Tild sez:   The responsibility for economic policies enacted in the past 27 years that have targeted working class America for destruction needs to be laid exactly where it belongs: on the right’s beloved Saint Ronald fucking Reagan.  A new book by Dean Baker takes some big strides towards that end… 

America Since 1980: A Right Turn Leading to a Dead End

By Dean Baker, AlterNet. Posted April 27, 2007.

Economist Dean Baker’s new book lays waste to the Reagan Revolution’s unprecedented assault on working Americans’ economic security.

Editor’s note: this is adapted from Dean Baker’s new book, The United States since 1980 (The World Since 1980).

U.S. politics took a sharp turn to the right in 1980 with the election of Ronald Reagan as president. Domestically, Reagan touted an agenda that would lead to a sharp upward redistribution of income. Internationally, Reagan explicitly rejected the “détente” framework for engaging the Soviet Union that had been accepted by the leadership of both major parties since the beginning of the Cold War. In its place, Reagan put forward a doctrine of U.S. unilateralism in which the United States basically claimed the right to do whatever it wanted, unconstrained by allies or international institutions.

The welfare state in the United States was always weaker than in West Europe, but in 1980 it was reasonable to believe that West Europe presented a model that the United States would follow. Medicare and Medicaid were still relatively new programs, having been established just 14 years earlier. Having recently seen a massive expansion of publicly provided healthcare coverage, many people believed that it would not be long before healthcare coverage was extended to the entire population. Other features of European welfare states, such as long vacations, short work weeks, and paid parental leave (generally maternity leave at the time), also seemed feasible political goals.

Reagan’s election changed the political reality. His agenda was rolling back the welfare state, and his budgets included a wide range of cuts for social programs. He was also very strategic about the process. One of his first targets was Legal Aid. This program, which provides legal services for low-income people, was staffed largely by progressive lawyers, many of whom used it as a base to win precedent-setting legal disputes against the government. Reagan drastically cut back the program’s funding. He also explicitly prohibited the agency from taking on class-action suits against the government — law suits that had been used with considerable success to expand the rights of low- and moderate-income families.

The Reagan administration also made weakening the power of unions a top priority. The people he appointed to the National Labor Relations Board were qualitatively more pro-management than appointees by prior Democratic or Republican presidents. This allowed companies to ignore workers’ rights with impunity. Reagan also made the firing of strikers an acceptable business practice when he fired striking air traffic controllers in 1981. Many large corporations quickly embraced the practice. Also, his high dollar policy in the mid-’80s was a severe blow to manufacturing unions, who suddenly had to compete against low-cost imports that were essentially subsidized by an overvalued dollar.

The net effect of these policies was that union membership plummeted, going from nearly 20 percent of the private sector workforce in 1980 to just over 7 percent in 2006. Inequality soared, as the vast majority of the gains from economic growth over the next quarter century went to high-end wage earners (e.g., doctors, lawyers, CEOs) and profits. The wages of typical workers increased little from 1980 to 2006.

On the international side, Reagan followed through on his campaign promise to reject the arms control agreements that previous administrations had negotiated with the Soviets. He insisted on going back to the drawing board and negotiating proposals for arms reduction, not just freezes. While Reagan eventually found a more accommodating enemy than he had anticipated when Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the Soviet Union, his belligerence towards the Soviet Union was a deliberate break with prior administrations.

[Read the whole article here]

 

Posted: April 27th, 2007 under Books, General, Reaganomics.
Comments: none

Tild sez: When I saw this story it really took me back a few years. Mike Daisey’s blog was one of the first ones I ever read, way back in those halcyon days of early 2003. Mike’s blog was a blogspot “Blog of Note” when I first started poking around in the blogosphere, so I took note and read him for quite a while until eventually I was wooed away by bigger flashier more exotic fare. Good to see him again.

Monday, April 23, 2007

The watering of Mike Daisey

by Joshua Glenn in the Boston Globe

Globe theater critic Louise Kennedy reviewed Mike Daisey’s comical-philosophical monologue “Invincible Summer,” now playing (till April 29) at the Carr Human Rights Foundation-supported Zero Arrow Theatre in Cambridge. She loved Daisey, but was disappointed in the crowd: “the empty seats were only slightly less responsive than the full ones,” she wrote, and: “Here’s hoping [Daisey's other shows] get the wide-awake audiences they deserve.”

Well, Daisey finally did get a responsive audience. As a number of my favorite bloggers — including Jason Grote at Confessions of an English Jason Grote Eater, John Hodgman at Good Evening, Annalee Newitz at Table of Malcontents, Edward Champion at Return of the Reluctant — reported over the weekend, on Thursday night Daisey’s performance was interrupted when a large portion of the audience (87 people) suddenly walked out. According to theater management, or so I’ve heard, it was a group of (Christian) choir students and their parents and teachers. But let’s let Daisey tell the story:

I am performing the show to a packed house, when suddenly the lights start coming up in the house as a flood of people start walking down the aisles — they looked like a flock of birds who’d been startled, the way they all moved so quickly, and at the same moment… it was shocking, to see them surging down the aisles. The show halted as they fled, and at this moment a member of their group strode up to the table, stood looking down on me and poured water all over the outline, drenching everything in a kind of anti-baptism.

[Read the rest here]

Watch it at YouTube:

[UPDATE]

Tild sez: In a terrific followup post, Mike relates the details of his search for and confrontation with his attacker the next day:

The group responsible for the incident is from a public high school, though they identified themselves to me as a Christian group as they fled the theater–it’s barely audible on the YouTube clip, as an adult tells me they are a Christian group, then flees for the door, refusing to engage with me. Then in the lobby of the theater and on the phone to the box office they identified themselves again and again as a Christian group–I don’t know what that says about the division of church and state in Norco, California. As a group, the people in charge freely identified themselves as a Christian group, until reporters call and they remember they are from a public high school.

As has been covered in other media outlets, I know now that the group bought their tickets that day. I have now spoken with the box office staff person who spoke with a representative from the school–when asked if the show had appropriate content for high school students, they were told it had strong language and adult situations. There are multiple corroborating witnesses to this phone conversation.

It bears noting that in fact, there were two high schools there that night–and the other high school STAYED, enjoyed the show, and I had a very good talk with them after the show discussing the work. That high school confirms that they were informed about the language and content of the show when they asked–the box office informs anyone who asks what the show contains.

I did speak with an administrator from the school, and with the individual who ruined my work. I think it’s important to note that *I* found and called *them*–it is clear to me that I never would have heard from any of them again had I not hunted them down. In fact, they were surprised to hear from me, which I think speaks to the lack of understanding and civility on their part. My work had been assaulted, and I had a clear vision of this man standing above me, destroying my work, with hatred in his eyes. I refused to be a victim twice–first by being assaulted, and second by committing the sin of silence. So I knew I had to find them, and speak with the man who did this.

[Read the whole thing here]

Posted: April 24th, 2007 under General.
Comments: 2

Women Catch Up With Men’s 2006 Earnings Today

By Heather Boushey, AlterNet. Posted April 24, 2007.

Today is Equal Pay Day — an anti-holiday that marks how far into 2007 a woman must work to earn as much as a man earned last year.

Equal Pay Day, on April 24, is not quite a national holiday. In fact, it’s something of an anti-holiday, marking how far into 2007 a woman must work to earn as much as a man earned last year. Although women have made gains over the last century, by the most basic measure — pay — they continue to earn 77 cents on the male dollar, even if they have similar educational levels and work in similar kinds of jobs as their male counterparts.

The gender pay gap should be a concern to all Americans, not just women. The typical wife in the United States brings home about one-third of her family’s income, and over the past generation, families with a working wife have been more likely to move up the income ladder. When women are short-changed, the whole family suffers.

This embarrassing fact — hidden in plain view — tends to trigger a barrage of objections from economic and cultural conservatives. Aren’t women just making poor choices? they ask.

While most women probably don’t “choose” to be paid less than their male colleagues, most women do continue to choose to work in different jobs than men and take on the role of primary caregiver at home. Let’s look at the reality. Women are disproportionately represented in lower-paid occupations like nursing, teaching, retail sales, and clerical work, and are more likely than men to work in the nonprofit sector. Women who attend college continue to choose majors that prepare for them for less-well-paid professions (but even within occupations, in the first year out of school, men earn more). And confronted with the reality of anti-family workplaces, women continue to not only do the most caretaking but also bear the economic brunt through lowered lifetime earnings.

So clearly, women, through their choice of occupation, college major and, ahem, “sensitivity” to the well-being of the young and defenseless, are making “bad” choices. If policymakers want to do something about this aspect of the inequality, they’ll pretty much have to focus on getting high school guidance counselors to steer women into nontraditional, higher paid jobs.

So it’s women’s fault, right? Not quite. Another chunk of the pay gap remains unexplained (41 percent, according to economists) by such basic life decisions. This means that if women worked in the same jobs as men and had the same educational and the same experience levels, they would still be making only 90 cents for every male dollar. How do we close this final gap?

[Read the rest]

Posted: April 24th, 2007 under Being Female, Feminism, General.
Comments: none

Here are some very pertinent questions for Tax Day   (…as well as every other day) :

What do we pay taxes for?

What have taxes done for us lately?

and

Why do Republicans keep thinking that Minnesotans are stupid? 

Republicans and other co-called “conservatives” continue to scream about those awful “tax and spend Democrats!”, when if the past 6 years have shown us anything, it’s what a load of bullshit they’re slinging with this particular attack.  Somebody ought to tell Tim Pawlenty and company that the “tax and spend Dems” dog just won’t hunt anymore.  Why do Republicans continue to insult our intelligence by expecting us to believe this crap?      

Charlieq illuminates some answers:

A coalition of progressive advocacy groups has launched an initiative to build support for increasing the size of the Minnesota fiscal pie over the next two years — and to influence where and how to invest the money. The centerpiece of the Invest in Minnesota coalition effort is an email campaign and Web site where supporters of investment can sign a petition to state leaders, contact their legislators, and enlist the support of their friends.

The goal is to demonstrate broad public support for investment in education, health care and transportation when the money is raised fairly and invested with the expectation of a return. That means government should be accountable for where the money goes and what results are achieved. [Read the rest]

~~~

Visit Invest In Minnesota and sign the petition:

 

 

There isn’t a better investment opportunity anywhere.  Let’s commit to this. Won’t you join us?

 

Posted: April 17th, 2007 under General, Minnesota.
Comments: 3

Dear Markos: We know that this has been an eventful time for you. After all, it’s not every day that a man becomes a father. This week you and your wife and son have experienced the joy of welcoming a beautiful baby girl into the world and into the loving embrace of your family. Congratulations, and know that our best wishes are with you all.

Still, I want to remind you that the stress and excitement of these happy days can quickly take a toll on even the hardiest individuals. Hazy judgement and temporary departures from logic happen frequently to parents suffering from sleep deprivation in the first weeks after a baby is born.

We understand, Markos. We know that there are good reasons why you might blurt out a stupid thing or two during these hectic days. You’re tired and not thinking clearly.

Oh, sure, some people have gotten a little riled up over the comments you made the other day. The word “misogyny” was floated around today and that led to a big squabble over whether you had actually been called a misogynist or not, and if you had, was or wasn’t that an even bigger issue and an even stupider comment than the one you made.
Some people defended your endearing, eternal cluelessness vis a vis gender issues, while others complained about your all too blatant dismissiveness towards women. Many wondered just what the hell a proposed blogger code of ethics has to do with death threats against women bloggers and increasingly pervasive online misogyny? Or wondered what you would do if it were your daughter or your wife who was the target of online intimidation and death threats? It was a loud, sometimes bitter discussion and it lasted all day.

Well, Markos, my advice to you is to take every inch of slack that’s being cut for you right now. Take all of it, and then take even more. You’re a parent of a newborn. You ‘ve got all the responsibilities you can handle right now and you need all the rest you can get so that you have the strength to become the well-informed and reasonable father your children deserve.
Go get some sleep!

Posted: April 12th, 2007 under Children, General, Loco Parent.
Comments: 5

Kurt Vonnegut died yesterday at the age of 84.

I know I’m just one of a multitude saying it, but I have to say that this news leaves me very sad.  

Actually I’m only familiar with a few of his books: 

Mother Night

Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons 

Slaughterhouse Five

and, my first encounter with him:

The Sirens of Titan

..which I read when I was 13, and which led me to conclude that Vonnegut must be the most psychotic SF author of all time.  It took me ten years to get over that first impression, but when I did, I embraced the madman and never looked back. 

Until today, that is, when we might all benefit from reading an essay Kurt Vonnegut wrote in 1971:

~~~

June 30, 1971

TORTURE AND BLUBBER

By KURT VONNEGUT Jr.

West Barnstable, Mass.,–When I was a young reader of Robin Hood tales and “The White Company” by Arthur Conan Doyle and so on, I came across the verb “blubber” so often that I looked it up. Bad people in the stories did it when good people punished them hard. It means, of course, to weep noisily and without constraint. No good person in a story ever did that.

But it is not easy in real life to make a healthy man blubber, no matter how wicked he may be. So good men have invented appliances which make unconstrained weeping easier–the rack, the boot, the iron maiden, the pediwinkis, the electric chair, the cross, the thumbscrew. And the thumbscrew is alluded to in the published parts of the secret Pentagon history of the Vietnam war.

The late Assistant Secretary of Defense, John McNaughton, speaks of each bombing of the North as “. . .one more turn of the screw.”

Simply: we are torturers, and we once hoped to win in Indochina and anywhere because we had the most expensive torture instruments yet devised. I am reminded of the Spanish Armada, whose ships had torture chambers in their holds. Protestant Englishmen were going to be forced to blubber.

The Englishmen refused.

Now the North Vietnamese and the Vietcong have refused. Plenty of them have blubbered like crazy as individuals, God knows–when splattered with jellied gasoline, when peppered with white phosphorus, when crammed into tiger cages and sprinkled with lime. But their societies fight on.

Agony never made a society quit fighting, as far as I know. A society has to be captured or killed–or offered things it values. While Germany was being tortured during the Second World War, with justice, may I add, its industrial output and the determination of its people increased. Hitler, according to Albert Speer, couldn’t even be bothered with marveling at the ruins or comforting the survivors. The Biafrans were tortured simultaneously by Nigerians, Russians and British. Their children starved to death. The adults were skeletons. But they fought on.

One wonders now where our leaders got the idea that mass torture would work to our advantage in Indochina. It never worked anywhere else. They got the idea from childish fiction, I think, and from a childish awe of torture.

Children talk about tortures a lot. They often make up what they hope are new ones. I can remember a friend’s saying to me when I was a child: “You want to hear a really neat torture?” The other day I heard a child say to another: “You want to hear a really cool torture?” And then an impossibly complicated engine of pain was described. A cross would be cheaper, and work better, too.

But children believe that pain is an effective way of controlling people, which it isn’t–except in a localized, short-term sense. They believe that pain can change minds, which it can’t. Now the secret Pentagon history reveals that plenty of high-powered American adults think so, too, some of them college professors. Shame on them for their ignorance.

Torture from the air was the only military scheme open to us, I suppose, since the extermination or capture of the North Vietnamese people would have started World War III. In which case, we would have been tortured from the air.

I am sorry we tried torture, I am sorry we tried anything. I hope we will never try torture again. It doesn’t work. Human beings are stubborn and brave animals everywhere. They can endure amazing amounts of pain, if they have to. The North Vietnamese and the Vietcong have had to.

Good show.

The American armada to Indochina has been as narrow-minded and futile as the Spanish Armada to England was, though effectively more cruel. Only 27,000 men were involved in the Spanish fiasco. We are said to have more dope addicts than that in Vietnam.  Hail, Victory.

Never mind who the American equivalent of Spain’s Philip II was. Never mind who lied. Everybody should shut up for a while. Let there be deathly silence as our armada sails home.

 

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. is the author of “Slaughterhouse-Five,” “Cat’s Cradle” and other novels.

[New York Times, June 1971]  

~~~ 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted: April 12th, 2007 under Books, General, Kurt Vonnegut, Torture, the Reading Room.
Comments: none

History gets retouched with the assistance of neo-confederates and their mad photoshop skillz.

(Via Lawyers, Guns and Money)

Hilarious.

So as not to give too much credit where little is due, I need to point out that the genius son of the confederacy who created this fantasy Civil War document didn’t need to use Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro or any similar app.  I did it in five minutes using only MS Paint. 
But let’s not let technicalities intrude on this shining moment in glorious southern revisionist history.   You done real good, Goober!

~~~

Posted: April 11th, 2007 under General, Wingnut Mythology.
Comments: 1

There she is again. For the 10th straight day this is the most-viewed and most-emailed photo on Yahoo news.

Here is the accompanying news story, in toto:

A prospective Denver Broncos cheerleader performs a routine on the first day of auditions in Denver, Colorado March 25, 2007. Over 250 women applied for the 34 slots. REUTERS/Rick Wilking (UNITED STATES) ATTENTION EDITORS - MOVING A PACKAGE OF EIGHT PICTURES FOR ESSAY ON DENVER BRONCOS CHEERLEADERS AUDITION.

That last bit isn’t even part of the story; it’s just a note to the editors that the photographer is sending 8 other pictures.
We are told that on March 25th of this year over 250 women applied for the 34 spots on the Broncos cheerleading squad. The other 8 photos in the package are of the finalists; this lady is not in any of those photos. No, she gets a photo all to herself. And her photo is the most viewed and most emailed of them all.

Am I the only one who’s wondering who this lady is and what her story is?

Please indulge me, dear reader. We all know why this photo is the most popular one out of all nine photos, don’t we?  Please just  allow me to go on in this disingenuous way a little bit longer, won’t you?  I have a few questions…

Why did she audition for the Denver Broncos cheerleaders?

What did she think would happen as a result of doing this?

What did she hope would happen as a result of doing this?   

Was it an April Fool’s stunt?

Is she by chance a stand up comic or some other variety of Fat Comedienne?

Did she lose a bet?  …Or win one?

Is she mentally ill?

Is anybody else on the intertubes posting anything about this lady?   I’ll answer that one right now:  

Those inveterate wits the Freepers know exactly what she is. She is manna from heaven, baby.  Shall we sample a few morsels from their banquet of bon mots?    

Want to bet she’s a Democrat?

~

She’d make a great………offensive lineman…………

~

Ease up. She just had a litter a week ago.

~

You sure she isn’t auditioning for the mascot’s job?

~

She is actually hoping for a walk-on spot on the offensive line. (npi)

~

Ease up. She just had a litter calf a week ago.

~

As Austin Powers would say “ That’s a MAN, baby! Yeah!”

~

I give her 100% credit for trying.
The issue is one of the merits. If she can do the routines and meet the criteria then good for her.
More realistically, I wonder if the newspaper put this picture out because a) most of their left wing readers are ugly women who hate cheerleaders b) their readers are not interested in pretty women…

~

She looks like a flatlander that grazed too much.

~

when did Ward Churchill have the sex change?

~

Geez, how will they stop her from grazing during halftime?

~

That is one good looking hound.

 

Wow.  Thanks for clearing that up for me, Freeps.  

Well I don’t know about you, but I think I’ve reached the limit of my curiousity about this, at least for today. I  have a high level of tolerance for the ways of the world and its endless capacity for wankery and foolishness, but sometimes even for me enough’s enough.      

~~~

Posted: April 10th, 2007 under Being Female, General.
Comments: none

Posted: April 8th, 2007 under General.
Comments: none

Easter weekend is not going well. Today is Day 3 of the horrible, terrible, no good, very bad Cold that has now set up shop in my throat and lungs after spending a couple of days camped out in my sinuses. I can’t speak above a whispery croak; I’m running a 101 fever and I’ve been mainlining guafenesin for the past 24 hours. In short: we have NOT been entertained. Not bloody much, anyhow.

Thankfully, things began to perk up a little today. The way the three major GOP presidential candidates have been falling over themselves and each other in what is apparently a contest to see who can be the most idiotic, maybe they oughta get their own game show on TV. Hmmmm. If they did, I think it might go something like this….

Hello, GOP candidates! Your question today is: If it were your responsibility and yours alone to lift the spirits of a tired, humorless and dejected nation by saying things of a comical nature, what would you decide to say?

GOP Candidate Number One?

“I’m not a big-game hunter. I’ve made that very clear,” he said. “I’ve always been a rodent and rabbit hunter. Small varmints, if you will. I began when I was 15 or so and I have hunted those kinds of varmints since then. More than two times.”

GOP Candidate Number Two?

“Of course I am going to misspeak and I’ve done it on numerous occasions and I probably will do it in the future,” says McCain.
“I regret that when I divert attention to something I said from my message, but you know, that’s just life,” he tells Pelley, adding “I’m happy, frankly, with the way I operate, otherwise it would be a lot less fun.”

And last but not least, GOP Candidate Number Three?

“I don’t like mandating health care. I don’t like it because it erodes what makes health care work in this country — the free
market, the profit motive. A mandate takes choice away from people. We’ve got to let people make choices. We’ve got to let
them take the risk–do they want to be covered? Do they want health insurance? Because ultimately, if they don’t, well, then, they may not be taken care of. I suppose that’s difficult.”

Posted: April 7th, 2007 under General, John McCain, Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani.
Comments: none