New posts at Many Years Young 1/27/12

Narcissism Especially Bad for Men’s Health, Study Says

The Psycho-path to Success?

Genes Influence Criminal Behavior, Research Suggests

Boss’ management style affects bottom line

Plus lots more.

Joel Pett:

Glen Ford, Black Agenda Report:

State of Obama: Immunity for Wall Street

President Obama had hoped to put on a big show – a huge con, really – at his State of the Union address, by announcing a monetary “settlement” of massive banker criminality in housing foreclosures. “Obama’s operatives have doggedly pressed for a settlement that would effectively give banks immunity from prosecution..” But he was thwarted by a small group of state attorneys general that wanted a real investigation into “the crime of the century.” So the president “was finally forced to set up a federal unit of his own.” Since Obama’s own law enforcers have failed to send a single banker to jail, Wall Street immunity is likely to remain the real State of the Union.

Bold Progressives has a petition:

BIG NEWS: President Obama announced last night that our friend Eric Schneiderman, New York’s progressive Attorney General, will lead a new Special Unit to prosecute Wall Street illegality.

Let’s show Eric that if he’s willing to jail Wall Street bankers who broke the law and wrecked our economy, the American people will have his back.

Join over 22,000 others on our statement stating: “Bankers who broke the law must go to jail.” Click here.

Washington Wire:

Obama Lays Out New Policy Proposals

President Barack Obama made several new policy proposals in his State of the Union speech, though few of the ideas that need congressional approval are expected to advance.

The proposals for Congress to consider include:

• Create a “Buffett rule,” that would require households who earn more than $1 million per year to pay a minimum 30% federal income tax. In addition, families earning that much wouldn’t be allowed to take deductions for mortgage interest, health care, retirement or child care. Charitable contributions would still qualify for tax breaks.
• Require U.S. companies with foreign operations to pay a minimum tax on overseas profits. The companies would have to pay to the U.S. any difference between the foreign tax and the new, minimum tax. Officials wouldn’t say what the rate would be.
• Bar companies from deducting as a business expense costs associated with shutting U.S. operations to move them abroad.
• Create a new tax credit to cover moving expenses for companies that close production overseas and bring jobs back to the U.S.
• Reduce tax rates for manufacturers, with extra breaks for high-tech manufacturing.
• Pay for proposed $200 billion in spending on roads and bridges with some of the savings from the wind-down of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
• Reduce federal aid to colleges and universities that raise tuition too high. Officials didn’t provide details.
• Provide funding to help people who have kept up their mortgage payments current to refinance at lower interest rates.
• Double the number of work-study jobs available for college students.
• Ban farm subsidies for millionaires.
• Ban insider trading by members of Congress.
• Prohibit lobbyists from bundling campaign donations, and bundlers from lobbying.
• Require the Senate to give certain presidential nominees an up-or-down vote within 90 days.

Mr. Obama also said he would take these actions on his own:

• Create a new trade enforcement unit to investigate unfair trade practice in countries including China.
• Set aside more federal land for natural-gas extraction and require companies to disclose the chemicals they use in fracking, a method used to extract the gas.
• Encourage new partnerships between businesses and community colleges to train workers for needed jobs.
• Establish a financial crimes unit at the Justice Department to go after large-scale financial fraud.

The full text is available here.

Now, will he do it?

Chrystia Freeland, The Atlantic:

The Rise of the New Global Elite

Before the recession, it was relatively easy to ignore this concentration of wealth among an elite few. The wondrous inventions of the modern economy—Google, Amazon, the iPhone—broadly improved the lives of middle-class consumers, even as they made a tiny subset of entrepreneurs hugely wealthy. And the less-wondrous inventions—particularly the explosion of subprime credit—helped mask the rise of income inequality for many of those whose earnings were stagnant.

But the financial crisis and its long, dismal aftermath have changed all that. A multibillion-dollar bailout and Wall Street’s swift, subsequent reinstatement of gargantuan bonuses have inspired a narrative of parasitic bankers and other elites rigging the game for their own benefit. And this, in turn, has led to wider—and not unreasonable—fears that we are living in… a plutocracy, in which the rich display outsize political influence, narrowly self-interested motives, and a casual indifference to anyone outside their own rarefied economic bubble…

The rise of the new plutocracy is inextricably connected to two phenomena: the revolution in information technology and the liberalization of global trade…

Many corporations have profited from this economic upheaval. Expanded global access to labor (skilled and unskilled alike), customers, and capital has lowered traditional barriers to entry and increased the value of an ahead-of-the-curve insight or innovation. Facebook, whose founder, Mark Zuckerberg, dropped out of college just six years ago, is already challenging Google, itself hardly an old-school corporation. But the biggest winners have been individuals, not institutions. The hedge-fund manager John Paulson, for instance, single-handedly profited almost as much from the crisis of 2008 as Goldman Sachs did.

Meanwhile, the vast majority of U.S. workers, however devoted and skilled at their jobs, have missed out on the windfalls of this winner-take-most economy—or worse, found their savings, employers, or professions ravaged by the same forces that have enriched the plutocratic elite. The result of these divergent trends is a jaw-dropping surge in U.S. income inequality…

The lesson of history is that, in the long run, super-elites have two ways to survive: by suppressing dissent or by sharing their wealth. It is obvious which of these would be the better outcome for America, and the world. Let us hope the plutocrats aren’t already too isolated to recognize this.

Dean Baker:

Unemployment Is Down Because People Have Given Up Looking for Work

The NYT mentioned the drop in the unemployment rate to 8.5 percent from a peak of 10.0 percent in 2009 as evidence of the economy’s recovery. Most of this decline is the result of people leaving the labor force. (Workers are only counted as being unemployed if they are still looking for work.) The employment to population ratio, the percentage of people with jobs, is only 0.3 percentage points above its low-point for the downturn.

New posts at Many Years Young 1/26/12

Positive thinking, affirmation help health

Do You Crave Spontaneous Happiness?

Steady Diet of Mental Stimulation Might Reduce Alzheimer’s Risk

Organize your mind to organize your life

Plus lots more.

New posts at Many Years Young 1/25/12

Exercise triggers “cellular garbage disposal”

Can Video Games Get You Fit?

Walking in place during commercials offers a good calorie burn

Fitting fitness inside the cubicle

Plus lots more.

Bob Gorrell:

Washington Wire:

Warren Buffett’s Secretary to Attend State of the Union

When President Barack Obama calls for changes in the tax code in his State of the Union address Tuesday night, he’ll be able to point to the very secretary he talks about when he argues for increasing taxes on the wealthy.

Debbie Bosanek is the relatively unknown secretary of billionaire investor Warren Buffett, and she’ll be sitting with First Lady Michelle Obama when the president delivers his speech before Congress, the president’s communications director said in a Tweet Tuesday.

Ms. Bosanek works at the nondescript headquarters of Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. in Omaha, and frequently avoids the spotlight. She was thrust into the debate over taxes after Mr. Buffett pointed out that she pays a higher tax rate than he does. Mr. Obama picked up on that and likes to point to her as a perfect example of what’s wrong with the U.S. tax code.

“Middle-class families shouldn’t pay higher taxes than millionaires and billionaires,” Mr. Obama said in September when announcing that he wanted to raise taxes on the wealthy. “That’s pretty straightforward. It’s hard to argue against that. Warren Buffett’s secretary shouldn’t pay a higher tax rate than Warren Buffett.”

POTUS: President of the United States

TOTUS: Teleprompter of the United States

SOTU: State of the Union

Greg Sargent:

What timing: On day of Obama’s big inequality speech, Romney reveals massive income, low tax rates

I’m not sure the Obama campaign could have scripted this more perfectly. In a remarkable bit of good timing, President Obama is set to deliver a State of the Union speech focused on income inequality and tax unfairness on exactly the same day that Mitt Romney will reveal that he made over $40 million in the last two years — all of it taxed at a lower rate than that paid by middle class taxpayers.

George Lakoff:

All politics is moral. Politicians advocate positions that they claim are right, not wrong or morally neutral. Like anyone else, a politician may lie to protect his or her own skin. But more often politicians lie to protect or advance what they see as a moral endeavor (e.g., the invasion of Iraq, Reagan’s war on nonexistent “welfare queens,” Johnson on the Tonkin Gulf). In the conservative moral system, the highest value is protecting and extending the moral system itself. When conservative icons or ideas themselves are threatened, it is not uncommon for conservative politicians to lie in their defense (Reagan never raised taxes; there’s no evidence for global warming; “government takeover”).

Voters tolerate lies they see as serving a moral purpose, or as having a reasonable excuse. They give more latitude to politicians they identify with.

The Telegraph:

Barack Obama attacked Hillary Clinton in negative campaign leaked memos show

“Change We Can Believe In”, a key Obama campaign slogan, was meant as a slur against Mrs Clinton’s personality, intended to highlight how she “couldn’t be trusted or believed in when it comes to change”, according to a memo seen by America’s New Yorker magazine.

“She’s driven by political calculation not conviction, regularly backing away and shifting positions … She embodies trench warfare vs Republicans, and is consumed with beating them rather than unifying the country and building consensus to get things done. She prides herself on working the system, not changing it,” the October 2007 memo added.

The memo was written by David Axelrod, a political adviser, as Obama’s nomination campaign stalled against Hillary Clinton during the height of the 2008 Democratic nomination process.

Rather than fight out their differences in policy, Mr Axelrod told Obama that the only way to secure a defeat was to attack Mrs Clinton’s character. The goal was to paint Obama as the “authentic ‘remedy’ to what ails Washington and stands in the way of progress” and to discredit his main rival in the process.

New posts at Many Years Young 1/24/12

Cognitive Therapy Can Treat Insomnia

Goodnighties Sleepwear is a New Option to Sleep Better

Nutrients Affect Brain’s Energy Balance in Different Ways

Foods That Help You Fall Asleep

Plus lots more.

New posts at Many Years Young 1/23/12

Age Discrimination Takes Its Toll

Report: 1 in 5 Adults Had Mental Illness in 2010

Adopt a New Attitude: Realistic Optimism

Marriage, Cohabitation Provide Similar Health Benefit

Plus lots more.

If you haven’t seen Bill Moyers’ new show on PBS, Bill Moyers and Company, please make it a point to watch.

The first episode consisted of an interview with the two co-authors of Winner Take All Politics, Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson.

Some highlights from the transcript:

JACOB HACKER: You know, the startling statistic that we have in the book is that if you take all of the income gains from 1979 to 2007, so all the increased household income over that period, around 40 percent of those gains went to the top one percent. And if you look at the bottom 90 percent they had less than that combined…

[W]hen you think about rising inequality, we think, “Oh, it’s the haves versus the have-nots.” That the top third of the income distribution, say, is pulling away from the bottom third.

And what we found is it’s not the haves versus the have-nots. It’s the have-it-alls versus the rest of Americans. And those have-it-alls, which are households in say the top one-tenth of one percent of the income distribution, the richest one-in-a-thousand households are truly living in an unparalleled age…

American politics did it far more than we would have believed when we started this research. What government has done and not done and the politics that produced it is really at the heart of the rise of an economy that has showered huge riches on the very, very, very well off…

BILL MOYERS: How did they do it?

PAUL PIERSON: Through organized combat is the short answer.

BILL MOYERS: And why did they do it?

JACOB HACKER: Because they could. Because the transformation of political organization, the creation of a powerful, organized business community, the degree to which that was self-reinforcing within both parties has meant that politicians have found that they can on issue after issue cater to the interests of the very well off while either ignoring or only symbolically addressing many of the concerns that are felt by most Americans and get reelected and survive politically.

 [T]here is an organized, powerful constituency for deregulation, for high end tax cuts, for policies that are neglecting some of the serious middle class strains. And there just isn’t anything of comparable size or power on the other side…

When citizens are organized and when they press their claims forcefully, when there are reformist leaders within government and outside it who work on their behalf, then we do see reform. This is the story of the American democratic experiment of wave after wave of reform leading to a much broader franchise, to a much broader understanding of the American idea.

In the mid-20th century we saw a period in which income gains were broadly distributed, in which middle class Americans had voice through labor unions, through civic organizations and through, ultimately, their government. We’ve seen an erosion of that world, but just because it’s lost ground doesn’t mean it can’t be saved. And so in writing this book we were hoping to sort of tell Americans that what was valuable in the past could be a part of our future.

At the end of the show, Moyers pointed out a sign at the Occupy Wall Street protests, which said, “The system’s not broken. It’s fixed.” Moyers also talked about the Citizens United decision and said, “If speech is money, no money means no speech”

“Crony Capitalism” is the title of the second episode, and Reagan’s former budget director David Stockman was the first interviewee.

Several things Stockman said really struck a chord with me. From the transcript:

DAVID STOCKMAN: Crony capitalism is about the aggressive and proactive use of political resources, lobbying, campaign contributions, influence-peddling of one type or another to gain something from the governmental process that wouldn’t otherwise be achievable in the market. And as the time has progressed over the last two or three decades, I think it’s gotten much worse. Money dominates politics…

It’s not a free market. There isn’t risk taking in the sense that if you succeed, you keep your rewards, if you fail, you accept the consequences. Look what the bailout was in 2008.

There was clearly reckless, speculative behavior going on for years on Wall Street. And then when the consequence finally came, the Treasury stepped in and the Fed stepped in. Everything was bailed out and the game was restarted. And I think that was a huge mistake…

I think what was going on was simply a huge correction that was overdue on Wall Street. The big leverage hedge funds on Wall Street that called themselves investment banks weren’t really investment banks. They were just big trading operations using 30, 40 to one leverage. And it was that that was being corrected.

But they used the occasion of the Wall Street banking crisis to create the impression that this was the beginning of a kind of black hole the whole economy was going to drop into. I think that was wrong.

And it was that fear that led Congress to do anything they wanted. You know, the Congress gave them a blank check…

You can’t save free enterprise by suspending the rules just at the hour they’re needed. The rules are needed when it comes time to take losses. Gains are easy for people to realize. They’re easy for people to capture. It’s the rules of the game are most necessary when the losses have to occur because mistakes have been made, errors have been made, speculation has gone too far. The history has always been — and this is why we had Glass-Steagall and a lot of the legislation in the 1930s…

BILL MOYERS: Where is the shame? Shouldn’t these people have been at least a little ashamed of running the economy and the financial system into the ditch and then saying, “Come lift me out?”

DAVID STOCKMAN: Yes. You know, I think that’s part of the problem. I started on Capitol Hill in 1970s. And as I can vividly recall, corporate leaders then at least were consistent. They might’ve complained about big government, or they might’ve complained about the tax system.

But there wasn’t an entitlement expectation that if financial turmoil or upheaval came along, that the Treasury, or the Federal Reserve, or the FDIC or someone would be there to back them up. That would’ve been considered, you know, it would’ve been considered, as you say, shameful. And somehow, over the last 30 years, the corporate leadership of America has gotten so addicted to their stock price by the hour, by the day, by the week, that they’re willing to support anything that might keep the game going and help the system in the short run avoid a hit to their stock price and to the value of their options. That’s the real problem today. And as a result, there is no real political doctrine ideology left in the corporate community. They are simply pragmatists who will take anything they can find, and run with it.

BILL MOYERS: So this is what you mean, when you say free markets are not free. They’ve been bought and paid for by large financial institutions.

DAVID STOCKMAN: Right. I don’t think it’s entirely a corruption of human nature. People have always been inconsistent and greedy.

But I think it’s been the evolution of the political culture in which there have been so many bailouts, there has been so much abuse and misuse of government power for private ends and private gains, that now we have an entitled class in this country that is far worse than you know, remember the welfare queens that Ronald Reagan used to talk about?

We now have an entitled class of Wall Street financiers and of corporate CEOs who believe the government is there to do what is ever necessary if it involves tax relief, tax incentives, tax cuts, loan guarantees, Federal Reserve market intervention and stabilization. Whatever it takes in order to keep the game going and their stock price moving upward. That’s where they are…

BILL MOYERS: So many people say, “We’ve got to get money out of politics.” Or as you said, “Money dominates government today.”…

DAVID STOCKMAN: I think we have [to] eliminate all contributions above $100 and get corporations out of politics entirely.

Ban corporations from campaign contributions or attempting to influence elections. Now, I know that runs into current free speech. So the only way around it is a constitutional amendment to cleanse our political system on a one-time basis from this enormously corrupting influence that has built up. And I think nothing is really going to change until we get money out of politics and do some radical things to change the way elections are financed and the way the process is influenced by organized money. If we don’t address that, then crony capitalism is here for the duration.

You can support an effort to amend the Constitution to declare corporations are not persons and don’t have free speech at MoveToAmend.org.

MoveOn.org, egregious as their error was in 2008 in supporting Obama before they ever demanded anything of him, at least is demanding things now. They say that Obama may be making a decision soon over whether or not to support legislation to let the banksters off the hook. You can sign their petition demanding that these people be brought to justice.

. . . no matter how much the elite think we are.

Think Progress:

Poll: Majority Say U.S. Needs New Campaign Finance Laws

On the heels of yesterday’s two-year anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, a new Rasmussen poll finds that 58 percent of Americans say the U.S needs new campaign finance laws — a change from three years ago when more people said it would be “good” if the Supreme Court struck down existing campaign finance laws.

Economist’s View:

Do Republicans Want to Win the Presidential Election?

It’s been puzzling so far, but I think I figured out the Republican strategy for the presidential election. Obama is already giving them everything they want in terms of policy, pretty much, and there’s no reason to think he’ll change after the election. Centrism is not an act for Obama, it’s who he really is and when you compromise from the middle, and do so poorly — i.e. give up most demands for one or two centrist bits in the final legislation — the outcome leans heavily to the right. Given that, it’s not at all clear that Republicans would be able to reach more of their goals if they controlled the presidency and faced united opposition from the left rather than the fractured opposition they face under a Democratic president.

And the right certainly has nothing to complain about when it comes to war mongering, domestic spying, and the like. Republicans are getting everything they want, more than they ever could have dreamed of with a Democrat in power, with little outcry from the leftists that usually make such a fuss over these types of activities.

Plus, the president is taking the blame for the lousy economy, and they are able to make headway in their long held goal of discrediting Keynesian economics…

If a Republican takes the presidency, that blame will fall on them. Sure, it’s possible that the economy will take off over the next four years, but more realistically it’s looking like more of the same sluggishness, a slow, agonizing, “are we there yet,” recovery that won’t be helped at all by the deficit reduction that lies ahead (thanks to one of those wonderful compromises by the administration). Who wants to preside over that? Instead, why not put up some weak candidates, very, very weak, and give the win to Obama? He’s already done a lot of their work for them, why not let him take the lead in dismantling social welfare in the name of deficit reduction (e.g. Obama has often cited Social Security as a target).

Avedon:

We have met the enemy and he is us

The other night on Virtually Speaking A-Z, Jay and Stuart discussed the idea that the dog-whistles coming out of the mouths of people like Newt Gingrich aren’t aimed at the general voter or even at unreconstructed racists, they’re aimed at us, and “progressives” keep falling for it. Atrios keeps pointing out that they do and say things “just to piss liberals off,” and I suspect he’s more right than he knows, and I think a lot of prog bloggers really need to give this some thought, because I believe Stuart is absolutely right – they say things that get liberals to react and that works for them in ways “the left” seems to be entirely unaware of.

I don’t just mean that it’s a distraction; I mean that we’re doing their PR for them. People are worried about their jobs. Gingrich talks about jobs, and instead of talking about jobs, progressives react with partisan defenses and accuse him of dog-whistle racism. But ordinary people don’t hear racism when Gingrich says he wants to give people paychecks rather than welfare checks, because ordinary people are worried that maybe a welfare check is all they can hope for anymore if things keep going the way they’re going.

Obama himself has been telling people that we can’t have good jobs anymore, we can’t have 4% unemployment and a healthy economy anymore, but we’ll try to protect “the most needy” – which means the only way you’ll get any help from the government is after they have made you too poor to help yourself - and you’ll never be able to help yourself again. It doesn’t matter that Gingrich is lying about his intentions to create jobs, since no one is actually offering jobs.

What matters is that instead of acknowledging that the jobs situation keeps getting worse, liberals sit around crying racism. And racism really isn’t the issue.

New posts at Many Years Young 1/22/12

A Sharper Mind, Middle Age and Beyond

How Exercise May Keep Alzheimer’s at Bay

Mind-wandering can make you unhappy

Gossiping Might Be Good for You

Plus lots more.