Endangered Species: The American Middle Class

I continue to follow and bring you information on the economics front that is depressing and for that I apologize. I wish I could be the bearer of really good news for a change but circumstances are what they are. I’m going to cite two more articles that have done extensive research into statistics that show that more and more middle class Americans are losing their socioeconomic status. I find this an appalling development because the strength of a democracy and a market economy lie in its middle class. We’re quite dependent–as an economy–on the buying power of households, further erosion of middle incomes can only eradicate any hope we have of steady growth. Then, there’s the social impact of accessibility to schools and other means of upward mobility. Limitations are by definition limiting. If we place limitations on the majority of American people, we limit our country.

The international version of Der Spiegel has an article that explains this trend in the U.S. First, Americans aren’t stupid. We know we’re losing ground.

According to a recent opinion poll, 70 percent of Americans believe that the recession is still in full swing. And this time it isn’t just the poor who are especially hard-hit, as they usually are during recessions.

This time the recession is also affecting well-educated people who had been earning a good living until now. These people, who see themselves as solidly middle-class, now feel more threatened than ever before in the country’s history. Four out of 10 Americans who consider themselves part of this class believe that they will be unable to maintain their social status.

No amount of cheerful discussion about the summer of recovery is going to change the outlook around us. You can see it every where. Things are not improving. The root cause of this is still the poor jobs market and the inability of the federal government to really grasp and do something significant about the problem. I still can’t believe that unemployment rates are where they are and that there is a threat of deflation and some policy folks are talking about the deficit. The deficit will close if people pay taxes and don’t require unemployment benefits and food stamps. Putting people back to work solves much of this issue. Why do so many government leaders refuse to see this? These rates of unemployment cannot be taken as the new normal.

In fact, the United States, in the wake of a real estate, financial economic and now debt crisis, which it still hasn’t overcome, is threatened by a social Ice Age more severe than anything the country has seen since the Great Depression.

The United States is experiencing the problem of long-term unemployment for the first time since World War II. The number of the long-term unemployed is already three times as high as it was during any crisis in the past, and it is still rising.

More than a year after the official end of the recession, the overall unemployment rate remains consistently above 9.5 percent. But this is just the official figure. When adjusted to include the people who have already given up looking for work or are barely surviving on the few hundred dollars they earn with a part-time job and are using up their savings, the real unemployment figure jumps to more than 17 percent.

In its current annual report, the US Department of Agriculture notes that “food insecurity” is on the rise, and that 50 million Americans couldn’t afford to buy enough food to stay healthy at some point last year. One in eight American adults and one in four children now survive on government food stamps. These are unbelievable numbers for the world’s richest nation.

The Dubya years should’ve put down the notion of any return to trickle down economics. Tax exemptions and reductions for the very rich do not create a vibrant economy. It creates asset bubbles. Why do we not see bold leadership on economic issues? Certainly, that’s been the main issue for the last two years in every election. Why do they not get it?

A recent NY Post op-ed ‘So long, middle class’ beats the wealthy’s drum against higher taxes –which is an argument that completely lacks merit–but gets the basic statistics correct.

Here are some of those statistics.

According to a 2009 poll, 61% of Americans “always or usually” live paycheck to paycheck, which was up from 49% in 2008 and 43% in 2007.

36% of Americans say that they don’t contribute anything to retirement saving

Only the top 5% of households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975

The bottom 40% of income earners now collectively own less than 1% of the nation’s wealth.

About 21% of all children are living below the poverty line in 2010 — the highest rate in 20 years.

According to Professor Emmanuel Saez of the University of California at Berkeley, the top 10% percent of Americans now take in approximately 50% of the income.

More than 40% of Americans who are employed now work in often low-paying service jobs.

Despite the financial crisis, the number of millionaires in the US rose a whopping 16% to 7.8 million in 2009.

For the first time in US history, more than 40 million Americans are on food stamps, and the US Department of Agriculture projects that number will go up to 43 million Americans in 2011

We’re still a very rich nation. Where the hell are our priorities? These are the kinds of statistics that lead a country into third world status and make them revolution prone. Right now, the anger is aimed at folks still coming into the U.S. looking for opportunities. The xenophobia recently has been way over the top. This anger needs to be channeled into something more productive; like working on policies to change the direction of these trends. We can’t continue to build massive jails instead of revitalized school houses and send young working class men and women into the military and to the Middle East as their only chance at training and upward mobility. This is not the behavior of a developed nation.

We need real change. It’s time to call out the Madison Avenue version of change for what it is. It’s more of the same. The bailout plans, the health care reform, the stimulus package did more for multinational entities than it has for our own neighbors. We need to start focusing and venting our frustration towards the politicians that put their lobbyist-in-training status above the interests of the nation.

Is religion naturally intolerant?

The Park51 project has brought many ugly things to the surface. One of the astounding rumors that we’ve continually had to put down here at TC are the ones about President Obama and his Muslim and Kenyan roots that some extremists have been using to whip up xenophobia. Just because we don’t consider him to be an effective president doesn’t mean we support right wing memes about him that play into xenophobia and religious and ethnic bigotry. Playing into those fears is the Rev. Franklin Graham. While some religious leaders work towards interfaith understanding, others fan the flame of we’re right and every one else is apostate.

This leads me to continue my assumption that most forms of religion are–by human design–intolerant.

Here’s Graham fanning the falsehood about Obama’s faith.

The Rev. Franklin Graham on Friday said that President Barack Obama was “born a Muslim” because the religion’s “seed” is passed from the father.

Graham made the remark during an interview with CNN’s John King set to air Friday night after being asked about a new Pew poll showing that 31 percent of Republicans believe the president — a Christian — is Muslim.

Asked by King if he, too, has doubts about the president’s faith, Graham said that Obama’s “problem is he was born a Muslim.”

“The seed is passed through the father,” Graham said. “He was born a Muslim. His father was a Muslim; the seed of Muslim is passed through the father like the seed of Judaism is passed through the mother. He was born a Muslim; his father gave him an Islamic name.”

Graham, the son of evangelist Billy Graham, acknowledged that Obama has said he is a Christian.

Obama says he’s a Christian, why not just leave it at that? This stupidity has even led to a circus of comments that suggest the president needs to go to church more often to prove it. This is ridiculous. Public displays of religion don’t actually demonstrate how seriously one takes their faith. Turning religion into a political strategy is something that has always been anathema to me. Not only because the Jesus created in the new testament preaches against it (Examples from Matthew: “And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites [are]: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.” “But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen [do]: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking”. ), but because it goes against the secular nature of our government as set up in The Constitution

Here are the voices of September Eleventh Families for Peaceful Tomorrows who support Religious Freedom.

September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows applauds President Barack Obama for his statement in support of the building of a mosque near Ground Zero. On that day, members of our organization paid the ultimate price. We lost loved ones in the tragic attacks, attacks perpetrated by criminals. Our losses will never be redeemed; our wounds will never fully heal. On 9/11/2001 while many of us buried our loved ones we also took heart in our nation’s principles and our rule of law. Ours is a nation that fights for religious freedom. Many of us who call ourselves Americans do so because we came to escape religious persecution in other lands.

We applaud President Obama for his leadership on this issue. Simply put:
we lost our family members on 9/11/2001, but will not lose our nation, too. America, the concept and the people and the land thrive when we chose to trust in our principles rather than cave to our basest fears.

What better place for healing, reconciliation and understanding than Ground Zero? We honor our family members by practicing American principles and moving forward from Ground Zero to a future of peaceful coexist

I am no fan of institutionalized religion as you well know. I am, however, a huge fan of the constitutional right to practice one’s religion and to be religious without public harassment. I don’t care if it’s the president or the guy on the corner. All this right wing religious fanaticism on what is and what isn’t acceptable is just pure xenophobia and based on religious intolerance. It’s not pretty and it’s not an American Value. Here’s a good article in Time on the number of U.S. religious leaders that support the Park51 project.

Is this the man you want to listen to?

or how about this?

There are many things that form a reasoned basis to for criticism of President Obama. There are many things that form a reasoned basis to criticize policies and human rights violations by countries like Saudi Arabia and revolutionary terrorist groups like the Taliban. Why ignite the fires of religious and ethnic bigotry? The President is not a Muslim and he was born in Hawaii. Franklin Graham and his seed story should be relegated to a nonpublic place.

Get on with discussing some real issues. Constitutional rights are not negotiable.

Hello? It’s not really killed yet and there’s still Oil in the Gulf! (Oh, and U.S. troops in the other Gulf)

The real headlines are still out there. Why is no one covering them? Just look at the lack of attention paid to the Gulf Oil Gusher. It’s still not killed yet but you wouldn’t know that reading the newspapers or watching the news any where but down here. They’re talking September now.

It now looks like BP’s blown well in the Gulf of Mexico won’t be completely killed until September. BP engineers are conducting a series of tests in preparation for a procedure called a bottom kill to ensure the well can withstand the pressure from the operation.

No oil has leaked from the well since it was capped with a static kill procedure last month. But the bottom kill is needed to make sure the well stays sealed. Before the well was capped on July 15, 4.9 barrels of oil spilled into the Gulf. The worst oil spill in US history was set off by an explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon oil rig on April 20.

The folks at The Oil Drum find this curiouser and curiouser.

from Rock man:

“Thad Allen, appearing on CNN, said under the latest timeline agreed with BP, the operation to kill the well by injecting mud and cement into the bottom through a relief well should be conducted the week after the U.S. Labor Day holiday, which is on Monday, September 6”

What I find curious is that once they replace the BOP they still currently plan to do the bottom kill/cmt with RW1. With the new BOP in place it’s a rather standard procedure to go in hole with drill pipe. Not only can they tag the top of the top cmt job and confirm exactly where it is they can do a leak off test (LOT) and confirm exactly what its limit is. They can also pull out the DP and run a variety of logs to tell where the cmt is in the annulus. They can also perforate a shallow section of the production csg and pump cmt into the annulus and permanently seal it. Likewise they can perf the csg at the planned RW intersect and pump cmt into the annulus there. After that it would be a simple matter to set the MMS required cmt plugs in the csg and complete the P&A process.

Once the BOP has been replaced making the RW intersect won’t be exceptionally dangerous. OTOH, it isn’t neccesary. Finishing the kill and P&A with drill pipe would be the safest approach IMHO. I wonder if that isn’t what they’re thinking about but don’t want to put it on the table until the replace the BOP and run logs.

response by MoonofA:

I think you are correct Rockman, but the BP and the politicians think, rightly, that the public has heard so much about “Relief Well” that it now expects that relief well process to be finished to its end. Not doing so would again raise lots of conspiracy stories.

Even if they totally kill the well form above, which they may well do, the “Relief Well” success shown and commented on CNNFOXMSNBC is what everybody has invested in and wants to see.

We’re also getting conflicting reports about how much oil is actually still out there. The University of Georgia just released a study that conflicts with what NOAA and the government are telling us.

Most of the oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico earlier this year is still there and poses a sizable risk to the marine ecosystem, according to a report issued yesterday by a group of independent marine scientists.

Of the 4.1 million barrels of oil spilled during the Deepwater Horizon disaster, the researchers estimate between 70 and 79 percent remains in the water. The new calculations are markedly different from a government report issued on Aug. 4 which argued that just 26 percent of the oil was “residual” in the water.

Media reports quickly picked up on this figure, and made it sound as though the vast majority of oil had simply disappeared. Jane Lubchenco, the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, appeared to be hedging her bets when she said, “At least 50 percent of the oil that was released is now completely gone from the system, and most of the remainder is degrading rapidly or is being removed from the beaches.”

The new report, authored by a mix of oceanographers at the University of Georgia and the Skidaway Institute of Oceanography, called such characterizations “largely inaccurate and misleading.”

Another story that is obviously largely inaccurate and misleading is that of the “last combat troops being pulled from Iraq”. At least MSNBC was a bit more clear: ‘Last full U.S. combat brigade leaves Iraq; Final fighting force rolls into Kuwait; 50,000 Americans to remain’. This seems a bit of a ‘mission accomplished banner’ moment to me. FIFTY THOUSAND remain? Notice how it also says “full” U.S. combat brigade. Isn’t ‘full’ a bit of a triangulation? Notice, also, that all they really did was cross the border to Kuwait. Is that really an end?

So, how about this from “Civilians to Take U.S. Lead as Military Leaves Iraq”? Or, more aptly, when is a withdrawal not really a withdrawal?

The array of tasks for which American troops are likely to be needed, military experts and some Iraqi officials say, include training Iraqi forces to operate and logistically support new M-1 tanks, artillery and F-16s they intend to acquire from the Americans; protecting Iraq’s airspace until the country can rebuild its air force; and perhaps assisting Iraq’s special operations units in carrying out counterterrorism operations.

Such an arrangement would need to be negotiated with Iraqi officials, who insisted on the 2011 deadline in the agreement with the Bush administration for removing American forces. With the Obama administration in campaign mode for the coming midterm elections and Iraqi politicians yet to form a government, the question of what future military presence might be needed has been all but banished from public discussion.

“The administration does not want to touch this question right now,” said one administration official involved in Iraq issues, adding that military officers had suggested that 5,000 to 10,000 troops might be needed. “It runs counter to their political argument that we are getting out of these messy places,” the official, speaking only on condition of anonymity, added. “And it would be quite counterproductive to talk this way in front of the Iraqis. If the Iraqis want us, they should be the demandeur.”

Oh, and we’re in the “recovery summer”. Did you catch this headline today? “Weekly Jobless Claims Post Surprise Jump, Hit 500,000”.

You don’t have to be an economist to know our economy is in bad shape

The message from Washington is that we’ve turned the corner on the recession and any day now, our lives will improve. No one is buying it however, except maybe a few folks that just don’t want to admit that what’s being done for the vast majority living in America has been close to nothing. A new AP Poll shows that people don’t think the economy is on the mend. Not a good omen for the fall elections.

Eleven weeks before the Nov. 2 balloting, just 41 percent of those surveyed approve of the president’s performance on the economy, down from 44 percent in April, while 56 percent disapprove. And 61 percent say the economy has gotten worse or stayed the same on Obama’s watch.

Still, three-quarters also say it’s unrealistic to expect noticeable economic improvements in the first 18 months of the president’s term. And Obama’s overall approval rating was unaffected; it remained at 49 percent, in part because most Americans still like him personally.

Americans’ dim view of the economy grew even more pessimistic this summer as the nation’s unemployment rate stubbornly hovered near 10 percent. That’s been a drag on both Obama and Democrats, who control Congress.

Meanwhile, one of the obvious results of the bad employment situation and consumer demand accompanied by low tax revenues to states and municipalities is that nearly every municipality is laying off teachers. School districts aren’t acting to rehire any despite a recent stimulus program aimed to bring some back into the classroom.

As schools handed out pink slips to teachers this spring, states made a beeline to Washington to plead for money for their ravaged education budgets. But now that the federal government has come through with $10 billion, some of the nation’s biggest school districts are balking at using their share of the money to hire teachers right away.

With the economic outlook weakening, they argue that big deficits are looming for the next academic year and that they need to preserve the funds to prevent future layoffs. Los Angeles, for example, is projecting a $280 million budget shortfall next year that could threaten more jobs.

“You’ve got this herculean task to deal with next year’s deficit,” said Lydia L. Ramos, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation’s second-largest after New York City.

“So if there’s a way that you can lessen the blow for next year,” she said, “we feel like it would be responsible to try to do that.”

Two bright spots sit on the horizon in policy but the President needs to be firm to ensure they happen. Lobbyist-in-training Chris Dodd says that Elizabeth Warren is unconfirmable but Congressman Barney Frank is lobbying the president for her. Warren has been a strong advocate for consumers.

Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat who leads the House Financial Services Committee, joined 41 other lawmakers in urging “no further delay” on nominating Warren, 61, as the bureau’s first leader in a letter to Obama dated yesterday.

“You have an opportunity to appoint to head this body a true visionary — not the usual Washington practice of a careerist,” the House Democrats wrote in the letter released today by New York Representative Carolyn Maloney.

Dodd says he will support her if the President decides to appoint her and says he won’t derail her nomination.

So far, the Obama administration hasn’t made a nomination, but there has been a groundswell of support for Warren from consumer advocates, labor unions, academics and a broad cross-section of Democratic lawmakers.

Endorsements have come from The New York Times and MoveOn.org, the political action group. This week, the campaign crossed over into a rap music video by Main Street Brigade, a group that pushes a consumer agenda, posted on YouTube.

“Sheriff Warren Wrap” (http://bit.ly/bzRz9l) has a western theme, mentioning Oklahoma, where Warren grew up. Comedian Ryan Anthony Lumas builds up Warren as a person who will protect consumers against the big banks.

“Elizabeth Warren, we’ve got your back,” Lumas sings. “Wall Street, you’d better watch out.”

The Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection is a key component of the financial services reform bill, signed into law by the president last month. Dodd was a key proponent of the reform and the consumer protection agency, in particular.

The idea for the bureau came primarily from Warren herself. The new director will be the first new banking regulator in decades and the first focused solely on consumers.

The President is pushing a plan to make it easier for small businesses to get loans. That would be heaven-sent down here in the Gulf Coast because many are hurting from the oil spill and the recession. Small businesses are usually a good source of stimulus because they don’t ship their jobs abroad and many buy and source locally. I’m hoping President Milquetoast develops some fight on this one. It’s been difficult to bet banks to lend to anyone despite all the TARP and public funding to them.

The legislation Obama is promoting would ease the terms for loans guaranteed by the Small Business Administration, providing $12 billion in tax breaks and issuing grants to states to provide business loans.

It would also provide $30 billion to banks with less than $10 billion in assets to encourage lending to small businesses. The cost of paying back those capital infusions would decline based on the level of small-business lending by the bank. The aid would spur $300 billion in lending, according to the administration.

Here’s something to protest about …

LEGO's sexist minifigures are not something to cheer about.

(h/t to a tweet from Shira Tarrant)

I was always a really fussy mom about the kinds of toys I bought for my girls. They got baby dolls but I never did the Barbie route with them. I always asked myself this question: If this was a son would I feel comfortable giving this toy to him or would his grandparents complain that it wasn’t appropriate for a boy? That was my acid test question. If most people wouldn’t give it to a boy, I wouldn’t give it to my girls.

I gave my oldest a microscope with a bunch of slides for her first grade birthday. Her room looked typically Montessori. There were small, low books shelves (that used to hold my dad’s law books from Missouri) lined with baskets and different activities. We had a family membership to the Henry Doorly Zoo (the only good thing in Omaha to do) and when I took her for strolls, that’s where we would go. We’d pick a loop to walk that day and which animals we wanted to see. Then, I’d buy her a book on the animal she liked best and her dad would read it to her that night. If we saw it again she’d get an action figure. She could build her own little zoo and frequently did. She said she wanted to be a Vet up until fifth grade when she switched to wanting to be a doctor for people instead. Because of my cancer experience, she wanted to cure cancer.

I took her to Yellowstone the year she developed a thing for bears, deers and elk. When she went through a dinosaur phase, we visited a dinosaur exhibit in St. Paul and we drove to Dinosaur National Monument which was one of my favorite trips as a kid. Unfortunately, she had plenty hands on experiences with hospitals because I had a very difficult second pregnancy followed by inoperable cancer. It went for two years so she really got to see the ins and outs of hospitals.

A lot of the toys I bought were actually wooden ones from Sweden that I had to mail order. They included puzzles with knobs, lots of wooden blocks. I had her godfather Jim make her a huge set of blocks so she could build herself into a castle if she wanted. She went through an intense My Little Pony stage so I bought her a kiddie medical kit and let her play vet on them.

She’s a doctor now delivering babies and pushing 30.

The younger one is a finance major at LSU. She’s my soccer dakini. Both play piano. Both draw and paint really well because we did endless art and craft projects at my house. It was easier to do that with their friends then clean up the mess and chaos later of unsupervised non-Montessori trained neighborhood kids.We also cooked and baked a of personalized pizzas, cupcakes, snacks, and cookies.

Neither complain that they lived a childhood without guns or sexist toys. (Although I do get yelled at about not giving them ballet lessons which both later did on their own.) We’d get the usual stockpile of them when they had birthday parties,but I always ensured I gave them something more exciting than a Barbie. For the youngest, it was usually something she could bang on like a drum or a bunch of rhythm instruments. (For mom, it was a bottle of Tylenol, a box of Calgon, and some earplugs.) The other thing she loved were trains so I bought plenty of them over the years in appropriate sizes shapes and types. We visited the aviation museum at Offutt AFB and the train station museum a lot. She liked things that moved as much as she did. (She used to scare the boys at her Montessori because she was very physical and assertive. She never hit any one but she knew how to stand her ground.)

Again, building blocks were a staple in my home because they were the one toy that I used to love. You could do anything with them. My cousins were of the Lincoln Logs generation so I did get some hand me downs of those things too. But what I really liked were the early versions of LEGOS so they pretty much hit the top of my list when I had the girls.

One of the toys that I always gave the girls were LEGOs. Well, evidently a lot has changed about LEGOS these days. They’ve just introduced fourteen new minifigures that are all yellow. Two are female. One is a nurse and the other is a cheerleader. Go check out the adventuresome kinds of things that the males do … including circus clown, spaceman, and zombie.

Sigh, some things never change. Some things change for the worse.

I intend to contact LEGO here and pitch a fit. Where is NOW when you really need them?

update: I’m not sure you read the ad accompanying said cheerleader, but here it is:

The Cheerleader is perpetually filled to bursting with energy, excitement and enthusiasm. She prefers cartwheels and handsprings to plain old ordinary walking, and she waves her pom-poms around wildly whenever she talks, which is pretty much all of the time.

compare that to the spaceman …

Greetings, strange creatures. I come in peace!”

This brave and intrepid space traveler doesn’t quite realize that he’s not out exploring the cosmos. The Spaceman walks in long, slow bounds across the landscape, somehow ignoring the fact that gravity is perfectly normal for everything else around him. He’s friendly and fearless, always happy to investigate a strange new place or salute a stranger with a universal-greeting hand gesture, but his unshakeable belief that he’s dealing with alien creatures and worlds can lead to a lot of confusion for everyone involved.