Bernie Sanders: No More Tax Breaks for Billionaires

Sanders Op-Ed: No More Tax Breaks for Billionaires

By Sen. Bernie Sanders

July 20, 2010

Four facts:

One: The United States is in the midst of the worst economic downturn since the 1930s. More than 16 percent of working-age Americans are unemployed or underemployed. Long-term unemployment is the highest on record. Millions of people have lost their homes, their savings and their pensions.

Two: The United States today has a $13 trillion national debt and a record-breaking deficit. Last year alone, the federal government spent more than $186 billion just paying interest on that debt. We are leaving our children and grandchildren a huge financial obligation which will not only impact them personally but affect the well-being of the entire country as we compete in the global economy.

Three: The United States has the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major country. Today, the top 1 percent earns more income than the bottom 50 percent and the top 1 percent owns more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. During the Bush years, when the middle class saw a $2,200 decline in median family income, the 400 wealthiest families saw their income more than double while their effective income tax rates were slashed almost in half over the past 15 years. The wealthiest 400 Americans have now accumulated $1.27 trillion in wealth, while the highest paid 400 Americans had an average income of $345 million in 2007 alone. As a result of Bush tax policy they pay an effective tax rate of 16.6 percent, the lowest on record. (Warren Buffet, one of the richest people on earth, has often commented that he pays a lower effective tax rate than his secretary).

Four: Last March, Dan Duncan, the wealthiest person in Houston, Texas, died and left his family some $9 billion dollars. For the first time since 1916, Mr. Duncan’s heirs will pay no inheritance taxes. Not one dime. This occurred as a result of President Bush’s $1.35 trillion dollar tax break enacted into law in 2001.

In other words, at a time when this country has a devastatingly high rate of unemployment, a huge debt, massive unmet needs and a growing gap between the very richest people and everyone else, we are currently providing enormous tax breaks to millionaire and billionaire families. This is absurd!

Under the Bush tax law, inheritance taxes eliminated this year would be restored to the pre-2001 estate tax rates in 2011 unless Congress acts. Needless to say, a united Republican Party and a few Democrats, representing the interests of the very wealthy few, are working hard to either eliminate the inheritance tax forever or make it as low as possible. (In fact, in 2006, every Republican but two voted in favor of eliminating the estate tax completely).

A century ago, President Teddy Roosevelt, a good Republican, called for a graduated inheritance tax on wealthy estates. In 1916, Congress passed that law. Here is what Roosevelt said in 1910.

“The absence of effective state, and, especially, national, restraint upon unfair money-getting has tended to create a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power. The prime need is to change the conditions which enable these men to accumulate power which is not for the general welfare that they should hold or exercise… No man should receive a dollar unless that dollar has been fairly earned. Every dollar received should represent a dollar’s worth of service rendered – not gambling in stocks, but service rendered. The really big fortune, the swollen fortune, by the mere fact of its size acquires qualities which differentiate it in kind as well as in degree from what is passed by men of relatively small means. Therefore, I believe in a graduated income tax on big fortunes, and in another tax which is far more easily collected and far more effective – a graduated inheritance tax on big fortunes, properly safeguarded against evasion and increasing rapidly in amount with the size of the estate.”

I agree with Teddy Roosevelt. What he proposed is exactly what The Responsible Estate Tax Act that I have introduced (along with Senators Harkin, Whitehouse, Franken and Sherrod Brown) will do. Specifically, my bill exempts the first $3.5 million of an inheritance from paying any federal estate tax whatsoever. Doing this means that 99.7 percent of Americans who receive an inheritance would not pay one penny in federal estate taxes. This legislation would impact only the very wealthy – the top three-tenths of 1 percent.

Under my bill, the value of estates above $3.5 million and below $10 million would be taxed at 45 percent; the value of estates above $10 million and below $50 million would be taxed at 50 percent; and the value of estates above $50 million would be taxed at a rate of 55 percent, the same as the 2001 level before the Bush tax cuts. Further, my bill includes a10 percent surtax on the value of estates above $500 million ($1 billion for couples). According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, this legislation, over a 10-year period, would bring in over $315 billion – a good step forward in addressing our national debt.

This legislation would do something even more important. In the midst of these enormously difficult times, it makes clear that we are one country and that all Americans must accept shared responsibility. It is immoral and unfair that, while the middle class struggles to survive, millionaires and billionaires get tax breaks.

U.S. Rep. Debbie Halvorson has a plan to boost U.S. manufacturing

From Trade Reform.Org

Congresswoman Debbie Halvorson (D-Illinois) understands that America’s economic prosperity depends on the success of our manufacturing sector. Over the last few decades millions of American manufacturing jobs have moved overseas. We need to jumpstart our nation’s manufacturing sector with policies that will create new, good-paying manufacturing jobs here in America.

Halvorson’s plan to boost American manufacturing:

Implement a National Strategy for Manufacturing

Halvorson is a co-sponsor of the National Manufacturing Strategy Act (H.R. 4692), legislation she is working to pass that would direct the President to submit a National Manufacturing Strategy to Congress every four years. The plan would include legislative proposals to train the manufacturing workforce, boost productivity, incentivize growth, and create new jobs.
Modernize Workforce Investment Programs

Halvorson believes with the proper training, American workers can outperform foreign competitors. Unfortunately, too many of our workers are not trained in the skills needed to compete in a rapidly changing global economy. This is why Halvorson co-authored and introduced the AMERICA Works Act (H.R. 4072), legislation to modernize federal workforce training programs to better prepare participants for high-tech jobs in the manufacturing sector.

Halvorson has heard from manufacturing employers that we must do more to provide educational options for our youth for careers in manufacturing. She is working with manufacturers to fight for increased investment in K-12 career and technical education, as well as in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education.

End Unfair Trade Practices

Halvorson is fighting unfair Chinese trade practices that put American manufacturers at a competitive disadvantage. For years China has undervalued its currency, which allows Chinese producers to sell its goods in the U.S. market at artificially low prices, undercutting American manufactures. Halvorson is a co-sponsor of the Currency Reform for Fair Trade Act (H.R. 2378), legislation that will respond to countries that manipulate their currency by accounting for their artificially low costs.

Halvorson is also fighting to ensure the U.S. government purchases goods manufactured in America. She is a co-sponsor of the Reciprocal Government Procurement with China Creates American Jobs Act (H.R. 5312), which will limit the U.S. government from purchasing goods made in China until the Chinese government allows procurement of goods made in the United States.

Tax Incentives for American Manufacturing and Clean Energy

Tax Relief for Manufacturers: Halvorson has led the way in sponsoring legislation that incentivizes manufacturers to make capital investments. Halvorson introduced the Bonus Depreciation and Enhanced Expensing Extension Act (H.R. 4311), legislation that extends tax incentives that allow manufacturers to more quickly recover the cost of purchasing new equipment and machinery. Provisions from Halvorson’s bill were signed into law by the President and are already in effect. Halvorson is also proposing additional investment tax credits that allow manufacturers to immediately deduct the cost of new equipment and machinery purchases.

Tax Incentives for U.S. Expansion: Halvorson is also proposing new federal tax incentives through the Economic Development Agency for manufacturers that choose to expand a current facility or open a new facility in the United States instead of overseas. These incentives will match state and local incentive packages.

Clean Energy Tax Credit: Halvorson supports the Security in Energy and Manufacturing Act (H.R. 5041), which extends a tax credit for investments in clean energy manufacturing projects. The tax credit gives priority to projects that manufacture (not just assemble) clean energy components in the United States.
Mechanical Insulation Tax Credit: Halvorson authored the Mechanical Insulation Installation Incentive Act(HR 4296), a 5-year tax incentive for non-residential building owners to install mechanical insulation above industry standards into new construction/retrofit projects to be more energy efficient. This bill will save $47 billion over 5 years in energy costs and support 89,000 jobs annually across the country.

Increase Access to Capital for Manufacturers through Loan Guarantees

Halvorson believes that small and medium sized manufacturers should have the resources they need to grow and hire new workers. With credit markets still very tight, many manufacturers are having difficulty accessing the capital they need to expand, even manufacturers with strong credit histories. Halvorson proposes the creation of a new loan guarantee program under the Department of Commerce that will guarantee private loans made to small and medium sized manufacturers who implement job creating expansion plans.

http://www.tradereform.org/2010/07/creating-the-next-generation-of-manufacturing-jobs/

Proposed Social Security Cuts Will Hurt The Middle Class

Despite the fact that Social Security is fully funded through 2039, there have been calls to cut Social Security benefits in an effort to reduce the long-term budget deficit. A new analysis from the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) finds that three of the most common proposals to cut Social Security would have a substantial negative impact on low- and middle-income families.

“There is a great deal of talk in policy circles about cutting Social Security, but very little discussion of the financial situation of those affected by the cuts,” said Dean Baker, co-director of CEPR and an author of the report.

The study, “The Impact of Social Security Cuts on Retiree Income,” analyzes three of the most common proposals for reducing Social Security benefits and calculates the implied cut in benefits and income for various age groups and income quintiles of near and current retirees. The proposals examined are the adoption of progressive price indexation, raising the retirement age to 70 by 2036 and reducing the annual cost-of-living adjustment or COLA by 1.0 percent below the rate of inflation. It is worth noting that these proposals would only have a negligible impact on the deficit over the course of the next 10 years.

The analysis of the proposed cuts show:

The most frequently suggested PPI formula would imply cuts in benefits of 6.2 percent for a household in the in the middle income quintile between the ages of 45-49 in 2007 and 9.6 percent for a household in the middle quintile between the ages of 40 and 44 in 2007.

Raising the normal retirement age 70 in 2036 would result in a 4.0 percent reduction in benefits for workers between the ages of 50 and 54 in 2007 and a 10.0 percent reduction for workers between the ages of 40-44.

Reducing the COLA by 1.0 percent would result in a benefits cut of 12 percent for a retiree at age 75 and more than 20 percent at age 85.

For retirees in the bottom income quintile at age 85 who were between the ages of 55 and 59 in 2007, reducing the COLA by 1.0 percent implies a 14.6 percent reduction in income and a cut of 16. 5 percent for retirees in the bottom quintile at age 85 between the ages of 40-44.

“The vast majority of near-retirees will rely on Social Security for most of their income in retirement,” said Baker. “All of these proposals will result in significant cuts in income for low- and/or middle-income families.”

http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/ss-2010-07.pdf

Worker-owned cooperatives help restore the American dream

A recent report by the New America Foundation calls attention to worker-owned cooperatives and employee ownership of corporations as a means of expanding economic prosperity.

Heath McCulloch writes:

Economic downturns typically galvanize interest in alternative economic models, and this one is no exception. Employee ownership is one such alternative that has, in recent months, captured the attention of the mainstream media including CNN Money, The New York Times, Time Magazine, Christian Science Monitor, The Economist, and Business Week. Employee ownership leaders and asset-building practitioners share a common goal of broadening access to ownership opportunities, but these strategies are still off the radar screen of the asset-building movement. It’s time to give them the attention they deserve.

Asset-building advocates have long included investment strategies – home and business ownership, in particular – as critical steps along a path to financial security for low-income working families, but we have typically focused on individual ownership strategies. Notable exceptions include recent Ford Foundation investment in the exploration of shared equity homeownership as a way to enable low-income families to build home equity while preserving public subsidies and keeping housing affordable over time and the Annie E. Casey Foundation has supported a national work group focused on the asset-building value of shared business ownership.

Today, there are new windows of opportunity to bring funders, investors, advocates and practitioners of shared business ownership strategies into the broader asset-building movement. Two common employee ownership strategies are a logical place to start—
Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs) and worker-owned cooperatives. These strategies have long supported U.S. workers – across the wage spectrum – to build financial assets through ownership of an equity stake in the businesses where they work. ESOPs are one type of employee benefit plan that buys and holds company stock on behalf of workers. Worker-owned cooperatives are companies that are owned and democratically managed by their employees.

The National Center for Employee Ownership reports that more than 10,500 ESOP plans cover almost 13 million workers and over $900 billion in U.S. company assets. ESOPs hold great potential as asset-building vehicles for U.S. workers, at all wage levels: the average ESOP participant has $47,000 of savings in the ESOP alone (the majority of ESOP companies offer additional, direct contribution retirement plans, typically 401(k)s).

Worker cooperatives represent a small segment of the U.S. economy: According to a recent federally-funded study, 223 worker coops in the U.S. employ 2,380 full-time worker-owners. But they are particularly relevant to asset-building advocates because they are increasingly being established in low-income communities, targeting low-skilled and/or immigrant workers. For example, the Cleveland Foundation, City of Cleveland, business and university leaders have established the Evergreen Cooperative Development Fund to create a network of coops targeting low-income community residents. In the San Francisco Bay Area, two nonprofits – WAGES and Teamworks – are supporting networks of worker-owned cleaning cooperatives owned by immigrant workers.

http://assets.newamerica.net/blogposts/2010/shared_business_ownership_an_asset_building_strategy-32264

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont introduced legislation last year to expand employee ownership and worker-owned cooperatives. The text of the bill introduced by Senator Sanders reads as follows:

United States Employee Ownership Bank Act - Directs the Secretary of the Treasury to establish the United States Employee Ownership Bank to foster increased employee ownership and greater employee participation in company decision making throughout the United States. Authorizes the Bank to make loans, on a direct or guaranteed basis, and which may be subordinated to the interests of all other creditors, to employees to purchase a company through an employee stock ownership plan or eligible worker-owned cooperative which is at least 51% employee owned, or will become so as a result of Bank assistance. Authorizes the bank also to allow:

(1) a company that is less than 51% employee owned to become at least 51% employee owned; and

(2) allow a company that is already at least 51% employee owned to increase the level of employee ownership, expand operations, and increase or preserve employment.Amends the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act to require the employer, if it orders a plant or facility closing in connection with the termination of its operations there, to offer its employees an opportunity to purchase such plant or facility through an employee stock ownership plan or an eligible worker-owned cooperative that is at least 51% employee owned. Exempts from such requirement an employer that orders a plant closing:

(1) but will retain the plant assets to continue or begin a business within the United States; or

(2) intends to continue the business conducted at such plant at another plant within the United States. Amends the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 to authorize the appropriate federal financial supervisory agency, in assessing and taking into account the record of a financial institution during an examination, to consider capital investments, loans, loan participation, technical assistance, financial advice, grants, and other ventures undertaken by the institution to support or enable employees to establish employee stock ownership plans or eligible worker-owned cooperatives that are at least 51% employee-owned.

http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-s2914/show

A very interesting history of the role of labor unions in creating worker cooperatives is provided by the Worker-Ownership Institute:

The concept of employee ownership in North America dates back to the settlement of the continent by men and women breaking the land to establish their farms and building their own stores and workshops. Unlike Europe, where peasants were bound to the land and ownership of productive property was concentrated in the hands of the few, in North America a society of relative equals who owned their own productive assets was built: farms, tools, workshops, stores, etc.

The independent farmers, shopkeepers and artisans who populated revolutionary North America yielded in the latter part of the 19th century to the rapid growth of the large corporations and increasing concentration of ownership. The farmers set about establishing cooperatives to buy their supplies…seed, fertilizer, etc….and to process and market their products jointly. The co-ops were owned by the farmers who bought from them and supplied them. Today family farming in the United States and Canada is sustained by an elaborate network of purchasing, processing and marketing cooperatives that provide the economics of large scale production within family ownership of land. Even electricity in large parts of rural America is provided by co-ops.

Consumer co-ops took hold in town and country. Credit unions, mutual savings banks and mutual insurance companies are owned by their depositors or policy holders, not by large companies, and provide lower rates and patronage dividends to their owners.

The early unions, such as the Knights of Labor in the 1870s and 1880s, and the craft unions in the 1880s and 1890s, sought to do the same by sponsoring worker cooperatives in which workers pooled their tools and resources to compete with the growing corporations.

For the better part of a century, the growth of worker co-ops was stymied by a structural problem. Those co-ops that failed in the market disappeared for the obvious reasons. But those that succeeded disappeared also. The problem lay in the design of ownership: each member owned one equal share. If the co-op did well, all shares appreciated in value. When founding members wanted to retire, new workers could not afford to buy the retiring members’ shares. So success was as fatal as failure because retiring members sold to outside buyers, and the cooperatives were converted into conventional corporations.

Despite this difficulty, the concept of co-ops was revived regularly in crises as a means to put the unemployed back to work. The Depression generated hundreds of co-ops; the oldest surviving worker-owned businesses of any size in the United States, the plywood co-ops in the Pacific Northwest, were purchased by their employees to avert shutdowns beginning in the 1930s.

But cooperatives gradually disappeared from labor’s agenda as industrialization advanced. While setting up co-ops was realistic in the traditional crafts, it was hard to see how it could work in mass production. How do you start up a cooperative steel mill or auto plant? After the turn of the century, radicals in the labor movement, like the Industrial Workers of the World before the First World War, or the CIO unions in the 1930s, focused on fighting the bosses instead of replacing them. The real economic gains from collective bargaining so far outweighed the hypothetical benefits from production cooperatives that, by the 1950s, the concept had virtually disappeared as a subject of union interest.

http://web.archive.org/web/20060112230115/www.workerownership.org/history.html

Unions have once again embraced the concept of worker co-ops. In October 2009, The United Steel Workers Union, North America's largest industrial trade union, announced a new collaboration with the world's largest worker-owned cooperative, Mondragon International, based in the Basque region of Spain.

Worker co-ops and employee owned companies contribute to restoring opportunity and security for the American middle class. For one thing, employee owned enterprises in the USA are going to be far less likely to outsource, lay off workers and move to China.

Schauer pushes for fair trade with China at House hearing

Congressman Mark Schauer (D-MI) was invited yesterday to testify before the House Ways and Means Committee about current trade policies with China. During his testimony, Schauer pushed for action on his bipartisan legislation (HR 5312) to stop wasting U.S. taxpayer dollars on goods that are made in China, while it continues to block American goods from its own government contracts.

“When will we play tough? When will we get it?” asked Schauer. “At the very least, we need to show China that we are willing to be strong until they open their procurement markets to us. American workers can build anything if they’re given half a chance to do it. We can’t afford to continue to let China eat the lunches of American workers.”

Currently, goods that are produced in China are being used for government contracts in the United States across multiple industries – such as manufacturing, construction and renewable energy – instead of goods produced by American workers and businesses. Since China has blocked American goods from its own government contracts, Schauer’s bill would level the playing field and make sure taxpayer-funded projects create jobs for U.S. workers.

According to a recent report from the Economic Policy Institute, 2.4 million American jobs have been lost or displaced as a result of the growing trade deficit with China since it joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001. During that time, the State of Michigan lost 67,800 jobs, including 4,700 in the 7th district alone, due to unfair trade with China.

A copy of Schauer’s testimony is available below:

Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Camp, members of the Committee - it’s a pleasure to come here to discuss our trade issues with China. I appreciate the invitation and look forward to working with the Committee on these issues.

I’m pleased that the committee is examining the indigenous innovation issue, because it is perhaps the best example we have of China overtly favoring its captive industries. Because China is not an open society, there is little we can do except count the missing jobs, unless we are willing to take a strong stand against favoritism as evidenced in China’s indigenous innovation initiative. My legislation is one tool that can be used to discourage China from continuing to go down this path.

Although the committee is examining a number of issues today, I’d like to focus on the patent unfairness of China’s government procurement policy, as contrasted with the U.S.’s open procurement policy.

Although I represent a manufacturing state that has longstanding concerns with China, my most recent involvement in this issue started rather innocently. This year, I was provided a bag of Census promotional materials. As is my custom, I inspect the labels of the product to determine the country of origin.

The first article was this hat. Now, we all get hats from every group in our district, and I proudly display a number of hats in my Congressional office.

Of all the hats I’ve ever received, I’ve never seen one of as poor quality as this. I can’t imagine anyone wearing this hat. I was shocked to see that this hat was made in China. I wasn’t shocked because the quality was poor; I was shocked because I couldn’t believe that our Census was procuring promotional goods from China.

In the same package of goods, there was a Census 2010 keychain – you guessed, “Made in China.”

I was outraged that our taxpayer dollars were going to our competitors, and I really hit the ceiling when I realized that China shut out US firms from its $580 billion stimulus plan. Something is fundamentally wrong here when a trading relationship is a one-way street that drives jobs out of the US.

When I began talking about my concerns with this procurement publicly, I received an email from the Census. To the extent I understand it – and I’m not certain that I do - the Census seems to believe that these articles were “substantially transformed” by an American company adding the words “Census 2010” to these Chinese goods. The email also contained an explanation stating that “it is extremely difficult to find vendors that sell entirely U.S. made products.”

That answer is unacceptable – if U.S. vendors exist AT ALL, there needs to be a damn good reason why they didn’t get this work.

The Census’s reasoning here is circular: they can’t find a U.S. firm to make the hats, because they don’t give contracts to U.S. firms to make the hats. Well, as I am inclined to do, I looked into this: in my own office I found this, and this, and this (showing U.S.-made hats). All of these are U.S.-made hats of recent vintage.

I also spent about 3 minutes on the internet and came up with a number of options to have these goods made in the U.S. There is no question but that there is sufficient U.S. manufacturing capacity to make these goods, so what went wrong and how did this money find its way to China? We’re still looking into this issue, but it’s clear that something went wrong, especially when the American Chamber of Commerce in China is reporting that U.S. companies – even U.S. companies that have operations in China – are being shut out of that market.

China is playing us for fools regarding the Government Procurement Agreement – the GPA. Upon joining WTO in 2001, China said it would sign the GPA as soon as possible. [noted in USCBC July 2009 “PRC Government Procurement Policy, page 4]. Nine years later, that still hasn’t happened. The U.S.-China Business Council notes in its 2010 White Paper that there has been zero progress on China submitting a commercially-meaningful accession offer to the GPA. It would be interesting to know how many billions of taxpayer dollars have gone to China during this 9-year waiting period.

When they do submit an offer, you can bet that it will be full of exceptions that will end up costing American jobs.

So, when will we play tough? When will we get it? At the very least – the very least - we need to show China that we are willing to be strong until they open their procurement markets to us.

I’ve offered one way of addressing this issue, and that is to cap the amount of US government procurement of Chinese goods to the amount of American goods purchased by the Chinese government.

My bill, H.R. 5312, includes a provision that requires the Secretary of Commerce to perform both a legal and factual analysis of whether China has opened its procurement practice to U.S. goods. Since China isn’t a transparent society, we need more than China’s signature to be assured that they, in fact, are buying U.S. goods.

Under H.R. 5312, the International Trade Administration would report the total value of American goods procured by the Chinese government. The Secretary of Commerce would then certify the amount of that year’s cap for US procurement of Chinese goods – in short, a dollar out, a dollar in. We need this type of basic fairness to bring jobs back to America.

The Economic Policy Institute estimates that we’ve lost 2.4 million American jobs since China joined the WTO in 2001, and that doesn’t include 2009, which was probably a very good year for the Chinese. Will this program be easy to administer? Perhaps it presents challenges, but there are 2.4 million American families that want us to face those challenges.

To a casual observer, it might look as if there are sufficient laws on the books to favor U.S. goods, but it is apparent that the current laws have not been sufficient to stem the flow of jobs heading out. I suspect that the exceptions and waivers have swallowed the rule, and it’s time to reexamine this relationship. At the very least, if we take some positive action, China may understand that it needs to put forth a meaningful accession offer to the GPA, and they’ll stop this “indigenous innovation” program.

There’s a right way to do this. Secretary LaHood travelled to China to tell them that rolling stock for our new railroad investments needs to be made in the U.S., and that waivers won’t be granted. That’s the right message.

American workers can build anything if they’re given half a chance to do it. Earlier I showed you the worst ballcap I’ve ever seen – here is the best one … made right here in the U.S.A. in Newark, New Jersey. Anyone involved in this industry knows that there is sufficient U.S. capacity to make these hats and keep these jobs in the United States.

We can’t afford to continue to let China eat the lunches of American workers through currency manipulation, “indigenous innovation,” and other means.

Kathy Dahlkemper on the benefits of health care reform

New Health Care Rule Delivers on Promise to Keep Existing Plans
by Congresswoman Kathy Dahlkemper (D-PA)
Monday, 14 June 2010


WASHINGTON—Western Pennsylvanians who like and want to keep their health care plans can be reassured that the Affordable Care Act will protect their existing coverage and provide them new consumer protections that will make their health insurance better. The U.S. Departments of Health and Human Services, Labor and Treasury today issued a new regulation under the Affordable Care Act on “grandfathered” (or existing) health plans that will protect the rights of those who want to keep their insurance.

“During the health care debate, I told concerned citizens that if they liked their health insurance, they could keep it under the new reform. Today, we are delivering on that promise,” Rep. Dahlkemper said. “The new regulation protects your ability to keep your insurance and provides new benefits and consumer protections to make your coverage even better. Consumers want more choice and more control when it comes to their health insurance, and we’re giving that to them through the new health care reform.”

The rule announced today ensures that consumers can keep their current plan if they like it. It also gives these consumers new benefits, including:

No lifetime limits on coverage for all plans,
Ending the insurance company practice of rescinding coverage when people get sick and have previously made an unintentional mistake on their application; and
Rep. Dahlkemper’s Young Adult Healthcare provision which offers parents the option to keep their adult children up to age 26 on their insurance plan.
“Grandfathered” plans include those that existed on March 23, 2010. Plans will lose their “grandfather” status if they choose to significantly cut benefits or increase out-of-pocket spending for consumers. Those in plans that make such changes will gain new consumer protections under the Affordable Care Act.

Most of the 133 million Americans with employer-sponsored health insurance through large employers will maintain the coverage they have today. Large employer-based plans already offer most of the comprehensive benefits and consumer protections that the Affordable Care Act will provide to all Americans this year and in the future, such as preventing lifetime limits on coverage.

People who work in smaller firms and those who purchase their own insurance—both of whom change insurers more often than those covered through large employers—will enjoy all of the benefits of the Affordable Care Act when they choose a new plan. These Americans also will benefit from the new competitive Exchanges that will be established in 2014 to offer individuals and workers in small businesses with greater choice of plans at more affordable rates—the same choice of plans as members of Congress.

For the vast majority of Americans who get their health insurance through employers, additional benefits will be offered, irrespective of whether their plan is grandfathered, including:

No coverage exclusions for children with pre-existing conditions; and
No “restricted” annual limits (e.g., annual dollar-amount limits on coverage below standards to be set in future regulations).

For a comprehensive fact sheet, check out the link below.
http://dahlkemper.house.gov/images/stories/2010-6-14_Grandfather_fact_sheet.pdf

New book by economist explains why "Free Trade Doesn't Work"

In his latest book, "Free Trade Doesn't Work: What Should Replace it and Why" Ian Fletcher, renowned California Economist and Adjunct Fellow at the U. S. Business & Industry Council, takes a hard look at the problems of free trade and its disastrous affect on the U.S. economy.

Unlike many books written in political jargon and confusing cross-semantics that only economists and bankers can understand, this book is focused on bringing important information and details to the average citizen. You will learn the real facts about why politicians keep denying there is a problem when America is sinking in an ever-growing ocean of debt. How the U.S. will not be able to regain its power on the world market until it moves from the industrial infrastructure that it currently is caught in, and more.

This great book explains in detail why free trade beliefs are unrealistic and the steps that must be taken by the nation to become powerful and strong in this changing work dynamic. After a short review of the history of free trade, the book will discuss politics and semantics that have left most average people lost in a fog of indecipherable, encrypted codes.

Economist Ian Fletcher provides the proactive steps that the American people are in a position to take in detail and how you can affect the political climate and understand the effects of economic globalization. Different trade regulations, pacts, and policies are discussed and after reading, you will have a clear understanding of how your life is affected by NAFTA, the Trans-Pacific Partnership and more.

To get access to this most forthright book, you will want to buy a copy of "Free Trade Doesn't Work: What Should Replace it and Why" today! Find information and details at the California Economist, Ian Fletcher, Releases New Book on Problems of Free Trade check out http://www.freetradedoesntwork.com now!

Will Obama begin to fight offshoring of U.S. jobs ?

Roger Bybee argues that standing up to Benedict Arnold CEO's is a winning strategy for President Obama and the American middle class. The full essay which appeared in the March 26 edition of In These Times is worth a read.

Bybee writes:

Public support for moving against the relocation of jobs to low-wage states is broad, now including Republicans, the college-educated, and, I would venture, more than a few Tea Party types. Here are summaries of some of the most important studies:

77 percent of Americans oppose the outsourcing of jobs to foreign nations, according to Pew Research. "The U.S. public is nearly unanimous in its support of requiring that both labor (93 percent) and environmental standards (91 percent) be included in trade agreements," according to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. In ranking the importance of possible foreign policy goals, 76 percent of Americans gave the top rating to "protecting the jobs" of the country's workers, according to the same poll.

"A large majority—68 percent—of those surveyed in a new Fortune poll says America's trading partners are benefiting the most from free trade, not the U.S." The explanation for the current economic slowdown most frequently cited by respondents: "U.S. companies sending jobs overseas where labor is cheaper," says Fortune magazine.

An AP-Yahoo News poll conducted mostly in April 2008 "found that most Americans have a negative view of trade agreements." Of those polled, 64 percent said that increasing trade between the United States and other countries has hurt the economy, while just 22 percent said it has helped.

"By greater than six-to-one (61 percent to 9 percent), the public says free-trade agreements result in job losses rather than in new jobs," according to a Pew study. "A solid majority (56 percent) says that free trade makes wages lower in the United States.... A majority of independents, or 52 percent, had a negative view of free trade, compared to 50 percent of Democrats and 43 percent of Republicans."

A University of Maryland/Knowledge Networks poll found that 53 percent of the American public is critical of U.S. government trade policy and wants greater efforts to improve the lives of workers at home and abroad, and to protect the environment.

"In 1997, 58 percent of college graduates said globalization had been good for the U.S. while 30 percent said it had been bad, according to a poll conducted for the Wall Street Journal and NBC News," Greg Ip reported in the Journal. "When the poll asked a similar question this past March, opinion had flipped: 47 percent of graduates thought globalization was bad and just 33 percent thought it was good."
GO AFTER 'BENEDICT ARNOLD' CEOs

This opposition is not new, it has just reached a critical mass where the major media can no longer totally ignore it or merely mock it as "protectionist." For example, NAFTA was opposed by 64 percent of Americans, but was promoted by the full weight of the Clinton administration, corporate America, Mexico, and virtually all of mainstream media including all but two or three of daily papers then in existence.

Similarly, the Permanent Normalization of Trade with China in 2000 generated the opposition of 79 percent of the public, according to a Harris poll (4/00). But again, an all-out lobbying campaign by the Clinton-Corporate America team prevailed—including $26.5 million for a single fundraising event.

Clinton was able to get away with those kinds of shameless anti-worker ploys because the economy was producing some wage increases and generating jobs during his term. But Obama walked in after eight years of George Bush and zero job growth and with wages falling, and some 7.8 additional job losses following the Wall Street meltdown.

American workers are in no mood to see their communities decay before their eyes while their tax dollars help send Whirlpool to Mexico, or Chrysler, which after receiving government "bailout" dollars also moved some of its U.S. operations to Mexico.

If Obama wants to get serious about jobs and recouping the sharp drop in enthusiasm among working people, he needs to challenge what John Kerry once called "Benedict Arnold CEOs."

http://www.inthesetimes.org/working/entry/5751/will_bolder_obama_be_willing_to_lash_out_on_job_relocations

Senator Webb Introduces the Clean Energy Act of 2009

“The Clean Energy Act of 2009” introduced by Senator Jim Webb D-VA appropriates $20 billion over the next 10 to 20 years to fund a series of loan guarantees; nuclear education and workforce training assistance; research into nuclear reactor lifetime-extension; and the development of solar power, biofuels, and alternative power technologies. The bill follows the urging of Secretary of Energy Steven Chu to increase funds available for the development of nuclear power facilities and technology.

“This legislation is measurable, achievable, and targeted. By making a concerted investment in nuclear power and other renewable energy technologies, we can effectively address our nation’s energy requirements and also the need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions,” said Senator Webb. “This legislation is a practical approach to move the United States toward providing clean, carbon-free sources of energy, to help invigorate the economy, and to strengthen our workforce with educational opportunities and high-paying jobs on U.S. soil.”

The legislation directs the Department of Energy to conduct five “Mini-Manhattan Projects” to study carbon capture technologies, non-ethanol biofuels, electric vehicles and electricity storage, cost-competitive solar power, and Generation IV reactors and technologies that will ultimately reduce nuclear waste

This initiative is also designed to keep the United States competitive in a global marketplace that has accelerated the development of nuclear power. While the U.S. has been at a stand-still in developing nuclear power in the last 30 years, others are forging ahead. France – with the lowest electric rates in Europe - now gets 80% of its electricity from nuclear power, while Japan’s nuclear fleet accounts for 35% of its electricity. And this week the United Kingdom announced plans to expand its reactor fleet.

“The Clean Energy Act of 2009” provides a framework that will facilitate the revival of nuclear power and the expansion of renewable energies in the United States, including:

A $10 billion appropriation that can leverage up to $100 billion in government backed loans for the development of clean, carbon-free energy to bring in investors and project developers to jump start efforts that are otherwise too capital-intensive up front.

$100 million per year for 10 years toward nuclear education and training. The nuclear revival cannot take place without a workforce and for that reason the bill provides much-needed support to educate and train craftsmen, engineers, operators and other workers.

$200 million per year for 5 years for a cost-sharing mechanism between government and industry to enable the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to review new nuclear reactor designs such as small and medium reactors and help bring those technologies from concept into the market place.
$50 million per year for 10 years for much needed research to extend the lifetime of our current nuclear fleet and maximize the production of low-cost nuclear power.

$750 million per year for 10 years for research and development of low-cost solar technology, battery technology, advanced bio-fuels, low-carbon coal, and technologies that will reduce nuclear waste. Each of these will be funded at $150 million, annually.

U.S. is the only advanced economy without paid vacation law

WASHINGTON,DC: The United States is the only advanced economy that does not guarantee its workers any paid vacation time, according to a report by the Center for Economic and Policy Research. As a result, 1 in 4 private-sector workers in the U.S. do not receive any paid vacation or paid holidays.

The report, No-Vacation Nation, by Rebecca Ray and John Schmitt, finds that European workers are legally guaranteed at least 20 paid vacation days per year, with 25 and even 30 or more days common in some countries. The gap between paid time off in the United States and the rest of the world is even larger when legal holidays are included. The United States does not guarantee any paid holidays, but most rich countries provide between 5 and 13 per year, in addition to paid vacation days.

“The United States is the only advanced economy in the world that does not guarantee its workers paid vacation days and paid holidays,” said John Schmitt, senior economist and co-author of the report. “Relying on businesses to voluntarily provide paid leave just hasn’t worked. It’s a national embarrassment that 28 million Americans don’t get any paid vacation or paid holidays.”

The sum of the average paid vacation and paid holidays provided to U.S. workers in the private sector ― 15 in total ― would not meet even the minimum required by law in 19 other rich countries.

A review of international standards shows that the United States lags far behind the rest of the world's rich countries. The lack of paid vacation and paid holidays in the U.S. is particularly acute for lower-wage and part-time workers, and for employees of small businesses. The report finds:

Employees of small businesses in the U.S. are less likely to have any paid vacation (70 percent) than those in medium and large establishments (86 percent).

Lower-wage workers in the U.S. (those making less than $15 per hour) are even worse off. Only 69 percent have paid vacation, compared to 88 percent of higher-wage workers.

Part-time workers in the U.S., who are much more likely to be women, are far less likely to have paid vacations (36 percent) than are full-time workers (90 percent).
The authors also found that several foreign countries offer additional time off for younger and older workers, shift workers, and those engaged in community service such as jury duty or voting.

The report reviewed the most recently available data from a range of national and international sources on statutory requirements for paid vacations and paid holidays in 21 rich countries (16 European countries, Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, and the United States).

http://www.cepr.net

Fiscal Year 2010 budget will restore funding for worker protection programs

SECRETARY OF LABOR HILDA SOLIS

From the AFL-CIO's NOW blog:

Labor Secretary Hilda Solis told two congressional committees this week that the Department of Labor’s fiscal year (FY) 2010 budget will restore capacity in our worker protection programs, which have languished for years.

Appearing in separate hearings before the Senate and House Appropriations committees’ Labor, Health and Human Services and Education subcommittees, Solis said the department’s budget—including a 10 percent increase for worker protection programs—will fund three priorities:

Renewed capacity of programs that protect workers’ safety and health, pay and benefits; new and innovative ways to promote economic recovery and the competitiveness of our nation’s workers; and carrying out programs in a way that is accountable and transparent to the public and our stakeholders.

Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said the budget will allow significant improvements in labor protections and workplace safety and health.

At the House hearing, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) said during the past eight years, the department relied far too heavily on voluntary employer compliance programs for workplace safety and other worker protections.

Your budget makes it clear that your department is in competent hands.

Solis said the proposed funding for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) will restore OSHA’s capacity to enforce statutory protections, provide technical support, promulgate safety and health standards, and strengthen safety and health statistics.

The increased funding for worker protection programs, Solis said, will allow the department to hire an additional

130 safety and health inspectors (a 10 percent increase from FY 2009);
25 whistle-blower investigators (a 33 percent increase);
13 full-time employees to strengthen OSHA’s capacity to quickly respond to the sudden emergence of safety and health hazards, such as a pandemic influenza;
20 full-time employees to restore OSHA’s rule-making capabilities, allowing the agency to simultaneously address multiple complex longstanding and emerging regulatory issues.

Solis told the committees the budget request for the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA)—including funds to hire 15 new inspectors for metal and nonmetal mines—will allow MSHA to ensure a 100 percent completion rate for all mandatory safety and health inspections; support MSHA’s enhanced enforcement initiatives, which target patterns of violation, flagrant violators, and scofflaws.

In March, a report from the Government Accountability office (GAO) found the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division under the Bush administration had a pattern of failing to investigate worker complaints of employer wage theft. The report followed up two earlier GAO investigations outlining the Wage and Hour Division’s failure to investigate worker complaints of employer wage violations.

Solis told the panels that the Wage and Hour Division’s budget includes a $35 million increase over the last Bush budget and allows the hiring of 288 more inspectors to help revive its customer service focus by supporting improved complaint intake and more in-depth complaint investigation processes. In FY 2010, the Wage and Hour Division will hire additional investigators to strengthen enforcement resources on behalf of vulnerable workers; verify future compliance of prior violators; and conduct high quality, responsive complaint investigations strategically, to increase protections for the greatest number of workers.

Rep. Shuler joins with Progressives for Immigration Reform to promote SAVE Act

CONGRESSMAN HEATH SHULER D-NC WORKING FOR REAL IMMIGRATION REFORM

The Washington Examiner reports:

Rep. Heath Shuler will soon reintroduce the SAVE Act (Secure America through Verification and Enforcement) within the next few weeks. The legislation is built around a three part plan to reduce illegal immigration. This includes: a strict emphasis on border security, the verification of an employee’s legal status, and increased enforcement of existing laws.

Shuler outlined his plan and discussed its prospects at a forum held near Capitol Hill Tuesday evening at the office of Progressive for Immigration Reform.
Shuler emphasized the importance of “interior enforcement” in his talk and said the E-Verify program could serve as a foundation for future efforts aimed at reducing the flow of illegal immigration. The electronic system would provide local officials with the ability to cross check federal databases and would essentially work like a Google search, he explained.

“This is not about discrimination because E-verify is activated after someone has been hired,” Shuler said. “This helps to ensure that local officials can identify who they arrest. Interior enforcement is crucial.”

Shuler also said there were not enough immigration judges available to hear cases and this complicates the interior enforcement of federal law. But he sees enough common ground among members in both parties to rally around key provisions in the SAVE Act that would help change the current dynamic.

Up until now the cause of tighter border security and interior enforcement has been identified with conservative Republicans but Leah Durant, executive director of Progressives for Immigration Reform, believes there is an opportunity to broaden this base of support.

“We started this organization because we wanted to bring in more liberals on the side of tighter enforcement,” Durant said. “There is a lot of concern about the impact mass immigration will have on the environment. In fact, there is a natural marriage here between immigration reform and environmental preservation. So we can have people across the political spectrum.”

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/Examiner-Opinion-Zone/Rep-Shuler-Joins-with-Progressives-for-Immigration-Reform-to-Push-SAVE-Act-44135177.html

ADA says real unemployment at 15.8%

Washington, DC - The real unemployment rate released on Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics is 15.8%, nearly 7 points higher than the rate officially reported according to Americans for Democratic Action (ADA).

The real rate includes marginally attached workers which the BLS reports “are neither working nor looking for work but indicate that they want and are available for a job and have looked for work sometime in the recent past. Discouraged workers, a subset of the marginally attached, have given a job-market related reason for not looking currently for a job. Persons employed part time for economic reasons are those who want and are available for full-time work but have had to settle for a part-time schedule.”

Since April 2008, 6 million people have lost their job. ADA’s Real Rate of Unemployment represents a staggering 23 million people who are unemployed or underemployed.

The increase of another 563,000 jobless claims for April 2009 was the smallest rise in 6 months, providing some evidence that government stimulus is working but underscoring the urgent need to put more government dollars to work motivating the private sector to begin hiring laid-off workers.

ADA National Director, Amy Isaacs, said: “While the Republican Party of No is looking backwards, rather than coming up with new ideas to help America’s working families, President Obama and Democrats in Congress are moving forward with a bold agenda. There is still much to do as record lay-offs continue and economic challenges abound, but we share the optimism of leading economists who believe the worst is behind us.”

http://www.adaction.org

Facing South: Are the Blue Dogs getting a bad rap ?

In a post at the Institute for Southern Studies blog Facing South, Chris Kromm asks if Blue Dog Democrats are facing unfair criticism from the netroots. As Kromm notes, most of the Democrats who vote more conservative than their districts (especially on economic issues) are not members of the Blue Dog Coalition.

Kromm writes:

The Blue Dog Democratic Coalition is one of the favorite punching bags of the progressive blogosphere. From DailyKos to OpenLeft, the Blue Dogs -- a group of 51 "moderate and conservative" House Democrats -- are routinely held up as a symbol of all that's wrong with the Democratic Party.

A piece yesterday in Firedoglake is typical of the anti-Blue Dog genre, in which they are savaged for being hypocritcal about government spending, opposed to hate crime laws and being the descendants of racist Dixiecrats (although the majority of Blue Dogs aren't in the South). http://firedoglake.com/2009/05/07/the-other-white-meat-blue-dogs-hate-pork-unless-its-theirs/

Defenders of the Blue Dogs respond by saying that these Democrats come from "hard districts," and they can't take progressive stands because they'll get voted out of office by their conservative constituents.

Put aside for the moment the unpleasant implication that Blue Dog votes are devoid of moral conviction and based purely on political calculation. Even on its own terms, is the idea that Blue Dogs come from uniquely conservative "hard districts" even true?

An analysis by the Swing State Project this week might give the Blue Dogs some backup.

In a widely-circulated post, blogger Crisitunity ranked members of the 110th Congress by their votes compared to their districts' Partisan Voting Index, a measure first developed by political analyst Charlie Cook in 1997. The idea is to find out if a Representative's voting record in 2008 was more or less "Democratic" than his district. http://www.swingstateproject.com/diary/4578/pvivote-index-for-2008

"Under-performing" Democrats are those that consistently vote more conservative than they could likely get away with given their district's Democratic leanings. "Over-performing" Democrats are those that somehow manage to vote more Democratic-friendly than their constituency.

So how do the Blue Dogs stack up? According to the Swing State Project's analysis:

* Only three of the top 20 "under-performing" Democrats in 2008 were in the Blue Dog Coalition: Reps. Scott (GA-13), Harman (CA-36) and Cooper (TN-5).

* By contrast, six of the Blue Dogs were among the 20 most "over-performing" Democrats: Reps. Taylor (MS-4), Matheson (UT-2), Pomeroy (ND-AL), Lampson (TX-22), Herseth (SD-AL) and Chandler (KY-6).

An analysis of Cook's own PVI rankings for Congressional districts shuffles some of the names but arrives at the same conclusion: there are more Blue Dogs topping the list of Democratic "over-performers" than "under-performers." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cook_Partisan_Voting_Index

What does it all mean?

One take is that, in key cases, the Blue Dogs are right about the makeup of their districts and the amount of political room they have to maneuver.

Furthermore, Blue Dogs are hardly unique -- in fact, most of the top Democrats who are voting more conservative than their constituents aren't Blue Dogs.

But then there are those representatives who cement the case that Blue Dogs can be out of touch with their districts. Exhibit A is Rep. David Scott whose conservative, business-friendly votes are a mismatch for his diverse and strongly Democratic district in the Atlanta suburbs. Rep. Jane Harman is clearly another.

An important note: The PVI is a limited tool. It measures the political lean of a district by presidential votes -- useful shorthand, but one that ignores complicated questions like the way a presidential election played out in a particular district.

And it clearly doesn't capture the breadth of political views among constituents -- for example, what about Southern populists who may vacillate on social issues but be progressive on economic ones?

The Blue Dogs also have to answer another question: Many Democrats, either due to conviction or opportunism, vote more conservative than their districts. But why have Blue Dogs taken the extra step of organizing/joining a political bloc that often defines itself by its opposition to the broader Democratic agenda -- as with the stimulus bill and Obama's budget?

In other words, the question for Democrats isn't necessarily whether the Blue Dogs are too conservative, but why they've organized in a way that frequently undermines the Democratic brand.

http://www.southernstudies.org/2009/05/do-blue-dog-democrats-get-a-bad-rap.html

Dissent: We Need a Permanent Solution for Our Banks

Writing in Dissent Magazine [www.dissentmagazine.org], Greg Smithsimon makes a strong argument for bank nationalization. As Smithsimon points out in the article, publicly owned does not have to mean government owned.

Smithsimon writes:

The Obama administration has gone to great lengths to insist that if nationalization of banks is necessary, it will only be temporary—as if the general public thinks the U.S. government was planning to permanently nationalize banks.

Yet that’s exactly what should be done. Time and time again, our experiences in the United States and in the global economy have taught us that banks are like weapons of mass destruction: they can cause so much damage to our society that they have to be guarded by stable states rather than rogue private interests who will exploit them for their own dangerous ends. On a regular basis privately held banks decimate our economy and those of an inexhaustible list of other countries. The inevitability of privately owned banks wriggling free of regulation and engaging in dangerous speculative activity for private gain is by now clear. The cost is unacceptably high.

The Realities and Benefits of Nationalized Banks
Nationalizing the banks can bring us two different sets of improvements to our current situation: As retail banks, they will provide consumers with healthy, stable replacements for the bankrupt zombie banks now paralyzing the economy. As democratized versions of the Federal Reserve Bank, they can oversee financial reform and fiscal policy that serve the needs of real Americans.

If we nationalize retail banks, they can provide checking and savings accounts, make loans for homes and small businesses, and do so without the speculative madness that private banks recently exhibited. Thus state banks would restore liquidity to the credit markets, confidence in the banking system, and sanity to lending practices.

What would this look like? Dozens of countries already have such state-owned banks. The state-owned CGD is Portugal’s largest bank. Most such countries have “post banks,” including Greece, New Zealand, and Ireland. Typically, they are state-owned banks in which customers make deposits and withdrawals at the counter of their local post office. Israel just created a separate postal bank company in 2006. Great Britain’s National Savings and Investments is state owned, and just last month a British survey showed 75 percent of the public supports creation of a new, publicly owned post bank as an alternative to private banks.

This would not be a new idea in the United States, which had a post bank until 1967. (The attraction of the bank originally was that only its deposits were insured by the full faith and credit of the United States. The FDIC eventually extended that benefit to private banks as well, but the recent banking debacles raise the question of whether such public guarantees should be made without the kind of oversight offered by public control.) Thus one promising model is for the United States to convert failed private banks into a system of publicly owned banks that could use depositor savings to make responsible home and business loans.

Beyond creating stable retail banks, public banks are also useful for macro-level policy purposes: state-run central banks set interest rates and implement de facto regulatory safeguards, and the more that macro-level banks are in the hands of the public instead of bankers on loan from Citibank, the more they can operate in the public interest rather than in the interest of speculative investment banks.

The Federal Reserve is already a state-run, not-for-profit, macro-level bank. But while it’s a government agency, its board of directors are made up of bankers from the very institutions that have lately run amok (and then aground). The Fed sets interest rates and makes important policy decisions about the U.S. economy. But in a perverse reversal of democracy, many of its executives are actually picked and installed in their positions by the private banks themselves. The desire for a more democratic bank dates to the Fed’s creation. Populists like William Jennings Bryan wanted the bank under public control, but banks wanted it controlled by bankers. The bankers won. While most Fed directors are picked by the private banks, the board of governors at the top is appointed by the president. And past presidents have almost always selected yet more bankers for those fourteen-year governorships.

At the moment, the Fed has two vacancies that could be filled by people who actually live up to the Fed’s mandate that governors represent groups like consumers and labor unions. While the first step is to begin appointing Federal Reserve governors who don’t represent the banking industry, the next step would be to let the public choose the second-tier directors rather than the banks, either through elections, state appointments, or other more representative means. If done poorly, political control could mean the bank would do the bidding of whatever political party was in power. But just as the Fed has successfully assuaged private banks’s fears that a member from Citibank would only represent Citibank interests (rather than those of Citibank and the rest of its ilk), so insulation from political influence can be structured into a more responsive, democratic, and transparent Federal Reserve Bank. In this model, nationalizing a bank would mean giving the public a real voice in an institution it already owns.

Read the complete article at:
http://www.dissentmagazine.org/online.php?id=232

The Atomic Show: A view from the Left on nuclear energy

David Walters from Left Atomics and Daily Kos joins Rod Adams for a discussion about atomic energy from a far left point of view. Check out this link to a podcast of the Atomic Show.
http://atomic.thepodcastnetwork.com/2009/04/14/the-atomic-show-131-view-from-the-left-on-atomic-energy/

Rod Adams, host of the Atomic Show and pro-nuclear blogger www.atomicinsights.blogspot.com writes:

It is well known that much of the opposition to nuclear power in the US, Europe, and Australia comes from people who are normally considered to be on the political left. David Walters, a self confessed socialist and long time labor activist has a different point of view. He believes, like I do, that abundant, clean, reliable, atomic energy is a boon for the working class.

Power plants provide good, stable jobs, often at union wage scales. They enable a vibrant local economy and good public infrastructure based on the plant’s addition to the property tax base and the salaries of the workers that get spent in local establishments. They allow generational employment with opportunities for young people to keep living and working in the towns where they grow up if they want to.

Link to Dave Walter's Blogs and Left Manifesto on Nuclear Energy
http://left-atomics.blogspot.com/
http://left-atomics.blogspot.com/2007/06/left-manifesto-for-nuclear-energy.html
http://davidwalters.dailykos.com/

David Sirota: Populism is Popular

David Sirota writing for In These Times www.inthesetimes.com:

April 24, 2009
Newsflash: Populism Is Popular
by David Sirota

In 2006, journalist Christopher Hayes wrote a little-noticed article for In These Times magazine about a proposal in Oregon to crack down on predatory lending. http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2733/ The initiative had become so popular that conservative legislators supported it fearing that if it were put on the state’s ballot, the resulting gusher of grassroots support would not only ratify the measure, but depose the bank-allied Republican Party, too.

Hayes’ piece was titled “Economic Populism Proves Popular,” the headline a sarcastic middle finger flashed at a political and media Establishment that portrays policies “supporting the rights and power of the people”—i.e., the dictionary definition of “populism”—as somehow anathema to the people.

That depiction, of course, continues today. But now, populism isn’t just popular in America; it is becoming the dominant paradigm, and that has the Establishment frightened.

For years, the country watched its populist desire for health care, tax, trade and financial reform run into the reality of elite politicians handing out trillions of dollars worth of corporate welfare and bank bailouts as the economy collapsed. Not surprisingly, a new Rasmussen poll on attitudes toward government and corporations shows 75 percent of the country “can be classified on the populist or Mainstream side of the divide” while just 14 percent “side with the political class.”

As if to confirm the chasm, this “political class”—consultants, politicians, lobbyists and commentators—has been denigrating populism as too overwrought to be taken seriously. Listen to a typical pundit defending AIG’s bonuses or criticizing demands for a new trade policy, and you will inevitably hear the word “populist” accompanied by the word “rage” and/or “dangerous,” followed by tributes to the status quo.

This elite propaganda, says Georgetown University’s Michael Kazin, dismissively implies “that anger from ordinary people is emotional, coming from people who don’t understand how the economy works and are just lashing out at their social betters.”

The caricaturing cribs from Richard Nixon’s playbook. Whereas the 36th president got himself re-elected by steering the country’s anger at the Vietnam War into anger at countercultural war protestors, today’s political class portrays the public’s outrage as the nation’s biggest problem, rather than what the public is justifiably outraged at.

Today, though, Tricky Dick’s tactics aren’t working, and not just because 2009’s economy is far worse than 1972’s.

This is the era when “You” are Time magazine’s person of the year—an era whose information and interactivity revolution now has us looking to ourselves for direction, not officialdom’s gatekeepers. Additionally, America has lately been taught to expect results from democracy. TV viewers get to decide “American Idol” winners, Facebookers get to change their site’s bylaws and voters get to autonomously use Obama campaign resources to win elections—and we get to do all this from outside the press clubs and smoke-filled rooms.

This profound rewiring of instincts and expectations is why the vilification of “populist rage” has failed as a political barbiturate, why the country still seethes, and why both parties are suddenly listening to “the people” instead of the Establishment. This is why, for instance, Republicans are staging “Tea Party” protests against federal spending and why Democrats are pushing bills to expand health care, re-regulate Wall Street and cap executive pay — because they know the political class, however offended, can no longer stop a voter backlash.

Admittedly, contradiction is everywhere: Republican rallies bewail deficits the GOP manufactured, and Democrats lament deregulatory schemes they originally crafted. But no matter how hypocritical the response is, it is a response, and that represents change from decades of aloof government. It suggests a democratic renewal whereby populism—i.e., advocating what the public wants—isn’t merely one popular brand of politics, but is politics itself.

http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/4388/newsflash_populism_is_popular/

Progressive Mayor supports school vouchers

Bridgeport Mayor Bill Finch

Columnist Rick Green, writing for the Hartford Courant [www.courant.com], notes that a progressive Democratic Mayor is supporting an experiment with education choice. Support for vouchers is really a liberal position - if not a civil rights issue.

Before More Kids Fail, Try School Vouchers
Rick Green
Hartford Courant
April 21, 2009

Bridgeport Mayor Bill Finch isn't crazy about school vouchers.

But the inequality of our failed system of urban education is even less appealing.

Finch, a liberal Democrat and former state senator in his first term as mayor, stunned observers not long ago when he unexpectedly suggested that using public money to pay for children to go to private schools might help his financially strapped city out -- and provide some hope for poor, minority children.

"It's a shock when you become the mayor of a Connecticut city," said Finch, faced with laying off teachers, shutting programs and perhaps even closing schools this year.

"There is no there, there," he said, bluntly describing his city's inability to pay for vital services.

"We could send children to private school in our city for a fraction of what we spend on public schools," he said. "We need to reduce the number of children in the public school system."

Private schools -- and we're talking Catholic schools -- can do the job "just as well," said Finch. His endorsement of vouchers is based in reality, not antipathy toward public education or some new-found belief in the free market.

He's watching another generation fail.

It's as simple as this: We have been unable to come up with a way to fund public education so that our neediest children get what they need.

Finch's schools are growing more crowded while he sees empty seats in parochial schools.

This makes it pretty hard to argue that the system is working.

Education Commissioner Mark McQuillan cautioned me that while "these are desperate moments for Bridgeport," it is not time to turn away from public schools.

"I don't know that vouchers have proved to be a worthy mechanism or tool to assist poor students," he said. "The real issue is not vouchers but to have adequate funding."

This is what a long line of education commissioners, mayors and urban superintendents of schools have concluded for decades. But what do you do when the politicians and the courts can't come up with a better system? While we wait, the nation's biggest achievement gap between whites and minorities only grows wider.

That's the frustration that Finch faces in Bridgeport. At least he's looking for an immediate solution instead of waiting for a court ruling that may never come.

"I perpetuate the creation of an underclass every day I open my [schools] up, because I can't catch up," Finch explained. "I can't get my kids to catch up."

At some point somebody has to be courageous enough to try something else.

We fund schools based on how wealthy a municipality is, not where the need is.

Meanwhile, our future workforce -- the people who will pay for your retirement -- is going to come from Bridgeport, Hartford and New Haven, where the schools are failing.

John Cattelan, director of the Connecticut Federation of Catholic School Parents, said there are about 400 seats open in Catholic schools in the Bridgeport area, with another 1,000 in Hartford.

"This is a way to relieve the financial stress on these municipalities," said Cattelan, who would like to see tax credits for corporations that help fund private school scholarships.

We can declare that it isn't right to use public money at one of Cattelan's Catholic schools.

But then we must accept over-crowded schools and inferior programs for city children who are years behind their suburban counterparts.

It's what voucher advocate Jay Greene, a professor of education reform at the University of Arkansas, calls "a very uncomfortable choice."

"For how long," Greene asked me, "can you say we don't need vouchers because you are going to improve public schools?"

Finch isn't willing to wait. That's far better than pretending we're fixing the problem.

http://www.courant.com/news/local/columnists/hc-rick-green-0421-column,0,1145473.column

SIngle Payer Health Plan Blows Away the Competition

A new TV commercial promoting Medicare for All a/k/a Single Payer Health Care. Our present medical care system is broken. A single payer health plan would provide universal coverage at a lower cost.

Dean Baker on the Need to Tax the Wealthy

After thirty years of class warfare against the middle class, it is time for the wealthy to pay their fair share. Dean Baker makes an excellent case for why we need a tax on financial transactions.

The Need to Tax the Wealthy
By Dean Baker

April 14, 2009, The Economist

This article is a guest opinion on an Economist online debate on whether or not the rich should pay higher taxes.

The quest to increase taxes on the wealthy is not a gratuitous attack on upper income households; it is driven by the need to raise more revenue to run the government. While many deficit hawks been irresponsible in raising fears of an impending collapse of the American government, the projected deficits for years following the recovery are in fact larger than is desirable.

There are areas of American spending at the federal government level that could be reasonably cut, but even after we have zeroed out the "waste, fraud, and abuse" category of federal spending we will still likely need additional revenue of between 1-2%t of GDP to keep budget deficits in an acceptable range. That leaves a choice between increasing taxes on the wealthy or imposing more taxes on the middle class.

The vast majority of the income gains in the United States over the last three decades have gone to the richest 5% of the population, largely as a result of policies that were explicitly designed to redistribute income upwards. Therefore it is far more appropriate to tax the richest 5%t of families who have prospered than the broad middle class who have suffered.

Of course taxes can be designed in a better or worse manner. The best way to increase taxes on the wealthy, in addition to allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire, would be to apply a modest financial transactions tax (FTT).

There is a long history in both the United States and the rest of the world with FTT. Until 1964, the United States imposed a tax of 0.12% on new stock issues and 0.04% on stock trades. Britain still has a tax of 0.25% on each stock sale or purchase, raising five billion pounds a year. This would be equivalent to roughly $30 billion a year in the American economy.

Robert Pollin and I calculated that a scaled set of FTT on stock, futures, options and other financial instruments could raise approximately $150 billion a year. This would go far towards bringing the long-term budget deficit down to a manageable level.

A FTT would be hugely progressive. While many middle income families own stock, their holdings are dwarfed by the holdings of the wealthy. Furthermore, few middle income families are active traders. Their intention is to hold their stock to support their retirement or their kids' education, not to shuffle it around on a daily or hourly basis. Some mutual funds do engage in frequent trading. An FTT would encourage investors to move their money to funds that are less active traders, thereby allowing them to escape most of the impact of the FTT.

Most of the burden of the FTT will fall on wealthy individuals who are active traders and also on the financial industry itself. Either way, the tax will be overwhelmingly borne by the wealthy. By raising the cost of trading, the tax will discourage the trading that provides the revenue for the financial industry. A well-designed tax should also discourage the creation of exotic assets that may serve little useful purpose, since it could lead to the tax being paid multiple times. For example, the holder of an option on a stock would both pay the tax on the purchase and sale of the option and also on the purchase and sale of the stock itself, if the option was ever exercised.

While most taxes impose some economic cost in addition to the revenue raised, a FTT may actually increase economic efficiency. By discouraging financial transactions that are entirely rent-seeking in nature, a FTT will reduce the resources used up by the financial sector, without affecting at all its ability to serve the productive economy. The reduction in trading volume will of course reduce liquidity to some extent, but American financial markets will still be quite liquid. Even with a 0.25% tax on a stock sale or purchase, transaction costs will still only be raised back to their mid-80s levels. And, the United States had a large and very liquid stock market in the 80s.

There also is a powerful element of justice in imposing a FTT in the current situation. The main reason that the budget situation has deteriorated so much in the last two years has been the damage caused by the irresponsibility and greed of the financial industry. In this way, a FTT can be seen as sort of a user tax, where the industry is effectively forced to pay for some of the damage caused by its practices, just as we might like to tax the output of industries that pollute our air or water.

In short, there is a very good argument for increasing taxes on the wealthy given the current budget situation. The alternative is taxing those who are not wealthy. And, there is no better way to tax the wealthy than to tax their gambling in financial markets. A financial transactions tax will raise revenue at the same time that it makes the economy more productive. This is a genuine win-win situation.

http://www.economist.com/debate/days/view/299

Dean Baker is the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). He is the author of Plunder and Blunder: The Rise and Fall of the Bubble Economy. He also has a blog on the American Prospect, "Beat the Press," where he discusses the media's coverage of economic issues.