I’ll soon provide an automatic redirect. In the meantime, though, new posts to the Civil Discussion blog will be found here. I’ll move previous posts as soon I can.
Top 10 Striking Findings from the Latest Data on Poverty
Here are the points. For details and support, read the full article.
- Record numbers of people are poor and without health insurance.
- More than a third of our population is living on a low income.
- Income inequality increased from 2009 to 2010.
- Young people are getting hammered in this recession.
- Racial and ethnic disparities widened in 2010.
- More than one out of every five children is living in poverty.
- Some good news: Poverty did NOT significantly rise among seniors.
- The percentage of people receiving health insurance from their employers continues to decline.
- Safety net programs give needy families a leg up when they fall on hard times.
- Poverty affects everyone.
Fact sheet on cost of Republican e-verify program
On June 14 Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) introduced the Legal Workforce Act, H.R. 2164. The bill would make the federal government’s Internet-based system that verifies work eligibility—E-Verify—mandatory for all employers in the United States. Currently, 4 percent of all businesses use the system, but expanding it for use in every business presents a number of logistical and costly problems.
Without providing for a fully legalized workforce, E-Verify is too expensive to make mandatory. It is a prime example of an enforcement-only strategy that does nothing to solve the fact that we have 11 million undocumented immigrants currently living in the country. The system’s high error rates will keep many Americans from working, while catching less than half of all undocumented workers.
Want to know what John Micas been up to?
September 12, 2011 10:00 AM
Newest GOP Hostages: Bicyclists and Pedestrians
By karoli
…
The Obama administration has made bicycle lanes and safe streets a priority. Secretary of Transportation, Ray LaHood is an avid cyclist who understands the benefits of safe pathways. As one who has nearly been run down by distracted drivers who inadvertently swerve into very narrow bike lanes, every improvement made is one that I view as a lifesaver somewhere to someone.
Enter Rep. John Mica, our new Republican transportation appropriations overlord. Yes, our tea party Congress has proposed killing all guaranteed funding for bicycle and pedestrian projects. Back in July, when the House was busily carving out all sorts of little green projects from the budget, Mica and his crew decided bicycle paths and walkways for pedestrians were just extras we don’t need. Luckily, the Senate had our backs and passed a clean funding extension, but the two bills have not been reconciled yet.
Once again, blind ideology trumps reason and compassion
Indirectly, from an AP story published in The Miami Herald:
Florida has turned down $106million in federal health care funds
By Ashley Lopez | 09.09.11 | 11:27 am
The Associated Press is reporting that Gov. Rick Scott and the GOP-led Legislature have “rejected or declined to pursue more than $106 million in federal grant money and returned another $4.5 million” for health care initiatives in the state.
According to the AP:
Scott ordered state agencies to reject any money tied to President Barack Obama’s health care plan, which Florida is challenging in court, but Scott kept more than $13 million for a four-year abstinence education grant and for another program coordinating background checks for long-term care workers.
…
Republicans are just flat wrong on effect of taxes on job creation
From…
By Dean Baker
Getting those Republican Attacks Right
At this point, Republican politicians are beginning to sound almost like wind-up toys when they complain about job-killing taxes … that keep businesses from hiring. The media should at least do the Republicans and the public the courtesy of attempting to discern if these complaints make any sense. (McClatchy gets high marks for this effort.)
If the charges are true, then there are logical implications that can be explored. The media should be taking the time to see whether the evidence is consistent with Republican claims.
The tax side of the story is pretty simple. The Republicans are making things up.
We still have the Bush-era tax rates in effect. The wealthy are paying a smaller share of their income in taxes than at any point since the Great Depression. The tax rate on corporate profits is also hovering near a post-Depression low.
Some of the more inventive Republicans may claim that it is fear of higher taxes in the future that discourages hiring, but this doesn’t fly either. There is a huge amount of turnover in the labor market, especially in sectors like health care, retail and restaurants.
Even if employers were convinced that higher tax rates in 2013 and beyond would make it unprofitable to have more workers; that would hardly be a reason not to hire workers today. It’s a safe bet that ordinary turnover would allow them to reduce their workforce to the desired level long before the tax rates returned to their Clinton-era levels.
Of course we created 3 million jobs a year from 1996-2000. This makes it difficult to claim the Clinton-era tax rates would destroy jobs.
Happy Labor Day!
Perspective on oil from Canada’s tar sands
The first controversy about tar sands I became aware of, some years back, was its terrible cost in terms of water pollution among other things. Now, with the protests against the proposed pipeline (running from Alberta to the Gulf coast, straight through the heart of the U.S.) we’re seeing a second phase.
Whenever anyone, ever, talks about the cost/benefit ratio of “developing” the tar sands “resource,” we need to make sure that all the costs of all parts of the process are included:
- Extraction.
- Transportation.
- Refinement.
- Resultant global warming.
While doing so, we must make sure that no costs are overlooked — because they’re deferred rather than immediate, for example — and especially that none are denied without evidence or, worst of all, deliberately hidden. To gain some perspective on that, watch this documentary about our Canadian neighbors. Some of it will sound depressingly familiar.
Republican rationale for voter suppression
This guy is lower and slimier than a flug’s belly.
September 1, 2011
Registering the Poor to Vote is Un-American
By Matthew Vadum
Why are left-wing activist groups so keen on registering the poor to vote?
Because they know the poor can be counted on to vote themselves more benefits by electing redistributionist politicians. Welfare recipients are particularly open to demagoguery and bribery.
Registering them to vote is like handing out burglary tools to criminals. It is profoundly antisocial and un-American to empower the nonproductive segments of the population to destroy the country — which is precisely why Barack Obama zealously supports registering welfare recipients to vote.
A decade before the Motor-Voter law that required states to register voters at welfare offices was enacted, NAACP official Joe Madison explained the political economy of voter registration drives.
“When people are standing in line to get cheese and butter or unemployment compensation, you don’t have to tell them how to vote,” said Madison, now a radio talk show host in Washington, D.C. “They know how to vote.”
Like Madison, Barack Obama grasped this basic truth when he worked for ACORN’s Project Vote affiliate in 1992.
“All our people must know that politics and voting affects their lives directly,” the future president said. “If we’re registering people in public housing, for an example, we talk about aid cuts and who’s responsible.”
Encouraging those who burden society to participate in elections isn’t about helping the poor. It’s about helping the poor to help themselves to others’ money. It’s about raw so-called social justice. It’s about moving America ever farther away from the small-government ideals of the Founding Fathers.
Concrete examples of persons and corporations refuse to consider taxing.
Of last year’s 100 highest-paid US CEOs, twenty-five took home more in compensation than their company paid in 2010 federal income taxes. As a new report by the Institute for Policy Studies reveals, these twenty-five CEOs averaged $16.7 million, well above last year’s $10.8 million average for S&P 500 CEOs. In the following slideshow, the Institute for Policy Studies’s Sarah Anderson uncovers ten companies that paid their CEOs more last year than they paid in corporate income taxes.
Check out the slideshow!
