The Contrarian Review

Where people are a priority

2011-06-18T11:45:00.000-07:00

"In the United States, we paid the equivalent of 8.2 percent of our economy more in social spending out of our own pockets than the people in other rich countries did that year. So the savings we enjoyed on our tax bills were more than offset by what we paid for those things our counterparts bought with their taxes."

9 Countries that Do It Better - AlterNet

The war over reality

2011-06-18T11:40:00.000-07:00

"[T]he parties are increasingly divided over reality itself: over what is actually true, not only about hard science but also social science and simple policy facts such as the contents of the health-care bill."

Reality Bites - The American Prospect

When facts are just a means to an end

2011-06-13T00:42:00.000-07:00

"Intellectualism, science, and knowledge itself is only valuable [for conservatives] to the extent to which it can shore up the ideological beliefs of the speaker or the listener. Facts that might subvert those assertions are simply dismissed."

The Conservative War on Facts - Daily Kos

The problem for conservatives is that they're wrong

2011-06-13T00:38:00.000-07:00

"Low tax rates. Profits for so-called 'job creators.' Spending cuts. The three things that conservatives say are most necessary for achieving a healthy economy are all occurring at historic levels. If conservatives were right, there could be no way that the economic situation could be this bad on either side of the pond. But it is, and that leads to one inescapable logical conclusion: conservative economic policies are not good for job creation or the overall economy."

If Conservatives Were Right - Daily Kos

Government spending does not diminish freedom

2011-06-09T20:37:00.000-07:00

"If freedom, as the conservatives seem to insist, comes down primarily to the quantity of government spending, then a country such as Sweden, where government spends quite a lot, would be less 'free' than a right-wing dictatorship that had no welfare state and no public schools — but also didn’t allow its people to speak, pray, write or organize as they wish."

Romney’s Flawed View of Freedom - Washington Post

America, the learning impaired

2011-06-09T20:20:00.000-07:00

"But we’re special. We’re Americans. We’re exceptional. If we want to learn how to keep healthcare costs from devouring the economy, we don’t need to study the methods used by comparable countries -- because no other countries are comparable to us, in our virtue, our wisdom, and our divinely inspired founding. No, instead of sending fact-finding commissions to other nations to meet with their medical experts, we’ll turn to the Federalist Papers, and try to deduce what Hamilton, Madison and Jay might have said about physician reimbursement rates."

The Case Against "American Exceptionalism" - Salon

Free markets don't exist

2011-06-09T20:07:00.000-07:00

"Free-market economists may want you to believe that the correct boundaries of the market can be scientifically determined, but this is incorrect. If the boundaries of what you are studying cannot be scientifically determined, what you are doing is not a science.... Their ideological cloak is to pretend that their politics is not really political, but rather is an objective economic truth, while other people’s politics is political. However, they are as politically motivated as their opponents."

There Is No Such Thing as a Free Market - Truthout

If they don't quit patting themselves on the back, they're going to hurt themselves

2011-04-25T00:23:00.000-07:00

"Yes, I make good money, but I work hard for it." People have got to stop saying that as if it explains everything. Lots of people work hard. They just don't get paid well for it. One does not axiomatically lead to the other.

Of course, many people love to believe that they control their own lives completely, and any good thing that happens to them is due to their own innate wonderfulness (l'm looking at you, Ayn Randians). Maybe the one good thing to come out of the current financial mess is that some of them have, at long last, been disabused of this ego-inflating illusion.

Also, it's odd how many conservatives in Congress are admitted Rand fans. They obviously believe they're part of the heroic "producer" class. That's absurd. They're in *conservatives in Congress,* for God's sake.

Btw, this is not to argue that people don't make bad decisions or are not in the least bit responsible for their circumstances. It's just to say that many people make plenty of good choices and still can't afford to live in this expensive world. Also, if we have any pretense of compassion, we need to make *some* allowance for simple human error. (And the "right choices" are not always so obvious when you're young or in the thick of things.) The bottom line is that our society *needs* a safety net, because a) in this imperfect world, the rewards don't always go to the good or follow from good choices (sometimes it seems precisely the opposite); and b) if we have any pretense of honoring the intrinsic worth of human life, it must be regarded as unacceptable for any one of us to go without the fundamentals of life: food, shelter. and medical care.

But then the Walton family couldn't buy quite as many platinum-plated butt scratchers

2011-04-25T00:15:00.001-07:00

"Walmart and other low-wage employers are poster-children for free-market hypocrisy, claiming that the 'market' dictates they pay poverty wages while shifting some of their labor costs onto the taxpayer. A 2004 study by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce estimated that just one Walmart store with 200 'associates' costs taxpayers over $420,000 per year in government assistance to the poor."

If Walmart Paid its 1.4 Million U.S. Workers a Living Wage, it Would Result in Almost No Pain for the Average Customer - AlterNet

And it's not just health care that's been commodified

2011-04-25T00:12:00.000-07:00

"How did it become normal, or for that matter even acceptable, to refer to medical patients as 'consumers'? The relationship between patient and doctor used to be considered...almost sacred. Now politicians and supposed reformers talk about the act of receiving care as if it were no different from a commercial transaction, like buying a car--and their only complaint is that it isn’t commercial enough."

Patients Are Not Consumers - The New York Times

The conservatives' Bizarro-world morality

2011-04-13T21:40:00.000-07:00

‎"There is one idea that explains Republican behavior: moral disgust at income redistribution.... Opposition to the progressive income tax is at once a sacred and a hidden value for Republicans, and thus one that makes compromise nearly impossible. You cannot bargain with a partner whose stated goals are merely pretexts....

"The great irony of the recent triumph of [Ayn Rand's] vision on the right is that it takes place in conditions just the opposite. The poor and working classes have languished for decades, while the rich pull in unimaginable sums. This is the atmosphere that has paradoxically given rise to the right’s fervid class warfare."

The Triumph of Taxophobia - Democracy

Yep--somehow it keeps coming back to Rand. The attraction is baffling to those of us who do not experience what Randians apparently do, i.e., an unquestioned sense of superiority to the 99.9999999 percent of humanity who are not them. I mean, radial solipsism and comically distorted egos I can almost grasp--winning!--but this is flat out psyhopathology:

‎"She wrote of one of the protagonists of her stories that 'he does not understand, because he has no organ for understanding, the necessity, meaning, or importance of other people;' and she meant this as praise." http://www.colorado.edu/AmStudies/lewis/ecology/wealthcare.pdf.

‎"From almost any page of Atlas Shrugged, a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: 'To the gas chambers--go!'" - Whittaker Chambers, in a 1957 review of Rand's novel published in--wait for it--William F. Buckley's "National Review."

Note to Paul Ryan: this is not the kind of change we can believe in.

A meaningful deficit fix

2011-04-13T12:00:00.000-07:00

"Estimates of how much would be saved by extending Medicare to cover the entire population range from $58 billion to $400 billion a year. More Americans would get quality health care, and the long-term budget crisis would be sharply reduced."

Medicare Isn't the Problem -- It's the Solution - Salon

I have an ideology. And so do you

2011-04-13T11:56:00.000-07:00

"There’s an old joke to the effect that you’re an ideologue; I’m just being sensible. The point is that everyone has an ideology — which is another way of saying that everyone has (a) values and (b) some view about how the world works. And there’s nothing wrong with that."

Everyone Has An Ideology - The New York Times

Who decides "deservingness"--and why?

2011-04-13T11:53:00.000-07:00

A recent conversation reminded me of this: the virtue of government safety-net programs vs. individually directed "charity" (beyond the sheer financial and logistical inadequacy of the latter) is that public programs provide objective criteria by which to evaluate need, as opposed to the erratic and often inaccurate patterns of distribution that would result from individual taxpayers' underinformed and often biased suppositions as to what another person's circumstances or degree of "deservingness" might be (see, for example, Reagan's fictitious Cadillac-driving "welfare queen," a story that all too many believed unquestioningly because it played to their preconceptions and prejudices).
Eight Great Myths About Welfare - Anitra.net

Slouching towards America

2011-04-04T01:15:00.001-07:00

"The corporate executives who helped bring on the recession of the past three years...went on to receive large bonuses. In some cases, companies were so embarrassed about calling such rewards “performance bonuses” that they felt compelled to change the name to “retention bonuses” (even if the only thing being retained was bad performance)."

‎"When you look at the sheer volume of wealth controlled by the top 1 percent in this country, it’s tempting to see our growing inequality as a quintessentially American achievement—we started way behind the pack, but now we’re doing inequality on a world-class level. And it looks as if we’ll be building on this achievement for years to come, because what made it possible is self-reinforcing. Wealth begets power, which begets more wealth."

Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1% - Vanity Fair

Where do they find these people?

2011-04-04T01:14:00.000-07:00

"It’s difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair

The Truth, Still Inconvenient - The New York Times

Rewriting the libertarian gospel

2011-03-30T22:40:00.000-07:00

"Countless factors beyond our choosing influence our [abilities,] ambition and effort, such as our upbringing, our family’s work ethic, our childhood experiences, subconscious insecurities, social milieu, career fads, role models, parental and peer pressure, available life paths, lucky breaks, and other contingent factors. It is not clear how much of it is our own doing, however militantly we may hold the illusion that we create our own life story...."

‎"Even if we somehow leveled socioeconomic disparities, the winners of the race would still be the fastest runners, due in part to a natural lottery. People are often born with certain talents and attributes—for instance, oratory, musical acumen, physical beauty and health, athleticism, good memory and cognition, extroversion, etc.—that give them unearned advantages. Are their wins not as arbitrary from a moral standpoint as of those born with silver spoons in their mouths? Further, is it not our dumb luck that our society happens to value certain aptitudes we may have—such as the leap and hand-eye coordination of Michael Jordan, sound-byte witticisms of talk show hosts like Jay Leno, or the algorithmic wizardry of Sergey Brin in the Internet age?"

"n Rawlsian terms, the problem in America is not that a minority has grown super rich, but that for decades now, it has done so to the detriment of the lower social classes. The big question is: why does the majority in a seemingly free society tolerate this, and even happily vote against its own economic interests? A plausible answer is that it is under a self-destructive meritocratic spell that sees social outcomes as moral desert—a spell at least as old as the American frontier but long since repurposed by the corporate control of public institutions and the media: news, film, TV, publishing, etc. Rather than move towards greater fairness and egalitarianism, it promotes a libertarian gospel of the free market with minimal regulation, taxation, and public safety nets.[10] What would it take to break this spell?"

What Do We Deserve? - 3 Quarks Daily

‎"It just so happens that I was in the right place at the right time. I really wouldn't have made a difference if I were born in Bangladesh. Or if I was born here in 1700. The odds of me being born here, in this time, were 1:50. And I just got lucky as hell. I won a lottery. Stick me some place other else and I could say I know how to allocate capital and value business. But they'd say, so what?" - Warren Buffett (investment guru; #3 on Forbes' 2011 list of world's richest people)

The "dumbest idea in the world"

2011-03-29T22:29:00.000-07:00

"Only in the English-speaking world, with its tradition of radical libertarian ideology, could a head of state like Margaret Thatcher declare: 'There is no such thing as society.'"

The Failure of Shareholder Capitalism - Salon

Like conducting a Gallup poll on gravity

2011-03-25T01:24:00.000-07:00

"[T]he rise of Idiot America today represents -- for profit mainly, but also, and more cynically, for political advantage and in the pursuit of power -- the breakdown of a consensus that the pursuit of knowledge is a good. It also represents the ascendancy of the notion that the people whom we should trust the least are the people who best know what they're talking about."

Greetings from Idiot America - Esquire

Defining crime as price rather than punishment

2011-03-25T00:41:00.000-07:00

“'The purpose of limited liability is to protect people from being responsible. If we put the assumptions about how we organize business in other areas of our lives and politics, people would be aghast.'”

How Wall Street Crooks Get Out of Jail Free - The Nation

You have to be asleep to believe it

2011-03-19T19:17:00.000-07:00

Carlin Knew the Rich Just Want More - The Cap Times

It's the 10-percenters' world. We just stagnate in it

2011-03-19T14:55:00.000-07:00

"Americans haven’t accepted the status quo. Rather, they’re unaware of it. Behavioral economist Dan Ariely and psychologist Michael Norton recently asked people to estimate wealth inequality in this country. As it happens, most Americans think wealth is distributed vastly more equally than it actually is, and yet they would like something more equal still: When given a choice between various options, they chose the one most closely resembling Sweden, followed by the world in which every quintile has exactly 20 percent of the wealth. Only 10 percent chose our world. But the problem, as Hacker and Pierson point out, is that the political system isn’t listening. It’s time it did."

The “Hood Robin” Economy - Democracy Journal

Adam Smith, liberal

2011-03-19T12:43:00.000-07:00

On businessmen:
"[F]or all they may talk of freedom and fairness, [they] 'generally have an interest to deceive and even oppress the public.'”
On progressive taxation:
"The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state."
On "big government:"
"Government has the duty of 'erecting and maintaining those public institutions and those public works which may be in the highest degree advantageous to a great society....'”
On full employment and high wages:
"What improves the circumstances of the greater part can never be regarded as an inconveniency to the whole. No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable."

Das Capitalist - The American Conservative

Failure by design

2011-03-16T23:43:00.001-07:00

http://www.epi.org/publications/entry/failure_by_design

All we have left is the capacity to say “no”

2011-03-15T00:19:00.000-07:00

Power Concedes Nothing Without A Demand - TruthDig

The true price of everything

2011-03-14T23:47:00.000-07:00

The Cost of Overpaying: How High CEO Salaries and Income Disparity Affect Our Wealth, Health and Happiness - AlterNet

Are these guys telling the truth?

2011-03-14T11:43:00.000-07:00

"[T]he fiscal issues are just an excuse for ideologically driven policies to lower taxes on well-off people and business while reducing government programs. Yet only occasionally do journalists step back to ask: Are these guys telling the truth?"

What If We're Not Broke? - Washington Post

Why cut a useless weapons system when you can cut housing for the disabled?

2011-03-13T22:47:00.000-07:00

The Pentagon's Biggest Boondoggles - The New York Times

A good refresher course

2011-03-13T21:05:00.000-07:00

Government Success Stories - Liberalism Resurgent

and

Free Market Failures - Liberalism Resurgent

Coolidge was wrong

2011-03-13T19:36:00.000-07:00

‎"As are most people around the world, most Americans are, first and foremost, caring and compassionate. That our government is so far adrift from representing such humane values speaks to why so many Americans feel so alienated from it. That so many in government and the media, and at least one of our two political parties, are so wholly invested in using government as but a means of manipulating and consolidating wealth speaks to why so many are so cynical about it. Being good at business does not qualify one to serve in government. Wanting to make the world a better place for as many people as possible does....

"Businesses are in business to make money. They are not in business to be nice. There are many responsible business leaders, but many of the world's largest and most successful industries depend on exploiting workers, despoiling the environment, manipulating and otherwise taking advantage of consumers, and squeezing out every possible penny of profit.... That is why the public good needs defending from them. That is why capitalism itself best thrives when protected from its own exigent excesses. Government is the vehicle.

"Modern democratic and republican forms of government were invented to protect people from despotism, to defend human rights, and to give the public good access to political power. Those that would put businesses in charge of government have it exactly backward. Those that deem business executives by that experience qualified to lead government have it exactly backward."

The Business of the Government - Daily Kos

Our reverse-Robin-Hood economy

2011-03-12T18:45:00.000-08:00

"Now we are told that everyone must sacrifice to bring state and federal government budgets in line. But somehow the sacrifices once again all fall on those at the bottom of the economic ladder. Once again businesses are given tax cuts, money is found to increase spending on roads, but education, health care and help for the poorest in our society are cut."

The Crisis Is Our Unwillingness to Make the Rich Pay Their Share - The Cap Times

It's the economy, stupid

2011-03-12T18:33:00.000-08:00

"Teachers did not send U.S. manufacturing jobs to Mexico, India, and China. Nor did they lose billions of dollars of other people’s money by gambling in deregulated financial markets. They did not deplete the public coffers by cutting taxes on corporations and the rich.... As our economy has suffered because of these ruinous policies, so have our schools."

School Woes Rooted in Boardrooms, Not Classrooms - Common Dreams

Yep

2011-03-11T12:14:00.001-08:00

Class Warfare, Illustrated - Daily Kos

Today’s Republicans just aren’t into rationality

2011-03-11T11:47:00.000-08:00

"[I]f you’re serious about deficits, you shouldn’t be pinching pennies now; you should be looking for ways to rein in health spending over the long term. And that means taking exactly the steps that had those G.O.P. staffers sneering."

Dumbing Deficits Down - The New York Times

When shareholder capitalism triumphs

2011-03-09T11:58:00.000-08:00

"It's one thing for a nation to be downwardly mobile during a recession. It's quite another to be downwardly mobile during a recovery - but that looks to be precisely what's happening."

Where's the Economic Recovery? - Washington Post

It's nice to see it in pie-chart form

2011-03-08T23:08:00.001-08:00

Republicans Lie A Lot: Here's the Proof - Daily Kos

What now?

2011-03-08T08:35:00.000-08:00

"This legacy of the privatized welfare state, with hidden public subsidies for services the government funds directly in other countries, lets Americans venerate the 'free market' and misunderstand the role of government -- and makes progressive organizing harder."

What comes after Wisconsin? - Salon

"‎Decades of research have shown that the economic pyramid is flatter in countries where unions are stronger. In economies as different as Canada and Germany, a sturdy union presence has helped reduce income inequality. The reason isn't just that unions defend their members. They also create changes in social norms, such as pressures for nonunion employers to match union gains."

The Wisconsin Union Fight Isn't About Benefits. It's About Labor's Influence - Washington Post

What "everyone knows" is wrong

2011-03-07T11:20:00.001-08:00

‎"[T]he notion that putting more kids through college can restore the middle-class society we used to have is wishful thinking. It’s no longer true that having a college degree guarantees that you’ll get a good job, and it’s becoming less true with each passing decade."

Degrees and Dollars - The New York Times

"Free lunch" economics tells people what they want to hear

2011-03-07T11:19:00.000-08:00

Economics vs. Fakeonomics - Huffington Post

People are realizing that the ogliarchs want to have their serfs and eat them, too

2011-03-06T22:42:00.000-08:00

More GRITtv

We can still screw this up

2011-03-04T20:22:00.000-08:00

How to Make Sure the Unemployment Rate Keeps Dropping - Salon

How to Kill a Recovery - The New York Times

David Brooks: living in the immaterial world

2011-03-04T17:57:00.000-08:00

"Even in a strictly meritocratic system, surely not everyone can be an entrepreneur in Silicon Valley, a columnist for the New York Times, or some other successful creative in one of the world’s innovation hubs. What is Brooks’ vision for those who fail to succeed in this thrilling new world? He never says."

David Brooks' Bias Toward Elite Values - Salon

Draw your own conclusions

2011-03-04T16:17:00.000-08:00

"[E]thnocentric whites are more likely to push for cuts in food stamps, to favor reductions in spending on welfare, to oppose increasing benefits to women on welfare if they have additional children, and to favor strict time limits on public assistance."

Ethnocentrism and Small Government Hypocrisy - Think Progress

The heart of what's the matter

2011-03-04T14:02:00.000-08:00

‎"The Story of Stuff" people have put out another video that, despite the self-consciously breezy tone, manages to hit its target squarely. To tweak Reagan's famous line, "Money *is* the problem."

But it's easier just to blame the teachers

2011-03-04T12:20:00.000-08:00

Great interview cratering the "blame-everything-on-the-teachers" discourse so beloved by the the right.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Diane Ravitch

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor & Satire Blog

The Daily Show on Facebook

Destroying tomorrow's middle class in order to protect today's rich

2011-03-04T12:18:00.000-08:00

"According to the Tax Foundation, most Republican-voting states receive more in federal funding than they pay in federal taxes, while most Democratic-voting states receive less federal money than they pay in federal taxes. That means traditionally blue states like California are now perpetually subsidizing -- or in Ryan's parlance, 'bailing out' -- traditionally red states like Indiana. Thus, federal aid to states could actually reduce the state-to-state subsidies conservatives say they oppose.

Congressional Republicans will undoubtedly ignore these facts."

State Crises Mean New Language of Deceit - Salon

When will America's teachers learn to sacrifice like the heroes of Wall Street?

2011-03-04T09:16:00.000-08:00

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Crisis in the Dairyland - For Richer and Poorer - Teachers and Wall Street

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor & Satire Blog

The Daily Show on Facebook

Saving lives, one tax dollar at a time

2011-03-03T20:53:00.000-08:00

Who Drives Innovation? - The American Prospect

What the right needs is better ideas

2011-03-03T20:47:00.000-08:00

Obama Calls the GOP's Bluff - The New Republic

There may be hope after all

2011-03-03T15:02:00.000-08:00

"What explains this huge gulf between what members of the the public see as common sense and what their democratically-elected representatives impose on them?

"A lot of it can be explained by money. It's not a coincidence that elected officials support more defense spending, given the size and influence of the military-industrial lobby. Nor is it surprising that they are wary of increasing taxes on the people who pay for their campaigns.

"By contrast, most of the things the public wants to spend more on -- job training, education, humanitarian aid, energy conservation and pollution control among them -- don't have wealthy corporate constituencies."

Study: Public Sees Both Parties Cutting Deficits the Wrong Way - Huffington Post

Responsibility won't get you headlines

2011-03-03T13:42:00.000-08:00

"Such [good] ideas are off the table because the current rage is not for figuring out how to make government work better - a cause that once united governors of both parties - but for cutting back even its most basic and popular functions."

No Glory for Governors Trying to do the Right Fiscal Thing - Washington Post

Cutting rich people's taxes is often very bad for the rest of us

2011-03-02T14:12:00.000-08:00

How the Rich Soaked the Rest of Us - The Guardian

GAO report doesn't say what Republicans wish it did

2011-03-02T10:10:00.000-08:00

A Magic, Budget-Cutting Formula? - The New Republic

One down, 100 million to go

2011-03-01T21:25:00.000-08:00

A well-known conservative (the esteemed Richard Posner) has actually changed his economic thinking based on evidence and reason. What is the temperature in hell?

How I Became a Keynesian - The New Republic

It's time the rich paid us back

2011-03-01T19:06:00.000-08:00

‎"Though many multimillionaires fancy themselves self-made men (and women), the truth is that they all have profited from investments that American taxpayers have made over the decades, and even centuries."

Budget Crisis? Duh, Tax the Rich! - In These Times

How Democrats Can Become Relevant Again (And Rescue the Nation While They’re At It) - RobertReich.org

Saving the middle-class will require a radically different conception of trade

2011-02-28T19:27:00.000-08:00

America's Trade Policy of the Absurd - The American Prospect

Repeat after me: Obama. Was. Right.

2011-02-28T18:53:00.000-08:00

"There is now broad agreement that the bailouts worked, stabilizing the financial system and preventing an even deeper crisis."

Bailouts Are Shaping Up to be Cheaper Than Expected - LA Times

Germinal, American edition?

2011-02-28T17:40:00.000-08:00

"Last weekend's demonstrations do not necessarily reflect a new sense of class consciousness, but they do suggest the potential for it. The idea of a class system where only a handful can ever be truly wealthy intrudes awkwardly on a culture rooted in notions of self-advancement, personal reinvention and rugged individualism, even if it is closer to reality. Old habits die hard."

Wisconsin Is Making the Battle Lines Clear in America's Hidden Class War - The Guardian

Germinal

"Lose the future"

2011-02-28T16:28:00.000-08:00

"[P]oliticians — and especially, in my experience, conservative politicians — always claim to be deeply concerned about the nation’s children.... In practice, however, when advocates of lower spending get a chance to put their ideas into practice, the burden always seems to fall disproportionately on those very children they claim to hold so dear."

Leaving Children Behind - The New York Times

The sound of a dozen libertarian billionaires moaning in ecstasy

2011-02-28T12:30:00.000-08:00

Why Can't All of America Be More Like Mississippi? - The American Prospect

"Why is this model of economic growth so appealing to the Tea Party? For one, it tends to jibe very well with the Ayn Randian belief in producerism: the idea that 'job creators'—business owners—are the only source of economic growth in society, and that everyone else—the workers, government employees, and the poor—are just 'useless eaters' shackling those who exercise individual initiative....

"The problem with this theory is that it won’t work: Economic development experts usually deride 'Moonlight and Magnolias' approaches to job creation, noting that they track the outmoded first and second 'waves' of basic economic development theory—which emphasized crude economic races to the bottom—as opposed to third and fourth 'waves' that focus on worker skills, quality of life, public-private partnerships, innovation, and sustainability. If Wisconsin and other states—not to mention the country as a whole—end up adopting these atavistic economic ideals, they will simply begin to resemble the dysfunctional Old South societies that spawned them in the first place."

Dixie Madison - The New Republic

The payoff is priceless

2011-02-27T10:58:00.000-08:00

"That’s not to say there is no fiscal mission in the right’s agenda, both nationally and locally — only that the mission has nothing to do with deficit reduction. The real goal is to reward the G.O.P.’s wealthiest patrons by crippling what remains of organized labor, by wrecking the government agencies charged with regulating and policing corporations, and, as always, by rewarding the wealthiest with more tax breaks. The bankrupt moral equation codified in the Bush era — that tax cuts tilted to the highest bracket were a higher priority even than paying for two wars — is now a given. The once-bedrock American values of shared sacrifice and equal economic opportunity have been overrun."

Why Wouldn’t the Tea Party Shut It Down? - The New York Times

The real motivation

2011-02-27T10:03:00.000-08:00

Trashing the Lessons of Watergate - The New York Times

Spreading the ignorance around

2011-02-27T08:36:00.000-08:00

"One of the biggest problems we have in dealing with the budget is the gross level of budgetary ignorance on the part of the public that I detailed last week. But an even bigger problem is that Republicans in Congress appear to be just as ignorant about the actual impact of the grandiose spending cuts they repeatedly claim they are going to enact immediately. In coming weeks, everyone is going to get a very fast and very rough education on the real effects of slashing government spending."

GOP Cuts Budget with an Axe Instead of a Scalpel - The Fiscal Times

"‎"[Studies have shown that] giving people correct information not only had little effect on changing their misperceptions, in some cases it actually increased them.... I would like to believe that most people will make the right decisions given the correct information. If that is not the case, then we have a far more serious problem than just the budget deficit. It calls into question the fundamental basis of democracy itself."

Voter Ignorance Threatens Deficit Reduction - The Fiscal Times

The Budget Fight Continues - The New York Times

The Misinformed Tea Party Movement - Forbes

For the far right, threats are still a substitute for thought

2011-02-26T22:50:00.000-08:00

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

The GOP: Advancing their vision of a harsher, more unequal, less democratic society

2011-02-25T19:01:00.000-08:00

Shock Doctrine, U.S.A. - The New York Times

Don't believe the high-tax hype

2011-02-25T18:11:00.000-08:00

The Breakdown: Why Aren't Corporations Paying Their Taxes? - The Nation

The only legitimate demonstrators are the ones they agree with

2011-02-25T17:20:00.001-08:00

For such noisy "supporters" of democracy and the Constitution, the Fox crowd seems strangely unfamiliar with the right of the people to peaceably assemble and petition government for a redress of grievances, i.e., to protest. And naturally you heard none of this reality-impaired echolalia when the Teabaggers were putting their multitudinous forms of illiteracy, civic or otherwise, on public display (http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/images/blpic-moran.htm).
Fox Slams WI Protests But Cheered Tea Party Protests - MediaMatters

Are wages determined by market forces? No, they're not

2011-02-24T15:18:00.000-08:00

Union-Busting Is Theft -- a Weapon of Class Warfare from Above - AlterNet

Do they really need AM and FM?

2011-02-23T16:37:00.000-08:00

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It'll cost us

2011-02-23T13:47:00.000-08:00

Working for the Shutdown - Slate

The battlefield is bigger than Wisconsin

2011-02-23T13:44:00.000-08:00

Wisconsin Is Only Part of the GOP War Against Unions - Washington Post

An innovative definition of “shared sacrifice”

2011-02-23T13:41:00.000-08:00

Priorities? GOP Governors Shift Burden To Poor, Middle Class To Pay For Tax Breaks For Rich, Corporations - ThinkProgress

Very comfortable reasoning for the very comfortable class

2011-02-23T13:11:00.000-08:00

The Overselling of Education - The American Prospect

They only call it class warfare when we fight back

2011-02-23T11:29:00.000-08:00

'Pampered' unionists? Really? - Cleveland.com

Eight charts that explain everything that's wrong with America

2011-02-23T10:13:00.000-08:00

It's the Inequality, Stupid - Mother Jones

Things would have been different

2011-02-23T10:08:00.000-08:00

"Thirty years of free-market evangelism have convinced nearly everyone—even middle-class voters who keep getting the short end of the economic stick—that the policy preferences of the business community are good for everyone. But in practice, the benefits have gone almost entirely to the very wealthy."

Plutocracy Now: What Wisconsin Is Really About - Mother Jones

How bad have things become?

2011-02-22T13:57:00.000-08:00

"One of the things I noticed reading through the letters was the pervasive sense of loss, not just of employment, but of faith in the soundness and possibilities of America. For centuries, Americans have been nothing if not optimistic. But now there is a terrible sense that so much that was taken for granted during the past six or seven decades is being dismantled or destroyed."

At Grave Risk - The New York Times

Balancing the power

2011-02-22T10:25:00.000-08:00

Nice observation by Ezra Klein in todays WaPo:

"Unions are not just about challenging the 'might and greed' of private-sector CEOs, but about recognizing the different incentives faced by managers and workers, and about correcting the tremendous power imbalance between those who can be fired for asking too many questions or demanding a different bargain and those who get to do the firing and would prefer a more submissive workforce and a status quo that they've created and defined."

Maybe the problem is that private sector workers make too little

2011-02-21T17:44:00.000-08:00

Do Wisconsin's Workers Make Too Much? - The New Republic

Hate is stronger than logic

2011-02-21T17:11:00.000-08:00

"It’s almost surrealistic. But decades of relentless Republican hate-mongering against the government has done its job.

Never mind that it was government that pulled off the greatest feat of social engineering in history. In 1900, only 4% of Americans graduated from high school. By 2000, more than 80% did. It was this mass educated public that made possible the most technically sophisticated economy in the history of the world.

It was government that won both World War I and World War II, leaving the U.S. economy astride the world like a colossus, able to harvest the fruits for decades. It was the government GI Bill program that educated a generation of young people to ultimately defeat the Soviet Union.

It was the government that wired every house in the country for electricity during the Great Depression, setting up the largest household consumer-goods market in the world in the 1950s: home appliances. And it was government guarantees for home loans that set off the greatest building boom in the history of the world: suburbia.

It was government that paved more than 3 million miles of road between 1930 and 1960, making possible the massive economic boom associated with automobiles, mass mobility, and more. It was government research that invented the graphical user interface and the Internet.

None of that matters.

Hate is stronger than logic and more than anything else, Republicans love their hate. It’s the only thing that gives them power."

When a Country Goes Insane - Common Dreams

No, they're not obsolete

2011-02-21T16:51:00.000-08:00

"...[T]he decline of unions over the past few decades has left corporations and the rich with essentially no powerful opposition. No matter what doubts you might have about unions and their role in the economy, never forget that destroying them destroys the only real organized check on the power of the business community in America. If the last 30 year haven't made that clear, I don't know what will."

Why We Need Unions - Mother Jones

Organizing Is a Right, Not a Privilege - The American Prospect

There's just one problem...

2011-02-21T15:42:00.001-08:00

Alternatives to Austerity - The Guardian

It's not about the budget. It's about the power

2011-02-21T12:49:00.000-08:00

Wisconsin Power Play - The New York Times

The long road down

2011-02-19T15:20:00.000-08:00

An oldie well worth revisiting:

"Dubbed 'median wage stagnation' by economists, the annual incomes of the bottom 90 per cent of US families have been essentially flat since 1973 – having risen by only 10 per cent in real terms over the past 37 years.... Worse is that the long era of stagnating incomes has been accompanied by something profoundly un-American: declining income mobility."

The Crisis of Middle-Class America - Financial Times

Run for your lives!

2011-02-19T10:52:00.000-08:00

You can believe him, because he's an expert.

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

If they can break the unions in Wisconsin, they can break them anywhere

2011-02-19T10:40:00.000-08:00

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

A trillion-dollar bonanza

2011-02-19T10:34:00.000-08:00

"Wall Street and its servants on Capitol Hill have lusted after Social Security's revenues for many years. And they regard the current uproar over the budget as a fresh opportunity to get their hands on a trillion-dollar bonanza. Given their record in recent years, it is all too easy to imagine how badly that would work out for everybody -- except them, of course."

Why Are Some Pundits and Politicans Hell-Bent on Underminig Social Security, in Spite of Its Success and Strength? - AlterNet

The GOP strategy is out in plain sight

2011-02-18T22:06:00.000-08:00

Sledge to America: The Republican Strategy - Common Dreams

Unraveling the Great Paradox

2011-02-18T16:38:00.000-08:00

"Our children’s children will look back and see that just a few years after the deregulatory agenda of anti-government ideologues resulted in a horrific recession, American politics somehow became even more dominated by anti-government zealotry than ever before."

The Submerged State - In These Times

One big, happy family

2011-02-17T23:23:00.000-08:00

"Criminal justice, as it pertains to the Goldmans and Morgan Stanleys of the world, is not adversarial combat.... Instead, it's a cocktail party between friends and colleagues who from month to month and year to year are constantly switching sides and trading hats."

Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail? - Rolling Stone

Is there a solution? Tiabbi identifies one almost sure-fire (and highly appealing) possibility:

"[O]ne has to consider the powerful deterrent to further wrongdoing that the state is missing by not introducing this particular class of people to the experience of incarceration. 'You put Lloyd Blankfein in pound-me-in-the-ass prison for one six-month term, and all this bullshit would stop, all over Wall Street,' says a former congressional aide. 'That's all it would take. Just once.'""