One Stop Thought Shop

Three million protesters marched in France yesterday. [woot]

What a phenomena.

Timothy Noah writes at Slate. This 30-year trend “may represent the most significant change in American society in your lifetime,”  “and it’s not a change for the better.”

Part 1
Introducing the Great Divergence:
Trying to understand income inequality, the most profound change in American society in your lifetime.

Part 2
The Usual Suspects Are Innocent:
Neither race nor gender nor the breakdown of the American family created the Great Divergence.

Part 3
Did Immigration Create the Great Divergence?
Why we can’t blame income inequality on the post-1965 immigration surge.

Part 4
Did Computers Create Inequality?
No. The tech boom’s impact was no greater than that of previous technological upheavals during the 20^th century.

Part 5
Can We Blame Income Inequality on Republicans?
Yes, but for the very richest beneficiaries the trend has been bipartisan.

Part 6
The Great Divergence and the Death of Organized Labor:
How has the decline of the union contributed to income inequality?

Part 7
The Great Divergence and International Trade:
Trade didn’t create inequality, and then it did.

Part 8
The Stinking Rich and the Great Divergence:
Executive compensation took off in the 1980s and 1990s. Is it to blame?

Part 9
How the Decline in K-12 Education Enriches College Graduates:
When the workforce needed to be smarter, Americans got dumber.

Another type of regulatory capture? Being outright dumb.

Reporting from Sacramento — Scores of people convicted of crimes such as rape, elder abuse and assault with a deadly weapon are permitted to care for some of California’s most vulnerable residents as part of the government’s home health aide program.

It’s a gray area they say. No it’s not. It’s just sloppy and lazy. And dumb.

The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

Rally to Restore Sanity

It’s set up as a joke, but there’s a serious point at the heart of it.

Dana Blankenhorn asserts, “It may be the most important political event of the year, putting the politics of our time on trial and calling for its rejection.

“He’s calling a new generation to renew the work before us, reasonably, honorably, purposefully, sanely, quietly, which is all the President is asking of us as well, and what our history demands of us.”

Ezra Klein reacts to the GOP’s Pledge to America:

Their policy agenda is detailed and specific — a decision they will almost certainly come to regret.

Because when you get past the adjectives and soaring language, the talk of inalienable rights and constitutional guarantees, you’re left with a set of hard promises that will increase the deficit by trillions of dollars, take health-care insurance away from tens of millions of people, create a level of policy uncertainty businesses have never previously known, and suck demand out of an economy that’s already got too little of it.

Economist Mark Thoma sums it up:

There don’t seem to be any new ideas here, just a promise to undo what’s been done since the Republicans lost power.

Why would we want to return to the policies that brought us
→ a stagnant middle class even in the best of times,
→ widening inequality,
→ out of control financial markets,
→ the biggest recession in recent memory,
→ declining rates of health care coverage,
→ threats to Social Security and to social insurance,
→ tax policies that reinforce inequality
→ big holes in the budget,
→ false claims that tax cuts more than pay for themselves, and
→ two wars that have brought Social Security and Medicare — programs vital to middle and low income households under increasing financial pressure?

Comment snippets:

• Didnt they have a ten point Contract With America when Gingrich took over? Let’s see… one was to run a balanced budget.

• The plan is to cut transfer payments that provide food and health care to children while cutting taxes, increasing defense spending, the deficit and expanding the size of government under the guise of protecting morals.

• Hey. Some of us get off on that kind of thing. Kall it Kinky Economics. Trickle down was just foreplay.

Republicans are now pledging to stop their spending spree? These Republicans that took a record $236 billion surplus into a record $1.3 trillion deficit? Sick.

The ship of State has a large hole in the bottom where the fuel tank used to be. The Reagan Solution is to chop more holes while invoking Reagan’s name.

“I’ve made clear over the last 20 months, when Republicans were in control of Congress we made our share of mistakes,” Boehner said.  Banana republic, here we come.

“When I hear Democrats griping and groaning and saying …

‘the health care plan didn’t have a public option’, and … ‘the financial reform — there was a provision here that I think we should have gotten better’, or, ‘you know what, yes, you ended the war in Iraq, the combat mission there, but you haven’t completely finished the Afghan war yet’, this or that or the other, I say ‘folks, wake up’.

“This is not some academic exercise, as Joe Biden put it, don’t compare us to the Almighty; compare us to the alternative.”

---

Have Americans gone mad?

Republicans need to make a net gain of 39 seats to retake the House of Representatives. The consensus is they will, and probably with something to spare; some analysts are even predicting a repeat of the 52-seat swing in 1994, when a pugnacious minority leader named Newt Gingrich led Republicans back to command of the House for the first time in 40 years.

You sense a flailing around for the vanished certainties once encapsulated in the notion of ‘the American Dream’, and a venomous search for scapegoats in the establishment that has failed them.

emphasis: venomous

Big stink in California about jobs. Right wing says taxes and regulations push out businesses such as military contractors in southern California. But this isn’t true.

Northrop Grumman moved 300 white-collar jobs to be closer to its key customers, federal agencies in Washington, not because of high taxes or cumbersome regulations. About 30,000 employees remain, the bulk of its California workforce.

Jobs lost as a result of business leaving the state total about 11,000 a year — less than one-tenth of 1% of California’s 18 million jobs.

To restore 2 million jobs lost under G. W. Bush, she says a governor just needs to be a ‘marketer-in-chief’. Yup. That’s it.

With a national record for campaign spending, Meg Whitman stumps to ‘turn California’s economy around’. She’ll use the tired tricks of the RNC: A bully appointing political friends. Eliminate 40,000 state jobs. Emaciate agencies. Strip green tech incentives. Bust education and the safety net. Inflame hot-button issues. Chase farm workers.

Typical plutocratic junk.

LA Times finally lifts a thin cover to dig up the shallow advertising muscle behind the tea party insurgency. You can bet this paper is much polite. And this investigation much too light:

√ Sal Russo began in 1969 with Ronald Reagan.
√ Key promoter in conservative political circles.
√ Pivotal player in wingnut rising.
√ Started the Tea Party Express.
√ Large database mining.
√ Millions of dollars crafting caustic ads.
√ “He’s a talented political operative who has been doing this a long time.”
√ Cheap commercials at about $3,000 not $30,000.
√ The Alaska boost of Joe Miller. The Nevada boost of Sharon Angle.
√ Delaware backer. Long list of wacky candidate clients.
√ A bus with six or eight people and Sarah Palin, a fundraising machine.
√ Always raising money to run more ads.

Here’s another look at self enrichment to snooker honest, unsuspecting, passionate Americans.

Just swing your head in a complete circle and stick out your tongue ?

“The exact phrase ’separation of Church and State’ came out of Adolph Hitler’s mouth, that’s where it comes from.

“So the next time your liberal friends talk about the separation of Church and State ask them why they’re Nazis.” —Delaware Republican Glen Urquhart

Jefferson’s text: [link]

“Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.”

Want to start your own hate group? [link]

• Find people who believe that they are owed something
• Give them a back-story like: “we were great once, but…”
• Tell them what they know is lies
• Offer them praise and acceptance
• Scare them with (insert catastrophe)

And so he is sad.

His income is $455,000 per year. He’s complaining about taxes.

He’s like most working Americans, he says. Once his bills are paid each month, there’s hardly anything left over. How can he be considered rich?

The median household income in the United States today is $50,000. Half of all households make more than this. Half of all households make less. 90% of households make less than $100,000 a year. Less than 1% captures more than $455,000 a year. By any standard, he’s really rich.

He thinks that he ought to be able to pay off student loans, contribute to retirement savings vehicles, build equity, drive new cars, live in a big expensive house, send his children to private school, and still have plenty of cash at the end of the month for the $200 restaurant meals, the $1000 a night resort hotel rooms, and the $75,000 automobiles.

But why does he think that’s the way things should be?

Nicholas Kristoff:

In America, bigoted comments about Islam often seem to come from people who have never visited a mosque and know few if any Muslims. In their ignorance, they mirror the anti-Semitism that I hear in Muslim countries from people who have never met a Jew.