The European Union has a larger economy and more people than America does. Though it spends less -- right around 9 percent of GNP on medical, whereas we in the U.S. spend close to between 15 to 16 percent of GNP on medical -- the EU pretty much insures 100 percent of its population.
The U.S. has 59 million people medically uninsured; 132 million without dental insurance; 60 million without paid sick leave; 40 million on food stamps. Everybody in the European Union has cradle-to-grave access to universal medical and a dental plan by law. The law also requires paid sick leave; paid annual leave; paid maternity leave. When you realize all of that, it becomes easy to understand why many Europeans think America has gone insane.
Der Spiegel has run an interesting feature called "A Superpower in Decline," which attempts to explain to a German audience such odd phenomena as the rise of the Tea Party, without the hedging or attempts at "balance" found in mainstream U.S. media. On the Tea Parties:
Full of Hatred: "The Tea Party, that group of white, older voters who claim that they want their country back, is angry. Fox News host Glenn Beck, a recovering alcoholic who likens Obama to Adolf Hitler, is angry. Beck doesn't quite know what he wants to be -- maybe a politician, maybe president, maybe a preacher -- and he doesn't know what he wants to do, either, or least he hasn't come up with any specific ideas or plans. But he is full of hatred."
The piece continues with the sobering assessment that America’s actual unemployment rate isn’t really 10 percent, but close to 20 percent when we factor in the number of people who have stopped looking for work.
Some social scientists think that making sure large-scale crime or fascism never takes root in Europe again requires a taxpayer investment in a strong social safety net. Can we learn from Europe? Isn't it better to invest in a social safety net than in a large criminal justice system? (In America over 2 million people are incarcerated.)
Jobless Benefits That Never Run Out
Unlike here, in Germany jobless benefits never run out. Not only that -- as part of their social safety net, all job seekers continue to be medically insured, as are their families.
In the German jobless benefit system, when "jobless benefit 1" runs out, "jobless benefit 2," also known as HartzIV, kicks in. That one never gets cut off. The jobless also have contributions made for their pensions. They receive other types of insurance coverage from the state. As you can imagine, the estimated 2 million unemployed Americans who almost had no benefits this Christmas seems a particular horror show to Europeans, made worse by the fact that the U.S. government does not provide any medical insurance to American unemployment recipients. Europeans routinely recoil at that in disbelief and disgust.
In another piece the Spiegel magazine steps away from statistics and tells the story of Pam Brown, who personifies what is coming to be known as the Nouveau American poor. Pam Brown was a former executive assistant on Wall Street, and her shocking decline has become part of the American story:
American society is breaking apart. Millions of people have lost their jobs and fallen into poverty. Among them, for the first time, are many middle-class families. Meet Pam Brown from New York, whose life changed overnight. The crisis caught her unprepared. "It was horrible," Pam Brown remembers. "Overnight I found myself on the wrong side of the fence. It never occurred to me that something like this could happen to me. I got very depressed." Brown sits in a cheap diner on West 14th Street in Manhattan, stirring her $1.35 coffee. That's all she orders -- it's too late for breakfast and too early for lunch. She also needs to save money. Until early 2009, Brown worked as an executive assistant on Wall Street, earning more than $80,000 a year, living in a six-bedroom house with her three sons. Today, she's long-term unemployed and has to make do with a tiny one-bedroom in the Bronx.
It's important to note that no country in the European Union uses food stamps in order to humiliate its disadvantaged citizens in the grocery checkout line. Even worse is the fact that even the humbling food stamp allotment may not provide enough food for America’s jobless families. So it is on a reoccurring basis that some of these families report eating out of garbage cans to the European media.
For Pam Brown, last winter was the worst. One day she ran out of food completely and had to go through trash cans. She fell into a deep depression ... For many, like Brown, the downfall is a Kafkaesque odyssey, a humiliation hard to comprehend. Help is not in sight: their government and their society have abandoned them.
Pam Brown and her children were disturbingly, indeed incomprehensibly, allowed to fall straight to the bottom. The richest country in the world becomes morally bankrupt when someone like Pam Brown and her children have to pick through trash to eat, abandoned with a callous disregard by the American government. People like Brown have found themselves dispossessed due to the robber baron actions of the Wall Street elite.
Hunger in the Land of the Big Mac
A shocking headline from a Swiss newspaper reads (Berner Zeitung) “Hunger in the Land of the Big Mac.” Though the article is in German, the pictures are worth 1,000 words and need no translation. Given the fact that the Swiss virtually eliminated hunger, how do we as Americans think they will view these pictures, to which the American population has apparently been desensitized.
This appears to be a picture of two mothers collecting food boxes from the charity Feed the Children.
Perhaps the only way for us to remember what we really look like in America is to see ourselves through the eyes of others. While it is true that we can all be proud Americans, surely we don't have to be proud of the broken American social safety net. Surely we can do better than that. Can a European-style social safety net rescue the American working and middle classes from GOP and Tea Party warfare?
County Republican registrations realized a large decrease from 2009 to 2010 by 2,27.9. Those numbers represent Republicans leaving the party according to the state figures.
Speaking about the Citizen's United decision, which allowed unregulated flow of cash into campaign coffers, Hall said, "I learned when I was in social studies class in school that corporate ownership or corporate control of government is called Fascism. So that's really the question— is that the destination if this court decision goes unchecked?" Hall said that the flow of corporate dollars is why he and the Democrats lost control of Congress.
"The country was bought," he said. "The extremist, most recent two appointees to the Supreme Court, who claimed in their confirmation hearings before the Senate that they would not be activist judges, made a very activist decision in that it overturned more than a century of precedent. And as a result there were millions of extra dollars thrown into this race."
At long last, those little census forms that arrived in our mailboxes last year, the ones we were endlessly hectored to fill out and send back, will come to mean something: They'll be used to redraw district lines for the 2012 state and federal elections. Already, legislators and their aides are pouring over maps and eyeing their colleagues suspiciously, wondering who will get their pick of city blocks and who will get squeezed out. In the meantime however, redistricting experts and politicos say that despite all of the breathless speculation, there is a whole lot of nothing happening for the next several months. Part of that is because despite the release of new population numbers for the country (308,745,538, thank you very much) and the state (19.4 million, third behind California and Florida, whoo-hoo!), we are still waiting on the granular, election district-by-election district kind of results that are required before any new lines can be drawn. Here is how the battle will be joined in the days ahead:
Juan Williams hit out at Sarah Palin on "Fox News Sunday," saying she could not match President Obama intellectually.
Williams was speaking about the potential Republican presidential candidates for the 2012 elections, and decrying them as "weak." He mocked the idea that someone like Indiana Congressman Mike Pence could go head to head with Obama.
"There is nobody out there except for Sarah Palin who could absolutely dominate the stage and she can't stand on the intellectual stage with Obama," Williams concluded.
This prompted a chorus of "oooohhhs" from the rest of the panel.
This past fall, mega-retailer Target caught a heap of bad publicity when it was revealed that they had made campaign donations in support of then-Minnesota gubernatorial hopeful Tom Emmer, whose hostility to the LGBT community began "with opposition to same-sex marriage and runs through to wholesale denial of equal rights and alliances with organizations whose takes on the gay community neatly align with those Ugandan madmen." Target CEO Greg Steinhafel was forced to make an apology, and promised to begin a "review process for future political donations." Over at The Awl, Abram Sauer, who covered this story thoroughly during the election season, has made a review of this review process. You'll never guess what he found out!
According to documents filed with the FEC in October 2010, Target continued donating to a bevy of anti-gay politicians even after Steinhafel apologized and committed to reforming the review process for future political donations. These donations even included some of the same anti-gay politicians the company had already been criticized for supporting.
Less than 24 hours after the GOP officially took the majority in the Senate, the press releases from the Democratic and Republican press shops have already swapped identities as completely as in one of those brain-exchange sci-fi movies. The subject at hand is redistricting reform, with the Democratic leadership calling out GOP Leader Dean Skelos for failing to support bipartisan redistricting reform. Here’s the Democratic statement (attributed to John Sampson and Martin Dilan), which amounts to the sort of foot-stomping and finger-wagging previously seen from the GOP minority — the word “should” makes what will likely be the first of many appearances by the new minority conference:
“As we begin to assess the new Census data New York uses to draw its political lines, Senate Republicans are already making it clear they will not keep their pledge to reform state government through non-partisan redistricting.
“On the day they claimed the Majority the GOP broke their first promise – Senate Republicans signed onto Mayor Koch’s NY Uprising pledge, but incoming Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos is now refusing to take a firm position on nonpartisan redistricting. Imagine how many other election promises will be broken in the New Year.
“We are disappointed that New York will lose two congressional districts as a result of the 2010 Census. This must serve as a wake-up call to state government to improve our economy and grow New York’s population, especially Upstate and in Western New York.
“We look forward to receiving actual redistricting data in March. The redistricting data will inform us where New York has gained or lost population and guide us in the redrawing of district boundaries for the House of Representatives and State Legislature.
“Senators truly committed to reform should support both an independent redistricting process and new district lines that will fairly represent all New Yorkers without bias or partisan advantage that disenfranchises key regions of the state and in diverse communities.
“The main source of Albany’s dysfunction is the absence of competitive elections which stem from the drawing of partisan political lines that protect political incumbents instead of preserving the public’s interest. Non-partisan redistricting, broad ethics reform, and continued improvements to the state’s electoral system will ensure more voter participation and instill greater faith in our government.”
Newt Gingrich, who is currently mulling a presidential bid in 2012, said at a political event in South Carolina on Thursday that most of America's problems can be blamed on the "leftist news media," Hollywood, tenured academics, overpaid federal workers, and unemployed people. "I'm opposed to giving people money for doing nothing," he told the crowd of 250 cheering GOP activists in a state with a 10.6 percent unemployment rate.
Chuck Schumer appeared on "Good Morning America" today with a stark warning for senators dragging their feet on the 9/11 Health Bill.
"It's not too late," he told host George Stephanopoulos. "But it will be if we don't do anything, because thousands will die because they don't get adequate medical care."
Schumer added that he believes the bill will pass unless one of his colleagues uses procedural maneuvers to keep it from coming to the floor.
Earlier today, Mayor Michael Bloomberg convened with the New York congressional delegation in the Blue Room at City Hall and pressed for passage, telling a news conference, "It's a vote on whether we should stand by those who stood by America in its hour of greatest need. It's a vote on whether we should fulfill our obligation to the men and women in uniform, and in hard hats, whom we rightly call heroes." Full Story
WASHINGTON -- Senate Republicans, who blocked a bill to provide care for 9/11 first responders suffering health consequences as a result of their work amid the burning and smoking buildings at Ground Zero, explained themselves with a variety of reasons. Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) said he voted against the first responders bill because Republicans had threatened to vote against everything until tax cuts for the rich were extended and a measure to fund the government was passed.
Without the bill, all of the tax cuts that Bush signed into law would have expired at the end of the year, and American families would be looking at thousands of dollars in higher taxes, Obama said at a signing ceremony.
WASHINGTON -- On its face, it does seem absurd. Buried in a trillion-plus-dollar omnibus spending bill is a line requesting $165,000 for maple-syrup research in Vermont. Americans love the savory sap, and the Green Mountain state is the epicenter for its production, churning out 890,000 gallons this year alone. But why does the federal government have to get involved? And for what purpose are taxpayers forking over the dough? These questions, undoubtedly, were on the mind of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) when he launched his Twitter screed against the pork-barrel projects included in the omnibus. The syrup-research expenditure made ranked fifth on McCain's list of the ten most egregious wastes of money in the omnibus bill -- a surefire example of the pure backwardness of the appropriators in Congress.
Dig a bit deeper, however, and that $165,000 starts to sound a lot less like a testament to fiscal lunacy.
That industry is at a crossroads. While international demand for maple syrup is rising, a poor harvest in 2008 crippled the U.S. supply, and much of that void has been filled by Canadian manufacturers. If domestic producers are to survive -- and maintain U.S. consumers' access to reasonably-priced syrup -- they need a technological breakthrough.
WASHINGTON -- A coalition of Republicans and conservative Democrats combined to push the Obama-GOP tax-cut deal through the House by a vote of 277-148 in Friday's early morning hours. The bill slashes the estate tax, extends all the Bush tax cuts and reauthorizes unemployment insurance for 13 months. The bill will now go to the president for his signature. The crucial vote was not on final passage of the tax cuts, but on the vote before, to reduce the generosity of the estate tax cut. Had it been included in the final measure, the bill would have gone back to the Senate. An identical version of that amendment passed in December 2009 with 225 votes, but it failed this time 233-194, with 60 Democrats voting against tightening the estate tax.
An informative and potentially productive political debate has broken out over fiscal policy. But it is not between Democrats and Republicans — the leadership on both sides of the aisle is trying hard to agree that a moderate stimulus is worth the cost: increasing the national debt by nearly $900 billion.
And the new debate is not particularly due to the president’s bipartisan deficit-reduction commission or other serious efforts to put the real math on the table; those technical discussions have so far been brushed aside.
Rather, the intensifying and illuminating debate is within the Republican Party — particularly among people who are presumed to be interested in running for the presidency in 2012.
On one hand, there are those like Newt Gingrich and Mike Huckabee, who are in favor of the tax deal currently on the table. This seems to be where most of the Republican mainstream is. On the other hand, Sarah Palin and Mitt Romney have come out strongly against the proposal.
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Senate Wednesday overwhelmingly passed a sweeping tax package that would save millions of Americans thousands of dollars in higher taxes while also reducing their Social Security taxes and extending jobless benefits.
A lot of people are unhappy that the president punted on first down, and I'm one of them. Extending the excessive Bush tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires will explode our deficit over the next two years without doing anything to help our economy. I think it's simply bad policy.
WASHINGTON -- A major swath of the conservative Democratic Blue Dog caucus has written a letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi asking for neither "delay" nor changes to the "essential" deal struck by President Obama and congressional Republicans on extending the Bush tax cuts.
The letter was passed to The Huffington Post by a somewhat distressed aide, who noted that somewhere between 27 and 31 members have signed on already. It reads as follows:
The poll also found Gov.-elect Andrew Cuomo has a 66 percent approval rating on the eve of his inauguration, and 43 percent of New Yorkers are prepared now to elect President Barack Obama (compared to 47 percent who want “someone else” and 10 percent who didn’t respond to the question.) The end of the election has salved Cuomo in the eyes of many Republicans, Greenberg explains: “He has a better than two-to-one favorability rating in every region of the state, and even Republicans who viewed Cuomo unfavorably last month by a 39-51 percent margin, have an ever-so-slightly favorable view of him.”But when asked the hard questions about cutting, they indicated a strong preference against cutting Medicaid and education — the two largest areas of the state budget — and instead opted for higher taxes on New Yorkers earning more than $1 million a year.
WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans on Thursday derailed a bill to aid people who got sick after exposure to dust from the World Trade Center's collapse in the Sept. 11 attack.
Supporters were three votes short of the 60 needed to proceed to debate and a final vote on the bill that would have provided as much as $7.4 billion in health care and compensation to 9/11 responders and survivors. The bill failed on a test vote, 57-42.
Story from the Valley NewsRepublicans call extension of the Bush-era tax cuts their top priority in the lame duck Congress, and they insist that the midterm election gave them a mandate to freeze tax rates on the wealthiest Americans.
“The American people want us to stop all the looming tax hikes and to cut spending,” incoming House Speaker John Boehner said Thursday, “and that should be the priority of the reminding days that we have in this Congress.”
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Trouble is, a new poll shows that Boehner may be mis-reading the election results. According to a new CBS poll, 53 percent of Americans want the Bush-era tax cuts extended only for households earning less than $250,000 per year.
Only 23 percent of Americans say that Congress should extend all of the Bush tax cuts — the adamant position of Republican lawmakers.
I have one question for President George W. Bush and the Republican leadership in Congress. Where are the jobs?
Syracuse, NY - Former Onondaga County Family Court Chief Clerk Bobette Morin’s lawsuit against Fifth Judicial District Supervising Judge James Tormey III can go forward to trial, a federal appeals court has ruled.Morin filed the lawsuit in May 2007 after losing her chief clerk’s position. She since took a slightly lower-paying attorney-referee’s position in Oswego County.
She claims she was driven from her job by Tormey, former executive assistant John Voninski, Family Court Judge Bryan Hedges and Hedges’ law clerk, William Dowling, because she refused to gather dirt for Tormey on Democratic Family Court Judge David Klim in his unsuccessful bid for state Supreme Court in 2002. Klim died in 2006.
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