Dying Middle-Class = Dying American Greatness

Is THIS a message that should resonate with our frustrated and angry Tea Party brothers and sisters? 

--

For decades, the American middle class has been working harder/harder to get less/less (stagnant wages). Big, moneyed interests have a LOT to gain by pitting working Americans against EACH OTHER, scrabbling over the same, shrinking piece of pie. The more we give in to that, the less we are likely to actually bring economic prosperity back to the American Middle Class, which is what made our country so great in the decades post WWII. Dying middle class = dying American greatness.

 --

SOME READING:

http://robertreich.org/post/3353591266

http://money.cnn.com/2011/02/16/news/economy/middle_class/index.htm

http://www.ips-dc.org/reports/executive_excess_2010

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2011/02/are_wisconsins_state_and_local.html

Push Back: GOP overreaches on Family Planning, Workers' Rights

A phone call, A rally, A pizza, A donation.


Hi all, I'm away from home & internet access so I wil be very brief--I have been so transfixed by all of the events in Egypt, Libya, Bahrain. Things have been moving so fast lately. And the Wisconsin protest is extremely encouraging--it seems that the middle-class is finally finding its voice to push back against the big $$ interests that have been squeezing them/us for decades!

Here are some quick actions (Timing is KEY--some of these things are NOW):

The LONGEVITY of the Wisconsin protests is key: LOCAL BUSINESSES ARE HELPING FEED THE PROTESTERS:
donate a pizza, some bagels or fresh produce at one of the businesses below! (many protesters are taking time off and incurring personal expenses--let's support them!)

• Ian's Pizza 608 257-9248;
• Michelangelo's coffee/pastries 608 251-5299;
• Gotham Bagels 608 467-7642
• Willy Street Co-op (608) 251-6776 http://bit.ly/goISmV
• "Straight to Your Door" Delivery Service: $3 off with coupon "KILLTHEBILL":

(And spread the word!! A little bit from everyone can go far!)

Boston Rally to support rights to Collective Bargaining and Wisconsin Workers

For a quick overview --From CNN money no less--on why unions are important to the middle class. (And here's a response to those who say "teachers already make too much")

RALLY on Tuesday: PLEASE ask your friends/family to attend!

If you want to do carpool--I can send out word of cars available etc

• STATE HOUSE/Boston
• 4-6PM Tuesday (TOMORROW)
• Bring the kids, bring friends, bring signs (not required!)!

Support the WI Dems who are standing up to GOP overreach

• -Donate to the 14 Democrats who are pushing back against Governor Walker! (may I suggest $14 for 14 senators!)--let's send the message to Democrats that when they stand up for us, we stand up for them! (and let's face it, $$$ is the only message the media and politicians seem to understand clearly)

Defunding Planned Parenthood (defunding Title X)

• GOP is waging culture war against women again. Last week the GOP House passed a bill to strip organizations like Planned Parenthood of their funding--NONE of which goes to abortion anyway, by the way (always prohibited by the Hyde Amendment.). It now goes to the Senate. That means calls to Scott Brown ARE VERY IMPORTANT. And a call to Lynch thanking him for voting against the bill would be nice too.
• -Urge Brown to vote no: do not defund Title X

Phones: Boston -- (617) 565-3170

Washington, DC -- (202) 224-4543

FAX: (202) 228-2646 (you can use services like FaxZero.com to send free faxes from the internet!)

• -Thank Lynch for voting no: 202-225-8273

-
PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD ABOUT THESE ACTIONS: your 1 phone call, $5 donation can turn into $15 and 3 calls if you just get 2 friends to do the same!

Energy, Environment, Climate

See also the "Money" entry for important info/links on the Koch brothers and their takeover of Energy Committee.

Big Oil, and other Big Polluters

• Ending oil subsidies could save $40billion... Exxon had 52% increase in profit last quarter (2/2011, bloomberg) (Markey bill)
• Barton: Govt Subsidies Necessary To Keep Exxon From Going Out Of Business | TPMDC 3/10/2011
• Windfall tax lets Alaska rake in billions from Big Oil, Seattle Times, 2008
• Koch's petro-chemical division

Attack the EPA

• House Panel Votes to Strip E.P.A. of Power to Regulate Greenhouse Gases - NYT 3/10/2011
• Small Biz group sign letter supporting EPA standards (2/10/2011, Small Business Majority)
• GOP: proposes $1.6B cut to EPA, defends $4B in Oil Subsidies (2/10/2011) (propublica)
• Utility Execs take issue w/ WSJ ed slamming EPA: "We're OK w/ EPA" (2/2011)
• Why American people of faith support the EPA « Many faith communities have found a calling over the past few decades to become better stewards of God’s creation in both their houses of worship and broader communities. 

Regulations aren't Red Tape. See this post

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Because They Can

• Boehner's GOP House brings back Styrofoam, ends composting (Feb 2011)

Propaganda/Public Opinions/Polls/Views on Climate Change
Yes, Virginia, there is a vast right wing conspiracy, and they want you to think that fossil fuels do not contribute to pollution or global climate change.

• Koch-funded climate change skeptic reverses course - latimes.com (7/29/2012) http://goo.gl/3Kzjn
• The Kochs' Climate Change Denial Media Machine | Center for Media and Democracy, 2/2011 (also look for Rachel Maddow's piece, "Oil and Coal Climate Denial Machine"... used to have a clip here, but it was apparently removed from YouTube due to copyright violations)
• Boston Globe, April 2011:  A majority of Massachusetts residents say global warming is happening and is caused by human activity, but many remain relatively apathetic on addressing the issue (survey)

Tea Party vs. the Grand Old Party

The schisms btw the "new" Tea Party ethos and the old GOP powers that be are causing some interesting fissures on issues like the Patriot Act and...more surprisingly, maybe, abortion.  Tho this topic is covered in a variety of blog entries, it seems to me that this is a developing/ongoing story that deserves its own tracking.

Maddow is out front on this/watch (from Feb 8 2011):

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

(More on the Patriot Act split is under the "Civil Liberties" entry).

TP v GOP on Abortion (!)
(on the abortion as wedge issue more generally, see "Culture Wars" entry)

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

(Feb 8, 2011)

• y, the GOP never had any intention of addressing the economic concerns of the tea partiers, (3/2011)
• Wisconsin: the Tea Party's Waterloo? (3/2011, Salon)
• ORCs vs YATs (budget showdown btw GOP/TP- 2/10/11)
• Dkos not so sure it's a TP/GOP split (2/9/2011)
• Libertarians heckle Cheney/Rumsfeld at CPAC (2/2011, Alternet)
• Tea Party wants Boehner to be primaried 3/2011

hmmmm....

Class Warfare (Wealth inequality, etc)

Mitt Romney flashing those benjamins

Also:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
World of Class Warfare - Warren Buffett vs. Wealthy Conservatives
www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor & Satire Blog

The Daily Show on Facebook

("World of Class Warfare: Warren Buffett vs. Wealthy Conservatives", Aug 18, 2011)

Distribution of Wealth

• Why the truly alarming economic trend is not income inequality. It's the Wealth Gap, Stupid | Mother Jones (2/13/2012) 
• The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office confirms that the rich have been getting richer. : CBO | Trends in the Distribution of Household Income Between 1979 and 2007 (10/25/2011) 
• Young Turks covers this CBO report

From CBO report, Oct 25 2011

(chart from MoJo's "It's the Inequality, Stupid")

Growing Pie? shrinking pieces for 99%

• How the McEconomy Bombed the American Worker | MichaelMoore.com  (May 10, 2011)
• Divide and Conquer; convince you that you have to fight for an ever smaller piece of the pie.  (robert reich, "The Republican Strategy" (Feb 2011) 
• "They pit average working Americans against one another, distract attention from the almost unprecedented concentration of wealth and power at the top, and conceal Republican plans to further enlarge and entrench that wealth and power."
• ONE | Catholic bishops to US House: ‘Make the poor a top priority’  (4/14/2011)

Poverty, Income inequality...

• Corporate Profits Just Hit An All-Time High, Wages Just Hit An All-Time Low - Business Insider - (6/22/2012) http://goo.gl/yk4jh
• As Big Bank Stocks Plunge, CEOs Continue To Reap Huge Salaries | ThinkProgress (1/2/2012) 
• Bottom Line - CEOs rake in huge sums when their companies go bankrupt (1/27/2012) 
• Wall St. Record pay when regular Americans facing unemployment, stagnant wages (2/4/2011)--the study is by Wall Street Journal: $135 billion in compensation. Exec payouts = 1/3 of the total Wall St bank bailout ($417billion)
• Review: The Spirit Level by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett | Books | The Guardian (3/13/2009)
• the life-diminishing results of valuing growth above equality in rich societies can be seen all around us. Inequality causes shorter, unhealthier and unhappier lives; it increases the rate of teenage pregnancy, violence, obesity, imprisonment and addiction; it destroys relationships between individuals born in the same society but into different classes; and its function as a driver of consumption depletes the planet's resources.
• Wilkinson, a public health researcher of 30 years' standing, has written numerous books and articles on the physical and mental effects of social differentiation. He and Pickett have compiled information from around 200 different sets of data, using reputable sources such as the United Nations, the World Bank, the World Health Organisation and the US Census, to form a bank of evidence against inequality that is impossible to deny.
• 21 CEOs With $100 Million Golden Parachutes | Mother Jones (1/18/2012) 
• Thirty Years of Unleashed Greed | Truthout (10/28/2011) 
• Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1% - Vanity Fair (5/2011) 1% of the people take nearly a quarter of the nation’s income—an inequality even the wealthy will come to regret.
• The Forgotten Truth That Conservatives Created The Welfare State Ray Medeiros/Politicus 2/2011 ( Low wages push ppl onto welfare) 
• Executive Bonuses Bounce Back - WSJ.com  (3/18/2011)
• Executive Excess 2010: CEO Pay and the Great Recession - IPS (Sept 2010)
• Executive Excess 2011: The Massive CEO Rewards for Tax Dodging - IPS (Sept 2011)
• The Rich Get Richer: CEO Bonuses Skyrocket; Worker Pay Flat | Mother Jones 3/18/2011
• War On The Poor: Minnesota Republicans Want To Bust Poor People Who Carry Cash | Crooks and Liars (3/2011)
• "250K Isn't Rich If You're A CEO But 50K is Rich If You're A Teacher":  Ray Medeiros 3/2011
• "It's the Inequality, Stupid" -MoJo 3/2011, great CHARTS AND GRAPHS abt income inequality
• Poverty Scorecard: 2010 scorecard analysis 
• "Executive Excess 2010: Exec Pay and the Great Recession", 9/2010, Institute for Policy Studies
• the CEOs who slashed their payrolls the deepest took home 42 percent more compensation than the year’s chief executive pay average for S&P 500 companies.
• American workers, by contrast, are taking home less in real weekly wages than they took home in the 1970s 
• Politifact:True: , just 400 Americans -- 400 -- have more wealth than half of all Americans combined," (Michael Moore statement in Wisconsin 3/2011)

"Redistribution of Wealth! Communist!"

• On redistribution of wealth : Does The Bible Mix Religion and Politics? - The Christian Left Blog (6/2/2011) 

There's a War on the Middle Class

• House moved to kill HAMP/Obama Mortgage Plan (CNN Money) - Mar. 29, 2011 
• Robert Reich (The Republican Strategy) 2/17/2011 
• - split the vast middle and working class – pitting unionized workers against non-unionized, public-sector workers against non-public, older workers within sight of Medicare and Social Security against younger workers who don’t believe these programs will be there for them, and the poor against the working middle class.
• How the middle class became the underclass (And how the DECLINE OF UNIONS hastens the decline of the middle class)- CNN Money Feb. 16, 2011
• Gov Walker's threat to American political stability (Huffpo, Steven Cohen, 3/2011)
• The American middle class owes its existence to the fact and threat of union organizing. That is why the attack on public workers' right to collective bargaining is an attack on the middle class
•  Michael Moore, "The Smug Wealthy Have Gone Too Far", Alternet 3/6/2011
• 400 obscenely rich people, most of whom benefited in some way from the multi-trillion dollar taxpayer "bailout" of 2008, now have more loot, stock and property than the assets of 155 million Americans combined. If you can't bring yourself to call that a financial coup d'état, then you are simply not being honest about what you know in your heart to be true
• Michael Moore: We Face a Global War on the Middle Class, AlterNet 3/2011 
• "Foreclosure Follies" House Republicans have introduced bills to eliminate four federal antiforeclosure programs and replace them with — nothing - NYT Ed, 3/2011
• The American Dream is Disappearing for This Generation! - Brian Conners, 2/2011 (compares our econ. situation to Egypt)

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Men of a Certain Wage - Money Talks
www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor & Satire Blog

The Daily Show on Facebook

("Men of a Certain wage - Money Talks")

[this post was getting too long; I've split off the UNION links to its own blog post]

(related content on Unions and Wisconsin at "Middle Class Fights Back" and "It's the Economy, Stupid" posts)

Civil Liberties, Obama and Bush

Torture, detainees w/o trials, Guantanamo, the PATRIOT act, the alarming (and unconstitutional) expansion of executive power--to me, these were among the most insulting offenses of the Bush administration.  I remember very clearly listening, during the 2008 election cycle, analysis (perhaps on This American Life? Perhaps Glenn Greenwald?) of Obama's positions on the expansion of executive power.  The commentator said, "We should not feel comfortable that Obama will reverse these breaches".

If I remember correctly, this analysis was only about executive power, not civil liberties abuses.  But as the Obama administration has failed to reverse Bush policies on detentions, or close Gitmo, or speak out strongly against the overreach of the PATRIOT act, I have thought of that bit of radio again and again.

Keeping Track of the GOP/Teaparty Leadership in 112th Congress

• President Obama Calls Out Mike Lee's Scorched Earth Obstructionism | ThinkProgress (1/30/2012) 
• 12 Examples of Stunning Hypocrisy from Tea Party Republicans In One Short Month | Tea Party and the Right | AlterNet (2/2011)
• Legislative GOP: Wasn't it Jobs, Jobs, Jobs??? (MN Prog Action, 1/26/11) [More on this theme at the Culture Wars entry]
• Comparing Pelosi's and Boehner's first months in office: 19 bills passed, vs. 4 for Boehner... And Republican Congress has been in session less than half the time of time of Pelosi's congress (2/2011)

Reaganing

Jack Donaghy is Reaganing (30 Rock)

"Conservatives don't worship Ronald Reagan. They worship what they believe Ronald Reagan to be"

• Politifact puts Reagan Claims to Truth-O-Meter (handy!) (2/8/2011)
• Reagan a tax/spend big gov guy who was also a pragmatist who respected objective reality (Eugene Robinson, 2/8/2011)
• Reagan, tax cuts, GDP (addicting info 2/11)
• Reagan unemployment rate almost 11% in 1982/high unemployment mirrored by high disapproval during his term
• Caller challenges Limbaugh on Reagan myth; Rush seems bewildered (2/2011)
• 5 Myths about Reagan's legacy (Will Bush, WaPo, 2/4/11)
• 10 Things Conservatives don't want you to know about Reagan (Think Progress, 2/5/2011)
• Reagan cared more abt UFOs than AIDS (Salon 2/4/11)
• Reagan's Triple Legacy (C&L, 2/5/11)
• Regan's embrace of Apartheid South Africa (Salon, 2/5/11)
• Reagan: Enemy of the American Worker (Truthout, 2/4/11)
• Reagan, Terrorist (RubberStampRoskm 2/6/2010--Reagan's 99th)
• Reagan's bin Laden connection (Slate, June 2004)
• Reagan's impact on education today (WaPo, 2/6/2011)

Reagan would be called a Socialist today

• Marco Rubio: Reagan erred in supporting 1986 amnesty for illegal immigrants

Hagiography

• America is like Reagan's Jellybeans by Ben Quayle (Politico, 2/2011)

Money, Influence, Corporations, Corruption, Lobbying

Until we fix how money courses thru elections and electeds' offices, we're always going to have a government and legislation written for the interest of those w/ the most $$$ (corporations!) and not that of the American people (98% 99.5% of whom don't have terribly a lot of $$--and certainly not enough to tip the influence of corporations).

UPDATE: I've made a separate collection just for  Citizens United

It's the Money, Stupid

• Great discussion: Lawrence Lessig on Money, Corruption and Politics | On Point with Tom Ashbrook (1/2/2012)
• the real problem is money in politics, not people in politics. Winning Progressive - Fighting for Jobs and Against Money in Politics (May 2011)
• Who's Paying for the GOP's Plan to Hijack the 2012 Election? | Mother Jones  (nov 2011)

Blame the Brown People

Culture, Racism, some History

• Low IQ & Conservative Beliefs Linked to Prejudice - Yahoo! News (1/26/2012)  
• Culture Poisons Brain With Racism, Study Finds| LiveScience (10/2/2011) 
• It’s No Joke to Self-Deceivers - Ideas Market - (5/21/2012) WSJ - http://goo.gl/4YzEy - 
• "People who, in tests of implicit associations, for example, showed a preference for white people over black people, laughed more heartily at racially charged jokes."
• Alto Arizona! - History of Racist U.S. Laws - http://bit.ly/RHcN83
• The Echochamber amplifies and reproduces nativist attitudes: http://bit.ly/PU3KdZ

Fantasy Obama/Obama Paranoia

• Right-Wing Activists: 'Obama is working with Islamists to bring down Christianity, the West and America' | rightwingwatch.org (8/7/2012) - http://goo.gl/5zqG1
• Juan Williams (!) - Racial code words obscure real issues - TheHill.com (1/31/12) 
• Report: Unprecedented Number Of Death Threats Against Obama -- And Secret Service Overwhelmed | TPM LiveWire (10/18/2009) 

(MORE AFTER FLIP)