Ten ideas to fix the economy

By Frank Moraes

I have this strange idea that I don't care for Dylan Matthews over at WonkBlog. But I just looked at my writing over the last year, and I find I am always very impressed with his work. I know that from time to time, he falls into false equivalence and splitting-the-difference fallacies. But mostly he is a very good reporter who understands economics.

Last week, he wrote perhaps the best thing I have yet seen from him, "Ten Ways to Reduce Inequality Without Raising Tax Rates." He lists ways that will reduce inequality for "both sides to get what they want." That's reaching up to Ezra Klein-level adorableness. I am far too cynical to think that Republicans would ever go along with these ideas. The reason is simple: Republicans like inequality; they are as a rule against anything that is good for the country generally. (I would not have said this 30 years ago.)

  1. Make it easier to start and join unions. Oh, there's a proposal Republicans are going to jump on! This is a great idea. Unions are one of the big reasons why workers shared in the productivity gains after WWII for 30 years and their demise is one of the big reasons why workers have hardly shared at all in the gains of the last 30 years.
  2. Weaken the dollar. This is all about big dicks on both sides of the aisle. A weak dollar makes our exports more competitive. But those who already have wealth hate a weak dollar because it lowers what their wealth can buy. But this is a no-brainer: a weak dollar is good for the economy. Politicians like a strong dollar because it makes them think they are powerful. Or something.

3. Promote trade in highly-skilled professions. This is one that Dean Baker pushes. We have allowed globalization to hit low wage workers in manufacturing, but we continue to practice protectionism for doctors, lawyers, dentists, college professors, you name it. If we had a truly free market, workers would have less money, but they would need less to pay for things like healthcare and education.

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The NFL officiating clusterfuck and the homer hypocrisy of Paul Ryan and Scott Walker

By Michael J.W. Stickings 

Yeah, I watched the Packers-Seahawks game Monday. Yeah, it was appalling. That call at the end -- the "Touception" -- was the worst game-deciding call, and maybe the worst major call generally, I've ever seen.

But isn't it hilarious how Republicans Paul Ryan and Scott Walker, both Wisconsinite Packers fans, are calling on the NFL to "get the real refs" back (in Ryan's words)? (Presumably Ryan meant all officials, not just the referees, but maybe he really doesn't know any better and is something of a faux fan.)

Because, you know, those "real refs" are unionized and both Ryan and Walker are viciously anti-union. I guess things are different when your team gets screwed.

**********

As for the issue itself, look, the officiating has been pretty awful. The Monday night game was terrible, but so was the Sunday nighter between the Patriots and Ravens. I watch parts of every game, because I have that NFL package, and every game has had its share of bad calls.

For example, while I hesitate to make excuses for my Steelers after their embarrassing 34-31 loss to the Raiders on Sunday, I would like to note that there was illegal motion on a key play near the end of the second quarter that gave the Raiders a first down deep in Steelers territory. It went uncalled and, with a new set of downs, the Raiders ended up scoring.

But I do think the officials should be given the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they're doing their best, or maybe not, but basically they're just not up to the very difficult job of officiating NFL games. (Most of us aren't. Not even close.) They're in way over their heads, and, to make matters worse, they're being bullied by players and coaches alike. Is it really all that surprising that they're making mistakes?

But it's not their fault they're in this position. I suppose they could have turned down the offer to act as replacements, but that's hardly realistic. If you're a football referee or other official and the NFL comes to you with an offer like that, you don't turn them down.

No, the fault lies with Commissioner Goodell and the disgustingly rich (and disgustingly cheap) owners who are playing hardball with the union.

It's time to end the madness. It's time to pay the officials, the real officials, what they want. Because without them it's all just a massive joke, with the players facing even greater risks on the field and the very integrity of the game, not just the league, coming undone at the seams.

Bad teachers: The Republican politics of vilification

By Michael J.W. Stickings 

Republicans like to call themselves patriots, but they're the party of discord and division, among other things vilifying entire regions, entire states, entire cities. (E pluribus unum is their anti-motto.)

In '88, it was Massachusetts, whence hailed Michael Dukakis and, worse, liberalism. In '08, it was the coasts, home to Sarah Palin's detested elites, in contrast to the all-American heartland of her fantasies.

This year, it's Chicago, Obama's degraded hometown, and Romney-surrogate Republicans are going all-out trying to connect the president to its supposed political and union thuggery.

You know, to political bosses like Rahm Emanuel, his ex-chief of staff, and to public-school teachers behaving like the Khmer Rouge.

Except, of course, that they're not. The Chicago Teachers Union went on strike not because it's made up of a bunch of thugs, or a bunch of layabouts being manipulated by a bunch of thugs, but because it wants fair pay, reasonable working conditions, and the best educational environment for students -- all perfectly reasonable demands that are being blocked by the city, led by Emanuel.

I'll let others debate the details, but here's where Republicans are contradicting themselves:

They vilify Chicago because of people like Emanuel, but here they're siding with Emanuel, even if they won't admit it, against the teachers. So what is it? Do they like Big Bad Chicago or not?

It hardly matters. Consistency is not their aim, just cheap political points. Besides, it's not Chicago they loathe, it's "Chicago," the nightmare they concoct in their propaganda.

And now, of course, they're trying desperately to connect Obama to the teachers, led by Mitt himself:

Obama has not taken sides in the standoff between Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, the president's former chief of staff, and the city’s teachers union.

But Romney, who routinely slams teachers unions as an obstacle to education reform, is trying to break that silence by accusing Obama of cozying up too close to labor in general.

"President Obama has chosen his side in this fight, sending his vice president last year to assure the nation's largest teachers union that 'you should have no doubt about my affection for you and the president’s commitment to you,'" Romney said in a statement. "I choose to side with the parents and students depending on public schools to give them the skills to succeed, and my plan for education reform will do exactly that."

Again, Romney lies. Obama may have affection for teachers -- who doesn't? oh, right, Romney and the Republicans -- but that doesn't mean he necessarily supports this strike action.

Furthermore, he and his party do not support public education in any meaningful way. Rather, they support bleeding the public-school system to benefit private education that itself benefits the select few, and mostly the rich, leaving everyone else behind, American public schools in ruins, teachers underpaid, infrastructure collapsing, education next to impossible.

This is not to say the strike isn't bad news for Obama and that Romney won't be able to, and make every effort to, take advantage of it.

But here again there is that contradiction. The president's own education policies suggest that he is indeed in line with Emanuel. And so once again Romney is trying to have it both ways, vilifying both Chicago and the teachers union and then both Obama and the teachers union. Obviously, he's hoping something sticks, but it's the usual nonsense of someone who prefers the politics of vilification to the politics of principle, and whose entire campaign is based on contradiction and dishonesty.

Mitt Romney... union-loving Keynesian?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Mitt Romney is a rich privileged douchebag willing to do or say anything in his relentless effort to pander to the Republican Party's far-right base, but occasionally, just occasionally, he shows us a glimpse, intentionally or not, of whatever is left of the real Mitt beneath the robotic, soul-less facade.

Sure, that real Mitt is still a douchebag, most likely, with a plutocratic sense of entitlement, but it's still a Mitt that isn't quite as extreme as the one we're witnessing on the campaign trail.

Spending cuts

As he said in Michigan yesterday: "If you just cut, if all you're thinking about doing is cutting spending, why as you cut spending you’ll slow down the economy."

This is certainly a lot more than you hear from most cut-and-cut-more Republicans these days, but of course Romney's not suddenly espousing a Keynesian, demand-side approach to the economy. He wasn't arguing against spending cuts, after all, let alone for stimulus spending, he was just saying that spending cuts alone, in his view (and the near-universal Republican view), aren't enough.

"So you have to at the same time create pro-growth tax policies," he quickly added. Which is to say, you have to have tax cuts for the wealthy, a core plank of all things Republican.

Unions

As he also said in Michigan yesterday: "Now labor unions play an important role in our society. There are some like the carpenters' union that compete on a fair basis and train their members to have greater skills, and so they're an important part of America's economy."

Wait, what? Did Romney not get the anti-union message? Is he departing from the anti-union activism of the likes of John Kasich in Ohio and Scott Walker in Wisconsin? Uh, no.

Note that Romney only said "some" unions (and he mentioned only one) are "important." And while this, too, is more than you hear from most Republicans these days, he quickly shifted his point, as he always does, into an attack on President Obama, in this case for supposedly sucking up to union bosses, and then advocated so-called "right to work" (i.e., right to get screwed) legislation.

This is what anti-union Republicans do. They draw a distinction between unionized workers and union bosses -- though of course what is a union without people running it? It's a way of being anti-union without seeming to be anti-worker. No matter that unionized workers vote for their bosses and are overwhelmingly pro-union. And they advocate legislation that is decidedly pro-employer and that would result in lower wages and fewer benefits for workers, another way of being anti-union while seemingly wanting to give workers "rights."

Sorry, what was I saying about Romney?

Whatever was there before, whatever once was real, appears to have been crushed. It may be his shameless opportunism or he may now believe this right-wing extremism, but it hardly matters.

This is the only Mitt left.

**********

Watch the clips:

Quote of the Day

By Creature

"My name is Eddie Vale of the AFL-CIO and I'm proud to fight for working families and I don't hide behind anonymous quotes." -- in response to the anonymous White House official who (stupidly) bashed the unions for spending money on Halter.

If the White House does one thing well, it's alienating the people they'll need come November.

Hey Morning Joke, Cheetos are made by a successful unionized company!

By J. Thomas Duffy

Morning Joke, and the Sergeant Demetrio López García-like sidekick, Mika Brezninski, to Morning Joke's "Zero" (along with NYT's Andrew Ross Sorkin), were really bucking today for a Garlic's "Instant Ignorant Dolt" designation.



Apparently, their Morning Joke Show got into a discussion about labor, and unions, and then displayed their challenged mental capacities.

From Jamison Foser, at Media Matters: "Morning Joe journos can't name a successful unionized company, even though one signs their paychecks":

The Morning Joe crew was on an anti-union tear this morning, claiming the union label on a company means "sell." Mika Brzezinski went so far as to say of unions: "They cripple the system that makes a company work." Collectively, the journalists on Morning Joe couldn't name a single "successful" unionized company.

[snip]

Oh, what the heck, let's take one more example. GE is one of the world's largest companies; in 2006, its revenues were greater than the gross domestic products of 80 percent of UN nations. The company made more than $18 billion in 2008 -- again, billion with a b, and again, those are profits, not revenue. All that despite (or, perhaps, because of) the fact that 13 different unions represent GE workers.

Oh, and GE owns NBC-Universal, which owns MSNBC, which pays Joe Scarborough a handsome salary (and the unionized workers who help get his show on the air considerably less.)

Does Joe Scarborough think NBC and GE are not "successful" companies? Does Mika Brzezinski think the unionized workers she no doubt interacts with every day are crippling her ability to do her job, or her employer's ability to be successful?

[snip]

If Andrew Ross Sorkin's name sounds familiar, that's probably because he's the reporter who started the myth about the average GM worker being paid $70 an hour. MSNBC's Keith Olbermann named him "Worst Person in the World" for that bit of blatantly false anti-union, anti-worker propaganda.

WHAP! ... Headslap!



Brian Beutler, over at TPMDC, with "Hoffa: Sorkin and Morning Joe Show Complete Failure To Understand":

Unions are aghast. "Sorkin and the Morning Joe crew just showed their complete failure to understand how unions contribute to the success of the American economy by blindly assuming that unionized companies haven't been profitable in the last year," said James Hoffa, General President of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, in a statement to TPMDC.

Off the top of my head I can give you several Teamster-represented companies who continue to thrive, despite the economic downturn, but there are thousands more: UPS, Eight O'Clock Coffee, Coca-Cola Enterprises, PepsiCo, Anheuser-Busch and MillerCoors. The Morning Joe team really should be embarrassed for showing their lack of knowledge on the subject.

Not only that, but jumpin' Jesus, for Morning Joke himself, this should have been a gimme.

Cheetos are made by Frito-Lay, which is owned by PepsiCo, one of the successful union companys named above.

Morning Joke sure should have remembered Cheetos:

Scarborough Defends McCain, Criticizes Bloggers ‘Eating Cheetos’ In Their ‘Underwear’

As for Mika, well, just company for Morning Joke, I guess ...

She should be listening to her daddy.


Bonus Morning Joke Riffs

Matthew Yglesias: Morning Joe Crew Can’t Name a Single Successful Unionized Firm

Steve Benen: UNION-BASHING GONE AWRY...

David Kurtz: Your Corporate Media

Top Ten Cloves: Things Joe Scarborough Likes To Eat and Wear When Sitting At Computer

Get A Shovel! ... Olbermann Disses Scarborough, On-Air

Morning Joke Teachs Thousands of Kids To Swear! ...Or: Blame It On The Cheetos, Joe ...




(Cross-posted at The Garlic.)

53

By Creature

That's the percentage of Americans that favor "a new law that would make it easier for labor unions to organize workers." Not surprisingly, 70% of Democrats support the right to organize, while 60% of Republicans say no way. I guess those Republicans don't realize that it was a strong middle class, largely built upon union jobs, that created this country. A country whose people they seem to despise.

Bush, Big 3: Nope, you can't pin this on the 'little guy'

By LindaBeth

Friday Bush announced that some of the TARP funds intended for the financial industry will be used as a temporary lifeline to the Big 3 auto makers, after the Senate failed to pass the auto bailout bill last week.

From The New York Times:

The plan pumps $13.4 billion by mid-January into the companies from the fund that Congress authorized to rescue the financial industry. But the two companies have until March 31 to produce a plan for long-term profitability, including concessions from unions, creditors, suppliers and dealers. (emphasis mine)

The funding is on the condition that the union workers' wages be reduced to the level of non-unionized workers at foreign auto plants. Now I've written this before, but I'm going to say it again: there were no such stipulations given to the financial industry bailout. I'm not opposed to restrictions and conditions, but the white collar/blue collar double standard in juxtaposing the two bailouts is astounding.

For the financial bailout, no one insisted on increased regulations to ensure such abuse would not happen again, no one said that traders would need to take a commission cut, no one demanded that the financial industry take accountability and explain how this will not happen again. And it's not like this was the first time the government has stepped into the affairs of the financial sector, just like this hasn't been the first state funding given to the auto manufacturers.

What's also key here is who is required to "concede": unions, creditors, supplier, and auto dealers....hmmm, what's missing on this list? CEOs, perhaps? Why must the automakers be required become viable on the backs of the blue-collar workers who dare to earn the median income, vacation time, and health care! The average union wage is $29/hour (Factcheck.org debunks the $70/hour lie, and has a great analysis of the difference between wages earned and labor costs "per worker"). The average non-union, foreign auto maker worker makes about $24/hour, and they particpate in profit-sharing program. For example, in 2007,

Toyota Motor Corp. gave workers at its largest U.S. plant bonuses of $6,000 to $8,000, boosting the average pay at the Georgetown, KY, plant to the equivalent of $30 an hour. That compares with a $27 hourly average for UAW workers, most of whom did not receive profit-sharing checks last year.

Which means that domestic union workers and domestic plants for foreign carmakers are pretty comparable. But when times are tough, Bush is demanding that worker benefits and pay be cut, when CEOS are making ridiculous compensations despite their leadership failure. It is not the auto workers who aren't doing their jobs. Why don't we begin with making U.S. CEOs cut their pay down to what the foreign automakers earn? From USA Today:

Detroit automakers have focused on the gap between their hourly workers and those of the non-union foreign automakers in the USA. Union workers say the executive pay gap should be examined, as well.

[...]

Japanese companies are not required to break out salaries and bonuses for top executives. Instead, they lump them together. Last year, Toyota's top 37 executives earned a combined $21.6 million in salary and bonuses, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. U.K. firm Manifest Information Services, which analyzes proxy information, estimates Toyota's top executive, Hiroshi Okuda, earned $903,000 in 2006.

At Honda, the top 21 earned $11.1 million, combined, in salary and bonuses, SEC filings show.

"There is this huge gap between the average worker and the CEO, and the gap is greatest in the U.S.," Kim says. "That kind of thing might work where individual work counts the most, but in the manufacturing sector, it's all about teamwork."

This alongside the recent revelation that Bush included a one-line loophole to allow excessive executive pay in the financial bailout package. From The Washington Post:

But at the last minute, the Bush administration insisted on a one-sentence change to the provision, congressional aides said. The change stipulated that the penalty would apply only to firms that received bailout funds by selling troubled assets to the government in an auction, which was the way the Treasury Department had said it planned to use the money.

Now, however, the small change looks more like a giant loophole, according to lawmakers and legal experts. In a reversal, the Bush administration has not used auctions for any of the $335 billion committed so far from the rescue package, nor does it plan to use them in the future.

Or listen to Air America's The Daily Left report:

Again, from FactCheck:

A final note on all this: Labor costs only account for about 10 percent of the cost of producing a vehicle. And it's not the cost of American cars that people complain about; they're already often thousands of dollars less than their Japanese counterparts.

American cars don't not sell because greedy union workers earn $4 more/hour base pay than non-union workers of foreign autos do; their health care and vacation time does not result in an equal quality, more expensive car than the Hondas and Toyotas of the world. There's clearly a problem with Detroit's business model, and the Big 3 have no one to blame but their leaders, who are getting paid a shitload for their companies' unprofitability. You can't pin this one on the little guy.

(Cross-posted to Speak Truth to Power)

A key endorsement for Obama, a key dis-endorsement for Clinton

By Michael J.W. Stickings

1) NYT: "Representative John Lewis, an elder statesman from the civil rights era and one of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's most prominent black supporters, said Thursday night that he planned to cast his vote as a superdelegate for Senator Barack Obama in hopes of preventing a fight at the Democratic convention." (More from the AP here.)

2) Politico: "Two labor sources tell Politico that the giant Service Employees International Union [SEIU], which has been neutral through the primary, is on the verge of throwing its support to Sen. Barack Obama."

But I don't want to get too excited. It's awfully close in Wisconsin, and Obama is trailing Clinton by significant margins in both Ohio and Pennsylvania.

The Miserables

By Michael J.W. Stickings

As you may have heard (or seen, or read, or smelled), there was a public sector strike in France yesterday -- just a one-day affair, but enough to get the riot police out. (As a public sector employee myself -- more specifically, as a public servant -- I cannot but be sympathetic, although I find myself significantly less sympathetic when it comes to the grossly over-bloated French public sector than when it comes to, say, the Ontario public sector.)

Here's an amusing photo from the BBC, taken during a protest by railway workers. Needless to say, those sketchy-looking troublemakers in the bus shelter -- and don't think they don't have their own barricades to erect on a moment's notice -- won't be storming the Bastille anytime soon.