Tag: Punting the Pundits

The press strained to find some good news in the government’s April employment report. Superficially, things appeared a little better. The official unemployment rate dropped to 7.5 percent, and the number of long-term unemployed people declined by about 258,000. The government revised upwards the number of new jobs created, to 138,000 in March, plus 165,000 in April.

The stock market loved the news: Just enough job growth to keep the economy officially out of recession. But a sufficiently sluggish economy that the Federal Reserve will keep interest rates low, and workers will have little bargaining power.

Take a deeper look at the figures behind the April report and consider the coming impact of budget cuts, and the picture is still bleak for the vast majority of Americans. The job growth is not sufficient to materially improve the condition of most working (and out-of-work) Americans.

Mijin Cha: Big Oil’s (Taxpayer Subsidized) Big Profits

Here’s an example of how government subsidies distort market economics: Gas prices are down nearly 35 cents from last year, yet this has had virtually no impact on this year’s first quarter profits of the big oil companies.

On top of the decline in gas prices, several of the top five oil companies — BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, and Shell — have had significant spills in the last quarter. A ruptured Chevron pipeline spilled thousands of gallons of oil into a Utah waterway. Shell’s oil pipeline spilled tens of thousands of gallons of oil in Texas. Exxon’s tar sand pipeline spilled up to 126,000 gallons of oil in Arkansas. All of these spills occurred just in the first quarter. Yet, these spills haven’t eaten into the companies’ profits, indicating that fines or cleanup costs aren’t anticipated to have an impact on the earnings potential.

Michael Shank and Matt Southworth: Authorization for Use of Military Force: A Blank Check for War without End

For both fiscal and ethical reasons, it is time Congress cancelled AUMF and reclaimed oversight of US military engagements

A handful of Democratic and Republican senators are considering a rewrite of 60 of the most consequential words to ever pass through Congress. The Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), passed after the attacks of 11 September 2001, and provides the legal cornerstone for the so-called US “war on terror”. Only one brave Congress member opposed it. It allows the US government to wage war at anytime, any place and on anyone deemed a threat to national security – with remarkably little evidence needed.

The consequential nature of these words is self-evident: the AUMF opened the doors to the US wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya; attacks on Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and Mali; the new drone bases in Niger and Djibouti; and the killing of American citizens, notably Anwar al-Awlaki and his 16-year-old noncombatant son. It is what now emboldens the hawks on the warpath to Syria, Iran and North Korea.

Robert Reich: The Hollowing Out of Government

The West, Texas chemical and fertilizer plant where at least 15 were killed and more than 200 injured a few weeks ago hadn’t been fully inspected by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration since 1985. (A partial inspection in 2011 had resulted in $5,250 in fines.) [..]

In effect, much of our nation’s worker safety laws and rules have been quietly repealed because there aren’t enough inspectors to enforce them. That’s been the Republican strategy in general: When they can’t directly repeal laws they don’t like, they repeal them indirectly by hollowing them out — denying funds to fully implement them, and reducing funds to enforce them.

News reports tell us that more than 500 people have now died and more than 2,500 were injured in Savar, Bangladesh, while the toll in West, Texas stands at 15 dead and over 200 injured. Behind these two disasters is a common thread of greed — and a common need for unionized resistance. [..]

What’s needed is a recognition that every life is worth fighting for, in every field and factory on the planet.  It’s fought with the understanding that better-paid workers buy more goods and raise the global standard of living, no matter where they live.

The stories from Texas and Bangladesh shouldn’t just horrify us. They should galvanize us into action.  They aren’t complete until we choose to live them ourselves. As Mother Jones said, “Mourn the dead, but fight like hell for the living.”

Doug Bandow: Syria: The Only Red Line Should be to Stay Out

The Syrian civil war lurches on, adding new casualties every day. The campaign to push the U.S. into the Syrian civil war also marches on, threatening to add American casualties to the human toll. Possible use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government is another reason to stay out, not to get in.

Washington’s foreign policy should be one of peace. There are tragic times when war becomes necessary, but thankfully not often. Especially for America, which enjoys a privileged international position.

Today the U.S. is without peer. Terrorism is the most serious security threat facing the country, but it is only exacerbated by promiscuous intervention in conflicts not America’s own. Bombing, invading, and occupying other nations creates enemies who want to hurt Americans.

Robert Reich: The Flaccid Jobs Report

We remain in the gravitational pull of the Great Recession. The Labor Department reports that 165,000 new jobs were created in April — below the average gains of 183,000 in the previous three months.

We can’t achieve escape velocity. Since mid-2010, the three-month rolling average of job gains hasn’t dipped below 100,000 but has exceeded 250,000 jobs just twice.

This isn’t enough to ease the backlog of at least 3 million (estimates range up to 8 million) job losses since 2007, just before the Great Recession began. (And as I’ll point out in a moment, 2007 wasn’t exactly jobs nirvana.)

Moreover, most of the new jobs now being created pay less than the ones that were lost.

What’s wrong?

Charles M. Blow: Dear College Graduates…

I’m scheduled to deliver the commencement address Friday at my alma mater, Grambling State University in Louisiana, so I’ve been giving quite a bit of thought to the America into which these students are graduating.

I must admit that finding hopeful, encouraging things to say has been exceedingly difficult, in part because the landscape at the moment – particularly for young adults – is so bleak.

Here are some of the facts that I’m up against rhetorically and that these students will be up against more literally.

President Obama had the opportunity this week to make an irresponsible Congress face the consequences of its own dumb actions. For reasons I cannot fathom, he took a pass.

Rather than use the veto pen that must be gathering dust in some Oval Office drawer, Obama signed legislation that cushions air travelers from the effects of the crude, cruel budget cuts known as the “sequester.” The Federal Aviation Administration is now allowed to shuffle funds around to avoid furloughing air traffic controllers-thus avoiding flight delays.

Joan Walsh: Yes, Americans Still Value Their Civil Liberties Even in the Wake of Boston Marathon Bombing

New poll says people are even more concerned about their country becoming a police state than before.

I admit I was a little bit surprised, but pleasantly: A new Time/CNN/ORC poll shows that Americans are actually more concerned about protecting civil liberties in the wake of the Boston bombing, not less. It turns out voters are smarter than many of their leaders, particularly (but not exclusively) on the Republican side of the aisle. Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who vilifies his local NYCLU by comparing it to the NRA, might want to take note. [..]

Only 32% of Americans believe that the U.S. government can prevent all major attacks, down from an average of 40% in 2011 and 41% in 2006.  And by contrast with polls taken in the wake of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bombing, when only 23 percent of voters polled showed reluctance to give up civil liberties to protect terrorism,, 49% said they were not willing to give up such rights, as opposed to 40 percent who were.

Norman Solomon: Don’t Vent, Organize-And “Primary” a Democrat Near You

Progressives often wonder why so many Republican lawmakers stick to their avowed principles while so many Democratic lawmakers abandon theirs. We can grasp some answers by assessing the current nationwide drive called “Primary My Congressman” — a case study of how right-wing forces gain ground in electoral terrain where progressives fear to tread.

Sponsored by Club for Growth Action, the “Primary My Congressman” effort aims to replace “moderate Republicans” with “economic conservatives” — in other words, GOP hardliners even more devoted to boosting corporate power and dismantling the public sector. “In districts that are heavily Republican,” the group says, “there are literally dozens of missed opportunities to elect real fiscal conservatives to Congress — not more ‘moderates’ who will compromise with Democrats. . .”

Such threats of serious primary challenges often cause the targeted incumbents to quickly veer rightward, or they may never get through the next Republican primary.

Joe Conason: What Might Be Missing From Bush’s Presidential Library

Like all such monuments that former presidents construct to edify the public, the George W. Bush Presidential Center-opened with great ceremony in Texas last week-is mounted from its subject’s point of view.

My own invitation to the festivities must have been lost in the mail, so I have yet to view the super-cool interactive exhibitions that reportedly allow visitors to become “the decider” on Iraq and other debacles. But the point seems to be that the 43rd president came under sustained pressure and, if he screwed up to an unprecedented degree, then he doesn’t think you or I would have done any better.

That pointless comparison would no doubt elicit Bush’s trademark smirk. He is said to feel satisfied with himself, no matter what the world thinks.

Sure, we urgently need to repeal the sequester.  (You can tell your Representative that here.) But it’s even more important to repeal the insane thinking that led to the sequester.  

That means repealing the deficit babble that still dominates Washington (and provided the theme for the President’s weekly Saturday address). It means repealing a conservative Republicanism which is based, not on economic philosophy, but on an atavistic hatred for government in any form.

Most of all, it means repealing the politics of deprivation and replacing them with the politics of growth. We’ve learned that contractionary policy based on government cuts is … well, contractionary.  And that expansion policy is needed if we want the economy to expand.

The argument shouldn’t be about where we should be cutting, but about where we should be spending more money.

William K. Black: The Lethal Lemons on the Road to Bangladesh

I wrote yesterday about the “control frauds” (in which the person controlling a seemingly legitimate entity uses it as a “weapon” to defraud) that target purchasers of bad quality goods (“lemons”) and employees. The example I used to explain these concepts was the collapse of the building housing garment factories in Bangladesh.

As I write, there are terrible reports indicating that the death toll is far greater than currently reported. Again, the initial reports from a disaster often prove inaccurate in important ways so I urge caution and the need to confirm whether the newer reports are accurate.

The higher death toll is not what prompts this article. I write to discuss the intersection of control fraud, austerity, globalization, labor “reform,” and economic development.

Jared Berbstein: The Trouble With Low Inflation

The Fed announced today that they’ll continue to be the only ones in town trying to do something about the stubbornly high unemployment rate:

   The Federal Reserve said Wednesday that its stimulus campaign would press forward at the same pace it has maintained since December, putting to rest for now any suggestion that it was leaning toward doing less.

[..]

The Fed’s “…statement also noted that the pace of inflation had slackened, a potential sign of economic weakness, but it showed little concern about that trend.”

Me, I’m pretty concerned about that trend. On the one hand, lower price growth means higher real wages, all else equal, and that’s important as slower nominal wage growth is another problem right now.

Robert Reich: The Fed, Apple and Trickle-Down Economics

The Fed’s policy of keeping interest rates near zero is another form of trickle-down economics.

For evidence, look no further than Apple’s decision to borrow a whopping $17 billion and turn it over to its investors in the form of dividends and stock buy-backs.

Apple is already sitting on $145 billion. But with interest rates so low, it’s cheaper to borrow. This also lets Apple avoid U.S. taxes on its cash horde socked away overseas where taxes are lower.

Other big companies are doing much the same on a smaller scale.

Who gains from all this? The richest 10 percent of Americans who own 90 percent of all shares of stock.

As thousands of air travelers suffered through flight delays last week, the average American got a lesson in civics: when you cut government spending, it has real life consequences. Americans are fond of saying that they want to slash government spending in the abstract, but loath to point to specific programs that they actually want to cut. With sequestration, this ambivalence has come home to roost. Because the automatic spending cuts known as sequestration affect all programs evenly, the ones that touch middle-class Americans, not just the poor, have suffered equally.

We haven’t just learned a lesson about the effects of budget cutting, though. We’ve also been able to see the priorities of Congress in stark relief. The flight delays, a result of furloughs at the Federal Aviation Administration, were not the first effects of sequestration. Those were visited on the poor. Yet the FAA was the only agency that saw swift and bipartisan action. After Congress was flooded with calls from angry travelers-not to mention, as lawmakers started down flight delays for their own flights home for recess-the Senate and House each passed a bill with overwhelming support within forty-eight hours. When’s the last time you remember that happening for any other issue?

Valerie Strauss: Obama’s Big Second-Term Education Problem? His First Term Policy

President Obama has a big problem in his second term in terms of education policy: his first term.

Obama and his education secretary, Arne Duncan, pushed hard in their first term to have a major impact on changing public schools with a larger-than-ever  federal role in school policy issues that affected every single classroom in the country. And they did, with rare bipartisan support. [..]

Enter the second term. The Obama-Duncan agenda in K-12 is aimed at universal preschool for children from low- and medium-income families, but federal budget cuts make that unlikely to be fully implemented.

What is most prominent is the mess from the first term.

Beverly Bell and Tory Field: Weeding Corporate Power Out of Agricultural Policies: Communities Mobilize for Food and Farm Justice

From the school cafeteria to rural tomato farms, and all the way to pickets at the White House, people are challenging the ways in which government programs benefit big agribusiness to the detriment of small- and mid-sized farmers. Urban gardeners, PTA parents, ranchers, food coops, and a host of others are organizing to make the policies that govern our food and agricultural systems more just, accountable, and transparent. They are spearheading alternative policies on the local, state, national, and international levels. [..]

Despite the activism on the most recent Farm Bill, it was allowed to expire at the end of 2012 due to a stalemate in Congress around payments to farmers and broader budget issues. Congress implemented a nine-month extension, but several important programs were de-funded, including support for new farmers and farmers of color, conservation efforts, research into organic farming, and other progressive initiatives. Organizations of farmers and activists are now pushing for these to be reinstated in the next Farm Bill, which is slated for action in summer 2013.

Frances Moore Lappé: After Boston, Eyes-Wide Open Hope?

How do we know the difference between head-in-the-sand hope and eyes-wide-open hope? One is a killer; the other, a life-giver.

First, it helps to ask, what is hope? [..]

I live in Boston, and in this moment our whole, beautiful city seems to be listening to his truth — using love to block fear.

So, for me, “hope” has nothing to do with wishful thinking; it is a stance toward life we can choose and actively cultivate. It relies on a special type of humility that flows from what I love to call an eco-mind. Thinking like an ecosystem, we see that the nature of reality is that all elements are shaping all other elements moment to moment.

And that means that nothing — including you or me — is stuck.

When Barack Obama leaves the White House in January 2017, what will black America, his earliest and most consistent supporters, have to show for making his political career possible. We’ll have the T-shirts and buttons and posters, the souvenirs. That will be the good news. The bad news is what else we’ll have…. and not.

To hear our black political class tell it, the election of the first black US president was its ultimate achievement to date, a giant step toward fulfillment of a previous generation’s insurgent agenda for social transformation. Is that real? Has the career of Barack Hussein Obama really advanced any of the historic goals of the Freedom Movement? Is the question even fair?

With corporate media already speculating about next year’s midterm elections, and the presidential contest of 2016, it’s entirely appropriate to discuss the president’s legacy. And fair is fair — the black political class doesn’t want its meager achievements compared to the agenda of those who fought for our freedom a half century ago, it probably ought to abandon its ceaseless self-promotion as the inheritors of that tradition.

E. J. Dionne, Jr.: The Economic Whodunit

The policy mystery of our time is why politicians in the United States and across much of the democratic world are so obsessed with deficits when their primary mission ought to be bringing down high and debilitating rates of unemployment.

And since last week saw a cross-party celebration of the opening of George W. Bush’s presidential library, I’d add a second mystery: Why is it that conservative Republicans who freely cut taxes while backing two wars in the Bush years started preaching fire on deficits only after a Democrat entered the White House?

Dave Johnson: Sequester Closes Cancer Clinic Doors, Congress Does Nothing

Affluent business flyers inconvenienced by delays = national emergency that Congress immediately fixes. Cancer clinics closing = Congress does squat, goes home. This is just one more story of our corrupt times.

Last week the sequester cuts kicked in at airports and caused affluent business fliers to experience some delays, so Congress acted immediately to fix it. The same sequester has been forcing cancer clinics to send away patients so they can’t receive the chemotherapy that they hope will keep them alive. Is Congress rushing to the rescue like they did for affluent business travelers who faced some flight delays? Not so much. They do have their priorities, after all. [..]

The kicker, it doesn’t even save the government money, instead it costs money:

   The care will likely be more expensive: One study from actuarial firm Milliman found that chemotherapy delivered in a hospital setting costs the federal government an average of $6,500 more annually than care delivered in a community clinic.

So not only does this sequester kill people, it costs the government much more than it saves.

David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz : You and Your Family Are Guinea Pigs for the Chemical Corporations

How Americans Became Exposed to Biohazards in the Greatest Uncontrolled Experiment Ever Launched

A hidden epidemic is poisoning America.  The toxins are in the air we breathe and the water we drink, in the walls of our homes and the furniture within them.  We can’t escape it in our cars.  It’s in cities and suburbs.  It afflicts rich and poor, young and old.  And there’s a reason why you’ve never read about it in the newspaper or seen a report on the nightly news: it has no name — and no antidote.

The culprit behind this silent killer is lead.  And vinyl.  And formaldehyde.  And asbestos.  And Bisphenol A.  And polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs).  And thousands more innovations brought to us by the industries that once promised “better living through chemistry,” but instead produced a toxic stew that has made every American a guinea pig and has turned the United States into one grand unnatural experiment.

Last week CISPA, the cybersecurity information-sharing bill, passed the House. Though fundamentally flawed, the bill is very different from when it passed the House a year ago, demonstrating the power of a growing Internet advocacy community that sometimes underestimates its own influence. Two game-changing achievements stand out.

When CISPA was reintroduced this year, CDT and others pointed out that, once again, the bill allowed information shared with the government for cybersecurity purposes to be used for national security purposes unrelated to cybersecurity. In the face of criticism that this loophole would turn CISPA into a backdoor intelligence-gathering operation, the House Intelligence Committee amended the text to clearly prohibit such uses. Chalk up one significant victory for Internet advocacy.

Robert Kuttner: Reality 1, Austerity 0

It’s been a very bad week for the merchants of austerity.

In Europe, the just-released statistics on first quarter performance show EU nations sliding deeper into recession. In Spain and Greece, unemployment rates are approaching a staggering 30 percent. In Britain, the Tory government took as good news the fact that the UK managed to eke out 0.3 percent growth. Even Germany, the prime sponsor of these policies, is on the edge of recession. [..]

And Ken Rogoff and Carmen Reinhardt had a really terrible week. Their now infamous 2010 claim that nations get into economic trouble when their debt ratios exceed 90 percent of GDP was blown to hell by a graduate student at the University of Massachusetts. For three years, critics have been pressing R&R to share their raw data. When Thomas Herndon and colleagues Michael Ash and Robert Pollin finally got hold of the research and reworked R&R’s numbers, it turned out that they had selectively used data and made basic errors of arithmetic.

Vijay Prashad: Made in Bangladesh: The Terror of Capitalism

On Wednesday, April 24, a day after Bangladeshi authorities asked the owners to evacuate their garment factory that employed almost three thousand workers, the building collapsed. The building, Rana Plaza, located in the Dhaka suburb of Savar, produced garments for the commodity chain that stretches from the cotton fields of South Asia through Bangladesh’s machines and workers to the retail houses in the Atlantic world. Famous name brands were stitched here, as are clothes that hang on the satanic shelves of Wal-Mart. Rescue workers were able to save two thousand people as of this writing, with confirmation that over three hundred are dead. The numbers for the latter are fated to rise. It is well worth mentioning that the death toll in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City of 1911 was one hundred and forty six. The death toll here is already twice that. This “accident” comes five months (November 24, 2012) after the Tazreen garment factory fire that killed at least one hundred and twelve workers. [..]

In the Atlantic world, meanwhile, self-absorption over the wars on terror and on the downturn in the economy prevent any genuine introspection over the mode of life that relies upon debt-fueled consumerism at the expense of workers in Dhaka. Those who died in the Rana building are victims not only of the malfeasance of the sub-contractors, but also of twenty-first century globalisation.

Robert Reich: Earth to Washington: Repeal the Sequester

Economic forecasters exist to make astrologers look good. Most had forecast growth of at least 3 percent (on an annualized basis) in the first quarter. But we learned this morning (in the Commerce Department’s report) it grew only 2.5 percent.

That’s better than the 2 percent growth last year and the slowdown at the end of the year. But it’s still cause for serious concern. [..]

So what is Washington doing? Worse than nothing. It has now adopted the same kind of austerity economics that’s doomed Europe — cutting federal spending and reducing total demand. And the sequester doesn’t end until September 30. It takes an even bigger bite out of the federal budget next fiscal year.

Earth to Washington: The economy is slowing. The recovery is stalling. At the very least, repeal the sequester.

In retrospect, George W. Bush’s legacy doesn’t look as bad as it did when he left office. It looks worse.

I join the nation in congratulating Bush on the opening of his presidential library in Dallas. Like many people, I find it much easier to honor, respect and even like the man-now that he’s no longer in the White House.

But anyone tempted to get sentimental should remember the actual record of the man who called himself The Decider. Begin with the indelible stain that one of his worst decisions left on our country’s honor: torture.

Tim Radford: Fast-Moving Climate Zones Speed Extinction

LONDON-As global temperatures rise, climate zones will shift at greater speed, according to new research in Nature Climate Change.

If greenhouse gas emissions carry on increasing, then about 20% of the land area of the planet will undergo change – and the creatures that have made their homes in what were once stable ecosystems will have to adapt swiftly, or face grim consequences. [..]

Such fears are not new: in the past two decades biologists and ecologists have repeatedly warned that vulnerable species were at risk from climate change.

But vulnerable species are at risk anyway, just from pollution, habitat destruction and the spread of humanity across the habitable globe. What Dr Mahlstein and her colleagues have done is to look at geography’s mosaic of climates and landscapes and measure the rates of change in these.

David Sirota: A Cronkite Moment for the Blowback Era

“The stuff we have done overseas is now brought back into our own front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost.”-Reverend Jeremiah Wright

In 2008, the hysterical backlash to the above comment by Barack Obama’s minister became a high-profile example of one of the most insidious rules in American politics: You are not allowed to honestly discuss the Central Intelligence Agency’s concept of “blowback” without putting yourself at risk of being deemed a traitor to country.

Now, five years later, with America having killed thousands of Muslim civilians in its drone strikes and wars, that rule is thankfully being challenged-and not by someone who is so easily smeared. Instead, the apostate is one of this epoch’s most revered journalists-and because of that, we will see whether this country is mature enough to face one of its biggest national security quandaries.

Richard Reeves: Bipolar Nation: The Rich Get Richer

Times are tough. Do the numbers: Chief executive officers (CEOs) of the country’s biggest companies experienced pay increases of a minuscule 15 percent in 2012, compared with the 28 percent their pay rose in 2011.

Only 15 percent. Ah! I’m sure they’ll make it up in bonuses and stock options this year. The rich will get richer and the poor will get porridge, cold porridge.

Those statistics are from GMI, Global Market Insite. Meanwhile, the earnings of workers (adjusted for inflation) declined by 2 percent, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.