Workers in the Digital Age are becoming invisible. And Amazon is evil. Welcome to the future…
And We Are Not Free
“Economic freedom” (i.e., unregulated, laissez faire capitalism) is not, despite conservative propaganda, the same thing as political freedom. Don’t believe me? Ask the Cato Institute and note that their top ten “most free” countries includes such bastions of liberty as Singapore, Hong Kong (the free-est place on Earth!), United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain. Evidently all the United States need do to improve its standing (which, according to Cato, has “fallen precipitously” in freedom rankings) is import a brutal repressive hereditary monarchy from the Middle East. We should take out a Craigslist ad or something.
Crony Capitalism For Dummies
There’s been a lot of snark on the Left side of the web about the “irony” of holding the RNC in a publicly financed stadium (a fact dutifully ignored by Your Liberal Media). Hah hah! Look at the hypocrites as they chant “we built this!” on the taxpayer’s dime. Don’t laugh; it’s not funny. It’s the modern Republican idea of “capitalism,” namely that the government exists to service corporations and billionaires, whether its paying for expensive sports venues or ladling out government contracts. All that horseshit about “rugged individualism”? That’s for “you people”. “Socialism” is for our neo-Ayn Randian “job creator” overlords; “capitalism” is for the “parasites,” meaning the people who work for a living.
Meanwhile, Back At The Great Recession…
Ever wonder what effect Romney-nomics would have on the economy? Worry no more! It’s already been tried. In the UK. And their economy is in free-fall. Back at home, no less than Sandy Weill, father of Citigroup, has come to Jesus and now thinks banks that are “too big to fail” should be broken up. I expect him to be vilified as a communist by the Right Wing Howler Monkey Media Chorus any second now. It’s a fairly substantial crack in the wall of propaganda constantly blasted by the 1% to justify their wretched excess.
Banks Suck, Part 257 In An Ongoing Series
Wells Fargo spent years steering minorities into crappy mortgages. Now they’re paying the price for it.
JP Morgan Chase actually may have managed to blow as much as $9 BILLION dollars.
Save Us, Willard!! (Part 2)
Mitt Romney proposes to save American jobs by…outsourcing those jobs to China. No, really; that’s pretty much his vaunted private sector experience. Which brings up the question I’ve frequently asked but never gotten an answer to: how does America remain an economic superpower if we don’t make anything? If all we do is ship out resources for China to turn into products to sell back to us, aren’t we pretty much just their colony? How is this good for America? Won’t one of our Randian Overlords deign to answer?
Great Moments in Democracy
Nothing like watching United States Senators from both parties fall all over themselves to lick the boots of bankster Jamie Dimon, with the slight exception of Merkley and Martinez. Why, just imagine if this was Iceland, where they actually prosecute bank frauds who trash the economy AND the politicians they bought and paid for? Imagine!
UPDATE: From the Great & Powerful Kos, a handy chart showing show of the best moments in brown-nosing organized by how much money Jamie Dimon, Superstar, bestowed upon each Senator telling him how much his ass smelled like a rose.
In Defense of Unions
As a follow-up to a previous post, an excellent piece from The Atlantic on why unions not only still matter but are needed now more than ever. Meanwhile, Mitch Daniels, architect of the Bush Recession and now Governor of Indiana, recently took to FOX “News” to opine that public sector unions should be done away with, the Constitutional right to freedom of association notwithstanding. The government should evidently be small, but not so small that it can’t bust unions, tell you who you can marry, and decide whether or not you have a baby.
UPDATE: A breakdown of where all those lazy public sector workers actually work. Unsurprisingly, the vast majority are public school teachers. To be sure, not all public employees are members of union, but it’s easy to see Willard’s sneer about more firemen, police officers and teachers as another not-so-subtle attack on public sector unions.
Do Unions Matter?
Unions, particularly public sector unions, went to the mat in the Wisconsin recall election, pushing ahead of s reluctant White House and DNC who wanted to wait until 2014 to tackle the odious Scott Walker. Not only that, but people who live in union households but are not union members themselves were at best tepid in support of throwing the bum out. There were, of course, other reasons for the loss, including Democratic incompetence and the fact that Walker outspent Barrett by 10-1, but it still raises a valid point: do unions really matter in elections anymore? Are fighting retreats the only thing left to them? Or is there life left in the movement yet, only requiring better organization and a better working relationship with national Democrats? Personally, I see the decline in union membership, and the resultant loss of political power as part and parcel of the ongoing slow destruction of the American economy. As long as both political parties remain committed to the cult of “Free” Trade, and as long as both political parties are content to see America lose its manufacturing base entirely, workers (union and otherwise) will continue to get screwed.
Mitt’s Base
The whiny bitchy uber-rich. It is beyond belief to me how the Republic Party, in an election year with a vulnerable incumbent and climbing out of the worse economic downtown since the Great Depression, could nominate Mr. Moneybags from the Monopoly Game. Have they just decided to write this one off, like they did 1996 and 2008?
The Local Crank