Don't Blame Immigrants For Slow - Or No- Wage Growth!

Graph showing average hourly earnings growth and  effect of one 'basket' of companies increase in labor costs since 2016, relative to a basket with high labor costs. (From The Wall Street Journal, yesterday, p. A1)

It is odd that the WSJ op-ed 'The Elites Feed Anti-Immigrant Bias' (July 10, p. A15) stands in stark contrast to the same day front page story ('Workers Welcome Wage Gains, But Companies Feel Squeeze').  In the op-ed we are asked to believe that it is hordes of Mexican immigrants getting hired and degrading white Americans' hourly wages.  In the second, we learn the real reason is that companies are simply reluctant to have shrinking profit margins via higher labor costs. (See graph)

The first piece gives an anecdote from a guy  whose fiancee earns $31 an hour and has worked at the same company for "21 years" while "Mexicans have been hired at $8 an hour".  The guy adds:

"I don't want to be racial but that's all they're hiring".

On which I call bollocks.  The fact is, no company or virtually none, is hiring Mexican immigrants at that quoted low wage rate to do quality work at a quality company. Where Mexican immigrants are working  now is where they're most needed, i.e. at landscaping jobs, construction, and agriculture - and even then not enough can be hired because of Dotard's immigration policies. Employers are having to partake in "lottos" to get the workers they need.

The anecdote above was preceded by this remark from the author (Prof. Joan C. Williams):

"Yet real wage growth for the working class has been abysmal for a generation, and for many native born blue collar workers the culprit seems obvious - immigration"   Adding:

"Today less than half of Americans born in the 1980s earn more than their parents did, according to a National Bureau of Economic Research study led by Harvard economist Raj Chetty'>

Yes, but WHY is this the case?  More to the point, why are the blue collars blaming immigrants instead of corporate America and the economic ideology that fuels its excesses?

As I first noted in my book, The Elements of the Corporatocracy, ordinary workers have suffered a 'death of thousand cuts' since Neoliberalism came into vogue during the Reagan years. Robert McChesney in his excellent book, The Problem of the Media, Monthly Review Press, 2004, p. 49, writes:

"With the election of Ronald Reagan, the neoliberal movement had commenced. Neoliberal ideology became hegemonic not only among Republicans but also in the Democratic Party of Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and Joseph Liebermann. Differences remained on timing and specifics, but on core issues both parties agreed that business was the rightful ruler over society"

The problem with the Neoliberal, pro -free market idiom is that it denies the most basic security for the majority of citizens. In this way it feeds economic inequality while it rewards the speculator and banker class. It also helps to corrupt the political class via unregulated campaign contributions.

Jay Bookman aptly noted('The New World Disorder Evident Here, Abroad', in The Baltimore Sun, December 15, 1997):

"The global economy has been constructed on the premise that government guarantees of security and protection must be avoided at all costs, because they discourage personal initiative.  In times of crisis, however, that premise cannot be sustained politically. In times of trouble it is human nature to seek security and protection and to be drawn toward those who promise to provide it. That is how men such as Adolf Hitler, and Vladimir Ilyich Lenin came to power, with disastrous consequences.""

In other words, the global Neoliberal dynamic inevitably paves the way for authoritarian populists like Trump and others to come to power.  Among the "thousand cut" insults sustained by U.S. workers compliments of corporations and the entrenched Neolib state:

(1) Cutting employee benefits, i.e. health plans - even after employees have retired with them.

(2) Eliminating defined benefits plans, such as provided standard corporate pensions - in favor or defined contribution plans (such as 401ks) in which workers are in it for themselves to accumulate adequate savings for retirement.

(3) Cutting wages - either de facto, or through eliminating the unions which protected them (much exacerbated after Reagan ascended to power)

(4) Firing/downsizing workers just before their retirement dates, so the company is free not to have to pay retirement plan benefits, or provide stock options, as per contract clauses.

(5) Re-engineering the workplace to increase its automation factor in order to dump workers, so increase profit margins by not having to pay benefits, etc.

(6) Shipping as many jobs as possible overseas, to places like Bangalore or Beijing, with labor costs barely 20% of what they are in the U.S. and no benefits to factor in.

(7) Firing - downsizing workers after mergers dictated by Wall Street interests, in order to enhance a company' profits through higher Wall Street share prices.

(8) Identifying older (over 50) workers as 'surplus' so that they can be replaced with younger workers for whom half the wages (or less) can be paid, with fewer benefits. (A recent 5-4 Supreme Court ruling a few years ago exacerbated this by asserting anyone claiming "age discrimination" could not file a suit in standing if that was the only charge)

(9) Eliminating nearly all permanent jobs which carry health and pension benefits, in favor of using 'temping', 'outsourcing' or some other device not requiring benefits. On the academic (university) front, using 'adjunct' professors, hired on a per hour, per course basis, without benefits., and with no possibility of 'tenure'.

(10) Tying health insurance to employment, so that when let go or fired, workers are waylaid again by having to do without critical protection

All of these in concert, have forced a massive marginalization of the workforce. It was so odious and extensive  - even by 1996-  that it prompted these powerful words of Charles Reich in his book, Opposing the System,p. 22:

"We have built a machine for dehumanization of such force and destructive power, thorough its accumulated assaults on human dignity, that we are creating kinds and degrees of damage to human beings beyond anything ever known, with totally unforeseeable consequences "


And as  Barbara Ehrenreich observed in her book, 'This Land is THEIR Land', p. 61:

"Market forces ensure that a volunteer army will necessarily be an army of the poor. The trouble is that enlistment doesn't do a lot to brighten one's economic future"

Probably no truer supporting statement ever appeared than barely 20 years ago, in an issue of Psychology Today  (July/August 1998, p. 10. Includes graph):

"Starting in the mid-1970s, the nation's quality of life parted company with its wealth, and the gap between social health, and GDP is now bigger than it's ever been."

A graph of 'quality life indices' vs. GDP (ibid.) shows the measured divergence. It also suggests that we devolved to a much sicker society than anyone imagined. The marginalization of the workforce, is surely one major barometer of that. The GINI coefficient, and research disclosing how it portends social and economic disintegration, is another. (The U.S. Gini coefficient is now at nearly 42.  Readers can track the Gini index increase at this St. Louis Federal Reserve site:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SIPOVGINIUSA


So how and when did the pre-eminence of market forces over human needs and welfare come about? It was actually brewing for dozens of years, perhaps since the collapse of LBJ's  "Great Society" in the mid to late 60s. From then on the real "elites" (which Prof. Douglas mentions) set out to render labor as cheap as feasible and hostage to Wall Street dictates and decisions.  Part of this was also based on twisted economic reasoning, e.g. as embodied in the Pareto distribution, e.g.


whereby the dollars from the affluent and the poor - or labor class - are treated differently.  This built in economic prejudice drives the Neoliberal machine and causes it to value affluent populations over ordinary workers, even as it tries to discourage the latter from enhancing their own welfare, say to do with health care.

Example:. Economist Marty Feldstein once suggested it makes more sense to give the ordinary worker with health insurance $1,499 NOT to get the colonoscopy, than to let her get the test and consume valuable specialist time and resources via a $2,000 "subsidy".  See also:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2011/06/modern-economics-its-evil-basis-pareto.html


In other words, capital is opted for over labor, and  profit margins trump higher wages, this was the topic of The Judas Economy: The Triumph of Capital and the Betrayal of Work, by William Wolman and Anne Colamosca.

The point is then, that labor is devalued precisely because we live in a "Judas Economy" where capital is revered over it. One of the most disgusting aspects is that productivity in relation to GDP has increased more than 40% yet isn't registered because of the skewed way GDP is computed.

All of this is eminently proven by the front page WSJ story cited above,  with the graph) in which we learn:

"Rising wages are beginning to eat into the profits of some U.S. companies. Businesses from dollar stores to hotel operators to fast food chains have warned that higher labor costs have been a drag on their profits - a potential headwind for the nine year stock rally as it struggles for momentum ahead of the second quarter earnings season."

Adding:

"This is good news for U.S. workers ...but the higher costs pose a threat to some U.S. companies"

And we should also dispel the myth that this higher labor cost factor just impinges "some" companies. That's plain blarney and understatement because in fact all corporations have higher labor costs on their radar. I already noted (Jan. 10 post),

According to Paula Harvey, VP of Human Resources at Schulte Building Systems in Houston:

"Companies are really hesitant to give raises. When you give a raise, it's stuck in the pay system. It is something you're guaranteeing: it's becoming a fixed cost. "

She insisted it's much better for companies to preserve "flexibility" so instead companies enact "variable pay". This can come in the form of one off bonuses - say on a per year basis- or if you are a stellar performer you can get a "bigger bump". Say equal to a half year's wage increase of 3 percent. (If you are a super star performer you have the optimal chance of getting a permanent good raise.)

Of particular relevance was the question asked her: Why, if the labor market is so tight (such low unemployment), do wages remain stagnant?   She responded that  "You can blame a combination of factors including the globalization of the work force, job automation and the decline of unions.".

Meanwhile. managing director of Aspen Advisors, Andrew Gadomski (from a WSJ piece), admitted that when companies lament they can't find workers to fill key openings, that is code for: "I can find talent, I just don't want to pay them as much as they cost."

Nowhere are immigrants mentioned, nor should they have been, since they aren't grabbing good paying jobs nor are they the source of wage deterioration. Vastly bigger threats  include corporations too cheap to pay decent wages and AI robots.

In the realm of manual labor, columnist Jim  Hightower cites the example of "SAM" a robotic bricklayer that "lays three times as many bricks in a day as a human can". Hence, it has the potential to displace three times the number of human workers. Immigrants? Not a factor at all compared to 'SAM'.

What about higher level jobs? They're also at risk from bots, not immigrants.  Hightower points out the jobs of "accountants, bank loan officers, and insurance claims adjustors are "falling to the bots".   Why? Because they can calculate more rapidly and more accurately than humans- oh, and they don't require 401ks or health care plans!

It shouldn't take a rocket scientist or astrophysicist to figure out the ultimate goal of the Neoliberals and all economic "efficiency" (i.e. Pareto distribution)  fetishists is to eliminate human labor and its costs as far as possible. That includes immigrants, as well as homegrown American workers - of whatever class.

See also: 'Oil's Technology Spells End Of Roughneck Boom' - Artificial Intelligence and Automation Replace Oil Industry's Blue Collar Jobs'

https://www.wsj.com/articles/oils-new-technology-spells-end-of-boom-for-roughnecks-1531233085


Excerpt:

"Technology has already upended labor needs in most of the world's manufacturing. It's now upending the energy business  foretelling the end for one of the last sectors in America where blue collar workers could hold jobs paying six figure salaries. ....The energy sector has found it can use new technologies, to do the work better and cheaper and with few people. They have invested billions of dollars on what the industry calls 'digital oil fields', embracing artificial intelligence, automation and other technologies"

And:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/tim-koechlin/80098/imagining-an-economy-that-serves-the-99

U.S.No Longer A Democracy But An Oligarchy- Gee,Yuh Think?

"The first truth is that liberty is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to the point where it becomes stronger than that of their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is Fascism." - Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

It seems it took a bit of time for the economic cognoscenti at Princeton to catch up to my much earlier conclusion (20 years ago in my tract -now a book-  'The Elements of the Corporatocracy') posted to Usenet groups alt.politics, alt.politics-economics and alt.conspiracy.jfk etc. that the U.S. had ceased to be a democracy.

I  observed  the U.S. has already evolved from a democracy (or to be technical, a Republic that operates using democratic machinery) to a Corporatocracy which represents a government - corporate nexus by which corporate power is able to purchase legislative leverage and overtime contaminate the wheels of government itself.  Thus, the corporate sphere uses the power of its wealth and influence (especially in the media and via lobbying) to control a nation's political and economic destiny.

In the most glaring form, people can examine the laws that have been passed and then ask how these laws benefit them or whether in fact they hide an agenda. Thus, The National Defense Authorization Act falls into the negative category. Obama assured us he wouldn't invoke any or all of the extensive powers it conferred (enabling a potentially dictatorial executive) but that doesn't console us if someone less honorable or judicious were to become commander-in chief. Someone like the authoritarian Hitler wannabe Donald J. Trump - if he should survive the  election recounts. (His threat against freedom of speech ought to be  wakeup call to all, as well as his multiple appointments of billionaires, i.e. to Dept. of Commerce and Treasury Secretary. So much for the man "of the people")

The basic structure of our corporatocracy is like this:

Corporation - > Congress Critter -> [corporate welfare in laws]
---------------------------------------------------V
!----------------- -----------------------(tax breaks etc.) -------!

This loop assures the governance of the nation is sold to the highest bidders. Obviously if our legislators accept money from corporations to get elected, they are obligated to those corporations afterwards. That means that these obligations have to made good, most often in passing laws that favor the corporations over the average citizen.

The Princeton study, in an article  “Testing Theories of American Politics.” by Prof Martin Gilens and Northwestern University Prof Benjamin I. Page, has now revealed the U.S. to be an oligarchy. This is defined as a society wherein elite wealthy interests control all the levers of power and ordinary citizens exert minimal impact on policy issues that affect their lives. In the case of oligarchy it is more the influence of hyper wealthy individuals, like the Koch brothers, who determine the political and economic landscape.

In the words of the Princeton profs:

Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.

The professors came to this conclusion after reviewing answers to 1,779 survey questions asked between 1981 and 2002 on public policy issues. They broke the responses down by income level, and then determined how often certain income levels and organized interest groups saw their policy preferences enacted.

They conclude:

Americans do enjoy many features central to democratic governance, such as regular elections, freedom of speech and association and a widespread (if still contested) franchise. But we believe that if policymaking is dominated by powerful business organizations and a small number of affluent Americans, then America's claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened.

Eric Zuess, writing in Counterpunch, isn't surprised by the survey's results.

"American democracy is a sham, no matter how much it's pumped by the oligarchs who run the country (and who control the nation's "news" media)," he writes. "The US, in other words, is basically similar to Russia or most other dubious 'electoral' 'democratic' countries. We weren't formerly, but we clearly are now."

Now with Trump hiring more and more billionaires into his administration the situation will be compounded and we'll likely become a full fascist corporate state unless he's somehow stopped in his march to the Oval Office. The best chance is perhaps the ongoing recounts which numerous Trump super PACS are now fighting tooth and nail, panicked as they are- and should be.

As Paul Krugman put it in a recent column, the working class who voted for him on the basis he'd improve their lives will now learn how wrong they were. They will soon face a "nasty, brutish, short life" as their Medicare and  Obamacare choices are withdrawn or winnowed to the point they're almost useless.

If we are lucky, the recounts will ultimately succeed and we won't decline into a further mess a la Trump and renegade pseudo patriots.

See also:  "The Voters Rejected Trump":

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/jack-lessenberry/70081/the-voters-rejected-trump

And:

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/steven-rosenfeld/70121/trump-campaign-and-gop-allies-in-full-legal-panic-as-recounts-could-create-electoral-college-crisi

Did You Know The Poor Have Gained The Most Wealth In The Past 200 Years?

"You might think the rich have become richer and the poor even poorer. But by the standard of basic comfort in essentials the poorest people on the planet have gained the most....Inequality of financial wealth goes up and down but over the long term it has been reduced...by the more important standard of basic comfort in consumption, inequality within and between countries has fallen nearly continuously."

- Deirdre N. McCloskey, 'Equality, Liberty, Justice and Wealth', The NY Times,, BU-6, Sept. 4

McCloskey puts forward an interesting premise, but once one reads two thirds through her piece it becomes clear it is yet more Neoliberal propaganda based on precious little evidence.  Start with the nonsense of a "basic comfort" gauge - i.e. comparing the downtrodden masses today with those in the early 1800s living in "tents and mud huts". Are you kidding me? Is THAT really the standard for economic elevation we're going to adopt? For a professor of economics it is incredible McCloskey wouldn't appreciate fully that one must use the living standards of the time - not how the lowest were 200 years ago. Else, one ends up comparing apples and oranges, chalk with cheese.

Indeed, if the poor masses have it so great today why are they flooding Europe en masse trying every which way to escape from their lousy economic environs - whether in South Sudan, Bangladesh, Mexico, Cuba, Honduras or wherever, e.g.

African migrants congregate near Calais to try to make a break through the "Chunnel" to get to Great Britain

Make no mistake that most of these people are economic migrants, which they will admit  to if pressed. They want to get to nations where they perceive increased opportunity, never mind that may well turn out to be a mirage.  Though most attention has focused on fleeing Syrians, in fact the biggest wave is from Africa and this is no surprise because it is experiencing the biggest population explosion.

As noted in the 2015 WSJ piece, 'Humans, Lions Struggle to Co-Exist', Aug. 8-9, p. A7:

"Africa's human population is the fastest growing in the world. In roughly the same period as the lion decline (42 percent over 21 years), the number of Africans has doubled to nearly 1.2 billion people. The population will double again to 2.5 billion by 2050 according to the United Nations."

In fact, short of a global catastrophe (Avian flu, new Ebola outbreak?) , it is projected to reach 5.8 billion by 2100. That means nearly 1 of every 2 people on Earth will be African. Where will the resources be to support them? The jobs? The water? The life quality? Fact is, that population growth is unsustainable and means either vast numbers will perish, likely of disease, war or famine - or they will do everything they can to go to places with greater opportunity and resources- like Europe and the U.S.

Thomas Malthus grasped that an increasing population was unsupportable unless it had access to resources: food, minerals, materials for building, etc., beyond subsistence. He also observed this must be the case given that population grows geometrically (2, 4, 8, 16 etc.) and food production only arithmetically (2, 4, 6, 8). In effect, at some point the population growth becomes so great that the available foodstuffs can no longer support it and one has a crash or dieout.  This is a primary reason for the mass migration movement today, which is also a symptom of endemic poverty.. People understand that they have only one of two choices: starve over the long run or try to get to a place where they might have work, economic security...enough food to eat.

Already, as the preceding image shows, European locations are being swarmed by desperate Africans, from Eritrea, Uganda, Somalia, Nigeria and other countries - as well as by Syrians seeking to escape their civil war. And this doesn't include the tens of thousands also headed for the southern U.S. border, often crossing the Atlantic to Brazil then  going through to Central America. (See the recent TIME on the new migrant influx).

At the core of these human floods is one condition: overpopulation. The population of African nations, for example, is vastly outpacing the ability of those nations to provide jobs or even basic resources. And because these populations consume the scarce resources there are, it means that for their subsistence they are creating ecologic havoc.

That Niger person may not have a Chevy Grand Cherokee belching out 6 tons of CO2 a year but he or she is raiding forests (e.g. for wood to render charcoal for fuel) and thereby decimating the primary carbon "sink". All totaled, between 1990 and 2005 Niger lost 34.9% of its forest cover or around 679,000 hectares. Meanwhile, the total rate of animal habitat conversion for the same interval amounted to 25. 7 percent.

I bring population up because McCloskey as part of her Neolib PR tract  writes:

"Look at the astonishing improvements in China since 1978 and in India since 1991"

But does she seriously believe these economic improvements would have materialized without severe policies to cut back on population?  Take the case of China, for example. It rejected  the world's opprobrium  to implement  a "one child only"  policy.  It opted to do this to contain its numbers so as to strive for higher life quality for all its people. The proof 'is in the pudding' as they say, and if anyone doubts it they merely have to look at the size of China's middle class which now is vastly greater than the U.S. And when you travel to Europe, If you do, you will see Chinese tourists all over- from Jungfraujoch in Switzerland, to Bratislava, Slovakia, to Vienna, Austria and Prague.  There is NO way that many well off Chinese would be turned into globe trotters had the population policy not been changed to provide a more favorable resources to population ratio.

And let's get it straight that lower fertility rates in correlation with greater material abundance and financial status is not peculiar to China.  India by virtue of its mass sterilization policy (attributed to reducing its population by at least a half billion over 30 years)  is also such a success story. It made possible  at least a significant Indian middle class roughly on a par with China's.

McCloskey asks: "What then caused the Great Enrichment?"

And like a true believer, a true Neoliberal acolyte, she writes:

"Not exploitation of the poor but investment, not existing institutions but a mere idea, which the philosopher and economist Adam Smith called 'the liberal plan of equality, liberty and justice.' In a word, it was liberalism, in the free market European sense."

Just give them "equality before the law and equality in social justice and leave them alone", and magical things will happen. 

Which, of course, is codswallop. Because what she is referring to isn't anything other than Neoliberalism and even Adam Smith recognized the need to keep it under control lest resources get out of balance. Smith wrote in his superb book, 'An Inquiry Into The Wealth Of Nations':,

"There are needs in a civilized society that a barbaric one refuses to address" and "What improves the circumstances of the greater part can never be regarded as an inconvenience to the whole". If one reads his 2-volume work carefully, it is clear Smith is not at all exalting or proposing the distorted Neoliberal system at work in the world today. That system disavows economic security provided by the state-  and extols "free" markets ex machina, which are really coercive markets. What Smith advocated was but something more in line with Rhine capitalism.  As the authors of Capitalism vs. Capitalism have noted, the Rhine economies in the 1970s-80s (with large doses of socialist behavior) actually exceeded American cowboy capitalism in productivity for most of the 70s, 80s. Evidently, some ethic of redistributive sharing works, as even Adam Smith acknowledged in his quote above.

Thus the Rhine model of capitalism built in redistribution to benefit those left behind (say the victims of today's trade pacts)  via higher taxation, which U.S. Neoliberals disavowed. Meanwhile, Matt Miller in his book,  The Tyranny of Bad Ideas, has pointed out that all the so-called European "welfare state" economies (e.g. Denmark, Norway, Sweden etc.) fared much better than the neo-liberal, market dominated U.S. during the great recession. They provided the resources for their citizens to be more resilient, and also their higher formal tax structures prevented the sort of macro-scale deficiencies we still see in the U.S. where infrastructure is crumbling, public pensions are under-funded.

In the U.S. capitalist system, it is more rank commercialized competition that prevails - and that engenders a perpetual destruction that ravages precious resources.  These resources include higher quality (i.e. higher EROEI, or energy returned on energy invested) energy sources. Because of population beyond the bio-capacity limit, and especially higher consumption in the Neoliberal economic West, we are headed to a state of degraded energy assets, massive debt and poverty. See e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/09/44-trillion-in-deficits-by-2024-minus.html

In  a small nation like Barbados, with few natural resources, each must be maximized. There isn't the quantity to allow duplication or other squandering in wasteful competition. In the U.S., the exact opposite holds. Huge amounts of resources are yearly squandered in competitive games- that have only one or a few 'winners'. In effect, the 400-odd  billionaires counted in this country have emerged at the expense of vast finite resources being destroyed forever.

McCloskey also insists we can "improve the conditions of the working class" by "raising low productivity". She claims "enabling human creativity" is what has mainly worked.  In a sense, this is true, but that enabling hasn't been consistent or equally distributed for a number of reasons. One of them is the variability of productivity owing to the variability in the energy sources to drive it.

Thus, McCloskey ignores the history of productivity advances, and what's really  been behind them. Northwestern University's Robert Gordon has posited that the Industrial  Revolution (at the turn of the 19th century) had a vastly bigger effect on productivity, economic growth than the so-called "PC revolution" in the 20th. Think about it! The former meant transition from the impossibly laughable energy of whale oil to kerosene, coal etc., a mammoth jump in the EROEI of available energy sources. The latter transpired over a period of roughly 20 years over which the EROEI of oil actually decreased from 16:1 to roughly 10:1.

So no wonder even millions of computers were not able to match the sheer change in productive output that accompanied the Industrial Revolution- and within the scope of the latter's purview we include the internal combustion engine, electricity, and indoor plumbing.  How can we attain the corresponding drivers of productivity today? We can't without new sources of energy.

Gordon  argued, and he's correct, that by the time the digital revolution got under way- say in the 80s- the big payoff in productivity began shrinking.  In this context no amount of "creativity" would matter because ultimately creativity also is contingent on energy capacity to make the new creative concepts work. Meanwhile, the PC-computing payoff basically has "come and gone" dissipating by 2004, when EROEI reached below 10:1 and fracking began as a last desperate effort to snare the vestigial ""riches" of oil - along with deep sea drilling.

What might change the equation? Well, nuclear fusion power, but don't look for it anytime soon. See, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2016/04/fusion-power-within-ten-years-basically.html

 The mistake the Neoliberal species called "homo economicus"  continues to make, then, is confusing advancing technology with adequate, high quality energy supply needed to actually leverage creative processes into widespread use for the benefit of all.

The Neoliberal cornucopians like McCloskey get it wrong because they don't take such factors into account nor do they see population growth for the toxin it is, and can't put 2 plus 2 together to see how it leads to the Malthusian nightmare (not necessarily on Paul Ehrlich's timetable).  All of this comes back to net energy which is that energy humans need to survive. If the oil taken from the ground, say by fracking, only has a ratio of 1:1 (for energy produced to energy consumed) then it is useless to extract it. The same amount of oil-energy you are using up to get it, is basically what it carries. There is no net gain.

It is the periodic net gains made possible by higher grade energy sources  that have allowed humans to reproduce and thrive in many places around the globe.  But there has always been a critical balance between the given energy capital and the rate of human consumption. Too little, productivity languishes, too much and existing energy sources become scarce or degraded and productivity still languishes.

It is currently the erosion of net gain (reflected in ever lower GDP)  that will eliminate a majority of  humans. Right now, with humans consuming nearly the equivalent of 1.6 Earths per year there is no way even a population of 7.3 billion can be sustained - far less squeezed into an area the size of Texas as the dimwit Bret Stephens once claimed. (WSJ, 'The Tyranny of a Big Idea', Nov. 3, 2015).
The Neoliberalism McCloskey worships only succeeds because it basically rigs itself against the citizens with fewer assets. This increases inequality, and worse, consolidates the power of the richest on the political system, especially in the U.S. This is why one can have laws which protect profiteers, such as corporations in Denver who refuse to build affordable housing because it doesn't redound to their profit demands or benefit. This leads to deplorable conditions like that shown below:
 A homeless family crowds into a corner of an Aurora, CO shelter. A food shortage at the shelter meant it had to seek outside assistance. How is Neoliberalism benefiting them?

The affordable  housing situation is so dire in the Denver area (as it is in others, e. g. Miami, San Francisco), that the city must hold a lottery every fall to award 700 to 1000. Section 8 vouchers.  Without such vouchers, a Denver resident would need an income five times the median existing one just to own a home at the median price. He or she would need three times the income to rent - given a median rent in the area of $1700/ month. Do the math for a Walmart clerk or Starbucks barista and see how that works out. And what of the 1.5 million Americans who live on only $2 per day, as reported in Project Censored's No. 5 most concealed story?  (Colorado Springs Independent, Oct. 26- Nov. 1, p. 24)

Here in Colorado Springs the  affordable housing situation isn't much better. The median home price at $262,500 - while less than Denver's ($345,000)  - is still beyond the reach of service sector workers. The mean apartment rent has spiked to $991/ month,  leaving many others in the cold.

What is Neoliberalism doing to rectify this situation? Well, nothing, because as McCloskey writes it's premise is "to leave people alone once laws for social dignity" are in place, oh as well as "equality under the law" (as I've shown, a total farce, given it doesn't exist in practice).  If the laws themselves are predicated on coercive markets instead of genuine free markets, this is a myth. To quote Charles Reich, Opposing the System, Crown Books, 1995, p. 22:

"A free market produces results that favor the health of society as a whole, because an essential balance is maintained. But in a coercive market, the balance is destroyed, the earning power of work and the standard of living of workers declines, and society as a whole is devastated while those with economic power gain an ever more unbalanced share of the nation's economic wealth."

Adam Smith, if he saw McCloskey's paean to the Neoliberal idiom would be turning over in his freaking grave.

Did Obama Diss Bernie In A Recent Speech? It Seems So!

Even as parts of the 'librul media' now claim Bernie Sanders is running a "con" (cf. Rachel Maddow Friday night) or "pandering" (Elizabeth King on salon.com) in getting younger citizens to buy into his concept of a political revolution, it appears the Prez is bearing down on Bernie too.  In her recent WaPo column, Ruth Marcus claimed that Obama - the day after the NH primary- delivered a speech in which he "lamented the poisonous political climate"  and mourned that "the tone of our politics hasn't gotten better since I was inaugurated, in fact it's gotten worse".

Well, duh! What would you have expected from hardcore Repukes who actually vowed (like Mitch McConnell in 2009) that their numero uno goal was to block Obama's plans at every turn?  And even Obama later conceded that obstruction by having to resort to a number of executive actions on a host of matters from immigration to the environment. So don't act so damned surprised, Mister Prez!  And also, if I may add, it took you way too damned long to admit what these rat fuckers were doing - to the point you actually tried to appease the bastards with Social Security cuts - via your now (thankfully)  defunct "Debt commission".

But I digress. The main thrust of Marcus' column was that Obama had a chief bone to pick with Sanders. Marcus wrote that "some correctly interpreted Obama as criticizing Trump" but "the more interesting aspect of Obama's speech was its implicit disagreement with Bernie Sanders - the previous day's winner."

She even went so far as to insist Obama's speech (which she admits was "bumped off the front pages and most media") "can be interpreted as a rebuttal to Sanders and a rebuke of the Vermont Senator's approach to politics and an unstated endorsement of Hillary Clinton's plodding pragmatism". Which  latter I already wrote about and took to task as essentially useless, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2016/02/why-hillarys-proposed-extension-of.html

Also noting:

"After all, if as Obama and Hillary demand,  health care be kept a business (since insurers are part of the mix) then profits will be incorporated. The profit expectations will also be continuously  increased so higher and higher premiums must be expected"

In other words, without calling out the term, I deliberately identified both Obama and Clinton as Neoliberals - which they are. Also known in Left parlance as "DINOS" or corporate democrats.  But again, I get ahead of  myself.

The point here is that no one with good sense ought to express surprise that a Neoliberal would "rebuke" the Bern. Hell, his whole legacy and identity depends upon it. And lest some forget, let's remind them of one of Obama's biggest, proudest Neolib badges, defending the TPP against fellow Dems, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2015/04/obama-needs-to-tone-down-his-rhetoric.html

 While we're at it, David Bromwich (at salon.com),   in an article Obama’s Disappearing Act- What Happened to the President He wanted to be?  put it in great context - much better than Marcus as to why he wouldn't have the courage to back a real Dem like Sanders:

"The truth is that Obama’s convictions were never strong. He did not find this out until his convictions were tested, and they were not tested until he became president.

 

Perhaps the thin connection between Obama’s words and his actions does not support the use of the word “conviction” at all. Let us say instead that he mistook his preferences for convictions — and he can still be trusted to tell us what he would prefer to do. “

Leading Bromwich to then revive the term "leading from behind". Waiting and waiting until a popular furor builds up and catapults the issue before embracing it. Marcus herself endorses this perception noting Obama's "ingrained tropism" (tropism being a feature of plants) to "move toward middle ground".

Sure, JFK would have ‘preferred’ also such lackluster behavior, e.g. so as not to face down U.S. Steel and earn the wrath of the corporatocracy, but he knew he had to do it for the welfare of the nation. Hence, he threatened that corporation with removing its defense contracts unless it complied and didn’t raise steel prices in the spring of 1962.  Similarly, Kennedy would have ‘preferred’ not to have to confront his Joint Chiefs over their intent to bomb and invade Cuba during the Cuban missile crisis, but he did so because he realized the preservation of life on Earth may well depend on it. 

Well, Bernie is THAT mold of President! One we haven't seen in the White House for over 53 years.

But what really annoyed the hell out of me is that Obama's middle ground "tropism" arose from Bernie's "call for political upheaval". Jeezus Peace, you'd think the woman was portraying a call to firebomb buildings, take over the Army bases and oust the high roller CEOs and banksters from their plush offices.

At no point did it sink into her thick cranium that when he calls for "political revolution" he doesn't mean it in a literal sense, say like the Marxist-Leninists did with the 1917 Russian Revolution! He meant it in the sense of a collective revolution in consciousness - much like author Charles Reich once proposed in his marvelous book, 'The Greening of America'.   The first step, as Reich notes, is hurling off the yoke of false consciousness - that infection of mind which leads us to only see reality through the lens of the System. Hence, leading us to accept such travesties as an economically rigged economy, a rigged banking system and a hopelessly defunct healthcare dinosaur.

Thus,  Sanders is correct when he avers that any real change must be stoked by the people - this after they doff the false conscious cocoons.  THEY must incite their reps to act on their behalf and do the right thing to make the system work for them and not against them. In this sense, it is true that Sanders (as he himself admits) is "no magician".  At the top of the list we have to override the mainstream media in its lies about Sanders' proposals - making them appear as if they're mere flights of fancy - say like constructing a gigantic space ship to go to Proxima Centauri.

Lastly, even as Obama was reciting his pabulum about uniting red and blue America" (which will NEVER happen!)  Marcus was bloviating how Sanders's depictions were too "dark" in terms of the business model of Wall Street being a fraud, the economy being rigged, and the billionaire class purchasing a "choke hold" on Washington. Hmmm.....methinks I need to send her a copy of my book, 'The Elements of the Corporatocracy'.

Anyway, even as she and Obama were blabbering their Neolib nonsense, the news from the February 12 Wall Street Journal was headlined: "A Warning Signal Flashes' (p. C4), the article noting how the market for credit default swaps - the same buggers that nearly crashed our financial system in '08 - are now on the rise again.  According to the Journal (ibid.):

"At the end of June the global CDS market was $14.6 trillion as measured by the total amount of default protection outstanding according to the Bank for International Settlements"

This is serious but confronting growing CDS toxic crap and also avoiding another massive bank bailout, depends on level-headed realists who see our craven, rigged system for what it is. Not on Neolib cheerleaders who value their legacies more than the truth! So Marcus can yap all she wants that we ought to follow Obama in his Kumbaya -unity themes and not Sanders "by manning the barricades". But if this CDS racket is on track to explode again, I believe we need the latter, and Bernie need make no apologies for his anti-establishment positions - nor should those of us who support him.

See also:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/thom-hartmann/65987/bernie-s-political-revolution-is-actually-happening-although-the-corporate-media-won-t-tell-you-that

And:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/donna-smith/65989/its-the-political-and-economic-establishment-stupid

Excerpt:

"Here's the list of issues I heard Bernie Sanders address at the Denver Convention Center on Saturday night: crumbling infrastructure, climate change, youth unemployment, mass incarceration, Medicare for all healthcare, campaign finance reform, tuition-free public education grades K-16, Social Security, poverty, income inequality, income equity, a woman's right to control her own body, and more. Was there one single thread running through his firebrand speech? Of course. And that single thread is the tie that binds people to Bernie's campaign."

Do You REALLY Want A 'Frankenfish' With Those Fries?

A GMO-designed salmon, aka 'Frankenfish',  next to its smaller, normal cousin.

On the CBS Early Show medical spot, when the topic turned to the latest GMO-designed monstrosity-  a new salmon dubbed 'frankenfish' because its growth hormones don't stop pumping over its life cycle -  Dr. David Agus  didn't mince words. He averred he would not eat this beastie and further, Americans ought to know what the hell kind of food they're ingesting - it's not good enough for the Neoliberal-coopted FDA to just say everything is fine.

Agus explained the process entails first "taking a gene from a different salmon, e.g. Chinook, then taking genes that turn on other genes from an eel (ocean pout eel) which had one growing season so it makes the GMO salmon grow all the time."

He added: "The problem is we don't know much about it", noting "the FDA is standing out there saying this stuff is safe to eat but you do not have the right to know whether it's genetically modified or not".

Why not? Well, because like most federal agencies the FDA is in the maw of the big corporations so must do their bidding. Can't have the poor little rats losing profits because of a few cancers of the bowel, liver or kidneys.

Of course, the process itself - which may also involve other genes, e.g. mouse, rat, squid -  is not known given it's considered "proprietary". (We do know that mouse genes in GMO tomatoes help to preserve their shelf life at grocers who carry them.) Also, as Agus pointed out, there have been no long term studies done on humans. While a breast or bowel cancer may not show up in a year, it might in 16 years if a person keeps consuming GMOs.

Fortunately, a number of supermarkets - including Trader Joe's, Target, Kroger's, Whole Foods, Costco and Safeway - have taken matters into their own hands (according to the CBS graphic displayed) and vowed they will not sell this creature. If they can't label the damned thing, they won't sell it.

It brings to mind again the conversation I had with Barbadian geneticist and biologist John Phillips (below) back in 2012 when I asked what his worst nightmare was in terms of GMO foods.

He didn't hesitate and stated:

"That would be any developing any genetically modified organisms for food, for which abnormal growth is promoted by the use of growth hormones and using a source creature that enables it".

He feared such a food, such a 'creature' would spawn "millions of new cancers" and asserted - like David Agus on the CBS spot yesterday - that the precautionary principle ought to be the guiding one. That is, the designers ought to be the ones to have to prove eating this creature is safe. People, consumers ought not to have to prove it is unsafe.

Apart from the health concerns, environmental activists oppose the salmon because, as Dr. Agus notes, they can escape and mix with wild fish, even out competing naturally occurring varieties. This was the reason The Center for Food Safety has vowed to sue the FDA in order to block final approval.

According to a Wall Street Journal piece on this beast, a bunch named AquaBounty is developing it.  The Journal observes:

"AquaBounty estimate it will take several years before the fish hits the market, because it needs to expand its farm facilities and begin raising the salmon. Still the (FDA) approval is a major victory for the company, which initially sought approval in 1995 and has in the past struggled to maintain funding."

The piece also noted that while AquaBounty has contemplated labeling its salmon, the FDA's Director for Food Safety has maintained that :

"The FDA can only require labeling of GMO foods if regulators find a material difference from conventionally produced versions"

And in the case of the AquaBounty monster salmon:

"The FDA did not find such differences."

To which I call 'bollocks'. The very fact this thing "will grow to a market weight twice as fast as wild or farmed versions" (see photo)  shows it is materially different. It does not have to sport mouse ears to be so classified, for god's sake. The sheer increase in mass shows it is! The growth hormones needed to make it a reality include those extracted from eels, as well as Chinook salmon.

Again, if people choose of their own volition to purchase this monstrosity for a fish fry, fine. But more discriminating buyers ought to be able to see the different brands at stores labeled as Dr. David Agus and John Phillips insist. It's just a matter of honoring a basic right to know what the hell you are eating. The FDA's rubber stamp may be ok for Neoliberals not fussy about how their cancers occur, but the rest of us damned well want to know!

The corporate whore kingdom often cites the FDA or other government agencies to bestow benediction on GMO foods, i.e. that they are "safe" - but of course these federal agencies have already been bought out long ago and become de facto PR- whore extensions for the corporatocracy. This is why they incessantly fight to keep labels off GMO foods.

While anti-GMO folks are lampooned by the Neoliberal governmental -business estate and its lackeys, let's bear in mind 64 countries already require labeling of GMO foods or ban them outright. Why is the U.S. different? Or better, why is the U.S. the exceptional dumb nation here? Could it be the corporate state has our gov't by the balls, lock, stock and barrel? Maybe! As Heather White observed on Oz' s 9/19/14 show, they are only willing to "rubber stamp" what the corporations want and most of our agencies are in their maw. That makes them corporate whores!

The American thing to do is to provide labeling for all foods, not deny citizens (via the 'DARK' Act) to have the right to know what they're eating!

Medicare Reaches 50 - And There Is No Such Thing As "Mediscare"!

Seniors marching on behalf of Medicare in the early 1960s. At that time, adult children had to declare mortgages, assets etc. to pay any extra money for medical care for their elder parents the state wouldn’t cover. Many seniors,  rather than burdening their charges, simply died alone.

"Mediscare" is the word conservatives use to mock the Democratic strategy of warning seniors what would happen if the Reepos alter it, i.e. according to "free market" value such as issuing vouchers.

Is it all really harem, scarem? Don't believe it for a nanosecond!


Yesterday, the 30th of July, marked the 50th anniversary of the government health benefit program called Medicare. While predictions of its demise have been with us almost since it's inception, all have been proven to be false or overblown. The one thing that has remained constant, however, is the conservative elites' belief it is "socialism" in disguise and needs to be dismantled - replaced by a "free market" solution.

In the December 19, 1960 issue of LIFE magazine, President -elect John Fitzgerald Kennedy referred to a few of the modest requests he would make in his new administration. Modest, because he recognized he had won the popular vote by the barest sliver of a majority- a mere 113,000 votes.

 His ‘requests’ included (p. 31):

-          a higher minimum wage

-          urban renewal

-          Old age medical care operating under Social Security

The last would evolve and become known as "Medicare" which is the system JFK originally foresaw and which is operating today as an ancillary benefit to Social Security. JFK understood that as powerful a benefit as Social Security was, it fell short if seniors' health issues were not attended to. The pre-Medicare era was indeed nasty, brutish and saw most elderly either dying in an impecunious state, or simply alone.....of some disease or infection. This is why JFK felt the issue of elderly medical care as an assured benefit could no longer be excluded.

Over the decades numerous attempts have been proposed to kill it or replace it, but all have been stymied as poll after poll has shown popular support for the program. Indeed, it is so popular that "Medicare for all" has been proposed as an alternative, e.g. to the too center-right formula of Obamacare - where citizens still have to cough up for increasingly higher premiums.  But since all the usual conservative tactics have basically been exhausted, the only one left is to brand any defense of Medicare as "Mediscare". But if seniors probe the underbelly of what's alternatively offered, they should be scared!

Most recently, Sally C. Pipes in her WSJ op-ed from yesterday (p. 11) has advanced the thesis that "Medicare spending is unsustainable" and so a new model must replace it. What is this new model she advances that she claims will provide greater access to medical care and lower costs? She sets out the following aspects:

- The eligibility age to get it ought to be increased to 67 because today life expectancy is 79 - up from 70 in 1965  - and those extra years "put additional strain" on the system.

-The postponement to 67 isn't enough and Medicare also needs to be "converted from an open-ended entitlement to a system of means-tested vouchers."

How would these vouchers work? According to Pipes:

"The government would give every senior a voucher based on health status, income and age. Seniors in better health and those who are wealthy would receive smaller vouchers. Sicker or needier seniors would receive larger ones.  Seniors would then choose from among privately administered health plans the one that best suited their needs and budget."

 What are the cutoff thresholds? She doesn't say. But, based on past gov't standards we can be sure if it's a Republican congress and President issuing them, they will be stringent to say the least. Probably the "neediest" will have incomes of $13,000- 14,000 a year or less. This would leave open what happens to a middling income couple - say with $50,000/year - who is also initially healthy at time of issuance - but then the husband develops prostate cancer and the wife breast cancer. It could happen! Then what?

Well, she says seniors can "choose" from among private insurance plans for needs and budget, but how would that work out? Really? Let me provide some perspective - including based on her desire to increase the eligibility age to 67.

At the age of 66 - one year short of Pipes' eligibility cutoff- I was diagnosed with stage T1c prostate cancer in six cores, Gleason scores of 3+3, to 3+4.  I elected high dose rate brachytherapy treatment and that bill tabulation, for those who might be interested, came to $42, 776 . This encompassed a breakdown of different contributors, from (epidural) anesthesia ($4,124) to radiology services ($16,768) to recovery room ($2, 090) to operating room services ($14,994).   The bill, after Medicare Part B kicked in, came down to $1,299 of which most was paid by my Medicare Supplement Plan (F).

It doesn't take a genius to see that had I been left with that bill at 66 - and no Medicare to depend on - with Obamacare still years from being formalized - I'd likely have gone bankrupt. By extension, many millions of other 65 and 66 years olds would too under Pipes' plan.

My other alternative, of course, would have been to skip any immediate treatments and hence, do nothing. In that case, the cancer would plausibly have metastasized until - by the time I finally did qualify for Medicare  - the costs of treating advanced prostate cancer would've been drastically more.

Pipes also claims that according to her proposal (ibid.):

"Insurers would have to compete for beneficiaries' business and providers would have to compete to get on the most popular plans".

But one has to wonder what fantasy world she inhabits. Compete for sickly (or soon to be) old folks? You have to be kidding me!

NO private health insurance companies are going to want to compete for senior health care! They only do it now because the Medicare Advantage plans are paid more for their services than the government pays in standard Medicare. Hence, contributing to the standard program’s insolvency (by an excess $12 billion a year according to the GAO).

Let us assume an elderly woman requires hip replacement surgery at an on-paper cost of $30,000. Today, Medicare - standard Medicare, will pay 80% of that or $24,000, leaving her with $6,000 to pay on her own. A goodly amount, but not insuperable. In premium support at the maximum level, however, the woman would use ALL her allotment for one operation and still have $15,000 left to pay, and no more "premium support" voucher for any other needs that may arise.

Worse, why compete for a pool of citizens which is basically going to be sickly most of the time? This is self-evident. Even now health insurance companies factor in the medical loss ratio (the ratio of unhealthy subscribers to the healthy ones that support them via fees, costs) as the most important in getting continued profits. That means they already know that any private plans for seniors on the open market would have vast medical loss ratios meaning the proportion of insurers' profits would be next to nil. Thus, seniors will clearly be shut out, translating to a no win situation for them. (No Medicare, and no private insurer to take them)


As Economics Professor Fiona Scott Morton aptly put it several years ago in referring to any such "voucher" plan, it is merely a demand shedding plan. As she puts it:

 “there’s no evidence many companies will be rushing in to provide health coverage to ailing boomers with competition that ought to lower any premiums"

BINGO!

She added:

"The Republican voucher plan is not solving the problem. It’s solving the problem of the cost of government health care. You have people who can’t afford it and they’ll just die. Economists call that demand shedding”.

Thus the “Medicare revolution” proffered by Pipes and earlier Paul Ryan is NOT to engender market competition to "lower health premiums for seniors", but to shed market demand (by seniors) so they'll be unable to enter or access any private health care, period. And since no government help or insurance will be available (other than other than a meager voucher to try and purchase private insurance in an open market with seniors the only and largest risk pool) the senior will have no choice but to die.)

Thus, we effectively have a "death policy" and there's no gaming it with euphemisms or trying to put any lipstick on this pig.

Apart from that, we know purchasing health care isn’t like buying a car, or i-pad or TV. The elements of objective and cool rational choice aren’t available mainly because the time when people most need health care is when their lives may be on the line: after a serious auto accident or fall, or appendicitis, or contracting pneumonia. Then, they simply need care and cost may not factor into it given that we know costs vary across large geographical regions, see e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/02/why-cant-colorado-follow-grand-junction.html

As shown in that blog post, there is a way to control medical costs, but it doesn't depend on "premium support". It requires a provider network than mandates FIXED pricing for each procedure irrespective of what insurance vehicle one has....or doesn't. In this way, the delivery of care is rendered uniform without wild variations in costs, and in addition, costs can be controlled - especially as unnecessary procedures.

Other ways Medicare's costs can be controlled to ensure it's sustainable into the future include:

1) Allowing Medicare to bargain for the lowest cost prescription drug costs like the VA does.

2) Transferring those currently on "Medicare Advantage" (based on more expensive private plans for which standard beneficiaries must subsidize) to standard, gov't run Medicare.

3) Implement new computer software to detect fraud, e.g. that can distinguish fake M.D. addresses - given by those trying to bilk the system - from actual ones of genuine providers.

The problem with all conservative solutions is that they're based on an exaggerated assumption that ascribes more power to the majority of people than they actually possess. Hence, the conservos can insist with a straight face (cf. WSJ, July 25-26, p. C2 )that "limited government allows individuals to take responsibility for themselves and their families and communities".

Yes, in an ideal world of limited corporate influence, that might be so. But not when corporate power and money can purchase political influence that undermines democracy and inveighs against the will  of the people as well as the general welfare. Then, "limited government" becomes exactly what the corporatocracy wants, a government too weak to protect the interests of its citizens against the array of private power. As FDR once put it:

"The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerated the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism: ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power.”

Claire McCaskill: "Bernie Sanders Is Too Extreme" - She's Another Neolib Traitor Dem

Claire McCaskil's brain dead,  dopey face after being called out by Mark Halperin when she asserted Bernie Sanders is "too extreme for Americans."  Maybe for pro-corporate Democrats like Claire McCaskill who prefer to see a stronger Corporatocracy!

I had Sen. Claire McCaskill pegged correctly as a Neoliberal, corporate Democrat when I wrote in an April 30, 2011 post:

"Another traitor Dem is none other than Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri (much like one of her predecessors, Sen. Carnahan in 2001 - who voted for the original deficit creating Bush tax cuts) who now wants to join up with Republican Bob Corker of Tennessee in a pie-eyed, cock-eyed, half-baked scheme to "save $7.6 trillion over 10 years." How? By capping federal spending at 20.6 percent of gross domestic product within a decade. That’s down from 24.3 percent now. And that's despite an expected increase in population of more than 15%. What the hell is she drinking?"

Of course, such capping would have meant mainly the poor - on programs like Medicaid and food stamps-  would suffer,  along with seniors on Medicare and Social Security. Meanwhile - as history has shown, MCCaskill has had no problem protecting the original Bush tax cuts, and protecting defense spending.

I write this because this morning it would have been no surprise for many when on 'Morning Joe', she slimed Bernie Sanders and the giant, energized crowds he was getting - insisting his platform was "too extreme" and he wasn't being subjected by the media to the same standard as Hillary. Including being tagged as a "socialist".

Maybe Claire has lost the ability to read, or perhaps she's got one blind eye, but I've seen at least ten articles or columns in the past month on Sanders' socialism - mainly written by right wing media imps like George Will. But this "unequal" treatment narrative fits in with McCaskill's shtick of protecting and exalting a pro-corporate, Wall Street -backed candidate.

She did concede that Bernie Sanders "has a message that is touching people's frustrations" and that she "totally gets that" - but "so does Hillary Clinton".   Of course, but in all the examples Claire gave it was only after her being pushed to the left once Bernie entered the race and began climbing in the polls (in one NH poll coming within pts. of Hillary). So she's being too clever by half and disingenuous.

The fact Claire wouldn't admit on air is that Hillary is being backed by Wall Street money and tons of it shows her dishonesty. But then as a pro-corporate Dem there'd be no reason for her to broach this on national TV.

Mark Halperin then challenged McCaskill to name three ways that Bernie Sanders' political message and platform was too extreme. After babbling for a bit, and then trying to dodge it ("why don't you name them?") she finally barfed up the following:

- "He would like to see  Medicare for all in this country and let everyone have a government insurance policy. "

Oh yeah, terrible! Horrible! Fuckin' awful! Imagine, each citizen being covered by a program already embraced by seniors which has the lowest administration fees compared to private insurance. And.  having it as opposed to a program (Obamacare) which allows the insurance companies to all take their cuts, jack up premiums whenever they want and forces people to pay into it even if they can't afford it.

And she's also dead wrong when she claimed "I don't think Americans want government to have every insurance policy" - because they DO - in poll after poll - when the alternative is only private medical insurance or some hybrid like Obamacare.  But again, what do you expect from a corporate Dem?

She went on:

- "He would like to see expansion of entitlement (Social Security)"

Again, god forbid seniors get expanded Social Security though I already showed there are ample justifications for it, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2015/02/a-social-security-expansion-bill.html

She added in connection with this, "he is not worried about debt at all" which is false. Because on multiple occasions Bernie has made it clear the social benefits he wants expanded can be paid for by decreasing the out of control military spending which already exceeds the total of the next 22 nations combined. 

- "Somebody who I think is frankly against trade"

Again, wrong! Bernie is not against trade, but rather against unbalanced trade agreements (with almost all  benefits to Wall Street & corporations) and  concealed trade pacts like the Trans Pacific Partnership  (TPP) which also enable corporate- multinational hegemony over national democratic decisions. I touched on many of the negative aspects here:


http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2015/05/so-how-bad-is-trans-pacific-partnership.html

Readers who want to see more can check these links:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/william-rivers-pitt/62790/killing-a-nation-with-euphemisms-tpp-eats-medicare-edition


http://www.salon.com/2015/05/12/the_10_biggest_lies_youve_been_told_about_the_trans_pacific_partnership

Make no mistake McCaskill has merely disclosed her true colors, as anti-Middle class, and pro-Wall Street. What do we know about the TPP? We know, according to Public Citizen,  that the TPP could ship millions of good-paying US jobs overseas.

We also  know that the TPP could increase the costs of health care and medicine, while hurting health and safety standards. (An excellent reason for Claire to be against  Bernie's "Medicare for All".)

We also  know that the TPP could make corporations even stronger and undo what few reforms are left on Wall Street.

All this is even more germane now that traitor, poseur Dems like McCaskill have voted for the fast track on TPP which now only the most valiant and ferocious opposition can upend. (Here are the D-senators who voted for Fast Track: http://1.usa.gov/1GtAdTH )

At one time the Dems stood for core principles and they constituted more than a temporary ensemble or "coalition" brought together every four years by dodgy rhetoric to win one election. Now, having sold out to the money changers, bankers and business assholes - not to mention the pseudo-free market, they are barely discernible from the Repugs. Two sides of one corporate party coin  - except that the Ds use lube before they fuck you over.

See also:
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/gaius-publius/62810/the-difference-between-bernie-sanders-and-hillary-clinton-in-one-paragraph


And:


http://www.salon.com/2015/06/24/bernie_sanders_cornel_west_the_radical_alliance_that_could_change_everything/