare for the umpteenth time; or energy better spent shredding the social safety net.

The Scums have a point here, not because the workers in this country have become so affluent as to marginalize the impact and importance of the measure; not because we have witnessed a wholesale movement in the labor force from lower to middle class. Indeed it is quite the contrary poverty is on the increase. The fact that so few, relatively, fall within the margins covered by minimum wage protection is a product of several factors

First, there are whole industries and millions of workers in this country who have never been protected by the Fair Labor Standards Act, the law which established the minimum wage. Farm workers, for instance were never covered, and restaurant workers were placed in a sub-wage category as noted above.

Secondly, there has been a trend in this country over the last decades to move millions of workers off the payroll altogether under the so-called 1099 heading. This is a provision in the labor and tax code allowing a company to hire an ‘independent contractor’ wherein the worker/employee works for a wage, usually above the minimum wage, but the employer withholds no local, state, or federal taxes, no social security or medicare withholdings, and no worker’s compensation or unemployment insurance. The "contractor" may indeed work for no other employer, I have seen this situation, and may indeed work 40 hours a week year round. Getting $9.00 an hour instead of $7.00, his employer simply pockets the difference between what he is paying and what he would or should be paying if he had made the contributions. Note here that only a fraction the "savings" in the "cost of labor" previously paid is returned to the worker. This practice is becoming ubiquitous and there are times when working under such an arrangement, as when a property management company ‘out sources’ its entire maintenance operation to so-called "1099 contractors" where work is on a bidding basis, the race to the bottom becomes complete: the "contractor" facing severe competition must pay his own transportation, supply his own tools and equipment, pay his own taxes etc., and often when the checks come in and the man-hours are tabulated the job is done for Less than the minimum wage.

Every day, it seems, we see another turn of the screw. As Congress dawdles and delays, the middle classes are slowly sinking into the abyss while the poor are becoming increasingly desperate. Not only must the minimum wage be raised, but the categories of workers must be expanded to include all those industries not covered. In addition, we must work to eliminate the ubiquitous use, if not outright abuse, of the 1099 provisions in the tax code. Raising and expanding the minimum wage would have the salutary effect of not only stimulating a sluggish economy, lifting the economic prospects of the least among us, but also raise the benchmark for other low-wage jobs, a much needed ripple-effect.

____________

(1). http://www.dol.gov/minwage/mythbuster.htm
 

March 23, 2015: Malignancy of Swine, Turning of the Screws, Marrow of the Republic

The malignancy that is the modern conservative movement has been growing and mestasticizing for over 30 years now. The country, once strong and prosperous, has become weak, fragile and, increasingly poor. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in my beloved state of Michigan.

Susan J. Demas is Publisher and Editor of Inside Michigan Politics, a nationally acclaimed, biweekly political newsletter. In an essay published yesterday on mlive, a Michigan website hosting all the state’s major newspapers, Demas graphically illustrates the state of malignancy.



"If you're not basking in the warm glow of Michigan's economic

"Comeback", you’re not alone", she writes.

"The median income in Michigan has shrunk by a startling $13,278 this century, according to data newly released from the Pew Charitable Trusts. In 2000, the median income was $61,551, but that tumbled to $48,273 by 2013.

That's a staggering drop". Indeed it is.

"There are certainly some visible signs of an improving economy here.", she adds, "Unemployment is down from 10.7 percent in January 2011 to 6.6 percent in January 2015 (although it remains well above the national rate of 5.7 percent)." And, according to the Tax Foundation, Michigan is the 13^th best business climate among the states in their collective ‘race-to-the-bottom’ to see who can best shine the shoes of their corporate paymasters. But, she rightly concludes, when median income takes such a big hit and thousands of families fall from the middle class, it takes awhile for people to feel an economic recovery."

Michigan, alas, is not alone for "All 50 states have seen their middle class ranks shrink, Pew reports". "The percentage of middle-class households dropped in Wisconsin by 5.7 points, in Indiana by 4.4 points and in Ohio by 5.2 points." None, however "saw such a dramatic drop in median income as Michigan did, however".

The trend is, indeed a national trend, with states that are doing relatively well like North Dakota where unemployment has been the lowest still reporting a 5.1% decline–higher than Michigan’s–in median household income.

" The number of people calling themselves "middle class"(nationally) has dropped significantly. A January 2014 Pew Research study found 44 percent identify as middle class, compared to 53 percent in 2008, at the start of the recession." (1)

America is beginning to perceive in measurable terms what has been the economic reality for some time now. We were informed about this, over a quarter of a century ago, with Kevin Phillips’ work "The Politics of Rich and Poor" in which the fallacies of Reaganomics were laid bare, but the country, governed by swine, paid no heed.

This is beginning to change, as the polling by Pew, here reportedly demonstrates. What this translates into politically is another matter; for we have learned from the fascist experiments in Europe that not all middle class political revolts are liberal or, for that matter, democratic. And, nowhere has this been better illustrated than electing and then re-electing a hedge-fund vulture capitalist governor. Snyder rewarded the ‘populist’ revolt by waging war on organized labor and the workingman, raising taxes on the middle class, and cutting taxes on his rich friends. None of this is new but with each ‘turn of the screws’ the middle class shrinks just a little bit more.

The cancer has spread from the delusions of a Russian emigre, and the scribbling of truculent economist to the stink-tanks funded by the billionaires across the airwaves of their paid minions into the halls of every corridor of power. The cancer that is the modern conservative movement is now spreading through the body politic into the very marrow of the republic itself. This is the legacy of the "Generation of Swine".
______________
(1) http://www.mlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2014/01/rick_snyder_state_of_state_2.html

March 22, 2015: Malice Toward All, Lurking Malignancy, Nixon at Large

In the presidential campaign of 1960, John Kennedy stood before an audience at a campaign rally and said, "I want you to understand the immense burden I carry in this campaign. I am the last man standing between Richard Nixon and the White House".  The audience roared in laughter and appreciation; Kennedy was not being facetious.

Kennedy knew his Nixon. When the subject of Nixon came up at the White House a few years later Kennedy, in a parody of Lincoln, quipped "With malice for all; with charity toward none". Jack had no illusions about ‘Tricky Dick’ and what lay behind the stratagems of the emerging Republican coalition. America was well aware of the witch hunts, the blacklisting, the financial (checkers and Hughes Loan) scandals and Nixon’s reputation as an ‘attack-dog’ and could, therefore, revel in the humor. Little did it appreciate the gravity of the malignancy lurking just below the surface. As a result, when the Republicans returned to power in 1968, riding the crest of the ‘white backlash’ of 1966 and pursuing a clearly delineated ‘southern strategy’, the President standing before them presenting himself as the "New Nixon" was indeed no Dwight David Eisenhower nor, it transpired, his Vice President. This Nixon represented a new strain of Republicanism, a potent and toxic mix of Southern racism and Ayn Rand inspired Goldwater conservatism posturing as a populist and popular front in the form of a not-so-"silent majority".

After Watergate the ‘movement’ underwent further metamorphosis, tracking further and further wrong, down the dark rat-holes of ‘states-rights’, libertarianism and cultural xenophobia finally mestasticizing into a full-blown cancer that threatens not only the legacy of the New Deal but, perhaps, the nation-state itself. We have seen calls to repeal the 14^th and 17^th Amendments to the Constitution providing for, among other things, "equal protection of the law" and direct election of United States Senators (1). Today we have open talk of secession, stratagems of nullification not seen since the Civil War. And we are now witnessing, since the Scum have taken control of the House and now the Congress, the passage of the so-called "Ryan Budget" named after the fiscal guru of the Idiot wrong congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. In it the Scums lay out their ‘Plan’ to address the nation’s ‘financial crises’ and balance the budget in 10 years. They propose to accomplish this by cutting deeply into Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, reduce spending on enforcement of environmental laws, roll back on banking reforms, cut student loans and grants, food stamps, ad nausem. Their friends in the financial community will see huge tax cuts and the military-security complex will get an immediate bonus of 40 Billion dollars. It’s the usual Rescumlican knee-jerk palliative; cut taxes, savage the safety net, squeeze the middle class, funnel the money upwards to the ‘truly deserving’.

The Rescumlicans now run this country the way a slum lord runs an apartment building. All the money goes to the "investor" class leaving the residents (from whom the money comes) increasing living in rat-infested squalor. And so, in this last recovery, the top 1% have taken 95% of the newly created wealth and the top 10% have taken 110% and they are still clamoring for more. Malice for all and charity toward none". The "Generation of Swine", Richard Nixon at large.

----------------------

(1) Previously senators were elected by their respective state legislatures, usually the state senate. So, for example, Abraham Lincoln would poll more votes than his opponent Steven Douglas in the Illinois senate race in 1858, but not be sent to Washington to sit in the Senate. 
 

October 5, 2013: Dead End Proposition, Experience Trumps Ideology, Knee-Jerk Reaction

“Conservatism is a dead end proposition” ---From The Quotations of Chairman Joe

 It should be clear from the foregoing posts that conservatism, brought to its conclusion, is a dead end proposition.  While it is true that, as old Ben Franklin would remind us, a penny saved is a penny earned, it is also true that one can save oneself out of business.  This was certainly true of the Butterfield Corporation and, as I left property maintenance in Athens, management faced with over 50% vacancies in the office building raised rents at the apartment complex.  This, because of the student base upon which the business rests and because yearly migrations produce high turnovers, resulted in a few short months of reducing occupancy at the apartments from 97% to around 75%.  The downward spiral had begun demonstrating, once again, that bedrock conservatism is not only a poor model for governance, but doesn’t even produce a workable model for small businesses.

 Every election cycle the citizenry is bombarded with loaded political messages.  Propaganda is another term for it.  The oracles on the political Wrong would have us believe that if we would only exercise enough discipline and work ourselves into a debt-free condition a new era of unlimited prosperity awaits us.  The problem with this “Morning in America” mentality is that it never did and never will work.

 Conservatism is always running amok not only science and reason, but the historical record.  The facts are overwhelming, in fact bordering upon universal observation and experience, that—as Professor Galbraith has more than once reminded us—all eras of economic advancement have involved debt.  Sometimes a great deal of debt.  The debate should be about how much debt, not about whether there will be debt at all.  For as was demonstrated here in the microcosm, a debt-free condition does not produce strength but weakness and, in the end, collapse.  Had Butterfield borrowed money and kept up with the times,  using its business leverage by having the stock holders let the customers, in effect, finance the expansions, it could very well have survived the times.  The same is true with the operations in Athens.  But the ‘ideological’ imperative was at work forcing management into a series of knee-jerk budget cuts that in the end hollowed out the enterprises.

 The “Ideological Imperative” manifests itself in the rhetoric of the Wrong.  Appeals are made to the fears and anxieties of the political marketplace by asserting that we must adopt policies of austerity lest we fall into a pit of fire and brimstone.  You’ve heard the message:  families have to balance their budgets, so must the government.  Overlooked is the fact that the government is responsible for the value of the currency and the health of the economy; but that is in large measure beside the point.  The fact is that families don’t live on balance budgets in the first place.  It is worth noting that prior to the financial meltdown of 2007, when government had to do some serious borrowing; private debt was far greater than public debt.  Experience trumps ideology.  Every household knows that there will be no home ownership, no automobile, hell no refrigerator or washing machine or indeed lawn mower without accompanying debt.  Debt, it emerges, is not a bad thing.  In fact it can be quite the opposite. 

 Nevertheless, we are now in the grips of a government ‘shut-down’ orchestrated by the teabaggers and their malignant representatives stalking the halls of Congress.  At issue is financing the Affordable Health Care act, otherwise known as Obamacare.  Once again the idiot Wrong is willing to drive us to the point of economic crisis in a knee-jerk reaction to further investments in ourselves.  As the experiences of life in the marketplace suggests when we recoil from investing in ourselves nothing but hardship can be the result. 

September 30, 2013: What He Desperately Wanted to Hear, Dismissing Legitimacy, Exile on Main Street

From September 1986 to August 1995 I served first as Account Executive then later with the passing of old “Mac” as sales manager and station manager at WION as his widow worked to sell off the station.  These were the years where I changed places, moving from behind the desk, so to speak and into the streets.  Previously, as theatre manager, I had made the purchasing decisions regarding local radio, wrote some of my own radio ads, and worked with account execs in joint promotions between the theatre, the station, and some of the radio station’s clients.  Now I would take that experience and change positions, myself now becoming the ad man. It was an enlightening experience.

 My position at the radio station gave me access to main street, entre into the business decisions of literally hundreds of clients, many regulars and some seasonal. The goal of the successful Account Executive is to become a trusted media advisor of the client, with the ultimate objective of gaining so much confidence as to become familiar with and influence budgetary decisions of the client’s business. I was able to do this with several accounts and it is an exhilarating experience.

 The nature of the modus operandi at WION was, however, that the management—beginning with Monroe and continuing under the direction of his widow—to run the business out of his back pocket.  That is, business decisions were made on a weekly, almost daily basis, with little or no planning.  This, I was to discover, is the way in which many “mom and pop” operations function and the radio station was nothing if not a classic “mom and pop” operation.  Corporate America, represented by the chain stores and big boxes that were now assuming a much more prominent place on Main Street, doesn’t do business that way. To do business with them, you have to be included in their budgeting.  Mac didn’t do budgeting and assumed no else did either.  The result was that in order, for instance, to sell annual packages—like Tiger Baseball—you had to approach these companies at the beginning of the year, Mac wouldn’t make a business decision to do anything on such schedule.  We found ourselves getting funds not from the client’s budget but in its petty cash drawer. Moreover, Ad purchases are made by advertising departments, based on demographic studies in which media are chosen by the reach of each venue to certain “segments” of the market.  For this purpose Arbitron and other ratings publications are used in which to fashion a sales pitch based on each station’s appeal to various segments of the market.  Mac didn’t subscribe to these publications and did not use the numbers, dismissing instead the legitimacy of their ratings.  Instead, if he used numbers at all, they would be generated at events like the annual spring Home and Garden Show, in which the station would have a booth and invite passer’s by to fill out a questionnaire in exchange for prizes including tickets to Detroit Tiger baseball games (the station was then broadcasting these games).  As any entry-level student of statistics knows, any poll has to be completely random even to the point of having once chosen a respondent to putting said respondent back into the pool before the next selection is made.  These respondents, chosen not at random but from a select business event itself heavily promoted by the station, in which the respondent must then walk past the station’s booth and is further enticed by prizes produces, as one would suspect, very skewed numbers.  According to the results, a small A.M. radio station playing a hopelessly outdated format was drawing an audience larger that the contemporary, rock and country stations in nearby Lansing and Grand Rapids.  WION was drawing, according to some of these numbers, 97% of the radio audience demonstrating not the strength of the station but the lengths to which Monroe was willing to go to tell himself what he so desperately wanted to hear. 

 The following Sales Meetings, in which these numbers were duly paraded, would begin with a disclaimer, with Mac saying that these numbers were perhaps a bit skewed, but you could tell that he truly believed, or wanted to believe them; for in the ensuing discussion he would direct us to show them to our clients, and then wonder openly how it was that we had such a massive audience yet couldn’t sell our available air time.  The problem would, as in all sales meetings, by whatever expedient, eventually fall upon the shoulders of the sales staff.  I,  for one, would never present such a study in a statistics class let alone a corporate ad department or ad agency for I knew I would be laughed out of court.  To present these numbers to the “Mom and Pops” were likewise problematic for I would then be seen flying in the face of universal observation for none of these people listened to the station, nor did any people that they knew, for the fact was that once the local news programming ended in the morning whatever audience the station had quickly dissipated.  Once a viable local media, WION had been ravaged by changes in the local market. As local pharmacies, bike shops, clothing and hardware stores were by degrees swallowed up by the larger chain operations and as the station’s listening audience had slowly passed from youth to middle age to the area’s rest homes, the local Radio station, like the local Newspaper had begun to resemble the aging hulk hovering over main street in the form of the old Ionia Theatre, a splendid irrelevance.

 To be a salesman one must be comfortable with occasionally being embraced with all the enthusiasm of the arrival of a social disease.  I remember one such encounter, a restaurateur named Jim Thompson.  Jim was a big guy with a booming voice.  One day I called on “Germaine’s” restaurant and his wife was behind the bar.  I asked if Jim was in, his office being located just around the corner behind the kitchen.  She yelled back calling “Jim there’s a guy here to see you”

 “Who is it”?  He yelled out

 “I don’t know, it’s a guy you know…the one that when you see him you yell out ‘oh shit’”.

 At that Big Jim came out of his office, through the kitchen and when beholding my form standing in front of him bellowed out for all to hear “OH SHIT”.  I had become an exile on Main Street. 

As it turned out, however, that Jim wasn’t a bad guy after all.  In fact, upon hearing that my daughter had a severe hearing impairment and was in need of hearing aids, arrange to have me join a fraternity that he was deeply involved in and helped her get a scholarship which provided a stipend for her to get hearing aids.  He would do this for me personally, but could not find it within himself to buy the product I was selling.

 

February 14, 2011: False Alarms, The Politics of Fear, Stampeding the Great Unwashed

Much has been made by the likes of Ron Paul and his followers in the “Tea-bagger” movement about how the level of our national debt is fast approaching 100% of the annual gross domestic product. This is represented as some kind of ceiling beyond which we cannot go, complete with various doomsday scenarios worthy of revelation.

As the above graph suggests, we have carried high levels of debt relative to the annual gross domestic product several times in our collective history without suffering the kind of doomsday collapse these modern prophets suggest. In fact you will notice that at the end of World War II we accumulated a level of debt equal to about 125% of our GDP or the amount equal to the entire yearly economic output of the country. No one suggested in 1946, as we set about through profligate fornication creating the generation of swine, that we were facing imminent collapse. In fact, judging from the birth rate, the national response was quite the opposite. Debt, in and of itself, even high levels of debt, have no bearing on the state of the national well being.

What differentiates then from now are three salient points. The first is not demonstrated on this graph. In 1946 we owed this debt to ourselves. Today three quarters of the debt is financed from abroad, so interest payment are, in effect, monetary transfers out of the country. The second point is demonstrated by the graph. Close examination reveals a number of interesting points: we emerged from the Revolutionary war with a debt level of about 35% of GDP, high by historical standards. Notice the up-tick in 1860 as we financed the Civil War. Likewise the two world wars of the twentieth century. Notice also how we lowered our debt burden in times of peace–that is until the emergence of Ronald Reagan. Look at the graph from 1980 onward: here you can see the interruption of the upward slope by the Clinton Administration followed by a return to growing deficits. The third point is this: what did we get for all that debt in the last 30 years?
Previously we established our independence and our own economy, we bound up the nation’s wounds, we fought for a new international order bringing in its wake decades of peace and prosperity. The massive debt of the last three decades has produced no such results. Instead we find that our two greatest exports are jobs and capital. I say this by way of pointing out that it is not debt that is at issue here. It is what we are doing with it or, more precisely, what we are not doing with it.


I point this out because one needs to get some perspective on this problem in order to speak reasonably, if not rationally, on the subject. The howlers on the idiot wrong raise this issue so as to create a climate of fear as we approach yet another debt ceiling in which the Congress will have to vote to borrow additional moneys. In order to whipsaw from granting the filthy rich yet another huge tax break, to now cutting 100 billion from domestic spending, paring such programs as Head Start, Pell Grants, and the Home Heating subsidies for the poor, it is necessary to sound yet another false alarm much as Ol Two-Cows would do at the Homeland Security Department in the run up to the 2004 election.

Once again the conservatives resort to the politics of fear in an effort to stampede the great unwashed into gutting the very programs upon which they depend and prevent us from rebuilding our infrastructure and, by so doing, our national economy. It is palpable nonsense.

Footnotes:

The graph depicting the percentage of debt relative to the GDP can be found at:
www.usgovernmentspending.com/federal_debt_chart.html

GDP stands for Gross Domestic Product. This measurement, formerly called GNP for Gross National Product, is the sum (measured in dollars) of the total amount of goods and services produced by the national economy annually.