A Jobs SuperCongress

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It’s rather pathetic that this idea seems so remarkable.

Rep. John Larson (Conn.), chairman of the Democratic Caucus, wants to amend the recently passed debt-limit package to establish a joint select committee on job creation to operate alongside the already mandated Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction.

In a “Dear Colleague” letter sent to House members earlier in the week, Larson argued that the nation’s jobs crisis is only exacerbating its long-term fiscal problems and therefore demands Congress’s immediate attention.
“This high unemployment poses a very real short-term fiscal crisis, because it drains the federal coffers through increased government spending and reduced tax revenues,” Larson wrote in the Aug. 8 letter.
“Families are being forced out of their homes, children are being forced to forgo higher education, the elderly are being forced to retire early without nearly enough saved to cover their long-term costs,” he said. “If not addressed, I believe the social costs of unemployment will dramatically damage the United States’ status in the world and prevent us from emerging from this recession.”

And in the Senate, a portion of Democrats are making a similar argument.

Dear Leader McConnell:

Given that the single best deficit reduction strategy is economic growth, we urge you to ensure that your appointments to the new joint select committee (“JSC”) created by the debt limit bill are committed to a policy of job creation.

The recent spate of discouraging economic news underscores the need to make employment the top priority of our government.  For families across the country, the biggest economic problem is high unemployment.  As you know, the lack of jobs and anemic growth rate of the economy are not only enormous problems in their own right, causing great pain for millions of Americans, they are a major component of our deficit.  Indeed, the loss of revenue resulting from the recession accounts for nearly $4 trillion of the projected deficits over the next 10 years.

At the same time, jobless workers put additional strain on our critical social safety net programs.  As more and more Americans rely on unemployment benefits, food stamps and Medicaid, our deficits go up.  Getting those individuals back to work not only allows them to be self-sufficient, it reduces federal government spending.

It is therefore appropriate and important that the JSC explicitly embrace job creation as a part of its mission.  Targeted investments in economic growth and job creation can complement and even enhance long-term deficit reduction efforts and should be a priority that the JSC embraces.  Indeed, failure to make such investments could have a serious negative impact on our fiscal situation.

But, as Bob Brigham observes, only 23 Senators signed this letter. How have we gotten to the point where not even a majority of Senate Democrats understand that the one of the best ways to fix the deficit it to fix the jobs crisis (of course, the absolutely best way to fix the deficit is to enact single payer health care, and that’s not going to happen either).

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Coming Soon to Your Hard-Hit Neighborhood: Government-Subsidized TBTF Slumlords

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I’m all in favor of creative ways to solve the foreclosure crisis. But I don’t think this is answer.

The government is soliciting ideas for ways to unload lots–big lots–of foreclosed properties currently owned by Fannie, Freddie, or FHA.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), in consultation with the U.S. Department of the Treasury and Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), has announced a Request For Information (RFI), seeking input on new options for selling single-family real estate owned (REO) properties held by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the Enterprises), and the Federal Housing Administration (FHA).

The RFI’s objective is to help address current and future REO inventory. It will explore alternatives for maximizing value to taxpayers and increasing private investment in the housing market, including approaches that support rental and affordable housing needs.

“While the Enterprises will continue to market individual REO properties for sale, FHFA and the Enterprises seek input on possible pooling of REO properties in situations where such pooling, combined with private management, may reduce Enterprise credit losses and help stabilize neighborhoods and home values,” said FHFA Acting Director Edward J. DeMarco. “Partnerships involving Enterprise properties may reduce taxpayer losses and meet the Enterprises’ responsibility to bring stability and liquidity to housing markets. We seek input on these important questions.”

Kevin Drum rightly wonders what the point of this is, given that investors can already buy as many REOs as they want.

The point is volume: basically, the government would share ownership of the houses for such time as it takes the new owner to make them profitable again. And in exchange, the investor would be able to buy a bunch more houses.

The idea is to facilitate investors buying up whole chunks of homes in a particular market.

the agencies look forward to responses from market participants that have the technical and financial capability to engage in large-scale transactions with the Enterprises and/or FHA involving the disposition of REO.
A specific goal is to solicit ideas from market participants that would maximize the economic value that may arise from pooling the single-family REO properties in specified geographic areas. Under the management of a third-party, a joint venture or some other structure may respond to local economic and real estate conditions more effectively than individual sales. For instance, there may be certain metropolitan areas (or some narrower geographic designation) with a substantial number of REO properties and a strong rental market. In such locales economic value in REO disposition may be enhanced (and real estate markets begin to be stabilized) by turning a large number of REO properties into rental housing.

Call me crazy, but it seems the only reason such a program would be lucrative would be because it allowed one investor to corner significant chunks of the housing or rental market in a given city or neighborhood. Which, it would seem to me, would make for really abusive landlords: people with no competitive need to keep up their properties, with market dominance sufficient to raise rents beyond what the economy really supported, and enough pull at city hall to avoid accountability for doing these things.

Now, Jared Bernstein says we shouldn’t worry about using government subsidies to create TBTF slumlords.

I’ve heard two arguments against the idea.

[snip]

Second, investors buying foreclosed properties in bulk make lousy landlords.  It’s a valid concern, but there’s a policy wrinkle in the FHFA/admin’s plan that should help: the proposal—the RFI noted above—should include requirements regarding property management and the Feds should reject proposals that aren’t convincing in that regard.

But really, the language purportedly protecting against TBTF slumlords is flaccid. It lists “address[ing] property repair and rehabilitation needs” as one of six objectives (after, it must be said, “reduc[ing] REO portfolios … in a cost-effective manner” and “reduc[ing] average loan loss severities.” It requires private partners take on “most or all day to day management and operations, including property maintenance and rehabilitation, rental property management, marketing for sale.” And it only requires proposed plans to address, “steps taken to ensure that the properties are well maintained and managed during the period” as item 7, after already emphasizing, as item 2, “a focus on maximizing returns.” Nowhere does it require these hypothetical landlords to charge reasonable rates for rents.

In other words, while this plan may include lip service to the upkeep of these properties, nowhere does it limit what kind of price gouging these TBTF landlords could engage in (indeed, it places more emphasis on financial return than on societal return).

And of course, as happens with most of these Third Way public-private partnerships (cf. health care reform and the Wall Street bailout), it deals away key enforcement mechanisms precisely by helping corporations avoid market forces and encouraging them to become so big they can’t be held to account.

Ultimately, this seems to be an effort to find a shortcut out of the housing crisis by engaging in more corporate subsidies. Plus, it’ll take several months to put the program together, whereas offering subsidies to everyone right now might be faster with less market-distorting effect.

If the government is going to be subsidizing turning these properties around anyway, why not subsidize the average people that have gotten so screwed over by TBTF corporations in the first place? Why not subsidize the people who create stable communities–actual community members–rather than asking corporations to restore communities? Why struggle again to limit market forces in a such a way that only the big boys benefit?

I know Obama likes to claim, falsely, that government can’t create jobs, and because of that claim he believes all government help must be laundered through corporations. But corporations can’t create communities, which is really what’s called for here.

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Ron Bloom to Spend More Time with His Family While Obama Pushes Trade Deals

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So Ron Bloom, Obama’s manufacturing czar and a key figure in the auto bailout, has announced he is leaving the White House to spend more time with his family.

Today, the White House announced Ron Bloom will be stepping down from his position as the Assistant to the President for Manufacturing Policy at the end of August.

[snip]

Bloom will be returning to his long-time residence of Pittsburgh, PA to take the opportunity to spend more time with his family.  

The press coverage of the timing of Bloom’s departure has focused more on what hasn’t happened yet than on what has. It emphasizes that Bloom is leaving before the government sheds the last of its stake in GM. And also notes that Congress probably won’t ever approve actually doing anything to support US manufacturing (in spite of the near unanimity it should).

Bloom won’t stay on to see the government completely exit the auto industry. The government still owns a 26 percent stake in General Motors Co. and 74 percent of Detroit-based Ally Financial. But it has completely exited Chrysler Group LLC, booking a $1.3 billion loss.

Bloom was initially tapped with working to boost the struggling manufacturing sector in September 2009 and took on the role full-time this year. He also oversaw the successful initial public stock offering of GM.

But efforts to further turn around manufacturing — including funding government programs — are likely to go nowhere since Congress is unlikely to approve any new money. Sperling said the Obama administration would still push Congress to do more to boost manufacturing.

But that misses one key aspect of the timing of Bloom’s departure.

Bloom’s announcement comes just days after reports that Congress will vote on Obama’s trade deals with South Korea, Panama, and Colombia and the Trade Adjustment Assistance. But reports on the deal make it clear that 1) Democrats failed to get a commitment to link the trade deal votes with the vote on TAA, and 2) John Boehner still has not committed to what order he’ll advance the bills.

The White House and Democrats are continuing to negotiate the terms of a vote with Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), who has said he plans to bring up for a vote the trade deals and the assistance program, known as TAA.

“While some sequencing details remain to be worked out, the speaker has now clearly committed to floor consideration of TAA, along with the trade agreements,” said Carol Guthrie, a spokeswoman for Kirk. “The Senate leaders’ agreement on a way forward is an important step on the path to submission of the pending agreements.”

[snip]

Democrats and the White House have wanted legislation renewing the trade assistance program to be voted on along with the three trade deals. Republicans have insisted that they be considered separately.

In a joint statement released late Tuesday, Reid and McConnell said separate votes would be held, with the vote on the trade assistance program coming first.

In other words, last week’s announcement opened the possibility that the trade deals might pass without the TAA that helps manufacturing workers transition into new jobs. And if TAA doesn’t get passed, that’s a huge chunk of investment in job creation that will be sacrificed to the TeaParty Congress.

And at precisely the same time as this possibility became more likely, the language Obama used to describe the trade deals got a whole lot more Orwellian, suggesting that the trade deals themselves–as opposed to the TAA–would help workers displaced by the trade deals.

Now, I don’t know whether there’s a connected between these trade developments and Bloom’s departure or not.

But I do know that Bloom won’t be around in September when this deal–with or without TAA–will be pushed through Congress.

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WSJ: How the Problem of Low Wages Is Different from the Problem of Low Wages

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This WSJ article–purporting to explain the difference between the 2008 crash from this crash (which is basically the extension of the earlier one)–is amusing for the way it avoids discussing the drop in real wages as the common cause for both crashes.

For example, it doesn’t consider why people were using their home as an ATM rather than spending non-existent wages on consumer goods in 2008…

The two crises had completely different origins.

The older one spread from the bottom up. It began among over-optimistic home buyers, rose through the Wall Street securitization machine, with more than a little help from credit-rating firms, and ended up infecting the global economy. It was the financial sector’s breakdown that caused the recession.

And then blames lack of trust (a version of the confidence fairy, I guess), rather than lack of customers, to explain why businesses aren’t investing or hiring.

The current predicament, by contrast, is a top-down affair. Governments around the world, unable to stimulate their economies and get their houses in order, have gradually lost the trust of the business and financial communities.

The two crises had completely different origins.

That, in turn, has caused a sharp reduction in private sector spending and investing, causing a vicious circle that leads to high unemployment and sluggish growth. Markets and banks, in this case, are victims, not perpetrators.

Aside from the way this ignores the “lack of customer” problem, since when does the business press’ flagship newspaper claim that the failure of the government to successfully stimulate business makes those inadequately government-stimulated businesses “victims”?

Someone has watched too many Cialis commercials.

The column continues, pretty much repeating the first difference using different words.

The second difference is perhaps the most important: Financial companies and households had feasted on cheap credit in the run-up to 2007-2008.

When the bubble burst, the resulting crash diet of deleveraging caused a massive recessionary shock.

This time around, the problem is the opposite. The economic doldrums are prompting companies and individuals to stash their cash away and steer clear of debt, resulting in anemic consumption and investment growth.

Once again, however, the column ignores that the same underlying problem–low wages forcing ordinary people to either rely on credit to continue spending, or stop spending–lies behind both crises.

Then, once again, the WSJ restates what is going on, repeating the claim that the failure of the financial bailout to work makes poor helpless businesses victims.

The final distinction is a direct consequence of the first two. Given its genesis, the 2008 financial catastrophe had a simple, if painful, solution: Governments had to step in to provide liquidity in droves through low interest rates, bank bailouts and injections of cash into the economy.

[snip]

The present strains aren’t caused by a lack of liquidity—U.S. companies, for one, are sitting on record cash piles—or too much leverage. Both corporate and personal balance sheets are no longer bloated with debt.

The real issue is a chronic lack of confidence by financial actors in one another and their governments’ ability to kick-start economic growth.

I find this last one the most interesting. The logic goes like this: Governments had to step in to provide liquidity (to banks, mostly). And they succeeded in making companies liquid (except for those burdened by the legal liabilities for the fraud they committed during the previous bubble, the WSJ forgets to mention). But for some reason that didn’t work, which makes these poor victim businesses lose confidence.

Somehow, the WSJ misses the obvious solution. Whether by direct government intervention, or by paying workers, you’ve got to put money in the hands of those who can stimulate the economy.

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Obama’s Slogan for Trade: “Displaced workers … Made in America”

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When I saw Obama’s pivot to creating Korean jobs on Tuesday, I actually thought he had mangled his script.

And I want Congress to pass a set of trade deals — deals we’ve already negotiated — that would help displaced workers looking for new jobs and would allow our businesses to sell more products in countries in Asia and South America, products that are stamped with the words “Made in America.”

As I noted, Obama adopted the phrase used to refer to those who had lost jobs in past trade deals, “displaced workers,” to refer to those who would get jobs out of these new ones.

And his suggestion that letting JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs use trade deals to extend their financial gimmickry to South Korea and incorporate Panama’s secrecy regime into the US orbit constituted products stamped “Made in America”? That’s a cynical appeal to the nearly-unanimous call for the opposite: a move away from such financialized madness to actual manufacture.

But he didn’t mangle the script. That is the script. Obama said precisely the same thing in his weekly address yesterday:

It’s time Congress finally passed a set of trade deals that would help displaced workers looking for new jobs, and that would allow our businesses to sell more products in countries in Asia and South America – products stamped with three words: Made in America.

Shorter Obama: “Displaced workers … Made in America.”

Update: Here’s how the Administration uses the term “displaced” when it’s not trying to propagandize (this is from a statement Austan Goolsbee made on Friday).

Bipartisan action is needed to help the private sector and the economy grow – such as measures to extend both the payroll tax cut and unemployment insurance, as well as passing the pending free trade agreements with re-employment assistance for displaced workers, the patent reform bill, and a bipartisan infrastructure bill to help put Americans back to work. [my emphasis]

Goolsbee has used the same formula before, as in this statement on July 29. That is, elsewhere, the Administration admits that these deals will “displace workers,” not directly benefit those who have already been displaced by trade deals.

Update: And Obama admits that the trade deals create displaced workers in this press conference on July 15.

I’ve got three trade deals sitting ready to go.  And these are all trade deals that the Republicans told me were their top priorities.  They said this would be one of the best job creators that we could have.  And yet it’s still being held up because some folks don’t want to provide trade adjustment assistance to people who may be displaced as a consequence of trade.  Surely we can come up with a compromise to solve those problems. [my emphasis]

And Jay Carney on July 8:

Q    Speaker Boehner today rejected the idea of tying Trade Adjustment Authority to the free trade agreements.  He says four separate bills.  Do you want it attached because you feel it can’t pass on its own?

MR. CARNEY:  Well, the agreement that was presented was worked out in a bipartisan way.  Trade Adjustment Authority has been supported by members of both parties for years.  And we believe it is very important to provide that kind of assistance to workers who have been displaced by free trade agreements.  And that has been a notion supported, again, by members of both parties for a long time. [my emphasis]

 

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The End of the American Empire

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I write about our dying empire just about every day in my links posts. But given the debt limit debate and Friday’s S&P downgrade, I wanted to look at four pieces that examine where we are more closely (note, all of these are well worth reading in full–do click through to read them).

There are two issues to grapple with: first, with the undeniable evidence that our government has become a clusterfuck, we have become incapable of taking obvious steps–like taking the profit motive out of our health care system or taxing the wealthy that just got a giant government bailout–that we need for the well-being of the country. At this level, S&P’s downgrade makes sense.

But then there’s the question of why we let a thoroughly discredited entity like the S&P be the one to dictate whether we merit our world leadership position or not. That’s not just a question of letting one of the agencies that created the bubble retain any position of authority in the world afterwards (though, again, the fact we left the rating agencies in place after the crash is another sign our governance has failed), but also why a nation-state would let a corrupted entity like S&P do so in the first place.

Therein lies the paradox here: the downgrade is at once a real measure of the collapse of our governance, one of the best symptoms of it, and a key piece of evidence of why our governance is failing. So what’s going on?

This column at Spiegel Online looks on this as a problem of culture. It argues the US has left “the West.”

America has changed. It has drifted away from the West.

The country’s social disintegration is breathtaking. Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz recently described the phenomenon. The richest 1 percent of Americans claim one-quarter of the country’s total income for themselves — 25 years ago that figure was 12 percent. It also possesses 40 percent of total wealth, up from 33 percent 25 years ago. Stiglitz claims that in many countries in the so-called Third World, the income gap between the poor and rich has been reduced. In the United States, it has grown.

Economist Paul Krugman, also a Nobel laureate, has written that America’s path is leading it down the road to “banana-republic status.” The social cynicism and societal indifference once associated primarily with the Third World has now become an American hallmark. This accelerates social decay because the greater the disparity grows, the less likely the rich will be willing to contribute to the common good. When a company like Apple, which with €76 billion in the bank has greater reserves at its disposal than the government in Washington, a European can only shake his head over the Republican resistance to tax increases. We see it as self-destructive.

The same applies to America’s broken political culture. The name “United States” seems increasingly less appropriate. Something has become routine in American political culture that has been absent in Germany since Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik policies of rapprochement with East Germany and the Soviet Bloc (in the 1960s and ’70s): hate. At the same time, reason has been replaced by delusion. The notion of tax cuts has taken on a cult-like status, and the limited role of the state a leading ideology.

Now, it is true that America’s political culture has been hijacked, and that those who have hijacked it used hatred as a way to convince others to act against self-interest. But that’s what (perhaps) distinguishes us from Europe; that’s what explains why we, a country with our own currency, can be in as dire a situation as Europe with its common currency. Moreover, I’m skeptical whether, mere weeks after the terrorist attack in Norway, Europe should really be lecturing the US about hate.

Craig Murray looks elsewhere–at the military we feed at the expense of feeding our own people. Read more →

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The $100 Billion TeaBagger Tax

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Last week, when analysts were contemplating a debt downgrade, they put a price tag on it: $100 billion.

A downgrade of the United States’ AAA credit rating is a bigger risk than a default and could over time add up to 0.7 percentage point to bond yields, members of a U.S. securities industry group said on Tuesday.

“That’s on the order of $100 billion over time that we will add to our funding costs,” said Terry Belton, global head of fixed income strategy at JPMorgan Chase. He was speaking on a conference call organized by the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, also known as SIFMA.

Over time, he said Treasury yields could rise 60 to 70 basis points on a credit downgrade — “a huge number because we’re talking a permanent increase in borrowing costs.”

That would make it more costly for consumers and business to borrow money and could land the economy back in recession.

That’s a big number though.

A better way of thinking of it is how much every American will have to pay. That $100 billion among 310 million Americans works out to be $322 for every man, woman, and child to pay for the TeaBagger’s little temper tantrum.

To put that in perspective, that’s more than the 2008 Bush tax rebate gave to taxpayers (rebate checks started at $300/person).

So the TeaBaggers are now taking away whatever benefit we got from Bush’s last tax cut.

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“Sustainable Growth” Wasn’t

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There’s something that bugged me about this article (indeed, bugs me about most economic analyses of our current crash). Amidst a discussion that fairly lays out some of the problems with the global economy (all the while ignoring that one critical issue in the US is a gutting of manufacture and unions and therefore increasing inequality), it talks about how to rebalance the global economy so as to return to “sustainable growth.”

What it failed to create, however, was the kind of virtuous cycle of growing sales, growing profits and growing employment, all feeding off of one another, to keep the economy growing even as the stimulus wears off — “escape velocity,” to borrow a term from aerodynamics.

[snip]

The truth is we’re in something of a trap. Until imbalances are corrected, the U.S. and global economies are unlikely to return to robust and sustainable growth. And yet to the extent that we address these imbalances, the correction process will inevitably be a short-term drag on an already weak economy.

I mean, aside from Pearlstein’s blind reverence for the market, he’s right about the notion of balance. It is true, for example, that the newly rebalanced globe, America will play a smaller role as the consumer of last resort.

But it’d be nice if, at the same time as analysts think about rebalancing the global economy, they’d consider what their idea of “sustainable growth” meant in the past–and what it would mean in the future if it continued unchecked. After all, the sustainable-growth-that-turned-out-to-be-unsustainable of the last 60 years of a globalized economy caused climate change which will be an increasing drain on even a growing economy as disasters become worse and more frequent.

The spending on unnecessary consumer goods, the transportation miles driven, the dietary patterns, the waste. Those things caused climate change. Those are the things economists would like to return to, if slightly adjusted around the globe.

Since we’re going to be spending the next couple of years trying to find “sustainable growth,” do you think we could also keep in mind what would be truly sustainable for the globe?

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Buffalo Hangs Its Head In Shame as L’il Luke Laughs at Slaves and Dead Workers

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Susie linked to this clip.

And while she’s right to point to all the evidence that L’il Luke Russert is an ignorant toad about how many jobs Obama’s trade deals will send overseas, I’m more amazed by his arrogant response to being asked about slave and dead labor.

Here’s my take on the exchange, starting from where Dylan Ratigan first interrupts L’il Luke to call him on the claim trade deals will create jobs.

L’il Luke [reciting a script]: A few things where they could find common ground are free trade agreements that are pending with South Korea and Colombia and Panama. It’s unclear whether or not [overtalk]

Ratigan: Hold on, hold on.

[Luke adopts self-satisfied smile]

Ratigan: Are you referencing those free trade deals?

L’il Luke: I am referencing the free trade deals.

Ratigan: I mean, come on now Luke, let’s talk about that for a second.

[Luke bites his lips]

That Panama deal’s nothing but a bank secrecy haven–

[Luke bursts out laughing]

That’s basically what that Panama deal is.

[Luke finally manages to look serious]

The South Korean deal is a way to hire North Korean slaves to make South Korean products so that we can refund the North Korean government–

[Luke has lost it again, openly laughing]

–After giving them sanctions, I call that the “let’s give them a nuke anyway plan,”

[Luke looking down, trying to compose himself, looks up again, biting his lips]

You know, what are we talking about? [Relents]

I’m giving you a hard time.

L’il Luke: No, I know you are. [Laughs] You threw me off my game there a little bit.

Ratigan: Tell me the truth, Luke.

L’il Luke: Aw look, —

Ratigan: When they discuss the South Korean trade agreement around Congress, do they refer to it as “hey let’s give North Korea a nucl- anyway plan?”

L’il Luke [finally adopting his serious pundit face]: No they do not.

Ratigan: They don’t?

L’il Luke: They say it’s a job creator.

Ratigan: For who? For North Korean slaves?

L’il Luke: For the United States, no, they say for the United States. They say it’s a job creator, can immediately [create] thousands and thousands of jobs.

[finally finding comfort in the Village script again, but trying to move on]

You also heard today from President Obama–

Ratigan: How?

L’il Luke [completely sheepish look]: The [??] of free trade, you take the tariffs away, people, you know, build things here,

Ratigan: No, no no. But the tariffs are away, and if I’m exploiting the ability to access a rigged Chinese currency system and North Korean slave labor,

[L’il Luke furrows his brow slightly, affects to look concerned, bites his lips again, shifts his head]

Seems interesting.

L’il Luke: It does.

Ratigan: My Colombian, the Colombian deal’s my favorite. That’s a big job creator.

[L’il Luke looks worried. He hasn’t studied for this test.]

Whaddya say we do a deal with the only country in the world that openly murders all labor organizers–

[L’il Luke has just decided he’s not having fun anymore; juts out chin, peeved now that Dylan is making him play this game]

–to ensure that they will never ask for a raise ever.

L’il Luke [apparently grasping on something he read in college or heard at a cocktail wienie fest]: Well, Colombia, though, in all fairness, Colombia has had massive strides in improvement in terms of their security. I mean, you’re bringing up something that George Miller–

Ratigan: But I’m saying the murder rate of union organizers on a per capita–

[Juts out chin, affects his serious look]

L’il Luke: Well, that’s why there’s Democratic opposition in the House for it right now and they have to figure out that, you know, technicality there.

“That, you know, technicality.” That Democrats think maybe it’s a bad idea to open into unfettered competition with a country that kills labor organizers. But that slave labor in Korea, that cheap labor in China? That–that sounds interesting.

L’il Luke is only where he is because Daddy combined his down to earth Buffalo roots with actual knowledge and–in the years before his death–access, access, access.

But it’s L’il Luke’s smugness that makes me want to vomit. Ratigan is trying to talk about how working people die over this shit. And Luke, shaken for the moment off his tight Village script, not only doesn’t have the knowledge to engage with Ratigan, but doesn’t even have the respect for the subject to avoid laughing openly.

What do you think of your kid, now, Timmeh Russert? Laughing at the idea of slaves and dead workers?

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Tornadoes, Austerity, and Food Stamps

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In one of my posts on drones, I noted that we have had more deaths this year in AL (238) and MO (159) because of extreme tornadoes the severity of which is probably at least due partly to climate change than we have from terrorism.

But there’s something else that seems to have happened.

Meteor Blades has a post cataloging how many more people are relying on food stamps this month–45.8 million, or close to 15% of the country. He links to the state-level data, which reveals  a huge spike in AL’s use of food stamps. In April 2011, 868,813 Alambamans used food stamps–a worse than average but not abysmal 18% of its population. In May, that number spiked to 1,762,481, over 37% of the population, almost 900,000 new people getting food stamps.

Incidentally, the only people from AL’s congressional delegation to vote no on the debt ceiling vote this week–Martha Robey, Mo Brooks, Richard Shelby, and Jeff Sessions–did so from the right.

Assuming these numbers are right (the numbers reported for new applicants–100,000 from hard-hit Jefferson County–seem to support them), there’s still a good reason why so many Alabamans are relying on federal aid to feed themselves: the devastating tornadoes in April. In response, the state rolled out special sign-up processes, turning around applications in three days time. Though, at least from some quarters, there was skepticism about whether people were applying because of the tornado, or more generalized need.

At the very least, the reliance of over a third of Alabamans on food stamps, half of them in response to the tornadoes, suggests one more cost from this crazy weather.

But it will be interesting to see what happens to these numbers in subsequent months. Will these numbers return to “normal,” reflecting an appropriate and short term response to a disaster (even if it is one Alabama’s legislators all refuse to pay for)? Or are we seeing a poor state come to rely on the government for bare necessities once it becomes easy to apply?

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