Worst President Ever - Economic Argument

In the December 2007 edition of "Vanity Fair," Joseph Stiglitz (professor of economics at Columbia University and chairman of President Clinton's Council of Economic Advisors) wrote a stinging rebuke of Bush's presidency. His premise is that Bush has been the worst President in history in terms of economic stewardship, even surpassing Herbert Hoover.

"The economic effects of Bush’s presidency are more insidious than those of Hoover, harder to reverse, and likely to be longer-lasting. There is no threat of America’s being displaced from its position as the world’s richest economy. But our grandchildren will still be living with, and struggling with, the economic consequences of Mr. Bush."

And he makes a great argument against the Bush tax cuts: "You’ll still hear some - and, loudly, the president himself - argue that the administration’s tax cuts were meant to stimulate the economy, but this was never true. The bang for the buck - the amount of stimulus per dollar of deficit - was astonishingly low. Therefore, the job of economic stimulation fell to the Federal Reserve Board, which stepped on the accelerator in a historically unprecedented way, driving interest rates down to 1 percent. In real terms, taking inflation into account, interest rates actually dropped to negative 2 percent. The predictable result was a consumer spending spree. Looked at another way, Bush’s own fiscal irresponsibility fostered irresponsibility in everyone else."

The article is well worth reading all the way through. Check it out here.

Welcome to the new America: Work more, earn less

The SF Chronicle has an excellent article on the new figures released by the U.S. Census Bureau. Among many of the disturbing numbers we find more people in our nation going without health care insurance, individuals making less money and more seniors living in poverty.

Tuesday's good news -- that median household income increased from $45,817 in 2004 to $46,326 in 2005 -- raised more questions than it answered about the nation's working population. For California, the figure was $53,629.

How could household income go up and individual income drop? Men's income fell to $41,386 and women's to $31,858.

David Johnson, chief of the Housing and Household Economic Statistics Division of the U.S. Census Bureau, suggested there were more people working per household to make ends meet, but working at individual jobs that pay less.

"It's clear that the income increase that happened in 2005 is attributable to elderly households," Sherman said, because their investments paid off well. But "working-age households saw a decline."

While Bush and his administration point to the fact that the number of Americans living below the poverty line has stabilized, the reality is:

that even though the poverty rates stabilized between 2004 and 2005 -- the headline that the Census Bureau used on its news release Tuesday -- the rate in 2005 was well above 2001's 11.7 percent.

The bottom line with the poverty figures is that the number of Americans living in poverty has increased during the GOP takeover of our government, and at the same time CEO's of defense companies are now making double what they did in 2001:

WASHINGTON - The chief executives of corporations making big profits from the war on terror are enjoying far bigger pay increases than CEOs of nondefense companies, according to a study by two liberal groups.

The study, conducted by the Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy, found that, on average, CEOs of corporations with extensive defense contracts are getting paid about double what they made before Sept. 11, 2001.

Remember, it is OUR tax dollars that are going into the pockets of these defense companies, and while individuals are becoming rich off the war on terror our nation is suffering from lack of infrastructure repair, shortfalls in education funding, a lack of affordable health care for Americans and, well, the list of programs that don't have the money to provide services to working Americans is just too long to post.

More below the fold

Decades ago our nation was warned by President Eisenhower, a Republican and a former General, to be wary of the military industrial complex:

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

President Eisenhower also stated:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

The report released today by the U.S. Census Bureau underscores both of the above statements. We have allowed unwarranted influence by the military -industrial complex, the CEO's of those companies are not only making huge profits, but are at the same time being allowed to control our government to the determent of our nation.

And while the defense industry continues to gain in power, influence and money, the average American is making less money, has to struggle to afford health care and is losing ground. There is a set amount of ground to deal with, and when one group takes more then a reasonable share that windfall comes from the rest of us. They gain and we lose, as the Census Bureau's figures show.

Right now the defense contractors have control of far more ground then is reasonable or good for our nation. Perhaps even more insulting is the fact that those in our society who are least able to afford to lose what little they have are the ones who end up giving the most. For example more seniors in our nation are finding out that they no longer are able to make ends meet:

-- More seniors over 65 were poor in 2005 -- 3.6 million -- than in 2004, when 3.5 million seniors were poor, according to the federal standard.

12.9 million American children are living in poverty. 12.9 MILLION children, in America, suffer because of the policies of this administration:

"We're seeing a general theme of divergences (between the economic classes), and we can't say the country as a whole is doing better," said Arloc Sherman, a senior researcher with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a think tank.

The children and seniors of our nation deserve better, the working people of our nation deserve better. We are not safer as a nation by allowing the military-industrial complex to become wealthy on our tax dollars, rather we do harm that goes far beyond what any bomb could ever hope to accomplish.

Bush II; Day 563: Gas prices...totally legitimate, y'hear?

So, the FTC released its report on gas prices and announced confidently that everything was kosher in big oil land. I guess that would have nothing to do with their boss, Dubya, stating confidently that he was sure everything was kosher.

The blogger at Thoughts of an Average Woman notices the same little questionable details in the article that I did, like:

But, wait! There's more to their convoluted justification! Apparently some of these companies WERE price gouging, but only technically not really.

The commission said it found 15 examples of pricing by refineries, wholesale companies and retailers that technically fit the definition of "price gouging." (It defined gouging as a price increase in the month after the hurricanes that was not attributable to the additional costs caused by weather-related damage.) But it said that in nearly all of those instances, there was probably not gouging because of regional or local trends that justified the higher prices.

No wonder the president has shifted his focus back to gay marriage. Nothing to see here, just move along now. (And given the recent articles trumpeting how Americans do seem to be driving just as much as ever despite the rising gas prices, apparently that's just what we're doing!)

Bush II; Day 562: How does Dubya piss off Grover Norquist?

He has to work really hard, but Dubya found a way to piss of even his right-wing fanboy Grover Norquist, president of the Americans for Tax Reform. By raising taxes on teenagers saving for college. Of course, no one at Norquist's organization "noticed" the provision raising taxation rates on teenagers investment income until it was pointed out by some no-doubt-liberal-and-therefore-biased reporter.

But once it was pointed out to him, he kinda had no choice but to acknowledge it was "a technical violation of the pledge" and noted that his group opposes all retroactive tax increases. The story concludes with "He pledged to immediately begin a campaign to have the tax increases rescinded."

Why am I getting deja vu over this story? And especially when I read this pledge that candidate Bush made to Norquist in a letter: "If elected president, I will oppose and veto any increase in individual or corporate marginal income tax rates or individual or corporate income tax hikes."

Say it with me now: "Read my lips, no new taxes." Yes, that was it.

Bush II; Day 557: Economic round-up: Inflation? Stagflation? Stock worries?

In line with the post I wrote last week about how you're really not crazy if you haven't been feeling the economic joy, despite the sunshiny reports in the media: investors are worried about inflation, rising interest rates...and now have started a stock market tumble to worry about too.

James Hamilton at EconBrowser shows charts that support his contention that the Fed was "too expansionary" for a few years, but cheers us with his contention that: "That may have been responsible for a slight increase we're seeing now in current inflation. However, the more restrictive measures adopted by the Fed over the last three years should help keep future inflation at acceptable levels."

The Capital Spectator wonders if "stagflation is just around the corner."

This post at Angry Bear illustrates that slight left and slightly right can both be feeling less than optimistic.

I'll close amusingly, by pointing you to The Dead Parrot Society, where Victor opines that all previous generations were "impossibly poor" compared to this one, mostly because they didn't have calculators or the Internet. No really, here's the quote, you be the judge:

"My hunch is that they are both right and both wrong. I do not believe there is a single aggregate statistic that can translate welfare over time. Instead, I ask myself how much money I would have to be given to voluntarily be born in a different year. Personally, I would require an almost infinite amount of money to be born in the eras before modern medicine and pain killers.

I would also require an extravagent amount of money to be born when my parents were born. My father went through grad school without calculators. In contrast, I would pay a significant amount of money to spend my life in an age with the internet as opposed to crappy color TV's that get terrible reception (see Cafe Hayek's 1975 catalog discussion for more). Therefore, in my view, people in the distant past *were* impossibly poor, in the sense that almost no amount of money would induce me to trade places with them."

Bush II; Day 553: Hillary Clinton with a simple plan?

Tie minimum wage hikes to congressional pay hikes.

Brilliant.

What is the argument against?

Source: CultureKitchen

Bush II; Day 550: The rich can breathe easy

Yes, thank God! The Senate approved the extension of Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy, and we can go on as a nation without having to actually suffer or sacrifice for this years-long war we were gotten into under false pretenses. Oh, except perhaps for those families directly affected. The rest of us can slap ribbon magnets on our car and feel all proud and patriotic.

Key excerpt:

"The overwhelming share of the tax cuts the Senate voted to extend will flow to the wealthiest taxpayers. People earning $1 million a year would save about $42,700, and reap about 22 percent of the total tax cut, according to the Tax Policy Center, a research group in Washington. People earning $40,000 to $50,000 a year would save about $47 and receive less than 1 percent of the benefits."

Bush II; Day 548: It's not just your imagination

The President, his lackeys, and in fact the so-called-liberal media trumpet economic news every other day that's supposed to make you feel good. Yet I, and most of the people I know don't feel good. We feel nervous. Nervous about the present, and nervous about the future. So are we just Negative Nellies?

According to this NY Times report...not really.

There's an interesting point within: unlike other times of economic uncertainty we are not, as a general rule, worried that the money will stop coming in. We feel like we have jobs, and if we lose them, we can probably find another one (unlike a few years ago.)

But what we're afraid of is that the money will never be enough...that it's becoming increasingly difficult to keep up with basic expenses:

Gas prices
insurance costs
health care costs

These all seem to be soaring unchecked and out of step with how much hope we have that our incomes will increase.

Even home buyers, who usually have more sense of security than non-owners are feeling stressed about the rising interest rates. Foreclosure rates are increasing, and it's mostly due to people being unable to handle adjustable loan rates that kick in.

It's an uncomfortable place to be employed, earning, yet anxious.

Bush II; Day 544: The Republicans really seem to be grapsing at straws, no?

I mean who came up with the bright idea to offer a $100 rebate to compensate for rising gas prices? It's missing the point. Not only that, but the next time I hear a Republican accuse Democrats of "throwing money" at something, because they want to fully fund programs in education or health care, I am going to laugh out loud.

What makes the Repugs seem even more desperate is that they're even willing to consider sacrificing their corporate buddies to try to curry favor with the "general public." Trouble is they don't have the cojones to stick with it, though...and they change their minds as soon as the oil folks squwak.

That was just a lose-lose loser move, guys.

Bush II; Day 543: Gosh, that's a surprise

The estate tax is opposed by 18 of the most super-wealthy famlies in the country. Who'd a thunk?

Now, the results of the report issued by Public Citizen sound suspiciously the conspiracy theory "international cabal" stuff of novels, but it doesn't mean they're untrue. You gotta be inheriting a chunk of change to have the estate tax hit you hard. And these families (like the family behind Wal-Mart, as one example) certainly are doing that.

I'm just having trouble stirringup the sympathy for them, though.

Bush II; Day 514: Yeah, the rich really are getting richer

A new analysis proves what you already knew: the Bush tax cuts help the rich get richer. Key points:

-Among taxpayers with incomes greater than $10 million, the amount by which their investment tax bill was reduced averaged about $500,000 in 2003, and total tax savings, which included the two Bush tax cuts on compensation, nearly doubled, to slightly more than $1 million.

-These taxpayers, whose average income was $26 million, paid about the same share of their income in income taxes as those making $200,000 to $500,000 because of the lowered rates on investment income.

-Americans with annual incomes of $1 million or more, about one-tenth of 1 percent all taxpayers, reaped 43 percent of all the savings on investment taxes in 2003. The savings for these taxpayers averaged about $41,400 each. By comparison, these same Americans received less than 10 percent of the savings from the other Bush tax cuts, which applied primarily to wages, though that share is expected to grow in coming years.

-The savings from the investment tax cuts are expected to be larger in subsequent years because of gains in the stock market.

Bush II; Day 498: The Senate has a brand new bag

Retro-correcting for administration failures.

This time I'm not talking about retroactively OK'ing Bush's illegal wiretapping activities.

This time I'm talking about a new habit of increasing the federal debt limit, so they can release budgets that exceed the old debt limit. That's just-in-time management if I ever saw it. Or I actually should say just-in-time mis-management.

The latest example:

The Senate narrowly approved a $2.8 trillion election-year budget Thursday that broke spending limits only hours after it increased federal borrowing power to avert a government default.

The budget decision at the end of a marathon day of voting followed a separate 52-to-48 Senate vote to increase the federal debt limit by $781 billion, bringing the debt ceiling to nearly $9 trillion.

The Senate budget bill would clear the way to opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling, but the outlook for that provision is uncertain given strong resistance by Republican moderates in the House and a long legislative route before final approval.

Well, what's going on is that as long as Dubya and the majority party insist that the tax cuts for the wealthy are not on the table, each individual Congressperson is kinda screwed. This NY Times piece explains why more fully. Key excerpt:

Lawmakers, analysts and others said the Senate's reluctance to clamp down on spending was a natural result of an approach that fails to recognize a sharply changed reality. In some respects, the administration and Congress act as if the surplus that greeted President Bush when he checked into the White House is still in the bank, rather than recognizing that whatever windfall was available then was eaten up and more by tax cuts.

The reality is that the cuts, plus two wars, new domestic security needs, natural disasters and a big expansion of Medicare have left the government's account badly overdrawn with no prospect of getting it back in balance anytime soon.

The criticisms set out by many Democrats - that no real progress can be made in setting the nation's finances right until Congress proves willing to revisit the tax cuts and that the nation is failing to invest sufficiently in addressing its economic and social ills- do not receive much of a hearing in a Washington where Republicans are in charge.

[snip]

"The problem we have had on the budget all along is a lack of adult supervision on the part of the White House," said Bruce Bartlett, an economist and author of a new book critical of Mr. Bush's economic record. "You can't blame members of Congress for looking out for their parochial interests. It is the president's responsibility to look out for the national interest."

[snip]

Almost lost in all the budget and spending activity was that House and Senate negotiators continue to try to hammer out an agreement for new tax cuts that could cost an additional $70 billion over five years.

Eek! Feel overwhelmed yet?

Bush II; Day 497: We don't need no stinkin' blanaced budget

True conservatives who support this current rendition of the Republican Party must walk around with their heads bowed in shame. The lack of fiscal responsiblity or, to be frank, rationality, is somewhat astonishing.

First the Republicans (well, most Republicans) voted down legislation that would have put back in place the "pay as you go" concept for budgeting. They're not even very secretive about their reason. They want Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy to stay in place forever, and it is basically impossible to balance our budget without ending those tax cuts.

No, wait. Not impossible. There is a way. Yes, you guessed it. Massive spending cuts on programs that help the weakest amongst us. As the Washington Post points out, there is one group of Republicans who are being honest about it and produced an alternative budget that shows what exactly it would take to actually live up to the Bush Administration claims about getting our deficits down.

Bottom line:

Balance could be achieved by 2011, it shows, but only if Americans are willing to sacrifice a good chunk of their health care, education, energy, transportation and foreign aid -- in fact, pretty much all of the federal budget outside defense and veterans.

What would go? Extra unemployment benefits and training to workers who lose their jobs as a result of foreign competition, heating assistance for low-income families, family planning funds, subsidized loans for graduate students and, after 2009, funding for the federal highway program. Also, Amtrak, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Agency for International Development and President Bush's Millennium Challenge Account. Substantially reduced would be funding for low-income schools, United Nations peacekeeping forces, the National Institutes of Health and block grants to states to pay for preventive health care for mothers and children. Head Start would be frozen at 2005 levels.

Average enrollment growth in Medicaid, which provides health care to poor people, was more than 7 percent annually between 2000 and 2004, and medical inflation itself is about 5 percent. Yet this budget would limit the growth in federal spending on Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), which provides health care to uninsured children just above the poverty line, to 4 percent per year. The result? More poor people, and more poor children in particular, would go without care.

[snip]

These budget cuts would be shortsighted and mean-spirited; they would transform the role of the federal government. We find much of this unthinkable, and we believe most Americans would, too. That's why Mr. Bush doesn't talk about the real-life consequences of his tax cuts, and the real-life people who will suffer from them after he leaves office. So we thank the Republican Study Committee for producing this document. If this is what you want government to look like, go ahead and support the extension of the president's tax cuts and oppose any tax increases.

Bush II; Day 491: CEOs vs. Shareholders...not always on the same side

I often ask "how pro-business do we need to be?" and I often bring up the compeltely disproporionate amounts of money CEOs get paid...whether they succeed or fail.

Billionaire Mark Cuban explains a little bit of why CEOs aren't looking out for the shareholders' interets. Not really.

I may not agree with everything Cuban says (notably his vote for Dubya...wonder how he feels about it now?) but sometimes he is spot on.

Read it.

Bush II; Day 480: My recurring question: how pro-business do we need to be?

Every now and then I blog about this question: how pro-business do we need to be? I say this as an entrepreneur and small business owner. I say this as someone who has paid a lotta taxes in my life. The only union I ever belonged to was Actor's Equity and AFTRA back in my New York starving artist days. I'm, contrary to the belief of some, no socialist or communist. But I do believe in fairness and priorities, and I don't believe you can give all the breaks in the world to businesses and not sacrifice somewhere else.

I think it's far from certain that the Bush Administration's desire to foster "more cooperative relations" with the mining industry has resulted in reduced mining safety. but there's plenty of things to make you go hmmm in the afore-linked NY Times article.

This one may be the most jaw-dropping:
Fines have been reduced in the last few years, but even those fines levied are not being properly handled. When they become delinquent they are supposed to be turned over to the Treasury Department within 180 days. Seems that they haven't turned over any delinquent accounts in over two years. Why, you ask? "Mr. Fillpot also said delinquent cases had not moved to the Treasury Department since 2003 because of computer problems. He could not say when the problems would be corrected. "

Um, can I send my S.O. the programmer over to help 'em out or something? how about the Tech Support guy from Saturday Night Live? Moooove...Mine Safety and Health Administration officials! You clearly aren't up to the job.

Bush II; Day 459: In all this talk of corruption, let's not forget competence

Or lack thereof...

Just take a look at the latest proposed Bush budget.

Tax cuts for the upper class.
Service cuts for the lower and middle classes.
Costs from Iraq not even incuded.

And yet still all-time high deficits.

Peachy.

Bush II; Day 449: Economy Slow-down a surprise?

I'm not sure why so-called experts find the Q4 economic slow-down a surprise.

I'm no expert, but I knew about Hurricane Katrina and other natural disasters that happened right before Q4.

I'm no expert, but I heard all about a slower-than-hoped-for holiday shopping season.

I'm no expert, but I heard that Americans weren't feeling too optimistic...and I'm not expert, but I know that consumer confidence plays a big part in the economy.

I'm no expert, but I've certainly heard the dire warnings about the housing bubble inevitable burst.

I'm no expert, but I know that if companies reach Q4 and find they've already reached their annual expense levels, or have not hit anticipated revenue targets...then they take a step back until the New Year.

Could the so-called liberal media be trying to continue the rose-colored glasses view of the economy, and the only way to do that after this Q4 is to say "my goodness, I just don't know what could have happened! I'm flabbergasted!"?

Bush II; Day 411: The War on the Poor

Since the holiday season obviously turns our thoughts to war (I mean serously what is up with those curmudgeonly anti-holiday-greeting people?) I thought I'd bring up a War you may not have noticed: the War on the Poor.

Rarely does a brief NY Times Editorial bring tears to my eyes, but this one about how loans to rebuild are flowing to the rich, not the poor in New Orleans did. Key excerpt:

"No one expects the government to squander tax dollars on bad loans. But there are ways around that, through grants, for instance, and looser standards for the many who straddle the shoulders of good credit and bad credit. Otherwise, the administration has engaged in the worst kind of cruelty - one that encourages the poor to think help is on the way, then swats down anyone who actually requests the promised assistance."

Let's not forget that our Vice President, Dick, emerged from his usual "undisclosed location" (OK, no, actually he was overseas) to cast the tie-breaking vote [Reg. Req'd. Sorry.] to allow Congress to cut spending for the poor, the elderly and college students in need of assistance. All while they refuse to consider those untouchable tax breaks for the wealthy.

But I don't need to say much when Ronni Bennett articulates my disgust so well here.

Shame on them. Shame on us.

Bush II; Day 403: Lower wage workers left behind by the boom times in the Bay Area

A recent article in the Mercury News [Reg. Req'd.] is pretty disheartening...that is, if you believe that a widening gap between the haves and have-nots is of concern.

Seems that over the last 25 years low-wage workers (and that's defined as <$11.50/hour in today's wages, or the bottom 20% of wage-earners) have actually lost purchasing power. Meanwhile middle-wage earners have gained, and high-wage earners have gained the most. The gap between high and low is widening markedly, and the middle group is sort of struggling to keep up.

Education seems absolutely key. The gap between those with a high school diploma and those without is big. The gap between those with a college diploma and those with a high school diploma is even larger.

The Bay Area is actually blessed with a much higher percentage of educated workers, with higher median incomes and surprisingly a higher liklihood of owning a home. (Surprising because we all know how expensive housing is here.)

I'm sure there are those who say that this is Darwinian in some way (I wonder if they're the same people who don't want to teach evolution in school?) But I think that outsourcing of manufacturing jobs has eliminated one way that those without college degrees could often advance. I used to work at a company that had an on-site manufacturing facility. Many of the workers were new Americans or immigrants; many were not lucky enough to have an advanced degree. But with that job they had salary, benefits, stock options etc. Where are those jobs now?

Some people probably are not concerned about the gap, thinking it's inevitable. I think the wider the gap between the have and have-nots, the lower overall quality of our society.

Of course my Singaporean friend who is planning to renounce his citizenship and become an American over a recent execution in Singapore would be swift to point out that Singapore has the richest, most educated populace in the world, the cleanest, safest city, but has other things to be ashamed of.

What do you think of this economic gap?

Bush II; Day 379: Tax Cuts do not equal Job Stimulus

I love my BlogHer buddy Arse Poetica, because she is filled with the same outrage as I am, and is not shy about expressing it.

Take this post, commenting on the latest research that shows that not only have Dubya's tax cuts not stimulated job growth, but that historically such tax cuts results in something else entirely: a widening gulf between rich and poor.

As she says: "I have to believe that these things are sinking in, or I won't be able to get up in the mornng."

Bush II; Day 361: Hard to see this as anything but a downer for the middle class

I've read and re-read the recommendations from Dubya's panel on how to reform the tax code.

As you work your way up the ladder some things hold true...you gotta pay state taxes (that deduction is on the cutting room floor in this proposal.) You hope to get a full-time job that provides health insurance (the proposal aims to restrict tax-free employer-paid health insurance.) The you start saving and planning because you want, more than anything, usually, to buy a home. That is the number one investment most Americans feel represents the American Dream (the proposal suggests big cuts in the deduction for mortgage interest.) And if you reach that goal (and often before you ever do reach that goal) you want to give a little back, and donate some portion of your income to charity (the proposal wants to limit those deductions too.)

These are the ways this panel suggests that Dubya can make his tax cuts for the wealthy permanent and compensate for that revenue loss. Go after the deductions that actually help a broad swath of the public.

Meanwhile they propose lowering the tax rate for the highest tax brackets and lowering the tax on investment income.

It seems so very blatant.

Bush II; Day 355: War Couldn't Do It, and Neither, Apparently, Can Costly Hurricanes

Do What?

Deter Republicans from reverse-Robin Hood'ing and stealing from the poor to give to the rich.

Read this NY Times editorial. Prepare to be sickened.

They have no shame.

Bonus: Neither does Wal*Mart, as an internal memo show their cynical efforts to avoid looking bad, but avoid investing in employee benefits.

Isn't it illegal for employers to use the health of the prospective employee as a criteria for hiring? Don't know. Just asking.

Bush II; Day 336: The mess that is FEMA

Still seems pretty messy to me.

It wasn't just the Louisiana officials' fault, obviously, since problems continue. FEMA is slow. FEMA is unable to account for money. FEMA is only now getting around to examining the no-bid contracts they passed out like candy.

What a mess.

Bush II; Day 315: UN nations not buying Bush

I think the nations at the UN could be forgiven for greeting Dubya's most recent speech with stony silence and skepticism.

He hasn't exactly gone out of his way to establish strong, trusting ties with most of them. Nor to help the world's poor (even though he now wants to act like their savior) nor to promote peace in the world.

This will be the lasting legacy (and problem left behind) of the Bush Administration. A world that no longer looks to us. Admires us. Trusts us. Gives us the benefit of the doubt. Believes us.

Bush II; Day 304: A not-so-happy Labor Day for labor

This is one of my pet rants.

No one ever said that making a fair profit meant making unfettered profit. We place controls on companies in a variety of ways.

But apparently asking that executives are paid what they deserve and that it not exceed ungodly amounts isn't one of those things we're willing to control. It's a field day for executives while many "rank and file" employees, especially in the Silicon Valley haven't seen merit increases since the bust started in the year 2000.

If they still have their job. And if it pays even 80% of what they were making before.

Case in point, this brief item from the NY Times that notes that chief execs are now making way over $400 for every $1 a production worker makes at 367 top companies.

So let's all honor Labor tomorrow shall we?

At least in words...because the American corporate world (and I include the Bush Administration in that description) are a hell of a lot better at words, than actions.

Bush II; Day 298: The Rich/Poor Divide

Several bloggers commenting on recent statistics on the rich vs. poor in this country.

ArgMax lays out the high level findings, and it is ugly. Poverty up. Median income down. The uninsured up. And get a load of this one:

"Shares of income in the middle 3 quintiles declined, while incomes in the highest quntile increased."

So, it's no longer the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. It's the rich get richer, and everyone else gets poorer.

Of course Daniel Gross points out that the percentage of folks who fall into that "richest" category has declined a bit. So we really do have the wealth of this great country concentrating into fewer and fewer hands.

But Gross also points out that there's really no limit to the ways Bushies will try to spin the economic news in a positive light to kiss Dubya's ass.

Feh.

Bush II; Day 284: Let's not forget to protect Social Security

God I love hearing that Dubya gave a speech to mark the 70th anniversary of the creation of Social Security. What hypocrisy. Or, really, what gonads, to even bring it up.

But lest we all forget, Paul Krugman is here to remind us:

-That Dubya came to destroy SS not to reform it
-That he lied to do try to do it, and that he used public funds to spread those lies

Eventually he may come back to this issue, and when and if he dares to, we should remember not to let him get away with it.

Bush II; Day 283: Repetition is good

I know, I know, you're sick of hearing all the reasons that repealing the estate tax is lunacy.

But you must hear it again.

Bush II; Day 277: The Spin on Job Growth

You may have heard the news trumpeted near and far about how great the recent figures about 207000 new jobs are.

I'm hear to make sure you understand the spin...or rather this NY Times editorial is.

Bottom line: We're finally creating enough jobs to cover just the new workers entering the work force, plus a little more, but compared to other periods of recovery in our nation's history the job growth is weak. So don't let anyone tell you this is the strongest economy ever, or a perfect economy, as I've seen bandied about. Not only that, but employment rates are still lower than back in 2000 when Bush took office. So the fact that unemployment rates can be down while employment are not up simply means that more folks have aged off the unemployment rolls.

Even more disheartening is the fact that wages are not increasing enough to keep up with inflation. Now the Labor Dept. will try to spin that overall compensation has increased more than just wAges, but most of that is employers trying to cover the ever-increasing cost of providing health care. Meanwhile employees are also pitching in more for health care than ever before. So the "overall compensation" argument is really just exposing that employers are having to divert money from worker wages to health care. And no one yet has the solution for the increasing costs for employers or workers.

The people who got new jobs last month are understandably happy. But none of us should feel pleased.

Bush II; Day 271: Economy Disconnects

Fascinating and lengthy post from the Emerging Democratic Majority blog about the discontent the public feels about the economy, and how the Democrats may be able to leverage it.

Why it's fascinating to me is that I see headlines in the San Jose Mercury on a regular basis now talking about how great the economy is. One recent headline talked about a "near-perfect" economy.

And I was thinking, hmmm, why doesn't it feel that way to me...or to any single person I've talked to. I know exactly no one who is jumping up and down about the economy. I think we all feel some underlying suspicion that the regular economic indicators don't tell the whole story.

The unemployment rate is down and productivity is up, but there are not more employed people. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that a) people are leaving the valley...which might help our traffic problems, but doesn't help the state's economy and b) people are simply aging off the unemployment tolls and c) the people who are employed are working even harder, even longer, and most of them for no more compensation.

That's just one example.

So, yes, the Democrats can likely use this feeling of economic insecurity. We should remember that statistics only tell part of the story. And that they can be easily manipulated and presented with plenty of spin.

Bush II; Day 250: Debunking Republican myths

Couple of NY Times stories this weekend that debunk the fond fairy tales that Bushies tell:

1. Tax cuts for the rich stimulate employment.

Not so, says economist Robert H. Frank. While I'm not sure his assumptions about how middle class folk would have spent the tax savings had they received them are anything more than assumptions, his look at how tax savings are not a business-savvy justification for new hiring is right to the point. Bush sells his tax cuts much as he has sold the Iraq War...with whatever argument seems handy...he's always testing out a new justification. Unfortunately none of them really make sense.

2. The estate tax will hurt farmers.

Not so, says a new study from the Congressional Budget Office. But this one you knew right?

Bush II; Day 221: Krugman says it best

Are we returning to the robber baron era?

Read this Op-ed by brain-crush Paul Krugman and you will likely think so.

The difference now is that we used to have leaders a la Roosevelt and Kennedy who came from privilege and thought it was their duty in life to look out for those who hadn't been so fortunate.

Now we have leaders born into privilege who see that as God's reward and sure as hell don't want to spread it around.

Bush II; Day 217: The haves and have-nots

Day 217 is a day to take a moment and thank Dubya for all he's doing for the super-rich?

What? You're not one of 'em, you say?

Too bad for you, as this NY Times analysis of the "Bush Economy" makes clear.

And this Op-Ed by Bob Herbert certainly won't make you feel any better! It's called the Mobility Myth, if that gives you a clue.

So I hope you like where you're at...'cause that American Dream, our Land of Opportunity is rapidly changing...and you're likely to stay right there.

Bush II; Day 199: Sick of lies, damn lies? Then here are some statistics.

You know, some things are just fact. And despite the fact that Republicans have been desperately trying it plant an image in your head of a sullen, spoiled teenager making minimum wage...the better to discourage the idea of raising it... the fact simply don't support that image.

Ezra Klien does us all the great favor of pulling out the highlights from a recent report on the state of the minimum wage worker, thereby alleviating me of the need to download yet another pdf.

Hint: Most minimum wage workers are NOT teenagers. But you knew that already, right?

[Note, i just caught the terrible egregious typo where I forgot the word NOT in the sentence above. So make sure you get that most minimum wage works are actually adults, many with families.]

Bush II; Day 191: Estate Tax de-BS-ified

Here's an excellent run down from economist Robert Frank on why the estate tax is fair, efficient and misunderstood. read it and educate yourself.

Bush II; Day 187: It's the whole food vs. groceries fight again

And the elderly lose again.

At least according to one of my blogging gurus, ShortWoman.com.

So, if the elderly take "advantage" of the Medicare prescription drug car, the government will cut their food stamp benefits. So the Medicare benefit which was supposed to alleviate the need to choose between food and drugs, will be used to put them in the position of choosing between food and drugs.

Nice.

Bush II; Day 161: ShortWoman = SmartWoman in my book

You know, I tend to focus on Social Security, occasionally veering off into budget deficit land, passing tax cuts for the wealthy vs. services for the less wealthy along the way.

That's why it's instructive for me to read ShortWoman.com, a blog that has a much more diverse approach to looking at our economy.

Check out this post where ShortWoman talks about trade gaps, high gas prices, de-linking the Chinese currency valuation from the dollar, and the fact that all Americans have gotten an effective, across-the board pay cut.

And the post below is no cheerier, sad to say.

But if we're into a reality-based existence, it ain't cheery that matters.

Check out ShortWoman to get your dose of reality for the day.

Bush II; Day 159: This is what I've been talking about!

The NY Times has laid out beautifully why Dubya's contention that there is no Social Security trust fund is not only a crock, but an insult to America and its credibility, its international reputation and whatever else you can name.

Why does Dubya hate America so much?

Read what I mean in the NY Times here.

Bush II; Day 151 Redux: The latest on Social Security

The plan to pass actual legislation on Social Security this year seems to be in a bit of a shambles, according to this WaPo article

And at least one Republican Senator, Lindsay Graham, is trying to be the maverick...and is kind of making sense! Do I have a fever?

But David Sirota points out what I've pointed out myself: it's Bush who has brought no plan to the table, while the intrepid Graham and a handful of Democrats have been trying to get some ideas on the table.

Other Social Security item of note:
Ezra Klein points out why Bush's Social Security Phase-Out plan will also destroy Medicare. It's not pretty.

Bush II; Day 147: Even the conservatives are split on Social Security

This WaPo article indicates that traditional conservatives are starting to break ranks, losing faith in Bush's Social Security "plan", as vague and unexplained as it is.

Dubya has been thinking that he could let Congress somehow hash out some of the more difficult elements (and thereby take the heat for them) and has said he won't be putting forward a specific plan until they work some stuff out in Congress.

But the WaPo article indicates that conservative economists and stalwarts aren't too happy about that laissez-faire attitude.

Aww, Poor Dubya...seems like lately his appalling tactics (congressional intrusion into private medical decisions; scare tactics on safety net programs) aren't really getting traction.

Bush II; Day 144: Bob Herbert on Bush's Budget

There's not much to add to this column. Herbert succinctly packs into one column many points we've made here before:

-That huge cuts are necessary because Dubya cares about his tax cuts for the wealthy above all else.
-That Dubya's ownership society is inherently burdensome on the middle and lower classes.
-That the hypocrisy over Terri Schiavo and the pro-life stance in general is shown in stark relief against the cuts in Medicaid, pre-natal assistance, and aid for children of poor families.

Oh, the hypocrisy. Oh, the sad, backward slide of a good nation.

I'm only wishing he didn't quote Herbert Hoover at the end. Not really the guy you want to be rallying behind, is it?

Bush II; Day 141: What a difference a year makes

Apparently the trustees of Social Security have come out to say that the system starts to put out more money than it takes in one year earlier than previously thought.

The sky is falling! The sky is falling!

Seriously, I think the Republicans have finally woken up and realized that the Schiavo case, that was supposed to save them from having to talk about Social Security and was supposed to please their right wing constituency, was a big, fat failure. They're on the wrong side of the issue, even amongst self-identified evangelicals.

So, now, they have no choice but to go back to SS, but they gotta do so with something catchy, something big. Something like a one year earlier difference! (Oh, and make sure no one realizes that it's really Medicare that is in more serious straits.)

Here are more people you can read on this:

Ezra Klein
Digby, briefly and with a touch of black humor
Kicking Ass
Matthew Yglesias and again.
Slactivist
AmericaBlog
Talking Points Memo

Bush II; Day 133: Yes, we're back to Social Security

Why?

Because it's fun to watch something implode slowly, while those in charge feign lack of concern. All I can say is those people who thought that at least they knew what Dubya stood for...should be feeling very disappointed right now.

Read all about it in the extended entry:

Dubya himself is refusing to lay out any plan, this despite the fact that it's supposed to be his big priority. Why? Because he figures it won't pass Congress. So, he wants them to come up with something. Kind of smells like a "take credit if it goes; disavow if it flops" kind of deal, don't you think?

So, I guess Dubya isn't one to put himself on the line for those famous "stands" that so many voters though they knew. Other presidents come up with sweeping plans from the New Deal to the Great Society to welfare reform, for goodness sake, and they go make it happen...twisting every Congressional arm they can find.

Not our Dubya. Yeah, he's a real stand-up guy. Well, no, right now he's more of a cowering guy.

So, anyway the Democrats tried to force a vote on the subject of private accounts, but the Republicans refused to even let the vote occur, voting down the vote, as it were. They don't want to go on record saying they're willing to rob Peter to pay Paul.

BUt meanwhile Dubya is pretty much saying the government intends to default on its commitments. How so? Well, here is what Dubya says:

"A lot of people in America think there is a trust: Your money goes in, the government holds it, and then the government gives your money back when you retire," the president said. "That's just not the way it works." Source: AP

Why is that utter crap? Well, once again we turn to shortwoman.com:

"The fact of the matter is that Social Security will take in more money than it hands out in benefits until about 2018. Furthermore, the extra money that has been taken in over the years has been put in nice, safe United States Bonds and Treasury Bills. Yes, that's right, the Social Security Administration owns a big chunk of the National Debt, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. The Feds can't default on this obligation without either defaulting on bonds held by private holders, banks or other nations, or by special, politically suicidal act of Congress. Either way, worldwide economic chaos would ensue. Yes, these bonds earn less over the theoretical long term gain in the stock market, but frankly that is irrelevant. Benefits paid are not linked in any way to performance of the trust fund. Putting the returns on trust fund investments into the argument is a big, fat, red herring."

So, I guess Dubya is willing to default on US bonds and Bills. Nice, huh?

But hey, cheer up. On one last cynical note, the AP reports that Americans' obesity is going to significantly shorten our life spans within, stopping and reversing the upward trend. So all that scary talk about long-lived Americans? Apparently we spoke too soon.

Bush II; Day 131: Scathing examination of cynical tax plans

This Sunday the NY Times had a scathing look at the Bush tax cut plan and the ever-more-inequitable Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT.)

And they hit the nail on the head when they see another case of creating a crisis, so that people will eagerly accept whatever solution the Administration puts forth to solve...well, the crisis that never had to be created in the first place.

It's very cynical. It's very typical. What else is there to say?

Bush II; Day 129 Redux: Squabbling Republicans

I just can't resist posting this WaPo article showing rational Republicans (yes they exist) squabbling with Bush Republicans over Social Security.

Lindsay Graham better seriously consider his party affiliation, because if the Bush Reps. stay in power he is going to get skewered.

UPDATED: Bush II; Day 127: Arianna on the Bankruptcy Bill

Sometimes I know something's going on that's going to be bad for the regular people. But I'm no economist, and the way they shove all sorts of addendums and riders to congressional bills starts to overwhelm me.

Luckily we have other people who manage to explain things clearly and simply.

I saw my brain-crush Paul Krugman on The Daily Show last night, and he brought up the bankruptcy bill that seems certain to make its way through Congress. He reminded me that it's bad for you and me, wonderful for big business (and Dubya's "base.")

And he reminded me that I'd been meaning to point to this Arianna Huffington column that manages to make it clear exactly why.

As always, you can use the SCC DP site to contact both your local representatives and your local media.

Other Sources: 03/09 WaPo article

UPDATED: ShortWoman also provides a succinct dissection of this bad bad bankruptcy bill.

Bush II; Day 125: Is the house of cards falling?

I'd be a little concerned if I was part of the Republican leadership. I mean weren't they supposed to have achieved total world dominance with their razor thin presidential win and Texas re-districting congressional wins?

Well, first of all Social Security continues to be anything but a winning issue for Dubya.

Digby has a good analysis of why it's just not resonating for Dubya...like maybe people are wondering why the guy who was supposed to protect us and has a war in Iraq to extricate us from instead seems obsessed with a program that we all figured on relying on, and that we can't quite buy is really going to be bankrupt in a decade, given all the evidence that, well, it's not going to be.

Now, even Bush's vaunted tax cuts for the wealthy...a cornerstone of his first term and campaign...well, they're in more crisis than Social Security! According to this WaPo article, even Republicans are realizing just how bad it looks to try to lower taxes more, or even make existing tax cuts permanent...what with all the scary talk about Social Security and Medicare, not to mention the war stuff.

Looks like Dubya's effort to have his Social Security crisis cake and eat his tax cuts for the wealthy too is failing.

Now, why couldn't people figure out this was a scam before November 2nd?

Bush II; Day 123: The Economy

Day 123's theme: The Econnomy

What you should know this week to push back on Bush's anti-average person agenda:

1. It's Old Faithful Paul Krugman showing us the way again on Social Security. The Democrats are really winning on this one, and the Bush Administration knows it, so lately they have been putting feelers out there about a compromise solution. Krugman reminds us that their real goal is Social Security Elimination, and that their compromise is still something to "Just Say No" to.

2. Krugman does it again by reminding us that our ginormous deficits are playing into the arch-conservatives game plan...starving what they consider the "beast" of social programs of any kind. Social Security Elimination is just first on the list. If you think this is crazy, go back and read a post I made months ago about the 2000 Texan Republican Party Platform. Key excerpt:

"Social Security – The Party supports an orderly transition to a system of private pensions based on the concept of individual retirement accounts, and gradually phasing out the Social Security tax."

3. But at least Krugman isn't the only voice of reason. Our very own Senate Minority Leader, Senator Reid, joined Krugman in calling it like he sees it: Alan Greenspan has become Bush's cheerleader and a partisan hack. Citing the deficit that his boy has created, Greenspan vocally leans toward cuts in social programs (which have somehow miraculously been re-named "entitlement" programs...even in that damn liberal media) over tax "increases" (which is what opposing Bush's insane desire to make permanent his tax cuts for the wealthy is now miraculously equivalent to...even in that damn liberal media.)

The fight is far from over on Social Security, the ballooning deficits and more of Bush's destructive policies...stay on top of it by reading the links above.

The Social INsecurity Calculator

OK, I admit I have not done some major due diligence on this little online application, but DISCLAIMER: I am not a journalist. I am a partisan commentator.

This is a cool link, and I think you should check it out. It shows you how much less your annual SS benefit will be under Bush's plan (at least what they'll release bout the plan) vs. under the current plan.

You can go read all the details behind how they claim to be making the calculations.

Who has time for that? Not me, the partisan commentator. If one of you journalists out there want to prove their calculations are all wrong, go for it!

Bush II: Day 102 Bonus: California Senators on Social Security

Thanks to Talking Points Memo for links to the well-reasoned thoughts of both Senator Boxer and Senator Feinstein on the topic of Social Security.

And since we're linking to interesting women's thoughts on Social Security, check out the long, multi-part, thoughtful series on Social Security written by this blogger at her Time Goes By blog. She writes about the issues facing Americans as they age, and obviously spends a lot of time on Social Security. It's definitely worth the investment of time to read her thoughts.

Bush II; Day Ninety-Seven: Now that they've revealed their actual SS plans...

I hope no one is getting bored of Social Security talk, but after all it is the linchpin of Bush's second term.

Of course some people think it's going to do as much for him as the health care plan Clinton tried to introduce did for him!

There is something new to talk about because they've finally started revealing some of the actual details behind their grand "privatization" scheme. It boggles the mind.

Look, here's what you should know:

1. It doesn't solve the Social Security "problem" of needing to dole out more $$ than was taken in.

2. It's still not going to be "your" money. You'll set it aside, and then you'll still give it back to the government for them to dole out. And you still might not ever get back all you put in. And no one gets to inherit what you don't pull out. So again, it is not "your money."

But, as I often admit, economics is not my subject, so I'll let a couple of other folks explain:

Pandagon explains it all to you.

But wait! There's more! Pandagon then realizes he made a little mistake...it's even worse than he originally thought!

Lastly, Digby suggests, with only a little irony, that the Democrats simply offer up today's Social Security as the viable alternative!

UPDATED: Bush II; Day Eighty-Seven: The state of the Social Security debate

Things surely aren't going as Bush had hoped or intended.

But then people on his own side keep mucking up the works:

1. I doubt it helps Bush to have representative Thomas talking about associating benefits with race and gender. I know they have some strange kind of rationale for it, but it just sounds suspect. And certainly it might play better in the African-american community if they worried as much about finding out why black men have shorter life spans and addressing that issue, rather than using it as an excuse to muck around with their benefits.

2. And despite Bull Moose suggesting that the right, flexible point of view could help Bush use the vast amount of public resistance as a helpful tool, his sources indicate that stubbornness (oops, of course I mean "resolve") is going to rule the day as per usual.

3. The example Bush trotted out to trumpet the SS privatization (actually Phase-out) concept has recently proven to be disastrous for people retiring. In addition, old Bush quotes about Social Security and its impending doom demonstrate that he'll say just about anything, manufacture any crisis he can to pursue his agenda.

I look to ShortWoman.com as I often do to help me understand economic issue in a clear, simple way. She provides just such a wonderful public service in her latest Social Security post.

UPDATED: Should also have included this Krugman column debunking the Social Security and Race card thrown by the Administration.

Ah-nold and the Language of Taxes

Republican Language on Taxes:

Democrats who oppose tax cuts for the wealthiest 1% of our population and who want to get rid of corporate off-shoring loopholes are for raising taxes.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is closing the California budget gap by, among other measures, eliminating the rent tax credit for many elderly Californians, is lauded for keeping his pledge to not raise taxes.

Can someone explain to me how opposing a tax cut for the wealthy is "raising taxes", but eliminating a tax credit for the elderly (wealthy or not) is not?

I'm completely flummoxed.

Bush II; Day Seventy-One: Sorry, more on Social Security Phase-Out

I can't help it...I think this is an important issue for Democrats to stick to their guns on. Before Social Security the majority of elderly in the country fell into living under the poverty line after retirement.

That's not OK for a civilized society. And unless all those right-wing folks screaming for Social Security Reduction are ready to go back to the multi-generational living arrangements that I'm sure they talk about, misty-eyed, as being how we handled caring for our parents' generation in the "good old days", they better think about that.

You know it's not just the working generation that might not want that...our parents might not want to be living with a bunch of screaming kids under one roof either, you know? Being turned into de facto babysitters. Don't they deserve a little peace and quiet, and their own home and security in their old age?

Anyway, two more interesting missives on Social Security from Paul Krugman:

The myth of the Social Security "Iceberg", and why Karl Rove and the Bush Administration is doing everything they can to get you to believe in it.

A Real-Life Example of a partially privatized Social Security System...and why it's failing.

[Registration Required on both]

Bush II; Day Sixty-Eight: More on Social Security

It's up to us folks. We have to let our representatives know if we object to Bush's Social Security Elimination program.

Don't forget the good commentary on it that I've already linked to. And here are some more links to help you decide whether you're against it or not:

Today's NY Times editorial

A little comparison from Talking Points Memo (one of his many posts on the topic.)

Quotes from this week's Democratic Party radio address

If Bush's plan was really a solution, why would he have to mislead about the state of Social Security, defer budgeting for his plan, and send secret emails? Short answer: he wouldn't.

Let's nip this in the bud.

UPDATED: Bush II; Day Sixty-One: Social Security Elimination, not Privatization

UPDATED: Coincidentally, Krugman's column in the Times today was about this very issue, so it would be remiss of me not to add it to the list at the bottom.
----------------
I was talking to my mom yesterday, and it occurred to me that we lend Dubya a little moral support every time we discuss "Social Security privatization."

It's "Social Security Elimination" that he's shooting for, and in the interest of leaving Republican framing behind and joining the reality-based community, we should start calling it like it is.

Here are some sources to back you up:

Read anything Matthew Yglesias writes about Social Security.

A little Paul Krugman on the issue.

Mark Cuban on the issue (with a link to Michael Kinsley on the issue.)

Up to the minute Krugman on the issue.

Bush II; Day Sixty Redux: Well, it couldn't just be good news!

I dare you to read this NY Times report on how Bush intends to keep his "reduce the deficit by half" campaign promise and not feel completely appalled.

Start with some phony numbers, exclude some known costs, and project wildly improved revenues without much supporting evidence.

Boy, I think I should start budgeting like this.

Must-read Social Security post

From Mark Cuban.

I have to say this guy's blog never disappoints. I don't care if it's all a pose, he poses as a straightforward, plain speaking, no-nonsense, millionaire regular guy better than anybody.

And here he gives what seems to be a simple, obvious explanation of why Bush's plans for Social Security Suck! (Couldn't resist the alliteration.)

Check out his post, and the Kinsley piece he refers to in it here.

Bush II; Day Forty-Three: Bush's allies deserting him...no NOT in Iraq!

While Dubya seems to think he's got his economic policies in "sharp focus" and not only that, a mandate to execute on said policies...his traditional allies are backing slooowly away.

According to this article in the WaPo anyway.

Seems different groups who were previously supporting Dubya think these new, radical, and shall we say potentially disastrous policies are scaring them off because they think they will be...you guessed it...bad for the economy.

Aww. Poor Dubya.

Bush II; Day Fifteen: how to pay for tax breaks on investments?

By removing the tax deduction business owners get for giving employees health benefits, apparently.

Once again, favoring the better off vs. the getting by.

From Atrios

Bush II; Day Four: Dollar within 1 cent of all-time low

Why?

Fears of our ever-growing deficits and reliance on foreign...no, not oil this time...investment and acquisition of our debt.

Source: Washington post

Bush II: Day One

Still ranting at my Personal Blog.

But here, in a much more measured tone, I am simply going to point out that from Day One, Bush's destructive policies are on full display:

They didn't want to bring it up pre-election, but exactly one day post-election, Bush needs Congress to raise the debt ceiling, or we won't be able to conduct a T-Bill auction scheduled for 11/18.

I'm betting that if I wanted to simply come to this blog every day and post one bad thing the Bush Administration did the previous day, it would be a piece of cake.

How Can Bush Keep a Straight Face

Oh, that's right, he can't. He's always got that odd, smirky look on his face.

It must be because he can't believe people actually listen to some of his stump speech rhetoric and take it seriously.

I have heard Bush say, quite seriously, that this is the fastest growing economy ever and we've turned the corner, and blah blah blah. Well, maybe living in the White House surrounded by people who won't let you hear any bad news could give you that impression.

But the rest of us live in the real world. Do you think things are growing rapidly? Do you feel like everything is on the road to economic nirvana?

The latest economic indicators only support the fact that this economy is slowing down from the snail's pace it was on.

But it's no surprise to most of us.

Social Security: Debunking the conventional wisdom

Interesting item over at Atrios about social security.

Most interesting of all is his link to a salon.com story by James Galbraith stating that the conventional wisdom that Social Security is "running out of money" is just not so.

You need to watch a brief ad to view the whole Salon story if you're not a Premium member, but it's worth it.

Bush's plan is not only a disaster for the rapidly approaching retirement age baby boomers, but also for the generation right behind.

And we know he'll saddle the next couple of generation with huge debt and deficits.

I'm not anxious to figure out how Bush could screw the few generations after that with another 4-year term, are you?

Democrats vs. Republicans on Fiscal Policy

Wanna guess who has done better on all of the accepted measures of economic policy since WW II?

Well, you might not be surprised to find out it's Democrats.

There is great data, and therefore great ammunition in the extended entry. Please forward to all of your "fiscally conservative" friends.

From the LA Times:

WHO MANAGES THE ECONOMY BETTER - REPUBLICANS OR DEMOCRATS?
Arthur I. Blaustein

A businessman who voted for Bush four years ago, and Clinton in '96, told me, "John Kerry sounds really impressive and I have to admit that the goals of his
social programs - particularly health care, education and the environment - seem good. But I'm worried the Democrats can't manage the economy as well and they'll get into my wallet."

Many voters agree, and a recent poll shows that the majority cites the economy as their top concern. For years the pollsters have found that most voters believe the Republicans do better with the economy. I've heard the businessman's basic point - that the Democrats have better social policies but the Republicans are better managers of the economy - more often than I've heard Judy Garland sing "Over the Rainbow." But is it true?

Don't count on this question being examined and answered in a full, open, and honest debate. Twenty-five years ago, we entered an entirely new phase of presidential politics. The focus now is on who can raise the most money and package the best media image, rather than who can demonstrate the most
competence and capacity to govern. Our country's political, economic, and social life has been reduced to a battle of fifteen-second sound bites and
thirty-second commercials, with results reported like a football score. TV news has turned democracy into "duhmocracy."

Fortunately, we don't have to depend on campaign slogans or advertising bucks to frame the debate. We can look to the record. Here's the Economic Sweepstakes Quiz. The rules are simple. Guess which president since World War II did best on these eight most generally accepted measures of good management of the nation's economy.

You can choose among six Republicans: Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bushes I and II; and five Democrats: Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, and Clinton. (No peeking.)

Which president produced:
1. The highest growth in the gross domestic product?
2. The highest growth in jobs?
3. The biggest increase in personal disposable income after taxes?
4. The highest growth in industrial production?
5. The highest growth in hourly wages?
6. The lowest Misery Index (inflation plus unemployment)?
7. The lowest inflation?
8. The largest reduction in the deficit?

The answers are:
1. Harry Truman, 2. Bill Clinton, 3. Lyndon Johnson, 4. John F. Kennedy, 5. Johnson, 6. Truman, 7. Truman, 8. Clinton.

In the Economic Sweepstakes, Democratic presidents trounce Republicans eight times out of eight! If this isn't enough to destroy the myth that the economy has performed better under Republicans, the stock market has also done better under the Democrats. The Dow Jones Industrial Average during the twentieth century has risen 7.3 percent on average per year under Republican presidents. Under Democrats, it rose 10.3 percent - which means investors gained a whopping 41 percent more. And the stock market declined 4 percent, on average, during George W's first three years.

Moreover, since WWII, Democratic presidents have increased the national debt by an average of 3.7% per year and Republican presidents have increased it an
average of 9.1%. During the same time period, Democratic presidents produced, on average, an unemployment rate of 4.8%; Republicans, 6.3%.
That's the historical record.

What about present policies? The Clinton-Gore administration presided over the
longest peacetime economic expansion in our history. The national debt was reduced dramatically, the industrial sector boomed, wages grew, and more
Americans found jobs. How has the Bush-Cheney team fared? In the past three years, we have experienced the weakest job creation cycle since the Great Depression, record household debt, a record bankruptcy rate, and a substantial increase in poverty. We have gone from being the nation with the biggest budget surplus in history to becoming the nation with the largest deficit in history.

Bush believes the free market will solve America's economic problems. Kerry, on the other hand, maintains that government has the responsibility to
keep our economy on the right track. Kerry says he will work toward reducing the debt and deficit. He pledges to help the middle class and the working poor
by maintaining benefit levels and eligibility for the Earned Income Tax Credit. He will hold the line on our tax progressivity and fairness, by rolling back
the Bush tax giveaways to taxpayers earning over $200,000 annually. And Kerry wants to target health care, education, affordable housing, and the
environment with critical investments.

Bush wants to privatize Social Security and Medicare, although he gets dangerously vague about this at election time. To finance government spending in the wake of his tax cuts for the wealthy, Bush is borrowing heavily from the Social Security Trust Fund. At the same time, the United States owes huge amounts to foreign investors, and the federal debt has soared 29% since Bush took office, to reach $7.3 trillion. George W. is mired in the failed economic policies of his Republican predecessors. In 1980, Bush I called
supply-side policies "voodoo economics." But he embraced these "trickle-down" policies in order to become vice-president and then president. Reagan and Bush's royalist economic policies of the '80's were failures - a fool's paradise built on the sands of borrowed time and borrowed money. The consequences were staggering debt, industrial decline, shrinking wages, two painful recessions, increased poverty, and structural unemployment. The reckless Reagan-Bush spending and borrowing brought us to the brink of
social catastrophe and economic depression.

Claims of compassion aside, Bush II has emerged as nothing more than a supply-sider in the mold of his father and his father's former boss. Since George W. Bush took office, corporate profits have gone up 57.5%, while workers' wages and benefits have increased a miniscule 1.57%. That shows just who is the object of Bush's compassion. The Bush administration, supported by Republicans on Capitol Hill, pushed through a sweeping tax cut in
2001, under which the wealthiest one percent of Americans reaped 43 percent of the gain. In less than a year and a half, the federal government's 10-year
projected budget surplus of $1.6 trillion has vanished. In 2000, we had a surplus of $236 billion. In 2003, we had a deficit of $375 billion. This dramatic reversal is the direct consequence of Bush's tax cuts.

Since then, the Bush administration's answer for the nation's economic woes is two more tax cuts for the wealthy individuals and corporations who, by no
coincidence, contribute to the Bush campaign. It's "trickle-down" economics with a vengeance. In denying the tax cut's role in the nation's current problems, and placing the blame instead on 9/11 and corporate malfeasance, the administration is trying to cook the books - not unlike Enron, WorldCom, and Arthur Andersen.

Back during the 2000 campaign, Bush and Cheney took pains to brag about their CEO credentials. We've since learned exactly what kind of real world skills
the pair picked up: fudging, manipulating, wheedling government contracts and favors, and generally working the system for all it's worth. Bush and Cheney have been schooled in a corporate culture that believes success is achieved by exploiting the government, the economy, and the environment. They have brought that same culture to the White House. To them the national treasury is a personal piggy bank they use to quietly reward the Haliburtons, Enrons, and the same CEOs they have so loudly attacked in the media.

In 2004 we need genuine leadership in Washington. We don't need more quick-fix schemes or lopsided tax cuts. With four more years of George W. practicing
Reaganomics II we could wake up one morning on the economic endangered nations list. Deficits and debt could strangle our economy for the next generation; and all but the wealthy will have a tough time making ends meet. John Kerry has demonstrated a willingness to confront these painful realities. On overall economic policy, he offers qualities indispensable to genuine leadership for America - patience, fairness, candor, and vision. We need an administration that understands and believes in coherent, comprehensive
and equitable policies that promote sustainable economic growth - and, on that count, Democrats have the winning record.

Arthur Blaustein was chairman of the President's National Advisory Council on Economic Opportunity during the Carter administration. He is a professor
at the University of California, Berkeley, where he teaches social and economic policy. His most recent books are Make a Difference and The American Promise.

new Job Numbers: Likely To Look Pretty Bad

I've heard that job figures are due to be release very close to the election, and they could have quite an impact on the race.

Well, if these figures about projected lay-offs and hiring for September are any indication, it's not going to be such good thing for the incumbents.

Check it out in this article from the Daily Kos.

Mark Cuban on offshoring jobs

Mark Cuban is a very wealthy man. Owner of the Dallas Mavericks, star of a new series called "The Benefactor."

I know him more from my days in the cable industry, as he is also the owner HDNet, a network providing solely HD content.

He has started a blog, and while I haven't read a lot of it yet, I have a feeling I'm going to enjoy it. He seems like a straight-talking and unpredictable kind of guy.

He has a statement about outsourcing/offshoring in a recent blog entry that completely aligns with my usual rants on it. Only perhaps coming from this extremely wealthy businessman, rather than me, it will carry more weight.

The excerpt just on offshoring is in the extended entry.

Check out the entire entry here.

Offshoring, according to Mark Cuban:

Where I have an issue, and where I think there needs to be controls put in place, is when corporate insiders in essence put the money saved from outsourcing in their own pockets.  If you go through the list of companies that outsource and start looking at stock sales, bonuses and other incentives, you quickly see that a material portion of the money saved is going into the pockets of insiders. That’s wrong. Or the outsourcing is being used to hit a Wall Street expectation for quarterly earnings, maintaining stock prices and enabling insider stock sales. That’s wrong.

If we want to make outsourcing the route of last resort and to make sure its only used when it makes absolute business sense, Prevent insiders from selling stock or earning corporate bonuses in any year they outsource jobs.

The Republican Party: The Party of the Few

The latest work out of this Republican Congress confirms what you probably already suspected: the President and his party have given up all pretense of caring about those out of the top-most segment of American society.

And in this election year, the Democrats have given in to the Republican spin machine, in fear for their jobs.

And you know what? You can blame the Democrats and the few remaining Republican moderates for not holding firm against the right wing of the Republican Party, carrying out their leader's wishes. You can do that, but it would be ignoring one basic fact: it is the people who have punished those who try to hold the line on tax cuts. The Republicans make the claim that voting against tax cut = voting for tax increases, and it is the people who buy that claim.

It's not extending the tax cuts for the middle class that bothers me. It's doing it while refusing to pay for it, so our deficit picture just gets worse and worse. And it's making sure to protect the tax cuts for the wealthy and to add $13 billion more in tax cuts for corporations, while at the same time making sure that some of the lowest-income families don't get their tax cut extended.

But one compassionate Republican Congressperson has the answer for that: ""The tax credit is for taxpayers,'' said Senator Don Nickles, Republican of Oklahoma. "If you want to change the welfare system, then change the welfare system.''

Truly, they are the big tent party.

Source:
NY Times
Washington Post

Traffic without Job is NOT a good thing!!!

OK, perhaps this is just a local issue.

Why, oh why, does the local media do stories about poor commutes as though it was a plus, a positive, a good thing for you and me?

ESPECIALLY when the latest job figures show that FEWER people are employed?

I know people like to think the Mercury is liberal, but what other reason can they have for touting a big headline "The Back-ups are Back!", and then only putting in small print that no one can explain why, given the crappy job market.

People: back in the boom, when people listed issues that were the biggest concerns to them...traffic came up number one. More than taxes or education or other stuff. Traffic.

People don't like it. It really degrades your quality of life.

And I'd really like the local media to stop trying to cheer us UP by bragging about traffic, okay?

Rant over.

And more of Kerry on the offensive

You asked for it; you got it...Kerry & Edwards on the offensive.

And more to the point...finally getting some press coverage for it.

In the Washington Post. In the New York Times. And again.

And yet some Democrats just can't help themselves. They have to keep giving their free and very public advice to the campaign. Listen, if you didn't get a campaign job by now., You're probably not going to, okay?

Kerry on the Economy

Kerry had an Op-Ed piece published in the Wall Street Journal on how he would approach the economy.

This is kind of unusual, because while the news pages of the WSJ are as balanced as can be expected from a mainstream media source, its Op-Ed pages have been filled with quite right-wing editorials for years.

I'm sure that must have been part of why Kerry would go for publishing his piece there.

Anyway, read it. It's quite comprehensive. And certainly way more detailed and specific than anything you'll ever catch coming out of the mouths of Bush or any of his surrogates.

Silicon Valley jobs

I'm not getting something here. The headline trumpets that the unemployment rate has gone way down in the Valley.

But then the article says that the number of jobs has gone down too. So there are actually fewer people employed than there were before. How could the unemployment rate go down then?

Because people have left the state or stopped looking and are no longer getting unemployment benefits.

How is this a good headline? How is this good news?

Because when people move out they stop paying taxes; they stop being consumers. We lose revenue.

But it's a liberal media, uh huh.

Greenspan stumping for bush again

Here's a good one from Alan Greenspan.

If it weren't for the surge in oil prices, our economy would be growing at a strong rate.

Yeah? Well, if it weren't for all of those desserts and fatty foods I ate, I would be losing weight at a faster rate.

Really. What kind of argument is that? If it weren't for the truth, we'd have a different truth.

Whatever.

Bob Herbert Gives Us a Bleak Picture

This column by Bob Herbert certainly discusses exactly how poor this economy is doing.

And he brings up the interesting point that productivity is up while the average family gains nothing from that productivity, and is, in fact falling behind. That, in a nutshell, demonstrates that Bush's policy focus has been on benefitting the Corporation and its officers, not the majority of the workers.

The only downside? Not much talk about solutions. Since he clearly has disdain for Bush, he could do everyone a favor and discuss Kerry's economic plans and whether or not he thinks they have merit.

Full text in extended entry:

An Economy That Turns American Values Upside Down
By BOB HERBERT
New York Times
Published: September 6, 2004

The Labor Department reported last week that 144,000 payroll jobs were created in August. Let's put that in perspective.

The number was below market forecasts. It was also below the number of jobs needed to accommodate the growth in the employment-aged population. In short, this was not good news. It's only by the diminished job-creation standards that have prevailed since the last recession that any positive spin could be put on last month's performance.

As the Economic Policy Institute tells us, in a book-length report it is releasing today: "The United States has been tracking employment statistics since 1939, and never in history has it taken this long to regain the jobs lost over a downturn."

In "The State of Working America 2004/2005," the institute shows in tremendous detail how those lost jobs and other disappointing aspects of the recovery are taking a severe economic toll on working families.

According to the institute:

"After almost three years of recovery, our job market is still too weak to broadly distribute the benefits of the growing economy. Unemployment is essentially unchanged, job growth has stalled, and real wages have started to fall behind inflation. Today's picture is a stark contrast to the full employment period before the recession, when the tight labor market ensured that the benefits of growth were broadly shared.

"Prolonged weakness in the labor market has left the nation with over a million fewer jobs than when the recession began. This is a worse position, in terms of recouping lost jobs, than any business cycle since the 1930's."

What is happening is nothing less than a deterioration in the standard of living in the United States. Despite the statistical growth in the economy, the continued slack in the labor market has resulted in declining real wages for anxious American workers and a marked deterioration in job quality.

From 2000 through 2003 the median household income fell by $1,500 (in 2003 dollars) - a significant 3.4 percent decrease. That information becomes startling when you consider that during the same period there was a strong 12 percent increase in productivity among U.S. workers. Economists will tell you that productivity increases go hand-in-hand with increases in the standard of living. But not this time. Here we have a 3.4 percent loss in real income juxtaposed with a big jump in productivity.

"So the economic pie is growing gangbusters and the typical household is falling behind," said Jared Bernstein, the institute's senior economist and a co-author of the new book.

This is the part of the story that spotlights the unfairness at the heart of the current economic setup in the U.S. While workers have been remarkably productive in recent years, they have not participated in the benefits of their own increased productivity. That doesn't sound very much like the American way.

According to the institute, "Between 1947 and 1973 productivity and real median family income both grew 104 percent, a golden age of growth for both variables." That parallel relationship began to break down in the 1970's, but it is only recently that it fell apart altogether, leaving us with the following evidence of unrestrained inequity:

"In the 2000-03 period income shifted extremely rapidly and extensively from labor compensation to capital income (profits and interest)," so that the "benefits of faster productivity growth" went overwhelmingly to capital.

American workers are in an increasingly defensive position. In a tight labor market, when jobs are plentiful, workers have leverage and can demand increased wages and benefits. But today's workers have lost power in many different ways - through the slack labor market, government policies that favor corporate interests, the weakening of unions, the growth of lower-paying service industries, global trade, capital mobility, the declining real value of the minimum wage, immigration and so on.

The end result of all this is a portrait of American families struggling just to hang on, rather than to get ahead. The benefits of productivity gains and economic growth are flowing to profits, not worker compensation. The fat cats are getting fatter, while workers, at least for the time being, are watching the curtain come down on the heralded American dream.

Bush and his anti-middle class crusade

All talk no action is one of the Bush Administration's trademark distractions.

But in the case of supporting the middle class of this country, this LA Times article makes the case that they're not even into the "talk."

It's pretty sad when you read it, and then think about the people you see struggling, but with a W04 bumper sticker.

Perhaps it's true what they say, that everyone in America likes to think they're a lot closer to the top bracket than they are.

I think the link is registration required, so full text is in the extended entry:

Late, Great Middle Class
By John Podesta and David Sirota, John Podesta is president of the American Progress Action Fund. David Sirota is the fund's director of strategic communications.

Over the last four years, President Bush has been ridiculed for his public speaking errors. He's been hammered for saying people "misunderestimate" him and mocked for asking "is our children learning?" But it's his omissions, not his errors, that should concern Americans.

Since his inauguration, the president has delivered more than 1,000 major addresses, news conferences and short public remarks. Yet he has uttered the phrase "middle class" in only 34 of them. On Thursday night at the convention, he kept the pattern going — the phrase never passed his lips.

Maybe it's just an oversight, but in such a highly scripted White House, is anything left to chance? Omitting references to America's most critical demographic is surely no accident — it's evidence of a tectonic shift in philosophy. No longer part of a bipartisan consensus that government should work to expand opportunity for ordinary Americans, conservatives are instead eliminating those opportunities. Bush's words — or lack thereof — simply punctuate the effort.

Consider, for example, decent wages. The gateway to the middle class is considered to be a salary of about $35,000 a year. Yet the Bush administration has refused to support a serious increase in the minimum wage, which at $5.15 an hour provides a salary of less than $12,000 a year — well below the poverty line. At the same time, the White House has worked to strip workers of federal overtime pay protections, and in budget after budget it has tried to cut billions out of job training programs.

Access to adequate healthcare is another marker of middle-class status. And yet the White House is making it harder to get that care. The president's health savings accounts, which would put money into the consumers' hands, also would allow employers to contribute less to workers' coverage. In other words, annual health insurance deductibles probably would go up. And then there's last year's Medicare reform. According to the Wall Street Journal, the administration included a little- noticed provision in the legislation that allows companies to continue receiving tax breaks even if they severely reduce workers' healthcare coverage.

On prescription drugs, it's a similar story. As prices skyrocket, the president's Medicare bill all but ensured hundreds of billions in profits for the pharmaceutical industry without providing truly comprehensive drug coverage to seniors. The bill did nothing to prevent drug companies from charging Americans the highest prices in the world. When lawmakers tried to give Medicare the power to negotiate discounts, they were blocked by White House allies. And the administration continues to oppose letting Americans purchase lower-priced, FDA-approved medicines from abroad.

In fairness to the president, on a few occasions he has targeted the middle class for aid. In 2001, his tax policy was supposed to help "families struggling to enter the middle class." But that was the same policy that rolled back the top tax rates, stock dividend taxes and the estate tax on the super-wealthy. In fact, the White House has given more than half of all its new tax cuts to those making an average of $1 million a year, leaving the middle class with a larger share of the tax burden. And it could get worse. On Thursday night, Bush mentioned "tax reform" — a likely reference to a national sales tax or flat tax that congressional Republicans already are pushing. Even President Reagan's Treasury Department noted that a flat tax "would involve a significant redistribution of tax liability" away from the wealthy and onto ordinary Americans. And a study by the nonpartisan Citizens for Tax Justice finds a national sales tax would mean tax increases on the bottom 80% of income earners.

Instead of squeezing the demographic group that defines the American dream, Bush and his band of conservatives should be working to expand it. One of their own icons got it right many years ago. "Upper classes are a nation's past," wrote Ayn Rand, "the middle class is the future."

Unfortunately, Bush and his Republican Party disagree.

Must-read analysis of Bush's latest (and only) economic ad

I've referred people to shortwoman.com before for economic analysis that is common-sense and clear.

She does it again, breaking down, point-by-point, the talking points in Bush's latest campaign ad, found on his site.

It's the must-read post for the day.

So Many Rebuttals; So Little Time

The Kerry rapid response Team came out with a nice one, "The Real State of the Union" under Bush.

I already complained about how all the RNC speakers talk about results without actually naming any.

So, this piece names some, and it's not too pretty.

Statistics Not Looking Too Good? Change the Statisics

The Daily Mislead today exposes one of the favorite tricks of this Administration.

If the results they say "matter" so much don't make them look too good, they change the way to calculate the results.

Why compare apples to apples, when you can compare apples to fool's gold?

Here is today's example.

Women & Bush: Cannot See the Connection

I don't get how most women could stand to support Bush. Well, I suppose most women don't.

But the problem is many, many women did not vote last time around. Something like 15 million single women didn't vote, to take just one sub-demographic. Think that might have swayed the election a teeny bit?

The Kerry site has used the dismal Census figures as a catalyst to launch a new national Women for Kerry/Edwards effort.

You can sign up here.

Please tell your female friends and family to stand up for themselves by standing with John Kerry.

And if you need just a little more ammo, here's a good post from the Kicking Ass blog over at the DNC site.

The Good Old 4 Years Ago Question

With the release of the latest Census figures, now might be an appropriate time to trot out the old question: "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?"

At least blogger Slactivist (and as a semi-slacker myself I appreciate that moniker very much) thinks so.

He writes a good summarizing post here, and closes with this very simple statement:

Are you better off than you were four years ago? Maybe you are. Unless you're a child, a woman, a man, or a white, black, Asian or Hispanic person.

Yes. Indeed.

Back to Real News: Poverty Increases; Health Coverage Declines

The blogger universe is focusing on this while the mainstream media continues to obsess about a 35 year old war.

Poverty is up. And the numbers of the poverty-stricken have risen every year of Bush's presidency. Particularly among children. 800K MORE children live in poverty in 2003 than did in 2002. That's over 3/4 of a million kids MORE. Or think of it this way: over 17.5% of children live in poverty...almost 20%! I hate to admit I'm so out of touch as to be shocked.

There are fewer people with Health Coverage too. You know what that means for Emergency Rooms.

And to top it all off, the Administration released these numbers today...you know in August, slow news month, Congress not in session, at the height of this ridiculous and distracting Vietnam debate. So what, you say? Well, it's just a month earlier than they normally release the year's figures.

But they wouldn't want you to hear this bad news in late September, now would they.

Although with this so-called-liberal media, I don't know why they're worried about you hearing about it at all.

Can I please hear some outrage, not only over these stats, but over the way we are allowing other non-issues to overshadow them?

Source:

The Daily Kos
ShortWoman.com
Associated Press story
Pandagon

UPDATED: A Recurring Theme in this Administration...

SEE UPDATE AT BOTTOM OF ENTRY
----------------------------
I have now read about several occasions where Bush states that the peril in rolling back tax cuts for the rich is that the rich have fancy accountants who will help them evade those taxes, so the burden will fall on the not-quite-so-rich.

I've read instances where he is totally serious about this. And now, an instance where it's become a little joke.

David Corn writes that his lackadaisical attitude towards rich tax scofflaws is notable. And I find it notable that it gets no attention, no outrage.

As a side note: I was searching around the White House web site while writing this entry. And it is nothing but a George W. Bush Re-election site now. It doesn't just say, here's what's going on...it says..."so we shouldn't change course now."

Don't taxpayer dollars support this site? why are they allowed to turn a government site into a political campaigning site?

I know that sounds naive. After all the President is riding around in Air Force One all day to campaign stops. But still, this gets my goat.

Am I off-base here? Anybody know?
---------------------
UPDATE:
So I tried in vain a couple of days ago to find another cite of the Bush quote about the real rich not paying taxes. The Nation columnist (and BushLies blogger) David Corn had stated you could find it on the White House site, but I could not.

I posted the link to David Corn's article anyway, but at the same time asked him via his blog comment capabilities to provide the cite.

Corn responded with the URL, but here's the interesting part: That URL is not posted or searchable anymore on the White House site. He has the URL from his original research, and it still works. But now that the story is in the blogosphere, someone looking for it cannot find it!

Flippity-floppity-flip

Great blog entry from The Daily Kos.

Al Franken should start asking for royalties from me, Kos and all the others who have started to use variations of his flippity-floppity routine.

Oh, if you'd like a hint, the blog entry is about Bush and whether he does, or doesn't, want to consider the wacky national sales tax idea. Bonus: a link ot why the idea is too wacky for our own good.

And Yet More on Dubya's "Base"

Some folks complain about money equalling power.

Some folks complain about the wealthy having a disproportionate voice in policy and politics.

And some people would rather complain about affirmative action.

I read articles like this one and I think we should all be concerned about our current systems and societal structures creating a ruling class and an underclass; that the American Dream that anyone can rise to a level commensurate with their skills, their drive and their passion, not necessarily their birth, is drifting out of reach.

Yes, perhaps there are even more pressing problems than the plight of the less fortunate Ivy Leaguers out there. After all their degrees are likely to pay off. But I always like to say, I don't have to worry about just one problem or another. I like to worry about them all.

Full text in the extended entry:

Crucial Unpaid Internships Increasingly Separate the Haves From the Have-Nots
By JENNIFER 8. LEE

Published: August 10, 2004

WASHINGTON, Aug. 9 - Susan Lim, a 20-year-old Georgetown University student, is working 89 hours a week this summer: two part-time jobs and an unpaid internship offered through the Public Policy and International Affairs Program.

Her schedule - working for money as a clerical assistant and a summer school resident adviser and without pay as a researcher at the public policy program - is a sharp contrast to that of her Georgetown classmates. Many of them have parents who support them through unpaid summer internships, or they have qualified for paid internships because of experience as unpaid interns during high school.

"I have to do the same things they do plus more to get to the same place," said Ms. Lim, whose mother and father each work two jobs, including running a Laundromat, to support a household of 14 people. But Ms. Lim says she has no choice on performing her summer juggling act, which includes taking a class at Georgetown, where she is studying at the School of Foreign Service. She believes she needs an internship to be competitive with her peers. "If you go and apply for a job and/or apply for graduate school and all you have are grades, the next person has the same grades or better and has done other things," she said.

The focus on internships as a tool for professional success has never been greater, according to Mark Oldman, co-author of "The Internship Bible" and co-founder of Vault Inc., a career counseling company. About 80 percent of graduating college seniors now have done a paid or unpaid internship, according to surveys by Vault, compared with about 60 percent a decade ago.

"The interest in internships is at a fever pitch," Mr. Oldman said. "It used to be that internships used to be a useful enhancement to one's résumé. Now it's universally perceived as an essential stepping stone to career success."

But as internships rise in importance as critical milestones along the path to success, questions are emerging about whether they are creating a class system that discriminates against students from less affluent families who have to turn down unpaid internships to earn money for college expenses.

"It's something that really makes me nuts," said Cokie Roberts, an ABC News correspondent who spoke out about the problem on Capitol Hill several weeks ago at a gathering of Congressional interns. "By setting up unpaid internship programs, it seems to me that without completely recognizing it, it sets up a system where you are making it ever more difficult for people who don't have economic advantages to catch up."

Dalton Conley, a sociology professor at New York University who has studied how people get ahead, said: "It moves the clock back when you need connections. It makes it doubly hard for social mobility and equal opportunity, because of the connections that it requires at an earlier age, the financial sacrifices and also the culture savoir-faire."

While half of internships nationwide are paid or have at least a small stipend, according to national surveys conducted by Vault, unpaid internships are concentrated in the most competitive fields, like politics, television and film.

"The more glamorous an internship, the less likely it is paid," Mr. Oldman said. "Washington in general has high-demand internships. In most cases they don't have to pay or they don't have to pay much."

The White House does not pay the hundred-plus interns who work there during the summer. The Supreme Court does not pay its undergraduate interns, who work 12 to 16 weeks, although in some cases it will give a $1,000 scholarship. And a vast majority of Congressional offices do not pay the 4,000 summer interns who pass through Capitol Hill, though a few, mostly on the Senate side, provide a limited stipend. Congressional offices once each received $3,000 to pay summer interns, but the money was eliminated by budget cuts in the 1990's.

And since Washington internships serve as a pipeline that brings policy makers into the nation's capital, some people fear that over the long term, internships will be another means, like the rising costs of college tuition, of squeezing voices from the working class and even the middle class out of high-level policy debates.

Adam King, 19, a student at Brown University who is an intern in a Senate office, said, "Dealing with the interns of our office, they were of a class that was extremely privileged." Mr. King got into a heated debate with fellow interns who disputed Michael Moore's portrayal of military recruitment in disadvantaged neighborhoods in the film "Fahrenheit 9/11.''

"They don't understand the issues, that the Army recruits poor people; there are Army recruiting people who say, 'Don't go to college, travel around the world,' " said Mr. King, who is working on Capitol Hill through a program that provides a stipend and housing. "That combined with the fact that so many interns wind up back on the Hill makes me scared that these people could possibly be making policy without understanding where so many of their constituents are coming from."

In some cases, students who take the unpaid internships get financial help from their universities or other programs, like the Washington Center, a nonprofit organization that prepares college students for civic leadership.

But such programs always receive many more applications than they have available money. The University of Virginia student services center received 10 times as many applicants as it could give summer stipends to this year. "It was heartbreaking because I couldn't give one to every student who applied," said Carrie Rudder, the university's senior assistant director for student services. The stipends are modest at best, often at most $2,000 or $3,000, which is less than students can earn in basic summer jobs.

"This program, it's a pay cut,'' Mr. King said. He is receiving $2,000, or $250 a week, for his internship, part of which he sends home to support his mother. "I could make a lot more bartending or waiting tables or even in a supermarket,'' he said.

The high cost of housing in Washington helps widen the gap between the haves and have-nots in the internship world here.

Some interns are able to live at home and commute.

Others find creative solutions. Wes McKain, a 19-year-old intern on Capitol Hill, lived free in housing belonging to the Church of the Nazarene in Washington in exchange for helping with chores.

Mr. McKain, who is from Kansas City, was surprised by how expensive food is in Washington. He takes a one-hour bus ride to shop in Langley Park, Md., where he can buy a loaf of bread for 70 cents and a gallon of milk for $2.95. "It's hard-core cheap," said Mr. McKain, whose father is a minister.

More on the 'Haves' and the 'Have Mores'

Interesting blog post on Bush's latest attempt at a unifying message. (Since 'Turning the Corner' isn't working out so well for him.) That would be the "Ownership Society"

And in particular this sentence rings a little elitist: "Because I understand if you own something, you have a vital stake in the future of America."

So, all you renters out there, all you car leasers, all you people who don't have a nice retirement nest egg, and certainly all you people who are on public assistance...your stake in America? Not so vital.

But I don't need to reinvent the wheel. Read Slactivist's post.

Kind of shocking how much can be off-shored

I would not have predicted these kinds of jobs to be easy to off-shore.

How does Greenspan want the folks laid off of these jobs to "upgrade" their skills?

Bob Herbert's Depressing Column

While this indeed may be required reading, especially for those who feel themselves drawn in by the "turning the corner" slogan, it is depressing, and not necessarily helpful either.

The fact is that many people don't want to hear how bad things are. If they're in dire straits themselves, then they're well aware of it, and if they're not quite there, it's comforting to think of hard times as only falling on other people, not "there but for the grace of God go I."

Still, it never hurts to get one more take on the failed policies of this Administration.

Continued analysis of latest (dismal) job figures

Yes, the more people look at the latest figures, the more they can't help but admit that the Democrats are right when they claim we are far from turning a corner.

Here's the latest from the NY Times.

UPDATED: More On Our Economic U-Turn

Just a few more items to brighten up your day...

BTW: I'm being sarcastic there. This is disappointing stuff, especially for us here in the Valley, which has been hit harder than some other areas during the last 3 years. I know there are folks who accuse Democrats of exulting when things go bad...that's just a more subtle way of disputing our patriotism than simply saying we side with terrorists!

Here's more news on the latest economic figures:

NY Times article on low job figures for July (and revised figures for may and June...hint, they were revised down)

Washington Post article on "cooling" economy

John Kerry's official statement on job numbers. Make sure you click on the link to the complete fact sheet on jobs and the economy. It's 5 pages of the most damning statistics.

CBS Market Watch item citing a conservative think tank econnomist trotting out the dreaded "stagflation" term. (Thanks to Daily Kos.)

Silicon Valley specific job stats

This sounds more like the Silicon Valley I've been observing.

Far from out of the woods.

And can I just say that it's pretty depressing when the one sign people point to as a plus is the return of the traffic jam?

Sorry, I can't get excited about those, especially if they're not accompanied by anything better than less job loss!

"Turning the Corner"?: My patriotic, liberal backside!

Get a load of the latest job figures.

Hey, I live in Silicon Valley. I have a lot of unemployed friends. And Mr. Greenspan, these are highly educated, technical and skilled people. So, I'd love to see a "real" recovery as much as the next person who fondly remembers the bubble times.

This report confirms that it just is NOT happening.

And as long as Bush refuses to acknowledge and address what problems remain, he will LOSE this election, just like his obtuse father did!

Here's the BBC News take on it, which is, of course, far less polite.

Ouch! The Washington Post Gets Testy

So, in the land of Bush, the largest deficit ever is still a sign of progress. In the land of Bush, you get to avoid accounting for known costs, just because you want to tell a better story. I guess the new accounting rules for businesses don't apply to the federal government, let alone the financial rules the rest of us have to live by in our every day lives.

And the Washington Post doesn't like their spin.

Here's a little tasty and testy excerpt:

Only in the administration's upside-down economic world could a deficit $70 billion higher than last year's be hailed as progress.

Does this matter? The administration says not: The deficit, though "unwelcome," is not high when measured as a percentage of the economy. Moreover, the administration assures worrywarts, the deficit will be cut in half in five years. The first assertion is true but misleading, the second likely to be both untrue and misleading.

Read the entire editorial at the link above. really...read it...it's good.

Bloggers Continue to Get It Right

While the so-called Liberal Media continues to take whatever talking points are shoved its way by the Administration and do very little reporting and a whole lot of rolling over and playing dead (LA Times economic comparison article notwithstanding), leave it to bloggers to dig in a little deeper.

This is a short, but sweet smackdown of Bush's claim that we're "turning the corner" from one of my fave bloggers, Pandagon.

Check it out. Great ammo to retaliate against those "Clinton Recession" parrots.

Cops vs. Tax Cuts: It's really that simple

The budget is complex, I'll grant you. But the correlation between tax cuts for the wealthiest among us and decline n services for the rest of us is unmistakable.

Let's take Cleveland. They just laid of 15% of their total police force. Why? well, more than one reason, including declining tax revenues from both individuals and businesses, but there's something else:

The state trimmed its aid for Cleveland's police force by $4 million this year.

But this year it will receive only $498,000 from Washington for all police programs, and President Bush's proposed budget would cut that figure in half.

read the full story here.

This says it all...

Here's an excerpt from a Merc story on the California budget that was finally agreed to:

"Schwarzenegger stuck to his anti-tax promise and, to appease Republicans, scrapped plans to raise fees on the timber industry. Still, college students and their parents will be asked to pay 14 percent more in student fees."

It's not all about income tax, folks. Whatever tax cuts most people get are more than offset by rising costs everywhere else.

And in an era where one might expect to be asked to sacrifice, to tighten your belt, apparently that is only being asked of individuals and families, not corporations. I'm not anti-business, but how pro-business do we need to be? No tax raises, okay. But raising fees on individuals and families, but not on corporations?

Well, it just makes so clear who the Republicans are really representing, doesn't it?

Source: 7/27/04 Mercury News article

Greenspan Better Stay Out of THIS Valley

So, Greenspan has a theory.

The reason jobs are being added, but at lower average wages?

It's not that people are being forced to become under-employed rather than stay unemployed.

It's a skills gap.

Now, I'm all for improving education and worker training.

But I don't think Greenspan would get a warm reception here in Silicon Valley, telling the engineers or former marketing execs who are working at Home Depot that they only have that job because of their own skills gap, not the glut of unemployed workers and the dearth of job adds.

And, another question I might ask is: exactly WHY is he engaging in this long apologist ramble? It seems like Greenspan once again is venturing into partisan politicking.

Republican Disarray? Evil Strategy? Both?

So amidst all of the tax cuts for the wealthy, Bush has actually thrown a bone or two to the middle class.

Nothing to compare with the tens of thousands of dollars saved by people like Dick Cheney, but a $1000 child tax credit and an expanded 10% bracket helped some folks.

And Bush has been pretty vocal about wanting his tax cuts to be the cure-all for all ills and woes, and wanting them to be extended forever and ever.

Oh, except for the middle class, that is.

Read the sordid truth in the extended entry:

So congressional Republicans want to extend these middle class tax cuts. Seems those accusations about only caring about the 'haves & the have-mores' are starting to sting a little bit.

Bush wants to extend his cuts for at least 5 years...I guess so if he gets re-elected he won't have to fight the battle again, and if he doesn't he can laugh with evil glee that he's saddled his successor with them!

Even Congress is thinking that might be a little unwise, irresponsible etc. So they're shooting for two years.

What's the problem? Well, even Democrats would sign up for a two year extension of middle-class tax cuts as good for the middle class and not TOO risky.

But Bush doesn't want the Democrats to look like they'd vote for tax cuts. That removes the only arrow he has in his quiver.

So, the White House has scuttled the attempt to extend the middle class tax cut to avoid letting the Democrats have a hand in lowering taxes before the election.

Do you think he'll do that when they get to talking about extending the tax cuts for the upper-most brackets?

I'm thinking....NO.

Of course only the NY Times proposes the "only arrow in the quiver" theory. The Post, on the other hand, posits that Bush wanted to push the vote until so close to the election that the Democrats won't want to be seen as opposing "family" tax relief and will let the 5-year extension go through.

I'm thinking the Times theory holds more water. Since we know Bush doesn't really give a damn about the average family.

Sources:
7/22/04 NY Times Article

7/22/04 Associated Press report

7/22/04 Washington Post article

Wages Not Keeping Up

They currently live in Gig green card lottery Harbor. They busiest time is merchant account during late October, November usa visa and December. The company hires accept credit card 400 temporary employees and accept credit card

Here's my quibble. The article implies that middle and upper income folks are doing just fine. But here in Silicon Valley I am really not so sure. Most of my friends who are employed in the high tech industry have not seen a raise in 3 years. Most of their stock options are well underwater too, so there's no bonanza to be found there.

Yes, if they own a house that house has likely appreciated, so their net worth might look better, but that doesn't do them much good day-to-day unless they take some equity out, thereby increasing their debt.

Meanwhile every bill has gone up, often with companies using oil/gas prices as an excuse to raise prices (due to their increased fixed costs/ overhead.)

And I still know lots of unemployed high tech folks. I see more jobs getting listed, but there's still this backlog of laid off workers vying for those jobs.

My point is not to say that middle/upper income folks have it rougher than lower income folks. Not at all.

But, stay with me here: studies show that people generally like to think that they are in an higher percentile of wealth than they are. People like to think they're doing better than their neighbors, in a way. People also have an optimistic view that here in America they can get to that next bracket. We are a nation of optimists who believe in the land of opportunity. Nothing wrong with that.

I think most people will read the Times article and want to think it doesn't apply to them. The article paints this as an "Average Joe" problem to a nation of people who think of themselves as far more than an "Average Joe."

And people tend to vote based on what applies to them.

I'd love to see some stats of what the real economic picture is for this Valley's high-tech workers. If you take away the value of a house that won't be sold any time soon, what is bottom line?

Anybody seen anything like that out there?

FULL TEXT
-----------------------------------------------
Hourly Pay in U.S. Not Keeping Pace With Price Rises
By EDUARDO PORTER

Published: July 18, 2004

The amount of money workers receive in their paychecks is failing to keep up with inflation. Though wages should recover if businesses continue to hire, three years of job losses have left a large worker surplus.

"There's too much slack in the labor market to generate any pressure on wage growth,'' said Jared Bernstein, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal research institution based in Washington. "We are going to need a much lower unemployment rate.'' He noted that at 5.6 percent, the national unemployment rate is still back at the same level as at the end of the recession in November 2001.

Even though the economy has been adding hundreds of thousands of jobs almost every month this year, stagnant wages could put a dent in the prospects for economic growth, some economists say. If incomes continue to lag behind the increase in prices, it may hinder the ability of ordinary workers to spend money at a healthy clip, undermining one of the pillars of the expansion so far.

Declining wages are likely to play a prominent role in the current presidential campaign. Growing employment has lifted President Bush's job approval ratings on the economy of late. According to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll, in mid-July, 42 percent of those polled approved of the president's handling of the economy, up from 38 percent in mid-March.

Yet Senator John Kerry, the likely Democratic presidential nominee, is pointing to lackluster wages as a telling weakness in the administration's economic track record. ``Americans feel squeezed between prices that are rising and incomes that are not,'' Mark Mellman, a pollster for the campaign, said in a memorandum last month.

On Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that hourly earnings of production workers - nonmanagement workers ranging from nurses and teachers to hamburger flippers and assembly-line workers - fell 1.1 percent in June, after accounting for inflation. The June drop, the steepest decline since the depths of recession in mid-1991, came after a 0.8 percent fall in real hourly earnings in May.

Coming on top of a 12-minute drop in the average workweek, the decline in the hourly rate last month cut deeply into workers' pay. In June, production workers took home $525.84 a week, on average. After accounting for inflation, this is about $8 less than they were pocketing last January, and is the lowest level of weekly pay since October 2001.

On its own, the decline in workers' wages is unlikely to derail the recovery. Though they account for some 80 percent of the work force, they contribute much less to spending. Mark M. Zandi, chief economist at Economy.com, a research firm, noted that households in the bottom half of income distribution account for only one-third of consumer spending.

Nonetheless, coming after the bonanza of the second half of the 1990's, the first period of sustained real wage growth since the 1970's, the current slide in earnings is a big blow for the lower middle class. Moreover, the absence of lower income households could also weigh on overall economic growth - putting a lid on the mass market and skewing consumption toward high-end products.

"There's a bit of a dichotomy," said Ethan S. Harris, chief economist at Lehman Brothers. "Joe Six-Pack is under a lot of pressure. He got a lousy raise; he's paying more for gasoline and milk. He's not doing that great. But proprietors' income is up. Profits are up. Home values are up. Middle-income and upper-income people are looking pretty good."

Tales of tight budgets at the bottom are springing up across the country. "I haven't had a salary increase in two years, but the cost of living is going up," said Eric Lambert, 42, a father of three who earns $13 an hour as a security guard at 660 Madison Ave. in Manhattan.

Silvia Vides, 43, who earns $11 an hour in a union job as a housekeeper at the Universal City Sheraton hotel in Los Angeles, said, "Sometimes I don't know how I pay the bills and food and rent." She has cut back on all nonessential expenditures and she is four months behind on payments on $4,000 in credit-card debt.

Their woes are a product of supply and demand for labor. From 1996 through 2000 when employers were hiring hand over fist, real hourly wages of ordinary workers rose by 7.5 percent. Those for leisure and hospitality workers rose 9.6 percent, and retail workers' climbed 8.9 percent. The raises continued even as the economy slipped into recession in 2001 and businesses began to shed workers.

From 2001 to 2003, 2.4 million jobs were eliminated, as businesses sharply reduced their work forces, refusing to hire back even as demand started picking up. Over a million of these jobs have been regained this year.

Yet with the lowest number of people employed as a share of the population since 1994, there is still a plentiful supply of unused laborers looking for jobs.

As the rise in energy prices in the earlier months of this year led to rising inflation, pushing prices in June up 3.2 percent from the same month of last year, the lackluster job market has left workers in a weak position to demand more money.

"Since last November, we've had a pickup in hiring and a pickup in hours worked in virtually all of our businesses," said David Pittaway, a senior managing director at Castle Harlan, an equity investment company that owns everything from Burger King franchises to a shipping company.

But there is clearly still a lot of slack. When Castle Harlan advertised in the newspapers to fill 70 to 80 positions at a Morton's restaurant it opened in early July in White Plains, 600 to 700 people showed up.

Ms. Vides in California ticks off the items of a rising cost of living. She pays $850 a month for a one-bedroom apartment in Panorama City, $25 more a month than last year. The cost of a bus pass rose $10, to $45 a month. The electricity bill is much higher and food costs more. "I've got to do miracles with my salary," she said.

So Ms. Vides said she was outraged that the hotels negotiating a new contract with her union were offering annual raises of 40 cents to 45 cents an hour each year for the next five years. The raise in 2004 would be about 4 percent, just enough to keep up with the 4 percent rise in prices in Los Angeles over the last year. "This is miserly," said Ms. Vides, who said the union wants $1.25 this year and $1.50 next.

Colleen Kareti, president of the Los Angeles hotel employers' council, which represents the hotels, argued that negotiations had not yet gotten down to bargaining over wages. But she pointed out that times are hard for the hotel business, too. "It's been pretty bad for the last three years. We're nowhere near the levels of business where we were in 1998 through 2000," Ms. Kareti said.

Some economists warn that if wages remain depressed for a long time they may end up weighing on the economy. "The recovery will likely continue on despite the travails of lower-income households, but it cannot flourish," Mr. Zandi said.

So far, spending has been fueled mostly by debt, as consumers took advantage of bedrock-low interest rates to whip out their credit cards and refinance their mortgages. But as interest rates rise to keep inflation in check, continued growth in consumer spending will depend more on jobs and wages.

Spending is still holding up, led by strong corporate profits as well as higher salaries and bonuses at the upper end of the income distribution. But the lagging earnings at the bottom end are making for a somewhat lopsided expansion.

The upper echelons of consumer spending, at places like Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus and Nordstrom department stores, are reporting gangbuster business. "I'm surprised by how well we've sold high-priced fashion at this stage," said Pete Nordstrom, president of Nordstrom's full-line stores.

But at the other end, sales at stores open at least a year at big-box discounters like Target and Wal-Mart have disappointed, while sales of used cars are declining year over year, government figures show. "We're not seeing the traffic, not even the same volumes of sales calls," said Richard Cooper, a sales manager at Jones Ford in Charleston, S.C.

Wages at the bottom should eventually recover, as businesses continue hiring to meet growing demand. The question is how fast. "As unemployment slides down, more of the benefits of growth should flow to the working class," Mr. Bernstein said. "But not until we reach truly full employment are they likely to see their earnings rise at a level closer to that of productivity."

The Rebuttal to those "The Economy's Doing Great Now" Ostriches

You've all probably run into them. Those people with blinders on saying the economy's all better.

They don't want to hear about "under-employment." They don't want to hear about health care. They don't want to hear comparisons between now and former presidencies. They don't want to hear about rising state and local taxes and fees. They don't want to hear about cuts in services.

And you know by now that I love Paul Krugman. It's because he delivers when we need him, this time with a succinct dissection of these economic Pollyannas who keep their heads in the sand and refuse to see how we're still limping along.

Are things better than a year ago? Yeah, I guess so. Is that saying very much?

Nope.

And if you've been feeling that, without quite having a few salient facts at your disposal to back it up, Krugman gives you those facts in this colunmn.

The full text is in the extended entry:

Bye-Bye, Bush Boom
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: July 6, 2004

When does optimism — the Bush campaign's favorite word these days — become an inability to face facts? On Friday, President Bush insisted that a seriously disappointing jobs report, which fell far short of the pre-announcement hype, was good news: "We're witnessing steady growth, steady growth. And that's important. We don't need boom-or-bust-type growth."

But Mr. Bush has already presided over a bust. For the first time since 1932, employment is lower in the summer of a presidential election year than it was on the previous Inauguration Day. Americans badly need a boom to make up the lost ground. And we're not getting it.

When March's numbers came in much better than expected, I cautioned readers not to make too much of one good month. Similarly, we shouldn't make too much of June's disappointment. The question is whether, taking a longer perspective, the economy is performing well. And the answer is no.

If you want a single number that tells the story, it's the percentage of adults who have jobs. When Mr. Bush took office, that number stood at 64.4. By last August it had fallen to 62.2 percent. In June, the number was 62.3. That is, during Mr. Bush's first 30 months, the job situation deteriorated drastically. Last summer it stabilized, and since then it may have improved slightly. But jobs are still very scarce, with little relief in sight.

Bush campaign ads boast that 1.5 million jobs were added in the last 10 months, as if that were a remarkable achievement. It isn't. During the Clinton years, the economy added 236,000 jobs in an average month. Those 1.5 million jobs were barely enough to keep up with a growing working-age population.

In the spring, it seemed as if the pace of job growth was accelerating: in March and April, the economy added almost 700,000 jobs. But that now looks like a blip — a one-time thing, not a break in the trend. May growth was slightly below the Clinton-era average, and June's numbers — only 112,000 new jobs, and a decline in working hours — were pretty poor.

What about overall growth? After two and a half years of slow growth, real G.D.P. surged in the third quarter of 2003, growing at an annual rate of more than 8 percent. But that surge appears to have been another blip. In the first quarter of 2004, growth was down to 3.9 percent, only slightly above the Clinton-era average. Scattered signs of weakness — rising new claims for unemployment insurance, sales warnings at Target and Wal-Mart, falling numbers for new durable goods orders — have led many analysts to suspect that growth slowed further in the second quarter.

And economic growth is passing working Americans by. The average weekly earnings of nonsupervisory workers rose only 1.7 percent over the past year, lagging behind inflation. The president of Aetna, one of the biggest health insurers, recently told investors, "It's fair to say that a lot of the jobs being created may not be the jobs that come with benefits." Where is the growth going? No mystery: after-tax corporate profits as a share of G.D.P. have reached a level not seen since 1929.

What should we be doing differently? For three years many economists have argued that the most effective job-creating policies would be increased aid to state and local governments, extended unemployment insurance and tax rebates for lower- and middle-income families. The Bush administration paid no attention — it never even gave New York all the aid Mr. Bush promised after 9/11, and it allowed extended unemployment insurance to lapse. Instead, it focused on tax cuts for the affluent, ignoring warnings that these would do little to create jobs.

After good job growth in March and April, the administration declared its approach vindicated. That was premature, to say the least. Whatever boost the economy got from the tax cuts is now behind us, and given the size of the budget deficit, another big tax cut is out of the question. It's time to change the policy mix — to rescind some of those upper-income cuts and pursue the policies we should have been following all along.

One last point: government policies could do a lot about the failure of new jobs to come with health benefits, a huge source of anxiety for many American families. John Kerry is right to make health care a central plank of his platform. I'll analyze his proposals in a future column.  

When is 112K new jobs bad news?

When you were supposed to get twice that many, and the average work week in hours is getting shorter, and you have a flood of NEW potential workers entering the work force, not counted in an unemployment statistics.

Oh, let me just throw it over to ShortWoman, Bridget Magnus, as I've done before, to explain it simply and succinctly: Check out her short, not-so-sweet post on the latest job numbers.

Arnold Learns His Lesson About Picking On Our Pets

In case you didn't hear about it to begin with. Arnold wanted to repeal the Hayden Act, which would result in numerous changes to animal shelter policy, including earlier euthanization of animals brought in to their facilities.

The idea only came out late Thursday, and they were going to be deciding whether to go along with his suggestion this weekend. Well, the pet-pampering population rose up and the Governor backed down.

My hope is that can rise up equally to protect the rights of the other creatures who will suffer from his budget cuts.

Why haven't we? My opinion is in the extended entry:

Here's the story in the Mercury about Gov. Arnold backing down on his request to repeal the Hayden Act.

Now, I'm a huge animal person. I'm a strict vegetarian, and a vegan when it comes to my clothing/car interior choices.

And I reject arguments, when I hear them, that question people who are animal activists, rather than activists for other causes. Everyone helps where they can, how they can, and it's best if people participate where they feel some passion.

And caring about animals doesn't preclude caring about humans, even though I may give more money to animal organizations than human-oriented ones.

I did find it interesting how the people rose up on this Hayden Act issue. Given very little time to act, the response was overwhelming. Apparently the offices of both the Governor and the Assembly Committee i question were flooded with calls and emails.

Meanwhile, his same budget request is filled with cuts that harm the most vulnerable humans among us...the young, the poor, the elderly.

Arianna Huffington seems to be the only person raising a consistent stink about it.

Part of it may be timing. If many people are like me, they are somewhat deadline driven. Tell me I have to act by Saturday, and I am all over it. If you don't give me a deadline, I don't know when to kick it into gear.

Part of it may be the very simply life-and-death factor.

It's pretty easy to understand: puppies and kittens will be killed if you do nothing

vs.

Many qualified college students will not get their once-promised financial aid to attend a 4-year institution in the California system, thus forcing them to go to 2-year institutions, although they can transfer later. However, given the more transient atmosphere at most community colleges (vs. the immersive nature of a 4-year college) the chances of actually sticking to that alternate plan are lower than the chances of graduation if one starts at a 4-yr. institution to begin with.

See the problem? It's pretty easy to pretty up the picture around programs cuts.

You can't pretty up euthanizing Spot.

I'm very happy that the Governor backed down (like a weak little girly man tee hee.)

I hope people start to take a closer look at everything he's doing, and stop giving him the free pass he's been getting so far.

The California Dream sacrificed for $150

I've blogged before about how I'm a little amazed how little people are protesting Governor Arnold's sacrifice of the California Dream, all so we can each pocket (maybe) $150.

Read all about it in the extended entry:

See, California has always had this thing, a little commitment it's made to its citizens: if you hit a certain level in GPA and SAT scores, you WILL go to a 4-year college, and the State will help you. California has a fine set of both University of California and State University campuses, and you might not always get into your 1st choice, but you got into a very reputable college.

That's gone as of this fall. Gone, after decades and decades.

Thousands of qualified students are being turned away. Thousands.

And all because Arnold took taxes "off the table." He insisted on repealing the car registration tax...which by the way was NOT a new tax, but simply a rescinding of a supposed temporary tax reduction. And he refuses to consider any taxes on either businesses or individuals.

The only person consistently bringing this betrayal of what California has always stood for is Arianna Huffington. her latest column covers it again, and very eloquently.

This state has always benefitted from its educated and motivated populace. as the hot bed of so many industries this state needs its young people to be the best and the brightest.

This is bad for our state in the long run.

Do you even remember what you did with your $150? About as much as I remember what I did with the $300 tax "rebate" I got when Bush took office, I bet.

It's amazing how much we're willing to sacrifice...as long as it is sacrificing someone else's present, and we won't feel the impact until some time in our future.

Interesting theories on deficits

There are a couple of interesting theories about the Bush Administration's slavish devotion to deficits so big you can't wrap your mind around them.

One is that they want to send the federal government into a financial crisis so major they will be left with "no choice" but to dismantle social programs like Medicare and Social Security.

And the other is one I espouse that I haven't seen elsewhere, and that is that Bush believes in the Rapture and won't be around to deal with it anyway!

More in the extended entry:

The idea that they want to force the dismantling of programs really isn't such a stretch, given the Republican Party's platform in the state of Texas. I've posted a link to a blogger discussion of that platform. Here's the direct link. But to save you time, here's one of the excerpts that's most pertinent:

"The Party supports an orderly transition to a system of private pensions based on the concept of individual retirement accounts, and gradually phasing out the Social Security tax."

There's more about abolishing the federal income tax, abolishing our contributions to the UN, abolishing numerous federal departments altogether. You get the point.

Today a report from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office made their job a little harder by refuting the concept that Social Security is on its last legs, requiring drastic measures to be revived. Here's a link to the story about that.

Now on to my theory.

I have often said that to be a Bush-supporter one must be either not really paying attention, or profoundly selfish.

Now there are two kinds of selfish I'm thinking of. there's the: "I need my $150 car tax back more than thousands of students need to get access to a college education" selfish.

But there's also the: "the end of days is coming, and when it does I'll be outta here. And so will everyone else who's worthy or righteous. So what should I care about the environment, about the burden of debt and so on."

I'm no theologist, and I'm NOT saying most Christians have this attitude. I'm only saying I wonder if Bush and his crowd do!

Anyone out there want to set me straight?

Viacom better not tell me they need to offshore to ensure shareholder profitability

If you read my "Conversations with an Undecided Voter" entry, then you've heard my little rant about how I don't want to hear about offshoring as a necessity to improve shareholder profitability from any company paying its executives in the millions of dollars.

How about from a company that pays a guy who quits millions of dollars?

Color me disgusted anew.

Here's the link.

Read the story in the extended entry:

Walk Away. Keep the Prize.
By PATRICK McGEEHAN

Published: June 6, 2004

IT is not unusual for people to quit their jobs after winning the lottery. But as Mel A. Karmazin's departure from Viacom Inc. reminded investors last week, only senior executives can win the jackpot by quitting.

Just a year into a three-year contract, Mr. Karmazin, 60, apparently decided that working for Sumner M. Redstone, Viacom's chairman and controlling shareholder, was not worth the considerable pay, especially if he could be paid just as handsomely for not working. For a mere $30 million or so of their shareholders' money, Mr. Redstone and the rest of Viacom's directors managed to accommodate Mr. Karmazin, who resigned as president and chief operating officer on Tuesday.

Rather than haggle over whether he had a valid cause for quitting or what he was entitled to, the directors chose to give Mr. Karmazin all that he would have received if Mr. Redstone had dispatched him on the spot, Viacom officials said. After two months as a consultant to Viacom, Mr. Karmazin will be free to join a direct competitor.

It is uncommon, people who specialize in executive pay and corporate governance said, for a public company to hand over that much cash to salve the sting of job loss when the blow is self-inflicted.

"Typically, if they fire you without cause, you get something; but not if you walk away from the job," said Charles M. Elson, who teaches at the John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware. He expressed surprise at the size of Mr. Karmazin's going-away present, saying "$30 million is a big number for any company."

A good chunk of that payout should go to the lawyers who wrote Mr. Karmazin's employment contract. That agreement, renewed last year, contained unusual language intended to protect Mr. Karmazin from meddling by his bosses. Along with standard clauses insuring him against any lessening of his authority or a move of company headquarters, he was shielded from second-guessing.

The definition of the "good reasons" that he could cite for resigning included being overruled on any legitimate business decisions by either Mr. Redstone or the board. If that happened, he could invoke his right to leave and collect two years' worth of compensation, a hefty sum for a man who took home $16 million in salary and bonus in 2003. Even without conducting a survey on the subject, it would be safe to say that most American workers would be lucky to collect two weeks' pay after challenging their supervisors' authority.

Joseph E. Bachelder, a lawyer in New York who negotiates contracts for corporate executives, said Mr. Karmazin's contract reflected the leverage he had when he joined the company and the peculiar dynamic of working for Mr. Redstone, who, at 81, is one of the oldest chief executives of a public company. Mr. Karmazin was the chief executive of CBS when Viacom bought it in 2000.

"That's a tough provision" that shows that Mr. Karmazin had a strong bargaining position at the time of the merger, Mr. Bachelder said. Although the balance of power in the boardroom appears to have shifted from management to the directors in the last few years, he said, "the leverage of an outstanding candidate is considerable."

Mr. Elson questioned the wisdom of giving an executive a contract that might temper the behavior of independent directors who are supposed to be looking out for shareholders' interests. "If the board's job is to monitor him, it certainly makes it more difficult for them when, if they disagree, he can cost the company millions of dollars," Mr. Elson said. "From the board's standpoint, it's rather slanted in his direction."

Mr. Karmazin never even had to make a case that he deserved the payout, said David T. McLaughlin, chairman of the corporate governance committee of Viacom's board. The directors "felt that Mel had done a very good job and to pay him out as if he were staying was not an unreasonable thing to do," he said.

Sweetening the deal, Viacom agreed to immediately vest all the long-term stock awards it had granted to Mr. Karmazin, including 800,000 options given last year. Mr. Karmazin, who reaped $35 million from exercising options last year, agreed to give back 550,000 options he received in mid-May but he still held others worth more than $100 million.

Mr. McLaughlin acknowledged that some of the language in Mr. Karmazin's contract "may not have been normal" from a governance standpoint, but he said that it did not force the board's hand. He noted that the contract also called for a full payout to Mr. Karmazin if someone else was picked to succeed Mr. Redstone as chief executive.

Though that had not happened and no such decision was imminent, Mr. McLaughlin said, it was becoming increasingly clear that Mr. Karmazin would not be Mr. Redstone's chosen successor. At the same time that Mr. Karmazin's departure was made public last week, Viacom promoted two executives, Leslie Moonves and Tom Freston, to be co-presidents and the leading candidates to succeed Mr. Redstone, who said he would step down within three years.

MR. McLAUGHLIN said it was unlikely that either Mr. Moonves or Mr. Freston would have the same protections in their contracts that Mr. Karmazin had. Boards may be taking a harder line in negotiations with internal candidates for the top jobs in corporations, but those recruited from the outside are still extracting most of what they want in contract negotiations, Mr. Bachelder said.

"Whether it's a Michael Ovitz or a Mel Karmazin or whoever, there still is a very substantial opportunity for C.E.O.'s moving from Company A to Company B to get very large compensation packages," he said. "I know that may be counterintuitive, but the fact is that it's a market."

The NY Times provide today's wry humor

usually the Time isn't a barrel of laughs, but I got a kick out of today's editorial.

It is a generally quite dry (and brief) analysis of the latest improvement in job figures.

But closes with this great closing paragraph:

"It's certain that Mr. Bush will continue to credit his tax cuts for the comeback. These are the same cuts, you may recall, that were first designed as a means of "giving back" part of the mounting surplus to the public. Then, as the surplus evaporated, they were relabeled a stimulus plan. Now, with no surplus and no slump — and with looming deficits a threat to long-term growth — it's hard to think of what Mr. Bush can call his tax cuts to justify their renewal. The administration could go with truth in advertising, and simply relabel them a handout to wealthy families at a time of war and deficits."

See the entire text in the extended entry:

Jobs and the Recovery

Published: June 5, 2004

Help is wanted, again. Confident in the economic recovery's staying power, American businesses have gone on an impressive hiring spree. Labor Department figures released yesterday show that the economy added nearly a million jobs in the last three months. Even the manufacturing sector has turned the corner.

There was a considerable time lag, as there often is in recoveries, between the first signs of strong growth last year and robust hiring. Employers were wary about rushing to add workers and made do with their existing payrolls for a time, helped in some cases by technologically driven productivity gains. But fears that jobs were never coming back, which led to grandstanding about outsourcing, proved overwrought.

As hiring continues, personal incomes will need to rise to sustain further economic growth. Consumer spending and confidence, so vital to economic growth, is directly linked to take-home pay. That will be especially important as the Federal Reserve lifts its emergency-level monetary stimulus. Nobody doubts that interest rates have to move up. The only question is whether Alan Greenspan will be able to hit the right balance — stern enough to keep inflation in check without applying a brake to growth or panicking the financial markets. Though it would have been wise to start raising rates earlier, the Fed might still have enough room to tighten monetary policy while presiding over measured growth. Of course, all bets could be off in the event of an external shock, like a serious disruption of oil supplies.

President Bush will no doubt be pleased with the latest job figures, although he may wish for a better economy in Midwestern battleground states, where the recovery is weaker. Since voters didn't seem to blame the president for the slowdown early in his presidency, it's unclear how much credit they will be prepared to give him for the recovery. Lately, Mr. Bush's approval ratings have been falling even as the economic news has brightened.

It's certain that Mr. Bush will continue to credit his tax cuts for the comeback. These are the same cuts, you may recall, that were first designed as a means of "giving back" part of the mounting surplus to the public. Then, as the surplus evaporated, they were relabeled a stimulus plan. Now, with no surplus and no slump — and with looming deficits a threat to long-term growth — it's hard to think of what Mr. Bush can call his tax cuts to justify their renewal. The administration could go with truth in advertising, and simply relabel them a handout to wealthy families at a time of war and deficits.

Misleader.org provides more info to convince my Undecided Voter

http://house9999.com/teen-gang-bang-boat-gang.html http://orgy.free-fast.net/gang-bang-video.html http://orgy.optima-host.com/interracial-gang-bang-gang-got-i.html thank you for your site.

Why I Want Paul Krugman's Love Child!

You're probably getting tired of me raving about Paul Krugman and his incredibly reliable habit of completely savaging the Bush Administration, but I just can't help it. Krugman rocks!

His latest column rips apart the contention that the tax cuts help all taxpayers, and outlines why, exactly, they will in fact be detrimental to most of us.

Just check out his closing statement and tell me you don't understand my Krugman-worship:

"Right now, it seems that the 2004 election will be a referendum on Mr. Bush's calamitous foreign policy. But something else is at stake: whether he and his party can lock in the unassailable political position they need to proceed with their pro-rich, anti-middle-class economic strategy. And no, I'm not engaging in class warfare. They are. "

Here's the link.

Full text in extended entry:

Dooh Nibor Economics
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: June 1, 2004

Last week The Washington Post got hold of an Office of Management and Budget memo that directed federal agencies to prepare for post-election cuts in programs that George Bush has been touting on the campaign trail. These include nutrition for women, infants and children; Head Start; and homeland security. The numbers match those on a computer printout leaked earlier this year — one that administration officials claimed did not reflect policy.

Beyond the routine mendacity, the case of the leaked memo points us to a larger truth: whatever they may say in public, administration officials know that sustaining Mr. Bush's tax cuts will require large cuts in popular government programs. And for the vast majority of Americans, the losses from these cuts will outweigh any gains from lower taxes.

It has long been clear that the Bush administration's claim that it can simultaneously pursue war, large tax cuts and a "compassionate" agenda doesn't add up. Now we have direct confirmation that the White House is engaged in bait and switch, that it intends to pursue a not at all compassionate agenda after this year's election.

That agenda is to impose Dooh Nibor economics — Robin Hood in reverse. The end result of current policies will be a large-scale transfer of income from the middle class to the very affluent, in which about 80 percent of the population will lose and the bulk of the gains will go to people with incomes of more than $200,000 per year.

I can't back that assertion with official numbers, because under Mr. Bush the Treasury Department has stopped releasing information on the distribution of tax cuts by income level. Estimates by the Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center, which now provides the numbers the administration doesn't want you to know, reveal why. This year, the average tax reduction per family due to Bush-era cuts was $1,448. But this average reflects huge cuts for a few affluent families, with most families receiving much less (which helps explain why most people, according to polls, don't believe their taxes have been cut). In fact, the 257,000 taxpayers with incomes of more than $1 million received a bigger combined tax cut than the 85 million taxpayers who make up the bottom 60 percent of the population.

Still, won't most families gain something? No — because the tax cuts must eventually be offset with spending cuts.

Three years ago George Bush claimed that he was cutting taxes to return a budget surplus to the public. Instead, he presided over a move to huge deficits. As a result, the modest tax cuts received by the great majority of Americans are, in a fundamental sense, fraudulent. It's as if someone expected gratitude for giving you a gift, when he actually bought it using your credit card.

The administration has not, of course, explained how it intends to pay the bill. But unless taxes are increased again, the answer will have to be severe program cuts, which will fall mainly on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — because that's where the bulk of the money is.

For most families, the losses from these cuts will far outweigh any gain from lower taxes. My back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that 80 percent of all families will end up worse off; the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities will soon come out with a more careful, detailed analysis that arrives at a similar conclusion. And the only really big beneficiaries will be the wealthiest few percent of the population.

Does Mr. Bush understand that the end result of his policies will be to make most Americans worse off, while enriching the already affluent? Who knows? But the ideologues and political operatives behind his agenda know exactly what they're doing.

Of course, voters would never support this agenda if they understood it. That's why dishonesty — as illustrated by the administration's consistent reliance on phony accounting, and now by the business with the budget cut memo — is such a central feature of the White House political strategy.

Right now, it seems that the 2004 election will be a referendum on Mr. Bush's calamitous foreign policy. But something else is at stake: whether he and his party can lock in the unassailable political position they need to proceed with their pro-rich, anti-middle-class economic strategy. And no, I'm not engaging in class warfare. They are. 

Soapbox: More on the cuts in service, courtesy of massive tax cuts

8065 Keep it up! Try Viagra once and youll see. http://viagra.levitra-i.com

When this budget document first surfaced, White House officials dismissed the cuts within as "based on a formula and did not accurately reflect administration policy."

But last week they had to finally cop to the truth and admit: "that agencies should assume the spending levels in that printout when they prepare their fiscal 2006 budgets this summer."

So, what's the big deal? I mean we, fiscally conservative Democrats believe in balancing budgets. And we believe you are going to have to do some spending cuts to achieve that right? So, he's a little late to the rational spending cut game, but at least he's getting there right?

Wrong.

It is wrong, I tell you, to cut massively, while simultaneously asking Congress to make permanent the tax cuts Bush enacted.

Just like it is wrong of Schwarzenegger to talk about "tightening the belt" when it is only the most vulnerable and needy among us who will really feel the pinch. Meanwhile the rest of us can go all crazy spending our $150 car tax rebate.

This isn't fiscal conservatism; it is corporate welfare and quid pro quo cronyism.

And what is also wrong, is to run around talking up your big accomplishments on your domestic agenda, such as: programs for Head Start: The Education Department; a nutrition program for women, infants and children; homeownership; job-training; medical research and science programs, when they are all facing significant cuts in your proposed budget.

It's wrong. No, it's hypocrisy. No, perhaps it's simply lying, bearing false witness, whatever you'd like to call it.

All I'm asking is that we call Bush on it. Preferably on November 2nd.

Here's a link to the Washington Post story.

Why a couple of months of job growth is nothing to crow over

8082 ok you can play online poker at this address : http://www.play-online-poker.greatnow.com

Delusions of Triumph
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: May 25, 2004

Republicans, we hear, are frustrated by polls showing that the public has a poor opinion of George Bush's economic leadership. In their view, the good news about Mr. Bush's economic triumphs is being drowned out by the bad news from Iraq.

A recent article in The New York Times, citing concerns of "Republican elected officials, pollsters and strategists," put it this way: "The creation of nearly 900,000 new jobs in the last four months — a development that might otherwise have redefined the race in Mr. Bush's favor — has been largely crowded out of the electorate's psyche by images from Iraq."

Funny, isn't it? In 2002, Republican strategists used the impending Iraq war to distract the public from the miserable economic news. Now they're complaining that Iraq is taking voters' focus off the economy.

But is the economic news really that good? No. While the recent economic performance is better than in the administration's first three years, it isn't at all exceptional by historical standards. And after those three terrible years, the economy has a lot of ground to make up.

Let's start with the "nearly 900,000 new jobs" created in the last four months. Is that exceptional? Well, during the first four months of 2000, the last presidential election year, the economy created 1.1 million new jobs. An e-mail message to Bush's supporters from Ken Mehlman, his campaign manager, takes a longer view, boasting of 1.1 million jobs created since last August (when job growth finally turned positive). But in April 2000, payroll employment was 2.3 million higher than in August 1999.

And that was after seven years of sustained employment growth; rapid job growth is hard to achieve when the economy is already close to full employment. To find a year comparable to 2004, we need to look back to 1994, when the economy was still recovering from the first Bush recession. In the first four months of that year, the economy added almost 1.3 million jobs.

The experience of 1994 also gives us some indication of how likely job growth is to "redefine" an election. Between December 1993 and November 1994 the economy gained 3.6 million jobs, a number beyond the Bush administration's fondest dreams. Yet voters, convinced that Bill Clinton was leading the country astray, gave his party a severe defeat in that year's midterm elections. So it's interesting that a new CBS News poll finds that 65 percent of Americans believe that the country is headed in the wrong direction — a level not seen since 1994.

If you want to convince yourself that I'm not playing games with dates, go to the Bureau of Labor Statistics Web site at stats.bls.gov. Click on "U.S. economy at a glance," then on the green dinosaur next to "Change in payroll employment" for a 10-year chart of monthly job gains and losses. The chart reveals that for 37 months, from January 2001 to February 2004, the Bush administration presided over dismal job numbers: employment for each month fell, or grew far more slowly than the norm during the Clinton years. March and April were much better, but they still weren't exceptional by 1990's standards.

And a mere return to Clinton-era job growth isn't enough: after all those years of poor job performance, we need extra-rapid growth to make up for lost time.

Here's one way to look at it. The job forecast in the 2002 Economic Report of the President assumed that by 2004 the economy would have fully recovered from the 2001 recession. That recovery, according to the official projection, would lead to average payroll employment of 138 million this year — 7 million more than the actual number. So we have a gap of 7 million jobs to make up.

And employment is chasing a moving target: it must rise by about 140,000 a month just to keep up with a growing population. In April, the economy added 288,000 jobs. If you do the math, you discover that President Bush needs about four years of job growth at last month's rate to reach what his own economists consider full employment.

The bottom line, then, is that Mr. Bush's supporters have no right to complain about the public's failure to appreciate his economic leadership. Three years of lousy performance, followed by two months of good but not great job growth, is not a record to be proud of.  

Let's not dicker about data; this is about MORE

I see folks feeling bad that we actually added some new jobs this last month, and I understand the feeling. We're afraid that opposition to Bush will melt away if employment improves.

Well, I don't think this campaign should be about the # of jobs lost then recovered, nor a few percentage points change in arcane economic statistics that very few of us real people understand much less care about in our day-to-day lives. If we as Democrats only try to hammer Bush on economic data, then we are leaving way too much of the tone of this campaign to things beyond the Party's or Kerry's or even Bush's control.

I think this campaign should be about bigger things. Are we saying that the recovery of jobs is more important than the erosion of our principles, our standing in the world, our civil liberties, our adherence to law...both our own and international; more important than the world we are leaving behind for the next generation, from mountains of debt to polluted mountains?

If we say that a jobless recovery that eventually includes new jobs wipes all of those horrors away...then what kind of country are we?

I don't know what to make of the American people. Every poll shows they are deeply dissatisfied with the economy, the War, the track this country is on, but they have yet to associate any of that with Bush personally. How can it be?

And we have to tap into that deep desire Americans are having to be on the RIGHT track. And the right track is about big ideas: honor and truth and liberty and fairness...it's about America retaining its self-image as the shining beacon of nations. We WANT to be the land of opportunity, the land that stands for freedom and right...with or without having to display our might.

Bush cannot lead us there. Bush cannot make our country truly great again.

If you believe (as 60% of the nation does) that we are on the wrong track, then DO something about it. Lay the blame where it belongs: at the feet of the President. And fire him in November.

Recent News: How are the States Rebounding? Gasp! Higher Taxes & Fees!

Here's an interesting article for all of those people who don't want to see the results of Bush's massive federal tax cuts.

Basically many states are only now recovering from over 2 years of growing deficits and curtailed services. How? The state legislatures took the risk of raising taxes and instituting new fees.

Result: they're in the black, services are maintained, and people and business aren't howling in protest or leaving in droves.

Then again it's not that surprising when you consider that polls show that people would rather have services than Bush's tax cuts.

Check out the Washington Post article

Discussion: What's good for the corporate goose should be good for the citizen gander, right?

I'm a little riled up because I've been reading Arianna Huffington's "Pigs at the Trough." It's a stinging indictment of how corporate greed and political ambition come together to subvert our democratic principals.

Of course some corporate benefits are currently perfectly legal. But it makes me think that I should be able to get the same benefits.

For example, why can't I register myself as a resident of the Grand Caymans (or at the very least Delaware) to avoid various tax burdens? I mean, I realize I don't have a residence there nor, to be honest, have I ever set foot in either place. But you know, companies don't have to have a single employee or even storage facility in Delaware to register as a Delaware corporation and avoid some of the tax burdens of other states.

All I'm saying is what is good for the corporate goose should be good for me as the citizen gander, right?

And let's not even START on how corporations actually get a tax break to move jobs offshore!

John Kerry's position on this topic is in the extended entry

John Kerry on Corporate Accountability:

CLOSE CORPORATE LOOPHOLES
Restore Investor Confidence With Strong Enforcement by the Securities and Exchange Commission:  John Kerry will fund strong budgets and assure strong enforcement by the SEC.

Stop Corporations From Keeping Bank Accounts in Countries like Bermuda to Avoid Paying Taxes.  John Kerry believes that American companies should not be allowed to set up virtual headquarters in foreign countries that are hardly more than mailboxes just to avoid paying U.S. taxes.

Assure Corporations Account for Disparities on the Books. A recent Joint Committee on Taxation report found that Enron claimed a $2.3 billion in profit between 1996 and 1999 in reports to its investors, while reporting a $3 billion tax loss to the IRS.  John Kerry believes corporations should have to account these kinds of disparities.

Stop Giving Government Contracts to Corporations Breaking the Rules.  The Federal government should not give lucrative contracts to companies that have a record of accounting fraud – like WorldCom – or are moving offshore.

End Unfair Protections for CEOs.  Executives should not be walking away with millions of dollars in salaries and benefits while their workers are laid off their companies are defaulting on loans. Kerry would tighten the laws that allow corporations to take advantage of tax deductions for performance based executive pay – even when executives do nothing to improve productivity.

Discussion: Deficits for Dummies

Sometimes I notice politicians and pundits displaying a disturbing tendency to pontificate and patronize.

If you haven't seen Dick Cheney's Op-Ed piece in the (supposedly liberal) New York Times this week, I'll give you the recap: We're all being silly (pat, pat, pat on our little heads.) Some day far in the future we'll all understand that everything in Iraq has been for the best. Why don't we all just relax and let the big, smart boys handle it?

The same thing crops up on the issue of our huge budget deficits.

First of all, it's all Clinton's fault...the new spin is that Bush "inherited a recession." Then, to defend increasing the deficits with their tax cuts; tax cuts they want to extend despite current economic circumstances, they trot out the old...you gotta spend money to make money argument. Don't you worry about a thing; they know better than we simple masses.

Well, if you've been wanting ammunition to combat the spin from the Bush Administration, read on to the extended entry for some great links that:

1. Explain exactly why budget deficits are bad for you and me.
2. Expose that it's not an inherited recession that's contributing to our deficits, but rather tax cuts and increased spending. Yes, things that happened on Bush's watch...no one else's.

First, a down-to-earth exploration of budget deficits from a great blogger:

Budget Deficits explained by shortwoman.com

I like how she explains the deficits in everyday, non-economist terms, and how she explains, step-by-step, the impact a national debt or budget deficit can have on individuals.

Second, an article that refutes the notion that these huge deficits (that shortwoman.com establishes as very bad for you and me) are due to any cyclical recession we have experienced. Rather, it makes the case that it's nearly all due to the combo of big tax cuts and increased spending.

Deficit Study Disputes Role of Economy

Here's the bottom line. EVEN IF one could make the argument that the first round of tax cuts, offered when we had a huge surplus to play with, were stimulating to the economy, it was unconscionable to press for MORE cuts when our spending increased dramatically due to the fight on terrorism and the war, misguided or not, in Iraq.

When a situation changes, one MUST respond appropriately, without fear of appearing weak.

That is true strength and true leadership.