Because 43 Billion Is Not Enough

It’s a great day in the morning when you get billionaires crying the blues in the Wall Street Journal op-ed section.

It’s an even greater one when that particular billionaire is Charles Koch, who has elected this year to play the role of the obscenely rich autocrat who is just fed up with all this cauterwauling from the masses about how much money he makes and how little taxes he really pays. He is just TIRED of people worrying about what government programs his corporations gladly participate in, because when you live in KochWorld, the government is only supposed to provide services and funding and tax breaks to those who hold the reins of commerce – all the rest of you lazy, good for nothing, molly coddled proletariat who just want police and schools and roads TO GET TO WORK ON to make KochWorlder types even more billions be damned.

"The interest of the second order, that of those who live by wages, is as strictly connected with the interest of the society as that of the first. The wages of the labourer, it has already been shewn, are never so high as when the demand for labour is continually rising, or when the quantity employed is every year increasing considerably. When this real wealth of the society becomes stationary, his wages are soon reduced to what is barely enough to enable him to bring up a family, or to continue the race of labourers. When the society declines, they fall even below this."

An inquiry into the nature and causes of the Wealth of Nations, Volume 1 By Adam Smith

It’s as simple as this for KochWorld inhabitants – all regular, non-millionaire and non-billionaire rank and file employees, or "second worlders", as Adam Smith puts it, whether you make $20,000 a year or $200,000, DO NOT DESERVE WHAT YOU MAKE.

You are overpaid, in the eyes of KochWorlders, if they are handing out anything more than it takes to sustain life. A dollar a day and a bowl of rice, in their calculations, would still leave you ahead of your Chinese counterparts in total compensation, and finally level the playing field enough, once those pesky TAXES and GOVERNMENT REGULATIONS have been removed, for them to make REAL MONEY.

It’s a fantasy most KochWorlders go to sleep by.

But that’s all it will ever be (have my TV economists all gone to sleep on the job? Or are they trying to figure out the exchange rate of a bowl of rice?), just a fantasy.

Because rich people can’t buy enough of anything to keep our economy running.

Because cutting corporate taxes doesn’t have anything to do with job creation. The trillions sitting on corporate balance sheets right now aren’t funding any new hiring initiatives, because there aren’t enough people with any money left to stimulate any kind of sustainable demand for any more goods or services than we consume right now. Cutting taxes saves a corporation money. Cutting taxes does not grow top line revenue, one of those bothersome but necessary results that happen when demand for a company's good or service actually increases. Cutting consumer wages in an economy driven by consumer spending seems to be the quickest way the United States can emulate the Roman empire's death spiral.

Putting even more money into the hands of people who won’t spend it (have you ever seen a billionaire back up a tractor trailer at a one day sale?) on anything but a raft of tax consultants to help them figure out how to avoid paying any taxes on it would stall an already unbalanced fiscal equation even further.

You are probably reading this at work. You need to quit reading and work harder, so the people on Wall Street who pushed the buttons that blew up the economy in the first place can be assured that you produce enough surplus value for your company and your 401(k) so they can roll the dice again.

Why has the nation’s toilet paper king has taken to writing op-eds? Because YOU PEOPLE JUST DON'T GET IT. His billions aren’t coming in fast enough. It’s high time someone had some sympathy for the rich and THEIR PROBLEMS, instead of worrying about paying EMT technicians and schoolteachers and firefighters – you know, those lowly Americans who buy practically every product KochWorld sells.

AFRO First Edition on WEAA: Sean Yoes And Kris Broughton Talk Politics Tonite At 8:30

I will be on the radio tonight at 8:30 pm EST with Sean Yoes, senior reporter at The Afro American, giving my own two cents on Governor Scott Walker and the Wisconsin protests. Yoes is the host of "The WEAA/AFRO First Edition", an hour-long political talk show on Baltimore's NPR affiliate WEAA-FM (88.9 FM), which airs Sunday nights at 8 p.m.

If you are a fan of Scott Walker and his heavy handed tactics to strip the Wisconsin public unions of their collective bargaining rights, you do not need to click on the link above tonight.

In any case, it will be an entertaining segment, with plenty of information about the plight of the protestors and the challenges facing the Obama administration going forward.

You can click this link and push the "Listen Live" button at the top of the page to hear the show.

Enjoy!

"You're Doing A Heck Of A Job, Scottie"

The dumbassedness continues in the governor's mansion in Wisconsin, where Scott Walker's guts are probably starting to curdle and twist in fear of the no show Tuesday by the state senate's Democratic caucus, an act that will effectively force him to deal with his budget shortfall without the benefit of a bond refinancing.

I couldn't see it happening to a nicer guy.

I told you earlier this week why this kicked out of college nincompoop would be an idiot for giving the rest of the world time to really study the entire 146 pages of that bill he and his posse were trying to pass so fast.

I could never have imagined that he would be dumb enough to TAKE A CALL FROM A BILLIONAIRE WHO IS ON FUCKING SKYPE! I actually have a similar recording device on my Skype account, although it doesn't work nearly as well as the one used by the editor of the Buffalo Beast.

Which is why "you're doing a heck of a job, Scottie" is getting half hearted endorsements from his fellow GOP governors, including ole Chris Christie, who just can't seem to form his lips around the words "no collective bargaining in my state."

But that's not why I'm posting here on a Saturday when I am almost half a day behind schedule already. I'm here because I am disgusted at the way this entire debacle, as ridiculous as its underlying premise is, has been discussed by the mainstream media solely in right wing talking points, as if the Fourth Estate doesn't own any dictionaries. Most of the people who call themselves journalists these days need to pour gasoline on their keyboards and set them on fire.

FOR INSTANCE, the entire conversation this week has focused on the compensation of public sector workers. But instead of describing their salaries and benefits accurately, as a combined salary and benefits package, they have mostly fallen down on the job, insisting that the taxpayers are "footing the bill" for public employees pension plans, when any fifth grader can tell you that if you agree to give him an apple to take out your trash, and he tells you to cut the apple in half and so he can have some later, the half you give him later is still a half that he earned for taking out your trash.

But I guess I shouldn't expect much from an entire contingent of journalists and pundits who continually refer to the Social Security as an "entitlement program" even though it has always been set up as an INSURANCE PLAN, one that has provided a whole lot of cash for our Congress to piss away like water back when times where good.

So if you have fifteen minutes today, you need to read this article on the Forbes magazine blog that takes the rest of their brethren to task for royally fucking up a fundamental part of the whole Wisconsin union pension argument - whose money is this?

Pulitzer Prize winning tax reporter, David Cay Johnston, has written a brilliant piece for tax.com exposing the truth about who really pays for the pension and benefits for public employees in Wisconsin.

Gov. Scott Walker says he wants state workers covered by collective bargaining agreements to “contribute more” to their pension and health insurance plans. Accepting Gov. Walker’ s assertions as fact, and failing to check, creates the impression that somehow the workers are getting something extra, a gift from taxpayers. They are not. Out of every dollar that funds Wisconsin’ s pension and health insurance plans for state workers, 100 cents comes from the state workers.
The Wisconsin Lie Exposed

This is why newspapers are going out of business - because their publishers insist on keeping their staffers on a leash and printing the kind of bullshit stories the general public could care less about.

As Gordon Gekko said to Bud Fox, "tell me something I don't already know."

And if you can't do that, just present the facts - ALL OF THEM - whether or not they look "objective" or "balanced" - and quit wasting our time with "response quotes" from bald faced liars, no matter which political party they support.

Brown Man Thinking Hard Is Now Mobile

I've been haranguing my buddy to death about his company website lately because he doesn't have a mobile version. Ever since I succumbed to the urge to get a smartphone, I have been amazed at the number of websites I can visit with just the touch of a few buttons during lunch or on a trip.

So it finally dawned on me yesterday that my own blog was not mobile friendly. This is usually the point where I wonder why I don't break down and get a Wordpress blog, which would make all of this as easy as uploading a plugin.

Luckily, the folks at Blogger are actually working, because while I was looking for a mobile friendly template to install, something I really don't have time for right now, I discovered that they have introduced a new feature to Blogger that makes getting a mobile friendly version of my blog as easy as clicking "yes" underneath the right tab on my Blogger dashboard.

So if you've got an IPhone, or a Android phone, (haven't tried it on a Blackberry, but should work there as well) this should be automatic. If you've got a Nokia phone like I do, or a Windows phone, or a  phone that uses Opera Mini, click the "Mobile Version" link at the top of the page and you should be all set.

The Brown Man, taking it to the streets one cell phone at a time.