Republicans who have taken over state capitols across the country are promising to respond to crippling budget deficits with an array of cuts, among them proposals to reduce public workers’ benefits in Wisconsin, scale back social services in Maine and sell off state liquor stores in Pennsylvania, endangering the jobs of thousands of state workers.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/08/us/politics/08govs.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=all

cut jobs to improve unemployment figures... Go figure...

I quote some contemporary wisdom from CounterCurrents.....

It was Bill Clinton’s campaign strategist, James Carville, who in 1992 created the election slogan: “It’s the Economy, Stupid.” For the 2010 Congressional campaigns, the slogan should have been: “It’s Corporate Crime and Control, Stupid.”

But notwithstanding the latest corporate crime wave, the devastating fallout on workers, investors and taxpayers from the greed and corruption of Wall Street, and the abandonment of American workers by U.S. corporations in favor of repressive regimes abroad, the Democrats have failed to focus voter anger on the corporate supremacists.

The giant corporate control of our country is so vast that people who call themselves anything politically—liberal, conservative, progressive, libertarian, independents or anarchist—should be banding together against the reckless Big Business steamroller.

Conservatives need to remember the sharply critical cautions against misbehaving or over-reaching businesses and commercialism by Adam Smith, Frederic Bastiat, Friedrich Hayek and other famous conservative intellectuals. All knew that the commercial instinct and drive know few boundaries to the relentless stomping or destruction of the basic civic values for any civilized society.

When eighty percent of the Americans polled believe ‘America is in decline,’ they are reflecting in part the decline of real household income and the shattered bargaining power of American workers up against global companies.

The U.S. won World War II. Germany lost and was devastated. Yet note this remarkable headline in the October 27th Washington Post: “A Bargain for BMW means jobs for 1,000 in S. Carolina: Workers line up for $15 an hour—half of what German counterparts make.”

The German plant is backed by South Carolina taxpayer subsidies and is not unionized. Newly hired workers at General Motors and Chrysler, recently bailed out by taxpayers, are paid $14 an hour before deductions. The auto companies used to be in the upper tier of high paying manufacturing jobs. Now the U.S. is a low-wage country compared to some countries in Western Europe and the trend here is continuing downward.

Workers in their fifties at the BMW plant, subsidizing their lower wages with their tax dollars, aren’t openly complaining, according to the Post. Not surprising, since the alternative in a falling economy is unemployment or a fast food job at $8 per hour.

It is not as if we weren’t forewarned by our illustrious political forebears Fasten your seat belts; here are some examples:

Thomas Jefferson—“I hope that we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.”

Abraham Lincoln in 1864—“I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. …corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.” (1864)

Theodore Roosevelt—“The citizens of the United States must control the mighty commercial forces which they themselves call into being.”

Woodrow Wilson—“Big business is not dangerous because it is big, but because its bigness is an unwholesome inflation created by privileges and exemptions which it ought not to enjoy.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt—“The first truth is that the liberty of a  democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is Fascism—ownership of Government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.”

Dwight Eisenhower, farewell address—“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.”

And, lastly, a literary insight:

Theodore Dreiser—“The government has ceased to function, the corporations are the government.”  (How true is that for Australia?)

Are you, dear reader, the same now as you were when you began reading this column?

COMMENT:  Perhaps to continue the deception to the US public (and in Australia by Murdoch) the all powerful media in America, being Corporation's themselves, are trying to make it appear that the Democrats and Republicans in the US and the Labor and Liberals in Australia, are really not that much different!  How further from the truth is that? 

IMHO the Corporation's media manages the people as the wealthy Corporations require.  Strip them of the protection of "democracy" - and apply regulations commensurate with the responsibilities that they are supposed to follow and we may well enjoy the real fruits of democracy.  As long as we elect governments that the Murdoch Empire has virtually ordered us to do, then we will never enjoy the wisdom of the above-mentioned famous Americans.   NE OUBLIE.

Sarah Palin may be the darling of the Tea Party but she appears to be rapidly falling out of favour among establishment Republicans. Having been criticised by strategist Karl Rove and George W Bush, she has now been taken to task by one of Ronald Reagan's former inner circle.

Reagan's former speechwriter Peggy Noonan took umbrage with Palin's description of Reagan as "an actor" and described her as a "nincompoop" for the comments made during a Fox News appearance.

Palin was defending her new TV show, Sarah Palin's Alaska, which debuts on The Learning Channel next week, when she said: "Wasn't Ronald Reagan an actor? Wasn't he in Bedtimes for Bonzo, bozo or something? Ronald Reagan was an actor."

However, her off-hand characterisation has infuriated Noonan, who was special assistant to Reagan and wrote many of his most famous speeches during his time in the White House. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Noonan described the comment as "ignorant even for Mrs Palin" and said it illustrated one of the fundamental problems with the Tea Party movement, which needs to field candidates with "dignity and stature".

Noonan said that by the time Reagan got to the White House he was a seasoned politician who had worked hard to earn the right to run for President.

"He wasn't in search of a life when he ran for office, and he wasn't in search of fame; he'd already lived a life, he was already well known, he'd accomplished things in the world," wrote Noonan, who outlined his achievements including seven terms as president of the Screen Actors Guild and two completed terms as governor of California.

"Here is an old tradition badly in need of return: you have to earn your way into politics. You should go have a life, build a string of accomplishments, then enter public service. And you need actual talent: you have to be able to bring people in and along. You can't just bully them, you can't just assert and taunt, you have to be able to persuade."



Read more: http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/71233,people,news,sarah-palin-is-a-nincompoop-says-reagan-speechwriter-peggy-noonan#ixzz14knUJ3Kj

A Republican congressman who says climate change is nothing to worry about because God promised Noah that he would never again flood the earth has provoked outrage among environmentalists by bidding to become chairman of a Congressional committee responsible for air quality and environmental health.

Following last week's midterm elections, when the Republicans retook the House of Representatives, the chairmanships of various committees are up for grabs. Illinois Republican Representative John Shimkus is hoping to snatch the chair of the powerful House Energy Committee.

One of the reasons why environmentalists are appalled is the video [...], which shows Shimkus telling fellow members of Congress last year why he disagrees with 'cap and trade' - the term used to describe the concept of offering economic incentives to industry in return for reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases.

He begins: "I wanna start with Genesis 8 verse 21 and 22: 'Never again will I curse the ground because of man even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood and never again will I destroy all living creatures as I have done. As long as the earth endures, seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.'

from Paul Krugman, NYT:

...

And about dollar debasement: leaving aside the fact that a weaker dollar actually helps U.S. manufacturing, where were these people during the previous administration? The dollar slid steadily through most of the Bush years, a decline that dwarfs the recent downtick. Why weren’t there similar letters demanding that Alan Greenspan, the Fed chairman at the time, tighten policy?

Meanwhile, the incoherent: Two Republicans, Mike Pence in the House and Bob Corker in the Senate, have called on the Fed to abandon all efforts to achieve full employment and focus solely on price stability. Why? Because unemployment remains so high. No, I don’t understand the logic either.

So what’s really motivating the G.O.P. attack on the Fed? Mr. Bernanke and his colleagues were clearly caught by surprise, but the budget expert Stan Collender predicted it all. Back in August, he warned Mr. Bernanke that “with Republican policy makers seeing economic hardship as the path to election glory,” they would be “opposed to any actions taken by the Federal Reserve that would make the economy better.” In short, their real fear is not that Fed actions will be harmful, it is that they might succeed.

Hence the axis of depression. No doubt some of Mr. Bernanke’s critics are motivated by sincere intellectual conviction, but the core reason for the attack on the Fed is self-interest, pure and simple. China and Germany want America to stay uncompetitive; Republicans want the economy to stay weak as long as there’s a Democrat in the White House.

And if Mr. Bernanke gives in to their bullying, they may all get their wish.

--------------------

Gus: we have the same problem here in Australia, except the Labor (liberal/democrat/socialist) party HAS succeeded... and that pisses the Liberals (conservatives) off. They'll do anything to derail Labor's relative success in a crashed world economy, even if it means sabotaging the country. Abbott is an expert at that. His new opposition mantra is that the Labor government "has lost its way" "does not know what it's doing" and with the help of the Murdoch media, and other gnarly media, is eager to see the glass could be half empty when it fills more than three quarters full, they're pulling hard at Julia's skirt.

But more often than not, she's the one wearing the trousers...

We can't blame those people who doubt in politicians promises. This is the reason why many of them are protesting, because of the promises that have broken. In relation to this, in accordance with OH Gov. John Kasich, reform of the state's CBA is necessary. I found this here: Ohio public workers protest collective barganining reform Cleveland.com reports that this has failed to endear Gov. Kasich to supporters of organized labor in the state. Approximately 1,800 protestors showed up at the OH Statehouse in Columbus in order to voice their displeasure of Senate Bill 5, which would radically alter collective bargaining rights.

The problem of unemployment is a world-wide reality. The developed countries like the U.S., England, France, Germany, Italy, etc. I've even read that
Banking giant Citigroup is poised to drop the ax on about one percent of its worldwide work force. That means around 3,000 individuals could find themselves out of work. While it is the largest financial institution to announce layoffs this week, Citigroup -- which cites cost reduction as its reason behind the job cuts -- isn't the only bank to do so. Layoffs continue to be announced in banks domestically and abroad. Article source: Citigroup could lay off thousands in continued industry turmoil.   There are millions of young men and women waiting and waiting for job opportunities. This chronic problem of unemployment is not confirmed to any particular class, segment or society.