Wednesday, July 28, 2010

The Bush Economy, Unemployment and Suicide

For a host of reasons, I have made it my policy for now not to go public with my own personal situation.  At least not yet. I deal with my own personal pain and suffering mostly by focusing on making a change and fighting for the countless numbers of others whose plight is far worst than my own.

Last night I was in a DM chat with a twitter friend of mine when it suddenly got quite personal for both of us. It turned out that this twitter friend and I share many of the same challenges in life much of which is caused by the severe devastation of the Bush Economic Policies. Our chat went on for quite some time until late into the night. Finally, I told him I was feeling exhausted and need some sleep. I did my best to encourage him and told him to be strong and keep fighting for the change we ALL desperately need.

This morning I woke up and checked in on the twitter front. In my ‘Mentions’ column was two tweets directed at me from two different people. One contained a letter the other a video. Both were in essence companion pieces relating to the quiet desperation of the unemployed.  I did numerous versions of ‘ReTweeting’ them both, before combining them together in one tweet. I sent that tweet out in various forms; some to the general twitter community and some directed at particular friends asking them to consider posting them on their blogs and websites.

     Before I show you the video and letter, I want to first have you take a look at this graph I got from Netroots Nation 2010 in Las Vegas. It was one of several graphics that AFL-CIO President Richard L.Trumka used during his address to the convention.

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Real World Politics: The Bush Economy, Unemployment and Suicide

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
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Last night Jon Stewart responded to Barack Obama’s much talked about appearance on "The View," or as Stewart refers to it, "a daily show about the misadventures of the world’s unluckiest couch." While Obama made criticisms about the media during his coffee talk, the media also lashed out at him for appearing on the show, calling it inappropriate and undignified. Other more specific criticisms revolved around the President missing a semi-annual Boy Scouts Of America conference.

Stewart defended Obama’s appearance on the show in two ways, first by showing a clip of former president George W. Bush and his wife in an interview with Dr. Phil wherein he asks, "were y’all spankers? Did you spank him?" Secondly, he came to the conclusion that if Obama had ditched the "View" appearance for the Boy Scouts, the conservative media would have skewered him for missing a candid conversation with women on national television, saying "nothing Obama does will ever make you f**king happy."

Speculating on whether or not either presidential appearance was really warranted, Stewart then asked if a "campfire sing-along or couch-side coffee klatch are the really the President’s only two options?"

Stewart To Media: ‘Nothing Obama Does Will Ever Make You F**king Happy’ (VIDEO)

If we are serious about the budget deficit we will allow the Bush tax cuts on those making in excess of $200,000 per year to expire. The false talking point that this would affect a large number of small businesses was debunked by factcheck.org the first time McCain made this argument (http://bit.ly/c3JMGA).

By simple experience, President Clinton had higher marginal tax rates with a robust economy and much more employment than Reagan. President Bush had one of the worst performances with some of the lowest tax rates and largest budget deficits.

The WallStreet Journal article at http://bit.ly/afeNTH is telling. Carter in four years had more jobs created than BushII in 8 years.

If one simply looks at the numbers, it would seem that while Republicans talk a good game, performance seem to occur under Democratic Presidents. I simply do not understand why Democrats are so poor at selling their virtues and why the American population seems so content to be uninformed.

DailyKos

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

This story touched me for one specific reason.  The systemic unemployment will affect those over 45 years of age more that anyone else; this specifically because of the oversupply of young unemployed citizens as well as rampant outsourcing. Unfortunately many of those over 45 years old are the same people who are buying into the less government programs / low taxes paranoia which effectively hurts them whether unemployed or not.

If you are over 45 years of age and unemployed, your prospect for employment at any level you expect going forward is grim. Your only option is self employment so find a passion and get on with it. Luckily with the passage of healthcare reform, employment by a major corporation to ensure healthcare is no longer necessary as you can no longer be denied the purchase of healthcare insurance.

If you are 45 years of age and employed prepare yourself to be replaced by a younger less expensive employee or outsourced, so act as if you are unemployed. It is imperative that that we are cognizant that America is going through a profound paradigm shift and we grasp for the past at our peril.

Most importantly it is imperative that you become an informed voter as opposed to misinformed voter adept to rhetoric and sound bytes.

Until 18 months ago, Maria Ortiz says she never had to search for a job in her life. As a highly skilled bilingual Ph.D. and the first ever Mexican-American woman to be admitted into Brigham Young University’s graduate school of management, Ortiz was always the kind of woman universities would beg to come work for them.

After working and teaching in California for 20 years, Ortiz was recruited in 2007 for a highly specialized job at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She left her stable situation to take a chance on a new program she believed in, but the program folded due to budget cuts less than two years later in January 2009, right in the middle of the recession.

Ortiz frantically applied for jobs for the next 18 months, running through all $15,000 of her savings, exhausting all 99 weeks of unemployment benefits and eventually having to draw from Social Security and accept financial aid from her local church congregation to help pay the rent. Monday morning, on her 63rd birthday, Ortiz says she received yet another job rejection phone call, and she felt like she could no longer hold it together.

"I cried the whole day on Monday," she told HuffPost. "It’s painful. It’s embarrassing. I worked so hard. I have all this experience and education. I was careful and prepared. I kept savings — I did everything right. Why am I living on handouts? I always felt like there were needy people out there that needed the help more than I did, but now I am turning into one of those people. Look at this. This is how the middle class is evaporating."

Ortiz lives in Las Vegas, Nevada, where the unemployment rate is currently the highest in the country. She says that while people often think of higher education jobs as being in a different category than most others, like construction or health care, she has experienced the same frustrations applying in her field as anyone else.

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Disappearing Middle Class: Bilingual Ph.D. Accepts Rent Money From Church

Usually, high-powered insurance company lobbyists in Washington, DC takes a long, luxurious August vacation – but not this year.  This year the lobbyists have turned their sights to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) in a blatant attempt to hijack reform.¹

After spending millions of dollars and employing thousands of lobbyists only to lose the battle against reform the insurance companies are desperate for any opportunity to weaken the new health care law.²  That’s why the lobbyists are targeting the NAIC – the new law tasks them with making recommendations on regulations to HHS Secretary Sebelius.

Click here to call your Insurance Commissioner and tell them you support tough regulations that make health care affordable and hold the insurance companies accountable.

Now is a critical time.  The detailed rules and regulations written in the upcoming months will determine whether or not the new law fulfills its promise and the insurance companies know it.  They don’t want anything to stand in the way of their profits and fat CEO salaries. The insurance companies have moved to a full court press to influence the NAIC and water-down reform.

We must fight back.  Tell your Insurance Commissioner you support strong regulations that control costs and check the rampant insurance company greed.

Today HCAN held a press conference with Senator Al Franken (MN) and Congressman Bill Pascrell Jr. (NJ-08) to shine a light on the need for regulations.  HCAN released a report on how insurance premium rules will control costs for businesses and families.³  In May we delivered 30,000 of your public comments on insurance regulations to Secretary Sebelius and now we have to keep up the pressure.

The insurance companies are determined to subvert reform every step of the way.  We have to tell the NAIC and show HHS that we want strong regulations that keep down costs and hold the insurance companies accountable.

In Solidarity,
Melinda Gibson
Health Care for America Now

1. Wendell Potter, Center for Media and Democracy, "State Insurance Commissioners Take Baton From Congress,"

2. http://www.healthreform.gov/newsroom/naicletter.html

3. http://healthcareforamericanow.org/newpremiumrules

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said on Wednesday that despite all their public criticism, Republican lawmakers tell him in private that they think the administration’s stimulus package has been a success.

"I believe the economic recovery plan has worked," LaHood said, in an interview with the Huffington Post, "and I’ve had Republican members tell me that when I’ve gone in and done projects or been with them or visited them in their offices… They know that we have dollars that have put people to work."

Speaking days before he was set to address a conference of progressive activists, LaHood’s remarks were offered as part of a broader defense of the president’s economic recovery agenda. The Transportation Secretary has been one of the administration’s main pitchmen and administrators for the stimulus package, overseeing the roughly $50 billion that has been set aside for infrastructure projects. But his unique expertise comes from having served — prior to his current post — as a Republican member of the House of Representatives.

LaHood was largely diplomatic when asked to reflect on his former colleagues’ criticism. But in saying that Republicans have privately told him that the stimulus is working, he added fuel to the debate over whether the GOP has been duplicitous or unfair in their critiques. Already, there have been numerous press reports of lawmakers attending stimulus-related ribbon cutting ceremonies in their districts as well as lobbying different government agencies for stimulus funds.

"There would be thousands of people out of work if it weren’t for the economic recovery program. Thousands of people," LaHood said of the Recovery Act. "We know that thousands of jobs have been created. We know that thousands of projects are underway. All you have to do is travel around American, see the orange cones, and see the men and women working on infrastructure, working on projects, resurfacing roads… there is a lot of activity in America and a lot of people working. This would not have happened if not for the economic recovery."

"So what I say to people is, ‘Take a few steps in my footsteps.’" He added, "Travel the country like I have for the last 18 months and you will know that America is working and wouldn’t be working if it hadn’t been for this plan."

One of the more frank and affable members of the White House, LaHood’s Republican roots provide him with a certain credibility in the stimulus debate. To this point, however, he’s done much of his work out of the public spotlight, spending his time instead traveling to more than 80 cities and 30 states to launch and oversee various projects. His bullishness with respect to the stimulus is not shared by the public, which is largely skeptical about its reach. To which LaHood blames both the media and the country’s prevailing unemployment problem.

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Secretary LaHood: Republicans Tell Me In Private The Stimulus Is Working

By Ralph Z. Hallow

The Republican National Committee failed to report more than $7 million in debt to the Federal Election Commission in recent months – a move that made its bottom line appear healthier than it is heading into the midterm elections and that also raises the prospect of a hefty fine.

In a memo to RNC budget committee members, RNC Treasurer Randy Pullen on Tuesday accused Chairman Michael S. Steele and his chief of staff, Michael Leavitt, of trying to conceal the information from him by ordering staff not to communicate with the treasurer – a charge RNC officials deny.

Mr. Pullen told the members that he had discovered $3.3 million in debt from April and $3.8 million from May, which he said had led him to file erroneous reports with the FEC. He amended the FEC filings Tuesday.

Campaign-finance analysts said that simply misreporting fundraising numbers to the FEC can lead to millions of dollars in fines and that criminal charges can be levied if the actions are suspected to be intentional.

"This is significant because the civil penalties could mean big fines that take a significant bite out of the RNC‘s finances close to the November congressional elections, when state parties need the RNC‘s financial help for their ‘victory’ programs," said former FEC Commissioner Hans A. von Spakovsky.

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RNC fails to report $7M in debt to FEC – Washington Times

The shame of right-wing "journalism"

Andrew Breitbart and Tucker Carlson distort facts to smear liberals, and it works. What liberals should learn Video

By Joan Walsh

Andrew Breitbart and Tucker Carlson

It pains me to pay attention to the work of the Daily Caller, Tucker Carlson’s vanity project, as Carlson vies to compete with Andrew Breitbart on the right-wing "investigative journalism" frontier. What Carlson’s "journalism" has in common with Breitbart’s (besides being ethics-free) is blowing up stories that purport to "expose" the left with what are supposed to be the left’s own words — except that later, it will turn out that "the left’s own words" will have been hyped, manipulated and selectively edited, and that the story was baloney.

Today a big Breitbart "scoop" blew up in his angry face, when it was shown that the Big Journalism proprietor selectively edited a clip of an African-American USDA official seeming to admit she treated a white farmer poorly out of her own racial bias. It turns out that Shirley Sherrod was actually telling the story to show how the issue of race often obscures the issue of class, and the fact that poor black farmers and poor white farmers had a lot in common (eventually, she helped and became close to the white farmer and his family) — but Breitbart left all of that out of the video (just as he selectively and unfairly edited his cartoonish ACORN tapes).

Unbelievably, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack fired Sherrod based on Breitbart’s creative editing, which left out Sherrod’s real point (and in fact, accused her of making the opposite point) and also made it seem as though she was talking about something she did while working for the USDA, when the experience in question took place 24 years ago, when she worked for a nonprofit. If Vilsack doesn’t hire Sherrod back, I will personally contribute to her legal fund.

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The shame of right-wing "journalism" – Joan Walsh – Salon.com