Representative Darrell Issa has been leaking selected partial quotes from his oversight committee's testimony regarding the so-called IRS scandal. Other members of the committee have gotten tired of the misdirection and have put the testimony in its entirety on-line.
So, here it is:
Part I
Part II
Okay, now your job is to decide how messed up Mr. Issa is. Ah, he is a gasbag_blowviator_teabagger you say?? Yes, he is.
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
Wednesday, June 12, 2013
Wait, Which Scandal??
"How them Mets??", as a friend says when things just too weird to be believed. That's bit of where I find myself these days.
I mean, everywhere I look the Teapublicans are trying desperately to gin up some sort of scandal to hit Democrats (and particularly the President) over the head with. For the most part we are left with Representative Issa pounding the table and foaming at the mouth without any substance to his rants. He won't release testimony because it does not support his position that the President or Democrats have done something wrong. For the most his oversight committee is a sham at this point.
But, all this nonsense is really a distraction from the real problems that need fixing. The list is very long at this point. High on the issues is the need to unwind thirty years of bad economic theory. "Trickle down" is a mythological bit of nonsense that is destroying the underpinnings of the country. We need taxes and we need government. What has made government problematic is the mega trend to privatize every possible aspect of the job it should be doing. For this we pay enormous sums more than if government hired people to do the actual jobs that corporations are now contracted to do. Trickle down has created this connection to the oligarchy and continues to take us down a road of worse and worse government capability. Even privatizing education will have very long lasting effects. Charter schools and the additional cost such a for profit system creates is ruining education. It is not the teacher's being unionized that is the problem. The unions are actually one of the best things about the public education system. Voucherizing education leads to fewer controls of what education should be about. It takes away local control for our systems to work well. No-child-left-behind has meant the dumbing down of the educational system. This is by no means the worst of what has happened to us.
One of the large things gone wrong has been the privatizing of our National Security. We now don't have a government entity actually doing hte work of intelligence gathering... we have a variety of contractors, private corporations, collecting and digging around in our data. The NSA is just front for a scads of companies sucking our internet, phone and other data dry to suss out the bad guys. Then we get this idiot, Edward Snowden, acting as if we do not have a representative form of government and saying he released information to help let the people decide what was right or wrong about the information being gathered. He will likely go to jail for a very long time but the real story is that the company he worked for, Booz, Allen, Hamilton (BAH for an appropriate short handle) should be fired along with all the other contractors doing the job that government should be doing inside.
The press has been snowed by the focus on Snowden but has yet to dig into the real problem.
I mean, everywhere I look the Teapublicans are trying desperately to gin up some sort of scandal to hit Democrats (and particularly the President) over the head with. For the most part we are left with Representative Issa pounding the table and foaming at the mouth without any substance to his rants. He won't release testimony because it does not support his position that the President or Democrats have done something wrong. For the most his oversight committee is a sham at this point.
But, all this nonsense is really a distraction from the real problems that need fixing. The list is very long at this point. High on the issues is the need to unwind thirty years of bad economic theory. "Trickle down" is a mythological bit of nonsense that is destroying the underpinnings of the country. We need taxes and we need government. What has made government problematic is the mega trend to privatize every possible aspect of the job it should be doing. For this we pay enormous sums more than if government hired people to do the actual jobs that corporations are now contracted to do. Trickle down has created this connection to the oligarchy and continues to take us down a road of worse and worse government capability. Even privatizing education will have very long lasting effects. Charter schools and the additional cost such a for profit system creates is ruining education. It is not the teacher's being unionized that is the problem. The unions are actually one of the best things about the public education system. Voucherizing education leads to fewer controls of what education should be about. It takes away local control for our systems to work well. No-child-left-behind has meant the dumbing down of the educational system. This is by no means the worst of what has happened to us.
One of the large things gone wrong has been the privatizing of our National Security. We now don't have a government entity actually doing hte work of intelligence gathering... we have a variety of contractors, private corporations, collecting and digging around in our data. The NSA is just front for a scads of companies sucking our internet, phone and other data dry to suss out the bad guys. Then we get this idiot, Edward Snowden, acting as if we do not have a representative form of government and saying he released information to help let the people decide what was right or wrong about the information being gathered. He will likely go to jail for a very long time but the real story is that the company he worked for, Booz, Allen, Hamilton (BAH for an appropriate short handle) should be fired along with all the other contractors doing the job that government should be doing inside.
The press has been snowed by the focus on Snowden but has yet to dig into the real problem.
Saturday, June 1, 2013
Working for a Living
When I was an employer and not really having time to think about such things I offered a package of work for pay that seemed reasonable at the time. There were not positions that paid minimum wage because it was not that sort of business. We consistently gave raises yearly even in the years we were not doing as well as other years. No, I was not probably as good an employer as I could have been given my much broader understanding of that now, but we held our own at the time.
Now that I do have time to ponder the situation I read with interest any article that broadens my understanding. My spouse worked for the welfare department in her state and has explained to me that many she interviewed over the years were told when they went to work for WalMart that they should apply immediately for food stamps, medical assistance and any other help available at the time. I was flummoxed by this bit of information... but the continued reading has proven this to be true. What sort of business model preys on its customers in this way? With the owners of WalMart very firmly part of the 1% I got a clear view of what greed really looks like.
Walmart-Taxpayers-House-Report
The economic theory at work here is not, "we're in this together..." but, rather, "Give me all you got, I got mine...". It is the bully's way of walking the path. It is corporate irresponsibility at its greatest. Years ago I hired a painter to spruce up the house. He was struggling a bit at the time and decided to take a job outside his field to tide him over in a down economy. He ended up at WalMart for a time and told me the stories of their employee abuse. I was stunned then by the system in place to suppress the workers who made the company run.
So, here come the questions. What is a fair wage for the worker bees? Why are unions so vilified and suppressed today? What is a reasonable minimum wage and why? Who is writing the laws that favor the abusive practices? What is to be done to correct the abusive power of corporations AND can it be relatively painless?
I have read several opinions about what the minimum wage should be. The easiest of these puts the minimum at around $14.75 and hour on the logic that with steady but small steps would have put it there since its last adjustments. I have noted that Congress rarely takes up this question and generally acts long after the need has become extremely dire. That is, or seems to be, the model for this rate. I have also read that if the MW had been upped all along the way since the 1960's (even though it dates from 1938) the current value would be in the neighborhood of $21 and change. What does that mean?
(From study by Oregon State University)
I have to ask why is the minimum wage for a full time worker LESS THAN THE POVERTY LEVEL?
If one is working full time to get to somewhere in the area of 60% of the poverty level there would seem to be something seriously broken in the equation. This means there is no healthcare in the formula and that we have reached a level of indentured servitude not seen for centuries. This is not freedom. This is not acceptable either. The politicians have failed us in providing for the general welfare. They have crimped economic expansion and eventually it will lead to a deep collapse of the economy.
As an aside here is the history of the Federal Minimum Wage:
Minimum Wage Chart
If you are in the situation of providing for your family at these levels you are incapable of making a meaningful stand against a specific employer. The threat of job loss is too great. Even if you are not truly making a living you are fearful of losing what little you do have. Given that the employee handbook for so many organizations admonishes against talking about your wages with other employees there is every reason to suppose that you are powerless as an employee. Given too that appointments to the Labor Relations Board have been stalled in Congress for some time the mechanism for dealing fairly with employee complaints has been hamstrung. There are so many reasons the scales have been more than just tipped against the worker at this point that general unrest and frustration is begin to form the early cracks in the system.
Which means for me... more on this later.
Now that I do have time to ponder the situation I read with interest any article that broadens my understanding. My spouse worked for the welfare department in her state and has explained to me that many she interviewed over the years were told when they went to work for WalMart that they should apply immediately for food stamps, medical assistance and any other help available at the time. I was flummoxed by this bit of information... but the continued reading has proven this to be true. What sort of business model preys on its customers in this way? With the owners of WalMart very firmly part of the 1% I got a clear view of what greed really looks like.
Walmart-Taxpayers-House-Report
The economic theory at work here is not, "we're in this together..." but, rather, "Give me all you got, I got mine...". It is the bully's way of walking the path. It is corporate irresponsibility at its greatest. Years ago I hired a painter to spruce up the house. He was struggling a bit at the time and decided to take a job outside his field to tide him over in a down economy. He ended up at WalMart for a time and told me the stories of their employee abuse. I was stunned then by the system in place to suppress the workers who made the company run.
So, here come the questions. What is a fair wage for the worker bees? Why are unions so vilified and suppressed today? What is a reasonable minimum wage and why? Who is writing the laws that favor the abusive practices? What is to be done to correct the abusive power of corporations AND can it be relatively painless?
I have read several opinions about what the minimum wage should be. The easiest of these puts the minimum at around $14.75 and hour on the logic that with steady but small steps would have put it there since its last adjustments. I have noted that Congress rarely takes up this question and generally acts long after the need has become extremely dire. That is, or seems to be, the model for this rate. I have also read that if the MW had been upped all along the way since the 1960's (even though it dates from 1938) the current value would be in the neighborhood of $21 and change. What does that mean?
![[graph]](http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/anth484/minperpov.jpg) | ||
| The minimum wage as a percentage of the poverty level. |
(From study by Oregon State University)
I have to ask why is the minimum wage for a full time worker LESS THAN THE POVERTY LEVEL?
If one is working full time to get to somewhere in the area of 60% of the poverty level there would seem to be something seriously broken in the equation. This means there is no healthcare in the formula and that we have reached a level of indentured servitude not seen for centuries. This is not freedom. This is not acceptable either. The politicians have failed us in providing for the general welfare. They have crimped economic expansion and eventually it will lead to a deep collapse of the economy.
As an aside here is the history of the Federal Minimum Wage:
Minimum Wage Chart
If you are in the situation of providing for your family at these levels you are incapable of making a meaningful stand against a specific employer. The threat of job loss is too great. Even if you are not truly making a living you are fearful of losing what little you do have. Given that the employee handbook for so many organizations admonishes against talking about your wages with other employees there is every reason to suppose that you are powerless as an employee. Given too that appointments to the Labor Relations Board have been stalled in Congress for some time the mechanism for dealing fairly with employee complaints has been hamstrung. There are so many reasons the scales have been more than just tipped against the worker at this point that general unrest and frustration is begin to form the early cracks in the system.
Which means for me... more on this later.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)