Working Life

Yesterday, I asked how it is possible that people who are either raving lunatics (read: Michelle Bachmann) or just simply have loony ideas, which are just covers for ripping off the country, still get taken seriously. Paul Ryan, take a bow.

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Everyone likes to compare their city to New York City. If you can be like the greatest city in the world, hey, you’ve made it. But, uh, this might not be a comparison the Chamber of Commerce and Tourist Board wants making the rounds.

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   I love it when billionaires feel misunderstood. It sounds something like this: “I’ve fleeced you or just piled up gobs of money at your expense but, gee, that really wasn’t personal, I’m really a good guy with all the right motives, if you could just see it my way because, well, my way is [...]

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   So, The New York Times discovered this startling fact: But many researchers have reached a conclusion that turns conventional wisdom on its head: Americans enjoy less economic mobility than their peers in Canada and much of Western Europe. The mobility gap has been widely discussed in academic circles, but a sour season of mass [...]

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   I took a longer break from blogging than I thought–to think, observe a bit, rest the brain, cycle New Zealand’s spectacular South Island. But, what stirred me to break this hiatus, at the very moment that people are switching off their computers to turn to libations and debauchery, was, well, the modest observation that [...]

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   Jacqueline Siegel is the target audience Republicans–and too many Democrats–fear will be the awful victims of higher taxes on the wealthiest one percent. Join me as we shed tears together for the woes of the Siegels.  The ballroom: Jacqueline Siegel paces the floor of her unfinished 7,200-square-foot ballroom. The former beauty queen, with platinum-blond [...]

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    You want a reason for the uprisings in Greece, where workers are on strike to protest the brutal austerity measures, or OccupyWallStreet or the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia fanned by the deep unemployment? Or are you looking for a reason people don’t believe the economy is getting better even when "growth" seems to [...]

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   Welcome to another edition in the economic philosophy of the Republican Party, where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Today, courtesy of the Citizens for Tax Justice, it’s the Herman Cain Robin Hood-in-reverse plan. Courtesy of CTJ: If presidential candidate Herman Cain’s proposed “9-9-9 tax plan” was in effect today, then [...]

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   Oh, those poor "job creators"…they just can’t get any respect–except from Republicans, and too many Democrats, who run around undercutting jobs programs because of some phony idea that taxing the wealthiest Americans will hurt jobs. Oooopppsss…nope… Embedded in the report out from the Congressional Research Service–which annoyingly doesn’t post reports publicly–which tell us this: [...]

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    There is an incredible easy equation to make–both morally and financially. The one percent broke it now they need to fix it. And it all adds up, according to the Congressional Budget Office.   The math: The Democrats’ proposed tax on millionaires would raise an estimated $453 billion, more than enough to pay for [...]

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I’ve been mystified for a while at the continued willingness to listen to anything that comes out of the mouths of the people at Standard & Poors. The Justice Department is investigating S&P and these fools had a deep role in creating the financial crisis–yet when this discredited group of bozos downgrades the U.S., everyone [...]

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   I hate to ruin a good party–or at least the world of the liberal bloviators who want everyone to stand in line and praise the president’s speech last night. Heck, I am glad he was there to push for something–ANYTHING–to be done to try to respond to the great crisis we have.    But, [...]

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   Apparently, in the alternate universe Republicans inhabit, socialism is on the march and the attack against the "free market" is unrelenting. Where? At the National Labor Relations Board, of course. The truth is–shocking, I know–quite different, and it speaks volumes about the playing field for workers in the real world.    The NLRB has [...]

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   What has been extraordinary to watch over the past 30-40 years is the way in which, when economic crisis strikes, the political and economic leadership of the country leaps into the breach to lend a hand–not to the regular people who suffered the most but, rather, to the very institutions and economic elites who [...]

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    Not a day goes by when we don’t hear from the mouth of some talking head or read the words of a transcriber of press releases (formerly known as a "journalist") about the awful "partisanship" or bi-partisan "paralysis" and failure to "compromise". It’s now a macro embedded in the minds and computers of virtually [...]

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   When I wrote the "The Audacity of Greed" in 2008, I had a chapter called "Vodka and Penises" which detailed a rather unique birthday party thrown in Sardinia, Italy, in 2000 by Tyko CEO Dennis Kozlowski in honor of his wife–it featured vodka spraying from the penis of a replica of Michelangelo’s David. Kozlowski, [...]

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