Category Archives: wages

Do as I say, not as I do…

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…is how Rahm Emanuel operates.

Story here on the private school where he sends his kids.  His kids enjoy a good education with art, physical education, languages, and God forbid, libraries…

…while he advocates charter schools run not by education majors, but finance majors; busing kids clear across town; longer school days that don’t necessarily mean a better education; and questionable evaluation measures for the kids and their teachers…

From the story:

Writing on the University of Chicago’s Lab School website two years ago, [Director David] Magill noted, “Measuring outcomes through standardized testing and referring to those results as the evidence of learning and the bottom line is, in my opinion, misguided and, unfortunately, continues to be advocated under a new name and supported by the current [Obama] administration.”

Well said.  But is anyone listening…?

Social Security is just fine, thank you

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David Cay Johnston has this excellent post up on the soundness of Social Security. (Be sure to read the post below the first–also an excellent one.)

I was searching for an analysis of the losses of Social Security funds due to the stagnant wages of the past twenty years…I was wondering how much of an impact on the amount now in the bank?  How many millions or billions have been lost because wages did not  increase at the same rate as previously?

I found some hints of an article like that–one blurb on a site said that Boomers were deferring their retirement because they didn’t have the money due to stagnant wages….but when I tried to find the article mentioned, I came up empty.

I did find this, however:  http://money.usnews.com/money/business-economy/slideshows/10-industries-with-stagnant-pay/5

It’s interesting that not all people working in banks have gotten the windfall.

 

More on the Chicago Teacher’s Strike

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Valerie Strauss has an excellent article up here on her perspective of the critical reasons for the strike.

The problem with the whole pay incentive thing is that really doesn’t appeal to those who love kids and love to teach–this appeals to people who are there for the paycheck…

People who love money over everything else have little sense of fairness and compassion.

I really don’t want them anywhere near kids…

Chicago public school teachers to strike

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Story here.

Emanuel is just another member of “the team” that is trying to undermine public education.  (haha, I typed “undermind” at first–perhaps a better term? 🙂

…because, you know, bankers, financiers, business-oriented people who look at kids as products or resources to be exploited.  They look at the kids with $$ in their eyes–what can we squeeze out of them?  What kind of profit can we make off of them?

This report from Indiana.

From the story:

But Russ Simnick, president of the Indiana Public Charter School Association, said it’s disingenuous to compare charter schools with other schools based on the ISTEP results. For one, such comparisons are between individual charter schools and the overall results of school corporations, in which high and low ISTEP scores are lumped together. Thus, he said, larger corporations have a better ability to mask their lower scores than smaller individual schools. A more honest comparison, he said, would involve lumping all charter schools together and treating them as one school corporation in order to compare with others.

Simnick also disputed Schnellenberger’s statistics on the lowest 50 ISTEP scores; he said only four were charter schools, and all of these opened in 2008. He said it’s not fair to expect such young schools to post high ISTEP scores, especially since many charter schools are in some of the most challenging communities and take in students who just transferred from poorly performing schools.

 

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Unbelievable.  What a way to worm out of accountability.  The teachers from public schools have made the argument for not giving them a failing grade for the above reasons–children from “challenging communities” are difficult to bring up to speed if they are poor, the parents are not involved, and there is some learning/behavioral difficulty.
But charter schools officials want to claim it’s not their fault that the kids are failing?

This from Pennsylvania.  Nepotism? Um, yeah.  Nice little game they have going there.

Notice how they use the same lines as the Indiana officials–the kids are poor performers, they’re special needs…blah, blah, blah.  If you’ve got only a 15% graduation rate, you’re not the people to be teaching kids. Period.

This from Miami.  Taxpayers should not be funding them at all.  But that would cut into the profit margin for the education vultures, wouldn’t it??  You know, privatize the profits while socializing the costs, eh?

 

 

Taibbi on Romney

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DN! has this up with Matt Taibbi giving the scoop on what Romney is all about–he’s not about creating jobs, and saving companies, but swooping in, making a boatload of money, and leaving the carcass behind…

Taibbi mentions Carlyle Group--red flags go up. (hat tip to this site)

From the article:

But what sets Carlyle apart is the way it has exploited its political contacts. When Carlucci arrived there in 1989, he brought with him a phalanx of former subordinates from the CIA and the Pentagon, and an awareness of the scale of business a company like Carlyle could do in the corridors and steak-houses of Washington. In a decade and a half, the firm has been able to realise a 34% rate of return on its investments, and now claims to be the largest private equity firm in the world. Success brought more investors, including the international financier George Soros and, in 1995, the wealthy Saudi Binladin family, who insist they long ago severed all links with their notorious relative. The first president Bush is understood to have visited the Binladins in Saudi Arabia twice on the firm’s behalf.

Another article here.

On the rest of the video–the guy going to the Romney campaign event and being told he was unpatriotic for wanting to save his job should be blasted on every radio station, every TV station, and printed on the front page of every newspaper (what ones are left…).  People are being lied to and are not getting that “fair and balanced” coverage.  I mean, the utter gall of them saying that unemployed people on food stamps are just lazy and unmotivated…while shipping their jobs to China…

…my mind flashed to Romney’s poor rendition of “America, the Beautiful…”  while Taibbi speaks of him and his cohorts’ non-allegiance to the States and the people trying to earn a living.

Taibbi makes a good point when he says the dispute over the actual time that Romney left Bain isn’t as important as to what profit he was reaping from Bain’s actions…that’s the key–what money did he make off the deals?

And Taibbi hints about how they don’t want to pay for anything–they make boatloads of money on these companies, after borrowing the money to do it.

 

 

Krugman deconstructs Christie and Ryan

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Paul Krugman has this up on Chris Christie…*fiscally conservative* towards the 99%…but a whole ‘nother view towards the one percenters…

….and this on Paul Ryan...

You just can’t make this stuff up:

In March, explaining his cuts in aid for the unfortunate, he declared, “We don’t want to turn the safety net into a hammock that lulls able-bodied people into lives of dependency and complacency, that drains them of their will and their incentive to make the most of their lives.”

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…while ignoring that most people who are dependent on not only food stamps but are dependent on disability/social security are there because of a health issue?

So if someone is on disability from a stroke, how is that person a moocher?  Or someone who is on oxygen and cannot work?  I see a building full of people with  health issues…so tell me again how we can get these damn moochers off of welfare/disability and working until they freaking drop?! /snark

I personally got a college degree so I would not be in the situation I’m in now…I got mercury poisoning and had undiagnosed Celiac that caused my health to deteriorate, which had a domino effect on the disaster that is my life.  I drove up and down a two lane highway for three and a half years, through wind and rain and dark of night so I could get my degree.  I studied every night for two to three hours after taking my kids to baseball, softball, ballet, etc., and fixing dinner and whatever else needed to be done…so don’t tell me that I’m lazy or unmotivated.

LG said it best:

  • LG  NYC

I always wondered why people always become “dependent and complacent” and lose “their will and their incentive to make the most of their lives” right after a financial crises…

Doublespeak

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…is a word in Communications for when you’re talking in such a way that it seems you mean something when you really mean something else…

…such as this.

This is why I am upset that people who went to Obama fundraisers didn’t put that money towards a third party candidate–someone who will restore the Constitution, not sign anymore Free Trade agreements, not sign legislation that gives the top 1% tax breaks, push for livable wage, get us out of all conflicts, and will push for re-regulating banks and sustainable farming/regulating environmental polluters.  And what happened to our antitrust laws, again?

That’s the candidate I want…

Romneyville

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Back in the day, when the government actually called a Depression– a Depression — the homeless lived in “Hoovervilles”.  A group in Tampa, Florida has dubbed an encampment “Romneyville”.   A funny “Bad Lip Reading” video on the site.

In all accuracy, though, they should be dubbed “Congressvilles”…because they are the ones responsible for not raising the minimum wage to a livable wage, for not raising taxes on the 1%,  for allowing banks to consolidate, for gutting banking regulations, for passing NAFTA and every other Free Trade agreement…I could go on and on…

Romney’s tax returns

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The Sunlight Foundation has this up on the lack of sunlight by Romney.  (hat tip to washington post)

The rightwingers are all over this–saying that Romney is a private individual who does not have to disclose his returns.

Um…does anyone else wonder why the rightwing (and the Dems)  are all about snooping into other people’s lives…saying “if you have nothing to hide, you shouldn’t mind someone reading your emails, watching what books you check out, who you call on the phone (and what you say), and generally destroying the Fourth Amendment…so, um…why do they have a problem with Romney laying his tax return out there?  I mean, if he has nothing to hide….

Looking at the stats on Romney…good grief look at the disparity between him and Obama.  And man, it warmed my heart to see Obama was paying 32%, but as the article states, it’s because of the classification of income–Obama’s coming from book sales.

The rightwingers will make the case that Romney somehow deserves to only pay 13 -15% of his income because it’s investment income…they have wrongly stated that he would be paying taxes on income he’s already paid taxes on. Not true–the investment capital is not taxed again, but the profits he makes on those investments is.   He should be paying 35% on the profits he makes–whether its from investments or from a paycheck.  Incidentally, if he loses money, he gets to deduct that from his taxes owed.

Lastly,  I’m sick of hearing about how great the rich are in contributing to charity–some statement was made awhile back on how much more they give to charity.  Sitting where I am, there is just as much charity with the poor–only they don’t get to deduct that off their taxes, so it isn’t documented.  They will help others out the best that they can–a few bucks or few sheets of typing paper or a few slices of bread to tide one over…that sort of thing.

So…speaking of taxes…here is the 2011 tax table figures:  http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i1040tt.pdf

If one takes the standard deduction (single), they start taxing you when you make $15,000–minus the $7,000 standard deduction.    It’s stunningly pathetic that the one-percenters like Romney can take taxes off to feed his horse, but a person who every week has to decide whether to pay the light bill or food on the table has to pay taxes on a measily $15k.  Poverty level….

Here is the poverty level, by the way–which is waaaay too low:  http://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty/11poverty.shtml

A person making $20,000 per year would be more like it–you can’t afford decent housing at even that level.  You certainly couldn’t put any money away in savings nor could one take even the most simple vacation (camping, etc.).  You’re one paycheck away from being homeless.

I think the reasons for keeping the level so low are listed on the page–it’s used to determine food stamp eligibility and other social services…it’s the same with the false 8% unemployment figures…if you don’t acknowledge a problem exists, or acknowledge the scope of the problem, then you don’t have to get off your butt and do something about it.