Give the Finance Sector an Inch, and Let Fly the Mile-- IPO Transparency Takes a Hit

Breaking Point, by K.M. Ramich

-by Skip Kaltenheuser

"The evil that men do lives after them, The good is oft interred with their bones..." Updated, Shakespeare's Mark Anthony might have included mischief done while scrambling for campaign funds as the finance sector obliges those doing its bidding. That mischief stumbles on like a zombie. This tortured comparison came to mind after reading a Naked Capitalism post by former derivatives trader Jerry-Lynn Scofield, Doubling Down on Deregulation: SEC Extends JOBS Act Benefit in Elusive Quest to Goose IPO Market. The post notes a bellwether of the speed of deregulation under SEC Chairman Jay Clayton.

Clayton is currently seeking to expand a degree of confidentiality to all IPO's that was previously available only to so-called emerging growth companies under the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act that passed in 2012. The result of the SEC extending aspects of the Act to all companies appear to include putting off filing information in financial statements when seeking an initial public offering, and allowing confidentiality until a mere fifteen days before trading begins. According to a sub-linked memo from Sullivan & Cromwell-- Clayton's former law firm-- the effort seems to imply very user-friendly treatment to requests for waivers of information in financial statements. To better parse it, read the sub-links in Scofield's post, but among the writer's concerns is reduced protection for investors.

Indeed, the bedrock of investor protection-- and investor confidence-- is transparency, particularly on matters where companies might be tempted to cook the books. Transparency appeared to be targeted by the JOBS Act, which loosened reporting and other requirements to facilitate small investor "crowd-funding" of IPO's by "emerging growth companies", characterized as small businesses. EGC's were able to claim their status despite having annual revenue of up to a billion dollars, which would include the vast majority of companies that might go public.

Jay Clayton is another denizen of the revolving door. You can read a quick background piece on him by Matt Taibbi here.

State capture is a theme not unknown to readers of DownWithTyranny. Maintaining continuity from the last administration, the SEC remains Exhibit A. You can explore the theme more generally at this post, At The Intersection of Stiglitz and Art.

Trump in the Driver's Seat, by Nancy Ohanian

For several years I wrote columns and cover pieces aimed at explaining Washington influence and dysfunction to a group of international lawyers. Here was what the JOBS Act looked like to me in March of 2012, in my column Legislating to create the next Enron. I quoted Carl Levin, then Chair of the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations-- 'The so-called "JOBS Act" will lower accounting standards and transparency in our markets, which I suspect may result in fewer IPOs, higher costs of capital for businesses, and fewer jobs.'

Motivations to grease easier IPO's may connect with the considerable drop over the last two decades in the number of companies publicly trading stock in US markets, a drop I assume isn't welcomed by Wall Street. The JOBS Act hasn't appeared to turn that decline around. There are various reasons-- mergers and the ability to raise venture capital-- but in any case I doubt mucking up transparency on a broader scale is the answer.

The JOBS Act is one of those onerous pieces of legislation useful to scrutinize members of Congress by checking if they voted for it. When there's finance sector money on the table, and the issues are too complex and archaic for most of the public to latch on to, what might politicians think they can get away with under cover of going along with the crowd? Legislation like the JOBS Act. When the (Democratic!) Senate voted in March of 2012, only 26 Senators voted against the Act. Not a Republican among them, but although they were in the majority not enough Democrats voted to stop it. In the House, only 23 members voted against it, against 390. Wisdom of crowds, like investors in Dutch Tulips in 1637. The Act also garnered the early blessing of Obama's White House, no stranger to Wall Street largess.

This wasn't because Washington wasn't warned. Here's a memo from Public Citizen, urging Congress to vote against the JOBS Act. I take comfort that Bernie Sanders did his best to oppose the bill. Although some amendments by Senator Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon) were accepted, making the bill less onerous than Wall Street pirates originally sought, Merkley still judged it too dangerous and ultimately voted against it.

With the JOBS Act, another Wall Street camel got its nose under the SEC tent. Now the SEC is making room on its bedroll.

Sean Spicer, The Swamp Deepens, by Nancy Ohanian

If I can digress (still can!), It's hard for me to damp down the feeling that regulatory power-grabs by the finance sector are evermore driven by a backstory of quiet desperation. Tangential to that feeling are several recent posts at the always interesting and concise WallStreetOnParade, written by Pam Martens and Russ Martens.

• These Charts Show the Fed’s Stress Tests as a Dangerous Illusion
• Financial System of U.S. Rests on Health of Just Five Mega Banks
• Why Wall Street Should Be Viewed as a Major National Threat
• New York Times Runs Editorial Today on the Mega Banks: You Need to Pay Attention
• After Passing Stress Tests, Wall Street Banks to Spend Like a Drunken Sailor-- on their Own Stock Buybacks
• Fed Chair Janet Yellen Seriously Misleads in London on U.S. Banking Reform
• Media Focus on Trump Blindsides the Public from Rising Wall Street Risks

Give them a quick read. Though maybe not at night if you suffer insomnia, or dreams of night rider derivatives.

Trump New Year 1984, by Nancy Ohanian

Sanders to Trump: Force Rehiring ALL Carrier Employees. Commit to Passing Outsourcing Prevention Act of 2017

This clip contains the viral Carrier Indianapolis plant video (also available here), then includes a discussion of why this is so bad, and why this was entirely discretionary by United Technologies (UTC), the company's owner. (Uygur fails to mention the $172 million "golden parachute" given to the UTC CEO in 2014.)

by Gaius Publius

"They don't know what to do with all the money they have, and they're still firing American workers."
     –Cenk Uygur in the clip above.

I think by now most people know the story of the Carrier plant layoffs that sparked such anger (discussed in the video above; to view the Carrier clip only, click here). A group of workers at a Carrier plant in Indianapolis were being told by management that their jobs were being eliminated and the plant moved to Mexico. The clip, shot by one of the workers at the meeting, shows their reaction. There's no doubt that the clip going viral had an influence on both the primary and the general election. It perfectly captures the state of working in American, and workers' reaction to it.

During the campaign, Trump said he'd fight, as president, to restore all of the Carrier jobs lost in Indianapolis. From the New York Times (my emphasis):

Carrier’s decision to move the factory to Monterrey, Mexico, will eliminate 1,400 jobs by 2019. Mr. Trump quickly made the factory Exhibit A in his argument against the trade policies of Republicans and Democrats alike.

He cited Carrier again and again on the campaign trail, threatening to phone executives at the company and its parent, United Technologies, and to hit them with 35 percent tariffs on any furnaces and air-conditioners they imported from Mexico. To the cheers of his supporters, he predicted at rallies that Carrier would call him up as president and say, “Sir, we’ve decided to stay in the United States.”

Here's video:

The writer added:

Now his supporters expect action. “If he doesn’t pass that tariff, I will vote the other way next time,” warned Nicole Hargrove, who has worked at Carrier for a decade and a half and is not certain what she will do if and when her job goes to Mexico.

"I will vote the other way next time." This is exactly the leverage the Sanders wing of the Democratic Party needs to bring non-racist Trump voters back to the Sanders camp. (Do the Democrats want to be part of that camp? We'll find out soon.)

As it turns out, Trump may be backing down. First, there's this:

In order for Trump to place a tariff on heating and cooling products made in Mexico coming to the US, first, he’d have to withdraw from NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement between the US, Canada and Mexico. The treaty was formally signed into agreement by President Bill Clinton in 1994, but it was negotiated by Republican President George H.W. Bush.

He could do that — and in fact, he promised to renegotiate NAFTA in the first 100 days of his presidency. But will he do either — save all Carrier jobs in Indianapolis, plus renegotiate NAFTA? Many are doubtful, including the president of the union representing Carrier's workers (notice, Carrier's Indianapolis workers were unionized; their Mexican workers won't be).

The Indianapolis Star:

Union president would be 'shocked' if Donald Trump convinces Carrier to stay in Indianapolis

The president of the union that represents 1,400 Carrier Corp. workers in Indianapolis is not optimistic that a last-ditch effort by President-elect Donald Trump can save their jobs.

Chuck Jones, president of United Steelworkers Local 1999, said Friday he has not been briefed on talks between the incoming Trump administration and Carrier. But he doesn't see any chance for Trump or Vice President-elect Mike Pence to reverse Carrier's plan to move its west-side furnace operations to Monterrey, Mexico.

"If in fact (discussions) do materialize into something, I would think they'd have to include us at some point in time," Jones said.

Trump announced his administration's talks with Carrier on Twitter, writing that he was "working hard, even on Thanksgiving, trying to get Carrier A.C. Company to stay in the U.S." Trump said he was "making progress" in keeping the heating and air conditioning giant in Indianapolis.

CNBC on Friday reported Pence is leading those talks, citing unnamed sources. Marc Lotter, a spokesman for Pence's vice presidential campaign, said in an email he had no comment beyond what Trump said. Spokespersons for Pence's office did not respond to requests for comment.

Carrier issued a statement via Twitter that confirmed it has been in touch with the Trump administration, but did not describe the nature of those communications. ...

Jones worries that campaign promise might be driving Trump to offer false hope.

"I think it's all a PR move," Jones said. "Trump said what he said when he was campaigning. We've been calling him out, that he made promises Carrier wouldn't move. In order to do something, I think he came up with this."

I hope you can see what's brewing — a classic bait-and-switch by Trump. After all, as Uyger points out above, all the government needs to do is threaten to cancel the lucrative United Technology (UTC) defense contracts — $6 billion worth of them — or refuse to grant new ones, until the plant, with its full complement of union workers, is restored.

Even I could make that deal. The government has all the aces. It just has to play them. Will Donald Trump play his aces and keep his very high profile promise to Carrier workers and American workers through the nation?

Bernie Sanders on Trump and Carrier Outsourcing

Will Trump keep his promise to Carrier workers? Perhaps he needs a nudge. Enter Bernie Sanders. Via his press office we find this (my emphasis):

Sanders Statement on Carrier and Outsourcing

BURLINGTON, Vt., Nov. 26 – U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) issued the following statement Saturday:

“During the campaign, Donald Trump made a 100 percent commitment to prevent United Technologies from shipping 2,100 jobs from Indiana to Mexico. All of us need to hold Mr. Trump accountable to make sure that he keeps this promise.

“Let’s be clear: it is not good enough to save some of these jobs. We cannot rest until United Technologies signs a firm contract to keep all of these good-paying jobs in Indiana without slashing the salaries or benefits workers have earned.

“United Technologies is not going broke. Last year, it made a profit of $7.6 billion and received over $6 billion in defense contracts. It has also received more than $50 million in corporate welfare from the Export-Import Bank and very generous tax breaks.

“In 2014, United Technologies gave its former CEO Louis Chenevert a golden parachute worth over $172 million. Last year, the company’s five highest paid executives made over $50 million. The firm also spent $12 billion to inflate its stock price instead of using that money to invest in new plants and workers.

“I call on Mr. Trump to make it clear to the CEO of United Technologies that if his firm wants to receive another defense contract from the taxpayers of this country, it must not move these plants to Mexico.

“We need to send a very loud and very clear message to corporate America: the era of outsourcing is over. Instead of offshoring jobs, the time has come for you to start bringing good-paying jobs back to the United States of America.

“If United Technologies or any other company wants to keep outsourcing decent-paying American jobs, those companies must pay an outsourcing tax equal to the amount of money it expects to save by moving factories to Mexico or other low-wage countries. They must pay back all of the tax breaks and other corporate welfare they have received from the federal government. And they must not be allowed to reward their executives with stock options, bonuses or golden parachutes for outsourcing jobs to low wage countries.

“I will soon be introducing legislation to make sure that Donald Trump keeps his promise to prevent the outsourcing of American jobs. For the sake of American workers, this is a promise that cannot and must not be broken.”

That's just the first half of the Sander challenge to Donald Trump — restore all Indianapolis Carrier jobs. The second half of his challenge is even stronger, both politically and in terms of policy. Look at the last paragraph in the press release again, the part that mentions the legislation.

The Outsourcing Prevention Act of 2017: "We need to send a very loud message to corporate America: the era of outsourcing is over."

Legislation like this is exactly what the Sanders and the Sanders wing needs to be doing — it's what Sanders would have done as president — and it's excellent to see them doing it. The "Outsourcing Prevention Act" that Sanders will introduce is described below. Read it for the pleasure it gives you.

Note that just introducing it will do three things at once:

1. Put Trump on a very public and long-drawn-out hook to prove he actually stands for workers
2. Put the corporate wing of the Democratic Party on the same hook, to prove they actually stand for workers
3. Begin (perhaps) to redefine the Democratic Party as the true party of workers, not the corporate elite

Introducing the bill challenges both Trump and the Democratic Party to show where it stands — out loud and in public. Points 2 and 3 interlock. If the corporate wing of the Party publicly blocks this bill, point 3 will be made in reverse — the Democratic Party will be outed as being no better than Trump when it comes to jobs and the economy.

Challenging the Carrier promise is a great first move, but if Trump does successfully negotiate to get those jobs back, the critical (to the nation) issue of job loss via outsourcing disappears for a while. Having a bill that works its way through Congress (a) keeps the conversation going for quite a while longer, and (b) represents a systemic fix to a systemic problem. Again, kudos to Sanders and his team for this strong move.

Here are the details of the bill, from the Sanders press release quoted above:

Summary of the Outsourcing Prevention Act

In February, Carrier and UTEC [sic] announced that it would be closing two plants in Indianapolis and Huntington, Indiana shipping 2,100 jobs to Monterrey, Mexico, where workers are paid just $3 an hour. Both of these plants are owned by United Technologies. This legislation will provide a comprehensive solution to address this problem. United Technologies is not an outlier; it is representative of how so many multi-national corporations are taking advantage of our rigged economic system to pad their profits while hurting American workers. President-elect Trump made a promise during the campaign that he would prevent all of these jobs from being shipped overseas. The Outsourcing Prevention Act would make sure that Donald Trump keeps this promise by:

1. Preventing companies that outsource jobs from receiving federal contracts, tax breaks, grants or loans.

Last year, United Technologies received over $6 billion in federal contracts, making it the seventh largest recipient of federal contract funds. Over the past 15 years, this Fortune 500 company has used loopholes in the tax code to shelter more than two-thirds of its $38 billion in profits from federal taxation. It has also received over $50 million in corporate welfare from the Export-Import Bank. Under this legislation, companies would be barred from receiving future contracts, tax breaks, grants or loans from the federal government if they have announced plans to outsource more than 50 jobs overseas.

2. Clawing back federal benefits from companies that outsource jobs have received over the last decade.

This legislation would require all companies that outsource more than 50 jobs in a given year to pay back all federal tax breaks, grants and loans they have received from the federal government over the last decade.

3. Establishing an outsourcing tax on companies that move U.S. jobs offshore.

This legislation would impose a tax on all companies that outsource jobs. The tax would be equal to the amount of savings achieved by outsourcing jobs or 35 percent of its profits, whichever is higher. United Technologies estimated that it would save $65 million a year by moving its jobs in Indiana to Mexico. Under this legislation, the company would be required to pay a tax of no less than $65 million a year.

4. Prohibiting executives from profiting off of the outsourcing of U.S. jobs.

This legislation would prohibit companies that offshore jobs from enriching executives through golden parachutes, stock options, bonuses, or other forms of compensation by imposing stiff tax penalties on this compensation. In addition, companies that outsource jobs overseas would be prevented from buying back its own stock. In 2014, United Technologies gave its former CEO a golden parachute worth over $172 million. Last year, the company’s five highest paid executives made over $50 million. The firm also spent $12 billion to inflate its stock price instead of using that money to invest in new plants and workers.

If you don't want to read the whole piece above, read just the four major points. Very nicely done. Again, exactly what Sanders would have done as president, and exactly why all those thousands showed up in all those stadiums to see and hear him.

The only difference now is, he has to do it all from his Senate seat instead of the Oval Office. Pity that. Still, he's doing it, and we should be continuously grateful.

Yes.

Just thought I 'd throw that in. Remember, it didn't have to be this way.

GP
 

Republicans Demand "Job Creation"-- And That Means Higher Unemployment And More Pain For American Families

Boehner and Cantor have a song they want to sing you about jobs

This week, a slightly inebriated Boehner was whining about some hostage crisis he's cooking up-- for the national debut, if I remember correctly-- and demanded the price of not driving the U.S. government into default on the debts Congress had run up would be… job creation. Job creation? Everyone likes job creation, right? Well, no, actually. Republicans have steadfastly tried to undermine the economic-- for purely partisan reasons-- by sabotaging every single jobs creation bill President Obama has proposed. And the Ayn Rand/Paul Ryan Republican version of "jobs creation" means lower taxes for the wealthiest Americans and jobs creation in China, India and Vietnam where wages are measured in cents, not dollars. Oh-- and 300 permanent jobs that the Keystone XL Pipeline would create. Ezra Klein reported on the relentless, concerted Republican Party economic sabotage yesterday.

The U.S. has been in a jobs emergency since at least 2008. The cause of the crisi-- too little deman-- isn’t mysterious, and neither are the solutions. We could invest in infrastructure to create construction jobs. We could give tax breaks to employers who hire new workers. We could restore the payroll tax cut to workers so they have more money to spend. We could help state and local governments hire back some of the employees they laid off during the recession. Macroeconomic Advisers, an economic consulting firm, found that the American Jobs Act, which contained many of these policies, would have created 2 million jobs.

But in recent years, these policies have been either blocked or canceled by congressional Republicans. They fought Democrats to scuttle the American Jobs Act and allow the payroll tax break and long-term unemployment benefits to expire. Creating jobs, they argued, was neither feasible nor affordable.

Thanks to GOP sabotage last month saw slow growth in jobs-- just 113,000 new ones in January, a tiny increase over bad December numbers. Unemployment dropped from 6.7% to a still miserable 6.6%, something Republican strategists figure will help them in the midterms. Republicans have even knocked and opposed the simplest and most straight-forward proposals like building infrastructure. Instead they have demanded policies that kill jobs, like gutting the food stamps program and taking money out of the pockets of the poorest Americans-- money that goes right back into the economy-- by refusing the extend unemployment insurance to workers who have lost their jobs because of bad GOP policies. Boehner has been raging against increasing the minimum wage, which would be a huge stimulus for the entire economy and probably create hundreds of thousands of jobs Boehner fears would doom GOP control of the House. Boehner after the President announced he is raising the minimum wage for federal workers: "I suspect the president has the authority to raise the minimum wage for those dealing with federal contracts. But let's understand something: This affects not one current contract, it only affects future contracts with the federal government. And so I think the question is, how many people, Mr. President, will this executive action actually help? I suspect the answer is somewhere close to zero."

Asked more broadly about Obama's push to raise the federal minimum wage, Boehner signaled he doesn't support the proposal.

"When you raise the cost of something you get less of it," he said, adding later: "The very people the president purports to help are the ones who are going to be hurt by this."

Boehner suggested that an increased minimum wage would adversely affect minorities who hold low-wage jobs and would be "bad policy."

Yes, his heart breaks for minorities… always.

Scott Paul, president of the Alliance of American Manufacturing seemed encouraged by today's numbers. “It’s still far from a resurgence, but the jobs picture in manufacturing is certainly better than it was last decade. And the latest jobs report offers fresh evidence that it is possible to create manufacturing jobs in America again. We believe better public policies would bring about a real resurgence: That would mean balancing our trade in goods, investing in infrastructure and training, combatting currency manipulation overseas, and boosting innovation. And even though manufacturing may be one of the brighter spots in this jobs report, we’re still well below the pace needed to achieve the president’s goal of adding one million such jobs in his second term.”

How is this playing out across the country? Here in the L.A. area, up in Santa Clarita's 25th CD, Lee Rogers is running for Congress against two right-wing ideologues, Steve Knight and Tony Strickland who are fanatically opposed to raising the minimum wage. Rogers is an advocate of raising the minimum wage and he's using the difference prominently in his campaign. "There are 3.4 million hard-working people right here in California that a minimum wage increase will significantly help. I support the growing movement to raise the minimum wage above $10," he told CA-25 residents again this week. "Raising the minimum wage would create jobs by rewarding people properly for their work and allowing them to spend more in our economy. This is 'middle-out economics,' not the failed 'trickle-down economics' of the past." Watch this two-minute Robert Reich video that explains the Republican War on working families:

The New Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment and Training Act-- Robin Hood To The Rescue?

Andy Hounshell, John Conyers-- fighting for jobs

Jimmy Carter signed the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act into law on October 27, 1978. It had passed the House on March 16... 257-152. 81% of the House Democrats (233 Members) were joined by 16% of the House Republicans (24)-- there were still that many mainstream Republicans back then-- to pass one of the era's most significant pieces of legislation. It's worth noting that the Democratic Party was so infested with racists and corporate whores even that recently that 41 Republicans joined with 111 Republicans to oppose it. The Keynesian bill, which was proposed to tackle rampant unemployment, created the largest public service jobs program and the largest training program since the Great Depression and it helped create 6.5 million new jobs and cut unemployment by 25%. During the debate, During the debate, Majority Leader Jim Wright (D-TX) said, "What this bill says is not that America owes everybody a living. No, But America owes every American an opportunity to earn a living. This bill is an embodiment of what American stands for."

H.R. 1000, the new Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment and Training Act, was introduced by John Conyers on March 6 of this year, and shut up by Boehner and Cantor in John Kline's Education and Workforce Committee, where they knew it would never see the light of day. Conyers is one of the few Members of Congress who voted for the original Humphrey-Hawkins bill. This one, has many similarities-- it is primarily a jobs bill-- but, of course includes provisions to cover things that weren't concerns in the 1970s. Here's how Conyers describes it on his website:

The Act aims to provide a job to any American that seeks work and to, ultimately, create a full employment society.

• The Act establishes a “Full Employment and Training Trust Fund” with two separate accounts. These two accounts will direct funding to job creation and training programs.

Dual Job Creation Focus: Direct Jobs Grants and WIA Training Programs

• The first trust fund account will direct funds to a new innovative direct jobs program. Funds will be distributed by formula through the Department of Labor to larger cities and states, and then be passed to localities and rural areas.

* The program will allocate funds based on the Community Development Block Grant formula modified to consider unemployment data. Local elected officials, who are closest to our communities and needs on the ground, would work with community groups and labor leaders to identify critical projects and connect workers to projects right away.

* Jobs could be in the public sector, community-based not-for-profit organizations, and small businesses that provide community benefits.

* The Program will adopt a two stage approach to ensure immediate job creation, and allow for a longer term planning process that involves community input and a focus on education and career development.

* Positions will be for up to 45 hours per week, for at least 12 months. They will pay comparable or prevailing wages, as well as benefits. Appropriate safeguards and strong anti-displacement protections will help to prevent substitution and ensure that workers are placed in new positions.

• The second trust fund will distribute funds to job training programs covered under the Workforce Investment Act.

* These funds will fund innovative job training initiatives including One Stop Job Training Programs and the Job Corps.

Revenue: Taxing Wall Street Transactions to Pay for Main Street Jobs

• Revenue for the trust fund will come from a small levy on covered trading transactions

* 0.25% on stocks = 25¢ on every $100 traded in stocks

* 0.02% on futures, swaps, and credit default swaps = 2¢ on every $100 traded on these types of transactions

* The rate for options contracts would be imposed on the underlying transaction multiplied by the premium paid for the option (still very small)

Boehner has vowed there will never be a vote on this bill on the House floor. There is a way to get a vote on it though-- defeating a couple dozen Republicans in 2014, particularly John Boehner. Andrew Hounshell, an Ohio steelworker and vice-president of the International Association of Machinist and Aerospace Workers (IAMAW) Local Lodge 1943 is running for the seat in western Ohio that Boehner currently holds. Bread and butter issues-- like jobs-- is exactly why he's running.

"A bill like the H.R. 1000 is exactly what the citizens of this great country expect from their elected Representatives," he told us this morning. "Instead they get the 37th vote to repeal or defund the Affordable Care Act from our Speaker. His excuse was that it is all about jobs. How will a vote that everyone knows will never pass the Senate be about jobs? Who's job is he referring to? His own? This bill would create real jobs, and put tax paying Americans back to work. The goal of a bill like this is to provide full employment. The problem is, the Speaker isn't interested in full employment because the corporations that support him aren't interested in it. Full employment raises the cost of labor which cuts into corporate profits. It is much more profitable for them to have the labor force in this country unemployed and underemployed. It's time our elected Congress represents the people and not the corporations."

Andy is on the Blue America ActBlue page... in case you'd like to help out.

A Not Very Happy Anniversary Today For The American Jobs Act

I assume Boehner has the same flunky tweeting for him on each of his Twitter accounts. Whomever it was, was busy after the convention in Charlotte attempting to change the subject as fast as possible to the disappointing jobs numbers. Although Paul Krugman termed the report unremarkable-- "the US economy this past year and more is that it has been steadily adding jobs at a pace roughly fast enough to keep up with but not get ahead of population growth"-- the right-wing propaganda machine is on full throttle about how it proves Obama has been horrible for the economy. And it's rare that the mass media-- outside of, say, Rachel Maddow, Chris Hayes, Lawrence O'Donnell and Ed Schultz-- ever mentions anything about the Republican efforts to obstruct President Obama's job creation plans and the efforts of the GOP governors in Michigan, Florida, Ohio, Georgia, Iowa, Maine, New Jersey, Virginia, Wisconsin, Texas and several other states going on a destructive binge of firing public service employees (teachers, foremen, policemen, etc).




It was on September 8, 2011 that Obama went before Congress (see video above) to explain the American Jobs Act and ask for bipartisan support to put the country back to work again. His plan called for the creation of something like 2 million new jobs and the American public was firmly behind it. But Boehner, Cantor and Ryan killed the proposal immediately and without proposing anything to take its place except their long discredited snake oil-- more tax cuts for the rich and fewer regulations for the corporate greed hogs. Obama's plan emphasized investing in desperately needed infrastructure, aid to states to shore up collapsing budgets that were pointing towards more layoffs for teachers, policemen and firemen and tax credits for employers that would encourage domestic job growth. All this is not just anathema to Republicans ideologically, this flies in the face of their decision to sabotage President Obama (and, incidentally, the American economy and the American people).

So yesterday we had an anemic jobs report and a twittering Speaker of the House. And a pathetic Republican presidential nominee who pulled a number out of his ass-- 11.5 million-- and claimed that's how many jobs he would (magically) create in his first term. Needless to say, he's being as cagey about how he would do it as he is about what he's hiding in his tax forms. Hounded by the media to get a little more specific-- even the Wall Street Journal was laughing at him-- he finally offered six specific ideas:

He said he would tap our energy resources to “put a lot of people to work in the energy sector.” He said he’d repeal Obamacare, which is “scaring small businesses from hiring.” He said he’d balance the budget so people know “investing in America is going to yield a return in dollars worth something.” He vowed to “open up new markets in American trade.” He said he’d revamp the National Labor Relations Board and lower tax rates on employers, both of which would make it easier to hire people.

[Greg] Sargent asked a few top economists whether Romney’s ideas would actually create jobs. “On net, all of these policies would do more harm in the short term,” responded Mark Hopkins, a senior adviser at Moody’s Analytics. “If we implemented all of his policies, it would push us deeper into recession and make the recovery slower.”

The American Jobs Act (H.R. 12) was officially introduced in the House by John Larson (D-CT) on September 21 with 105 cosponsors. It was referred to the Subcommittee on Insurance, Housing and Community Opportunity, where it was shelved by 10 Republicans acting on orders from Eric Cantor-- Judy Biggert (R-IL), the subcommittee chair, Robert Hurt (R-VA), Gary Miller (R-CA), Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), Scott Garrett (R-NJ), Patrick McHenry (R-NC), Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA), Sean Duffy (R-WI), Robert Dold (R-IL), and Steve Stivers (R-OH). But clownish Texan Louie Gohmert introduced his own bizarro-world "American Jobs Act" (H.R. 2911) that abolishes corporate income taxes entirely. Embarrassed, Boehner also buried that in committee.

McHenry's independent-minded opponent this year, Rep. Patsy Keever, was dismayed when she saw the role McHenry had played in killing the American Jobs Act. "People in North Carolina are hurting economically," she told us last night. "We are just coming out of the worst recession since the great depression. Workers in this state need a representative in Congress who will work with both sides of the aisle to help them. Just getting a job is the goal of too many North Carolinians! Not only do they need a job, they need a chance to earn a living wage. Part of what helps women in our state secure a living wage is receiving equal pay for equal work. Too often women are paid less than men. My opponent thinks there is nothing wrong with that, that being a women is reason enough for wage discrimination. I ask voters to stand with me this fall in recognition of the fact that their current representative doesn't actually represent them and that equal pay is not just about equality, it's about economics."

Working to kill the Jobs Act with McHenry was one of the Wall Street banksters favorite congressional shills, Steve Stivers. This year he's in a tough reelection battle with Democratic populist Pat Lang. And Lang isn't mincing any words about Stivers' malfeasance. "Every American," he told us this morning, "should be appalled that the 112th Congress has failed to pass a single piece of comprehensive jobs legislation. Steve Stivers and House Republicans refused to even consider President Obama's American Jobs Act, which would have put a million people to work, immediately. Steve Stivers and House Republicans are more concerned with denying President Obama a legislative 'victory' than they are with strengthening our economic recovery."

On October 11, Harry Reid attempted to block the filibuster of the bill in the Senate but his cloture move only got 50 votes. Every single Republican-- even fake moderates like Scott Brown R-MA), Susan Collins (R-ME) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME)-- voted NO, as did 2 conservative Democrats, Ben Nelson (R-NE) and Jon Tester (D-MT). And now we have almost half the voters in the country seriously contemplating the alternative to letting Obama finish his modest agenda for cleaning up after Bush and his GOP allies in Congress whose policies tanked the economy in the first place. I don't expect most voters in Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, Utah and Idaho to grasp why this is important-- nor in any way alter their self-destructive behavior at the polls. But what about in Massachusetts. Independent voters in the Bay State could hold the future well-being of our country in their hands. Elizabeth Warren is very different from Wall Street construct Scott Brown. In fact... this is something you can do.

Andrei Cherny And The Steve Jobs Act

I'm guessing most people who know who Andrei Cherny is know him as an author (The Next Deal: The Future of Public Life in the Information Age), or as the youngest ever White House speech writer or, more recently, as a prolific writer for a wide range of publications from the Washington Post and NY Times to the Huffington Post and The Atlantic. Almost incongruously, for the past 9 months he also been the chairman of the Arizona Democratic Party. And now this former Arizona Assistant Attorney General is rumored to be about to announce his candidacy for a new blue-leaning congressional seat in Phoenix.

This week, Eric Cantor, ran like a mangy cur with his tail between his legs when he realized his speech at the University of Pennsylvania was open to the public. That didn't keep his undelivered speech on income disparity from being widely panned. Cantor then announced he is about to unveil what he's calling "The Steve Jobs Act," coincidentally the exact name of the widely acclaimed article on jobs creation by Andrei last week: The Steve Jobs Act: Why It's Time to Invest in Entrepreneurs. Cantor's proposal, little more than a shrewdly crafted partisan hit piece to attack President Obama, doesn't stack up well to Andrei's serious look at how to move forward now that the Republican Party has killed the American Jobs Act.

Americans struggling to put food on the table and pay the mortgage are not looking for grand notions; they need the kind of immediate relief Obama's proposals would provide. However, an America struggling to find its way in a bewildering, humbling world needs something more-- a sense of larger purpose and direction.

The eulogies and encomiums delivered to Apple founder Steve Jobs seemed to capture some of this longing. They were celebrations of greatness and vision in a middling, small moment. At the end of a decade that saw Iraq, Katrina, and Lehman Brothers become watchwords of American weakness, they were paeans to someone who believed, with Thomas Paine, that we had it "in our power to begin the world over again." But, perhaps most of all, in a floundering economy, they spoke to a sense that it is entrepreneurs and innovators-- and not merely infrastructure spending and payroll tax cuts-- that are needed to rebuild the engine of economic growth.

The facts back up this assumption. Research from the Kauffman Foundation has demonstrated that new and young companies, those under the age of five, are responsible for all net job creation over the past generation. It is the entrepreneurs who start these businesses-- and not the business tycoons courted by both parties-- that are the true "job creators." But while Republicans focus on tax cuts and regulatory relief for large corporations and Democrats look to keep teachers and police officers in their jobs, it is these entrepreneurs-- the next generation's Steve Jobses-- who are being overlooked.

This has real consequences. At the heart of our jobs crisis is an ongoing entrepreneurial recession. Over the past three years, the number of new business being started has fallen by a quarter. The number of new companies with employees in 2009 was at its lowest level since 1992. Since the year 2000, the number of jobs created by startups has been sliding consistently to the point that in 2010 there were about half the number of jobs created by these new companies as there were a decade earlier.

While no set of government programs can create the revolutionary zeal needed to launch and lead a company such as Apple, we do need a set of policies to encourage and aid innovators as they turn their ideas into new, high-growth, job-creating companies -- the "Steve Jobs Act." In a Washington that worked, these ideas would be embraced by both parties. Such a measure would include elements from President Obama's plan such as aid to small businesses and reform of the unemployment insurance system to allow for more flexibility for potential entrepreneurs. And it would build on the emerging bipartisan consensus that certain regulations such as the accounting requirements in the Sarbanes-Oxley reforms have a disproportionate impact on young firms ill-equipped to handle the onerous burdens.

Yet the "Steve Jobs Act" would go much further. It would make healthcare and retirement benefits more universal, personalized, affordable and portable so that entrepreneurs have a greater ability to strike out on their own. With the knowledge that companies such as Nike, Intel, FedEx, and, yes, Apple Computers all started out with the benefit of government loans, it would create a National Innovation Bank to invest in companies with a potentially high rate of return in job creation. It would open the doors of legal immigration to hard-charging, determined new Americans like those who came through Ellis Island a century ago and like the Syrian immigrant who was Steve Jobs' biological father. And it would make sure our public schools put a greater emphasis not only on science and mathematics, but on the creative problem solving skills that are at the heart of the entrepreneurial drive.

As much as anything else, the "Steve Jobs Act" would give Americans a sense of direction about our economy. Despite the rhetoric out of Washington, America's economic future lies neither in competing with off-shore tax havens over the lowest corporate tax rates nor with authoritarian dictatorships such as China to produce high-speed bullet trains. It lies in doubling down on what has historically made America an exceptional economy: an entrepreneurial culture, a willingness to dare greatly, an openness to new ideas, the ability to tap talent that other countries' castes would overlook. If we want to create jobs and recreate a strong American economy, this is where we should focus our energies. It might not mean an iPod in every pot, but it would help innovators get their tinkers out of their garages and into our lives.

Fluffing The 1%-- Last Night's Senate Vote Against Recovery

I doubt many senators read Andy Coghlan's and Debora MacKenzie's enlightening feature in New Scientist this week about the capitalist network (i.e., a manifestation of the 1%) that runs the world... runs it primarily to benefit not society but themselves, their families and their circles. And this isn't some kind of political polemic; it's science... so, right, conservatives can stop reading right now.

An analysis of the relationships between 43,000 transnational corporations has identified a relatively small group of companies, mainly banks, with disproportionate power over the global economy.

...The idea that a few bankers control a large chunk of the global economy might not seem like news to New York's Occupy Wall Street movement and protesters elsewhere. But the study, by a trio of complex systems theorists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, is the first to go beyond ideology to empirically identify such a network of power. It combines the mathematics long used to model natural systems with comprehensive corporate data to map ownership among the world's transnational corporations (TNCs).

...The work, to be published in PloS One, revealed a core of 1318 companies with interlocking ownerships (see image). Each of the 1318 had ties to two or more other companies, and on average they were connected to 20. What's more, although they represented 20 per cent of global operating revenues, the 1318 appeared to collectively own through their shares the majority of the world's large blue chip and manufacturing firms-- the "real" economy-- representing a further 60 per cent of global revenues.

When the team further untangled the web of ownership, it found much of it tracked back to a "super-entity" of 147 even more tightly knit companies-- all of their ownership was held by other members of the super-entity-- that controlled 40 per cent of the total wealth in the network. "In effect, less than 1 per cent of the companies were able to control 40 per cent of the entire network," says Glattfelder. Most were financial institutions. The top 20 included Barclays Bank, JPMorgan Chase & Co, and The Goldman Sachs Group.

Wednesday night Harry Reid filed cloture to break the Republicans' filibuster of the first piece of President Obama's jobs legislation-- this bill to authorize $35 billion to keep teachers, policemen and firefighters employed and to pay for it with a pathetically small and inadequate tax on millionaires. Only money above a million dollars in annual remuneration would be subject to the tax, but, needless to say, even that's too much for the Republicans. Miss McConnell deceitfully referred to it as "a proposal to raise taxes on 300,000 business owners in order to send money down to states so they don’t have to lay off state employees."

Over half the members of the Senate-- probably close to 60% now-- are millionaires themselves and aren't eager to raise their own taxes... not even a tiny little bit. Wouldn't the decent thing be for the millionaires in the Senate to recuse themselves for voting on legislation that would have a significant effect on their own wealth? Among the super-rich decamillionaires in the Senate, 11 are filibustering the jobs bill, 10 Republicans and one quasi-Democrat:

Bob Corker (R-TN)- $96 million
Jim Risch (R-WY)- $87 million
Olympia Snowe (R-ME)- $45 million
Lamar Alexander (R-TN)- $40 million
Miss McConnell (R-KY)- $32 million
John McCain (R-AZ)- $26 million
Ben Nelson (D-NE)- $18 million
Johnny Isakson (R-GA)- $13 million
Dick Shelby (R-AL)- $10 million
John Barrasso (R-WY)- $10 million
Jim Inhofe (R-OK)- $10 million

As Jamison Foser pointed out, narrowing in on fake moderate Olympia Snowe, "when Sen. Olympia Snowe explained her vote against the Senate jobs bill last week, she identified only one provision of the bill she disagreed with: the surcharge on taxpayers who earn more than $1 million in adjusted gross income." Not counting herself, that's 374 people in the state of Maine, a state suffering immense unemployment. "Snowe's vote against a jobs bill that would greatly help Maine simply because it would raise taxes on about 375 of the state's richest residents doesn't make much sense-- but it's certainly easier to understand if Snowe and her husband [a notorious crook] are among those fortunate few," Foser concludes. Greg Sargent was just as straight to the point at the Washington Post before the vote.

Let’s be as clear as possible: Any Democratic or Republican senators who vote this week against the $35 billion package of aid to the states are putting the very narrow interests of an infinitesimal few over the interests of many thousands of their own constituents.

The Senate vote is on whether to send billions to the states to avert teacher layoffs and to facilitate the hiring of more teachers and first responders-- a key provision of Obama’s jobs plan. This would be paid for by a 0.5 percent surtax on millionaires. As of now, it’s unclear how a handful of moderate Senators in both parties will vote, because they have “stimulus spending” and they oppose hiking taxes on the rich.

So here’s a way look at this: How many people would be impacted by this proposal in each state represented by each on-the-fence senator? And how does that compare to the number of constituents in each of those states who would pay that 0.5 percent surtax? And keep in mind, the impact of one teaching job is far vaster and affects far more people than the impact of the surtax on one constituent, which is only paid on income over one million dollars.

Sargent singles out 7 wealthy senators who his sources told him were on the fence:

* Snowe and fellow-Mainer Susan Collins, where $117 million in aid to the state will be lost so that 374 people (+ Snowe) wouldn't have to pay an extra 0.5% on income over a million dollars a year.

* Tennessee's two multimillionaire senators, Alexander and Corker, who had to think about turning down 9,400 education jobs and over $596 million for their state to help out the 2,450 people who make over a million dollars a year-- like themselves.

* Ben Nelson, who was willing to snub 2,800 education jobs in Omaha, Lincoln, Kearney, North Platte and across the state ($176 million) so that himself and 1,049 Nebraskans making over a million dollars a year won't have to pay a pittance more for the public good-- even though Nelson's wealthiest constituent, Warren Buffett, has endorsed the idea.

* John Tester, who once billed himself as a populist-- but that was when he was running for the Senate 5 years ago-- was looking at turning down 1,400 education jobs ($90 million) so that 340 millionaires wouldn't have to pay the tiny tax.

* And, of course, West Virginia's right-wing Democrat, Joe Manchin, always eager to screw working people on behalf of the wealthy, had to balance 2,600 education jobs ($162 million into West Virginia's hard-pressed economy) against 580 who make over a million dollars a year in his state.

The Senate voted at 10 last night and the Republicans managed to block allowing the debate to proceed. Reid's motion to end their smarmy filibuster lost 50-50, Lieberman plus 2 ultra-conservative Democrats-- Pryor (AR) and Nelson (NE)-- voting with Miss McConnell to keep the filibuster going. Tester, at least, had seen the light, but not one Republican-- not Scott Brown and not Olympia Snowe (both of whom are up for reelection next year)-- crossed the aisle to support teachers, policemen, firemen or their own states' economies. President Obama's statement (which rings unauthentic since it singles out Republicans instead of Republicans + Lieberman, Pryor and Nelson):

For the second time in two weeks, every single Republican in the United States Senate has chosen to obstruct a bill that would create jobs and get our economy going again. That’s unacceptable. We must do what’s right for the country and pass the common-sense proposals in the American Jobs Act. Every Senate Republican voted to block a bill that would help middle class families and keep hundreds of thousands of firefighters on the job, police officers on the streets, and teachers in the classroom when our kids need them most.

Those Americans deserve an explanation as to why they don’t deserve those jobs-– and every American deserves an explanation as to why Republicans refuse to step up to the plate and do what’s necessary to create jobs and grow the economy right now.

We must rebuild the economy the American way and restore security for the middle class, based on the values of balance and fairness. Independent economists have said the American Jobs Act could create up to two million jobs next year. So the choice is clear. Our fight isn’t over. We will keep working with Congress to bring up the American Jobs Act piece by piece, and give Republicans another chance to put country before party and help us put the American people back to work.

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers sounded more authentic in her outrage:

The senators who voted “no” late Thursday night on the Teachers and First Responders Back to Work Act have once again squandered the chance to help our kids, communities and the economy by putting teachers back in the classroom, and ensuring that police officers and firefighters protect our neighborhoods.

The 50 senators who voted against the jobs measure showed a callous disregard for our kids’ futures and the safety of our neighborhoods. The no-voters are more concerned about protecting the wealthiest Americans from a half-cent-per-dollar tax increase than about helping our kids and ensuring safe communities. These senators are clearly out of touch with the American people. This week’s CNN/Gallup poll found that 75 percent of Americans support the Teachers and First Responders Back to Work Act.

Our nation is in a state of economic emergency that requires an immediate response. The unrelenting layoff of teachers and first responders is putting educational quality and the safety of our cities and towns at risk. The $35 billion jobs bill would support nearly 400,000 education jobs and keep thousands of police officers and firefighters on the job. By asking millionaires and billionaires to pay an extra one-half of 1 percent, the jobs plan would strengthen the economy without adding to the deficit.

With a deep and grinding recession causing disinvestment in our schools, the American people are sick and tired of having their concerns about the future ignored by some members of Congress. It’s time to set aside the political gamesmanship and do what is right for our students, for the safety of our communities, and for our country.

Obama Stands Up To Cantormania

Ken and I went to elementary school together in Brooklyn. We often get smitten with the same magazine covers

Obama's never going to be the kind of president I want. I knew that-- from carefully studying his uncomfortably corporatist record in the Senate-- when I voted for him in 2008. And, despite pressure, Blue America never endorsed him or raised a dime for his campaign, not in 2008 and, certainly not during this campaign. Obama was in Asheville, North Carolina yesterday, a Democratic stronghold and he was talking smack about conservatives. It would have been a great opportunity-- one he would never in a trillion years consider-- to show another side of bipartisanship. He could have talked about how conservative Republican Patrick McHenry (who just had Asheville put into his district) and how conservative Blue Dog Democrat Health Shuler (the current Representative for that city) have been obstructing his plans for a better America. Shuler, like McHenry, is a corporate whore, who takes his campaign cash and his walking orders from Wall Street. The Obama of my long-dead dreams would have endorsed progressive Democrat and Asheville City Councilman Cecil Bothwell. Sure, I know... patently absurd. How many Democratic presidents ever campaigned against conservatives in their own party? Do you know? You might be surprised at the answer.

That said, a "C' or a "D" is always better than a flat out "F," which would be a good description of the policies of Romney, Perry, Gingrich or any of the minor vanity candidates running for the Republican nomination. As Steve Benen pointed out yesterday, Obama is smart to offer to put his jobs program up against the Republican Party's "jobs" program as often as possible.

Here's some of the back-and-forth from the President's appearance yesterday in Asheville:

THE PRESIDENT:  We should be talking about jobs.  When you hear what’s going on out in the country, when you take the time to listen, you understand that a lot of folks are hurting out there.  Too many people are looking for work.  Too many families are looking for that sense of security that’s been slipping away for the past decade, now.
 
Here in North Carolina, you’ve got thousands of construction workers who lost their jobs when the housing bubble  burst.  Some of those construction workers are here today.  They’ve got experience.  They’ve got skills.  All they want is to be back on the job site doing what they do best.  (Applause.)
 
And there is plenty of work to go around.  In this airport right here in Asheville, you’ve got a runway that needs to be widened and repaired.  You’ve got a taxiway that’s in the wrong spot –- which means that planes sometimes get too close together.  So we could be doing some work right here at the Asheville Airport that would help boost tourism, help to boost the economy here, put people to work right now.  (Applause.) 
 
But it’s not just here in Asheville.  All across the state, you’ve got highways that need to be built.  You’ve got bridges that need to be fixed.  You’ve got schools that need to be modernized.  (Applause.)  And that’s what America used to do best.  We used to build things -- built the Transcontinental Railroad; built the Golden Gate Bridge; the Hoover Dam; the Grand Central Station.  There’s no reason why we should sit here and watch the best highways and the newest airports being built in China.  We should be building them right here in the United States of America.  (Applause.)  Right here in North Carolina.  (Applause.)
 
Now, our problems were a long time in the making–- we’re not going to solve them overnight.  But there are things we can do right now to put people back to work-- right now.  There are things we should do right now to give the economy the jolt that it needs.  So that’s why I sent Congress the American Jobs Act.  (Applause.) 
 
AUDIENCE:  Thank you!
 
THE PRESIDENT:  Keep in mind-- keep in mind, Asheville, this is the kind of bill containing the kinds of proposals that in the past have received support from Democrats and Republicans.  It’s completely paid for-- by asking our wealthiest citizens, folks making more than a million dollars a year, to pay their fair share.  (Applause.) 
 
Independent economists-- not my economists, but independent economists-- have said this jobs bill would create nearly 2 million jobs.  That’s not my opinion.  It’s not the opinion of folks who work for me.  It’s the opinion of people who evaluate these kinds of things for a living.  It says this bill will help put people back to work and give our economy a boost right away.
 
But apparently none of this matters to the Republicans in the Senate-- because last week they got together to block this bill.  They said no to putting teachers and construction workers back on the job.  They said no to rebuilding our roads and our bridges and our airports.  They said no to cutting taxes for middle-class families and small businesses when all they’ve been doing is cutting taxes for the wealthiest Americans.
 
AUDIENCE:  Booo --
 
THE PRESIDENT:  They said no to helping veterans find jobs. 
Essentially, they said no to you-- because it turns out one poll found that 63 percent of Americans support the ideas in this jobs bill.  (Applause.)  So 63 percent of Americans support the jobs bill that I put forward; 100 percent of Republicans in the Senate voted against it.  That doesn’t make any sense, does it?
 
AUDIENCE:  No!
 
THE PRESIDENT:  No, it does not. 
 
Now, it turns out that the Republicans have a plan, too.  I want to be fair.  They call-- they put forward this plan last week.  They called it the “Real American Jobs Act.”  The "real one"-- that’s what they called it-- just in case you were wondering.  (Laughter.)  So let’s take a look at what the Republican American jobs act looks like.  It turns out the Republican plan boils down to a few basic ideas:  They want to gut regulations; they want to let Wall Street do whatever it wants. 
 
AUDIENCE:  Booo --
 
THE PRESIDENT:  They want to drill more.
 
AUDIENCE: Booo --
 
THE PRESIDENT:  And they want to repeal health care reform.
 
AUDIENCE:  Booo --
 
THE PRESIDENT:  That's their jobs plan.
 
So let’s do a little comparison here.  The Republican plan says that what’s been standing in the way between us and full employment are laws that keep companies from polluting as much as they want.  On the other hand, our plan puts teachers, construction workers, firefighters and police officers back on the job.  (Applause.)
 
Their plan says the big problem we have is that we helped to get 30 million Americans health insurance.  They figure we should throw those folks off the health insurance rolls; somehow that's going to help people find jobs.
 
AUDIENCE:  Booo --
 
THE PRESIDENT:  Our plan says we’re better off if every small business and worker in America gets a tax cut, and that's what’s in my jobs bill.  (Applause.)  Their plan says we should go back to the good old days before the financial crisis when Wall Street was writing its own rules.  They want to roll back all the reforms that we’ve put into place. 
 
AUDIENCE:  No!
 
THE PRESIDENT:  Our plan says we need to make it easier for small businesses to grow and hire and push this economy forward.  (Applause.)
 
All right, so you’ve gotten a sense-- you got their plan, and then we got my plan.  My plan says we’re going to put teachers back in the classroom; construction workers back to work rebuilding America, rebuilding our schools-- (applause)-- tax cuts for small businesses; tax cuts for hiring veterans; tax cuts if you give your worker a raise.  (Applause.)  That's my plan.
 
And then you got their plan, which is let’s have dirtier air, dirtier water.
 
AUDIENCE:  Booo --
 
THE PRESIDENT:  Less people with health insurance.
 
AUDIENCE:  Booo -- 
 
THE PRESIDENT:  All right so, so far at least, I feel better about my plan.  (Laughter and applause.)  But let’s admit I’m a little biased.  So remember those independent economists who said our plan would create jobs, maybe as many as almost 2 million jobs, grow the economy by as much as 2 percent?  So one of the same economists that took a look at our plan took a look at the Republican plan, and they said, well, this won’t do much to help the economy in the short term -- it could actually cost us jobs.  We could actually lose jobs with their plan. 
 
So I’ll let you decide which plan is the real American Jobs Act.  (Applause.) 
 
AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Obama's plan!
 
AUDIENCE:  Four more years!  Four more years!
 
THE PRESIDENT:  Look, I appreciate the “four more years,” but right now I’m thinking about the next 13 months.  (Applause.)  Because, yes, we’ve got an election coming up, but that election is a long ways away, and a lot of folks can’t wait.  A lot of folks are living paycheck to paycheck.  A lot of folks are living week to week.  You’ve got kids right now who’ve lost their teachers because at the local level you ended up having layoffs.  You’ve got bridges right now that are crumbling and deteriorating.  So we don’t have time to wait.  And we’ve got a choice right now-- right now.

And here's the lockstep Republican response with his fatuous defense of the 1%-- a veritable Thomas Burke, if a less eloquent one-- of the day:



Cantor makes a great target for Democrats; he's as repulsive a political figure as you can find without going to someone like Paul Broun, Mean Jean Schmidt or Steve Womack wiping drool off their chins. In his column about the Kvetchocracy Sunday, Krugman never calls out Cantor by name but one has to believe he had him-- or maybe him and Ryan-- in mind when he was writing the column. These are the people for whom Cantor and Ryan (not to mention Rahm Emanuel and Harold Ford) are shilling for:

As the Occupy Wall Street movement continues to grow, the response from the movement’s targets has gradually changed: contemptuous dismissal has been replaced by whining. (A reader of my blog suggests that we start calling our ruling class the “kvetchocracy.”) The modern lords of finance look at the protesters and ask, Don’t they understand what we’ve done for the U.S. economy?

The answer is: yes, many of the protesters do understand what Wall Street and more generally the nation’s economic elite have done for us. And that’s why they’re protesting.

On Saturday The Times reported what people in the financial industry are saying privately about the protests. My favorite quote came from an unnamed money manager who declared, “Financial services are one of the last things we do in this country and do it well. Let’s embrace it.”

This is deeply unfair to American workers, who are good at lots of things, and could be even better if we made adequate investments in education and infrastructure. But to the extent that America has lagged in everything except financial services, shouldn’t the question be why, and whether it’s a trend we want to continue?

For the financialization of America wasn’t dictated by the invisible hand of the market. What caused the financial industry to grow much faster than the rest of the economy starting around 1980 was a series of deliberate policy choices, in particular a process of deregulation that continued right up to the eve of the 2008 crisis.

Not coincidentally, the era of an ever-growing financial industry was also an era of ever-growing inequality of income and wealth. Wall Street made a large direct contribution to economic polarization, because soaring incomes in finance accounted for a significant fraction of the rising share of the top 1 percent (and the top 0.1 percent, which accounts for most of the top 1 percent’s gains) in the nation’s income. More broadly, the same political forces that promoted financial deregulation fostered overall inequality in a variety of ways, undermining organized labor, doing away with the “outrage constraint” that used to limit executive paychecks, and more.

Oh, and taxes on the wealthy were, of course, sharply reduced.

All of this was supposed to be justified by results: the paychecks of the wizards of Wall Street were appropriate, we were told, because of the wonderful things they did. Somehow, however, that wonderfulness failed to trickle down to the rest of the nation-- and that was true even before the crisis. Median family income, adjusted for inflation, grew only about a fifth as much between 1980 and 2007 as it did in the generation following World War II, even though the postwar economy was marked both by strict financial regulation and by much higher tax rates on the wealthy than anything currently under political discussion.

Then came the crisis, which proved that all those claims about how modern finance had reduced risk and made the system more stable were utter nonsense. Government bailouts were all that saved us from a financial meltdown as bad as or worse than the one that caused the Great Depression.

And what about the current situation? Wall Street pay has rebounded even as ordinary workers continue to suffer from high unemployment and falling real wages. Yet it’s harder than ever to see what, if anything, financiers are doing to earn that money.

Why, then, does Wall Street expect anyone to take its whining seriously? That money manager claiming that finance is the only thing America does well also complained that New York’s two Democratic senators aren’t on his side, declaring that “They need to understand who their constituency is.” Actually, they surely know very well who their constituency is-- and even in New York, 16 out of 17 workers are employed by nonfinancial industries.

But he wasn’t really talking about voters, of course. He was talking about the one thing Wall Street still has plenty of thanks to those bailouts, despite its total loss of credibility: money.

Money talks in American politics, and what the financial industry’s money has been saying lately is that it will punish any politician who dares to criticize that industry’s behavior, no matter how gently-- as evidenced by the way Wall Street money has now abandoned President Obama in favor of Mitt Romney. And this explains the industry’s shock over recent events.

You see, until a few weeks ago it seemed as if Wall Street had effectively bribed and bullied our political system into forgetting about that whole drawing lavish paychecks while destroying the world economy thing. Then, all of a sudden, some people insisted on bringing the subject up again.

And their outrage has found resonance with millions of Americans. No wonder Wall Street is whining.

The 1% know they can count on Paul Ryan, Eric Cantor, Rahm Emanuel and Harold Ford, the entire Republican Party and at least half the Democrats to work with all their might to save them from the 99%. And no matter how determined he may have sounded in Asheville yesterday, Obama is, at best, a conflicted and unsteady champion for the 99%-- as are most of the Democrats. It's why we've endorsed so few incumbents at Blue America and why we're backing just three candidates for the Senate this cycle.


UPDATE: And That Debate... My God

As bad as Obama has been, the seven dwarves are going to win him an undeserved second term. Just look at these two pathetic front runners-- sorry, Herman, but we're dealing with the real word here-- arguing over which one is more of an asshole and Know Nothing:

Who Needs Jobs When We Have Right-Wing Dogma?

Tuesday night Harry Reid failed to break the obstructionist Republican filibuster of even debating a jobs bill. The cloture motion needed 60 and only got 50, every single Republican plus two conservative Democrats, Ben Nelson (NE) and Jon Tester (MT) refusing to allow President Obama's proposal to be brought up. The senators who did the biggest disservice-- in financial terms-- to their constituents were John Cornyn and Kay Bailey Hutchison, two very right-wing Texas Republicans. By voting NO, they helped block the creation of 33,800 infrastructure jobs in their own state, along with $2.6 billion of spending on Texas roads, bridges, etc-- and almost an identical amount on money for Texas teachers ($2,565,500,000 for 39,500 teachers). They also nixed a Texas school rebuilding program that would have employed 30,300 Texans for a hefty $2.3 billion Texas stimulus. Cornyn and Hutchison turned down the biggest amount of anyone in the Senate.

Florida ideological extremist Marco Rubio was the second worst culprit. On behalf of hard-pressed Floridians he gave a big thumbs down to 20,500 infrastructure jobs (and $1,578,600,000 in infrastructure spending) plus $1,669,500,000 for 25,900 teachers and another $1,280,300,000 for schools that would have employed another 16,600 Floridians in school rebuilding jobs.

Alan Grayson shook his head sadly after Rubio's vote against the jobs bill. "One out of every nine Floridians is out of work," he told us. "We need every job we can get. Isn't that obvious?" Just down the road from Grayson's Orlando district, Nick Ruiz is running against Tea Party crackpot Sandy Adams-- yes, an actual member of Michele Bachmann's Tea Party Caucus-- and it was as obvious to him as it was to Grayson:

"The great myth of 2010 that all of Florida and America shall have to endure until we unseat him in 2016 is that Marco Rubio (R-FL) now represents Florida, when in truth, he does not. Rubio's senatorial GOP pop debut is simply a neocon scam, brought to you in large part by the Koch Bros., Inc. Tea party crusade against the people of the United States of America.

"The hustle, despite Rubio being elected in 2010, really fails on a representative level, because less than 50% of Florida even voted Rubio! Clearly, we wanted someone else. Rubio only won on a ticket split by Charlie Crist (I-FL) and Kendrick Meek (D-FL). Instant runoff voting anyone?

"Rubio's senatorial votes will always be against the greater interest of the American public, and decidedly in favor of the 1% that owns nearly everything you can see. As long as Rubio functions as a tool of the Koch Bros., ultra-socially violent, clockwork orange odyssey - you can count it."

Alan and Nick are on the same (Blue America) page

President Obama isn't on that page. But his messaging afer the the vote was... effective-- if not uplifting. But what do I know? Uplifting for me would be to start out with "I'm declaring my independence from the Wall Street criminals who got us into this mess and I've just fired Tim Geithner and Daley's kid and I told Eric Holder to either get some banksters behind bars or find a new job." Instead, he said:

Tonight, a majority of United States Senators voted to advance the American Jobs Act. But even though this bill contains the kind of proposals Republicans have supported in the past, their party obstructed the Senate from moving forward on this jobs bill. 
 
Tonight’s vote is by no means the end of this fight. Independent economists have said that the American Jobs Act would grow the economy and lead to nearly two million jobs, which is why the majority of the American people support these bipartisan, common-sense proposals. And we will now work with Senator Reid to make sure that the individual proposals in this jobs bill get a vote as soon as possible. 
 
In the coming days, Members of Congress will have to take a stand on whether they believe we should put teachers, construction workers, police officers and firefighters back on the job. They’ll get a vote on whether they believe we should cut taxes for small business owners and middle-class Americans, or whether we should protect tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires.
 
With each vote, Members of Congress can either explain to their constituents why they’re against common-sense, bipartisan proposals to create jobs, or they can listen to the overwhelming majority of American people who are crying out for action. Because with so many Americans out of work and so many families struggling, we can’t take “no” for an answer. Ultimately, the American people won’t take “no” for an answer. It’s time for Congress to meet their responsibility, put their party politics aside and take action on jobs right now.

It's not like anyone couldn't have done the math in advance and been unable to predict the cloture vote. When you need 60 votes to end a filibuster-- and for Miss McConnell and DeMint everything is a filibuster these days-- there's no way to do it without some Republican votes, even if jerks like Nelson and Tester (not to mention Webb, Manchin, Lieberman, McCaskill, Landrieu and Baucus) don't escape from the reservation. As Reid said immediately after the vote, "Republicans unanimously voted against our nation's economic health to advance their narrow political interests. Republicans blocked a bill that would put nearly two million Americans back to work. And they voted against this job-creating bill despite previously supporting many of the ideas it contains, such as tax cuts for the middle class and small businesses."

You don't like the DMX rendition of Romney up top? How about this one that Romney put together himself?