Discussion Forum

It sounds like the stuff of fiction: a family whose home was due to be repossessed find a rare and valuable comic in the basement.

However, it was reality for one American couple who discovered a the very first edition of Action Comics featuring Superman as they were packing up their belongings.

The husband and wife - who wish to remain anonymous but who are from the country's south - were devastated when they could not meet the repayments on their property.

But they struck gold when the came across a stash of 'old magazines' and 'old comic books', including the first comic in which Superman appears, dated June 1938.

It could sell for $250,000 (£160,000).

Superman rescues family home: Cash-strapped couple faced repossession... then they find rare comic in the basement

Any update on this one? We've got Cycling Weekly magazines that go back to the 60's....

Very mysterious. I remember posting a reply in this thread about my world paper money collection, and now it's gone.

I don't remember any flames ...

Here's something that fits the thread:

The great university con: why giving degrees out willy-nilly doesn't actually help the economy

Blair's dream of a working-class kid getting a degree that would catapult him or her up the social ladder has not come off

Aditya Chakrabortty
The Guardian, Tuesday 24 August 2010

So predictable, so rote is the newspaper coverage of exam season that I can only presume editors of mid-market newspapers have to sit their own A-level on how to report them. Shots of exuberant blondes jumping up and down clutching their results? That gets you a basic pass. Fancy-that story about an Asian lad with top grades in maths and science - even though he's only 10 and in all likelihood faces an adolescence of Belmarsh-style bullying? Now you're up to a B. Oh, and the conviction that university is the best place for any 18-year-old? Bingo: you've scored the A* required for a place at Associated Newspapers.

To be fair to journalists (and this thing goes far wider than the Daily Mail), that last belief is not theirs alone; it's shared by prime ministers and civil servants alike. Even before Tony "education, education, education" Blair set a target that half of all school leavers would go to university, it was John Major who presided over a huge expansion of higher education. Official thinking was best summed up by an official report for the Treasury published in 2006: "The UK must become a world leader in skills. Skills is the most important lever within our control to create wealth and reduce social deprivation." Going to university was not only a teenager's lucky ticket to the top jobs; it would make the economy more dynamic. It was practically in the national interest.

And plenty of parents were ready to do their patriotic duty and send Jack and Emily off to college. Over the last couple of decades, attending university has become almost a rite of passage, with well over 40% of school-leavers toddling off to collect a degree - investing three or more years and racking up tens of thousands of pounds of debt in the process.

Except that 20 years into this historic expansion of the higher- education system, the evidence is that a big proportion of those freshly minted degrees have not repaid either the hopes or the tuition fees and student loans invested in them. Quite the opposite: one in three graduates are now in jobs that before the 90s would not have required a degree at all.

A couple of years ago, two economists at the University of Kent crunched through data from 1992 up to 2006 on how graduates fared in the jobs market. It was a big exercise, going through thousands of career paths, and it was carefully done. Francis Green and Yu Zhu took into account that it can take a while for graduates to find the right job (or, as their parents might more precisely refer to it, to switch off E4). Yet they still found a third of graduates were "overqualified" for their jobs. Many were "formally overqualified", in positions that wouldn't usually require a university degree; but one in 10 were what Green and Zhu called "really overqualified" - their jobs barely utilised their expensively acquired skills.

Just look at the occupations where new recruits are now expected to have a degree: policing, nursing, hotel management. And the list is growing fast: researchers report that the smarter estate agents now prefer staff to have degrees (and a public school education too, apparently, "for the added confidence"). Those from the upper- and middle-classes who go to Oxbridge will do fine - as they were always going to do. But Blair's dream of a working-class kid getting a degree that would catapult him or her up the social ladder has not come off. Instead, they'll probably end up doing similar work to their school-leaver parents - only with a debilitatingly large debt around their necks. Meanwhile, their schoolmates who left at 18 will find themselves locked out from the jobs they would once have been amply qualified to take up. The lack of letters after their name now signals a lack of talent.

What about the extra money that degree-holders are meant to earn over their careers - the so-called graduate premium? Even by Whitehall calculations, that has dropped from £400,000, to £100,000 now - which works out to an annual £2,500 over a 40-year career. But even that more modest average is swollen by the number of Oxbridge students who end up at Goldman Sachs.

Ewart Keep, an economist at Cardiff, takes the example of a young man who studied history or social science at a former poly and comes out with a middling degree: "Statistically, he's unlikely to earn any more than if he'd simply left school at 18." Keep, together with his colleague Ken Mayhew, argues that the reason the Great Degree Scramble has not paid off in better jobs is because Labour did not try to provide them. That would have required nurturing new businesses and raising conditions for the most awful jobs - the sort of thing Blair and his party emphatically did not do.

The scramble for degrees resembles the audience at a theatre standing up: as each row stands up, those behind them have to get up on their hind legs too - so that no one can see the play any better but everyone is a lot more uncomfortable. That metaphor comes from the Cambridge economist Ha-Joon Chang who, in his new book 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism, points out that plenty of economies have prospered without forcing their young into university. Up until the mid-90s, Switzerland - one of the richest and most industrialised nations in the world - sent only 10-15% of students off to get a degree. But it made sure the others had apprenticeships with actual businesses and vocational training. There must, surely, be a lesson in that.

Here's something else:

Corporate America, it's time to spread the wealth

Businesses are sitting on a record hoard of cash, but they're not using it to hire workers or pay existing ones better wages. Broadly distributing the fruits of economic growth is the only way to sustain that growth.

Los Angeles Times
August 25, 2010
Michael Hiltzik

Corporate America must be in a bad way. Job growth has stagnated, the prospects for hiring, at least in the near term, seem grim, and the polls of top executives sound universally glum.

And yet, operating earnings of companies in the Standard & Poor's 500 index jumped 38.4% in the second quarter compared with a year earlier, according to Thomson Reuters, and companies are sitting on an estimated $1.8 trillion in cash -- by some measures, a record mound of cash.

Somebody's making money in this economy. Unfortunately, it's not the middle class or the working class. And that's our real problem.

The business lobby talks as though the flat-lined job picture isn't the fault of employers. Certainly it's true that it's not entirely the fault of employers. Chamber of Commerce types overemphasize doubts about the strength of the economic recovery, the prospect of higher federal taxes and the costs of government initiatives such as healthcare reform.

Some aren't above suggesting that American workers have simply become too lazy to get off unemployment and do some real work.

That was the theme of a recent article in the Wall Street Journal quoting several business owners marveling at the dearth of applicants for skilled job openings. But you had to do some math to find a clue to why this might be.

One business was looking to pay $13 an hour for machinists. That works out to about $27,000 a year (assuming vacation is paid for), or about the federal poverty line for a family of five.

Now, it's possible that the business owner couldn't possibly afford to pay a penny more. Or he might be thinking that with unemployment nosing 10% he could try bidding down. But the article also quoted him saying his company could grow sharply if it only had the personnel, so perhaps he should consider bidding up.

The idea that only a shrinking proportion of American workers deserves a solid middle-class income seems to have become ingrained in parts of the business community over the last few years. That was the thought behind the punishing Southern California grocery lockout and strike of 2003-04, when the supermarket chains pressed for a wage and benefit system on which it would be difficult if not impossible to raise a family. (They got their way for new employees.)


Told ya so:

---

Quote: The San Francisco Onion

Right now, these same people are holding the American economy hostage until they get more business conservatives in office.

Yeah, I know, someone will say that's a crazy conspiracy, but don't doubt for an instant that a group of multi-billionaires acting in unison can invest in whatever they want, whenever they want, and exert their influence on the American economy, and thereby influence public opinion that supply-side economics actually works.

---

Well, I'll be God- ... gosh-darned:


ScientificAmerican
60-Second Psych
August 28, 2010

Generation X More Loyal To Religion Than Previous Generation

A recent survey analysis reveals that Gen-Xers are more likely than Baby Boomers to remain loyal to religion. Christie Nicholson reports.

Research published this week reveals a surprising trend among the American Generation X-the group who came of age in the late 1980s and 1990s and are known for their rejection of all things conventional. It appears that in comparison to the Baby Boomers, Gen-Xers are significantly more loyal to religion.

Scientists analyzed survey responses from more than 37,000 people between the years 1973 to 2006. Their results are published in The Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. They found that Boomers are 40 to 50 percent more likely to abandon their religious faith, than Gen-Xers.

Interesting to note, from those surveyed, the number of Americans with no religious affiliation doubled in the 1990s and continues to increase through the first decade of this century.

The researchers attribute this drop off to the Boomers who were likely to have abandoned religion in young adulthood perhaps due to the rejection of organized authority or what the researchers call the "1960s effect."

So what's up with this newfound loyalty in the younger Generation X?

Well the authors note that it probably has to do with the expansion of the "religious marketplace" in recent decades, and suggest that instead of this trend watering down religious faith, they say that more choices is influencing the increase in affiliation and commitment to religion.


-Christie Nicholson

US Ticker: Cost of Wars

We Only Trust Experts If They Agree With Us

We only consider scientists to be experts when their argument is in line with our own previously held beliefs.

Christie Nicholson reports


We think we trust experts. But a new study finds that what really influences our opinions, more than listening to any expert, is our own beliefs.

Researchers told study subjects about a scientific expert who accepted climate change as real. Subjects who thought that commerce can be environmentally damaging were ready to accept the scientist as an expert. But those who came into the study believing that economic activity could not hurt the environment were 70 percent less likely to accept that the scientist really was an expert.

Then the researchers flipped the situation. They told different subjects that the same hypothetical scientist, with the same accreditation, was skeptical of climate change. Now those who thought that economic activity cannot harm the environment accepted the expert, and the other group was 50 percent less likely to believe in his expertise. The study was published in the Journal of Risk Research.

The investigators found similar results for various other issues, from nuclear waste disposal to gun control. Said one of the authors, "People tend to keep a biased score of what experts believe, counting a scientist as an 'expert' only when that scientist agrees with the position they find culturally congenial."

-Christie Nicholson


I heard they just passed new anti-gravity legislation in Kansas on the grounds that Newton's discovery has held down American students for far too long. Now, kids just float right through the school system.

The misguided reaction to Tea Party candidates

BY GLENN GREENWALD

The "tea party" movement is, in my view, a mirror image of the Republican Party generally. There are some diverse, heterodox factions which compose a small, inconsequential minority of it (various libertarian, independent, and Reagan Democrat types), but it is dominated -- in terms of leadership, ideology, and the vast majority of adherents -- by the same set of beliefs which have long shaped the American Right: Reagan-era domestic policies, blinding American exceptionalism and nativism, fetishizing American wars, total disregard for civil liberties, social and religious conservatism, hatred of the minority-Enemy du Jour (currently: Muslims), allegiance to self-interested demagogic leaders, hidden exploitation by corporatist masters, and divisive cultural tribalism. Other than the fact that (1) it is driven (at least in part) by genuine citizen passion and engagement, and (2) represents a justifiable rebellion against the Washington and GOP establishments, I see little good in it and much potential for bad. To me, it's little more than the same extremely discredited faction which drove the country into the ground for the last decade, merely re-branded under a new name.

All that said, there are some reactions to the Tea Party movement coming from many different directions -- illustrated by the patronizing mockery of Christine O'Donnell -- which I find quite misguided, revealingly condescending, and somewhat obnoxious. In two separate appearances -- one on Hannity and the other on some daytime Fox show -- Karl Rove, that Paragon of Honor, insisted that she lacks the "character and rectitude" to be in the Senate, and raised these points in support of his accusation:

"One thing that Christine O'Donnell is going to have answer is her own checkered background . . . . These serious questions: How does she make her living? Why did she mislead voters about her college education? How come it took nearly two decades to pay her college tuition? How does she make a living? Why did she sue a well-known conservative think tank? . . . . questions about why she had a problem for five years paying her federal income taxes, why her house was foreclosed and put up for a sheriff's sale, why it took 16 years for her to settle her college debt and get her diploma after she went around for years claiming she was a college graduate. . . . when it turns out she just got her degree because she had unpaid college bills that they had to sue her over."

Most people are not like Rove's political patron, George W. Bush, who was born into extreme family wealth. O'Donnell's financial difficulties, which Rove is describing, and implicitly condemning, are far from unusual for ordinary Americans. In 2009 alone, there were 2.8 million home foreclosures. Contrary to what Rove is trying to imply, an inability to pay one's college tuition bills or a struggle with taxes are neither rare nor signs of moral turpitude. Those are common problems for a country whose middle class is eroding as the rich-poor gap rapidly widens. If the kinds of financial struggles O'Donnell has experienced are disqualifying from high political office, then we will simply have an even more intensified version of the oligarchy which our political system has become.

It's hard to avoid the conclusion, at least for me, that, claims to the contrary notwithstanding, much of the discomfort and disgust triggered by these Tea Party candidates has little to do with their ideology. After all, are most of them radically different than the right-wing extremists Karl Rove has spent his career promoting and exploiting? Hardly. Much of the patronizing derision and scorn heaped on people like Christine O'Donnell have very little to do with their substantive views -- since when did right-wing extremism place one beyond the pale? -- and much more to do with the fact they're so . . . unruly and unwashed. To members of the establishment and the ruling class (like Rove), these are the kinds of people -- who struggle with tuition bills and have their homes foreclosed -- who belong in Walmarts, community colleges, low-paying jobs, and voting booths on command, not in the august United States Senate.

You want to know why it's so unusual for a U.S. Senate candidate to have what Rove scorned as "the checkered background" of O'Donnell, by which he means a series of financial troubles? In his interview with me earlier this week, Sen. Russ Feingold said exactly why. It's not because those financial difficulties are rare among Americans. This is why:

"It's not a new thing; it's been going on for a couple of decades. If you look even in the Senate, I'm one of the very few people in there who doesn't have a net worth over a million dollars; my net worth is under half a million dollars, after all these years."

And as poor as Russ Feingold is relative to his colleagues in the Senate, he's still a Harvard Law School graduate who owns his own home and has earned in excess of $100,000 as a U.S. Senator for the last 18 years. People with unpaid Farleigh Dickinson tuition bills and home foreclosures just aren't in the U.S. Senate. And there are a lot of people -- those who see nothing wrong with the U.S. Senate as a millionaire's club and as an entitlement gift of dynastic succession -- who want to keep it that way.

And this ethos is hardly confined to admission requirements for the Senate, but extends to the entire Versailles on the Potomac generally. The Washington ruling class is embodied by the vile image of millionaire TV personality Andrea Mitchell, wife of Alan Greenspan, going on GE-owned MSNBC and announcing that it's time for ordinary Americans to "sacrifice" by giving up Social Security benefits (that she, of course, doesn't need). All sorts of right-wing extremism is tolerated and even revered in Beltway culture provided it comes from the Right People. A Washington political/media culture that rolls out the red carpet for every extremist Bush official is now suddenly offended by these Tea Partiers' extremist views? Please. What's most frowned upon is the inclusion in their circles of those Who Do Not Belong. Hence, the noses turning upward at Christine O'Donnell's lower-middle-class struggles and ordinariness as though they disqualify her for high office. If anything, one could make the case that those struggles are her most appealing -- perhaps her only appealing -- quality.

These socio-economic biases have been evident for many years. Bill Clinton's arrival in Washington caused similar tongue-clucking reactions because, notwithstanding his Yale and Oxford pedigree, he was from a lower-middle-class background, raised by a single working mother, vested with a Southern drawl, and exuding all sorts of cultural signifiers perceived as uncouth. Much of the contempt originally provoked by Sarah Palin was driven by many of the same cultural biases. As I wrote at the time, the one (and only) attribute of Palin which I found appealing, even admirable, when she first arrived on the national scene was that she came from such a modest background and was entirely self-made (Obama's lack of family connections and self-made ascension was also, in my view, one of the very few meaningful differences between him and Hillary Clinton). So much of the derision over Palin had nothing to do with her views or even alleged lack of intelligence -- George Bush, to use just one example, was every bit as radical and probably not as smart -- but it was because she hadn't been groomed to speak and act as a member in good standing of the elite class.

I'm not defending Palin or O'Donnell; they both hold views, most views, which I find repellent. But it's hard not to notice the double standard which treats quite respectfully many politicians with the right lineage who espouse views every bit as radical. This is the kind of condescension that causes Sarah Palin's anti-elitism screeds to resonate and to channel genuine resentments.

* * * * *

This is the principal reason I simply do not believe the high-minded claims that these scornful reactions to Tea Party candidates are primarily based on ideology. On Monday, The American Prospect's Jamelle Bouie -- last seen condemning Markos Moulitsas for the crime of comparing the Iraq-War-and-torture-loving American Right to "killers and terrorists" (perish the thought!) -- absurdly lamented the Tea Party movement on the ground it is undermining the "moderating" influences in the GOP and causing a "rigid conservatism" to dominate. I have no idea what Republican Party Bouie has been looking at for the last couple of decades, but it isn't the same one I've been looking at. As Atrios responded -- and I couldn't agree more -- Tea Party extremism isn't an aberration from what the GOP has been; it's perfectly representative of it, just perhaps expressed in a less obfuscated and more honest form.

For as long as I can remember -- decades -- I've been hearing that the new incarnation of the GOP is far more radical and dangerous than anything that preceded it, and it tragically threatens to banish the previously Reasonable, Serious, Adult version of that party. That was certainly said about Ronald Reagan, as he argued for the elimination of the Department of Education, brought in cabinet officials like Ed Meese and Jim Watt, catered to Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority, and nominated people like Robert Bork to the Supreme Court. That was certainly said about the Gingrich-led GOP of the 90s, with their Contract with America, obsessions with law-enforced morality, and impeachment of Bill Clinton. And it was said over and over about the Bush/Cheney era that ushered in the Iraq War, the torture regime, broad executive lawlessness, and an endless roster of vapid, know-nothing ideologues and religious fanatics in the highest positions.

Given all that, I'd really like to hear what it is about Christine O'Donnell, or Sharron Angle, or any of these other candidates that sets them apart from decades of radical right-wing elected officials who came before them? They seem far more similar to me than different. When was this idealized era of GOP Adult Reasonableness?

During the Clinton years, Jesse Helms was the Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and threatened the President not to go on Southern military bases lest he be killed. The Wall Street Journal called for a Special Prosecutor to investigate the possible "murder" of Vince Foster. Rush Limbaugh -- along with people like James Dobson, Pat Robertson, and Bill Kristol -- have been leaders of that party for decades. Republicans spent the 1990s wallowing in Ken Starr's sex report, "Angry White Male" militias, black U.N. helicopters, Clinton's Mena drug runway and the "distinguishing spots" on his penis, Monica's semen-stained dress, Hillary's lesbianism, "wag the dog" theories, and all sorts of efforts to personally humiliate Clinton and destroy the legitimacy of his presidency using the most paranoid, reality-detached, and scurrilous attacks. George Bush spoke routinely with people like Pat Robertson and Franklin Graham, and unleashed untold violence, destruction, corruption and lawlessness. How is the current American Right -- and these Tea Party candidates -- any different? Warning that the other party is More Radical Than Ever is a reliable tactic to win elections, but in the case of Republicans, they seem every bit as radical to me now as before, just a bit more pure, primitive and aggressive about it.

As Atrios also suggested, these Tea Party candidates differ not in their views but in their untrained, unsophisticated style of expressing those views. They just haven't been groomed yet to comport themselves with Ruling Class mannerisms, which is what is causing most of the consternation. A perfect example of this occurred during the 2008 presidential campaign, when Palin said in an interview with Charlie Rose that the U.S. should be prepared to fight a war with Russia in order to defend Georgia and other republics, such as the Ukraine. That caused widespread outrage as Democrats everywhere rushed to condemn her as a crazed warmonger.

But as Matt Yglesias accurately pointed out in an interview I did with him, Palin's view was more or less shared by both Obama and Joe Biden, both of whom had expressed support for admitting those countries into NATO, which would obligate the U.S. to wage war to defend them. As Yglesias explained, Palin's real offense was that she used uncouth language -- meaning language that was too honest and clear -- to describe the implications of this policy:

Sarah Palin's real mistake in that Russia interview, was being sufficiently inexperienced and unsavvy to just state plainly what's become consensus American policy, which is that we should risk a nuclear war with Russia, that would kill billions of people, and possibly lead to the total end of human civilization, over boundary disputes about Abkhazia and South Ossetia, in Georgia. When she said it, it sounded a little bit crazy, and I think it is a little bit crazy, but Joe Biden just has a more sophisticated way of saying the same thing, and certain routine formulations about this.

I had a conversation with a progressive ally who specializes in national security issues about this, and he was talking about the desire to go after McCain-Palin on this, and I was saying, I thought it was hard because they were really wrong -- that it's Obama's position too, and he was saying to me, you know, the real problem here is that, even if your policy is that these countries should join NATO, you don't talk explicitly about the fact that that might mean you go to war.

But, I'm not really sure why we don't talk about that.

The same thing happened when Obama caused great (and absurd) controversy among foreign policy elites with his campaign statement that he would consider escalating our bombing campaign in Pakistan if they refused or were unable to capture Al Qaeda elements: his desire to bomb Pakistan was not (of course) controversial, but merely the fact that one does not say such things out in the open. The Ruling Class code is that a desire to bomb is kept secret, away from the masses, talked about only among elites, and Obama deviated from this code by telling American voters of his intentions.

The Republican Party has thrived by keeping much of its real agenda and many of its tactics hidden from public view. These unsophisticated Tea Party candidates are unpracticed in those skills of deception and thus far too harsh and declassé for our effete Guardians of Elite Political Power to bear (watch David Ignatius today long for the glory days when old, wise "centrists" like Lee Hamilton decided everything in secret, bipartisan harmony). It's all perfectly fine to crave cultural and religious wars, to start actual wars, to despise marginalized minorities, to want to slash the safety net for an already vulnerable population, to adhere to extremist religious dogma, and to endorse lawlessness in the name of Security. You're just not supposed to say any of this -- at least not so bluntly, without obfuscating code. And it's especially uncouth when the person violating this code isn't an industrial billionaire like Ross Perot -- whose vast wealth entitles him to some maverick eccentricities -- but some poor, unprivileged, very ordinary Walmart shopper like Christine O'Donnell. Nobody wants someone like her coming in and trashing David Broder and Sally Quinn's place.

Title: 'Third World America': 11 Books Predicting The Collapse Of The Middle Class
Source: The Huffington Post
URL Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/ ... ld-america-11-bo_n_672280.html
Published: Aug 9, 2010
Author: Caroline Eisenmann and Amy Hertz
Post Date: 2010-08-09 10:48:28 by Robin

NO to Oligarchy

The 400 richest families in America, who saw their wealth increase by some $400 billion during the Bush years, have now accumulated $1.27 trillion in wealth. Four hundred families! During the last fifteen years, while these enormously rich people became much richer their effective tax rates were slashed almost in half. While the highest-paid 400 Americans had an average income of $345 million in 2007, as a result of Bush tax policy they now pay an effective tax rate of 16.6 percent, the lowest on record.

Last year, the top twenty-five hedge fund managers made a combined $25 billion but because of tax policy their lobbyists helped write, they pay a lower effective tax rate than many teachers, nurses and police officers. As a result of tax havens in the Cayman Islands, Bermuda and elsewhere, the wealthy and large corporations are evading some $100 billion a year in U.S. taxes. Warren Buffett, one of the richest people on earth, has often commented that he pays a lower effective tax rate than his secretary.

But it's not just wealthy individuals who grotesquely manipulate the system for their benefit. It's the multinational corporations they own and control. In 2009, Exxon Mobil, the most profitable corporation in history made $19 billion in profits and not only paid no federal income tax-they actually received a $156 million refund from the government. In 2005, one out of every four large corporations in the United States paid no federal income taxes while earning $1.1 trillion in revenue.

But, perhaps the most outrageous tax break given to multi-millionaires and billionaires happened this January when the estate tax, established in 1916, was repealed for one year as a result of President Bush's 2001 tax legislation. This tax applies only to the wealthiest three-tenths of 1 percent of our population. This is what Teddy Roosevelt, a leading proponent of the estate tax, said in 1910. "The absence of effective state, and, especially, national restraint upon unfair money-getting has tended to create a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power. The prime need is to change the conditions which enable these men to accumulate power which is not for the general welfare that they should hold or exercise.… Therefore, I believe in a…graduated inheritance tax on big fortunes, properly safeguarded against evasion and increasing rapidly in amount with the size of the estate." And that's what we've had for the last ninety-five years-until 2010.

Today, not content with huge tax breaks on their income; not content with massive corporate tax loopholes; not content with trade laws enabling them to outsource the jobs of millions of American workers to low-wage countries and not content with tax havens around the world, the ruling elite and their lobbyists are working feverishly to either eliminate the estate tax or substantially lower it. If they are successful at wiping out the estate tax, as they came close to doing in 2006 with every Republican but two voting to do, it would increase the national debt by over $1 trillion during a ten-year period. At a time when we already have a $13 trillion debt, enormous unmet needs and the highest level of wealth inequality in the industrialized world, it is simply obscene to provide more tax breaks to multi-millionaires and billionaires.

That is why I have introduced the Responsible Estate Tax Act (S.3533). This legislation would raise $318 billion over the next decade by establishing a graduated inheritance tax on estates over $3.5 million retroactive to this year. This bill ensures that the wealthiest 0.3 percent of Americans pays their fair share of estate taxes, while making sure that 99.7 percent of Americans never have to pay a dime when they lose a loved one. It also makes certain that the overwhelming majority of family farmers and small businesses never have to pay an estate tax.

Stumbling Toward a Bleak Horizon

What may be more serious is the erosion of the middle class that is well underway. Business insider cites these statistics:
--83 percent of all U.S. stocks are in the hands of 1 percent of the people.

--61 percent of Americans "always or usually" live paycheck to paycheck, which was up from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.

--66 percent of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1 percent of all Americans.

--36 percent of Americans say that they don't contribute anything to retirement savings.

--A staggering 43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved up for retirement.

--24 percent of American workers say that they have postponed their planned retirement age in the past year.

--Over 1.4 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009, which represented a 32 percent increase over 2008.

--Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975

While the middle class is shrinking, their wealth is being transferred to the rich. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, has been livid in denouncing this:

"The 400 richest families in America, who saw their wealth increase by some $400 billion during the Bush years, have now accumulated $1.27 trillion in wealth. Four hundred families!

"During the last 15 years, while these enormously rich people became much richer their effective tax rates were slashed almost in half. While the highest paid 400 Americans had an average income of $345 million in 2007, as a result of Bush tax policy, they now pay an effective tax rate of 16.6 percent, the lowest on record.

"Last year, the top 25 hedge fund managers made a combined $25 billion but because of tax policy their lobbyists helped write, they pay a lower effective tax rate than many teachers, nurses, and police officers."

Divided We Fail

By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: October 28, 2010

Barring a huge upset, Republicans will take control of at least one house of Congress next week. How worried should we be by that prospect?

Not very, say some pundits. After all, the last time Republicans controlled Congress while a Democrat lived in the White House was the period from the beginning of 1995 to the end of 2000. And people remember that era as a good time, a time of rapid job creation and responsible budgets. Can we hope for a similar experience now?

No, we can't. (probably a reference to Obama's "Yes, we can" - SFO) This is going to be terrible. In fact, future historians will probably look back at the 2010 election as a catastrophe for America, one that condemned the nation to years of political chaos and economic weakness.

Start with the politics.

In the late-1990s, Republicans and Democrats were able to work together on some issues. President Obama seems to believe that the same thing can happen again today. In a recent interview with National Journal, he sounded a conciliatory note, saying that Democrats need to have an "appropriate sense of humility," and that he would "spend more time building consensus." Good luck with that.

After all, that era of partial cooperation in the 1990s came only after Republicans had tried all-out confrontation, actually shutting down the federal government in an effort to force President Bill Clinton to give in to their demands for big cuts in Medicare.

Now, the government shutdown ended up hurting Republicans politically, and some observers seem to assume that memories of that experience will deter the G.O.P. from being too confrontational this time around. But the lesson current Republicans seem to have drawn from 1995 isn't that they were too confrontational, it's that they weren't confrontational enough.

Another recent interview by National Journal, this one with Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, has received a lot of attention thanks to a headline-grabbing quote: "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president."

If you read the full interview, what Mr. McConnell was saying was that, in 1995, Republicans erred by focusing too much on their policy agenda and not enough on destroying the president: "We suffered from some degree of hubris and acted as if the president was irrelevant and we would roll over him. By the summer of 1995, he was already on the way to being re-elected, and we were hanging on for our lives." So this time around, he implied, they'll stay focused on bringing down Mr. Obama.

True, Mr. McConnell did say that he might be willing to work with Mr. Obama in certain circumstances - namely, if he's willing to do a "Clintonian back flip," taking positions that would find more support among Republicans than in his own party. Of course, this would actually hurt Mr. Obama's chances of re-election - but that's the point.

We might add that should any Republicans in Congress find themselves considering the possibility of acting in a statesmanlike, bipartisan manner, they'll surely reconsider after looking over their shoulder at the Tea Party-types, who will jump on them if they show any signs of being reasonable. The role of the Tea Party is one reason smart observers expect another government shutdown, probably as early as next spring.

Beyond the politics, the crucial difference between the 1990s and now is the state of the economy.

When Republicans took control of Congress in 1994, the U.S. economy had strong fundamentals. Household debt was much lower than it is today. Business investment was surging, in large part thanks to the new opportunities created by information technology - opportunities that were much broader than the follies of the dot-com bubble.

In this favorable environment, economic management was mainly a matter of putting the brakes on the boom, so as to keep the economy from overheating and head off potential inflation. And this was a job the Federal Reserve could do on its own by raising interest rates, without any help from Congress.

Today's situation is completely different. The economy, weighed down by the debt that households ran up during the Bush-era bubble, is in dire straits; deflation, not inflation, is the clear and present danger. And it's not at all clear that the Fed has the tools to head off this danger. Right now we very much need active policies on the part of the federal government to get us out of our economic trap.

But we won't get those policies if Republicans control the House. In fact, if they get their way, we'll get the worst of both worlds: They'll refuse to do anything to boost the economy now, claiming to be worried about the deficit, while simultaneously increasing long-run deficits with irresponsible tax cuts - cuts they have already announced won't have to be offset with spending cuts.

So if the elections go as expected next week, here's my advice: Be afraid. Be very afraid.

My Dearest Step Son

In the city by the bay,

Gosh, you seem pretty agitated right now.

Probably with good reason.

May I share something with you?

Good.

I shall begin.

I have worked in industry for most of my working life, born and bred in the heartland of the industrial revolution. I've said before that I was a union rep, and our politics follow fairly similar lines.

But as Dylan once so famously said: The times they are a changing.

But not that much.

The biggest enemy of the working man these days is the person who works beside you. It isn't the Republicans or the Conservatives - it's the person you looked on as a friend and a workmate. Once these people get a sniff of authority, they'll sell you down the river as soon as look at you.

Offer them a promotion and they'll backstab you until their arm can't take it any more.

I had a case like that recently - I won it without getting dirty, (Which I could easily have done, but didn't) but because I was right. I'm proud of my working class ethos, but it's never going to make me a rich man.

But at least I can sleep soundly in the night, safe in the knowledge that my integrity is intact.

And it always will be.

Respectfully

Skoob.

---

Quote: Skoob1999

I have worked in industry for most of my working life, born and bred in the heartland of the industrial revolution.

---

That's why you're a fan of Manchester United, innit?

---

Quote: Skoob1999

The biggest enemy of the working man these days is the person who works beside you. It isn't the Republicans or the Conservatives - it's the person you looked on as a friend and a workmate. Once these people get a sniff of authority, they'll sell you down the river as soon as look at you.

Offer them a promotion and they'll backstab you until their arm can't take it any more.

---

It seems that since we spend most of our lives at work, the workplace contributes heavily to our pool of friends.

Unfortunately, as co-workers, they are also the same people we must compete with for promotions and raises. It can get pretty ugly.

And I'm already not much to look at.

Me neither,

Even in me pork pie hat.

See Martin Shuttlecock on Facebook - that's me.

Not that I want to advertise it. I mean, fucking hell - with a mug like mine a low profile is probably the best option.

Take care matey

Dad

Americans, Your Country Isn't So Great

David A. Love
November 5, 2010

This is a commentary I was bound to write regardless of the outcome of the midterm election. I start by saying that your country is not so great, Americans. Any discussion of "what went wrong" must be prefaced with that statement. Harsh words, perhaps, but I do not utter them in haste. And we need to say it over and over again until we change it.

The United States is at the bottom of the barrel. We don't live well. Since the 1970s, the bottom 90 percent has experienced income stagnation, while the top 1 percent has seen its wealth skyrocket. In America, two-thirds of income gains in recent years went to the top 1 percent. The gap between rich and poor hasn't been so great since 1928, right before the first Great Depression, with the top 20 percent controlling 84 percent of the wealth. In Sweden, the top 20 percent owns 36 percent. Canada and Western Europe all have greater social mobility than the so-called "land of opportunity," and with far more generous benefits, over a month of vacation, real universal health care -- you get the picture. If the citizens of all of these advanced nations are living better than Americans, then what is so special about America?

And yet, this recent election is a testament to this country's proclivity -- with help from the bottom 90 percent -- to keep things the way they are, if not worsen them. Some people vote with the oligarchy against their own interests because they simply lack the proper information. There's lots of blame to go around.

Turnout from the base.

Young voters and African-Americans, a key part of the Democratic base, refused to show up in the numbers they should have to turn this thing around. And 29 million people who voted in 2008 stayed home this year. If you don't use democracy you lose it. But then again, perhaps many felt as if they had no reason to vote. And their silence is as deafening as the noise made in the voting booth. There is no question that the president lost touch with his soldiers, far more than a hundred interviews on hip-hop radio stations could ever make up. This is not to excuse those who sat out of the race, but it's trickier than that. The reality is that the White House appeared arrogant and distant, even dismissive and impatient towards its progressive supporters-turned-critics. Obama must answer to the voters, not scold them, but he got it twisted somewhere along the way.

Anti-Wall Street sentiment.

Clearly, the voters who went against the Democrats were mad at Wall Street. One would conclude that an anti-Wall Street fervor should favor the Democrats. But the Democrats are as much a party of corporate enablers as are the Republicans. Obama decided to cozy up to the bankers and prop them up rather than tear them down for the havoc they engineered. Plus, he surrounded himself with dead weight -- Wall Street shills and neoliberal Clinton insiders among his closest advisors. These individuals have utter contempt for unions, "the professional left" and other components of the base. This was not the change the Obama supporters thought they were getting in November 2008. Meanwhile, average Americans observed that as they struggled through hard times, with mounting bills, chronic unemployment and foreclosures, the banks were not left wanting.

Compromise.

"We were in such a hurry to get things done that we didn't change how things got done," President Obama said. And he is right. Cutting deals with lobbyists and watering down health care reform for the sake of putting another notch in your belt is the old way of doing things. Compromising with the other side from a position of weakness and giving away the store before the negotiations even start -- well that's just plain naïve.

Also naïve was the administration's belief that it could compromise with Republicans, the extremists who awake every morning wishing and hoping for his downfall. Perhaps it would have been possible decades ago, but not now. Wasting too much time on this quixotic dream of compromise as an end, rather than one of various possible means to an end, gave the Republicans their opening. Now, the GOP is even more extreme, racist and uncompromising after its Teabilly infusion of white supremacists, Christian Taliban, conspiracy theorists and certified kooks.

A weak, fraidy cat administration.

Obama failed to exert his power and authority in many ways, often appearing weak and equivocating. His heart just wasn't in it. The stimulus was a half measure that was not bold enough, and contained tax cuts designed to attract Republican support that never came. The plan failed to restore the 11.5 million jobs needed to get America back to pre-recession levels. And Obama continued Bush's trillion dollar folly in Iraq and Afghanistan. Bigger than the rest of the world's armies combined, the U.S. war machine sucks up nearly half of the discretionary dollars in the federal budget, crippling our ability to compete with China.

Obama did not take the jobs problem seriously enough soon enough, and the lunatic right gave him a beat down with it, dismissing his entire agenda as ineffective and creating a top-down faux populist movement to mess him up. The Citizens United decision all but guaranteed a conservative multi-billion dollar buyout of the election by the Koch brothers, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Fox and an array of sketchy, shady interests, anonymous and unaccountable.

The Economy and F.D.R.

It's the economy stupid, but it's what you do and say as a leader in tough economic times that matters. Oddly, candidate Obama's effective communication strategy has not translated into President Obama the great communicator. The use of the narrative is important, particularly in bad times, and Reagan knew it. President Obama could have traveled the F.D.R. route and crafted a message of economic populism, with Wall Street greed and predatory capitalism as the clear enemy, and himself as the national hero who has come to make things right. If the narrative resonates with an approving public, who cares which party controls Congress?

President Roosevelt betrayed his class, saying "I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made." In his inauguration speech, he said the "Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men.... The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit." Not having sought enemies--though the enemies found him-- Obama chose not to follow F.D.R., and is paying a price. Yet he must do this very thing if he wants a second term.

A New Movement.

A sustainable movement for social and economic justice must help this president to place him on the path of greatness that these crisis times demand, that his campaign promised. Nothing less than America's future is at stake. Whether it is an internal effort to wrest control from the corporatist neoliberals smothering the Democratic Party, or an independent movement, or both, it must be done. I refer to this genuinely organic, bottom-up antithesis of the Tea Party as the "Hot Chocolate" Party, to coin a term from my father-in-law. Hot chocolate is a sweet mix of diverse ingredients that brings comfort on cold days. Minimally caffeinated compared to tea, it can ease fatigue and positively affect health.

Despite their immediate victory, it is almost certain that the GOP Hate Caucus is running on borrowed time. It is expected they will disappoint immensely. Devoid of ideas, they will die from a combination of infighting, overreaching, and insurmountable demographic shifts in the nation. But in the meantime, progressives must sustain a movement to provide cover and apply pressure to Obama and any subsequent presidents.

Roosevelt asked civil rights leader A. Phillip Randolph to "go out and make me do it," that is, make him use his power and the bully pulpit to right the wrongs and do the things they both agreed should be addressed. We, too, must make Obama do it, for him and for ourselves.