Category Archives: Politics

July 11, 2011 · 4:45 pm

Mexicans No Longer Immigrating to US?

Another issue the Republicans have beaten to death…

And another issue whose impact has been drastically exaggerated…

See a pattern?f

And if this trend continues, who is going to do all the jobs Americans refuse to do themselves?

From AlternNet.com:

Immigration from Mexico – which provided the largest number of immigrants to the U.S. during this latest wave – has all but dried up. Douglas S. Massey, co-director of the Mexican Migration Project at Princeton, told the New York Times that fewer Mexicans want to migrate northward today than at any time since at least the 1950s. “No one wants to hear it, but the flow has already stopped,” Massey told the Times, referring to illegal entries. “For the first time in 60 years, the net traffic has gone to zero and is probably a little bit negative.”

A common misperception that helps fuel hostility toward immigrants is that there is a never-ending pool of people dying to come here and if we don’t hold the line we’ll be overrun. The reality is that we have always had a modest flow of new immigrants punctuated by large but finite spikes from one country or another. Individuals have all sorts of reasons for emigrating, but when large numbers migrate from a single country or region, it’s always been in response to some kind of shock in their country of origin, be it civil strife or pestilence or drought or war or economic collapse or natural disaster. That’s true whether we’re talking about the Irish fleeing the Great Potato Famine, Russian Jews fleeing the pogroms or Vietnamese boat people fleeing war in Southeast Asia. The Wikipedia entry for Swedish emigration to America explains why their numbers peaked just after the Civil War:

There was widespread resentment against the religious repression practiced by the Swedish Lutheran State Church and the social conservatism and class snobbery of the Swedish monarchy. Population growth and crop failures made conditions in the Swedish countryside increasingly bleak.

This is true of the wave of Mexican immigration that now appears to be coming to an end. According to a study by the Pew organization, Mexican immigration “grew very rapidly starting in the mid-1990s, hit a peak at the end of the decade, and then declined substantially after 2001.” According to some estimates, 9 percent of the Mexican population pulled up roots and headed north during this period.

What happened to spur that movement? A few things. First, that timeline corresponds perfectly with the damage wrought in Mexican labor markets by NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement). Employment in Mexico’s agricultural sector dropped by 16 percent between 1993, the year before NAFTA went into effect, and 2002. Service sector employment was stable — it didn’t absorb many of those workers. And while manufacturing increased in the maquiladoras between 1994 and 2000 — when it peaked with about 800,000 jobs – the maquiladora zone shed 250,000 of those jobs over the next three years, most of them outsourced to China. Make capital mobile, make goods mobile and people will have no choice but to mobilize themselves.

via Mexicans No Longer Immigrating to US? (What Will Xenophobes Freak Out About Now?) | | AlterNet.

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July 10, 2011 · 10:26 am

The Only Crisis Here Is The One The Republicans Are Making

Perfect Summary of the situation in Washington by Mark Sumner at DailyKos:

 

There is no fiscal crisis. Everyone should be clear on that.

The United States is not bankrupt. Social Security is not about to founder. Wall Street is not on a precipice, the IMF is not standing by demanding massive shifts in our government, and U.S. bonds are not trading 1:1 with Charmin. There is nothing wrong.

Nothing except that the Republican Party is prepared to slice the nation’s throat to get its way.

Real crises do exist. There are moments in a nation’s history where the government must take abrupt action, either military or fiscal, to prevent disaster. In the collapse of 2008, some might disagree with the exact nature of the action the Bush administration took in bailing out banks that had recklessly overextended themselves, but there’s little doubt that there was a real problem and without action there was a chance that it could grow from disaster to catastrophe.

That’s not the case this time. Not only does solving the issue at hand not require the launching of a single ship, it doesn’t require the expenditure of a single dime. Raising the debt limit does not commit the United States to any debt it has not already incurred. Refusing to raise that limit is no more an act of fiscal prudence than refusing to pay the restaurant for a meal already eaten.

Not only is the money already spent, the Republicans are the ones who spent it. It’s not Social Security that drove up the debt over the last decade. Social Security is responsible for 0% of the deficit. Make that 0.00%, to be exact. The deficit that the Republicans are railing against is driven by the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and by the cost of the recently extended Bush tax cuts. You know what’ll happen if we cut Social Security? We’ll get less Social Security, not less deficit.

It’s funny that politicians on both sides of the aisle keep demanding that “everything be on the table,” when what they really mean is that “everything not responsible for the problem be on the table.” Not that it matters. The truth is that Republicans aren’t interested in solving the problem. They’re making the problem. They invented it from thin, hot air and they’re entirely invested in seeing that the problem gets worse.

Don’t think the Republicans would put the nation at risk on purpose? Consider this: the only thing they won’t even think about, the only option so odious they’ll walk out of the room rather than talk about it, is precisely the only thing that would actually help. If we allow the Bush tax cuts to expire as scheduled—all of the cuts—the deficit will dry up and the nation will return to sound fiscal standing in short order. If we don’t allow those unsustainable rates to expire … then we will. If we go down after making cuts in Social Security and health care, then we’ll we’ll only succeed in making a lot of people miserable to no purpose. Only returning taxes to viable levels will help.

If Republicans were actually concerned about the fiscal health of the nation, they would sign onto raising the debt ceiling without hesitation or condition. Because there’s nothing wrong, and because raising the limit would cost nothing. Instead they’ve created a completely artificial problem as nothing more than an excuse to extend the damage they’ve already caused. It’s really a wonderful little game they’ve created: drive the nation so far into debt that there’s no choice but to raise the limit, then use raising the limit as an excuse to create more debt. No wonder they call it red ink.

The only crisis we’re facing is that one of our nation’s political parties has decided to hold its breath until the nation turns red. And the media, the public, and the opposing party are treating this massive tantrum with far more respect than it deserves.

via Daily Kos: The only crisis here is the one the Republicans are making.

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July 9, 2011 · 6:10 pm

Betty Ford Dies: Former First Lady Dead At Age 93

Sad news….

I always liked her-she was so real.

They don’t make Republicans like her anymore….

While her husband served as president, Ford’s comments weren’t the kind of genteel, innocuous talk expected from a first lady, and a Republican one no less. Her unscripted comments sparked tempests in the press and dismayed President Gerald Ford’s advisers, who were trying to soothe the national psyche after Watergate. But to the scandal-scarred, Vietnam-wearied, hippie-rattled nation, Mrs. Ford’s openness was refreshing.

And 1970s America loved her for it.

According to Mrs. Ford, her young adult children probably had smoked marijuana – and if she were their age, she’d try it, too. She told “60 Minutes” she wouldn’t be surprised to learn that her youngest, 18-year-old Susan, was in a sexual relationship (an embarrassed Susan issued a denial).

She mused that living together before marriage might be wise, thought women should be drafted into the military if men were, and spoke up unapologetically for abortion rights, taking a position contrary to the president’s. “Having babies is a blessing, not a duty,” Mrs. Ford said.

“Mother’s love, candor, devotion, and laughter enriched our lives and the lives of the millions she touched throughout this great nation,” her family said in a statement released late Friday. “To be in her presence was to know the warmth of a truly great lady.”

via Betty Ford Dies: Former First Lady Dead At Age 93.

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July 9, 2011 · 3:08 pm

Rep. Ryan Tastes The Grapes Of Wrath

All I can think of is Marie Antoinette’s response to being told the peasants had no bread.  She allegedly said “Well, let them eat cake.”

This is the guy who wants to destroy Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid while he drinks $700 worth of wine in a restaurant.

These Republicans really do live in a different world.  They can’t imagine what life is like for most people.  That’s got to be why they do the things they do…

Or, they are just evil….

Your choice….

From TalkingPointsMemo.com:

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), a leading advocate of shrinking entitlement spending and the architect of the plan to privatize Medicare, spent Wednesday evening sipping $350 wine with two like-minded conservative economists at the swanky Capitol Hill eatery Bistro Bis.

It was the same night reports started trickling out about President Obama pressing Congressional leaders to consider changes to Social Security and Medicare in exchange for GOP support for targeted tax increases.

The pomp and circumstance surrounding the waiter’s presentation, uncorking and decanting of the pricey Pinot Noir caught the attention of another diner who had already recognized Ryan sitting with two other men nearby.

Susan Feinberg, an associate business professor at Rutgers, was at Bistro Bis celebrating her birthday with her husband that night. When she saw the label on the bottle of Jayer-Gilles 2004 Echezeaux Grand Cru Ryan’s table had ordered, she quickly looked it up on the wine list and saw that it sold for an eye-popping $350, the most expensive wine in the house along with one other with the same pricetag.

Feinberg, an economist by training, was even more appalled when the table ordered a second bottle. She quickly did the math and figured out that the $700 in wine the trio consumed over the course of 90 minutes amounted to more than the entire weekly income of a couple making minimum wage.

“We were just stunned,” said Feinberg, who e-mailed TPM about her encounter later the same evening. “I was an economist so I started doing the envelope calculations and quickly figured out that those two bottles of wine was more than two-income working family making minimum wage earned in a week.”

via Rep. Ryan Tastes The Grapes Of Wrath | TPMDC.

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July 6, 2011 · 11:15 pm

In Debt Talks, Obama Offers Social Security Cuts

If he does this, he’s lost me….

If he supports Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security cuts, he might as well be a Republican President.  No Democrat should ever support cuts to these programs.

I will have no patience for this type of sell out.

I truly hope this is not true…

This is wrong on so many levels:  Factually and Morally.

From the Washington Post:

President Obama is pressing congressional leaders to consider a far-reaching debt-reduction plan that would force Democrats to accept major changes to Social Security and Medicare in exchange for Republican support for fresh tax revenue.

At a meeting with top House and Senate leaders set for Thursday morning, Obama plans to argue that a rare consensus has emerged about the size and scope of the nation’s budget problems and that policymakers should seize the moment to take dramatic action.

As part of his pitch, Obama is proposing significant reductions in Medicare spending and for the first time is offering to tackle the rising cost of Social Security, according to people in both parties with knowledge of the proposal. The move marks a major shift for the White House and could present a direct challenge to Democratic lawmakers who have vowed to protect health and retirement benefits from the assault on government spending.

“Obviously, there will be some Democrats who don’t believe we need to do entitlement reform. But there seems to be some hunger to do something of some significance,” said a Democratic official familiar with the administration’s thinking. “These moments come along at most once a decade. And it would be a real mistake if we let it pass us by.”

Rather than roughly $2 trillion in savings, the White House is now seeking a plan that would slash more than $4 trillion from annual budget deficits over the next decade, stabilize borrowing and defuse the biggest budgetary time bombs that are set to explode as the cost of health care rises and the nation’s population ages.

That would represent a major legislative achievement, but it would also put Obama and GOP leaders at odds with major factions of their own parties. While Democrats would be asked to cut social-safety-net programs, Republicans would be asked to raise taxes, perhaps by letting tax breaks for the nation’s wealthiest households expire on schedule at the end of next year.

The administration argues that lawmakers would also get an important victory to sell to voters in 2012. “The fiscal good has to outweigh the pain,” said a Democratic official familiar with the discussions.

It is not clear whether that argument can prevail on Capitol Hill. Thursday’s meeting at the White House — an attempt by Obama to break the impasse that halted debt-reduction talks two weeks ago — will provide a critical opportunity for leaders in both parties to say how far they’re willing to go to restrain government borrowing as the clock ticks toward an Aug. 2 deadline for raising the debt ceiling.

Obama has already spoken to House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) about the possibility of building support for a more ambitious debt-reduction plan, according to people with knowledge of those talks, who, like others quoted in this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity to shed light on private negotiations. The two discussed various options for overhauling the tax code and cutting entitlement spending, but they reached no agreement.

via In debt talks, Obama offers Social Security cuts – The Washington Post.

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July 4, 2011 · 12:27 pm

Did J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI Push Ernest Hemingway to Suicide?

Speaking of evil…

I wonder if it’s possible to count the number of famous and not so famous lives destroyed by J Edgar Hoover.

This article from The Guardian raises some interesting new theories on his possible role in Ernest Hemingway’s death:

 

For five decades, literary journalists, psychologists and biographers have tried to unravel why Ernest Hemingway took his own life, shooting himself at his Idaho home while his wife Mary slept.

Some have blamed growing depression over the realisation that the best days of his writing career had come to an end. Others said he was suffering from a personality disorder.

Now, however, Hemingway’s friend and collaborator over the last 13 years of his life has suggested another contributing factor, previously dismissed as a paranoid delusion of the Nobel prize-winning writer. It is that Hemingway was aware of his long surveillance by J Edgar Hoover’s FBI, who were suspicious of his links with Cuba, and that this may have helped push him to the brink.

Writing in the New York Times on the 50th anniversary of Hemingway’s death, AE Hotchner, author of Papa Hemingway and Hemingway and His World, said he believed that the FBI’s surveillance “substantially contributed to his anguish and his suicide”, adding that he had “regretfully misjudged” his friend’s fear of the organisation.

The reassessment is significant as it was precisely because of Papa Hemingway that the writer’s fear of being bugged and followed by the FBI first surfaced. Hotchner’s belated change of heart casts a new light on the last few months of Hemingway’s life and two incidents in particular.

In November 1960, Hotchner writes, he had gone to visit Hemingway and Mary in Ketchum, Idaho, for an annual pheasant shoot. Hemingway was behaving oddly, Hotchner recalls: “When Ernest and our friend Duke MacMullen met my train at Shoshone, Idaho, for the drive to Ketchum, we did not stop at the bar opposite the station as we usually did because Ernest was anxious to get on the road. I asked why the hurry. ‘The Feds.’

“‘What?’

“‘They tailed us all the way. Ask Duke.’

“‘Well… there was a car back of us out of Hailey.’

“‘Why are FBI agents pursuing you?’ I asked.

“‘It’s the worst hell. The goddamnedest hell. They’ve bugged everything. That’s why we’re using Duke’s car. Mine’s bugged. Everything’s bugged. Can’t use the phone. Mail intercepted.’

“We rode for miles in silence. As we turned into Ketchum, Ernest said quietly: ‘Duke, pull over. Cut your lights.’ He peered across the street at a bank. Two men were working inside. ‘What is it?’ I asked. ‘Auditors. The FBI’s got them going over my account.’

“‘But how do you know?’

“‘Why would two auditors be working in the middle of the night? Of course it’s my account’.”

It would not be the only time during this visit that Hemingway would complain about being under FBI surveillance. On the last day of Hotchner’s visit, at dinner with the writer and his wife, Hemingway pointed out two men at the bar who he identified as “FBI agents”.

More: Fresh claim over role the FBI played in suicide of Ernest Hemingway | Books | The Observer.

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July 4, 2011 · 12:19 pm

Ann Coulter Calls Princess Diana ‘Anorexic, Bulimic Narcissist’

I think she was confused and referring to herself….

I can’t believe people still put this awful woman on television and the so-called Christians run and buy her books….

Ann Coulter is just a petty, self-centered, opportunistic media whore who’ll say anything to get attention and make money.  I don’t know why anyone but Fox News has her on television.

She’s kind of like Sarah Palin if Sarah only had one black dress and a better vocabulary……

From the Huffington Post:

 

Ann Coulter has some harsh words for the late Princess Diana.

The conservative commentator raised some eyebrows in a new interview with “The Insider” co-host Kevin Frazier.

“I find it a little baffling when Americans get so gaga-eyed over a princess. In particular Lady Di, who was just this anorexic, bulimic narcissist,” Coulter said.

Coulter, who was promoting her new book “Demonic: How The Liberal Mob Is Endangering America”, has professed contempt for Diana and the Royal Family before.

In April, Coulter appeared on “The O’Reilly Factor” to call the late princess a “nitwit hussy” and said of the Royal Wedding: “It’s totally embarrassing Americans cared about that.”

She also said she was specifically going to be on a plane to France so she wouldn’t have to watch William and Kate’s nuptials.

Coulter did admit on her “Fox News” appearance that she looked up Kate Middleton and said, “She seems like a lovely woman, I feel sorry for the life she’s signed on to.”

Princess Diana was known not just for her royal title, but for being the “People’s Princess.” It was her philanthropy working to raise AIDS awareness and working towards a ban on landmines that won her the respect and admiration of many.

via Ann Coulter Calls Princess Diana ‘Anorexic, Bulimic Narcissist’ (VIDEO).

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July 2, 2011 · 4:35 pm

Going Populist? Dems Put GOP On Spot Over Tax Benefits For The Super-Rich | TPMDC

It’s really unbelievable the GOP wants to cut Medicaid, kill Medicare and cut Social Security, but they won’t agree to any tax increases for Millionaires and Billionaires.

Even on yachts or private planes.

I don’t see how anyone who isn’t a millionaire can continue to be fooled into voting Republican.

You really ought to click the link and read this article from Talking Points Memo….

 

The Democrats’ response, from the rank and file up to President Obama, has been a political twofer. If Republicans are taking all taxes off the table, then they’re playing reverse Robin Hood — demanding trillions in cuts to social programs while refusing to budge on preferences to unfathomably wealthy special interests. It’s class war, but in tactical sense. If they can make the GOP feel so uncomfortable that they agree to end special tax favors for the ultra-wealthy — even if those favors don’t ultimately cost that much money — then maybe they can break the anti-tax firewall and encroach on $400 billion.

Here’s what they’re focusing on.

via Going Populist? Dems Put GOP On Spot Over Tax Benefits For The Super-Rich | TPMDC.

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July 2, 2011 · 12:27 pm

Mac Stores Tell Workers, Instead of Giving You Health Care, Working for Apple ‘Should Be Looked at As An Experience’

Somewhere along the way, the social contract between workers and employers has completely disappeared in this country.

Workers now seem to be viewed solely as a cost to Corporate profits.  Unless you are a CEO, CFO or other very high level employee…

I hate to tell them, but the way to avoid Unions, which most companies fear like the Plague, is to treat your workers fairly.

Apple doesn’t seem to get this…

This is a disturbing article, from AlterNet.com, about one of my favorite companies that makes some of my favorite things.

I’m an Apple Addict.

What makes this so disturbing is that I’ve always seen Apple as such a modern, forward-thinking company.  And they are wildly successful and profitable.

 

 

Those workers who did ask received a consistent response: “Money shouldn’t be an issue when you’re employed at Apple.” Instead, managers said, the chance to work at Apple “should be looked at as an experience.” “You can’t live off of experience,” said the worker interviewed. The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Apple has outpaced Tiffany & Co. jewelers in retail sales per square foot.

Employees said that Apple keeps its healthcare costs down by defining even employees working 40 hours a week as part-time if they can’t guarantee open availability (availability to be scheduled to work anytime the store is open). The three workers interviewed said that most employees at each of their stores either work second jobs or go to school, making open availability impossible.

These workers are instead offered Apple’s “part-time” health insurance plan, which costs them much more and the company much less. The Bay Area worker, who works 32 to 40 hours a week, is currently going without medication for a serious health condition because he can’t afford the $120 to $150 a month for the “part time” plan. “$120 a month is what I live on after rent and bills,” he said. All three employees said that the majority of their co-workers were classified as part time.

via Mac Stores Tell Workers, Instead of Giving You Health Care, Working for Apple ‘Should Be Looked at As An Experience’ | | AlterNet.

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July 1, 2011 · 7:00 pm

Lies Become Truths: The Demise of the Newspaper Leaves Americans Dumber, Blinder and Prone to Ideological Manipulation | | AlterNet

Great article on AlterNet.com about the impact of the death of newspapers.

Here’s an excerpt and a link to the full article:

The great newspapers sustained legendary reporters such as I.F. Stone, Murray Kempton and Homer Bigart who wrote stories that brought down embezzlers, cheats, crooks and liars, who covered wars and conflicts, who told us about famines in Africa and the peculiarities of the French or what it was like to be poor and forgotten in our urban slums or Appalachia. These presses churned out raw lists of data, from sports scores to stock prices. Newspapers took us into parts of the city or the world we would never otherwise have seen or visited. Reporters and critics reviewed movies, books, dance, theater and music and covered sporting events. Newspapers printed the text of presidential addresses, sent reporters to chronicle the inner workings of City Hall and followed the courts and the police. Photographers and reporters raced to cover the lurid and the macabre, from Mafia hits to crimes of passion.

We are losing a peculiar culture and an ethic. This loss is impoverishing our civil discourse and leaving us less and less connected to the city, the nation and the world around us. The death of newsprint represents the end of an era. And news gathering will not be replaced by the Internet. Journalism, at least on the large scale of old newsrooms, is no longer commercially viable. Reporting is time-consuming and labor-intensive. It requires going out and talking to people. It means doing this every day. It means looking constantly for sources, tips, leads, documents, informants, whistle-blowers, new facts and information, untold stories and news. Reporters often spend days finding little or nothing of significance. The work can be tedious and is expensive. And as the budgets of large metropolitan dailies shrink, the very trade of reporting declines. Most city papers at their zenith employed several hundred reporters and editors and had operating budgets in the hundreds of millions of dollars. The steady decline of the news business means we are plunging larger and larger parts of our society into dark holes and opening up greater opportunities for unchecked corruption, disinformation and the abuse of power.

via Lies Become Truths: The Demise of the Newspaper Leaves Americans Dumber, Blinder and Prone to Ideological Manipulation | | AlterNet.

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