ANS -- Stop Coddling the Super-Rich

Here is an op-ed piece by Warren Buffet about taxing the rich.  He's for it.  Seems logical.  Sounds like he actually cares about this country, which many apparently don't.  Note that he sees $7M as a relatively small amount of money.  If you can't see it as small change, you aren't one of the rich.
Find it here:  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/opinion/stop-coddling-the-super-rich.html?_r=2&hp   
--Kim

Op-Ed Contributor

Stop Coddling the Super-Rich

By WARREN E. BUFFETT


Published: August 14, 2011

 

Kelly Blair

OUR leaders have asked for "shared sacrifice." But when they did the asking, they spared me. I checked with my mega-rich friends to learn what pain they were expecting. They, too, were left untouched.

While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks. Some of us are investment managers who earn billions from our daily labors but are allowed to classify our income as "carried interest," thereby getting a bargain 15 percent tax rate. Others own stock index futures for 10 minutes and have 60 percent of their gain taxed at 15 percent, as if they'd been long-term investors.

These and other blessings are showered upon us by legislators in Washington who feel compelled to protect us, much as if we were spotted owls or some other endangered species. It's nice to have friends in high places.

Last year my federal tax bill ­ the income tax I paid, as well as payroll taxes paid by me and on my behalf ­ was $6,938,744. That sounds like a lot of money. But what I paid was only 17.4 percent of my taxable income ­ and that's actually a lower percentage than was paid by any of the other 20 people in our office. Their tax burdens ranged from 33 percent to 41 percent and averaged 36 percent.

If you make money with money, as some of my super-rich friends do, your percentage may be a bit lower than mine. But if you earn money from a job, your percentage will surely exceed mine ­ most likely by a lot.

To understand why, you need to examine the sources of government revenue. Last year about 80 percent of these revenues came from personal income taxes and payroll taxes. The mega-rich pay income taxes at a rate of 15 percent on most of their earnings but pay practically nothing in payroll taxes. It's a different story for the middle class: typically, they fall into the 15 percent and 25 percent income tax brackets, and then are hit with heavy payroll taxes to boot.

Back in the 1980s and 1990s, tax rates for the rich were far higher, and my percentage rate was in the middle of the pack. According to a theory I sometimes hear, I should have thrown a fit and refused to invest because of the elevated tax rates on capital gains and dividends.

I didn't refuse, nor did others. I have worked with investors for 60 years and I have yet to see anyone ­ not even when capital gains rates were 39.9 percent in 1976-77 ­ shy away from a sensible investment because of the tax rate on the potential gain. People invest to make money, and potential taxes have never scared them off. And to those who argue that higher rates hurt job creation, I would note that a net of nearly 40 million jobs were added between 1980 and 2000. You know what's happened since then: lower tax rates and far lower job creation.

Since 1992, the I.R.S. has compiled data from the returns of the 400 Americans reporting the largest income. In 1992, the top 400 had aggregate taxable income of $16.9 billion and paid federal taxes of 29.2 percent on that sum. In 2008, the aggregate income of the highest 400 had soared to $90.9 billion ­ a staggering $227.4 million on average ­ but the rate paid had fallen to 21.5 percent.

The taxes I refer to here include only federal income tax, but you can be sure that any payroll tax for the 400 was inconsequential compared to income. In fact, 88 of the 400 in 2008 reported no wages at all, though every one of them reported capital gains. Some of my brethren may shun work but they all like to invest. (I can relate to that.)

I know well many of the mega-rich and, by and large, they are very decent people. They love America and appreciate the opportunity this country has given them. Many have joined the Giving Pledge, promising to give most of their wealth to philanthropy. Most wouldn't mind being told to pay more in taxes as well, particularly when so many of their fellow citizens are truly suffering.

Twelve members of Congress will soon take on the crucial job of rearranging our country's finances. They've been instructed to devise a plan that reduces the 10-year deficit by at least $1.5 trillion. It's vital, however, that they achieve far more than that. Americans are rapidly losing faith in the ability of Congress to deal with our country's fiscal problems. Only action that is immediate, real and very substantial will prevent that doubt from morphing into hopelessness. That feeling can create its own reality.

Job one for the 12 is to pare down some future promises that even a rich America can't fulfill. Big money must be saved here. The 12 should then turn to the issue of revenues. I would leave rates for 99.7 percent of taxpayers unchanged and continue the current 2-percentage-point reduction in the employee contribution to the payroll tax. This cut helps the poor and the middle class, who need every break they can get.

But for those making more than $1 million ­ there were 236,883 such households in 2009 ­ I would raise rates immediately on taxable income in excess of $1 million, including, of course, dividends and capital gains. And for those who make $10 million or more ­ there were 8,274 in 2009 ­ I would suggest an additional increase in rate.

My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress. It's time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice.

Warren E. Buffett is the chairman and chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway.

A version of this op-ed appeared in print on August 15, 2011, on page A21 of the New York edition with the headline: Stop Coddling the Super-Rich.

Related

• Times Topic: Income Tax

  
  
  

Related in Opinion

• Editorial: The Truth About Taxes (August 7, 2011)

ANS -- 10 Things You Need To Know About Rick Perry

Send this list to anyone you know who might be considering voting for Rick Perry.  He's very nice looking, and some Americans are suckers for nice looking.  Picture of Dorian Gray anyone?
Find it here:   http://front.moveon.org/10-things-you-need-to-know-about-rick-perry/?rc=fb.fan  
--Kim

10 Things You Need To Know About Rick Perry

Posted on August 13, 2011 by Peter

Share this now!

This is the GOP�s great hope for 2012? Really?



To read more about Rick Perry and for background on these 10 things, check out this great list and this blog post from ThinkProgress.

Graphic created by volunteer editor Mark H.

ANS -- Stop Whining About What Obama Hasn’t Said. Look at What He’s Actually Done.

Obama has been doing more than talking.  They only let him do the stuff he doesn't talk about. 
Find it here:  http://swampland.time.com/2011/08/11/stop-whining-about-what-obama-hasnt-said-look-at-what-hes-actually-done/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+timeblogs%2Fswampland+%28TIME%3A+Swampland%29&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher  
--Kim



Viewpoint

Stop Whining About What Obama Hasn't Said. Look at What He's Actually Done.

By Michael Grunwald Thursday, August 11, 2011 | 240 Comments

I know President Obama is supposed to be an awful disappointment to environmentalists because he doesn't talk enough about climate change, just like he's an awful disappointment to progressives because he doesn't say enough nasty things about bankers. But people who actually care about what Presidents do, as opposed to how they talk, might be interested in Obama's trip to Michigan on Thursday. He's visiting a factory that builds batteries for electric vehicles, a factory that exists for three reasons: 1. Because Obama saved the U.S. auto industry. 2. Because Obama has ratcheted up fuel-efficiency standards, boosting demand for green vehicles. 3. Because Obama created a U.S. advanced battery industry from scratch.

I'm going to have more to say about the battery industry in particular and Obama's clean-energy industrial policy in general in the magazine. But as close readers of my oeuvre have probably already guessed­hi, Mom!­the Johnson Controls lithium-ion battery factory that Obama is visiting in Holland, Mich., was financed by his 2009 stimulus bill. Yes, that's the pathetically tiny stimulus bill that any good liberal can tell you pumped a mere $800 billion into the free-falling economy­more than the entire New Deal in inflation-adjusted terms, and enough to prevent a depression, but still, a pittance compared to what it undoubtedly would have done if only Obama had properly and vigorously explained Keynesian economics.

Anyway, the pathetically tiny stimulus included an unprecedented $90 billion for clean-energy investments, including unprecedented investments in wind, solar and geothermal energy, biorefineries, the smart grid, electric vehicles, and factories to manufacture all that green stuff in the U.S. The most radical investment was probably a $2.4 billion grant program that helped finance 30 factories building advanced batteries and components, including $300 million for Johnson Controls, which had to match the government dollars with private dollars.

Before 2009, the U.S. was supplying less than 2% of a tiny global market in advanced batteries. When the stimulus-funded factories are all complete, they'll have the capacity to supply 40% of a rapidly growing global market, about 500,000 batteries a year. The stimulus will also boost our supply of electric-vehicle charging stations by more than 3,000%. And the Obama administration has provided loans to help Tesla, Fisker and Nissan build electric-car factories in the U.S., all part of Obama's pledge to put 1 million plug-ins on the road by 2015. That is what change looks like, even if the President doesn't beat his chest and call for mass beheadings on Wall Street while it happens.

Again, I'll have more to say about the battery factories; there are legitimate questions about how sustainable the battery industry will be in the U.S., how fast electric vehicles will spread in the U.S., and whether the government should interfere with the private sector at all.  (Although as Jared Bernstein, Vice President Biden's former chief economist, likes to say, we're way more than a little bit pregnant on that last one.) It's also fair to point out that these state-of-the-art factories are marvels of automation, a nice way of saying they don't create all that many jobs; Johnson Controls will apparently employ about 150 workers in Holland. On the other hand, as electrification grows, we're going to want to have a supply chain here if we want to have an auto industry here. And did I mention that Obama saved the U.S. auto industry in 2009?

My point, which I guess I've made before,  is simply that the liberals who keep whining that Obama isn't telling them what they want to hear ought to open their eyes and look at what he's trying to do. Whining enviros should be especially grateful to Obama, which I guess I've also said before–and that was before his latest round of fuel-efficiency standards for cars and light trucks, as well as the first-ever standards for buses and heavy trucks. As White House environmental aide Heather Zichal pointed out in a Wednesday briefing, those standards represent the biggest step the country has ever taken to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.  She didn't point out that they're also the biggest step the country has ever taken to reduce our carbon emissions.

I can see why the White House's failure to mention the climate crisis would be annoying to people who spend their days trying to raise awareness about it. But would you rather have a President who talks about climate change, or a President who does something about it?

Read more: http://swampland.time.com/2011/08/11/stop-whining-about-what-obama-hasnt-said-look-at-what-hes-actually-done/#ixzz1Uz9jGiSo

ANS -- Staffing agencies defend job ads discriminating against the unemployed

This is sad and silly.  Employers don't want to hire unemployed people because wanting a job is not the right reason for looking for a job. 
Find it here:  http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/08/11/1005874/-Staffing-agencies-defend-job-ads-discriminating-against-the-unemployed?via=blog_1   
--Kim




Thu Aug 11, 2011 at 11:30 AM PDT

Staffing agencies defend job ads discriminating against the unemployed + *

by Laura Clawson Follow for Daily Kos Labor
Share3882  23
permalink 73 Comments  /  73 New

A recent report by the National Employment Law Project found a broad swath of job ads discriminating against unemployed people through language like "must be currently employed." Now, a team of Huffington Post reporters has followed up, calling companies to ask about their discriminatory ads. The result? A whole lot of excuses. For the most part, employers blamed the ads on staffing firms. Meanwhile, some staffing firms stood by their ads:

"When my clients hire me, they want people who are motivated to go to work for the right reasons," Seed said. "And if someone is currently employed in a good position, then their motivation to move to a different company would be that the company offers better benefits or offers more growth for advancement, or whatever. They're not people who have to have a job, they're people who want to move for the right reasons."

That's right, folks: Where this staffing agency VP is concerned, wanting a job is the wrong reason to apply for a job. This one may be the best, though:

Cypress Hospitality Group, a Florida-based staffing agency listed in the report, defended the ads it posted. "I don't see how 'current or very recent tenure' is discriminatory," a spokesperson said.

Nope, no way specifying that current or very recent employment is a requirement of a job discriminates against people who aren't currently or very recently employed.

A bill making it illegal to refuse to consider job applicants because they are unemployed has been introduced in the House and Senate. Perhaps its passage would clarify things for that staffing agency spokesperson.

ANS -- Inventor working on thorium-powered car that could use steam turbine and electrical generator to replace gasoline engine

This is a really different car: no refueling at all.  they just have to figure out how to miniaturize it. 
Find it here:  http://techblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2011/08/inventor-working-on-thorium-po.html  
--Kim

Inventor working on thorium-powered car that could use steam turbine and electrical generator to replace gasoline engine

 

By

Victor Godinez/Reporter

vgodinez@dallasnews.com | Bio

12:58 PM on Fri., Aug. 12, 2011 | Permalink


Cadillac showed off its World Thorium Fuel concept car (yes, the WTF) back in 2009. (source: AutoBlog)

If we really want to invest in next-generation vehicles, I'd suggest a Manhattan Project for this technology highlighted Thursday in WardsAuto.com:

The key to the system developed by inventor Charles Stevens, CEO and chairman of Connecticut-based Laser Power Systems, is that when silvery metal thorium is heated by an external source, it becomes so dense its molecules give off considerable heat.

Small blocks of thorium generate heat surges that are configured as a thorium-based laser, Stevens tells Ward's. These create steam from water within mini-turbines, generating electricity to drive a car.

A 250 MW unit weighing about 500 lbs. (227 kg) would be small and light enough to drop under the hood of a car, he says.

Jim Hedrick, a specialist on industrial minerals - and until last year the U.S. Geological Survey's senior advisor on rare earths - tells Ward's the idea is "both plausible and sensible."

Thorium is slightly radioactive, but Stevens says aluminum foil is enough to block the effects, so the stainless steel container that would go around the power unit should be plenty.

And thorium cars would essentially run forever:

Because thorium is so dense, similar to uranium, it stores considerable potential energy: 1 gm of thorium equals the energy of 7,500 gallons (28,391 L) of gasoline Stevens says. So, using just 8 gm of thorium in a car should mean it would never need refueling.

...

"How do you take the laser and put these things together efficiently?" he asks rhetorically. But once that is achieved, "This car will run for a million miles. The car will wear out before the engine. There is no oil, no emissions - nothing."

Frankly, this technology sounds so amazing that it verges on the unbelievable.

The main hurdles seem to be whether this technology can be made small enough to fit in a standard car, and the cost.

I don't know about the miniaturization problem, but I suspect these vehicles would be much more expensive than traditional internal combustion cars.

That's not necessarily a problem, though.

Given that you'll never need to buy gas for a thorium car, and you'll seemingly eliminate all the wear and tear that comes from gasoline engines, the long term savings could well eclipse a higher upfront cost of a few thousand dollars. Nor will you have to pay for electricity to charge your car battery the way you do with the current generation of electric vehicles and hybrids.

Thorium cars are not new.

Cadillac showed off the World Thorium Fuel concept car (above) a couple years ago.

It doesn't seem that prototype ever came to anything.

Hopefully the folks at Laser Power Systems are ready to move this thing along.

ANS -- Plagiarized by a Murderer: Norway’s Anders Breivik Stole My Words

Here is some unfortunate feedback.  It's an article by Sara Robinson for New York magazine.  Shocking. 
Find it here:  http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2011/08/plagiarized_by_a_murderer_when.html  
--Kim



Artist's Wife: Yeah, I Slapped My Husband's Mistress at Bar Pitti. What?

Plagiarized by a Murderer: Norway's Anders Breivik Stole My Words

• 8/10/11 at 11:44 AM
• 13 Comments

 

Anders BreivikPhoto: Splash News

One of the riskiest parts of being a writer is that once you launch your words into the memetic breeze, you have absolutely no idea where they will land, who will read them, or what good or evil purposes they might be turned toward.

This is not idle philosophizing. Late last Thursday night, I learned that 2,039 words that I wrote back in 2008 had entered history, for all time and eternity, as part of a madman's manifesto that attempted to justify the slaughter of 77 people.

I was in a hotel room in Vancouver when I got an email from a man I'd never met before: "I wonder if you are aware that long plagiarized excerpts of your essay 'What We Can Learn from Conservatives About Winning in Politics" are included in the so-called '1500 pages manifesto of Anders Breivik.'"

The news hit me right between the eyes. It was hard to even comprehend at first. I hadn't yet read Brevik's maundering diatribe in full. As a blogger and social analyst who made her bones thinking and writing about political and religious extremism, I've plowed through plenty of this kind of stuff over the years; and I'd read enough excerpts from this one to believe I had a pretty good idea of the gist. I planned to give it a thorough reading later.

Brevik's "manifesto" is an omnivorous cut-and-paste job that regurgitates links from hundreds of right-wing sources. It's carefully footnoted with links at the end of each chapter. Right-wing polemicists from all over Europe and North America figure prominently (and many of them have gone on the record denouncing Brevik's murderous assassination attack). Other passages have been plagiarized wholesale, with no attribution whatsoever. Mine was one of these. So far as anyone knows at this point, it's the only piece of the manifesto that came from a left-wing source, which is no doubt why he didn't take pains to annotate it.

A subsequent note from Christian Stoia, the man who sent the email, informed me that journalists in Quebec had been plugging passages from the manifesto into Google to see exactly where Brevik had drawn his sources. Stories about my involvement were already beginning to appear in the French Canadian press. I immediately pinged a friend who I knew had given the document a very thorough reading. By the time I checked my mail the next morning, she'd located the passage.

There I was, in Section 2.74, starting on page 652 and carrying on through page 655. Sure enough: They were my words, written in Andre Brevik's voice.

The passage was cribbed from an article I'd published on Leap Day in 2008 on the website of the Campaign for America's Future. In it, I gleaned some useful bits of organizational wisdom from conservative founding father Paul Weyrich, suggesting to progressives that the conservative ascent to cultural power offered lessons that those of us on the political left would do well to borrow.

Brevik, coming from the far right, had borrowed those insights right back ­ bringing Weyrich's wisdom full circle with a particular vengeance. He left my original language largely intact, mostly just substituting "cultural Marxist/multiculturalist" (his chosen enemies) where I had written "conservative". In some places, where I was talking about specifically liberal strengths and weaknesses, he used it without changing a thing.

I found one change particularly telling. In my piece, I warned my readers that political shifts always generate strong push-back, and the violent rhetoric that's been used on the right for the past twenty years is a warning we should take seriously. I wrote:

"But if we're in this fight to win, we need to get serious about being prepared for the worst. After all, we have far more to fear from them than they do from us."

Brevik's amendment read:

"But if we're in this fight to win, we need to get serious for to [sic] make sacrifices and attack them relentlessly where it hurts the most. After all, we have far less to fear from them than they do from us." [emphasis added]

Apparently, Brevik and I agree about at least one thing. The comfort that provides is very cold indeed.

There is nothing that can prepare you for seeing your own words being fed back to you by someone who has just committed mass murder on a historic scale. And yet I wasn't entirely caught by surprise. I've long been known to the guys (they are overwhelmingly guys) at the U.S. white nationalist site Stormfront, where I've been the target of vitriol for years. (One of them once called me "a huffed-up lefty harridan," an epithet so cherished I've asked my family to inscribe it on my tombstone.) Stormfront has also been home to a writer named Fjordman, who might rightly be credited as the major author of Brevik's "book." In that context, it's hardly surprising that my little "rules for radicals" piece attracted their attention, and eventually ended up in Brevik's overworked Word file.

I've spent a lot of my blogging career arguing that words have power. It's not that inflammatory language invariably leads to violence. But violence always starts with a mental dress rehearsal, a rhetorical "trying on" of the warpaint to see if it suits. There are specific kinds of language humans use to identify enemies, name their crimes, incite hatred against them, and create moral and emotional justifications for hurting them.

Given that strong political action is always preceded by this kind of language, we are obligated to choose our own words carefully; and also to pay very close attention to the words chosen by our enemies when they talk about us. Call it a blind spot, but the last thing I ever expected or wanted was to see my own words ­ designed to inspire and focus people on my own side to come together and organize ­ appropriated by someone to justify the annihilation of the most promising political leaders of an entire generation in a country far away.

Even creepier is the knowledge that a century or two from now, when I'm in my grave and most of what I've ever written has passed into irrelevance, these particular 2,039 words are the ones that are most likely to live on, read by curious historians of the 21st century who study Brevik to understand the tensions of our times. If I don't want my legacy as a writer to be defined by this horror, I guess I'd better get back to work.

Sara Robinson is a strategic foresight analyst, consultant, and writer in the Seattle area. Her work has appeared at ourfuture.org, Orcinus , Alternet, The New Republic, and many other publications. This is her first piece for New York magazine.

Fwd: Oh.........and there are many more then this.

These were sent by one of our readers.  They are a bit hard on Obama.  But some are funny. 
Do you think it's possible that all of the propaganda about how weak and spineless Obama is, originates with some very clever Republicans? designed to undermine the base....
--Kim

Wedgie Issues

Obama Downgrade

 

Obama the Negotiator

 

The GOP's Cuts

 

Backseat Driver

 

Obama's 50th Birthday

 

Hostages

 

GOP Bullies

 

Tea Party Madness

 

Something Is Definitely Wrong Here

 

The Ransomblican Party

 
 

ANS -- Ford Focus electric to come with home solar option

Here is the latest on electric car ideas.  We will be able to improve on this when we go into production....
Find it here:  http://content.usatoday.com/communities/driveon/post/2011/08/ford-focus-solar-panels-sunpower/1
--Kim

Ford Focus electric to come with home solar option

By Chris Woodyard, USA TODAY

Updated 9h 30m ago


CAPTION
Ford Motor via Wieck
For the environmentally conscious who think driving an electric car isn't doing enough, there'll be a chance to go solar at the same time.

Ford is announcing that it is teaming with an established solar provider, SunPower, to sell a solar energy system through Ford dealers in conjunction with the Focus electric sedan that goes on sale later this year.


CAPTION
By SunPower
Solar panels, to be mounted on the car owner's house, wouldn't necessarily directly charge the electric car's batteries.

Rather, they would provide juice from the sun to the house equal to offset about 1,000 miles of driving a month in the electric Focus, a plug-in version of the new compact sedan. Electric cars are typically recharged overnight.

"In effect, you are driving a solar-powered car," says SunPower CEO Tom Werner. He says his customers are always commenting, "Wouldn't it be cool if I could power my car?"

To generate enough solar power for an electric-car offset, the system will have about 147 square feet of roof panels ­ about 11 panels that are 4 feet by 2 feet:

The 2.5-kilowatt system will produce about 3,000 kilowatt hours of electricity a year.

The option will be offered by Ford dealers to Focus electric buyers, but will be a pricey option: about $10,000 after federal tax credits. Best Buy's Geek Squad, with which Ford already has a deal to install home chargers, can perform the solar installation.

Ford hasn't announced the price of the 2012 Focus electric yet. It goes on sale in California and New York later this year, beginning a gradual rollout nationwide into next spring.

The solar power option could get a good reception among environmentalist buyers who have figured out that even driving a plug-in EV isn't truly green because electricity is often made by burning fossil fuels at power plants.

"To have a scenario where you know you are offsetting (the electricity) used in your car, that's pretty attractive," says Ron Cogan, publisher of the Green Car Journal.

The new partnership lets Ford burnish its "green" image with the solar angle and gives SunPower, based in San Jose, Calif., a new batch of potential customers.

"It's pretty brilliant marketing," Cogan says. Not only does it help broaden electric car appeal, "it's going to introduce a whole new crowd of people to solar power who might not have gone there otherwise."

ANS -- Progressives don't see Obama clearly because of our racial blind spots.

Here is a new analysis of Obama and his presidency -- a new idea, something I haven't heard before. (though I have suspected he is trying to return Washington to cooperation by sheer persistence.  That might be a vaguely related idea....)
Find it here:  http://www.tomschade.com/2011/08/progressives-dont-see-obama-clearly.html  
--Kim

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Progressives don't see Obama clearly because of our racial blind spots.

The predominately white progressive intelligentsia don't see Obama clearly because of our racial blind spot.  We don't see the role of race in how he seems to understand himself and how other perceive him.

First of all, we think that he understands himself as one of us.  A progressive activist, heir to the radical and New Left movements most of us were raised in.  He is not; I think that he understands himself (and certainly his real base understands him) as the first African American President.  We're thinking Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.  We should be thinking about Harold Washington, the first African American mayor of Chicago.  Washington was elected and immediately faced a solid wall of opposition from most white aldermen in the city.  Washington understood his role as breaking down that wall of opposition and assembling a governing majority, which he finally did after his re-election.  Unfortunately, he died shortly thereafter.  By the way, one of Washington's political strategists was David Axelrod.

How does Obama break the iron unity of the GOP opposition to assemble a governing majority in the US Congress?

If we progressives were not blinded by our own assumption that our history is the only history, we might see how Obama may be seeing his situation.

White progressives often think that African American elected officials are politically naive.  We will far more credit to Cornel West, who has never been elected to anything, than to an elected state senator, or even the President of the United States.  We think that Obama does not understand the nature of John Boehner, Mitch McConnell or Eric Cantor, as though he has not sat across the table from them.  He doesn't understand how mean they are, we think.

Obama acts entirely within the tradition of mainstream African American political strategy and tactics.  The epitome of that tradition was the non-violence of the Civil Rights Movement, but goes back much further in time.  It recognizes the inequality of power between whites and blacks.  Number one: maintain your dignity.  Number two: call your adversaries to the highest principles they hold.  Number three: Seize the moral high ground and Number four: Win by winning over your adversaries, by revealing the contradiction between their own ideals and their actions.  It is one way that a oppressed people struggle.

Obama has taken a seat at the negotiating table and said "There is no reason why we cannot work out solutions to our problems by acting like responsible adults.  That is what people expect us to do and that is why we have entered into public service."  That is the moral high ground.

Honestly, I have been reminded more than once in the last few months of those brave college students sitting in at a Woolworth's lunch counter, back in the day.  Obama sits at that table, like they did at the counter.  Boehner and McConnell and Cantor clown around, mugging for the camera, competing to ritually humiliate Obama, to dump ketchup on his head.

I don't think those students got their sandwiches the first day, but they won in the end.

Obama is winning.  Democrats are uniting behind him, although some white progressives think that they could do the job better.  Independents are flocking to him.  Even some Republicans are getting disgusted with their Washington leaders.  Obama is not telling us about lack of seriousness of the Congressional GOP; he is showing us the vivid contrast between what we expect of our leaders and their behavior.  The last two and half years have been a revelation of the essential conflicts in our society and politics.

If white progressives understood much about the politics of the African American struggle in the United States, we would see Obama in the context of that struggle and understand him better.  And you don't have to be African American to know something about the history of the African American struggle.  The books and the testimony is there.  It's not all freedom songs.  But you have to be convinced that it is something that can teach you something you don't already know.
Posted by Tom Schade at 2:12 PM

ANS -- Fwd: WISCONSIN

Hi -- This is an excerpt from an email I got.  It's short and it describes clearly why the vote last night in Wisconsin was important.
--Kim

---

Kim,

Last night, we stood in a crowded square outside the state Capitol in Madison. Teachers, fire fighters, police officers, moms, and dads chanted, "This is what democracy looks like."

It was powerful. And as the election results came in, something else was clear: The voters are powerful.

When Republicans declared war on working families, we could have retreated. But together, we took the fight onto their home turf and put them on defense for a change. And in 2 of 6 Republican strongholds, we won.

History will deem last night a victory for progressives. Here are some key facts:

• Gov. Scott Walker no longer has a working majority in the Senate. His extreme anti-worker bill passed by only 2 votes, thanks to 1 moderate Republican. Our 2 wins are game changing.
• If last night's election was statewide, Democrats would have won in a landslide. We forced neck-and-neck races in Republican areas. 
• In 2012, if Democrats achieve last night's rate of success in Republican House districts, Speaker Nancy Pelosi will have a 274-seat majority.  
• We sent a national message that when Republican politicians hurt working families, voters will punish them -- even in Republican areas.
• We also proved that when Democrats stand strong for progressive principles -- as Wisconsin Democrats did -- they will be rewarded by voters and volunteers.

Thanks for all you did to achieve last night's historic success.
 
PCCC members made 382,623 calls to voters, gave over 120,000 grassroots donations, and helped air 5 powerful TV ads. Yesterday, one "Call Out The Vote" volunteer even called Jennifer Schilling, who defeated Dan Kapanke last night -- she said to tell everyone thank you!
 
This morning, the Wisconsin Democratic Party chair sounded a forward-looking note, "We went on their turf and we won. We will not stop, we will not rest until we recall Gov. Scott Walker."
 

Thanks for being a bold progressive. Onward!

-- Stephanie Taylor, Adam Green, Amanda Johnson, and the PCCC team

 
 

ANS -- Education Affects Americans' Religiosity -- But Not How You Might Think

Here's a surprising article about how religious Americans are at various levels of education.  It sounds important to UUs....
The article could use some more detail...
Find it here:  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/08/110808124245.htm 
--Kim

Science News


Education Affects Americans' Religiosity -- But Not How You Might Think

ScienceDaily (Aug. 8, 2011) ­ It's pretty much a given that the more educated someone becomes, the more likely they are to question their religious beliefs, stop going to church and even abandon their faith entirely. Or is it?


A new University of Nebraska-Lincoln study challenges that age-old notion with findings that show education actually has a positive effect on Americans' churchgoing habits, their devotional practices, their emphasis on religion in daily life and their support for religious leaders to weigh in on the issues of the day.

The work, to be published in a forthcoming edition of the journal Review of Religious Research, analyzed a nationwide sample of thousands of respondents to the General Social Survey. The analysis determined that education does, in fact, influence Americans' religious beliefs and activities -- but the effects are more complicated than conventional wisdom suggests.

"Education influences strategies of action, and these strategies of action are relevant to some religious beliefs and activities, but not others," said Philip Schwadel, associate professor of sociology at UNL and author of the study. "The effects of education on religion are not simple increases or decreases. In many ways, effects will vary, based on how you define religion."

For example, the study found higher levels of education eroded Americans' viewpoints that their specific religion is the "one true faith" and that the Bible is the literal word of God. At the same time, education was positively associated with belief in the afterlife. And while more highly educated Americans were somewhat less likely to definitely believe in God, it's because some of them believed in a higher power, not because they were particularly likely to not believe at all.

The research also found that disaffiliating, or dropping religion altogether, was not a popular option for highly educated Americans -- in fact, having a greater level of education was associated most often with converting to mainline, non-evangelical Protestant denominations.

The study is unique, Schwadel said, because it examines education's effects on religion in the various ways that Americans are religious -- from their different beliefs, their varied ways of participating and the nature of their affiliations with specific denominations.

Also among the study's findings:

• Education had a strong and positive effect on religious participation. With each additional year of education, the odds of attending religious services increased 15 percent.
• Increases in education were associated with reading the Bible. With each additional year of education, the odds of reading the Bible at least occasionally increased by 9 percent.
• Education was related to respondents' switching of religious affiliations. The odds of switching to a mainline Protestant denomination increased by 13 percent for each year of education.
• The more educated respondents were, the more likely they were to question the role of religion in secular society. Yet, they were against curbing the voices of religious leaders on societal issues and supported those leaders' rights to influence people's votes.

"The results suggest that highly educated Americans are not opposed to religion -- even religious leaders stating political opinions," Schwadel said. "But they are opposed to what may be perceived as religion being forced on secular society."

The research illustrates the unique, voluntary American brand of religiosity, he said, and should open up a discussion about the interactions between education and religion in modern American life.

"It's clear that though the religious worldviews of the highly educated differ from the religious worldviews of those with little education, religion plays an important role in the lives of highly educated Americans," Schwadel said. "And religion remains relevant to Americans of all education levels."
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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by University of Nebraska-Lincoln. The original article was written by Steve Smith, University Communications.

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Journal Reference:

1. Philip Schwadel. The Effects of Education on Americans' Religious Practices, Beliefs, and Affiliations. Review of Religious Research, 2011; DOI: 10.1007/s13644-011-0007-4

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
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ANS -- Five Scriptures You Won’t Hear at Rick Perry’s Prayer Event

Here is an answer to right wing Christianity by a Christian minister.  In case you ever wanted help with which scriptures to use (though these aren't the ones I think of necessarily....)  I do cite the one about not praying in public, though.
Find it here:  http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/08/03-7
--Kim






Published on Wednesday, August 3, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

Five Scriptures You Won't Hear at Rick Perry's Prayer Event

by Jim Rigby

As a native Texan, I'm used to crazy religion and crazy politics. So, the announcement of Gov. Rick Perry's plans for "The Response," a prayer event scheduled for Aug. 6 at Houston's Reliant Stadium, was not a surprise.

But as a Presbyterian minister and community organizer, it's part of my job to stand up for my neighbors. The use of the governor's office to promote one religion in a country with such rich religious diversity is obviously unhealthy politics, but -- if one takes the Christian and Jewish scriptures seriously -- it is also unhealthy religion. Here are five rather important verses of scripture you aren't likely to hear at "The Response":

Don't make a show of prayer

"And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray in public places to be seen by others… But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your heavenly parent, who is unseen." (Matt. 6:5-6)

While Jesus never addressed the issues most important to some of this event's co-sponsors, such as homosexuality and abortion, he did speak out against public displays of religion. Whatever Jesus meant by the word "prayer," it seems to have been about the quiet and personal. The disciples had to ask Jesus how to pray, which is a pretty good indication that he wasn't praying a lot publicly.  What he did say about prayer carried a warning label: "Don't rub it in other people's faces."

God doesn't withhold rain because we've done something wrong

"God causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous." (Matt. 5:45)

Perry recently called Texans to pray for rain, which implies that God steers clouds toward the worthy. According to Right Wing Watch, one of the events co-sponsors has said the earthquake in Japan happened because the emperor had sex with the Sun Goddess. It may be a part of our lower nature to blame disasters on people we don't like or understand, but Jesus taught that God sends rain on the just and unjust.  Furthermore, he said our love should be equally nonselective.

I have chosen Christianity as my life's religion, but when nonjudgmental love is taken out of its center, it becomes poisonous and predatory. The word "God" can be a helpful symbol for all the transcendentals of life, but the symbol becomes instantly pathological when used as a scientific explanation or political justification.

God doesn't have favorites

Then Peter began to speak: "I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism." (Acts 10:34)

When the Bible says that God is not a "respecter of persons" it means that God doesn't have a favorite country or religion. The idea that God wants Christians to be in charge of other people violates Jesus' teaching that we are to take the lowest place. We are to change the world by humble persuasion and good example, not by messianic coercion. The assumption that Christianity and America are God's two favorite things will be particularly ironic, as the prayer event falls on the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima.

Worship by those who neglect the poor is offensive to God

"I hate, I despise your religious festivals; your assemblies are a stench to me… Away with the noise of your songs!  I will not listen to the music of your harps. But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!" (Amos 5:21-24)

The prophet Amos chastised the religion of his day for praying to God while mistreating people.  Texas leads the nation in citizens who are uninsured, who work for minimum wage, and who die from unsafe working conditions on construction sites. Our state has the widest gap between rich and poor of any in the union.  If the governor wants to call us to repentance it should begin with our real sins against the poor not the imaginary sins dreamed up by his friends.

The heart of Christian ethics is being a good neighbor

When Jesus told the story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30-37) it was to teach humility to a rich young zealot who thought he was approaching moral perfection.  The Samaritans were the scapegoats of the day. The rich young ruler would consider Samarians heretics and immoral people. Jesus used a merciful Samaritan as the example of ethical perfection.  It is a lesson many Christians have yet to learn.

One sponsor of the event, the American Family Association, is listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group.  The group's director of analysis for government and policy is quoted by the SPLC as saying that Hitler was "an active homosexual" who sought out gays "because he could not get straight soldiers to be savage and brutal and vicious enough." He also said Muslims should not be allowed in the military or be allowed to build mosques in the United States.

None of this analysis springs from malice. In fact, I must confess that I have a soft spot for Rick Perry. When the James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act in Texas was passed, I had the honor of pushing the wheelchair of Byrd's mother into the governor's office for the signing.  I privately thanked Perry for his courage in standing up to all the groups who had fought against the bill; I knew he might pay a political price for signing the bill.  Tears came to his eyes, and he said, "It's the right thing to do."

I can't know what is in Perry's heart, of course, but I do know the problem isn't one politician but rather a nation that has embraced an unhealthy political arrogance undergirded by even unhealthier religious hubris.  The "prayer" that is most needed at this time is for each of us, believer or not, to go into our own heart and find the humility and empathy that is at the core of righteousness, political and spiritual.


Jim Rigby is pastor of St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church in Austin, TX. He can be reached at jrigby0000@aol.com, and videos of his sermons are available online at http://www.staopen.com/sermons/.

Fwd: How Many Friends Do You Have?

I usually don't send canned emails to you all, but it really is important that the government hear from us over and over again that the People  don't want Medicare, Social Security, or Medicaid cut.   At all. 
--Kim

What You Can Do To Avoid This:



Ask five friends to sign our No Cuts petition RIGHT NOW!

Dear Kim,

According to this Gallup poll, the average American has nine close friends, not including relatives. And more not-so-close friends, of course.

I mention this because I want you to contact five friends – not nine, just five – and ask them to sign this petition:

"We Are Against Any and Every Cut to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits. Not today, not tomorrow, and not ever. No way, no how. Not on your life, and certainly not on mine.

N-E-V-E-R.

Sincerely,

The American People"

That's our petition, at www.no-cuts.com.

Now, I know what you're thinking. Maybe your friends don't want you to ask them to sign this petition.

I think they probably do. Let me tell you why.

There is now an organized effort in America to gut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. That's what the Simpson-Bowles Commission tried to do. That's what the Ryan Budget says; the Republicans in the House already passed the Ryan Budget. And now the Congressional "Super-Committee" is going to go after them.

It's safe to say that every one of your friends either: (a) gets Social Security and Medicare benefits right now, or (b) hopes to, one day. And every one of your friends might need Medicaid one day, unless you're friends only with the Forbes 400.

Click here for a quick and easy way to ask five friends to sign our petititon at www.no-cuts.com.

We may save Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, or we may lose it. You care about that. So do all your friends.

As we watch our so-called "representatives" debate this issue in Washington, DC, many of us have felt helpless. But you're not. You, and your friends, can sign this petition.

And if enough people sign it, I will take it to the White House. Personally.

You know that you want to save Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. You know your friends do, too. So what are you going to do about it?

Click here to ask five friends to sign our No Cuts petition.

Politics is all about finding kindred spirits. Get in touch with yours. Because it's time for all of us to get organized.

Courage,

Alan Grayson

Paid for and Authorized by the Committee to Elect Alan Grayson

8419 Oak Road, Orlando, FL 32819

If you do not wish to receive further email from Congressman Grayson, please elick here to unsubscribe.

ANS -- How to Think About Standard and Poor's Downgrade

Lots of stuff has been and is being written about the credit downgrade of the US by Standard and Poor's (S&P).  This one seems to have a good take on it.  Essentially, S&P graded some junk paper as investment grade because some politicians and banksters asked them to (we don't know for sure if they were paid to do so; at least I don't....).  If they did that, how can we trust them downgrading the US when the same politicians wanted them to?  If they weren't honest or trustworthy in the one case, why would we assume they are in the other case?
Find it here:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dean-baker/how-to-think-about-standa_b_920148.html?ref=fb&src=sp  
--Kim

How to Think About Standard and Poor's Downgrade

Posted: 8/6/11 12:27 PM ET


Standard and Poor's downgrade of U.S. government debt captured headlines across the country and around the world. It is a newsworthy event, but primarily as another colossal failure by a major credit rating agency.

First, it is worth mentioning the important background here. S&P, along with the other credit rating agencies, rated hundreds of billions of dollars of subprime mortgage backed securities as investment grade. They were paid tens of millions of dollar by the investment banks for these ratings. We know that concerns were raised by their own people about the quality of many of these issues. This was at the least astoundingly incompetent. It was quite possibly criminal.

This raises the question of whether S&P fears an investigation and possible prosecution. In such circumstances the desire to curry favor with powerful politicians could certainly influence their credit rating decisions. There are also rules affecting the credit rating agencies in the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill. The desire to have these rules written in a favorable way could affect the credit rating agencies' decisions. It would be nice if we could just assume that the credit rating agencies make their rulings on an objective assessment of the evidence, but we can't.

Let's look at the evidence. S&P made a big point of citing the fact that the debt deal did almost nothing to slow the growth of Medicare and other entitlements, obviously alluding to Social Security. S&P surely knows that Medicare's cost growth is driven by projections of explosive growth in private sector health care costs. The projections it relies upon from the Congressional Budget Office show that the cost of providing health care to an average 65 year-old in the private sector will be almost $20,000 (in 2011 dollars) a year by 2030. Of course, this will make Medicare unaffordable if it proves true, but this projected explosion in health care costs will be devastating for the U.S. economy even if we eliminated Medicare and other public sector health care programs altogether.

If S&P were being honest, it would have written about the need to fix the U.S. health care system. Instead it talked about the need to cut Medicare. Of course, if U.S. health care costs were comparable to those in any other country in the world, then we would be looking at massive surpluses in the long-term, not deficits.

The reference to Social Security also cannot be supported. The program is financed by its own designated tax. Under the law, if benefits exceed the money raised by the tax, then they are not paid. If S&P assumes that Social Security will add to the deficit in future years, then they are assuming that Congress will change the law in a way that no one is now proposing.

It is also worth noting that the projected increase in Social Security as a share of GDP over the next 30 years is 1.6 percent. This is roughly the same as the increase in the annual military budget since the days before September 11th. An unbiased credit rating agency would not be highlighting one increase while ignoring the other.

There are other problems with the S&P downgrade. U.S. government debt and its derivatives (e.g. the $5 trillion of mortgage backed securities issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) are the backbone of the U.S. financial system and indeed the world financial system. If U.S. debt is in fact less creditworthy, then all the banks and financial companies that rely on its value should also be less creditworthy. Yet, we didn't hear of J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs and the rest being put on the watch list for a downgrade. Why not? Perhaps this is because S&P doesn't take its own rating seriously.

Finally, what does the risk of default on U.S. government debt mean? The debt is issued in dollars. That means it is payable in dollars. The U.S. government prints dollars. This means that if for some reason the government was unable to tax or borrow to raise the money to pay its debt then it could always print it. This may carry a risk of inflation, but S&P is not in the business of making inflation predictions, they are in the business of assessing the likelihood that debt will be repaid. (Of course if they are worried that inflation will erode the value of U.S. debt, S&P would also have to downgrade all debt denominated in dollars everywhere in the world.)

In short, there is no coherent explanation that can be given for S&P's downgrade. This downgrade was not made based on the economics. We can only speculate about the true motive.
 

ANS -- The Tea Party, Take Two

Here is a story by a "pragmatist" who, as he learned more and more about what has been going on with our economy, made the obvious logical conclusion that the deregulation of the financial industries is what has caused our financial problems. 
Find it here:   http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/06/opinion/the-tea-party-take-two.html?_r=1  
--Kim

Op-Ed Columnist

The Tea Party, Take Two

By JOE NOCERA


Published: August 5, 2011

 

In the four months since I began writing an Op-Ed column, the thing that has most surprised me is how darned liberal I sound sometimes. I know that seems like a strange thing to say, so let me explain.
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Earl Wilson/The New York Times

Joe Nocera

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Growing up in heavily Democratic Providence, R.I., in the 1950s, it was hard not to absorb the values of the Democratic Party ­ the party of Roosevelt, as my parents often reminded me, who had gotten the country through the Great Depression. My parents and their friends believed in a progressive income tax, in the importance of unions (my parents were public schoolteachers), and in a government that helped those who couldn't help themselves. It wasn't until I moved to Washington after college that I got to know any Republicans. Not until I was nearing 30, and living in Texas, did I see how conservative most of the country truly is.

Early in my career as a journalist, I had a mentor, Charlie Peters, who believed strongly that it was important for liberals to criticize various wrongheaded tenets of liberalism. He used his magazine, The Washington Monthly ­ and his young editors, of which I was one ­ to do so regularly. I remember once writing an article so critical of teachers' unions that my mother was moved to complain in a letter to the editor.

In Texas, where I started writing about business, my views evolved further. Businessmen were not the embodiment of evil, as liberals sometimes seemed to think. Some regulations made sense, but others did not. And so on. I came to see myself as a pragmatist who favored common-sense solutions over ideology.

Then came the financial crisis. I like to joke that there's nothing like a good financial crisis to turn you into a liberal. But it's not really a joke. The more I learned the back story that led to the crisis, the more horrified I became. The lack of regulation and oversight of Wall Street and the big subprime companies like Countrywide, driven by the ideology of deregulation, was thoughtless and irresponsible. The refusal of bank regulators to stop subprime abuses bordered on the criminally negligent. The unwillingness of the Obama Justice Department, even now, to hold anyone to account for their role in the crisis has been disheartening.

Once the Republicans gained control of the House of Representatives, they began to systemically undermine the Dodd-Frank reform law, pushing back against new, and mostly sensible, regulations designed to prevent another meltdown. The worst was the way Republicans took a hatchet to Elizabeth Warren as she tried to set up the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Such an agency, had it been in existence prior to 2008, might have prevented millions of Americans, many of them poor and financially unsophisticated, from being gouged by mortgage companies. Watching it all unfold made me angry.

That anger reached its apex on Tuesday, when I wrote a column comparing the Tea Party Republicans to terrorists. The words I chose were intemperate and offensive to many, and I've been roundly criticized. I was a hypocrite, the critics said, for using such language when on other occasions I've called for a more civil politics. In the cool light of day, I agree with them. I apologize.

I still think it was terribly wrong for the Republicans to use the threat of default to insist on massive spending cuts, though President Obama also deserves blame for playing his hand so poorly. Putting on my pragmatist hat again, I also think Congress could not have chosen a worse time to rein in spending. Yes, the country's enormous debt ­ and the entitlement programs that are driving the federal deficit ­ needs to be brought under control.

But look at how sick the economy is. Standard and Poor's just downgraded U.S. debt for the first time in modern history. Despite the better-than-expected job numbers on Friday, unemployment remains stubbornly, and unacceptably, high. So far this year, G.D.P. growth is under 1 percent. The stock market is skittish. Companies have cash, but they aren't hiring because there is no demand for their products.

Choking off spending can only make matters worse. Mark Zandi, the well-known economist at Moody's Analytics ­ who applauds the debt ceiling deal ­ acknowledged to me that if major spending cuts take place in 2013, as is currently envisioned, they will cost the country 1.5 percent of G.D.P. The debt ceiling deal, it seems to me, practically guarantees another recession.

Most frightening of all, the hand-to-hand combat over spending is going to resume shortly when Congress returns from the August recess, and its supercommittee will start to look for an additional $1.5 trillion in cuts. It is hard to see how the outcome of those negotiations will be any different from this last awful go-round. In all likelihood, they will inflict more damage to our battered economy.

Undoubtedly, I'll write columns about those negotiations. But I won't be calling anybody names. That I can promise.

A version of this op-ed appeared in print on August 6, 2011, on page A17 of the New York edition with the headline: The Tea Party, Take Two.

ANS -- 30 Years Ago Today: The Day the Middle Class Died

Here is an article by Michael Moore.  It's about when America's slide into third-world-ness started.  One of the comments suggests his date is wrong, that, instead, it's June 6, 1978, when California passed Prop 13 and made taxes "evil".  Remember, Brad Hicks thinks it was 1964 at the Republican Convention's anti-Communist caucus.  What do you think?
find it here:   http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/mike-friends-blog/30-years-ago-today   
--Kim


 

Michael Moore

Michael Moore is an Academy-Award winning filmmaker and best-selling author
76 Comments Print Share
August 5th, 2011 3:00 PM

30 Years Ago Today: The Day the Middle Class Died

By Michael Moore

From time to time, someone under 30 will ask me, "When did this all begin, America's downward slide?" They say they've heard of a time when working people could raise a family and send the kids to college on just one parent's income (and that college in states like California and New York was almost free). That anyone who wanted a decent paying job could get one. That people only worked five days a week, eight hours a day, got the whole weekend off and had a paid vacation every summer. That many jobs were union jobs, from baggers at the grocery store to the guy painting your house, and this meant that no matter how "lowly" your job was you had guarantees of a pension, occasional raises, health insurance and someone to stick up for you if you were unfairly treated.

Young people have heard of this mythical time -- but it was no myth, it was real. And when they ask, "When did this all end?", I say, "It ended on this day: August 5th, 1981."

Beginning on this date, 30 years ago, Big Business and the Right Wing decided to "go for it" -- to see if they could actually destroy the middle class so that they could become richer themselves.

And they've succeeded.

On August 5, 1981, President Ronald Reagan fired every member of the air traffic controllers union (PATCO) who'd defied his order to return to work and declared their union illegal. They had been on strike for just two days.

It was a bold and brash move. No one had ever tried it. What made it even bolder was that PATCO was one of only three unions that had endorsed Reagan for president! It sent a shock wave through workers across the country. If he would do this to the people who were with him, what would he do to us?

Reagan had been backed by Wall Street in his run for the White House and they, along with right-wing Christians, wanted to restructure America and turn back the tide that President Franklin D. Roosevelt started -- a tide that was intended to make life better for the average working person. The rich hated paying better wages and providing benefits. They hated paying taxes even more. And they despised unions. The right-wing Christians hated anything that sounded like socialism or holding out a helping hand to minorities or women.

Reagan promised to end all that. So when the air traffic controllers went on strike, he seized the moment. In getting rid of every single last one of them and outlawing their union, he sent a clear and strong message: The days of everyone having a comfortable middle class life were over. America, from now on, would be run this way:

* The super-rich will make more, much much more, and the rest of you will scramble for the crumbs that are left.

* Everyone must work! Mom, Dad, the teenagers in the house! Dad, you work a second job! Kids, here's your latch-key! Your parents might be home in time to put you to bed.

* 50 million of you must go without health insurance! And health insurance companies: you go ahead and decide who you want to help -- or not.

* Unions are evil! You will not belong to a union! You do not need an advocate! Shut up and get back to work! No, you can't leave now, we're not done. Your kids can make their own dinner.

* You want to go to college? No problem -- just sign here and be in hock to a bank for the next 20 years!

* What's "a raise"? Get back to work and shut up!

And so it went. But Reagan could not have pulled this off by himself in 1981. He had some big help:

The AFL-CIO.

The biggest organization of unions in America told its members to cross the picket lines of the air traffic controllers and go to work. And that's just what these union members did. Union pilots, flight attendants, delivery truck drivers, baggage handlers -- they all crossed the line and helped to break the strike. And union members of all stripes crossed the picket lines and continued to fly.

Reagan and Wall Street could not believe their eyes! Hundreds of thousands of working people and union members endorsing the firing of fellow union members. It was Christmas in August for Corporate America.

And that was the beginning of the end. Reagan and the Republicans knew they could get away with anything -- and they did. They slashed taxes on the rich. They made it harder for you to start a union at your workplace. They eliminated safety regulations on the job. They ignored the monopoly laws and allowed thousands of companies to merge or be bought out and closed down. Corporations froze wages and threatened to move overseas if the workers didn't accept lower pay and less benefits. And when the workers agreed to work for less, they moved the jobs overseas anyway.

And at every step along the way, the majority of Americans went along with this. There was little opposition or fight-back. The "masses" did not rise up and protect their jobs, their homes, their schools (which used to be the best in the world). They just accepted their fate and took the beating.

I have often wondered what would have happened had we all just stopped flying, period, back in 1981. What if all the unions had said to Reagan, "Give those controllers their jobs back or we're shutting the country down!"? You know what would have happened. The corporate elite and their boy Reagan would have buckled.

But we didn't do it. And so, bit by bit, piece by piece, in the ensuing 30 years, those in power have destroyed the middle class of our country and, in turn, have wrecked the future for our young people. Wages have remained stagnant for 30 years. Take a look at the statistics and you can see that every decline we're now suffering with had its beginning in 1981 (here's a little scene to illustrate that from my last movie).

It all began on this day, 30 years ago. One of the darkest days in American history. And we let it happen to us. Yes, they had the money, and the media and the cops. But we had 200 million of us. Ever wonder what it would look like if 200 million got truly upset and wanted their country, their life, their job, their weekend, their time with their kids back?

Have we all just given up? What are we waiting for? Forget about the 20% who support the Tea Party -- we are the other 80%! This decline will only end when we demand it. And not through an online petition or a tweet. We are going to have to turn the TV and the computer and the video games off and get out in the streets (like they've done in Wisconsin). Some of you need to run for local office next year. We need to demand that the Democrats either get a spine and stop taking corporate money -- or step aside.

When is enough, enough? The middle class dream will not just magically reappear. Wall Street's plan is clear: America is to be a nation of Haves and Have Nothings. Is that OK for you?

Why not use today to pause and think about the little steps you can take to turn this around in your neighborhood, at your workplace, in your school? Is there any better day to start than today?

P.S. Here are a few places you can connect with to get the ball rolling:

Showdown in America
Democracy Convention
Occupy Wall Street
October 2011
How to Join a Union by the AFL-CIO (they've learned their lesson and have a good president now) or UE
Change to Win
MoveOn
High School Newspaper (Just because you're under 18 doesn't mean you can't do anything!)

ANS -- The Tea Party, the debt ceiling, and white Southern extremism

This is an interesting and different take on what's going on in Congress and the United States.  Though, I'm not sure Obama has caved quite as much as the author thinks. 
Find it here:  http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/08/02/lind_tea_party  

--Kim


Tuesday, Aug 2, 2011 07:45 ET

The Tea Party, the debt ceiling, and white Southern extremism

The goal, methods and passions of the Tea Party in the House are all characteristic of the radical Southern right

By Michael Lind
 
Reuters/Jason Reed

The Tea Party movement takes its name from the Boston Tea Party of 1773, when American patriots dumped British tea into Boston Harbor to protest British imperial power. But while New England was the center of resistance to the British empire, there are few New Englanders to be found in today's Tea Party movement. It should be called the Fort Sumter movement, after the Southern attack on the federal garrison in Fort Sumter in South Carolina on April 12-13, 1861, that began the Civil War. Today's Tea Party movement is merely the latest of a series of attacks on American democracy by the white Southern minority, which for more than two centuries has not hesitated to paralyze, sabotage or, in the case of the Civil War, destroy American democracy in order to get their way.

The mainstream media have completely missed the story, by portraying the Tea Party movement in ideological rather than regional terms. Whether by accident or design, the public faces of the Tea Party in the House are Midwesterners -- Minnesota's Michele Bachmann and Joe Walsh of Illinois. But while there may be Tea Party sympathizers throughout the country, in the House of Representatives the Tea Party faction that has used the debt ceiling issue to plunge the nation into crisis is overwhelmingly Southern in its origins:

 

 

 

The four states with the most Tea Party representatives in Congress are all former members of the Confederate States of America. The states with the greatest number of members of the House Tea Party caucus are Texas (12), Florida (7), Louisiana (5) and Georgia (5). While California is in fifth place with four House Tea Party members, the sixth, seventh and eighth places on the list are taken by two former Southern slave states, South Carolina and Tennessee, and a border state, Missouri, each with three members of the congressional Tea Party caucus.

If states with significant white Southern diasporas were included, the Southern proportion of the House Tea Party caucus would be even bigger. Many of the other states with Tea Party representatives are border states with significant Southern populations and Southern ties. One is Maryland, a state with Confederate sympathies during the Civil War, which, because the Census Bureau defines it as "Northeastern," is responsible for the only Northeastern member of the Tea Party caucus, Roscoe Bartlett. The four Californian representatives come from the Orange County area or inland California, both regions whose political culture was shaped by Southern political culture, in the form of the "Okie" diaspora that settled there during the Depression.

In the entire House Tea Party Caucus, there is not a single representative from New England.

The fact that Tea Party conservatism speaks with a pronounced Southern drawl may have escaped the attention of the mainstream media, but it is obvious to members of Congress who have to try to work with these disproportionately-Southern fanatics. One is Rep. Loretta Sanchez of California. As a guest on a radio show, she mocked the Southern accent of the typical congressional Tea Party caucus member:

The congresswoman, who represents Anaheim and other parts of Orange County, laughed and said she knows how to get along with people. Then she used a mock Southern accent to describe how conversations with them play out.

"Hey what's your name? 'My name is M-o-e,'" Sanchez said, feigning a Southern drawl that drew howls of laughter from Miller and her co-host. "Ok Moe. Moe-ster, how you doing baby? What are we going to do today? What's your interest? What can we work on together?"

"'Well, it's unconstitutional," she said, using her faux Southern accent.

Contradicting the mainstream media narrative that the Tea Party is a new populist movement that formed spontaneously in reaction to government bailouts or the Obama administration, the facts show that the Tea Party in Congress is merely the familiar old neo-Confederate Southern right under a new label. The threat of Southern Tea Party representatives and their sidekicks from the Midwest and elsewhere to destroy America's credit rating unless the federal government agrees to enact Dixie's economic agenda of preserving defense spending while slashing entitlements is simply the latest act of aggression by the Solid South.

Here is how the League of the South, a neo-Confederate organization that favors Southern secession from what it describes alternately as "the yankee empire" and "the South-busting American regime," describes the South's pattern of voting in Congress in recent years (note the author's British spelling of "favour" -- Noah Webster, who tried to Americanize spelling, was a Yankee):

Another stark Southern – US split occurred when the Senate voted on President Clinton's impeachment verdict. The whole Senate voted to acquit Clinton on both impeachment charges while Southern Senators voted two-thirds in favour [sic] of convicting Clinton of obstruction of justice (18 to 8). If the South had been in charge, President Bill "the Lecher" Clinton would have been the first president in U.S. history to have been removed from office by impeachment.

Election

If the South had had its way, however, Clinton would not even have been elected in the first place. In both 1992 and 1996 the South voted for the Republican nominee for President, i.e., the candidate generally perceived to be more conservative (regardless of the reality).

Taxes

On tax policy, the South almost always votes for lower taxes, and is sometimes overridden by the US congress. In 1998 the thirteen State South voted by the required two-thirds margin for a constitutional amendment to require a two-thirds vote of both houses of congress to raise taxes. Southerners voted in favour [sic] of this constitutional amendment 90 to 41. In the full House the amendment failed by 238 to 186 opposed, far short of the constitutionally required two-thirds margin.

Religious Freedom

Also in 1998, Southern Representatives voted by the requisite two-thirds "super majority" to submit to the States the Religious Freedom Constitutional Amendment. It would have guaranteed an individual's right to pray and recognize his religious beliefs on public property, including schools. The house of representatives [sic] as a whole rejected this amendment by a vote of 224 in favour to 203 opposed, falling miserably short of the necessary two-thirds margin.

States' Rights

In 1997 Senator Hutchinson of Arkansas offered an amendment to abolish the National Endowment for the Arts and transfer its fiscal 1998 funding directly to the States. The South voted for this State Rights proposal by the ample margin of 17 to 9, whereas the full Senate rejected this affirmation of the rights and duties of the States by the almost equally strong margin of 63 against to only 36 for.

In light of this recent history, it is clear that the origins of the debt ceiling crisis are to be sought, not in generic American conservatism, but in idiosyncratic Southern conservatism. The goal, the methods and the passion of the Tea Party in the House are all characteristic of the radical Southern right.

From the earliest years of the American republic, white Southern conservatives when they have lost elections and found themselves in the political minority have sought to extort concession from national majorities by paralyzing or threatening to destroy the United States.

The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798 and 1799 asserted the alleged right of states to "nullify" any federal law that state lawmakers considered unconstitutional. This obstructionist mentality led to the Nullification Crisis of 1832, when South Carolina refused to enforce federal tariffs. Civil War was averted only when President Andrew Jackson, a Southerner himself, forced the nullifiers to back down.

In 1820 and 1850 the South used the threat of secession to force the rest of the United States to appease it on the slavery issue. In 1861, the South tried to destroy the United States, rather than accept a legitimately elected president, Abraham Lincoln, whom it did not control.

Following defeat in the Civil War, the former Confederate states regrouped as "the Solid South," a one-party region, first Democratic and now Republican, that has tended to vote as a bloc in national affairs. The South sought to block the federal civil rights revolution by a policy of "massive resistance" to court orders ordering racial integration. Some Southern states went so far as to try to abolish their public school systems rather than integrate them. It is hard to avoid seeing a link between this racist rationale for privatization and modern conservative plans to scale back Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, relied on disproportionately by black and brown Americans and low-income whites, while increasing taxpayer subsidies to private retirement and healthcare accounts enjoyed mostly by affluent whites.

As white Southerners, upset with the Democratic Party's racial and social liberalism, migrated into the post-Goldwater GOP, they brought their Dixiecrat attitudes into the party of Lincoln. The Kemp-Roth tax bill of 1981, which inaugurated the policy of creating permanent deficits by slashing taxes without cutting spending, had its strongest support among Southern and Western members of Congress and the least support in the fiscally conservative Northeast.

The Republican Party's attempted government shutdown of 1995 marked the new domination of the Republican Party by Southerners like Newt Gingrich, Dick Armey and Tom DeLay. The impeachment of their fellow Southerner Bill Clinton was an attempted coup d'état by the Southern white minority in the United States, which, as in 1860, was frustrated because its candidate lost the presidential election.

The debt ceiling crisis is the latest case in which the radical right in the South has held America hostage until its demands are met. Presidents Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln refused to appease the Southern fanatics. Unfortunately, President Obama and the Democrats in Congress chose not to follow their example and instead gave in. In doing so, they have encouraged the neo-Confederate minority in Congress to find yet another opportunity in the near future to extort concessions from America's majority by sabotaging America's government.

• Michael Lind is Policy Director of the Economic Growth Program at the New America Foundation and is the author of " The Next American Nation: The New Nationalism and the Fourth American Revolution." More: Michael Lind