The revolution has not been televised yet

The "revolution," (which I believe had begun a LONG time ago, back in the day, when I was but a late 60's virgin) has had its stops, starts, fits, hits, and misses.

The "war" has already been won in that, we, the dirty unwashed, unshaven, unemployed, unhoused, etc, have much empathy for our fellow creatures, especially those less fortunate than ourselves. We laugh belly laughs of delight at the foibles of the so-called "elites" - the wealth / financial "elites", the "elites" of academia, the "elites" of media, who, as individual human shaped creatures, devoid of any understanding of "the human condition," they function as gate keepers, keeping the rabble "happy," "drugged," "anesthetized," "institutionalized," and happy to be just barely making it at all ... repeat ... we LAUGH BELLY LAUGHS at these people, to their faces, and so do our children, and our children are REALLY getting this but good.

That's victory (victory in spirit, victory in principal) but, not the end of the battles, because those thats gots lots, they want only more ... NEVER once realizing that without we, the unwashed, the unshaven, the unsophisticated, the etc's, their money and power and influence are worthless -- without us to wait on them, the serve them, to jiggle their toilet handles, to pick up their garbage, to mow their lawns, to blow their leaves, to clean up their messes, without us -- they are worse than helpless; they are food for the jackals and hyenas (the literal jackals and heyenas, not the metaphorical ones).

YES, of course, NO WAR ... but, and I think better yet, YES of course, to PEACE .... YES, hopefully, to justice, but, YES, always, to MERCY ... YES, keep your treasures, you who do so little for humanity, but just that which you presently possess, for, the rest is ours ... we have built it by the sweat of our labors, we have grown it by the sweat of our brow, we sustain it by our native genius and ingenuity, we make it all go, we keep the wheels greased, we make it run ... without us to compare yourselves to, you have nothing; without us, you are nothing; and, in a perfect world, you too shall receive this Bhudda wisdom, this zen-like state of grace, where we exist to LOVE ONE ANOTHER

So, behave nicely, be gracious, and we will behave nicely back, and we will be gracious back -- but if you go killing us and enslaving us and jailing us (again, as you always have, but need not always do) ... DO NOT BE SURPRISED ... if we have a secret we've not told you ... your armies and your police forces ... they are US .... and they will not take your orders to kill their own ... now, whether or not they turn on you, and frog march you into our courts for our judgments, or just turn on you and empty their magazines into your clueless inbred bodies, that choice might be in your hands ....

Choose well, mes amis!

"Get Loud: Decrowd!:" Police State Targeted by New Year’s Eve Demos

by STEVEN HIGGS

If mainstream media reports on a New Year’s Eve demonstration in downtown Bloomington, Indiana are given any credibility, the only crimes committed that evening were perpetrated by a couple protesters, and the city’s lightweight mayor may take away Occupy Bloomington’s tents for their indiscretions.

But mainstream media reports on social justice issues, especially on the police, have little to no credibility. By institutional design, they are propaganda for the economic elite, managed by law enforcement to shock the masses (and produce profits for media companies). The real news from Bloomington is that the “noise demo” that took place along its streets as the year turned was part of a coordinated, ongoing, global struggle against the corporate police state.

“Noise demos outside of prisons in some countries are a continuing tradition, a way of expressing solidarity for people imprisoned during the New Year, remembering those held captive by the state,” said a nationwide call for the New Year’s Eve actions posted on websites like 325.

Before the new year was 24 hours old, first-person accounts of noise demos from Sydney, Seattle, Chicago, Portland, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, New York and Baltimore, as well as Bloomington, had been posted on the Anarchist news dot org website.

The Bloomington account began, “Saturday night, around 50 people gathered at the Occupy Bloomington camp in People’s Park for a roving dance party and noise demonstration outside the Monroe County jail. The party left the park just before 11 p.m., heading west on Kirkwood Avenue toward the square.”

The mood, it said, was festive, as street dancers traded greetings of ‘Happy New Year!’ with other revelers on the sidewalks, in cars and in windows overlooking the square. Followed all the while by the police, the march arrived at the jail at around 11:30 p.m., where the dancing continued, and squad cars sealed off the streets.

“One comrade read a statement through a megaphone expressing solidarity with those people locked inside the jail and against this prison society,” the account continued. “It was inspiring to hear pounding on the windows from the inside as we cheered from the outside. Just before midnight a banner that read ‘Break Your Chains’ was dropped from the Hilton hotel across the street from the jail.”

*** The New Year’s Eve noise demo in Bloomington was at least the third such action in the city since summer 2011. One was held in October, as a court-ordered limit on the jail’s prisoner population was set to expire. Another was held August to show solidarity with striking prisoners in the Indiana Department of Correction. Occupy Bloomington marches all stop at the jail. The Monroe County Jail, renamed Monroe County Correctional Center, was opened in 1986 with a maximum prisoner capacity of 126. By September 2008, the inmate population had reached 312, Monroe County Sheriff Jim Kennedy told The Bloomington Alternative at that time for an investigative reporting series called Going to Jail.

That series ran 10 months after an inmate sued the county over the inhumane and unconstitutional conditions caused by jail overcrowding. The lawsuit, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of inmate Trevor Richardson, was settled in December 2009. The federal court order set a “cap” of 278 prisoners in the facility.

As the agreement’s Oct. 1, 2011, expiration date arrived, the group Decarcerate Monroe County issued a news release inviting the public to a parade called “Get Loud: De-Crowd!” to recognize the settlement’s expiration, jail conditions and the impact that incarceration has on everyone in the community.

“The majority of people held at the Monroe County jail pose no threat to the community,” the release said. “On the contrary, the security of those incarcerated and their families is threatened because being in jail means losing your ability to work and care for your family.”

The Decarcerate release said county judges in September had begun allowing non-violent offenders to be released from jail without bond as a step to reduce the crowding.

The Herald-Times reported on Oct. 1, 2011, that the jail population was 243, still almost twice the design capacity. The article said Kennedy had written a letter asking federal-court approval of a one-year extension to the cap. It also announced the Get Loud: DeCrowd! March.

Searches on The Herald-Times Online produced no follow-up stories on either story angle. ***

The Bloomington New Year’s Eve demo proceeded from the jail “toward the newest hipster bar in town,” as tourists and revelers watched, the Bloomington Anarchist dot org account continued.

“Upon arriving at the hipster bar, our numbers swelled to well over 100 and maybe 150 as well-groomed partiers came out to dance and be seen in the street,” the post said. “While the whole scene was being closely monitored by over a dozen cops, it looked as if they were going to let the party ride out and fizzle on its own accord. But that’s not what happened.”

The crowd dropped back to about 50 as “last call” summoned the drinkers back inside, the account said. “Somewhere in the mix a bottle was broken on the sidewalk,” after which an officer jumped out of his car and tackled a protester, “punching him in the head as he lay helplessly below the much larger cop.”

Protester efforts to retrieve the man from custody were unsuccessful, which led to verbal confrontations between police and protesters, the account said. “More cops, including university cops, BPD and Monroe County, showed up. The march turned east on Kirkwood, as 15 cops or so followed on foot, ordering people out of the street.”

Two more protesters were arrested during the demo, which ended about 1:30 a.m. Prosecutors have charged one man with two felonies for the altercation with police. Charges against another were dropped. The third was charged with public intoxication.

Occupy Bloomington issued a statement on Jan. 3 saying the arrested men had no connection to the local group. ***

In August, Bloomington activists acted in solidarity with prisoners at Indiana state prisons, where similar conditions contribute to increased tensions, violence and rebellion, according to a post titled “Bloomington solidarity actions with prisoners in struggle” on the Rififi Bloomington website.

According to the post, Indiana state prisons were put on system-wide lockdown in July, using as a pretext “the stabbing of an Aryan Brother (a member of a prison gang that often acts in collusion with guards and administrators) in Pendleton.”

The real reason, the post says, was to prevent a “rebellion.”

At the end of July, prisoners in the Secure Housing Unit (SHU) at Indiana’s Wabash Valley Correctional Facility organized a protest against the shutdown and the inhumane conditions, which included no water for sanitation or cleansing. SHU’s are solitary-confinement prisons within prisons.

The strike caught the attention of national prison reform activists, who on Aug. 3 organized a national call-in day to support Wabash Valley prisoners, the Reififi post said. Fifteen Bloomington activists passed out fliers and covered the town in chalked messages to raise awareness of the prisoners’ protest.

In early August the SHU protest ended inconclusively. “Prisoners remain on lockdown, but the rebels win an improvement of conditions, including the restoration of water for sanitation and washing up,” the post said.

An Aug. 10 noise demo was held outside the Bloomington jail, “making a ruckus for Prisoner Justice Day,” the post said. “It’s dedicated to prisoners killed and tortured inside every prison, but especially the local jail and the Wabash Valley SHU.”

The lockdown ended in mid-August. A search for “Secure Housing Unit” on the H-T website produced no results.

Steven Higgs can be reached at editor@BloomingtonAlternative.com.

The Race to New Hampshire: Making Sport of Our Future

by WALTER M. BRASCH

One of the fun things sports writers do is try to predict the winners and scores of upcoming games, from high school through the pros. For special “look-at-us-we’re important” bonus points, they create lists of “Top” teams and rank them, both pre-season and weekly.

Sports writers have some kind of genetic mutation that leads them to believe they know more about sports than the average schlump who spends almost $200 a year for a newspaper subscription and as much as $500 a year for all-access all-games everywhere cable coverage. However, the reality is that even the best prognosticators—sports writers love big words when they can pronounce them—have a record about as accurate as the horoscope on the comics page.

Nevertheless, the guesses and rankings by sportswriters are usually innocuous. Readers and viewers usually forget in a couple of days who says what, and go about their own lives trying to make a mediocre paycheck stretch until the end of the month.

Joining the “guess how bright I am” journalists are some reporters who cover national political races. Instead of researching and explaining candidate positions on numerous issues, and giving readers and viewers a greater understanding of how those positions could impact their own lives, these pompous scribblers have made politics another sports contest.

The national news media, secure in their perches in New York and Washington, D.C., several months ago began chirping about who will win the Iowa caucus. For the final few days, they parachuted into Iowa to let their readers and viewers think they were toughened field reporters with as difficult a job as combat correspondents in Iraq or Afghanistan. Like hungry puppies, they stayed close to the candidates, hoping for a morsel or two, digested it, passed it out of their system as wisdom, and haughtily predicted the winner would be Mitt Romney—no, wait—it’s Michele Bachmann—no, we’re calling for a surprising victory by Herman Cain—stop-the-presses, Cain petered out—Newt Gingrich is definitely going to take Iowa—Rick Perry is our prediction— we predict Ron Paul might be ahead—the race is going to be tough, but based upon our superior knowledge because we’re the national news media and we’re infallible, and from projections we picked out of our butts we believe—.

The one candidate they discounted for almost all but the last week of the Iowa primary race was Rick Santorum. Not a chance, they declared. Weak campaign. Lack of funds. No charismatic razzle-dazzle. No vital signs. Dead as a 2-by-4 about to be sawed and covered by wallboard.

Santorum, of course, came within eight votes of taking the Iowa caucus. The news media then spent the next day telling us all about that campaign, much in the same way that a bubbly TV weather girl, who a week earlier predicted bright sunny skies for a week, tells us we had snow the past three days.

The national news media jetted out of Iowa faster than a gigolo leaving a plain rich girl for a plain richer one, and descended upon New Hampshire. In the granite state, they have been repeating their performance from Iowa. They have predicted who the “real” winners and losers are. They have tried to convince us they can actually talk to us common folk, so they are grabbing whoever they find to answer in less than ten seconds, “Who do you think will win?” After the New Hampshire primary concludes, Tuesday, the media will happily discard their snow coats for windbreakers and descend into South Carolina, where they will continue to treat a presidential race as little more than a sporting contest.

There’s a difference, however. Generally, whoever wins or loses a game doesn’t have much impact upon the rest of us, so we smile at the sportswriters’ attempts to predict outcomes and pretend they can analyze the impact of a reserve left tackle’s hangnail. Those who are elected to our city councils, state legislatures, Congress, and the Presidency do have an impact upon us. And we deserve a lot better than the arrogance of the news clan reporting the contests as if they were sporting events.

Walter Brasch’s latest book is Before the First Snow, a fact-based novel that looks at the nuclear industry during its critical building boom in the 1970s and 1980s.

Save the Economy, Tax Tweets!

Predictions for 2012 by PAUL KRASSNER Politics: The electoral college will be replaced by a system where voters will choose the polling firm they trust the most. Barack Obama will be re-elected because his vice-presidential running mate Joe Biden will be replaced by Hillary Clinton, thereby gaining the women’s vote. Failed Republican campaigners will all take other jobs. Mitt Romney will start smoking a pipe and portray the character Bob Dobbs in a movie about the cultish Church of the Subgenius. Newt Gingrich and Herman Cain will launch the bipartisan Adultery Party in 2016, joined by Democrats John Edwards and Bill Clinton. Ron Paul will unite with Ru Paul and they’ll perform on Dancing With the Stars. Rick Santorum will be caught in an airport bathroom stall enjoying a gay encounter. Michelle Bachmann will launch a lie-detector company. Rick Perry will copyright the word “Oops.” And it will be revealed that Donald Trump was actually born on Mars; he will have a birth certificate to prove it, along with a photo of him as a typical Martian baby with a comb-over. Show Business: Vegetarian converts will include Lady Gaga, who will wear a dress made entirely of heirloom tomatoes, and Meatloaf will change his name to Tofuloaf. Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy will win Academy Awards for best male and female actors. Angelina Jolie will legally adopt Brad Pitt. Kim Kardashian will get married and divorced on the same day. The Tea Party will become a popular sitcom. Capital-punishment executions will become a top-rated reality-TV series. The Second Coming of Jesus Christ will occur live on a three-hour special to be telecast on every single channel simultaneously, with an offstage voiceover narration by God. Atheists and agnostics will picket the production, only to be struck by lightning. Howard Stern will expose himself on America’s Got Talent. The Taliban and al-Quaeda will be the final competitors on The Biggest Terrorists. Hulu and Netflix will merge as Huflix. Fashion Trends: Square Hitler-style mustaches will finally become stylish after decades of ridicule. Botox will become a soft drink that will get rid of unwanted wrinkles from the inside. Pornography will be allowed in public libraries, but moaning out loud will definitely not be permitted. Fetus transplants from poor pregnant girls to wealthy anti-abortion women will become a controversial new fad. Arizona, Mississippi and Tennessee will refuse to recognize Leap Year. Lottery winners will be fingerprinted. Private prisons will be turned into ashrams. Inspired by Steve Jobs, many industries will continue his legacy by transforming planned obsolescence into a virtue. Prescription drugs will become children’s names, such as Ambien and Lipitor. Travel agents will begin arranging guilt trips for clients who have given up on airplanes. Combination vibrators and insomnia cures will be invented, trademarked as Dildoze. Pope Benedict XVI will permit condoms to be marketed if there are tiny pinhole pricks in the reservoir tips in order to ensure a fighting chance for spermatozoa to get through. Serial pedophiles, gay bashers and Internet hackers will form unions. The Economy: The Department of Energy will release a report concluding that so-called “clean coal” is, in point of fact, “filthy dirty.” The Bank of America will stop doing business with Verizon and switch to Credo. The largest protest in history will take place by ongoing Occupy-the-Federal-Reserve-System demonstrations. The recession will evolve into a depression, which will end quickly as the war on drugs morphs into the legalization of every single strain of cannabis will be designated as medical marijuana. Facebook members will be taxed for every friend, Twitter users will be taxed for every tweet, Monsanto will be taxed for every genetically modified food, and masturbators will be taxed for every ejaculation. The Supreme Court will download all corporations into embryos. Several million jobs will be created as Unemployment Insurance clerks. International Relations: North Korea’s new Beloved Leader will be caught cheating on his SAT examination, but he will redeem himself when he allows almost 70 McDonalds restaurants to open all over his dictatorial realm; however, in keeping with his father’s policies, he won’t allow them to sell any food. Saudi-Arabia will outlaw laughter. Iraq will become our 51st state. Afghanistan will require all men to wear burkas. Iran will develop a nuclear bomb, than drop it by accident on Libya and Syria. World War III will be fought entirely by drone planes attempting to destroy each other in the air. Products made in China will be increasingly pirated by American entrepreneurs. Global warming will continue to melt icebergs as well as Sarah Palin’s cold heart. The world will end on December 21st, but will begin all over again on December 23rd, just in time for last-minute Christmas shopping. The most popular gift will be cans of pepper-spray in a variety of flavors. Pakistan will continue to be bribed by us. And the Nobel Peace Prize will be secretly awarded to Anonymous. Paul Krassner publishes the infamous Disneyland Memorial Orgy poster. His latest book is an expanded and updated edition of his autobiography, Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut: Misadventures in the Counterculture, available at paulkrassner.com and as a Kindle e-book. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, forthcoming from AK Press. These predictions for 2012 were originally published in Metro Newspapers.

Life and Death at Exit 34

This Year

by MISSY BEATTIE

Sister Laura and her partner Erma had to have two pets euthanized within a two-week period.

Road trip.

Geographical cure tour. And I’m the designated driver.

I can’t remember when we left and had to locate the date on the computer’s screen to see that I’m writing on the 2nd. I am aware of entering 2012. Time is meaningless at the moment and only will become important, again, when one of us decides we need to go home. (I’ve just learned that one of us, meaning all of us, must go home over the weekend.)

Laura, Erma, their new kitten Maggie Mae, and I left Baltimore, traveling 95-S, drove nine hours, and stopped at a motel at an exit indistinguishable from others. At the end of the ramp, we turned onto a road decorated with strips of drive throughs, motels, gas stations, and empty storefronts.

I thought of a family story that seems ancient due to circumstances beyond my want—one of those travel gems, talked about immediately following and, then, filed away in the recesses to open later. It was, also, something to use in a short story, although I never did.

We were staying in a motel during our annual Thanksgiving trip to Tennessee. Son Hunter was scouring the exercise room when two teenage girls, whose mother worked in housekeeping, approached.

One of the girls asked, “Where do you live?”

“New York City. What about you?”

“Exit 34.”

A slice-of-life snapshot.

Just as it is for us, now, four females, including the cat, escaping to exit Maybe. Soon, we’ll turn the key in the Lesbaru’s ignition and 70-mile-an-hour it back to Realitymore. During the motoring and after, we’ll examine meanings, machinations, moving, and motivations.

We were with Daddy during his five days of dying. We were with Mother during her nine days of dying. This is not unusual. And, really, there’s nothing unique about caring for a spouse who’s diagnosed with an incurable illness. One half of a couple provides what’s necessary, unless there’s sudden, unexpected death. Becomes the strong one. Shift. Becomes the fragile one. Shift. A dying spouse, weakened by disease, often is courageously accepting. A healthy widow or widower, fragmented by anguish, eventually decides to live. Or not. Such is life. Such is death.

Life is living at Exit 34. Life is watching a loved one die. Life is sitting on some step of a staircase called Death. Life means death. And this is natural.

And, then, there’s the unnatural—the taking of life through war. The racket that exploits young men and women who may be ignorantly ultrapatriotic, in desperate need of a job, or somewhere on a what-do-I-do-now-that-I’m-out-of-high-school spectrum that stretches between teenage angst and adult responsibility. Or irresponsibility. And plotted, also, without consideration for the never-ending devastation in the lands we invade.

War is a financial product, a derivative of bundled toxins, calamitous to everyone but the corporate giants that profit from maiming and killing.

War is a widow and widower maker, via made-in-America WMD. Making children orphans and parents childless.

But war can be shaped to normal by smooth spinners who divert attention to the mindless focus of events like presidential debates and election cycles. Like floats on a route of oblivion. The Empire demands that our tired, poor, and huddled masses are enslaved. The Empire’s one percent require obeisance from the chained as well as from the politicians in their employ.

It’s a new year, and integrity has been in arrears for more than 200 years.

Hello, Occupy Wall Street. Play it and pay it forward, backward, and sideways. Whatever it takes. Even when sites are raided, shut down, and livestream operators are arrested. Find a way. Hold the big-bank criminals accountable for a crisis that’s crescendo’d crises, ravaging families and our economy.

Time for peace, justice, and equality. And for the road trip home, another geographical cure. Let this be the year.

Missy Beattie is in transit. Email: missybeat@gmail.com

The Wrath of the Neoliberals: Robbed in Little Rhodie

by HOWARD LISNOFF

This past fall, both my wife and I were beaten up in Rhode Island! We weren’t physically harmed, but part of the pensions we had worked a combined 58 years for were stolen from us by a law passed by the General Assembly. The law had been championed and proposed by the general treasurer of the state and signed into law by the governor.

Since we no longer live in Rhode Island, and I seldom follow news there, I learned of the proposed pension cuts while parking my car at the community college where I teach in upstate New York. A security guard whom I greeted every morning in the garage communicated the news to me, having heard a report in the national media on the pension system in Rhode Island.

I knew that the labor movement had been active in places like Wisconsin and Ohio over the past several months trying to stem the tide of attacks against collective bargaining rights and the pensions of current and former workers in those states. The anti-union and anti-worker movement is not new, with so-called right-to-work laws having been passed in states across the US with the intention of limiting the rights of workers won during and since Roosevelt’s New Deal.

Rhode Island is a strange place politically. Nepotism is an accepted way of doing business in the state and the political environment reflects that reality. Contrasted against the stilted political apparatus is the state’s stunning natural beauty at its seashore and the significance of the state’s colonial history.

Both the state’s general treasurer, Gina Raimondo, and its governor, Lincoln Chafee, represent the 1 percent in America. Raimondo representing high finance (by way of past employment before becoming general treasurer), while the governor represents “old” Rhode Island money and a storied political family. The cry of possible state bankruptcy would become the hallmark of the battle to strip pension benefits from those least able to defend themselves against the power of the state and often living hundreds or thousands of miles away. The whole episode would play out as a shoddy experiment in social Darwinism!

As the fall of 2011 matured, I received mailings from the Employee’s Retirement System of Rhode Island, of which Raimondo, as the state’s general treasurer, is also chairperson. Even with the seriousness of what was at stake in terms of pensions for about 66,000 current and retired state and municipal workers in the state, I had to laugh out loud when the communications from the state began with congenial greetings. Raimondo had successfully campaigned on the platform of pension “reform,” and she was about to deliver on that promise.

I began writing furiously and often in opposition to proposed pension cuts in the bill before the General Assembly and voiced my opposition to the bill on the website that the University of Rhode Island’s School of Business had created to deal with comments on the bill. Not a single letter I wrote was published in the Providence Journal and I was never contacted about my critical comments about the bill on the university’s website.

More and more upset, I contacted the presidents of the American Federation of Teachers, the National Education Association, and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees in Rhode Island. Each president of his respective organization was supportive and already had spent years dealing with pension issues in the state. A previous pension law had taken away pension benefits to current workers in the state by increasing worker contributions to the pension system and increasing the number of years a worker would have to labor for a pension. After the current pension bill was passed in Rhode Island, these organizations could not represent retired workers in any legal battle to win back their lost pension funds. In Rhode Island, the bill eliminated (to take effect in 14 months) what’s known alternatively as the cost-of-living allowance or the cost-of-living adjustment (COLA). The latter amounted to an annual 3 percent adjustment to my pension to help meet inflationary pressures in the economy. It was now gone with a simple signature. The state, under the new pension law, has the option of paying out a COLA in several years if the state’s investment portfolio performs well.

As the fall wore on, I was forced to miss (because of the demands of my teaching schedule) a demonstration at the Rhode Island State House attended by thousands of those protesting the proposed pension bill. Local protestors associated with the Occupy Wall Street movement attended the protest as well.

How much of a mess the retirement fund in Rhode Island was in prior to the current pension law’s passage is debatable. At the end of the decade of the 1980s, an early retirement incentive was passed that allowed workers within the pension system to use all sorts of questionable past employment experiences to qualify for pension credit. A summer of work as a lifeguard could be applied to the system for early retirement. Debacles like the latter, coupled with Rhode Island’s penchant for nepotism in official matters, lent itself to the slow deterioration of the system. The Great Recession of 2007-to the present may have done the rest. An acquaintance calls the pension system there a giant Ponzi scheme. General Treasurer Gina Raimondo claims that the state will save $3 billion because of the pension law. I know I will receive a smaller retirement benefit, as will many retired workers across the nation as their pension funds crack and crumble under the strain of The Great Recession and unbridled greed of the wealthy.

Nationally, the Social Security Administration published the study in 2009 “The Disappearing Defined Benefit Pension and Its Potential Impact on the Retirement Incomes of Baby Boomers.” The study compared traditional defined benefit (DB) plans with defined contribution (DC) plans from 1980 through 2008. DB plans pay a lifetime annuity, while DC plans establish an investment account owned and controlled by employees (often with employer contributions). DC plans are generally more risky than DB plans, but the recession and attacks against workers may change the nature of that debate. The study combined an analysis of both public and private pension plans in both categories of pensions. The study found that through the years of the study DB plans fell from 38 percent to 20 percent, while DC plans rose from 8 percent to 31 percent among private pension holders. The study concluded that pension changes by employers would create losers among baby boomers born from 1961 to 1965 (“last-wave” boomers) and hurt “first-wave” boomers (those born between 1946 to 1950) generally less. The study also found that “last-wave” boomers would lose more in retirement income than “first-wave” boomers, much of the loss accelerated by membership in demographic groups whose lifetime earnings are generally less than “first-wave” boomers. Those groups that would be hurt most would be high school dropouts, minority groups, and those who are unmarried. The most startling conclusion of the research states: “Finally, as policymakers consider proposals to improve the solvency of the Social Security System, they must recognize that the shift from DB to DC pensions means that Social Security will increasingly become the only source of guaranteed lifetime benefits of which most retirees can rely.” Indeed, with the drop in once guaranteed benefits from Rhode Island’s pension system, I will need to tap into those potentially threatened Social Security funds!

The Social Security Administration’s study does not consider, however, the collapse of pension funds due to businesses’ wrongdoing or the effects of The Great Recession on retirees.

Nationally, as The Great Recession continues for millions of people, the federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) paid out $5.6 billion to stakeholders because of 147 failed pension plans across the nation during fiscal year 2010. PBGC’s deficit rose by 45 percent during that period to $23 billion. Astonishingly, PBGC has $102.5 in obligations with only $79.5 in assets. If the track record of The Great Recession on Wall Street is an indicator, that deficit will be foisted on the heads of the working class and middle class!

When I think of my years of teaching service in Rhode Island, I recall the innumerable students I helped while serving in several capacities within the educational system. I remember winter mornings driving with white knuckles resulting from my grip on a car’s steering wheel while attempting to negotiate ice and snow-laden roads. When I retired, I signed an agreement that I thought was a legal document that guaranteed benefits for the years I had worked, but law, as it turns out, is politics by just another name.

I also remember my years as a political activist, years that gave an entirely different flavor to the decades that I lived in the state. There were years protesting against wars and injustice. There were winter days standing with others out in front of the federal building in Providence and marches through the streets of that city that dated back to the antiwar movement during the Vietnam War. There was the chilling hate-filled remark of a neighbor commenting on my attendance at, and writing about, the latter: “Hitler should have killed all of the Jews!” But in spite of all of this, somehow I thought that all of this counted for something. That, however, would not be the case. The US has long been the world’s only superpower and the engine of the economic system of globalization. Rhode Island is but one small cog in that system, but it’s where many changes took place in my life. And it’s where I wrongly thought equity and economic justice might prevail in some small way!

*Little Rhody is the nickname for Rhode Island.

Howard Lisnoff is a freelance writer. He blogs at howielisnoff.wordpress.com.

Long Overdue Appointments: The Obama Three at the NLRB

by DAVID MACARAY

Just hours after recess-appointing former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, President Obama recess-appointed three people to the NLRB (National Labor Relations Board), giving it a full complement of five members for the first time in more than a year. The three new members are Sandra Block, Richard Griffin and Terrence Flynn. They join current members Mark Pearce and Brian Hayes. Block, Griffin and Pearce are Democrats; Flynn and Hayes are Republicans.

It’s hard to know how much praise Obama deserves for making these appointments. On the one hand, appointing members to the NLRB ain’t exactly a landmark achievement. After all, presidents have been appointing board members since 1935, when the NLRB was first established, so the “presidential act” of picking five suitable people (it used to be three, until the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act expanded it) to fill out the roster shouldn’t be gushed over. It’s his job, isn’t it?

On the other hand—given that the Republicans despise any agency with the power to regulate business, given that they’ve fought for 75 years to defang the NLRB, given that they’ve purposely tried to keep it understaffed (aware that two members don’t constitute a quorum and, therefore, don’t have the authority to issue rulings), and given that, even with a 53-47 senate majority ready to approve Obama’s appointees, they’ve threatened to filibuster any nominee—it was a bold move. Bold, necessary, and, let’s be honest, way overdue. Credit goes to organized labor for keeping the president’s feet to the fire. That reported $400 million they donated to the Democrats in 2008 finally bought them something.

What the Republicans typically characterize as “interfering with” and “restricting” business, the NLRB views as providing safeguards—safeguards expressed in our federal labor law. For example, when people get fired illegally for engaging in union activism, or when a workforce formally requests a union election and are denied, or when the management negotiating team refuses to bargain in good faith—that’s when the NLRB (in principle) comes to the rescue.

Although congressional Republicans are already threatening legal action and issuing hysterical statements (Wyoming Senator Mike Enzi referred to the appointments as a sign of the White House’s “contempt for America’s small businesses”), there’s not much they can do about it, which means the NLRB, at least through 2012, is going to have a fair amount of latitude in addressing workers’ rights.

And one major area of concern will be union membership drives. According to surveys, upwards of 60 per cent of American workers have expressed an interest in joining a union, attracted by across-the-board advantages in union wages, benefits and working conditions. But national membership stands at barely over 12 per cent. While part of that difference can be traceable to the unreliability of surveys, the real culprit is management’s ability to keep its employees from joining up, by using its two favorite weapons: stalling and intimidation.

There are thousands of documented cases of companies illegally attempting to dissuade their workers from joining a union. They threaten, they lie, they bully, they bribe, they spy, they hire outside agencies to assist them. I knew a retired woman who, on a whim, decided to take a part-time job at Walmart to augment her pension. She said she was blown away by the level of anti-union propaganda. As a new employee, the first order of business was being shown a 45 minute movie on the evils of labor unions.

Without the FDA (Food and Drug Administration, formed way back in 1906), one can imagine the sort of liberties that would be taken by manufacturers looking for shortcuts and angles. The same applies to the NLRB. Without the labor board acting as a clearinghouse for employee complaints, there would be no workplace justice. Without the NLRB, we would see the rise of “employer tyranny.” Indeed, many would argue that we already see it….even with the board. Clearly, it’s an uphill battle.

DAVID MACARAY, an LA playwright and author (“It’s Never Been Easy: Essays on Modern Labor”), was a former union rep. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, forthcoming from AK Press. He can be reached atdmacaray@earthlink.net

The Bishop Was a Sadist: Mitt Romney, Abortion Counseler

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Frank Bardacke's "Trampling Out the Vintage" Real Farmworkers, Real Chavez by SAUL LANDAU

WEEKEND EDITION JANUARY 6-8, 2012 Frank Bardacke has written the comprehensive history of the United Farm Workers, a definitive biography of Cesar Chavez and a magnificent guide to the politics and sociology of the 1960s-80s.

In the mid 1960s a nascent union of field workers transformed themselves into moral guideposts for middle class liberals as well as the first media magnet for Mexican Americans. Cesar Chavez became an almost instant icon, able to marshal a variegated supporting cast of politicized farm laborers, civil rights veterans and radical organizers and make communion with elements of the Catholic Church, the AFL-CIO and the Democratic Party.

Together they organized a sector of the middle class: not to buy grapes. Imagine! A group of humble darker skinned poor people requested consumers to postpone their God-given needs for instant grape-ification just to support the cause of a union of those who picked and processed the succulent commodity!

Bardacke chronicles the farm workers’ union’s campaign to convince pre-soccer moms to shun grapes and the organized religious and union-backed march through California’s Central Valley. Together, these campaigns helped pressure major grape growers to recognize the United Farm Workers. Sacrificing consumers and workers rejoiced. But within two decades of its meteoric rise and seemingly solid liberal and political alliances the UFW fell into obscurity.

Bardacke explains the process by which the charismatic Chavez at the helm of a potential labor powerhouse then failed to try to organize the majority of California’s farm laborers. The boycotts and political pacts – especially when Democrats lost – proved insufficient by themselves to sustain a viable union. Without the specter of mass union power, powerful adversaries would – and did — squash the UFW.

Chavez played the key role in the UFW’s rise and then undermined its future. Bardacke examines internal union struggles, and those within Chavez himself, “Trampling” dramatizes the man’s legendary strengths, but also his weaknesses.

From his Arizona boyhood, through military service “Tarmpling” shows how Chavez emerged as a natural leader. Bardacke also provides perceptive critiques of influences on him, from the Catholic Church through the organizing mantras of Saul Alinsky; and how Chavez used these doctrines to shape his own world-view. The book does not debunk Chavez; it brings him from legend to earth. Like some devout Catholics, Chavez linked penance with justice. The long Central Valley march became a religious journey, a symbol of “the long road we have traveled.. and the long road we have yet to travel, with much penance, in order to bring about the Revolution we need.” Chavez suffered immense physical pain on the pilgrimage, but it offered “an excellent way of training ourselves to endure the long, long struggle.”

“Trampling” also recounts anecdotal biographies of dozens of the countless extraordinary men and women who contributed their energy, brains, and talent – and sacrificed – to make possible the birth and initial successes of the UFW.

Characters like Gilbert Padillia and Epifanio Camacho emerge alongside Dolores Huerta and the white organizers like Marshall Ganz, Catholic priests and the gifted Luis Valdez who helped organize through theater. His now celebrated teatro campesino employed enormously talented field workers and barrio residents to teach lessons through drama and song.

Bardacke paints three-d pictures of the characters to emphasize that history is not just class confrontation, but also dialogue and debate, anger and frustration: the intellectual and emotional components of class struggle.

The author refuses to lump tens of thousands of men and women as “farm workers.” Instead, we meet apieros (celery choppers) and lechugueros (lettuce pickers) with amazing skills and discipline. Those who tended the grapes and dealt with the eccentricities of broccoli, also had full lives. Some could make rousing speeches, or sing and play instruments, plot strategy and become role models.

They didn’t always agree. Indeed, the UFW splintered over the next decade so that most of the thousands of mostly dark skinned people stooping over the crops that feed this nation no longer have a union or even earn a sustenance wage. But they share a legacy that Cesar Chavez helped build. Chavez forged the Chicano identity, but didn’t endure as the labor leader who could lead the working class battle against agri-business and lesser capitalists who reap huge profits from the farm workers’ backs.

The book explores in excruciating detail how Chavez blamed “illegal aliens,” Mexican farm workers for losing strikes. He claimed they weakened the union because they loomed as strike-breakers. Bardacke documents how the UFW actually reported Mexican workers without papers to the INS and how the union forged “an extralegal gang of a couple of hundred people who policed about ten miles of the Arizona-Mexico border, intercepting people attempting to cross it, and, brutalized the captives.”

Chavez leaned toward consumer boycotts over militant organizing. He fasted and indulged in self-sacrifice during tough bargaining. He also exercised ruthless central union control, not allowing organizing initiatives to develop without his approval. Bradacke cites examples of how he actually ousted and even blacklisted some potential leaders who defied his authority. And he also shows Chavez’ virtues: A balanced and just portrait.

(TRAMPLING OUT THE VINTAGE: CESAR CHAVEZ AND THE TWO SOULS OF THE UNITED FARM WORKERS Verso, $54.95, 742 pages) deserves #1 ranking as best labor history of the year. Professors should assign it as a text for labor history, California history, and US history. I suggest it for all book-lovers.

Saul Landau’s WILL THE REAL TERRORIST PLEASE STAND UP is on dvd (cinemalibrestore.com) He’s an Institute for Policy Studies fellow. His BUSH AND BOTOX WORLD was published by CounterPunch.

Another 11 Million Foreclosures in the United States? Foreclosure Crisis Goes Global

WEEKEND EDITION JANUARY 6-8, 2012 by MIKE WHITNEY

Even though housing is in terrible shape in the US, it’s not nearly as bad as Ireland. Irish real estate is in freefall. Prices have plunged 60 percent across the country and 65 percent in Dublin. Austerity measures have sent unemployment soaring (18 percent) and housing into the doldrums. According to the Guardian, prices dipped 8 percent in the last quarter alone, “the largest ever quarterly fall in house prices in Ireland.” (“Ireland’s house prices at lowest levels since 2000″, The Guardian)

And things aren’t so hot in neighboring Spain either where housing prices slumped 7.4 percent in the third quarter year-over-year, “the fourteenth straight quarter of falls.” (Reuters) The wreckage from Spain’s housing bubble is visible everywhere, from the dysfunctional, underwater banking system, to the skyhigh unemployment (22 percent), to the droopy state revenues. The country’s dreary finances have led to the ousting of Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and his Socialist government to be replaced by rightwing hardliner Mariano Rajoy. (Rajoy promises to slash government spending wherever possible, even if it means rolling back popular social programs.) Here’s more on Spains’ housing bubble from Reuters:

“House prices have dropped around 24 percent in real terms since their peak in 2007 and are expected to decline between 35 and 40 percent over a 10-year period, with demand hit by high unemployment and low population growth.” (“Spain housing prices fall 7.4 pct in long slump”, Reuters)

In the US, homeowners have seen their equity vanish in a matter of a few years. According to the benchmark S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index, housing prices have slipped 32 percent from their peak in 2006, wiping out roughly $8 trillion in home equity. The price-reversal has caused a sharp decline in consumer spending as nearly $500 billion per year had been drawn from Home Equity Withdrawals (HEW) during the bubble years.

So, how far will prices fall in the US, and is there any chance that the US follows Ireland’s lead and lobs off another 30 percent or so?

That seems unlikely, mainly because the big banks appear to be working with the Fed to control the amount of supply that comes online. So, for example, (according to Calculated Risk) “Existing home inventory declined 18 percent year-over-year in December” (2011) whereas, the “shadow inventory” of homes barely budged. Here’s how Calculated Risk defines shadow inventory:

Housing inventory “that is currently not on the market, but is expected to be listed in the next few years. Shadow inventory could include bank owned properties (REO: Real Estate Owned), properties in the foreclosure process, other properties with delinquent mortgages (both serious delinquencies of over 90+ days, and less serious), condos that were converted to apartments (and will be converted back), investor owned rental properties, and homeowners “waiting for a better market”, and a few other categories – as long as the properties are not currently listed for sale.”

So, while existing home inventory is back to about 2005 levels (2.5 million units); shadow inventory adds another 3 million to that sum. If that shadow supply was suddenly dumped onto the market, prices would fall precipitously. So, my guess, is that the Big Boys are colluding with our friends at the Fed to maintain pricing by releasing the backlog in dribs and drabs. Even so, the downward pressure on prices is impressive. For example, the banks reduced supply by roughly 18 percent y-o-y, and yet, prices STILL went down nearly 4 percent! Normally, you’d think that if that much supply was kept off the market, prices would rise, but that’s not the case. This just shows that the attitude towards owning a home has changed dramatically. Even with historic low interest rates, people are shunning home ownership in droves.

Readers may have heard rumours in the last few days that the Fed is pushing a program to convert an undisclosed number of foreclosures into rental units. Unfortunately, this just looks like another Ponzi-scam that will have little effect on overall sales. Let me draw your attention to the key passage in the Reuters summary of the proposed program:

“Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, in a letter accompanying the recommendations, said the U.S. central bank was responding to requests for advice about what could be done to halt the spiral of falling home prices and rising foreclosures.

Among the recommendations: allow Fannie Mae (FNMA.OB) and Freddie Mac (FMCC.OB) to refinance loans that they have not guaranteed.” (“Fed says expand Fannie, Freddie role to aid housing”, Reuters)

So what the Fed wants to do is refinance the private-label garbage mortgages that are left on the banks’ balance sheets, that way the taxpayer is left holding the bill. The whole rental thing is just a diversion; just another bailout.

Let’s get back to the meat and potatoes: “CoreLogic reports that shadow inventory as of October 2011 is still at January 2009 levels.”

From Seeking Alpha:

“As of October 2011, shadow inventory remained at 1.6 million units, or five-months’ supply and represented half of the 3 million properties currently seriously delinquent, in foreclosure or in REO.

Of the 1.6 million properties currently in the shadow inventory, 770,000 units are seriously delinquent, …430,000 are in some stage of foreclosure … and 370,000 are already in REO.” (Seeking Alpha)

So, there’s roughly twice as many homes that will eventually come onto the market than we see in the reported current inventory. Does that mean that prices could fall another 32 percent?

Probably not, but they’ll certainly drop another 5 or 10 percent. That’s inevitable. But sticker shock is just small part of a much more serious problem. 1 in 5 homeowners are already underwater on their mortgages. If that number goes up, so too will the foreclosures further devastating working class people who’ve already had the rug pulled out from under them countless times since the crisis began. Unfortunately–on our present trajectory–we’re headed straight for the cliff. If the Obama troupe doesn’t change the present do-nothing policy, and take aggressive steps to keep people in their homes; we could see foreclosures triple before this thing is over. Here’s the scoop from Business Insider:

“A major bear on the housing market, Amherst Securities’ Laurie Goodman has predicted since 2009 another housing crash as banks are forced to liquidate tons of bad loans.

Up to 11 million mortgages are likely to default, according to Goodman. This is a frightening figure, seeing as only several million have been liquidated since the crisis began. When it happens, the market will be flooded with supply.

Goodman reached 11 million by projecting default rates for non-performing loans, re-performing loans, and underwater loans.(Check out the excellent graphs)

Meanwhile banks are refraining from liquidations in hope that bad loans turn good. Thus the shadow inventory keeps growing.” (“Laurie Goodman On Why Another 11 Million Mortgages Will Go Bad”, Business Insider)

For those who think we should “Let the market work this out”; keep in mind the different standard that’s been applied to the banks, who not only perpetrated this crisis, but who’ve also been its main beneficiaries via unlimited public support. (A “blank check”)

Isn’t it about time we gave the victims equal consideration?

MIKE WHITNEY lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, forthcoming from AK Press. He can be reached at fergiewhitney@msn.com

Into the Tumbrils With Them by ALEXANDER COCKBURN

WEEKEND EDITION JANUARY 6-8, 2012 CounterPunch Diary

First up: “sustainable.” It’s been at least a decade since this earnest word was drained of all energy, having become the prime unit of exchange in the argot of purposeful uplift. As the final indication of its degraded status, I found it in President Obama’s “signing statement” which accompanied the whisper of his pen, as on New Year’s Eve – a very quiet day when news editors were all asleep — he signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for 2012 which handed $662 billion to the Pentagon and for good measure ratified by legal statute of the exposure of US citizens to arbitrary arrest without subsequent benefit of counsel, and to possible torture and imprisonment sine die, abolishing habeas corpus. Don’t bother ask what happens to non-US citizens.

As he set his name to this repugnant legislation the president issued a “signing statement” in which I came upon the following passage: “Over the last several years, my Administration has developed an effective, sustainable framework for the detention, interrogation and trial of suspected terrorists…”

So much for “sustainable.” Into the tumbrils with it.

Obama is against signing statements, at the theoretical level. In 2008 he said, “I taught the Constitution for ten years, I believe in the Constitution, and I will obey the Constitution of the United States. We’re not going to use signing statements as a way of doing an end run around Congress.” Whatever Obama may have taught, a signing statement, whether issued by Bush or Obama, doesn’t have the force of law. Obama’s December 31 signing statement was part of a diligent White House campaign to suggest that (a) there is nothing in the NDAA to perturb citizens, but (b) anything perturbing is entirely the fault of Congress, and (c) Obama solemnly swears that so long as he is president he’ll never OK anything bad, whatever the NDAA might be construed as authorizing, and anyway (d) there’s nothing new about the detention provisions because they merely reiterate those of the Authorization for Use of Military Force, signed by Bush in 2001.

Next up: “iconic.” I trip over this golly-gee epithet thirty times a day. No warrant for its arrest is necessary, nor benefit of counsel or trial in a US court. Off to the tumbrils, arm in arm with “narrative.” These days everyone has a narrative, a earnest word originally recruited, I believe, by anthropologists. So we read “according to the Pentagon’s narrative…” Why not use some more energetic formulation, like, “According to the patent nonsense minted by the Pentagon’s press office…” ? Suddenly we’re surrounded by “narratives,” all endowed with equal status. Into the tumbrils with it.

I think “parse” has almost run its course, though occasionally this shooting star of 2011 is to be spotted panting along in some peloton of waffle from the Commentariat. Off with its head , along with “meme,” an exhausted little word that deserves the long dark rest of oblivion.

Back to janitors and the flailing Gingrich’s masterplan for youth. Doug Lummis writes from Okinawa:

“Alex,

You should know that the public schools in Japan do not hire janitors. The kids do it, boys and girls, all of them. Nobody gets paid for it, so it doesn’t have anything to do with rich or poor. It’s just one of the things you do at school. They dust and sweep, and wipe down the floors with damp rags, and clean the toilets. I don’t know if it teaches a ‘work ethic’, but it teaches them some valuable skills, and it also teaches them that that kind of work is not ‘beneath them’, something only poor people do. I suppose some of the kids dislike doing it, but a lot of them seem to enjoy it, and take pride in their skill at wielding the broom, or bending over and laying your wet cloth on the floor, putting your weight on it and running to the end of the hall, leaving a clean damp streak behind. Of course this is utterly different from what Gingrich is proposing which, like the present US system of hiring adults to clean the children’s schools, is bound to teach that certain jobs are only for certain classes. The Japanese system doesn’t produce and egalitarian society, but it does have a good educational effect.

“You might mention that I consider myself qualified to talk about janitoring because when I was in the fifth and sixth grades I was the janitor for the one-room Donner Trail Elementary School at Norden, California. I was chosen not because we were the poorest family but because I was one of the few who didn’t have to take the school bus to get home. They gave me $20 a month, which in those days (1947-48) was very nice money for a kid to get.”

Next, from John Walsh’s letter to Amy Goodman of Democracy Now:

“I have a bone to pick about your coverage of Ron Paul and the five comments that appeared in his newsletter a generation ago.

“First, contrary to what you say, the rest of the MSM does publish the exact words of the statements – in fact they appear ad nauseam in semi-official publications like the NYT.

“Second, as you surely know, Paul has said he did not write those statements, did not read them or know of them at the time and DISAVOWS them. You did not mention that.

“Third Ron Paul is against the death penalty and mandatory minimum sentences in part because they are racist – and he has said so. You did not mention that.

“Fourth, the head of the NAACP in Austin who has known Ron Paul for 20 years says that the man can in no way be considered a racist. You did not mention that.

“Fifth, in an interview with Bill Moyers Ron Paul specifically says that Libertarianism is incompatible with racism. You do not mention that.

“I think you have a duty to tell the whole truth on the matter because a half truth is a full lie – as the saying goes.

“Finally I might ask which is more racist- bombing people of color all around the world as Obama has done, for example in the war on Libya for which your constant guest CIA ‘consultant’ Juan Cole was a cheerleader – or five statements written by someone else a generation ago which have now been repudiated by Paul?

“Have you forgotten that your program is subtitled the War and Peace Report? My friends in NYC have taken to calling it HypocrisyNow! I hope that soon it can reclaim its older tradition of principled and consistent anti-interventionism and report the full truth on antiwar candidates like Ron Paul, the only anti-imperialist and peace candidate in the race.

John V. Walsh, MD Professor of Microbiology and Physiological Systems University of Massachusetts Medical School.”

One question Paul should be asked is whether or not the doctor believes, as Lew Rockwell (the imputed author of the memos, though he denies it) and most other southern libertarians do, that plantation owners should have been compensated after the freeing of the slaves for their lost ‘property.’

The So-Called Newspaper of Record: Can’t They Get Anything Right?

Thanks to The Poke for that one.

WHY TELL THE IRS WHAT IT ALREADY KNOWS?

Long Beach Press-Telegram (CA) - Tuesday, April 11, 2006 Author: Austan Goolsbee

The Internal Revenue Service filing deadline is almost upon us, forcing us once again to fill out exasperating tax forms. Spurred on by the grumbling, Congress will most likely make noises about introducing tax reforms that never come about. Experts will again bemoan the deductions and loopholes of the system and the complexity of the alternative minimum tax .

Rather than rehash the same old debates, though, we would do better to aim at the middle and ask why most Americans have to do their taxes at all.

You see, many people do not have a complex tax situation. They don't itemize. They get income only from simple places -- like wages from their job and interest from their bank. And here's the kicker: this information is already sent directly to the Internal Revenue Service by taxpayers' employers and banks.

Indeed, for many Americans, literally every line they fill out on their tax return is information the IRS already has. (If you don't believe it, try not filling out the ``wages'' line on your tax return next year and see what happens. You'll receive a notice that states your wages -- and assesses a penalty for not reporting them.)

And yet these same people are forced to spend hundreds of millions of hours and several billion dollars each year preparing and filing their taxes .

That expense in time and money is as much a part of the tax burden on Americans as the check that goes to the federal government. And unlike the tax payment, this part of the tax burden doesn't generate any revenue for the government, though part of it goes into H&R Block's pocket. It is, in the words of the econo- mists, pure deadweight loss.

Which is why the IRS should eliminate it. With a small adjustment in processing procedures, the revenue service could send you a tax form already filled out with the information it has for you -- a Simple Return -- rather than a blank tax form.

You would simply check the numbers against your W-2 and 1099 and then sign it. That would be it. If you didn't want to participate, you could just throw the Simple Return away and do your own taxes the old-fashioned way.

A system like this is already used in Denmark and Sweden. Last year, California tried a version for its state income tax . According to the California Franchise Tax Board, the system reduced the time people spent doing their state taxes as much as tenfold; around 95 percent of the people who participated in the pilot project said they would use it again.

Even without fundamentally changing the tax code, plenty of Americans -- as many as 40 percent of taxpayers -- would be able to qualify for a Simple Return.

According to research I did for the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution, this could save middle-class Americans up to $2 billion per year in tax preparation fees and 250 million hours of time. At the very least, the program would represent a triumph of common sense over bureaucracy for millions of people. Here's another way to think about it: A Simple Return would be the equivalent of giving a tax cut to the middle class but at little cost. Indeed, when the Government Accountability Office analyzed this type of tax system in 1996, it claimed that it would save the IRS money because it would reduce the error rate on the tax returns that people file. (California found this to be true in its pilot project.)

For the cost of modernizing the computer matching system within the IRS and the Social Security Administration, we could eliminate the compliance burden for more than one-third of American taxpayers.

Many experts say we should tackle complexity where it is most obvious -- the top income brackets. After all, they argue, nearly 40 percent of taxpayers use the easier forms like the 1040EZ.

But the instruction manual for even the 1040EZ form is 36 pages long. Is it any wonder that almost half of the people filling out the simpler forms still pay a tax preparer to do it for them? Our system is driving people to tax preparers who then get paid for filling out information that the IRS already has.

As we contemplate tax reform in the coming year and beyond, many will ponder grand changes to the tax system like moving us from an income to a consumption tax or eliminating the mortgage interest deduction. But tax revolutions are a tough sell these days.

And we could do a lot worse than relieving Americans of the burden of doing busywork for the IRS.

Austan Goolsbee is a professor of economics at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business.

Rick Santorum’s Google Problem Keeps Getting Worse

New York Observer, The (NY) - Friday, January 6, 2012

Author: Adrianne Jeffries One kind of Santorum.

Remember when a mischievous sex columnist Google-bombed Rick Santorum in order to associate the then-U.S. Senator with a neologism for an anal sex byproduct in retaliation for Mr. Santorum’s comments against homosexuality? Perhaps you don’t, because it was almost nine years ago. And in that amount of time, the second search result on both Google and Bing is still spreadingsantorum.com, which features a splash page with the definition of the term as “the frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the by-product of anal sex” and a frequently-updated blog about the man himself.

How did Mr. Santorum’s staff let this public relations crisis go on for so long? How many Santorum supporters have had their heads explode before they could even make a donation?

The campaign isn’t helping itself much, writes search engine guru Danny Sullivan, who notes that the campaign has replaced the homepage of the site with a splash page asking for donations that forces readers to jump to a new page before they can learn anything about the presidential candidate. As a result, his campaign page doesn’t even make the first page of Bing and searches for things like how to volunteer with the campaign redirect to the donation page. Many of the site’s pages redirected to the donation form.

Thanks for the free advice, Mr. Santorum’s campaign responded tacitly; they abolished the redirects only four hours after Mr. Sullivan wrote about them (creating a few errors in the process). Nine years after the Google bombing, and Mr. Santorum hadn’t hired any SEO experts to tell him this kind of stuff?

Of course, blog posts like this one don’t help.

I doubt there is one Republican in the land who gives a damn about this.

To Do Friday: No, Virginia

New York Observer, The (NY) - Friday, January 6, 2012 Author: Elise Knutsen

The season of St. Nick has left you exhausted. Keeping up the Santa ruse for your little ones has proved terribly tedious: sending letters to the North Pole, stuffing stockings, baking Christmas cookies for Santa’s enjoyment, eating said cookies yourself and pretending to hear the jingle of sleigh bells all seems so laborious now that your children are past kindergarten. Isn’t honesty the best policy, anyway? Today, you’ll shatter the Santa illusion, paving the way for a more civilized gift exchange next year without the exhausting commercial trappings and contrived Christmas lies. The New York Historical Society’s exhibition “The Invention of Santa Claus” postulates that the twinkle-eyed St. Nick we’ve come to associate with the birth of Jesus was, in fact, concocted by scholar Clement Clarke Moore, best known for writing “’Twas the Night Before Christmas.” Tracing the evolution of the red-suited patron saint through the years, you’ll give your children the gift of the truth (P.S. Jimmie, you’re adopted.) and expose them to early New York history. Cheers to a merry, farce-free Christmas next year!

“It Happened Here: The Invention of Santa Claus,” New York Historical Society, 170 Central Park West, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Admission is $5

Portents of things to come? The Occupy movement seems to be getting a small slice of credibility!

OWS Sympathizers to Protest Outside Mayor Bloomberg’s House…For the Journalists

New York Observer, The (NY) - Friday, January 6, 2012

Author: Drew Grant

Since the holiday season, the Occupy Wall Street movement has seen a drop in media coverage. Some of this may be attributed to the dissemination of the movement after the Zuccotti Park raid last November, while another factor has to do with the fact that reporters covering the protests tend to get treated by the NYPD as part of the demonstration…even if they’re carrying city-accredited press badges.

Today, members of OWS (but not OWS itself, since, as a member of the press team told The New York Observer by phone, the still-existing General Assembly did not pass this motion), citizen journalists, and anyone else who isn’t afraid of getting arrested will be protesting outside of Mayor Bloomberg’s house for the ethical treatment of the press.

Full memo below:

New Yorkers and members of Occupy Wall Street to protest Bloomberg/NYPD attacks on First Amendment rights of journalists.

Street action at billionaire mayor’s mansion – photographers, videographers, livestreamers will bring NYPD misconduct to public attention.

New York, NY—Outraged New Yorkers and Occupy Wall Street (OWS) members will protest ongoing NYPD interference with members of the press including citizen journalists on Friday, January 6. In recent months NYPD has refused to recognize press credentials, summarily seized press credentials, harassed, physically blocked, assaulted, and arrested–without cause–members of the press.

WHAT: Vibrant and visual protest including street performers. Many photographers, videographers, and livestreamers will participate and film.

WHEN: Friday, January 6, 3pm-8pm

WHERE: Bloomberg mansion, 17 East 79th St., NYC - assemble at 5th Ave. and 79th St. Protesters will vigorously assert their first Amendment rights to be within sight and sound of the mayor’s residence.

WHO: Outraged New Yorkers, members of OWS, journalists and media makers who have been subjected to harassment and arrest for covering Occupy Wall Street and other political protests.

The protest will bring this issue to the doorstep of New York City’s billionaire mayor Michael Bloomberg. In recent remarks Bloomberg called the NYPD his “own army.” The mayor, a member of the wealthiest 1% of the country, ordered the forcible removal of Occupy Wall Street from Liberty Square on November 15th. The working press was prevented from covering that police raid – either ejected from the site or prevented from being close enough to do comprehensive reporting. This week a group streaming live video of Occupy Wall Street activities was forcibly evicted from a space in Brooklyn and arrested.

Attacks on the press have gotten so numerous and severe that several journalist organizations have formed the Coalition for the First Amendment. More information and many links to news coverage are on the New York Press Club website: http://www.nypressclub.org/coalition.php . Also see

http://storify.com/jcstearns/tracking-journalist-arrests-during-the-occupy-prot for OWS-related arrests of journalists around the country.

To date the Mayor and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly have failed to stop these attacks or ensure a thorough and untainted investigation.

The working press is essential for holding government and other institutions accountable. No democracy is safe without a free press. NYPD’s shameful behavior against journalists by some rank and file officers and commanders has been going on for years. Letters of protest by journalist organizations have been ignored by police. Attacks on members of the media continue to flourish under the mayor and his police commissioner despite their promises to the contrary.

So…several questions. Will Mayor Bloomberg be home at 3 p.m. on a Friday? Will that fake press secretary be there? And can OW-sympathizers convince journalists that they’re protests are still worth covering if they make said protests about journalists?

Unfortunately, The New York Observer won’t be able to attend due to conflicting schedule appointments, but we’d love to hear how it goes down! Photos and video welcome for submission.

Drew Grant is a Staff Reporter for The New York Observer. Follow Drew on Twitter or via RSS. dgrant@observer.com

on't worry, it's docile. WTF you talkin' 'bout Mr? That be a FIVE FOOT RAT!

New York Observer, The - January 06, 2012New Search New York Observer, The (NY) - Friday, January 6, 2012

Author: Drew Grant

Don't worry, it's docile. (@TheGoodfella_)

As if child slave labor in China wasn’t bad enough, Footlocker’s reputation took another hit recently when a Twitter used named @Thegoodfella_ tweeted a photo of a five foot rat went viral on the web. Don’t worry though: an animal curator quoted by The Huffington Post, the creature, allegedly found in a Bronx store earlier this year (the photo was uploaded on Facebook earlier this year before it made the Twitter rounds) promised that “no way it’s a common sewer rat.

” “I’m 90 percent certain that it’s a a Gambian pouched rat,” said Dr. Robert S. Voss, the Curator of Mammals at The American Museum of Natural History in New York. And apparently Gambian rats are pretty docile. So if you trip over one of these horrific fellas while doing inventory, don’t worry! It probably didn’t come crawling out of your toilet. It’s just a freak incident, at least until we find out the whole thing was a hoax to begin with.

Drew Grant is a Staff Reporter for The New York Observer. Follow Drew on Twitter or via RSS. dgrant@observer.com

Caption: Don't worry, it's docile. (@TheGoodfella_)

We do SO love our celebrities, we give their worthless children free face time, free air time, free speech time, at a time when the voices of Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, etc, etc, are marginalized out of the public discourse. For shame!

Liz Cheney Joins Fox News

New York Observer, The (NY) - Friday, January 6, 2012

Author: Kat Stoeffel

Make me proud.

Like Jenna Bush, Meghan McCain and Chelsea Clinton before her, Liz Cheney, daughter of Dubya V.P. Dick Cheney, has secured a paid TV gig. The former State Department employee and Republican Party activist is joining Fox News as a contributor and substitute host, the Times reports.

Ms. Cheneyis no stranger to the network. She has appeared on The O’Reilly Factor and substituted for Sean Hannity and will now add her national security and foreign policy insight “across all platforms,” including primary coverage.

there’s no record of any problems at the girl’s home

Police: Mother, 13, left baby in trash

Police say a newborn found dead in County Club Hills was placed in a trash bin by his 13-year-old mother.

Authorities say the infant was wrapped in a pair of jeans when he was found Sunday. Police say the girl told officers that she gave birth to her son at home and put him in the trash. She hasn’t been charged.

A spokesman for the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services says child welfare officials are investigating allegations of abuse by the baby’s mother. DCFS spokesman Kendall Marlowe says there’s no record of any problems at the girl’s home.

Kendall Marlowe says "there's no record of any problems at the girl's home?

Umm - gag me with a pitchfork; of COURSE there's no evidence of any problerms at the girl's HOME, the evidence of the problem was wrapped in a pair of jeans in a trash bin in country Club Hills. The evidence of "another aspect of the problem" is also amply demonstrated by this piece of shit DCFS coporate line sprouting tool who fails to acknowledge that a dead baby in a trash bin IS a problem - a problem, minimally, of communication - CLEARLY, this young girl, pregnant, terrified out of her skull, in absolute denial of EVERYTHING, even that the baby was a LIVING HUMAN BEING from the moment it exited the mother's womb, no, she had to dehumanize this baby ... HER BABY ... and I can PROMISE you, this is gonna haunt this poor young girl for the REST OF HER LIFE, until she forgives herself, and then forgives

(1) The ass hole who impregnated her (2) Her parents for letting her (or being willfully ignorant of her) see this boy-fiend in the first place (3) HIS parents for letting such a predator on the loose when it should have been kept under lock and key (and I REALLY want to learn about how old IT is ... in fact, IT could easily be the girl's farther, or brother, or uncle, etc,m IT being the predator who raped this minor)

(4) The DCFS for failing to ackonwledge that a man who impregnates a 13-year old child is a child rapist, and that INDEED there was a problem in the home - that the daughter was permitted to date an older person, that the daughter was permitted enough "freedom" to have intercourse with the older predator, that the daughter didn't feel she could communicate to ANY BODY AT ALL about her extremely stressful situation - not famnily, not friends, not church members, not classmates ...

HOUSTON ... WE DO HAVE A PROBLEM!!!!!!!

Quote to Ponder

Quote to Ponder

"We continually set before us the successful rich man as more typical of what America means than the student or the philanthropist or the unselfish man of small income and simple tastes."

- W.E.B. Du Bois

Racial Disparities in Air Quality By James E. Harris President, NAACP New Jersey State Conference

BlackCommentator.com Guest Commentator

As the NAACP State Conference President for New Jersey I am responsible for hearing and addressing all types of concerns. In New Jersey far too many of the complaints I hear relate to deprivation of what should be a basic human right for all, the right to breathe clean air.

The racial disparities in air quality lead to disparities in health and quality of life. An African American making $50,000 per year is more likely to live in an area cited for bad air pollution than a white American making $15,000 per year. Arsenic, dioxins, lead, mercury and other pollutants are spewed daily from various industrial facilities such as incinerators, power plants, factories, etc., putting people at risk across the country. For example, a Clean Air Taskforce report on power plant pollution found that emissions from all power plants in the U.S. are responsible for 30,000 premature deaths, 7,000 asthma-related emergency room visits, and 18,000 cases of chronic bronchitis each year.

When opponents denounce safeguards against pollution, such as the Clean Air Act and associated regulations with labels such as “job killing”, they disregard the high monetary cost of inaction and who is paying those costs. Consumers are already paying for the less-publicized costs of toxic air quality: mounting health expenses, lost days of school to care for sick kids, poor performance for lead exposed kids who have learning challenges, lost days of work due to illness and trips to take children to the doctor, etc.

Currently, regulations under the Clean Air Act, such as the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule and the Mercury and Air Toxics Rule which aim to reduce pollution in our air, are under attack by polluters and certain legislative initiatives in Congress aimed at blocking the functionality of the Clean Air Act. These rules are essential for sensible reductions in air pollution. Supporting these rules would save up to 1200 lives and will prevent heart attacks, hospitalizations, and ER visits in New Jersey every year.

Robert, a resident of Jersey City, NJ recently stated that,

“I think that the community members in the area should be informed and that the media should really take a look at the kinds of emissions that have been happening, because nobody wants to raise their children next to a coal plant like that. The emissions in this community are so off the charts and so astronomically dangerous for human health that I think that once there’s some light shed on what is really going on with the likes of things like this coal plant, I hope that will raise awareness about this, stop these emissions in Jersey, and really do a lot more to clean up our environment.”

In New Jersey, with more Superfund sites than any other state in the country, we vigorously oppose any effort to fight any operations that would increase the already overburdened pollution that would diminish the air quality. It is unfortunate and unjust that so many of the air quality distracters are placed in areas that are overwhelmingly populated by African Americans and other poor populations in New Jersey. We vigorously oppose any operation that would erode the quality of clean air in New Jersey, it is simply unacceptable. We in the New Jersey State Conference will work with any and all collaborators who advocate for cleaner air quality in New Jersey.

Opposing the implementation of the Clean Air Act and its associated regulations would limit the EPA’s ability to enforce clean air standards that protect us from significant amounts of harmful air pollution. Our focus must be on retaining and strengthening safeguards which protect the health and well-being of the people living in communities affected by air pollution, who are over 50% of the US public and disproportionately communities of color and low income communities.

Enough is enough. We must maintain existing safeguards, as well as implement and strengthen standards that protect our communities. The NAACP New Jersey State Conference of Branches strongly urges our Senators and Representatives to support clean air safeguards and oppose proposed measures in Congress that put their constituents at risk.

Let New Jersey lead the way to cleaner air. BlackCommentator.com Guest Commentator James E. Harris is President of the NAACP New Jersey State Conference. Click here to contact Mr. Harris.