Tag: labor

And no, I’m not talking about the past anti-labor ties like former COS Rahm Emanuel who called labor unions “f-ing retarded” and condescendingly opined about “where are they going to go?” if they expect more from Democrats. No, I’m not talking about the NAFTA and China PNTR hatchet man that helped crush US industry before he became mayor of the President’s home town of Chicago attacking the teacher unions that helped elect this President. And I’m not talking the former U.S. Secretary of Commerce and JP Morgan Executive that also worked with Rahm and the Clinton administration to pass NAFTA either.

Of course, there still are plenty of anti-labor ties to choose from such as Jeffrey “China! China! China!” Immelt who serves as chairman of his outside panel of economic advisers while retaining his post as chairman of the board and CEO of the GE; the non tax paying conglomerate that outsourced its X-ray division from Wisconsin to China. Of course I don’t need to which brings me to the main point of this piece.

(h/t Rick Pearlstein)

Cross posted at Voices on the Square

To start things off, I recommend first reading Cassiodorus's piece The case against the case for Obama even though I started mine about the same time he did. It's definitely quite worthy of checking out before mine because it has many apt points to it. My views are slightly in a different vein as I’m more of a mix of Jim Hightower and L. Randall Wray as one of my friends used to say so read his piece before reading my take.

Well I guess we knew it was coming. Matt Stoller's superb piece The progressive case against Obama was bound to exercise a reaction from the veal pen or hacktivist pen appealing to their own authority first hand to make sure you all know how serious their decisions to sell out are. The end justifies the means and in Peter Coyote’s case it is a failed exercise in condescension right off the bat. He claims he is making…

"The Progressive case for Obama"

So right off the bat we get an exercise in condescension—Peter Coyote is older than Matt Stoller so therefore his time working for CA Governor Jerry Brown must be more relevant than Matt Stoller’s past work including his tenure working for Congressman Alan Grayson. Psychologically one might think, as I do reading this piece, that Peter Coyote's arguments do not come from a position of strength behind them. Whether he realizes it or not, it lets you know how unserious Peter Coyote perhaps thinks of his own arguments right off the bat. After all, he must provide authority for them but not from historical facts of course, from his own resume.

And it’s not just people like me that support the Democratic Party Platform over any politician that noticed this. It was one of the President’s biggest most enthusiastic supporters; Ed Schultz of the Ed Show on MSNBC.

Let’s look at the transcript:

LEHRER: All right? All right. This is segment three, the economy. Entitlements. First — first answer goes to you, two minutes, Mr. President. Do you see a major difference between the two of you on Social Security?

OBAMA: You know, I suspect that, on Social Security, we’ve got a somewhat similar position. Social Security is structurally sound. It’s going to have to be tweaked the way it was by Ronald Reagan and Speaker — Democratic Speaker Tip O’Neill. But it is — the basic structure is sound.

And yes, I know the President offered a touching anecdotal of what SS has meant for his family and I respect that; however I’m going to borrow a line from someone whom I won’t speak for, but it’s a good line anyway so I’ll tweak it for my POV on this. Mr. President, don’t tell me what you believe about Social Security, you have shown what you plan to do with Social Security by agreeing to another Greenspan commission like “tweak.” So I’ll tell you what you really believe and why that is a problem.

Table of Contents:

III. A Printable Petition  

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I. Quick History of the Creative Schools Approach Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) pushed by Jonathan Knapp in Dec. 2011 to Jan. 2012.

Tues. 6 Dec. an SEA email had a draft of MOU in it, but, no warning in the subject line about this issue.

Thurs. 8 Dec. SEA sent out an email with MOU stuff in it, subject “Exhibit A”.  

Mon. 12 Dec. The SEA RA votes to not vote until the Jan. RA.

3 Jan an email from SEA with the FIRST mention of “Creative Approach Schools” – and a week later on 10 Jan they sent out an update.

In Jan. the SEA RA approved the MOU.

15 Feb. 2012 the school board approves the MOU.

http://saveseattleschools.blog…

http://saveseattleschools.blog…

5 March 2012 City Council member Tim Burgess weighs in the CAS MOU on Publicola.

http://publicola.com/2012/03/0…

In July the MOU is declared illegal.

http://saveseattleschools.blog…

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II. A Perspective on the implications of this MOU.

This MOU is extremely dangerous for teachers, and even though there was an SEA vote affirming it last January, that document was found illegal in court in July.

After careful study of both the MOU and its supporting documents, we find that, far from its advertised intent of allowing creative teaching, it instead is much more about abrogating important protections we have within the collective bargaining agreement.

One of the most egregious provisions requires all teachers who wish to retain their jobs at a “Creative Approach” schools to sign a kind of binding 3-year duration “loyalty oath”.

Failure to sign, even for a teacher with otherwise excellent evaluations, would result in displacement. Displacement in a district with many “Creative Approach” would would have to end in termination for many, as openings for displaced personnel shrinks.

There is at present a chance to stop this MOU in its present form if enough signatures of SEA represented folks are gathered, quickly.

SEA leadership intends that the new version of this MOU not come up for any new consideration of SEA membership, at any level.

Cross posted at our new beta site Voices on the Square and The Stars Hollow Gazette

Yes, another crash is coming. I can’t predict precisely when as that would be a fool’s errand, but much closer than you think. It will probably be after our President is reelected and will care very little what you or I think once he and his treasury push for criminal TBTF banks to bailed out once again. Doctor Doom: the nickname for economist Nouriel Roubini: one of the relatively few outside the mainstream(part of the Got It Right (pdf) project) who predicted the last crash thinks 2013 is a perfect storm for another one which will be even worse and it makes sense.

Despite on theoretical fiscal policy limits with regard to the US, Roubini is absolutely right on the political deadlock with the coming crisis. We wasted our last crisis and that’s something Conservatives have not done whether we’re talking about the stagflation crisis of the 70s or 9/11. There won’t be as many political options this time to prop up the underlying economy in 2013 because Democrats have failed to change the Senate rules because most of them secretly like the way things work or don’t work in Washington. Sadly, if Republicans take over both houses again, they will change the Senate rules as they threatening to do in 2005 and 2006.

Anyway some might still want to scoff at Roubini’s prediction, but that will come back to bite them in the ass. Not even Roubini can predict the exact moment it will happen, but if one knows anything about the history of financial crashes, since the 80s when the 1933 banking reforms passed by FDR started slowly being dismantled, they started happening once again in a 5-7 year time-frame(and even closer than that if you count global stock crashes which count now more than ever since our markets turned dark with OTC derivatives and Information Asymmetry all around); some worse than others as the 2008 bust was on par with 1929 but you get the idea.

• Black Monday (1987)
• Black Wednesday (1992)
• Asian financial crisis (1997)
• Mini-crash (1997)
• Dot-com bubble(2000)
• Economic effects arising from the September 11 attacks (2001)
• Stock market downturn of (2002)
• United States bear market of (2007)
• Global financial crisis (2008)
• European sovereign-debt crisis (2010)

Ever since last weekend, I’ve been seeing Paul Ryan’s mug everywhere and it is all anyone can talk about. I can’t help but think this constant attention elevates him a little, even though as Elliot Spitzer said, if he turned his budget to the SEC he would be fined for turning over fraudulent documents. I also don’t believe Ryan helps the Romney ticket at all, except for the pretense by the corporate owned media that he’s an intellectual instead of someone who just likes crazy immoral Ayn Randian ideas and terrible mathematical projection fantasies.

Regardless, there are too many negatives and a lack of anything at all for Romney to run his campaign on. It won’t be a contest, in my opinion, when you look at electoral votes(though the media will have fun playing up the head to head match-ups as if the popular vote still matters) and the President is lucky he doesn’t have an opponent who excites the base at all. He’s lucky because his record is a mediocre one at best when it comes to what should have been pursued in what many are now calling a depression(economic inequality and private debt overhang is on par with the Great Depression).

This isn’t the 90s. He shouldn’t have hired people from the 90s that helped crash the economy. He wasted this crisis, which conservatives never do when they get a chance to exploit one, ruining any chance for real reform and stability. It’s really not OK because the opportunity only comes once every 20 or 30 years and he blew it. There will be more financial panics and bailouts in the nearer than you think future because of this wasted crisis.

History shows that Dodd Frank will not stop implicit bailout guarantees, specifically, with the massive political power, the biggest power, of TBTF banks. Our safety net is not safe even if Democrats win this election. The banks own our government, so we must be on guard when the lame duck period comes after next November.

I hope there is a major moment of self reflection for a party I’m having trouble recognizing by the second so I’m asking these questions to spur one. I’ll give my take on each of them, but you all can answer them for yourself.

Cross posted in Orange and at Voices on the Square

Yes, this is true. It’s not a popular saying, but I’m not here to make everyone feel good for 2012 electioneering while people are suffering to feel a sense of belonging among the Washington elite prognosticating over poll numbers instead of real issues. As we have this debate over 4 percentage points in the tax code, the overall omission of most Americans suffering from the fallout of the housing bubble is insulting.

That’s right. This debate ignores the big elephant in the room; the millions of people underwater defrauded into mortgage debt and other private debt chaining them to their deflating assets with no sufficient income prospects added up and compounded in a usurious fashion sucking demand out of the economy. For those that do not “got theirs jack” and can’t afford cable news to cheer along with this partisan war syndrome dynamic, this actually matters.

It matters because as I have chronicled here, here, here, and here, the Foreclosure Fraud Settlement was an insult to the millions injured from the fallout of this bubble once NY AG was bought off to prop it up with stilts. Banks were given credit for the HAMP mods in addition to being propped up by the other failed HARP program. Basically those that defended that settlement or any of these programs anymore have to admit now they knew nothing.

For want or need of a nice election tune, many are tuning in to this election while too many are tuning out these debilitating economic problems because the absolute failure to deal with them at all. I partially understand, it is daunting and demoralizing, but whether one wants to tune in to these problems or not, the song remains the same.

It’s the song of the decade and it goes well beyond this election.  

Wages have not matched inflation, unemployment for those without work for more than six months is topping 40% while real unemployment (U-6) sits at 14.9%, the housing market continues to tumble. The cost of housing, food, health care, education, transportation has gone up while wages have gone in the other direction.

That is the reality of the US economy and it does not bode well for a sustainable recovery, not without a boost from the government. Nobel Economist Joseph E. Stiglitz writes that “the labor market is a shambles” and it’s not going to improve anytime soon without a boost from the government:

Let’s assume that job creation continues at the rate of 225,000 jobs a month. That is only about 100,000 beyond the number required to provide jobs for the average monthly number of new entrants into the labour force. At that pace, it would take 150 months to reach full employment – 13 years, some time around 2025. The independent Congressional Budget Office is more optimistic, forecasting the return of full employment by 2018. [..]

Before the crisis, 40 per cent of all investment was in property. We had a housing bubble that left a legacy of excess capacity. Continuing weakness in the property sector is reflected in high foreclosure rates and low home prices. [..]

Finally, US states and local governments are constrained, to a large extent, by having to balance their budgets. They depend heavily on property taxes, so both revenues and expenditures have plummeted. This is why there are a million fewer public employees than before the crisis. Government as a whole is being procyclical, not countercyclical. [..]

Unfortunately, little has been done about the underlying structural problems. Indeed, the downturn, during which wages have not kept pace with inflation, has in many ways made US inequality worse.

Today the American economy faces three big risks. First, a steeper European downturn, as a result of the excessive austerity and the euro crisis. Second, complacency that the economy will recover quickly without government support. Though every downturn comes to an end, that should not be of much comfort. Third, that we accept that an unemployment rate above 7 per cent is inevitable.

If my Cassandra forecast turns out to be wrong, stimulus can be cut. But if it turns out to be right, and we do too little, we will live to regret it.

We need Congress and the President to stop listening to “Washington Consensus” and the “main stream” economists that are preaching “austerity” that will only prolong the economic decline and increase poverty.

The Great Teacher Bashing Tour continues in the great state of Washington. All kids will be saved when we have charters and evaluations that work as well as the evaluations of Wall Street bandits.

http://seattleducation2010.wor…

http://saveseattleschools.blog…

The teacher bashing onslaught soared to new heights in September 2010 with the release of “Waiting For Stuporman”. 1 September day, I was privileged to get home from work & be channel surfing & see my Ex-Boss, (7 clicks removed) Bill Gates, sitting on Oprah’s couch with Michelle Rhee, while the 3 of them ooh-ed and ahh-ed over this little piece of propaganda.

Below is a leaflet I distribute at ed deform events, and at sundry other local Seattle community events. I enjoy leafleting.  I enjoy telling people I’m leafletting because I’m prejudiced:

I’m prejudiced against well paid managers, AND

I’m prejudiced against well paid CON$ultant$, because as members of the 1% and as agents of the 1%, their greatest skills are blaming us working stiffs for problems we didn’t create –

I’ve been teaching high school math for over 6 years now,

I actually worked at Microsoft in Redmond as a low level support serf for 5 years,

I was a chef for 15 years, and spent 5 of those years cooking in fine dining in Boston (the Boston Four Seasons Hotel from ’85 to ’87).

I KNOW what high priced CON$sultant$ look like,

I KNOW how little they help my kids learn math, AND

I know how little they help kids at our school, AND

I know how little they help any kids in our district,

I’m prejudiced against well paid managers, AND

I’m prejudiced against well paid CON$ultant$, because as members of the 1% and as agents of the 1%, their greatest skills are blaming us working stiffs for problems we didn’t create –

Below is my leaflet.  

The Great Teacher Bashing Baloney Tour continues tomorrow night in Seattle, Tues., 1 Nov. at our downtown public library.

http://www.educationvoters.org…

The teacher bashing onslaught soared to new heights in September 2010 with the release of Since “Waiting For Stuporman”. I was privelaged to watch the the acclaim of this propaganda from the classroom experts of Michelle Rhee, Bill Gates and Oprah over a year ago.

I enjoy leafleting against these Teacher Bashing Baloney Tours put on by the toadies of the 1%, and I enjoy telling people I’m leafletting because I’m predujiced –

I’ve been teaching high school math for over 6 years now,

I actually worked at Microsoft as a low level support serf for 5 years,

I was a chef for 15 years, and spent 5 of those years cooking in fine dining in Boston (the Boston Four Seasons Hotel from ’85 to ’87)

I KNOW what high priced CON$sultant$ look like,

I KNOW how little they help my kids learn math, AND

I know how little they help kids at our school, AND

I know how little they help any kids in our district,

I’m prejudiced against well paid managers, AND

I’m prejudiced against well paid CON$ultant$

because as members of the 1% and as agents of the 1%,

their greatest skills are blaming us working stiffs for problems we didn’t create –

Below is my Leaflet –