Tag Archives: deregulation

Mental illness: more profitable than you might think

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Add the mentally ill to illegal immigrants and non-violent drug offenders, and you have the magic profit formula for America’s private prison industry and its shareholders.

Mother Jones has a timeline illustrating how deinstitutionalization has moved thousands of mentally ill people out of hospitals—and into jails and prisons.

I’ve taken just the past 35 years of that timeline and pasted it below — notice Saint Raygun’s heartwarming contributions towards mental health services in 1981:

1977 There are 650 community health facilities serving 1.9 million mentally ill patients a year.
1980 President Jimmy Carter signs the Mental Health Systems Act, which aims to restructure the community mental health center program and improve services for people with chronic mental illness.
1981 Under President Ronald Reagan, the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act repeals Carter’s community health legislation and establishes block grants for the states, ending the federal government’s role in providing services to the mentally ill.  Federal mental health spending decreases by 30 percent.
1984 An Ohio-based study finds that up to 30 percent of homeless people are thought to suffer from serious mental illness.
1985 Federal funding drops to 11 percent of community mental health agency budgets.
1990 Clozapine, the first “atypical” anti-psychotic drug to be developed, is approved by the FDA as a treatment for schizophrenia.
2004 Studies suggest approximately 16 percent of prison and jail inmates are seriously mentally ill, roughly 320,000 people. This year, there are about 100,000 psychiatric beds in public and private hospitals. That means there are more three times as many seriously mentally ill people in jails and prisons than in hospitals.
2009 In the aftermath of the Great Recession, states are forced to cut $4.35 billion in public mental health spending over the next three years, the largest reduction in funding since deinstitutionalization.
2010 There are 43,000 psychiatric beds in America, or about 14 beds per 100,000 people—the same ratio as in 1850.

Read the whole thing: TIMELINE: Deinstitutionalization And Its Consequences

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From 2009 – 2012, these six states made the deepest cuts to their mental health budgets: South Carolina, Alabama, Alaska, Illinois, Nevada, District of Columbia, and California.

I wonder how many private prisons are in these states?

three pie charts in a row

Image: Mother Jones

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Largest Prison-Owning Corporation Issues Massive Dividend of $675 Million to Shareholders

If you want to make money these days, owning stock in a prison company is the place to do it.  The confinement of human beings, while selling their cheap labor to companies seeking to save on labor costs has become a cash cow.  One company that has benefited handsomely from the profit boom is the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA).

CCA is the largest owner of private prisons in the nation, behind only the federal government and three states. The company just announced that it’s Board of Directors has declared a special dividend to shareholders of $675 million dollars.

…The CCA operates a total of 67 prison facilities throughout the United States, with a total capacity of 92,500 beds in 20 states and the District of Columbia.  The company was heavily criticized for offering to buy prisons in 48 states, in exchange for a guaranteed occupancy rate of at least 90%.

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It’s not just the private prison industry. Something else to consider:

A jury on Wednesday awarded a total of $240 million to 32 mentally disabled turkey processing plant workers in Iowa for what an expert witness described as years of “virtual enslavement” by [Henry's Turkey Service, of Goldthwaite, Texas] that oversaw their care, work and lodging…

During the weeklong trial that ended Wednesday, officials testified about the squalid conditions they found during a 2009 inspection of the bunkhouse where the men were housed. The building, which was in a rural area several miles from the West Liberty Foods turkey processing plant where they worked, was falling apart, infested with rodents and full of fire hazards.

Social workers spoke of the physical and verbal abuse the men said they had been subjected to by the Henry’s supervisors who oversaw their work and care. They said they had been forced to work through illness and injuries, denied bathroom breaks, locked in their rooms, kicked in the groin and, in one case, handcuffed to a bed…

By 2008, Henry’s was being paid more than $500,000 per year by West Liberty Foods, but it was paying the men the same $65 per month that it always had. The company docked the men’s wages and Social Security disability benefits, telling them it was to pay for the cost of their care and lodging, and it never applied for medical care or other services for the disabled that the men would have qualified for in Iowa.

Henry’s began employing mentally disabled men in the 1960s and 1970s who had been released from Texas mental institutions. Hundreds of them were sent to labor camps in Iowa and elsewhere in the coming decades, where they were supplied on contract as workers to local employers. Company officials argued that the arrangement was a benefit to the men, and that they were once praised for giving them employment opportunities…

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Related: 

Don’t ever say Republicans–with their deregulation and “pay workers less so CEOs can get more” and “corporations  are people” mentality–aren’t job creators. Companies like private prisons and Henry’s Turkey Service are just selective about the wages they want to pay and the type of workforce “willing” to work for those wages. Remember, it was the glassy-eyed Teaparty Queen, Michele Bachmann, who said that the federal minimum wage should be eliminated for the benefit of job growth.

Clearly if you deinstitutionalize the mentally ill / disabled, you’ll be able to make a handsome profit on their confinement in labor camps or prisons — with the added bonus that you won’t “waste” money on having to care for them. If the Republican Party had its way, we’d all be working for $65 a month in company housing that was falling apart.

American fundamentalist Christianity combined with deregulated Capitalism in 2013 – same as it ever was:

“Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.” – Ezekiel 16:49

Not ONE program / service for taxpayers should be cut while subsidies are given to big banks

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Bloomberg: So what if we told you …the largest U.S. banks aren’t really profitable at all? What if the billions of dollars they allegedly earn for their shareholders were almost entirely a gift from U.S. taxpayers?


image recall-all-republicans

The top five banks — JPMorgan, Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., Wells Fargo & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. - – account for $64 billion of the total subsidy, an amount roughly equal to their typical annual profits (see tables for data on individual banks). In other words, the banks occupying the commanding heights of the U.S. financial industry — with almost $9 trillion in assets, more than half the size of the U.S. economy – would just about break even in the absence of corporate welfare. In large part, the profits they report are essentially transfers from taxpayers to their shareholders.

Neither bank executives nor shareholders have much incentive to change the situation. On the contrary, the financial industry spends hundreds of millions of dollars every election cycle on campaign donations and lobbying, much of which is aimed at maintaining the subsidy. The result is a bloated financial sector and recurring credit gluts. Left unchecked, the superbanks could ultimately require bailouts that exceed the government’s resources. Picture a meltdown in which the Treasury is helpless to step in as it did in 2008 and 2009.

Regulators can change the game by paring down the subsidy. One option is to make banks fund their activities with more equity from shareholders, a measure that would make them less likely to need bailouts (we recommend $1 of equity for each $5 of assets, far more than the 1-to-33 ratio that new global rules require). Another idea is to shock creditors out of complacency by making some of them take losses when banks run into trouble. A third is to prevent banks from using the subsidy to finance speculative trading, the aim of the Volcker rule in the U.S. and financial ring-fencing in the U.K.

— Why Should Taxpayers Give Big Banks $83 Billion a Year? – Bloomberg

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Last month, Washingtonblog wrote about Chris Whalen’s report that the top banks receive more than $780 billion per year in subsidies. Whalen is one of America’s top banking analysts. Specifically, Whalen estimates the following types of subsidies to the giant banks:

  • $360 billion in Federal Reserve subsidies, by creating an artificial “spread” in interest rates…
  • $120 billion in federal deposit insurance (through the FDIC, backed by the Treasury)
  • At least $100 billion in government-guaranteed loans, especially mortgages
  • At least $100 billion in monopolistic advantages in the secondary market for home mortgages…
  • More than $100 billion in fees in the over-the-counter (OTC) derivative market…

That totals $780 billion per year. And that’s only a PARTIAL list.

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It’s funny how the GOP / Fox likes its voting base to focus on things like the pay and benefits of federal, state, and local government employees (Republican consensus: civil servants are way overpaid when compared to 7-Eleven and Walmart workers), marriage equality, and pseudo-wars on Christian holidays. Keep the rubes riled with the Shiny Object of the Week (SOOTW).

The massive financial transfers between the U.S. Treasury and big banks (and big oil, big ag, etc) are well worth the SOOTW campaigns. The GOP doesn’t want a smaller government to save the taxpayers money! They want a smaller government so all the money spent on employees and regulation (and on programs / services for working class taxpayers) can be re-routed to banks, oil companies and corporate ag.

Obviously, in order to increase the flow of tax money to banks (and oil and ag), the Republican Party continuously fights for MORE tax cuts and LESS regulation. And by using Orwellian methods of doublespeak / doublethink, they fight for these things and call themselves the True Patriots™ simultaneously – that’s specifically so their base-rubes can at least feel superior while they support their own ruin.

Sen-elect Elizabeth Warren scores Senate Banking Committee seat: Suck it, Wall Street!

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Think Progress: “Sen-elect Elizabeth Warren, a dogged consumer advocate whose critique of Wall Street excess was a centerpiece of her campaign, will join the Senate Banking Committee. Wall Street spent boatloads of money to prevent Warren’s election, but now, as the Center for Responsive Politics noted, she will have oversight of the rules and regulations under which banks operate:

The securities and investments industry contributed just $245,000 to Warren and spent $3 million supporting her opponent Scott Brown,according to OpenSecrets data from mid-October. The industry was Brown’s top supporter.

The Financial/Insurance/Real Estate sector followed suit and contributed $6 million to Brown and a puny half-a-million to Warren…

“Several Senate candidates supported by Wall Street wound up losing. As a member of the Banking Committee, Warren will have the opportunity to stand against both the watering down of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law and new misguided efforts to reduce limits on Wall Street.”

In Elizabeth Warren’s own words – NYTimes.com:

“Wall Street C.E.O.’s — the same ones who wrecked our economy and destroyed millions of jobs — still strut around Congress, no shame, demanding favors, and acting like we should thank them,” she said in her speech at the Democratic National Convention in September.

“The people on Wall Street broke this country, and they did it one lousy mortgage at a time. It happened more than three years ago, and there has been no real accountability, and there has been no real effort to fix it,” she said in a debate last year.

It’s so great to realize that money can’t buy every American election.

Related:

Nearly two years after Wall Street waged a successful campaign to keep consumer advocate Elizabeth Warren from running the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the incoming senator will be tapped to serve on the Banking Committee.

Fix the Debt: plutocrats are turning up the volume on the class war

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“Listening to these people talk about the national economy is like listening to a burglar tell you that you should really polish the silver more often.” – Charles P. Pierce

“The important thing to understand now is that while the election is over, the class war isn’t.

The same people who bet big on Mr. Romney, and lost, are now trying to win by stealth — in the name of fiscal responsibility — the ground they failed to gain in an open election. […]

Consider, as a prime example, the push to raise the retirement age, the age of eligibility for Medicare, or both. This is only reasonable, we’re told — after all, life expectancy has risen, so shouldn’t we all retire later? In reality, however, it would be a hugely regressive policy change, imposing severe burdens on lower- and middle-income Americans while barely affecting the wealthy. Why? First of all, the increase in life expectancy is concentrated among the affluent; why should janitors have to retire later because lawyers are living longer? Second, both Social Security and Medicare are much more important, relative to income, to less-affluent Americans, so delaying their availability would be a far more severe hit to ordinary families than to the top 1 percent.

Or take a subtler example, the insistence that any revenue increases should come from limiting deductions rather than from higher tax rates. The key thing to realize here is that the math just doesn’t work; there is, in fact, no way limits on deductions can raise as much revenue from the wealthy as you can get simply by letting the relevant parts of the Bush-era tax cuts expire. So any proposal to avoid a rate increase is, whatever its proponents may say, a proposal that we let the 1 percent off the hook and shift the burden, one way or another, to the middle class or the poor. […]

So keep your eyes open as the fiscal game of chicken continues. It’s an uncomfortable but real truth that we are not all in this together; America’s top-down class warriors lost big in the election, but now they’re trying to use the pretense of concern about the deficit to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Let’s not let them pull it off.”

— Paul Krugman: Class Wars of 2012

While finance executives urge Congress and the President to rein in spending, finance companies are raking in profits. [...] Meanwhile, workers are struggling. Average hourly pay, when adjusted for inflation, has fallen 0.7 percent over the past year, according to the Labor Department. And the unemployment rate in October was 7.9 percent — it was at a low of 4.4 percent in May 2007 before the recession. It’s a “zero-sum game,” Moody’s Analytics economist Aaron Smith told The Huffington Post in February. Companies are earning record profits largely because they are squeezing more productivity out of their workers without paying them more. — Corporate Profits Reach Record High, While Workers Struggle

Several CEOs — under the guise of a campaign known as “Fix the Debt” — have recently called for cuts to Social Security and other entitlements. Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, for instance, said that “there will be things that, you know, the retirement age has to be changed, maybe some of the benefits have to be affected, maybe some of the inflation adjustments have to be revised.” “The solutions [to the fiscal cliff] are – it’s the retirement age; means testing Social Security and Medicare,” said Aetna CEO Mark Berolino. [...] Blankfein has nearly $12 million in retirement assets, while Bertolini has $1.5 million. Adding insult to injury, many of the CEOs calling for cuts to the social safety net are underfunding their workers’ retirement accounts — CEOs Looking To ‘Fix The Debt’ By Cutting Social Security Sit On Huge Retirement Accounts

The CEO Campaign to ‘Fix’ the Debt: A Trojan Horse for Massive Corporate Tax Breaks – IPS: The Fix the Debt campaign has raised $60 million and recruited more than 80 CEOs of America’s most powerful corporations to lobby for a debt deal that would reduce corporate taxes and shift costs onto the poor and elderly.

Key findings:

  • The 63 Fix the Debt companies that are publicly held stand to gain as much as $134 billion in windfalls if Congress approves one of their main proposals — a “territorial tax system.” Under this system, companies would not have to pay U.S. federal income taxes on foreign earnings when they bring the profits back to the United States.
  • The CEOs backing Fix the Debt personally received a combined total of $41 million in savings last year thanks to the Bush-era tax cuts. The top CEO beneficiary of the Bush tax cuts in 2011, Leon Black of Apollo Global Management, saved $9.9 million on the Bush tax cuts. The private equity fund leader reaped $215 million in taxable income last year just from vested stock.
  • Of the 63 Fix the Debt CEOs at publicly held firms, 24 received more in compensation last year than their corporations paid in federal corporate income taxes. All but six of these firms reported U.S. profits last year.

Sign this petition to tell Congress that it’s time to let the Bush tax cuts for the richest 2% expire and that they must reject any Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefit cuts.

Paul Ryan’s speech: the Romney campaign has officially embraced the extreme

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David Corn reacts to Paul Ryan’s speech, which demonstrated that the Romney campaign is not moving to the middle but has embraced a fundamental extremism:

His message literally was: You should be on your own, left alone to define your own journey, your own happiness. (Unless of course, there is an unwanted pregnancy, even one that occurred due to rape.) “That’s the American Dream,” he contended. “That’s freedom, and I’ll take it any day over the supervision and sanctimony of the central planners.”

With such language—which was vetted by Romney Central Command—Ryan was not pressing the obvious case that Romney is a pragmatic Mr. Fixit who could be a competent steward of the still-struggling American economy. He was announcing that he and Romney aim to remake American society. He was essentially issuing a declaration of ideological warfare: Government is the enemy of freedom and the cause of the nation’s economic woes; it must be crushed. And, yes, taxes must be slashed for all, which would include those on the highest rungs.

[...] Ryan was selling libertarian articles of faith: Downsize the government and the welfare state, and all will be well; the economic downturn had nothing to do with corporate shenanigans or deregulation; and if the Medicare guarantee is dumped, the elderly will fare better in the free flowing corporate marketplace. Trust in this theology, he was saying, and the nation will revive—and he was not just speaking for himself. This was now the official sales pitch of the Romney-Ryan ticket.

— With Ryan Speech, Romney Campaign Goes Full Tea Party | Mother Jones

Live and learn — too bad the Republican voting base can’t figure out the second part.

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Bill weighs in. via: barackobama

Mitt Romney wants to ‘trickle down’ all over you and tell you it’s raining

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Taking a break from mocking the president for wanting to retain teachers, cops, and firefighters, Romney talked about his plans for massive financial deregulation and more tax cuts for the wealthy – which, he says, would make America the most attractive place in the world for job creators:

“It’s not just because I love job creators, it’s because I love jobs,” Romney said. “I want more good jobs for the American people and I want such competition for good, hard workers that salaries and wages go up so people make more money. I want to help the middle class of America and I’m going to do it.”

We already know that Mitt wants you to believe that firing even more public sector employees will magically free up a huge number of “good” private sector jobs. In case you weren’t aware, that’s how middle class employment works apparently.  All those teachers, cops, and firefighters — or any public sector worker, really — are somehow hogging all the other jobs that could be created by the kind, gentle wealthy folks in the private sector. They’re holding back the job creators!

So Romney’s ‘vision’ is that the job creators are just waiting for more government workers to be fired. Then, jobs! Of course, they also need bigger tax cuts — and they’ll need some relief from all this ridiculous government regulation. But then, definitely, this’ll be a wonderland for job creators. We’ll have so many good jobs, we’ll be knee deep in jobs. We’ll have jobs coming out of our ears!

Here’s an observation on Romney’s vision from a NY Times editorial this morning:

“There is no meaningful difference between the trickle-down economics of George W. Bush, rejected by the country in 2008, and the plans supported by Mr. Romney and his Republican allies in Congress. All the elements are there, from the slavish devotion to tax cuts for the rich, to a contempt for government regulation, to savage cutbacks in programs for those at the bottom.”

How’d that work out for Bush? “[P]ainfully slow job growth was followed by a recession that shed nine million jobs.” Oh, that’s right.

Morning Bunker Report: Thursday 6.14.2012

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WHAT ROMNEY / REPUBLICANS STAND FOR———————————————

“With how he treated me, is that how he’s going to treat others? You know, if he gets in office is he going to be that way to us little people?” – Dianne Bauer, owner of the Main Street Diner in Council Bluffs, Iowa, regarding Mitt Romney’s use of her diner for a campaign stop (The answer is YES, Dianne, of course that’s how he treats the little people who aren’t immediately being used as a photo-op. lol)

Mitt the Mormon — The uptick in anti-Mormon voter attitudes may come as a surprise to those who predicted Romney’s candidacy would have a mainstreaming effect on his faith. But as University of Sydney scholar David Smith, the paper’s author, writes, just as President Obama’s successful candidacy didn’t put an end to tense race relations in America, Romney’s political assent hasn’t cured the country of anti-Mormonism. In fact, as the data shows, Romney’s rise may have led to increased anxiety about his religion among his natural political opponents. […] Strikingly, the correlation between attitudes about Mormonism and support for Romney is even stronger than political ideology or party identification. Perhaps most potentially distressing to Romney’s campaign is the study’s finding that conservatives who said they were less likely to vote for a Mormon were much more likely to say they were undecided or would not vote at all in a contest between Obama and Romney. Pundits have been predicting for months that anti-Mormon Republicans would stay home in November; this study reaffirms that idea. – Buzzfeed

Romney tells CEOs they deserve more tax cuts, deregulation, and warm tongue baths from DC – Preaching to the converted on lower taxes and less regulation, Republican Mitt Romney courted more than 100 of America’s top chief executives Wednesday demanding government be an ally of enterprise, “not the enemy. Government has to be the partner, the friend, the ally, the supporter of enterprise — not the enemy,” Romney told a gathering of the Business Roundtable, a grouping of executives of leading US firms with some $6 trillion in annual revenue. “Too often, you find yourself facing a government that looks at you like you’re the bad guys,” he said in a 20-minute speech before going into a closed-door discussion with his audience. “I want to change the attitude (in Washington) and encourage the growth of enterprise in this country.” – Raw Story

  • Romney Endorses Massive Corporate Tax Giveaway That Failed To Create Jobs In The Past – [At the same CEO roundtable, Romney] called for the repeal of the tax on corporate profits that is levied when those profits are returned (repatriated) to America. Repealing the tax, Romney said, would drive investment in the United States and spur job creation. In the past, however, temporary tax holidays for profits stored overseas have not led to the job creation that proponents promised. Instead of creating jobs, companies used a 2004 repatriation tax holiday to line their executives’ pockets, paying stock dividends and buying back shares. The holiday “didn’t accomplish the stated goals of bringing jobs and investment to the US,” according to former member of President Bush’s Council on Economic Advisers. –  Think Progress

image: 1percenthole

Adelson give $10 million to Romney Super PAC – Casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, who helped keep Newt Gingrich’s failed presidential campaign alive during the GOP primaries, is giving $10 million to a super PAC supporting Mitt Romney, the Wall Street Journal reports. The $10 million donation to the super PAC Restore Our Future appears to be the largest single donation toward Romney’s efforts so far.  – Political Wire

The rise of the megadonors (the end of democracy) –The Adelsons are hardly the only ones taking advantage of the post-Citizens-United free-for-all. But they are blowing all other donors away: Their spending exceeds that of the next six biggest donors. (So far, most major donors are also supporting conservative super-PACs, which are outspending their liberal counterparts by a factor of 7 to 1.) – Mother Jones

John McCain Haz a Sad – Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) told The Hill that President Obama never made a sincere effort to reach out to him after the 2008 election. He wants us to know he’s not bitter, though – not even a little bit.

How they cheat to win in Michigan – Michigan Republicans passed three bills yesterday to make voting harder. In particular, the legislation makes it harder to run a voter-registration drive. As has been their custom this year, House Republicans passed the legislation under immediate effect over the objections of the minority Democrats. That means the legislation could become law this year instead of waiting until 2013. – Maddow Blog

WHAT THE PRESIDENT / DEMOCRATS STAND FOR ————————————

“I am telling you, I want you all to pay attention over the next five months and see if they’re offering a single thing that they did not try when they were in charge, because you won’t see it.” — President Obama


image: randomactsofchaos

A lampoon of Mitt Romney, by Mitt Romney: “Out of touch” – the video features a highlight reel of the Republican’s gaffes,  a collection of Romney’s missteps, including such comments as “corporations are people,” “I like being able to fire people,” and “I’m also unemployed.”

…

Sen. Sanders blasts conflicts of interest at the Federal Reserve – Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday explained the importance of ending conflicts of interest at the Federal Reserve, [such as with] Jamie Dimon, the CEO and chairman of JPMorgan Chase, serv[ing] on the New York Fed’s board of directors. “The idea that we don’t have a Fed which is sitting there with knowledgeable, intelligent people who are fighting for the middle class and working families and not just for the profits of the large financial institutions — I mean, to me, that’s just a very simple reform,” Sanders said on Current TV’s Viewpoint. “But at the end of the day, if we are serious about trying to rebuild the middle class of this country, rebuild our manufacturing sector, et cetera, no question we need real Wall Street reform. To get Wall Street reform, we need Fed reform. To get Fed reform, we’ve got to get the bankers off of the regional Feds.” Sanders has introduced the Federal Reserve Independence Act to prohibit banking industry executives from serving as Fed directors. – Raw Story

Millions of old people are benefitting from Obamacare but are voting for Romney anyway – A Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services study determined that senior citizens more than any other demographic group of Americans benefit from Obamacare. The law hasn’t even really kicked in fully and yet 14.3 million senior citizens have benefitted from the law’s preventative care provisions. In other words, millions of old people have received free preventative care via Medicare that they wouldn’t have received if Obamacare hadn’t been passed. And so they’re going to vote for the guy who wants to repeal the law. – Bob Cesca

  • CBO Director: Romney’s claim is nonsense — Mitt Romney and many other Republicans commonly claim that President Obama’s health care law is already harming small businesses in the U.S. …Doug Elmendorf, director of the Congressional Budget Office, called that nonsense. “We don’t think that the health care law is having a significant impact on the economy today,” Elmendorf told reporters at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast roundtable Wednesday.  – TPM
  • More Romney nonsense: Obamacare made a small business in Iowa close — Mitt Romney has debuted a new talking point on the campaign trail, arguing Obama is out of touch with the negative impact Obamacare is having on small businesses. …Romney’s claim is based on a local interview Obama gave in Iowa, in which the president was told by a reporter that a local company had closed and was moving jobs to Wisconsin because of Obamacare. [...] It turns out that the company didn’t close because of Obamacare at all, according to a company spokesperson. What’s more, the company sees lack of demand as the key problem — a lack of demand that is partly due to the drive to repeal or modify Obamacare, not to the implementation of the law itself. [...] “We never said health care reform is the reason we’re closing and consolidating that operation,” Schurman said. “We never said it’s the result of the health care reform legislation.” – Greg Sargent

Senate Republicans introduce bill to block Obama Admin’s rule allowing home health workers to earn minimum wage – The Obama administration last year introduced a rule that would extend minimum wage protections to home health workers who, up to that point, had received no guarantee of a livable wage or fair overtime pay. But Senate Republicans are attempting to block the rule from going into effect:  A group of Republican senators on Thursday introduced legislation aimed at blocking the Obama administration’s controversial efforts to extend minimum wage and overtime protections to 2 million in-home care providers through Department of Labor regulations  – Think Progress

Both President Obama and Mitt Romney will deliver economic speeches in Ohio today. – Associated Press

Morning Bunker Report: TGIF 5.25.2012

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WHAT THE REPUBLICAN PARTY STANDS FOR TODAY—————————–—

The Truth About Governor Willard and Education – “President Obama has been unable to stand up to union bosses and unwilling to stand up for our kids,” Romney charged, citing hundreds of millions of dollars contributed by teachers unions to Democratic campaigns as the cause. “We have to stop putting campaign cash ahead of our kids,” he said to applause. First of all, our kids? You mean Tagg and Bagg and Bogg and Quagg and whoever, who already have $100 miilion trust funds to send their kids to prep schools? Whatchoo mean “our,” extremely white man? But, the point here is that, while he was governor, he didn’t let cash of any kind get ahead of the “kids” in the public schools of the state where public education was pretty much invented. In 2006, he cut $37.8 million from the state’s higher education budget. Fees skyrocketed, as they did generally throughout the state. In 2003, he tried to cut $100 milion from that same budget while raising tuition by $50 million at state colleges and universities. He also wanted to slash job training initiatives and workforce training funding. Things were rather worse at the primary and secondary level, where Romney passed down budget cuts and left cities and towns holding the bag. And that’s the way it was. – Charles P. Pierce

  • Mitt Romney’s campaign bus rolled into one West Philadelphia community on Thursday, but his appearance was less than welcomed. Hecklers shouted at him to leave, and a sign featuring Romney’s “I’m not concerned about the very poor” comment was raised. — Washington Post
  •  Mitt Romney regrets saying that he likes being able to fire people. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Romney said he got frustrated whenever he made flubs like his line, “I like being able to fire people who provide services to me,” last winter in New Hampshire. — ABC News

Polluters Ran Amuck Under Romney, Says Watchdog – Just weeks after taking office in 2003, he announced a plan to centralize the state’s legal services and lay off as many as half of its attorneys, including many within the Department of Environmental Protection. In rolling out the plan, Romney’s chief legal counsel Daniel Winslow singled out environmental positions as a target for cuts in an interview with Lawyers Weekly. Critics said the move would limit the state’s ability to prosecute environmental crimes, as the DEP was already “chronically understaffed” and would likely have to drop some cases. In the end, Romney’s reorganization plan was stymied by opposition from enviros, unions, and residents. [...] His administration also cut the DEP’s budget by almost a third, and temporarily closed its Northeastern Regional Office in Wilmington, Mass. [...] In 2004, Romney’s administration was accused of suppressing a report that detailed problems within the Massachusetts Environmental Police (MEP), which enforces laws related to pollution, wildlife and marine safety. – Mother Jones

Right-Wing Billionaires Behind Mitt Romney — Presidential politics has always been a rich man’s game. But now, thanks to the Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United that upended decades of limits on campaign donations, financing a presidential race is the exclusive domain of the kind of megadonor whose portfolios make Mitt Romney look middle-class. “I have lots of money, and can give it legally now,” Texas billionaire and top GOP moneyman Harold Simmons recently bragged to The Wall Street Journal. “Just never to Democrats.” – Rolling Stone

Romney wants to stop Congressional work on the economy until he’s sworn in — In an interview with Time magazine on Wednesday, the Republican presidential candidate said he wants Congress to deal with major issues to keep the U.S. from going over a “fiscal cliff” after the January swearing-in. Romney said he wants permanent legislation to deal with those problems instead of a temporary effort. Government analysts say the economy will shrink if Congress doesn’t act to prevent the expiration of two major rounds of tax cuts along with automatic spending cuts to the Pentagon and domestic programs. – NYTimes.com

The same Senate Republicans who pushed for massive spending cuts are now hitting Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid for insisting that Congress abide by them. — Politico

NO WASTEFUL SPENDING: The Missouri House “spent more than $1,100 in taxpayer money on a security camera to keep watch over a new bronze bust of conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh.” The small-government conservative talk show-host was inducted into the Hall of Famous Missourians during a closed-door ceremony last week. — Think Progress

Things that are hilariously real:

Source: secure.mittromney.com

Yes, that’s Mitt Romney’s signature on the poster of birther Donald Trump asking you for a $3 donation. As recently as two days ago on May 22nd, Donald Trump tweeted to ask what President Obama’s college applications say about his place of birth. That’s not merely a wink and a nod, it’s an accusation of fraud. Does this mean birtherism is now an official component of the Romney campaign? — JM Ashby

WHAT THE PRESIDENT / DEMOCRATS STAND FOR ————————————


image: barackobama

Obama has to Explain Why Fairness is Essential to Growth (and Why Some Democrats Have to Stop Believing Otherwise) – Fairness isn’t inconsistent with growth; it’s essential to it. The only way the economy can grow and create more jobs is if prosperity is more widely shared. The key reason why the recovery is so anemic is so much income and wealth are now concentrated at the top [that] America’s the vast middle class no longer has the purchasing power necessary to boost the economy. The richest 1 percent of Americans save about half their incomes, while most of the rest of us save between 6 and 10 percent. That shouldn’t be surprising. Being rich means you already have most of what you want and need. That second yacht isn’t nearly as exciting as was the first. It follows that when, as now, the top 1 percent rakes in more than 20 percent of total income — at least twice the share it had 30 years ago — there’s insufficient demand for all the goods and services the economy is capable of producing at or near full employment. And without demand, the economy doesn’t grow or generate nearly enough jobs. – Robert Reich

Here is the much-talked-about TED talk on income inequality given by billionaire venture capitalist Nick Hanauer, and his discussion of the negative impacts of income inequality on the economy. — AFL-CIO Blog

…
Maddow: Union-busting about making Wisconsin permanently Republican — “Killing the unions is the strategy for turning Wisconsin red, not just for now, but for generations to come in an irreparable way,” she said. “This is about partisan politics. It is about destroying Democrats’ chances of competing with Republicans.” Maddow noted that while Republican candidates are disproportionately funded by corporate and pro-business groups, Democratic candidates are disproportionately funded by public service unions — the very unions that Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker targeted in his budget repair bill. “It’s not about some year’s budget, it is not even about jobs,” Maddow continued. “Since he wiped away union rights in Wisconsin, Scott Walker has racked up the single worst jobs records in the entire country.” – Raw Story

Forever Herding Cats: A coalition of liberal interest groups is pushing back on a proposal by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to extend the Bush tax cuts for individuals earning less than $1 million a year, instead pushing a proposal from President Barack Obama that would draw the line at $250,000 a year in income. — Roll Call

  • Pelosi urged Speaker John Boehner to bring up a vote on extending tax cuts for middle-class income earners “as early as next week,” when the House returns from recess. — Roll Call

Sen. Charles Schumer on Thursday responded to conservatives who had compared his Ex-PATRIOT Act to laws imposed by the Nazis. “I know a thing or two about what Nazis did,” Schumer, a Jew, said on the Senate floor. “Some of my relatives were killed by them.” [...] “Saying that a person who made their fortune specifically because of the positive elements in American society in turn has the responsibility to do right by America is not even on the same planet as what the Nazis did to the Jews,” Schumer said. – Raw Story

Campaign comparison to meeting ‘The Donald’ – via: demnewswire

Meeting a President is a once-in-a-lifetime experience—how about an evening with two:  http://OFA.BO/UWiWts

The status of the U.S. worker over the last several decades: productivity vs. hourly compensation

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But listen to Mitt Romney: blame government workers with their “salaries” and “benefits.”

“The continuing growth of the wage gap between high and middle earners is the result of various laissez-faire policies (acts of omission as well as commission) including globalization, deregulation, privatization, eroded unionization, and weakened labor standards…The gap between the very highest earners — the top 1 percent — and all other earners, including other high earners, reflects the escalation of CEO and other managers’ compensation and the growth of compensation in the financial sector.”

— Larry Mishel, President of the Economic Policy Institute, speaking about the institute’s forthcoming study, “The State of Working America.”

TPM’s Brian Beutler looks the EPI’s new reflections on the status of the U.S. worker over the last several decades.

Krugman: why did faith in the wonders of financial deregulation persist so long?

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Because deregulation really was a financial wonder … for the ONE PERCENT:

… The true age of spectacular growth in the United States and other advanced economies was the generation after World War II, with post-Reagan growth nowhere near comparable. So why do these people imagine otherwise?

And the answer, once you think about it, is obvious: growth for whom? There’s only one way in which the post-deregulation boom was exceptional, and that’s in terms of the growth in incomes at the top of the scale.

Here’s a comparison of the postwar boom with the deregulation alleged boom, using real average family income from the Census and real average income for the top 1 percent from Piketty and Saez:

If you’re looking at the average, the last generation is a poor shadow of the postwar boom. But if you’re talking about the 1 percent, wonderful things have happened.

Read it all…

Here’s what you’ll be voting for in 2012, Republican Teaparty base: more tax cuts (and deregulation) for the wealthy and more spending cuts for the rest of us (income redistribution, bottom to top). Pull your heads out!

#OccupyWallStreet AND move your money

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WHAT IF YOU DISCOVERED THAT YOUR BANK was bailed out with billions of taxpayer dollars but is currently fighting new reforms to re-regulate the financial sector, was at the nexus of the foreclosure crisis, is laying off 30,000 people, plans to charge you to use your debit card, yet continues to reward its executives with multi-million dollar salaries?

Top five reasons to move your money from Bank of America

See also:

(Cartoon) The Teaparty: why listen to really dumb people who never learn from their past mistakes?

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source: David Horsey via: azspot

(Cartoon) What the Teaparty GOP and Non-Voters want for America

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Source: Jonik Cartoons via azspot

Viva the United States of Koch! Viva the Corporatist Plutocracy!

The Republican Teaparty job creation plan: MORE SNAKES!

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Yesterday, taking their anti-regulatory zeal to absurd new heights, House Republicans claimed that a proposed rule from the Interior Department that would “designate the Burmese python and eight other snake species as ‘injurious’” — therefore “make it illegal to import them or transport them across state lines” — is a threat to job creation. They even brought a snake breeder to testify before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, who said that the rule could “devastate a small but thriving sector of the economy.”

Source: Think Progress

So, turns out, America’s unemployment problems and growing income inequality isn’t caused by numerous issues like deindustrialization, or giving tax cuts to the wealthiest (who hoard the extra money), or union-busting, or spending our federal dollars on wars in the middle east… No! It’s all because of regulations that bar people from transporting injurious and poisonous snakes into the U.S.  And, further, those regulations are “devastating” to the economy.

It’s conceivable that these Congressional teapartyers may feel some kinship with snakes, but this “issue” is a completely unserious and irresponsible use of their workday, our precious tax dollars, and was obviously staged as a big “fuck you” to the serious problems we face.

I will just remind the Republican Teaparty base that it’s YOUR politicians who are screwing around in Congress with college-level stunts like deregulating snakes and they have better retirement and health benefits than federal employees, earn $174,000 annually, get a $3,000 annual tax deduction for living expenses while in Washington, have a three-day work week, get to jet back home on the weekends, and enjoy recesses that last up to to a month. It’s great work if you can get it!

Nice job on your 2010 selections, teaparty voters.