7% the tipping point pushing us over the cliff

Notes 28
Can’t pay the bill on the back of workers and students and the elderly.

AUSTIN, Texas – Public education in Texas is facing billions in proposed budget cuts that would include slashing arts education, pre-kindergarten programs and teacher incentive pay as lawmakers take on a massive deficit with the promise of no new taxes.
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Maybe Republicans could set tax rates at Eisenhower levels instead. By thinnest of margins in 2010, Republicans won 65 seats and are determined to turn the country upside down

by Chris Bowers
Sun Jan 16, 2011
A 7% national popular vote victory is a landslide in contemporary American politics. Democrats showed this in 2006 when they took back the House of Representatives with a 6.49% victory. President Barack Obama again made this point in 2008, when he defeated Senator John McCain by 7.27%. Just eleven weeks ago Republicans provided a third example when they won the national popular vote for Congress by 6.83%. A 7% victory isn’t just a win--it’s a thumping, a shellacking, or some such catch-phrase.

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Getting the word out and making it a matter of conviction like the NRA does

Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon | A Time for Action - Not Servility
Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon, RootsAction: "While Washington pundits are talking up a new civility, many progressives are bracing for the old servility - a bipartisanship that is servile to a corporate elite that is unquenchably greedy and more powerful than ever. But this is not a time for despair. It's a time for new activism - built upon one of the great achievements of the last decade: the rise of independent media."

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Time to keep the money home. RAISE TAXES

Think China Has a Big Stake in US Business? Not Yet
Kevin G. Hall, McClatchy Newspapers: "China holds almost $1 trillion in U.S. government bonds, but it's made only modest investments in the nuts and bolts of the U.S. economy. China lags far behind its Asian and European competitors in direct investment in the US - taking stakes in manufacturers, suppliers, warehouses and other businesses. In fact, cash-rich China is near the back of the pack."

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The rats under the rocks are overreaching. Maybe America will be revulsed by what it has done.

Is decline in workers’ power behind slow job growth?
By Zachary Roth
"For corporate America, the Great Recession is over. For the American work force, it's not."
That's how David Leonhardt of the New York Times puts it.
Leonhardt, a respected economics columnist for the Times, appears to disagree. One "obvious" explanation for slow job growth, he argues, is a shift in power away from workers and toward management. Leonhardt writes.
"For all their shortcomings," Leonhardt writes, "unions remain many workers' best hope for some bargaining power."

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Escape from emptiness. Make your life mean something

I Joined the Peace Corps Because of Angelina Jolie
by Sean Smith Info


“When I was famous for just being an actress, my life felt very shallow,” Jolie said.
So I was seeking something authentic when I arrived in India, and I got more than I bargained for. A reported 43 percent of Mumbai’s 18 million people live in slums, and the depth of poverty is soul-sickening. By the time I met with Jolie, I felt raw and rattled, and I was eager to learn how she coped with this kind of suffering in her role as a U.N. ambassador. She said it was painful, yes, but it wasn’t debilitating because she was active. Her work was bringing attention to crises in the world. “If I couldn’t do that, I don’t know how I’d be around it, because I’d feel helpless,” she told me as we drove through the city. “You know, we all go through stages in our life where we feel lost, and I think it all comes down to having a sense of purpose. When I was famous for just being an actress, my life felt very shallow. Then when I became a mom and started working with the U.N., I was happy. I could die and feel that I’d done the right things with my life. It’s as simple as that.”

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An abandoned dream financed through FANNIE MAE/FREDDIE
MAC, a middle class of homeowners

by Douglas A. McIntyre, Michael B. Sauter and Charles B. Stockdale
Tuesday, January 18, 2011

The single biggest problem in the U.S. real estate market is simple: There are very few homebuyers.
That seems obvious, but the "buyers' strike" has caused house prices to drop, along with an epidemic of foreclosures. What's worse, the long depression in real estate is probably not over. S&P has forecast that home prices will drop by 7% to 10% this year. The S&P Case-Shiller Index has dropped for most of the 20 largest real estate markets over the last several months. RealtyTrac recently reported that more than 1 million homes were foreclosed upon in 2010.
Many economists argue that the housing market may take four or five years to recover. Even if that's proven to be true, the all-time highs of 2006 may never be reached again.

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