OBOF TYMHM & MORE PART 14-08

WELCOME TO OPINIONS  BASED  ON FACTS (OBOF)

&

THINGS YOU MAY HAVE MISSED (TYMHM)

YEAR ONE

YEAR TWO

YEAR THREE

YEAR FOUR

 

OBOF YEAR FOUR INDEX
OBOF TYMHM PART 14-01	Jan. 02, 2014
OBOF TYMHM PART 14-02	Jan. 09, 2014
OBOF TYMHM PART 14-03	Jan. 15, 2014
OBOF TYMHM PART 14-04	Jan. 24, 2014
OBOF TYMHM PART 14-05	JAN 30, 2014
OBOF TYMHM PART 14-06	Feb. 06, 2014
OBOF TYMHM PART 14-06 EXTRA	Feb. 09, 2014
OBOF TYMHM PART 14-07	Feb. 13, 2014
OBOF TYMHM PART 14-08	Feb. 21, 2014

 

Agenda

 

1.  Note from Floyd.

2.  Which election is most important - 2014 or 2016?

3.  Social Security bounces in debate.

4.  Cost of wars.

 

 

 

 

 

NOTE  FROM  FLOYD

I believe this is the latest I have ever been getting this posting to you.  Not that it matters to you, but I have gone a long, long time without falling.  That ended this week and I have been a little behind ever sense.

 

Even though this is late I think you will find it quite interesting.  Here's to good reading.

~~~

Which is more important, the 2014 elections, or the

 2016 elections?

By Floyd

 

The 2014 elections, particularly in the Senate, is by far the most important, WHY?  Think about it, but before you do, let me give you some "food for thought."

 

If Republicans win the Senate in 2014, what  will it mean for our nation?  There are three Supreme Court Judges that, quite possibly, may retire in the next two years.  Two of them are 77 and one is 80.  There has not been any indication from any of the three that they are planning to retire and I am quite sure they will not give any indication prior to the 2014 elections.

 

The three are: 

 

Antonin Scalia, 77, born 3-11-36 and appointed to the court by President Reagan in1986.

 

Anthony Kennedy, 77, born 7-23-36 and appointed to the court by President Reagan in 1988.

 

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 80, born 3-15-33 and appointed to the court by President Clinton in 1993.   

 

If any or all of the three should retire in the next two years and if the Republicans take over the senate, it is a certainty that no matter who President Obama nominates for replacement, they will not only not be confirmed, they won't even be voted on.  It would be a dead issue. 

 

Now, what would that mean for the 2016 election?  Just suppose that Hillary is elected President.  It would mean exactly the same thing for her as for President Obama.  If the Republicans take over the Senate in 2014, you can bet your last dollar that they will do the same in 2016, and President Hillary Clinton would not be able to get anything done for the country for four years and then it is quite feasible to think that the Republicans could take over the White House in 2020.

 

NOW, IF THAT DOESN'T SCARE YOU, YOU ARE A REPUBLICAN.  After three plus years writing to you, I am pretty sure that any of you who are still reading, are Democrats, because if you were a Republican you would have stopped reading my jabbering a long time ago.         

 

NOW, I can't believe THE NEXT BIG THING THAT SHOULD SCARE YOU.  Tonight, Tuesday the 18th of February, Lawrence O'Donnell, who heads up the show "The Last Word" on MSNBC, reported that the largest Democratic financial contributor, "Priority USA", and the equivalent of the Koch Brothers for the Republicans,  has said that they are not going to fund very much for the 2014 election and are going to go all out for the 2016.  NOW, I ASK YOU, WHAT KIND OF SENSE DOES THAT MAKE?  THEY JUST AS WELL SAVE ALL THEIR MONEY FOR BOTH ELECTIONS AS THE 2016 ELECTION IS ALREADY DECIDED IF WE WRITE OFF THE 2014 ELECTION.

~~~

Social Security Bounces in Debate

Peter McDermott

New America Media / News Report

Published: Sunday 16 February 2014

 

From its passage in 1935, Social Security was to be one leg

of the retirement income stool, along with savings and private pensions. Both of those legs, though, have fallen short for most older Americans.

 

 

Prof. Eric Kingson asked in class recently, “Has anyone in this room ever received Social Security benefits?”

He raised his hand because his father died when he was young. But he intended it, in part, as a rhetorical question, to which his answer was: “Every one of you has received something from Social Security from the day you were born.”  The teacher of social work at Syracuse University said that each had gotten the gift of insurance.

“People largely take it for granted,” said Kingson, a cofounder and director of the advocacy group Social Security Works.  “We assume it’s there. It’s seamless.  It’s like the court systems, the highway systems. It functions.  You can’t really imagine life without it.” 
But some have imagined and plotted a future without it, often with well-funded campaigns to cut the program.

Kingson said that in recent times, however, the supporters of the government-run insurance system have seen the debate tilt in their favor.

Shifting Debate

“You go back four
 years, three years and
 the policy discussion
 on Social Security was: Do we cut it a lot, do we eviscerate it in the name of 'strengthening' it or do we just cut it a little?  Those were the only two frames that were out there,” he said.

“The polarity has really shifted.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             Though there is a momentum still for those who want to see some sort of a cut, the discussion now is much more about expanding benefits,” Kingson said.

“A funny thing happened on the way to the chained-CPI,” he said, referring to the plan to substitute a new way of adjusting Social Security’s annual cost of living increase for inflation.

“It was a Republican idea, but the [Obama] Administration proposed it as a way to gain Republican support for tax increases,” Kingson said.

 “The press over time has picked up that it isn’t just a technical change.  It’s a way to cut benefits,” he added.  “I think that realization has sunk in.

“Many Democrats came out against some proposals, one of them being the chained-CPI,” he added.  And the reasons for the shift in the debate over time?  “Persistence and knowledge,” he said.  Experts like Kingson have had to counter well-funded efforts that argue for drastic cuts to Social Security, as well as to Medicare and Medicaid.  Billionaire and former Nixon cabinet member Peter G. Peterson alone has spent in excess of $400 million in an attempt to link these programs to the issue of the national debt.

Such campaigns have had the greatest impact on media pundits and politicians from both parties in Washington, but not so much, if at all, among voters, in Kingson’s view. 

A poll in mid-November taken in 10 states that will face competitive Senate races showed that up to three-quarters of voters said they would punish any candidate who voted for cuts in Social Security, while two-thirds supported an increase in benefits.

Fighting Bad Proposals

“All of the emphasis has been on fighting bad proposals” from both parties and the Administration, said Kingson, “but we’re at the cusp in a change of the politics.”

Social Security Works sponsored a conference at the end of October in the Hart Senate Office Building about the use of Social Security to address the retirement-income crisis.  It was attended by several leading members of Congress, some of who have developed proposals for extending the almost 80- year-old program in key ways.

“Many Americans aren’t going to be positioned to maintain anything near their standard of living when they get old.  And the reality that the one system that provides the solution is Social Security,” Kingson said, which is only “a partial solution.”  From its passage in 1935, Social Security was to be one leg of the retirement income stool, along with savings and private pensions.  Both of those legs, though, have fallen short for most older Americans.

Social Security Works frames its detailed policy positions against the backdrop of the “extraordinary” growth in income inequality over the last three decades or so. 

“Who are the big winners in terms of the tax giveaways in the past 10 or 14 years,” its cofounder asked?

As the policy advisor to two presidential commissions on Social Security--one during the Reagan era, in 1982-3, and the other in 1994 under the Clinton presidency--Kingson has long been familiar with the various “red herrings” used in the debate.

One tactic has been to pit younger adults against older age groups.  These days, it’s suggested that the baby boomers will use up resources that should be put aside for future generations.  Thirty years ago, the refrain was that those then entering the retired population were stealing from the baby boomers.

None of it makes sense, according to Kingson “It’s disingenuous politics,” he said.

Setting the record straight, by Floyd.

Lets be completely factual and straight about this stealing matter.  During the Reagan Administration in 1983, there were changes made in SS to handle the increase need to pay benefits to the baby boomers.  Up until that time, the FICA (Federal Insurance Collection Account) was paid to provide benefits for the previous generation.  The FICA rate was increase considerably, so that the baby boomer generation paid, not only for the previous generation, but also, for their own generation.

It was determined that this increase would provide a trust fund of $2.7 trillion by the time baby boomers began to retire.  The plan was a good one, except for one thing. 

Every President and Congress, beginning with Reagan himself, have taken the surplus that was suppose to be in the trust fund and spent it.  Stealing it is a more accurate word.  They have spent it on other programs and wars.  There is a big argument now as to the value of the government bonds that were placed in the trust fund when money was taken out.  I won't get into that here as it would simply be too long. 

However, from what I know, I don't believe the bonds have any monetary value.  The only value they have is the supposedly good faith of the U. S. Government to repay the money the bonds represent.  It is an accounting method only.  Given our economic situation today, I don't know how the Government can pay back $2.7 trillion to the trust fund.  There would be no SS problem today at all, if that money had not been stolen, embezzled, or whatever you want to call it.

The income from FICA today does not meet the benefits paid out and the Government has to make up the difference.  To me, that simply is a very, very small pay back towards the $2.7 trillion.

 Human Dignity

The professor has described Social Security as a “uniquely American institution.”  Comparing it to another feature of national life, the native New Yorker said, “When you have a pothole, you don’t say: ‘Rip up the interstate high- way system!’”

He wrote recently with his Social Security Works cofounder Nancy Altman, a former legislative aide to former Republican Senator John C. Danforth, “As powerful and effective as private enterprise is, there are certain tasks that are performed better collectively and cooperatively through government.  One of those tasks is the economic security provided by Social Security when wages are lost as the result of disability, death, or old age.”

For Kingson, who previously taught at Boston College, one aspect of Jesuit theology gets to the heart of the issue: “This notion that human dignity is very important, that we are on this Earth and we have an obligation to each other and maintaining dignity is critical.  “It’s a difficult sell in a Madison Avenue world. We’re such a cynical society.  The ’80s invited us to be very selfish and to really not think about others,” he added.

Still, there have been signs of a tectonic shift, he noted, Pope Francis I being one of them.“I found myself in class the other day saying ‘our pope,’” said Kingson, who is Jewish. “Many of us have taken ownership of this seemingly spiritual human being. The man seems to live what he believes. And he’s also communicating it.  That’s good. That’s an unambiguous good.”

On social justice issues, the Syracuse professor can switch with ease to the political and the national.  The attack on Social Security, he said, is part of the “assault on government and on the idea of the commonweal. I think it’s dangerous.”

Kingson continued, “Some things hold us together as families, as society.  This is one of the institutions. It’s critical in holding the nation together,” Kingson said, “enabling people to help themselves, but also expressing the best parts of this country.”

~~~

Wars in Afghanistan, Iraq

 to Cost U.S. Over $4 Trillion

Pierce Nahigyan

NationofChange / News Report

Published: Tuesday 18 February 2014

 

 

In March 2013, the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government issued a report on the costs of America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Presently, these conflicts, which America has been fighting for over a decade, have totaled approximately $2 trillion in war debt.

This figure includes direct outlays for America’s three main military operations: 

·                 Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) - The official name for America’s war in Afghanistan.

·                 Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) - The official name for America’s war in Iraq (which some may remember by its original title: Operation Iraqi Liberation, or OIL).

·                 Operation New Dawn (OND) - The official title for America’s war in Iraq under President Obama’s command (2010 to present).

These operations were implemented under the umbrella of America’s Global War on Terror.  In 2006, President George W. Bush would tell CNBC that the war on terror was nothing less than “the first counter-attack to World War III.” 

 

That counter-attack, or World War III, continues through the present day, twelve years after the first and only attack on America’s home soil since the turn of the century.  In that time, America has financed its $2 trillion war mainly by borrowing from foreign lenders. It has in fact only paid $260 billion of that so far, which is merely the interest accrued on our debt. 

 

Yet the ultimate costs of America’s wars in the Middle East will accumulate long after they have officially ended.  Medical care and disability benefits will be due to their veterans for a generation to come, damaged equipment will need to be replaced, and Obama has promised to build a “Strategic Partnership” with Afghanistan.  This will likely include American management of its police and military forces. 

All told, Harvard calculates that the price tag for these conflicts will double and potentially triple.  That means $4 trillion at its most conservative and $6 trillion at its highest.

Putting This in Perspective: Past Wars

When we approach these numbers, their sheer size makes them difficult to comprehend.  The best way to illustrate America’s vast military expenditures is by comparing its present to its former wars.

In the fiscal year 2011, the Iraq and Afghan wars had cost the U.S. $1.15 trillion.  At the time, only World War II had been more expensive, totaling $4.10 trillion in expenditures (adjusted for inflation). Comparatively, Vietnam totaled $738 billion and the first Gulf War $102 billion. 

The Iraq and Afghan wars have also been fought by one of the smallest militaries in American history.  Over 16 million people served in theaters of war or in support roles during World War II. Vietnam and Korea had over 8 million and 5 million in active service respectively.  The first Gulf War had 2.2 million people in active service.

America’s current wars are served by about 2.1 million people. Nevertheless, the protracted length of the wars, combined with the breakdown and transport of military equipment in harsh desert environments, have contributed to higher costs.  On the personnel side, the Harvard report states that military pay and benefits have increased since 2004 to counter declining recruitment in the face of the war’s rising casualties.

Putting This in Perspective: Total Budget vs. the World

The United States treasury divides annual spending into three groups: Mandatory, Discretionary and Interest on Debt.  Interest paid on the federal debt comprises about 6 percent of the annual budget.  Mandatory Spending (about 64 percent of the budget) includes earned-benefit programs such as SNAP (i.e. food stamps) and Social Security.  This spending is determined by eligibility and cannot be altered by Congress. On the other hand, Discretionary Spending (about 30 percent of the budget) is decided by Congress directly.

For the fiscal year 2014, President Obama has allotted 57 percent of the $1.15 trillion Discretionary Spending budget to go towards the military. Six percent is allotted for Veterans’ Benefits, 6 percent for Education, 3 percent to International Affairs and so on in progressively smaller pieces of the pie. 

Though the military receives over half of the United States’ Discretionary Spending budget, it in no way covers the ballooning costs of its current wars.  This despite the fact that defense spending in general has ballooned continuously since September 11 (though in reality America’s defense budget has been incrementally increasing since the start of the Cold War). America’s Defense budget grew from $287 billion in 2001 to $645.7 billion in 2013. 

 

These fractions of America’s discretionary spending dwarf the total national budgets of both Afghanistan and Iraq, though the combatants American troops are facing in these countries are largely insurgent forces with even less capital to spend on weapons and soldiers. These are America’s only nominal “enemies,” and yet America’s defense budget continues to grow.

 

In 2012 the United States spent more on defense than the next ten highest defense budgets combined.  That’s more than China, Russia, the UK, Japan, France, Saudi Arabia, India, Germany, Italy and Brazil. 

Putting This in Perspective: What We’re Paying For

When Donald Rumsfeld was serving as the Secretary of Defense for the Bush administration, he said that the military would be in and out of Iraq in four months.  He told the press, “I don’t do quagmires.”

 

Bush’s Senior Economic Advisor, Lawrence Lindsey, told the Wall Street Journal that the war would cost no more than $200 billion.  Both he and Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill were forced to resign in 2002. According to Republican Strategist Scott Reed, “They didn’t send a message that we knew where we were going, we knew what we were doing.” 

Years after the fact, many Americans still don’t know why we entered Iraq or what we are still doing there.  We will be paying for this confusion for decades, a debt compounded by a series of poor choices by the federal government.  Tax cuts for the wealthy, overseen by the Bush administration, stripped revenue from the federal budget; to fund the war, over thirty emergency bills were passed in the last decade to override its regular spending caps; and 2 million Iraqi refugees are stranded in Syria and now embroiled in its civil war.  Will the United States return them to their liberated nation?

Only compounding this debt is the staggering price paid by and for the men and women who have fought in these wars.  About 1.56 million American soldiers are currently receiving medical treatment, over fifty percent of all Iraq and Afghan veterans. One-third of them suffer from mental health issues, including depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, and many will for the rest of their lives.  Harvard estimates that these disability benefits will add up to $836 billion in the coming decades. 

And yet every tank, round of munition, boot on the ground, drone, vehicle and death fails to justify two wars fought for too long with too much borrowed money.

There is no way to fix this problem.  All we can do is pay for it.

NationofChange fights back with one simple but powerful weapon: the truth. Can you donate $5 to help us?

 

ABOUT Pierce Nahigyan

Pierce Nahigyan is a staff writer for Nation of Change.  He resides in southern California and holds a B.A. in Sociology and History from Northwestern University.

~~~

If, the good Lord is willing and the creek don't rise, I'll talk with you again next week, hopefully Wednesday or Thursday, February 26 or 27.

God Bless You All

&

God Bless the United States of America

Floyd

 

 

 

 

 

 

OBOF TYMHM & MORE PART 14-07

WELCOME TO OPINIONS  BASED  ON FACTS (OBOF)

&

THINGS YOU MAY HAVE MISSED (TYMHM)

YEAR ONE

YEAR TWO

YEAR THREE

YEAR FOUR

 

OBOF YEAR FOUR INDEX
OBOF TYMHM PART 14-01	Jan. 02, 2014
OBOF TYMHM PART 14-02	Jan. 09, 2014
OBOF TYMHM PART 14-03	Jan. 15, 2014
OBOF TYMHM PART 14-04	Jan. 24, 2014
OBOF TYMHM PART 14-05	JAN 30, 2014
OBOF TYMHM PART 14-06	Feb. 06, 2014
OBOF TYMHM PART 14-06 EXTRA	Feb. 09, 2014
OBOF TYMHM PART 14-07	Feb. 13, 2014

 

Agenda

 

1.  Opening thoughts.

2.  Deficit of truth.

3.  Inequality is hobbling equal opportunity.

4.  Right wing media hates Obamacare.

5.  Post Office Banking.

 

 

 

 

 

OPENING THOUGHTS.

 

By Floyd

 

As I have told you before, I can't identify who reads my blog.  I can only identify how many of you read it and what country you are from.  The point is, you won't ever get any unwanted postings from others, or me, as a result of reading my blog.  That also, applies if you write a comment.                  

 

I have noticed that many of you do your reading on Saturday or Sunday.  I would guess that you read the most recent posting.  If that is the case this past week, you may have only seen the posting 14-06 EXTRA and missed posting 14-06.  Posting 14-06 contains some very interesting information.  I would suggest you be sure to read it  

~

Late last year, Gallup measured Republican favorability plummeting to 28%, down from 38% two months earlier, the lowest party rating ever measured since they started such counting in "92.  In January, Gallup reported only 25% of Americans call themselves Republican, down 9% since Dubya's second '04 victory.  Across America, only 17% endorse current GOP lawmakers while 74% disapprove, the worst ranking ever in Quinnipiac's polling.

~

Recently, I was able to tell you that a budget for two years was agreed on and signed by the President.  At the time I said we wouldn't have anymore fight delays as far as budget are concerned for two years.  I also said, that we were still looking at the problem of raising the Debt Ceiling.  I didn't feel that the Republicans would be so easy to work with as with the budget.

 

Well, I am happy to say that I was wrong.  The House, with 28 Republicans, passed a raised clean Debt Ceiling bill, nothing attached.  The Senate, after the Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell, did some arm-twisting, passed the bill with 12 Republicans joining the Democrats.  I believe that this, being an election year, they don't want shutdowns to be blamed on them.  There is no doubt that the President will sign the bill if it comes to him with no attachments.  This is good news.

~~~

Deficit of Truth: What Republicans

Hope You Don’t Know and Never Find Out

 

Joe Conason

NationofChange / Op-Ed

Published: Monday 10 February 2014

Fortunately for Republicans and sadly for everyone else, the American public has little comprehension of current fiscal realities

Listening to Republicans in Congress wailing incessantly about our spendthrift culture raises a nagging question: What would they do, besides talking, if they actually wanted to reduce federal deficits and, eventually, the national debt?

First, they would admit that President Barack Obama's policies, including health care reform, have already reduced deficits sharply, as promised.  Second, they would desist from their hostage-taking tactics over the debt ceiling, which have only damaged America's economy and international prestige. And then they would finally admit that basic investment and job creation, rather than cutting food stamps, represent the best way to reduce both deficits and debt — indeed, the only way — through economic growth.

Fortunately for those Republicans and sadly for everyone else, the American public has little comprehension of current fiscal realities.  Most people don't even know that the deficit is shrinking rather than growing.  According to a poll released on Feb. 4 by the Huffington Post and YouGov, an Internet marketing firm, well over half believe the budget deficit has increased since 2009, while less than 20 percent are aware that it has steadily decreased.  (Another 14 percent believe the deficit has remained constant during Obama's presidency.)

Unsurprisingly, perhaps, it is Republican voters, misinformed by Fox News, who most fervently and consistently insist on these mistaken ideas, with 85 percent telling pollsters that the deficit has increased.  Less than a third of Democrats gave that answer. But nearly 60 percent of independent voters agree with the Republicans on that question, and only 30 percent of Democrats understand the truth — an implicit repudiation, as The Huffington Post noted, of the president's political decision to prioritize deficit reduction rather than job creation.

 

The facts are simple enough even for a tea party politician to understand.  The federal deficit reached its peak — in dollar amount and as a share of the national economy — in 2009, which happens to be the year that Obama took office.

Thanks to the profligate war and tax policies of the Bush administration — which undid the fiscal stabilization achieved under former President Bill Clinton — the Treasury had no financial margin when the Great Recession struck. Federal spending required to avoid another (and possibly far worse) worldwide depression, combined with declining tax revenues that resulted from economic stagnation and tax cuts, led inevitably to that record deficit.

Over the past five years, the red ink has swiftly faded.  This year's deficit will be about $514 billion, or about one-third of the $1.5 trillion deficit in 2009; next year's will be even lower, at around $478 billion.  As when Clinton was president, those marked fiscal improvements are mainly the product of a slowly recovering economy and growing incomes, along with federal budget cuts.

But not only is the good news about the shrinking deficit widely ignored; it isn't actually good news at all.  By avoiding a mostly mythical "budget crisis," federal policy has created a very real jobs crisis that persists, with particular harm to working families.  The latest Congressional Budget Office report on the fiscal outlook for the coming decade strongly suggests that the cost of reducing the deficit has been — and will continue to be — substantial losses in potential economic growth and employment.

The ironic consequence, as former White House economist Jared Bernstein recently explained, is that the fiscal outlook for the next 10 years will be somewhat dimmer than expected.  In other words, we will return to higher deficits because fiscal austerity — enforced by Republicans and accepted by Obama — is still dragging the economy down.

To restore the kind of growth that lets families prosper and ultimately erases deficits, the Republicans would have to listen to the president — especially when he calls for public investment in infrastructure and an increased minimum wage, first steps toward robust growth and fiscal stability.

If Americans understood the truth about deficits and debt — and how the federal budget affects their jobs and income — the congressional obstruction caucus, also known as the GOP, would have no other choice.

 

ABOUT Joe Conason

Joe Conason has written his popular political column for The New York Observer since 1992.  He served as the Manhattan Weekly’s executive editor from 1992 to 1997. Since 1998, he has also written a column that is among the most widely read features on Salon.com. Conason is also a senior fellow at The Nation Institute.

~~~

Why Widening Inequality is Hobbling

Equal Opportunity.

 

 

Robert Reich

NationofChange / Op-Ed

Published: Thursday 6 February 2014

Is it to be inequality or equal opportunity? 

Under a headline “Obama Moves to the Right in a Partisan War of Words,” The New York Times’ Jackie Calmes notes Democratic operatives have been hitting back hard against the President or any other Democratic politician talking about income inequality, preferring that the Democrats talk about equality of opportunity instead.

"However salient reducing inequality may be," writes Democratic pollster Mark Mellman, “it is demonstrably less important to voters than any other number of priorities, including reducing poverty.”

 

The President may be listening. Wags noticed that in his State of the Union, Obama spoke ten times of increasing “opportunity” and only twice of income inequality, while in a December speech he spoke of income inequality two dozen times.  The President may be listening.  Wags noticed that in his State of the Union, Obama spoke ten times of increasing “opportunity” and only twice of income inequality, while in a December speech he spoke of income inequality two dozen times.

 

But the President and other Democrats — and even Republicans, for that matter — should focus on the facts, not the polls, and not try to dress up what’s been happening with more soothing words and phrases.

 

In fact, America’s savage inequality is the main reason equal opportunity is fading and poverty is growing. Since the “recovery” began, 95% of the gains have gone to the top 1 percent, and median incomes have dropped. This is a continuation of the trend we’ve seen for decades. As a result:

(1) The sinking middle class no longer has enough purchasing power to keep the economy growing and creating sufficient jobs.  The share of working-age Americans still in the labor force is the lowest in more than thirty years. 

(2) The shrinking middle isn’t generating enough tax revenue for adequate education, training, safety nets, and family services. And when they’re barely holding on, they can’t afford to — and don’t want to — pay more.

(3) Meanwhile, America’s rich are accumulating not just more of the country’s total income and wealth, but also the political power that accompanies money.  And they’re using that power to reduce their own taxes, and get corporate welfare (subsidies, bailouts, tax cuts) for their businesses.

All this means less equality of opportunity in America. 

Obama was correct in December when he called widening inequality “the defining challenge of our time.”  He mustn’t back down now even if Democratic pollsters tell him to. If we’re ever to reverse this noxious trend, Americans have to hear the truth.

~~~

Right-Wing Media Hate That Obamacare Reduces Economic Insecurity.

 

Albert Kleine

Media Matters for America / Research

Published: Thursday 6 February 2014

 

 

Right-wing media outlets are falsely claiming that workers voluntarily reducing hours due to provisions of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is evidence that the law is harmful to the economy, ignoring economists' opinions about its role in reducing economic insecurity.

Congressional Budget Office Report Shows ACA Will Lead To Reduction In Worker Hours

Congressional Budget Office: ACA Will Reduce Number Of Full-Time Workers.  In its February 4 release of the Budget and Economic Outlook for 2014 to 2024, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) noted that the ACA will allow workers to choose to work less, amounting to a decline in full-time equivalent workers. From the report (emphasis added):

The reduction in CBO's projections of hours worked represents a decline in the number of full-time-equivalent workers of about 2.0 million in 2017, rising to about 2.5 million in 2024.  Although CBO projects that total employment (and compensation) will increase over the coming decade, that increase will be smaller than it would have been in the absence of the ACA.  The decline in full-time-equivalent employment stemming from the ACA will consist of some people not being employed at all and other people working fewer hours; however, CBO has not tried to quantify those two components of the overall effect. 

 

The estimated reduction stems almost entirely from a net decline in the amount of labor that workers choose to supply, rather than from a net drop in businesses' demand for labor, so it will appear almost entirely as a reduction in labor force participation and in hours worked relative to what would have occurred otherwise rather than as an increase in unemployment (that is, more workers seeking but not finding jobs) or underemployment (such as part-time workers who would prefer to work more hours per week). [Congressional Budget Office, 2/4/14]

Right-Wing Media React With Outrage About Americans Choosing To Work Less

Fox's Varney: Effects Of ACA On Employment "A Complete Reversal Of American Work Ethic."  On the February 5 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends, Fox Business' Stuart Varney used the CBO report to criticize health reform, claiming that the reduction in workers' hours was "a complete reversal of the American work ethic" and that the law has "shifted the whole concept of work." [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 2/5/14]

 

Fox's Scott: White House Trying To "Sell This As Somehow A Good Thing."  On the February 5 edition of Fox News' Happening Now, host Jon Scott cast doubt over the purported benefits of ACA's impact on reducing workers hours, claiming that the Obama Administration was trying to "sell this as somehow a good thing."  Scott went on to ask guest Douglas Holtz-Eakin "can you see in any way that this is a good thing if two million fewer Americans are working in a few years?" [Fox News, Happening Now, 2/5/14]

 

WSJ: Health Reform A "Job Destroyer" That Reduces "Economic Mobility."  In an editorial titled "The Jobless Care Act," the Wall Street Journal reacted to the CBO report by claiming that the ACA provides an "in-kind bonus for unemployment," and concluded "now we learn that the law is a job destroyer that is removing rungs from the ladder of upward economic mobility." [Wall Street Journal, 2/4/14]

Wash. Post's Rubin: ACA Induces "Sloth To Get Government Benefits."  On her Washington Post blog, conservative commentator Jennifer Rubin cast doubt on the benefits of the ACA allowing workers to put in fewer hours:

So we see with Obamacare.  Looking at the latest Congressional Budget Office report, the left, given the talking point from the White House (I kid you not, this is the defense of Obamacare), says 2.5 million jobs aren't going away, it's millions of people who will leave the workforce and/or work less because they get free or subsidized healthcare.  Now there's a selling point -- induced sloth to get government benefits. [Washington Post, 2/4/14]

But Economists Note That the Reduction In Hours Is Evidence Of ACA Reducing Economic Insecurity

Economic Policy Institute: ACA Giving Americans More Health Insurance Options An "Unambiguously Good Thing."  Reacting to claims that the CBO report showed that the ACA reduces the number of jobs, economist Elise Gould of the Economic Policy Institute argued that the reduction in workers' hours resulting from the law was evidence that Americans have reduced economic insecurity:

Not surprisingly, the CBO finds that, all else equal, people are less likely to work and will work fewer hours under the ACA. They find, and I quote, "The estimated reduction stems almost entirely from a net decline in the amount of labor that workers choose to supply, rather than from a net drop in business' demand for labor" (page 117).

These are purely voluntary labor supply decisions, not people being laid off from jobs they'd rather keep, or people looking for work and being unable to find it.  Working-age adults can now choose, without regard to their need to secure health insurance, whether they wish to supply labor and how much labor they wish to supply to the labor market. This is unabashedly a good thing for them.

Opponents of the ACA will try to paint these CBO estimates as evidence that the ACA has "killed jobs" or something like it. That's flat wrong. What the ACA has done is expand the menu of options available to Americans about how to obtain decent health insurance without having their income fall to poverty levels. That menu used to include one option--"go to work for a large employer." The fact that it's broader now is an unambiguously good thing. [Economic Policy Institute, 2/4/14]

Economist Dean Baker: ACA Allowing Some Americans To Work Less "A Huge Plus." In a February 4L.A. Times post, Michael Hiltzik quoted economist Dean Baker's reaction to the CBO report's findings. Baker noted that the report showed that people who previously had to work to receive health insurance have additional economic security because of health reform:

As economist Dean Baker points out, this is, in fact, a beneficial effect of the law, and a sign that it will achieve an important goal.  It helps "older workers with serious health conditions who are working now because this is the only way to get health insurance. And (one for the family values crowd) many young mothers who return to work earlier than they would like because they need health insurance. This is a huge plus."

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Post Office Banking

Could be the Start of Something Big

 

Richard (RJ) Eskow

Campaign for America’s Future / Op-Ed

Published: Friday 7 February 2014

 

It seems like an idea whose time has come.  With one in four American households partially or entirely excluded from the current banking system, and with the U.S. Post Office in search of additional revenue, why not use the postal system to offer banking services to lower-income households?

In fact, this is an idea whose time has already come, more than once. Many nations – among them Great Britain, Japan, Germany, Israel, and Brazil – provide or have provided some form of postal banking services.  So did the United States, until 1966.

It’s hardly a radical idea.  The U.S. system was voted into law in 1910, during the presidency of William Howard Taft.  In any case, a better way to describe it would be as a beginning.

What better way to start a much-needed transformation of our financial sector than by providing services to those communities the financial industry refers to as the “unbanked”? Right now those communities are routinely victimized by predatory payday lenders.  As wefirst reported in 2010, “Studies have shown that payday lenders disproportionately exploit minority neighborhoods with loans that are issued at an average annual interest rate of 455%.  The average number of loan each borrower takes out is nine per year, according to one study, as these high rates lead to a cycle of indebtedness.”

 

Sen. Elizabeth Warren has endorsed the postal-banking concept, which David Dayen describes in more detail here.  As Sen. Warren wrote recently, “if the Postal Service offered basic banking services — nothing fancy, just basic bill paying, check cashing and small-dollar loans — then it could provide affordable financial services for underserved families, and, at the same time, shore up its own financial footing.”

 

The report that stimulated all this new discussion was written by the Post Office’s Inspector General, and it makes a compelling case.

 

Who wouldn’t benefit from this proposal?  Well, there are the payday lenders, of course. Then there are the politicians they support, and to serve them in return, like Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee.  The other politicians and lobbyists who feed at the trough, a spectacle which only becomes publicly visible when their lobbying succeeds – which is often.

 

And then there are the big banks who underwrite the payday lending industry to a large, and largely invisible, extent.  Those banks were bailed out by the American taxpayer, and continue to benefit from implicit and explicit government subsidies.

As the big-money interests band together to decry postal banking as “socialism,” it might be worth asking them why it’s not socialistic to keep bailing out the private-sector predators who currently dominate this market.

But there are other reasons to support this concept, too. If it works – and it will, if managed correctly – it will be a great boon for the transformative idea of public banking.  Public banking can include state-owned lending institutions like the Bank of North Dakota, county banks, and cooperatives. President Obama’s MyRA savings plan is also a form of public banking. Even Sen. Warren’s plan to link student loan rates to the rates which private banks get from the Federal Reserve is a variation on the public-banking theme.

Bankers, lobbyists, and their political apologists constantly tell us that the private sector can manage money better than the government can.  If so, they should have no compunction about supporting this idea.  Private lenders will still be free to compete for this business.  If they can offer a better and more reliable product, and they can do so legally and ethically, they have nothing to fear.

They do have something to fear, of course: competition.  While they claim to embrace it, they have no interests in proving their worth by competing on a level playing field with government – or, for that matter, with their own smaller competitors like credit unions and community banks.

Government institutions like the Post Office have a number of advantages over the big banks. For one thing, they have publicly accountable inspector generals, like the one who wrote this report.  As has been demonstrated by recent experience, the private banks do not.  Instead, powerful Wall Street institutions have a history of fraud and criminality that has been tacitly encouraged by lax law enforcement in Washington.

The situation has gotten so bad that the editor-in-chief of American Banker concluded this week that “bank executives would be crazy to hold back (from unethical and corrupt acts).  If they get caught, they can pay their way out of the problems with shareholders’ money.  And if their misdeeds pay off as expected, the profits will goose their pay.”

In a situation like that, who would you trust with your money: a powerful Wall Street banker, or a government institution?  It’s time the big banks competed for the public’s business and stopped being the primary recipients of the public’s largesse. We need a sea-change in the banking industry.  Public banking could provide it – either by transforming the banking system, or by forcing it to transform itself through genuine competition.

The postal banking concept deserves consideration on its own merits.  But there’s another compelling reason to support it: It could be the start of something big.

Join NationofChange today by making a generous tax-deductible contribution and take a stand against the status quo.

ABOUT Richard (RJ) Eskow

Richard (RJ) Eskow is a well-known blogger and writer, a former Wall Street executive, an experienced consultant, and a former musician. He has experience in health insurance and economics, occupational health, benefits, risk management, finance, and information technology.

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If the good Lord is willing and the creek don't rise, I'll talk with you next Wednesday or Thursday February 19 or 20.

 

God Bless You All

&

God Bless the United States of America.

Floyd