Who is to blame for this mess?

From my saying of "You cannot sway a Republican with mere Facts and Logic" to this blog post :

"Now, back to unnamed Republican lawmaker who thinks his party isn’t to blame. The frightening thing is, he probably believes it. When people hold certain ideological beliefs strongly enough, no amount of facts will get in their way. If you believe that the current deficit is the result of excessive government spending (passed by Democrats, even though they only controlled Congress and the White House for four out of the past thirty years*), no pile of charts will be big enough to convince you otherwise — just like if you believe that tax cuts increase tax revenues, that the deficit has produced high interest rates, or that Barack Obama was born on Mars, no amount of evidence will convince you otherwise."

Ultimately, WE are to blame.  We (in general) voted for the people who fight against our best interests. Thirty years.  I think it is time we stop doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results.

Also read this article : America Needs Taxes! by the cofounder of USUncut.org

Okay, so I was told that the Democrats controlled congress for 18 years and the Republicans only 12 years in the past 30... so... Real Story - go see wikipedia.  I combined two charts from that article and cut to from 1977 to 2010.

What we see is that from 1994 until 2007 the Republicans pretty much had a lock on congress - except for 2 years when Bush II was first elected, they lost the Senate.  For 4 of those years they had they whole thing - both houses of Congress and the Presidency - the four years just before it got really bad.  So, basically 12 years of Republican policy domination lead up to the great recession of 2009.  The Democrats were elected into control of congress BECAUSE the economy was already so bad.  Obama was elected BECAUSE the economy was so horrible (okay, and Palin in control of anything scared every rational human being on earth).

So, the Democrats can be singing, "We didn't start the fire, but we're trying to fight it...."

Democrats are better than Republicans, but Independents are better still.

More People Taking up the Call

NPR has an article written by an economist that says workers should be more important than wall street and corporations.  Of course, he is asking the GOP to stop focusing on building up Wall Street and start to focus on workers and small businesses, which is about as likely to happen as ... as... well, something really unlikely.  I agree that our Government needs to focus on the workers and the small businesses, I just don't imagine the GOP are going to be the ones to do it.  The article also ignores that it was 8 years of GOP policies and practices that got us into the mess we are in now with the economy and unemployment.

A comment on that article I like :

Duwayne Anderson (DandyStryker) wrote:

Few things better illustrate how average Americans are being screwed than the current "debate" about the debt ceiling. TeaPublicans are refusing to raise the debt ceiling (and thus endangering the economy) until they get "deep cuts" aimed at screwing working Americans.


Republicans raised the debt ceiling multiple times during the Cheney/Bush administration. They raised it without a whimper. They raised it to fund a war based on lies, tax breaks for billionaires, and loopholes for corporations.


Republicans actually *created* the deficit crisis. They did it through irresponsible fiscal policy that directly supported the Wall Street robber barons that created the Cheney/Bush depression of 2008.


Now the TeaPublicans want to use the deficit that they helped to create as a pretext for destroying Medicare and Social Security (social programs the TeaPublicans hate). All at the same time they continue to vote to extend welfare to the oil companies and tax breaks to billionaires.


It's clear that the only people the TeaPublicans are worried about are Wall Street robber barons, corporate stooges like the Koch brothers, and billionaires. But if you are a working man or woman, the TeaPublicans are screwing you.

Wed Jun 01 2011 10:01:53 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time)

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ODE magazine has an article on what they call "Spiritual Capitalism."

Sounds great, but is it worth it? Versteeg thinks so. Brokers are performing better and the number of customers is increasing, mainly through referrals from existing clients.“Our people dedicate their time now to more human goals,” Versteeg says. “The salespeople have their pride back and clients are happier than ever before.” Field suggests a whole new kind of financial metrics, “so that the value of a company becomes not a single number based on its profits, but a composite number that includes its spiritual health.” Sound too good to be true? Take a look around. It’s already happening, at companies like Allianz, Ameriprise, Dr. Hauschka, One World Everybody Eats and countless others.

It goes a bit further than my idea of "Ethical Capitalism" by focusing on doing good rather than just creating a more sustainable business model by paying your employees a wage that is good compared to the profits they help create, but it fits well.  I suppose a merger of the two where doing good is just a side effect of doing good business could be "Sustainable Capitalism?"  All of them should move away from the wrong-headed idea of Profits-first and put People-First back into business.


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Some Comments on a blog post I found interesting :

D P (Curmudgeon51) wrote:

The GOP are the biggest job killers of all time. Recent reports in my area (California) show that employers are not able to find enough educated people for jobs. So why are the GOP job killers? Well, the GOP labels any tax as a job killer, but fail to notice that every loss of tax revenue equates to cuts in education, either at the K - 12 level or colleges. Without an education, people are not employable. My take on all this is that the GOP, with most of their wealthy contributors able to go to private school their entire lives, are content with the rest of the U.S. in minimum wage jobs. Reducing taxes and then cutting education are the real job killers. Maybe not today, but for a long time. Fri May 27 2011 16:04:23 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time)

Ziyu Ziyu (ziyu) wrote:
How about a real jobs program instead of an ideological program? Tax cuts don't create jobs. Jobs are created when there is lots of business activity driven by demand that more people are needed to help the company. Having more money just adds to profit. It creates no motivation for jobs. Tax cuts are not a real jobs plan. It's untargeted, creating massive inefficiencies, and just serves as another talking point. Let's see a real jobs bill that non-partisan economic analyses say will create jobs. Until then, all of that talk about jobs is still just hot air. Fri May 27 2011 18:06:41 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time) 

Daniel Dellinger (corinthian) wrote:

Cutting taxes is part of the reason the deficit is so big to begin with, and deregulation gets us disasters like Upper Big Branch and Deepwater Horizon. When will republicans learn? Better question, when will the American people learn? Fri May 27 2011 16:49:57 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time) 

Economics Explanation

Angry Bear has a post about why wage and income growth are the key to reviving the economy.  It goes a long way toward supporting my Ethical Capitalism stance.

My idea of "Ethical Capitalism" apparently does not mesh with the popular idea out there.  I am focused merely on the Fiscal aspect of paying workers well as compared to the executives.  Ford's 40 to 1 measure could be expanded a bit today. Maybe pay your CEO no more than 50 entry level workers, or at most 100 times more than an entry level worker.

The Profits-over-Everything mentality is destroying the economy.  When more companies realize that profits are not everything and that sustainability will pay off more in the long run, perhaps we can avoid the bubble and burst roller coaster effect.

Couple things to shout about

First, a quote from my corporate hero :

There is one rule for the industrialist and that is: Make the best quality of goods possible at the lowest cost possible, paying the highest wages possible.

Henry Ford

Second, an article on Truthout.  Not exactly for it's scathing review of progressives, but for a section on recovering Democracy.
( I clipped and rearranged a couple items in the following clip from the article )

Structural political reforms are needed for that movement to transmit change through government at all levels. <clip> The two-party system is sclerotic. <clip> The reason for this is that the rules of the game that elect our representatives actually hurt [Democracy].  

 A truly democratic electoral (and thus political) system would include:

• Public financing of campaigns.
• Free media time for campaigns.
• Universal/automatic voter registration.
• Direct election of the president (abolition of the electoral college).
• Instant runoff voting to allow voters to express their true preferences and prevent spoilers.
• Proportional representation (allowing more than two parties).

Together these measures would serve to both expand the electorate and broaden representation in our legislatures.

I am not sure (yet) what all Proportional Representation entails, but I'll find out.  Everything else sounds right on spot.

The Road to Damascus

Where was Paul going on the Road to Damascus?

Okay, so it doesn't work as well in text format, but for one Conservative Skeptic, the light of truth has finally been seen.

My Road To Damascus: Coming to Terms with Global Climate Change | Coffee Party

I do not see how anyone can watch the news and not be absolutely positive that SOMETHING is changing. We are not well into "the season" and already record setting Tornadoes, Floods and Hurricanes. Yazoo City, Birmingham, Joplin - and many more cities in states all over the place have become victims of these storms.

The rejection of proven science in favor of a form of ideologically driven magical thinking by the GOP is extremely unfortunate, and unnecessary.

Hopefully some day, facts and reason will have a greater impact than ideology and profits.

The People's Budget

Just throwing this out there to get more people aware of the fact that there is a good alternative to the Ryan "Throw Grandma Under the Bus" plan.

http://cpc.grijalva.house.gov/index.cfm?sectionid=70


Paul Krugman
“genuinely courageous”
“achieves this without dismantling the legacy of the New Deal”
Dean Baker
"if you want a serious effort to balance the budget, here it is."
Jeffrey Sachs
“A bolt of hope…humane, responsible, and most of all sensible”
The Economist
“Courageous”
“Mr Ryan's plan adds (by its own claims) $6 trillion to the national debt over the next decade, but promises to balance the budget by sometime in the 2030s by cutting programmes for the poor and the elderly. The Progressive Caucus's plan would (by its own claims) balance the budget by 2021 by cutting defence spending and raising taxes, mainly on rich people.”

Keeping the Economy Functional

http://www.truthout.org/why-rich-love-high-unemployment/1305061465

In the boardrooms of corporate America, profits aren't everything - they are the only thing. A JPMorgan research report concludes that the current corporate profit recovery is more dependent on falling unit-labor costs than during any previous expansion. At some level, corporate executives are aware that they are lowering workers' living standards, but their decisions are neither coordinated nor intentionally harmful. Call it the "paradox of profitability." Executives are acting in their own and their shareholders' best interest: maximizing profit margins in the face of weak demand by extensive layoffs and pay cuts. But what has been good for every company's income statement has been a disaster for working families and their communities.

..and the economy as a whole.  What these companies, CEOs and corporate boards fail to realize is that by focusing on short-term goals, they are shooting themselves in the foot, cutting off their legs at the knees and congratulating themselves on loosing excess weight.

True recovery will only take place when businesses invest in their workers.  Lower executive pay, golden parachutes and stock options in order to raise every employee's base pay.  This puts money into the hands of people who will spend it, putting it back into circulation and revving up the economy.  The current method of making a few people multi millionaires will - as evidenced by our current economy and unemployment - leech money out of the economy and into an elite upper tier where it will stay.

If we want to keep government out of business, keep a small government and few regulations, then it is a priority that businesses act with Full Fiscal Responsibility.  Profits must get out of the driver's seat and let Sustainability drive.  Otherwise, government will have to step in and make them responsible by regulation - pay ratio caps, perhaps, where the Executives can not be paid more than 100 times the entry level employee.

The Free Market requires the Free Movement of Money to function on a sustainable basis.  Its not a question of "wanting" to bring more equity to the income scales - its a matter of keeping a Capitalistic Economy functioning.