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How they get away with obstruction – Opening Shot – Salon.com

21 Oct

The most recent data shows that 75 percent of voters say they want the federal government to send money to the states so that they can hire teachers and first responders. … At the same time, 76 percent of voters — and 54 percent of Republicans — favor increasing tax rates on Americans with incomes over $1 million.

So you might think that all 47 Republicans in the U.S. Senate and the three Democrats who joined with them late last night are going to be in some seriously hot political water for killing a plan that would have sent $35 billion to state governments to create or preserve about 400,000 jobs for teachers and firefighters and that would have paid for it with a 0.5 percent tax on millionaires.

If only it were that easy.

The measure, which represents a slice of the $447 billion jobs bill that President Obama proposed last month and that was derailed in the Senate last week, died because Democrats didn’t have the 60 votes needed to end a GOP-initiated filibuster aimed at preventing it from being debated.

via How they get away with obstruction – Opening Shot – Salon.com.

Party of Pollution – NYTimes.com

21 Oct

A new study by researchers at Yale and Middlebury College brings together data from a variety of sources to put a dollar value on the environmental damage various industries inflict. The estimates are far from comprehensive, since they only consider air pollution, and they make no effort to address longer-term issues such as climate change. Even so, the results are stunning.

For it turns out that there are a number of industries inflicting environmental damage that’s worth more than the sum of the wages they pay and the profits they earn — which means, in effect, that they destroy value rather than create it. High on the list, by the way, is coal-fired electricity generation, which the Mitt Romney-that-was used to stand up to.

via Party of Pollution – NYTimes.com.

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Nine Ideas Up for Grabs

20 Oct

Economist Robert Reich (Secretary of Labor under Clinton) has nine suggestions for specific reforms (from Salon magazine).

One, Anger (cf Occupy America and Change History):

What’s needed isn’t just big ideas. It’s people fulminating for them – making enough of a ruckus that the ideas can’t be ignored. They become part of the debate because the public demands it.

Two, jobs:

The nation needs a real jobs plan, one of sufficient size and scope to do the job – including a WPA and a Civilian Conservation Corps, to put the millions of long-term unemployed and young unemployed to work rebuilding America.

Three, to address long-term debt, raise money by:

What about halving the military budget …? It doubled after 9/11, and military contractors are intent on keeping it in the stratosphere. . . .

And what about really raising taxes on the rich to finance what the nation should be doing to create a world-class workforce with world-class wages? . . . Incomes of more than $5 million should be subject to a 70 percent rate. (The top marginal rate was never below 70 percent between 1940 and 1980.) And these rates should apply to all income regardless of source, including capital gains. . . .

And a tax on financial transactions. Even a tiny one of one-half of one percent would generate $200 billion a year. That’s enough to make a major contribution toward early childhood education for every American toddler. Continue reading →

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Occupy America and Change History

20 Oct

Let Occupy Wall Street become a permanent well of political discontent.

Occupy Wall Street HAS changed political discourse in America. It remains to be seen, however, what fruit will come from this change, if any.

That the OWSers have yet to come up with a set of concrete demands has often been noted. On this I side with those who do not see this as a problem. On the one hand, as many have noted, it’s not as though their central issue—massive income inequality—hasn’t been obvious for years, if not a decade or two, and it’s not as though it is difficult to come up with proposal after proposal that addresses the problem.

Everyone Must Eat

It is more important, at this point, simple to recognize the problem and to see it as deep and fundamental.

America, with all our problems, remains the world’s richest nation. That being the case, it is disgraceful that anyone should lack the basic necessities of life: food, shelter, education, and health care. Everyone, WITHOUT qualification, MUST have access to the means of living a decent life. Just how that is to be done, yes, that is a problem. But let us first state, and accept, the principle:

Everyone, WITHOUT qualification, MUST have access to the means of living a decent life.

It is not the OSW movement’s job to come up with proposals to achieve that end. That is a job for think tanks, Congressional staffers, lobbyists, and universities.

The Well of Our Discontent

Moreover, I rather like the existence of a somewhat amorphous well of ‘WE AREN’T GOING TO TAKE IT ANY MORE.’ Perhaps that should become a permanent feature of our political ecology. Continue reading →

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Occupy the Classroom – NYTimes.com

20 Oct

Most of the proposed remedies involve changes in taxes and regulations, and they would help. But the single step that would do the most to reduce inequality has nothing to do with finance at all. It’s an expansion of early childhood education.

Huh? That will seem naïve and bizarre to many who chafe at inequities and who think the first step is to throw a few bankers into prison. But although part of the problem is billionaires being taxed at lower rates than those with more modest incomes, a bigger source of structural inequity is that many young people never get the skills to compete. They’re just left behind.

via Occupy the Classroom – NYTimes.com.

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Federal Reserve Riddled with Conflicts of Interest

19 Oct

The GAO detailed instance after instance of top executives of corporations and financial institutions using their influence as Federal Reserve directors to financially benefit their firms, and, in at least one instance, themselves. “Clearly it is unacceptable for so few people to wield so much unchecked power,” Sanders said. “Not only do they run the banks, they run the institutions that regulate the banks.”

Sanders said he will work with leading economists to develop legislation to restructure the Fed and bar the banking industry from picking Fed directors. “This is exactly the kind of outrageous behavior by the big banks and Wall Street that is infuriating so many Americans,” Sanders said.

The corporate affiliations of Fed directors from such banking and industry giants as General Electric, JP Morgan Chase, and Lehman Brothers pose “reputational risks” to the Federal Reserve System, the report said. Giving the banking industry the power to both elect and serve as Fed directors creates “an appearance of a conflict of interest,” the report added.

via GAO Finds Serious Conflicts at the Fed – Newsroom: Bernie Sanders – U.S. Senator for Vermont.

How cities should work – Imprint – Salon.com

19 Oct

An interview with Gary Hustwit, director of , “Urbanized,” a design documentary.

Everybody wants to change their city and make it better, but a lot of people don’t really know how to go about doing that.

Is there a message you want people to take away from the film?

A lot of it is about how cities should work. The projects take so long that it’s a detriment because political winds change and citizens who should be involved in the project don’t even know it’s happening until the bulldozers start rolling in. It’s never the case where government is going to ask “What projects do we need?” and really use the public as a compass. The main time the public interfaces with the city is when they are against something that is already underway. They are not leading a positive initiative to get something done. That’s the takeaway of this film: Be more involved and critical about how you want your city to be.

via How cities should work – Imprint – Salon.com.

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Major News Corp Shareholders Vote to Replace Directors | The Nation

18 Oct

It’s showdown at the OK corral:

Earlier this month the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, which owns more than 6 million shares in News Corporation, voted to replace the entire board of directors. At the same time California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the country’s largest pension fund, said it would be pushing for Murdoch to step aside in favor of an independent chairman. Glass Lewis, an advisor to major institutional investors in the United States, recently advised its clients to vote against both Rupert Murdoch and his son James, while Pirc, a British advisor, told its clients to vote against the Murdochs, as has the British group who manage local government pension funds.

Of, course, the  News Corporation is huge and it owns the Fox network, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post and local newspapers from here to Dunady, not to mention all the British media they own. And, as we all know, they’ve got dirt on everyone. So bringing the company to shareholder justice

Yet Friday’s meeting is more than just corporate theatre. News Corporation also faces a tsunami of legal troubles: hundreds of potential phone-hacking victims in Britain lining up for cash settlements generate the most headlines, but there are also shareholder lawsuits attacking the way the Murdochs run the company “like a wholly owned family candy store,” and ongoing criminal investigations in Britain and the United States.

via Major News Corp Shareholders Vote to Replace Directors | The Nation.

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MARK CUBAN: ‘Tax The Hell Out Of Wall Street And Give It To Main Street’

18 Oct

n a world of High Frequency Trading and black box trading that does nothing but create a platform for “financial hackers” to turn the market into their own proprietary financial playground, we need to figure out a way to revert the Stock and Bond Markets, and the derivative instruments created from these equities, back to their original purpose, a place to raise capital for growing business. Instead, today its a platform for financial engineers and hackers looking to exploit every and any opportunity. When 60pct or more of trades are from High Frequency/Algorithmic traders and the correlation for every market index rushes past .7, the market is no longer a market, its a platform.

The simplest way to change this is to place a very simple per share tax on every transaction. 10 cents a trade. Every share. Every option. Every Bond. Every currency transaction. Every trade.

The obvious response is that trading volume will plummet. So what? Let it. The next response is that traders will merely move their trades to foreign exchanges. Yes they will. Will transaction costs go up? Duh.. that is the point. The market thrived when spreads and transaction costs were much higher just a few short years ago. It will survive now.

via MARK CUBAN: ‘Tax The Hell Out Of Wall Street And Give It To Main Street’.

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Come Together, Right NOW! Music on the March

18 Oct

Yeah, Dylan was cool. But today we have marchin’ music that would burn his protestin’ butt.

Last Saturday Salon published an article by Stephen Deusner on protest music: Will a new Dylan emerge from Occupy Wall Street? For better or worse it struck me as a bit of a lament for the Good Old Days when they had Good Old/New Protest songs, but, alas, kids today don’t write ‘em like they used to:

As Occupy Wall Street has gained momentum, it has been compared to the anti-war and civil rights protests of the 1960s by commentators as diverse as comedian Dick Gregory, Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain and scores of newspaper columnists. Yet, as Mangum’s performance demonstrates, they are very different in at least one regard, however minor: Music is not quite the central force today that it was 40 and 50 years ago, when a song like “We Shall Overcome” or “Fixin’ to Die Rag” could communicate certain motivating ideals and reinforce solidarity among a great throng of participants. Instead, it remains peripheral.

Things get moderated toward the end:

The lesson of the 2000s seems to be to approach politics obliquely instead of head-on, to make it one concern among many. If protest songs are largely absent from Occupy Wall Street, it’s not that they aren’t being written. It’s that they no longer serve the same purpose they once did — and are so spread out across genres and audiences that they don’t register as broadly as they once did. …

On the other hand, protests inspire music, not vice versa. Perhaps the artists participating in or even just witnessing the Occupy Wall Street gatherings will be moved to write about their experiences. Perhaps the next great wave of radicalized pop is just a few months or years away.

Well, maybe.

People’s Music

But I have a somewhat different take on the whole business. Back in the day the most important music was the music sung in black churches, mostly traditional hymns and gospel. That’s the music that summoned, organized and energized the civil rights movement. The anti-war movement was a different group of people and, of course, a different issue, but it emerged in a public arena that had been activated by the civil rights movement. Continue reading →

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