WELCOME TO OPINIONS BASED ON FACTS (OBOF)
&
THINGS
YOU MAY HAVE MISSED (TYMHM)
YEAR ONE
YEAR TWO
YEAR THREE
YEAR FOUR
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OBOF YEAR FOUR INDEX
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OBOF TYMHM PART 14-01
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Jan. 02, 2014
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OBOF TYMHM PART 14-02
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Jan. 09, 2014
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OBOF TYMHM PART 14-03
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Jan. 15, 2014
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OBOF TYMHM PART 14-04
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Jan. 24, 2014
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OBOF TYMHM PART 14-05
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JAN 30, 2014
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OBOF TYMHM PART 14-06
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Feb. 06, 2014
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OBOF TYMHM PART 14-06 EXTRA
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Feb. 09, 2014
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OBOF TYMHM PART 14-07
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Feb. 13, 2014
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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 America
~
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
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
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 Manhattan
~~~
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
(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
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]
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
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."
~~~
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
It’s hardly a radical idea. The U.S.
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 MyRA
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.
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.
~~~
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
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