Economy Can't Stand Massive Layoffs?

No kidding!

Could the White House have thought of that before inviting the fat cats to plunder and pillage it? (Plunder and pillage? What else do you call "de-regulation"?)

I no longer believe anything this White House or this Congress tell me about bailouts.

I mean, do I really know that the economy "can't stand" massive layoffs? No, I don't. I thought the economy couldn't stand the failure of Wall Street investment banks, too, but apparently they weren't facing ruin after all. The evidence is that they just wanted fatter bonuses. Pure Shock Doctrine at a neighborhood near you.

So now, I want those who testify before Congress to testify under oath and under penalty of perjury, racketeering, fraud, and extortion. And THEN I want their signatures on contracts stipulating restructuring for a challenged environment, prudent industrial and manufacturing reinvestments, new green jobs, fair pay checks for the workers, and their commitment to partner with the government to create and support universal health care.

This isn't about union wages. This is about the unfettered costs of health care. Get that money off the backs of US companies and families facing foreclosures (that's all of us) and our economy will be fine.

A Verifiable National Threat: The GOP

"Republicans know how to run a business, run a government, and deal with national security."

This morning, as I contemplate our country's economic and national security catastrophe--we can't be in economic meltdown without being also being at grave security risk--I'm reminded that those who've run the government, the investment banks and the Big Three automakers into the ditch are Republicans.

I'm reminded, too, that Republicans love to boast about their patriotism. I just wonder where that patriotism was when the boys in the CEO suite made the decisions that trashed our flagship corporations, blew the world's confidence in our market, trashed our national honor, shipped our jobs offshore, and put the stockholder ahead of the nation.

This crisis -- too paltry a word -- didn't sweep upon us suddenly and without warning. For thirty years, Republicans have made major policy decisions that they knew or should have known would bring us to this point. Where was all that patriotism?

If any teenage mom can explain the flaw in the notion that people will self-regulate, nobody can tell me that our leaders weren't fully aware that deregulation would bring bags of loot to a few at the price of disaster for the rest of us. If you haven't, yet, please read The Shock Doctrine. You'll see just how knowing and deliberate it all is--is, and continues to be. Pray, where is that patriotism?

Since even I can predict a market meltdown if there's nothing but air to sell, you can't tell me that our national failure to ensure that we are a producing economy--a nation that actually makes tangible goods of value--wasn't understood to be a guarantee that one day, an economy built on vapors would collapse. So exactly where was all that patriotism?

And now, when Bush is shoveling our tax dollars and those of the next ten generations out the door in secret deals with family banks and massive bailouts to AIG executives who, as we speak, are again lolling poolside at Arizona's most expensive resports, where's the patriotism?

The lousy management of business, banking, government, and economy is more than evident. So where's the patriotism?

And by the way, Department of Justice: Aren't there laws to stop the looting of the national treasury? Aren't there laws that require our public officials to exercise fiduciary accountability? Isn't rank, bald-faced theft an actionable offense?

I heard this morning that if the Big Three automakers go down, three million American jobs will be gone. If that happens, we're in the second Republican-created Great Depression. Therefore, if that's true, we have no choice but to bail them out, even though they themselves created their own demise. So much for Republicans' mantra of personal responsibility. But what gets me is that everyone saw it coming. It makes me furious that we're in this situation, and it makes me crazy that even one American saw fit to vote for even one Republican last week. A-a-astonishing.

I don't know if there's anything that the American people can do to ensure that those responsible are made accountable in a tangible, meaningful way--as in a racketeering conviction or something--and that we are repaid when the economy finally crawls back into the black. But one thing I do know, now forever and indelibly, and I hope you do, too: Republicans suck at business, government, and national security. They're not just bad. They're verifiably dangerous.

"The Democratically Controlled Congress"? Puh-Leeze!

The "Democratically controlled Congress." How often do we hear that as an indictment of this failure or that over the last four years? What isn't said, ever, by media whores like Wolf Blitzer and Alan Greenspan's wife, Andrea Mitchell, or by GOP hacks like that genius of corporate management, Carly Fiorina, is this: While the Democrats were in power in both the Senate and the House, (1) there was not a veto-proof majority. No matter who controlled what, the Democrats could not -- repeat, could not -- overcome the will of the GOP. (2) Senator Lieberman, who voted WITH the GOP 90% of the time, simply weakened the power of the Democrats, and did so consistently from the time Bush took power.

Do NOT confuse a stalemate with capitulation on the part of the Democrats. When I see capitulation--as now, with Pelosi-Reed's craven support for a modified offshore drilling bill, and earlier, with Obama's refusal to stand up to the telecoms who enabled Bush's ILLEGAL domestic spying, I'll say so. I'm not operating under any illusions that Democrats are perfect.

Whatever they are, they aren't the originators of Neocon deregulation. That began with Uncle Ronnie, and has hit a banana peel under W. That's core Republican ideology, and the past and the coming administrations will sustain deregulation because investment bankers are part of their base.

What we've seen with Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Bros., Fannie May, Freddie Mac, and AIG, the underlying wave of predatory lending practices and the resulting home foreclosure crisis; what we've seen with the plunging value of the dollar; what we've seen with 600,000 job losses just since January; what we've seen with eroded wages and busted unionization efforts (e.g., Wal-Mart); exploited miners and deregulated mines; what we've seen with tax breaks for oil and for corporations that export American jobs--ALL THIS IS CORE REPUBLICAN NEO-CON IDEOLOGY APPLIED TO REAL LIFE.

Did I make that up?

So: Given THAT evidence, anyone who still votes for McCain--the Savings and Loan senator who has consistently supported all this, who still, today, says he thinks the economy is "sound"; who takes his economics advice from the catastrophic Neo-Con Senator Phil Gramm; who has confessed to knowing nothing about economics and therefore has promised to continue Bush economics, is an idiot. An unquestionable, certifiable, Bush Davidian, Kool-Aid drinking, way below Zero moron.

If Americans want a better world, here at home and abroad, we'd better elect Obama and give Democrats a majority in both houses of Congress.

Republiconomics and Life in the Reality-Based World

This economic update from The Progress Report does more than expose the size of the gap between wealthy and other Americans. It also demonstrates the size of the lies coming from Republicons about the wonders of Republicon/neo-con/free-trade/shock-doctrine economics.

For those of us who live in the reality-based world--which is 99.99999% of the human race--"free trade" is a synonym for "screw you." Verily. Verdad. I'm not kidding.

Why, just yesterday, I ran across a whole new example of exactly what Republiconomics means to average Americans. It's called the Trans-Texas Corridor, and it's for sure coming to a state near you. More about this momentarily, because it is the all-encompassing metaphor for, symbol of, and manifestation of "free trade." I don't know how I've managed to miss it until now.

Heads Up: While none of us likes to think of hi- or herself as "average" in any sense, you and I are included in the "average Americans" demographic. That makes us merely fodder for the cannibalistic appetites of the emerging new plutocracy, or grist for its mill, if you prefer the Vegan version.

Anyway, here's a snapshot of today's pocketbook economics from The Progress Report. I'm sure it won't surprise you at all.

The Income Divide

The Congressional Budget Office reports that since 1979, the average income for the bottom half of American households has grown by 6 percent. In contrast, the top 1 percent of earners have seen their incomes shoot up by a 229 percent during that same period. Under the Bush administration, the average income of most Americans has fallen, but the average income of top wage earners (those above the 95 percentile range) has increased from $324,427 in 2001 to $385,805 in 2006. Only one other year has seen a comparable income gap: 1928, the year before the Great Depression.

And who took office in 1980? Which party has ruled for the majority of these decades?

WHY THE DIVIDE?: The reasons for this rise in income inequality can be split into three basic components: government policies, tremendous wage inequality, and high investment income. The federal government under Bush, which provides the fundamental rules that guide how economic gains are distributed around the country, has embraced deregulation and an unstructured financial system. Consequently, huge corporations have raked in profits while the economy sags. The administration's tax policies, which lower taxes on the wealthy rather than the middle class, have furthered the problem...

Remember the word "cannibalistic"? Back when the USA was governed by civilized people, the prevailing ethic was based on the notion of the body politic, the notion that the nation is a living organism whose members are as interconnected as cells in a human being. That notion and the resulting ethic, which acted to regulate capitalism's innate cannibalistic tendencies, has vanished. Now the prevailing ethic is based on a Darwinian view. Leviathan corporate entities are at the top of the food chain, and you are, well, krill.

CEO pay, which has increased by 20.5 percent over just the past 12 months, dwarfs the mere 3.5 percent salary increase for American workers. To put this in perspective, the top 500 American corporate executives earned a combined total of $6.4 billion in 2007, about $12.8 million each and roughly 10 percent of all company profits. An absence of laws protecting collective bargaining has removed the leverage that unions once had on companies to increase wages quickly. Wage inequality, the shrinking value of the minimum wage, and the all-around decline in manufacturing jobs only intensify the problem.

So now we begin to see that wage inequality isn't just a problem for "illegals." That being the case, we also see why immigrant rights are worker rights are civil rights.

WHERE DOES [YOUR] MONEY GO?: ... A recent report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that the largest increases in consumer spending between 2006 and 2007 was on necessities: fuel, food staples, and medical bills.

Are you having fun yet?

HEALTH INSURANCE PERILS: ... Approximately 158 million Americans enjoy employer-provided health care benefits. More and more workers, however, are opting out of their health insurance because they simply can't afford it. The average cost of those benefits to employees has increased by $1,500 -- from $1,800 to $3,300 -- since 2001. For a middle class worker, that amount is an entire month's paycheck, which is particularly troubling as national incomes rose only one-tenth that amount during that same period. Due to a combination of bigger out-of-pocket deductibles and co-payments, higher premiums, and less extensive coverage, medical bills now account for almost one-fifth of average family income.

Against this factoid, rhetoric about "the greatest generation" makes me to hurl. Well I guess! Not to diminish its valiant sacrifice in WWII, but holy crap! The GI Bill, employer-paid healthcare, pension plans, cheap housing, and a great economy brought by FDR to grow the US Middle Class? If I sound bitter, it's because I'm reflecting on the difference between life under progressive Democratic economic policies (then) and life under Republiconomics (now). More. . .