Just Stop It: This Is NOT A Good Economy. We Can Fix It.

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Recent stories appearing in “mainstream” opinion-leader outlets would have you think that things with the economy are going great – if you didn’t know better (and they don’t). The thing is that outside of the geographic areas and cultural circles these opinion leaders inhabit, everyone knows better. Especially “Old Economy Steven.”

better than his kids

The old economy collapsed because it wasn’t sustainable, and to put that another way, “unsustainable” means it couldn’t be sustained. And it wasn’t. It didn’t work then for 99 percent of us and it won’t work now. We can’t go back to that.

“Good News”

The economy is slowly improving. Car sales are rising, housing has “bottomed” and started back up (and is in absolute bubble-mode again in some areas), and we’re actually seeing about as many new jobs as new people entering the economy! But that’s it. And this has taken how many years?

These small gains are enough for our media opinion-elite to declare good times are rolling. All around us we are hearing that we are out of the woods. For example, at The Washington Post Neil Irwin and Ylan Q. Mui wrote Tuesday that the sequester’s austerity (which has only partially kicked in so far) hasn’t really held back the booming economy. In “The economy is holding up surprisingly well in a year of austerity,”

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Another Bridge Falls — Fixing Infrastructure Fixes Jobs And Deficits

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Another aging highway bridge fell the other day, cars and people in the water… This problem was well-known and urgent years ago! But Republicans block it, saying fixing our infrastructure is “more government spending.” Fixing our infrastructure is also jobs and economic growth. And after you fix or build a bridge you have the bridge.

In Seattle another aging bridge has fallen. The American Society of Civil Engineers report America’s 2013 Infrastructure Report Card gives us a D+ and says we are $3.6 trillion behind in infrastructure maintenance. And this is just to catch up, not get ahead.

This work has to be done at some point but today we have a 10 million person employment gap. And today we can get the money to do this at close to zero percent. We have the double need — it needs doing and we need jobs — and we can get the money almost free.

The hiring and purchase of American-made materials involved in fixing the infrastructure would bring millions of jobs. It would boost the economy, increase the tax revenue and decrease safety-net spending.

Fix Or Build A Bridge: You Have The Bridge

And did I mention that when we fix or build a bridge we have the bridge? After we have updated the roads, bridges, electrical systems, dams, airports and everything else that means our economy is much more competitive and efficient. So the benefits continue. Compare that to the supposed benefits of tax cuts. After the tax cuts you are left with the debt they cause and less revenue with which to pay it off.

This is a trifecta of the urgent need to fix our aging infrastructure matched with all the good that it will do for us to do this now.

WTF is the matter with Republicans, that they won’t even let us maintain the country’s infrastructure?? They call it “just more big-government spending.” In fact they force this sequester of cuts, and demand even more cuts! (More here, here, here, here, here, here, here.)

In this mornings post, Washington’s Literal Sinkhole, And Our Idiotic Fixation On Deficits — written before the bridge collapse — Bob Borosage laid it out,

There is an idiocy about our current national politics that is simply stupefying. We are sitting idly, watching, and suffering, as our nation disintegrates into a run-down backwater. Our airports are a global disgrace. Our railroads, broadband, energy grid are all outmoded by international standards. A bridge falls every other day. Our sewage systems are overwhelmed by normal use, and collapse in the extreme weather that has become the national norm. Sinkholes now are becoming a life-threatening peril.

At the same time, over 20 million people are in need of full-time work.

1) Urgent need to fix the infrastructure.
2) Urgent unemployment problem.
3) Fixing #1 fixes #2.
4) We can get the money for free.
5) It isn’t “government spending” it is investment in ourselves because after we fix or build a bridge we have the bridge and all the things that does for the economy.
6) WTF?

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This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF. Sign up here for the CAF daily summary

Keystone Pipeline To Sell Canadian Tar Oil To China

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Step back and see what this is.

A Canadian oil company wants to cross our country with a pipeline so they can sell oil to China. A political party and the Tea Party are working, for-hire, as the agents of this company.

This is one revenue-generating project for a company, not a cause.

How MUCH are they paying the Republicans?

And then on top of that Obama might approve it? Here is what Van Jones has to say:

Is IRS “Scandal” Hype An Attempt To Stop Investigations Into Blatantly Illegal Campaign Activity?

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Americans for Prosperity (AFP) is a 501(c)(4) group. This special tax status allows the organization to hide its donors from the public. But this also means it is prohibited by law from engaging in political activites. Founded with the support of the Koch brothers, AFP ran more than $30 million of 2012 election attack ads targeting President Obama.

Just HOW political were these ads? Political enough that the Chair of the Repubican Party released a statement accompanying the announcement of these ads. From Americans For Prosperity Ad Blasts Obama For Hope And Change Failure,

“Four years ago Americans entrusted that President Obama would truly bring ‘Hope and Change’ to Washington,” RNC Chair Reince Priebus said in a statement accompanying the new ads. “It is clear that he has failed to live up to his promises and has left our country with a mountain of debt and a health care bill that has cost the taxpayers trillions.”

A bit more on this from Tobacco giant funded conservative nonprofits, bt the Center for Public Integrity,

These groups, which obtain their nonprofit status because they say their “primary purpose” is not political activity, are generally under no legal obligation to detail their funding sources. Super PACs and other recognized political committees, by contrast, must report the names of their contributors who give more than $200 and the amounts they give.

Yet during the 2012 election cycle, various social welfare nonprofit organizations, emboldened by the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision in January 2010, spent more than $250 million to promote or attack federal political candidates, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. The source of most of that money remains a mystery.

This is blatant, flat-out, unquestionable illegal campaign spending.

Maybe THIS has something to do with why the right is drumming up a false “scandal” claiming that the IRS “targeted” conservative groups. This is about scaring the IRS away from doing its job.

Why Government Only Does Things For The Wealthy & Big Corporations

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One reason is because everyone understands that there is a big check waiting for them later if they “play ball.”

Example: Ex-Obama Aides Attended Oil Industry-Sponsored Azerbaijan Conference,

Jim Messina, the former Obama 2012 campaign manager, Robert Gibbs, the former White House press secretary, and David Plouffe, the former Obama senior adviser, all received five-figure checks to deliver remarks at the event.

5-figure checks to “deliver remarks.” It adds up.

Big names get the biggest checks, of course. Lobbying jobs, “speaking fees,” etc. But members of a legislator’s staff move over to a lobbying firm or big corporation and get good 6-figure jobs.

Tonite On Virtually Speaking

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Tonite at 6ET Click here to listen live or later.

From the Virtually Speaking Media Panel: Dave Johnson & Stuart Zechman – discuss developments of the week; countering the narratives of the legacy media. Informed, lively and informal.

This week: the quandary of corporate income tax, TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership), and the principles that inform liberal policy with respect to corporations. Plus political satire from Culture of Truth.

Listen live or later: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/virtuallyspeaking/2013/05/27/dave-johnson-stuart-zechman-virtually-speaking-sundays
Follow @dcjohnson @Stuart_Zechman

More at http://virtuallyspeaking.us/virtually-speaking-sundays/2013/5/21/dave-johnson-stuart-zechman-vs-sundays

The Virtually Speaking Media Panel: Avedon Carol, Cliff Schecter, David Dayen, Dave Johnson, David Waldman, digby, Gaius Publius, Joan McCarter, Marcy Wheeler, Stuart Zechman

TPP: A Deregulation Treaty Not A Trade Treaty

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The upcoming Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement is using a process that is rigged from the start. It is not being negotiated by governments for the benefit of their people, it is being negotiated by executives (or future executives/lobbyists currently in government) largely for the benefit of the giant corporations they serve. The process has these giant corporations “in the loop” but groups citizens, working people, consumers, the environment, human rights groups and especially democracy are not part of the process. That can only go one way: if you don’t have a seat at the table you are on the table — the meal.

Chile’s TPP Negotiator Quits, Warns Citizens

Rodrigo Contreras, Chile’s lead TPP negotiator recently up and quit to warn people of the dangers this agreement poses to everyone except the giant multinational corporations. In The New Chessboard, (English translation) Contreras warns that the TPP is solidifying multinational corporate control over the Internet, copyrights, patents (especially drug patents), and in particular warns that the giant financial interests are solidifying their current control over the regulatory process. He writes that this will block countries that are trying to “restore the space for applying financial safeguards. In these circumstances it does not makes sense to further liberalize capital flows, depriving us of legitimate tools to safeguard financial stability.”

In particular Contreras warns that smaller countries face a threat from this agreement’s solidifying of the con trol of the giant multinationals, concluding,

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The Latest Lie: IRS Targeted Conservatives

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Remember the video of the guy in the “pimp costume” who got advice from ACORN employees on how to run his prostitution ring? Turns out the whole story was just a lie, a doctored-video smear job on an important organization. The guy never wore a “pimp costume” and the real, undoctored videos showed that ACORN employees did nothing wrong. But a lie travels around the world before the corporate media bothers to check the facts. The “news” media blasted the story everywhere, and Congress was so outraged they forced ACORN to close its doors. And here we are again.

The corporate media is blasting out the story that the IRS “targeted conservative groups.” Some in the media say there was “IRS harassment of conservative groups.” Some of the media are going so far as claiming that conservative groups were “audited.”

This story that is being repeated and treated as “true” is just not what happened at all. It is one more right-wing victimization fable, repeated endlessly until the public has no choice except to believe it.

Conservative Groups Were Not “Targeted,” “Singled Out” Or Anything Else

You are hearing that conservative groups were “targeted.” What you are not hearing is that progressive groups were also “targeted.” So were groups that are not progressive or conservative.

All that happened here is that groups applying to the IRS for special tax status were checked to see if they were engaged in political activity. They were checked, not targeted. Only one-third of the groups checked were conservative groups.

Once again: Only one-third of the groups checked were conservative groups.

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Apple Avoiding Billions And Billions Of Dollars In Taxes

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Apple (like many giant, multinational corporations) has been avoiding paying the taxes they owe to the country by setting up foreign “subsidiaries” in tax-haven countries, and moving jobs and profit centers out of the country. They have accumulated billions upon billions of dollars in these tax havens. Now they want a special tax break to reward them for doing that.

Tomorrow the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations is scheduled to hold a hearing titled “Offshore Profit Shifting and the U.S. Tax Code – Part 2 (Apple, Inc.)” with Apple’s Tim Cook. Apple is holding more than $100 billion in tax haven countries, to evade U.S. taxes. At the hearing, Cook (2011 compensation $378 million) is expected to offer a proposal for changes to the corporate tax system.

Cook’s proposal is likely to be for a “tax repatriation holiday” and a “territorial tax system,” both of which mean giant, multinational companies like Apple will pay less in taxes, people like Cook will have even more money, and We the People will end up with higher taxes, fewer good schools and good roads and police and teachers and the other things government does to make our lives better. As a bonus, this makes giant multinationals that move jobs and profits overseas even more competitive against smaller American companies that keep jobs and profits here and do not have foreign “subsidiaries” located in tax havens.

New Report On Apple’s Tax Avoidance

Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ), Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) and the AFL-CIO held a conference call today to talk about a new report by CTJ, “Apple Holds Billions of Dollars in Foreign Tax Havens,” documenting Apple’s offshore tax avoidance. The report states that,

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Deficit Fixed. Now Fix The Job Gap, Wage Gap And Trade Gap

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The deficit is now down 60 percent as a percent of gross domestic product. It is down more than the deficit hawks Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles asked for. This rapid reduction is seriously hurting the economy and jobs, but demands for cuts continue. It is time for Congress and the President to “pivot” to focusing on our real problems: the jobs gap, the wage gap and the trade gap.

Mythical Deficit Problem Solved

The “deficit problem” is man-made. When Bill Clinton was president we were paying off the debt. George W. Bush turned Clinton’s budget surpluses right around, calling deficits “extremely positive news” because they would later force cuts in government. Ronald Reagan’s “strategic deficits” began a strategy to make the borrowing appear so bad that the public would be panicked into allowing cuts in the things government does to make our lives better – so the wealthy few could have even more wealth and power. (Reagan tripled the national debt, Bush doubled it again.)

So after Bush we had a problem. When ‘W’ left office the budget deficit was $1.4 trillion. Then after Obama took office Wall Street and the right started terrifying the public about deficits and outlining their “solutions”: Cut government, cut regulation of the giant corporations, cut entitlements, cut investment in infrastructure, privatize public assets, cut the safety net, etc… Cut the things that government does to make our lives better (government spending) and cut the things government does to protect us from the immense power of the insanely wealthy and their giant corporations.

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