Even if you don't agree with Ames' slant, this is insightful background info on two slippery, spineless people, Obama and Geithner, whose lives have curiously overlapped.
URL: http://exiledonline.com/are-obama-and-geithner-the-twins-from-hell/
Friday, January 15, 2010
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Now city gov'ts need a fed bailout, too
Gee, whaddya know, it looks like local government is just as wasteful, profligate, and stupid as state and federal government. What's more, both state and local governments are depending on Big Guvmint to bail them out. Tom Jefferson, boy, were you dumb.
So if all government is bad, where does that leave us?
An-ar-chy in the USA!
U.S. cities will face a collective budget shortfall of at least $56 billion over the next two years, with the current recession not seen hitting bottom until 2011, according to a report on Wednesday.
By Lisa Lambert
January 13, 2010 | Reuters
The National League of Cities said that because economic recoveries in cities lag national ones by about two years, the pain from the recession that began in 2007 could continue for years to come.
The collective shortfall could reach $83 billion through 2012, the league said. Cities will seek to cure revenue declines and spending pressures with higher service fees, layoffs, unpaid furloughs, and drawing on reserves or canceling infrastructure projects, the report said.
Many cities have already used these options as the recession has worn down their finances.
States are also threatening to cut another lifeline for cities -- direct aid transfers. As they attempt to reconcile their own battered budgets, states are saying they can send less money to cities. California, for one, has already taken back aid it had granted.
States cut aid to cities by 9 percent in 2003 and 2004 in response to the 2001 recession, according to the report.
"In comparison, the current recession is by nearly all measures more severe than the 2001 recession, suggesting that state cuts in transfers will, if anything, be more severe as well," the group said.
If states simply cut 10 percent of aid per year from 2010 to 2012, cities will lose $21 billion in total, the league estimated.
Like the states, cities are pressing for more federal aid, through a job creation bill like the one recently passed by the House of Representatives; a transportation bill; or additional funding for programs begun through the economic stimulus bill passed last February, such as the energy efficiency grant program.
"We urge federal action that would create jobs. Inaction at the federal level could worsen the already difficult situation facing cities and the country," said the group's president, Ronald Loveridge, who is mayor of Riverside, California, one of the areas hardest hit by the housing downturn.
BusWeek: U.S. workers are cheap, disposable
This is why in the U.S. the march towards "socialist" Big Gov't is inevitable, because starting in the late 1970s-early 1980s, the compact between Management and Labor was torn asunder and there was nothing to replace it. Some of you luckier older folks just don't get it. It's a different world out there today.
U.S. workers have nothing to rely on now: no pensions, no sick leave, little or no vacation, no severance pay, and no or inadequate health insurance. Meanwhile, the productivity of U.S. workers continues to rise, as fewer employed people are asked to do more for less pay and benefits in return. Corporate owners and managers reap continued benefits from that (even in recessionary 2009, corporate profits as a percent of national income were at the 40-year average), but still they warn us constantly that cheap labor overseas threatens to take away our jobs at any moment if we get too uppity.
We are warned not to complain, or else, despite the fact that "pay for production and nonsupervisory workers—80% of the private workforce—is 9% lower than it was in 1973, adjusted for inflation," according to BW. Corporations and the MSM tell us that lazy, greedy unions are the problem, despite that only 8 percent of U.S. workers are in unions, and most of them are government employees.
This is not to mention the increasing frequency of wage theft by employers, which Dubya's Dept. of Labor failed to investigate. Wal-Mart, although probably the worst offender when it comes to non-payment, is just the tip of the iceberg.
Don't believe all that corporate-funded media propaganda about spoiled, lazy U.S. workers. The U.S. has the third most efficient labor market in the world, whose workers are the easiest to hire and fire, according to the World Economic Forum. (Meanwhile, the U.S. has been usurped by Switzerland as the #1 most competitive economy in the world for 2009-2010.)
So of course American workers are going to turn increasingly to Guvmint to help them meet their basic needs. This lemon has been squeezed dry.
Pay is falling, benefits are vanishing, and no one's job is secure. How companies are making the era of the temp more than temporary
By Peter Coy, Michelle Conlin and Moira Herbst
January 7, 2010 | BusinessWeek
Monday, January 11, 2010
Zandi index: U.S. home prices to fall farther in 2010
We haven't hit bottom yet:
"Zandi estimates that 2.4 million homes will find their way into foreclosure next year. He expects banks to start putting those properties on the market more aggressively during the first half of the year, resulting in a flood of cut-rate inventory that will drag prices down."
This year the housing market showed signs of life. But with foreclosures and unemployment climbing, prices have further to fall.
By Beth Kowitt
December 9, 2009 | CNN-Fortune
Literal blood-sucking corporate vampires
To correct Ross Perot, that "giant sucking sound" isn't U.S. jobs going to Mexico, but rather poor Mexicans' blood being sucked into this multi-billion-dollar U.S. industry.
America is one of the few countries that allows corporations to buy human plasma, but according to the NYT, "the plasma industry says it pays donors for their time, not for the plasma itself." How nice. Maybe we should start calling these desperate Mexican donors "hematology consultants."
By Mark Ames
January 9, 2009 | Exiledonline
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