The Politics of Lowered Expectations by Ralph Nader / The Politics of Lowered Expectations by Ralph Nader

Published on Tuesday, January 3, 2012 by CommonDreams.org

The Politics of Lowered Expectations

by Ralph Nader

Ezra Klein, the bright, young, economic policy columnist for the "Washington Post" believes that Obama came out ahead last year in the "administration's bitter, high-stakes negotiations with the Republicans in Congress."

He cites four major negotiations in 2011 with the Republicans that Obama won. Obama won the game of chicken played in February by the House Speaker John Boehner and Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell to avoid a government shutdown. He won the battle to raise the customarily supported debt ceiling on government borrowing. He avoided an embarrassment after he had to concur in the formation of a "Supercommittee" on deficit reduction when Congress couldn't come to an agreement. And he won all of a two-month extension of the social security payroll tax cut and extension of unemployment compensation benefits.

If those were "high stakes," I wonder what microscopic instrument would detect any lower stakes. Obama keeps "winning battles" that he could have avoided. But what about taking the offensive on some really significant matters? For example, when he caved in December 2010 to the minority Republicans and agreed to extend the deficit-producing Bush tax cuts on the rich, he didn't demand in return a continuation of the regular bi-partisan approval of lifting the debt limit. So over weeks in 2011, he had to mud-wrestle the Republicans on the debt limit - to the dismay of finance ministers across the world - and won only after conceding the bizarre creation of a Supercommittee to order its own Congress to enact budget cuts. That Supercommittee gridlocked and closed down.

Finally, if he does nothing, the $4 trillion over 10 years that are the Bush tax cuts expire automatically on January 1, 2013 - after the election. On the same day, the spending trigger automatically kicks in which cuts over ten years $500 billion from the bloated Defense budget and another $500 billion from other departments, but not from social security and Medicare/Medicaid beneficiaries.

This is an Obama victory? What makes Mr. Klein so sure Obama won't cave again? He has all this year to do so. His own Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has often said that there's now way he would go for any further defense cuts. Also, Obama was ready in 2011 to raise the Medicare eligibility age in return for the deal on debt ceiling. He was saved from this folly only by the stubbornness of Boehner and his clenched-teeth sidekick, Virginian Eric Cantor from the arguably most passive Congressional district in the U.S. Boehner and Cantor wanted more.

Here are some high stakes fights where the Republicans defeated the White House and blocked major substantive advances. They stopped the wide-ranging energy bill, and stifled Uncle Sam's authority to bargain for drug discounts that taxpayers are paying to the gouging drug companies for the drug benefit program for the elderly. They kept the coal industry King Coal on Capitol Hill, preserved crass corporate welfare and tax loophole programs, and blocked the able nominee to head the new agency to protect against consumer finance abuses. They also cut budgets for small but crucial safety programs in food, auto safety, and children's hunger.

Republicans preserved the notorious nuclear power loan guarantee boondoggles, a bevy of Soviet-era weapons systems nestled in the arms of the military-industrial complex and mercilessly beat up on the work and budget of the cancer-preventing, illness-reducing Environmental Protection Agency. That's just for starters.

Obama and the majority Democrats in the Senate dug this hole for themselves when they failed to curtail the filibuster in January 2009 and 2011 by majority vote. They doomed themselves to the numerically impossible hurdle of needing 60 votes to pass any measure and avoid filibusters.

Putting themselves on the defensive, while dialing business lobbyists for the same campaign dollars as the Republicans, the Obama crowd, of course, could not advance what they promised the American people. They went silent on raising the federal minimum wage to $9.50, promised by candidate Obama in 2008 for 2011. At $9.50, it would still have been less than the federal minimum wage in 1968, adjusted for inflation. Hardly a radical proposal.

Obama went silent on the card check, promised unorganized American workers in their losing struggle with multinational corporate employers. While bailing out the criminal gamblers on Wall Street, he could have pressed for a stock transaction sales tax that could have raised big revenue and helped dampen speculation with other peoples' money such as pension funds and mutual fund savings.

He could have pushed seriously for a visible public works program producing domestic jobs in thousands of communities for improved public services. He could have directly challenged the Tea Partiers with cuts in corporate welfare, but he did not, except for ending an ethanol subsidy. He could have made a big deal of cracking down on corporate fraud on Medicare and Medicaid that totals tens of billions of dollars a year. However, once on the defensive from his own self-inflicted weak hand, he was always on the defensive.

Obama may be in a superior tactical position vis-a-vis the Congressional Republicans, as Mr. Klein posits, but is this all there is left of the touted movement for hope and change in 2008?

President Obama is deemed by his fellow Democrats to have won the financial battles, but the Republicans won the rest. How can the expectation levels of this two party duopoly sink any lower?

Let's face it, if today's Republicans are the most craven, greedy, ignorant, anti-worker, anti-patient, anti-consumer, anti-environment and coddlers of corporate crime in the party's history, why aren't the Democrats landsliding them?

For two answers try reading John F. Kennedy's best-selling Profiles of Courage, 1955, or if you favor the ancients, Plutarch's Lives (circa 100 A.D.).

Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer, and author. His most recent book - and first novel - is, Only The Super-Rich Can Save Us. His most recent work of non-fiction is The Seventeen Traditions.

All the Bad News That's Fit to Print by David Michael Green / CommonDreams.org

 Pu blished on Thursday, September 22, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

All the Bad News That's Fit to Print

by David Michael Green

Sometimes, when certain species (you know who you are) are too utterly daft to recognize the obvious, the Universe sees fit to scream it out in the form of big, bold block letters. "The story of American politics over the last generation," writes Green, "Is the story of the transfer of wealth from the people to the plutocrats. If you think there is anything else essential going on here, you don’t get it."
Such was the case just last week, when all of the following headlines were published, by one journal alone (the New York Times), and just in one 24-hour period. Read them and weep:
“Poverty Levels in 2010 Reach 52-Year Peak, US Says”
“Obama Looks For Big Health Cuts, Worrying Democrats”
“G.O.P. Scores Upset, Claims Win As Omen For Obama”
“Two-Tier Pay Now the Way Detroit Works”
“In Suburb, Battle Goes Public On Bullying of Gay Students”
“Student Loan Default Rates Rise Sharply In Past Year”
“What’s a Presidential Library to Do? An Admiring Approach at the Reagan. History, Warts and All, at the Nixon.”
“Obama Offers Jobs Bill, And the G.O.P. Balks”
“Government Pays More In Contracts, Study Finds”
“Ex-Senate Aide Will Be a Lobbyist”
“Fast-Track for Disaster Aid Is Blocked”
How’s that for a litany of shame and destruction? I didn’t even include the garden variety domestic violence scandals of mayoral aides and schools cheating on standardized tests, or anything in the sports section.

What’s most amazing, however, is the degree to which the American public still can’t put it together. Imagine if you were capable of recognizing letters on a page, but not able to string them together into meaningful words. Imagine if you could identify individual biological organs but not add them up to constitute a person. Imagine if every Cheerio in your cereal spoon was a source of fresh wonder, as if you’d never seen one before. Now imagine 300 million people who can encounter news stories like the ones above and still not tie them together into a coherent narrative.
Let me make it simple, in case anyone wants to share this essay with their idiotic, Republican (pardon the redundancy) cousin Buford: The story of American politics over the last generation is the story of the transfer of wealth from the people to the plutocrats. If you think there is anything else essential going on here, you don’t get it.
Of course, you’re not supposed to get it. And one reason why so many people can’t put the narrative together is because there is no one in the political class who is articulating that vision for them to consider. Not a single one among the elites in American politics and government.
Here’s what’s not being said, and not being understood:
That, thirty years ago, the ‘heroic’, venerated, practically deified, Ronald Reagan ushered in the age of plutocratic piracy, artfully hiding it behind any kind of fear that would sufficiently stimulate the amygdala of your garden variety troglodyte enough to hide the real agenda. You know, commies, fags, fur’ners, whatever.
That the folks who had traditionally been advocates for the rest of us who don’t own yachts were now every bit as bought off as those in the more overly corrupted Republican Party. These Democrats would mouth the words about “fighting” (if I hear that word again from another politician, I swear I will projectile vomit) for the middle class, but that they would actually screw us at every opportunity. Have you noticed how when they don’t control the institutions of government they are always somehow unable to block the Republicans’ worst crimes. But when they do control these institutions the Republicans are somehow always able to prevail from a minority position. Go figure. It almost seems like the Democrats aren’t really serious about the rhetoric they employ. But, of course, that would be dishonest...

That regressive policies have, with almost no exception, prevailed in every contest over the last thirty years, especially on questions of political economy. Taxes? Regressives won. Deregulation? Regressives got what they wanted. Labor relations? What’s this thing they used to call the “union”? Privatization? Why not? Debt? “Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter”. Trade policy? Dude, where’s my job? (Hint: it speaks Mandarin now.) Bailouts for big banks? A hundred pennies on the dollar. Need I go on?
That we are now where we are, precisely because of regressive economic policies. This is the single most crucial and most frustrating fact of our time. It’s not exactly theoretical physics to figure out that slashing taxes will produce debt. And it did. Or that trade deals will ship our jobs overseas. As they did. Or that banksters with all the same latitude to indulge their greed that they possessed in 1929 will produce the same results as their grandfathers. Which they did. Or that the much-vaunted private sector is no more efficient and inexpensive at doing things than the government. And it’s not.
That the American public has simply and utterly been downsized over the last thirty years. That people work longer and harder to make less, and live with far greater insecurity than before, while corporations and plutocrats are far richer than they were three decades ago. That people are more miserable, have less time to spend with their families, are less healthy, more stressed, more insecure and more poorly compensated – when they can scratch out a job at all – than their parents were. All so that the über-rich can now be über-über-rich. So that millionaires can be billionaires.
That people are sick to death (often quite literally) of a government that is unresponsive to their most basic needs. That they have lost all faith in the once-given notion that someone in Washington has their back. But that they still continue to believe in the dream of democracy, and will cast a vote (no matter which way they choose) for precisely the folks who brought us this nightmare, and who will accelerate its delivery after the election of 2012.
This situation is becoming acute, and I foresee about sixteen different ways in which it will only get worse from here. It is a fact of stunning proportions and epic significance that – less than three years since the end of the Bush nightmare – America is about to turn back to a more extreme version of the same disastrous politics brought to us by the same disaster-loving politicians.
Rick Perry will be the next president of the United States, you can count on that. (A fact which does, believe it or not, have its certain virtues. At the very least it means that both the oleaginous scumbucket, Ken-Doll Romney, and the inner-circle-of-hell traitor, Barack Obama, will both be humiliated in losing.) And Perry will seek to Texafy the rest of the country as fast as he can. His state is one of the worst in the union on practically every measure of quality of life that there is (except for creating new, low-wage, non-union, no-benefit jobs, that is, and the wholesale murder of poor blacks and Hispanics on death row), and he will run successfully on the basis of his record as governor of Texas.
I tell you, some days it just feels like you’ve fallen into an alternative universe where the laws of nature cease to apply... Perhaps that little problem with physical reality also accounts for why regressives have such a hard time with evolution and global warming.
But I digress. A Perry presidency can only happen because the status quo is so untenable, and people therefore so badly crave change. Such seeming oscillations chart the course of American electoral politics during this Era of Corporate Rape. Where once we had stable centrist politics and even stable majorities in Congress, now every election is a referendum on the failed policies of the current incumbents. We make radical u-turns, switching from one party to the next, without switching from one policy to another. Every politician pretends to be for the people. Every one of them actually serves the oligarchs who buy them their stations and a small bit of relief for their raging personal insecurities. Nothing changes but the letter after their names.
This is precisely why Obama and his party are sinking so rapidly now. He is nothing more than Bush’s third term, and Bush was nothing more than a continuation of the Wall Street-friendly policies of Clinton, and so on, back to Reagan. Of course Obama is failing utterly. He is pursuing policies that are utterly failing the American people, as they have for three decades. The only difference between him and the public he’s meant to serve is that he well knows that that is precisely what they’re designed to do, while the American public still – still! – doesn’t get it.
I was delighted (not really) to see Obama do his big speech and finally get some spunk going, nearly three years since he was elected, to start “fighting” for jobs in America. The only problem is that his is the only job he’s actually trying to protect. Idiotic liberals need to face reality. The only significant difference between George W. Bush and Barack Obama is that the latter is the more skilled lying corporate hack. Look at his policies. Look at what he hasn’t done. Look at the people he’s surrounded himself with.

This will be even more clear than it already is for anyone who has the interest and the courage to observe the guy accurately (sorry, regressives, that leaves you out) when he details his big no-cost jobs plan. Why it took three years into his presidency to notice there is a small jobs problem in America (and the administration evidently still hasn’t noticed the mortgage holocaust going down), and why Obama couldn’t have had his big plan actually formulated when he gave the speech incessantly exhorting Congress to pass ‘it’, tells you a lot about his real priorities. We already know how fast he’d jump if the banks were hurting, because we saw him do it, giving them full public (that means your money and mine) bail-outs, with no restrictions and no requirements to loan taxpayer money, and doing so even though these are the very criminals who wrecked the global economy in the first place. For all you regular folk, it takes a lot longer to get some help, I’m afraid.

The speech was textbook bully pulpit. Apart from the small matters of content, timing and motivation, it was precisely what a president should be doing, and precisely the way it is effectively done by successful presidents. If you doubt that, recall that when the Bush junta began in late 2002 to market its plan for a wee skirmish in the Middle East, only about a third of Americans saw the wisdom in that manifestly ludicrous idea. By the time Karl Rove and his Mad Men were finished making their relentless and ruthlessly amoral pitch for invading Iraq, the figure had become about two-thirds on the eve of the attack. People who give Obama a pass for having to work in a difficult political environment fundamentally misunderstand the nature of the American presidency. The most effective ones are effective because they make their own realities through the power of persuasion.
But the only thing that Obama is serious about is appearing to be serious. This speech was excellent political theater, but substantively as hollow as a Hostess Twinkie. And about as nutritious for the country as well. But hollow well suits a president who capitulates so frequently he’s starting to be known around DC as the Caveman of Pennsylvania Avenue. In any case, he doesn’t care. The whole point of the exercise was to communicate to the American people (read: voters he’ll soon be needing again) that “I care”, and to trap the Republicans into either going along with his plan – which he knows they won’t, so no serious danger to the aristocracy there – or providing him with a nice campaign cudgel (“they don’t care”) to be used between now and November 2012.
Either way, this is likely to be one of the most sickening campaigns ever in modern American history. By all rights, according to the essence of the democratic idea, Obama should lose. He has failed dramatically, by any serious measure, and the voters’ natural inclination is to seek change – which, by the way, is precisely why he is today president himself. So the White House will be desperately seeking to change the story such that the election is about anything but themselves. This is just what the chickenhawk-in-chief Bush did in 2004, with the assistance of the hapless John Kerry (or was it the hapless Jimmy Carter? or the hapless Walter Mondale? or the hapless Michael Dukakis? I get all these punching-bag Democrats so confused!). Bush the Vietnam coward actually managed to turn the Silver Starred and Purple Hearted Kerry into a knock-kneed wimpy-burger threat to American national security. Anything to get people talking and thinking about something besides the dismal incumbent.
Watch Obama do the same in this cycle, and do it hard because Perry will not be coming at him with wiffle balls. What that means is that the ‘hope and change’ guy who won hearts in 2008 with his appeals to our better angels will now be running a campaign Nixon and his Plumbers could be proud of. And it’s all the more reason why he’ll lose. I mean, how inspirational, Barack! It also explains why he’ll continue in his remarkable efforts to eviscerate the Democratic Party – even the corporate obeisance version we have today. I mean really, in what bizarro universe is this worthless chump not being shown to the nearest home for retired politicians by members of his own party? First there was Scott Brown snagging the more-or-less-most-Democratic-Senate-seat-in-the-country because of Obama, then a wholesale mass bloodletting in the 2010 midterms, also because of the president, and last week the loss – by nearly ten points – of what is probably the most Democratic congressional district in the entire country, for yet again the same reason. Now he’s hurdling headlong into pissing away the White House and loads of Congress and state-level Democratic-held positions along the way in 2012. Does Obama have to launch predator drone missiles against the FDR monument on the Washington mall for Democrats to realize the extent of his destructive capacity against their party?

In any case, 2013 is when history will get interesting, in a Chinese curse sort of way. The Republicans will own Washington, and will viciously destroy the welfare state and otherwise turn over every bit of national wealth and middle class prosperity to the country’s plutocrats that they can, as fast as they can. Their program will, of course, have no effect on stimulating the economy (shhh!, don’t tell anyone, but it’s not intended to), and will very likely make it worse through reducing government spending and laying off public sector employees. As if we’ve learned nothing this last century. As if Keynes had been a botanist or something.
What then? It is possible, as happened to Reagan, that the GOP will get lucky and happen to be sitting in the White House at the moment the economy recovers. That’s a nightmare scenario, for it means that progressive, New Deal-style, ideas about the national social compact will be utterly buried for a generation or more.
Alternatively, and more likely, the economy will remain awful or get worse. It’s then possible that the public will just tolerate their downsizing like docile lambs, just as the Japanese have done for over a decade now. But the moment may also provide an occasion for people to rise up and demand an end to he national theft that’s been plaguing them for thirty years now. Perhaps that seems unlikely, but there are signs of stirring in Europe and Israel and elsewhere that are rather promising. If the Arabs can have their Spring cleaning of kleptocratic oligarchs, why shouldn’t Americans too?
The thing is, though, there’s pretty much nothing that I put past the right in this country. And, if they’re about to head down the toilet because people are starting to catch up to the bankruptcy of their policies, the question becomes what might they do to change the channel before it’s too late? A little racism or gay bashing, maybe? Nope. It wouldn’t be on a grand enough scale for this project. They’ll need something powerful, like a good national security scare or a full-on war, just like the Argentinean regime invaded the Falklands/Malvinas when they were in trouble domestically, and just like Margaret Thatcher responded in kind when she was in trouble domestically herself. Scary, eh?

It is scary, actually. And not just for, oh, I dunno, the Iranians or Cubans or Venezuelans in a desperate GOP’s crosshairs, either. This is the sorriest state I’ve seen the country in during my lifetime. What were once political outrages of epic proportions are now standard issue Republican Party rhetoric and policies. What was once a Democratic Party largely for the people is now a bunch of corporate hacks hiding behind faux political cowardice to mask their real commitments. You know you’re really hurting when appearing to be a coward is more attractive than telling the actual truth about your politics.

Meanwhile, the country adopts stupider and stupider policies, turning to more and more idiotic characters, in hopes of salvaging our sinking ship. Iraq, tax cuts for the wealthy, unabated global warming – those sure turned out great, eh? Hey, well then, let’s do even more of that!
Sorry, but nowadays the only thing that makes me feel better about the present is thinking about the future.

David Michael Green is a professor of political science at Hofstra University in New York. He is delighted to receive readers' reactions to his articles (mailto:dmg@regressiveantidote.net), but regrets that time constraints do not always allow him to respond. More of his work can be found at his website, www.regressiveantidote.net.

Robert Reich

Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy, University of California at Berkeley; Author, 'Aftershock'

GET UPDATES FROM Robert Reich

The GOP Ticket in 2012: Romney-Rubio

Posted: 01/ 2/12 04:50 PM ET

Since my New Year's prediction that Obama would select Hillary Clinton for his running mate in 2012 (and Joe Biden would become Secretary of State), I've been swamped by requests for my GOP prediction. Here goes.
You can forget the caucuses and early primaries. Mitt Romney will be the nominee. Republicans may be stupid but the GOP isn't about to commit suicide. The other candidates are all weighed down by enough baggage to keep a 747 on the tarmac indefinitely.
For his running mate, Romney will choose Marco Rubio, the junior senator from Florida. Why do I say this?
First, Romney will need a right-winger to calm and woo the Republican right. Tea Partiers are attracted to Rubio -- an evangelical Christian committed to reducing taxes and shrinking government. Rubio's meteoric rise in the Florida House before coming to Congress was based on a string of conservative stances on state issues.
Rubio is also a proven campaigner, handily winning four House elections starting in 2002, and then beating popular incumbent Republican governor Charlie Crist in the 2010 Republican primary -- with the help of Tea Partiers.
Moreover, he's only 40, thereby giving the GOP ticket some youthful vigor.
And he's Hispanic -- a Cuban-American -- at a time when the GOP needs to court the Hispanic vote.
Rubio's only baggage is the "son of exiles" controversy -- his suggestion that his parents were refugees forced out of Cuba by Castro when in fact they moved to the United States before the Cuban revolution.
But this isn't the sort of slip that would keep him off the ticket. In fact, Romney has defended Rubio, saying "I think the world of Marco Rubio, support him entirely and think that the effort to try to smear him was unfortunate and bogus."
Finally, and most critically, Florida is a crucial swing state. Rubio would help deliver it.
So it will be Obama-Clinton versus Romney-Rubio.
And what's my prediction for Election Day? Obama-Clinton hands down.
I warn you, though. Political predictions, economic forecasts, and astrology differ in only one respect. Astrology has a fairly good record of being correct.
Robert Reich is the author of Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future, now in bookstores. This post originally appeared at RobertReich.org.

Restore America’s basic bargain By Robert Reich / Salon

Monday, Nov 28, 2011 2:46 PM 18:58:22 PST

Restore America’s basic bargain

Since the Model T, our economy has only functioned well when workers can afford what their employers are selling

By Robert Reich

(Credit: Wikipedia)

Topics:U.S. Economy, Great Recession, Taxes

This originally appeared on Robert Reich's blog.

For most of the last century, the basic bargain at the heart of the American economy was that employers paid their workers enough to buy what American employers were selling.
That basic bargain created a virtuous cycle of higher living standards, more jobs, and better wages.
Back in 1914, Henry Ford announced he was paying workers on his Model T assembly line $5 a day – three times what the typical factory employee earned at the time. The Wall Street Journal termed his action “an economic crime.”

But Ford knew it was a cunning business move. The higher wage turned Ford’s auto workers into customers who could afford to buy Model T’s. In two years Ford’s profits more than doubled.
That was then. Now, Ford Motor Company is paying its new hires half what it paid new employees a few years ago.
The basic bargain is over – not only at Ford but all over the American economy.
New data from the Commerce Department shows employee pay is now down to the smallest share of the economy since the government began collecting wage and salary data in 1929.
Meanwhile, corporate profits now constitute the largest share of the economy since 1929.
1929, by the way, was the year of the Great Crash that ushered in the Great Depression.
In the years leading up to the Great Crash, most employers forgot Henry Ford’s example. The wages of most American workers remained stagnant. The gains of economic growth went mainly into corporate profits and into the pockets of the very rich. American families maintained their standard of living by going deeper into debt. In 1929 the debt bubble popped.
Sound familiar? It should. The same thing happened in the years leading up to the crash of 2008.
The latest data on corporate profits and wages show we haven’t learned from the two big economic crashes of the last seventy-five years: When the economy becomes too lopsided – disproportionately benefitting corporate owners and top executives rather than average workers – it tips over into recession or worse.
In other words, we’re in trouble because the basic bargain has been broken.
Yet incredibly, some politicians think the best way to restart the nation’s job engine is to make corporations even more profitable and the rich even richer – reducing corporate taxes; cutting back on regulations protecting public health, worker safety, the environment, and small investors; and slashing taxes on the very rich.
These same politicians think average workers should have even less money in their pockets. They don’t want to extend the payroll tax cut or unemployment benefits. And they want to make it harder for workers to form unions.
These politicians have reality upside down.
Corporations don’t need more money. They have so much money right now they don’t even know what to do with all of it. They’re even buying back their own shares of stock. This is a bonanza for CEOs whose pay is tied to stock prices and it increases the wealth of other shareholders. But it doesn’t create a single new job and it doesn’t raise the wages of a single employee.
Nor do the wealthiest Americans need even more money. The top 1 percent is already taking in more than 20 percent of total income — the highest since the 1920s.
Corporations have no incentive to create new jobs as long as consumers don’t want to spend. And right now consumers – whose spending accounts for about 70 percent of the American economy – don’t want to spend because they don’t have the money. Their after-tax incomes dropped in the second and third quarters of the year, the first back-to-back drops since 2009.
The recent small pickup in consumer spending has come out of their savings. Obviously this can’t continue. Consumer savings are already at their lowest level in four years.
Get it? Corporate profits are up right now largely because pay is down and companies aren’t hiring. But this is a losing game even for corporations over the long term. Without enough American consumers, their profitable days are numbered.
After all, there’s a limit to how much profit they can get out of cutting American payrolls or even selling abroad. European consumers are in no mood to buy. And most Asian economies, including China, are slowing.
We’re in a vicious cycle. The only way out of it is to put more money into the pockets of average Americans. That means extending the payroll tax cut. And extending unemployment benefits.
Don’t stop there. Create a WPA to get the long-term unemployed back to work. And a Civilian Conservation Corp to create jobs for young people.
Hire teachers for classrooms now overcrowded, and pay them enough to attract people who are talented as well as dedicated. Rebuild our pot-holed highways. Create a world-class infrastructure.
Pay for this by hiking taxes on millionaires.
A basic bargain was once at the heart of the American economy. It recognized that average workers are also consumers, and their paychecks keep the economy going. We can’t have a healthy economy until that bargain is restored.

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Robert Reich, a professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley, was secretary of labor during the Clinton administration. He is also a blogger and the author of "Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future." More Robert Reich

Attack of the deadbeat corporations, Part 2 By Andrew Leonard / Salon

Wednesday, Dec 7, 2011 5:00 AM 18:58:22 PST

Attack of the deadbeat corporations, Part 2

We already knew U.S. companies weren't paying enough federal taxes. But the same is also true at the state level

By Andrew Leonard

Why do those mean people at the Citizens for Tax Justice and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy keep picking on American corporations? Just one month ago, they released a damning report pointing out how hundreds of the bluest of American blue-chip corporations were flat-out deadbeats when it came to paying their federal income taxes. But that wasn’t enough. Now they’re piling on with even more nasty numbers — a breakdown of how many of those same Fortune 500 companies are also slipping out from under their state tax liability.

Bottom line: The average statutory corporate tax rate is 6.2 percent. But between 2008 and 2010, the 265 companies analyzed in the report “paid state income taxes equal to only 3.1 percent.” If they had paid the full rate, states would have collected another $82.6 billion in revenues, money sorely needed to pay Medicaid bills and keep parks open and employ teachers and firefighters.
We can’t repeat this enough: When you hear someone say that American corporations suffer from high taxes, take a moment to point out that, as far as taxes are concerned, it’s never been better than right now to be an American corporation.

As recently as 1986, state corporate income taxes equaled 0.5 percent of nationwide Gross State Product (a measure of nationwide economic activity). But in fiscal year2010, state and local corporate income taxes were just 0.28 percent of nationwide GSP, equaling the low-water mark set in 2002. For the three years between fiscal 2009 and 2011, in fact, state corporate income taxes were at their lowest sustained level, as a share of the U.S. economy, since World War Two.

The report cites three major reasons to explain the ongoing decline in state corporate income tax revenue — “the trickledown impact of federal corporate tax cuts, ill-advised tax ‘incentives’ intentionally enacted by state lawmakers, and unintended tax shelters created by companies armed with creative accounting staffs.” The report also proposes a sheaf of well-meaning, sensible policy responses and strategies for reversing the trend. But ultimately, the proposed fixes all run head on into exactly the same political reality that any attempt to rationalize the federal income tax debacle faces: at the congressional level, politicians are still attempting to reduce corporate tax liabilities.

Earlier this year, the House Judiciary Committee approved H.R. 1439, the so-called “Business Activity Tax Simplification Act” (BATSA), which would make it substantially more difficult for states to effectively tax the income earned by corporations from activities within their borders.
The bill’s sponsors — and the corporate lobbyists pushing this plan — say that the goal of the bill is to limit state and local governments to taxing only those businesses with a “physical presence” in a state.

Of course, as the authors point out, the “physical presence” standard makes no sense in the Internet age. Even worse, any corporation with accountants who know what they are doing can easily structure subsidiaries to carry out physical operations in such a fashion as to escape local taxes.
Which leads us to one final inescapable conclusion. Today, a not insignificant amount of corporate creativity and innovation is channeled directly into the task of avoiding taxes. Our patchwork system of federal and state incentives and tax breaks creates fertile ground for game-playing. In a simpler world, you would have to think that energy could be directed to more productive uses.

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Andrew Leonard is a staff writer at Salon. On Twitter, @koxinga21. More Andrew Leonard

The Most Important Economic Speech of His Presidency / Robert Reich / Huff Post

Robert Reich

Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy, University of California at Berkeley; Author, 'Aftershock'

The Most Important Economic Speech of His Presidency

Posted: 12/ 6/11 11:56 PM ET

The President's speech today in Osawatomie, Kansas -- where Teddy Roosevelt gave his "New Nationalism" speech in 1910 -- is the most important economic speech of his presidency in terms of connecting the dots, laying out the reasons behind our economic and political crises, and asserting a willingness to take on the powerful and the privileged that have gamed the system to their advantage.
Here are the highlights (and, if you'll pardon me, my annotations):

For most Americans, the basic bargain that made this country great has eroded. Long before the recession hit, hard work stopped paying off for too many people. Fewer and fewer of the folks who contributed to the success of our economy actually benefitted from that success. Those at the very top grew wealthier from their incomes and investments than ever before. But everyone else struggled with costs that were growing and paychecks that weren't -- and too many families found themselves racking up more and more debt just to keep up.

He's absolutely right -- and it's the first time he or any other president has clearly stated the long-term structural problem that's been widening the gap between the very top and everyone else for thirty years -- the breaking of the basic bargain linking pay to productivity gains.

For many years, credit cards and home equity loans papered over the harsh realities of this new economy. But in 2008, the house of cards collapsed.

Exactly. But the first papering over was when large numbers of women went into paid work, starting the in the late 1970s and 1980s, in order to prop up family incomes that were stagnating or dropping because male wages were under siege -- from globalization, technological change, and the decline of unions. Only when this coping mechanism was exhausted, and when housing prices started to climb, did Americans shift to credit cards and home equity loans as a means of papering over the new harsh reality of an economy that was working for a minority at the top but not for most of the middle class.

We all know the story by now: Mortgages sold to people who couldn't afford them, or sometimes even understand them. Banks and investors allowed to keep packaging the risk and selling it off. Huge bets -- and huge bonuses -- made with other people's money on the line. Regulators who were supposed to warn us about the dangers of all this, but looked the other way or didn't have the authority to look at all.
It was wrong. It combined the breathtaking greed of a few with irresponsibility across the system. And it plunged our economy and the world into a crisis from which we are still fighting to recover. It claimed the jobs, homes, and the basic security of millions -- innocent, hard-working Americans who had met their responsibilities, but were still left holding the bag.

Precisely -- and it's about time he used the term "wrong" to describe Wall Street's antics, and the abject failure of regulators (led by Alan Greenspan and the Fed) to stop what was going on. But these "wrongs" were only the proximate cause of the economic crisis. The underlying cause was, as the President said before, the breaking of the basic bargain linking pay to productivity.

Ever since, there has been a raging debate over the best way to restore growth and prosperity; balance and fairness. Throughout the country, it has sparked protests and political movements -- from the Tea Party to the people who have been occupying the streets of New York and other cities. It's left Washington in a near-constant state of gridlock. And it's been the topic of heated and sometimes colorful discussion among the men and women who are running for president.
But this isn't just another political debate. This is the defining issue of our time. This is a make or break moment for the middle class, and all those who are fighting to get into the middle class. At stake is whether this will be a country where working people can earn enough to raise a family, build a modest savings, own a home, and secure their retirement.

Right again. It is the defining issue of our time. But I wish he wouldn't lump the Tea Party in with the Occupiers. The former hates government; the latter focuses blame on Wall Street and corporate greed -- just where the President did a moment ago.

Now, in the midst of this debate, there are some who seem to be suffering from a kind of collective amnesia. After all that's happened, after the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, they want to return to the same practices that got us into this mess. In fact, they want to go back to the same policies that have stacked the deck against middle-class Americans for too many years. Their philosophy is simple: we are better off when everyone is left to fend for themselves and play by their own rules.

He might have been a bit stronger here. The "they" who are suffering collective amnesia include many of the privileged and powerful who have gained enormous wealth by using their political muscle to entrench their privilege and power. In other words, it's not simply or even mainly amnesia. It's a clear and concerted strategy.

Well, I'm here to say they are wrong. I'm here to reaffirm my deep conviction that we are greater together than we are on our own. I believe that this country succeeds when everyone gets a fair shot, when everyone does their fair share, and when everyone plays by the same rules. Those aren't Democratic or Republican values; 1% values or 99% values. They're American values, and we have to reclaim them.

Amen.
...

In 1910, Teddy Roosevelt came here, to Osawatomie, and laid out his vision for what he called a New Nationalism. "Our country," he said, "... means nothing unless it means the triumph of a real democracy... of an economic system under which each man shall be guaranteed the opportunity to show the best that there is in him."

Some background: In 1909, Herbert Croly, a young political philosopher and journalist, argued in his best-selling The Promise of American Life that the large American corporation should be regulated by the nation and directed toward national goals. "The constructive idea behind a policy of the recognition of the semi-monopolistic corporation is, of course, the idea that they can be converted into economic agents... for the national economic interest," Croly wrote. Teddy Roosevelt's New Nationalism embraced Croly's idea.

For this, Roosevelt was called a radical, a socialist, even a communist. But today, we are a richer nation and a stronger democracy because of what he fought for in his last campaign: an eight hour work day and a minimum wage for women; insurance for the unemployed, the elderly, and those with disabilities; political reform and a progressive income tax.
Today, over one hundred years later, our economy has gone through another transformation. Over the last few decades, huge advances in technology have allowed businesses to do more with less, and made it easier for them to set up shop and hire workers anywhere in the world. And many of you know firsthand the painful disruptions this has caused for a lot of Americans.
Factories where people thought they would retire suddenly picked up and went overseas, where the workers were cheaper. Steel mills that needed 1,000 employees are now able to do the same work with 100, so that layoffs were too often permanent, not just a temporary part of the business cycle. These changes didn't just affect blue-collar workers. If you were a bank teller or a phone operator or a travel agent, you saw many in your profession replaced by ATMs or the internet. Today, even higher-skilled jobs like accountants and middle management can be outsourced to countries like China and India. And if you're someone whose job can be done cheaper by a computer or someone in another country, you don't have a lot of leverage with your employer when it comes to asking for better wages and benefits -- especially since fewer Americans today are part of a union.
Now, just as there was in Teddy Roosevelt's time, there's been a certain crowd in Washington for the last few decades who respond to this economic challenge with the same old tune. "The market will take care of everything," they tell us. If only we cut more regulations and cut more taxes -- especially for the wealthy -- our economy will grow stronger. Sure, there will be winners and losers. But if the winners do really well, jobs and prosperity will eventually trickle down to everyone else. And even if prosperity doesn't trickle down, they argue, that's the price of liberty.
It's a simple theory -- one that speaks to our rugged individualism and healthy skepticism of too much government. It fits well on a bumper sticker. Here's the problem: It doesn't work. It's never worked. It didn't work when it was tried in the decade before the Great Depression. It's not what led to the incredible post-war boom of the 50s and 60s. And it didn't work when we tried it during the last decade.

Obama is advocating Croly's proposal that large corporations be regulated for the nation's good. But he's updating Croly. The next paragraphs are important.

Remember that in those years, in 2001 and 2003, Congress passed two of the most expensive tax cuts for the wealthy in history, and what did they get us? The slowest job growth in half a century. Massive deficits that have made it much harder to pay for the investments that built this country and provided the basic security that helped millions of Americans reach and stay in the middle class -- things like education and infrastructure; science and technology; Medicare and Social Security.Remember that in those years, thanks to some of the same folks who are running Congress now, we had weak regulation and little oversight, and what did that get us? Insurance companies that jacked up people's premiums with impunity, and denied care to the patients who were sick. Mortgage lenders that tricked families into buying homes they couldn't afford. A financial sector where irresponsibility and lack of basic oversight nearly destroyed our entire economy.
We simply cannot return to this brand of your-on-your-own economics if we're serious about rebuilding the middle class in this country. We know that it doesn't result in a strong economy. It results in an economy that invests too little in its people and its future. It doesn't result in a prosperity that trickles down. It results in a prosperity that's enjoyed by fewer and fewer of our citizens.
Look at the statistics. In the last few decades, the average income of the top one percent has gone up by more than 250%, to $1.2 million per year. For the top one hundredth of one percent, the average income is now $27 million per year. The typical CEO who used to earn about 30 times more than his or her workers now earns 110 times more. And yet, over the last decade, the incomes of most Americans have actually fallen by about six percent.

The very first time the President has emphasized this grotesque trend. Now listen for how he connects this with the deterioration of our economy and democracy:

This kind of inequality -- a level we haven't seen since the Great Depression -- hurts us all. When middle-class families can no longer afford to buy the goods and services that businesses are selling, it drags down the entire economy, from top to bottom. America was built on the idea of broad-based prosperity -- that's why a CEO like Henry Ford made it his mission to pay his workers enough so that they could buy the cars they made. It's also why a recent study showed that countries with less inequality tend to have stronger and steadier economic growth over the long run.Inequality also distorts our democracy. It gives an outsized voice to the few who can afford high-priced lobbyists and unlimited campaign contributions, and runs the risk of selling out our democracy to the highest bidder. And it leaves everyone else rightly suspicious that the system in Washington is rigged against them -- that our elected representatives aren't looking out for the interests of most Americans.
More fundamentally, this kind of gaping inequality gives lie to the promise at the very heart of America: that this is the place where you can make it if you try. We tell people that in this country, even if you're born with nothing, hard work can get you into the middle class; and that your children will have the chance to do even better than you. That's why immigrants from around the world flocked to our shores.

And what it's done to equal opportunity, and how it's eroded upward mobility:

And yet, over the last few decades, the rungs on the ladder of opportunity have grown farther and farther apart, and the middle class has shrunk. A few years after World War II, a child who was born into poverty had a slightly better than 50-50 chance of becoming middle class as an adult. By 1980, that chance fell to around 40%. And if the trend of rising inequality over the last few decades continues, it's estimated that a child born today will only have a 1 in 3 chance of making it to the middle class.
It's heartbreaking enough that there are millions of working families in this country who are now forced to take their children to food banks for a decent meal. But the idea that those children might not have a chance to climb out of that situation and back into the middle class, no matter how hard they work? That's inexcusable. It's wrong. It flies in the face of everything we stand for.

What should we do about this? Not turn to protectionism or become neo-Luddites. Nor turn to some version of government planning.

Fortunately, that's not a future we have to accept. Because there's another view about how we build a strong middle class in this country -- a view that's truer to our history; a vision that's been embraced by people of both parties for more than two hundred years.It's not a view that we should somehow turn back technology or put up walls around America. It's not a view that says we should punish profit or success or pretend that government knows how to fix all society's problems. It's a view that says in America, we are greater together -- when everyone engages in fair play, everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share.

So what does that mean for restoring middle-class security in today's economy?

It starts by making sure that everyone in America gets a fair shot at success. The truth is, we'll never be able to compete with other countries when it comes to who's best at letting their businesses pay the lowest wages or pollute as much as they want. That's a race to the bottom that we can't win -- and shouldn't want to win. Those countries don't have a strong middle-class. They don't have our standard of living.
In 1910, Teddy Roosevelt came here, to Osawatomie, and laid out his vision for what he called a New Nationalism. ...
The fact is, this crisis has left a deficit of trust between Main Street and Wall Street. And major banks that were rescued by the taxpayers have an obligation to go the extra mile in helping to close that deficit. At minimum, they should be remedying past mortgage abuses that led to the financial crisis, and working to keep responsible homeowners in their home. We're going to keep pushing them to provide more time for unemployed homeowners to look for work without having to worry about immediately losing their house.

I wish the Obama administration had made this a condition for the banks receiving bailouts.
But there's far more to the speech. Read it in full. It lays out the basis for what could be the platform Obama will run on in 2012 -- increasing taxes on the rich, investing in the rest us, requiring corporations and Wall Street banks that reap benefits from being in America create good jobs for Americans, and protecting our democracy from being corrupted by money -- a new New Nationalism.
Here, finally, is the Barack Obama many of us thought we had elected in 2008. Since then we've had a president who has only reluctantly stood up to the moneyed interests Teddy Roosevelt and his cousin Franklin stood up to.
Hopefully Obama will carry this message through 2012, and gain a mandate to use his second term to take on the growing inequities and game-rigging practices that have been undermining the American economy and American democracy for years.

Robert Reich is the author of Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future, now in bookstores. This post originally appeared at RobertReich.org.

Lawmakers from Boehner to Pelosi have been accused of gaming the market. A new bill might do something about it / By Michael Winship / Salon

U.S. Congress

Monday, Dec 5, 2011 10:44 AM 12:24:52 PST

No more insider trading on Capitol Hill?

Lawmakers from Boehner to Pelosi have been accused of gaming the market. A new bill might do something about it

By Michael Winship

(Credit: AP)

Topics:U.S. Congress, Wall Street

The other day, a couple of kids up in Kingston, N.Y., called 911 looking for Santa Claus. Law enforcement arrived to tell them that what they had done was naughty, not nice, but in deference to the holiday, no pepper spray was involved.
Meanwhile, on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, a guy dressed up like Frosty the Snowman – that jolly, happy soul — tried to thumpety-thump-thump a cop with the head of his costume. He’s also accused of kicking a police dog – bad, Frosty, bad!
Then, of course, there are those cheery photos from Scottsdale, Ariz., of people – including kids — posing with Santa at a local gun club, hoisting their choice of machine guns, pistols, semi-automatic AR-15s and grenade launchers. It’s okay, the club says, they’re not loaded, but you better not pout or cry… punk.
Welcome to Christmas in these United States, Anno Domini 2011.

Just in case you thought those three incidents were lacking in the true spirit of the season, last week the investment company PNC Wealth Management issued their annual “True Cost of Christmas” index which reported that purchasing all the items mentioned in “The Twelve Days of Christmas” costs more than ever – $101,119.84, to be precise, up 4.4 percent from last year. The high price of gold sent retail demand plummeting so the cost of the five golden rings actually went down, but seven-swans-a-swimming rose by 12.5 percent. Pipers piping and drummers drumming “saw modest increases, both up 3.0 percent,” but the cost of eight-maids-a-milking, representing the only unskilled labor, remained unchanged – there was no increase this year in the minimum wage.
Coincidentally, Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, Democratic chair of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, held a press conference on Capitol Hill to announce, “There will be no Christmas for Congress unless there is an extension of unemployment insurance benefits.” He and some of his colleagues declared that they’ll keep the House and Senate from adjourning for the holidays if action isn’t taken.
“I hate to inform my Republican colleagues,” Harkin said, “but Wall Street did not build America. But when it comes to handing out hundreds of millions of dollars, Wall Street is up front. It’s time for middle-class America to be up front.”
Fair enough. But it seems that during all that time it’s been up front, Wall Street also has done all right for our do-nothing Congress (and if you want to know just how do-nothing, a couple of weeks ago, congressional lobbyist Billy Moore told NBC News’ First Read that this Congress “has enacted just 55 public laws so far this year — and 34 of them merely extended existing laws — compared with the average over the last 20 years of 148 public laws for a first full session”).
Such idleness comes with its rewards – apparently, many of our members of Congress could afford all of that Twelve Days of Christmas loot without lifting a manicured finger. Last month, the Center for Responsive Politics reported that about 47 percent of Congress – 250 current members – are millionaires, a “lofty financial status enjoyed by only about one percent of Americans.”
According to the Center, “the median estimated net worth among Senate Republicans was $2.43 million, and the median net worth among members of the Democratic caucus in the Senate was $2.69 million.” In the House, “the median estimated net worth of a GOP House member was $834,250 in 2010… compared to a median net worth of $635,500 among House Democrats.” (Richest was California House Republican Darrell Issa, with an estimated average net worth of $448 million. Republican Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas was second with an average net worth of $380 million, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., came in third at $232 million, much of it the assets of his wife Theresa Heinz Kerry.)
What’s more, the Center reports, “members of Congress might be more financially well off than we can see” because their personal financial disclosure forms don’t include government retirement accounts or any non-income generating personal property, including residences, cars and artwork. But we do know about their Wall Street investments:
“The most popular company in which members of Congress were invested in 2010 was General Electric, a company that spent more than $39 million on federal lobbying that year and ranked as the No. 3 top spender on lobbying. Seventy-five different current members of Congress held stock in GE in 2010, according to the Center’s research. Collectively, these holdings were worth at least $3.6 million.”
Coming in second and third were Procter & Gamble (62 lawmakers hold at least $8.7 million worth) and Bank of America (57 members, $2.8 million). Microsoft ($3.2 million) and Cisco ($1.3 million) were tied for fourth place; stock of each was held by 56 legislators. Fifth place goes to drug giant Pfizer – 51 members held stock worth at least $2 million.
None of this, of course, includes corporate campaign contributions to members, which by all indications will hit dismayingly record heights next year.
“It’s no surprise that so many people grumble about lawmakers being out-of-touch,” Sheila Krumholz, the Center for Responsive Politics’ executive director, said. “Few Americans enjoy the same financial cushion maintained by most members of Congress — or the same access to market-altering information that could yield personal financial gains.”
But one of the few pieces of good holiday season news coming out of this forsaken Congress is that they may finally be doing something about “access to market-altering information,” the knowledge members pick up via their privileged status and access to congressional testimony, reports, briefings and daily contacts with lobbyists, special interests and government agencies.
Five years ago, the intrepid congresswoman from western New York State, Louise Slaughter, a ranking Democratic member of the House Rules Committee, introduced legislation to prevent insider stock trading by her fellow legislators. According to The Washington Post, “Most lawmakers bristled, offended by the mere suggestion that they would ever engage in such behavior.” She could find but nine sponsors, only one of whom was a Republican – Walter Jones from North Carolina. It was, as the congressional newspaper The Hill reported, “a non-issue.”
And yet, as that paper noted in its December 1 edition, there has been ample evidence that “consciously or not, federal lawmakers use their positions to reap better Wall Street returns than other investors.
“A 2004 study conducted by researchers at Georgia State University, for instance, found that trades made by selected senators between 1993 and 1998 produced returns more than 12 percent higher than the rest of the market. ‘These results,’ the researchers concluded, ‘suggest that senators knew appropriate times to both buy and sell their common stocks.’
“More recently, researchers from four universities found that 300 House lawmakers trading 16,000 times between 1985 and 2001 outperformed the market by roughly 6 percent each year — something the researchers deemed ‘significant positive abnormal returns.’”
But what a difference a visit from 60 Minutes makes. Last month, the newsmagazine broadcast a story based on the book, “Throw Them All Out,” by Peter Schweizer, a fellow at the Hoover Institution, the conservative think tank at Stanford University. Their report stated, “Congressional lawmakers have no corporate responsibilities and have long been considered exempt from insider trading laws, even though they have daily access to non-public information and plenty of opportunities to trade on it.”
CBS was critical of both House Speaker John Boehner and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (they have denied any wrongdoing), as well as others, but perhaps the most damning evidence was against House Financial Services Committee Chair Spencer Bachus, Republican from Alabama, who just before the 2008 financial meltdown attended closed door briefings with Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke.
“While Congressman Bachus was publicly trying to keep the economy from cratering,” 60 Minutes reported, “he was privately betting that it would, buying option funds that would go up in value if the market went down. He would make a variety of trades and profited at a time when most Americans were losing their shirts.” According to the broadcast, Bachus made about 200 trades and netted around $28,000. As Peter Schweizer said, “I mean, talk about a stock tip.” (Bachus has said the 60 Minutes piece had “a disturbing number of errors” and that Schweizer’s allegations are “a total lie.”)
Overnight, in the face of public outrage – not to mention a Congressional approval rating seeming to fall more precipitously every day — Rep. Slaughter’s legislation, the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act, came off life support and began acquiring sponsors faster than Santa’s sleigh on Christmas Eve. She now has at least 133, including 37 GOP members.
Last Thursday, Sens. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and Susan Collins of Maine held the first hearings on Senate versions of the legislation. Lieberman hopes to have a bill out of committee by mid-December. House hearings are scheduled to begin this week and the House Ethics Committee has sent a memo to members on the proper use of non-public information.
And all of this isn’t the only holiday cheer spreading across the Potomac. Democratic Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota announced that he and more than half of his fellow senators – 21 Republicans and 37 Democrats – are planning a Secret Santa gift exchange. Franken told The New York Times he thought it “would be a good way to cut through the partisan divide here in the Senate. And who knows, maybe it will create some unlikely friendships.”
The price limit is ten dollars, so no golden rings or partridges in pear trees this year. But the American public will be happy to throw in lumps of coal for free.

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Michael Winship is senior writing fellow at Demos and a senior writer of the new series, Moyers & Company, premiering on public television in January 2012. More Michael Winship