What Does "Means Testing" Mean to You?

An ABC News poll dated July 17th asks "adults" (not voters) what they think about the debt talks in Washington.  Question 20 asks: "In order to reduce the national debt, would you support or oppose [ITEM]?"  Items include raising taxes on hedge fund managers (64% approve); raising taxes on those earning over $250,000 a year (72%); cutting spending on Medicaid (26%); and raising Medicare premiums for wealthier retirees (61%).  This last item is referred to as "means-testing."

As the debt arguments have progressed, I have noticed a rise in the use of the phrase "means testing" (especially in relation to Social Security and Medicare.)  What I haven't heard or read is a clear explanation of how this "test" would be applied in "real life"?

For example, given how most IRA accounts and home values have been decimated by the economic recession, and how dicey the markets will be going forward, it seems unreasonable to assume that the average retiree could necessarily count on income other than Social Security from year-to-year.  So one assumption is that benefits would get paid to everyone and the "means test" would be part of the income tax returns process.  But I don't know if this is correct. 

Or does it mean we have to create a new reporting system -- that considers medical benefits as "income" -- even though other insurance pay-outs are tax-exempt?  Since most insurance pay-outs are the result of unforeseen circumstances (whether damage to one's home or car or body) why would Medicare (as health insurance) be taxed differently from other insurance?  And why is civilian insurance (Medicare) "means tested" while VA benefits are off limits?  Especially since all workers pay into the Medicare system, while members of the armed services don't.

Or one could change the funding of Social Security to include all taxable income (not just the current $109 K "wage base") so those in the upper 2-3% contribute more equitably to a system from which they derive basic income "security" should their situation change after retirement.  (See my earlier blog entry for more details.)   In the poll, 66% of those interviewed approve this option.

You can see that one can travel down a very circuitous road when dealing with the realities of what seems to be a simple and reasonable limitation to "entitlements."

So I ask for clarification:

What is meant by the term "means testing" and how would it be applied in "real life"?

I look forward to your thoughts on this topic.

Image information:
March 13, 2008, Blairsville, Georgia; AARP Tax-Aide program offers free one-on-one counseling.

Credit: Janice Boling, Writer/Photographer for the North Georgia News

Obama and Boehner: They have a "rendezvous with destiny"

I have been grappling with this debate about the debt ceiling and the "grand bargain" of spending cuts offset by revenue increases.  I understand why we need to increase the debt ceiling.  I understand why we need to cut some spending programs.  I agree with the need to close tax loopholes and tax breaks for those sending jobs to other countries.  And most of the commentary has been spent talking about the various maneuvers of politicians around these issues.

To me, what has emerged are a few key points:

·        We cannot get out of this mess with spending cuts alone. 

·        We are in trouble because 14 million Americans are out of work; and they are depending on safety-net benefits instead of paying taxes.

·        There is no "partial deal" or "deal on spending cuts" without a full agreement, including revenue enhancement. Despite what the chattering heads may say, Obama and Biden have not agreed to any cuts until and unless the GOP agrees to some revenue increases.

·        The GOP will not allow any discussion of revenue increases.  They consider the elimination of tax breaks and loopholes for the wealthy to be "job killing tax increases on small business."

·        Going into last weekend, the President and Speaker Boehner wanted to try for a big deal – three trillion dollars in spending cuts and one trillion dollars in revenue increases.

·        Speaker Boehner discovered he did not have the support of enough Republicans in the House to make this deal a reality.  In this effort, he appears to have been challenged by the GOP Majority Leader, Eric Cantor (R-VA.)

·        As a result, the Speaker backed away from the potential historic deal and started setting smaller targets.  In these efforts, he was still undercut by Cantor.

·        With the Republicans refusing to consider any revenue growth ideas, while wanting to undermine the social safety net for children, the disabled, the unemployed and the elderly, the Democrats are beginning to position themselves politically for a potential take-over of the Congress in the upcoming 2012 elections.

These developments led me to consider what I would do if I were John Boehner.  I would conclude the following:

·        Boehner will be a one-term Speaker. Either Cantor will challenge him or the GOP will lose control of the House and he'll be rejected as leader.

·        Boehner may want to consider his "place in history" now that his career is ending.

·        Taking the country to the edge of bankruptcy and undermining the "full faith and credit" of the US Treasury is not a legacy a reasonable person wants to see on his resume'.

·        Boehner should work with Minority Leader Pelosi and her team to find an agreement (or a "clean bill") for which the two parties together can provide enough votes to get it passed in the House of Representatives.  (Yes, I understand this means more Democrats will likely vote for it than Republicans. But then the Democrats believe in more than politics – they believe in governance.)

·        Boehner and Pelosi then must assure there are sufficient votes in the US Senate to support this measure.

If this can be done, the President will sign the debt ceiling extension measure.

John Boehner reminds me of Senator Ross in Kennedy's Profiles in Courage: "I almost literally looked down into my open grave. Friendships, position, fortune, everything that makes life desirable to an ambitious man were about to be swept away. . ."

If President Obama understands Boehner's position in this situation I call on him to encourage the Speaker to do the right thing for the country.  Obama and Boehner have been dealt a bad hand: a broken economy and high unemployment; dropping federal revenues; un-funded wars and under-funded benefit expansions.  This is not the time to debate who is to blame for this situation.  This is the time to act to change the direction, to "bend the curve" and set us back on course for a successful future.

In the election year of 1936, President Franklin Roosevelt addressed his Party's convention in Philadelphia with words that ring true today:

We are poor indeed if this nation cannot afford to lift from every recess of American life the dread fear of the unemployed that they are not needed in the world. We cannot afford to accumulate a deficit in the books of human fortitude.

. . .

Governments can err, presidents do make mistakes, but the immortal Dante tells us that Divine justice weighs the sins of the cold-blooded and the sins of the warm-hearted on different scales.

Better the occasional faults of a government that lives in a spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference.

There is a mysterious cycle in human events. To some generations much is given. Of other generations much is expected. This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.

Photo Credit:

Washington, DC - July 12: Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) answers reporters' questions during a press briefing after a caucus meeting at the U.S. Capitol July 12, 2011 in Washington, DC. The House Republicans spoke about the ongoing budget and debt limit talks between Congress and the White House. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Thought Experiment: Life Expectancy & Social Security "Reform"

OK, I'm listening to various arguments going on about ways to cut spending and reduce the growth of the costs for Medicare and Social Security.  Most of the proposals (excluding Ryan's non-starter) center around increasing the eligibility age over the course of time.  Since the average life expectancy is rising over time, this seems logical.  It's simple: If we delay the starting date for providing benefits, we save federal outlays in both systems. 

However, the life expectancy data do not hold up well under close scrutiny.  Averages are made up of a broad range of ages and genders and socio-economic situations.  For instance, the gap in life expectancy between African-Americans and their white counterparts has been narrowing over the past few decades.  That's good news – and it's a piece of data that backs up the proposed increases in the eligibility age for Social Security and Medicare.

But wait.  When we cut the data based on income, we find that the gap between those at the upper end of the economic spectrum and those near the bottom is actually growing, not narrowing.  That is, the wealthy are living to an older age than their counterparts who earned less over their work-life.  This means the wealthy, as a group, collect more benefit from Social Security and Medicare than their less-advantaged peers.

Social Security is funded by taxes on the employer and employee up to a designated "wage base."  Income beyond this base amount are not taxed for Social Security.  The wage base has been $106,800 since 2009.  This means that no matter how much someone earns above that amount, no further tax is paid to support the Social Security system. 

A person earning federal minimum wage ($7.25 per hour), working a 40 hour work week, and working 50 weeks a year makes $14,500 a year.  Although this sounds like an unrealistically low income, in 2007 19% of households earned less than $20,000.  The total income for this 19% of households represents only 3.1% of all earnings in the United States. 

That same year, 77.9% of households (earning up to $95,000 a year) held 47.3% of the total US income.  All this income was subject to the existing Social Security tax (the wage base in 2007 was $97,500.)

Twenty percent of households earned between $95,000 and $250,000, representing 40.8% of total US income.  And last (but definitely not least) the top 1.9% of households (making more than a quarter of a million dollars) brought in almost 12% of all income.  However, for both these brackets, no Social Security tax was paid once income exceeded $97,500.

So the relatively poor pay Social Security tax on 100% of their income, while those in the upper brackets clearly do not. 

The actuarial tables tell us those at the lower end can expect to collect Social Security benefits for about sixteen (16) years, while those at the upper end will collect about twenty-one and a half (21.5) years after age 65 years.  And this 5.5 year gap is growing (it was less than one year difference about 30 years ago.)

Based on this data, I would propose that those who are wealthy, who will generally live longer than their low income colleagues, could reasonably be asked to pay more into the system. 

There are a couple of ways we could do this.  We could simply raise the wage base again a few thousand dollars.  But this would continue to tax the lower and middle classes which do not benefit from the system as much as those at the upper end.  While I would prefer a progressive tax (hitting those at the upper end with a higher Social Security tax rate than those with less income) I don't think that would earn enough votes to pass Congress.  So I propose that we eliminate the concept of the Social Security "wage base" and simply include all earnings when calculating the Social Security taxes due.

Your thoughts are appreciated.

Photo Source
Cultural Health News Blog, November 30, 2010

No Comment. . .

From the US State Department files, unedited:

Joint Statement of the Office of the Prime Minister of Israel and The Office of the Secretary of State of The United States

Media Note
Office of the Spokesman
Washington, DC

November 11, 2010

Begin Text

‪‪Prime Minister Netanyahu and Secretary Clinton had a good discussion today, with a friendly and productive exchange of views on both sides. Secretary Clinton reiterated the United States' unshakable commitment to Israel's security and to peace in the region.

‪‪The Prime Minister and the Secretary agreed on the importance of continuing direct negotiations to achieve our goals. The Secretary reiterated that "the United States believes that through good-faith negotiations, the parties can mutually agree on an outcome which ends the conflict and reconciles the Palestinian goal of an independent and viable state, based on the 1967 lines, with agreed swaps, and the Israeli goal of a Jewish state with secure and recognized borders that reflect subsequent developments and meet Israeli security requirements." Those requirements will be fully taken into account in any future peace agreement.

‪‪‪The discussions between the Prime Minister and the Secretary focused on creating the conditions for the resumption of direct negotiations aimed at producing a two-state solution. Their teams will work closely together in the coming days toward that end.

PRN: 2010/1624

Makes one wonder what the Likud and Right-Wing/Fox News outrage was really about last week.

Continuity

Pundits have been arguing the past few weeks about who should "get credit" for the death of bin Laden and which borders to use in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.  The neo-cons try to claim everything for Bush 43, as if there were no Presidents before him.  If Obama says or does anything that is similar to Bush, then Obama must have accepted the "Bush Doctrine."  (Of course, if they don't like what Obama recommends, he's a socialist-who-hates-America or worse.)  This is all childish, schoolyard stuff – again. 

Obama is not as "radical" as his opponents wish to claim.  He is well within the mainstream of American principles and political thought.  He is generally continuing some Executive Branch policies with which the Left disagrees (surveillance and secrecy for instance) and clearly stopping and disavowing some practices which the far-Right support (such as torture, including waterboarding.) 

Last night, as I was drifting off, words came to me from over fifty years ago.  They could have been said in Obama's speech at the State Department last Thursday. 

 [Whether] you are citizens of America or citizens of the world, ask of us here the same high standards of strength and sacrifice which we ask of you. With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God's work must truly be our own.

They are the almost-forgotten words that conclude John F. Kennedy's inaugural address.  While most of us remember the clear call to action which echoed through most of the text, this reference to history's judgment reminds us that even in this moment of celebration we humans have no way of knowing the results of what we sow. 

In that spirit, I will assume that Bush did not realize his escapades would lead to a multi-trillion dollar debt and global economic melt-down.  Accepting that it is not my place to judge his intentions, I extend to his beleaguered successor a great deal of faith in his ability to begin to turn us back toward energy, stability and community. . . which we have  not experienced as a nation for almost fifty years. 

Photo Information:

Inaugural Address of John F. Kennedy, 35th President of the United States. Washington, D. C., 20 January 1961.  (CWO Donald Mingfield, USA, U. S. Army Signal Corps photograph in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston)

Yes. We. Can.

On the death of Osama bin Laden.

All I can say is:

·    I'm relieved – my body issued a long, great sigh of relief.  Yes, there will always be terrorists.  But this decades-long manhunt is finally over.  And I'm glad.

·    I take heart from the way the President led the team – of advisors and operatives – to achieve this result in a measured and appropriate manner.

·    I find it bewildering that there are some who begrudge Obama's visits to Ground Zero, to the troops, and to the CIA – calling this process a "victory dance."  These same voices were only too happy to praise Bush's swaggering display declaring mission accomplished on the Abraham Lincoln's flight deck – when there was nothing yet to celebrate.

Congratulations. . . and thank you.

Photo Information:

President Barack Obama listens during one in a series of meetings discussing the mission against Osama bin Laden, in the Situation Room of the White House, May 1, 2011. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

United We Stand. . . .

Thoughts on watching the PBS-American Experience documentary, Soundtrack for a Revolution (2009):

Once there was a link between the civil rights movement and the union movement.  It's seems so long ago that people made the connections that mattered in a stable, middle class community.  They knew when  you denied one person a decent job, you could anyone a job. When you denied someone the right to vote, you could deny anyone the right to vote. When you denied someone a basic education, you denied everyone the right to hear their voice as an equal.

Nixon came along and made a deal with the devil.  In exchange for political power his partisans drove a wedge between young people and unions and black Americans and unions. The GOP made us believe the pie wasn't big enough for everyone . . .  that we had to fight over one cookie, while their friends and donors hogged the other 11 (see below).

Wisconsin gives me hope that those days of community may be coming back.  Union members are sticking together on this one.  Perhaps they remember that if you can privatize public education, you can create a world where the powerful take even more and productive workers have no hope of a better life for their children. . . where we all become second class citizens unless we're among the lucky 1 percent who grab a third of the income each year.  There are greedy people in the world – and greedy people are trying to take everything from people who have almost nothing left.

Jobs – job security, safe jobs, well-paying jobs with good benefits – these are still possible for this country to provide.  As long as the greedy don't get a free ride and are required to pay for the services this country provides them – safe neighborhoods, trained workers, stable infrastructure (power grids, highways, bridges, etc.)  These things are not free and those who benefit most from them have an obligation to pay their fair share.

In the early days of our Republic, we understood the importance of standing together.  We took on many symbols of earlier attempts at self-governance and union.  On the wall behind the Speaker's podium in the US House of Representatives is a pair of fasces – bundles of sticks which represent the power found in unity.  If one loosened the bundle, each twig could easily be snapped and discarded.  Bound together, they become unbreakable. 

 


 That is what our nation once represented – unity out of diversity; community over greed.

Photo Information:

Civil Rights March on Washington, D.C., Leaders marching from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial, August 28, 1963.

In the front row, from left are: Whitney M. Young, Jr., Executive Director of the National Urban League; Roy Wilkins, Executive Secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; A. Philip Randolph, Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, American Federation of Labor (AFL), and a former vice president of the AFL-CIO; Walter P. Reuther, President, United Auto Workers Union; and Arnold Aronson, Secretary of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights.  (National Archives; ARC Identifier: 542010)

US House Chamber

From left: Sen. Patrick Toomey, R-PA., Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood applaud as President Barack Obama enters the House Chamber to deliver his State of the Union address at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., Jan. 25, 2011. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Fasces:  The bronze fasces, representing a classical Roman symbol of civic authority, are located on both sides of the U.S. Flag.  (Office of the Clerk, U.S. House of Representatives)

Mark 9:38-40

John said to him, ‘Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.’   But Jesus said, ‘Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterwards to speak evil of me.   Whoever is not against us is for us.' ~New Revised Standard Version of the New Testament

'Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make.

Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.'  

~ Pres George W. Bush, September 20, 2001, Address to Congress:

I find it strange how these positions seem to be the converse of each other – one invites relationship with others; the second forces an identity on them by requiring submission or opposition.  One wonders what the last ten years might have looked like had we chosen the first path instead of the second.

A thought on "Miranda" and other constitutional rights

Now this may seem "obvious" to someone formally schooled in the Law, but this just occurred to me – after years of watching perps have their rights read to them on various TV procedurals.

Miranda isn't about the particular person named "Miranda."  It's about the process that must be applied to everyone (regardless of previous record or behavior or reputation) to truly be "presumed innocent" and protected under the Law.

For all their talk about the Constitution and the importance of the Individual, it seems many conservatives on the Right only support constitutional rights for the persons of whom they "approve" – especially the right to vote.

Except 2nd Amendment Rights – which do seem to apply to everyone, without reservation.

Obama and the Tea Party - A Different Twist

  

A few months ago, The New Republic carried an insightful review Kate Zernike's Boiling Mad: Inside Tea Party America by Kate Zernike.  A key passage seems relevant in the current round of Birther talk:

But more than just nostalgia for a whiter America fuels this tantrum. “I can’t believe this is the America I grew up in as a kid,” says one of Zernike’s subjects. Pages later, another one reminisces about her own childhood America: “People would talk to their neighbors, have block parties, there was less stress in life.” What is striking is that those testimonies came from a twenty-nine-year-old and sixty-six-year-old, respectively—childhoods spent decades apart, in Americas that looked different from each other. They eulogize not so much the common, long-gone America of their childhoods, but the state of childhood itself. The relentless hurtling away from the simplicities of youth is what the Tea Partiers rebel against. But the grown-up world, with its complications, compromises, and disappointments, is here to stay, which is a cruelty that no election can salve. 

~ Elbert Ventura, Teaism

Obama is the first president in decades to both honor the separation of powers (let Congress take the lead on budgets and legislative details) and talk to us as reasonable adults (not children).  Do we know how to engage in adult discourse? 

After decade of pandering and simplistic, emotional presentation of our options, is some of the anti-Obama ranting a childish reaction to rational, adult conversation?

Are we seeing a national, primarily-but-not-exclusively-right-wing temper tantrum?

Image Information: 

President Barack Obama smiles before speaking to the press in the Briefing Room of the White House April 27, 2011 in Washington, DC. US President Barack Obama released a long form version of his birth certificate after extended criticism by those who do not believe he was born in the United States.

(April 27, 2011 - Photo by Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images North America)

Battle of the Wilderness

…Belief in white supremacy provided a rationale for slavery. As the French political theorist Montesquieu observed wryly in 1748: "It is impossible for us to suppose these creatures [enslaved Africans] to be men; because allowing them to be men, a suspicion would follow that we ourselves are not Christians."

~ James W. Loewen, Five Myths about why the South seceded 

This year we mark the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War.  I have been reminded of the last major round of observances fifty years ago.  In 1961, the civil rights movement was still fairly new in the national psyche.  As a child in the North, I did not yet connect the events I witnessed on the evening news with those hallowed battles of long ago.  In school, as part of the 100th anniversary of the Civil War, we studied Presidents and strategies and generals.  We did not discuss the causes of the war as in any way related to what was happening in our country now.    

Perhaps this is the proper approach for initiating children to this complex time in our history.  Perhaps it was a recognition that the Detroit suburbs were heavily populated with families who had migrated from the South in search of jobs -- as if silence was the best way to let the children of opposing sides get along in the classroom.

However, I think that something important was missing from our education.  We didn't learn to face the dark realities behind either of the historic struggles – the civil war of long ago or the fight for human rights happening in our streets and neighborhoods.  We were not encouraged to look into our own souls to find the fears and anxieties we might still carry with us. 

Now we are the adults and I look around and see the angry faces of Little Rock and Selma again.  This time they carry posters with distorted images of our first African-American president and argue for states' rights and secession and nullification.  I wonder if these adults had the same edited education I had.  And I wonder how many of those who find joy in these images and these slogans consider themselves good Christians.

Image Information:  Battle of the Wilderness | Desperate fight on the Orange C.H. Plank Road, near Todd's Tavern, May 6th, 1864 (Kurz & Allison, Art Publishers, Chicago, U.S.A, 1887)

On-going Loss

From a colleague on the ground in Japan. 

Failing to acknowledge loss of heritage can mean survival is the start of crisis

Brent Duncan

A humpbacked old woman with a walker was teetering along a busy coastal highway that cut through the debris that had been a coastal neighborhood of nearly 400 homes in Noda Village. The old woman showed me the spot where her home had been before tsunamis blendered it into shreds, then mixed those shreds with the ruins of an entire community. As tragic as that seemed, the old woman said that she did not care about her house and rice field. She motioned toward the vast wasteland of debris that had been her village, and said her only concern was to find in that mess the box that contained her ancestors.

I felt like a boy scout as I helped her across the highway to the area in which 85 volunteer airmen, sailors, and civilians from Misawa Air Base were clearing debris. The old woman joined us, wandering in the debris with the aid of her walker. Eyes to the ground, she looked for her ancestors. We helped her to seek, but we did not find.

This is not an isolated case. The media focus almost entirely on the loss of life and property. Although these are tragic beyond imagination, focusing on only these aspects of disaster means that we miss the destruction of livelihood, culture, heritage, history, and religion—core elements of identity that give humans purpose and hope.

A mental health professional who is administering to survivors in a remote fishing village told me that the main challenge now is preventing survivors from killing themselves. This seems dreadfully ironic: struggling to survive, only to commit suicide. During times like these, we need to look beyond immediate survival needs and engage in administering to the psychological, emotional, cultural, and spiritual needs of survivors. We must do this within the cultural context of those who are suffering, not according to our desires to impose our reality on them. Otherwise, survival only means the beginning of crisis.

Brent Duncan, Professor | University of Phoenix | Gakushuu.org

Image Information:  A destroyed landscape is pictured in Otsuchi village, Iwate Prefecture in northern Japan, after an earthquake and tsunami struck the area. Image date, March 14, 2011. (Credit: Reuters/Kyodo)

Bullies

As the Congress was debating how to "cut spending" the Republicans also spent a lot of time talking about Planned Parenthood and lying about it (see John Kyl, R-AZ)  My response is simple:

Democrats – please stop talking about the issue as "Planned Parenthood" – that just plays into the GOP talking points / makes their base happy.

Title 10 is about Women's Health Care; only a quarter goes to PPFA.  Only 3% of PPFA activities are related to abortions – and those are privately not federally funded.  NO federal dollars are being spent on abortions. Zero.  So, stop talking about abortion and playing the GOP game.

Talk about basic health care for women – that's what Title X is about.  Does the GOP want women to die?  Sorry, too strong – The GOP wants women to die if they are the "wrong" women, poor or old or working but without health insurance.

The GOP controls 1/3 of the political branches. They want 100% of the say. That's not a grown-up approach.  That's not even a childish approach – kids on playgrounds learn how to play by rules and "work with others" better than these guys.

The Hill Republicans – and their Tea Party allies – are bullies.  Stick to your guns.

Photo Source  http://allaboutcareerssite.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/workplace-bullying-2.jpg

Japan: Words are Inadequate

Between human beings there may be no silence as loud as the silence of death.. . . The breath goes out and does not come in again. No one knows it was the last until it is gone, and the silence that follows it is like no other sound in the world. (pp. 36-37)

Some of the most effective language in the world leads you up to the brink of Silence and leaves you there, with the soft surf of the unsayable lapping at your feet. (p. 113)

~ Barbara Brown Taylor, When God is Silent

In that time, there is no possibility of thinking, of explanations, resolutions. I can't remember much sense of panic, much feeling about the agony going on a couple hundred yards away. . . It was an empty space. I don't want to forget that, as feeling returns in various ways. We don't know what goes on when, in the middle of terror or pain, this emptiness and anaesthesia set in (it happens in plenty of contexts.) But somehow the emptiness 'resources' us. Not to run too fast to explore the feelings and recover the words seems important.

Simone Weil said that the danger of imagination was that it filled up the void when what we need is to learn how to live in the presence of the void.

~ Rowan Williams, Writing in the Dust: After September 11 (p. 10)

 

Photo information:

The hand of a victim is seen among jumbled concrete sea barriers in Toyoma, northern Japan | AP

The GOP and "class warfare"

This about sums up what has been happening economically for the past few years:

[Tom] Barrett [mayor of Milwaukee] recounted a parable making the rounds among Wisconsin Democrats, telling of a room in which “a zillionaire, a Tea Party person and a union member” confront a plate of 12 cookies: “The zillionaire takes 11 of the cookies, and says to the other two, ‘That guy is trying to steal your cookie.’ ”

Thanks to E.J. Dionne for the story in today's Washington Post.

The GOP Assault On Jobs

During the past few weeks much of the focus in the media has been on the GOP's union-busting activities.

These assaults on middle class workers have taken a wide range of forms:

– Stripping public employees of their right to negotiate effective contracts (Wisconsin);

– Downsizing the unions by converting employees to "at will" status when the union contract comes due for renegotiation (New Hampshire);

– Creation of state-appointed "emergency financial managers" who can dissolve legal agreements including (surprise) union contracts and take over cities and school districts (Michigan);

– An attempt by Maine's Republican governor to dismantle a union-history mural installed in the state's Department of Labor;

– Even an attempt to intimidate a university history professor (Wisconsin).

In all this, the party that rolled to victory in 2010 by saying its agenda was to create jobs has not made an effective case that explains how union-busting and worker intimidation create even one real job.

The Republicans focus on budget cuts instead of infrastructure investment (which contributes to our country's long-term growth.)  They act as if helping people get jobs with decent pay and benefits is fiscal madness – even though such actions would help these workers buy things and pay taxes again (as opposed to drawing unemployment benefits or depleting their remaining retirement savings.)

Of course, if people went back to work and bought things and paid taxes then the economy itself would pick up, more jobs would be created and more revenue would flow into government coffers – federal, state and local. Then there would be a budget problem – but not a budget crisis.  And the GOP needs everyone to believe there's a crisis so the voters will be afraid and Republicans will win big in the upcoming 2012 elections.

At least, that's how they're acting.  And their "jobs program" backs up this skepticism.

Robert Reich, Clinton's former Labor secretary, focuses on the "big lies" Republicans put out there as their jobs "program":  Tax Cuts for truly wealthy individuals ($1 million +); Corporate Income Tax Cuts; Cuts in Wages and Benefits; and Elimination of Regulations.  They claim these four actions will create jobs – when history proves they actually increase the deficit, undermine middle class earning power, and deplete our ability to maintain our nation's infrastructure. 

These "ideas" are not new; they are a reintroduction of Reagan era trickle-down voodoo economics. They didn't create jobs in the 1980s and they were a downright failure in the 2000s.  The tax cuts (exaggerated by two unfunded wars) have led to a "budget crisis" which the GOP claims only more tax cuts, regulatory cuts, and lowered wages will "solve."  Wage and benefit cuts have led to a major loss of real income for the middle class and working poor.  De-regulation led to the worst economic recession since the 1930s and the Gulf oil spill disaster.

Rachel Maddow says clearly "It's not about the budget."

This is about a lot of things. This is not about a budget. This is using or fabricating crisis to push for an agenda you'd never be able to sell under normal circumstances. And so you have to convince everyone that these are not normal circumstances. These are desperate circumstances and your desperate measures are therefore somehow required.

Given this situation, it's time for President Obama to call the Republican bluff.  He needs to say clearly that the budget "crisis" continues into the future primarily because revenue is down.  There are two primary reasons for the reduced inflow of cash:

– Unemployed people don't pay taxes; and people who earn less (due to frozen or cut salaries) pay less tax.

– The tax rate on those industries which gained during the past decade (such as banking, finance and energy) is too low; they aren't covering the cost of government services that benefit them (energy subsidies, bank bail-outs, lax regulations and enforcement.)

Obama needs to change the conversation back to real Job Creation.  As long as he goes along with the budget "crisis" argument, he is missing the larger issue: the corporate assault on working Americans. 

The American people understand this as two March 2011 polls show:

– The CBS News poll identified the Economy/Jobs as the number one national priority (51%); Budget deficit/national debt came in a distant second (7%)

– Bloomberg: Unemployment and jobs were number one with 43%, Federal deficit and spending gets 29%, more votes, but still second place.

Candidate Obama knew this too:

…Real change isn't another four years of defending lobbyists who don't represent real Americans - it's standing with working Americans who have seen their jobs disappear and their wages decline and their hope for the future slip further and further away.  

– Spartanburg, SC | November 03, 2007

I look forward to hearing President Obama reaffirm this commitment to the country's top priority: meaningful jobs for all those who want and need to work.

Photo credit

Sally Fields, Norma Rae, released by 20th Century Fox, 1979.

Huckabee – Three Strikes??

All this time I thought former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee was a fairly level-headed guy – for a Fox News host. But over the period of a few days, he got caught up in the idea that he had to "make news" on his book tour and he succeeded beyond his wildest expectations. 

Strike 1, February 28, 2011, Huckabee said the following in response to a question about President Obama's birth certificate:

I would love to know more. What I know is troubling enough.. . .

If you think about it, his perspective as growing up in Kenya with a Kenyan father and grandfather, their view of the Mau Mau Revolution in Kenya is very different than ours because he probably grew up hearing that the British were a bunch of imperialists who persecuted his grandfather.

Anyone who has read Obama's 1995 autobiography, Dreams From My Father, knows this is false.  Obama was born in Hawaii; his father left when he was two years old and his parents divorced.  He grew up with his mother and her parents – without his father (although Obama Senior did make one visit around the holidays in 1971.)  Later, his mother remarried and he spent some time in Indonesia with his step father's family. He eventually returned to Hawaii and lived with his mother's Kansan parents.  He did not learn about Kenya or the British imperialists or the Mau Mau Revolution at his Kenyan grandfather's knee. The only grandfather Obama ever knew is the one who appears on the cover of Obama's book.

Huckabee compounded this misrepresentation by saying he "misspoke" – he meant Indonesia, not Kenya.  Of course, he didn't address how Obama's grandfather and the Mau Mau's made it all that way from Africa to Indonesia.  Instead Huckabee blamed the New York Times for sensationalizing the story.

Strike 2, March 2nd, while on another radio talk show, Huckabee engaged in this exchange:

Fischer: "You seem to think that there is some validity to the fact that there may be some fundamental anti-Americanism in this president."

Huckabee: "Well, that's exactly the point that I make in the book. And I don't know why these reporters -- maybe they can't read... And I have said many times publicly, that I do think [Obama] has a different worldview and I think it's, in part, molded out of a very different experience. Most of us grew up going to Boy Scout meetings and, you know, our communities were filled with Rotary Clubs, not madrassas."

This statement is so-o-o-o loaded.  Not only does it imply that Obama has fundamentalist Muslim connections.  It implies that neither Hawaii nor Indonesia has Boy Scouts – or Rotary Clubs.  As of December, 2010, Indonesia has 17.1 million Boy Scouts (7.2% of the nation's population) and the USA has 3.97 million (1.3% of estimated population.)  The Rotary Youth Exchange is one of the primary sponsors of foreign exchange students in the world. Rotary International has chapters in Indonesia and Malaysia, both Muslim nations.  So it's quite likely, whether he spent time in Hawaii or Indonesia, that Obama was exposed to Scouting as well as Rotary International.

Strike 3, February 28th (again), in another radio exchange – this time about the Oscars (which had taken place the night before):

Medved: . . .However, there was - there was one moment where a very brilliant and admirable actress named Natalie Portman won Best Actress. . . But in any event, she got up, she was very visibly pregnant, and it's really it's a problem because she's about seven months pregnant, it's her first pregnancy, and she and the baby's father aren't married, and before two billion people, Natalie Portman says, 'Oh I want to thank my love and he's given me the most wonderful gift.' He didn't give her the most wonderful gift, which would be a wedding ring! [Huckabee chuckles] And it just seems to me that sending that kind of message is problematic.

Huckabee:  You know Michael, one of the things that's troubling is that people see a Natalie Portman or some other Hollywood starlet who boasts of, 'Hey look, you know, we're having children, we're not married, but we're having these children, and they're doing just fine.' But there aren't really a lot of single moms out there who are making millions of dollars every year for being in a movie. And I think it gives a distorted image that yes, not everybody hires nannies, and caretakers, and nurses. Most single moms are very poor, uneducated, can't get a job, and if it weren't for government assistance, their kids would be starving to death and never have health care. And that's the story that we're not seeing, and it's unfortunate that we glorify and glamorize the idea of out of children wedlock [sic].

You know, right now, 75 percent of black kids in this country are born out of wedlock. 61 percent of Hispanic kids -- across the board, 41 percent of all live births in America are out of wedlock births. And the cost of that is simply staggering.

Shades of Dan Quayle and "Murphy Brown" with a little tinge of racism thrown in for good measure.  What Huckabee doesn't mention in his discussion of the birth demographics is the finding that over two thirds (67.7%) of births to single mothers are white.  

Or that "Hispanic" is an imprecise number, because there are Hispanic mothers in both the Black and White data.  For example, 35.7% of white births are to single white mothers. If you back out the mothers who are white Hispanics, this rate drops to 28.7%.  The reverse is true for black births (71.8% of all live black births are to single mothers; it's 72.3% for non-Hispanic black births.)  My calculations show that 52.6% of Hispanic live births are to single mothers.  American Indian/Native Alaskan births to single mothers account for 65.8% of that group's newborns; while Asian/Pacific Islanders are only 16.9%. 

Or that if you consider the actual birth rate – births per 1,000 – rather than raw number of births, one finds the number dropping significantly for all groups (14% overall since 1989; 28% among black births) except Cuban/Hispanics (rose about 2%).

Something is going on.  In general, the number of births among single mothers is rising.  But the assumption that this is occurring only for poor, uneducated women surviving on government assistance is a Reagan-era stereotype that doesn't necessarily match the data.  Since none of the many data tables on this topic identify maternal income or education levels, I can only surmise that someone's biases are showing in Huckabee's comments.  "Ain't it awful" is not an intelligent or effective policy statement – unless the policy is to sell books to true believers.

Book Cover Information:
Pictured in left-hand photograph on cover: Habiba Akumu Hussein and Barack Obama, Sr. (President Obama's paternal grandmother and his father as a young boy). Pictured in right-hand photograph on cover: Stanley Dunham and Ann Dunham (President Obama's maternal grandfather and his mother as a young girl).