Business Insider has a press from Pakistan and Russia claiming due to the floods, there is a nuclear reaction in Nebraska having a nuclear meltdown and the Obama administration is covering it up.
Wow. Anyone can take the time to find out about this and verify if it's true, please do. Get another credible source and we'll post it.
The New York Times is running some "article" on the backlog of foreclosures in New York. Naked Capitalism calls this dubious research and so did Calculated Risk (in a more politically polite manner).
Bottom line banks are sitting on properties but watch out when someone calculates out "timeline" for foreclosures and then blames homeowners.
They are sitting on properties and just holding them, at least in my area I know they are. Foreclosures pop up like mushrooms yet never appear on the market.
But in this case, it never occurred to me dailykos would care if I put in a whole diary by an anonymous, uncompensated contributor from two years ago.
If anything, I would have thought they'd be please to have the ideas disseminated and discussed.
You really think they'd get mad and make a stink over it with you? Wow!
I actually copied the material from text I emailed to myself. After I made the post above, I did hit the link and brought up the live article (which I wasn't sure would still be there). I noticed "Mark27" who wrote the diary hasn't posted anything since 2010. Too bad. Maybe he got too much grief over looking at the world, seeing what was there and speaking truthfully about it.
Funny, isn't it, how the partisans are always accusing each other of living in fantasy worlds -- and how true it is! Just different fantasies, same dodging of truth and foreseeable consequences.
Your point about immigrants swaying elections: they didn't give Obama the win in 2008 and won't in 2012, because so many of them can't vote. But in time, the descendants of the Hispanic immigrants we've absorbed in recent years will be a sizeable minority in this country. Their voting habits remain to be seen, of course. The assumption by Democrats that they'll vote for them out of gratitude is ludicrous. But for the foreseeable future they will be a conspicuous and conspicuously needy group which we allowed to develop and grow almost unimpeded and will pass along to future unsuspecting generations.
I had to edit this to remove the actual post. Honestly, I posted quite a bit at Dailykos and they have their agenda and no economic metric thou shalt be recognized.
The absurdity of thinking immigrants would sway the balance on a two party system, well, I guess the test will be 2012 for Obama. Of course he will have "worser" running against him.
But such agendas when they do not make national interest sense or economic sense and it's so bad over there they post volumes of economic fiction trying to claim the opposite, just is not my cup of tea.
I'm a infrequent visitor to dailykos but luckily I found the following article there about two years ago.
Given the rapid increase in population and demographic changes we're experiencing, it would be naive to think our current parties won't undergo considerable change.
Of course it's doubtful that Mark27's specific predictions will come true -- but his reasoning and analysis seem strong to me. It's only natural, really, that the consequences of the mass immigration that's occurred since the 1980s will be far-reaching and in the end, probably revolutionary.
Certainly I expect future generations will wonder why on earth we sat back and let our nation be quietly overwhelmed by and subsequently transformed by outsiders. Part of the answer is that we allowed ourselves to be quietly overwhelmed and subsequently transformed by a number of relatively small but nevertheless surprisingly influential interests groups (eg, ethnic lobbies, cheap labor employers).
To a large extent, though, I believe our passivity in the face of this invasion of foreign job stealers (well, OK, I guess we let them take the hard agriculture jobs) and the success of a small minority in imposing their will over a majority -- much to the majority's detriment -- will remain a mystery. I know I sure can't explain it to myself.
Both Australia and the UK have systems something like ours ... and they have had third parties for a long time. But we have this strong presidency system -- probably not working the way the Founders expected.
Like you say, in unusual times -- when the two-party system becomes definitely dysfunctional -- a third party may rise to the occasion. Either that or one party becomes dominant (like FDR/Truman from 1932 until 1952 or so). I think the U.S. system requires a public consensus in order to function, and we probably don't have that today. If we had proportional representation, we'd have nothing but caretaker (coalition) governments. Would that be so terrible? The Ford administration was pretty good, and it was basically a caretaker government.
What would be interesting is if we had, today, maybe 40 members of the House (not even 10%) who formed a caucus outside either major party -- so that neither major party could form a majority without the third party.
We always think in terms of the every-four-years media circus, and maybe that's a mistake. There were quite a few Republicans in the Congress before Lincoln was elected.
My guess is that presidents get their AM intelligence briefing, and that's reality to them, at least for a day. Everything else is all about perceptions.
Also, I sometimes ponder over how right Jimmy Carter was when he talked about energy and resource conservation ... and how little appreciation the public showed him for that. Or, another example, when G.H.W. Bush suggested a modest 50¢ per barrel tax on oil imports -- what a difference that might have made over time! Neither Bush nor Carter was allowed a second term.
I don't know what to think either, but I can't stop myself from thinking. It's some kind of addiction.
We've been a two-party country for just about all of our history. For good or for bad, that seems to be what we like or at least what seems comfortable.
So I have to hope you are wrong about the necessity of a third party rising and permanently establishing itself -- because based on our history I don't give that much chance of happening.
Now if you are hoping for a third party movement that will rise, affect us for awhile and then be absorbed or co-opted by one of the two major parties, well that's happened before. If we get a needed push in the right direction by a short-lived third party, then I am all for it and hope it happens.
2. Had not thought about reverse mortgages lately, but that they are a thing of the past? That sure fits! More fowl come home to roost!
3. Robert Reich makes a good point about the tax preference for investment income over earned income. I wish Reich and others would call it like it is: a preference system that differentially punishes earned income!
Otherwise, I think that Reich and many other economists tend to neglect consideration of two underlying factors: population growth and resource depletion.
4. "29 Facts about Income Inequality" -- and related taxation preferences
BusinessInsider.com --
Our system has become corrupted beyond all recognition.
We need to throw out the current system of taxation and come up with something entirely new.
With taxation, the is always in the details -- whether it's reforming the old or reframing the "entirely new" system.
Happy to see Citizens for Tax Justice cited!
Also, happy to see the CTJ point that tax reform must be revenue-enhancing! (Anybody saying different is either talking up fantasies or planning on a time soon-to-come when "blood runs in the streets.")
Do not see, but would like to see, three points:
A. Profits from derivatives arbitrage should be treated exactly like profit from gambling.
B. We need across-the-board tariff (VAT) in order to control transfer-pricing scams by MNCs. Corporate income taxes should be passed through to investors (that file returns) who hold shares for a year or more, with partial-period carry-back to prior year (or 100% carry-back for complete years).
C. All income should be taxed equally, that is, there should be no preference for investment income or inheritance income over earned income. There should, in such a system, be no 'death tax', which is really a preference system for redistribution of tax liability. Of course, income averaging should be brought back.
Preference for certain income over earned income is an egregious example of what should be called a "generalized preference system" -- the practice of disguising political payoffs as preferences underwriting this, that or the other presumably benign 'social' or 'societal' goal or 'national interest'. The public would hardly tolerate these tax preferences if they were understood as what they are: preferential subsidies (or disguised redistribution of income).
(Keep in mind: computers and internet make previously complex record-keeping and calculation easy to do, with results and choices easy to examine.)
I saw this article over at Huffington Post earlier today before reading your comment.
It was a first rate job, both in facts and presentation. Too bad Rather's on an obscure network. This article made me curious about what else he's been working on since leaving CBS.
But I have to wonder -- how could a president --any president -- make statements that are so wrong. Doesn't he have a staff of researchers who verify what people tell him before he agrees to makes appearances or before his speechwriters compose speeches for him?
Or is it possible his staff did their research, realized they'd been snookered but went along and passed along the many erroneous assertions because they sounded good?
I don't know what to think. I'm sure appalled by it all and extremely grateful that Dan Rather wrote this up.
Anybody who didn't read the article at Huffington Post, go read it now. It's definitely an eye opener.
Not even a danger of an inflationary wage spiral! There is much too big a backlog to fill -- it'd be a long time before we would actually come close to exhausting our domestic skilled labor or professionals supply.
It's more of the multiple 'preference' systems to which Obama and many others in Washington are so deeply committed, based maybe on rhyme but no reason. Republicans are half-right about letting markets function without government interference -- they probably actually think that in the name of non-interference, H1B visas should be eliminated but employers should be free to bring in professionals and even unskilled labor with no paperwork required, as long as there is no track to citizenship. That approach enhances the bully power of employers.
It's the clumsy attempt of the U.S. to play the neo-mercantilist game, even though it locks us into a losing position every time.
This is some great stuff, Dan Rather with statistical facts, just called out the Obama administration pushing for more foreign guest workers in STEM. It is complete BS and not only by the jobs vs. those graduating, but add in all of those forced out of the field and there is no shortage of technical people in the U.S.
"If Obama is the brilliant politician you think he is, what will he do in the future to show that -- besides get reeelected, that is?"
What I mean by 'Obama the Politician' is exactly that he may very well be re-elected. From the point of view of a politician engaged in electoral politics, getting re-elected is pretty much the whole deal, you know! I am currently willing to take all the action I can find that will give me 3 to 2 odds, or better, against Obama for 2012.
But, Jersey, that's the horse-race diversion. And, I understand, that you are saying that life is more than the diversions that serve to distract us from unpleasant reality.
Being neither a Democrat nor a Republican, I never had great expectations for President Obama, so I have never been bitterly disappointed and, in some respects, I have been moderately pleased. I don't believe that a McCain administration would have been in any respect better than the Obama administration has been -- probably significantly worse. (That's my judgment, although I would not want to engage in a detailed analysis of why I thought that in 2008 and still think that today.)
My view is that the country badly needs a real 'third party' that is viable and popular enough to affect congressional elections and to elect a substantial number of representatives outside the two party system. Otherwise, IMO, we are delusional to entertain high expectations for any president or even for any congress -- or, ultimately, for the country.
In 2009, I attempted to push for a more sane approach to medical insurance reform -- repeal of the anti-trust exemption, for example -- and I was disappointed. But my disappointment was focused more on Congress than on the White House. I am aware of the sell-out in the White House on insurance matters, but I still hold that legislation is the business of Congress. The idea that the ship of state can make progress by tacking to starboard and then port, never settling on any course, will prove to be disastrous for the country.
There was a time when there was a consensus of the people and so we could go back and forth, controlling things through a two-party balancing system, but that time is long gone.
Taking the medical insurance issue as an example, Obama said that he would sign a bill that included repeal of the anti-trust exemption and he said he would sign a bill that included a public option. But Congress never sent any of those provisions to him -- neither in separate nor in omnibus legislation. Seeking to punish Obama and the Democrats by going Republican in 2010 has resulted in a situation where we cannot now even discuss such matters as repeal of the ant-trust exemption.
We have, effectively, cut off our nose to spite our face. And what I am saying is that I think that Obama is possessed of such remarkable political talent that he will survive even this disaster. After that ... who knows?
I have acknowledged in my post at "The Lost Decade" that Obama has risked losing his base. That's obvious. And, no, I don't think there is any chance that, with a Republican House and a split Senate, Obama will have any opportunity to sign any legislation or make any appointments that could possibly make you happy. That's the squeeze play that we, the people, are caught in.
It's supposed to be the way it is. The current political situation isn't an accidental bit of chaos -- it's the result of deliberate planning, investment and action by mutually-aware self-interested political organizations (e.g., lobbyists). Like it or not, anti-Obama anger is part of 'the plan'.
WSJ runs an interactive map on just the employment rate, here and I will update the Michigan payrolls graph when the actual raw data is released.
It's not available yet. The spin is how the employment rate may have dropped, one just cannot say that at this point, it's about payrolls, self-employed, jobs, and civilian non-institutional population growth, participation rates.
Business Insider has a press from Pakistan and Russia claiming due to the floods, there is a nuclear reaction in Nebraska having a nuclear meltdown and the Obama administration is covering it up.
Wow. Anyone can take the time to find out about this and verify if it's true, please do. Get another credible source and we'll post it.
"... partisans are always accusing each other of living in fantasy worlds -- and how true it is! Just different fantasies ... '
I'm not a bank fan, but isn't it their right as property owners to decline to sell houses in an unfavorable market?
I understand that this also has the effect of restricting supply to keep prices high, but it seems like something that can't be helped.
The New York Times is running some "article" on the backlog of foreclosures in New York. Naked Capitalism calls this dubious research and so did Calculated Risk (in a more politically polite manner).
Bottom line banks are sitting on properties but watch out when someone calculates out "timeline" for foreclosures and then blames homeowners.
They are sitting on properties and just holding them, at least in my area I know they are. Foreclosures pop up like mushrooms yet never appear on the market.
"Banks are sitting on the properties, unable to sell them."
This isn't true. Banks are sitting on the properties unwilling to sell them.
The banksters have foreclosed ... it is time to foreclose on the banksters.
Equal justice
Officially DK claims all posts are his property by the site ID.
Well, this site's thing is economics and looking at the statistics, things are definitely a drag on the economy.
Part of this is also education. Even to do a skilled manufacturing job, one needs to be able to do basic math, read.
But in this case, it never occurred to me dailykos would care if I put in a whole diary by an anonymous, uncompensated contributor from two years ago.
If anything, I would have thought they'd be please to have the ideas disseminated and discussed.
You really think they'd get mad and make a stink over it with you? Wow!
I actually copied the material from text I emailed to myself. After I made the post above, I did hit the link and brought up the live article (which I wasn't sure would still be there). I noticed "Mark27" who wrote the diary hasn't posted anything since 2010. Too bad. Maybe he got too much grief over looking at the world, seeing what was there and speaking truthfully about it.
Funny, isn't it, how the partisans are always accusing each other of living in fantasy worlds -- and how true it is! Just different fantasies, same dodging of truth and foreseeable consequences.
Your point about immigrants swaying elections: they didn't give Obama the win in 2008 and won't in 2012, because so many of them can't vote. But in time, the descendants of the Hispanic immigrants we've absorbed in recent years will be a sizeable minority in this country. Their voting habits remain to be seen, of course. The assumption by Democrats that they'll vote for them out of gratitude is ludicrous. But for the foreseeable future they will be a conspicuous and conspicuously needy group which we allowed to develop and grow almost unimpeded and will pass along to future unsuspecting generations.
I had to edit this to remove the actual post. Honestly, I posted quite a bit at Dailykos and they have their agenda and no economic metric thou shalt be recognized.
The absurdity of thinking immigrants would sway the balance on a two party system, well, I guess the test will be 2012 for Obama. Of course he will have "worser" running against him.
But such agendas when they do not make national interest sense or economic sense and it's so bad over there they post volumes of economic fiction trying to claim the opposite, just is not my cup of tea.
I'm a infrequent visitor to dailykos but luckily I found the following article there about two years ago.
Given the rapid increase in population and demographic changes we're experiencing, it would be naive to think our current parties won't undergo considerable change.
Of course it's doubtful that Mark27's specific predictions will come true -- but his reasoning and analysis seem strong to me. It's only natural, really, that the consequences of the mass immigration that's occurred since the 1980s will be far-reaching and in the end, probably revolutionary.
Certainly I expect future generations will wonder why on earth we sat back and let our nation be quietly overwhelmed by and subsequently transformed by outsiders. Part of the answer is that we allowed ourselves to be quietly overwhelmed and subsequently transformed by a number of relatively small but nevertheless surprisingly influential interests groups (eg, ethnic lobbies, cheap labor employers).
To a large extent, though, I believe our passivity in the face of this invasion of foreign job stealers (well, OK, I guess we let them take the hard agriculture jobs) and the success of a small minority in imposing their will over a majority -- much to the majority's detriment -- will remain a mystery. I know I sure can't explain it to myself.
++++++++++++
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/6/6/122134/6056
Both Australia and the UK have systems something like ours ... and they have had third parties for a long time. But we have this strong presidency system -- probably not working the way the Founders expected.
Like you say, in unusual times -- when the two-party system becomes definitely dysfunctional -- a third party may rise to the occasion. Either that or one party becomes dominant (like FDR/Truman from 1932 until 1952 or so). I think the U.S. system requires a public consensus in order to function, and we probably don't have that today. If we had proportional representation, we'd have nothing but caretaker (coalition) governments. Would that be so terrible? The Ford administration was pretty good, and it was basically a caretaker government.
What would be interesting is if we had, today, maybe 40 members of the House (not even 10%) who formed a caucus outside either major party -- so that neither major party could form a majority without the third party.
We always think in terms of the every-four-years media circus, and maybe that's a mistake. There were quite a few Republicans in the Congress before Lincoln was elected.
Ooops, put in wrong place ...
That's a good question!
My guess is that presidents get their AM intelligence briefing, and that's reality to them, at least for a day. Everything else is all about perceptions.
Also, I sometimes ponder over how right Jimmy Carter was when he talked about energy and resource conservation ... and how little appreciation the public showed him for that. Or, another example, when G.H.W. Bush suggested a modest 50¢ per barrel tax on oil imports -- what a difference that might have made over time! Neither Bush nor Carter was allowed a second term.
I don't know what to think either, but I can't stop myself from thinking. It's some kind of addiction.
We've been a two-party country for just about all of our history. For good or for bad, that seems to be what we like or at least what seems comfortable.
So I have to hope you are wrong about the necessity of a third party rising and permanently establishing itself -- because based on our history I don't give that much chance of happening.
Now if you are hoping for a third party movement that will rise, affect us for awhile and then be absorbed or co-opted by one of the two major parties, well that's happened before. If we get a needed push in the right direction by a short-lived third party, then I am all for it and hope it happens.
God knows we need that push.
1. Japanese steak:
2. Had not thought about reverse mortgages lately, but that they are a thing of the past? That sure fits! More fowl come home to roost!
3. Robert Reich makes a good point about the tax preference for investment income over earned income. I wish Reich and others would call it like it is: a preference system that differentially punishes earned income!
Otherwise, I think that Reich and many other economists tend to neglect consideration of two underlying factors: population growth and resource depletion.
4. "29 Facts about Income Inequality" -- and related taxation preferences
BusinessInsider.com --
With taxation, the
is always in the details -- whether it's reforming the old or reframing the "entirely new" system.
Happy to see Citizens for Tax Justice cited!
Also, happy to see the CTJ point that tax reform must be revenue-enhancing! (Anybody saying different is either talking up fantasies or planning on a time soon-to-come when "blood runs in the streets.")
Do not see, but would like to see, three points:
A. Profits from derivatives arbitrage should be treated exactly like profit from gambling.
B. We need across-the-board tariff (VAT) in order to control transfer-pricing scams by MNCs. Corporate income taxes should be passed through to investors (that file returns) who hold shares for a year or more, with partial-period carry-back to prior year (or 100% carry-back for complete years).
C. All income should be taxed equally, that is, there should be no preference for investment income or inheritance income over earned income. There should, in such a system, be no 'death tax', which is really a preference system for redistribution of tax liability. Of course, income averaging should be brought back.
Preference for certain income over earned income is an egregious example of what should be called a "generalized preference system" -- the practice of disguising political payoffs as preferences underwriting this, that or the other presumably benign 'social' or 'societal' goal or 'national interest'. The public would hardly tolerate these tax preferences if they were understood as what they are: preferential subsidies (or disguised redistribution of income).
(Keep in mind: computers and internet make previously complex record-keeping and calculation easy to do, with results and choices easy to examine.)
I saw this article over at Huffington Post earlier today before reading your comment.
It was a first rate job, both in facts and presentation. Too bad Rather's on an obscure network. This article made me curious about what else he's been working on since leaving CBS.
But I have to wonder -- how could a president --any president -- make statements that are so wrong. Doesn't he have a staff of researchers who verify what people tell him before he agrees to makes appearances or before his speechwriters compose speeches for him?
Or is it possible his staff did their research, realized they'd been snookered but went along and passed along the many erroneous assertions because they sounded good?
I don't know what to think. I'm sure appalled by it all and extremely grateful that Dan Rather wrote this up.
Anybody who didn't read the article at Huffington Post, go read it now. It's definitely an eye opener.
Not even a danger of an inflationary wage spiral! There is much too big a backlog to fill -- it'd be a long time before we would actually come close to exhausting our domestic skilled labor or professionals supply.
It's more of the multiple 'preference' systems to which Obama and many others in Washington are so deeply committed, based maybe on rhyme but no reason. Republicans are half-right about letting markets function without government interference -- they probably actually think that in the name of non-interference, H1B visas should be eliminated but employers should be free to bring in professionals and even unskilled labor with no paperwork required, as long as there is no track to citizenship. That approach enhances the bully power of employers.
It's the clumsy attempt of the U.S. to play the neo-mercantilist game, even though it locks us into a losing position every time.
This is some great stuff, Dan Rather with statistical facts, just called out the Obama administration pushing for more foreign guest workers in STEM. It is complete BS and not only by the jobs vs. those graduating, but add in all of those forced out of the field and there is no shortage of technical people in the U.S.
article here.
"If Obama is the brilliant politician you think he is, what will he do in the future to show that -- besides get reeelected, that is?"
What I mean by 'Obama the Politician' is exactly that he may very well be re-elected. From the point of view of a politician engaged in electoral politics, getting re-elected is pretty much the whole deal, you know! I am currently willing to take all the action I can find that will give me 3 to 2 odds, or better, against Obama for 2012.
But, Jersey, that's the horse-race diversion. And, I understand, that you are saying that life is more than the diversions that serve to distract us from unpleasant reality.
Being neither a Democrat nor a Republican, I never had great expectations for President Obama, so I have never been bitterly disappointed and, in some respects, I have been moderately pleased. I don't believe that a McCain administration would have been in any respect better than the Obama administration has been -- probably significantly worse. (That's my judgment, although I would not want to engage in a detailed analysis of why I thought that in 2008 and still think that today.)
My view is that the country badly needs a real 'third party' that is viable and popular enough to affect congressional elections and to elect a substantial number of representatives outside the two party system. Otherwise, IMO, we are delusional to entertain high expectations for any president or even for any congress -- or, ultimately, for the country.
In 2009, I attempted to push for a more sane approach to medical insurance reform -- repeal of the anti-trust exemption, for example -- and I was disappointed. But my disappointment was focused more on Congress than on the White House. I am aware of the sell-out in the White House on insurance matters, but I still hold that legislation is the business of Congress. The idea that the ship of state can make progress by tacking to starboard and then port, never settling on any course, will prove to be disastrous for the country.
There was a time when there was a consensus of the people and so we could go back and forth, controlling things through a two-party balancing system, but that time is long gone.
Taking the medical insurance issue as an example, Obama said that he would sign a bill that included repeal of the anti-trust exemption and he said he would sign a bill that included a public option. But Congress never sent any of those provisions to him -- neither in separate nor in omnibus legislation. Seeking to punish Obama and the Democrats by going Republican in 2010 has resulted in a situation where we cannot now even discuss such matters as repeal of the ant-trust exemption.
We have, effectively, cut off our nose to spite our face. And what I am saying is that I think that Obama is possessed of such remarkable political talent that he will survive even this disaster. After that ... who knows?
I have acknowledged in my post at "The Lost Decade" that Obama has risked losing his base. That's obvious. And, no, I don't think there is any chance that, with a Republican House and a split Senate, Obama will have any opportunity to sign any legislation or make any appointments that could possibly make you happy. That's the squeeze play that we, the people, are caught in.
It's supposed to be the way it is. The current political situation isn't an accidental bit of chaos -- it's the result of deliberate planning, investment and action by mutually-aware self-interested political organizations (e.g., lobbyists). Like it or not, anti-Obama anger is part of 'the plan'.
You ask, "Where's the leadership?"
I ask, "Where's the third party movement?"
WSJ runs an interactive map on just the employment rate, here and I will update the Michigan payrolls graph when the actual raw data is released.
It's not available yet. The spin is how the employment rate may have dropped, one just cannot say that at this point, it's about payrolls, self-employed, jobs, and civilian non-institutional population growth, participation rates.
EPI doesn't put any warm fuzzies on this report either, some state job gains go into reverse.
That's no lie, some regions are actually losing more total non-farm payrolls as their population increases.
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