Government Must Play Role in Reviving the American Economy

Source: Salon:

The American economy has been driven by waves of technological change and the successful adoption of ideas from elsewhere. Michael Lind, the author of “Land of Promise,” tells us how it happened, and what history teaches us about the way ahead.

The BrowserYour latest book is a sweeping economic history of America. In a nutshell, how did America become such an economic powerhouse?

Well, it did so as a result of collaboration between the government and the private sector and, increasingly in the 20th century, the nonprofit, academic research sector. It’s quite a different story in reality from the tale that is sometimes told of how capitalism grew up without controls in the United States, and then with the New Deal it came under regulation. In fact, the government both at the federal and the state level was deeply involved with projects for promoting the industrialization of the United States and the creation of a capitalist market from the administration of George Washington onward.

CEO Pay Grew 127 Times Faster Than Worker Pay Over Last 30 Years: Study

Source: Huffington Post:

American CEOs saw their pay spike 15 percent last year, after a 28 percent pay rise the year before, according to a report by GMI Ratings cited by The Guardian. Meanwhile, workers saw their inflation-adjusted wages fall 2 percent in 2011, according to the Labor Department.

That's in line with a trend that dates back three decades. CEO pay spiked 725 percent between 1978 and 2011, while worker pay rose just 5.7 percent, according to a study by the Economic Policy Institute released on Wednesday. That means CEO pay grew 127 times faster than worker pay.

Income inequality between CEOs and workers has consequently exploded, with CEOs last year earning 209.4 times more than workers, compared to just 26.5 times more in 1978 -- meaning CEOs are taking home a larger percentage of company gains.

That trend comes despite workers nearly doubling their productivity during the same time period, when compensation barely rose. Worker productivity spiked 93 percent between 1978 and 2011 on a per-hour basis, and 85 percent on a per-person basis, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

Illinois: Feds say city official actually stole $53M

Source:

Federal prosecutors say in an indictment that a former financial officer for the small northern Illinois city of Dixon stole millions more in public funds than an initial investigation had uncovered.

Tuesday’s indictment accuses Rita Crundwell of stealing more than $53 million from the city since 1990. An initial criminal complaint filed upon her April 17 arrest had accused her of siphoning $30 million in public funds to a secret account she controlled.

Crundwell is accused of using the money to fund horse-breeding operations that brought her national fame and a lavish lifestyle that included expensive jewelry and luxury vehicles.

The former comptroller will be arraigned May 7 in U.S. District Court in Rockford. 

My May Day Raw Video: Police protecting Chase bank

Factory Orders Post Biggest Decline in Three Years

Doesn't sound to me like the economy is getting any better as the Obama apologists keep insisting.
Factory Orders Post Biggest Decline in Three Years

Billions Of Dollars, Thousands of Lives Lost In Afghanistan War

Why isn't Obama being criticized for losing the war. He expanded it and now he wants to pull out. He didn't run on ending the war. He should be held responsible for the losses.
Billions Of Dollars, Thousands of Lives Lost In Afghanistan War

Facebook users heap baggage on Spirit Airlines after dying vet refused refund

People power. We wont be ripped off any longer. Big business has to respect its customers.
Facebook users heap baggage on Spirit Airlines after dying vet refused refund

Occupy Wall St. activists in N.Y. join May Day protest

The press essentially missed the real story of the May Day rallies. They instead focused on a few trouble makers. The press is all about sensationalism. The coming together of thousands to protest injustice in America is of little concern. That is why we must depend on the people's media. So keep tweeting, blogging, video recording, photographing. The people we be victorious in the end.

This article is an example. They took the exception and made it the rule:

In the birthplace of last year's nationwide Occupy movement, the campaign that had seemed to drop from sight after being evicted from its New York City encampment surged back into the public eye Tuesday with a series of May Day protests, the largest drawing thousands of people to Union Square in Lower Manhattan.

There were no immediate signs of clashes, but tensions were apparent as the afternoon wore on and police erected metal barricades around most of the sprawling square to hem in protesters. Local media reports said 30 people had been arrested, mostly for disorderly conduct.

About 5:30 p.m. EDT protesters began marching down Broadway, headed by a man carrying a large American flag hanging upside down. Crowds waving posters bearing pictures of Che Guevara and banners of labor unions taking part in the march moved slowly down Broadway, which police had closed to traffic at the height of rush hour.

"The workers united will never be defeated," chanted one group walking with a large banner that read: "Smash the 1 percent with communist revolution." 

5 Ways To Occupy The May Day General Strike (Even If You Have To Work)

Source:

What Occupy Wall Street is advocating instead is a day in which members of the 99% take whatever actions they can to withdraw from participation in the normal workings of the economic system. Here are 5 easy ways that everyone can participate in tomorrow’s historical action, regardless of employment status.

1. Don’t Shop: The middle-class consumer creates the incentive to conceive, manufacture, and sell what our economy produces. That demand drives business opportunities and spurs investment. If the 99% stops spending its giving its hard-earned money to global corporations, crooked CEOs won’t be able to afford yet another lobbyist to help bend the laws to their own advantage. By not shopping, you will hit corporations where it really counts, the wallet.

2. Don’t Bank: Big banks are some of the worst criminals in the United States. Their fraudulent lending practices are what crashed the economy, and their complete disregard for the welfare of their customers has led to millions of foreclosures, many unnecessary, over the past few years. May 1st is a great day to move your money out of a corporate bank, and into a community controlled credit union.

3. Don’t Go To School: American student debt just pass the $1 trillion mark. The quality of education in the United States is falling further behind other countries every day, yet it costs more to go to school here than almost anywhere else in the world. The government, private lenders, and for-profit colleges tell students that getting an education is a good reason to go into mountains of debt, even as they push to increase student loan interest rates. For one day, refuse to participate in this racket. Gather your fellow classmates and take to the streets to educate each other about what’s really happening to students in America.

4. Don’t Drive: In 2011, oil companies raked in $261,000 in profit per minute, while middle class families struggled to put food on the table. Despite this obscene profit, most oil companies paid zero dollars in federal taxes, and some even got a refund. Why? Because they enjoy millions of dollars in taxpayer-funded subsidies for polluting our planet and exploiting the last bit of its natural resources. Ditch your car, and ride a bike or walk instead. Refuse to be a part of the problem, even just for a day.

5. Don’t Work: Times are hard, and not everyone can simply walk out of work without facing serious financial repercussions. Still, consider taking a personal day to join demonstrations, marches, disruptions, occupations, and other mass actions. You can take your lunch hour to write personal letters to your state and local representatives, asking them to take action on an issue that’s close to your heart. Or simply take five minutes during your day to talk to a fellow member of the 99% about why you support the Occupy movement, and why they should get involved.

Occupy May Day protests could block roads, shut down ferry service

Although many commuters could be inconvenienced it must be done. Unless we speak up and out the ruling class will continue ignore the will of the people. Revolutionary justice always requires sacrifice. If you late for work don't curse Occupy. Curse those that rule America without our consent:

 May Day protests may disrupt the morning commute in major U.S. cities Tuesday as labor, immigration and Occupy activists rally support on the international workers' holiday.

Demonstrations, strikes and acts of civil disobedience are being planned around the country, including the most visible organizing effort by anti-Wall Street groups since Occupy encampments came down in the fall.

While protesters are backing away from a call to block San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge, bridge district ferry workers said they'll strike Tuesday morning to shut down ferry service, which brings commuters from Marin County to the city. Ferry workers have been in contract negotiations for a year and have been working without a contract since July 2011 in a dispute over health care coverage, the Inlandboatmen's Union said.

[...]In New York City, where the first Occupy camp was set up and where large protests brought some of the earliest attention — and mass arrests — to the movement, leaders plan a variety of events, including picketing, a march through Manhattan and other "creative disruptions against the corporations who rule our city."

Organizers have called for protesters to block one or more bridges or tunnels connecting Manhattan, the city's economic engine, to New Jersey and other parts of the city.

 Full article

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Obama Fails to Stem Middle-Class Slide He Blamed on Bush

Sadly there are still millions of Americans who still believe in the fraud who is Barack Obama. He lied to us. We should not be surprised. Democrats and Republicans have been lying to us for decades. So why should he be any different:

Barack Obama campaigned four years ago assailing President George W. Bush for wage losses suffered by the middle class. More than three years into Obama’s own presidency, those declines have only deepened.

The rebound from the worst recession since the 1930s has generated relatively few of the moderately skilled jobs that once supported the middle class, tightening the financial squeeze on many Americans, even those who are employed.

“It started long before Obama, but he hasn’t done anything,” said John Forsyth, 58, a railroad-car inspector and political independent from Lebanon, Ohio. “He kept pushing this change, change, change, and he hasn’t done anything.”

Underlying the erosion of the middle class, defined by some economists as the middle 60 percent of income earners, are trends that stretch back decades, including competition from lower-wage workers overseas and technological advances that allow factories and offices to produce more with less labor.

As a candidate in 2008, Obama blamed the reversals largely on the policies of Bush and other Republicans. He cited census figures showing that median income for working-age households -- those headed by someone younger than 65 -- had dropped more than $2,000 after inflation during the first seven years of Bush’s time in office.

Yet real median household income in March was down $4,300 since Obama took office in January 2009 and down $2,900 since the June 2009 start of the economic recovery, according to an analysis of census data by Sentier Research, an economic- consulting firm in Annapolis, Maryland.

Full article

Press Release: Demonstrators Request Injunction Restricting NYPD’s Use of Metal Barricades

I am proud to be a part of this lawsuit. We are sending a message: the government cannot be allowed to get away with violating Constitutional rights. Hopefully others will be encouraged by this case to speak out against the continued move towards less freedom in America:

Today, Occupy-affiliated demonstrators who were illegally held for two hours against their will on November 30, 2011 inside a pen built of interlocking metal barricades filed a civil rights action in federal court. The group is represented by the law firms of Rankin & Taylor and Beldock Levine & Hoffman. In addition to damages, the group seeks an injunction on behalf of all demonstrators in New York City that would prohibit similar Police tactics.

“We came to express our views at a place where the President might see us, and were detained for hours as if we had committed a crime,” said John Rivera, one of the class action plaintiffs, who was a member of the Civil Service Employees Association, a prominent New York Union, for 20 years and is a Bushwick, Brooklyn resident. Mr. Rivera has been demonstrating in New York City since the 1980s. His first political action was protesting the Soviet Embassy after the shooting of an American soldier in Germany. He says he has never experienced a detention like this one.

“What happened to me, and my fellow protesters, was an eye opener. We were corralled like farm animals.” Mr. Rivera had been spending time in Liberty Park since September 19, 2011.

Though the New York Civil Liberties Union was successful in getting the NYPD to agree to restrictions on the use of barricades in 2008, the current suit alleges that the police department has violated those guidelines as well as the US Constitution.

“Under Commissioner Kelly the NYPD has considered itself above any restrictions when it comes to political protests, even restrictions it agrees to in front of a federal judge. We will look for judicial oversight of these tactics in order to defend New Yorker’s rights,” said attorney Mark Taylor.

“We were demonstrating peacefully and then with no warning we were detained for hours,” describes Jonathan Jetter, another of the plaintiffs, who is a professor at the State University of New York at Purchase and the owner of a midtown Manhattan-based music business. “We were denied access to legal representation and the press. I’ve taken part in many protests and this was the most chilling police response I’ve yet encountered,” he continued. Mr. Jetter lives in Queens.

“This felt like an attempt to scare us from participating in future protests,” explained Phoebe Berg of Brooklyn, another class representative. “I hate the fact that I can’t help but take into account the real possibility of being detained again, not allowed access to a water/food or a restroom for possibly hours, during the May Day General Strike and other future actions.”

Source

Occupy Wall Street Plans Global Disruption of Status Quo May 1

I'll be there:

Occupy Wall Street demonstrators, whose anti-greed message spread worldwide during an eight-week encampment in Lower Manhattan last year, plan marches across the globe tomorrow calling attention to what they say are abuses of power and wealth.

Organizers say they hope the coordinated events will mark a spring resurgence of the movement after a quiet winter. Calls for a general strike with no work, no school, no banking and no shopping have sprung up on websites in Toronto, Barcelona, London, Kuala Lumpur and Sydney, among hundreds of cities in North America, Europe and Asia.

In New York, Occupy Wall Street will join scores of labor organizations observing May 1, traditionally recognized as International Workers’ Day. They plan marches from Union Square to Lower Manhattan and a “pop-up occupation” of Bryant Park on Sixth Avenue, across the street from Bank of America’s Corp.’s 55-story tower.

“We call upon people to refrain from shopping, walk out of class, take the day off of work and other creative forms of resistance disrupting the status quo,” organizers said in an April 26 e-mail.

Source

City Sued Over Police Response to Occupy Protests

I'm involved in a lawsuit as well (more on that in the future):

Four lawmakers are suing the city over its treatment of the Occupy Wall Street protests.     

The civil rights suit was filed Monday in a Manhattan federal court. It says police conduct is so problematic that the force needs an outside monitor.     

The city Law Department had no immediate comment Monday. Mayor  Bloomberg has defended police handling of the protests.   

Occupy demonstrators have gone to court before over particular episodes. The new lawsuit is a compendium of complaints.     

It says the city and police violated demonstrators' free speech and other rights, used excessive force and interfered with journalists' and council members' efforts to observe.     

City Council members Letitia James, Melissa Mark-Viverito, Ydanis Rodriguez and Jumaane Williams are among the plaintiffs.

Source

Bowles: 'We Face The Most Predictable Economic Crisis In History'

The warnings keep coming but the political/media establishment ignores it. Meanwhile we're just talking about a meaningless election in where there is really no mention of what needs to be done to rescue the current economy:

 Erskine Bowles, a true Southern gentleman and co-chairman of President Barack Obama’s erstwhile budget-deficit commission, came to New York City from his home in North Carolina the other night to talk sense about the nation’s perilous fiscal condition.

“I think today we face the most predictable economic crisis in history,” he told an audience on April 24 at the Council on Foreign Relations -- an audience that might actually be able to help do something about the problem. “Fortunately, I think it’s also the most avoidable. I think it’s clear, if you do simple arithmetic, that the fiscal path that the nation is on is simply not sustainable.”

Bowles, a Democrat, then laid on the crowd some pretty simple, but devastating, arithmetic. He explained that 100 percent of the tax revenue that entered the Treasury in 2011 went out the door to pay for mandatory spending -- such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security -- and to pay the interest on our staggering $15.6 trillion national debt.

That means that every single dollar we spent on everything else, including two wars, national defense, homeland security, education, infrastructure, high-value-added research and the like, was borrowed. “And,” he warned, “half of it was borrowed from foreign countries. And that is a formula for failure in anybody’s book.”

Full article

'Slaughtered for their ivory': Up to 35,000 elephants slain in one year, charity says

Source:

Up to 35,000 elephants were killed last year for their tusks, the head of a charity told NBC News.

Charlie Mayhew, the chief executive of Tusk Trust, said: "What we have witnessed over the last 18 months or two years has been a significant escalation in the poaching of both rhino for rhino horn and elephant for ivory, fueled by sort of a dramatic increase in demand from consumers in the Far East.

"Last year we believe that as many as 35,000 elephants may have been slaughtered for their ivory," he added. "South Africa lost 434 rhino last year. This year we know that they've lost more than 170 rhino. That's more than an average of one every 15 hours and that is just South Africa alone."

A rhino horn is worth as much as $40,000 on the black market.

'Fareed Zakaria GPS' Transcript (4-29-12)

Full transcript. Excerpt below:

ZAKARIA: So this sounds like something out of a murder mystery. I mean how do you think most Chinese people are reacting to this news that they're getting that this guy who was really one of the most admired people in China, from what we could tell, has suddenly been now revealed to be a corrupt hack or is being kind of painted as a corrupt hack by officials?

OSNOS: This story is unprecedented. I mean we're talking about the world's second largest economy, the most powerful men in charge. Bo Xilai was going to be perhaps one of the nine people running the country this fall.

And, now, he has been -- he has fallen from grace in the course of just a few weeks. And this has really left people's head spinning because, in the Chinese press, they're being told every day that this man was a criminal. This man who had been celebrated just a couple of months ago.

And this is very hard for the party to explain to people. How is it that a man who, evidently, is now a criminal, who's accused of wire-tapping his own peers, could have, in fact, gotten so high and been celebrated so recently. This is a problem that's hard to reconcile for the leadership.

ZAKARIA: And what is the larger point here because, in the Chinese press, he's being portrayed as a criminal and kind of a bad apple. But, obviously, this is also about a power struggle.

OSNOS: Yes, this is the part that's especially awkward for the leadership because what they've got is a case in which the details themselves are so spectacular. Let's think about it.

We've got a police chief fleeing to the U.S. Consulate in Chengdu seeking protection from the Americans saying that his boss's wife has murdered an English businessman, poisoned him in a hotel.

We've then got rumors coming up on the Internet and then eventually being confirmed by Western reporters that show that, in fact, the Bo Xilai family had assembled an enormous fortune. We don't know how large, but perhaps into the millions or the hundreds of millions of dollars that they were trying to move out of the country.

And the party has tried to say very carefully that this is a criminal matter, regard this as one bad apple. But what we now know, in fact, is that this is just the outward expression of what is a deep and intense political contest going on at the highest ranks of the Communist Party.

Student Demos Turn Violent in Mexico, 200 Arrested

Source:

Students demanding access to university hostels set fire to two police cars in street protests in the Mexican city of Morelia on Saturday that led to 200 arrests, local media reported on Sunday.

Masked men sprayed a police pick-up with gasoline and then set it ablaze with molotov cocktails on one of the busiest streets of Morelia, television images showed.

The protesters, mainly young men, were demanding local government funding to maintain access to student hostels from which they had were evicted by police.

Obama appoints top campaign bundler to Netherlands ambassador post

"Change" you can believe in?

President Obama has nominated a top campaign bundler to be the next U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands, following in a rich presidential tradition of granting diplomatic posts to big-dollar fundraisers.

The White House announced this past week that Maryland lawyer Timothy Broas would be nominated for the Dutch ambassadorship.

According to the Obama campaign, Broas has helped raise more than $500,000 for the 2012 reelection effort. By law, Broas cannot contribute all that money himself -- so he, like other so-called "bundlers," serves as a fundraising point person and collects money from others to donate to the campaign.

These bundlers are frequently rewarded with prestigious positions -- in the administrations of President Obama as well as his predecessors. The Center for Responsive Politics estimated that Obama nominated two-dozen fundraisers to ambassador positions within his first year in office.

"Face the Nation" Transcript (4-29-12)

Full Transcript. Excerpt below:

BOB SCHIEFFER: It seems like a lot of-- lot of campaign ahead of us.

HALEY BARBOUR: Of course, we do. But I think a lot of people in the news media and a lot of others were surprised that after a not very flattering nomination contest for Republicans, the first Gallup poll, Romney's ahead. In your poll, it's a dead heat. In other polls, it's a dead heat. I think a lot of people expected that Romney would be like Reagan was in 1980 when as, you know, Reagan was about fourteen points at this point. I didn't expect Romney to be behind that far but the fact that it's a dead heat right now after the Republican nomination contest, which wasn't as helpful as we might have liked it to be.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Mister Mayor, do you think it's that close?

ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA (D-Los Angeles Mayor/Democratic National Convention Chairman): I think the country is evenly divided. I think it's going to be a very close election, but if you look at Governor Romney's record, the only people that will be packing, looking back, where the companies that he bought put in debt, and then had employees go packing, and he made a profit. If that's what he's going to do with the economy, then we're all going to be packing. I think it's going to be a very close election. It's going to be tough. The country is evenly divided, but I think ultimately that President Obama will win. And he'll win because he's got a record of defending and fighting for the middle class. Because he's set on addressing the deficit, but doing it in a way that's responsible, two dollars and fifty cents of cuts for every dollar of revenue.

BOB SCHIEFFER: So how about you, Governor, do you think it's going to be close?

HALEY BARBOUR: Not if President Obama tries to run on his record. I-- I would love to think that that's what they're going to do is run on his record, because the results of his policies have been terrible. The economy grew 2.2 percent the last quarter, according to his administration. I mean, after the last deep recession, the ec-- the economy was growing five, six, seven percent. We were adding jobs by the hundreds of thousands. This has been the most peeked recovery, and it's because of his policies, telling employers he wants to hit them with the largest tax increase in American history. How does that make employers more likely to hire more people, which should be our first goal? Obamacare drives up the cost of health care, drives up the deficit. So, yeah, I hope that this is a referendum on the President's record, because if it is, that's the best it can be for Republicans.