Monday, February 10, 2014
Tuesday, February 4, 2014
Morning Must-Read: “Mitt”, Tom Perkins, The 1%, The 47%, and How Inequality Is Destroying Our Leadership
Here is an interesting post from "The Equitablog". Please follow link to original. Read some more of the stuff there.
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http://equitablegrowth.org/2014/02/04/1881/morning-must-read-mitt-tom-perkins-the-1-the-47-and-how-inequality-is-destroying-our-leadership
Elias Asquith: The 1 percent’s most ruinous sin: How they sap our politicians of all decency:
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http://equitablegrowth.org/2014/02/04/1881/morning-must-read-mitt-tom-perkins-the-1-the-47-and-how-inequality-is-destroying-our-leadership
‘Mitt’, Netflix’s recently released documentary… has, on the whole, been rather well-received…. Not everyone believes that the film succeeds in giving viewers a behind-the-scenes look… but most seem to have found it… a humanizing depiction of a seemingly decent man…. Even if the man in “Mitt” is not so charming and sympathetic a figure as to counterbalance the woeful policies on which he ran, there is the lingering question of why there is such a great distance between Candidate Romney and Mitt Romney. How could the same guy who at one point in the film acknowledges the immense privilege he was born into repeatedly insist, on the campaign trail, that he was a self-made man, a testament to the American meritocracy? How could the guy who infamously sneered that roughly half of the country were irresponsible, entitled, greedy moochers seem, in another context, to be kind, thoughtful, polite and fundamentally well-meaning?
Sure, people are complicated; and yes, the intensity of the politico-media complex often renders us incapable of seeing the men and women on the other side as fully formed human beings until well after the final ballot is counted. That’s all true. But I think there’s another explanation…. While [Tom] Perkins’ ahistorical and narcissistic ramblings were roundly mocked, they also inspired greater interest in discovering whether or not his fellow members of the 1 percent felt the same way he did. As it turns out, many, if not most, of them do. Bloomberg Businessweek’s Joshua Green explained how in the Obama years, ‘a class of financiers whose wealth shields them from the effects of practically any government policy has come to develop… a powerful persecution complex’….
Now, if Perkins and his ilk were as isolated from American society and politics as they feel they are, this kind of ‘frothing paranoia’ would still be annoying and ridiculous, but also fundamentally harmless…. [But] more than a quarter of all the disclosed political donations in the 2012 election (nearly $6 billion) came from a mere 31,385 people. And… these are Tom Perkins’ people…. Imagine spending five hours of every day talking to Tom Perkins and not only having to listen to his nonsense, but do so in such a way that he’ll feel inclined to give you huge amounts of money afterward….
So, getting back to Mitt Romney, keep in mind that during the roughly six years he was running for president — from 2006 to 2012 — Romney was spending an unfathomable amount of his time engaging in the soul-destroying process of pretending to listen, pretending to agree, pretending to care, all in the hopes of securing a big, fat paycheck… and then doing it again, and again, and again.
Think back to the infamous 47 percent video, which was taken during a high-priced Romney fundraiser. Romney’s a Republican, so I don’t doubt that on some fundamental level he believes that what separates Democrats and GOPers is an ethic of responsibility and self-reliance. But at the same time, you can easily imagine that Romney, long numb to the entire process of humoring the wealthy, was acting like any modern politician: telling his audience what it wanted to hear. And his audience wants to hear that they’re true Masters of the Universe, real champions of the meritocracy.
One of the most remarked upon moments in “Mitt” features Josh Romney explaining why “good people” don’t run for office. Referring to the nonstop criticism, scrutiny and abuse a candidate for president must endure, Josh says:
This is why you don’t get good people running for president. What better guy is there than my dad? Is he perfect? Absolutely not. He’s made mistakes. He’s done all sorts of things wrong. But for goodness sakes, here’s a brilliant guy who’s had experience turning things around, which is what we need in this country. I mean, it’s like, this is the guy for the moment. And we’re in this, and you just get beat up constantly.It’s a common complaint, and people of all stripes tend to enjoy bashing ‘the media’, so it has quite a few adherents. But it’s got the dynamic all wrong. It’s not what happens on the big stage, in front of all the flashing lights and snapping cameras and hovering microphones and outstretched tape recorders, that keeps ‘good people’ from wanting to run. It’s what happens behind the curtain, during those thousands upon thousands of moments spent greasing the Tom Perkinses of this world, that turns a seemingly decent guy like Mitt Romney into that most vacuous and disturbing figure: the presidential nominee…
Trumpet Battle - Gillespie, Eldridge, Buckner, Coleman
Dizzy Gillespie, Roy Eldridge, Teddy Buckner and Bill Coleman
Charlie Shavers - It's All Right With Me
Charlie Shavers (tp), Urbie Green (tb), Sol Yaged (cl), Sam "The Man" Taylor (ts), Buddy Weed (p), Barry Galbraith (g), Bob Haggart (b), Cozy Cole (ds)
Monday, February 3, 2014
Al Cohn-Zoot Sims/Live at the Half Note/1959...Lover Come Back To Me
By the way -- The Half Note was a GREAT Jazz Club
Thursday, January 30, 2014
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
Ice Storm In The South
So, one of our STAUNCH, anti-Government, anti-tax, anti-damn near anything that even slightly smacks of "big gubmint" is now wondering WHY the government response to their freak "southern ice storm" was not stronger. When the shit hits the fan, the first place they look for help is the very government they tell you they HATE.
They hate public schools, want private EVERYTHING -- but CRY when "gubmint" can't clear the roads and insure their services are delivered and safety insured. This right after they DEMAND a tax cut.
Dear sweet Georgia -- bless your heart -- why not show us all that "self reliance" you demand other folks must have.
Hell the Northeast was DESTROYED by a once in a lifetime convergence of storms and you called them a bunch of "pussies" -- BUT you get 3 inches of snow and the @#$^%&%^ world is coming to an end.
GET A GRIP!
They hate public schools, want private EVERYTHING -- but CRY when "gubmint" can't clear the roads and insure their services are delivered and safety insured. This right after they DEMAND a tax cut.
Dear sweet Georgia -- bless your heart -- why not show us all that "self reliance" you demand other folks must have.
Hell the Northeast was DESTROYED by a once in a lifetime convergence of storms and you called them a bunch of "pussies" -- BUT you get 3 inches of snow and the @#$^%&%^ world is coming to an end.
GET A GRIP!
Tuesday, January 28, 2014
Iceland's big problem: bringing 4% unemployment down to 2%
This from "Hullabaloo" - please follow link to original
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http://www.digbysblog.blogspot.com/
by digby
At one time there was a big debate about whether or not Iceland came out on top during our current depression, largely due to it's hard core treatment of its banks. It was always pretty obvious that they made the smarter decision. It looks even more obvious today:
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http://www.digbysblog.blogspot.com/
by digby
At one time there was a big debate about whether or not Iceland came out on top during our current depression, largely due to it's hard core treatment of its banks. It was always pretty obvious that they made the smarter decision. It looks even more obvious today:
Iceland let its banks fail in 2008 because they proved too big to save.We, on the other hand are making nearly 7% official unemployment (along with many millions not even being counted) the new normal. And we're slashing our meager safety net, even food assistance. But our megabanks are doing very well which is what matters.
Now, the island is finding crisis-management decisions made half a decade ago have put it on a trajectory that’s turned 2 percent unemployment into a realistic goal.
While the euro area grapples with record joblessness, led by more than 25 percent in Greece and Spain, only about 4 percent of Iceland’s labor force is without work. Prime MinisterSigmundur D. Gunnlaugsson says even that’s too high.
“Politicians always have something to worry about,” the 38-year-old said in an interview last week. “We’d like to see unemployment going from where it’s now -- around 4 percent -- to under 2 percent, which may sound strange to most other western countries, but Icelanders aren’t accustomed to unemployment.”
The island’s sudden economic meltdown in October 2008 made international headlines as a debt-fueled banking boom ended in a matter of weeks when funding markets froze. Policy makers overseeing the $14 billion economy refused to back the banks, which subsequently defaulted on $85 billion. The government’s decision to protect state finances left it with the means to continue social support programs that shielded Icelanders from penury during the worst financial crisis in six decades.
Paranoia of the Plutocrats
The latest from Dr. Krugman. Please follow link to original
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http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/27/opinion/krugman-paranoia-of-the-plutocrats.html?_r=0
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http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/27/opinion/krugman-paranoia-of-the-plutocrats.html?_r=0
Rising inequality has obvious economic costs: stagnant wages
despite rising productivity, rising debt that makes us more vulnerable
to financial crisis. It also has big social and human costs. There is,
for example, strong evidence that high inequality leads to worse health and higher mortality.
But
there’s more. Extreme inequality, it turns out, creates a class of
people who are alarmingly detached from reality — and simultaneously
gives these people great power.
The
example many are buzzing about right now is the billionaire investor
Tom Perkins, a founding member of the venture capital firm Kleiner
Perkins Caufield & Byers. In a letter to the editor
of The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Perkins lamented public criticism of
the “one percent” — and compared such criticism to Nazi attacks on the
Jews, suggesting that we are on the road to another Kristallnacht.
You
may say that this is just one crazy guy and wonder why The Journal
would publish such a thing. But Mr. Perkins isn’t that much of an
outlier. He isn’t even the first finance titan to compare advocates of
progressive taxation to Nazis. Back in 2010 Stephen Schwarzman, the
chairman and chief executive of the Blackstone Group, declared
that proposals to eliminate tax loopholes for hedge fund and
private-equity managers were “like when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939.”
And
there are a number of other plutocrats who manage to keep Hitler out of
their remarks but who nonetheless hold, and loudly express, political
and economic views that combine paranoia and megalomania in equal
measure.
I
know that sounds strong. But look at all the speeches and opinion
pieces by Wall Streeters accusing President Obama — who has never done
anything more than say the obvious, that some bankers behaved badly — of
demonizing and persecuting
the rich. And look at how many of those making these accusations also
made the ludicrously self-centered claim that their hurt feelings (as
opposed to things like household debt and premature fiscal austerity)
were the main thing holding the economy back.
Now,
just to be clear, the very rich, and those on Wall Street in
particular, are in fact doing worse under Mr. Obama than they would have
if Mitt Romney had won in 2012. Between the partial rollback of the
Bush tax cuts and the tax hike that partly pays for health reform, tax
rates on the 1 percent have gone more or less back to pre-Reagan levels. Also, financial reformers have won some surprising victories over the past year, and this is bad news for wheeler-dealers
whose wealth comes largely from exploiting weak regulation. So you can
make the case that the 1 percent have lost some important policy
battles.
But
every group finds itself facing criticism, and ends up on the losing
side of policy disputes, somewhere along the way; that’s democracy. The
question is what happens next. Normal people take it in stride; even if
they’re angry and bitter over political setbacks, they don’t cry
persecution, compare their critics to Nazis and insist that the world
revolves around their hurt feelings. But the rich are different from you
and me.
And
yes, that’s partly because they have more money, and the power that
goes with it. They can and all too often do surround themselves with
courtiers who tell them what they want to hear and never, ever, tell
them they’re being foolish. They’re accustomed to being treated with
deference, not just by the people they hire but by politicians who want
their campaign contributions. And so they are shocked to discover that
money can’t buy everything, can’t insulate them from all adversity.
I
also suspect that today’s Masters of the Universe are insecure about
the nature of their success. We’re not talking captains of industry
here, men who make stuff. We are, instead, talking about
wheeler-dealers, men who push money around and get rich by skimming some
off the top as it sloshes by. They may boast that they are job
creators, the people who make the economy work, but are they really
adding value? Many of us doubt it — and so, I suspect, do some of the
wealthy themselves, a form of self-doubt that causes them to lash out
even more furiously at their critics.
Anyway,
we’ve been here before. It’s impossible to read screeds like those of
Mr. Perkins or Mr. Schwarzman without thinking of F.D.R.’s famous 1936
Madison Square Garden speech, in which he spoke of the hatred he faced from the forces of “organized money,” and declared, “I welcome their hatred.”
President
Obama has not, unfortunately, done nearly as much as F.D.R. to earn the
hatred of the undeserving rich. But he has done more than many
progressives give him credit for — and like F.D.R., both he and
progressives in general should welcome that hatred, because it’s a sign
that they’re doing something right.
Pete Seeger has died. Another American Treasure gone.
We lost a great man Monday. Pete Seeger diesd in a hospital in N.Y. He was 94.
He affected so many lives, was a beacon of light and had the courage of his convictions. Through his songs he will live forever -- but, he will be missed.
He affected so many lives, was a beacon of light and had the courage of his convictions. Through his songs he will live forever -- but, he will be missed.
Monday, January 27, 2014
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