Use of Public Assistance Programs Increasing

From USA Today:

Government anti-poverty programs that have grown to meet the needs of recession victims now serve a record one in six Americans and are continuing to expand.

More than 50 million Americans are on Medicaid, the federal-state program aimed principally at the poor, a survey of state data by USA TODAY shows. That's up at least 17% since the recession began in December 2007.

The increase in the food stamp program is even more dramatic:

More than 40 million people get food stamps, an increase of nearly 50% during the economic downturn, according to government data through May. The program has grown steadily for three years.

and

More than 4.4 million people are on welfare, an 18% increase during the recession. The program has grown slower than others, causing Brookings Institution expert Ron Haskins to question its effectiveness in the recession.

As unemployment benefits run out, more people are turning to what we used to call "welfare," which is now TANF, Temporary Aid to Needy Families. In Philadelphia:

Between February and June, the number of people receiving welfare through the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program has climbed 2 percent in New Jersey to 98,856 and 3 percent in Pennsylvania to 217,884.

Camden County has hovered near the top of New Jersey's welfare rolls for years, fueled primarily by the city of Camden and its decades-long struggle to bring jobs back to the once-bustling manufacturing center. Since the beginning of this year, those numbers have only grown.

TANF is a temporary program, intended to aid people and get them back to work. Obviously, the getting people back to work part is especially challenging right now.

Nidia Sinclair, a middle-aged social worker from Panama who strolls through the office in bright embroidered dresses, says the task of getting people off welfare and into the workplace has never been harder, and her clients know it.

"It's a work-first program, but the problem is, with the economy the way it is, there's no work," she said. "The frustration level is very high right now."

(if you read the whole online article, you may find the comment section disturbing.)

In Williamsburg, Virginia:

Agencies that help people are simply overwhelmed.

In Williamsburg, for example, the number of families on food stamps rose by 28% in the past year. Food stamps in James City soared even higher, by 60% to 1,638.

Many are suffering from losing their jobs. Temporary welfare cases rose by 31% in the city and 22% in James City. Medicaid cases rose by about 9% in each locality.

Adult protective services cases and child protective services cases in the city rose as well, although the numbers are smaller.

As many as 10% of the city population of 13,000 are suffering.

Safety net program budgets have been on the chopping block for years. The need for services is already surpassing the funds available to help people. How much worse do things have to get before our elected officials wake up to the ongoing crisis?


Cross-posted at MainSt/workingamerica.org

A Look at Layoffs Around the Country

This is just a sampling of layoffs announced during the last seven days. The economic recovery we keep hearing about seems to be a well kept secret.

In Trenton, NJ a notice was sent out to all 1200 city employees, notifying them that layoffs were coming:

An estimated 111 police officers and 70 firefighters could be out of jobs, while 200 other city workers face unemployment.

In Massachusetts:

A second round of layoffs began yesterday at Northeast Hospital Corp., as the health care organization looks to eliminate up to 100 full-time positions.

Corporate handed out pink slips to personnel ranging from vice presidents to nurses yesterday at the nonprofit organization's three hospitals, Addison Gilbert Hospital in Gloucester, Beverly Hospital and BayRidge Hospital in Lynn, and two outpatient centers, Beverly Hospital at Danvers and the Cable Center in Ipswich.

In Kansas:

Cessna Aircraft Co. is issuing 75 layoff notices to employees at its Independence, Kan., plant Wednesday and Thursday, company spokesman Doug Oliver said.

In Mississippi:

The Masonite Mill in Laurel announced Wednesday they have laid off 83 employees saying market conditions are forcing the reduction in staff.

In Connecticut:

Officials from Pratt & Whitney have told union workers that the company will be eliminating 129 hourly jobs at the Cheshire Engine Center, union officials said.

In Utah:

LAYTON -- Officials with Citi Commerce Solutions announced Wednesday they are laying off about 120 workers at the firm's credit card service center in Layton.
The center at 2195 University Park Blvd. employs about 540 people and supports the private label credit division for Citigroup Inc.

In New York:

DeWitt, NY--New Process Gear Inc. Tuesday notified the New York State Department of Labor that it plans to lay off 107 workers in November.

In Florida:

MANATEE — Mosaic cut 140 employees from its South Fort Meade mine staff today as a result of the pending closure at the 10,885-acre tract.

In Nebraska:

An Omaha company that sells veterinarian products and equipment will lay off about 300 workers and sell all its assets.
Professional Veterinary Products said Friday that it had filed for bankruptcy protection to help facilitate the sale of its assets.

In Pennsylvania:

UNIONTOWN, Pa. — Defense contractor BAE Systems plans to lay off 124 workers - half of the work force - at its western Pennsylvania plant beginning in mid-October.

In Arkansas:
Fort Smith, Ark. - Whirlpool has expanded its planned layoff of refrigerator factory workers here this fall.
and
Whirlpool didn't say how many workers would be affected by the actions, but local TV station KFSM-TV projected the number of pink slips at between 600 and 1,000.

In Missouri:

Food-and-facility services giant Aramark laid off 78 workers in St. Louis last month.

In Ohio:

AKRON, Ohio - Akron Mayor Don Plusquellic announced on Tuesday that the city will lay off 49 police officials, including 40 officers and 9 supervisors.


cross posted at MainSt/workingamerica.org

Get a Job, Ya Bums

We've all heard the mantra of how the long term unemployed are lazy bums who should "go get a job at McDonalds."

The wealthy folk who blame the unemployed for their plight also seem to believe that there are unlimited job openings available at the McDonald's fast food restaurant chain. A number of job seekers in northern Nevada and California recently discovered that there the job openings at the chain are actually finite:

Thousands of job seekers turned out at McDonald’s stores in Nevada and California today as part of a “Hiring Day” event.
McDonald’s plans to hire about 1,000 people across 600 restaurants in the Pacific-Sierra region, which includes Northern Nevada and California.

From the Sacramento Bee:

About 300 applied at Courtney Ristuben's five McDonald's locations in Citrus Heights, Fair Oaks and Folsom. There, she saw "people from (age) 16 to folks with families; people with four-year degrees to others with résumés two pages long."

The scene was repeated at McDonald's restaurants from Sacramento to Visalia, Reno to the San Francisco Bay Area, with managers describing lines that formed around restaurants and spilled into parking lots, said Julie Wenger, a McDonald's regional marketing manager.

Apparently even the McDonald's chain doesn't have over 15 million job openings.



cross posted at MainSt/workingamerica.org

Becktearian Faux-Feminists

The 19th Amendment to the US Constitution was adopted by Congress on June 4, 1919. There were 48 states in the union at that time, and a three-quarters majority of them (36) was required to vote in favor of amending the Constitution. These votes took place in state legislatures. Twenty-one states had voted in favor of suffrage by the end of 1919. The pro-suffrage organizations hoped to have the amendment ratified before the 1920 elections. By July of 1920, 35 of the necessary 36 states were in place. On August 18, the Tennessee House of Representatives took their vote. (The Tennessee Senate had already voted to ratify.) The lobbying had been intense, and no one had an accurate count on how the representatives would vote because the numbers kept changing. The pro-suffrage groups chose a yellow rose as their symbol, and the antis chose a red rose. The vote stood at 48-48 to table the resolution, when the Speaker (knowing that a tie would kill the measure, and feeling pretty secure) called for a vote to ratify. The youngest member of the Tennessee House, Harry Burn, had voted to table. Now, still wearing a red anti rose, he cast his vote to ratify. In his pocket was a letter from his mother, telling him to be a good boy and vote for suffrage. On August 26, the US Secretary of State issued a proclamation of final ratification, in time for women to vote in the 1920 elections.

New Hampshire was the 16th state to vote in favor of ratifying the 19th Amendment, in a vote taken on September 10, 1919. The town of Sandwich had already voted in favor of women’s suffrage, some 17 years earlier, according to Sandwich, New Hampshire 1763-1990, the excellent town history written by the Sandwich Historical Society. In fact, the people of Sandwich were incensed to learn that their elected state representative had voted against ratification, and so, they voted him out at the next election. Given our state legislative schedule, NH was certainly early to vote in favor of suffrage. When it comes to equality issues, NH gets it right more often than not.

That’s one reason why it’s painful to read the faux-feminist lamentations of the pro-war crowd, who attempt to use the plight of women to justify warmongering. Remember all those purple fingers? Remember all that phony concern from George and Laura Bush about Iraqi women? What a load of codswallop. Say what you will about Saddam Hussein, the Baathist regime was largely secular, and protected women from the kind of religious extremism that quickly moved into place with the US invasion. Women had more equality before we blundered in. It was women who bore the brunt of the sanctions against Iraq. It is women who bear the burdens caused by the US destruction of the Iraqi infrastructure. They are the ones who have to deal with having little or no electricity or clean water. It is their bodies that are treated as spoils, during wartime. Yet, for a time, the tearful (in the most Beckian sense) lamentations about Iraqi women were touted as a justification for a war that can never be justified.

The same tactic is being employed to justify the ongoing war in Afghanistan. One of the documents released by Wikileaks is a CIA analysis on how support for the war might be shored up, in part by using Afghan women as a tool. I don’t know that this is a valid document, but the government has not said otherwise. The document suggests that using Afghan women to speak out against the Taliban might have an impact on female audiences in the US and Europe. The cynicism is breathtaking, especially when we consider how the Taliban came into being. During the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, a group of conservative religious rebels formed to engage in resistance. They were called mujahideen, or holy warriors. The US decided that the Soviets were a threat to our interests in the Gulf, and so we began giving the mujahideen money, weapons, and CIA training. President Carter initiated the aid giving. President Reagan continued – praising the mujahideen as freedom fighters. Some of those weapons went to a new mujahideen group formed by a young rebel named Osama bin Laden. When the Russians finally left Afghanistan, the chaos the US helped along left a void filled by a new group that some of the surviving mujahideen morphed into – the Taliban. The CIA continued to arm and fund them well into the 1990’s. The Taliban is our creature, just as Saddam Hussein was. US interference in other countries politics and wars has been nothing short of disaster. We are no friend to the women in these countries.

I wonder about these becktearian faux-feminists. They claim concern for the women of Afghanistan in order to justify the ongoing war. They have no apparent concern for the US women serving in the military, despite the statistics that show that one out of every three of them will be raped by a male soldier. The becktearian contingent is silent on the horrifying reality of a backlog of some 180,000 untested rape kits sitting around in labs around the United States. They don’t seem to wonder how it is that this can happen – or how it is that cases can be closed without examining the evidence.

Their concern is solely for women who aren’t real to them – women in a war zone thousands of miles away from here. They cynically use these nameless, faceless women to justify their support for wars that have shamed us as a nation and bankrupted our treasury. It’s also safe to say that some of these same people would have voted gleefully against ratifying the 19th Amendment in 1919 – and would today, given the opportunity.


"The women's suffrage movement is only the small edge of the wedge, if we allow women to vote it will mean the loss of social structure and the rise of every liberal cause under the sun. Women are well represented by their fathers, brothers, and husbands." Winston Churchill


published as an op-ed in the August 20, 2010 edition of the Conway Daily Sun
© sbruce 2010

The Decline: The Geography of a Recession

This shows the progression of unemployment over the last decade - a frightening video by LaToya Egwuekwe. Remember, this does not include the underemployed or those who have given up.





Originally posted at MainSt/workingamerica.org

Routine Health Care Compromised by the Economy

The global economic crisis has affected routine health care more in the US than in countries that have universal systems;

The study, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, finds that “Americans, who face higher out-of-pocket health care costs, have reduced their routine medical care” much more than people in Britain, Canada, France and Germany.

and

Among Americans responding to the survey, they said, 26.5 percent reported reducing their use of routine medical care since the start of the global economic crisis in 2007.
This proportion dwarfs the comparable numbers for other countries: 5.3 percent in Canada, 7.6 percent in Britain, 10.3 percent in Germany and 12 percent in France.

“Even in countries with universal coverage, individuals pay some medical care costs out of pocket,” the researchers noted.

Cutbacks were generally correlated with the size of out-of-pocket costs, the researchers found. The proportion of people reporting reductions in routine care was smaller in Britain and Canada, where the co-payments are lower, than in France and Germany, where somewhat larger co-payments are required.

This isn't a surprise. People who have difficult choices to make about keeping a roof over the family's head and food on the table will ignore their own health issues for as long as possible. Sadly, this will mean ignoring problems until they reach a critical stage, which will mean that many will die for want of routine care.

Economic desperation is why massive free medical clinics are a draw, like this one at the beginning of the month. From HuffPo:

A massive free health clinic for uninsured people in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday morning attracted nearly two thousand people, from infants to the elderly, all taking advantage of free doctor attention, blood tests and cancer screenings they otherwise wouldn't be able to afford.

The story profiles two men in their fifties who were laid off from their good jobs where they had insurance. They just can't afford COBRA.

One of the men is quoted:

"Did I think I was gonna be coming to a free health clinic after working as a teacher for 24 years? No," he told HuffPost. "My resumé speaks for itself.

Originally posted at Main St/workingamerica.org

Sign of the Times

From CNN:

A crush of people 30,000 strong unexpectedly turned out Wednesday in hopes of getting public housing applications in East Point, Georgia, causing a panic to ensue once the process actually began, authorities said.

Crowds began gathering in the municipality on the outskirts of Atlanta as early as Monday for the applications, officials said.

and in HuffPo:

13,000 applications were handed out.

The large numbers indicate a huge demand, but there is literally no supply. The housing agency director "stressed that none of her agency's 455 housing aid vouchers is available at the moment."

and

"I find this amazing," Ed Schultz said on "The Ed Show" Wednesday night. "One can only imagine watching this videotape ... how many other cities have it like this across America. And I think we have to ask ourselves the moral question, aren't we better than this?"

East Point's approximately 200 public housing units are full, according to 11Alive, and more than 400 Section 8 vouchers are already in use. It is unlikely that many of those waiting for the applications would ever receive the housing funds.

"A lot of these folks will never get off that waitlist, and the executive director of the housing authority acknowledged that today," NBC reporter Ron Mott told Schultz. "Dozens upon dozens of people passing out from the heat, standing in the heat just to apply for public housing. ... I've got to tell you, the first thought that I had when we pulled up on the scene here was whether we were in America."

This was handled badly by the housing authority and the police, though to be fair, they couldn't have anticipated such an enormous crowd.

The desperation on display here is heartbreaking.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Originally posted at MainSt/workingamerica.org

Stories from the Road to Nowhere

Laura mentioned Paul Krugman's excellent op-ed. He and Salon.com blogger Glenn Greenwald have been thinking along similar lines. Here are some of the stories that inspired them:

The city of Camden, NJ is permanently closing it's library system by the end of the year:

Camden is preparing to permanently shut its library system by the end of the year, potentially leaving residents of the impoverished city among the few in the United States unable to borrow a library book free.

At an emotional but sparsely attended meeting of the library board Thursday, its president, Martin McKernan, said the city's three libraries cannot stay open past Dec. 31 because of severe budget cuts by Mayor Dana L. Redd.

"It's extraordinary, it's appalling," McKernan said.

All materials in the libraries would be donated, auctioned, stored, or destroyed. That includes 187,000 books, historical documents, artifacts, and electronic equipment. Keeping materials in the shuttered buildings is a fire hazard, officials said, and would make them vulnerable to vandalism and vermin.

Camden is a city of over 500,000 people, who will have no access to free books or to free library computers and internet.

Ripping up the roads:

Paved roads, historical emblems of American achievement, are being torn up across rural America and replaced with gravel or other rough surfaces as counties struggle with tight budgets and dwindling state and federal revenue. State money for local roads was cut in many places amid budget shortfalls.

In Michigan, at least 38 of the 83 counties have converted some asphalt roads to gravel in recent years. Last year, South Dakota turned at least 100 miles of asphalt road surfaces to gravel. Counties in Alabama and Pennsylvania have begun downgrading asphalt roads to cheaper chip-and-seal road, also known as "poor man's pavement." Some counties in Ohio are simply letting roads erode to gravel.

Remember when America's roadways and highways were something to be proud of?

Utah looks at making the senior year of high school optional:

The sudden buzz over the relative value of senior year stems from a recent proposal by state Sen. Chris Buttars that Utah make a dent in its budget gap by eliminating the 12th grade.

The notion quickly gained some traction among supporters who agreed with the Republican's assessment that many seniors frittered away their final year of high school, but faced vehement opposition from other quarters, including in his hometown of West Jordan.

"My parents are against it," Williams said. "All the teachers at the school are against it. I'm against it."

Buttars has since toned down the idea, suggesting instead that senior year become optional for students who complete their required credits early. He estimated the move could save up to $60 million, the Salt Lake Tribune reported.

There's more. In the NY Times we learn of a Georgia public bus system being shut down completely:

Many transit systems have cut service to make ends meet, but Clayton County, Ga., a suburb of Atlanta, decided to cut all the way, and shut down its entire public bus system. Its last buses ran on March 31, stranding 8,400 daily riders.

and Hawaii furloughed schools:

Plenty of businesses and governments furloughed workers this year, but Hawaii went further — it furloughed its schoolchildren. Public schools across the state closed on 17 Fridays during the past school year to save money, giving students the shortest academic year in the nation and sending working parents scrambling to find care for them.


We're in a big, big mess - and there aren't any real solutions being offered. Cutting taxes for the wealthy isn't going to dig us out of this hole. Worrying about the deficit isn't going to dig us out. Cutting food stamps or Social Security isn't the way forward. President Obama has said that everything other than defense is on the chopping block. We are supporting over 1000 overseas military bases. Is this really making us stronger or safer? If we can cut food to hungry families without even blinking, we shouldn't be afraid of reevaluating how we spend our defense dollars.


originally posted at MainSt/workingamerica.org

The Mad Hatter's Tea Party

This could have been a boring mid-term election season, but thankfully, we have the tea partiers to liven things up. Rand Paul, Sharron Angle, Sarah Palin – the fun just never stops. Tea Partiers complain that they’re fed up, and they’re a legitimate political movement, but it’s difficult to take them seriously when they appear to be channeling the Mad Hatter.

Take Rand Paul, the Tea Party candidate who won the Republican primary in Kentucky in the race to replace retiring US Senator Jim Bunning. Right after winning the primary, he was caught up in controversy over his remarks about the Civil Rights Act and the Americans With Disabilities Act. He said that he’s in favor of ending discrimination, but opposed to telling business owners that they can’t discriminate, and that’s pretty much what he said about the ADA. Not only did he say this stuff, he went on television to justify it. That didn’t go well for him. Apparently the GOP hasn’t been able to reel him in, because he steps in it every time he opens his mouth. After the Deepwater Horizon explosion, where 11 people were killed, and millions of gallons of oil drained into the ocean, Mr. Paul’s sympathies were with BP. He told Good Morning America that “accidents happen” and that President Obama was “un-American in his criticism of business.”

Shortly after that, the disavowals began. Mark Meckler of the Tea Party Patriots said of Rand Paul, “He’s a politician. HE doesn’t represent the movement on anything regardless of what he says.”

Since then, Rand Paul has gone on to further distinguish himself with his knowledge of coal mining in Kentucky. At a campaign stop at the Harlan Center, Paul was asked about the disaster at the Big Branch Mine, where 29 miners were killed. Paul said,” "Is there a certain amount of accidents and unfortunate things that do happen, no matter what the regulations are?" Paul says at the Harlan Center, in response to a question about the Big Branch disaster. "The bottom line is I'm not an expert, so don't give me the power in Washington to be making rules. You live here, and you have to work in the mines. You'd try to make good rules to protect your people here. If you don't, I'm thinking that no one will apply for those jobs.” It’s a charmingly naive Libertarian viewpoint, to think that no one will apply for jobs in a dangerous setting, but it’s not based in any kind of reality. The mine had been cited for over 1300 safety violations over a 5-year period. Sometimes an accident is not an accident. This Randian philosophy hasn’t endeared him to coal miners, who rely on safety regulations to protect them. Paul also believes that business should be self-regulating, a tired bit of baloney that is continually recycled by people who work behind desks.

Another Tea Partier running for the US Senate is Sharron Angle of Nevada. Last week, I mistakenly gave her credit for the plan to barter health care for chickens. That was Sue Lowden, who was apparently so crazy that Sharron Angle defeated her in the primary. Angle’s been in the news this week, because a reporter unearthed an interview where she discussed her belief that the agenda of the Democrats are a “violation of the first commandment.” Not amendment. Commandment. Angle is in favor of a theocracy, and in her view, social programs being pushed by Democrats are turning our government into God. Apparently Ms. Angle’s Bible is uncluttered with all that stuff about compassion, and caring for the poor and needy. Angle is opposed to abortion even in the case of rape or incest. She advocates that young women pregnant by rape or incest should “turn lemons into lemonade” by having the baby. One wonders if she would counsel a family member in the same way – and one is certain that Ms. Angle has never been raped. She wants to make Nevada the spent nuclear fuel capital, by promoting the waste dump at Yucca Mountain. Angle also called the escrow fund for victims of the oil spill set up by BP “a slush fund.” She backtracked on that pretty quickly, though; later saying it was “an important first step.” In any case, a Republican with a pulse and a flag lapel pin should be able to beat Harry Reid in this election – but Tea Party Sharron is apparently too crazy for Nevada.

Meanwhile, back home in New Hampshire, the Tea Party is hard at work. Tea Partiers claim to be opposed to government interference, but it’s hard to see any sign of that at the NH Tea Party Coalition website. They’re opposed to marriage equality – which means they support government interference in our private lives. They’re opposed to abortion, which means they support government interference in women’s lives. They claim that schools are for brainwashing children, which does make a certain amount of sense. People who lack literacy and critical thinking skills would be far more likely to blindly follow these Tea Partiers. There’s plenty of talk about “socialism” a term always erroneously used by teabaggers and Republicans. They support the Arizona immigration laws, but they aren’t racists.

Of course not. Tea Partiers claim to be defenders of the Constitution, and angry about runaway government spending. It’s surely a coincidence that they ignored the Patriot Act and the decadent spending of the Bush administration – and chose to form up during the administration of our first black president. Are we the Dormouse, or are they?


“Up above the world you fly,
Like a tea tray in the sky.
Twinkle, twinkle, little bat!
How I wonder what you're at!”

The Mad Hatter, in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland


published as an op-ed in the August 6, 2010 edition of the Conway Daily Sun
© sbruce 2010

Job insecurity and Stagnant Wages

Financial Insecurity in the USA

Insecurity in America is on the rise—and was even before the Great Recession.

The Rockefeller Foundation just released a study of economic insecurity in America, which was developed by Yale professor Jacob Hacker and measures harsh changes in circumstance: For example, it reveals how many Americans have been subjected to a staggering decline of 25 percent of "available household income," either from loss of income or sudden, unanticipated out-of-pocket medical costs, and how many were without the savings to buffer the damage. Brutal losses such as these take six to eight years to recover from, the report said.


A 25% decline in household income? Surely this can't be common.

Economic insecurity affected 12.2 percent of Americans in 1985 and spiked to 17 percent during the 2000 downturn. In 2007, when economists were celebrating "the Great Moderation," insecurity was higher than in 1985, affecting 13.7 percent of Americans. In 2009, after the downturn, Hacker estimates that one in five Americans was hit with a 25 percent decline in available household income. And the report estimates that between 1996 and 2006—before the collapse—fully 60 percent experienced such loss.

One in five families in 2009? That's pretty common.

But Ben Bernacke says:

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said rising wages would probably spur household spending in the next few quarters, even as weak job gains dragged down consumer confidence.

He never tells us where these rising wages will come from. Wall St. would be my guess.

On Main St. workers are actually being subjected to pay cuts:

The furloughs that popped up during the recession are being replaced by a highly unusual tactic: actual cuts in pay.

Local and state governments, as well as some companies, are squeezing their employees to work the same amount for less money in cost-saving measures that are often described as a last-ditch effort to avoid layoffs.

Let's be clear. These are not pay freezes - these are actual pay cuts.

It is impossible to say how many employers have cut workers’ pay, because the government does not keep such statistics. Economists say a modest but growing number of employers have ordered wage cuts, especially in the public sector. In a 2010 survey by the National League of Cities, 51 percent of the cities that responded said they had either cut or frozen salaries of city employees, 22 percent said they had revised union contracts to reduce some pay and benefits, and 19 percent said they had instituted furloughs.

Some businesses are also cutting workers’ pay, often to help stay afloat or to eliminate their losses, although a few have seized on the slack labor market and workers’ weak bargaining power to cut pay and thereby increase their profits and competitiveness.

Right now workers will agree to almost anything to stay employed and some businesses are willing to hold workers hostage by threatening their jobs.

At a time when the official unemployment rate is nearly 10%, it's shocking to learn that USAID (US Agency for International Development) is contributing to train offshore IT workers:

Despite President Obama's pledge to retain more hi-tech jobs in the U.S., a federal agency run by a hand-picked Obama appointee has launched a $36 million program to train workers, including 3,000 specialists in IT and related functions, in South Asia.

Following their training, the tech workers will be placed with outsourcing vendors in the region that provide offshore IT and business services to American companies looking to take advantage of the Asian subcontinent's low labor costs.

Roger Smith spoke with the CEO of Engine Yard, Lance Walley, about their Ruby and Rails deployment platform.
Under director Rajiv Shah, the United States Agency for International Development will partner with private outsourcers in Sri Lanka to teach workers there advanced IT skills like Enterprise Java (Java EE) programming, as well as skills in business process outsourcing and call center support. USAID will also help the trainees brush up on their English language proficiency.

USAID is contributing about $10 million to the effort, while its private partners are investing roughly $26 million.

This is one unholy partnership. USAID is working with US companies (using some of our tax dollars) to help them avoid paying US labor costs by training overseas workers to get jobs, at a time when so many Americans are out of work.

The mind boggles.


Originally posted at MainSt/workingamerica.org

Robbing the Poor Instead of Cutting Corporate Welfare

States are begging for federal aid. And this week, the Senate is voting on an aid package that would give states Medicaid dollars, as well as money to keep teachers on the payroll. There is a catch. The money for this aid will be taken from SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program - formerly known as food stamps.

That's right. To pass this aid package, the Senate is willing to take food away from children and families:

But to gain the votes of the Republicans necessary for passage, the bill includes “pay fors” to make it deficit-neutral. There is language to close a foreign tax credit loophole, raising $9 billion. Billions more come from tinkering with Medicaid drug prices and rescinding unspent funds from a variety of programs. But controversially, the bill will also likely slash $6.7 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, the benefits formerly known as food stamps. This might result in a cut in benefit checks from one month to the next — an unprecedented event in the history of the benefit.

American food stamps are not generous, averaging only $4.50 a day even after being bumped up in the recession-era stimulus — less than you’d need to buy two meals at McDonald’s. And since the start of the recession, the number of families depending on them has skyrocketed. The economic crisis has pushed 12.9 million people into SNAP; as of April, more than 40 million collect the bare-bones benefits. More than 6 million Americans report no income whatsoever except for SNAP — because they are not eligible for unemployment insurance, Social Security, disability or other programs.

and:

Still, the suggestion caused outrage on the Hill. The House Appropriations Committee originated the education-jobs provision in a war supplemental bill, and in an interview with the Fiscal Times, its chair, Rep. Dave Obey (D-Wis.), first revealed that the White House had suggested cutting SNAP early in the summer.

“We were told we have to offset every damn dime of [new teacher spending]. Well, it ain’t easy to find offsets, and with all due respect to the administration their first suggestion for offsets was to cut food stamps. Now they were careful not to make an official budget request, because they didn’t want to take the political heat for it, but that was the first trial balloon they sent down here,” he said.

It ain't easy to find offsets? He's joking, right?

But this is also a question of priorities, of what gets cut. Bernie Sanders put up an amendment last month to cut about $35 billion in oil and gas subsidies. It failed. Republicans are arguing to extend Bush's tax cuts for the rich with no offsets, and they may well succeed. But food assistance for poor families? You can get the votes to slash those.

How can this be? Sadly, it all comes down to money and influence:

The oil and gas industry, of which BP is a member, reported $169 million in 2009 lobbying expenditures.

Poor people spent $0 on lobbying.


Originally posted at Main St/workingamerica.org

More Stories of the New Homeless

A while back I wrote about The New Homeless, and took a look at why it is we hear so little about them. In 2009, tent city stories were all the rage. In 2010, the most visible tent cities have been broken up and residents dispersed by the town fathers. As the numbers of homeless families increase, the media coverage decreases. A little digging finds a few stories:

In the Las Vegas Sun:

Before the recession, Michelle and her then-boyfriend, John Brower, led a relatively happy life. He worked at a grocery store, she as a waitress and then at the crafts store. She hoped to go back to college.

Like thousands of other residents, the Browers, now married, had lived paycheck to paycheck. They teetered on the brink of homelessness for the better part of a decade. If one of the longtime Las Vegans lost a job, eviction wasn’t far behind.

They wound up living in a tent in a homeless encampment in the desert. Michelle was pregnant.

But getting out of the desert is harder than ever amid the recession, the Browers say. You need to create and print resumes, you need a phone, and you need clean clothes for interviews. Getting all of that lined up takes a lot longer when you have to ride a bus for two hours across town just to shower and the only phone you have is at a friend’s house.

and

In 2009, an estimated 13,350 homeless people were in Clark County, according to county records. That’s 17 percent over 2007 numbers.

Of those, about 6,640 were living on the streets or in the desert.

The National Alliance to End Homelessness says that’s a drop in the bucket. The group says there are 39,760 Nevadans, mostly in Southern Nevada, couch surfing or in families that are “doubling up” in single-family homes to share expenses. It claims Las Vegas has the fourth highest homelessness rate in the country, behind Detroit, New York City and Los Angeles.

Maybe I'm being naive, but shouldn't nearly 40,000 homeless folks in the southern part of one state be a big news story?


A recent NPR story looked at the phenomenon of homeless college students:

Antonio Sandoval, head of UCLA's Community Programs Office, says he doesn't have the exact number of students experiencing the day-to-day hardship of food and shelter because they often keep it hidden.

"It's very affluent here, it's Westwood, Bel Air, Beverly Hills," Sandoval says. "Students who come to UCLA want to fit the norm here, so they're not going to tell you they're homeless, or they're not going to tell you they're hungry.

Just down the hall from Sandoval's office is an unmarked door. Inside is a converted utility closet filled with food. There's a refrigerator stocked with fruit cups, yogurt, juices and milk. Next to the fridge is a pantry.

"It has a lot of soups and main meals you can cook like macaroni and cheese," explains Abdallah Jadallah, a 22-year-old engineering student.

Jadallah says he got the idea for the food closet after noticing a number of students were going hungry. The food is donated..

As Antonio Sandoval points out - this is at UCLA, which is smack dab in the middle of California affluence. Imagine the stories that aren't being reported in the other 49 states.

HBO is currently showing a new documentary called Homeless: The Motel Kids of Orange County

The film takes a look at the lives of families who work hard, but don't earn enough money to be able to afford housing in one of the wealthiest areas in the nation - and what life is like for children growing up with no fixed address.


Originally posted at Main St/workingamerica.org

So Much for the Conventional Wisdom

We keep hearing that when the economy begins to turn around, businesses will start to hire. Well, it ain't necessarily so:

Motorcycle sales are falling in 2010, as they have for each of the last three years. The company does not expect a turnaround anytime soon.

But despite that drought, Harley’s profits are rising — soaring, in fact. Last week, Harley reported a $71 million profit in the second quarter, more than triple what it earned a year ago.

That's impressive! But:

Many companies are focusing on cost-cutting to keep profits growing, but the benefits are mostly going to shareholders instead of the broader economy, as management conserves cash rather than bolstering hiring and production. Harley, for example, has announced plans to cut 1,400 to 1,600 more jobs by the end of next year. That is on top of 2,000 job cuts last year — more than a fifth of its work force.

and:

Because of high unemployment, management is using its leverage to get more hours out of workers,” said Robert C. Pozen, a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School and the former president of Fidelity Investments. “What’s worrisome is that American business has gotten used to being a lot leaner, and it could take a while before they start hiring again.”

What's worrisome to me is that businesses may choose to perpetuate high unemployment.

Harley has warned union employees at its Milwaukee factory that it would move production elsewhere in the United States if they did not agree to more flexible work rules and tens of millions in cost-saving measures.

This could be a frightening new US reality - companies holding workers hostage, in exchange for jobs.


originally posted at MainSt/workingamerica.org

Granny Grizzly's Latest Endorsement

Sarah Palin, self-styled “Mama Grizzly” (which apparently sounds more Alaska folksy than "lipstick wearing pit-bull") endorsed US Senate candidate Kelly Ayotte this week. Ms. Ayotte is one of the seven Republicans in the field of 14 candidates running to replace retiring Senator Judd Gregg. Apparently Ms. Ayotte is thrilled to be chosen as a “Mama Grizzly” since Palin’s endorsement is the very second thing one sees on her website. The first thing one sees is a face shot of Sarah Palin. The third thing one notices is a rather odd profile shot of Ms. Ayotte, taken from the back. Apparently the endorsement of the linguistically, geographically, and factually challenged Palin is quite a coup. Mrs. Palin has also endorsed Sharonn Angle, who is running for US Senate against Harry Reid, in Nevada. Angle proposed returning to the health care system where folks paid for medical care with chickens. Palin also endorsed Rand Paul of Kentucky, who hasn’t been able to take his foot out of his mouth since he won the primary. Maybe she likes his shoes. The most amusing bit of fallout from the grizzly endorsement of Ayotte was a front page comment in the Union Leader from Joe McQuaid, who seems quite unimpressed with Mrs. Palin.

Sarah Palin and Kelly Ayotte do have some things in common. Both are considered politically conservative. Palin is trying to recreate herself as a “conservative feminist,” which Ayotte, so far, has (wisely) steered clear of, despite the fact that both of them are against a woman’s right to bodily autonomy and reproductive choice. Palin praised Ayotte, claiming she “battled all the way to the US Supreme Court to protect the rights of NH parents – and won!” It’s true that as NH Attorney General, in 2005, Ayotte defended an NH parental notification bill before the Supreme Court. It’s also true that SCOTUS sent the case back to the federal court that declared it unconstitutional, because it made no exception for the possibility of a medical emergency that could threaten the health or even life of a minor child. The law was later repealed. This is hardly the victory that Palin is claiming it was – but – she and Ayotte are both counting on the fact the media is little more than a stenographer for the GOP, especially in NH. The obedient media does not question or counter misinformation or even outright lies.

There are the occasional exceptions. NHPR’s Josh Rogers took Kelly Ayotte to task last week for one of her favorite outright lies. Ayotte has repeatedly stated that Arizona has the second highest rate of kidnapping in the world. This isn’t true. She’s been made aware that it isn’t true, yet she continues to say it. According to a May 2010 story by Dennis Wagner in the Arizona Republic, the crime rate along the Arizona border has remained flat for the last decade. Statewide, rates of violent crime are down. The sheriff of Pima County calls all of the rhetoric, “a media created event.” Arizona Senator John McCain has generated plenty of that rhetoric himself, and now he’s being assisted by Kelly Ayotte. Take some time to ponder the recent revival of the immigration issue, and how “urgent” it has become. Think about when immigration started to become a hot topic again. Then think about what’s coming up in November.

What are most working folks concerned with right now? Either keeping their jobs or finding one. What are they getting from the politicians on the right? A lot of distraction about immigration, abortion, and marriage equality. This is all meant to divert attention from the sad reality that the GOP hasn’t any kind of plans to offer – just the usual cut taxes and cut spending baloney, served up with a side of dishonesty. Oh, how they wail that we are being taxed too much – yet in 2009, we paid lower federal taxes than we have since 1950. The Bush tax cuts, once touted as the fastest way to create jobs, are still in place, yet the jobs never materialized. The Republicans have been trying since the Reagan years to convince us that tax cuts for the wealthy are the way to create employment. It hasn’t worked. If it did work, over 5 million jobs would not have been lost during the Bush administration. It doesn’t work – but that won’t deter our doughty friends on the right from doing their best to help the rich get even richer.

Foster’s Daily Democrat published an opinion piece by Kelly Ayotte this week, where she promises that cutting taxes will jump start the economy. She also promises she will end the “death tax” which is what the defenders of the wealthy like to call the estate tax. They used to wail about how the death tax would kill family farms, before it was proven that hardly any family farms would be affected. NH abolished the estate tax some years back. Naturally, the one thing Ms. Ayotte doesn’t propose cutting is the defense budget. The GOP is only too happy to keep on borrowing and spending to perpetuate the war machine.

There is one more thing that Palin and Ayotte have in common. They’re both quitters. Sarah Palin quit her job as governor of Alaska, before finishing her first term. Kelly Ayotte quit her job only months after promising Governor Lynch that she would serve a full second term as NH AG. Ms. Ayotte was appointed to her first term by the GOP Governor-of-Whom-We-Don’t-Speak: Craig Benson.

"I like being here, because it seems like here and in our last rally too -- other parts around this great Northwest -- here in New Hampshire you just get it." Sarah Palin in Laconia, 2008


published as an op-ed in the Conway Daily Sun newspaper, July 23, 2010

© sbruce 2010

Becoming Less Invisible

The long term unemployed are finally becoming less invisible. From the PBS The Nightly Business Report:

DARREN GERSH, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT CORRESPONDENT: The official figures will tell you there are 1,371,000 people like Randy Moe.

RANDY MOE, 99ER CHICAGO: I was unemployed, laid off, August 15, 2008, and collected benefits until about six weeks ago.

GERSH: That's because Moe hit the limit on benefits. In most states, that's 99 weeks, which is why many of those who have run out call themselves "99ers."

MOE: We've become thrown away people. They're losing a lot of valuable people, the country is.

GERSH: Randy Moe found other 99ers online. A dozen meet regularly in this chat room. They talk about finding a job and about lobbying Congress for help. They're part of a grassroots movement to add what's called a tier five to unemployment insurance -- another 20 weeks of benefits.

Websites for the unemployed are cropping up:

Jobless Bloggers

No Job Survivor

Survive Unemployment News Blog

Unemploymentality

Unemploymentality has a lot of links to other unemployed bloggers, some helpful options (look for Broke-Ass Stuart's money saving recommendations) and there's also plenty of entertainment.

The only way to end long term unemployment is to put a human face on it.


cross posted at Main St/workingamerica.org

Senate Gamesmanship Hurting Families

Those pesky unemployed folks - from WaPo:

Even before his unemployment checks ended, Dwight Michael Frazee's days were filled with the pursuit of any idea that could earn him a buck. But few are working out, and now his nights are filled with dread.

In the coming weeks, the Senate is expected to resume its debate about whether to extend the emergency jobless benefits that were passed in response to the steep increase in unemployment caused by the recession. But people like Frazee, who have suffered the longest in the downturn, will not be part of that conversation. They are among the 1.4 million workers who have been unemployed for at least 99 weeks, according to the Labor Department, reaching the limit for the insurance. Their numbers have grown sixfold in the past three years.

The 99ers are glaring examples of the nation's most serious bout of long-term joblessness since the Great Depression. Nearly 46 percent of the country's 14.6 million unemployed people have been out of work for more than six months, and forecasters project that the situation will not improve anytime soon. Currently, the Labor Department says there are nearly five unemployed people for every job opening.

As grim as the news is, at least the media is beginning to cover actual stories of folks who are amongst the long term unemployed.

The Grand Junction Sentinel takes a look at an unemployed single father:

Daniel Stark didn’t have the best Fourth of July weekend of his life.

That’s because the Clifton resident is worried about the immediate future for him and his 6-year-old son, Isaiah.

Stark has been unemployed for more than a year and is about to see his unemployment benefits run out. He’s angry not only because he can’t find a new job, but also because Congress hasn’t extended those benefits.

A bill to do that has stalled in the U.S. Senate several times.

“I’ve talked to everyone, my senators, my congressman,” he said. “They need to know that they’re impacting people who are really hurting. A lot of people are scared to tell them that, but I’m not. I just want this to be over so I can find work.”

Stark and his son have already spent time in a homeless shelter. That's the reality of the game that is being played out in the Senate.

Ezra Klein in the WaPo gives us a look at the numbers of long term unemployed since the 50's:



Klein asks:

Unemployment is likely to remain above 9 percent for the rest of this year, and for much of next. That means the ranks of the long-term unemployed will swell even further. As you can see in the graph atop this post, that's been the trend so far in this recession, and it's not likely to stop now. And we're just going to leave them without incomes and without job opportunities and without money to spend in their wrecked local economies -- thus making it harder for those economies to generate new jobs? That's the economic theory this country is going to embrace amid terrible joblessness?

Sadly, this does seem to be the economic theory that the US intends to embrace. That's why, in my humble, long-term unemployed opinion, the stories of what this is doing to people must be told. Loudly.


cross-posted at Main St/workingamerica.org

Census Jobs Ending

The temporary census jobs are wrapping up, and hundreds of thousands of newly unemployed workers will be pouring in to the already flooded job market:

Now, its decennial work largely done, the Census Bureau is shedding hundreds of thousands of workers — about 225,000 in just the last few weeks, enough to account for a jot or two in the unemployment rate, say federal economists. Most of those remaining will be gone by August; a few will last into September.

Usually the census has trouble getting enough people to stay on to finish the job. Not this year:

“Typically, at this point in the process, we’re losing a lot of people because they’re taking jobs,” said Kathleen Ludgate, the regional director in Boston. “I wish we had that problem now.”

Ms. Ludgate receives notes from departing workers, some by e-mail, others in ink. They thank her for the chance to learn something about themselves and their country. They write to say their confidence had picked up, that they can again meet the gaze of friends and neighbors.

These are the missives of hard-working people who found themselves in a tighter spot than they ever expected, and who came to view census work as a lifeline.

Many are middle-aged. The census offices in Providence and Bridgeport, Conn., offer a sea of gray-haired men and women in neat office garb. They work with an intensity that suggests they would rather concentrate on the task at hand than the fast-approaching end.

How will this affect the unemployment numbers? From The Atlantic:

According to these projections and the actual results in June, it would mean a summer of 329,000 net job losses. It could take until winter before the labor market gets those back through three months of net positive gains, unless jobs grow at a rate of more than 110,000 per month starting in September. That might not sound like much, but so far this year, only two months -- March and April -- have seen non-Census job growth exceed 100,000.

At this rate, millions of unemployed people are likely to be unemployed for years to come.


cross-posted at Main St/workingamerica.org

NH's Rand Paul

New Hampshire has a primary election in September that will winnow the field of candidates for some of the races. One of the GOP gubernatorial hopefuls recently stopped by the Conway Daily Sun, for an interview. Jack Kimball is a seacoast area businessman, who described himself as the “warrior” in the race. (Some men never recover from high school football.) He was honest enough to say that he’s not “the establishment” candidate. This is true. He’s called Glenn Beck an “American hero,” which reportedly provoked a fresh outburst of Beck tears. Kimball is a tea partier, and a member of Beck’s 912 Project. This is the same Glenn Beck who said, “But when I see 9/11 victim family, you know, on television, or whatever, I’m just like, ‘Oh, shut up.’ I’m so sick of them. Because they’re always complaining.” Some hero.

Jack Kimball achieved national notoriety on April 15, when he spoke at the Concord Tax Day Tea Party rally. That day the tea partiers had a number of events around the state to show their ire at paying taxes. They were in Market Square in Portsmouth, at the docks in Wolfeboro, and in front of the State House in Concord. All of these are public places, paid for by – you guessed it! The very same tax dollars that the tea partiers are so opposed to paying. The Concord Monitor quoted Kimball:

In Concord, gubernatorial candidate Jack Kimball drew cheers with an anti-tax message. He decried the state's taxation of business while criticizing its relatively low level of services."I don't mind paying my fair share, folks," he said. "I don't think any of us do. But I do mind when I'm raped. It's awful."

News outlets and blogs around the nation picked up on Mr. Kimball’s trivialization of a serious crime, used to score cheap political points. If Kimball ever had a man put a gun to his head and rape him, or a group of men beat him up, hold him down and gang rape him, he wouldn’t be using the term so blithely. One in six women is raped during her lifetime. One in four women on college campuses is raped. One in three women serving in the US military in Iraq is going to be raped by a fellow soldier. One in 33 men will be raped in his lifetime. The Concord Monitor got so much mail about the story on Kimball, he felt compelled to offer up a very GOP apology:

“I used the term ‘rape’ talking about taxation at the Tea Party in Concord. I think the Concord Monitor took the remark out of context and there has been a lot of negative reaction. People that know me know that I don’t say things to purposefully hurt people. “I want to apologize to anyone that is offended. My remark was clearly not intended to offend people.”

Not exactly a foray into the land of personal responsibility. I’ve listened to the tape. That is exactly what he said – that is the context. In this insincere excuse Kimball blames the CM for taking his remarks out of context. He blames people for being offended. The one thing he doesn’t do is offer a sincere apology.

Jack Kimball is also well known for the reader board sign in front of his business on the Route 1 Bypass in Portsmouth. He uses the sign to express his beliefs like, “NH has the highest business taxes in the US.” According to the Small Business and Entrepreneurial Council, NH doesn’t even make the top ten list of states with the highest business taxes. Four New England states make their top ten list, but NH isn’t one of them. New Jersey is number one. This dishonest bit of hyperbole is especially disappointing coming from one of Beck’s 912 Project acolytes. The third of the project’s nine principles is: “I must always try to be a more honest person than I was yesterday.” It does say try. No mention of succeed.

Kimball’s website is all that one would expect from a far right Republitealican. Lots of commentary about liberty and freedom from gummint interference, while informing us that he’s against a woman’s right to bodily autonomy and opposed to marriage equality. All that liberty and freedom is for folks who aren’t female or gay. He recites the standard issue NH GOP mantra, “NH doesn’t have a revenue problem, NH has a spending problem.” He blames business taxes for everything. No mention of property taxes. No mention of the role that the Bush administration played in destroying the US economy. The magic slate of Bush responsibility was wiped clean the day Obama took office -isn’t that right, Ralph from Eaton?

Kimball has a lot to say about socialism, so I was shocked to learn that he actually supports socialist practices. The free market doesn’t support nuclear power, which is why no plants have been built in over 30 years. The US Dept. of Energy has $18.5 billion in loan guarantees for nuke plant builders in 2010. Obama has asked for $35.5 billion in the 2011 budget. Included in the emergency supplemental bill passed by the House on July 1 was $9 billion more for new nuke loans. Let’s be clear – these are loans. If the loans are defaulted upon, we the taxpayers pick up the tab. As I’ve pointed out before, the nuclear industry is one long taxpayer subsidy from inception to decommissioning. The taxpayers pay for the building of the plant, pay for insuring the plant, pay for the cleanup if there’s an accident, and pay for the decommissioning, which is always more than the owners have saved up for. The only thing the taxpayers don’t get is a share in the profits. The most devoted free marketers seem to find socialist nuclear power perfectly acceptable.

Kimball’s list of endorsements is full of people you’ve never heard of. The NH GOP seems to be lining up behind John Stephen. Stephen, though better known, is joining the ranks of Jim Coburn and Joe Kenney as the latest sacrificial lamb to be led slaughter against the popular Governor Lynch. I’m betting that NH GOP Chairman John Sununu Sr. would be about as happy to have Kimball win the primary as the Republicans in Kentucky were to end up with Rand Paul. The tea partiers are even nuttier than the standard issue GOP, and that’s saying something.

“Finally a guy who says what the people who aren’t thinking are thinking.” Jon Stewart


Published in the Conway Daily Sun on July 9, 2010
© sbruce 2010

States Continue Layoffs

The city of Lawrence, MA has just laid off 23 firefighters, and closed a third fire station, in an attempt to balance the budget. This is especially alarming in a city that has been called "the arson capital of the world."

The Los Angeles County Office of Education has just laid of 177 employees.

In Grand Rapids, Michigan the school board approved layoff notices to 71 employees.

The Miami-Dade budget, recently proposed by the mayor, includes 900 layoffs.

In New Orleans, 38 civilian members of the police department and 12 recruits training at the Police Academy were fired:

Twenty-three of the dismissed employees were communications operators, which are the people who staff the 911 lines that take emergency calls.

In a city troubled by violence and high muder rates, this is quite disturbing.

No word from the deficit peacocks on how having even more unemployed folks with fewer dollars will help decrease the deficit.


cross-posted at Main St/workingamerica.org

Lessons We Failed to Learn in 1928

Robert Reich in The Nation:

Wall Street's banditry was the proximate cause of the Great Recession, not its underlying cause. Even if the Street is better controlled in the future (and I have my doubts), the structural reason for the Great Recession still haunts America. That reason is America's surging inequality.

Consider: in 1928 the richest 1 percent of Americans received 23.9 percent of the nation's total income. After that, the share going to the richest 1 percent steadily declined. New Deal reforms, followed by World War II, the GI Bill and the Great Society expanded the circle of prosperity. By the late 1970s the top 1 percent raked in only 8 to 9 percent of America's total annual income. But after that, inequality began to widen again, and income reconcentrated at the top. By 2007 the richest 1 percent were back to where they were in 1928—with 23.5 percent of the total.

Apparently we didn't learn anything at all from the Depression. Only fifty years later:

But starting in the late 1970s, and with increasing fervor over the next three decades, government did just the opposite. It deregulated and privatized. It increased the cost of public higher education and cut public transportation. It shredded safety nets. It halved the top income tax rate from the range of 70–90 percent that prevailed during the 1950s and '60s to 28–40 percent; it allowed many of the nation's rich to treat their income as capital gains subject to no more than 15 percent tax and escape inheritance taxes altogether. At the same time, America boosted sales and payroll taxes, both of which have taken a bigger chunk out of the pay of the middle class and the poor than of the well-off.

It makes one wonder why we bother to study history at all. Unless we're willing to engage in stern regulation and address the structural problems, this sort of economic devastation will continue to occur.

Containing the immediate financial crisis and then claiming the economy was on the mend left the public with a diffuse set of economic problems that seemed unrelated and inexplicable, as if a town's fire chief dealt with a conflagration by protecting the biggest office buildings but leaving smaller fires simmering all over town: housing foreclosures, job losses, lower earnings, less economic security, soaring pay on Wall Street and in executive suites.

Precisely. The "small people" are left holding the bag, while Wall St. and the banks rake in the big pay and bonuses. Again.


cross-posted at MainSt/workingamerica.org