Give me your tired, Your poor...

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Something tells me Republicans can't keep a straight face when they read those words on the Statue of Liberty. The GOP could care less about the less fortunate among us, and just the thought of having to help the "wretched" must send chills up their spines. As evidence, consider their recent track record: NO to health care reform. YES to protecting Wall Street. And perhaps the most egregious example is Arizona, where they recently passed an immigration bill that makes them look more like a police state than a democracy.

And don't forget the Tea Party. Republicans have gone out of their way to promote and defend these people because they're primarily white, wealthy men - a.k.a. their base.

The GOP may claim they don't have a double-standard when it comes to race in this country, but Alternet asks us to imagine this: What If the Tea Party Were Black?

Imagine that hundreds of black protesters were to descend upon Washington DC and Northern Virginia, just a few miles from the Capitol and White House, armed with AK-47s, assorted handguns, and ammunition. And imagine that some of these protesters — the black protesters — spoke of the need for political revolution, and possibly even armed conflict in the event that laws they didn’t like were enforced by the government? Would these protesters — these black protesters with guns — be seen as brave defenders of the Second Amendment, or would they be viewed by most whites as a danger to the republic? What if they were Arab-Americans? ...

Imagine that a rap artist were to say, in reference to a white president: “He’s a piece of shit and I told him to suck on my machine gun.” Because that’s what rocker Ted Nugent said recently about President Obama.

You get the picture. Republicans have a double-standard, and so do tea party members. How else to explain their silence about Arizona's immigration law? I'd like to hear them answer this question that someone asked over at Washington Monthly:

Shouldn't the tea party crowd be having a cow over this new immigration bill that Arizona just passed? Doesn't that sound like big government tyranny to them? Giving the police the power to demand "papers" from someone just on their own suspicion?

I somehow doubt we'll see them marching in the street in defense of their Hispanic brothers and sisters. They only care about their own sorry, white butts. This is what "white privilege is all about" (as anyone who lived through the civil rights era knows only too well):

The ability to threaten others, to engage in violent and incendiary rhetoric without consequence, to be viewed as patriotic and normal no matter what you do, and never to be feared and despised as people of color would be...

Recent events - and votes - tell us who Republicans really represent: White America, the wealthier the better.


(Cross-posted at Blogging for Michigan.)

Senate Health Bill Provides Enormous Help To Poor

Everyone seems to be trashing the Senate's health reform bill. That's fine, dissent is good, but I don't think we should let it blind us to the positives, such as the enormous good the bill will do for the poor and middle class. (Via Jonathan Cohn at TNR.)

This bill would mean Medicaid coverage for an additional 15 million people a year, all of them living below or just above the poverty line. For a sense of scale, that's more than double the entire population now covered by the state Children's Health Insurance Program.

This bill would also subsidize coverage in the exchanges for (roughly) another 15 million people a year, the majority of whom would also qualify as low-income by any reasonable standard.

"Do the math," he says, and we'll see that this bill is "arguably, the single most progressive initiative in a generation."

And if you don't believe Cohn, he asks you to consider what his colleague Harold Pollack at the Huffington Post had to say [emphasis mine]:

Fully implemented, the bill would provide about $200 billion per year down the income scale in subsidies to poor, near-poor, and working Americans.

$200 billion is a big number. It exceeds the combined total of federal spending on Food Stamps and all nutrition assistance programs, the Earned Income Tax Credit, Head Start, TANF cash payments to single mothers and their children, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the National Institutes of Health.

That money won't be allocated to wars or tax cuts for the rich, it's going to help the poor and middle class.

Trash the bill if you want, but don't let yourself lose sight of the good it will do.


(Cross-posted at Blogging for MI.)

Poll: Let The Wealthy Pay Higher Taxes

A new Bloomberg poll shows Americans want the government to do something about the economy.

Americans want their government to create jobs through spending on public works, investments in alternative energy or skills training for the jobless.

They also want the deficit to come down. And most are ready to hand the bill to the wealthy.

A Bloomberg National Poll conducted Dec. 3-7 shows two- thirds of Americans favor taxing the rich to reduce the deficit.

Raising taxes on the rich was popular across party lines too: About half of Republicans back the idea and it is more popular among Democrats and Independents.

Steve Benen summarized the polls results best:

In other words, here's a poll showing widespread support for the Democratic economic agenda.

That's because mainstream America is rational, unlike those teabagger Republicans whose only answer for every problem is cut taxes, cut taxes...


(Cross-posted at Blogging for MI.)

Passing the Healthy Families Act is Sensible

The swine flu (aka H1N1) appears to be milder than experts initially anticipated, but what if it had turned out to be much worse? What if people felt early symptoms coming on and had to chose between staying home from work or going in and exposing their coworkers? That could be problematic.

...millions of Americans can’t just stay home because they’re under the weather. When EPI looked at corporate sick leave policies in 2007 it found that some 43% of all private-industry workers have no paid sick days. Rather than the common sense precaution the President advices, these workers have a more difficult choice of going to work sick or staying home without pay and risk losing their jobs. In this current climate of high unemployment and even higher job insecurity, workers without any formal sick leave are even less likely to risk taking a day off.

Even more problematic, access to time off for health reasons is especially rare in low-paying jobs. In a 2006 compensation survey, the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that 79% of those earning more than $29.47 per hour had sick time, but only 16% of those earning less than $7.38 an hour had the same benefit.

The EPI also points out what a challenge it is for working parents if their children get sick.

The Huffington Post, citing data from the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, notes that fewer than one in three U.S. workers who do have sick leave are allowed to use that time to stay home and care for a sick child.

The Institute argues that "workers who lack paid sick time are more likely to go to work with a communicable illness, and parents who cannot stay home with a sick child are more likely to send them to school or day care." That just spreads germs around even more.

In Michigan, 1,725,000 residents — 48 percent of Michigan workers — are not able to take a paid sick day when they are ill.

It's time to revisit "the Healthy Families Act, which Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) plan to reintroduce in Congress next month. The bill would “guarantee workers up to seven paid sick days a year to recover from an illness or care for a sick family member.”

There is also an economic advantage to passing the legislation.

According to the National Partnership for Women and Families, “when sick workers are on the job, it costs our national economy $180 billion annually in lost productivity. For employers, this costs an average of $255 per employee per year and exceeds the cost of absenteeism and medical and disability benefits.”

At least 139 other countries already provide some paid sick leave to workers as a matter of national law, and four out of five Americans think paid sick days should be a basic labor standard, so passing the legislation should be a no-brainer. This is clearly one of those "changes" Americans voted for last November.

Americans View the Rich With Rising Skepticism

F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote, "Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me."

That segue leads me to an article I read in the LA Times about Americans attitudes toward the wealthy. For decades they've been held up as examples of what we can achieve through hard work and determination, but recent events have people looking at them in a different light, and the belief that the wealthy are worthy is waning.

Thanks in part to AIG, BOA and men like Bernie Madoff, Americans are beginning to realize that the rich have added little value to our economy, and in the case of corporate executives, their huge salaries weren't even based on performance. They made millions even when they failed at their jobs.

And they made millions even when they didn't work. Dumb luck explains their wealth in many cases.

By my count, roughly one-quarter of the names on the Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans got there by inheritance (and by no means have all of them enhanced the family fortune with their own toil or brainpower). A few years ago, it was common to think of the rich as a special breed. We may soon come around to George Orwell's view that the only difference between rich and poor is income -- "The average millionaire," as he put it, "is only the average dishwasher dressed in a new suit."

Except, the average millionaire can still afford health care, a roof over his head and the cost of a college education, while the rest of us struggle to keep our homes, fund retirement accounts, etc. Meanwhile, inequality is now at levels not seen since the Great Depression.

It's no surprise that a recent CNN poll shows that Americans are losing confidence in their ability to keep their current standard of living. People need jobs, good paying jobs, and that means we'll probably need a second stimulus plan, along with progressive tax increases on the wealthy.

But, but, higher taxes make it harder for the wealthy to invest and create jobs, right? Wrong.

It's proper to note that years of study have unearthed no consistent evidence that taxation causes the rich to alter their investing behavior much, at least not until their tax burden reaches a point vastly higher than what Obama contemplates.

"The real rich -- the top 1% -- work very hard for reasons other than money," Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, a tax historian at the University of Michigan, told me this week. The quest for prestige, political power and self-esteem, the ability to control things and people, are all factors in their behavior.

Actually, the original case for a progressive income tax was directed at the real wealthy. Our Founding Fathers sought to break up concentrations of wealth, inherited or otherwise, because they considered these to be undemocratic -- markers of "an aristocratic society, not a free and virtuous republic."

IMHO, it all boils down to two things. Morality: Taxing the wealthy at higher rates than the poor is a moral issue. And it's also a religious issue: If God provides abundantly it is only for the purpose of you in turn giving to those in need.

Republicans Say No to Largest Tax Cut in History

Republicans not only voted against creating jobs when they voted no on the stimulus plan, they also voted against one of the biggest tax cuts in history. Robert Schlesinger at US News gives us the lowdown.

Steven Waldman, a former U.S. News editor (well before I wandered these halls), makes an interesting case that the coming tax cut will indeed be the biggest ever.

The compromise stimulus plan includes $282 billion in tax cuts over two years.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Bush's first two years of tax cuts amounted to $174 billion. A second batch in 2004 and 2005 cost $231. And those were thought to be bigger than the tax cuts offered by Reagan, Kennedy, or others.

But wait, you say, wasn't Bush's 2001 tax cut, at $1.35 trillion (funny how the GOP didn't mind draining one trillion dollars from the government coffers then), the largest in history?

Yes, over the full 10 years of its existence. But over the first two years, as Waldman points out above, the price tag was much smaller. So the Obama stimulus tax cut would be the biggest ever for the first two years.

It's common knowledge that Republicans love tax cuts, so what motivated them to vote against these? I think Steve Benen nails it with this remark:

George W. Bush's tax cuts were long-term income-tax rate cuts, which amounted to a generous break for those at the top, since the wealthy pay most income taxes. Obama's tax cuts, meanwhile, are short-term refunds paid directly to working and middle class families (some of which Republicans have denounced as "welfare").

We can't have money trickling down to the masses. That would ruin their plans to redistribute even more money up to the already wealthy.

By the way, with this stimulus bill, Obama kept his campaign promise to deliver tax cuts, and he's only been in office one month. Meanwhile, we're still waiting for Republicans to deliver on some of that compassionate conservatism they said we'd be seeing.

Fair Pay Act Passes Senate

Change is coming in the area of wage discrimination and it's long overdue. The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act passed the Senate yesterday.

The Senate approved landmark worker rights legislation on Thursday that will make it easier for those who think they've endured pay discrimination to seek legal help. The vote was 61-36.

The House of Representatives approved a similar measure on January 9, three days after the 111th Congress convened. Because the Senate made modest changes in the House version, the House must pass it again. Once it does, as is assured, this will be one of the first bills that President Barack Obama signs into law.

Senators Levin and Stabenow voted yes, as did all the other female senators and Democrats (except for Kennedy and two vacant seats). Five Republicans supported the bill - Collins, Hutchison, Murkowski, Snowe, and Specter - and 35 Senate Republicans voted against it, including Alabama's two senators, Richard Shelby and Jeff Sessions. Here's the roll call.

(When the House voted earlier this month, Michigan Republicans Ehlers, Hoekstra, Camp, McCotter, Miller, Rogers and Upton voted no.)

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid predicts President Obama will sign the bill because "this administration stands for equality and fairness."

Those Republicans who voted against the bill aren't too concerned with fairness and equality.

"This bill is about effectively eliminating the statute of limitations on pay discrimination," said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. "Job creators have enough to worry about these days. We shouldn't add the threat of never-ending lawsuits."

Great. Not one ounce of concern for workers like Ledbetter who have been victims of discrimination. Mitch and other Republicans are clueless, or missing the point as Steve Benen puts it.

To hear opponents of the bill tell it, making it easier to challenge pay discrimination will lead to more lawsuits. That's almost certainly true. But therein lies the point -- if American workers are facing unjust wage discrimination, there should be more lawsuits. Those are worthwhile lawsuits, challenging an injustice. Ideally, employers would stop discriminating, as most already do, and in turn, there'd be fewer lawsuits.

Challenging injustice. Ending discrimination. That's the kind of change Americans want. Haven't Republicans been paying attention?


(Cross-posted at Blogging for Michigan.)

Think losing the Big 3 will be a mere blip? Think again.

Why is Paulson allowing this kind of wheeling and dealing to take place with the $700 billion dollar bailout fund? It should be used to help save the jobs of hundreds of thousands of auto workers, who also happen to be productive, taxpaying consumers. You know, the same consumers Bush called on after 9/11 to help keep the economy going.

What a double-standard, one that could very well touch your life or that of someone you know. Watch the video and you'll get a good idea of just how many people's lives are affected by Detroit's auto industry.


I wanted to mention those $71 dollar an hour autoworker wages and benefits the papers keep talking about. What they don't tell you is those figures are based on old contracts and include the projected cost of lifetime health care and pensions. Under a new contract negotiated last year, union employees will make considerably less than that, some as little as $14 per hour, and benefits have been reduced too. (Another reason we should have universal health care.)

Union workers aren't the fat cats the media makes them out to be. In fact, UAW members are actually losing their edge against foreign automakers. From the Detroit Free Press, February 2007:

Workers for foreign automakers don't pay union dues, but they do share the costs of insurance and retirement plans. UAW-represented autoworkers get health insurance and a full pension after 30 years -- valuable perks they will fight to keep during contract negotiations this year.

But even accounting for Toyota employees' health care spending -- $700 per year on average, according to the company -- the [Toyota] Georgetown workers still made more in 2006.

General Motors Corp., which lost $10.6 billion in 2005 and didn't issue profit-sharing checks last year, paid its production workers an average of $27 an hour, GM spokesman Daniel Flores said. That would be a base of about $54,000 a year, based on a 2,000-hour work year. The $30 average at Toyota's Georgetown plant, which includes a bonus, equals $60,000 a year.

Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler Group representatives said GM's base pay figures are similar to theirs. Only Chrysler, which had a 2005 profit, paid a bonus last year. The $650 bonus was not enough to surpass Toyota's pay. [...]

Assembly workers for Detroit automakers last year remained a bit ahead of Honda's U.S. hourly workers, who made an average $24.25 an hour, or $26.20 with the $4,485 bonus they received. In November, Honda paid bonuses for the 21st consecutive year, the longest streak in U.S. auto history, said Ed Miller, Honda spokesman.

Nissan workers are paid $24 an hour in Mississippi and $26 an hour in Tennessee, but company officials would not disclose employee bonuses.

Hyundai Motor Co. pays its U.S. production workers less than other automakers. Wages at its Alabama plant start at $14 an hour and grow to $21 an hour after two years on the job, according to a January 2004 company release.

Detroit's automakers have been shedding workers by the thousands over the past decade and the average wages will continue to fall, but the difference between union and non-union autoworkers isn't as vast as the media makes it out to be. In fact, by 2011, Toyota's labor costs could exceed the Big 3 because they've been here for 30 years now and a growing number of their workers are paid top wages.

The domestic automakers are competitive with foreign ones, but they currently find themselves in trouble not of their own making. Credit has dried up, people can't get loans, and cars aren't selling. Don't blame the middle-class auto workers, blame those highly compensated Wall Street and Washington types who made a mess of things.

UPDATE: Dean Baker did a better job of clarifying claims that GM auto workers are paid $70 an hour than I did: "The trick is to add in GM's legacy costs, the pension and health care costs for retired workers. These legacy costs are a serious expense for GM, but this is not money being paid to current workers. The person on the line in 2008 is not benefiting from these legacy costs."

McCain plans new tax cut for millionaires

McCain flip-flopped back and forth last weekend about a new economic proposal before finally settling on The Pension and Family Security Plan. Part of his plan proposes cutting the tax rate on long term capital gains and dividends to 7.5 percent in 2009 and 2010. The current tax rate for these capital gains is 15 percent.

Who benefits the most from his plan? Wealthy millionaires like buddies Dick DeVos and George Bush. From the Wonk Room:

Today, the non-partisan Tax Policy Center (TPC) released an analysis showing who would benefit from this cut. Like the rest of McCain’s tax cuts, this one overwhelmingly aids the wealthy, with two-thirds of the benefit going to those making over $1 million:

In 2009, under a plan that lowers taxes on both gains and dividends, those making $1 million or more would get two-thirds of the benefit, and an average tax cut of more than $72,000. Those making less than $50,000 would get, on average, nothing. [emphasis mine]

And according to Jared Bernstein:

The average tax savings for the top 0.1%--income above $3 mil--is $244,000.

Besides, in what world is John McCain living? In case he hasn't noticed, the stock market has been losing value, and losses are already deductible from our taxes.

Jared Bernstein summed it up best: "This isn't a recipe for helping families hurt by the financial crisis and recession. It's a recipe for more income inequality."


(Cross-posted at Blogging for MI.)

Can President Bush dance?

Yep. Bush is an expert at the Limbo Rock. So, how low can he go? Really low according to a new AP-Ipsos poll taken from April 7-9:

A survey released Thursday showed 28 percent approve of the overall job Bush is doing. That was statistically tied with his previous low in the poll of 30 percent last month and in February.

Only 27 percent are happy with his job on the economy, which threatens to enter a recession and which many national surveys show is voters' top worry. That was worse than his previous low of 29 percent approval for handling the economy set in February, and down 4 percentage points from last month.

Sadly, Bush is taking us down with him:

Confidence among U.S. consumers sank to a 26-year low in April as the labor market continued to deteriorate and gasoline prices rose.

The Reuters/University of Michigan preliminary index of consumer sentiment decreased to 63.2 from 69.5 in March. The reading was below the lowest forecast in a Bloomberg News survey and the weakest since March 1982.

Oh, yeah, one more thing - we haven't hit bottom yet.

According to a new Wall Street Journal forecasting survey, by a 3-to-1 ratio, economists say “the economy is in a recession, and almost three-quarters [say] the economy hasn’t yet hit bottom.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. Died Fighting for Labor

Today marks the 40th anniversay of Martin Luther King Jr's assassination in Memphis. King died fighting for labor and a living wage. He was there to support municipal sanitation workers who were striking for better pay, benefits and working conditions. King didn't die in vain. The strikers did ultimately win their strike and receive better pay, benefits and working conditions, which helped lift millions of other Americans into the middle class. However, the AFL-CIO reminds us that for all the good that came from that strike, labor rights and economic equality have been losing ground (which we know all too well here in Michigan):

Over the past three decades, however, this situation has taken a turn for the worse as both the number of jobs in manufacturing and the number of unionized jobs have declined sharply. In 1979, for example, manufacturing accounted for nearly one-quarter of all jobs in this country and about the same share of the total workforce was in a union. Today, only about one-in-10 jobs is in manufacturing, and roughly 13 percent of the workforce is in a union or represented by one at their workplace. [...]

Meanwhile, probably the most important reason for the simultaneous drop in unionization was corporate America's deliberate decision to adopt a more hostile attitude toward unions. Many firms have relocated plants overseas or in states with little union presence as part of a conscious effort to evade unions. [...]

Employers also regularly violate other aspects of the NLRA designed to protect workers' freedom to form unions. Research... has estimated that one-in-five workers actively involved in organizing a union can expect to be fired in the middle of a union organizing election.

And here in Michigan we have the "right-to-work" crowd stirring the pot. These attacks on labor are discouraging, but as King often said, "We, as a people, will get to the promised land!”

In his lecture, "The Quest for Peace and Justice", King said...

Let me close by saying that I have the personal faith that mankind will somehow rise up to the occasion and give new directions to an age drifting rapidly to its doom. In spite of the tensions and uncertainties of this period something profoundly meaningful is taking place. Old systems of exploitation and oppression are passing away, and out of the womb of a frail world new systems of justice and equality are being born.

If Martin Luther King were alive today, I have no doubt he'd be openly critical of the economic inequality in our country. King believed all work has dignity and worth and it was a crime for people to live in this rich nation and receive starvation wages. It's up to us to continue his fight.

Life Expectancy Inequality Growing

We don't often think about life expectancy when we talk about inequality; however, we should, because (according to the NYT) new government research has found “large and growing” disparities in life expectancy for richer and poorer Americans, paralleling the growth of income inequality in the last two decades.

According to researcher Dr. Singh, federal officials have found “widening socioeconomic inequalities in life expectancy” at birth and at every age level in counties across the United States.

In 1980-82, Dr. Singh said, people in the most affluent group could expect to live 2.8 years longer than people in the most deprived group (75.8 versus 73 years). By 1998-2000, the difference in life expectancy had increased to 4.5 years (79.2 versus 74.7 years), and it continues to grow, he said.

After 20 years, the lowest socioeconomic group lagged further behind the most affluent, Dr. Singh said, noting that “life expectancy was higher for the most affluent in 1980 than for the most deprived group in 2000.” [emphasis mine]

“If you look at the extremes in 2000,” Dr. Singh said, “men in the most deprived counties had 10 years’ shorter life expectancy than women in the most affluent counties (71.5 years versus 81.3 years).” The difference between poor black men and affluent white women was more than 14 years (66.9 years vs. 81.1 years).

Can wealth affect health? According to USA Today, researchers have studied the influence of socioeconomic status on health and that research will get TV time on PBS over the next month in the form of a four-part documentary, Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick? Here's a brief synopsis about the show and their findings:

The point of the series and the research it draws on is not that we are powerless to improve our health: Whether you are rich or poor, it's a bad idea to smoke and a good idea to eat fruits and vegetables. It's also good to have health insurance.

But all those things are harder to sustain and may do you less good if you live in a dangerous, unwalkable neighborhood with lots of fast food and no supermarkets; if you have little control in your work life; if you are constantly worried about money, housing and safety; and if, on top of it all, you live with the lifelong stress of racial discrimination.

"Personal behavior and personal choices are important," Troutman says. "But we also need to recognize that educational policy is health policy, economic policy is health policy, housing policy is health policy."

And, at a time of widespread economic pain, when the "poor are getting poorer and the middle class is being squeezed," in the words of one sociologist quoted in the film, there's plenty of reason to worry about the literal health of the nation.

The show airs in the Flint area for the first time tonight. Click here to check your local area.

Besides discussing the connections between healthy bodies and healthy bank accounts, the documentary will also show why residents of poorer nations live longer and healthier lives. For instance, according to Native American Times, the series shows that Hispanic immigrants to the U.S. are healthier than average American citizens, but within a generation their health declines and they become more like the rest of us. That's just plain sad.

(Cross-posted at BFM.)