"Asset Poor" Households Growing in Number

A new report by the Corporation for Enterprise Development (CFED) shows a major increase in what they call "asset poor" households:

In the United States, 27 percent of all households are “asset poor,” meaning they lack the savings or other assets to cover basic expenses for just three months if a layoff or other emergency
leads to loss of income, according to the 2012 Assets & Opportunity Scorecard, released today by the
Corporation for Enterprise Development (CFED). Since the release of the 2009-2010 Assets & Opportunity Scorecard, the number of asset poor families has increased by 21 percent from one in five families to one in
four families. The asset poverty rate is now nearly twice as high as the Census Bureau’s official income
poverty rate of 15.1 percent.

An increase of 21% is certainly significant.

“Growing numbers of families have almost no savings or other assets to see them through if they lose their jobs or face a medical crisis,” said Andrea Levere, president of CFED. “Without savings, few will be able to build a more economically secure future, including buying a home, saving for their children’s college educations or building a retirement nest egg.”

Levere added that the Scorecard findings are “particularly disturbing in the context of precipitous drops in
incomes for many Americans and widening of the wealth gap between the richest and poorest households.”

Last year Business Insider provided us with 15 graphs looking at income inequality and wealth in the US. Graph #5 illustrates the flat wages many of us have experienced since at least 1990.

A look at key findings from the report shows something of crucial importance:

One in five jobs (22 percent) is low wage and nearly half of employers (46 percent) do not offer health insurance. Most workers (55 percent) do not have or participate in retirement plans. These low- quality jobs make it harder for families to both meet their needs today and create a reserve for tomorrow.

As wages continue to stagnate, good paying jobs are replaced with low wage jobs, and the costs of housing, food, transportation, heating oil, and everything else continue to rise, how will people save for the future, when they can't even make ends meet in the present?

And why aren't the presidential candidates talking about this?


cross-posted at MainSt/workingamerica.org

Shakir E-Mails Immortalized

Regular readers and locals will remember this name: Ray Shakir. Ray, a guy who made his money in NY, (at a union job, no less) moved to NH to tell folks here how to spend THEIR money, mostly by not educating kids. He's written obnoxious letters to the editor of the Conway Daily Sun newspaper for years, shooting his mouth off at every opportunity. He went a little too far, in a series of emails where he referred to President Obama as a "jungle alien" and a "n*gger." Shakir's racism went national, thanks to a story in Mother Jones magazine. He's been a little subdued since then. GOP candidates don't come to his house or his parties any more. His letters to the paper are infrequent, and no longer reach the soaring heights of bellicosity he could command.

This is the same sweet guy who sent a letter to the paper after I hit a moose with my car in 2003, and commented that it was too bad I hadn't been killed in the crash.

Ray's email exchange with one local resident has been immortalized forever by xtranormal:

Take Down the Tea Party Ten

The folks at CREDO Action have formed a Super Pac, intended to: Take Down the Tea Party Ten in 2012. The Super Pac has chosen 6 (so far) of the 10 worst offenders from the Tea Party House. The biggest offenders in the areas of : Sexism, racism, science denial, hypocrisy, and of course sheer crazy.

So, what's the point? One of the chosen is our very own NH CD 1 Congressman Frank Guinta. Frank of the "forgotten" $350,000 bank account. Frank who would force a rape victim to incubate the spawn of her rapist. Frank who voted against additional FEMA funding to help our state rebuild after Hurricane Irene devastated parts of the state. Frank whose allegiance is to the Koch Brothers, not the people of District One. Frank who got elected with the help of the Tea Party, but didn't even join their caucus.



The CREDO Super Pac is going to be funded with small donations, and unlike the other Super Pacs, will also be transparent. No secrets about where the money came from. The Super Pac will be used to pay for offices in each of the targeted districts, to pay organizing staff, new media folks - who will roll up their sleeves and get to work on throwing the bums out. CREDO has over 2.5 million activists around the country, waiting to get involved.

This is a campaign to oust. Not a campaign to elect. The folks working for various candidates can take care of that.

So far the rest of the Big Ten list consists of: Joe Walsh, Sean Duffy, Steve King, Chip Cravaack, and Allan West. The remaining 4 of the Big Ten will be chosen soon.

The CREDO Super Pac is planning to put a lot of resources into ousting the odious. As we learned in 2006, committed citizen activists can have a huge impact on an election. We kicked Jeb Bradley to the curb, and voted in Carol Shea Porter. None of that would have been possible without all of the folks who went to Bradley's town hall meetings and asked him pointed questions about Social Security and Medicare. CREDO will be opening an office, hiring staff, organizing volunteers, and engaging the new media. With their help, we'll be saying goodbye to Fraudulent Frank, come November.

Things should start happening in March. I'll keep you posted.

The Desperate Need for Affordable Housing

In July I wrote about folk stampeding for Section 8 housing vouchers in Dallas, when thousands of people showed up, some waiting all night, to get vouchers for subsidized housing. It was a terrible story.

Since then, nothing much has changed, other than the fact that even more people are in need of affordable housing. From The Nation:

In Oakland, California, which opened its waiting list in January, officials expected as many as 100,000 people to apply for 10,000 vouchers. In Atlanta, sixty-two people were injured in 2010 at an East Point shopping center where 30,000 lined up after the local housing authority opened its waiting list for the first time in eight years. Even small communities like Aiken, South Carolina, saw hundreds queuing up in October for a chance at housing aid about as likely as seeing three cherries in a row on a Vegas slot machine.

Another way you can find tangible evidence of the housing affordability crunch is by visiting one of New York City’s exploding number of homeless shelters, where a record 41,000 homeless people bed down each night, including more than 17,000 children. The New York Times recently told the story of one of those children, fourth-grader N-Dia Layne, who travels two and a half hours each day between her Upper Manhattan shelter and her school in Brooklyn’s Brownsville neighborhood. In Cleveland, the number of homeless families and kids grew so rapidly this past summer that for the first time shelters were forced to eliminate daytime meals, housing-search assistance and other services in order to move workers to the overnight shifts, according to Brian Davis of the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless.

I had to read those New York numbers a few times. I can't imagine that there are over 17,000 homeless children in NY City and this isn't an issue being discussed in the endless presidential debates?

By nearly any measure, there are fewer and fewer homes affordable to working-class and poor Americans. The federal housing agency’s annual assessment finds that “worst-case housing needs” grew by 42 percent from 2001 to 2009, and nationwide there is a shortfall of nearly 3.5 million housing units for the poorest households. According to Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, the share of renter households with the most severe cost burdens—that is, where more than half of income goes to rent and utilities—grew from a fifth to a quarter over the past decade and has doubled in the past half-century. And as household incomes stagnated for most of the past decade and then dropped during the economic crisis, the nation saw its already inadequate stock of cheap rental housing shrink even faster.

It's pretty simple, really. The cost of living is increasingly high, while wages are increasingly low. It's not a recipe for keeping a roof over one's head.

All of the plans to "end homelessness in 10 years," either are, or will be abject failures. The programs were all underfunded, and as the budget for federal housing programs continues to shrink, their failure is guaranteed. In the name of "deficit reduction" these programs are being cut, and cut again - with the goal being to eliminate them all together.

Despite the bleak policy landscape and the worsening affordability crisis, many local advocates and people working on the front lines talk about the renewed energy and hope generated by the nascent Occupy movement and the revived national discourse about income inequality. Donovan talks hopefully about the “other 1 percent”—the homeless and poor—saying that the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the superrich 1 percent is “causing the other 1 percent to agitate, and to show that homeless people are something other than a herded mass. They’re saying, Enough is enough.”

The Occupy movement changed the national discussion when it began last fall. Instead of deficits and debt, we're now hearing about income inequality, joblessness, and a host of other issues that weren't even on the horizon over the summer. It is my hope (as someone living with housing insecurity) that Occupy brings housing to the forefront of our national dialogue.


cross posted at MainSt/workingamerica.org

We Need Jobs That Pay the Bills

We hear a lot of talk about job creation, and bringing jobs back to America. We hear nothing about the kind of jobs we need the most: jobs that provide decent wages. From the Los Angeles Times:

While productivity has grown by more than 80% over the last 30 years, wages have effectively been flat for 80% of Americans. So, although we're making stuff faster and more efficiently, the benefits of that hard work have not trickled into the pockets of the people who do it.

In other words, more work for less pay.

First, companies are coming back to the United States because wages here are dropping, in real terms. At the same time, lower-wage corporate nirvanas such as China are no longer as cheap an alternative as they once were, partly because the sea of people who worked for next to nothing for so long have had enough and are rising up in protest.

The US is becoming the place to outsource low paying jobs to.

Second, most of the jobs coming back are not high-wage, union jobs with full healthcare and pensions. In fact, with concerted efforts by Republican governors in the Midwest to eviscerate union rights, times have never been better for corporate leaders seeking to lower labor costs. With labor costs in the U.S. dropping relative to those in the Third World, the president's offer of tax incentives to other companies that in-source is unnecessary. As Citizens for Tax Justice points out, using a 2007 Bush administration study, corporations based in the United States already have plenty of tax incentive to locate here because "the United States takes a below-average share of corporate income in taxes compared to other developed countries."

and

If you add those people to the people who have full-time work at or just above the minimum wage, at least 1 in 5 Americans — 30 million people — does not have a decent job. Which explains why, according to the Census Bureau, 46 million people — or about 15% of Americans — live in poverty, the highest percentage since 1993.

This is a nasty reality that politicians shy far, far away from, when they talk about jobs. Many of us (I'm one of that 15%) are relying on part time jobs, or low paying jobs that result in us not having enough to live on. This means more people relying on the shrinking safety net, and the kindness of family and friends.

We need the kind of jobs that will rebuild the middle class.



cross-posted at MainSt/workingamerica.org

Mobile Food Pantries Helping Rural Nevada

Food banks in Nevada are trying to reach small communities in rural areas by setting up mobile food pantries. A truck comes in, volunteers unload, and begin to distribute the food. By the time they finish, nothing is left.
From the Las Vegas Sun:

The mobile pantries differ from traditional pantries because they’re scheduled, mass-distribution events that can quickly serve thousands of people, said John Livingston, Three Square’s chief operating officer.

and

As the Sandy Valley operation proved successful, Three Square officials scouted other locations that would benefit based on factors such as access to grocery stores, nutritious food availability and existing agencies’ capacity to feed those in need, Livingston said.


Without having to rely on a fixed location, the trucks can travel to the areas that have the greatest need.

Grace Immanuel sits in ZIP code 89106, where 27 percent of residents may go hungry despite food stamps and other services already provided in the area, according to a Feeding America report using 2010 data. It’s the same situation in neighboring ZIP codes.

Other mobile pantries began in surrounding rural areas known as “food deserts”: Pahrump, Mesquite and, earlier this month, Laughlin, Livingston said. A Caliente location will begin in February, he added.

Given that Nevada consistently has the highest unemployment rates in the US, it's good to see organizations working together to provide assistance to folks in small communities that are often underserved. This is truly a creative solution.


Cross-posted at MainSt/workingamerica.org

Moving to Gilead

The current NH House of Representatives packed so much crazy into the last year, it’s difficult to imagine that there could be more. But there is more, so much more. The NH House is comprised of Free Staters, Teabaggers, and John Birchers, all simmering together in the least appetizing stew one could be served. Throw in a couple of outraged, old fashioned Main St. Republicans, and you’ve captured the essence of the O’Brien lead House.

In 2010, the Republicans campaigned on their perpetual slogan, “NH doesn’t have a revenue problem, NH has a spending problem” and their promise of a laser-like focus on job creation. Voters responded to these craven statements by electing any dimwit (see Harty, Martin) having an “R” next to his or her name. NH has long had a spending problem, but not the one the freebaglicans claim. NH doesn’t spend enough money in some very important areas. Take infrastructure. According to the American Society of Civil engineers: 51% of NH bridges are structurally deficient or functionally obsolete, 27% of NH ‘s major roads are in poor or mediocre condition, and there are 106 high hazard dams in NH. (This is only a sampling of NH infrastructure needs.) The “repair and maintain” can gets kicked down the road every 2 years, so that ultimately the state will pay the pound of cure. Or in the case of that bridge from Milton to Lebanon, ME the local businesses will go under while the bridge remains inoperable. Don’t look to the current legislature to actually address an actual need. They’re far too interested in making bold power grabs, eliminating the judiciary, eliminating public education, eliminating voting, eliminating women, and assigning everyone a gun. They realize they have to work fast, because most are unlikely to be reelected, thanks to the national humiliation they’ve brought upon our state.

By my (inexact) count, there are at least 5 bills aimed at gerrymandering districts, 15 anti-education bills, 10 involving elections, 6 anti-voting, 10 anti-union, 10 anti-local control, 10 telling Congress what to do, 11 gun bills, 2 whiny men bills, and at least 10 anti-women bills. There are also plenty of nonsensical bills. More on those next time.

With HB 1659, the forced birth crowd wants women to have a 24 hour waiting period to read incorrect anti-abortion propaganda before going through the LEGAL procedure of abortion. Apparently we wimmin are so dumb, we need men to make our decisions for us. We are not, however, too dumb to serve as involuntary incubators. HB 1660 would eliminate abortions after 20 weeks, and HB 1679 would eliminate partial birth abortions, even though there is no such medical procedure, and third trimester abortions. Third trimester abortions account for about 0.04% of abortions. (That’s four hundredths of one percent) These women have late term abortions for health reasons. Like saving the life of the woman, which doesn’t appear to be a concern of the folks who wrote this bill. Those health reasons are not the business of the people who want to stick their noses into women’s medical privacy. What about freedom and liberty, and no gummint interference in your personal life? Oh, right! That only applies to white, heterosexual men.

HB 1680 would compel HHS to compile and maintain termination of pregnancy statistics. That, dear readers, means making a list of names, and demonizing the women that had a legal medical procedure somewhere down the line. Get out your red capes, girls. We’re moving to Gilead.

The NH House voted this week to defund Planned Parenthood. Public money isn’t used for the legal procedure known as abortion, but that matters naught to the men who want to make decisions for women. Planned Parenthood does, however, do: pap smears, breast exams, STD screenings, and provides low cost birth control to low-income women. What the NH legislature is telling women is this: you have no value. We don’t care if you get cancer. Our only concern is a nebulous potential fetus. So, if you get ovarian cancer, that’s your tough luck, slut. The men who claim to value life above all else don’t place any value on YOUR life, if you’re a woman. Speaker O’Brien has attached an amendment to this that would ban public employee health plans from covering the legal procedure known as abortion. Papa Doc O’Brien knows what’s best for you silly girlies.

Imagine if all this scrutiny were aimed at male genitalia. It’s time to stop boys and men from murdering trillions of potential people every day via the Sin of Onan. Where is the GOP concern for all of that killing? Where is the cry for HHS masturbation statistics? Surely that information needs to be close at hand, along with the names of the multiple offenders. And isn’t it time for these good Republican Christians to be forced to go before a panel to explain why they need a Viagra prescription? It better be for purposes of procreation only, with only a legal spouse, in one of those “between a man and a woman” marriages. Men must come to terms with the fact that their impotence is God’s will, and stop trying to do an end run around God’s plan for them.

Either women are equal human beings, or chattel. If having a functioning uterus makes women property of the state, than it’s time for the state to start picking up the tab for the support and maintenance of their property. In fact, boys, I’d be wary about all those unlicensed guns you’re advocating for. The women just might start fighting back. I only hope I live long enough to see it.


“Women are the only oppressed group in our society that lives in intimate association with their oppressors.” Evelyn Cunningham



© 2012 sbruce
Printed as an op-ed in the January 20, 1012 edition of the Conway Daily Sun newspaper.

Nation's Mayors Exasperated With Congress

The US Conference of Mayors is meeting in Washington, and expressing their disgust with the ongoing spending cuts that leave their cities firmly mired in the ongoing economic crisis.

New York Times:

Only 26 of the nation’s 363 metropolitan areas had recovered their lost jobs by the end of 2011, and only 26 more are projected to recover them by end of this year, according to the report, which was commissioned by the United States Conference of Mayors. It will take at least five years for the 80 hardest-hit areas to recover the jobs they lost, the report forecast.

and

Not only has Congress failed to overcome partisan gridlock to agree on a way to created much-needed jobs by spending more money on infrastructure, mayors said, but even the small sources of federal support that cities rely on — whether the Community Development Block Grants that were devised by Republican administrations in the 1970s or more recent federal programs that help struggling cities pay for more police officers or firefighters — are being scaled back as Washington has made cutting the deficit a priority.

Now, here's a thought:

Mayor James Brainard of Carmel, Ind., a Republican, said that the country must get to a point where it spends less than it collects in revenues, but that it must be done over years, carefully.

“We have to recognize that it can’t be done in one year without throwing us into a huge, much worse depression than we’ve had,” he said. “It needs to be a multiyear plan that doesn’t create terrible hardship.”

The report commissioned by the mayors can be found here.

The opening lines of the introduction:

No one has been hit harder by the Great Recession than the 8.8 million Americans who have lost their jobs during the most significant economic downturn in generations.

Our nation’s mayors are focused on doing everything we can to help the jobless, the underemployed, and those worried about losing their jobs.

That kind of concern is a real contrast to all the unemployed bashing we've seen by members of Congress and the presidential candidates. Let's hope that folks in Washington are paying attention while the mayors are in town.



cross-posted at MainSt/workingamerica.org

Wyoming: Highest Rate of Workplace Fatalities

The gas, oil, and mining industries are booming in Wyoming. A new report shows that workplace fatalities are booming, too. From the New York Times:

A report compiled by an epidemiologist hired by the state and released on Jan. 3, found that Wyoming’s work sites lacked what it called a culture of safety and that proper safety procedures were not followed in the vast majority of cases when someone was killed on the job.

The report also noted that Wyoming had the highest workplace fatality rate in the country for all but one year from 2003 through 2008. In 2010, the last year that data was provided, Wyoming’s estimated occupational death rate was three and a half times the national average, the report said.


Granted, workers know going in that these are dangerous jobs. But this report emphasizes that proper safety procedures were not followed in most cases.

“We have a system where there’s no accountability, where the employer has no incentive to be responsive,” said John Vincent, a former mayor of Riverton, who has represented the families of dead and injured oil and gas workers in his law practice and has worked on the legislative effort. “People are afraid to sue. They won’t report injuries. They’ll just stay at home until they get better.”

The online publication New West Politics also covered this report. The fatality numbers in Wyoming did actually decrease in 2010 (when Montana took first place) but:

“More than half of the 16,000-plus jobs lost in Wyoming were in natural resource development and construction, and these bear the most dangerous occupational risks,” Wyoming state occupational epidemiologist Timothy Ryan told WyoFile in a recent interview.

Ryan fears that when the economy picks up and hiring resumes in the construction, oil, mining, and gas industries, the fatalities will also increase again.

A story from 2011 that illustrates the lack of "a culture of safety" in the workplace:

On January 5, Kyle Rooke, 42, of Drummond, Id., was struck by drilling mud when a standpipe valve failed on a drilling rig south of Pinedale. The drilling mud caught fire, according to the Wyoming Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Rooke died before medical responders arrived at the scene.

A Wyoming OSHA investigation revealed several alleged safety violations. Rooke wasn’t wearing flame-retardant clothing, and had the rig operator — Unit Drilling Co. — conducted a “protective equipment assessment” the company should have realized that flame-retardant clothing was necessary for the job Rooke was performing, according to Wyoming OSHA.

The investigation, according to OSHA officials, also found improperly functioning equipment related to the accident that should have been repaired, replaced or removed. As a result of those and other safety violations on the rig, Wyoming OSHA issued several citations to Unit Drilling Co., totaling $23,250 in fines. The company has until July 13 to contest the citations or agree to pay.

These fines are substantially higher than fines levied in the past.

The four workplace fatalities that Wyoming OSHA investigated in 2010 resulted in a total $9,125 in fines, according to federal OSHA documents. That’s an average $2,281 for violations contributing to the death of a worker.

Not exactly an incentive for the company to change - and a sorry commentary on how worker's lives are valued.

Other steps are being made to improve workplace safety in Wyoming. In June approximately 200 companies within the oil and gas industry formally signed an alliance with Wyoming OSHA. The Wyoming Oil and Gas Industry Safety Alliance (WOGISA) seeks to raise safety awareness, identify best practices and share training resources. Already in the works is a training program for “first-line” supervisors.

All worthy goals, and hopefully this alliance will have a positive impact on the worker safety issue in Wyoming. Of course there's nothing like having a report like this make national news to provide even more of an incentive to change.


A study on workplace safety done at the University of Michigan had some interesting results:

New research by Roland Zullo of the Institute for Research on Labor, Employment and the Economy shows that right-to-work laws result in the underfunding of safety training and accident-prevention activities.

Wyoming is a right-to-work-state.

Although he found no direct association between right-to-work laws and industry and occupation fatalities Zullo’s findings suggest that the estimated effect union density has on reducing worker deaths does depend on state right-to-work laws. In states without such laws, a 1 percent increase in union density correlates with a 0.35 percent decline in the ratio of industry fatalities and a 0.58 percent drop in the occupation fatality ratio.

“Unions appear to have a positive role in reducing construction industry and occupation fatalities, but only in states without right-to-work laws,” he said.

RTW may not be to blame for the high rate of worker fatalities in Wyoming, but it certainly hasn't helped. Zullo's research should be taken into consideration by any state considering a RTW law.



cross-posted at MainSt/workingamerica.org

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Has Vigorous Agenda

Last month the Senate used the filibuster to prevent President Obama's nomination to direct the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. As a result, the president installed Cordray as director by using executive power to make a recess appointment.

From the New York Times:

The new director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau outlined a vigorous oversight and enforcement agenda on Thursday, saying that financial companies that take unfair advantage of consumers would face “real consequences.”

The director, Richard Cordray, who was appointed to the post on Wednesday by President Obama, encouraged consumers to contact the agency through its Web site with complaints about banks, payday lenders and other financial institutions that they think have sold deceptive products or engaged in abusive behavior.

Finally! At last, consumers will have a place to go to make complaints about shady mortgage companies, banks, title loan companies, and payday lenders. This is great news for the bottom 99%.

The agency’s most immediate focus will be on so-called nonbank financial companies — money transfer agencies, credit bureaus and private mortgage lenders, for example — which have fallen outside the authority of most regulators, Mr. Cordray said.

That these companies have been unregulated is just not acceptable.

“Many subprime loans during the housing bubble were made by nonbank mortgage brokers,” he added. “Since most of these businesses are not used to any federal oversight, our new supervision program may be a challenge for them. But we must establish clear standards of conduct so that all financial providers play by the rules.”

That's very diplomatically put. What he's saying, of course, is that these companies are going to be held accountable for their actions, which is long overdue. Richard Cordray plans to move forward "promptly and vigorously" and that is good news for all of us.

People who have complaints are urged to contact the new bureau directly at: www.consumerfinance.gov


cross-posted at MainSt/workingamerica.org

First in the Nation

The Iowa caucuses are over, and the circus has come to NH. The national and international media are either here or on the way, and the whole world is watching. The Iowa caucus generated a lot of discussion about the relevance of Iowa in the Big Political Scheme of things. The effort to end New Hampshire’s favored First in the Nation status are ongoing. So, with all that in mind, knowing that they eyes of the world are upon us, the NH legislature has decided to stop pretending to have a laser like focus on job creation, and is bringing out the full on crazy. News sites and blogs are having a marvelous time laughing at NH, and the berserkers that we the people sent to Concord last year.

Some recent national headlines are courtesy of Rep. Jerry Bergevin of Manchester. Bergevin is a freshman legislator, one of the many Teabaglicans swept into office during the noxious red tide of 2010. Bergevin wants our public schools to teach creationism, and has filed two anti-evolution bills, in the hopes of dictating religious curriculum. Bergevin told the Concord Monitor that teaching evolution has a global societal impact that led to the rise of the Nazi party, and ultimately the Columbine massacre. (Warning: do not try to make sense of this.) Bergevin seems to be his own best proof that evolution is only a theory.

National headlines are also being made by a trio of freshman legislators who filed HB 1580, after a “brainstorming” session that seems more likely to have been binge drinking. HB 1580 stipulates: “All members of the general court proposing bills and resolutions addressing individual rights or liberties shall include a direct quote from the Magna Carta which sets forth the article from which the individual right or liberty is derived,”

That’s right, folks. The Magna Carta, a British charter issued in Latin in 1215, requiring King John to proclaim certain liberties. As a widow, I find comfort in this section of the document: “No widow shall be distrained to marry for so long as she wishes to live without a husband, provided that she gives surety that she will not marry without our assent if she holds of us, or without the assent of her lord, if she holds of another.” Does this make Speaker O’Brien my lord?

On January 5, the NH Senate passed HB 542, a bill that allows parents to pull their children out of any lesson they object to, and demand that the school replace it with alternative curriculum. In other words, parents can object to any course, and force the school to come up with an alternative. In a single class of 20 kids, that could mean 20 individual lesson plans. Not only is that unworkable for an already overworked teacher, it’s going to be mighty expensive for the local taxpayers. And that, readers, is the goal. The Teabaglicans are doing their best to eliminate public education by ensuring that it doesn’t work. This bill is so bad that even the Union Leader, propaganda arm of the NH GOP, is opposed to it. As I’ve said before, eliminating education is the best way to ensure more GOP voters.

Of course, that bill may not even be necessary. The just passed HB 334, which prohibits any private entity from prohibiting firearms or knives on any property owned “in whole or in part” by the public. That means that state colleges can’t ban weapons – and for that matter, neither can public kindergartens. All but 3 Carroll County Representatives voted in favor of this bill, by the way. Only Babson, Knox, and Patten voted against it. Guns in schools, guns in nursing homes, and guns in the state psychiatric hospital! Guns in civic arenas and stadiums! Guns and booze, guns and the mentally unstable, and guns and kids – what could go wrong? This is obviously a clever accompaniment to HB 542. Fewer students means lower educational costs.

Nowhere is there any concern being expressed for the sorry condition of our state’s infrastructure. A recent story in Fosters highlighted the closing of a bridge between the town of Milton, NH and Lebanon, ME. The bridge had been redlisted for a long time, and finally was too unsafe to remain open. Maine is willing to pony up their share of the cost of rebuilding, but NH doesn’t have the funds. And because people aren’t willing to drive miles out of their way to get to local businesses on the NH side, one business has already closed, and others may well be on the way. I’m sure a quote from the Magna Carta would be a great comfort to Colleen Savarese and Jeff Everett, who lost their small business and a big chunk of their future.

The O’Brien junta has offered no practical solutions to anything. Instead, this legislature has served up dementia on a plate at every opportunity. They’ve done their level best to ensure that no money comes in to our state coffers, guaranteeing that we won’t have that oft-touted “spending problem.” We don’t even have the money to fix our bridges.

The prospects of moving a business to NH seem increasingly unlikely. Why would a company choose to relocate to a state that is deliberately sabotaging its infrastructure and educational system?

The red tide swept in at a time when the legislature was beginning to repair some of the damage that 150 years of GOP rule had done to our state. The current legislature has set our state back even further. It will take decades to fix all of this, and I’m not sure it’s possible. Our backward tax structure guarantees that our infrastructure will continue to crumble, thanks to a legislature that seems to view Somalia as a model to emulate.

Meanwhile, the whole world is watching the side show the NH legislature is providing. Look for a big future fight questioning why the Magna Carta state should have any role at all in the presidential primary process.


© sbruce 2012

published as an op-ed in the January 6, 2012 edition of the Conway Daily Sun newspaper.

NH Right to Work: The Return of the Hydra

In 2011, NH unions and supporters ultimately defeated HB 474, the first RTW bill filed by the current NH legislature. This was a real victory against the special interests and extremists at work in my state, but, sadly, it's too soon to do the victory lap.

In February 2011, the NH House passed HB 474, a so-called "right to work" bill. NH has been fighting RTW for decades. It's the hydra whose legs keep growing back, no matter how many times they're cut off. As I documented in a piece called Threatening Their Own, threats from anti-union thugs started before the NH Senate voted in April. In What's Behind Right to Work, we took a look at the special interests behind RTW, and linked to an opinion piece from the Keene Sentinel, written by former GOP state senator Mark Hounsell.

Current NH State Representative Lee Quandt has been an outspoken critic of the right to work agenda. Rep. Quandt is both a Republican and a former union member. On his own blog , Rep. Quandt refers to it as "right to work for less." Representative Quandt's criticism of the O'Brien led House resulted in his being kicked off the House Finance Committee. The current NH speaker tolerates no dissent from the members of his own party.

Finally, in December I wrote about the failure to override the veto of HB 474. There was a brief sigh of relief, but the speaker had promised that RTW would be back.

He wasn't kidding. It came back very quickly. HB 383, a bill that had been languishing in committee, suddenly loomed on the horizon. A piece called Son of Right to Work, at Blue Hampshire warned readers there that it was coming back, and provided a link to the bill's text. The bill is written to apply to state employees, but establishing a precedent is just what the union busters are hoping for.

Today the NH House passed 383, by a vote of 212 to 128. NH Labor News posted a press release from NH AFL-CIO President Mark McKenzie:

Today a clear bipartisan coalition of 128 state representatives rejected the attempt by special interests to repackage HB 474, the right-to-work law voted down by the House in December. The fact that over a third of our House representatives – both Republicans and Democrats - voted against HB 383's passage is a clear sign that Speaker O'Brien is losing momentum in his Tea Party-fueled campaign to pass the so-called right to work law.

While HB 383 only impacts state employees as currently written, it opens a back door for the Speaker and other Tea Party extremists to impose a right-to-work on all New Hampshire workers and businesses. Our legislators' continued opposition to the right-to-work law in any and all forms the Speaker that New Hampshire's people need jobs more than they need political attacks on workers.

As New Hampshire struggles out of this recession, Speaker O'Brien has shown no wavering from the extreme Tea Party agenda that has cost us thousands of jobs in the Granite State. Passing HB 383 is just another sign that the Speaker cannot admit defeat. He will push his agenda at any cost – regardless of how it impacts the people of New Hampshire.

In summary, NH defeated HB 474, the first RTW bill proposed by the current NH legislature. With HB 383, we're going to have to go through the same process all over again.

Speaker O'Brien is much less popular in 2012, and so is his extremist agenda. Four special elections have been held in the last year, and every single winning candidate opposed RTW. As Mark McKenzie points out, this is a bi-partisan coalition of over a third of the NH House that voted against HB 383. GOP partisans are increasingly willing to distance themselves from O'Brien, a movement that will continue to grow as we move closer to the November elections.

The speaker continues to assert that businesses won't locate to NH because we don't have a RTW law, even though when pressed, O'Brien was unable to name a single company that would move here if such a bill were enacted. In fact, Safrans, an international company, recently announced their intention to build a manufacturing facility in Rochester, NH, and create some 400 manufacturing jobs. Safrans seems to have been undeterred by a lack of RTW legislation in NH.

If Speaker O'Brien really wants to make his failure to enact RTW legislation his political legacy, NH workers will be happy to oblige him. We beat back 474. We'll defeat 383, too.


cross-posted at MainSt/workingamerica.org

What Happened to Upward Mobility?

We're all familiar with the mythos: the USA is the land of the meritocracy, not the aristocracy. The place where every boy can grow up to be president. Where the janitor can become the CEO.

The reality looks rather different. From the New York Times:

“It’s becoming conventional wisdom that the U.S. does not have as much mobility as most other advanced countries,” said Isabel V. Sawhill, an economist at the Brookings Institution. “I don’t think you’ll find too many people who will argue with that.”

One reason for the mobility gap may be the depth of American poverty, which leaves poor children starting especially far behind. Another may be the unusually large premiums that American employers pay for college degrees. Since children generally follow their parents’ educational trajectory, that premium increases the importance of family background and stymies people with less schooling.

To put it a different way:

“The bottom fifth in the U.S. looks very different from the bottom fifth in other countries,” said Scott Winship, a researcher at the Brookings Institution, who wrote the article for National Review. “Poor Americans have to work their way up from a lower floor.”

Poor Americans are working their way up from lower bottom than other countries? Why isn't this front page news? Why aren't the presidential candidates currently invading NH talking about this?

Oh, wait. Here's why:

Perhaps another brake on American mobility is the sheer magnitude of the gaps between rich and the rest — the theme of the Occupy Wall Street protests, which emphasize the power of the privileged to protect their interests. Countries with less equality generally have less mobility.

The privileged have the power to protect their interests. The non-privileged just get trickled on. This is grim news, coming on the heels of the recent report showing that one in every two families has either fallen into poverty or qualifies as low income.

The best way to turn this around is to continue to push for more jobs, better pay, and stronger unions.

cross-posted at MainSt/workingamerica.org

The Year Long GOP Obsession with Urine Testing

In October we told you about the governors and legislators proposing mandatory urine testing in order to qualify for food stamps or welfare.

A few weeks ago, we wrote about Rep. Jack Kingston from Georgia, who wants the unemployed to undergo mandatory drug testing to "qualify" for unemployment benefits.

The latest entrant into the drug testing wars is Michigan. From Huffington Post:

Officials in Michigan's Department of Human Services want to bring back drug testing of welfare recipients, a controversial practice that Michigan courts struck down more than a decade ago. The new policy would differ from the one enacted under Republican Gov. John Engler in 1999, which required a urine test to apply for benefits and would have subjected recipients to random drug screenings.

and

Michigan state Rep. Jeff Farrington (R-Utica) introduced a bill on Dec. 13 that would require applicants take a drug test to qualify for FIA benefits. Under the proposed bill, which is still up for discussion, recipients who passed a drug screening would have the cost of the test deducted from their first benefits payment.

Great. Not only do they want to demonize the poor, they want the poor to pay for that demonization. Apparently Rep. Farrington has not learned the lesson that Governor Rick Scott of Florida learned. From Mother Jones:

But with 96 percent of applicants passing the test with flying colors (and another 2 percent getting inconclusive results), the state is having to buy back a lot of clean pee: 11.5 gallons at $34,300 every month, assuming an average sample size of 1.5 ounces and and average test price of $35.

That's spending an awful lot of taxpayer money just to harass poor people. It's certainly not creating the big savings that Governor Scott promised his constituents.

I wrote in October:

On the one hand, we hear a lot of gnashing of teeth from DC about job creation, yet on the other, we have the ongoing blame being heaped upon those who aren’t able to find work and are living in poverty, as if being unemployed or poor were somehow voluntary.

It is deeply distressing to see this becoming a national trend.

cross-posted at: MainSt/workingamerica.org

NH Legislators Embrace the Magna Carta

In the December 20th edition of Clocking Out was yet another story about the nutty NH legislature. Some members of the NH House are in favor of putting WARNING signs near the Massachusetts border, so that the good folk of NH know when they're about to enter into that socialist republic. The best part of this inspired bit of lunacy, is that Rep. Jennifer Coffey, the lead sponsor, moved to NH in 2005. Guess what state she moved here from?

This week brings a new story. From the Concord Monitor:

House Bill 1580 is the product of such a brainstorming session this summer between three freshman House Republicans: Bob Kingsbury of Laconia, Tim Twombly of Nashua and Lucien Vita of Middleton. The eyebrow-raiser, set to be introduced when the Legislature reconvenes next month, requires legislation to find its origin in an English document crafted in 1215.

"All members of the general court proposing bills and resolutions addressing individual rights or liberties shall include a direct quote from the Magna Carta which sets forth the article from which the individual right or liberty is derived," is the bill's one sentence.

Yes, that's right. These three state representatives want quotes from the Magna Carta; an 800 year old British document, in new bills going before the NH legislature.

I've been told by legislators that the average cost to the NH taxpayer for filing a bill is about $1500. Each bill that is filed by a state legislator goes to Legislative Services, where the bill is checked for compliance with other NH laws. Then it is printed up. So far, the members of the NH House have filed 840 potential bills.

Kingsbury said the "primary motivation" for the bill was to honor the Magna Carta's upcoming 800-year anniversary in 2015. Citing quotes from the document will bring its historical importance to the public's attention, he said.

And if they have to waste taxpayer dollars to bring that anniversary to the public's attention, they will!

The majority of the people in this state don't read ANY of the bills that go before the legislature. This is truly a bizarre vanity exercise by a trio of freshman legislators.

A translation of the Magna Carta certainly provides some interesting fodder for the 2012 legislative session:

19] No constable or his bailiff is to take corn or other chattels from anyone who not themselves of a vill where a castle is built, unless the constable or his bailiff immediately offers money in payment of obtains a respite by the wish of the seller. If the person whose corn or chattels are taken is of such a vill, then the constable or his bailiff is to pay the purchase price within forty days.

and

21] No sheriff or bailiff of ours or of anyone else is to take anyone’s horses or carts to make carriage, unless he renders the payment customarily due, namely for a two-horse cart ten pence per day, and for a three-horse cart fourteen pence per day. No demesne cart belonging to any churchman or knight or any other lady (sic) is to be taken by our bailiffs, nor will we or our bailiffs or anyone else take someone else’s timber for a castle or any other of our business save by the will of he to whom the timber belongs.

and

[34] No-one is to be taken or imprisoned on the appeal of woman for the death of anyone save for the death of that woman’s husband.

I can hardly wait to see these quotes worked into NH law.


cross-posted at MainSt/workingamerica.org

Cuts to Block Grant Program Hurting Cities

Cities are already suffering from budget shortfalls, decreasing tax revenues, foreclosures, and unemployment> Now they're being hit hard by cuts to the federal block grant program. From the New York Times:

The shrinking federal program, called Community Development Block Grants, was devised by the Nixon administration to bypass state governments and send money directly to big cities, which were given broad leeway to decide how to spend it. This year the federal government is giving out just $2.9 billion — a billion dollars less than it gave two years ago, and even less than it gave during the Carter administration, when the money went much further.

and

Cuts to the block grants program were cited in a recent report by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office, which noted that the number of vacant properties in America has jumped to 10 million from 7 million in 2000, threatening to attract crime and cause blight. “With sustained high foreclosure and unemployment rates and further declining home values, local officials said that continued, flexible C.D.B.G. funding would help them maintain efforts to address vacant properties in their areas,” the report noted.

Stabilizing neighborhoods that have been hard hit by foreclosure seems like a really good idea. Over 10 million vacant properties in the US is a recipe for disaster.

But mayors see it as an invaluable tool — one of the few federal programs that sends money directly to big cities, without going through the middlemen at the state level. Before its creation, mayors had to apply for small grants in many specific areas — leading to complaints of the this-food-is-terrible-and-the-portions-are-so-small variety. Tom Cochran, the executive director of the United States Conference of Mayors, said that mayors were thrilled when the Nixon administration agreed to consolidate the various grants into a single block grant program, which could be used broadly for community development, with local officials choosing their priorities. It was signed into law by President Gerald R. Ford.

It makes sense to let the cities decide what their own needs are, and not force them into one size fits all solutions.

From the website of the Community Bock Grant Program:

The CDBG program works to ensure decent affordable housing, to provide services to the most vulnerable in our communities, and to create jobs through the expansion and retention of businesses. CDBG is an important tool for helping local governments tackle serious challenges facing their communities. The CDBG program has made a difference in the lives of millions of people and their communities across the Nation.

With poverty and homelessness on the rise, it seems more than a little short sighted to cut the funding for this program, especially given that this funding is a proven source of job creation.


cross-posted at MainSt/workingamerica.org

Warning: Lunatic Legislature at Work

The NH legislature is in the national news again. Once again, NH legislators are covering our state with glory. They aren’t content with merely eliminating thousands of jobs, defunding the state university system, and ensuring that the number of bridges on the red list continues to increase. Another group might rest on their laurels after all that – but not these doughty folk. They’ve found a new way to avoid dealing with the actual needs of our state.

The latest boondoggle comes to us from lead sponsor Rep. Jennifer Coffey of Andover. She and a group of other legislators (all from the southern part of the state) have written a bill that, if enacted, would place warning signs at the NH/Massachusetts border. The signs would read, “WARNING: Massachusetts Border, 500 Feet.”

The Reps claim that this wouldn’t cost the taxpayers anything, since businesses would pay for the signs. That is untrue. Taxpayers pay every time a silly bill is introduced by a legislator, at a cost of approximately $1500 to have it written up, go through legislative services, etc. Already we’re paying for this folly. Coffey also points out that the DOT would place the signs. DOT workers are not volunteers; they’re paid by the state of NH.

Since the bill has generated some publicity, the sponsors now claim that these signs are necessary to inform people that they’re leaving NH and entering a state with different laws about seatbelts, motorcycle helmets, guns, and fireworks. It used to be that we residents were expected to be personally responsible for knowing all of that, and acting appropriately. How odd to see the liberty minded Teabaglicans taking such a nanny state action! Could it be that what they REALLY want to warn people of is that they’re entering a state that many of these elected officials deride as being the “Socialist Commonwealth of Taxachusetts” to the south?


This is truly a brilliant plan. Massachusetts residents come to NH to buy our cheap booze and cigarettes. MA residents come here to enjoy the many recreational activities available in our state. They come up to stay in their second homes. They eat in our restaurants, stay in our hotels and inns, and shop in our factory outlets. Massachusetts residents contribute mightily to the economy of our state. What a truly excellent idea it is to offend and alienate them!

The best part? Jennifer Coffey moved to NH in 2005. Guess where she moved here from? The same state that gave us so many of the current crop of legislators, including the Speaker of the NH House: Massachusetts. The warning signs really ought to be on the other side of the border. “Warning: stop sending us these people, or we’ll stop selling cheap booze and butts.”

In other NH gone national news, the Huffington Post covered the desire of Rep. David Bates to turn NH into a referendum state. This would require a constitutional amendment. Funny how these guys swear they love the constitution (either state or US), even as they express the need to change it. Bates is motivated by his obsession with overturning NH’s marriage equality law, a law supported by a majority of NH voters. He’d like to see NH laws subjected to the whim of well funded, out of state, special interest groups, as we’ve seen happen in Maine and California. Another brilliant plan from this legislature. That laser like focus on job creation that these folks campaigned upon has yet to rear its pointy little head.

The House committee on redistricting has also been working on their plan to gerrymander the state’s voting districts. The committee was comprised entirely of representatives from the bottom half of the state, which explains a lot about how the decisions were made about districts in the top half. They gave these guys maps, and armed with absolutely no familiarity with the north, they revved up their chainsaws, and got to work on carving up areas they have no familiarity with. So far, the plan seems unable to pass Constitutional muster, and best of all, they intend to bypass the Governor altogether, by issuing their plan as an “order” to the Secretary of State. The Teabaglicans seem intent on flouting long established tradition, at every part of the redistricting process.

Their goal in many cases seems to be to peel wards off in some cities and combine them with towns that certainly don’t have the same interests or needs. There seems to be an attempt to combine mismatched towns into big districts, which will cost candidates more to run in, and create a number of headaches for those elected, in trying to represent multiple communities with differing school districts. And of course, the goal is also to protect some who are currently serving and eliminate others. Towns that traditionally lean toward the more liberal are being paired with towns that lean far to the fascist right. The lawsuits will be a lot of costly fun for NH taxpayers, but will certainly create jobs for lawyers.

Representative Gregory Sorg’s recent letter to the editor about one of my November columns indicates that he was miffed at being compared to Scrooge. Sorg claims that 30% of our state revenue comes from federal monies, and that 40% of federal monies are borrowed. Sorg calls this unsustainable. Of course, we’re borrowing to fund the Bush tax cuts and wars, something Sorg would surely prefer not to acknowledge. It’s far easier to vilify the poor, which Sorg did, by referring to people needing fuel assistance as “engaging in irresponsible behavior.” Yes, indeed. How irresponsible of people to be under-employed, elderly, or poor!


NH gets back approximately $0.70 cents for every federal tax dollar we send in. We’re subsidizing states like Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alaska. Refusing federal dollars for heating assistance isn’t going to change any of that, it just means that we’ll continue to be a cash register, while refusing to raise sufficient revenue to run our own state with. As one of the wealthiest states in the nation, we could afford to pay our own way. We just don’t want to. Our legislature wants NH to be a poor relation, so that we will continue to be a tax-free haven for our 27,000 millionaires. And if that means that a few people freeze to death, and 15% of our bridges remain structurally deficient, well, that’s the way it was intended it to be, back in the 18th century that Sorg and his ilk intend to return us to.


"Darkness is cheap, and Scrooge liked it." Charles Dickens


© 2011 sbruce

Published as an op-ed in the December 23, 2011 edition of the Conway Daily Sun Newspaper.

Protecting Home Care Workers

The Obama administration has proposed some regulations to protect home care workers. From the NY Times:

Labor unions and advocates for low-wage workers have pushed for the changes, contending that the 37-year-old exemption improperly swept these workers, who care for many elderly and disabled Americans, into the same “companion” category as baby sitters. The administration’s move calls for home care aides to be protected under the Fair Labor Standards Act, the nation’s main wage and hour law.

and

These workers, according to industry figures, generally earn $8.50 to $12 an hour, compared with the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. The White House said 92 percent of these workers were women, nearly 30 percent were African-American and 12 percent Hispanic. Nearly 40 percent rely on public benefits like Medicaid and food stamps.

While industry experts say an overwhelming majority are paid at least the minimum wage, many do not receive a time-and-a-half premium when they work more than 40 hours a week. Twenty-two states do not include home health care workers under their wage and hour laws.

Home care workers assist elderly people with all aspects of their lives, including bathing, exercise, and remembering to take medications. They may also prepare meals, and do housework. They may be dealing with clients in varying stages of dementia. There's a great deal of skill required to do this kind of work.

These are also workers who don't get sick days, any sort of benefits, and if their client dies - well, that's just too bad. No more paychecks for them.

Predictably, the opposition is gearing up:

“The president’s goal is commendable, but the likely result of this new rule is reduced hours for home care workers and higher costs for taxpayers,” said John Kline, a Minnesota Republican who is chairman of the House Education and the Work Force Committee, and Tim Walberg, a Minnesota Republican who heads the panel’s subcommittee on work force protections. “Moreover, our nation’s elderly may pay the greatest price in the form of more costly services and fewer opportunities to obtain the care they need in the comfort of their own homes.”

In other words: Caregivers are good enough to take care of the elderly, but what they do isn't real work, therefore they don't deserve the sort of protections that other workers are entitled to.


cross-posted at MainSt/workingamerica.org

The CEO's Are Alright

US Census finds nearly half of US population is considered low-income or downright poor. From Huffington Post:

Squeezed by rising living costs, a record number of Americans – nearly 1 in 2 – have fallen into poverty or are scraping by on earnings that classify them as low income.

The latest census data depict a middle class that's shrinking as unemployment stays high and the government's safety net frays. The new numbers follow years of stagnating wages for the middle class that have hurt millions of workers and families.

You gotta love this guy:

Robert Rector, a senior research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, questioned whether some people classified as poor or low-income actually suffer material hardship. He said that while safety-net programs have helped many Americans, they have gone too far, citing poor people who live in decent-size homes, drive cars and own wide-screen TVs.

Apparently if you lost your job, your credit, and your savings when the economy collapsed in 2008, you were supposed to sell everything you owned, or give it away, in order to look appropriately poor. Donate those designer clothes, and don some sackcloth and ashes. Car? Who cares if you need it to look for work, get rid of that car, and your refrigerator, too. If you're poor you have no right to a refrigerator.

Paychecks for low-income families are shrinking. The inflation-adjusted average earnings for the bottom 20 percent of families have fallen from $16,788 in 1979 to just under $15,000, and earnings for the next 20 percent have remained flat at $37,000. In contrast, higher-income brackets had significant wage growth since 1979, with earnings for the top 5 percent of families climbing 64 percent to more than $313,000.

Housing costs have accelerated hugely in the wake of the foreclosure crisis. Families are paying more than a third of their income for housing; then there are utilities, energy costs, transportation, child care, and health care. Divide all of that into $15,000 a year, and see what's left over.

What is truly shocking here, is the complete lack of concern about this on the part of most of our elected officials, and the mainstream media.

Fortunately there is one group of Americans whose income does not appear to be shrinking or stagnant. From The Guardian:

Chief executive pay has roared back after two years of stagnation and decline. America's top bosses enjoyed pay hikes of between 27 and 40% last year, according to the largest survey of US CEO pay. The dramatic bounceback comes as the latest government figures show wages for the majority of Americans are failing to keep up with inflation.

America's highest paid executive took home more than $145.2m, and as stock prices recovered across the board, the median value of bosses' profits on stock options rose 70% in 2010, from $950,400 to $1.3m. The news comes against the backdrop of an Occupy Wall Street movement that has focused Washington's attention on the pay packages of America's highest paid.

No sackcloth and ashes for this crowd. No shame, or sense of propriety, either. The "job creators" are delivering record profits without adding jobs.

Time for some new solutions?


Cross-posted at MainSt/workingamerica.org

A Brief Pep Talk About Change

Jim Hightower in Nation of Change:

"We the people of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

What a paragraph! Whatever happened to that BIG idea of America — the creation of a society that embraces and fosters such egalitarian values as justice, tranquility, common effort, the welfare of all and liberty?

Mr. Hightower makes an excellent point. We used to have BIG ideals. Those ideals have eroded, and our politics have become hopelessly entangled with big money and ideology.

Some days we all need a pep talk, and Jim Hightower is the go-to guy for pep talks. He's not too impressed with our leaders, but he has a lot of faith in all of us; what we have done, and what we will continue to do:

However, there is hope in the people themselves. We see it in the ongoing Wisconsin rebellion that is rejecting the Koch-fueled autocracy of the imperious Gov. Scott Walker; in the 61 percent grass-roots victory in Ohio on Nov. 8 to throw out the repressive anti-labor law that the right-wing Gov. John Kasich arrogantly tried to hang around the people's neck; in the Occupy protest that is so big and so deeply felt by so many angry/hopeful people that even police sweeps cannot make it go away; and in still more uprisings that are coming — coming from such corners as frustrated jobseekers; tens of thousands of misused war veterans returning from the Mideast to mistreatment at home; hundreds of thousands of homeowners being mercilessly foreclosed on by bailed-out bankers; and others who're simply fed up with the corporados and political flim-flammers who're knocking ordinary Americans down and holding America back.

And finally, he gives us our assignment:

As we head into the New Year, our task is to confront their pusillanimity — demand from every candidate for every office to explain why their vision is so myopic and why their idea of what Americans can do is so small.

We used to dream big dreams for what we might accomplish in the future. When I was a kid, we all dreamed that someday a man might walk on the moon. Now our leaders dream of cuts to entitlement programs.

As Jim points out, it's our job to ask any and every candidate why their vision is so myopic. What about the future? What about progress?