The tubez this morning are filled with discussion of a "senior White House aide" attacking organized labor for labor's support of Bill Halter, who nearly unseated incumbent Arkansas Senator Blanche Lincoln in the Democratic primary yesterday.
These numbers are impressive, and they surprised me. But remember, these are numbers that are bouncing back from somewhere deeper than the basement floor. There's a long climb back to the top still ahead of us.
I was inspired by Michael Collins' wonderful article, Where are the Populists? to make this contribution. I have been spending much time this winter peering through the kaleidoscope of American history at what happened in the early 1900s, when progressives were able to ride a rapidly rising wave of populism to political power, and institute some major reforms that still redound to our advantage today. These progressive populists were able to achieve a number of specific goals, such as direct primaries (to break the rule of state and city political bosses), direct popular election of U.S. Senators (to break the stranglehold large business and financial interests had acquired over the selection process in state legislatures), and some reforms within the U.S. Congress that curtailed the power of entrenched interests by curbing some of the administrative power of House Speaker Joseph Cannon.
“China Unveils the World’s Fastest Super High-Speed Train” versus “America’s Top Ten Performing Banks.” If you can’t figure out, from this one picture, what’s wrong with this country, and where we’re headed on our present course, I really don’t think there’s anything that I could write that would enlighten you.
This was written and posted by Mitchell Hirsch last week at Working America's 'Main Street' blog, where he is a featured guest blogger. Mitch was kind enough to email me his HTML text to cross post it here.
What if Wall Street's financial transactions could be taxed to help fund job creation and economic recovery on Main Street? Politically the idea is vastly appealing, especially in the wake of Wall Street's bailouts and the resurgence of its obscene bonus plans. But as it turns out a financial transactions tax also makes a lot of economic sense.
The basic idea is fairly simple. Impose a small percentage tax of anywhere from .02% to .5% on things like securities trades and derivatives transactions, thereby generating an estimated $150 billion annually.
Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not. —Robert F. Kennedy
According to figures compiled by the America Society of Civil Engineers, a multi-year program of just repairing all existing U.S. infrastructure requires an additional $1.134 trillion dollars than already planned funding.
Using various employment multipliers specific to types of infrastructure (more discussion below), such a program spread over five years cen be expected to create 4.605 million direct and indirect jobs.
In remarks that will fuel the row around excessive pay, Lord Griffiths, vice-chairman of Goldman Sachs International and a former adviser to Margaret Thatcher, said banks should not be ashamed of rewarding their staff.
Speaking to an audience at St Paul’s Cathedral in London about morality in the marketplace last night, Griffiths said the British public should “tolerate the inequality as a way to achieve greater prosperity for all”
The National Academy of Sciences has issued its own estimates of the number of Americans in poverty, and yes, it’s much worse than the official statistics have been telling us for the past decade. The new NAS formula estimates nearly 1 in 6 Americans, 15.8 percent, are living below the poverty line. That’s 48 million Americans.
By comparison, the latest official Census Bureau statistics are that 13.2 percent of Americans, or 39.8 million, are impoverished. It should be noted that the Census Bureau is reportedly cooperating with the National Academy of Sciences to get this information out as quickly as possible.
Suggestions to solve the financial crises by basically shutting down most of Wall Street are always shouted down by howls of “How are companies going to raise money?” or “How are people going to invest in companies?”
Well, take a good, long look at this graph, which shows the percentage of capital expenditures by U.S. non-financial companies that was raised in U.S. financial markets from 1952 to 2006.
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