Food Stamp Fraud vs. Tax Evasion

Which offense will land you in prison the longest: Income tax evasion, financial fraud, attempted murder, possession of drugs, or lying on a food stamp application?

In Mississippi Stanley Jones failed to disclose on his application for food stamps that someone in his household had been convicted of a drug-related felony since 1996. He was sentenced to 6 months in prison, three years on supervised release and ordered to pay restitution of $8,282 (Doesn't his prison term cost the taxpayers more than $8,282 in food stamps?)

No record of this particular Stanley Jones was found on the Mississippi Department of Corrections website or at the Federal Bureau of Prisons, so one can assume that Mister Jones' drug-related felony wasn't all that serious. If he had been imprisoned for trafficking 100 pounds of crack cocaine, Stanley Jones might still be in jail, getting free meals and avoiding the food stamp rap altogether.

Although, prior to 1996, Stanley Jones might have been arrested for possession of one joint of marijuana. And if so, I wonder how much time he spent in jail for that offense in the good State of Mississippi (especially if he were black).

Meanwhile, Lauryn Hill (singer-songwriter) received a measly 3 month jail sentence for failing to pay about $1 million in taxes over the past decade. ($1 million could have paid for a hell of a lot of food stamps!)

Martha Stewart only got 5 months in prison for conspiracy, obstruction, and making false statements to federal officers after being accused of insider trading.

And Mark Wahlberg (the famous novelist) only got 45 days in jail for attempted murder and assault after knocking an older man unconscious with a large wooden stick. It seems that beating someone almost to death is less onerous than financial fraud, income tax evasion or lying on a food stamp application.

Stanley Jones got a six month prison sentence for fraud in a case brought by the same Justice Department that's now investigating JP Morgan Chase and Bank of America. The $8,282 in restitution that Mister Jones must pay most likely represents the entire amount of value "taken" via his "food stamp fraud" --- because States never settle for anything less than every last dollar in these type of cases.

Meanwhile, the SEC's latest target Fabrice Tourre --- the Goldman Sachs exec who joked about selling bad bonds to "widows and orphans" --- will not do a single day in jail for his part in a fraud that caused two banks in Europe to lose over a billion dollars. And Fab's restitution will range from $30,000 to $780,000, depending upon how much judge Katherine Forrest decides to fine him for each of his six counts of civil fraud.

Goldman Sachs has already settled for $550 million for the same case, which is far much less than the total amount of damage they caused, and less than the profits Goldman Sachs made. And nobody went to jail for a single day.

Even Paris Hilton (the trust fund baby) got three days in jail after she violated probation for not attending rehab after being found guilty for speeding and driving without a license.

And Chace Crawford (the actor) spent a few hours in jail after he was found with less than 2 ounces of marijuana while sitting in a parked car.

But Stanley Jones got 6 months of hard time because he was too poor to buy food. Maybe if he had incorporated himself, he could have done what the big banks and pharmaceutical companies always do when they're caught for fraud --- by enjoying "limited liability" and only paying pennies on the dollar for their fraud. And just like the CEOs, Stanley Jones could have also escaped doing any jail time at all.

But by being in prison, at least Stanley Jones is being fed my the taxpayers again...and getting free healthcare too.

Currently at least six federal agencies, including the Justice and Treasury departments, are coordinating a broad probe of online payday lenders that charge enormous interest and fees to low-income borrowers. New York's top financial regulator on Tuesday ordered 35 online payday lenders to stop offering loans that violate state laws. The state also sent letters to 117 banks, asking them to help cut off payday lenders from the global network used by banks to send money and collect payments. Michael Bresnick, the former federal prosecutor who's directing the task force, referred to online payday lenders repeatedly as “mass market fraudsters". (Will any of these banksters go to prison for fraud?)

Conservative Reasons for the Great Recession: Debunked

From Noah Smith's article: Conservative economic arguments since the crisis: A review. Noah Smith (a finance professor at SUNY Stony Brook, an economics PhD student at the University of Michigan, an academic editor in Japan, and a physics major at Stanford) writes:

"I want to go through the main economic arguments put forth by conservatives since the crisis, and try to be as fair and even-handed as I can to each. Maybe that's a hopeless task, but it's healthy to do these things once in a while."

Argument 1: "Fannie, Freddie, and possibly the CRA caused the crisis."
Conclusion: I judge this conservative argument to be 5% right.

Argument 2: "Stimulus can't possibly work."
Conclusion: I judge this conservative argument to be 0% right.

Argument 3: "Welfare is the main force prolonging the recession, by discouraging people from working."
Conclusion: I judge this conservative argument to be 10% right.

Argument 4: "Uncertainty about government policy is the main thing holding back the recovery."
Conclusion: I judge this conservative argument to be 15% right.

Argument 5: "Quantitative Easing will cause inflation."
Conclusion: I judge this conservative argument to be 10% right.

Argument 6: "Deficits are dangerous and must be cut, but only by cutting spending rather than raising taxes."
Conclusion: I judge this conservative argument to be 50% right.

Noah Smith:

"To sum up, as hard as I try, I can't rid myself of the notion that conservatives have tossed out a lot of bad economic arguments in the last five years.

Paul Krugman writes: "Politicians seek out economists who reinforce their prejudices; news media are either propaganda organs or desperately afraid of declaring, in any straightforward way, that politicians are wrong, no matter how much what they say is at odds with the truth."

Obamacare isn't destroying jobs (by Jared Bernstein and Paul Van De Water) "Many of the jobs added in recent months have been part-time, and this has led critics of Obamacare to argue that the implementation of health-care reform is the culprit. Because the legislation requires employers with at least 50 full-time workers to offer them health coverage or pay a penalty, the bill’s detractors claim that it creates a disincentive to hire full-timers and that you can already see the shift to part-time work in the data....Recent data provide scant evidence that health reform is causing a significant shift toward part-time work."

Also read The Right cuts food stamps to pass corporate farm welfare and this, The simple economics of the declining middle class — and the not so simple politics

Medicare, Big Pharma & Hospital Fraud: Rampant

Many of us are aware of the TIME magazine investigation about hospitals charging us $12 for those little paper pill cups. Those little cups add up to millions of dollars a year; but those little red and blue pills that Big Pharma pushes on us add up to billions. And many times the taxpayers are illegally billed for those little cups and pills. But because of budget cuts, the Inspector General may no longer investigate these abuses and fraud. It seems the healthcare industry, just like the banks, will be left to police themselves -- so expect profits soar. Unless of course, the GOP shuts down the government.

Health and Human Services Inspector General Daniel Levinson said the public should be "outraged" to hear that government warnings to avoid using the anti-psychotic drugs on people in nursing homes with dementia often went unheeded. He went on to accuse manufacturers of putting profits before safety by aggressively marketing these drugs for just such uses.

An audit in 2011 found that almost 305,000 of over 2 million elderly persons who lived in nursing homes in the first six months of 2007 had a prescription for at least one atypical anti-psychotic drug.

The OIG report said that 88 percent of these prescriptions were written "off-label," meaning the drugs were being used for purposes that had not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. In some cases, pills were prescribed despite warnings from the FDA that using them for treating dementia patients could be dangerous. In all, unapproved uses and improperly documented claims for these drugs cost Medicare $116 million in one six-month period, the report found.

Eli Lilly & Co. had once urged doctors to prescribe one such drug (Zyprexa) for elderly patients with dementia, an unapproved use for the anti-psychotic, even though the drug maker had evidence the medicine didn't work for such patients. As a matter of fact, the drug could even be deadly. Four years after Lilly sent study results to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (showing that Zyprexa didn't alleviate dementia symptoms in older patients) it began marketing the drug to those very people, according to documents unsealed in insurer suits against the company for overpayment.

In the past Lilly had pleaded guilty to a federal misdemeanor charge of illegally marketing Zyprexa for off-label uses to elderly consumers. The company admitted illegal promotions from September 1999 through March 2001, while denying such practices beyond that date. But because corporations enjoy "limited liability", no particular individuals within the company are ever personally held accountable, and the incorporated company (with "personhood") is usually let off with a small fine in proportion to the profits they make off of such practices. A cost-to-risk analysis is calculated beforehand, so therefore, paying a fine for marketing unsafe products is just part of the cost of doing business (just as when the banks are fined for their fraud in home mortgages, when no banker was ever actually prosecuted).

Haldol is another such drug used on nursing home residents and a study last year says Haldol is even more deadly than other anti-psychotics. Everyday we are inundated with ads where the list of side effects clearly will make someone suffer, if not outright kill them. Marketing new drugs, or trying to sell bad drugs for new purposes, to the elderly in nursing homes for profit is nothing new, but appears endemic to the U.S.

Russian dissidents in the USSR were once tortured with Haldol, but in the U.S. it is routinely used to control people in nursing homes. In Gitmo these drugs were also used on detainees, as well as by ICE on undocumented immigrants during deportation. Lawsuits were filed on behalf of 356 deportees who had been sedated with Haldol from 2002-2008. The side effects of this drug are literally torturous, and will make someone want to "rip off their skin". And we give these drugs to our elderly, because in America we have corporations who profit from pain --- because after all, "no pain, no gain".

Yet the Inspector General's investigative unit recently cited major budget and staffing cuts for scrapping new audits to identify these type of abuses on our elderly in nursing homes. (Big Pharma wins while old people lose big time.)

Also, in related medical fraud news: hospitals grab at least $1 billion in extra fees for emergency room visits, suggesting facilities have taken advantage of government's failure to set billing standards. The growth of electronic medical records has helped ease the path to inflate medical bills as billing software helps medical professionals document higher fees.

According to the Center for Public Integrity, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Attorney General Eric Holder fired off a stern letter to five prominent medical groups threatening criminal prosecution for applying the technology to bill for more complex and costly services than merited --- a practice is known as "upcoding."

Doctors and hospitals have collected billions in questionable Medicare fees. One investigation suggests costs from upcoding and other abuses is massive fraud. Thousands of doctors and other medical professionals have steadily billed higher rates for treating elderly patients on Medicare over the last decade --- adding $11 billion or more to their fees and signaling a possible rise in medical billing abuse. (The GOP wants to cut Medicare insurance for elderly patients, rather than investigate the corporate fraud.)

CNN and Time magazine investigated hospital billing and found a family that was charged hundreds of thousands of dollars. Hospitals are charging us $12 for those little paper pill cups and paying their hospital CEO's over $9 million a year. People who are fully insured, or those on Medicare, have their medical costs negotiated, and even though there is fraud in billing to the government, at least those patients aren't being bilked to death, at least, not like those who are either under-insured or can not afford any health insurance at all.

We now spend 20 percent of our GDP --- an estimated $2.8 trillion --- on health care every year. And we know the real reasons why, don't we? Corporate greed.

In the United States a neurosurgeon must complete four years of college, four years of medical school, a one year internship, and at least five years of a neuro-surgery residency. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the top neurosurgeons made an annual median salary of $225,390 in 2010. But the CEO of a hospital or pharmaceutical company only needs a business degree and a willingness to steal at the risk of seriously harming or killing people.

Among the highest-paid "public employees" in California was at the Palomar Pomerado Hospital. Chief Executive Michael Covert's pay totaled $1.04 million in 2009. The hospital's chief executive, Nancy Farber, was the second-highest-paid official and was paid about $874,000. The healthcare publication Payers & Providers reported that the average compensation for "private hospital" chief executives averaged $732,000 a year, and far surpassed the annual salary of $225,390 that a top neurosurgeon might earn.

But even the "average" of $732,000 a year for a hospital's CEO is a paltry sum when compared to what many others earn in the healthcare industry. Here are but a few examples of excessive annual CEO salaries in the healthcare industry, and another reason why the cost of healthcare might be so high:

• John Hammergren of McKesson Pharmaceuticals - $131.2 million
• George Paz at Express Scripts Healthcare - $51.5 million
• Stephen Hemsley at UnitedHealth Group - $48.8 million
• John C. Martin of Gilead Sciences (Biotech) - $42.7 million
• David Pyott at Allergan Pharmaceuticals - $33.8 million
• Gregory Lucier of Life Technologies (Biotech) - $33.8 million

And when they earn stock options as part of their pay, these CEOs also pay a lower tax rate that many other American workers will pay on their ordinary salaries --- such as neurosurgeons, who might pay the top tax rate while the CEOs might pay a lesser rate than Warren Buffett's secretary. In other words, we are paying people less who save lives than the people who are willing to risk lives.

Our healthcare system, from the top down, seems more driven by "profits" and "pay" than about "health" or "care". It seems that healthcare itself is more of a by-product of patented medicines, medical devices made in China, CEO compensation packages and Medicare fraud.

Average working Americans are paying for this corporate fraud. As the decades have gone by, Americans have been spending more and more on health care, largely through their health insurance premiums, to the point that many families cannot afford the kinds of health insurance plans in which middle- and upper-income families take part.

Working Americans are paying for corporate fraud in the way of jobs as well. In looking at the totality of the Affordable Care Act, the most important component of the act is what it will do to the costs of medical care. For the last 25 years (according to a study from the National Federation of Independent Business), small businesses have ranked the cost of health insurance as the most critical problem they face. The link between health costs and employment is increasingly clear. A study shows that industries that provided health care to more of their workers in 1986 had significantly lower employment growth between 1987 and 2005.

Could bribery and political corruption be behind Medicare and hospital billing fraud? The top 2 U.S. counties in which doctors billed the highest percentage of the two most expensive Medicare codes for established patients in 2008 were in Republican Florida Governor Rick Scott's state of Florida.

Governor Rick Scott (who was once accused of Medicare fraud) recently suspended Miami Lakes Mayor Michael Pizzi and Sweetwater Mayor Manuel Marono from office after they were both arrested by the FBI on public corruption charges for taking bribes (Both mayors are Republican, but the reason for the pending charges are as yet unclear). U.S. Attorney Wifredo A. Ferrer said, "Our democracy suffers in these cases when elected officials use their power and political influence for personal gain instead of the public good."

As "Mister" Rick Scott, he ran a company that paid a record fine for committing Medicare fraud. But as Republican "Governor" Rick Scott, he cut millions from health care benefits for Florida's poor. Now Florida's chief economist has warned the staff of Governor Rick Scott that his Medicaid cost estimates are all wrong, but Rick Scott keeps using them anyway. (PolitiFact has investigated claims against both Rick Scott and Mitt Romney about Medicare fraud during their business careers.)

More and more we're discovering that healthcare costs have been more driven by greed (and many times fraud) than anything else, plain and simple. Richard Scrushy was once the superstar CEO of HealthSouth, a huge provider of outpatient rehab services until federal prosecutors accused him of masterminding a $2.7 billion fraud.

In the U.S. about $70 billion is lost to heathcare fraud every year. And these people who cheated Medicare, most likely also cheated on their income tax return too (tax evasion costs us another $337 billion every year.)

Thousands of medical professionals have steadily billed Medicare for more complex and costly healthcare over the past decade --- adding $11 billion or more to their fees --- despite little evidence that elderly patients required more treatment. While Mitt Romney was a director of the Damon Corporation, the company was defrauding Medicare out of millions, and yet Romney's and Paul Ryan's plan would have ended Medicare for the elderly as we know it.

To his rare credit, Mitt Romney has dismissed the GOP strategy of shutting down the government in their efforts to de-fund Obamacare. Bain Capital greatly profits from government contracts. Senators Marco Rubio of Florida (Rick Scott's state), Ted Cruz of Texas (George W. Bush's state) and Mike Lee of Utah (home state of Romney's church) are urging Republicans to swear off voting for any year-end spending bill that includes money for the president's healthcare law. Parts of the federal government would shut down on October 1st if Congress doesn't approve a short-term funding bill before then.

Mitt Romney also opposes Obamacare because of the 3.8% surtax on his capital gains to fund Obama's healthcare plan. Romney earns, on average, about $20 million a year from capital gains on his "deferred interest". But because most Americans don't have the same access to good affordable healthcare as people like Romney do, that might also be another reason why the rich live longer than the poor.

The ultra-wealthy don't want to help fund Obamacare because they'll never need Obamacare --- they've been installing full-fledged emergency rooms right inside their homes, each complete with an array of medical gear that mirrors what the White House has available for the President. They even have them installed on their yachts and private jets. Some hospitals are specifically competing for wealthy clients by offering them perks like butlers, fancy beds, beautiful views, and fine food. But if you're poor with a tooth ache, you might need an old rusty pair of pliers and a bottle of cheap whiskey. And if you're elderly in a U.S. nursing home, you might prefer euthanasia. But the hospitals and nursing homes will keep grandpa and grandma alive for as long as possible, because they are more profitable alive, even if they may be living as vegetables.

A few other examples of healthcare fraud (too numerous to list here)

• CEO Earnest Gibson III of Riverside General Hospital, along with his son and five others, were arrested by the FBI as part a national Medicare fraud sweep involving $430 million in bogus billings and 91 healthcare providers in seven states.
• Kent Thiry, who's paid $15 million a year as CEO of DaVita Inc., defrauded the government by over-billing Medicare and Medicaid "hundreds of millions, easily!"
• Marcus Jenkins, the owner of several Detroit-area businesses that housed severely mentally-disabled Medicare recipients pleaded guilty for his role in a $13.2 million fraud scheme.
• Texas psychiatrist, Anthony Francis Valdez, wrongly billed over $42 million in medical procedures.
• Abshir Ahmed, operator of a home healthcare agency in northeast Minneapolis was charged with filing bogus Medicaid billings totaling more than $400,000.

In other medical related news: Colorado, California and Washington, including 16 other states, enjoy freedom under state law to operate legal medical marijuana-cannabis businesses. But with billions of dollars in the bank, the pharmaceutical companies pay millions for anti-marijuana lobbying efforts to sway Congress not to legalize marijuana under federal law --- even though the pharmaceutical industry is now marketing an FDA approved cannabis medicine to undercut the growing market dominated by the states.

Lying Corporate Scumbags

The Three Biggest Lies about Why Corporate Taxes Should Be Lowered
Monday, August 5, 2013 by Robert Reich

Instead of spending August on the beach, corporate lobbyists are readying arguments for when Congress returns in September about why corporate taxes should be lowered. But they’re lies. You need to know why so you can spread the truth.

Lie #1: U.S. corporate tax rates are higher than the tax rates of other big economies. Wrong. After deductions and tax credits, the average corporate tax rate in the U.S. is lower. According to the Congressional Research Service, the United States has an effective corporate tax rate of 27.1%, compared to an average of 27.7% in the other large economies of the world. 

Lie #2: U.S. corporations need lower taxes in order to make investments in new jobs. Wrong again. Corporations are sitting on almost $2 trillion of cash they don’t know what to do with.

Rather than investing in expansion, they’re buying back their own stocks or raising dividends. They have no economic incentive to expand unless or until consumers want to buy more, but consumer spending is pinched because the middle class keeps shrinking and the median wage, adjusted for inflation, keeps dropping.

Lie #3: U.S. corporations need a tax break in order to be globally competitive. Baloney. The “competitiveness" of American corporations is becoming a meaningless term because most big U.S. corporations are no longer American companies at all. The biggest have been creating way more jobs abroad than in the U.S. 

A growing percent of their customers are outside the U.S. Their investors are global. They do their R&D all over the world. And they park their profits wherever taxes are lowest — another reason they pay so little in taxes. (Don’t be fooled that a “tax amnesty" that will bring all that money back to America and generate lots of new investments and jobs here — see item #2 above).

Corporations want corporate tax reduction to be the centerpiece of “tax reform" come the fall. The President has already signaled a willingness to sign on in return for more infrastructure investment. But the arguments for corporate tax reduction are specious.

* Editor's Note: Here is an opposing view (if you are stupid enough to believe this bullshit) where they propose a VAT tax and lowering the corporate tax rate to 15%. (It's almost as bad as Herman Cain's "999" plan.)

The REAL State of the Union (July 2013)

All the bloggers and writers of op-ed pieces in newspapers these days are saying what everyone else is saying (and already knows)....high and long-term unemployment for the past 5 years, crappy jobs, low wages, part-time hours, temporary work, no healthcare or other benefits, the offshoring/outsourcing of good jobs, young adults stuck at home with their parents, huge and growing CEO salaries, wealth inequality, rampant tax evasion, healthcare fraud, financial fraud, record corporate profits, offshore tax havens, an unfair tax code, corporate welfare (crony capitalism), globalization, foreign sweatshops, guestworker visa abuses....the list is almost endless it seems, and growing every day.

The rich get richer as the rest of us get poorer as inequality is at a record level. Corruption and greed abounds in a financial system that government refuses to reign in --- that Congress continues to do nothing about it. As a matter of fact, it was Congress that has enabled all these things to happen in the first place over the past 40 years.

And guess what? It most likely will only get worse, and might not ever get better....at least not on the path we're on now. We have declining tax revenues to support government and infrastructure because of the continued loss of good-paying jobs and a very skewed tax code. The USA continues to lose its top rankings in many categories regarding the middle-class standard-of-living.

Corporate America hasn't invested in America or the American Dream. They've been the enablers of other economies in other countries for other workers to buy things and pay taxes to other governments by offshoring jobs to many countries that don't like us very mach....all to further fatten a handful of already very fat wallets by exploiting low-wage countries.

The mainstream media, depending on who you listen to, either sugar-coats the facts or misrepresents them. On MSNBC (a major supporter of Obama because of his close ties to GE's CEO) had on ex-CBS news reporter Dan Rather saying it was a good thing that a Libertarian was buying the Washington Post. Meanwhile, a major supporter of the Tea Party, the Koch brothers, are trying to buy the LA Times. And we already know the agenda of Fox News (who supported Mitt Romney). Not only can our politicians now be bought on the cheap, but so can the Fourth Estate.

Obama is going to make a major speech on the housing market, and will most likely tell us how home prices are rising again. But most of the buyers are either wealthy or foreign investors, taking advantage of the low prices --- and if they can't pay cash, will finance at low interest rates, making us a nation of renters. 20 million Americans are either unemployed or working part-time and most probably don't have the cash for a down payment, can't afford a mortgage payment and don't have a good enough credit rating to qualify for a mortgage. A 30-year fixed rate mortgage can keep housing costs fairly steady for a household for three decades, but someone who pays rent can see their cost of keeping a roof over their head go up every year.

Speaking of housing, with so many of our young people still reliant of their parents, they would have to start forming communes (multiple room-mates) to afford housing costs on their low-paying jobs. Not to mention the disabled and elderly, who are trying to survive on their meager Social Security benefits. With ever-increasing costs for food and energy, how will they also be able to afford rent? The CEOs and members in Congress certainly don't seem overly concerned, or they would have done something long ago...like 40 years ago.

The political process is corrupt; campaign finance laws only enables those with the most money to have a voice in politics. Propaganda and outright lying to the American people is the norm, just to keep those in power in one of the two political parties. They will say anything to retain or regain power with little concern for the people that the they're supposed to actually represent. They don't serve the people, but themselves, and why so many became wealthy only after getting into political office.

The GOP wants to ban all "pro-life" clinics, believing that fetuses have a right to life; but when a baby has the unfortunate luck of being born to a poor family, the GOP wants nothing to do with educating or feeding them if their parents lack the financial means...as though procreation was an absolute choice (rather than a primal instinct) and that personal responsibly was the only factor in a child's upward mobility --- as though babies could make any choices at all, or take personal responsibly for their own being.

The Democrats talk the talk when it comes to the middle-class, but were equally complicit in maintaining the preferential tax treatment of capital gains over the last 90 years...one of the primary factors that has been driving income disparity. Why are the most wealthy among us allowed this special tax, and not taxed like we are on our regular wages?

Obama talks about low-paying jobs and the offshoring of good-paying jobs, but signs more free trade agreements...saying one thing, but doing another. And the GOP is also pushing for more guestworker visas, which of course, the labor unions are steadfastly against. The GOP has been busting unions for the last 40 years. But even the co-founder, CEO and editor-in-chief of Business Insider says he hates labor unions, but unless companies start raising wages, we're going to need them.

The Republicans complain about government entitlements but neither party will tax the rich the same way as everyone else --- according to their annual adjusted incomes in the income tax brackets that are currently in the tax code. The tax code was written specially for the most wealthy individuals and corporations. Tax loopholes (legislated on behalf of lobbyists) is why many companies pay less, and sometimes pay ZERO in "effective" corporate taxes --- but yet, claim we have the highest "statutory" tax rate in the world. If the tax rate were 100% but loopholes allowed them to pay 0%, what difference does it matter what the tax rate is? And the offshore tax havens have yet to be outlawed.

The GOP wants to defund the IRS so that these people and their revenue streams can't be audited and taxed to fund a growing population, education and infrastructure --- but at the same time, wants to keep funding the defense industry because of lobbyists, holding jobs as hostages in all 50 states.

The Democrats had plenty of chances to make changes when they held power in all three branches of government --- but passed Obamacare to further enrich the healthcare industry, which is already riff with corruption, greed and fraud --- just look at Medicare. But rather than effectively cut fraud, the GOP wants to cut benefits to the elderly --- and the Democrats, to get what they want, talk about "compromise" --- such as chained-CPI for Social Security on the elderly, but yet, doesn't subject their own Congressional salaries to the same standard.

Both parties have allowed the $113,700 cap on Social Security taxes, but then some also complain that not enough people are paying in to the system make it solvent in the future. 50% of US workers earn $27,000 or less and pay this tax on 100% of their income. Members of Congress, who earn $174,000 (or more) a year, do not pay this tax on 100% of their income. CEOs who earn millions every year pay ZERO Social Security taxes on their capital gains from stock options. Raise wages, tax capital gains for Social Security and eliminate the cap. Case solved.

But both political parties won't do this because they're both beholden to the big banks, big corporations and the wealthy (half of Congress are millionaires...so they write the tax code for themselves too, just like they did with the insider trading law called the STOCK Act.)

Congress just left for another paid vacation (for 5 weeks) without passing a farm bill to renew food stamps to 47 million poor Americans. They didn't pass an immigration bill either, or a host of many other reforms that are needed. Instead the House voted to repeal Obamacare for the 40th time (primarily to repeal the 3.8% surtax of capital gains on the very rich to help fund Obamacare for the poor); and Obama went on the campaign trail again to "talk" about the declining middle-class.

Speaking of banks that are too big to fail and their CEOs who are too big to jail: Why does our central bank (the Federal Reserve) loan money to the commercial banks for 99% less than what the American people have to pay for their home, auto and school loans? Nationalize the Fed and the entire banking system and get rid of the corrupt and greedy middle-men (BofA, Citigroup, JPMorgan, etc). Why does our central bank print money (actually, digitally creates out of thin air), just to profit these banks? The Fed has no obligation to see these commercial enterprises succeed in a genuine market-based economic system. Although, the Fed does have a responsibly for job growth. One bank (The People's Bank) is all we need. If some reckless Wall Street investment banker wants to gamble, they can do it with their own money, not money that's insured by the FDIC (taxpayers). And ban the monopolies of commodities that these banks use to manipulate prices.

Both major political parties have enabled the vast gap in wealth inequality in America...and although many Democrats might complain, only a very few have actually attempted to correct this. And for the most part, the GOP blames everyone who's not rich for being poor.

Maybe Congress could pass a law banning all imports from American companies and their subsidiaries operating overseas unless all their foreign contracted employees abroad were paid the same prevailing minimum wage as in the US. (It would be impossible to get the G-8 to agree on a global minimum wage). And if not that, impose such prohibitive tariffs that American companies would prefer to hire American workers, and then start EXPORTING their products again, instead on importing them (Are American-made imports considered a part of US GDP?) But still, we have more trade agreements like the TPP, thanks to both our political parties. If we're not exporting jobs, we're importing people to take what jobs there are.

Voter suppression laws are on the rebound. Super PACS are thriving. The Supreme Court gave corporations (which are legal entities that are government-sanctioned statuses to businesses for the purpose of taxation and limited liability) "peoplehood". This could very well be the beginning of the end of a democratic government because of the dramatic rise of corporate plutocracy. We are living and witnessing the decline of the American Empire due to globalists and globalization. And maybe partly because of ignorant voters who keep voting the same old politicians back into office (keeping them in power for decades). So maybe some of us only got what we deserved, but why should the rest suffer for their ignorance? (I didn't say Tea Party!)

The most tragic thing is, not only have we've seen the morality of our captains of industry diminishing day by day, we've also seen the dramatic economic decline of the average working American, who like a hamster in a cage spinning their wheel, have gotten nowhere in the last 40 years --- while we've seen the moral decay of our corporate business leaders who have been raking in more money than ever before in human history.

And so in the end, we might only have ourselves to blame. These days the American Dream might be just that...a dream. Now I know how the ancient Romans might have felt. It seems that it's true: nothing lasts forever, and that also applies to the US middle-class and the American Dream...the dream that was.

Update: Just as I thought. As usual, almost everything that Obama said in his speech today made perfect sense, and therein lies the problem. Republicans in the House will do just the exact opposite of every idea that Obama proposes (because he's half black?)...and many times the House will reject Obama's ideas just because it was Obama himself that proposed them.

It's a shame that Obama didn't propose these ideas (and pushed Congress hard to adapt them) back in 2009 and 2010. In hindsight, it might have been better that Obama wasn't elected in 2008. Maybe then John McCain might have moved more to the center (instead of further right) and Glenn Beck wouldn't have helped inspire the Tea Party and the slew of radicals that took over the House in 2010. After all, how much worse can things be than they already are now?

Oh yeah...Mitt Romney...he might have been the next president instead of Hillary Clinton or Chris Christie. So essentially, for the remainder of Obama's term, and into the next presidency, things will mostly remain the same (because of gerrymandered congressional districts) and the media will continue to report on things (like the U-3 unemployment rate that's keeps falling) that only they want us to know. Personally, I'd like to see more live coverage of the fast-food strikes.

After Offshoring, What's Left? Low Paying Jobs.

From an article by James Surowiecki in the New Yorker (August 12, 2013) The Pay Is Too Damn Low:

Historically, low-wage work tended to be done either by the young or by women looking for part-time jobs to supplement family income. As the historian Bethany Moreton has shown, Walmart in its early days sought explicitly to hire underemployed married women. Fast-food workforces, meanwhile, were dominated by teen-agers. Now, though, plenty of family breadwinners are stuck in these jobs. That’s because, over the past three decades, the U.S. economy has done a poor job of creating good middle-class jobs; five of the six fastest-growing job categories today pay less than the median wage.

That’s why, as a recent study by the economists John Schmitt and Janelle Jones has shown, low-wage workers are older and better educated than ever. More important, more of them are relying on their paychecks not for pin money or to pay for Friday-night dates but, rather, to support families. Forty years ago, there was no expectation that fast-food or discount-retail jobs would provide a living wage, because these were not jobs that, in the main, adult heads of household did. Today, low-wage workers provide forty-six percent of their family’s income. It is that change which is driving the demand for higher pay.

The situation is the result of a tectonic shift in the American economy. In 1960, the country’s biggest employer, General Motors, was also its most profitable company and one of its best-paying. It had high profit margins and real pricing power, even as it was paying its workers union wages. And it was not alone: firms like Ford, Standard Oil, and Bethlehem Steel employed huge numbers of well-paid workers while earning big profits. Today, the country’s biggest employers are retailers and fast-food chains, almost all of which have built their businesses on low pay—they’ve striven to keep wages down and unions out—and low prices.

Note: I wrote a letter to the editor of the New Yorker:

In his excellent article "The Pay Is Too Damn Low" James Surowiecki makes one misstatement: "Apple employs just seventy-six thousand people". But between Apple and Nike alone they employee over 2 million people as "contract manufacturers" in Asia. Apple was not a good example. Maybe he could have mentioned America's second largest private sector employer, which is a temp agency called Kelly Services with 538,000 workers. Walmart also hires temps, calling them "flexible associates".

Also read: The China Toll - "The growing U.S. trade deficit with China cost more than 2.7 million jobs between 2001 and 2011, with job losses in every state."

Why the GOP wants High Unemployment

Paul Krugman at the New York Times: Republicans Against Reality

"For a long time the Republican establishment got its way by playing a con game with the party’s base. Voters would be mobilized as soldiers in an ideological crusade, fired up by warnings that liberals were going to turn the country over to gay married terrorists, not to mention taking your hard-earned dollars and giving them to Those People. Then, once the election was over, the establishment would get on with its real priorities — deregulation and lower taxes on the wealthy."

(Note: I almost agree with everything Robert Reich says.) Robert Reich, August 3, 2013:

They [the GOP] and their patrons want unemployment to remain high and job-growth to sputter. Why? Three reasons:

First, high unemployment keeps wages down. Workers who are worried about losing their jobs settle for whatever they can get -- which is why hourly earnings keep dropping. The median wage is now 4 percent lower than it was at the start of the recovery. Low wages help boost corporate profits, thereby keeping the regressives’ corporate sponsors happy.

Second, high unemployment fuels the bull market on Wall Street. That’s because the Fed is committed to buying long-term bonds as long as unemployment remains high. This keeps bond yields low and pushes investors into equities -- which helps boosts executive pay and Wall Street commissions, thereby keeping regressives’ financial sponsors happy.

Third, high unemployment keeps most Americans economically fearful and financially insecure. This sets them up to believe regressive lies -- that their biggest worry should be that “big government" will tax away the little they have and give it to “undeserving" minorities; that they should support low taxes on corporations and wealthy “job creators;" and that new immigrants threaten their jobs. [Yes, new immigrants threaten their jobs --- and further drives down wages.]

He should have added: Because the GOP will always want the exact opposite of what Obama proposes. Robert Reich says we should counter the GOP with three basic truths:

• First, the real job creators are consumers, and if average people don’t have jobs or good wages this economy can’t have a vigorous recovery.
• Second, the rich would do better with a smaller share of a rapidly-growing economy than their current big share of an economy that’s hardly moving.
• Third, therefore everyone would benefit from higher taxes on the wealthy to finance public investments in roads, bridges, public transit, better schools, affordable higher education, and healthcare -- all of which will help the middle class and the poor, and generate more and better jobs.

And also noted by Dean Baker (via Paul Krugan), Republicans like Eddie Lazea are saying "An analysis of labor market data suggests that there are no structural changes that can explain movements in unemployment rates over recent years. Neither industrial nor demographic shifts nor a mismatch of skills with job vacancies is behind the increased rates of unemployment.

Also from Dean Baker: "So when this recession started a number of years ago, you had 63, something like that, out of 100 Americans in the labor force. Now we're down, fewer than in [the employment to population ratio is now 58.7 percent] -- than when the recession started. And so that suggests we have got some deep structural problems. It probably has a lot to do with technological change. People are not hiring -- companies are not hiring human beings. They're hire machines."

New York Times: Pot Shots at Disabled Workers

In a post I did for the Economic Populist, I noted the NPR's war on the disabled. It seems there's someone else at the New York Times that just can't help but get their digs in as well.

Binyamin Appelbaum sometimes writes about unemployment for the New York Times, but in his posts he also likes to reference an article he wrote about Social Security disability.

On August 2, 2013 in a post titled An Employment Number That Isn’t Budging he writes," The share of Americans on disability has soared, in part because the program is serving as a safety net for people who might have found work in better times. But once on disability, people almost never return to work." --- which refers to his article The Rise of Disability where it says:

• The share of working-age Americans receiving federal disability payments has roughly doubled in recent decades. It rose from 23 of every 1,000 workers in 1980 to 47 of every 1,000 workers in 2011.
• 5 percent of the potential work force is more or less permanently out of action.
• The government likes to describe the increase mostly as the result of two demographic trends. Independent experts, however, see substantial evidence that disability insurance increasingly serves as a safety net for people who cannot find jobs.
• A new research note from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco estimates 40 percent to 60 percent of the growth in disability claims in recent decades is a result of the program’s attracting a broader constituency.
• Historically, few people who qualify for disability during downturns return to the work force during rebounds, creating a twofold drag: Fewer workers and more people depending on each of those workers to pay their taxes.
• Disability insurance is likely to keep expanding unless program rules and incentives are fundamentally altered.”

Lies, damn lies, and statistics. Number can be twisted to tell many different stories. The Wall Street Journal had also made some unsubstantiated claims which were more or less assumptions than anything else --- and not supported by facts or data, as indicated in my post. I also noted that earlier this year in a new study by Jesse Rothstein (University of California, Berkeley and NBER) found that there was "no indication that expiration of UI benefits causes DI applications."

On July 18, 2013 Binyamin Appelbaum wrote another article titled Labor Force Participation Is Not Coming Back where he writes, "It also points to the growing popularity of federal disability benefits, a program many researchers say is functioning as a safety net for people who can’t find jobs – except that it tends to remove them from the workforce on a permanent basis." --- which also refers to his article The Rise of Disability.

In another post I wrote on disability I noted:

• According to the Social Security Administration, as of June 2013, there were 8,892,515 disabled workers in the U.S. who received SSDI benefits and averaged $1,130.34 a month.
• According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate for persons with a disability declined from 2011 to 2012. The unemployment rate for persons with a disability was 13.4 percent in 2012.
• According to the Social Security Administration, actual SSDI awards (not claims or applications) declined from 2011 to 2012, and SSDI terminations were up, for a net increase of 2.94% for people in current payment status for SSDI benefits.

But Mister Binyamin Appelbaum doesn't also mention these facts. On May 3, 2013 - Binyamin Appelbaum wrote an article titled Keeping Up, Not Getting Ahead where he says, "The number of Americans receiving disability benefits has increased by 1.8 million since the recession began, and people on disability rarely return to the work force." --- where he references someone else's article titled Disabled, but Looking for Work, where it says:

• For the last five years, Social Security has paid out more in benefits to disabled workers than it has taken in from payroll taxes.
• About 8.2 million people collected disabled worker benefits totaling $115 billion last year, up from 5 million a decade earlier.
• About one in 21 Americans from age 25 to 64 receive the benefit compared with one in 30 a little over a decade ago.
• Some economists say they believe that an increasing number of people rely on disability benefits as a kind of shadow safety net.
• The benefits have no expiration date, like the current 99-week limit for collecting unemployment.

Yet what Binyamin Appelbaum also neglects to ever say is, according to that same article, "Nicole Maestas, an economist at the Rand Corporation, has examined Social Security data with fellow economist Kathleen J. Mullen, and concluded that in the absence of benefits, about 18 percent of recipients could work and earn at least $12,000 a year. Other economists say that even among those denied benefits, a majority fail to go back to work, in part because of medical problems and a lack of marketable skills. And because many people spend years appealing denials and building their medical case before being granted benefits, their skills often atrophy and gaps open on their résumés, making it more difficult for them to get back to work."

You can look at the data on my posts and see how the statistics can be spun to make any ideological argument for or against anybody's opinion. Binyamin Appelbaum clearly has no empathy for American disabled workers, and just like Bill O'Reilly on Fox News, he most likely believes that Social Security is a scam and we should make it more difficult than it already is to quality. Let's just hope that for his own good, Mister Binyamin Appelbaum never breaks his back.

More Temp and Low-Paying Jobs

The unemployment rate fell to 7.4 percent as 162,000 more Americans had jobs in July, the U.S. Labor Department announced Friday. They said the number of unemployed went down from 11.8 million to 11.5 million. The way the government counts jobless numbers is either a sham, or miracles really do happen!

From the Huffington Post: Temps accounted for nearly 8,000 of the jobs added in July, and along with retail and restaurant workers made up more than half of the employment gains. Low-wage workers have been a big part of overall job growth since the recession officially ended in 2009, a pattern economists say is normal early in an economic recovery but usually doesn't last this long.

In July, there were 4.2 million long-term unemployed, Americans who have been jobless six months or longer. Their ranks have declined by almost 1 million in the past year, though economists are uncertain about how many of them are finding jobs or just giving up on their search for work. (Note to economists: If they were finding jobs, they would be counted. If they haven't found a job after one year, they are no longer counted.)

This proves once again my "conveyor belt theory", where as more people move into the "long-term" unemployed category, others are also "dropping out" of the labor force (making the rate go down). Whereas if layoffs exceeded "drop outs", the rate would only remain the same, rather than going up.

In July there were 8.2 million part-timers who wanted full-time work but couldn't find it.

From the Wall Street Journal: Arne Kalleberg, a sociology professor at the University of North Carolina (and the author of the book Good Jobs, Bad Jobs) says, "These jobs count as jobs in the jobs reports, but there's very little attention paid to the kind of jobs these are. They tend to be low-wage jobs, they tend to be in retail and personal-service-type sectors, many of them are part time."

Over the past year, lower-paying sectors such as retail, restaurants, hotels and temporary-help agencies accounted for more than 40% of job growth. Many of those jobs are part time; the share of Americans working part time, which spiked during the recession, has shown little improvement and has been trending upward for much of this year.

The proliferation of low-wage jobs is leading to anemic growth in incomes. A broader measure of income released by the Commerce Department on Friday showed that inflation-adjusted incomes actually fell slightly in June.

Amazon.com said it was adding more than 5,000 full-time jobs in its distribution centers across the country. Many of the jobs pay $11 an hour or less. "In our viewpoint these are great jobs," Amazon spokeswoman Kelly Cheeseman said.

Some 6.6 million workers say they want a job but don't count as unemployed because they aren't actively looking, a number that has barely budged in the past year. (The Dow Jones Industrial Average marked its 30th new high this year).

From the Economic Populist - Today Walmart is the largest private sector employer in the U.S. with more than 1.3 million employees. A Reuters survey of 52 stores run by the largest U.S. private employers showed that 27 of them were only hiring temporary workers --- including America's largest employer, Walmart, who calls temps "flexible associates". And America's second largest private sector employer is a temp agency called Kelly Services with 538,000 workers.

The Huffington Post - Daniel Alpert, managing partner of New York investment bank Westwood Capital, told Yahoo Finance's Daily Ticker, "We have become a nation of hamburger flippers, Wal-Mart sales associates, barmaids, checkout people and other people working at very low wages. That's why job growth is not increasing consumption or the ability to go out and buy stuff."

• The unemployment rate fell in part because 37,000 workers dropped out of the labor force
• The labor-force participation rate fell to 63.4 percent in July, near a 35-year low.
• The civilian employment-population ratio was near the lowest in 30 years, down from more than 63 percent before the recession.
• And there are a skyrocketing number of Federal workers on forced leave because of sequester cuts.
• And we have a GDP growth rate of only 1.7 percent.
• And the Economic Policy Institute says,"We could have a jobs deficit of more than 8 million jobs."

* On MSNBC Al Sharpton and his guests were discussing the GOP's plan to cut food stamps by $40 billion. They said that one Republican congressman, at a hearing on the poor this week, asked why the churches weren't doing more. Al Sharpton asked, "So next time we should just ask the churches to bail out the banks?"

* * Funny video from Stephen Colbert about McDonald's

Fast Food Workers Hit the Streets --- Oorah!!

Fast-food workers took to the streets in protest of low wages --- but then panic ensued, and Fox News immediately launched a counter-offensive by putting on a high-priced restaurant lobbyist to argue that America's most titanic and profitable corporations, as well as our largest job creators, can't afford to pay their employees a living wage. If this is true, then capitalism, as we once knew it, has come to a shuttering halt.

According to a new report by the Pew Research Center, as of last year 36% of the nation's young adults (ages 18 to 31) were living in their parent's home...the highest share in at least four decades. Pew reports that 21.6 million Millennials lived in their parent's home in 2012, up from 18.5 million before the Great Recession hit in 2007. The reasons given were declining employment, rising college enrollment and declining marriage.

In 1973, as an unskilled laborer working at the Spalding factory in Chicopee Falls Massachusetts, one could earn $7.50 an hour, more than the minimum wage is today. (Back then, the minimum wage was $1.60 a hour). And as a union member, one also had healthcare and pension benefits as well.

Today, according the Bureau of Labor Statistics' inflation calculator, that same $7.50 an hour 40 years ago would be $39.44 an hour in today's dollars, as the minimum wage is currently $7.25. Accounting for inflation, it should be at least $8.41 --- but because now, many rely service industry jobs, as opposed to manufacturing jobs, it should be much higher. Back in 1973, a job at McDonald's wasn't a considered a "real" job, but a part-time job for those still in school. But the times, they are a changing.

Today Walmart is the largest private sector employer in the U.S. with more than 1.3 million employees. A Reuters survey of 52 stores run by the largest U.S. private employers showed that 27 of them were only hiring temporary workers --- including America's largest employer, Walmart, who calls temps "flexible associates".

And America's second largest private sector employer is a temp agency called Kelly Services with 538,000 workers. Then there's IBM (426,751), UPS (400,600) and McDonald's (400,000). GM, Bell, Ford, GE and U.S. Steel used to be America's largest employers. The federal government is, and has always has been, America's largest job creator (Note to John Boehner: "Government creates jobs.")

The various minimum wage proposals that are currently being offered for discussion are ludicrous. President Barack Obama has proposed raising the federal minimum wage to $9 and pegging it to inflation, while congressional Democrats would like to see it set higher, at $10.10. The minimum wage in 1973 wasn't enough to live on. It might have been adequate 40 years ago for teenagers who were working summer jobs --- or for college kids, helping to subsidize their costs of tuition and books --- but nowadays, grown-ups who have families to care for and children to feed rely on these type of jobs (fast-food and retail).

The jobs that are being offered to the Millennials in 2013 (whether they're college-educated or not) are at places like McDonald's or Walmart earning $8-9 an hour. They are not earning enough to pay for rent AND a car payment, auto insurance, food, electricity, cloths, cell phone and healthcare. McDonalds had a budget for their employees, assuming they would work TWO jobs --- but there are only 3.8 million job listings for 11.8 million unemployed. Do the math (7 million are already working multiple jobs).

So rather than moving out of their parent's house to enjoy their freedom and be out on their own, the Millennials are being forced to stay at home --- stuck --- relying on their parents.

According to a new analysis from the National Employment Law Project, the biggest losses in real wages during the "economic recovery" have been concentrated in low- and middle-income job categories. In other words, any nominal raises that many workers may have received have been wiped out by inflation, essentially leaving them with less money to cover their bills.

These workers also took a sizable hit earlier this year with the expiration of the temporary payroll tax cut, which had been lowered by 2 percentage points for two years as a stimulative measure. But the CEOs, who earn millions of dollars every year off of their stock options, pay no payroll taxes at all on their capital gains --- and are only taxed for Social Security up to $113,700 on their base pay.

And the same can be said for members of Congress. House members and Senators make $174,000 a year (plus perks), with the exception of the Speaker and other top leadership positions, who earn much more from their "big government" salaries --- and whose COLAS aren't subjected to chained-CPI as is proposed for Social Security recipients. According to a Rasmussen poll, 81 percent of respondents said lawmakers should take a 25 percent pay cut until the budget is balanced.

Occupations that have been socked by inflation include restaurant cooks (-7.1 percent) and food preparation workers (-5.2). Many retail and food workers have seen their inflation-adjusted incomes fall even though their industries are actually adding jobs. Bargaining power is disproportionately weaker among workers in low-pay industries. As research from the Economic Policy Institute shows, even in an improving job market, wages tend to increase at a slower rate among low-wage workers than among middle- and high-wage workers.

But recently low wage fast-food and retail workers have been fighting back, staging their biggest strikes yet, with hundreds of workers walking off the job in seven cities across the country. Chief among their demands was a raise to a "livable" wage of $15 an hour. Currently, the median hourly wage for cooks, cashiers and crew who deliver your meals is $8.94 an hour. That is hardly enough to get by on in most cities. And while $15 might sound like a big jump (almost double), it's still not enough to meet living wage standards in many areas. It seems no matter where one lives, every month or so either the cost of food, gas or electricity is always getting higher.

The strikers have a long list of grievances, not the least of which are poverty wages that forces many (if not most) of these workers to choose between eating three square meals a day or keeping a roof over their head...or living at home with their parents.

According to a recent report from the Employment Policies Institute (a research organization whose work is often cited by those who argue against increasing the minimum wage), if McDonald's had doubled their employees' wages, the price of a Big Mac would go up by $1.28 --- not, they argue, 68 cents as the Huffington Post had previously reported. But even still, Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, says that there's no way "that it'd put McDonald's out of business."

The only problem is, if the fast-food (and retail) workers were given a fair wage, many poor people who rely on fast-food for their nutritional needs could suffer an economic hardship if the price of a Big Mac went up a $1.28. But then again, if those poor people were McDonald's or Walmart employees, maybe they would buy two Big Macs instead of one. (Add maybe these same employees wouldn't need food stamps either, saving the taxpayers a fortune. After all, aren't these "government entitlement" really "wage subsidies"? And fair wages would also help keep taxpayers from having to subsidize profits for large corporations. (15% of America is currently relying on food stamps.) And think of all the tax revenues the nation could generate with all the increased wages!

These low wage workers were also protesting against their employers for skimming money from their already meager paychecks, like pre-paid debit cards that forces people to pay to access the money they've already earned. Ever since the news of the fee-laden debit cards broke, McDonald's has been on the defensive. Now, with strikes spreading all over the country this week, McDonald's executives are paying close attention to how customers and potential customers are reacting to the workers' concerns.

Workers who hadn't initially planned on participating in the walk-outs, suddenly decided to join their co-workers. It was also reported that replacement workers that were brought in ("scabs") have been refusing to cross picket lines.

The restaurant industry is so concerned that one of its trade associations took out a full-page ad in USA Today to try and convince the public that these massively profitable fast-food chains can't possibly pay a living wage. Here's the ad from the Employment Policies Institute (not to be confused with the Economic Policy Institute). In part, the ad says:

"Today, union-supported activist groups are staging walk-outs at restaurants in seven major cities, demanding a $15 hourly wage. This would have negative consequences for employees. Restaurants keep just a few cents in profit from each sales dollar, and won't be able to afford current staffing levels when faced with a $15 minimum wage. Instead, they will be forced to replace employees with less-costly, automated alternatives like touch-screen ordering and payment devices.

Recently on July 29th, on the Fox News business channel, host Stuart Varney interviewed Richard Berman of the Employment Policies Institute to provide a "critical analysis" of the walk outs. Berman dismissed the idea of raising fast food employee wages, claiming that a hike in pay would result in lower employment:

"The business model just does not support those kind of wages. If people are feeling that they are not being paid adequately, then they have got to find a job someplace else."

Berman, a corporate lobbyist, did not disclose his organization's ties to the fast food industry. According to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, the Employment Policies Institute is one of many front groups associated with Berman which provides political cover for clients in the restaurant, hospitality, alcohol, and tobacco industries. Berman specializes in a so-called "aggressive media outreach" approach intended to "change the debate" in favor of major clients.

Berman, who says the fast-food industry can't support paying $15 an hour, is trying to convince the general public that this raises the incentive for fast-food businesses to replace workers with some automated method of preparing, serving and selling fast-food. According to the Employment Policies Institute's 2011 990 form, Berman is paid $1.16 million to use scare tactics to convince others that they aren't worth $15 an hour.

If all these workers had all been in a labor union, they'd have people representing them against corporate shills like Berman. But according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, union density dropped to new lows last year, with just 6.6 percent of private-sector workers being union members. Labor leaders have long argued that labor law is tilted in the favor of employers, making it difficult to unionize workers. Many of the jobs the economy has added in the recovery are in low-wage service-sector industries, such as retail and food, where unionization rates tend to be miniscule.

The Republicans have been on a rampage for the past 40 years to kill the unions, who fund Democrats in elections. Whereas the Republicans are primarily financed by the big banks and corporations. GOP controlled state legislators have also passed various anti-union/worker laws, such as "right to work". And the GOP in Congress has also battled to weaken or eliminate many other worker organizations, such as the National Labor Relations Board, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) --- just to name a few.

If the Republicans could, they'd also do away with the minimum wage completely --- as well as unemployment benefits for laid off workers, disability if one became ill or injured at work, and Medicare and Social Security when one becomes too old to work. That's why, despite all the conniving that the Democrats are capable of, the Republicans give us many more reasons why friends shouldn't let friends vote Republican --- unless of course, they're a multi-millionaires like Bill O'Reilly, Darrell Issa, Sean Hannity, Herman Cain, Rush Limbaugh, Mitt Romney or Glenn Beck.

Richard Trumka, the president of the AFL-CIO union federation, said, "Working women and men urgently need a voice on the job today, but the sad truth is that it has become more difficult for them to have one, as today's figures on union membership demonstrate. Our still-struggling economy, weak laws and political as well as ideological assaults have taken a toll on union membership, and in the process have also imperiled economic security and good, middle-class jobs."

In other words, it's not 1973 anymore. Most of those jobs went to Asia. Now most of the hiring that many major US companies are doing is overseas.

Three million teenagers are graduating from high school every single year --- and they will either be looking for a job, enrolling in college, or both. If they can't earn a "living wage", many more will be living at home with their parents --- and protesting in the streets. If not, they could very well be sleeping on them instead.