With the growing abuse of the filibuster and Democrats unwilling to take the strong action necessary to fix the economy and regain the public trust, with the airwaves and cable increasingly dominated by the demagogic likes of Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, and with the ever-growing influence of corporate money on Congress and public opinion, what hope do we have? This country, with all of its great power and potential, is becoming increasingly ungovernable, increasingly in the hands of the myopic and greedy and the voices of ignorance. We are on the brink of disaster.

The argument that free speech won is a false one. The only voices that will be heard are the ones with the most money. Your voices/letters/emails to representatives will fall on deaf ears more so than ever. But we have a tiny window of opportunity to still be heard NOW.

Here’s the background from the New York Times:

Justices, 5-4, Reject Corporate Spending Limit

By ADAM LIPTAK

Published: January 21, 2010

WASHINGTON — Overruling two important precedents about the First Amendment rights of corporations, a bitterly divided Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that the government may not ban political spending by corporations in candidate elections.

The 5-to-4 decision was a vindication, the majority said, of the First Amendment’s most basic free speech principle — that the government has no business regulating political speech. The dissenters said that allowing corporate money to flood the political marketplace would corrupt democracy.

The ruling represented a sharp doctrinal shift, and it will have major political and practical consequences. Specialists in campaign finance law said they expected the decision to reshape the way elections were conducted. Though the decision does not directly address them, its logic also applies to the labor unions that are often at political odds with big business.

Read the entire article here.

Here’s what lawmakers may do in response to this terrible decision:

Campaign finance ruling: Can Congress do anything?

While many Republicans on Capitol Hill hailed the Supreme Court decision striking down restrictions on corporate spending on political campaigns, Democrats are ramping up measures to curb its impact. This is what lawmakers are thinking about to ameliorate the decision:

For majority Democrats, it’s yet another urgent agenda item heading into a charged election season.

“This disastrous decision paves the way for free and unlimited special-interest spending in our elections,” said Sen. Charles Schumer (D) of New York at a briefing with Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D) of Maryland on Thursday. “We will not let this decision go unchallenged.”

Read the entire article here.

I think we need to immediately contact our representatives and demand legislation—or better still, a Constitutional amendment to reverse this terrible decision!

Here’s where you can contact senators:

http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

Here’s where to contact the House of Representatives:

http://clerk.house.gov/member_info/index.html

If you want to contact a member of Congress other than your own, they will ask for your area code and zip code to make sure you are in their state/district. Here’s where to get area codes/zip codes:

http://www.prodial.com/areacodes-Alpha.html

http://www.zip-area.com/search.html?type=coord&string=?57,156

These are the addresses of the major television news outlets:

FAIR’s Media Contact List

Let your voice be heard! Talk back to the media.

ABC News
77 W. 66 St., New York, NY 10023
Phone: 212-456-7777 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              212-456-7777      end_of_the_skype_highlighting

General e-mail: netaudr@abc.com
Nightline: nightline@abcnews.com
20/20: 2020@abc.com

CBS News
524 W. 57 St., New York, NY 10019
Phone: 212-975-4321
Fax: 212-975-1893

Email forms for all CBS news programs
CBS Evening News: evening@cbsnews.com
The Early Show: earlyshow@cbs.com
60 Minutes II: 60m@cbsnews.com
48 Hours: 48hours@cbsnews.com
Face The Nation: ftn@cbsnews.com

CNBC
900 Sylvan Avenue, Englewood Cliffs, NJ 07632
Phone: (201) 735-2622
Fax: (201) 583-5453
Email: info@cnbc.com

CNN
One CNN Center, Box 105366, Atlanta, GA 30303-5366
Phone: 404-827-1500
Fax: 404-827-1784
Email forms for all CNN news programs

Fox News Channel
1211 Ave. of the Americas, New York, NY 10036
Phone: (212) 301-3000
Fax: (212) 301-4229
comments@foxnews.com

List of Email addresses for all Fox News Channel programs
Special Report with Bret Baier: Special@foxnews.com
FOX Report with Shepard Smith: Foxreport@foxnews.com
The O’Reilly Factor: Oreilly@foxnews.com
Hannity: Hannity@foxnews.com,
On the Record with Greta: Ontherecord@foxnews.com
Glenn Beck: GlennBeck@foxnews.com

MSNBC/NBC
30 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, NY 10112
Phone: (212) 664-4444
Fax: (212) 664-4426

List of Email addresses for all MSNBC/NBC news programs
Dateline NBC: dateline@nbcuni.com
Hardball with Chris Matthews: hardball@msnbc.com
MSNBC Reports with Joe Scarborough: joe@msnbc.com
NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams: nightly@nbc.com
NBC News Today: today@nbc.com

PBS
2100 Crystal Drive, Arlington VA 22202
Phone: 703-739-5000
Fax: 703-739-8458

The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer: newshour@pbs.org

National Public Radio
635 Massachusetts Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20001-3753
Phone: 202-513-3232
Fax: 202-513-3329

E-mail: Alicia Shephard, Ombudsman ombudsman@npr.org
List of Email addresses for all NPR news programs
The Rush Limbaugh Show
1270 Avenue of the Americas, NY 10020
Phone (on air): 800-282-2882
Fax: 212-445-3963
E-mail: ElRushbo@eibnet.com
Sean Hannity Show
Phone (on air): 800-941-7326
Sean Hannity: 212-613-3800
James Grisham, Producer: 212-613-3807

E-mail: Phil Boyce, Program Director phil.boyce@citcomm.com

The Los Angeles Times
202 West First Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012
Phone: 800-528-4637 or 213-237-5000
Fax: 213-237-4712

L.A. Times Contact Information by Department
Letters to the Editor: letters@latimes.com
Readers’ Representative: readers.rep@latimes.com
The New York Times
620 8th Ave., New York, NY 10018
Phone: 212-556-1234
D.C. Bureau phone: 202-862-0300
Fax: 212-556-3690

Letters to the Editor (for publication): letters@nytimes.com
Write to the news editors: news-tips@nytimes.com
Corrections: senioreditor@nytimes.com
New York Times Contact Information by Department
How to Contact New York Times Reporters and Editors

USA Today
7950 Jones Branch Dr., McLean, VA 22108
Phone: 703-854-3400
Fax: 703-854-2078

Letters to the Editor: editor@usatoday.com
Give feedback to USA Today
The Wall Street Journal
200 Liberty St., New York, NY 10281
Phone: 212-416-2000
Fax: 212-416-2658

Letters to the Editor: wsj.ltrs@wsj.com
Comment on News Articles: wsjcontact@dowjones.com
The Washington Post
1150 15th St., NW, Washington, DC 20071
Phone: 202-334-6000
Fax: 202-334-5269

Letters to the Editor: letters@washpost.com
Ombudsman: ombudsman@washpost.com
Contact Washington Post Writers and Editors

Newsweek
251 W 57th Street, New York, NY 10019
Phone: 212-445-4000
Fax: 212-445-5068

Letters to the Editor: letters@newsweek.com
Time
Time & Life Bldg., Rockefeller Center, 1271 6th Ave., New York, NY 10020
Phone: 212-522-1212
Fax: 212-522-0003

Letters to the Editor letters@time.com
U.S. News & World Report
1050 Thomas Jefferson St., Washington, DC 20007
Phone: 202-955-2000
Fax: 202-955-2049

Letters to the Editor letters@usnews.com

Associated Press
450 West 33rd St., New York, NY 10001
Phone: 212-621-1500
Fax: 212-621-7523

General Questions and Comments: info@ap.org
Partial Contact Information for the Associated Press by Department and Bureau

Reuters
Three Times Square, New York, NY 10036
Telephone: 646-223-4000

Reuters Editorial Feedback

United Press International
1133 19th Street, NW, Suite 800, Washington, DC 20036
Telephone: 202-898-8000
FAX: 202-898-8048

Comments and Tips: tips@upi.com

FAIR
104 W. 27th St. 10th Floor
New York, NY 10001
fair@fair.org

If anyone has any other addresses, including your local newspapers, please add them to this post. PLEASE– LET’S AT LEAST TRY TO KEEP DEMOCRACY ALIVE. THANK YOU!

After a Superbowl that symbolically saw the city of New Orleans make a statement of defiance and resilience against social and economic injustice, CBS (Corporate Broadcasting System) debuted a show that was a disturbing piece of pro corporate propaganda disguised in the sheep’s clothing (borrowed from Carly Fiorina’s media consultant).

So, in addition to promoting the hateful faux-Christian political group, Focus on the Family during the Superbowl, CBS used the valuable slot that followed the Superbowl with a segment from “Undercover Boss”

The superficial description of this reality series is that a corporate CEO goes undercover as a lowly employee to learn about and appreciate the lives of the insects…whoops… employees…under him.

What it represents though is pro-corporatist propaganda wrapped in the manipulative, humiliating, saccharine sweetness of “Queen For a Day”. You see, the corporate “Prince” (CEO) masquerades as a “pauper” (employee) to rub elbows with the unwashed and discovers…they’re actually human beings with real problems (some of which ironically have been caused directly or indirectly by their greedy employers).

The dynamic itself is insulting. In these times when CEOs and hedge fund managers have so devastated and continue to devastate the lives of what was a robust middle class, the concept that a series would present CEOs as warm hearted, compassionate “kings” of our society who may grant their “peasants” a favor out of their holy mercy…is a sobering roadmap for where the corporate “kings” of our society are charting course.

In light of the SCOTUS ruling which openly awards ownership of our democracy to corporations, the corporate plutocracy that has taken over our society needs to have ongoing propaganda to keep the peasants from using their strength in numbers to take back their wealth and country…the only strength the people have that corporations can’t overcome.

So, corporations and CEOs need to shape the perception of themselves as kind and gentle kings who should be loved and respected by their serfs. They need to be Tom De Lay on Dancing With The Stars. Be self-deprecating and humble on tv so they can shield their greed and ruthless acquistion of wealth and power from the American people.

For example, look at the phony “concerned American” T. Boone Pickens (who Dylan Ratigan celebrated last week by using Boone’s ass as a nose warmer) and his “Pickens Plan” .

As the book, Deceiving Americans For Dummies explains on Page 1, if you’re trying to present a plan as selfless, you don’t name it after yourself.

Greedy, egotistical creatures like Pickett just can’t help themselves. Even when they’re trying to cloak themselves in sheep’s clothing, they can’t help but put a huge wolf tattoo on it.

Why is Pickens, the greedy, polluting, destructive oil man who financed the hateful, lying Swift Boat ads against John Kerry, now our savior, only trying to help us to energy independence without any concern for his own benefit?

You guessed it, like all the bullshit that corporations and CEOs shovel about themselves, it’s another Swift Boat-style blatant lie just for public consumption.

The Pickens Plan is about changing our addiction to the limited fossil fuel, oil…to an addiction to the limited fossil fuel, natural gas.

Pickens has cornered a majority of the natural gas market in the U.S., along with using his money and deception to get state governments to grant him wide swaths of public land for “wind farms”…but somehow has ended up with the water rights for all of that land too.

As many nations in the world could tell you now, potable water is the oil of tomorrow, something that is quickly shrinking in supply thanks to global warming and the destruction of rain forests and nature…that has happened due to the use of and exploration of oil and gas and other plundering of the Earth.

Which was and still is Pickens original “plan”.

Pickens used his money to get a ballot measure in CA that would have only allowed natural gas powered cars and natural gas stations to be subsidized by the state, excluding all other vehicles and stations that used any other type of energy. It’s a credit to Californians that they voted the deceptively “altruistic” bill down which would have effectively smothered actual renewable and environmentally positive types of energy including plug-in electric and the potential for hydrogen powered cars.

When you see generic energy organizations or oil companies promoting natural gas in commercials on MSNBC, CNN, etc. with clear blue skies and happy families having picnics at big grassy parks, that’s Pickens rubbing his hands like Mr. Burns and sighing, “Exxx-ce-llent!”, hoping that his dream of a new monopoly on energy has just moved a little closer to reality.

What all of this points to is the ongoing propaganda assault on our nation by the unapologetically, greedy corporations and CEOs who, despite destroying our economy, won’t stop trying to shake the piggy bank until all of our nation’s wealth and democracy are emptied into their hands.

And IMO, the new, post-economic-crash phase of propaganda is in full swing, exemplified by the debut of this new series in a great time slot and cynically presented with a deceptive, populist theme.

Perhaps they should have titled the show, “The People Are Revolting” so that people on each side of the fence could have a definition they found most satisfying.

I’ve mentioned Randi Rhodes a few times on this site. She’s probably my favorite progressive broadcaster (Rachel Maddow is nipping at her heels). I like Randi because she reads. She scours the newspapers and agency sites for stories, and she has an uncanny ability to pull together information from different sources to create a narrative that other news organizations miss. Many times, insights from her broadcast can be heard on other, higher profile shows (I won’t mention them by name, but they are popular with progressives).

I also enjoy her show because her callers are so intelligent. Below is the transcript of an exchange between Randi and a caller from the January 28 second hour. It’s a very important conversation — one I wish we were having more often. (Our Mr. Bopp would be thinking along these lines.)

I’ve substituted the word “Caller” for the caller’s name for privacy’s sake. I’m sure he wasn’t expecting his words would be preserved in this transcript.

Note: Adlib, I don’t think we run into any copyright issues with this transcript (Fair Use), but let me know if you think it’s problematic

RANDI: Caller in Santa Rosa, California.

CALLER: Hello Randi.

RANDI: Hi.

CALLER: I wanted to talk about the corporate thing that you brought up today because it’s so profoundly important. In my opinion, what the supreme court did was to change our form of government in the same way that, when a bably is born, you really don’t get to see what it’s like until it begins to develop. We’re not going to see — many people are not going to understand, in my opinion — what occured in that decision and how it’s going to emerge over time Into a corporate state, which is a different form of government as you know…

RANDI: I do.

CALLER: …than democracy. They’re not the same thing.

RANDI: No, they’re not the same.

CALLER: The corporation — which the republicans are always trying to tell us, “What a wonderful way to run the country” — a corporation is a state… is a… is a … institution in which the executives give orders. Orders are not what we do in a democracy. They’re different things. One is a political system, one is an economic system. And we have been now moved into an economic system that will continue to unfold as a fascist state. I say fascism because that is what Mussolini created when he created fascism. And that’s what a fascist state does. It is a ruthless, deadly, murderous form of government. When you transform it …

RANDI: It’s lawless.

CALLER: When you transform it from a form of running a business to a form of running a country…

RANDI: Don’t you remember Bush said he was going to run the country like a corporation?

CALLER: Yes. Yes.

RANDI: And a lot of us just, you know, had this knee jerk reaction like, ” Oh my god, this is fascist speak.” And we were, you know, told that, you know…

CALLER: That’s right.

RANDI: … we were unpatriotic, we didn’t love our country. And obviously we weren’t stupid. I wasn’t asleep in dream land. I understood …

CALLER: No you weren’t.

RANDI: … what the goal was. I got it.

CALLER: You felt lonely.

RANDI: I did.

CALLER: That’s what happened.

RANDI: I did. And now …

CALLER: And many of us did.

RANDI: Well, you know, what’s really interesting is …

CALLER: I’d like to …

RANDI: The corporate media for the most part has ignored this supreme court ruling.

CALLER: They will continue to do that as long as they can, and if I may add..

RANDI: It’s so fascinating how they ignore stories that are inconvenient to their agenda of corporatism.

CALLER: They’re lazy for one thing. They only want to do something that doesn’t require them to spend money on reporters …

RANDI: Well, quite frankly …

CALLER: [unintelligible]

RANDI: Right. The punditry is not that bright.

CALLER: No. No, they’re not. And they’re not looking at something very important that is not discussed. One of the things that I think …

You know, when a child walks behind its mother only looking at her heels, he never sees the big picture. He never sees motive. He never sees intent. Motive tells us what people want the outcome to be. And if we don’t look at motive, we only see things as events, and we don’t see them as a process. When the Bush administration set about the financial procedures, the economic procedures, it knew what it was doing. It was creating massive debt with the intent of making the country ungovernable so that the following events that they set in motion would lay this country low.

And when people refuse to talk about motve, which is comprised of circumstances … When investigators and prosecutors look at motive, they’re only looking at a set of circumstances and they say, “You know, we don’t have any absolute evidece, but here’s a bunch of circumstances that all seem to add up to the same thing — that there’s an intent here. A motive.”

So when we have Bush bankrupting the country and knowing what they were doing … They’re brilliant people behind him. Brilliant. They knew what their policies were doing to this country, and they even said, there were quotes, “You know what? Debt is not a bad thing.” Why do you suppose they said that? Because debt is the engine of capitalism. Debt is the engine and fire of capitalism. That’s how they make money. On debt.

Low and behold, along comes guess what? The big catastrophe of the big corporations. Oh what a surprise! You mean those people, those geniuses who created those systems didn’t know what they were doing?

Now we come along with another kill stroke from the Supreme Court.

If we don’t look at motives, we’re not able to assess what people were trying to do, and we only see the events without ever seeing the process. And until people start facing the fact that … There are very large nubers of people in the United States, not a small number, who — in any country they’re always present — who don’t want to live in democracy. And in this case they want to live under a corporate state. And when they talk about things like “I’m a free trader”? There are two kinds of those people. One is t the guy who knows absolutely what he believs in and understands it. He believes in a corproate way of life. The other guy is confused. He’s the guy who’s the average guy who thinks somehow he’s going to belong to the special club some day. He’s never going to make it. Never.

Ninety nine percent, we now know, of the American people are not the one percent of the people who have all the money. They’re never going to get in that club. And that club is a corporate club. And when that club becomes a form of government instead of a form of economics, the American people will rue the day they never thought about motive. Because there will be blood everywhere.

RANDI: Thank you, Caller. That was beautiful. Really. Well said. Beautiful.

Here is an interesting letter I received from AARP this morning:

If you and I don’t act now – the future of Social Security and Medicare could be decided for us without a public debate.

As soon as today your senators will decide whether to give a special commission the power to propose drastic cuts to the programs that millions of seniors depend on: Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.

The proposals could be voted on immediately, without full transparency and accountability – and without our voices being heard. We can’t let that happen.

Make no mistake – AARP and most Americans are deeply concerned about increasing debt, health care costs and the long-term solvency of Social Security.

But as some of the most fundamental challenges we face as a nation, surely these issues deserve full and open debate by all members of Congress.

You elected your members of Congress to make the tough decisions, not to punt them to a special “commission.”

Tell your senators to vote “NO” on the Conrad-Gregg amendment.

Thank you for your help on this urgent matter.

Sincerely,

Barry Jackson
Senior Manager, Grassroots

http://www.unionvoice.org/campaign/conrad_gregg

According to AP “Obama Steps Up His Campaign Against Wall Street Banks”.

It seems like the first part of President Obama retooling his efforts is to reach out to the people and reign in the institutions people are rightfully directing their anger towards.

President Barack Obama stepped up his campaign against Wall Street on Thursday with a far-reaching proposal for tougher regulation of the biggest banks.

“We have to get this done,” Obama said at the White House. “If these folks want a fight, it’s a fight I’m ready to have.”

It was a stern, populist lecture from the president to Wall Street for what he perceives as its abandonment of Main Street. Obama said the government should have the power to limit the size and complexity of large financial institutions as well as their ability to make high-risk trades.

He said it wasn’t appropriate that banks have been able to run these trading operations with the protections afforded to regular banking services.

“We have to enact commonsense reforms that will protect American taxpayers and the American economy from future crises,” Obama said. “For, while the financial system is far stronger today than it was one year ago, it’s still operating under the same rules that led to its near-collapse.”

I understand people’s anger but it’s all reaction from people that want pay back and only care about punishment.  These changes will be cheered on by the Huffy crowd and many progressives but it never really was my issue.  I think allot of it is grandstanding and there will be little change in the long run that positively affects people’s lives.   I would much rather have HCR which looks like it’s not happening.  Sorry but the system rarely repeats the exact same mistakes again the underlying reason for the banking crisis has been corrected by the banks themselves last year when they stopped making loans to people that could not pay them back.  Sure there were contributing mitigating factors that made the collapse worse like derivatives trading and a bloated housing market but even if the trading was based on predominantly safe loans and the unsustainable loans were not granted to artificially increase real estate values the financial crisis would have been much less intense.

I also do not see how this is going to help out main street save for making some people feel better.  The economy is out of governments control in most aspects.  No matter what FDR did it took WWII to really end the Great Depression.   Sure we can have another stimulus like the last 2 stimulus’s we had the previous two years but if big business keeps on laying off people it really does not matter.  People need to wake up and understand that big business is in the final phase of creating the kind of work environment that only favors them.  They have Americans so afraid of being fired, especially when they are going to lose benefits like healthcare insurance, that they will work harder for less.  Conservatives in big business will continue to reap more profits but they will not be hiring until at least after the midterms so they can help their party get back into power again.  That’s the real conspiracy American workers should know.

Sure it’s good political move for our short term thinking country but it could be another set up for failure with the bought and paid for Congress anyway who will take the teeth out of any legislation he proposes.  Obama be should responding to the people more but in a way to show how the future needs long term fixes like healthcare reform.   These short term populist efforts will do little to make the future better so the reactionaries win out again in round one.

UPDATE Wall Street does not seem to like this new populist president.

The Dow Jones industrial average tumbled 210 points after dropping 122 on Wednesday. The index has seen four straight triple-digit moves and the latest slide erased the Dow’s gains for 2010. Bond prices rose as the stock market became more volatile.

Yeah again it will make people feel better but I still don’t see how this helps main street.

Click image to enlarge

Keep you doped with religion, and sex and TV;

and you think you’re so clever and classless and free;

but you’re still f**king peasants, as far as I can see

- John Lennon, “Working Class Hero”

Who Wants to Be a Revolutionary? Oh, there’s anger out there! America has got to be one of the most royally pissed off countries in the world. It doesn’t matter if you’re a leftie or a rightie, if you’re an American, there is a good chance that something has got your blood boiling now. It might be stolen elections, Kenyan birth certificates, Katrina, terrorists, bank bailouts, wars for oil, telecom spying, CEO’s salaries, religious fundamentalism, misleading food labeling, the slow death of the American automobile industry, the quicker demise of the American middle class or any sordid combination of the above. If you haven’t thought at some point in the last ten years or so that things are seriously FUBAR, that the system doesn’t work, and that it definitely doesn’t have YOUR best interests in mind, then I wonder about you. Where have you been?

Yes, the mood is ugly. It’s Tea Party ugly. It’s Ron Paul angry. It’s the stuff of which revolutions are made, the fire next time that burns like a thousand California wildfires that somebody, no doubt, blames Obama for (and somebody else probably blamed Bush for). Yes, there is revolution in the air!

Except, there isn’t. The American people are NOT going to revolt, folks. The country isn’t going to split apart either. The country probably isn’t even going to sweep a true maverick like Paul into power anytime soon. Why? People are too comfortable! A second American Revolution is no more likely to occur than a rebellion of the brainwashed, mutated denizens of Huxley’s “Brave New World”, and for the same exact reason. The Powers that Be have got us, folks, right where they want us. Docile, overfed, overstimulated, undernourished and undereducated, and most of all, hyper-entertained. Which has led me to wonder, what WOULD need to happen for Americans to rise up like the Founding Fathers, taking to the streets with eyes blazing and teeth gnashing? Something the Powers that Be would never be so stupid as to do; take away our televisions!

You’d see a revolution then! Without Monday Night Football and American Idol and Jeopardy and Lost and Jay and The Simpsons, without Wii and PlayStation, without commercials telling us what to buy and what meds we need to be taking, people would flat out lose it! You want anger? You ain’t seen nothing yet!

And see it you won’t. Nobody is going to take anybody’s television away. Television has done what no tyrant nor terrorist has ever come close to accomplishing. It has reduced a once proud and powerful nation to a land of dazed zombies, wearing a groove in the rug between the couch and the fridge while their warden, the glowing rectangular object in the Living Room, goads them to ask the question no revolutionary has ever asked; “What’s on after this?”

Click graph to enlarge

I have heard many of the political pundits say that if the unemployment pictures does not improve we can expect one or more of the houses of congress to change hands, reverting back to a Republican majority. Not knowing what these predictions were based on I did some research.

I wanted to know what the unemployment trend was from 1949 to 2009. This data is available at the Bureau of Labor Statistics at http://data.bls.gov  for any period you wish to look at.  Taking this time frame I compared which parties were a majority in the Senate, the House of Representatives and which party held the Presidency.

The results to me were surprising.

In 1953 the Republicans gain a majority in the Senate and won the Presidency. Unemployment was on the rise.

In 1955 the Democrats won back the Senate. Unemployment was on a decline.

In 1961 the Democrats won back the Presidency and at that time unemployment had been rising and reached a peak of about 6 percent.

The Democrats held everything until 1969 when the Presidency reverted to the Republicans. From 1961 to 1968 unemployment had been in a free fall dropping below 4 percent. By 1969 though, there was a spike taking it back to above 4.5 percent. To me this did not seem to be that bad.

In 1977 the Democrats held everything again, when they won back the Presidency. Unemployment was in a decline at this time.

1981 Reagan won the office of President and the Senate was taken back by the Republican Party. Unemployment had been rapidly rising. It peaked in December of 1982 at 10.82 percent. This is the only data point that compares to what we have going on now. It rose under President Carter and continually rising under Reagan until the start of his second year. Looking at the trend now at the start of 2010 we may see history repeat itself with a decline starting.

In 1987 with a steady decrease in unemployment for 5 years, the Democrats took back the Senate.

1993 when President Clinton won back the Presidency, the unemployment rate was in a decline and it had been declining since the middle of 1991. The quote “It’s the economy stupid” was a little late.

The Republicans surprised everyone when in 1995 when they took both the House and the Senate. It is even more surprising that unemployment had been on a constant decline.

Unemployment was on the rise again when George W. Bush became President. The Senate was also taken back by the Democrats. That was 2001. So which party was being favored at this time?

The Democrats won back both houses of congress in 2007, unemployment was rising at the time this happened and we were well on our way into a recession.

Of course with unemployment still rising in 2009, the Presidency was back in the hands of the Democrats.

It was a surprise to me that the democrats held sway over both house of congress for a majority of the last 60 years, and the Presidency was a win for Republicans during that time by a smaller margin.

The chart I made is interesting to me as it shows that control switched hands some of the time when unemployment was on the rise and sometimes not. It was not enough to say that you can guarantee a sweep for one political party if you have high unemployment. In fact there were cases when everything was going great when control swapped hands.

I know this is hard to imagine but what if the financial industry in a nation conspired to create a dishonest system that looked to everyone else to be a sound and thriving economy but wasn’t?

Now suspend your disbelief even further and imagine that out of greed, what such entities were doing were intentionally creating an economic bubble that brought them huge wealth while pulling out the cornerstones of the world’s economy.

Now imagine that I’m talking about China.

The New York Times ran this sobering article on Thursday

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/08/business/global/08chanos.html?scp=2&sq=china&st=cse

Now, this is one man’s view of China’s economy but what’s worrisome is that it has the “feel” of being very viable, especially in light of what we’ve learned about how corrupt and nihilist the so-called “sharpest” financial minds are in the Western world.

The prevailing short-sightedness, greed and immorality of the corporate mindset represents a far greater threat to the future of our civilization than terrorism.

There is every motivation for them to kill the golden goose, to squeeze every last drop of life out of it if it means more money for them today or this quarter.

The financial world is in fact sociopathic and self-destructive, recent history clearly confirmed this.

So what if this kind of thinking, practiced to one degree or another around the world, also resides in China? What then, if China’s economy collapses and there is no one to keep financing the U.S.’s deficit spending?

It is a frightening thought but not outside of the realm of possibility. That doesn’t mean that we should buy guns, gold and canned beans and cringe in our basements waiting for the Apocalypse. What it does mean is that the U.S. urgently needs to reform its corrupt financial industry and get on top of deficit spending ASAP to insure against being thrown overboard and plunging like an anchor to the bottom of the financial sea.

It really isn’t hard to spot an economic “bubble”, all you have to do is ask yourself, “Where are all the voices of ‘common sense’ telling me is the one place to put my money?”

Well, if you won’t take my word for it that gold is the new bubble, you must be taking Glenn Beck’s, Sean Hannity’s and Bill O’Reilly’s word that the best and most secure investment that can only make you richer is gold.

I don’t know about you but I knew the housing bubble was a bubble, I knew the dot com bubble was a bubble, I even recognized the Tulip bubble way back when.

There is a natural ebb and flow to investments, in which legit investments earn profits or lose value.

They don’t go up 50% a year…unless they are sitting on top of a bubble.

So, there may be a silver lining to all of this, if all the right wingers are following their leaders’ advice and investing in gold, when a rush to sell gold wipes out their investments, that’s less money for Palin 2012.

The Conference Board Research Group has released the results of their survey regarding job satisfaction and the results show that 45% of Americans are content with their jobs. The lowest rate of job satisfaction since the study began over twenty-two years ago.
The study concludes that workers dissatisfaction with their jobs are for several reasons, and three of them are:
1.) fewer workers consider their jobs interesting
2.) incomes have not kept up with inflation
3.) The soaring cost of health insurance has eaten into workers’ take-home pay.

Americans’ job satisfaction falls to record low

This article provoked thoughts about the corporation that I worked for and retired from 14 years ago.
I’ve calculated the average salary from figures recorded from 2000 – 2009.

Salary Survey for Job: Mechanical Engineer

An engineer that obtained a Bachelor of Science Degree in Mechanical Engineering has an average salary of $50,740.00 within the first four years of employment.

Last year, the corporation asked employees to take a 10% cut in wages –

$50,740.00 – $5,074.00 = $45,666.00 annual salary

The corporation also demanded employees take 2 days off per month without pay, two weeks off during the summer without pay and starting January 1st, 2010 – the first week of January off without pay.
That works out to 39 days annually without pay.

Engineering is rarely a 40-hour per week job.
Overtime is common and 55-hour weeks are the norm.
For this discussion, we’ll ignore the fact that due to drastic cutbacks in employees, the remaining engineers are putting in 60+ hour weeks.
To keep it simple, we’ll stick with the 55-hour week.

39 days x 8 hours = 312 hours off without pay annually

Normally, employers calculate the hour paid per year, including paid vacation and holidays at 2,080 hours for a 40-hour week.
Since engineers’ average 55-hour weeks without overtime pay, the annual hours increase to 2,640 hours.

$45,666 /2640 = $17.30 per hour

According to the PayScale site above, the median salary for a Home Depot Retail Assistant Manager is $51,000 annually, and a college degree is not a requirement.

Four years at a university studying calculus, logarithms, science, physics, statistical analysis, and Strength of Materials for a job that pays less and is more stressful than an assistant manager at a hardware store.

Is it any wonder employees are not satisfied?

The next big issue Congress is addressing is regulation reform.  It is bad enough that there are corporate Democrats that are going to water down most financial regulations.  But the one truly inspired idea is the creation of a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA).  One of the basic reasons the financial collapse was because too many people got too many loans they could not afford and mortgage predictors fooled many people, especially working class people and the elderly into bad loan terms.  Creation of this agency could mitigate those problems at the point of sale by not only educating financial consumers but making terms simpler and ultimately giving people an arbitrator on their behalf.

Republicans are even playing their word games again to invoke the desired Pavlovian response in their base by saying a newly formed independent CFPA would just be like the EPA and create unnecessary regulations that will only restrict business.

Get ready for a bruising showdown over the consumer protection agency the Democrats are trying to create: GOP senators are pledging to kill a standalone body, which is critical to the Dems’ plan. A strong, independent CFPA is anathema, says Utah Republican Robert Bennett: “Can you say EPA?” Bennett and allies see the EPA as a model of business-harming regulatory excess, and are determined to bring the proposed CFPA under the auspices of a larger agency to prevent it from doing likewise.

Coming back to the oxymoronic phrase “Populist Republican” which just means more tax cuts and deregulation, sound familiar?   “Populist Republicans” would only give corporations more power by giving them even more tax breaks and fewer regulations.   These same Republicans are now trying to say NO to a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency with the help of their old allies like the US Chamber of Commerce.

Of course this is all part of the GOP’s political strategy of saying NO to any progress whether it helps their constituents or not.  The GOP is banking on blocking enough progress so that they can get back power in 2010.  So they can have the power the progress of the Obama administration even more.  Maybe they can block progress enough to get back the White House in 2012 so we can slide backward again as a nation like we did under Bush.  The worse part is conservative Democrats trying to get elected in more conservative districts and states and apathetic progressives who are not happy with the pace of progress are unwittingly part of the GOP’s plan.  Conservative Democrats are under the false impression that if they just act like Republicans they will win more conservative constituents over.  Even more illogically some progressives think if they sit on their hands during the 2010 elections that it will teach Democrats some kind of lesson and somehow magically more obstructionists members of the GOP in office will ultimately lead to a progressive nation.

One of the MSM main memes last year was that the Public Option was some kind of liberal’s we dream scheme.   This year to create more controversy and get more ad money for higher profits their memes will be focused on the great Republican comeback.  The ironic part is that if the Republicans do take back power it will be because they are exceptional at just doing nothing.

Stop the CFPA brought to you by the US Chamber of Commerce.

Thanks to a discussion on NPR yesterday, I became aware of a little provision in tax law that in the age of the wealthy consolidating greater wealth, is an abomination.

Due to the Bush changes to the Estate Tax(or as the Repub propagandists call it, the “Death” Tax) and because The Senate has failed to act (The House has done their part), in 2010, the Estate Tax is fully repealed then comes back into existence in 2011.

“Huh?”, you might respond in a far more eloquently way than that.

Allow me to describe this…how do they say…”bull shite”? The changes to the Estate tax can be simply summed up by the simplest newspaper, USAToday:

At the time (just before the bill was passed in 2001), estates valued at $675,000 or higher were subject to the tax. And they were taxed at a rate of 55%. This year’s exemption threshold is $3.5 million, and the tax rate is 45%. The levy brought in an estimated $26.5 billion in gross collections in 2008, according to the IRS.

The levy is set to disappear for 2010. Barring any agreement to extend or change the 2001 law, the tax is scheduled to resurface in 2011 at a rate of 55% on estates valued at $1 million or higher.

http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/taxes/2009-12-28-estate-tax-expire_N.htm

There are conflicting accounts as to why this was structured the way it was. To force Congress to act on making the reduction to 45% permanent (looking far better than 0%)? To make the financial impact of the bill look different by backloading the biggest benefit which would instead allow the wealthy to manipulate the situation legally and escape taxes on a far more massive level than imagined? To get the public acclimated to the wealthy paying zero in estate tax?

The arguments against the Estate tax were and are mostly all bogus. The big canard was how family farmers lost their farms and will lose their farms because of it. Unfortunately for those propagandists, that claim spurred people on to study this and discovered that no family farm has ever been lost due to Estate tax. Whoops! Back to the Lying Board!

The concept of an Estate Tax used to be universally appreciated by Dems and Repubs, the idea seemed reasonable that those who benefited most from a society, at a time when they were no longer around to buy private jets or gold-plated toilets, would be required to give back substantially to the stability and growth of that society.

It was only realatively recently, when the GOP and many Dems were literally bought and kept in their protective wrappers by the wealthy and their corporations, that the POV of that sociopathic person named “corporation” became enshrined.

“Why should the wealthy have to share their money with anyone? Hey, you rednecks and overly-religious loons…it’s The Government trying to take away YOUR future money! Yep, one day you will of course be a multimillionaire and then when you die in your gold-plated La-Z-Boy, it will be too late for you to stop this theft of your money! You need to be able to protect more than a lousy $1.35 million! I mean, that’s chickenfeed!”

The thing is, by upping the income tax and the Estate tax on the wealthy, we could have a backdoor way of recouping a lot of taxpayer money that has been stolen and manipulated out of our pockets. Somewhere between 95% and 97% of this nation do not and will not have estates that are worth more than the previous threshold of $1.35 million going to a couple ($675k to an individual). And even if one did, the tax was only on the amount above that.

Now, here’s the screwjob on how things will work in 2010 if there is no Estate tax. Capital gains taxes would apply. These are down to 15% (these should be raised hugely too!) and there is NO exemption. So, if you are a farmer who dies and leaves a family farm worth 200k, though that would’ve been exempt under Estate tax laws, in 2010 you would owe the government $30k. Even on an estate worth $1,000, you’d have to pay the government $150. However, if you’re wealthy, instead of paying $45 million on $100 million inheritance, you only have to pay $15 million, a $30 million tax cut for you!

There are those in the Senate who say that they will pass a bill in 2010 that is retroactive and continues The Estate tax in that year. We’ll see. However, I strongly doubt that they will raise it back up to 55% and will instead allow the Bush giveaway to the wealthy of that 10% to stay…awaiting the day when a Repub Congress and Pres can knock it down another 10% and another 10% until it is negligible.

The bottom line on this is USAToday simple: The less the wealthy pay, the more the non-wealthy will pay. Or our infrastructure will go unfinanced and will crumble. Or the U.S. will be forced into a death spiral of deficit spending.

It comes down to the wealthy forking over their fair share or further oppression of taxpayers and the decimation of our society and economic strength as a nation. And in light of what they did to our economy, this lobbying of theirs underway to block paying ANY Estate taxes in 2010 is their way of saying, “Let them eat cake…and send them the bill for ours!”.

From Talking Points Memo:

Tea Partiers’ Next Target: American Business?

The end-all-regulation, my-health-insurance-company-is-just-fine-thanks crowd in the Tea Party movement have found an unlikely target for their next national effort: Corporate America.

The Tea Party Patriots group is planning a “National Day of Strike” for Jan. 20, one year to the day after President Obama’s inauguration. The goal of the strike, according to the websitewhere it’s being planned, is to “financially cripple” the companies across America the group says are “backing the leftist agenda” and “funding socialism.”

How can you tell which companies are funding socialism? The answer, according to organizers: they advertise on CNN and/or MSNBC, and they donate money to Democratic candidates.

Former Christian Coalition state legislative director and conservative political strategist Allen Hardage is organizing the effort. In his messagecalling on tea partiers to join the strike, he says he knows from experience that some corporations are sending a message to the left with their advertising dollars.

“Having spent the last 21 years working in advertising I can tell you that before someone take out an advertising plan on CNN, MSNBC etc, they know where they stand,” he writes. “Contrary to popular belief it’s not just about money, if it were MSNBC would have no advertisers.”

On Jan. 20, Hardage is calling on tea partiers to “expose” the socialist-supporting companies, and bombard them with phone calls, emails and protests to demand they stop advertising with “liberal” media outlets and contributing to Democratic campaigns. If they, don’t, the tea partiers will promise to boycott the firms into financial ruin.

It’s not clear how organized the strike movement is at this point. (An email to Hardage was not returned Dec. 24.) The plan was first announced Dec. 20, and on the strike website organizers say they have several thousand followers on various social networks. But the site says Hardage is still searching for regional directors and staff to orchestrate the scheme across the country.

Some conservatives are warning the tea partiers against the strike. On his blog, conservative law professor William Jacobson argues the plan is doomed to failure, based not least on the fact that conservatives could be alienating a potential ally when they take on the machinery of capitalism:

I completely sympathize with the emotion behind the idea. But the idea is a really bad idea for at least two reasons.First, conservatives are not about boycotting commerce. We are about generating commerce and free enterprise. We also are about working hard, so taking the day off as a means of protest runs against our grain.

And just who is it that we would hurt? The small business people who are a critical part of our movement. A boycott of innocent businesses sends the wrong message, even if for only one day.

Jacobson says the second reason not to strike is found among the progressive groups who’ve tried boycotts in the past. He ticks off a list of boycotts against Glenn Beck advertisers, “Mormons and the state of Utah” and writes, “Not one of the boycotts worked, and these failures left the boycotters looking foolish and less powerful.”

The Billionaires Behind The Hate

Billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch are the wealthiest, and perhaps most effective, opponents of President Obama’s progressive agenda. They have been looming in the background of every major domestic policy dispute this year. Ranked as the 9th richest men in America, the Koch brothers sit at the helm of Koch Industries, a massive privately owned conglomerate of manufacturing, oil, gas, and timber interests. They are best known for their wealth, as well as for their generous contributions to the arts, cancer research, and the Smithsonian Institute. But David and Charles are also responsible for a vicious attack campaign aimed directly at obstructing and killing progressive reform. Over the years, millions of dollars in Koch money has flowed to various right-wing think tanks, front groups, and publications. At the dawn of the Obama presidency, Koch groups quickly maneuvered to try to stop his first piece of signature legislation: the stimulus. The Koch-funded group “No Stimulus” launched television and radio ads deriding the recovery package as simply “pork” spending. The Cato Institute — founded by Charles — as well as other Koch-funded think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, produced a blizzard of reports distorting the stimulus and calling for a return to Bush-style tax cuts to combat the recession. As their fronts were battling the stimulus, David’s Americans for Prosperity (AFP) spent the opening months of the Obama presidency placing calls and helping to organize the very first “tea party” protests. AFP, founded in 1984 by David and managed day to day by the astroturf lobbyist Tim Phillips, has spent much of the year mobilizing “tea party” opposition to health reform, clean energy legislation, and financial regulations…….  For the entire article, click here:

http://www.barbrastreisand.com/us/article/billionaires-behind-hate

The Koch brothers, like other wealthy folks in this country, will not be happy until all of the riches this country has produced are in their own pockets.  The Right touts Capitalism as the be all, end all of finance and business in this country.  What they fail to admit is that unfettered capitalism breeds greed, fraud and hate.  The Koch brothers or Koch Industries has been linked to many anti-progressive activities over the past year.  Max Brantley of the Arkansas Times published a blog on their involvement and was contacted by a spokeswoman from Koch Industries.  She promised him she would provide proof of their non-involvement in these activities, which never came.  David Koch presents himself as a champion of science, yet has done more to undermine the public’s understanding of climate change science than any other person in this country.  The recent campaign that charges a set of hacked emails somehow unravels the scientific consensus that global warming is occurring, according to The Progress Report, can be traced back to Koch Foundations.

Much of the opposition to Healthcare Reform can be traced back to Koch Industries as well.  They funded Patients United to blanket the country with ads distorting the provisions of the bill.  They have been behind the organization of the Teabagger movement.  Koch Industries is a major contributor to pollution across this country via their timber, gas and oil industries.  They are believed to be behind the move to push this country to the far right since the 1950’s with their founding of The John Birch Society.  God only knows what else these brothers have concocted on their road to greed and lining their own pockets.

I wonder, when will the people of this country sit up and take heed?  The middle class is being destroyed and instead of Americans standing up together, corporate interests are using our fellow citizens to further their own agenda.  Where, along the way to fullfilling our dreams, did Americans decide to bury their heads in the sand?  Is there a way to unite middle class Americans in one cause, the survival of our very liveliehood?  I still hold out hope that there is a way.