Good Jobs Are Where the Money Is - New York Times

Good Jobs Are Where the Money Is - New York Times:

“…the people running this country as the mad-dashers, a largely confused and inconsistent group lurching ineffectively from one enormous problem to another.

They’ve made a hash of a war that never should have been launched. They can’t find bin Laden. They’ve been shocked by the subprime debacle. They’re lost in a maze on health care.

Now, like children who have eaten too much sugar, they are frantically trying to figure out how to put a few dollars into the hands of working people to stimulate an enfeebled economy.”

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"David Cay Johnston, took a look at income patterns in the U.S. over the past few decades in his new book, “Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You With the Bill).”

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Big business and the federal government have worked hand in hand to squeeze the daylights out of working people, stripping them (in an era of downsizing and globalization) of much of their bargaining power while ferociously pursuing fiscal policies that radically favored the privileged few.

From 1980 to 2005 the national economy, adjusted for inflation, more than doubled. (Because of population growth, the actual increase per capita was about 66 percent.) But the average income for the vast majority of Americans actually declined during that period. The standard of living for the average family has improved not because incomes have grown, but because women have gone into the workplace in droves.

The peak income year for the bottom 90 percent of Americans was way back in 1973 — when the average income per taxpayer (adjusted for inflation) was $33,001. That is nearly $4,000 higher than the average in 2005.

It’s incredible but true: 90 percent of the population missed out on the income gains during that long period.

Mr. Johnston does not mince words: “The pattern here is clear. The rich are getting fabulously richer, the vast majority are somewhat worse off, and the bottom half — for all practical purposes, the poor — are being savaged by our current economic policies.”

His words are echoed in a proposed stimulus plan currently offered by the Economic Policy Institute in Washington. (The plan is available on its Web site, epi.org.) Stressing that any stimulus package should be “fair,” the authors of the institute’s proposal wrote:

“The distribution of wages, income and wealth in the United States has become vastly more unequal over the last 30 years. In fact, this country has a more unequal distribution of income than any other advanced country.”

Economic alarm bells have been ringing in the U.S. for some time. There was no sense of urgency as long as those in the lower ranks were sinking in the mortgage muck and the middle class was raiding the piggy bank otherwise known as home equity.

But now that the privileged few are threatened (Merrill Lynch took a $9.8 billion fourth-quarter hit, and the stock market has spent the first part of the year behaving like an Olympic diving champion), it’s suddenly time to take action.

There is no question that some kind of stimulus package geared to the needs of ordinary Americans is in order. But that won’t begin to solve the fundamental problem.

Good jobs at good wages — lots of them, growing like spring flowers in an endlessly fertile field — is the absolutely essential basis for a thriving American economy and a broad-based rise in standards of living.

Forget all the CNBC chatter about Fed policy and bargain stocks. For ordinary Americans, jobs are the be-all and end-all. And an America awash in new jobs will require a political environment that respects and rewards work and aggressively pursues creative policies designed to radically expand employment."

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Within the Democratic party there are the so-called centrists, represented by the Clintons and Lieberman. They believe in market forces. There are populists, like Edwards who believes in close combat with few holds barred is the solution, but still supported NAFTA. Finally, there' span ingenuity.<>

My shorthand for them: Slicers, Throwers, and Bakers.

Only the bakers can make a bigger pie.

Slicers can't alter the recipe as needed because of available resources or changing circumstance.

There's a certain satisfaction in throwing the pie. It messes up the suits, for sure, but crumbs tend to be all that's left over. Dirty crumbs at that.

When slicers hearts are in the right place, they still aren't making anything. They're just marketing their slicing technique.They can make sure everybody gets a slice. Sure.

Only the bakers can make sure everyone gets enough.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/19/opinion/19herbert.html?ref=opinion#

Eugene Robinson - A Hand the Clintons Aren't Showing - washingtonpost.com

Eugene Robinson - A Hand the Clintons Aren't Showing - washingtonpost.com

Is it possible that accusing Obama and his campaign of playing the race card might create doubt in the minds of the moderate, independent white voters who now seem so enamored of the young, black senator? Might that be the idea?

“A new Post-ABC News poll shows that black Democrats nationwide support Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton for the presidential nomination by nearly 2 to 1. This striking reversal -- a month ago, Clinton held a big lead among African Americans -- is perhaps why race has suddenly become such a hot issue in a campaign that previously had dodged the subject.”

I'd guess it depends on how calculating (and how devious) you think the Clintons are. After all, occasionally, smart people do dumb things.

At some point though, they get it. They figure out that this isn't working and start doing somwthing else.

On "Meet the Press," Clinton didn't just seek to explain her remarks about the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s role in landmark civil rights legislation (she said it took a president to bring about real action) or Bill's "fairy tale" crack about Obama's record on the Iraq war (which some African Americans took as a dismissal of Obama's candidacy as mere fantasy). Instead, she went on the attack, accusing the Obama campaign of "deliberately distorting" her words in a way that was "unfair and unwarranted."

It wasn't just her phrasing. The attitude seemed to be that if you found anything to be upset about you were the one with the problem. It might even be the case, but that's a strange attitude to take when you want someone's support.

A lot of the things associated with their quest for the nomination seem strange. They keep chastising the press for not examining Obama's record. You might think they'd do that. Instead, we get rumors that Barack is a secret muslim, or the elementary school he went to was a madrassah. We're told that he's so ambitious that he wante to be president in kindergarten.

The closest thing to a legitimate attack is a partial, out of context quote from an interview at the 2004 convention. Bill Clinton should be ashamed. A sense of shame is something neither Clinton seems to have.

Race is just one of the fights that the Clinton campaign is pressing with Obama; the other is an attempt to discredit Obama's opposition to the war. It could be that the idea is to engage Obama in so much tit-for-tat combat that his image as a new, post-partisan kind of politician is tarnished.

Is it possible? Have they given up on inclusion? Is destroying Obama more important than building a better coalition?

Bill won in 1992 by a very small margin, but, at least he ran on hope. This time they want us to abandon hope.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/14/AR2008011402082.html

Race and Gender Are Issues in Tense Day for Democrats - New York Times

Race and Gender Are Issues in Tense Day for Democrats - New York Times:

"In a tense day of exchanges by the candidates and their supporters, Mrs. Clinton suggested on Sunday that Mr. Obama’s campaign, in an effort to inject race into the contest, distorted remarks she had made about the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Mr. Obama tartly dismissed Mrs. Clinton’s suggestion, adding that “the notion that somehow this is our doing is ludicrous.”"

I get email from the Obama campaign daily. Sometimes as often as five times a day. I've posted my reaction to the Clintons comments so "my" view is clear. I haven't received one single email about her statement from the Obama campaign. No one has called about them. If reporters weren't asking about this, I'm not sure there would be any mention at all. So what's really going on here?

The Clintons seem to need so desperately hurt Obama, that in the context of the interview she said something that many of us found offensive. Instead of apologising, she blamed her opponent for distorting what she said and then spreading the distortion. In fact, he's done neither. In fact, they've distorted what he said in the 2004 convention. In fact, theyve taken his statments out of context and deleted the part of the statement that proves their argument an outright lie.

Before this, like most African Americans, I had respect for the Clintons. While I'm for Obama, I didn't see a Clinton win as bad thing. That's no longer true. The uneasiness I've felt about their tactics has hardened into opposition. I now believe that they will do and say anything they think they'll get away with. While the mainstream media fails to ask hrd questions of any candidates democratic or republican. They think this is spinoff of American Idol.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/14/us/politics/14campaign.html?th=&emc=th&pagewanted=all#