1/ "Why Americans Work so Hard but Feel so Poor"
Provocative title to a very interesting article, with the premise that productivity is the answer - all of the efficiencies American workers generate go to the company, and almost none to the employees. And all of the savings are in areas that don't affect your core expenses, like food, housing, health - only the things we use and consume are cheaper and more advanced, so we don't feel richer....
Hard to explain properly......so read it .......
Sped up, slimmed down, squeezed dry, or simply shut out, the American worker faces an unprecedented slump. The numbers say we're getting better at our jobs, but paychecks suggest we're worse off.
Since the recovery began, corporate profits have captured nearly 90 percent of the growth in real income. Wages and salaries have accounted for 1 percent. That's "unprecedented," say
There's a lot of online ink about the productivity paradox, memorably deemed our "Speed-up Crisis" in a provocative article by Monika Bauerlein and Clara Jeffery, coeditors of Mother Jones. It boils down to one question. Why does it seem like people have to work harder and harder to make the same amount of money?
HOW WE GOT HERE
(or: HOW CONSUMERS FOUGHT WORKERS, AND WON)
Since the recovery began, corporate profits have captured nearly 90 percent of the growth in real income. Wages and salaries have accounted for 1 percent. That's "unprecedented," say
There's a lot of online ink about the productivity paradox, memorably deemed our "Speed-up Crisis" in a provocative article by Monika Bauerlein and Clara Jeffery, coeditors of Mother Jones. It boils down to one question. Why does it seem like people have to work harder and harder to make the same amount of money?
HOW WE GOT HERE
(or: HOW CONSUMERS FOUGHT WORKERS, AND WON)
I want to try to tell this story without using the word corporation. Yes, corporate profits are up 22 percent since 2007 while employment is down. Yes, companies have swapped unionized workforces for universal workforces by letting jobs expire at home while hiring overseas. These are important pieces to the puzzle. But I want to tell the story starting with another piece. Productivity.
2/ The coal lobby is getting desperate - they are putting out ads against wind farms saying they will affect the earth's orbit.....
Onion News has the story......
3/ I think it would be fair to say Matt Taibbi is in love with Michele Bachmann, or at least in love with her ambitions as it gives him such great stuff to write about......
Here he looks at the start of her campaign, and assesses one of her talking points that all of the other pundits have deemed crazy, but which Matt thinks is very shrewd.....the minimum wage......
Always fascinating......
Michele Bachmann’s presidential campaign is running exactly according to plan. She kicked off the festivities Monday with one of her all-time Zucker-Brothers-style whoppers, confusing John Wayne with John Wayne Gacy (I wonder how the citizens of Waterloo, Iowa feel about that slip). Then in the next two days she set the political journalism world on fire with a series of characteristically provocative statements/positions. Bachmann, singlehandedly, is going to keep sites likepolitifact.com and factche
The most interesting statement of Bachmann’s came in an interview with George Stephanopoulos, in which she announced she would consider abolishing the federal minimum wage. She believes that eliminating this and other regulations would “virtually wipe out unemployment.”
4/ A combo video today - a travelogue through beautiful Scotland, folk music by two excellent bands in the background, and some astonishing feats of extreme bike riding by a young, very fit lunatic.......
Interesting.....7 unusual minutes......
5/ Paul Krugman on the Russian Roulette the Republicans are playing with the debt ceiling.....and that this truly is a time for the President to stand up and call them out.
It's a test.....and I really, sincerely hope Obama passes it and doesn't wimp out again....
Excellent article......
P-ED COLUMNIST
To the Limit
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: June 30, 2011
In about a month, if nothing is done, the federal government will hit its legal debt limit. There will be dire consequences if this limit isn’t raised. At best, we’ll suffer an economic slowdown; at worst we’ll plunge back into the depths of the 2008-9 financial crisis.
Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
Paul Krugman
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Times Topic: Federal Debt Limit (Debt Ceiling)
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So is a failure to raise the debt ceiling unthinkable? Not at all.
Many commentators remain complacent about the debt ceiling; the very gravity of the consequences if the ceiling isn’t raised, they say, ensures that in the end politicians will do what must be done. But this complacency misses two important facts about the situation: the extremism of the modern G.O.P., and the urgent need for President Obama to draw a line in the sand against further extortion.
Let’s talk about how we got here.
The federal debt limit is a strange quirk of U.S. budget law: since debt is the consequence of decisions about taxing and spending, and Congress already makes those taxing and spending decisions, why require an additional vote on debt? And traditionally the debt limit has been treated as a minor detail. During the administration of former President George W. Bush — who added more than $4 trillion to the national debt — Congress, with little fanfare, voted to raise the debt ceiling no less than seven times.
So the use of the debt ceiling to extort political concessions is something new in American politics. And it seems to have come as a complete surprise to Mr. Obama.
Last December, after Mr. Obama agreed to extend the Bush tax cuts — a move that many people, myself included, viewed as in effect a concession to Republican blackmail — Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic asked why the deal hadn’t included a rise in the debt limit, so as to forestall another hostage situation (my words, not Mr. Ambinder’s).
The president’s response seemed clueless even then. He asserted that “nobody, Democrat or Republican, is willing to see the full faith and credit of the United States government collapse,” and that he was sure that John Boehner, as speaker of the House, would accept his “responsibilities to govern.”
Well, we’ve seen how that worked out.
Now, Mr. Obama was right about the dangers of failing to raise the debt limit. In fact, he understated the case, by focusing only on financial confidence.
Not that the confidence issue is trivial. Failure to raise the debt limit — which would, among other things, disrupt payments on existing debt — could convince investors that the United States is no longer a serious, responsible country, with nasty consequences. Furthermore, nobody knows what a U.S. default would do to the world financial system, which is built on the presumption that U.S. government debt is the ultimate safe asset.
But confidence isn’t the only thing at stake. Failure to raise the debt limit would also force the U.S. government to make drastic, immediate spending cuts, on a scale that would dwarf the austerity currently being imposed on Greece. And don’t believe the nonsense about the benefits of spending cuts that has taken over much of our public discourse: slashing spending at a time when the economy is deeply depressed would destroy hundreds of thousands and quite possibly millions of jobs.
So failure to reach a debt deal would have very bad consequences. But here’s the thing: Mr. Obama must be prepared to face those consequences if he wants his presidency to survive.
Bear in mind that G.O.P. leaders don’t actually care about the level of debt. Instead, they’re using the threat of a debt crisis to impose an ideological agenda. If you had any doubt about that, last week’s tantrum should have convinced you. Democrats engaged in debt negotiations argued that since we’re supposedly in dire fiscal straits, we should talk about limiting tax breaks for corporate jets and hedge-fund managers as well as slashing aid to the poor and unlucky. And Republicans, in response, walked out of the talks.
So what’s really going on is extortion pure and simple. As Mike Konczal of the Roosevelt Institute puts it, the G.O.P. has, in effect, come around with baseball bats and declared, “Nice economy you have here. A real shame if something happened to it.”
And the reason Republicans are doing this is because they must believe that it will work: Mr. Obama caved in over tax cuts, and they expect him to cave again. They believe that they have the upper hand, because the public will blame the president for the economic crisis they’re threatening to create. In fact, it’s hard to avoid the suspicion that G.O.P. leaders actually want the economy to perform badly.
Republicans believe, in short, that they’ve got Mr. Obama’s number, that he may still live in the White House but that for practical purposes his presidency is already over. It’s time — indeed, long past time — for him to prove them wrong.
6/ Classic video - Marvin Gaye with "Mercy Mercy Me".......I had not really noticed the lyrics before, but boy are they relevant today......3 minutes....
7/ Corporations are not only running this country, they are increasingly immunising themselves from any legal consequences....to anything.
It's all in the fine print.....do you read yours?
In Halliburton Gang-Rape, Justice Only for Corporations
By Laura Flanders, Guardian UK
30 June 11
How corporations award themselves legal immunity: Whether it's in your employment contract or the paperwork for a cell phone, it's odds on that the small print says you can't sue.
orried about the influence of money in American politics, the huge cash payouts that the US supreme court waved through by its Citizens United decision - the decision that lifted most limits on election campaign spending? Corporations are having their way with American elections just as they've already had their way with our media.But at least we have the courts, right?
Wrong. The third branch of government's in trouble, too. In fact, access to justice - like access to elected office, let alone a pundit's perch - is becoming a perk just for the rich and powerful.
Take the young woman now testifying in court in Texas. Jamie Leigh Jones claims she was drugged and gang-raped while working for military contractor KBR in Iraq (at the time, a division of Halliburton). Jones, now 26, was on her fourth day in post in Baghdad in 2005 when she says she was assaulted by seven contractors and held captive, under armed guard by two KBR police, in a shipping container.
8/ Dominique Strauss-Kahn has been released, and the case against him will probably be dropped, because the woman he assaulted has questionable connections....story below.
But something happened in that room, the DNA proves it, so even though there will be no criminal case he is still a very warped oligarch.....
At the 2115 Café on Frederick Douglass Boulevard in Harlem, where the hotel chambermaid who accused Dominique Strauss-Kahn of criminal sexual assault used to spend much of her free time, there are some interesting pictures on the wall. One shows owner Ibrahim “Abe” Fofanah, 46, gripping and grinning with a police captain. Another shows him with New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly.
But pride of place goes to the photograph of Fofanah and Alpha Condé, who was elected last November as president of Guinea, the country from which DSK’s accuser immigrated and requested political asylum. Condé, as it turns out, also has extensive ties to major political players in France, including people close to—wait for it—both President Nicolas Sarkozy and Strauss-Kahn, who had been expected to be the incumbent’s main challenger in next year’s elections. You can see why the conspiracy-minded French find the case so fascinating.
9/ Hypnotic computer animation of Captain Sully taking off, getting in trouble, and landing the US Airways plane in the Hudson, with actual radio traffic blended in.....cool beans.....6 minutes......
10/ Editorial from the Tribune that spells out how bad Governor Scott and the evil bastards in the Legislature have screwed us all......
There can be no dispute. Today, Florida is a far less hospitable place to live for government workers, the elderly, the unemployed, women, students and property owners.
A raft of new laws and a shrunken state budget take effect today. The Republican-led Legislature and Gov. Rick Scott have bragged they cut business regulation, corporate income taxes and property taxes for water management districts.
11/ I know statistically some of our readers work out, and do ab crunches.....this column tells you how to keep your back and spine in shape......
Forget About Crunches. Here’s How to Protect Your Back.
By JANE E. BRODY
Published: June 27, 2011
If you have not suffered a vertebral fracture, adopting anexercise routine that improves posture and strengthens back muscles can go a long way toward preventing one. And if you are already plagued by back pain due to vertebral fractures, the exercises and protective movements described below may bring relief and prevent the problem from getting worse.
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These guidelines and exercises have been adapted primarily fromrecommendations published in the medical journal Osteoporosis International.
First, it is critically important to know what not to do. Avoid those infamous stomach “crunches” and toe touches and any exercise or activity that involves twisting the spine or bending forward from the waist with straight legs.
Next, recall a mantra you may have heard often as a child: Stand up straight. Good posture — proper alignment of body parts when you stand, sit or walk —reduces stress on the spine. Lift your breastbone, and keep your head erect and shoulders back, all the while gently tightening abdominal muscles and maintaining a small hollow in your lower back.
More advice from the experts:
12/ Movie review - "Transformers - Dark Of The Moon", directed by Michael Bay. Very funny, tongue in cheek critique of this extravaganza that's worth reading for the subtleties of him searching for the right words to praise this POS movie....
There are filmmakers whose work is characterized by thrift, efficiency and devotion to the subtleties of cinematic expression. And then there is Michael Bay, whose films are symphonies of excess and redundancy, taking place in a universe full of fire and metal and purged of nuance. I’m not judging, just describing, and since today’s theme is bluntness, I might as well come out and say that “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” is among Mr. Bay’s best movies and by far the best 3-D sequel ever made about gigantic toys from outer space.
Transformers trailer.....2 minutes.....
Todays Journalism jokes [proofreading]
Proofreading is a dying art, wouldn't you say? Man Kills Self Before Shooting Wife and Daughter This one I caught in the SGV Tribune the other day and called the Editorial Room and asked who wrote this. It took two or three readings before the editor realized that what he was reading was impossible!!! They put in a correction the next day. I just couldn't help but send this along. Too funny. Something Went Wrong in Jet Crash, Expert Says Really? Ya think? ------------------------------ Police Begin Campaign to Run Down Jaywalkers Now that's taking things a bit far! ---------------------------- Panda Mating Fails; Veterinarian Takes Over What a guy! ------------------------------ Miners Refuse to Work after Death No-good-for-nothing' lazy so-and-so's! ------------------------------ Juvenile Court to Try Shooting Defendant See if that works any better than a fair trial! ---------------------------- War Dims Hope for Peace I can see where it might have that effect! ------------------------------ If Strike Isn't Settled Quickly, It May Last Awhile Ya think?! ------------------------------ Cold Wave Linked to Temperatures Who would have thought! ------------------------------ Enfield ( London ) Couple Slain; Police Suspect Homicide They may be on to something! ------------------------------ Red Tape Holds Up New Bridges You mean there's something stronger than duct tape? ---------------------------- Man Struck By Lightning: Faces Battery Charge He probably IS the battery charge! ------------------------------ ------------------------------ Astronaut Takes Blame for Gas in Spacecraft That's what he gets for eating those beans! ---------------- ------------------------------ Kids Make Nutritious Snacks Do they taste like chicken? ****************************** Local High School Dropouts Cut in Half Chainsaw Massacre all over again! ****************************** Hospitals are Sued by 7 Foot Doctors Boy, are they tall! ***************************** <span style="background-color:white; |
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