“Did you see it?”

“Yeah, I saw it, it was awesome!”

“What’s wrong with his voice?”

“Who cares! It’s great! He’s great!  It was a great message!”

Last night, Twitter was ablaze with references [...]]]> The chatter around the water cooler at the office this morning is about the Clint Eastwood commercial from last night’s SuperDooperBowl.

“Did you see it?”

“Yeah, I saw it, it was awesome!”

“What’s wrong with his voice?”

“Who cares! It’s great! He’s great!  It was a great message!”

Last night, Twitter was ablaze with references to The Commercial.  I would say that 80% of it was favorable.  Don’t hold me to that number, it’s very much a guesstimation, but it’s directionally correct.  Most people said they liked it.  They especially liked the quick reference to the Madison protests.  If you didn’t see it, here it is.

I’m in the 20% camp who didn’t like the commercial.  I found the message manipulative, exploitative and, in retrospect, a hollow vision of America as a corporate controlled wasteland.  The rah-rah of Corporate America, represented by the Chrysler automotive group, never referenced the destruction of good jobs in America through an endless series of trade agreements, championed by these corporate hacks, that moved work offshore and destroyed the manufacturing base of the midwest.  With apologies to Saint Ronoldus, patron Saint of Crony Capitalism,

Chrysler isn’t the solution to our problem, Chrysler is the problem!

Forgive me if I can’t get all misty when a gravely-voiced Clint Eastwood tells me how we’re going to come back stronger than before.  I’m sorry.  I can’t do it.  I’m not buying what Chrysler is selling through their High Plains Drifter spokesmodel.  Because that’s what he is.  A spokesmodel for a corporatist vision of America.  The lone gunman.  The guy who can overcome all obstacles.  Except that that’s a lie.  It’s the biggest lie we tell ourselves as Americans.  The lie of the American Dream that anyone can make it.  They can’t.

You see, the deck is stacked against the average American to a degree we haven’t seen in more than 100 years.  Income inequality and intragenerational income rigidity have combined to make America pre-Revolutionary France.  Born Rich – Die Rich.  Born Poor – Die Poor.  It’s now the American Way.

Forgive me for not cheering.

But what caught my attention [...]]]> Salon has an interesting interview with Arthur Goldwag, author of the new book The New Hate: A History of Fear and Loathing on the Populist Right.  He argues that the racist and conspiracist approach of today’s right-wing nut jobs is “largely the same as it was 50 years ago.”

But what caught my attention was this question and answer because I think it goes a long way towards understanding recent attacks on public workers in Wisconsin.

Why is this resurgence of the “old hate” happening now?

We’re going through a historic shift in this country.  We were on an incredible run of prosperity in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, thanks to the New Deal social compact, thanks to big unions, thanks to very strong regulation – thanks to all the things that Glenn Beck’s followers think are the most evil things in the world.  Fairly unskilled, uneducated people were able to earn a good living, and send their children to college.  And that’s changed.  Income inequality is growing.  If you look at American history, the bottom has dropped out of rural people’s lives every five years, but there used to also be a manufacturing class that made a decent living.  There used to be a route for people that weren’t well educated to make a decent living.  There isn’t anymore. There’s a lot of anxiety about our individual positions in our society, and our country’s position in the world. If you’re not educated to be able to understand it, and you’re trapped in a disadvantaged life, you might become really, really angry. (emphasis added)

I believe that this is, fundamentally, correct.  His assessment of the level of anger and vitriol in the undereducated population is being exploited by the right wing of the GOP in ways that are, ultimately, detrimental to their own interests.  Rather than expressing solidarity with public workers who, while not paid as well as private sector workers in general, certainly retained levels of benefits not seen in the private sector since the 1970s.  And that was achieved, of course, through collective bargaining.

You want to see envy in action, here it is.  If you think the 99% envy the wealth of the 1%, private sector workers, many of whom have ceded more benefits and more compensation to their employers demands, are most certainly envious of the benefits of their public sector brothers and sisters.  You can hear it in their rhetoric.  The rich capitalize on this envy through the omnipresent right wing media who stoke these fires of jealousy into action against working-class Americans.  They’ve even convinced these “useful idiots” that “right to work” laws will benefit workers! As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said,

In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans, such as ‘right to work.’ It is a law to rob us of our civil rights and job rights.Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining by which unions have improved wages and working conditions of everyone…Wherever these laws have been passed, wages are lower, job opportunities are fewer and there are no civil rights. We do not intend to let them do this to us. We demand this fraud be stopped. Our weapon is our vote.  (Martin Luther King, speaking about right-to-work laws in 1961)

Instead of standing in solidarity with the public sector and demanding the same benefits from their private sector employers, these cowards resort to jealous tantrums against “pampered” public sector workers.  These class traitors demand that the benefits bargained by public sector workers be slashed to the same meager levels they suffer in the private sector.  All the while, heaping opprobrium onto the very institution, the labor union, that could help raise them up.

Working class people tearing down working class people.  The capitalists have certainly won.

Jay Gould’s dystopian worker’s paradise has certainly come to pass…

I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half.

But we’re much more sophisticated than that now…

Reactionary douchebags never change.  No strategy too vicious, no idea too contemptible, no freedom inviolable as long as they get their way.

But we’re much more sophisticated than that now…

Reactionary douchebags never change.  No strategy too vicious, no idea too contemptible, no freedom inviolable as long as they get their way.

Welcome to Wississippi!

Over the past 40 years, a period in which U.S. GDP per capita more than doubled after adjusting [...]]]> Men in the workforce have, on the whole, lost income ground over the past 40 years, a new study reveals.  Those who have been following the national discussion of income inequality shouldn’t find this data at all surprising.

Over the past 40 years, a period in which U.S. GDP per capita more than doubled after adjusting for inflation, the annual earnings of the median prime-aged male has actually fallen by 28 percent. Indeed, males at the middle of the wage distribution now earn about the same as their counterparts in the 1950s! This decline reflects both stagnant wages for men on the job, and the fact that, compared with 1969, three times as many men of working age don’t work at all.

The American Dream is all about doing better than the previous generation.  This isn’t happening in America anymore.  We’ve ceased to be the land of opportunity for all Americans.  The reasons behind this shift are varied, but nearly always come down to education.  Men are not pursuing levels of education necessary to compete in the modern economy.  Good jobs that once paid a decent wage for high-school graduates have mostly vanished.

The difference today is that men have largely stopped upgrading their skills – the portion of young men who complete college has hardly budged since the late 1970s. The reasons are not entirely clear, but include the end of the Vietnam War (which had artificially inflated college attendance rates among men) and a temporary narrowing of the wage gap in the 1970s as the supply of skilled workers in the labor force surged.

In any event, ordinary men who face diminishing job prospects are less likely to earn middle-class wages.

Men without a high-school diploma have seen their median earnings decline by two-thirds.

Over the last 30 years, the cost of higher education has spiraled out of reach for many working class families, relegating them and their children to lower-paying employment.

Educational costs have outpaced inflation by 3x; faster even than healthcare.  Many of the Occupy Wall Street protesters talked about facing enormous ($100,000+) debt burdens after graduating from college.  These are not people graduating from professional schools with M.D.s or J.D.s, which will have ample opportunity to replay their loans, but students graduating with a B.A. or a B.S. who face a labor market as bad as any since the Great Depression.  How will they repay their debts?  Many will not, many will start their professional lives in bankruptcy.

The irony is that we, as a nation, have told them that the key to success is to get an education.  Yet their pursuit of this education leaves them with levels of personal debt so vast that any chance of success is snuffed out before it can even begin.  We are setting up a whole generation to fail.

For America to regain her competitive footing we must commit to a free, universal college education which allows students to enter the workforce free and clear to navigate.  We must ensure that they have the flexibility to apply their skills to solve the problems we face as a nation.  To accept less is to admit defeat.  America will not survive if we do not commit to the development our most important resource, our people.

Over the last three decades, economists played an important role in creating the conditions of the 2008 crisis (and dozens of smaller financial crises that came before it since the early 1980s, such as the 1982 Third World debt crisis, the [...]]]> Economics has real, unpleasant, even destructive consequences for the people of the world.

Over the last three decades, economists played an important role in creating the conditions of the 2008 crisis (and dozens of smaller financial crises that came before it since the early 1980s, such as the 1982 Third World debt crisis, the 1995 Mexican peso crisis, the 1997 Asian crisis and the 1998 Russian crisis) by providing theoretical justifications for financial deregulation and the unrestrained pursuit of short-term profits. More broadly, they advanced theories that justified the policies that have led to slower growth, higher inequality, heightened job insecurity and more frequently financial crises that have dogged the world in the last three decades… On top of that, they pushed for policies that weakened the prospects for long-term development in developing countries… In the rich countries, these economists encouraged people to overestimate the power of new technologies…, made people’s lives more and more unstable…, made them ignore the loss of national control over the economy…, and rendered them complacent about de-industrialization… Moreover, they supplied arguments that insist that all these economic outcomes that many people find objectionable in this world – such as rising inequality…, sky-high executive salaries… or extreme poverty in poor countries… – are really inevitable, given (selfish and rational) human nature and the need to reward people according to their productive contributions.

In other words, economics has been worse than irrelevant. Economics, as it has been practised in the last three decades, has been positively harmful for most people.

Ha-Joon Chang, 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism. Bloomsbury Press (2011)

Dylan Ratigan is my new hero.

He’s got a new book out, Greedy Bastards.  Check it out!

But nowhere is the disdain for organized labor more evident than on the Republican presidential campaign trail. Never in the modern history of the Republican Party, which [...]]]> The Nation and Madison’s own John Nichols, has a great column out about the republican presidential primary, their love for Scott Walker and hatred of unions.

But nowhere is the disdain for organized labor more evident than on the Republican presidential campaign trail. Never in the modern history of the Republican Party, which once made a serious effort to compete with Democrats for labor endorsements and the votes of union members, has a field of GOP presidential candidates been so united and so aggressive in opposing collective-bargaining rights for public-sector and private-sector workers.

Well we know that the economy is down and many places are broke so that we need to knock down the “haves” of public employees down to their private sector counterparts. Things are so bad, Wall St. employees are threatening to quit unless they get record bonuses.

Hold on now, before we start a fundraiser for Wall St. executives,(save your charity for Sean Duffy he needs it), while bonuses may be down, total compensation, which includes salaries, benefits and bonuses, is on track to exceed 2010 levels at seven big banks. I am breathing easier, now that I know the Big Banks, who are job creators and victims, will be paying record bonuses. If anyone deserves it, its them! I mean it’s not like they have needed any help from "the taxpayers" of this country. Oops! Move along, nothing to see here.

We all know that teachers and other public employees, make more than their private sector counterparts. NOT THEM! They don't count they work harder than everyone else in America! I was talking about this part of the private sector. 16 million children living in poverty in the US and teachers have the nerve to think they can have health care AND cable TV? Those greedy bastards. No wonder the right wing ideologues hate our teachers so.

Here are a couple of interesting videos:

Wall St. Bonuses exceed aid to Africa!

Scott Pellys expose on 60 Minutes!

And the crazy liberals like to cry “class warfare” when there is absolutely NO proof of it. EVeryone knows that these families could all be drinking $350 bottles of wine, if they would only work harder!!