HERE IS WHY GEORGE WASHINGTON IS WORTH CELEBRATING

February 16, 2015 5:33 pm / 1 Comment on HERE IS WHY GEORGE WASHINGTON IS WORTH CELEBRATING

George Washington warned this Nation about political parties that,”alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities.” He called political parties..”a frightful despotism.”

He called plutocrats (wealthy, controlling capitalists) ,”powerful engines” of cunning and ambition that “subvert the power of the people and usurp, for themselves, the reins of government.”

Because a democratic government is compelled to enact the will of the people he gave this advice: “Promote then, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge.” He said, “In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened.”

He denounced war that is coerced by “habitual hatred” and those who profit from it. He said “The nation, prompted by ill-will and resentment, sometimes impels to war the government, contrary to the best calculations of policy… The government… makes the animosity of the nation [towards war] subservient to projects of hostility instigated by pride, ambition and other sinister and pernicious motives.”

And he made all of these comments in his Farewell Address, with the hope that we would still be listening.

https://www.senate.gov/…/his…/resources/pdf/WashFarewell.pdf

HT: StarLedger of NJ Feb 16, 2014

A Best of Times, Worst of Times Economy

January 22, 2015 2:08 pm / 2 Comments on A Best of Times, Worst of Times Economy

by Brian T. Lynch, MSW

How is it possible that the investment economy is booming while the economy of ordinary citizens is still in such a slump? Stock prices are at an all time high and big time investors are getting high rates of returns while worker wages have declined and are just starting to rise. The raises in wages so far is still not keeping up with inflation. It seems like there are two separate economies not entirely connected to each other. Right?

To understand what’s happening we have to begin by acknowledging that most of the richest billionaires today have gotten much of their wealth increases at the expense of lower wages for the rest of us. This trend is more than thirty years old now in the United States. There is plenty of evidence supporting this fact for those who care to look. And this wage suppression is a global phenomenon, not just a U.S. feature.In order to increase consumer spending while wages remained flat we have had to make a series of changes, beginning with mothers entering the workforce, longer work hours followed by layaway plans, credit cards and then home equity loans to pay for spending beyond our means. These have run their course and the long hard pay down of personal debt (including college loans) means that consumer spending will be sluggish for the foreseeable future.

The impact on the economy of stagnant wages is ever slower consumption of goods and services over time. There isn’t as much money to buy things. This slower rate of consumption suppresses demand. Lower demand means fewer jobs and even lower wages for the rest of us. This is the cycle were we find ourselves today.

The consumption of goods produces the profits from with owners of capital collect returns on their investments. Lower demand due to suppressed wages would normally also lower returns on capital investments but for the factors that have kept consumption afloat. Now there are no hours left in a day, fewer household members available to work, no more capacity to borrow against future earnings. Now the impact of low wages has come home to roost and lower sales means less profit to be made.

Before the 1970’s this situation would right itself when owners shared a portion of their wealth by offering productivity raises to reward their workers. Productivity wages are based on growing productivity and are separate and above cost of living increases. Productivity raises, along with cost of living adjustments, allowed the labor/consumers to increase spending and boost demand. Increased demand would spur on manufacturing and stimulate the whole economy.

But today’s billionaires have found another way to profit without sharing their wealth with wage earning consumers. They spotted the growing ownership stake of many in the middle class and created an opportunity to take it all back. It is hard for most of us to see in our lifetime, but this is the first time in history of the world that the middle class (upper-middle mostly) has accumulated a significant stake in capital ownership. Many of us have retirement accounts, money market funds, etc. People in the upper-middle class, doctors, lawyers, middle-managers etc., have become mini-investment capitalists. Prior to the vast destruction of property caused by the world wars in the last century, wealth was concentrated at the top as is happening again today. Middle class gains in the 20th Century directly correspond to capital losses by the wealthiest owners during the two world wars.

Billionaire capitalists, the “true heirs” to wealth ownership, have responded to middle-class ownership of capital by creating a massive financial investment casino filled with elaborate new investment vehicles. The object is to entice new wealth owners to play in the billionaire’s casinos. Mortgage backed securities and swaps are just two small examples that nearly bankrupted the economy in 2008.

These new and incomprehensible investment products has spawned a whole new class of hucksters, like Bernie Madoff, who use these bewildering new instruments to create slick ponzi schemes. But the bulk of these new investment opportunities are just a big casino games in which the house (billionaire owners) always wins. Billionaires are quickly siphoning away middle class ownership stakes in capital through high finance games of chance. In this way they can boost returns on investments and entertain themselves without sharing their wealth through higher wages.

Because these billionaire owners, who make up less than .01% of the population, control the investment odds, they are sure to win back all the capital they lost in the war years of the last century. Middle class gains in the 20th Century correspond to capital losses by the wealthiest owners during the two world wars. This now explains why the stock market and investment economy seem to be booming while the economy on Main Street slumps. Billionaire capitalists don’t have to share wealth to make wealth like they use to. There are enough small investors with an ownership stake willing to gamble what little they have in this new investment casino to keep billionaire fortunes growing.

If you, the reader, are still with me at this point let me assure you that the geometrically rising gains by the wealthiest owners of capital are not an inevitability. There are difficult but concrete steps we can take to bring capitalism back into balance for everyone. A discussion of these solutions does require a much deeper understanding of problems that I can provide here. I firmly believe it is in our best interest to arm ourselves with a much better understanding of the forces creating our two economies; Forces that are threatening our democratic institutions. For a fuller understanding I recommend Thomas Piketty’s excellent book, Capitalism in the 21st Century. I encourage you to strike up conversations with others and share your thoughts and questions.

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Image Credit: (and recommended site) http://oxfamblogs.org/fp2p/is-doing-something-about-inequality-just-a-choice-between-bash-the-rich-v-tackling-poverty-some-thoughts-for-blog-action-day/#prettyPhoto-img/0/

A Moderate GOP Congressman’s Slide to the Right

August 23, 2014 10:41 pm / Leave a comment

Leonard Lance is a Republican running for his third term as New Jersey Congressman from the 7th Congressional District. This is among the wealthiest Congressional Districts in the country. Lance was elected because he was considered a moderate, but over time the whole GOP has pulled hard to the right. Here is the voting record for this “moderate” Republican just over the past month on some key legislation. This isn’t is complete voting record for the past month but it shows how he voted on the most contested pieces of legislation.

HR 4935 – Child Tax Credit Improvement Act of 2014

Passage of this bill has both pros and cons.

Pros: This law would index the current $1,000/child tax credit to inflation. This would automatically increase the amount of this tax credit each year going forward. This is a good thing.

Cons: 1. This law would raise income eligible for a Child Tax Credit to families making between $110,000 to $140,000 per year. This income group is in the top 5% of wage earners and they clearly do not need this tax break more than, say, a child in need of a federally funding lunch at school. We don’t need to give more tax breaks to the already well off.

2. At the same time that it raises income eligibility for wealthier Americans this law does not extend enhanced benefits to poor families that is scheduled to expire in 2018. Expiration of that extended benefit will cost poor families over $1,000 per year. We have got to stop making life ever more difficult for the poor.

3. Under current federal law employers are required to obtain federal taxpayer ID numbers for undocumented aliens who work for them and to collect both payroll and income taxes for these employees (Many people are unaware that at least 2.3 million undocumented aliens pay their fair share of income and payroll taxes each year). The bill requires that recipients of the tax credit have Social Security numbers. This bill blocks unauthorized immigrants who work and pay their taxes from collecting Child Tax Credits on their Income Tax returns. As it stands, most of these immigrants will never receive any Social Security benefits either, despite paying into the system their whole life. They help float the whole system for the rest of us citizens. Now we are going to tax them at a higher rater than we tax citizens. This is another attack on unauthorized residents, particularly those who have been here for decades and contribute so much to this country.

Leonard Lance voted YES for this bill.

H Amendment 1040 – Prohibits Implementation of Certain Climate Assessments

Leonard Lance voted YES for this bill.

Passage of this bill blocks already appropriated funding needed to prepare several of the federal governments annual climate assessment reports including:

· The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fifth Assessment Report;

· The United States Global Climate Research Program National Climate Assessment; or

· The United Nation’s Agenda 21 sustainable development plan.

Leonard Lance voted YES for this bill to block funding for these assessments.

H Amendment 1012 – Prohibits Federal Agencies from Contracting with Businesses Chartered in Bermuda or in the Cayman Islands

This bill Prohibits Federal Agencies from entering into contracts with businesses that are chartered in Bermuda or in the Cayman Islands in order to avoid paying US taxes.

Leonard Lance voted NO which means federal agencies cannot reject contract bids from companies that evade US taxes.

H Amendment 1098 – Prohibits District of Columbia from Implementing Certain Firearm Laws

Passage of this law would effectively prevent the District of Columbia (Washington, DC) from enforcing any of the districts gun control legislation, apparently allowing guns to be openly carried in the district.

Leonard Lance voted YES for this bill. (Isn’t it time to give DC a right to vote in Congress?)

H Res 676 – Providing for Authority to Initiate Litigation for Actions by the President or Other Executive Branch Officials Inconsistent with Their Duties Under the Constitution of the United States

This bill Provided the Authority to Initiate Litigation for Actions by the President or Other Executive Branch Officials Inconsistent with Their Duties Under the Constitution of the United States. A vote to pass a resolution that authorizes the Speaker of the House of Representatives to initiate a civil action on behalf of the House of Representatives against the President of the United States for certain purposes.

Leonard Lance voted YES for this bill. He wants to sue President Obama for trying to govern the country while Congress is unable to pass any meaningful legislation on the most urgent issues of the day.

Oklahoma Woman Sues Fracking Company

August 23, 2014 10:07 pm / Leave a comment

To follow-up on an article I posted here on June 27th, I just learned that an Oklahoma woman has filed a law suit against the natural gas fracking company she believes is responsible for the many earthquake swarms in her community. The prior article posted here was about the political dynamics at play. It will be very interesting to see how this judicial action plays out in the courts Check this blog for future updates. – Brian T. Lynch, MSW

EARTHQUAKES:

Okla. drillers sued for quake swarm

Ellen M. Gilmer, E&E reporter

Published: Thursday, August 7, 2014

Almost three years after earthquakes rocked Sandra Ladra’s living room in central Oklahoma, she’s taking two energy companies to court.

Ladra this week filed a complaint in Oklahoma state court against New Dominion LLC and Spess Oil Co., both based in Oklahoma, for using wastewater injection wells that may have caused a cluster of earthquakes in late 2011. Ladra was injured when rocks fell from her fireplace during the quakes and is now suing the drillers for personal injury and punitive damages.

http://www.eenews.net/energywire/2014/08/07/stories/1060004160

Police Killings Not Uncommon – Exact Numbers Not Known

August 15, 2014 1:53 pm / Leave a comment

By Brian T. Lynch, MSW

How many people are shot and killed by law enforcement every year? The answer is that no one knows.

There are 17,000 law enforcement agencies in the United States, including local municipal police. There is no national database to track police shootings. The FBI has maintains a partial data based of police killings, but submitting data to the FBI is on a voluntary basis. Only 750 law enforcement agencies, just 44% of all agencies, volunteer to submit police shooting data. What the FBI collects and reports are only those cases in which police homicides were considered justified by the departments reporting them. Some of the largest law enforcement agencies, such as the US Border Patrol, do not report shooting incidents to anyone. It isn’t even clear if the US Border Patrol has an internal tracking system for shooting incidents.

So, given this very limited collection of information on police killings, what does the FBI data base show?

There are about 400 “justified” police homicides per year. Every week in this country there are two incidents like the one in Ferguson, Missouri, involving a white police officer shooting a black citizen. About half of all police homicides involve black citizens, and among the population of folks 21 years old or younger, the police homicide rate for blacks is 18%, twice the rate for white citizens (8.7%). And these numbers are based on voluntary self-report from less than half of all law enforcement agencies nation wide.

This and other information on police killings come from a recent CNN article (see below) Couple these startling facts with the militarization of local police departments and the changing nature of police culture and we have some frightening new insights on our hands. These are issues that clearly need to be confronted and addressed.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/08/14/police-killings-data/14060357/

Local police involved in 400 killings per year

Kevin Johnson, Meghan Hoyer and Brad Heath , USA TODAY
August 15, 2014

WASHINGTON — Nearly two times a week in the United States, a white police officer killed a black person during a seven-year period ending in 2012, according to the most recent accounts of justifiable homicide reported to the FBI.

On average, there were 96 such incidents among at least 400 police killings each year that were reported to the FBI by local police. The numbers appear to show that the shooting of a black teenager in Ferguson, Mo., last Saturday was not an isolated event in American policing.

The reports show that 18% of the blacks killed during those seven years were under age 21, compared to 8.7% of whites. The victim in Ferguson was 18-year-old Michael Brown. Police have yet to identify the officer who shot him; witnesses have said the officer was white.

While the racial analysis is striking, the database it’s based on has been long considered flawed and largely incomplete. The killings are self-reported by law enforcement and not all police departments participate so the database undercounts the actual number of deaths. Plus, the numbers are not audited after they are submitted to the FBI and the statistics on “justifiable” homicides have conflicted with independent measures of fatalities at the hands of police.

August 2, 2014 12:19 pm / Leave a comment

Leonard Lance is a Republican running for his third term as New Jersey Congressman from the 7th Congressional District. This is among the wealthiest Congressional Districts in the country. Lance was elected because he was considered a moderate, but over time the whole GOP has pulled hard to the right. Here is the voting record for this “moderate” Republican just over the past month on some key legislation. This isn’t is complete voting record for the past month but it shows how he voted on the most contested pieces of legislation.