Archive for category Disaster
Bush’s ‘Ownership Society’ – Wiping Out the Middle Class
Posted by Richard Warnick in American People, Bailout, Bush Administration, Capitalism, Disaster, Economic Exploitation, Economy, National Politics, Poverty, This Blog, Unemployment on July 27, 2010
Yesterday I got my annual property tax assessment in the mail. When President Bush’s so-called “ownership society” collapsed, the value of the house I live in plunged 40 percent in one year. Now it has come back up a few thousand dollars to the market price from eight years ago.
The “ownership society” was a right-wing article of faith, but the hard reality is most Americans got owned. By the politicians, by the banks, by the corporations. I’m actually one of the lucky ones, because I don’t owe more on my house than it’s worth– and I still have a job.
From Michael Snyder, Business Insider:
22 Statistics That Prove The Middle Class Is Being Systematically Wiped Out Of Existence In America
- 83% of all U.S. stocks are in the hands of 1% of the people.
- 61% of Americans “always or usually” live paycheck to paycheck, which was up from 49% in 2008 and 43% in 2007.
- 66% of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1% of all Americans.
- 36% of Americans say that they don’t contribute anything to retirement savings.
- A staggering 43% of Americans have less than $10,000 saved up for retirement.
- 24% of American workers say that they have postponed their planned retirement age in the past year.
- Over 1.4 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009, which represented a 32% increase over 2008.
- Only the top 5% of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.
- For the first time in U.S. history, banks own a greater share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together.
- In 1950, the ratio of the average executive’s paycheck to the average worker’s paycheck was about 30 to 1. Since the year 2000, that ratio has exploded to between 300 to 500 to 1.
- As of 2007, the bottom 80% of American households held about 7% of the liquid financial assets.
- The bottom 50% of income earners in the United States now collectively own less than 1% of the nation’s wealth.
- Average Wall Street bonuses for 2009 were up 17% when compared with 2008.
- In the United States, the average federal worker now earns 60% MORE than the average worker in the private sector.
- The top 1% of U.S. households own nearly twice as much of America’s corporate wealth as they did just 15 years ago.
- In America today, the average time needed to find a job has risen to a record 35.2 weeks.
- More than 40% of Americans who actually are employed are now working in service jobs, which are often very low paying.
- For the first time in U.S. history, more than 40 million Americans are on food stamps, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that number will go up to 43 million Americans in 2011.
- This is what American workers now must compete against: in China a garment worker makes approximately 86 cents an hour and in Cambodia a garment worker makes approximately 22 cents an hour.
- Despite the financial crisis, the number of millionaires in the United States rose a whopping 16% to 7.8 million in 2009.
- Approximately 21% of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010 – the highest rate in 20 years.
- The top 10% of Americans now earn around 50% of our national income.
What are the Republicans proposing now that the “ownership society” has been exposed as a fraud? They want to raise taxes on what’s left of the middle class to pay for more tax cuts for the rich, and more corporate tax cuts.
UPDATE: On Walking Away: Is Strategic Default All That’s Left to Stressed Homeowners?
Krugman: ‘If you want to understand opposition to climate action, follow the money’
Posted by Richard Warnick in Climate Change, Corruption, Democracy, Disaster, Energy, Environment, Foreign Policy, Global Warming, National Politics, This Blog, congress on July 26, 2010
The climate bill’s dead. Senate Democrats pulled the plug last Thursday on a bill that wasn’t even as good as the woefully inadequate House bill passed a over a year ago.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid trotted out the well-worn “60 votes” excuse. Funny how we never heard about the so-called “60-vote rule” during the Bush administration, when it could have helped the country avoid a series of catastrophes and record deficits. Democrats have a big problem, because it seems inevitable that any bill capable of crossing the 60-vote threshold could be worse than doing nothing.
So we lost, and the special interests won. NYT columnist and Nobel Prize economist Paul Krugman wrote the epitaph for climate legislation:
If you want to understand opposition to climate action, follow the money. The economy as a whole wouldn’t be significantly hurt if we put a price on carbon, but certain industries — above all, the coal and oil industries — would. And those industries have mounted a huge disinformation campaign to protect their bottom lines.
Look at the scientists who question the consensus on climate change; look at the organizations pushing fake scandals; look at the think tanks claiming that any effort to limit emissions would cripple the economy. Again and again, you’ll find that they’re on the receiving end of a pipeline of funding that starts with big energy companies, like Exxon Mobil, which has spent tens of millions of dollars promoting climate-change denial, or Koch Industries, which has been sponsoring anti-environmental organizations for two decades.
Or look at the politicians who have been most vociferously opposed to climate action. Where do they get much of their campaign money? You already know the answer.
What’s next? Well, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is responsible for regulating greenhouse gas emissions. Several regulatory initiatives are underway, and the Obama administration has pledged to veto any legislation that attempts to suspend the EPA’s rulemaking authority.
It’s possible the United Nations could go ahead and do climate change mitigation without us.
As a way to salvage the 12-year-old Kyoto protocol, the United Nations has suggested amending its rules to require only four fifths of the countries to agree to a climate deal, effectively forcing the opposed nations to accept a cleaner earth. “It reflects a degree of desperation — and justifiable desperation — on the part of the UN,” says Mark Lynas, who advised the Maldives at the international climate summit in Copenhagen last winter.
If the amendment passes this August when countries meet in Bonn, Germany, it could prohibit rogue anti-climate-treaty states — such as the oil giant, Saudi Arabia, or major energy-using nations, such as the U.S. — from holding the treaty hostage. “We saw at Copenhagen how some countries blocked progress and we can’t allow that to happen again,” said Britain’s shadow secretary for energy and climate change Ed Miliband, according to The Guardian.
UPDATE: The Big Green Buy. The Nation’s Christian Parenti covers the need for government to step up and use its buying power to create economies of scale for energy conservation and renewable energy. The federal government is the world’s largest consumer of energy and vehicles, and the nation’s largest greenhouse gas emitter. President Obama can make the switch by executive order, without congressional approval. For example, why isn’t the U.S. Postal Service relying on electric vehicles?
How Can We Stop the Catfood Commission?
Posted by Richard Warnick in Deficit, Democrats, Disaster, Economic Exploitation, Economy, National Politics, This Blog, Unemployment, congress on July 23, 2010
It is absolutely beyond the Republicans’ power to cut Social Security, even if they re-take the House and Senate in November, since Obama will continue to wield veto power. The real impetus for Social Security cuts is from the “Deficit Commission” which Obama created in January by Executive Order, then stacked with people (including its bipartisan co-Chairs) who have long favored slashing the program, and whose recommendations now enjoy the right of an up-or-down vote in Congress after the November election, thanks to the recent maneuvering by Nancy Pelosi. The desire to cut Social Security is fully bipartisan (otherwise it couldn’t happen) and pushed by the billionaire class that controls the Government.
If the Catfood Commission proposes a bill slashing Social Security and Medicare benefits and it comes to the House floor, Republicans and Blue Dog Dems will vote for it. Even if all the progressive-leaning Democrats oppose it on a straight vote, it will probably pass. Millions of retirees will fall out of the middle class into poverty.
Jon Walker on FDL thinks that House progressives can threaten to remove Rep. Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House if she allows such a vote. That does not seem likely. IMHO if they had that kind of cojones then Bush would have been impeached and health care would include a public option.
Here’s the question. How can we stop the Catfood Commission?
Related One Utah post:
Budget Priorities Left to Catfood Commission (July 6)
Hope is Fading Away
Posted by Richard Warnick in Barack Obama, Civil liberties Infringement, Democrats, Disaster, Economy, Health Care, National Politics, Party Politics, This Blog, Unemployment on July 16, 2010
John Harris and Jim VandeHei yesterday wrote a Politico article in which unnamed White House functionaries complain that the administration isn’t getting enough credit for bringing the change promised in the 2008 campaign.
Digby offers a few thoughts that are obvious to those of us outside the Beltway:
First of all, the central premise seems to be that liberals should be happy that Obama has “gotten something done” without regard to what that “something” is. But the fact is that professional politicians always rattle off a legislative laundry list while activists care about process, politics and policy — and average voters only care about the results.
…Therefore, his political advisers should know that when the country is still reeling from unemployment and foreclosures after nearly two years, the passage of an inadequate stimulus bill, which unrealistic benchmarks and a giddy victory party ensured would be the only chance they got, the only people who will consider that a “success” would be beltway insiders. They should have realized that a health care bill that nobody in their right minds would have designed from scratch, the worst aspects of which liberals will be asked to defend for years to come, would be met with dampened enthusiasm by those who watched the process devolve from a sense of progressive purpose to an exhausting farce. They are expected to be able to predict that financial reform without accountability for what’s gone before, combined with the administration’s unwillingness to confront the civil liberties abuses of the last administration — indeed expanding on them in some cases — would show a lack of fundamental concern for justice among those who care about such things.
Since the Village is essentially a Republican town perhaps they assumed that liberals were all going to be the same dead-enders the Bush cultists were, defending their man until the day he was out of office (and then insisting they never liked him in the first place). That’s what “little people” (and paid political hacks) are supposed to do. But liberals are not known for cultlike devotion to their leaders — ask Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Carter.
Like I said, some things are obvious outside the Beltway.
85 Days, 16 Hours and 25 Minutes
Posted by Richard Warnick in Barack Obama, Disaster, Energy, Environment, National Politics on July 15, 2010
NEW ORLEANS – BP finally choked off the flow of oil into the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday — 85 days and up to 184 million gallons after the crisis unfolded — then began a tense 48 hours of watching to see whether the capped-off well would hold or blow a new leak.
Keep your fingers crossed.
Meanwhile, having apparently learned nothing from the succession of catastrophes on Wall Street, in the coal mines and out in the Gulf of Mexico, the Obama White House is conferring with the Business Roundtable about eliminating many more federal regulations that protect the environment, workers, consumers and investors.
Budget Priorities Left to Catfood Commission
Posted by Richard Warnick in Deficit, Democrats, Disaster, Economic Exploitation, Economy, National Politics, This Blog, Unemployment on July 6, 2010
The country’s best known Nobel economist, Paul Krugman, put it plainly: “[P]enny-pinching in the midst of a severely depressed economy is no way to deal with our long-run budget problems.”
Democrats aren’t listening to Krugman. The House just passed a “budget enforcement resolution” that didn’t actually contain a budget, but did call for a spending cap of $1.12 trillion. That means $7 billion will probably have to be carved out of existing domestic spending. The bloated Department of Defense budget plus supplemental funding for Iraq and Afghanistan are exempt from cuts.
How do they propose to eliminate $7 billion in non-military spending? The details were left to President Obama’s bipartisan fiscal commission (aka the Catfood Commission), which is supposed to report a long-term budget plan by December.
The National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform was established with little fanfare last February. It is stacked with prominent advocates of drastic cuts to social programs, including Social Security and Medicare. Thanks to Monica Lewinsky, most people have forgotten President Clinton’s plan to raid the Social Security Trust Fund for the benefit of Wall Street. Now it’s back.
There is no way the Catfood Commission is going to recommend raising taxes on the rich, quickly bringing the troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan, or creating jobs for 15 million unemployed Americans. Those measures would balance the federal budget, but they wouldn’t benefit Wall Street as much as privatizing Social Security.
Marie Antoinette never said “let ‘em eat catfood.” But she was in favor of balancing the budget on the backs of low-income people, and that’s what the Catfood Commission is all about.
UPDATE: The hand wringing about $7 billion in budget cuts is astounding when you stop to think that’s ONE PERCENT of military spending. Also, the federal government hands out more than $4.5 billion a year to the oil & gas industry in tax subsidies alone (this does not include the federal leases auctioned off at bargain prices).
Bush Rated Worst Modern President, Fifth Worst Ever
Posted by Richard Warnick in American History, Bush Administration, Bush Failures, Disaster, George W. Bush, National Politics, This Blog on July 1, 2010
Via Think Progress. The annual Siena Research Institute poll (PDF) of presidential scholars is out, listing the best and worst presidents in American history.
[E]xperts rank Franklin D. Roosevelt as the top all time chief executive. The 238 participating presidential scholars round out the top five in order with Theodore Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Teddy Roosevelt had, more than any other president the “right stuff”, and tops the collective ranking of a cluster of personal qualities including imagination, integrity, intelligence, luck, background, and being willing to take risks. Lincoln, according to the experts, demonstrated the greatest presidential abilities while FDR ranks first in overall accomplishments.
…George W. Bush …found himself in the bottom five at 39th rated especially poorly in handling the economy, communication, ability to compromise, foreign policy accomplishments and intelligence. Rounding out the bottom five are four presidents that have held that dubious distinction each time the survey has been conducted: Andrew Johnson, James Buchanan, Warren G. Harding, and Franklin Pierce.
I predict that President Bush’s rating will sink even lower as the consequences of his failed presidency continue to unfold. Under Bush, we suffered the deadliest terrorist attack ever. Bush began not one but two unwinnable wars, one of which has turned into the longest war in American history. The damage done to the Constitution during the Bush administration has not been reversed. And the biggest man-made environmental catastrophe history is a direct result of the Bush administration’s de-regulation of the oil industry.
For historical trivia buffs: George W. Bush’s mother, Barbara Pierce Bush, is a fourth cousin four times removed of President Franklin Pierce. Pierce was a Democrat, and has the questionable distinction of being the only sitting president ever refused re-nomination by his own party.
How Long Are We Going to Keep Blaming President Bush for the Results of His Bad Policies?
Posted by Richard Warnick in Afghanistan, Bush Administration, Deficit, Disaster, Economy, Federal Budget, Hypocrisy, Iraq, National Politics, Republicans, Tea Bag Party, This Blog on June 28, 2010
From The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities:
Message to the Tea Partyers: Iraq, Afghanistan, the Bush tax cuts and the Bush Recession are what is driving the U.S. deficit, not stimulus spending.
Mike Lee: Taxpayers Ought to Bail Out BP
Posted by Richard Warnick in Disaster, Energy, Hypocrisy, Jon Huntsman, Mike Lee, National Politics, Republicans, Sam Granato, Utah Politics, Utah Pollution on June 25, 2010
A week ago, U.S. Senate candidate Mike Lee sat down with the Salt Lake Tribune’s Robert Gehrke for a wide-ranging interview. When asked if taxpayers ought to pay the economic costs of the BP oil spill, Lee answered candidly.
SL TRIBUNE: Currently there’s a cap on liabilities that BP is expected to pay $75 million dollars. There’s legislation that Bill Nelson sponsored to increase that liability to $10 billion dollars. The oil companies say that will put them out of business. Is that something you would be supportive of, increasing that cap on liability for environmental damage?
MIKE LEE: No.
SL TRIBUNE: Why is that?
LEE: This company is reliant, the entire industry, is reliant on the insurance its provided by law. Now had that cap not been in place, we would be facing a completely different question. But you have a set of settled expectations that you give to a business when it decides to make an investment in this. Our country benefits from this type of activity and allows us to produce more oil and allows more of our petro dollars to remain in the United States. We’ve relied on that, and to take that away I think would be a mistake.
SL TRIBUNE: Does that leave taxpayers on the hook for part of the damage?
LEE: Well yea probably does. And the government can look at that and say look, we put this damages cap in place, so we understood what that meant.
SL TRIBUNE: Isn’t that equivalent to a bailout?
LEE: I don’t think, well, I don’t think that’s equivalent to a bailout. I think that’s the government saying there’s some things its going to — if you look at the Outer Continental Shelf, something over which the United States has jurisdiction, and the United State wants to clean that up, then it’s free to do so. There’s nothing in that liability cap that requires the Federal government to do it. Well I’m not sure that necessarily means the taxpayers will end up paying the bill. It maybe the industry generally will just contribute to it. In fact I would expect other people involved in offshore drilling will have a part of the clean up because they would want to to show this can be done safely and when disasters do happen it can be cleaned up.
Mike Lee’s philosophy is what I call “Wall Street Socialism.” Corporations want to privatize their profits and socialize their losses (or simply dump negative externalities like oil spills on the public). Bumper-sticker version: “Taxpayer Bailouts for Billionaires.”
Vote for Sam Granato, or else this guy will be our new senator.
You’re Either the Commander-in-Chief Or You’re Not (7)
Posted by Richard Warnick in Afghanistan, Barack Obama, Disaster, Foreign Policy, Military, National Politics, Pakistan, Taliban, This Blog, War on June 23, 2010
No, General McChrystal hasn’t been demoted already – it’s an old photo.
Well, today General Stanley McChrystal went to the White House, resignation letter in hand. About time. An article by Michael Hastings in Rolling Stone has revealed him as the leader of an arrogant staff who billed themselves ironically as “Team America,” a reference to the film “Team America: World Police” (2004).
McChrystal and his inner circle, perhaps irritated by the almost-immediate failure of their Afghanistan counterinsurgency strategy, expressed extreme annoyance at President Obama and most of the administration’s national security officials (with the notable exception of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton).
On Danger Room, they weigh the problem and the opportunity:
If President Obama fires McChrystal, there’s a very real possibility of months of chaos as the commands switch over—just as there was last year, when McKiernan was axed. Worse still, it’s unclear that McChrystal’s original strategy can be pulled off without his staff there to push it down the chain of command. There’s also another possibility, namely that Team Obama could use this as an opportunity for reversing many of McChrystal’s astoundingly bad decisions (like going into Kandahar in the first place), focusing resources instead on winnable battlegrounds like Kunduz and Herat and Khost.
Unfortunately, whether or not McChrystal and “Team America” remain in charge, the Obama administration still shows no sign of considering a switch to a counter-terrorist strategy in Afghanistan-Pakistan in the near future. That means more reinforcements will be sent, providing more targets for Taliban IEDs. Six more NATO soldiers were killed in attacks in Afghanistan on Wednesday, bringing to 75 the number of foreign troops who have died there this month. June 2010 is the worst month for NATO casualties since the 2001 invasion to oust the Taliban.
Here’s a fact that won’t surprise you: Afghanistan ranks in the top ten of the Failed States Index again this year, as it has since the list was first compiled six years ago. In a failed state in the 21st Century, it’s fourth generation warfare (4GW). Counterinsurgency (COIN) is a non-starter.
Even if COIN were possible, it would take more than half a million troops to pacify Afghanistan — the planned 100,000 can’t do it. The key component of the few successful COIN campaigns has always been a strong national government with a good claim to legitimacy. Afghanistan has never had one.
Maybe people would be surprised to learn that U.S. taxpayers are helping to fund the Taliban. U.S. armed forces require a lot of logistical support. Transportation and security for the supplies is contracted out, and the contractors pay protection money to the Taliban for safe passage. A new report released yesterday by the House subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs found that they were paying as much as $1,500 per truck. Investigators say as much as $4 million per week end up in the hands of the Taliban via local security companies in return for not attacking convoys bound for American bases, and some 200 military combat outposts throughout Afghanistan.
Here’s another surprising fact: In Marjah, the largest military operation in Afghanistan since the initial U.S. invasion in 2001, has not defeated the Taliban after four months. The 15,000 NATO and Afghan troops provide a ratio of one occupying soldier for every two members of the population. Counter-insurgency doctrine normally calls for one counter-insurgent for every 20-50 people. The “government-in-a-box” arrived, but the box turned out to be empty. Force without good governance isn’t working.
Rajiv Chandrasekaran in the Washington Post:
Residents of this onetime Taliban sanctuary see signs that the insurgents have regained momentum in recent weeks, despite early claims of success by U.S. Marines. The longer-than-expected effort to secure Marjah is prompting alarm among top American commanders that they will not be able to change the course of the war in the time President Obama has given them.
Oh, and that Pentagon-planted New York Times story about $1 trillion in Afghan mineral deposits was nonsense. Afghanistan has no mining industry, and very little water or transportation infrastructure. Not to mention a considerable security problem.
UPDATE: General McChrystal has been relieved of command. CENTCOM commander General David Petraeus is going to take over. President Obama made clear that the change in generals will not bring a change in policy.
Previous One Utah posts in this series:
You’re Either the Commander-in-Chief Or You’re Not (6) (November 11, 2009)
You’re Either the Commander-in-Chief Or You’re Not (5) (October 25, 2009)
You’re Either the Commander-in-Chief Or You’re Not (4) (October 7, 2009)
You’re Either the Commander-in-Chief Or You’re Not (3) (February 27, 2009)
You’re Either the Commander-in-Chief Or You’re Not (2) (February 3, 2009)
You’re Either the Commander-in-Chief Or You’re Not (January 29, 2009)
Rachel Nails BP For Lame Excuses
Posted by Richard Warnick in 4th Estate (Media), Disaster, Energy, Environment, National Politics, Rachel Maddow, Utah Pollution on June 15, 2010
Last night on Rachel Maddow’s MSNBC show, she highlighted the absurdity of the excuses offered by BP’s COO concerning the company’s Gulf of Mexico slapdash oil spill response plan, and the fact that spill cleanup technology hasn’t improved in the last 40 years.
h/t Firedoglake for excerpting this segment. Rachel’s list of oil spills includes the recent Salt Lake City Chevron fiasco that put an estimated 33,000 gallons of oil in Red Butte Creek and the Liberty Park pond. Forcing zoo workers to clean oil off hundreds of ducks and geese.
killed
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