Sometimes stories happen because of planning; other times serendipity intervenes, which is how we got to the conversation we'll be having today.
In an exchange of comments on the Blue Hampshire site, I proposed an idea that could be of real value to unions, workers...and surprisingly, employers.
If things worked out correctly, not only would lots of people feel a real desire to have unions represent them, but employers would potentially be coming to unions looking to forge relationships, and, just to make it better, this plan bypasses virtually all of the tools and techniques employers use to shut out union organizers.
Since I just thought this up myself, I'm really not sure exactly how practical the whole thing is, and the last part of the discussion today will be provided by you, as I ask you to sound off on whether this plan could work, and if so, how it could be made better.
It's a new week...so let's all put our heads together and rebuild the labor movement, shall we?
As I pick up the pace of work again, coming into the midterms, I have to get some stories cleared off the desk in order to make room for some others, and that's what we're about today.
We'll be talking about saving more than 300,000 of this country's most important jobs, and paying for it in a way that is not only good policy, but is a real problem for Republicans who are yelling "no new taxes!" once again while pretending they care about actually paying for actual spending and actually want to cut actual unemployment.
We have a bit of work to do today, but we want to keep it somewhat short...so let's get going.
This week from the think tanks, the narrative was that of an economy under stress, and attempting to recover from the greatest economic downturn since the Great Depression. The report this month from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that while employment remained steady at 9.5% the private sector added only 71,000 jobs. While the employment rate is holding steady, the labor market is shrinking as more and more workers drop out of the labor force because they have been unable to find employment. What we can see from the latest reports is that while the government stimulus prevented the economy from falling into a second Great Depression, and according to a report from two leading economists without the stimulus the GDP in 2010 would be about 11.5% lower, and payroll employment would be less by some 8½ million jobs. However, despite this it is clear that the economy needs more economic stimulus and jobs programs to prevent the Great Recession to turn into the Great Depression.
"The primary reason the unemployment rate did not rise in July is that the labor force officially shrank by 181,000 workers. Those that dropped out of labor force were prime-age workers, while the number of young workers and older workers increased. The teen (age 16-19) labor force increased by 70,000, the young adult (age 20-24) labor force increased by 17,000, the prime-age (age 25-54) labor force decreased by 325,000, and older workers (age 55+) increased by 46,000. If the 181,000 workers that made up the decline had instead remained in the labor force and were counted among the unemployed, the unemployment rate in July would have been 9.6%. This points to another ongoing issue in the labor market, the backlog of "missing workers," that is, workers who dropped out of (or never entered) the labor force during the downturn. In the last three months, the labor force has declined by 1.2 million workers, reversing much of the 1.7 million increase in the labor force in the first four months of the year. This clearly shows how the forward momentum from earlier this year has largely evaporated."
Saying no only goes so far. The Congressional Republicans obstructionism has been purely a political strategy, but it is a shortsighted political strategy with no long term vision. Perhaps that is because that Republicans have no long term vision, and that their campaign agenda amounts to nothing but clichés and platitudes. Over the course of the primary campaign season we have heard Republican candidates use phrases like "pro-growth," and "free enterprise," and "lower taxes," and "less spending," and of course "smaller government." These candidates have spent most of their time informing voters about everything that they're against, but they haven't spent much time explaining to voters what they support. Some may argue that Republicans don't have a coherent narrative for a policy agenda because they do not have one. However, the real reason they don't have a coherent narrative might be because they do have an agenda, and the policy ideas that Republicans are advocating are to simply double down on the failed economic policies that lead to the Great Recession.
This year Congressman Jim Jordan (R-OH) introduced the Economic Freedom Act of 2010, which among other things would eliminate the tax on the capital gains of individuals and corporations; reduce the maximum corporate income tax rate to 12.5%; allow a permanent and unlimited expensing allowance for depreciable business assets; and reduce payroll tax rates for employers, employees, and self-employed individuals in 2010, permanently repeals the estate taxes. According to an analysis by the Center for American Progress, what this proposed legislation amounts to is a $10 trillion giveaway to corporations and placing a further burden on working and middle class Americans. For all of the Congressional Republicans talk about budget deficits, this legislation would add $7 trillion in deficits over the next ten years. When you consider Republican support for extending the Bush Administration 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, the Republican economic agenda would add $10 trillion to the deficit. How does the legislation proposed to pay for these policies? By repealing TARP and using the remaining stimulus funds. However, that would only pay for about 5% of the cost of the legislation, which disproportionately benefits the wealthy. The average middle-class taxpayer would receive a tax cut of $467, compared to the average taxpayer in the richest 1% receives a tax cut of $157,500.
Then there is the Roadmap for America's Future Act of 2010, which was introduced this year by Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI). While Congressman Jordan's legislation would simply disproportionately benefit the wealthiest of Americans and add trillions of dollars to the budget deficits, Congressman Ryan's legislation would also increase the tax burdens on the work and middle class and make significant cuts to the social safety net. Basically not only does Ryan want to dismantle the policies that kept the Great Recession from turning into the Great Depression, he wants to dismantle the policies that where created because of the Great Depression to protect the most vulnerable of Americans. According to an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the Roadmap would reduce by half the taxes of the richest 1% of Americans and the tax cuts would increase the further up the income ladder you climb. The richest 1/10 of 1% of Americans (whose incomes exceed $2.9 million a year) would receive an average tax cut of $1.7 million a year. How would these massive tax cuts be offset? By taxing working and middle class Americans. A new consumption tax on most goods and services, and this would shift the tax burdens so considerably from the upper class to the middle class that people with incomes over $1 million would face much lower effective tax rates than middle-income families would. When you consider that the Roadmap makes drastic changes to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, discontinue the Children's Health Insurance Program, radically reduce federal spending, the picture becomes clear that Ryan's plan is a roadmap to the Gilded Age.
What should Congress do? Right now, nothing. Why should Congress do nothing? Because if Congress does nothing then the Bush Administration tax cuts for the wealthiest of Americans will expire and this will recover much needed revenue and help reduce the budget deficits. Except for the first time during the course of the Obama Administration Congressional Republicans actually want to do something: extend the Bush Administration tax cuts and some believe they should be made permanent.
If tax legislation is passed all the tax cuts passed under Bush Administration in 2001 and 2003 will expire. The tax rates would then revert at the end of the year, with the top marginal income tax rate rising to 39.6% from 35%, and other corresponding rates for lower income brackets would also increase. There basically have been three different lines of thought on the Bush tax cuts, and that has been to either let them all expire, let some of them expire, and to let none of them expire. Generally speaking liberal Democrats have been making the case to allow the tax cuts to expire, while conservative Democrats have been arguing to allow some to expire but maintain the lower tax rate cuts. Of course Republicans have been arguing that they should all be extended.
According to a new report by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, Texas ranks 34th nationally in a state-by-state study on the well-being of America's children. There are also significant areas in which Texas is among the worst in the nation, and these ranks represent a failure in many of the public policies instituted over the last two decades.
Texas is among the very worst in preventing teenage pregnancies. The teen birth rate in Texas in 2007 was 64 births per 1,000 females ages 15-19, which is considerably higher than the national rate of 43 births per 1,000. Texas ranked 48th in the nation in teenage pregnancies, and only New Mexico and Mississippi ranked higher. This follows a nationwide trend of increased teenage pregnancies. According to a report by the Guttmacher Institute, after a decade of declining teenage pregnancies the nationally teen pregnancy rate rose 3% in 2006, which reflected an increase in teen birth of 4%. The report notes that the cause of the decline in teenage pregnancies in the 1990s was due to more and better use of contraceptives among sexually active teens. However, during the 2000s sex education programs aimed exclusively at promoting abstinence, and these programs have lead to increasing teen pregnancy rates especially in states such as Texas.
This week the Congress passed a $34 billion dollar extension of benefits to Americans who have been out of work for more than 26 weeks, and these benefits where passed along party lines with the Republicans in the Senate blocking the benefits for weeks. Congressional Republicans argued that the benefits should not be passed unless a corresponding amount of budget cuts could be made, however, another argument that Republicans have offered is that unemployment benefits themselves are a disincentive to find work. At a time when long term unemployment is high than at any time since the Great Depression, and there are five workers applying for every one job these arguments seem ludicrous. The unemployment benefits will help 2 million struggling Americans, and the extension of benefits will last through November.
The idea that unemployment benefits will unacceptably add to the deficit is a relatively weak argument, considering that the fall in consumer demand if unemployment benefits are not extending in the long run will add more to the deficit in lack of tax revenue. Also, it seems a bit disingenuous for Republicans to lecture anyone on deficits or government spending. According to analysis by the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, significant causes of our current deficits where due to the 2001 and 2003 Bush Administration tax cuts (which by the way Republicans are still arguing doing not need to be paid for with corresponding cuts in the budget). The other idea that unemployment benefits are a disincentive for people to find employment is another weak argument when you consider that there are not enough jobs for American workers. What these arguments are about is plain and simply politics.
Americans are getting poorer, and it's going to get worse | McClatchy
For the life of me I cannot understand why so many people just don't get what's going on economically in this country. We are on our way down folks and it is going to get worse. The gap between the very well off and the poor continues to grow and our middle class continues to shrink. I always get a laugh out of so-called conservatives who shout "class warfare!" when these statistics are pointed out to them. Class warfare has been the republican strategy since Richard Nixon was president. His so-called "Southern Strategy" sought to bring southern state democrats into the fold of the republican party by appealing to their fears of integration, the civil-rights movement and the general upheaval of the country in those Vietnam war years. Here is how Kevin Phillips, Nixon's strategist put it in 1970:
Although the phrase "Southern strategy" is often attributed to Nixon political strategist Kevin Phillips, he did not originate it,[1] but merely popularized it.[2] In an interview included in a 1970 New York Times article, he touched on its essence:
From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote and they don't need any more than that... but Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That's where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats.[3]
While Phillips sought to polarize ethnic voting in general, and not just to win the white South, the South was by far the biggest prize yielded by his approach. Its success began at the presidential level, gradually trickling down to statewide offices, the Senate and House, as some legacy segregationist Democrats retired or switched to the GOP. In addition, the Republican Party worked for years to develop grassroots political organizations across the South, supporting candidates for local school boards and offices, for instance.
The economic downturn has had devastating effects on all Americans, and economist are predicting that there are long to be long term affects and that the economy will not recovery fully for a significant amount of time. According to the last report from the Bureau of Labor and Statistics, 14.6 million people are currently unemployed, 9.5%. The long term unemployed, those who have been unemployed for 27 weeks or longer, make up 6.8 million of the jobless Americans. However, the economy has had a disproportionate effect on people of color, in an economy where people of color have already long been at a disadvantage. The latest statistics show that while the overall unemployment rate for whites is 8.6%, the unemployment rate for Latinos is 12.4% and the unemployment rate for blacks is 15.4%. While white America may be in the middle of the Great Recession, people of color in America are in the middle of a prolonged depression.
While we've all been busy watching the "oil spill live cam", a similar uncontrolled discharge has been taking place in Washington, DC
In this case, however, it's lobbyists that are spilling all over the landscape as the House and Senate attempt to merge their two visions of financial reform.
They're trying desperately to influence the outcome of the conference in which House and Senate negotiators have been engaged; this to craft the exact language of the reconciled legislation.
There's an additional element of drama hovering over the events as eight House members, including one of the most vocal of the Republican negotiators, face ethics questions related to this very bill.
The best part: if you're enough of a political geek, you can actually watch the events unfold, unedited and unfiltered, from the comfort of your very own computer.
So far, it's been amazing political theater, and if you follow along I'll tell you how you can get in on the fun, too.
It's part two of our "Netroots Nation Goes To Vegas Piano Bar Extravaganza", and in keeping with tradition that means we are again taking a story request.
This time we won't be talking about energy security or "climate security"; instead, we'll discuss retirement security, keeping your money for yourself instead of paying it out in "mystery fees", and how one of the "usual suspects" is at it again.
(John Robert Behrman is an economist and fifth-generation Texan. He is Executive Vice-Chair of the Progressive Populist Caucus of the Texas Democratic Party and State Committeeman for Senate District 13 writing his column here on Texas Kaos with his personal views only - promoted by boadicea)
Here are three questions about Deepwater Horizon that will be hard but useful to answer:
How did this happen?
Who is responsible?
Where do we go from here?
It may seem ludicrous to think of Conservatism as a mental illness. It is really even hard for a died-in-the-wool liberal to think of it that way. But looking at the events and emotions coming to the surface since the first black man was elected President of the United States, common sense demands we look deeper into the common threads running through the current conservative movement in the U.S.
Some of the most serious conservatives have formed the Tea Party Movement, which seems to be bent on venting anger, frustration and irrational ideals. The conservatives who are less extreme, seem to have little motivation to separate themselves as a more rational group.
Resentment has always appeared to be at the core of modern conservatism. Now it has grown into a visceral aggressive motivation. Greed and has always been a part of it too, but the current conservatism is rife with selfishness and total disregard for others.
Its no accident that the current brand of conservatism resembles the temper tantrum of spoiled children. But what one cannot avoid is the obvious relation of the hallmarks of conservative idealism and anger, hostility and frustration coupled with paranoia and delusional ideology. Government is bad and out to get us, minorities have it too easy, people are laying around and not working, the poor are that way because they are lazy, there is no one getting substandard health care in America., the president is not legitimate, the constitution is being ignored, the IRS is unconstitutional...... the list just goes on and one.
When you really sit down and listen to these people, your common sense tells you something is wrong with them. The more they irrational thinking is reinforced, the more angrey and frustrated they become. Then they become addicted to the hate and resentment and they feed on it....... Then they blow..... shooting people and flying planes into buildings .. God only knows what will come next.
(This is the industry that Conservadems are trying to protect with inaction. - promoted by boadicea)
I was supposed to begin the long-delayed series of PTSD stories I've been planning, but before we begin, I need to tell y'all about something that just happened in my house.
For us it wasn't a matter of life or death, but it is the kind of story that explains, perfectly, why we need to reform the health care system we have today-and for that matter, it's also a great explanation of why a single-payer system would be a giant step forward for everyone in this country, whether you're insured today or not.
It's also hilarious and sad and frustrating, all at the same time-which makes today's story a pretty good allegory for the current American way of doing health care.
So follow along, have a good laugh...and at the same time, take a minute to consider what could be, and how much less irritating things should be.
The problem is that I got laid off just before the November election, and I spent a fair bit of time moping and bemoaning my fate. Then I picked up a political gig (Political Director for a Mayoral candidate in Austin), and my world was nothing but the campaign. I didn't feel comfortable blogging about the race, and I didn't have much else to talk about. I got really boring, and very quiet.
Now that I'm past the municipal campaign, I'm back on the job hunt, and it's sucking out there.
The work I do for a living is what I like to call a "Luxury Job". When companies have the money to spare, they hire Technical Writers to handle policies and procedures or software manuals. In a down economy, the developers write the help files, and management throws darts to see who gets saddled with the Policies & Procedures Manual. No one really wants to do the job (except language nerds like me).
The comforting thought is that when the economy does turn around, I'll have plenty of work to do "fixing" the documentation that is written by the unfortunate souls who were forced to write. Those folks will either welcome me with flowers and sunshine, or resent the living daylights out of what I am doing to what they wrote. There's no way to know until I get there. And I'm not sure WHEN I'll get there.
House Republicans presented a four-page outline of their health care reform plan Wednesday but said they didn't know yet how much it would cost, how they would pay for it and how many of the nearly 50 million Americans without insurance would be covered by it.
Well, I guess if you don't plan on doing shit about the problem it doesn't take that long to outline a plan with no financing and no sick people in it.
I don't know if you've been thinking about it, but the costs of long-term care have been on the mind of some friends of mine lately.
For reasons that we won't go into here, they are in the process of pricing long-term care at care facilities...and yesterday afternoon, we had a chance to have a look at the "menu" of services (the facility's term) that can be purchased at this particular location.
If you are facing this issue in your own family, if you are a taxpayer thinking about how we plan to fund long-term care in the future...or if, one day, you expect to be old yourself...this conversation will surely matter.
So there's a lot of conversation out there about car dealerships being told they won't be selling cars for Chrysler and GM any more.
The idea, we are told, is to save the auto manufacturers money by reducing the number of dealerships with whom they do business.
I don't really know that much about the car business; and I really didn't understand where these cost savings would come from, but I was able to have a conversation with the one person I do know who actually could offer some useful insight.
Follow along, Gentle Reader, and you'll get a bit of an education at a time when we all need to know a bit more about these companies we suddenly seem to own...and about the closure of thousands of local businesses that will make the news about our bad job market worse.
I confess, besides catching up with work and such, I've been lost in space (cyberspace, that is), since our first meeting last weekend. It was just too much fun to be learning all the ins and outs of the twitterverse and following the "journos" (new word for me) at the teabagasm events around the nation. Oh, the tales I could tell, having heard all the quips and "personal" comments from behind the scenes! Lots of fun--almost like "being there".
Which brings me to the point I wanted to communicate today. About how we are all connected. It's a very simple thought, one that makes common sense when you think at a meta level about all life on earth being part of one large ecological system. But it has come more into focus these days in terms of the kind of social networking we do on the internet (Facebook, Linked-In, blogging websites, Twitter, texting, etc).
It seems to be important, though, to combine that e-socializing with the face-to-face in order to build the kind of personal connection needed for a relationship, whether that be a personal, a group, or a community kind of relationship. For example, while the recent political campaign of Barack Obama was successful in its use of the most advanced communication technology, use was also made of town halls and community organizing. In these venues, personal, face to face connections could be made--people could interact with each other and form a sense of kinship that encouraged them to trust each other and work together for their common good. The personal connection is a powerful component in what people can accomplish together because it goes back to the most primal instincts of human beings--that of forming close social groups. By living and working together in social groups, people were able to survive difficult primitive conditions.
The phrase, "Six Degrees of Separation" was coined by John Guare in a play he wrote in 1990. The play explored the existential premise that everyone in the world is connected to everyone else in the world by a chain of no more than six acquaintances, thus, "six degrees of separation."
In the play, one of the characters states:
"I read somewhere that everybody on this planet is separated by only six other people. Six degrees of separation between us and everyone else on this planet. The President of the United States, a gondolier in Venice, just fill in the names. I find it A) extremely comforting that we're so close, and B) like Chinese water torture that we're so close because you have to find the right six people to make the right connection... I am bound to everyone on this planet by a trail of six people."[16] (From Wikipedia).
I must say, I had a most striking experience of this phenomenon, this kind of six degrees of separation just today at lunch. I met a beautiful young African American woman at Kuff's (Charles Kuffner) Democratic lunch bunch. She is the "communications coordinator" for Anise Parker's Houston mayoral candidacy. In talking with her about how her boss, Anise, would be a good mayor, I told her about our meeting to explore how a local community group might provide mutual aid and support to each other in times of economic uncertainty. I told her how we'd talked both about forming a local currency for exchange of goods and talents that may not currently be valued in the mainstream economy.
I told her about how we talked about the possibility that foreclosed houses or apartment buildings inside the loop in Houston could be purchased and remodeled to LEEDS standards with some of the federal stimulus money, and how this could help many people who were struggling to find affordable housing. Moreover I told her how this conversation came about in brainstorming about how there are a rising number of aging single women (and others, of course) who would prefer living in the city where they could form relationships with others who shared their values (and she added, in affirmation, "whether they were brown, black, or white, right?"--to which I added, of course! --She had just told me how she struggled to find affordable housing as a single female when she moved to Houston from Chicago several years ago.) And I added that, in fact, there are several women in our group that fit that characterization I described.
I also told her how we talked about our visions for renewing the city's transportation infrastructure, using federal stimulus money for building a light rail system that would cut down on the fossil fuels being used for suburban-city commuting purposes. Of course, I told her one of Mayor White's reasons for suggesting the idea of making inner city homes desirable, affordable, and energy smart was to cut down on the number of people having to commute into the city, not only because we are using a declining supply of foreign oil, but also because we are polluting our city skies.
After she gave me the answers she thought her boss would support and initiate if elected, we continued to talk more and I found she was enthusiastic about the idea of urban intentional community. She told me the area of town in which she lived might be an excellent starting place for exploring such community building. She expanded upon the thought of a group buying an apartment building to buying up a whole block where everyone knew each other and "had each other's backs".
Before we said our goodbyes, she smiled really big and said she had just been smiling inside the whole time since she'd first heard my name in introductions, (Thurman), because that had been the name of some of her father's people in Illinois. Chicago, I asked, since she'd said she moved here from there? No, she said, her father's people came from southern Illinois. Oh, really, I said, because my grandfather Thurman and grandmother were from that area, and had, in fact, met, swimming where the Missouri and Mississippi rivers converge at Cairo, Illinois. She, looking surprised and kind of amazed, said her father's people only lived about 40 miles from there. We both looked at each other with that kind of "knowing" look, and it was hard to break contact with each other's eyes, because we were likely telepathing (or tel-empathizing) that we were "connected" (who knows, but that we are blood relatives?).
Six degrees of separation?
Back to the line in the play where the character says, "I find it A) extremely comforting that we're so close, and B) like Chinese water torture that we're so close because you have to find the right six people to make the right connection... I am bound to everyone on this planet by a trail of six people."
Brazos Valley Stimulus: How much Bryan and College Station have requested in stimulus projects.
According to Stimulus Watch.org Bryan has requested $46.5 million, College Station has requested $36.2 million, Waco has requested $81.55 million and overall Texas has requested $10,775,423,039.
All of the projects that Bryan has requested funds for are for water improvements. Bryan has requested $13 million for improvements to the Burton Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant, which was built in 2004 for $1.2 million dollars, and another $13 million to construct the Thompson's Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant. Also $6.5 million has been requested for improvement to Still Creek sewer; $1.5 million for a Highway 47 waterline extension, $1.5 million for a Highway 21 waterline extension and $1.5 million for a Well 19 collection line.
Bryan also requested $4 million for 5 million and 1 million gallon ground storage tank, and another $5.5 million for a Westside Interceptor. Bryan did not include the number of estimate jobs created in the stimulus project request.
College Station has requested $9 million for "pedestrian improvements" to Northgate, which the city estimates will create twenty-five jobs; $4.2 million was requested for Northgate park improvements that the city estimates will create 31.5 jobs. Another $2 million was request for improvements to Tauber Street and Stasney Street off of University Drive, which the city estimates will create six jobs.
College Station also requested $4 million for mixed-use development and another $2 million for utility-line burying on Holleman Drive; the city estimates that these projects will create a total of 75 new jobs.
The project that is estimated to create the most amount of jobs is the Community Center project that College Station requested $7 million for; this project is estimated to create 120 jobs. The project that could possibly be most beneficial to the community is $8 million that was requested for affordable housing development that is estimated to create 40 jobs and help several people attain affordable housing.
How much and where the stimulus money is going in Texas under the cut...
Here are three questions about 
