Jan 22, 2012 Budget, Economy, News
The 2012 Legislative session is just around the corner, due to start on Tuesday. Both sides seem eager to make it a historically short session so that campaign preparations can begin in earnest once the new district maps are released Feb. 21st.
On the docket for consideration and debate are the Vikings Stadium question, a slew of proposed constitutional amendments, proposed government 2.0 reforms, and a bonding bill.
Fortunately, they will not have to rebalance the budget because the budget appears to be in the black. But rather than patting themselves on the back with avoiding a deficit they need to look at what they had to do to get there. Borrowing money from schools and denying services to many who need them is not sustainable. Hopefully all parties will continue to work toward crafting a budget that will help us get the economy going and come closer to providing what our citizens need. But more about that in future posts.
The Stadium question remains unsettled as a means of funding the various projects has proven difficult to settle on. For that reason, the final result is still uncertain. I continue to oppose using state general fund dollars to fund this kind of project and although it would meet a much-needed boost to employment I hope other ways funding it can be found. It is difficult to justify that kind of expenditure when we have been cutting much needed services.
The amendments in number and scope represent an admission on the part of the legislature that they are unable to convince the Governor of their arguments and hope with the help of ALEC (a right wing national legislative think tank), and corporate donors to persuade voters of their issues.
We already have a marriage amendment on the ballot and Republicans hope to add voter photo ID, balanced budget (both limiting spending increases and measures to make it harder to raise taxes), and a so called, “right to work” amendment. Other measures have been talked about but these are perhaps the most likely to come up.
Amendments in general have been added to the constitution on the state and federal level to broaden rights and opportunity. All of these measures do the opposite they put into our constitution, which should be an expression of all of our interests, measures which take away the rights of some; make it harder to provide for the needs of others and make it harder to get a fair shake in our economy. In other words they make our government, our economy and our society less democratic.
For this reason I urge a “no” vote on all of the amendments next fall. I will go into my reasoning in greater detail in future entries.
Many of the conservative 2.0 Reforms fall under the same delusion that somehow we will be better off by making it easier for a few to do well and harder for most of us to get the help and protection we need.
Finally, the bonding bill, it is a much-needed investment in infrastructure and a job creating measure. As a brief aside sometimes I am surprised by how many people tell me how glad they are Mark Dayton is our Governor and how pleased they are with the job he has done – working hard to make Minnesota a better place. This is not just the usual suspects, but a number folks who begin by saying, “I didn’t vote for him, but it’s clear he cares about Minnesota.”
In that vein, Governor Dayton is proposing a $750 million bonding bill. This is smaller than most of the bonding bills passed in recent years. It is a good time to invest as interest rates are low and construction costs are depressed. We need the investment in our infrastructure and putting unemployed workers to work will improve our revenue situation without raising taxes. Those projects will increase purchasing of supplies needed for the construction and also increase the ability of those workers to purchase goods in services that they can’t afford now. There will be a ripple effect across the economy and continue to make much needed improvements.
It is my hope that the current legislature will be persuaded by all of these positives to get behind the governor’s proposals and move Minnesota forward. It is clear that austerity measures across the country and in Europe are not bringing the results we need. We can’t spend money we don’t have so bonding is one of the few ways states can make a difference in stimulating the economy.
I urge you to let your legislator now how important it is to join with the Governor to move things forward. They need to hear from you.
sen.al.dekruif@senate.mn
rep.kelby.woodard@house.mn
Dec 15, 2011 Economy, Education, Health Care, Jobs, Middle Class Amendment, News, Transportation, Unions, Working families
Over the past several months I have brought you 30 conversations dealing with our current economic situation. I invited guests from a variety of backgrounds to come and talk with me about how our economy works, how we ended up in a deep recession and how we might get out of it. In addition I had guests who described from their perspective what they were experiencing and what was happening at various levels of state and local government to deal with the economic slow down.
I hope you found this series of conversations interesting and useful. I have enjoyed the opportunity to share with you some of my thoughts and to learn a long with you as my guests enlightened us. Thanks to Jeff Johnson at KYMN radio for allowing me to purchase the time for the program and for the help of his staff in production. Although there are many guests I would like to continue this conversation with I have
decided to make this my final program in the series for now and rather than inviting another guest I thought I might use this half hour to review some of things I learned and my guests shared with us. To serve as a kind of index should you want to go back and review. I will keep the programs archived on my website and if you wish to revisit them or if you haven’t heard one and would like to you can do that by locating the programs on the Economy Talk page.
I began the series with Dr. E. David Emery, Professor of economics at St. Olaf College. I had heard a presentation by Dr. Emery explaining what had happened to our economy and what the prospects for recovery were. He drew upon the work of Hyman Minsky, professor of economics at Washington University in St. Louis and described what has come to be known in many circles as a “Minsky moment. “
He explained that, Minsky proposed theories linking financial market fragility, in the normal life cycle of an economy, with speculative investment bubbles common to financial markets. Minsky claimed that in prosperous times, when corporate cash flow rises beyond what is needed to pay off debt, a speculative euphoria develops, and soon thereafter debts exceed what borrowers can pay off from their incoming revenues, which in turn produces a financial crisis. As a result of such speculative borrowing bubbles, banks and lenders tighten credit availability, even to companies that can afford loans, and the economy subsequently contracts. It all sounded familiar.
This slow movement of the financial system from stability to fragility, followed by crisis, which he described became as known as the “Minsky moment”.
Minsky offered very good insights in the ’60s and ’70s when linkages between the financial markets and the economy were not as well understood as they are now. He showed us that financial markets could move frequently to excess. And he underscored the importance of the Federal Reserve as a lender of last resort.
Disagreeing with many mainstream economists of the day, Minsky argued that these swings, and the booms and busts that can accompany them, are inevitable in a so-called free market economy – unless government steps in to control them, through regulation, central bank action and other tools. Such mechanisms Minsky pointed out did in fact come into existence in response to crises such as the Panic of 1907 and the Great Depression. Minsky strongly opposed the deregulation that characterized the 1980s.
A good explanation of this can also be found in John Cassidy’s book How Markets Fail, but the short version of his theory that Dr. Emery described is that many of us operate under the assumption that markets are stable or can self stabilize if left alone. Minsky’s idea was that markets are not stable and have a way of creating environments where investors believe they are acting rationally but because they operate in an irrational system little of what they do is rational when seen from a broader perspective. This creates the potential for financial bubbles or what are for a period economic booms that people assume are the new reality but when the actual reality reveals that this is not so the bubble bursts with a loss of all that was gained. Dr. Emery explained that this event was a result of years of unregulated banking fraud and wishful thinking related to the housing boom and other investment speculation (which is really money created by computer key stroke). The result was a chain reaction across the globe of bank failures and pension and investment losses, which will take years to recover from. The shock of these losses created a Tsunami of job losses across the private sector, which is now spreading across the public sector as lost tax revenues force governments to shrink their budgets.
Policy makers initially responded by bailing out banks and other crucial industries as well as infrastructure spending to stave of some job losses. At the federal level this increased deficit spending that had begun in the Bush years to cover the cost of two wars and the Bush tax cuts.
In my second and third programs I talked with another St. Olaf professor Steve Soderlund who expressed concern about the knee jerk response of wanting to cut spending to reduce the debts created by the decline in tax revenue. This means that we abandon the future for our children as we cut school budgets or the programs that support children and families in the early years. It is very difficult after all to go back and provide what is needed to young people once they have become adults. We may well end up leaving them not only with a mountain of debt but far fewer resources to earn the income to pay down the debt. It seems a better plan would be to deal with the slowing economy first and concentrate on the debt once the economy is working again.
Another economist and friend of Dr. Emery’s, Tor Dahl made just that point when he talked about his idea of a growth economy and how for the last twenty to thirty years our economy had been underperforming and we would not be having conversations about taxes and debt if the economy were only growing at a rate similar to Singapore or Brazil. He believes this has much to do with a focus on short term planning and too much emphasis on quality as opposed to productivity. Productivity is where growth comes from and he believes you can get quality from focusing on productivity but not the other way around. He seemed to imply that managers seemed too cautious and not bold or imaginative enough to move the economy forward. It was a fascinating conversation for me and gave me the sense that there was reason to hope for our economic future we those who have the power to move the economy could be bolder and plan more long term. I had Tor on a second time and he shared his research on what kind of political leadership had produced the best conditions for economic growth and hands down his data showed it was liberal or Democratic administrations or legislatures.
An economic summit at St. Olaf gave the chance to interview a friend from my college days Deborah Arnie Arneson who held office in the New Hampshire legislature, ran for governor there and has become a radio personality. She had emceed the various forums on campus that week and was kind enough to share some of her insights on what was talked about at the forum. She also shared a touching story about her elderly aunt and our health care system.
I also had the chance to visit with a couple of local businessmen Karl Vohs and Bob Ciernia who talked about their business and how they were fairing and what strategies they were using.
Local Arts Guild director Ann Mosey shared with me work that she and Dean Kjerland had been doing along with a number of others to advance the arts as vehicle for economic growth in our community. She described the efforts that brought together local farmers and artists to create River Walk Market Fair, which just recently completed its second successful year and is now moving to a year round venue.
I talked with Regi Marroquin-Haslett who started the Mainstreet project assisting local latinos in establishing agripreneurs that is local fariming and food distribution enterprises. Creating new markets and entrepreneurs who successfully contribute to our community.
As the legislative session was in full swing and eventually moved into a government shut down and special session I interviewed several state legislators to get a read on what was happening. Rep. Rick Hansen, Terry Morrow, Tina Liebling, and Sen. John Marty all shared their insights on the struggles at the Capitol.
I supplemented their discussions with some floor speeches by Rep. Ann Lenchewski former tax chair and some one who truly understands tax issues at the state and local level. I followed that up with local CPA and tax consultant Leota Goodney who gave a more local perspective on tax law and policy.
University of Minnesota Economics Prof. Richard Levins talked with me about growing income inequality over the last 30 years and the problems this created for our ability to pull out of the current recession and how it related to the problem. The change in regulatory policies and the decline of unions were huge factors in the change from the period when it seemed our economy could spread the growth and productivity gains across our society benefiting everyone. Our current situation has seen those at the top regain their footing and continue to do very well at the same time folks further down the income scale struggle to get by and see their wealth continue to diminish. Continuing to ignore this growing divide will only slow the recovery and may in the end force us to become more like a banana republic with out a middle class. I had Dr. Levins on a second time and we talked some about a recent book, “The Spirit Level“, which further described the dangers of an unequal society. Our economy used to work for everyone what was causing it to fail? Dr. Levins has written about it in a little book called Getting America Back to Work and mentioned my work on saving the middle class. To help us move away from the politics we seem to have fallen into where we have a winner take all attitude among some super wealthy players in our economy, who want to regulate and restrict what access most citizens have to their government while they are completely unrestricted in what they can do and take from the system. Things like the Supreme Court’s “Citizens United Decision“, which money into speech, essentially protecting fraud by insisting that citizens have the right to hear all sides and must be trusted to determine the truth. Essentially allowing corporations or anyone with massive amounts of money to buy elections and politicians.
During the legislative debates about cutting spending an interview with local therapist Dan Dimick got me thinking about how and why we provide for those most vulnerable around us and some in our society seem to have lost the social contract that seemed to be a common assumption. A belief perhaps best summed up by former Sen. Humphrey who argued that we are judged as a civilization for how we provide for those who are in the shadows of life, the poor, the sick and the elderly. It is through government that we are able to meet their needs and provide comfort by asking those who have done very well to contribute to caring for those who through little fault of their own struggle in our society.
I did two programs dealing with how we might improve our health care system and as a result improve our economy. In the legislature along with Sen. John Marty I introduced the Minnesota Health Plan, a single payer plan, which would reduce the costs of insurance at the same time making sure every citizen in Minnesota had access to health care. Joan and Steve Janusz have been working with the Minnesota Universal Health Care Coalition to build support for this policy. They have become very knowledgeable about our health system and talked about how it compares to health care in France where their daughter lives and they recently returned from a visit.
I also, shared with listeners an interview with Dr. William Hsiao, a Harvard expert on the economics of health care and the primary architect of the newly passed Vermont single payer plan. His research and plan – project great savings and improved access for the citizens of Vermont and an added bonus predicts it will bring jobs and employers to that state.
Nan Madden joined me on the program to share her research on the Minnesota budget process and the effect of spending cuts on Minnesota’s non profits who are often in a position to deliver many of the services the State of Minnesota decides are important for citizens. These services often provide vulnerable Minnesotans with care and comfort they would be unlikely to get elsewhere and is funded through grants and allocations of funds directly to these organizations that are able to deliver the services in efficient and cost effective ways.
Carleton Economist Martha Paas, a macroeconomist who teaches courses in economic history, the history of economic thought, and the economics of the arts.
Shared her thoughts on what is happening to the economy.
She attributes the Causes of our recent deficit spending to Defense spending that has doubled in the last 10 years largely due to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; the Bush tax cuts; and of course The Recession.
She believes shrinking government will not solve the problem. By 2015, half of all government spending will be dedicated to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Social Security is solvent for now, and there is time to make fiscally responsible reforms. Containing health care costs is the real issue.
Prof. Paas says the U.S. is not going broke. It’s not a problem as long as the federal debt, now at $14 trillion, doesn’t grow faster than our Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Our debt to GDP ratio is currently 37th in the world.
The philosophy of Trickle down economics has not worked. The income inequality gap is wider than at any time in our nation’s history. This is not simply a social justice issue. There are sound economic reasons to reverse this trend.
She does not see Inflation as a real danger. The recovery is more important at this point in time than guarding against inflationary forces. She believes investing in infrastructure and clean energy creating jobs not cutting spending will turn things around for the US. Policy decisions must be based on hard evidence and argues that much of what passes for economic thinking is ideology passing for truth and slogans for facts. We should look to the data and our economic history and the path it shows us to take to find our way out of a difficult situation.
Jennifer Labovitz grew up in Northfield and is the daughter of Carleton Economist Bob Will. She didn’t pursue a career in economics nor in the field of criminal justice but found herself learning a lot about both subjects as chair of the Council on Crime & Justice an organization that works for social justice and to draw attention to concerns and needs of those who make there way through our criminal justice system. She shared with me a chart that shows that the US is the worlds number one jailer. We pride ourselves as a nation valuing individual freedom but a combination of no tolerance policies and the tendancy to seek the ultimate punishment for non-violent crimes means that we tend to lock up many of our citizens.
We talked about the economic issues this creates for our society as we spend increasing dollars on keeping non-violent criminals locked up and are forced to cut spending on education and health care. In addition we touched briefly on the difficulty of individuals who have paid their debt to society and now must support themselves in an economy that is increasingly unfriendly to them. The increased use of background checks and the competition for jobs with increasing numbers of unemployed workers makes their assimilation back in to society even harder.
I followed that interview with two interviews about school funding as the Northfield School district was forced to ask for additional funds from local tax payers. Don Hill former teacher and union president has worked for many years to increase spending on k-12 education and to get the state legislature to realize that they can’t just continue to rely on local property tax payers to fund our much needed education system.
And Rep. Mindy Greiling, former chair of the MN House education finance committee shared with me her insights about the current legislative impasse and her efforts to put in place a more equitable funding system for education. She also cleared up some misinformation being spread across the state by the current education chair.
I have been doing a lot of reading about the economy and how we got into this mess and often made references to some of my readings in the interviews. But I was struck by one writer who had expressed concerns about our economic and political system that really rang true to me and predicted the collapse several years before it happened. John Ralston Saul is a Canadian whose book the Unconscious Civilizationcompelled me to call him and see if he would be willing to talk about some of his ideas and what is happening with the Occupy Wall street movement. When I contacted him I did not realize all of Saul’s background. He is President of the International PEN association, the organization that attempts to protect freedom of speech and writers who are harassed by oppressive governments. His wife is the former Governor General of Canada. He has won awards for his novels and acclaim for his books commenting on current political and economic events in the world, US and Canada.
Mr. Saul shared with me his ideas about the corrosive effect of corporatism and its attack on democracy. He sees the Citizen’s United decision by the US Supreme court establishing Corporations as citizens as part of rational extension from Mussolini who was a 20th century advocate of corporatism. He also linked the progression of Corporatist thinking to Globalization, which has little regard for citizens and national governments. He said he was impressed with the efforts of the Occupy movement to try to reawaken citizen activism and indicated felt they were doing a good job of pointing out the problem of corporate influence on political and economic institutions. Mr. Saul is able to avoid many of the right left and or Republcian Democratic arguments by bringing a very different perspective to the recent economic and political events. He echoed some of what economist Tor Dahl had said in our current corporate system ruled by managers anxious to protect what they have in privelege and advantage are unable to provide the economic growth we truly need. I highly recommend his series of books which also advocate for a more balanced view of how function as individuals in society. He believes strongly that government is the one way individuals can express themselves in the political sphere and they have an obligation to do so. He also believes that protection of the public space and public institutions are crucial for preserving our democracy and corporatism and privatization are bent on destroying both.
My friends from the Minnesota Jobs Now Coalition Kris Jacobs and Kevin Ristau shared with me their most recent research on the job situation in Minnesota. They have long advocated that an increase in the minimum wage would go along way in improving the demand side of our economic equation, an important concept when the economy is in slow down mode. If we want to be able to get people working we have to get money into more people’s pockets. It reminded me of what Utah banker, Mariner Eccles said before a Senate committee when trying to help them develop policies to help America find its way through the depression. “Contrary to what you have been hearing cutting government spending would only make matters worse. We have a situation where there is too much money in too few hands and the only way to correct the situation is for the government to step up and put people to work any way it can.” I also asked Jacobs and Ristau about a recent proposal by Georgia Professor William Darity to revive and expand the civilian conservation corps and attempt to get us back to full employment. They made it clear that without a clear jobs program putting people back to work it would be even harder to solve the debt problem our nation has. We have two problems they said the debt and jobs It matters which we one we solve first because it will assist in the other. We must create jobs and put people back to work.
Finally, I was joined by Carleton student Rebekah Frumkin who talked with me about her play “Security’ about the Enron scandal as Greek tragedy and also about her involvement with both the Occupy Chicago and Occupy Minnesota movements. It was refreshing to get her perspective on the economy and our future. You can listen to all of these programs archived on the KYMN Radio website on the Economy Talk page or you can visit the Economy talk page on this website to listen to interviews in an mp3 format.
This is my final program for the time being I expect to be spending time finishing up my book on how to save the middle class and will be busy promoting it. It should be published soon as an e-book. I also will soon be hitting the campaign trail to run for the newly reapportioned Mn House district in hopes of once again representing Northfield and surrounding townships in the state legislature. If you have questions about any of the programs in the series or my future pursuits you can contact me via e-mail at david@davidbly.com It has been a pleasure sharing this time with you and I hope you have enjoyed it as much as I have.
1. New Show David Emery 2. Economy Talk Steve Soderlund
3. Economy Talk Steve Soderlund2 4. Economy Talk Tor Dahl1
5. Economy Talk Reginaldo Haslett-Maroquin 6. Economy Talk Arnie Arneson
7. Economy Talk Karl Vohs 8. Economy Talk Ann Mosey
9. Economy Talk Rep. Lenczewski 10. Economy Talk Leota Goodney
11. Economy Talk Rick Hansen 12. Economy Talk Terry Morrow
13. Economy Talk Dick Levins1 14. Economy Talk John Marty
15. Economy Talk DanDimick 16. Economy Talk Bob Ciernia
17.Economy Talk Joan-Steve-Janusz 18. Economy Talk Nan Madden
19. Economy Talk RepTinaLiebling 20. Economy Talk Martha Paas
21. Economy Talk Jennifer Labovitz 22. Economy Talk DonHill
23. William Hsiao 24. Economy Talk Tor Dahl2
25. Economy Talk Levins2 26. Economy Talk Rukavina
27. Mindy Greiling 28. John Ralston Saul
29. Kris Jacobs and Kevin Ristau 30. Rebekah Frumkin
Program Summary
Nov 30, 2011 News
Today my father’s birthday, (Nov. 30) would find him at 87 years old if he were still alive. Unfortunately for me and for you too if you never met him, he died in 1968 at the age of 43. It was a couple of weeks after Martin Luther King’s assassination and I remember we talked about his admiration for King and how he had courageously faced his imminent death. Faith and scripture guided King as it did my father. Who I remember would sit on our front porch and sing his favorite hymns as death closed in on him.
My father was a journalist and enjoyed telling us he shared a birthday with his favorite writer Mark Twain and two other writers Jonathan Swift and Winston Churchill, although it was much easier to associate my father with the rye wit of Twain.
I got much of my appreciation for literature from my father as well as his sense of justice and service to community. He is without doubt the person I admire most in life. He unselfishly gave of himself and his skills until the very end of his life. What amazes me is even though I know he suffered most of his life
from pain severe illness he met every day until the very end with a smile and with an eagerness to accomplish something worth doing. As a scoutmaster in Northfield in the early sixties my father strived to make leaders of young boys and there are still a few men my age in Northfield who remember him and tell me how much he meant to their outlook on life.
Each year, for too many to remember, I have tried to write a poem to capture his values or his love of nature or my memory of him. Here is today’s effort:
THE ORDER OF THINGS
Waning light streams through the distant trees
Throwing ghostly shadows across the brown grass
Their dark forms seem to dance branches intertwined
Above them clouds blush the sky turning purple
The air goes cool and moist as if some living thing
Wakes from day long sleep – begins to stir with hunger
Swaying prairie grass seems to go on forever over the hills
In this still moment it’s easy to miss the multitude of ways
Life expresses itself in a thousand different grasses
Tiny flowers open only the bees know which are sweet or bitter
We cannot see them because we cannot name them our words
Allow us to know what is there even in the darkness
The chain of being is spread out all around us and we hold
Ourselves separate as if it cannot touch us – in the same way
We regard each other as strangers separate even invisible
Even though my existence depends on this other as her
Existence depends on me – to be, as Berkeley said, is to be
Perceived – So how are we to live in the world if we do not
See each other – even though the distance between us seems
Unfathomable – Even now I cannot reach you like a rich man
Who has no sense that his wealth is stitched together in a
A broad cloth made from lost pennies of the poor – threads of
Withered dreams and lost chances blamed on being in the wrong
Place at the wrong time or finding that all was lost when you
Looked the other way in that instant of sunlight and rain
The river of wealth flows toward those who have riches
And empties out the lakes of the exploited like blood
Drained from the veins of the carcass we will butcher and eat
Like the light fading from the distant trees that stand lonely
Against the spinning darkness as if holding up the stars
Nov 16, 2011 Economy, News
This Wednesday my guest is Carleton College Senior, Rebekah Frumkin who has been active in the Occupy MN movement. A movement echoing the concerns of Occupy Wall Street. We’ll talk about that and a play she wrote and produced called “Security” about the ENRON debaucle. She describes being struck by a publication called, “ADBUSTERS” that inspired her and others to check out the Occupy movement. We also talked a bit about the next steps for “Occupy (OWS)” as cities across the country seem to be cracking down.
Rebekah has become active in the “Teach-in” aspect of the movement and enjoys sharing the research she has done not only on ENRON but also the 2008 banking crash both resulting from as she describes “Corporate Malfeasance.” Listen in Wednesday at 6pm to KYMN radio 1080 on the AM dial. Or catch it on line, I think you’ll find Rebekah refreshing and articulate. She is someone who believes strongly in the democratic principles of the protesters and has done her home work about what went wrong in our economic and political system at the same time looking for ways to improve it.
After we finished the story she remembered one more story she wanted to tell:
I’d say if there’s anything this movement sorely needs, it’s a sense of humor. It may be hard to imagine Zapatistas in Chiapas chewing on cigars and making puns, but it’s certainly not impossible – humor really brings people together, and #occupy’s primary aim is bringing people together. And the quality or sophistication of the humor doesn’t necessarily matter. For instance, I was driving across Minneapolis with a group of fellow protesters, and we were all freezing (a long day of November frigidity had really gotten to us). Everyone was really somberly talking about their plans for winter. Were we going to sleep on the plaza in pup tents? Get space heaters somehow? Someone half-jokingly suggested that we make igloos, and one of my very serious, very dedicated friends expressed her approval of the idea of camping out on the frozen surface of a lake once we got kicked out of Government Plaza. Someone else said, “Yes. This could definitely work. Minnesota has over 15,000 lakes.” I sensed that the conversation had taken a turn for the absurd, so I began a chant of “Take your money out of the lakes!” It wasn’t funny in principle, but it got a car of exhausted protestors laughing. Contrary to what some may think, humor doesn’t detract from our political goal – it hones our focus, makes the long hours of protesting more bearable, and makes a loose association of people into a real community.
Rebekah has also been writing stories and you can find one of her stories, “Monster” in the 2009 collection of “Best American Non-Required Reading” edited by Dave Eggers.
Also if you are interested in learning more about Occupy Northfield here is a link to a story on Northfield.org
Nov 8, 2011 Budget, Economy, Jobs, Middle Class Amendment, Unions, Working families
Join me Nov. 9th at 6pm KYMN Radio 1080 AM for a conversation about the job situation in Minnesota with Kris
Jacobs and Kevin Ristau of the Minnesota JOBS NOW Coalition.
JOBS NOW Coalition is statewide research and policy coalition dedicated to promoting jobs that pay a family supporting wage—enough for a family to pay for basic needs. We are organized as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit institution and based in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
There goal is a Minnesota where everyone who is able and willing to work can work, where all jobs pay a family-supporting wage or better, and where work of every kind is respected and valued.
They compile solid research—including our groundbreaking Family Wage and Budget Calculator—to help government, businesses, nonprofits, and the public understand how jobs that support families historically have been generated and how we can generate these jobs now and into the future.
The payoff for Minnesota is expanded prosperity and a reduced future burden on state and local resources as the family-supporting wage, rather than assistance, comes to provide for the bulk of family needs.
That’s Nov. 9th at 6pm on kymnradio.net 1080 Am and remember if you don’t live in the area you can listen online by going to kymnradio.net and look for Economy Talk. I’ll post the link to the archive as soon as it is up.
Nov 4, 2011 News
The other night I went up to see a forum on Minnesota’s Energy Future hosted by Think Again Minnesota. The forum was Moderated by former Sen. John Doll who represented Bloomington and was Vice-Chair of the Senate Energy Committee.
The speakers were Ellen Anderson, Dean Abrahamson and Barbara Freese:
Ellen Anderson – Chair, Public Utilities Commission. Her dedication to clean energy for Minnesota resulted in the passage of the Clean Energy Bill of 2007 when she was a MN Senator.?Her topic:
The History of Minnesota’s Clean Energy Laws: How the Public Utilities Commission Can Lead the Way to a Clean Energy Future?
“I believe this will be the most transformational decade in the energy world since rural electrification, possibly even longer than that. . . If Alexander Graham Bell came back from the dead and looked at our telecommunications world, he would be stunned and amazed. But if Thomas Edison came back and looked at our electricity system, he’d say, ‘It looks just like it did when I left.’ We have an old fashioned grid, an analogue grid. It’s not in the digital world. We need to move to a smart grid.”
Dean Abrahamson – Professor Emeritus, Energy and Environment Policy, University of Minnesota. Professor Abrahamson was the first head of environmental studies programs in the Institute of Technology and the School of Public Affairs at the U of M and has published several books on climate change and energy including The Challenge of Global Warming.??
Energy Options in a Greenhouse World??
“In the U.S., the average carbon emissions per year is about 24 tons per person. That’s 2 1/2 times as much as in Europe. . . Keeping global warming to less than 2 degrees celsius requires reducing greenhouse gas emissions 60 to 80% by mid century. . . You can feed a person for a year or give one fill to an SUV. Are we going to use our precious farm land to grow food or use it to make motor fuel? . . . The capital cost of new nuclear plant is $10,000 per kilowatt. . . The cost of increasing efficiency is $300 per kilowatt, and it provides a lot of jobs.”
Barbara Freese – Author, Coal: a Human History; Climate and Energy Policy Analyst and Environmental Attorney; former MN Assistant Attorney General
Making Room for Clean Energy in a Shifting Political Landscape: The Opportunities and Challenges for Replacing Environmentally Destructive Coal Plants with Clean Energy?
“U.S. coal plants are old and uncontrolled. They contribute to thousands of deaths, affect the brain development of children, and are our greatest source of mercury. . . The National Academy of Sciences said the need for urgent action to address climate change is now indisputable.
I was lucky to run in to my old friend Jonathan Larson who blogged about the event and included some more information about Dean Abrahamson including a great article.
Dean Abrahamson taught a two-quarter graduate-level sequence entitled Energy and Public Policy at the University of Minnesota. He was a consummate generalist. After getting his undergraduate degree in mathematics, he got a Ph.D. in Physics. He then worked for the nuclear power industry before becoming concerned by the various exotic emissions those plants throw off. But before condemning them, he decided he needed to understand their effects on humans and so wrangled a spot in the medical school — becoming a doctor. But soon he discovered that the real action when it came to understanding and mitigating the effects of nuclear power was not in physics or medicine, it was in public policy. So it was back to school and soon he had another degree in public policy. (read more)
Overall the forum left me feeling we have stepped backwards from facing the difficult challenges of Peak Oil and Climate Change. This is a very sad state of affairs. Dr. Abrahamson and Ms Freese both said we need to move quickly to bring about systemic change if we are going to have any hope of addressing the problem. I agree, which is why I am pressing for a constitutional amendment to address this and the many other issues that threaten our well being.
Watch the Video by Bill Sorem of the Uptake
From the forum for Tuesday, November 1 ?Bloomington City Council Chambers
Oct 30, 2011 Economy, Jobs, News
My guest this Wed. Nov. 2nd at 6pm Canadian author and essayist John Ralston Saul has written a series of fascinating books on what means to be a citizen/individual. I was so impressed by his The Unconscious Civilization that I e-mailed him to see if I could interview him. I am pleased to report he was able to find the time to do the interview. Listen in you won’t regret it.
Mr. Saul is also the President of the International PEN an organization of writers committed to promoting literature and protecting freedom of expression.
Even though written a while ago (1995) his ideas are very relevant to our current situation. He discussed the importance of government and citizen action. He describes the take over of Corporatism and the corrosive affect it has on democracy and the destruction of the individual. He also, explains the collapse of Globalism and why it was an economic system that had no future and could never meet its many promises. You can listen here to a brief interview on the collapse of Globalism here. And here a longer lecture on Freedom and Globalization here.
Here is a sampling of The Unconscious Civilization:
The acceptance of corporatism causes us to deny and undermine the legitimacy of the individual as citizen in a democracy. The result of such a denial is a growing imbalance, which leads to our adoration of self-interest and our denial of the public good.
The point of these received wisdoms of the second half of the 20th century is that the very heart and
soul of our 2,500 year old civilization is, apparently, economics, and from that heart flowed, and continues to flow, everything else. We must therefore fling down and fling up the structures of our society as the marketplace orders. If we don’t, the marketplace will do it anyway.
Now, given our inability over the past two decades to deal with an unbreakable chain of unemployment, debt, inflation and no real growth, we have drifted farther and farther out into a cold, unfriendly, confusing sea. The new certitude of those in positions of authority – those out of the water – is that the certain answer is to cut away the life preservers.
The unregulated money markets have now given us over twenty years of crisis, instability, gratuitous speculation and no real growth. And on the subject of growth, what we are experiencing is a feeding frenzy of delusion. The money markets are a prime example. But so also are the commercial property booms; the endless investment in management structures; and our embroidering of consumerism which ranges from the highly baroque to the outright lunatic.
You know a society is in trouble when the virtual totality of the elite, now a good third of the population, adopts public silence and private passivity on the professional level, then walks away from society to blow off accumulated steam on private pleasures.
Our civilization is locked in the grip of an ideology – corporatism. An ideology that denies and undermines the legitimacy of individuals as the citizen in a democracy. The particular imbalance of this ideology leads to a worship of self-interest and a denial of the public good. The practical effects on the individual are passivity and conformism in the areas that matter, and non-conformism in the areas that don’t.
Listen in Wed. November 2nd at 6pm at KYMN Radio 1080 AM or listen on line at kymnradio.net.
Here is the link to the archived program (click here)
Oct 26, 2011 Budget, Economy, Jobs, Middle Class Amendment, News, Working families
David Cay Jonston has been doing outstanding work on explaining what has been happening in our economy for years. He describes himself as a Republican but one who is extremely worried about the growing inequality in our society and the growing inability of our government to meet the needs of our people as a whole.
Here is a video of his on the latest news on wages (click on image for video):
His related article:
First look at US pay data, it’s awful
Oct 20, 2011 02:45 IST
Anyone who wants to understand the enduring nature of Occupy Wall Street and similar protests across the country need only look at the first official data on 2010 paychecks, which the U.S. government posted on the Internet on Wednesday.
The figures from payroll taxes reported to the Social Security Administration on jobs and pay are, in a word, awful.
These are important and powerful figures. Maybe the reason the government does not announce their release — and so far I am the only journalist who writes about them each year — is the data show how the United States smolders while Washington fiddles. (read more)
Then here is his critique of tax cut proposals and what they will do (again click on the image):
Here’s a related article:
Orwellian tax talk By David Cay Johnston
The author is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.
Political tax talk is becoming Orwellian: Secrecy is Democracy. Auditors Reduce Collections. Tax Cheats Will Be Caught With Fewer Auditors.
Let’s start in Kansas, where the Lawrence Journal-World broke the news on Sunday that economist Arthur Laffer, father of curve-on-a-napkin tax policy, is advising the state on a new tax structure. The news is not so much that Laffer is getting $75,000 of taxpayer money, but that Governor Samuel Brownback wants advice only from business leaders; no wage earners allowed behind these officially closed doors. (read more)
Latest Entry
false slogans, such as ‘right to work.’ It is a law to rob us of our civil rights and job rights. Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining by which unions have improved wages and working conditions of everyone…
