Economy

By Richard (RJ) Eskow

Here's a walk down memory lane that's worth taking, even if it makes your blood pressure spike a little: Three years ago Tim Geithner was in the position of having to explain why the Federal government wasn't going to nationalize the nation's failing banks. In 2009 many people expected that to be part of the government's bank rescue plan.

Only three years. It seems so long ago, doesn’t it?

In 2009 there was a very compelling argument for a Federal takeover over these failing institutions, which had been so negligently (and very possibly criminally) mismanaged could no longer survive on their own. And while nationalization wasn’t the only course worth considering, this snapshot from our national past reflects the gravity of the crisis caused by bankers.

By Judy Dugan
Consumer Watchdog

Three of the five global corporations behind a coalition aimed at protecting $1 billion a year in California tax loopholes are among the nation’s top tax evaders, said Consumer Watchdog. They are:

- International Paper Co., whose outlandish deductions and credits gained through Congressional earmarks left it with less-than-zero federal taxes on $198 million dollars in 2010 profit. The company’s refund of $249 million exceeded its profits.

- Procter and Gamble, described by Fortune Magazine as in a class with GE when it comes to tax manipulation. It structured more than $6 billion in sell-offs since 2002 to avoid billions in federal tax and hundreds of millions in state taxes.

By Anthony Wright
Health Access California

On tax day, we remember the saying by Oliver Wendell Holmes, that "taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society."

Today, we joined other Sacramento leaders in front of the Federal building, to protest a decidedly uncivilized proposal--to give significant tax breaks to the richest among us, to cut and undermine core health programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act.

Of course, we are referring to the "Ryan budget," the measure passed by the U.S. House of Representatives last week, with the support of several California Republican Congressmen, including Representative Dan Lungren.

By David Dayen

In 2007, Democrats passed an increase in the minimum wage, and got George W. Bush to sign it by making it the scraps exchanged for more war funding. In the 2008 campaign, most of the Democratic candidates, including the eventual winner, expressed support for indexing the minimum wage to inflation, so it maintained its value in real dollars. But this never became a part of top-level Democratic legislating when they held both houses of Congress, and certainly not now, with Republicans in control of the House. Meanwhile, in this election season, Mitt Romney actually endorsed indexing the minimum wage to inflation, at least until his primary got a little dicey and he had to pull back.

By Steven Mikulan
The Frying Pan

Heist, a new film by Frances Causey and Donald Goldmacher, joins the growing list of angry documentaries chronicling the destruction of America’s economy and its middle class by powerful corporate forces. Like Inside Job and just about any title in the Brave New Films catalog, Heist gets our blood boiling with its money-pile graphics and occasional glib comments exhaled by Wall Street fat cats. Call this genre the Cinema of Outrage.

Subtitled Who Stole the American Dream?, the film breaks away from the pack, however, by drilling deep to explain how we came to find ourselves on the verge of where Argentina was a dozen years ago. The film also eschews conspiracist viewpoints and refuses to offer up, say, Alan Greenspan or the Koch brothers as villainous piñatas for us to vicariously bash.

By Dave Lagstein
Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment

While the majority of Californians continue to suffer from the economic crisis, big corporations and super-rich individuals are driving an agenda in our state to ensure the 1% prospers at the expense of the 99%.

The result has been an increased economic burden for working families that includes escalating costs of higher education and healthcare, fewer jobs, more foreclosures, depressed wages, and a deteriorating quality of life.

Check out upcoming showings of the film, including at Oakland’s Grand Lake Theater on April 19th and at UC Davis during the week of April 13th- 19th.

Mark Karlin: What role did the book "Global Class War" (2006) play in your formulation of the film?

Donald Goldmacher: Though our initial focus was on undocumented workers, the book gave us a much broader understanding of how big corporations were using low-paid workers, by either outsourcing manufacturing jobs to low-wage countries, or in-sourcing low-paid workers into the United States, to undermine good-paying jobs held by union members. It was also instrumental in helping us to understand that the phenomenon of globalization that began in the 1970s, accelerated during the 1980s by Ronald Reagan and George Bush senior, was also unequivocally embraced by Bill Clinton and his economic team, which included Professor Alan Blinder, Robert Rubin of Goldman Sachs and Larry Summers, all of whom believed in free trade and free markets. They revealed their true colors when they pushed through the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) agreements, concocted during the Reagan administration, screwing workers in all three countries.

By Danny Feingold, The Frying Pan

It’s matzah bargain-hunting season, and guess who has entered the fray? That’s right, Walmart.

The world’s largest retailer may not be known for bar mitzvah catering, but apparently the matzah market was too lucrative to pass up. Visit walmart.com, and in less time than it took God to part the Red Sea, you can load up on all variety of matzah products, from matzah ball soup mix to matzah meal. Those looking to brush up on their Pesach basics can even find Celebrate Passover: With Matzah, Maror and Memories, a handy guide to the holiday published by that noted authority on Jewish customs, National Geographic (imagine the charoset photo spreads).

But before you get out your credit card, you might want to consider whether a matzah splurge at Walmart is really in the spirit of Passover. Here’s some unleavened food for thought:

1) Walmart and Poverty

By Dave Johnson

We need to rebuild our country, and we need to do it with steel and supplies that are made in America. It actually costs taxpayers more to "save money" by outsourcing then it saves because of the "safety net" costs from lost jobs and factories. A new campaign launching Monday is going to use billboards to make this point to local officials who might outsource these projects. I attended the launch event.

New Campaign To Fight For Buy American When Using Tax Dollars

By Dave Johnson

Is smaller government really better for the economy?

Conservatives chant that taxes and government "take money out of the economy" and we need to "cut and grow," meaning if government spending is cut way back the economy will grow as a result. Europe's conservatives are also forcing cuts in the things their governments do for regular people, claiming "austerity" will bring "confidence" that grows their economies.

How is this experiment working out? What are we learning about the effect on the larger economy when government is cut?

What Does Government Do?

Almost everything the government does is because it needs to be done. We need roads, bridges, schools and colleges, dams, courts, police and fire departments, water management, etc. (We can discuss the need for military spending another time.)