So the calvary’s here huh? The Tea Party is going to save the day right? I’ve heard those terms used by others in referring to the Tea Party and the new blood in our political leadership. Congratulations, you wanted it and now you got it.
What you got is leadership that would turn Medicare and programs like it into something totally different. Starting in 2022 their plan would no longer directly pay bills for senior citizens in the Medicare program. Instead, recipients would choose a plan from a list of private providers, which the federal government would subsidize. This proposed plan by Paul Ryan, a Republican from Wisconsin, is very similar to what is affectionately called “Obamacare” by the Paul Ryan types and Tea Party types in that it would create a government subsidy for Americans to help them purchase healthcare.
The thing is “ObamaCare” doesn’t include senior citizens in its dynamic but does include younger healthier Americans who would be more apt to afford it. When it comes to Ryan’s bill, the older population is naturally more illness prone and therefore their healthcare would cost more. The government can provide subsidies of $1000 a month for healthcare, but if a senior citizen’s healthcare costs him $3000 a month and his retirement and social security totals a fixed amount of $900 a month, there’s nothing to live off of.
Talk about killing grandma. Oh, by the way, this same leadership is the one that balks at increasing taxes on the wealthy. As a matter of fact, Ryan’s bill which passed on the 15th of April in the Tea Party/Republican controlled Congress would lower the top income and corporate tax rates from 35% to 25%. What an outrage at this time of such a large deficit right? (more…)
As America’s middle class battles for its survival on the Wisconsin barricades — against various Koch Oil surrogates and the corporate toadies at Fox News — fans of enlightenment, democracy and justice can take comfort from a significant victory north of Wisconsin border. Fox News will not be moving into Canada after all! The reason: Canada regulators announced last week they would reject efforts by Canada’s right wing Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, to repeal a law that forbids lying on broadcast news.
Canada’s Radio Act requires that “a licenser may not broadcast….any false or misleading news.” The provision has kept Fox News and right wing talk radio out of Canada and helped make Canada a model for liberal democracy and freedom. As a result of that law, Canadians enjoy high quality news coverage including the kind of foreign affairs and investigative journalism that flourished in this country before Ronald Reagan abolished the “Fairness Doctrine” in 1987. Political dialogue in Canada is marked by civility, modesty, honesty, collegiality, and idealism that have pretty much disappeared on the U.S. airwaves. When Stephen Harper moved to abolish anti-lying provision of the Radio Act, Canadians rose up to oppose him fearing that their tradition of honest non partisan news would be replaced by the toxic, overtly partisan, biased and dishonest news coverage familiar to American citizens who listen to Fox News and talk radio. Harper’s proposal was timed to facilitate the launch of a new right wing network, “Sun TV News” which Canadians call “Fox News North.” (more…)
Since government workers refuse to live up to the greedy goon stereotype, the Tea Party must do it for them. Stephen Colbert shows how they accomplish this.
By David Sirota
Political journalist, best-selling author and syndicated newspaper columnist
During the recent fight over extending unemployment benefits, conservatives trotted out the shibboleth that says the program fosters sloth. Sen. Judd Gregg, for instance, said added unemployment benefits mean people are “encouraged not to go look for work.” Columnist Pat Buchanan said expanding these benefits means “more people will hold off going back looking for a job.” And Fox News’ Charles Payne applauded the effort to deny future unemployment checks because he said it would compel layabouts “to get off the sofa.”
The thesis undergirding all the rhetoric was summed up by conservative commentator Ben Stein, who insisted that “the people who have been laid off and cannot find work are generally people with poor work habits and poor personalities.”
The idea is that unemployment has nothing to do with structural economic forces or rigged public policies and everything to do with individual motivation. Yes, we’re asked to believe that the 15 million jobless Americans are all George Costanzas — parasitic loafers occasionally pretending to seek work as latex salesmen, but really just aiming to decompress on a refrigerator-equipped recliner during a lifelong Summer of George.
Of course, this storyline makes no sense. From liberal Paul Krugman to archconservative Alan Greenspan, economists agree that joblessness is not caused by unemployment benefits. With five applicants for every one job opening, the overarching problem is a lack of available positions — not a dearth of personal initiative. (more…)
So because conservatives hate NPR for firing a Fox News personality, House Republicans put aside their stated concerns about high unemployment to make a personal vendetta their top priority.
2. Block unemployment insurance extensions. But if House Republicans are actually concerned about high unemployment, they clearly are not concerned about actual unemployed people.
By Michael Winship
Senior writer at Bill Moyers Journal on PBS
(With apologies to the late, great Damon Runyon)
So I am in Washington, DC, our nation’s capital, admiring the buildings and the fine monuments and so forth, when I run into my very dear friend Gorilla Bagsley, whom I have not had the pleasure of seeing for many a year.
We shake hands with joy indeed and Gorilla says to me, come and have a drink for old time’s sake. I have not imbibed in a very long time, I tell him, and fear that such a thing will give me gas, but he persuades me to come into an establishment he knows and to bend an elbow with a pint of something pale and weak while he imbibes a beverage of a more muscular variety.
I have not been with Gorilla since he and I were young and flimflamming the tourists around New York Harbor, telling them that the Statue of Liberty is green on account of it was a gift from the generous people of Mars. Now here he is in Washington, which to me is passing strange. For if Boston is the home of the bean and the cod, as the poet once said, then surely Washington is the home of the scheme and the fraud, and so I ask Gorilla, who I thought had gone the route of the straight and narrow, what he is doing in such a place.
“Oh,” he says. “This is a wonderful place.”
“Why?” I ask, and Gorilla replies, “Because, dear pal of mine, it is coin-operated.” (more…)
House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) gave a speech this week describing his party’s positions on jobs and the economy going into the fall election. Summary: Our economic policies destroyed the country’s economy and millions of lives, but it made a few of my buddies really REALLY rich, so let’s do more of it.
I write about the specifics of Boehner’s call to return to disastrous trade policies below, but first I just have to say a few words about his economic ideas in general and how utterly wrong they are. In the speech Boehner said we have an “economy stalled by ‘stimulus’ spending.” But according to FOX News’ Wall Street Journal, yesterday the CBO reported that “the impact of the stimulus program estimated … the plan lowered the unemployment rate by between 0.7 percentage points and 1.8 percentage points.” In addition, the Washington Post reported, “The CBO said the act also increased the nation’s gross domestic product by between 1.7 percent and 4.5 percent in the second quarter, indicating that the stimulus may have been the primary source of growth in the U.S. economy.”
Boehner also said that “each dollar the government collects is taken directly out of the private sector.” This is the old “taxes take money out of the economy” argument, which is intended to trick people into thinking that the money just disappears instead of being used to pay for the schools, courts, agencies and infrastructure that enable businesses to thrive and drive the country’s prosperity. If you think that President Eisenhower’s spending on the Interstate Highway System “took money out of the economy” you really need to see someone about your problems and not take them out of the rest of us. (more…)
Posted
August 27, 2010 at 12:09 pm,
in
From the News
Mark Gruenberg
By Mark Gruenberg
PAI Staff Writer
Realizing today’s jobless workers are more numerous and different from those of past years, the Union of the Unemployed and Working America, using two different tacks, are trying to mobilize the jobless to vote this fall, in their own self-interest.
The objective, say both Union Acting Executive Director Rick Sloan and Working America Director Karen Nussbaum, is to show the nation’s 15 million jobless workers that the set of policies that labor advocates for them will help, and that those pushed by the corporate elite and the Right Wing will not.
The mobilization is important. Sloan points out California alone has 2.2 million unemployed, who could provide the decisive votes in close Senate and gubernatorial races there. There are more than half a million jobless in Ohio and similar numbers in other key states, including Michigan and Pennsylvania, he adds.
All those states have hot political races whose outcomes — for the Senate, for governorships, or both — could affect what aid comes to the jobless to help haul them out of the Great Recession.
And this recession’s group of unemployed is more white-collar, more politically active and madder than before, Sloan says. Now it’s up to unions to channel the anger.
The Union of the Unemployed, which the Machinists also call “U-Cubed,” hopes to “go viral” on the Internet with a hard-hitting 2-minute “Bite Back” ad, with links to be sent out after Labor Day, Sloan said.
“Bite Back” slams “the Coalition of the Heartless” — congressional Republicans and some Democrats — who try to cut off unemployment benefits, COBRA insurance and other aid to the jobless. Sloan says the unemployed can be “predators” eating those pols. And he wants to make the election “sweet revenge” by the jobless against “the heartless…for all they have put us through.”
“Revenge is a dish best served cold. Lucky for us, the November 2nd elections are far enough away for our outrage to become cold, calculating and career-ending for certain politicians,” Bite Back begins. “We have time to sense their fear, time to watch them flail helplessly. And we have time to strike with a ferocity last seen in Jaws.”
“They will never see us coming. After all, the politicians whose policies destroyed our lives think we’re ‘lazy’…’drug users’…and ‘hobos.’ They are counting on us to be docile as lambs and so depressed we’ll stay in bed on Election Day. Well, here’s a news flash for them and the folks at FOX News: America’s jobless are tougher, more tenacious and totally focused on one thing – getting back to work.
“We want jobs. We want to rebuild our lives. We want to enjoy the fruits of our labor. And we want to see our families and our nation prosper once again. But first, we have to shred the Coalition of the Heartless. We have to eviscerate the politicians – Republican senators and representatives and a few misguided Democrats – who voted against every effort to aid the jobless.
“Ripping apart the Coalition of the Heartless will not be easy but it can be done. The greedy bastards who sunk our economy — the bankers, brokers and hedge fund managers — are pouring billions of dollars into the midterm elections. They are underwriting massive efforts to raise public anger to a fever pitch by denigrating” Democratic leaders, Bite Back adds.
“Unbelievably, those greedy bastards expect the unemployed, if we vote at all, to vote in a blind rage for their hand-picked candidates. Alternatively, if we don’t go vote, they know the Coalition of the Heartless can control the next Congress. Heads they win, tails we lose, once again.
“Well, I AM VOTING. But I AM VOTING against those who destroyed our jobs and lives. I AM VOTING against those who delayed, denied or diminished the relief we demanded. I AM VOTING for JOBS,” the Bite Back Internet video declares.
Bite Back offers viewers a link and tells them to forward it to their jobless friends. Then the unemployed “will tear huge holes in the Coalition of the Heartless,” it says.
While the Union of the Unemployed takes to the Internet air, Working America — the AFL-CIO’s organization for people who can’t or won’t join union locals but who agree with the movement’s aims — is staying on the ground.
Nussbaum said one-quarter of employed Working America members “are afraid they will lose their jobs.” Her group talks to at least 25,000 people a week, and plans to add a tele-“Town Hall” this fall for jobless voters to those efforts. It will also station field organizers at job training sites and unemployment offices in 12 cities. And Working America will run a “pledge to vote” campaign of jobless workers signing postcards and pledge cards in September, along with later precinct walks and phone banks.
“Some politicians are willing to play politics with the survival of unemployed workers and their families. We’ll make sure unemployed workers get out and vote, and that they know the records of the candidates on issues like extending unemployment insurance, investing in jobs and preventing outsourcing,” Nussbaum says.
Glenn Beck made it official on Fox News last week: He’s seeking the office of 21st Century Marie Antoinette.
The queen of France, beheaded during the revolution, attained infamy for insensitivity toward hungry peasants. Glenn Beck, the Fox talk show host, achieved celebrity for his callousness toward unemployed Americans.
Beck leads a pack of royalist Republicans who have spent the summer mocking, vilifying and denigrating the nation’s 14.5 million unemployed workers. It is the moneyed class smacking down the working class in an attempt to disempower and disenfranchise them. Dispirited workers are less likely to vote – which could give Beck and his gang of royalist Republicans control of Congress.
The unemployed, like France’s 18th Century peasants, are fighting back, however. The Union of the Unemployed and Working America are organizing the jobless to vote this fall and to demand help from lawmakers. They’re not out to behead Beck and the royalist Republicans, just dethrone them.
Two and a half years after wanton recklessness by Wall Street banksters crashed the economy, the official unemployment rate remains stuck at 9.5 percent. It rises to 17 percent when statisticians add part-time workers seeking full-time jobs and the jobless who’ve abandoned the search out of hopelessness. With the help of a taxpayer bailout, Wall Street has recovered, and those banksters are taking home multi-million dollar bonuses again. But on Main Street, there still are five unemployed workers for every job vacancy, so no matter how hard the jobless try, there are no openings for 80 percent of them.
Routinely, crowds line up before dawn when job openings are announced. In June, in Longmont, Colo., hundreds queued up to vie for 100 low-paid clerk and stock jobs at a new SmartCo Foods. Hundreds of Louisville residents gathered in the dark on Aug. 9 at the Kentucky Exposition Center to apply for 450 state fair jobs paying $7.25 an hour and lasting a total of 20 days.
In addition to jobs, the people on Main Street are losing their homes and life savings at increasing rates. Bankruptcy filings nationwide reached the highest level in five years between April and June. Banks repossessed 92,858 homes in July, up 6 percent from July 2009. For too many, the situation is so desperate that they’re discussing plans for suicide on an on-line forum for the jobless.
Glenn Beck and the royalist Republicans don’t care about all that. Here’s Beck ranting about those who lose unemployment benefits at 99 weeks:
“Have you heard of the 99ers? These people, some of which I, frankly, I bet you would be ashamed to call them Americans, they think 99 weeks of unemployment benefists are not enough. . .Two years is plenty of time to have lived off your neighbors’ wallets.”
Video of Beck slamming the "99ers" begins at 2 minutes and 33 seconds into this clip.
Beck went on to argue that the jobless who protested last week on Wall Street were not “regular people,” like him and his friends:
“Are they just regular people? . . They are socialists and anti-capitalists.”
Then, incongruously, Beck condemned a protestor seeking jobs for all unemployed workers with a sign asserting, “A job is a right.”
“No, a job is not a right,” insisted Beck, making it clear that in his world, the unemployed are “un-American” for not landing jobs, but, simultaneously, it’s perfectly moral and fair that the American economy has failed to produce enough jobs for them to fill.
Beck is the TV mouthpiece for the royalist Republicans who champion this view: a job is not a right, and it’s not right to aid the jobless. Republicans, virtually as a block, oppose extending unemployment benefits for the jobless while they support extending tax breaks for the moneyed class – themselves. They opposed legislation to save the jobs of 319,000 public servants – the people who educate our children and protect our lives — teachers, police officers, firefighters. Democrats in Congress paid to preserve those jobs by eliminating $11 billion in tax loopholes for corporations that ship jobs overseas — a provision that ultimately could create jobs in the United States.
The jobless, however, are mad as hell and aren’t going to take it anymore. They’re organizing. The Union of the Unemployed and Working America, the community affiliate of the AFL-CIO, are mobilizing the jobless.
The Union of the Unemployed is launching a “Bite Back” campaign, targeting those in Congress who tried repeatedly to cut off unemployment insurance and other aid to the jobless. “They will never see us coming,” the first Bite Back ad says, “After all, the politicians whose policies destroyed our lives think we’re ‘lazy’ ‘drug users’ and ‘hobos.’ They are counting on us to be docile as lambs and so depressed we’ll stay in bed on election day.”
Working America, whose members are not in unions but align themselves with the political philosophy of the AFL-CIO, plans to organize hundreds of thousands of the jobless across the nation to vote in workers’ interests. Field organizers will ask the jobless to fill out “Help Wanted” petitions to send to their congressmen and senators asking exactly what they’ve done to create jobs and assist the unemployed.
The jobless removing the royalists from their jobs – nothing could be sweeter, unless this revolution also included dispatching Glenn Beck to his unemployment office.
Posted
August 13, 2010 at 1:25 pm,
in
From AFL-CIO
--------- Tula Connell --------- Photo by Joe Kekeris
By Tula Connell
AFL-CIO Managing Editor
Looks like we got the attention of Stuart Varney at Fox News. After we challenged as grossly false his assault on the ability of union workers to produce high-tech products, Fox this morning ran a list of the “awesome” things unions build.
The talking heads there then tried to backtrack on their attacks on union members, denying they said union workers were not highly skilled—but that they think that unions bog down corporations with too many rules.
Rules like safety and health to ensure workers stay safe—and alive—on the job. And getting paid for overtime. And then there’s the weekend….
Thanks to unions who sent us some of the other highly skilled jobs their members perform every day.
AFT notes the union represents most of the people holding patents. Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE), reminds everyone that (feel free to retweet):
@WGAEast: #unionsbuild every movie you love & whatever you’re watching after dinner tonight. (tx @amayatune)
Electrical Workers (IBEW) retweeted a cool video of the space shuttle, built by union members, and noted that union members also build nuclear subs and power plants.
And as WGAE noted, New York City’s Fox 5’s writers, graphic designers and other staff are all union members.
