Working Life

If you sit and worry about how to save public money, it’s no mystery — go after the drug companies and health insurance mafia. That’s where real money is.

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    It won’t be long before you hear–because it’s part of the framing of Democrats and Republicans alike, and traditional media "analysts" who haven’t a clue what they are taking about when it comes to economics–that unions are in trouble because of the "new economy" (which means, to some people, the industrial base is […]

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    Yesterday, I wrote about how much money Paul Ryan pockets from the insurance industry–and how the health care part of the industry was going to make out like bandits in the Ryan budget proposal. This is worth digging into a bit more because you can learn very quickly how the Ryan budget truly boils […]

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   I don’t write this to convince the people who are intentionally lying or have some ideological end-game here (as in, destroy unions and the middle class). I write this for those people who are still living on the planet Earth of reality. So, here it is: Wisconsin has a great, financially-sound public pension system. […]

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   You’ve heard (and, in some cases, unfortunately, been persuaded) that "generous" pensions given to public employees has caused great deficits in pensions and state budgets. It’s nonsense. And here are the facts to prove it.    The Center for Economic and Policy Research has a very important study out. It must be given wide […]

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In the lore of political budgetary rhetoric, Sen Everett Dirksen’s observation is often useful: “A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon it adds up to real money” he is rumored to have said–rumored because there is some debate about whether he actually used that whole phrase. But, whatever–it’s useful to our current discussion. Where […]

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   I am so tired of listening to the transcribers of press conferences (people we used to call "journalists") speaking about the debt or deficit "crisis". They just regurgitate crazy, phony stuff–and the height of all this came yesterday with the release of the proposals by the co-chairmen of the Commission appointed by the president. […]

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   The president, having just announced that we would be wasting tens of billions of dollars more in a pointless, tragic, immoral war in Afghanistan, will hold a job summit tomorrow. It is a very small point but telling that we would first be told that vital resources will be spent in a conflict that […]

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