July 26, 2012

Romney meme: "we don't have lobbyists running our campaign". But who pays the lobbyists Romney? Your

superpack and campaign backers. Same people: vested interests in Washington back Romney.

See Romney argueing with a reporter in this video:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/101743955

July 25, 2012

"What Mitt did and didn't build" The Economist (Great article)

What Mitt did and didn't build

The Economist

http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2012/07/tax-justice?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/whatmittdidanddidntbuild

"SNIP.....................................

What caused this tremendous increase in the share of wealth going to the top 0.01% of earners? To some extent, it was due to implacable changes in the nature of the global economy: the shift of manufacturing jobs to emerging markets holding wages down, increasing returns to education and information technology, financialisation, the superstar economy. To some extent, it was due to political changes: the collapse of labour unions, drastic cuts in top marginal income-tax rates, and so on.

One thing you can't reasonably say, though, is that it's because top managers in Mitt Romney's era are smarter or harder-working than those in his father George's were. Nor can you say that managers these days are generating more growth or jobs for the rest of us; they're generating less. For the most part, America's richest executives today are vastly richer than America's richest executives in 1968 for reasons that have nothing to do with their own merits or sins, or with their contributions to society. Mitt Romney may have built Bain Capital, but he didn't build the income distribution pattern of the US economy.

Or maybe he did, in part. There is an argument to be made that companies like Bain Capital did, in fact, contribute to the widening of income disparities, by extracting more and more of firms' value for private equity and other investors and for top management, and leaving less and less of it available for workers. But I don't think that's an argument you'll hear Mr Romney making.

Anyway, if America's richest are wondering why a majority of Americans favour taxing them more heavily, they may want to look at the above graph for an explanation. Americans see an elite class that seems to be reaping an ever-growing windfall from globalisation, while average workers are being squeezed ever tighter by unemployment and stagnant or falling wages. The income elite don't appear to have done anything to justify their ever-enlarging share of the pie. They seem to have lucked into it. Or rather, there are two theories. The first theory is that America's financial elites are in no way responsible for the forces that are awarding all the gains from economic growth to them, while tossing only occasional scraps to average workers. The second possibility is that America's financial elites are responsible for those forces. Neither of those theories is very politically helpful to Mitt Romney.

..........................................SNIP"

July 8, 2012

The job market is hot in western Canada. Pipeline jobs are being offered to U.S. Vets. Why?

http://www.vfw.org/News-and-Events/Articles/2012-Articles/CANADA-WANTS-U-S-VETERANS-FOR-PIPELINE-WORK/

I think it is to circumvent the hot wages Canadians are making out west. People get paid $25 to $35 an hour to work in construction in Edmonton. So they are bringing in 'guest workers' now. Why don't the pipeline builders like the free market where employment is concerned? I thought the market was everything to those corporate types. Seems they only like the 'market' when it goes in their favour.

http://www.hrsdc.gc.ca/eng/labour/employment_standards/contracts/schedule/alberta/edmonton/schedule.shtml

July 5, 2012

GOP intransigence on the economy: not just to hurt Obama's election chances now but also to kneecap

the middle class in the USA in the long term?