After all, they might spend the cash on pitchforks and torches

via Susie Madrak at Crooks and Liars we learn that the northern wingnuts of Minnesota will not be outdone by the dairyland wingnuts of Wisconsin. Wis. Gov. Scott Walker is trying to crush unions and take away the constitutional right of working people to freely associate - hah! what a piker! a mere robber baron wannabe! Minnesota Republicans want to make it illegal for anyone on public assistance to have more than $20 cash!

On March 15, Angel Buechner of the Welfare Rights Committee testified  in front of the House Health and Human Services Reform Committee on  House File 171. Buechner told committee members, “We would like to  address the provision that makes it illegal for MFIP [one of Minnesota’s  welfare programs] families to withdraw cash from the cash portion of  the MFIP grant - and in fact, appears to make it illegal for MFIP  families to have any type of money at all in their pockets. How do you  expect people to take care of business like paying bills such as lights,  gas, water, trash and phone?”
House File 171 would make it so that families on MFIP - and disabled  single adults on General Assistance and Minnesota Supplemental Aid -  could not have their cash grants in cash or put into a checking account.  Rather, they could only use a state-issued debit card at special terminals in certain businesses that are set up to accept the card.

Which is a actually a partial surrender to all those Cadillac-driving welfare queens in Minnesota - the original bill would have barred those on assistance from getting any cash at all.
Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?
But remember, trying to get millionaires to pay an extra 2% in income taxes is Marxist class warfare by jealous communists who hate successful people who pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps. You know, scrappy entrepreneurs like Paris Hilton and all those hedge fund managers on Wall Street who earn every cent of their million-dollar taxpayer-funded bonuses.
I'm guessing the next step will be Oklahoma bringing back indentured servitude and debtor's prisons or Missouri passing the "Modest Proposal Act" requiring all families on public assistance to sell their children to the nearest rendering plant or perhaps the kindly burghers of Indiana will finally pass the "Work will make you Free" Act to provide a final solution to the poverty problem.

(crossposted, as usual, from The Woodshed)

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I got your class war right here

Give a man a fish and he'll eat it, teach a man to fish....and he may starve to death waiting to get a bite.

There has been a lot of asinine talk lately about the evils of creating dependence among the poor by...well, y'know, making sure that they don't starve to death. My previous favorite were entitlement-crazed assholes like these on the right who felt that sending money to Haiti would just encourage people there to remain poor. It's funny that no one thought of how the Haitians were encouraging the French to be poor while they were paying reparations for freeing themselves from slavery between 1804 and 1947.

But my new favorite in the "I hope one day your car breaks down in the slums you helped create" sweepstakes is South Carolina Lt. Gov. and gubernatorial hopeful Andre Bauer who thinks the poor are a bunch of ungrateful layabouts breeding like the vermin he thinks they are because of school lunch programs.

GREENVILLE - Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer has compared giving people government assistanc to "feeding stray animals."

Bauer, who is running for the Republican nomination for governor, made his remark during a town hall meeting in Fountain Inn that included state lawmakers and about 115 residents.

"My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed. You're facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce especially ones that don't think too much further than that. And so what you've got to do is you've got to curtail that type of behavior. They don't know any better," Bauer said.

In South Carolina, 58 percent of students participate in the free and reduced-price lunch program.

Yes, Mr. Bauer, by all means deny aid to the children of irresponsible poor parents, that will teach them a lesson! And if little Johnny and Janey can't attend school because they are out dumpster diving to get enough to eat or can't concentrate at school because they didn't have breakfast and can't afford lunch, well then I guess they will learn not to be poor -- certainly it won't reinforce the cyclical nature of poverty and make more poor people. That would be unthinkable in a state as prosperous and egalitarian as yours

• According to statistics collected by the South Carolina Appleseed Legal Justice Center, (cribbed from the comments but tracked down to the linked source above)

  
  

  South Carolina ranks 45th in overall child wellbeing today.

  26% of children under the age of 6 years old lives in poverty.

  1 in 10 children live in extreme poverty.

  In 2006, 38% of babies were born to mothers who lacked adequate prenatal care.

  Infant mortality: 47th

  High school grad: 48th

  Obesity: 45th

  Infectious diseases: 42nd

  Violent crime: 50th (highest)

  Lack of health insurance: 37th

  Premature deaths: 46th

  Mental health: 41st

  Per capita income: 45th

  Underemployment: 46th

And what is this little tidbit of info?

Per dollar of federal tax collected in 2005, South Carolina citizens received approximately $1.35 in the way of federal spending. This ranks the state 16th highest nationally and represents a slight rise from 1995, when South Carolina received $1.20 per dollar of taxes in federal spending, ranking it 18th highest nationally.

hmmm, maybe the U.S. federal government should stop feeding South Carolina?

first against the wall when the revolution comes

Stop the presses!

The President had a beer with a professor and a policeman! Why is it that I can't read these stories without this song going through my head?

Meanwhile, back in the American heartland, in the shining city on a hill, there is good news as the the latest minimum wage increase kicked in last week. The federal minimum wage is now $7.25 per hour (about $15,000 a year based on a 40 hr week) Of course some states don't even have minimum wage laws. About 13 percent of the population of the United States lives below the poverty line (set in 2001 at $18,000/year for a family of four).

There are about 45 million americans without health insurance of any kind and millions more with wholly inadequate insurance. Kids are dying of toothache because their family doesn't have the money to take them to a doctor. The current health care proposal in front of congress now is estimated to cost $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion over the next ten years and some people oppose it because it would be funded by a one percent increase in income taxes for people making more than $200,000 a year. That's in addition to the roughly 3% income tax hike Obama already has proposed for the top tax bracket, bringing their tax rate to 38%.

Handing over 38% of your taxable income to the government sounds like a lot until I see stories like this:

Bank Bonus Tab: $33 Billion

Nine Lenders That Got U.S. Aid Paid at Least $1 Million Each to 5,000 Employees

By SUSANNE CRAIG and DEBORAH SOLOMON

Nine banks that received government aid money paid out bonuses of nearly $33 billion last year -- including more than $1 million apiece to nearly 5,000 employees -- despite huge losses that plunged the U.S. into economic turmoil.
(snip)
Wall Street has shown little sign of slowing down the pay train this year. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley recently disclosed that they have set aside $11 billion and $6 billion in compensation and benefits, respectively, for their employees so far this year. Goldman's second quarter was among its best ever. Morgan Stanley lost money for its third straight quarter.Goldman and Morgan Stanley declined to
comment on the report.Meanwhile, some big banks that received government bailouts, including Citigroup Inc. and Bank of America Corp., are offering handsome pay packages to lure stars. Citigroup -- which received about 25% of the aid going to the nine banks -- has the No. 1 pay recipient. Andrew Hall, who heads Citigroup's energy-trading unit Phibro LLC, received $98.9 million in 2008, according to a government official. Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit, by comparison, received more than $38 million last year."

Poor Vikram, he's the CEO and he has to struggle along on a paltry $38 million a year.

The U.S. government in the past year has spent about $1.8 trillion on bailing out and proping up the banking industry: $31.1 billion on bank takeovers, $117.9 billion on bailing out AIG, $1.4 trillion on Fed financial rescue efforts including the Bear Stearns bailout effort, $40 on the capital investment in Citigroup and Bank of America, $20.4 billion on the Capital Purchase Program to bail out banks, and another $5 billion in assest guarantees for BoA and Citi. This is money spent, not just money committed or earmarked for bailout programs - those numbers are even higher. And it doesn't include the more than $1 trillion spent on the GM bailout or the stimulus plan or the money spent on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and mortage relief for homeowner facing foreclose. Nope, that $1.8 trillion is just what has been forked over to shore up the banking industry. (figures from here)

And that's just the financial sector payoff. How about the military industrial complex?

They say if you aren't angry, then you aren't paying attention.

People often wonder why the French Revolution and the Russian Revolution were so brutal. How could ordinary French peasants and townsfolk cheer to see people they formerly respected as their "social betters" being marched to guillotine? How could the Bolsheviks be so hardhearted as to machine-gun to death the Tsar and his family, even the young children?


I think I might understand it.

Big Darkness soon come

About 1,500 people live in this shantytown, huddling in tents and makeshift shelters built of scrap lumber and plastic tarps, cooking meagre meals over communal fires less than a mile away from wealthy property owners who are barricaded in walled compounds protected by a private army of a hired security guards. The police, who have become increasingly violent in recent years, cruise the shantytown hoping to keep a lid on drugs, gangs and violence and to make sure the have-nots don't wander off to trouble the haves. The shantytown is growing by about 50 residents a week. It's not in some distant underdeveloped third world hellhole -- it's Sacramento, California.


The divide between rich and poor grew faster in the last 35 years than at any point in recorded economic history, certainly since the 1920s and probably since the industrial revolution - but we don't have the facts and figures for that. But we do know a lot of homes have been lost to foreclosure, a lot of people have lost their jobs (more than a million jobs lost this year so far) and the market crash has wiped out a lot of middle class portfolios intended to as retirement savings. People are ending up on the street while abandoned homes are left to rot. In Georgia alone, 1 in 8 mortgages are in foreclosure or 90 days past due in payments.



How bad is it? According to Consumer Reports, pretty bad:

The number of U.S. homeowners with mortgages whose homes are worth less than their loans is 8.3 million, according to an analysis by First American CoreLogic that was reported on by CNN. The number means that about 20 percent of mortgages are underwater.
Eight percent of all mortgages are delinquent, and 6,600 homes go into foreclosure each day, says the Center for Responsible Lending; foreclosures could total 8.1 million by 2012. Some banks suspended foreclosures, but the moratoriums are set to expire this month.

And while all this is going on, all we seem to hear about is Rush Limbaugh's takeover of the Republican party, whose economic policy at this point in time is damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead on tax cuts for the wealthy. I keep hearing the same old upper middle class spoiled white man's refrain: "I got mine Jack. If you make me pay another couple of percent in tax on the money I make over a quarter million dollars, me and the other five percent of Americans priviledged enough to be making the big money are gonna take out ball and move to Galt's Gultch."

More factual fun from the esteemed R.Porrofatto in comments at the Alicublog post linked above:

The total tax rate (including all federal, state and local taxes) for the top 80% of the country is essentially flat. According to the Tax Foundation, here is the effective total tax rate in the U.S. by income quintile:

Highest income quintile: 35%

Second-highest income quintile: 31%

Middle-income quintile: 28%

Second-lowest income quintile: 23%

Lowest income quintile: 13%

More fun:

- The average tax rate of the wealthiest 1% fell to its lowest level in at least 18 years.[IRS]

- The top 1% of wage earners have more wealth than the entire lowest 95% of wage-earners.

- The top 1 percent of households saw income gains of over 45% in the last eight years. The bottm 90% saw gains of less than 4%. Since 1976, average income of the top 1% grew by 232%, average income of bottom 90% grew by 10% [IRS]

- The share of the nation's income flowing to the top 1 percent has increased sharply, rising from 15.8 percent in 2002 to 22.1 percent of all adjusted gross income for 2006. Not since 1928, just before the Great Depression, has the top 1 percent held such a large share of the nation's income[IRS]

- The 400 U.S. taxpayers with the highest incomes pay income taxes worth only 18 percent of their income on average, compared to 25 percent for the typical American. Because of reduced capital gains taxes, the top 400 taxpayers cumulatively saved $10 billion between 1995 and 2005. [CBPP]

- The campaign to repeal the federal estate tax was financed by 18 of the richest
families in America-including 23 billionaires-who spent nearly $500 million on it.

According to a recent study 1 in 50 American kids experiences homelessness at some point. The study is based on figures from 2005 and 2006 - anyone want to bet that the situation has improved during the current crisis? I didn't think so.

In Japan, all of the senior excutives of these bank and financial institutions that are failing would have resigned in ignominous shame by now and several would have probably had the decency to hang themselves. Meanwhile at AIG et al, it's bonuses all around while the U.S. taxpayer is left holding the bag.

I've said it before and I'm sure I'll say it again: The only surefire investments right now are in pitchforks, torches, tar and feathers.
Other Recommended Reading.

Crossposted from the Woodshed

If you're so smart, how come you're not rich

Since I've been resting here in my undisclosed location in the aftermath of the Canadian parliamentary crisis and the U.S. presidential inauguration, I've been very busy lately reading the conservative blogs and listening to the talk radio they pump into the lounge 24/7 to get the truth that the liberal MSM won't tell - you know about the victory in Iraq and how Barack Hussien Obama is really Malcom X's love child - that kinda stuff. This post started, as so many posts do, as a comment over on RossK's Gazetteer, so if it seems I am repeating myself, rest assured I am and that your engraved apology is on its way from the Woodshed's department of redundancy department.



One of the members of our blogging posse, RossK, is troubled lately. Troubled because grant money for research is drying up fast and as a researcher, that grant money not only pays for him to further humankind's knowledge and probably save lives in the future, but it also allows him to "put food on his family."

Science, bah! What has science ever done for us? Okay, the Internet, but what else? The only things more useless than science are liberals and maybe the roman empire.


Fund basic research to encourage breakthroughs that might lead to new technologies as a way to stimulate the economy? That's crazy talk! Everyone knows that is the moneymen - the brokers, the bankers, the leverage and arbitrage artistes - that drive economic innovation and deserve all the stimulus money! Who else could come up with a way to sell loans made to people who had no hope of paying them back as a AAA investment! Hooray for capitalism! If only government could be run like a business.

Come on RossK, science has its place in high school and stuff, but do you think those freewheeling capitalist Masters of the Universe can get by on a measly half a million dollars a year (plus whatever they can steal) without a big fat bonus? Do you think those Lexuses and 3,000 square foot ski condos are going to buy themselves?

Don't you realize that if the government takes the $120,000 grant that supports your biomedical research and pays the salaries of the three people you work with, and instead gives that money to a needy bank, brokerage or multinational corporation, those companies can pay the bonuses they need to pay to keep the kind of executive talent around that got them where they are today. And that money filters down into the economy through sports car dealerships, caviar importers and expensive escort agencies. That bonus money plays a vital role in the economy in other ways too. Do you really want the banker in charge of asset-stripping a borderline profitable small manufacturer that the bank has foreclosed on being distracted by wondering if he can afford another Rolex or a third country club membership? Do you want the people who run our economy stressed out over not being able to get a decent tee-off time just so your "research assistants" can squander the money that could have been spent building a private company golf course on bulk lentils, bus passes and cheap instant ramen noodles and clothing imported from China (a nation of communists)? Do you RossK? All in the name of "learning" and "scientific inquiry" and all that other egghead stuff? My god, you science geeks are a selfish bunch!

Any conservative will tell you that science is overrated. Whether its climate scientists yammer on about melting ice caps and drowning polar bears or biologists with all their "Darwin this" and "evolution that" -- don't they know it snowed in Delisle, Sask. just the other day and that God made the world -- as is -- in 168 hours. Just look at the success the new government of Canada has had removing science from such areas as food inspection and nuclear regulation. Industry can take care of itself, why can't science? If you Pointedexters are so smart, how come you're not rich?

huh? What's that nurse? It's time for my medication? NO! NO! NO! I like the voices in my head, they are my friends! They want me to be a success, just like the other blogging tories here on the ward! Don't come any closer! PUT DOWN THAT NEEDLE! I'M GONNA REPORT YOU TO STEPHEN HARPE........zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

* * *

In all seriousness, Astro, one of the commenters over at RossK 's joint, suggests its time to stop letting the economists run things and start listening to the scientists. He's right, but I'll go him one better.

It isn't just time to listen to the scientists instead of the economists and moneymen, it's time to take most of econmists out behind the barn and put them down like diseased cattle. And it's long past time to take most of the moneymen and other latter-day would-be robber barons, strip them naked, and kick them out of the back of a moving van in Kabul or Dhaka or Port-au-Prince or Kitcisakik and see how far the Harvard MBA and the old boys clubs get them then. As far as I'm concerned, every single one of these bonus babies should be put in the stocks and the government should subsidize truck farmers by buy all their rotten produce and handing out to people to throw.

A thought to ponder for the weekend

When it comes to a financial meltdown, after dire predictions from economists governments around the world scramble to cooperate, the G7 calls emergency meetings, the doors to various national treasuries are flung open. The attitude among politicians and pundits by and large is "Do something! Costs to the taxpayers be dammed, we must solve this problem before it get worse, no matter what it takes.The government tells you about different ways to save money to weather the crisis and tell you "Times are hard and we all have to pull together!" Handing over $700 billion with little or no oversight is something that must be done.
When it comes to global warming on the other hand, after 25 years of studies and dire predictions from scientists, there are still many politicians, bonehead and corporate lackies who claim the whole thing is a matter of opinion and the best thing to do is burn more coal and oil and drive your SUV to the corner store. Equiping factories with antipollution gear and forcing the auto industry to build more hybrids would be socialism and would cost too much.
When it comes to genocide in Darfur, thousands are dying, but it might be too expensive to divest or to pay some bills for the African Union or send some of our own soldiers. Besides, Sudan has some oil and you never know when that might come in handy.
The government of the United States is willing to fork over $700 billion in one fell swoop to the very people who lead the finanacial industry into disaser, but when experts say it might cost as much aas $150 billion to bring unversal health care to the country, all we hear about is "personal responsibility" and "fiscal restraint."

Nice to know where our priorities lay as a society.

Crossposted from the Woodshed.