-
Website
http://www.jackandjillpolitics.com/ -
Original page
http://www.jackandjillpolitics.com/2009/10/saturday-open-thread-67/ -
Subscribe
All Comments -
Community
-
-
Top Commenters
-
Popular Threads
All Comments
by Charles Lemos, Sat Oct 24, 2009 at 01:04:59 AM EST
Note: This is the first in a series of irregular posts on the topic of Reaganism and its consequences.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s my mother never earned more $50,000 per year. And yet she sent me to private schools and then onto Stanford. Apart from a $500 per quarter Pell Grant, she paid for all of it. Beyond providing me with an education, she took us on annual European vacations and on annual Christmas vacations which rotated between Florida, the Caribbean and Colombia. She bought a home in Westchester County, New York and a vacation home in Rhode Island.
I was curious tonight and looked up my old high school's current tuition. It is now running $36,900 per year. That's 30 times more than when I was there. Stanford tuition now runs $12,460 per quarter or more than tuition, room & board, books combined ran for a full academic year when I attended. Four years of Stanford now runs more than $200,000.
To replicate my mother's feat, I would now need an income of $500,000. How is this progress?
What prompted all this is that I have been focusing more and more on the topic of income inequality. I was shocked and dismayed to learn that 74 percent at the nation's top 146 colleges and universities now come from families in the top quintile of income. And just three percent come from the bottom quintile. At the state-funded University of Virginia, just eight percent of the student body comes from the bottom half of income distribution. In short, the Sonia Sotomayors and Michelle Robinsons are increasingly a rara avis in the nation's top schools.
Rich households in the United States have been leaving both middle and poorer income groups behind. This has happened in many countries, but nowhere has this trend been so stark as here in the United States. As of 2008 the average income of the richest 10 percent is $93,000 the highest level in the OECD. However, the poorest 10 percent of the US citizens have an income of $5,800 per year - about 20 percent lower than the average for OECD countries.
That's income. Wealth is even more highly skewed. The top one percent control about a third of total net worth and the top 10 percent holds 71 percent. By comparison and on average in the rest of OECD, the top 10 percent have just 28 percent of total income.
Now for the truly shocking. I was reading Fighting Poverty in the US and Europe: A World of Difference by Alberto Alesina and Edward Ludwig Glaeser. In terms of social mobility, being born in the bottom half in the United States is a life sentence of poverty. You stand a better statistical chance of becoming wealthy if you are born poor in Italy than you do in the United States.
Now consider rates of entrepreneurship. A 2005 survey showed that 28 percent of Americans would like to own their businesses. That compares to just 15 percent of Europeans. Yet Americans, it seems, are deferring their dreams while Europeans are living theirs. 14.7 percent of Europeans are self-employed while just 7.3 percent of Americans are self-employed. What's more, the rate in the United States is actually declining. In 1994, 9.1 percent of Americans were self-employed.
This is to me all quite startling and befuddling because Ronald Reagan, who remains an adored figure by American conservatives, won the Presidency in part by claiming that the GOP was the party that wants to see an America in which people can still get rich. But the facts demonstrate quite the opposite. Reagan's policies were nothing more than a redistribution of wealth upwards away from the middle class. By allowing the minimum wage to fall below the poverty line, he single-handedly created the working poor. The percentage of Americans living below the poverty line in 1979 was 11.7 percent. It is now 13.2 percent. And yet there is a guy in the NY-23 running for Congress by name of Doug Hoffman on the Conservative Party ticket who is proudly going around calling himself a "Reagan Conservative." How is the failure of the last 28 years not more evident?
http://www.mydd.com/story/2009/10/24/1459/2063
"I worked there for fourteen months," said Chris Nulf, Ph.D. "I started off in the serology lab which means we analyzed evidence for blood or semen."
Dallas County terminated Nulf in May for insubordination, saying he displayed unsatisfactory progress as a trainee, was unproductive and did not follow procedures at the Southwestern Institute of Forensic Science, also known as SWIFS.
But in a lawsuit to be filed Wednesday, Nulf says he was terminated for pointing out problems inside the lab, including:
• an outdated protocol manual used by analysts to conduct their daily work
• equipment that isn't calibrated
• analysts using expired chemicals
• criminal case files stored in an unsecured hallway
• a box fan which blew over areas where evidence is examined
"The evidence may have blood flakes on them or hair and fiber on them," Nulf explained. "If you have a box fan going in the background, those fibers could be blown across the evidence, lost forever or cross-contaminated into someone else's evidence."
Former crime lab analyst to sue Dallas County
Every day in every way, the average Joe or Jane is held to beyond reproach standards, yet, this gross dereliction is allowed to continue jeopardizing lives and liberties "in the name of law".
White collar is more than I thought it would be. Four AA's w/ speaking roles, a mansion on Central Park and Diahann Carroll for glamour. This has promise.
LOVE IT.
I love that everyone is smart. the FBI guy is smart;the criminal is smart, but doesn't make a fool of the FBI guy.
that he found Diahann Carroll, and she's rich with a White maid...LOL
and the art school going granddaughter.
the FBI Black girl I've missed since she left VEGAS.
I think I'm going to like this show.
Endless war in Afghanistan is an absolute necessity. Health care for Americans is a luxury that can wait.
By Glenn Greenwald
Something very unusual happened on The Washington Post Editorial Page today: they deigned to address a response from one of their readers, who "challenged [them] to explain what he sees as a contradiction in [their] editorial positions": namely, the Post demands that Obama's health care plan not be paid for with borrowed money, yet the very same Post Editors vocally support escalation in Afghanistan without specifying how it should be paid for. "Why is it okay to finance wars with debt, asks our reader, but not to pay for health care that way?"
The Post editors give two answers. They first claim that Obama will save substantial money by reducing defense spending -- by which they mean that he is merely decreasing the rate at which defense spending increases ("from 2008 to 2019, defense spending would increase only 17 percent") -- as well as withdrawing from Iraq. But so what? Even if those things really happen, we're still paying for our glorious, endless war in Afghanistan by borrowing the money from China and Japan, all of which continues to explode our crippling national debt. We have absolutely no ability to pay for our Afghan adventure other than by expanding our ignominus status as the largest and most insatiable debtor nation which history has ever known. That debt gravely bothers Beltway elites like the Post editors when it comes to providing ordinary Americans with basic services (which Post editors already enjoy), but it's totally irrelevant to them when it comes to re-fueling the vicarious joys of endless war.
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwa...
you stop that. I want you alive. don't be holding your breath.
Pending cases will be dismissed, and those who paid the $204 fine for the charge, which does not exist in the city, will be reimbursed, Kunkle said.
Dallas police ticketed 39 drivers in 3 years for not speaking English
Texas law enforcement is creative when extracting money from POC.
They helped bring hip-hop to the mainstream, revitalized the career of Aerosmith and now, Run-DMC could be headed to Broadway
Run-DMC Musical Is Planned
Are they kidding me, I would think they would be smarter than that, hell the world did not end in 2000, 1995, 1982, 1988 OR any other dates the mysterious Nostradamus's or calendars tells them to pick. End to these predictions already, they are like Bill Kristol. WTF? And by the way they need to stop with the "every president is the antichrist shit." What happened to people? No wonder the world is a deep hole, when folk can't think logically, instead CLING to rubbish.
Okay I am done
not watching tv so maybe it's being politicised now?
anyway, whatever. take it with a grain of salt as you hopefully would with all doom and gloom predictions.
Time out from predictions for everybody seriously. If its failed since 200 A.D. to get the correct time for the end of the world maybe its time we focused on fixing the present world
I had the great pleasure of speaking with New Orleans mayoral candidate James Perry, this morning. We discuss Obama, charter schools, education, Katrina, levees and more. This is a great interview of a magnificent candidate. You can find out more about James Perry.
If you missed my show earlier, you can hear my interview here
Let me know what you think of Mr. Perry. Would you vote for him? Will he help New Orleans?
http://www.costofwar.com/
But we cant afford health care.This is truly bizzaro world
Michael Phelps smoked a bong, Lance Armstrong is pushing alcohol. Why is Phelps the bad guy?
http://www.salon.com/life/drugs/index.html?stor...
The Muppets
Devil Went Down to Jamaica
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnhZscDJFy8
Some recommendations from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments might be welcomed by service members and their families, such as a proposal to cut the cost of permanent change-of-station moves by extending tour lengths by 50 percent.
But other recommendations strike at the heart of the military pay and benefits system. The report by Todd Harrison says the promise of retired pay after 20 years is an example of the generous benefits that led to financial problems in the auto industry, requiring a government bailout.
“Few employers today offer pensions and health care benefits for retirees, must less a package that becomes effective after only 20 years of service,” Harrison wrote. “Even GM’s much-derided labor contracts did not provide benefits this rich.”
Harrison said big reductions in benefits, such as requiring more service to earn retired pay and charging more for health benefits, are “politically difficult” but that modest changes, if begun soon, could help control costs.
Modest steps could include cutting Army and Marine Corps personnel levels as operations in Iraq and Afghanistan subside to reduce overhead costs as quickly as possible, the report said.
The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments is a Washington-based independent, nonpartisan think tank focusing on national security issues.
“If the overall defense budget remains relatively flat over the coming years, continued increases in personnel-related costs will crowd out funding for acquisitions,” Harrison wrote. “Rather than accept this as inevitable, DoD should begin taking steps to rein in personnel costs.”
The report, called “Avoiding a DoD Bailout,” focuses on the financial choices facing the Pentagon if budgets remain relatively flat in the coming years. The fear that personnel-related costs could leave no money for weapons research and purchases is an issue already under study by the Defense Department.
Harrison said personnel cuts are not enough to take care of all of the budget pressures; the Defense Department also needs to be careful with weapons spending.
“The Pentagon must also rethink the types of weapons it is buying and how it buys them,” the report said.
Cut Military retirement to pay for weapons
This will go over well with the military. /snark
Great! This kind of policy is what caused the subprime mess, i.e. forcing banks to make bad loans…
See you still can't read and realize that one and one are two.
The banks made bad loans could they thought they could unload the risk to bond holders whom were to stupid to do due dilgence. In not performing due diligence investors/speculators bought bonds that were sliced and diced that hid how bad the underlying portfolio was. Even the Fed says it was not a problem w/ CRA.
When you come here would you please wear a bibb?
by DemInRedville
Share this on Twitter - Chip Reid, CBS News Chief Whitehouse Correspondent, Proves the Obama Administration’s point. Sat Oct 24, 2009 at 04:19:32 AM PDT
So you want evidence of Fox News driving the news narrative. You want proof that the Fox agenda is to take any story and make it a negative for the Obama Administration. Did you ask where is support for the argument that the other News organizations follow Fox News like blind mice? Okay well let’s take a look at yesterday’s hot topic of the day at Fox News White House Loses Bid to Exclude Fox News From Pay Czar Interview.
DemInRedville's diary :: :: On the Friday October 23rd CBS Evening News Chip Reid states "All the networks said, that's it, you've crossed the line." Chip Reid reports this as support for the Fox News argument that the Whitehouse attempted to exclude the news channel from a pool interview. Since this reporting was part of a bigger story on the "Feud" between the Whitehouse and Fox News and since the report only relied on a couple of examples to support its premise that a "Feud" does exist, it would seem to be important that the example be credible. Having your chief Whitehouse Correspondent report the incident gives it credibility. Unfortunately, the incident is not as described based on actual sources. First the Whitehouse’s only role in the story was to approve adding Fox News to the pool (which Anita Dunn did); it was the Treasury Department holding the interview and thus being responsible for making the Administrator accessible. Most importantly it appears that Fox News didn’t request to be included in the interview, and because it would lower their production costs, the other news organizations asked to have them added. Sources Here, Here (Update and Update2), Here, and Here.
In the end the story is as described by one official "Much ado about nothing". But because Fox News wants to keep the storyline that Obama is trying to "Censor" criticism, Fox took the story and "Talk Radioed" it. The story became bigger, more dastardly, and was directly connected to Obama. What followed is what always follows. The news "Posers" started reporting Fox’s version. Drudge and Huffington Post, two peas in a pod, link to it. Wing Nut Radio chime’s in and stirs the pot with some good old Obama hatred, the bloggers follow suit.......and
..... now this is where it get’s interesting. In the past the "REAL" news ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, PBS etc would actually try to determine if the story was credible, significant, news worthy. But it appears that since the ACORN story there might not be as much hesitance to check on facts. With this story, and his comment, Chip Reid demonstrated that not only did he (and by extension CBS News) buy Fox’s storyline, he had to spice it up a bit with the "... that’s it you’ve crossed the line". This is CBS News trusted by millions to give them the straight scoop every night for 30 minutes, 30 very valuable minutes. If one looked at a news minute as real estate this is Central Park view. Yet with this story they treat those minutes as trailer space, they Foxify it (put anything on to fill space and get advertisers). They fall for the trap exactly how the Obama Administration has described.
No wonder why the Obama Administration has taken the stance they have. This is war. Fox News makes it's money by providing a home to that segment of the population who dislike Obama, Democrats, Liberals, etc. And because there are 300+ million people in this country, that segment will always be big enough to make Fox profitable. The problem of course is when these distorted, twisted, biased news stories are picked up and given credibility by the big 4 (I include PBS). This has to be stopped, or slowed down. The Obama Administration has to fight back. It really is a difficult task. This case shows why.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/10/24/79....
FOR generations, American car buying has been guided by one grand philosophy: which one do I want?
But now, another question has begun to percolate: do I need a car at all?
Read More
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/22/automobiles/a...
No Einstein in Your Crib? Get a Refund
Parent alert: the Walt Disney Company is now offering refunds for all those “Baby Einstein” videos that did not make children into geniuses.
Read More
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/24/education/24b...
Yesterday, Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez (pictured) defended the issuance of the subpoena, which was reported Monday by the Chicago Tribune. "If you're going to put yourself into the role of an investigator, then you need to turn over whatever your notes are," Alvarez said. The subpoena asks for the students' notes and recordings of witness interviews, as well as the students' grades and evaluations, the class syllabus and e-mails they sent to each other and to their professor.
The students and their professor, David Protess, director of The Medill Innocence Project, are fighting the subpoena and have retained two Sidley Austin lawyers to represent them, Richard J. O'Brien and Linda R. Friedlieb. They say they are protected under the Illinois Reporter's Privilege Act.
All of this is an outgrowth of an investigation the journalism students started in 2003 into the conviction of Anthony McKinney for the 1978 murder of security guard Donald Lundahl in the Chicago suburb of Harvey. After three years of reporting, the students became convinced that McKinney was innocent. They shared their findings with law students at Northwestern Law School's Center on Wrongful Convictions, who filed a petition on McKinney's behalf to vacate his conviction.
Prosecutor Defends Subpoena to Students
Gotta discourage the young early especially when they are questioning "the system". /snark
I'm interviewing James Perry candidate for mayor of NOLA!! Check me out - The Errington Thompson Show is now!!! streaming at http://www.880therevolution.com
We've been having similar union woes here in Boston where the (largely white) unions are trying to get rules on the books that limit new green economy initiatives to unions. The effect of this is to shut out POC from the new green economy because the unions have been effective at limiting the number of POC in their training programs.
I sent the article around to green economy folks I know in the community and got a lot of interesting responses. . . so you may have an impact since such green roof rules have not yet been suggested here. Many thanks to whoever posted it!
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175129/jo_comer...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/ar...
2) I don't trust "journalism" anymore. Who were the Obama "advisors" throwing Deeds under the bus. Are they people like David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett or are they people like Billy who answers the phone?
http://blogs.e-rockford.com/applesauce/2009/10/...
oh, they're not going to make it hip, they're either going to scare everyone into wanting them for self-security reasons (because you know, any one of us could get kidnapped or have our kid molested and with the RFID you'd be able to track them down and find them before they get hurt) OR they'll slowly progress the medical records industry to the point where you have to have one in order to go to the doctor.
I'm no conspiracy dude, but I see this RFID coming and I see it being bad.
They'll use the same rationale as speed cameras, crime cameras etc... "well, if you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about"
http://www.spychips.com/
by Jed Lewison
Share this on Twitter - What he really meant Sat Oct 24, 2009 at 09:16:03 AM PDT
Douglas Holtz-Eakin (the McCain economic guru) in Politico:
Partisan health care reform efforts by Democratic presidents in 1993-94 and 2009 failed to win the confidence of the American people and sufficient votes in Congress. If we want a different outcome the next time around, we need to try a different tactic: genuine bipartisanship.
Real bipartisan reform should begin immediately. Each party must compromise and swallow a little bitter medicine to save health care. The Democrats want universal coverage through a single-payer system, but the public wants to keep its private insurance. The Republicans have staked their reforms on a consumer-driven system modeled after health savings accounts, but the public doesn’t trust that solution either. Both approaches need to be left behind.
What he really meant:
Stupid damned mother-effing voters keeping on screwing up bipartisanship...to hell with those mother-effers...we'll never get gen-u-whine bipartisanship if they keep on electing 60% Dems in the Senate and 59% Dems in the House...and how will we ever get bipartisanship if they keep on electing radical black terrorist Muslim CommuniFacist Demonc-RATS as president at the same time?
I hate Americans.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/10/24/79...
RIGHT FALLS FOR 'THESIS' HOAX.... Right-wing pundit Michael Ledeen published an item this week on Barack Obama's "college thesis," which Obama allegedly wrote as a student at Columbia 25 years ago. Leeden cited some website, which ran a piece in August.
The paper was called "Aristocracy Reborn," and in the first ten pages (which were all that reporter Joe Klein -- who wrote about it for Time -- was permitted to see), the young Obama wrote:
"... the Constitution allows for many things, but what it does not allow is the most revealing. The so-called Founders did not allow for economic freedom. While political freedom is supposedly a cornerstone of the document, the distribution of wealth is not even mentioned. While many believed that the new Constitution gave them liberty, it instead fitted them with the shackles of hypocrisy."
That's quite an indictment, even for an Ivy League undergraduate.... Maybe instead of fuming about words that Rush Limbaugh never uttered, the paladins of the free press might ask the president about words that he did write.
Yesterday, Rush Limbaugh picked up on Leeden's report, blasting Obama for the alleged paper.
The first sign of trouble was when Joe Klein noted that he's never seen or written about Obama's college thesis, and has "no idea where this report comes from."
The second sign of trouble was when one stopped to notice that Obama didn't write a senior thesis (though he did write a thesis-length paper on Soviet nuclear disarmament).
The third sign of trouble was when one clicked on the link that Leeden provided as support and found the word "satire."
Yes, Leeden and Limbaugh got all worked up, trashing the president for a paper he didn't write in college 25 years ago, relying on a satirical blog post. And for real entertainment value, notice what Leeden and Limbaugh did when they realized they'd fallen for a dumb joke -- they blamed Obama anyway.
Leeden conceded he was wrong and apologized, but added, "It worked because it's plausible." Limbaugh said the text he touted was fake, but it didn't matter because, "I know Obama thinks it." Yep, even when they're wrong, it's only because the president makes it easy for them to be confused.
Remember, the Washington Post and New York Times are committed to paying much closer attention to what's generating buzz among far-right talk-show hosts and bloggers. Here's hoping the dailies noticed the Leeden/Limbaugh journalistic breakthrough.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/indiv...
I don't see a problem EVEN IF HE DID write this.
The risks were identified in a landmark decade-long study by the World Health Organization, The Daily Telegraph reported Saturday.
The study, which surveyed the cell phone habits of 12,8000 people in 13 countries, found a "significantly increased risk" of brain tumors among people who had used cell phones for 10 years or longer, Elisabeth Cardis, the head of the study told the Telegraph.
Cell phone use by children should be restricted, Cardis said, adding she does not advocate banning cell phones for children because of their importance in emergencies and in maintaining contact with parents.
Study: Long-time cell phone users at risk
McCain introduces bill to block FCC's net neutrality rules