April 12, 2007
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
THE STRATEGY TO DRIVE DOWN WAGES
A good website called www.conceptualguerilla.com talks about "cheap labor conservatives." Conservatives like to maximize profits for the already well to do and if that means suppressing wages so be it. These days corporations are crying "labor shortage" as an excuse to bring in cheaper labor from outside the United States. This column by David Sirota is at www.workingforchange.com:
We are expected, for instance, to ignore academic studies published recently by the National Academy of Sciences showing that, in fact, there is no shortage of high-tech engineers here in America. We are expected to ignore the data showing that companies are using the H-1B program to drive down domestic workers' wages by forcing them into competition with imported workers from impoverished countries. We are expected, in short, to believe that layoffs, wage stagnation and pension/health care cutbacks have absolutely nothing to do with corporate executives trying to line their own pockets, and everything to do with workers themselves - and we are expected to believe all this at the very same time new government data shows that the share of national income going to wages is at a record low, and the share going to corporate profits is at a record high.
Yet a few paragraphs into the Businessweek article, the real story starts to trickle out:
"A global labor crunch, already being felt by some employers, appears to have intensified in recent months. That's in spite of widely publicized layoffs, including Citigroup's plans to shed as many as 15,000 staffers... Corporations are determined to keep labor costs under control, so they're reaching deeper into their bag of tricks...Some are lowering their standards for new hires or moving operations to virgin territories other outsourcers haven't discovered... Economists, of course, will tell you there's no such thing as a labor shortage. From a worker's viewpoint, many so-called shortages could quickly be solved if employers were to offer more money. And worldwide, millions of people still can't find jobs. The strongest evidence that there's no general shortage today is that overall worker pay has barely outpaced inflation."
There, finally, is the real story - the story that corporate executives and staid political pundits don't want anyone to talk about: The Great Labor Shortage Lie (related, of course, to the Great Education Myth - the one I've debunked before that claims all of working America's problems are due to a bad education system, and that if we just fixed our education system, everything would be great for workers). There's no labor shortage - there's a cheap labor shortage, because, as the free market fundamentalists all love to say, supply and demand rules everything. And if that's the case - then there's no way you can have a real labor supply shortage at the very same time wages (the monetized manifestation of employer demand for labor) continue to stagnate.
UNBELIEVABLE
Today there is a letter in The Fresno Bee from a guy claiming that global warming is God's work and that humans shouldn't "try to control the weather." It's simply amazing how some people don't bother to think at all. I don't believe there is a God. I don't think there is much evidence there is. But if there is some supernatural being that can be called God, I would have lots of questions.
If God is in such control, we have to assume that God has allowed thousands of years of cruelty and murder to proceed without interfering. We have to believe that God stood idly by and allowed the Nazi Holocaust. We have to believe that God allows all manner of tragedies from hurricanes to earthquakes that kill thousands and deprive others of their homes and livelihoods. We have to believe that God permits the ravages of cancer and AIDS and other hideous diseases. If such a being exists, he, she, or it doesn't deserve reverence.
CHENEY THE LIAR
Dick Cheney was on gasbag Limbaugh's show the other day still trying to claim a link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. Those claims have been disproved over and over again. Cheney, Bush, and their cadre lied about the reasons for this war and they're lying still. It's going to take a very long time for the American government to have any credibility in the world again. This column by Carl Levin is at www.latimes.com:
It is incredible that more than four years after the invasion, the vice president is still trying to convince the public that Saddam Hussein's regime was connected to Al Qaeda and that Zarqawi's presence in Iraq was evidence of a connection.
While the vice president doesn't say directly that there was a tie between the two, his clear purpose is to blur the line between Al Qaeda — the perpetrator of the 9/11 attacks — and the Iraqi dictator in order to justify the war in Iraq.
The problem is, that's simply not supported by the facts or by our intelligence community — and everyone except the vice president acknowledges it. In September, for example, the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded in a bipartisan report that Hussein was "distrustful of Al Qaeda and viewed Islamic extremists as a threat to his regime, refusing all requests from Al Qaeda to provide material or operational support." And the CIA reported a year earlier, in October 2005, that the Iraqi regime "did not have a relationship, harbor or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi and his associates." As the Intelligence Committee report noted, the Iraqi intelligence service was actually trying to capture Zarqawi, who was in Baghdad under an alias. Is the vice president willfully ignoring what the rest of the government has concluded? Or does he have access to information he hasn't shared with us? If so, he should produce it.
The vice president has a clear, documented pattern of overstating and misstating information with regard to Iraq. He also, for instance, continued to claim that 9/11 terrorist Mohamed Atta may have met with an Iraqi agent in Prague — long after the intelligence community believed otherwise. Again, his obvious purpose is to link Hussein's regime with Sept. 11, even though the rest of the world has concluded that no such link exists.
Showing posts with label cheap. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cheap. Show all posts
Sunday, March 18, 2007
March 18, 2007
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
MONEY AND POWER
This is an interesting article about the tightwads who comprise the class of the super rich. We're talking billionaires here, often multi-billionaires. With the exception of Warren Buffett, they are very tight-fisted in giving away any of their massive fortunes, even though they would never be able to spend all the money they've accumulated. This is in real contrast to past members of the super-rich such as Andrew Carnegie, who gave away a hefty percentage of his fortune. But these are the people we're supposed to admire. They're the people who need those big tax cuts. This article by Gregg Easterbrook is at www.latimes.com:
Why do the super-rich hoard? Certainly not because they need money to spend. As economist Christopher Carroll of Johns Hopkins University points out in an upcoming paper, the super-rich save far more than they could ever spend, even with Dionysian indulgence. Gates' fortune must throw off, even by conservative estimations, about $6 million a day after taxes. You couldn't spend $6 million every day of your life even if you did nothing all day long but buy original art and waterfront real estate. The fortunes of Allen, Knight and others mentioned here throw off at least $1 million a day after taxes. Nobody can spend $1 million every day.
Carroll speculates that the super-rich won't give away money they know they will never use for two reasons: because they love money, and because extreme wealth confers power. We know already that people who give their lives over to loving money surrender their humanity in the process. As for clout, Carroll quotes Howard Hughes: "Money is the measuring rod of power." That $53 billion ensures Gates will be treated with awe wherever he goes. If he gave away 78% of his wealth like Carnegie did, he might be universally admired, but he would no longer be treated with the same degree of fawning reverence. He might even, someday, find himself in the same room with someone who has more money!
Runaway wealth accumulation by zillionaires, combined with the rising share of national income claimed by the top 1%, often inspires calls to soak the rich. But I disagree. Ideally, the top federal income tax rate and capital-gains tax rate should be increased a few percentage points while the payroll tax (which funds Social Security and Medicare) is reduced. Reasonable increases of taxes on the well-off — if done to reduce taxes on the average — would make the U.S. a fairer place.
THE ROT AT THE TOP
This editorial from The Los Angeles Times talks about the abject incompetence in the Bush administration. I think the editorial goes a little too lightly on the endemic corruption of Bush and his cronies, but it's worth looking at the combination of arrogance and incompetence leading to the bad place we are today. The editorial is at www.latimes.com:
IT'S TOO EARLY TO SAY whether any laws were broken in the Bush administration's dismissal of eight U.S. attorneys, a purge that was justified as an exercise of presidential power though both President Bush and his attorney general profess to be ignorant of the details of the firings. But even assuming that laws weren't broken, the affair is a disaster for the administration, one that recalls Talleyrand's observation: "This is worse than a crime, it's a blunder."
That is why this scandal (and the preceding week's Walter Reed scandal) loom so large, even among some Republican lawmakers — they fit into a larger pattern of incompetence on the part of this administration. Any confidence the American people or Congress once had in the administration's capabilities has long since been depleted.
It wasn't always so. Early on, this administration was perceived — by ideological friends and foes alike — as a paragon of competence. Names like Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell and even Rice (who knew?) were supposed to signal steady, experienced leadership. How far we've come.
The botched, ill-planned occupation of Iraq will go down as the administration's capital blunder. It stemmed from a cavalier arrogance, a belief that when you are on the right side of history, the details will take care of themselves. The sluggish response to Hurricane Katrina and the constitutional shortcuts in the war on terror also qualify.
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
MONEY AND POWER
This is an interesting article about the tightwads who comprise the class of the super rich. We're talking billionaires here, often multi-billionaires. With the exception of Warren Buffett, they are very tight-fisted in giving away any of their massive fortunes, even though they would never be able to spend all the money they've accumulated. This is in real contrast to past members of the super-rich such as Andrew Carnegie, who gave away a hefty percentage of his fortune. But these are the people we're supposed to admire. They're the people who need those big tax cuts. This article by Gregg Easterbrook is at www.latimes.com:
Why do the super-rich hoard? Certainly not because they need money to spend. As economist Christopher Carroll of Johns Hopkins University points out in an upcoming paper, the super-rich save far more than they could ever spend, even with Dionysian indulgence. Gates' fortune must throw off, even by conservative estimations, about $6 million a day after taxes. You couldn't spend $6 million every day of your life even if you did nothing all day long but buy original art and waterfront real estate. The fortunes of Allen, Knight and others mentioned here throw off at least $1 million a day after taxes. Nobody can spend $1 million every day.
Carroll speculates that the super-rich won't give away money they know they will never use for two reasons: because they love money, and because extreme wealth confers power. We know already that people who give their lives over to loving money surrender their humanity in the process. As for clout, Carroll quotes Howard Hughes: "Money is the measuring rod of power." That $53 billion ensures Gates will be treated with awe wherever he goes. If he gave away 78% of his wealth like Carnegie did, he might be universally admired, but he would no longer be treated with the same degree of fawning reverence. He might even, someday, find himself in the same room with someone who has more money!
Runaway wealth accumulation by zillionaires, combined with the rising share of national income claimed by the top 1%, often inspires calls to soak the rich. But I disagree. Ideally, the top federal income tax rate and capital-gains tax rate should be increased a few percentage points while the payroll tax (which funds Social Security and Medicare) is reduced. Reasonable increases of taxes on the well-off — if done to reduce taxes on the average — would make the U.S. a fairer place.
THE ROT AT THE TOP
This editorial from The Los Angeles Times talks about the abject incompetence in the Bush administration. I think the editorial goes a little too lightly on the endemic corruption of Bush and his cronies, but it's worth looking at the combination of arrogance and incompetence leading to the bad place we are today. The editorial is at www.latimes.com:
IT'S TOO EARLY TO SAY whether any laws were broken in the Bush administration's dismissal of eight U.S. attorneys, a purge that was justified as an exercise of presidential power though both President Bush and his attorney general profess to be ignorant of the details of the firings. But even assuming that laws weren't broken, the affair is a disaster for the administration, one that recalls Talleyrand's observation: "This is worse than a crime, it's a blunder."
That is why this scandal (and the preceding week's Walter Reed scandal) loom so large, even among some Republican lawmakers — they fit into a larger pattern of incompetence on the part of this administration. Any confidence the American people or Congress once had in the administration's capabilities has long since been depleted.
It wasn't always so. Early on, this administration was perceived — by ideological friends and foes alike — as a paragon of competence. Names like Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell and even Rice (who knew?) were supposed to signal steady, experienced leadership. How far we've come.
The botched, ill-planned occupation of Iraq will go down as the administration's capital blunder. It stemmed from a cavalier arrogance, a belief that when you are on the right side of history, the details will take care of themselves. The sluggish response to Hurricane Katrina and the constitutional shortcuts in the war on terror also qualify.
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