Fact-esque

Media (Finally) Notices That Psychotics Run the Economy

For those of us who have for 30 or so years been watching the take-over of the economy by drunken psychotics whose only touchstone is bottomless greed and a vicious drive for the power money buys to create more money, it is mildly amusing to notice that in the last few weeks the same media that spent those 30 years boosting, protecting, defending and admiring Wall Street greedheads and Corporate America Moloch-followers busily swallowing their own tails once they'd devoured everybody else's, have now begun to acknowledge that the Masters of the Universe are, like, crazy . I mean, like, clinical crazy.

NYC Mayor Mike "Richie Rich" Bloomberg Wants to Charge Rent to the Homeless

Once again I feel have to explain that this is not, despite all appearances to the contrary, a joke. According to the Daily News, Bloomberg wants to charge rent to any homeless who sleep in city-run shelters. What a good idea! It's time these layabouts had to face reality, the Deputy Mayor explains.

NYC Mayor Mike "Richie Rich" Bloomberg Wants to Charge Rent to the Homeless

Once again I feel have to explain that this is not, despite all appearances to the contrary, a joke. According to the Daily News, Bloomberg wants to charge rent to any homeless who sleep in city-run shelters. What a good idea! It's time these layabouts had to face reality, the Deputy Mayor explains.

What Really Happened - And Is Happening - to Our Economy Under Conservatives

David Kay Johnston reports in Tax Analysts that a couple of economists just finished examining and comparing income data from 1961 and 2006. to say the least, the results are striking. Since TA is pay-only, it was nice of Mark Thoma at Economists Review to copy-and-paste some of David's column for us. (Via Norwegianity)

The vast majority of Americans saw their incomes rise only modestly in those 45 years. Measured in 2006 dollars, the average income of the bottom 90 percent grew from $22,366 in 1961 to $31,642 in 2006. That is a real increase of $9,276 in average income. But it was also after 45 years, longer than the careers of most workers. ...

For the vast majority, federal income taxes declined. In 1961 these people paid on average 9.6 percent of their income to the federal government. By 2006 this burden had been cut to 7.2 percent. That tax rate reduction saved each of these taxpayers about $760...

That tiny increase in pay does not represent a real increase in wages, only total income. That is because in the middle of that 45-year era, a profound transformation took place in America. In 1961 most families lived on one income, maybe supplemented by some part-time work by the wife... Now two-income households are the norm. ...

America grew and grew during this era. GDP, adjusted for inflation and increased population, was up 227 percent. But wages and fringe benefits did not grow with the economy. For most workers, they fell. Wages peaked way back in 1972-1973, were on a mostly flat trajectory for more than two decades, rose briefly in the late 1990s, and then fell sharply in the new century. ... Millions are out of work, and the jobs they once held are ... not coming back. And even if the Great Recession is coming to an end, we face years of jobs growing more slowly than the working-age population, which could radically transform America’s culture, work ethic, and sense of progress.

(emphasis added)

To put it bluntly, we have been taking it in the neck for the sake of enriching a tiny slice of our burgeoning plutocracy. By itself, this is probably not news to many of you, though it's always nice to see hard proof for when your wingnut friends/family start whining about how the working class robbed them of money that was rightfully theirs. Or how the brave CEO's who dared to defy the unions deserve so much more and, really, they weren't paid that much were they?

Why Does Sen Tom Coburn (R-OK) Hate the Troops?

Tom Coburn, who ran on the platform that there were lesbians in lavatories all over Oklahoma and when asked couldn't explain why that was relevant to the Senate race, turns out to be the one who's been blocking veterans' benefits bills for months. (Via Norwegianity)

One of the Senate’s most vociferous opponents of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) has been Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), who called the stimulus “the worst act of generational theft in our nation’s history.” Today, The Marine Corp Times revealed exactly how far Coburn was willing to go to undermine ARRA. It turns out Coburn has been the senator who has placed holds on several veterans benefits bills because he wanted to divert money from unspent ARRA funds on them.

When one of the several groups of veterans' advocates - the American Legion, fer dawg's sake - finally got a meeting with him to find out why he was blocking the bills and plead with him to stop, they got the expected reaction. Basically, "Fuck off".

Steve Robertson, the legislative director for the veterans advocacy group The American Legion, met with Coburn’s staff about the holds on the bills and came away disappointed with their refusal to budge on the issue. “For a lot of family caregivers, delay is costing them their jobs and their savings. It’s having a big impact,” Robertson told the press. “They made it clear that Sen. Coburn sees this as using his rights as a senator to place a hold on a bill…I agree with that, but that doesn’t mean it makes sense to hold up a bill that would do a lot of good things for veterans that has cleared a committee and is ready for a vote.”

(emphasis added)

No, it doesn't make any sense at all...unless you've been paying attention to the votes of Congressional Pubs all through the Bush Years, votes which consistently cut the budget of the VA, of war supplies (when they didn't come from Cheney's Halliburton, which got paid double for everything), of troop transportation (the Pubs made combat troops pay their own way home from the war zone), etc etc etc. There's been a pattern of Republicans voting to short-change the troops for years. There's nothing new about this except the excuse.

So...why do Republicans hate the troops? And why don't the troops know about it?

American Corporatism: The More Incomes Need to Rise, the More the Company Cuts

The Obama Admin sent the message loud and clear and Corporate America got it: workers don't matter. Only the corporations get to be saved. They are the focus.

The result is pretty much what you'd expect: even though economists agree that putting money into the hands of people who will spend it is the only way to get out of the morass Bush and the Chicago School created, the corpo's are laying off more workers and cutting the paychecks of those who remain while loading them up with even more work and calling it "a rise in productivity".

Stuck on Labor Day

This may be a brilliant idea....

Signe Wilkinson, San Jose Mercury-News

No Excuse Could Ever Be Good Enough

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Homeless Explosion: Not So Invisible Any More

Anybody who's been reading me for any length of time isn't going to be surprised but it's coming as a shock to a lot of people. The NYT is all "Who could have expected this?"

As the operations manager of an outreach center for the homeless here, Paul Stack is used to seeing people down on their luck. What he had never seen before was people living in tents and lean-tos on the railroad lot across from the center.

“They just popped up about 18 months ago,” Mr. Stack said. “One day it was empty. The next day, there were people living there.”

Like a dozen or so other cities across the nation, Fresno is dealing with an unhappy déjà vu: the arrival of modern-day Hoovervilles, illegal encampments of homeless people that are reminiscent, on a far smaller scale, of Depression-era shantytowns. At his news conference on Tuesday night, President Obama was asked directly about the tent cities and responded by saying that it was “not acceptable for children and families to be without a roof over their heads in a country as wealthy as ours.”

While encampments and street living have always been a part of the landscape in big cities like Los Angeles and New York, these new tent cities have taken root — or grown from smaller enclaves of the homeless as more people lose jobs and housing — in such disparate places as Nashville, Olympia, Wash., and St. Petersburg, Fla.

It's just barely possible that this might have some slight connection to the new Bushvilles.

Another Nail in the Coffin: Rahm, Chuck, and Kirstie Screw the Left Together

The saga of how Kirsten Gillibrand, a right-wing Dem with all of two years experience in the House, got to replace Hillary and become the new US Sen from NY is making its way into the press and it's about what you'd expect: the OBC in action, except that nowadays it isn't the Old Boys' Club, it's the FREC - Friends of Rahm Emanuel Club.

First there was long-time Democrat political lackey and party propagandist Paul Begala fawning over Kirsten in his CNN column. I mean, gushing.

[T]he big news -- and for Democrats, the good news -- is that Gov. David Paterson has put another crack in the glass ceiling by appointing Kirsten Gillibrand to the Senate.

Gillibrand has it all. She moves with equal ease among Manhattan high-rollers and Delaware County dairymen.

***

I've seen Gillibrand in action. My father has a small farm in her district, near the village of Andes, New York. Every summer I bring my boys to Andes to fish in a pristine mountain trout pond, and at night we feast on fresh-caught fish with my dad's neighbors.

Those farmers and schoolteachers see Gillibrand as one of their own; someone who shares their values, who respects and protects the rugged beauty of their mountains even as she fights to bring jobs to the region.

And so on. Why, Kirsten is just perfect! A saint! WonderWoman and Clara Barton rolled into one! Wow!!