Catfood Country

[Hannah Bell]

Sunday, July 25, 2010
Catfood Country

This is the country brought to us by our multi-national corporation overlords and the politicians they own: An analysis by the nonpartisan Employee Benefit Research Center ("Study: Many workers' retirement savings will run out too soon," USA Today, July 14, 2010) found that 64 percent of workers earning less than $30,000 a year will run out of money within 10 years of retiring, and that "early" baby boomers, meaning people ages 56 to 62, have a 47 percent likelihood of not having enough money to cover basic retirement costs (i.e., housing, food, and clothing) and will be unable to meet uninsured medical expenses.

If anyone doubts the conclusions of these estimates, the consequences are already becoming apparent in the latest U.S. Department of Labor report ("Workers Over 65 Vie With Teens in Labor Market for First Time Since Truman," Bloomberg.com, July 13, 2010) that announced that for the first time since at least 1948, people over age 65 now outnumber young workers 16-19 by a significant margin. There are currently 6.6 million seniors working or actively seeking work versus only 5.9 million 16-19 year olds. Moreover, the rate of growth in this disparity is increasing rapidly. The two reports when taken together spell a major change in the labor market that will be particularly problematic for places like New York City, which has such a large number of young people, seniors, and people living at or near poverty.

Why should we be alarmed by more and more seniors coming back into the labor market? For at least two reasons. First, many are not coming back voluntarily, but because they cannot afford basic necessities on their fixed incomes; second, because they're often taking low-wage jobs that used to be the first steps into the labor market for young people, particularly those without credentials and who come from poor communities...

This kind of future - where people work right up until death at shitty jobs - is EXACTLY the one the education deformers, the anti-union people and the corporate whore politicians...want to bring for all but the top 1%. That's what the ed deform movement is all about - firing as many teachers as you can so you turn over your ENTIRE teaching corps every five years and never have to pay any retirement costs...And they know they can do this because the Obama administration is now saying unemployment will stay at or above 9% all the way to the end of 2012. And of course those numbers don't count the people who have already dropped out of the job market and stopped looking because there is nothing to be had or the people working fewer hours and crappier jobs just to have some money coming in. There will be PLENTY of applicants to take the place of fired veteran teachers...

http://perdidostreetschool.blogspot.com/2010/07/catfood-country.html

[jaxx]

1. Corporate whores is used three times in that article.....

to describe the President and the administration. It's over the top and inflammatory.

[Hardrada]

2. Probably just once is okay. IMHO

[jaxx]

3. None would be best.

Calling the President names seems counter progressive.

[Hannah Bell]

4. i edited the offending reference. i think the information on retirement & the return of seniors

to the labor pool is important.

the blog is written by a teacher; since teachers are under attack both by corporatists & by this administration (not to mention the last one), i can understand the writer's anger.

and i think it's good for the party and the administration to be aware it's out there. as teachers' unions were one of the biggest supporters of this admin.

[jaxx]

8. I understand your edit, but the article stands.

I won't get into the teachers business, not that I don't care, but that it would be like a teacher telling me how to do my job. It's the labeling that creates brick walls...

[Hannah Bell]

11. people elected to high office should expect to be called names. they're supposed to be tough enough

to take the flak.

i could understand your concern if the article were nothing but a string of f-bombs or a bunch of teabagger bullshit about the president being a commie kenyan muslim, but it's not. the information is truthful & the issues are real & grave.

it's people's lives. it's not about insider party politics or people being mean to obama. the admin needs to admit there are legitimate concerns being voiced BY ITS OWN SUPPORTERS & change course.

[jaxx]

12. F bombs are a dime a dozen, as are the corporatist labels.

Legitimate concerns don't need to use name calling, they only need to use facts.

[Hannah Bell]

13. i don't speak for the blogger. but i disagree that "only facts" is enough to move policy.

or that politics should always be confined to the polite, circumspect language of middle-class "professionalism".

[jaxx]

15. Without facts there is no policy.

Did you just smack the middle class with "professionalism'?

[Hannah Bell]

17. the powerful can create their own "facts". facts don't move policy; power does.

[Hardrada]

5. Suggest a nice way to express the sentiment, if you would.

[Hannah Bell]

6. i don't see why i need to. i edited the offending reference. i didn't post it because the blogger

used that term, but because the piece contained information about seniors crowding out young people in the workforce for low-income jobs. something unprecedented since WW2. it's a very bad sign, & not much hopeful on the horizon.

i think that's about 100 times more important than the blogger's uncircumspect word choice.

i voted for obama. i didn't like clinton, or kucinich. i liked edwards because he talked about poverty & class a bit -- but he seemed a bit smarmy/phoney & apparently was.

i have no personal beef against obama; but i want this admin to change course. i think the present course is going to seriously hurt people, & in my own life & community it already has.

[Hardrada]

20. I wasn't addressing you but one of the critics. I agree with you entirely.

[JDPriestly]

9. Americans are angry. The Obama administration is trying to

settle them down. Wrong strategy. He needs to acknowledge that the anger is justified and do a lot more to prosecute the terrible crimes that were committed -- torture, illegal wiretapping, fraud, embezzlement (remember the millions that just disappeared in Iraq?), the list is very long.

When people feel or know that they are victims of an economic crime, they feel very, very angry. If they can, they sue the person who committed the crime against them or report the crime to the police or DA's office.

Many Americans are protesting the economic crimes that were done in the Bush administration and continue to this date. Obama signed a bill that doesn't appear to be nearly strong enough. He has not prosecuted anyone. Meanwhile, people can't find jobs, pay is stagnant and people have lost and are still losing their homes. People know they have been cheated. They want to see the cheaters punished. Obama is not punishing them.

Americans are angry. Do you think they should not be?

[jaxx]

14. People have every right to be angry about whatever they want.

My family has been hit by the economic mess, we're angry too. But it's sent in other directions....such as right back where it started and to the rightwing in congress that is hell bent against the people. No, they haven't prosecuted anyone. I'm no lawyer but my guess is that to prosecute you know the charges will stick as crimes. Crimes, not a lack of ethics that tore this country apart.

[JDPriestly]

19. Millions went missing in Iraq -- unaccounted for -- during the Bush

administration. The illegal wiretapping was a violation of the Fourth Amendment and then existing law. Torture -- waterboarding -- is illegal. The Bush administration invaded another country, Iraq, based on lies. That is a violation of the law and not just American law. The list of crimes is long.

I am suggesting that Obama needs to use your anger, the anger of Americans. He needs to turn it against the Republicans. The prosecutions are justified. Americans deserve to know who committed the crimes that got us into this financial mess. There is blame to go around. Some Democrats may have been responsible. Some close to Obama may have been responsible.

One thing is certain, Obama did not support or assist in any of the terrible decisions or acts that caused the economic crisis. But, by hiring people like Geithner and folks from Wall Street and the left-overs from the Clinton administration like Larry Summers who participated in the conduct and policy changes that enabled the criminals to cheat the American people as well as people in other countries, Obama has failed to bring justice. That is why people have turned their anger toward him rather than at those against whom they would be angry if they analyzed the causes of their problems rationally.

Obama needs to have the courage to attack the wrongs that have been done. He promised that he would change the way things work in D.C., that he would bring transparency. If he actually delivered on those fundamental promises, he would fire some of his top advisers and prosecute a number of prominent people. His administration has refused to do that. The recent Feinberg report on the outrageous salaries in the financial sector of the economy is yet another stupid mistake. Cenk correctly states that the companies that gave the huge bonuses are actually still in the red because they still carry so much bad debt that they have not acknowledged in their accounting. If they were honest about their economic conditions, they would not be giving bonuses.

When I saw Obama at the unannounced and last minute news conference last Friday, I saw a spark of anger in Obama that gave me hope.

No doubt, Obama will go back into his Oval Office, surround himself with his "experienced" advisers -- meaning those who caused the economic mess and who backed the Iraq War (Hillary did so with great passion) and become the calm self that makes his advisers feel so safe.

Obama needs to answer criticisms more strongly. He needs to show some emotion. It is part of his job to give voice to our rage at this time. Our rage is righteous. It is not without cause.

[DrDan]

18. prosecute????? Those crimes continue. There is not going to be any prosecution.

[JDPriestly]

7. K&R

[jtuck004]

10. "This kind of future - where people work right up until death at shitty jobs..."

I think that is over the top and inflammatory. How the hell do we dare treat human beings like that, or, even worse, allow others to help it happen in our name in what was the richest country in the world? That is, until the corporations, with the help of elected officials, started moving all the good jobs overseas or across the border so they could make a bigger profit, leaving their ex-employees to freeze in the winter - except for those who are killed when they set their house on fire by trying to burn newspaper in the oven just so they can stop shivering for a few hours. Where the financial industry literally ruins the economy, clearly precipitating the unemployment of 15 million of our neighbors, is directly responsible for creating a bubble that collapses leaving millions of good people without a home or the resources to get another one? A country where
1) 36% can't contribute anything toward their retirement
2) because 61% live paycheck-to-paycheck
3) because 66% of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1% of all Americans
4) and a staggering 43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved up for retirement.

The Federal Reserve Chairman was nominated by President Obama, who nearly any thinking person would support over over any candidate our opponents have ever brought forward. But the Federal Reserve has made public statements, saying the "crisis was caused by the shadow banking system" and the shadow banks "increased the fragility of the entire banking system", and yet for some unfathomable reason this very chairman is trying to re-inflate the very system that has brought so much pain to so many people here... through their complicity in what Senator Bernie Sanders calls the Great Wall Street Depression. Given those facts, and in the face of the abject misery those institutions have brought to so many people, the fact that someone calls them "corporate whores" seems almost excessively mild. What do you call people who wreck the economy of a country in which 50% of the children need food stamps during a year just to eat, who cry when they leave school on Friday because they know they won't eat again until Monday when the school kitchen comes into view.

Now what do you call people who support them? How could one possibly expect people to be respectful when they are so dis-respected?

Is there a button where I can notify a moderator about this? Where I can have them tombstone a society which makes people live their whole lives, raise their families, pay taxes, give service to the country, teach the kids, dig the ditches - and then be told that for the last few years of their life they can either curl up in a ball and die or get the "good" job standing at the local Wal Mart with a big happy face for minimum wage, part-time with no health benefits, until their back gives out or their arthritis is so bad they are screaming just to try to pull themselves out of bed, or they are coughing so much that they can't catch their breath?

'Cause it's damn well over the top.

[eridani]

16. +10000 n/t

[mdmc]

21. 1