But they refuse to look in the mirror. That refusal is at the root of our economic troubles and global competitiveness…not the government.

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich throws the gauntlet down yet again on the 1%ers out there. The current mythology and meme has the average American—especially white people suffused with confusion and cognitive dissonace about the American Dream, their waning power and the typical scapegoats—acting like rape and abuse victims who’ve been conditioned to blame themselves for what’s been done…

—CAC 

politicalprof:

I realize this is already viral, but if you haven’t seen it, it’s absolutely worth 6 minutes of your time: Visualizing the reality of inequality.

ht: MG

Of course it wasn’t about unions. Or diabetes and obesity. Its always been about money, and ROI.

—CAC

Another myth busted, along with not taxing the 1%.

 My cliff was seeing a fit end to my yoke, as a bondsman to lesser men who considered me less than such. I died to free my wife, thusly. So I have a different eye on the manufactured crisis now faced by a victorious Negro president, who was but an atom in the ether when I lived, and died, eaten by pigs in a muddy lane in Harpers Ferry. I posit these questions to the you all, then, about this so-called fiscal cliff—

Is this another Myth, created by the descendants of the same men, the Slave Power, who minted the myth that we were “Cannibals, All” or that God Almighty had imbured them with a righteous cause which was once ordained by federal power, thence, suddenly, with the election of another gentle man from Illinois, decreed by a state’s power?  The white man Paul Krugman opined: “The looming prospect of spending cuts and tax increases isn’t a fiscal crisis. It is, instead, a political crisis brought on by the GOP’s attempt to take the economy hostage.”Republicans are manufacturing this crisis to pressure Democrats to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy and accept painful cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. What they could not do in the Election…like starting a bloody war 18 months after I died.

The Bush Tax Cuts Finally End December 31. If Congress does nothing, the ax will fall on all the Bush tax cuts on New Year’s Eve. Then, on January 1, the public pressure on John Boehner and House Republicans to extend the middle-class tax cuts (already passed by the Senate and waiting to be signed by President Obama) will become irresistible.So the middle-class tax cut will eventually get renewed, and the coffers will have $823 billion more revenue from the top 2% to improve the common good and roads, bridges, life and health.

And what of “The Sequester?” The sequester is another political creation, forced on Democrats by Republicans in exchange for lifting the debt ceiling last year to avoid destruction.It’s a set of cuts (50% to a bloated military budget and 50% to important domestic programs) designed to make both Republicans and Democrats hate it so much that they’d never let it happen. And the cuts can be reversed weeks or months into 2013 without causing damage.

Nothing happens to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid benefits on January 1—unless Republicans force painful cuts to beneficiaries in exchange for tax increases on the wealthy, which are going to happen anyway if Congress does NOTHING.So, there’s literally no reason benefits cuts should be part of the discussion right now.

This once low-bent bondsman, turned warrior for a day, offers this humble opine, in the hopes that you among the living catch your wits.

—D.N.

fernandofrench:

Readers, we need your help.

We want Isn’t It Pretty To Think So? to be stocked on the bookshelves of every great independent bookstore.

But there are, like, thousands of them. Help us whittle down the list by responding with your favorites.

Amen

(via vintageanchorbooks)

From The Atlantic. Interesting lede & thesis: “In a fascinating 2011 study, the economist Todd Gabe identified the key factors behind this creative class wage premium. He found it is less the result of working around people or firms in the same industry and more about interacting with other creative workers who reside in the same region. Creative class wages are also higher in larger cities and metros that offer more diversity across different kinds of creative work.”

The article ranks metro areas where it pays to be a member of the creative class. “Professionals in the fields of science and technology, design and architecture, arts, entertainment and media, and healthcare, law, management and education.” The unemployment in that sector—one that President Obama claims he represents, and Mitt Romney has skirted to court the redneck/ban evolution/anti climate change vote. The Number One place: San Jose, CA. Silicon Valley.

Diversity? Somewhat. The number one region’s tech sector anchor isn’t exactly a font for people of color, but others are, such as the Boston to DC Megaplex, or Raleigh-Durham, Houston.

Perhaps the candidates ought to pay attention. Yes, hardhats, displaced public sector employees, gum chewing Wal Mart clerks, are the keys to swing state votes. But the vital nerve center of those states and this nation, increasingly, are the creative class. How European!

“Next time you hear Mitt Romney’s proxies blame unions or minorities, think about this” - Prof Christopher Chambers

[Below is an op piece from two years ago, still timely, from my fellow martyr Nat Turner. But first here’s some insight for you to measure from Michael Tomasky in The Daily Beast, which purports to unmask Mitt Romeny’s dismal record with the Massachusetts economy, as governor. Forget Romneycare, or being a corporate raider. Just check him out a as a public servant. “Romney avoids talking about his health-care policies because they’re too liberal, but he also doesn’t want to talk about jobs because his record here is so lame from any ideological perspective” —D.N.  ]

This week, singer John Legend repeated his aim to donate his Bush Tax Cut millionaire’s windfall to help offset cuts in the arts, and help Americans—especially African Americans—who are unemployed and facing eviction or foreclosure. Contrast this with this week’s other news: former Massachusetts governor and possible 2012 presidential aspirant Mitt Romney penned an op-ed in The Boston Herald purporting to offer a blueprint for “more jobs.”

Governor Romney titled this piece “Obama Misery Index Hits All-time High” — as if it were a real piece of objective reporting. Trouble is, the op-ed, its title and its economic blueprint, are all smoke. The “Obama Misery Index” is a fairy tale, invented by, well, Mitt Romney. Meanwhile, real people are suffering.

The smoke does carries the piquant taste of Mitt Romney’s wealth-enhancing plan. That is, continued wealth for commercial and investment bankers, hedge fund managers, greedy CEOs seeking any finance vehicle to give them a short term jump, former derivatives pushers and their trickle-down remora…mortgage lenders. In other words, the folks who brought us the misery in the first place appear to be Romney’s true constituents. No smoke there.

Concomitantly, fables like a “Misery Index” cloak such reality from average Americans, including the “Joe the Plumber” types who abandoned Romney in 2008 when he sought the Republican nomination against John McCain and who flock now to Tea Party activism (financed by the not-so-populist Koch Brothers).

Perhaps the only truth Romney engages in the op-ed is that the President “outsourced” the spadework of job-creating economic policy to former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D. Nevada) and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D. Ca.). Laying anything at Congress’s doorstep invites pork and pandering, not policy. And indeed, I have long considered Barack Obama, like Jimmy Carter (target of the original “misery index” label in 1980, pinned by Ronald Reagan) a technocrat, a Spock, a wonk.

Yet from there, Mitt Romney’s “truth” becomes vapor.

Reduce ruinously high taxes on “employers,” he says. Maybe with lower taxes, less regulation, jobs will return, even from overseas outsourcing? First, all, according to sources like the World Bank-IMF, the Tax Policy Center, Organization of Economic Cooperation & Development and our own Federal Reserve and U.S. Department of Commerce, American employers pay some the lowest, not highest payroll taxes (unemployment insurance, social security-related, etc.) in the industrialized world, and indeed nations with both higher payroll taxes on employers and taxes wealthy citizens now have:


· Higher living standards


· Lower consumer debt, lower crime, lower teen pregnancy and out of wedlock births, lower infant mortality, lower income inequality between among the rich, poor and middle class, lower healthcare costs, lower excessive CEO compensation


· Higher personal investment rates, home ownership rates; lower healthcare costs and income disparity—unlike the U.S. where despite the 2008-09 economic meltdown, the rich get richer the poor poorer, the middle class more burdened.

Mitt Romney doesn’t discuss those ironies, of course. Nor would he bother touching this: the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that most U.S. and foreign corporations doing business in the U.S. pay almost no corporate income tax. This means that huge foreign corporations paid no federal income taxes measuring year 2005—before the Wall Street collapse— despite $372 billion in gross receipts. Most of the largest U.S. companies paid little or no federal income taxes despite $1.1 trillion in gross sales. Accordingly, when Mitt Romney claims that outsourcing jobs is a response to Obama’s “big government” and taxes on the rich, he’s fooling us. Coupled with this smokescreen is the fact that long before Barack Obama took office, the U.S. been effectively mortgaged itself to China, India, Europe and nations in the middle east; foreign governments and corporations now own trillions our foreign debt and assets.

Tea Party leaders and Republicans in general are still divided over giving Mitt Romney a pass for another blueprint—the very liberal 2005 Massachusetts healthcare reform package Romney himself created…and from which Barack Obama borrowed as a model for his own plan! Now Romney attacks “Obamacare” in the op-ed as contributing to “misery?” Frankly I thought it was a lack of affordable healthcare coverage that causes misery. Accordingly, is Mitt Romney embodying irony or hypocrisy in his op-ed? As with Wall Street, it would appear that Mitt Romney may consider patriotism is a virtue until it interferes with making money. But it’s not merely the millionaire’s and Wall Street welfare system— rejected by folk like John Legend—that’s disturbing. What’s also nettlesome is Mitt Romney trying to hide the real reason’s why he’s invented a “Misery Index.”

In case you slept through the first part of this essay, I’ll make it clear: he’s part of the misery. His personal net worth was $250 million when he surrendered the GOP nomination to John McCain—including holdings in foreign export credit corporations and bank stock. Of course, in the op-ed he trumpets his private sector experience in “creating jobs.” That experience accrued mainly through his association with Bain & Co., an investment and venture capital business with tax-free fund holdings in Bermuda and the Cayman Islands, and has raided and bankrupted big companies like Staples and Kay Bee Toys. Jobs, pensions, health insurance—all gone.


Here’s a mighty run-on sentence for you. No number of op-eds decrying Obama’s 2009’s Stimulus package, or “Obamacare” or extolling tax cuts, cuts in social services, destroying regulating worker safety, consumer protection, regulating banks and wall Street and CEO pay, or exhorting an end to affirmative action, gun control, abortion and birth control, blah blah can create a true Misery Index except in the minds of people so deranged by dissonace at perceived fading power, or plain racism. But they do augment, excerbate, add what I can call “The Romney Smoke.” As rich as John Legend might be, he’ll always seem more one of “us”—we average Americans demanding jobs and economic justice—than Mitt Romney.

Back in 2008 (after the Florida Republican primary), a black conservative friend (I will have to keep the name close to the vest) lamented Mitt Romney’s crash and burn. I chuckled and said that it had nothing to do with conservatives doubting his bona fides in favor of Mike Huckabee or vacuous rock stars like Fred Thompson or Rudy Giuilani. Rather, I mused,

“Romney reminds people of ‘Lumberg’ in the movie “Office Space.” He’s a smarmy boss-type who lays you off then takes his own golden parachute so he can eventually do the same at some other place. Unfortunately too many folks want to be like him, because they perceive nothing else to measure their value other than unworthy types below them on the totem pole.”