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Israel: "nothing to kill or die for"?

2012-01-26T20:15:00.010-06:00

American Jews are mostly European (or Europeanized!). Should they really wish to support the carryings on of “hillbilly” democracy challenged and broadly racist Russian and Oriental Israeli Jews? European Jews may be their figureheads but they supply the war votes.

If Israeli Jews were all European background would Israel carry on the way it does?

Would American Jews – with only their own cultural experience for guidance – have chosen to savagely bomb Lebanon for 26 days, killing 1000 men and women and 400 boys and girls, over two armed, on-duty soldiers (presumably fair game) being taken prisoner off the border (not even by government forces)?

If not, then, American Jews and all Americans should stop supporting Israel’s wild behavior until Israel is no longer putting America at hazard for trading more skyscrapers for settlements.
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Suppose there were ten times as many Jews in the world – 120 million instead of 12 million – to where could the Diaspora go home? 6 million Jews living in Israel; 6 million Jews (mostly) in the United States to prod Uncle Sam in the right direction -- perfect combination. Is today's Israel merely an accident of eighth-grade math?

Another hundred years and the whole world will be using a single currency – as well as speaking English (preserving Hebrew, Gaelic: foolishness). Maybe global warming will have everyone moving north (Israel might be under the Mediterranean) – or global prosperity have everyone moving anywhere they wish (for this year!).

Another hundred years and Israel may remain a big Jewish neighborhood at most – nice if it is still there -- but "nothing to kill (massacre) or die (how much of the Israeli elite carry foreign passports) for" to borrow from John Lennon.
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“God said to Abraham kill me a son/
Abe said to God you must be putting me on”
(Bob Dylan, “Highway 61”)

If you are trying very hard to be good (a trustworthy measure of your love for God) you don’t rejoice over putting God’s other children out of their ancestral homes.

If the Ultra-Orthodox believe they should be excused from military duty – and the Ultra-Orthodox got their presumed wish for every Jew to join their sect – then, who would be left to defend Israel? King David wouldn’t like that.

MY CONTRIBUTION ON THE ROOT TODAY

2012-01-19T11:49:00.001-06:00

http://www.theroot.com/views/santorum-right-time

In his book "Cracks in the Pavement: Social Change and Resilience in Poor Neighborhoods", professor Martín Sánchez-Jankowski -- who spent 9 years on the ground observing the goings in 5 ghetto neighborhoods in NYC and LA -- concludes that ghetto schools don't work because there is so little waiting for graduates (or non-graduates) in the American labor market that working at getting a good education often isn't considered worth the bother.
http://www.amazon.com/Cracks-Pavement-Social-Resilience-Neighborhoods/dp/0520256751/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1326986246&sr=1-1

Look up president LBJ's 1968, $1.60/hr minimum wage on the BLS inflation calculator (which uses CPI-U -- the most broadly accepted inflation index) and you get just short of $10.50/hr -- in 1968! Look up senate majority leader LBJ's 1956 minimum wage (he snuck it through the chamber when the opposition was out -- senator Hubert Humphrey wanted $1.25/hr -- in 1956!) and you get just over $8.25/hr!
http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl

Look up Census historical income tables (historical > people > all races) and you get $15,000 per capita income in 1968 -- $28,500 in 2006 (before the bottom fell out). 2012's federal minimum wage is over $3/hr lower -- almost double the average income later.
http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/historical/people/

Before the "big" Democratic increase in 2007 the federal minimum wage in 2011 dollars was $5.60/hr -- dropped almost in half since 1968.

MUCH MORE SHOCKING (!):
The annual US median wage is $26,363 -- as reported by Harold Myerson -- which if you divide by 2080 working hours (you would probably need to factor in how many full or part time jobs was average, etc. -- this is the best my non-expert self can figure), today's US median wage comes in at $12.68/hr -- about where it probably was in 1968! The US median wage is reported at about $14/hr in 1973 -- the year wages stopped keeping up with productivity increases; or regressing -- in the book "The State of Working America 2008/2009", p. 134, table 3.5.
http://www.prospect.org/article/what-americans-make
http://www.amazon.com/State-Working-America-2008-2009/dp/0801474779/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1326987915&sr=1-3

The answer to all this is legally mandated, sector wide labor agreements, the only labor market setup that produces both a fair labor market -- and fair political forum because labor is effectively organized -- everywhere it is used world-wide in the decades since WWII -- back when it was instituted to avoid an organized labor "race to the top" in Europe so more money could go to rebuilding -- prevents the race to the bottom just as well (Wal-Mart closed 88 big boxes in Germany where it could not compete paying the same as everyone else). If you want to read more about sector-wide Google it -- it's mostly my (frantic) posts; nobody else discusses it (most economists not being as poor as retired cab drivers).

Today, 9:59:20 AM

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annie nymess

opus512

EDMUND BURKE
Min. wage is def. a culprit. The unemployment of teens, part. of AAs, has grown over the past 60 years. Now in alot of cities, the only opportunities for some folks is drug dealing which produces about $3.50/hr. of income (Freakonomics).

Today, 10:17:07 AM

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ddrew2u
What's really a lost opportunity is that doubling the minimum wage would add only 3.5% direct inflation -- giving half the country a raise. As in the Crips and the Bloods couldn't whip a decent paying Ronald McDonald -- and presumably wouldn't want to.

To wit:
Jumping to a federal minimum wage to $15 would add about 3% direct inflation – easily computed: 70 million (half the workforce – at very most; many positions not hourly or salaried) X $3.25 average raise (close enough) X 2000 hours (work year) + 3.5 million* more half raises for those at or below the minimum (in 2009) X $3.25 X 2000 hours = $477.75 billion altogether -- out of a GDP of $14 trillion = 3.4% direct inflation.

* http://www.bls.gov/cps/minwage2009tbls.htm

Today, 11:30:49 AM

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opus512
There you go using liberal facts and context.

The reason the rich have gotten so much richer is because the poor and middle class have gotten so much poorer. The economy was much more evenly spread out back then, back in the days that conservatives claim to long for, yet they completely and willfully ignore the rest of what it was like back then.

Today, 11:03:17 AM

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ddrew2u
Right; basically, if you squeeze a toothpaste tube at the bottom it will all come out the top. The first baseman who recently got a contract big enough to buy half the stadium ($245 million over 10 years!) is not out to exploit anyone. Ditto for TV anchors and CEOs for that matter -- they are just taking what is available given no resistance. Who wouldn't?

Without organizing labor effectively -- and sector wide is the only proven way -- there will never again be resistance at the political lever in America either. My unfavorite example of no political resistance is what happened in my old Bronx neighborhood over the last 10 years.

First, Mad King (Mayor) Bloomberg closed two of the (legitimately) most beautiful courthouses in New York City -- one was brand new when I was going there with kids back in the 70s (sparkling new marble) -- after building a $500 million replacement (in today's money) -- after the bottom had dropped out of crime.

Second, over this hill, blocks away, a new Yankee Stadium was built over a track and field used by 39 Bronx schools (including my grammar school a mile north and my high school a mile south) so 43 more millionaires could be glassed in. When the Yankees moved into the new stadium did the city tear down the old one and replace the track and field? Too bad kids; it just left the old one there. (As yuppies move in in the future I am sure a much more beautiful new park than the old will be built.)

Could the proposition to leave 3 more derelict structures in the architectural center of gravity of the Bronx -- at the cost of $500 million and for 43 more millionaires -- have survived the outrage of the middle classes when I was growing up there? Not a howling chance; but now there is no opposition to anything anyone does to us.

Got to get organized again. Google "sector-wide labor agreements" to find out how.

Today, 11:48:38 AM

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An interesting insight into Israeli demographics -- from David McWilliams (Irish economist)

2011-12-22T08:42:00.002-06:00

An interesting insight on Israeli demographics -- from David McWilliams (Irish economist)

A recent OECD report told them the message they least want to hear, which is that this year, for the first time ever, 50pc of all schoolgoing children are either Israeli Arabs or ultra-orthodox Jews. This means that the secular Israelis are witnessing what they have always feared, which is that they will be out-bred on one flank by the local Arabs and by the religious Jews on the other flank. They conclude that these trends mean the country will become politically more right-wing and more isolated while their ability to defend the place will diminish because the orthodox Jews don’t go to the army. All the while, the Arab population will rise which will obviously mean that the very Jewish nature of the Jewish homeland will diminish.

From: http://www.davidmcwilliams.ie/2011/12/21/our-children-wont-be-able-to-pay-cost-of-our-debt-folly

If there had been no 9/11...

2011-11-14T09:17:00.004-06:00

If there had been no 9/11...

...would one crazy little guy sneaking a few ounces of explosive on board an airplane have set off a nation wide system of strip searching 800 million passengers a year and/or fondling 24 million of those a year (3% X 800 million) once X-rate-scanners are in place all over. This question will be begin my next anti-TSA screed, whatever month I get around to it.

PS. My comment on "We Wont Fly" to a passenger's complaint he was groped twice because a rookie TSA didn't witness carefully enough the first time -- was quickly followed by -- my comment on my 89 year old mother's own report (never a complainer) she was groped all over twice because the TSA sniffer was set off by he carry on (probably perfume) -- second time out of public view (probably to avoid looking as stupid as it all was).

MY COMMENT (#831) TO BARRY RITHOLT'Z WASH POST COLUMN

2011-11-07T11:08:00.002-06:00

How to make fun of the Big Lie [spread now by Mayor Bloomberg]:
A few poor people in our ghettos are blamed for bringing down the entire financial world -- our toxic mortgage packs were sold overseas too. Too bad the poor never understood their power; they could have threatened not to pay their mortgages and forced concessions across the economic landscape (forget about riots)!

Mad King Bloomberg's construction company in my old Bronx neighborhood:
Closed down the Concourse court house which is too beautiful to tear down empty -- closed down the BRAND NEW (when I was going there with neighborhood kids in the late '70s) courthouse down the hill -- after building a half billion dollar (today's money) new replacement AFTER CRIME MORE THAN HALVED.

Built the new Yankee Stadium across the street from the old one -- on top of a track and field used by 39 schools -- never tore down the old one to rebuild the track and field. Never fear; when enough yuppies take over the neighborhood, like they are taking Harlem, the track and field will surely be rebuilt and to much higher (yuppie) standards (see all new waterfront parks in lower yuppie land).

MY COMMENTS ON ANGRY BEAR'S "OPEN THREAD"

2011-11-06T12:13:00.006-06:00

I have been spamming around that $10.15/hr [was the] 1968 federal minimum wage ($1.60/hr adjusted) -- going by the Minneapolis fed reserve bank online inflation calculator...
...and that today's US median wage is $15/hr going by chart 3.5 on p. 134 of "The State of Working America, 2008/2009."

The lost growth facts may be more extreme.

According to the BLS online calculator -- which uses the most widely accepted index (CPI-U) -- $10.43/hr was the 1968 minimum...
...and dividing an annual median wage of $26,363 -- reported by Harold Myerson -- by 2080 hours, today's US median wage comes in at $12.68/hr.

All -- following 43 years of improving productivity (we are both old enough to remember the typing pool) -- double the per capita income since.

Somebody -- please! -- just say the words out loud: sector wide labor agreements, sector wide labor agreements, sector wide labor agreements.

Yesterday, 11:02:59 AM
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I think Germany got a min wage for the first time of $7.50 a couple of years ago. I supposed then it was mostly for the east. Last I heard -- a few years back -- the German 10 percentile wage was $15/hr (the American median wage; perhaps even that optimistically), so the min seems not a critical measure of German worker conditions -- Germany pretty much having invented sector wide labor agreements, which labor market setup chased Wal-Mart 88 big boxes out of the country a couple of years back for not being competitive at the same wages everybody else pays.

New theory comes in -- like Richard C. Koo's "government as the BORROWER of last resort"; the answer to the Great Depression?; the obvious angle both Keynes and Milton missed? -- and people at least discuss it. Decades old, round the world successful practice -- like sector wide labor agreements; the only possible out of the race to the bottom that I have ever learned of or can think of (it's one of those things you wish you had though of) -- and nobody even says the words out loud. ???

Yesterday, 5:04:11 PM
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I don't care if the minimum wage is $30,000/yr if the median wage is $100,000 (in today's buying power) as some day it undoubtedly will be (if we don't blow ourselves up or Jesus comes first) -- I want the minimum to reflect the maximum that could be extracted for that job without harming the worker more than helping (because I am very likely to be that worker). Suppose you dignified life wage is lower than that.

If -- at that "maximum extraction point" (don't look for that phrase in any text book :-]) -- there is still not enough for a dignified life, then it is time for the earned income tax credit or a subsidized higher minimum. Since the minimum should minimally be (in this cab driver's indubitable wisdom) $31,200/yr (2080 hours) this should not be a problem.
Yesterday, 3:07:06 PM
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You are right. I am pushing sector wide labor agreements here without even explaining what they are all about. Under legally mandated, sector wide labor agreements every worker doing the same type of job (e.g., retail sales) in the same geographic local must work under one common contract for all employers.

This originated on continental Europe after WWII as a program Republicans would have loved in the beginning. It was intended to restrain labor unions from beginning a race to the TOP (we actually had some of that here in the late 60s and early 70s): each workplace claiming they deserved more money because another company was paying more -- and round and round. Keeping labor's price down was intended to free up more money to go to reconstruction of war torn nations. (England didn't do it which is why England fell behind according to Barry Eichengreen in "The European Economy [Since] 1945."

The fabled European welfare state was considered at the time a compensation to get labor to accept sector wide collective bargaining.

Upshot: sector wide also fends off the race to the bottom -- seemingly creating the perfectly fair and balanced labor market -- seemingly perfect compared to the labor market craziness we have here anyway.

I was like one of those nineteenth century farmers who read pamphlets to try to understand how they were be crucified (on a cross of gold). Endless stories like this: My husband worked as a unionized butcher for whatever chain for 25 years and then one day they just told his local that next week they would start getting their meat from an outside nonunion firm. All the stories seemed in one direction -- down, down; with no way out.

Then I accidentally read about sector wide somewhere and instantly recognized a way out -- because I was desperately looking for one -- unlike our progressive economists, even our very best ones.

A few weeks ago Brad DeLong -- one of our very few top progressive economists -- was musing on his blog about Matthew Yglesias' -- one of our very few top progressive columnists -- speculating (they were just talking; not seriously proposing) whether breaking up the barber cartel would help the poor people. THE BARBER CARTEL!? On commenter on DeLong's blog told of doing his two barbers' tax return to insure they got their earned income tax credit. DeLong was apparently embarrassed enough by the reaction that he (I think) deleted his own post.

The lack of sense of proportion about the real world by even our very top progressive shows why they never pick up on sector wide -- I guess. They are not desperately looking for a way out. They never even notice that the median wage may now be way down below what the minimum wage could very workably could have been.

So I do what I can to wake them up from my home computer -- like above comparing how a new idea ("BORROWER of last resort") gets at least some discussion while a decades old, world wide proven idea like sector wide never sees the light of day between the oceans here (not quite: it is used in Canada). Something, somehow has to wake our best progressives up.

Today, 8:12:33 AM
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All that has to happen is for someone to tell the people what has happened to them -- that the median wage is now lower than what the minimum could very workably have been.

If we could have foretold to Americans of 1968 that by early 2007 the minimum wage would have shrunk almost half ($5.50 adjusted) and that 25% of our hourly workforce would be earning less than LBJ's minimum ($10.15?, $10.43?) they would have assumed some disaster happened on the level of a comet strike. If we told them that, no, per capita income would have doubled they might have burned us at the stake for mad witchery.

Americans of today are in the position of the proverbial frog put in cold water, gradually heated to boiling, doesn't notice and jump out. Tell wage starved Americans their boiling point should have been reached and tell them how easy it is to jump out (sector wide, fair rebalancing of the labor market) and don't vote for anybody who does not support (careful introduction of) madated, sector wide collective bargaining ? :-)

Point out that mandatory union formation will correct the political imbalances too with financing equal to special interests and the overwhelming majority of votes.

Let's not commit Obama's cardinal sin and never discuss the most opportune way out with the people. I believe supermarket and airline workers would kill for sector wide. Just tell them where to vote!

Today, 12:39:27 PM

END THE GREAT WAGE DEPRESSION!

2011-11-01T10:20:00.002-05:00

MY COMMENT ON: http://www.prospect.org/article/protest-and-possibility

I have been spamming around that LBJ's 1968 minimum wage was $10.15/hr ($1.60/hr adjusted for inflation) -- and -- today's MEDIAN wage is $15/hr -- probably what the minimum wage should (minimally) be.

Correction?: I was using the Minneapolis fed reserve online inflation calculator for the first -- and -- drawing on a table on p. 134 in "The State of Working America, 2008/2009" for the second.

But according the the BLS online inflation calculator the UDS 1968 minimum was $10.43/hr -- and -- according to Harold Meyerson's article on AP online the US MEDIAN wage is now $12.75/hr ($26,363/2080hrs).
http://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm
http://www.prospect.org/article/what-americans-make
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Want a slogan for the movement Mr. Kuttner? Try what calling "inequality" by how it hits me -- an enslaved American worker -- by the "Great Wage Depression" -- as in "End the."

Then try selling the one and only labor market set up that can possibly rebalance both the US labor market and the political forum: legally mandated S-E-C-T-O-R W-I-D-E L-A-B-O-R A-G-R-E-E-M-E-N-T-S!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Try explaining this labor market setup originated as a Republican type program designed to thwart a race to the top by militant labor unions in post war Europe (we had a similar situation in the US in the late '60s and early '70s (as I fondly remember -- good ole Teamster's local 804; which last I heard had a defined retirement benefit of $3600/mo for high school educated truckers and warehousemen -- oh, and the securities are owned by the Teamsters, not some firm that may go out of business).

Miracle cure: sector wide collective bargaining thwarts any race to the bottom just as certainly. The only way to have a fair market is if both sides must agree to terms (no legally mandated contract for scabs; no legal work for scabs). American supermarket and airline workers would kill for sector wide (Northwest recently squeezed $1 billion in pay cuts out of flight crews -- next year gave $1 billion in bonuses to 1000 execs) -- the end of helpless American labor! But somebody has to tell American labor about it (Obama?, you?).

Will the courts condone one class of fetuses "slave" and the other "free"? :-)

2011-10-26T19:07:00.004-05:00

EMAILED THIS DAY to Mississippi Gov., Lt. Gov., state senators and reps:

[improved version]
What will the Constitution view about prenatal personhood be when future medical technology permits removing fetuses (whose development leaves no doubt about humanity) overnight for medical procedures and returning them to mom to complete gestation? Will the courts view one class of fetuses as "slave" and the other "free"? :-)

In 1973, the Roe Court could not determine when life begins -- not with a 4 week overdue baby -- but no trouble at all with a 12 week early arrival. :-)

Roe (purported to) impose a "compelling interest test" -- requiring the state's interest in life to be weighty enough to override the mother's fundamental constitutional privacy (sounds like a perfect legislative proposition in at any rate). Or did it?

Roe's exact summing up words: “In view of all this, we do not agree that, by adopting one theory of life, Texas may override the rights of the pregnant woman that are at stake.” (Roe v. Wade -- 410 US at 163) Sounds more like a "consensus test" than a compelling interest test to me.

How about adopting the medical consensus -- merely meeting Roe's consensus requirement -- who could object to the medical consensus? One week below said fixed line would live 95% the same babies: unarguably compelling enough to meet any reasonable compelling interest standard. Simply legislatively meet Roe's consensus test requirement and watch the silly consensus test fade into injudicious history. :-)

Maybe Milton Friedman was on to something on the Depression after all

2011-09-14T19:08:00.003-05:00

For what it is worth for today's puzzles:
I just read in Richard C. Koo's book, "The Holy Grail of Macro Economics" (the explanation for our Great Depression) that Milton Friedman may have got the cause of the Great Depression right -- shrunken money supply -- but Friedman and everyone else missed the key -- monetary policy is helpless to maintain (or expand) money supply as long as corporations are not borrowing, are paying down the balance sheet deficits instead of borrowing, which is what happened here in 1929 and in Japan in 1990.

When corporations stop borrowing for years while they pay down debt -- what Japanese corporations have been doing since the real estate crash in 1990; just coming out of the woods now -- is what happens. If you make 1000 yen and save 100 (typical Japanese) the bank normally keeps the 100 yen in circulation by lending it -- and somebody somewhere earns 1000 yen. If the bank doesn't, somebody somewhere earns only 900 yen and saves 90. Some other body earns 810 and saves ... etc.

So the Japanese government has been using fiscal policy since 1990
-- borrowing vast sums and running a vast debt (commercial land prices in six major cities dropped 87%), but has avoided 1929; not that the Japanese government knew what it was doing according to Koo --
to make monetary policy work. Took both Milton. Surprise; Milton was on to something.

So the way to avoid a depression -- in a contraction -- is for government to become the borrower of last resort? Hey; that's Milton Friedman (almost?) Republicans.

http://www.amazon.com/Holy-Grail-Macroeconomics-Revised-Recession/dp/0470824948/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1316024126&sr=8-1

Surprised on 9/11/2001 -- more surprised on 9/11/2011

2011-09-12T08:15:00.004-05:00

Surprised on 9/11/2001 -- more surprised on 9/11/2011

http://slatest.slate.com/posts/2011/09/09/_9_11_flight_93_heather_penney_and_marc_sasseville_sent_on_suici.html

I was shocked on 9/11 to read that only 7 fighter pairs were on scramble alert in the whole continental US. I was raised under the Russian bomber threat back in the '50s and '60s when the US had 1000 dedicated interceptors -- dedicated meaning they were not designed to handle dog fights or bombing, only bombers: huge F-89Ds in the '50s, first, with 6 20 mm cannon, then, upgraded to 104 2.5 inch rockets and the biggest radar and (analog?) firing computer available at the time. Later 1000 supersonic F-102s took over, then filled in with 400 F-106s.

Russians bombers are long ago but getting down to 14 planes that could not cover our largest city or capital city in time is just out of proportion. Didn't we just purchase 3000 F-16s and F-15s starting with Reagan era, not to mention Navy F-18s and F-14s? Only 7 fighter pairs?

Now comes a bigger surprise. The two F-16s designated to take down Flight 93 -- the one that crashed -- were on a suicide-crash mission because no missiles or bullets were available! !!!

Teen sexting and the First Amendment -- just an idea ???

2011-09-07T11:01:00.004-05:00

Just had a First Amendment idea on teen sexting. Suppose a straight girl sends a pic to a straight girl or a straight boy to a straight boy (maybe just to make a joke of the statute -- sounds like the kind of stunt I would have pulled around 1960).

Fear it is going to end up in the hands of somebody else -- a homosexual male? Sounds a bit of a stretch to set the First Amendment aside for. ???

What legislatures had in mind banning child pornography was the harm done to the child by the act of the adult taking the picture of a naked child for prurient reasons. That is what the gargantuan penalties are for. That is what excepts child porn from the First Amendment.

A girl sexting a picture to a boy she can legally have sex with is not what the legislatures had in mind either count: the picture taking harm or the giant penalties. That would be enough for me not to apply the law to teens if I were a judge instead of a cabdriver -- without the First Amendment, just doesn't apply to what the legislatures had in mind. When sex is not even involved (how about those bruised behind paddling pictures that make the news) that should make three not to apply the harsh laws to teens -- the latter the First.

What every desperate federal student loan debtor desperately needs to know

2011-09-04T10:51:00.005-05:00

What every desperate federal student loan debtor desperately needs to know:
http://www.tgslc.org/borrowers/repay/ibr.cfm
Partial contents below:

How do I qualify?

You must meet certain criteria in order to qualify for IBR. You can use TG's IBR calculator to help you determine if you may be eligible for this program. If it appears that you are eligible, the calculator will provide you an estimated monthly payment amount under IBR.

What kinds of loans are eligible for IBR?

IBR is only available for federal student loans, such as the Stafford, Grad PLUS, and certain Consolidation loans. It is not available for Parent PLUS loans, Consolidation loans that include Parent PLUS loans, non-federal student loans, or defaulted loans.

How long is the repayment term for loans under the IBR plan?

The repayment term for loans paid under the IBR plan may extend up to 25 years. Any outstanding principal and interest still owed after 25 years of qualifying payments will be forgiven and may be taxable.

A couple of universal dental care equations

2011-09-04T10:34:00.001-05:00

Dentists -- oral surgeons for sure -- seem to have doubled their prices in real terms over the last 15 years. I had root canal done for $500 around 1996. At the same place it was $1400 for the exact same procedure recently -- which seem universal; I checked for a cheaper price around the country.

Maybe dentists watching medical prices double and redouble because of new treatments figured they could double theirs for the same old and nobody would notice. ???

Crazy idea: freeze today' prices and then tax enough off those prices to put dental coverage back in Medicaid. Better yet, government dental insurance for all back at the old price level (allow for average income increase since 1996 -- which average I suspect medical doctors have not kept up with since the early 70s; which may be why cutting doctors fees are the wrong place to look for Medicare and Medicaid savings) paid for with a dental tax that would take less than they pay from everybody on the average.

Good idea for a dental care dictator. For current democracy: make enough stink about doubling dental prices -- looking like under cover of exploding medical prices -- and something like the above might get done (whenever Democrats go back to being 1960 Democrats)

Just a couple of crazy equations.

LINK for today

2011-08-28T10:42:00.001-05:00

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/08/27/BU1K1KROOA.DTL

"prime working-age men between 25 and 54, only 81.2 percent held jobs, a barely noticeable improvement from its low point last year - and still well below the depths of the 1982-83 recession, when employment among prime-age men never dropped below 85 percent. To put those numbers in perspective, consider that in 1969, 95 percent of men in their prime working years had a job"

"After accounting for inflation, median wages for men between 30 and 50 dropped 27 percent - to $33,000 a year - from 1969 to 2009"

Today's article by David McWilliams -- best economic writer in the world

2011-08-15T10:08:00.002-05:00

Today's article by Irish economic writer David McWilliams -- the best economic writer in the world (disclosure: I have five Irish grandparents counting my mother' stepmother).

http://www.davidmcwilliams.ie/2011/08/15/time-to-tackle-the-traders

30 years of Republicans fulfilling their every voodoo economics wish

2011-08-11T18:02:00.113-05:00

30 years of Republicans fulfilling every (last) voodoo economics wish have left America awaiting a second-dip low-demand recession inside a prolonged illiquidity contraction (normal recovery 7-8 years) and US Treasury bonds downgraded and ducking default.

80's Reagan got his 25% across the board income tax cuts -- building unprecedented peacetime debt – his dereg’ing savings and loans crashing the industry. '90's Sen. Gramm and friends tore down the Glass-Steagall Chinese wall between retail and investment banking – not without help from Clinton Democrats -- setting the stage for our much troubled 2000s. '90s Greenspan noted Wall Street partying too hard while failing to remove the punch bowl – the burst bubble end gave us the 2001 recession.

2000's Bush cleared away more financial reg’s -- while smiling on little reg’ed shadow banking's proliferation – converted Clinton budget surpluses into trillions in tax cuts for the better off -- which cuts flooded by now much degreg'ed banks and never much reg'ed non-banks with too much savings to be lent to too many borrowers – inflating an oversize real estate bubble whose burst aftermath left said prolonged illiquidity contraction and said low demand dips -- while trillions of piled up Reagan-Bush debt inhibit routine Keynesian easing of low demand dips with temporary deficit spending.
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Decades of de-unionization have left half our hourly wage workforce earning less than what the minimum wage woulda-coulda-shoulda been. Today’s median (not minimum) wage is $15/hr.

LBJ’s 1968 minimum was $10.15/hr ($1.60/hr adjusted). Doubled per capita output since 1968 -- as jet engines, copying machines (put millions of pool typists out or work), computers and improvements in between made us twice as productive per capita – would expect the minimum wage to increase at least 50% -- to $15/hr.

After the “big” $2.10/hr federal minimum wage hike, in early 2007, it remains $3/hr below LBJ’s. A $15/hr federal minimum wage would give half of America's hourly wage earners a raise at an easily computed cost of 3% direct inflation. My Chicago neighborhood Mac's traffic seemed to go up with Governor Blagojevich’s $8/hr minimum wage (Ike’s 1956 level!) – mostly in the third world end.

[Bonus: In the essay linked to above, the author (perhaps the strongest voice warning against irresponsible over lending) suggests that moderate inflation -- 4-6% a year -- could quicken our exit from the illiquidity contraction (would clear the real estate market). Would reduce real federal debt too.]
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Over the past two-thirds of a century and around the world only one collective bargaining mechanism has proven able to fend off the race to the pay and benefits bottom as well as guarantee representative political forums via labor lobbying power: legally mandated, sector wide labor agreements -- wherein every employee working the same job in the same geographic locale (nationwide for airline workers, etc.) works under a single collectively bargained contract with all employers.

In every OECD economy where sector wide labor agreements is not the bargaining model the average person’s interests have gone bye-bye: in Japan, the lifetime security half of the workforce pays for it with 60 hour weeks, the other half may live more like our illegals; in Australia, unionization has dropped from 40% to 20% over 25 years; in England (did not adopt sector wide postwar; not sure if or how much since), watch TV; in Israel reformers complain of “ 'an economic policy of privatization that leaves the free market without reins…making our daily existence a war for survival to subsist with dignity' ”, read para. 4 & 5 in "What to make of the Israeli movement for social justice." In America, the "Great Wage Depression" prevails (also known as "inequality" to our progressive elite), see above.

American supermarket and airline workers would kill for sector wide agreements – the perfect places to introduce the only fair and balanced labor market model known to contemporary economics (if never, ever heard of from our contemporary progressive economists).

[Bonus: restoring lost income share to segments who would spend (all of) it could ease low-demand dips -- without building federal debt. According to this author of a Wall Street Journal blog post, "Five False Premises about Economic Recovery", top 1% earners share alone grew from 10% to 22.9% between 1979 and 2006 (see #4).

New way to look at (literally) appraising the minimum wage

2011-07-18T12:35:00.002-05:00

New way to look at (literally) appraising the minimum wage: add one line within a line to ye ole 101 supply/demand chart always invoked against raising the minimum: show the labor component of the supply price. If the price of labor doubles -- but is only 10% of the total cost of output -- and demand consequently dropped only 10%: that sounds great for labor. Justice: simply explain that a market is only efficient (and fair) when all parties to a bargain are able to extract the maximum the other parties are really willing to pay.

Feed a bust -- rebuild US labor

2011-07-18T12:20:00.005-05:00

Here is an email I just sent to David Leonhardt at the Times:

The consumer bust may never end as long as the US labor market remains a permanent pay squeeze market. It is more than plausible the US minimum wage could have risen to $15/hr from $10/hr (adjusted) as per capita income doubled since 1968. That means that half today's workforce may plausibly be earning less than what the minimum wage should be -- today's median wage being $15/hr. If we could somehow have foretold this to Americans of 1968 they would not have labeled it as wan "inequality." What "disaster": small nuclear exchange, plagues, comet strike?

Any OECD labor market that works for the average person (and empowers same politically too) uses legally mandated, sector-wide labor agreements. All that do not work so nicely (e.g., Japan, Australia) do not avail themselves of this seemingly perfect labor market balancer -- instituted to prevent a wage race to the top in postwar Europe.

Supermarket workers and airline workers would kill for sector-wide bargaining -- easy political place to start. Never happen if no one ever informs 2011 Americans of what I fantasized informing 1968 Americans of.

PS. Isn't inflation -- I'm thinking labor market inflation -- the classic way to diminish all debt (our grandchildren paying New Gingrich's grandchildren because Newtie and friends these days lend the government money at interest instead of paying taxes) -- and -- doesn't lowering real prices through inflation the classing cure for a housing bust?

Monday, July 18, 2011 at 09:27 AM

Republicans have their minimum wage theory backwards

2011-07-06T11:36:00.002-05:00

My comment on "Slate Magazine's" "Get A Job Kid" :

Republicans have their minimum wage theory backwards: that American teens are now missing out on minimum wage jobs because better skilled adults came running for them after 2007's "big raise" -- ROFL. After the "big raise" from $5.15 to $7.25 the federal minimum wage was still $1 short in buy power from what it was in 1956 (that's nineteen-fifty-six in case you think you read wrong) -- $1/hr nominally in 1956 being $8.19/hr adjusted.

But there's more -- as they say in those TV commercials. Average income in 1956 was 40% of what it is today. To put meat on those bones -- and mine -- when I was a kid in NYC we ate a lot of Hamburger Helper and a large variety of noodle casseroles, not because we were poor but because the economy simply put out a lot less per person back then. No dream in anyone's mind of stainless steel kitchens and de rigueur granite counter tops. :-)

Which brings up relative living standards. Americans on the minimum wage today -- if you can find any (recent parolees forced to take any job?) -- see the how the upper percentiles live on television and understand too well they are at the bottom of the 21st century standard of living barrel. McDonalds restaurants in Chicago are staffed almost exclusively by Mexicans. Higher skills than American teens? Worse English language skills. But no one else will work for Illinois' minimum wage of $8/hr.

LBJ was pushing the minimum wage pretty hard in both 1956 -- when as majority leader he snuck it through the US Senate seeing not enough conservatives present -- and in 1968 -- at 80% of the median wage. I guess there is so little money in that end of the economy that it does no harm.

America's greatest historical economic scandal: if the minimum had kept up only half speed with per capita income growth it would be $15/hr today. Today's American median wage (the average person's wage) is $15/hr. And 20% of our wage and salaried workforce is earning less than LBJ's minimum wage.

The welfare state in Europe was instituted after WWII as a compensation for something call LEGALLY MANDATED, SECTOR-WIDE LABOR AGREEMENTS which were designed to hold off the race-to-the-top by labor unions so more money could go to rebuilding -- which very same labor market system recently chased Wal-Mart out of Germany because they could not hang on there paying the same pay and benefits as everyone else. Every OECD labor market in which sector-wide is in place (e.g., Canada, Germany to take the lite and heavy versions) the economic well being of the average person is assured. Sector-wide bargaining prevents the race-to-the-bottom too.

Everywhere in the OECD sector-wide is not in place (e.g., Japan, Australia, America) labor is ever more screwed. Theoretically I cannot think of anything else that can reverse America's race to the bottom; can you?

Not by picking one of Roe’s -- mostly theological (!) – alternate theories

2011-07-04T11:55:00.012-05:00

“In view of all this, we do not agree that, by adopting one theory of life, Texas may override the rights of the pregnant woman that are at stake.” (Roe v. Wade -- 410 US at 163)

Not by adopting one from Roe’s lame -- mostly theological – menu; that’s for sure: live birth (Jewish Orthodox?), viability (declines as technology advances), quickening (anyone hear of quickening, last 100 years?), mediate animation (40 days for girls; 80 days for boys!) and conception (Catholic?).

Which un-scientific round up left our high court “not in a position” to “resolve the difficult question of when life begins” – not at four weeks overdue (conceived, “animated”, quickened and viable) – but no problem at 12 weeks early arrival (live birth).

Texas (and every other state) may adopt today’s up-to-date medical consensus on when life begins, which concurrence may be ascertained at up-dating-Roe legislative hearings. Even late second-trimester abortion providers do not deny humanity.

Adopting the medical consensus on when life begins at a fixed week in gestation (16 weeks or earlier?) – to replace Roe’s floating week (live birth) – would reveal, one week below medical consensus, 95% the same baby: an undeniably compelling interest to override Roe’s (constitutional surprise of) fundamental privacy.

Once a medical consensus on humanity is agreed at a fixed week in gestation Texas may go all the way and recognize full legal personhood for such children. On a not too distant tomorrow medicine will temporarily remove fetuses from their mothers’ wombs for medical procedures and return same to their natural sanctuaries. “Exo-fetuses” (to coin a faint phrase) will travel as legal persons and must retain that status upon return to the womb. Could future courts of any political leanings find one class of fetuses "slave" and the other "free”?

Courts of any day and any leanings should not feel free to draw a line further than one week below the medical consensus where they can decide possible life is no longer compelling: too transparently legislative in the wake of Roe’s deep discrediting.

In view of all this, Texas, by adopting one scientific theory of life, may unravel Roe’s “consensus test” with medical certainty on life at a fixed week before birth – and looking one week under for a certainly compelling interest -- easy as that.

PS. Scientifically certified prenatal humanity being synonymous with personhood, Congress may use its powers under the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection and Enabling Clauses to oblige full legal equality for these babies in all 50 states.

Addendum
*********
Harvard Law's (most quoted liberal law professor for the last 40 years) Laurence Tribe on the unborn not passing Roe’s compelling interest test (Roe passed itself off as a compelling interest test -- judging the substantive value of prenatal life in the balance against privacy -- but worked out to be what I call a never-before-heard-of consensus test: the “one theory of life” thing): "One of the most curious things about Roe is that, behind its own verbal smokescreen, the substantive judgment on which it rests is nowhere to be found." (HLR, Vol. 87:1, p.7, intro.) Tribe quoting future Stanford Law president John Hart Ely on Roe’s explanation for ruling viability the compelling point: "Truly this mistakes ‘a definition for syllogism’ and offers no reason at all for what the court has held."(Ibid., p.4 – see Ely’s “Wages of Crying Wolf”)

It is not the Holocaust -- waited too long for a Jewish state -- God said to Abraham kill me a son

2011-07-04T11:50:00.009-05:00

It is not the Holocaust. The further back in today's Israel's, the less likely it would have retaliated to a guerrilla force hiding grabbing two uniformed soldiers POWs by mass bombing neighboring Lebanon's infrastructure and capital city, killing 1000 men and women in 400 children – or to a single soldier taken POW by bombing immediately the only power plant supplying electricity for a million mostly very poor Gaza inhabitants? The further you back, the closer to the Holocaust, the less likely such venomous reprisals would have been.

It is not fear of military attack today than decades ago. It would take 9,000 NATO quality tanks and crews to invade against today's Israel's 3,000 -- takes 3 to 1 on offense. Israel's fighter force is fully one-sixth the size of today's American fighter force: active, National Guard and reserve. What other small nation possesses nuclear tipped ICBMs, 5 second-strike nuclear warhead missile submarines, nuclear bombs and even nuclear artillery shells?

I would postulate "The Picture of Dorian Gray* syndrome": the more Israel offends its neighbors, the more Israel's guilt builds up unconsciously, the more Israel needs to repress its growing bad conscience, the ever more desperately Israel strikes out at anyone who reminds it that it is not the respectable nation state it wants to see itself as (analogous to a Mafia kingpin who lately comes to desire respectability). * http://www.amazon.com/Picture-Dorian-Gray-George-Sanders/dp/B000OHBCI8 [1945, 3 1/2 stars, cinematography Oscar]
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Suppose mid-19th-century Americans arriving to settle in the Midwestern continent had found 20 million Plains Indians already living there – instead of the 1 million remaining after Spanish diseases had traveled up from the Gulf Coast starting 100 years before, wiping 95% of them out.

The only feasible – and moral – way for us to have moved in on them would have been to assimilate the Indians into our culture – it is called acculturation*. The Indians took to European horses and guns. Why would they not have been attracted to the "iron horse" all the other conveniences of a technological civilization that they were a 1000 years behind? In this alternate history, America might have had many Indian blood presidents by now. :-o * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherokee

Want a nice Jewish state (neighborhood)? In 100 years the Chinese will be reading and writing English and the world may be one big city with a really big Chinatown. Today's Israel would be only a neighborhood in that world -- a world where people get off airliners and walk around other countries like they were their own -- oh, we already have that world. For those who waited two millennia for to return to a Jewish nation – they have waited too long. :-)
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God said to Abraham kill me a son/Abe said God you must be putting me on/God said no/Abe said what/God said do what you want Abe but the next time you see me coming you better run. (B. Dylan)

Did Abraham jump at the opportunity to kill his son? I didn't know the kid. Do West Bank settlers who they are obeying God's will taking back their biblical homeland from Palestinians agonize (like Abraham) over doing such a thing: evicting them from their ancestral homes and lands? Do they offer tearful apologies to them; do they long to offer generous financial compensation to them?

God chose Abraham because of his willingness to give unselfishly – not grasp greedily. What would Abraham have thought – what does he think – about the unabashed eagerness of West Bank with which West Bank colonizers displace whole Palestinian communities.

No fair and efficient market unless both sides can EXTRACT THE MAXIMUM the other will pay

2011-07-01T08:05:00.008-05:00

Are American median wage earners, at $15.11 an hour*, getting what the minimum wage rightfully should be? LBJ pushed the minimum hard in 1956 (as Senate majority leader) and 1968 – to 80% of, for the times, much more robust median wages. (* “State of Working America – 2008-2009”, p.134, Table 3.5, Wages of all workers by percentile, 1973-2007 -- 2007 dollars)

More incredibly, 20% of today’s American workforce earns below LBJ’s $10.15 an hour ($1.60 adjusted) minimum.

Jumping the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour could make about 3% direct inflation – easily computed: 70 million (half the workforce – at most; many positions not hourly or salaried) X $3.25 average raise (close enough) X 2000 hours (work year) + 3.5 million* more half raises for those at or below the minimum (in 2009) getting the full raise X $3.25 X 2000 hours = $477.75 billion altogether -- out of a GDP of $14 trillion = 3.4% direct inflation. * (http://www.bls.gov/cps/minwage2009tbls.htm)

Before we check out the only workable solution to today’s American pay and benefit race to the bottom let's put stupid Republican economic tricks behind us. An individual banker can figure he cannot bust the entire economy all by his lonesome so why miss out on millions in fees before the bubble bursts? Republican tax cuts for the rich flooded banking system with excess liquidity while their deregulation ideology did away with checks on irresponsible loans. Of course, the automatic Republican response to the resulting real estate bust is even more tax cuts and endlessly picking away at new restrictions on over lending. And don’t forget to cut government spending in the middle a recession. Feed a bubble; starve a bust.

Guiding free market principle: Markets operate at maximum efficiency – also at maximum niceness -- when both parties to a bargain may extract the maximum price the other would be willing to pay.

There are two kinds of labor markets in modern OECD economies: the kind that produce adequate political and economic strength for most people and the kind that do not. Wherever legally mandated, sector wide labor agreements are the rule the average person gets what they need because they cannot be out flanked at the bargaining table and because the associated unions supply adequate political muscle. Where they are not the rule the average person is toast.

From “Japan, the System That Soured”, I got the impression that the vaunted security of half the Japanese work force is paid for with permanent 60 hour work weeks and that the other half lives more like our illegals. Australia, which uses an eccentric judicial system for setting wages, has seen union membership dropped from 40% to 20% over the last 25 years.

The original intent of legally mandated, sector wide labor agreements was to fend off a race to the top by European labor unions after World War II so more money could be directed to rebuilding industries. Europe's vaunted welfare state was actually a compensation for lower wages. Britain did not adopt sector wide agreements in the aftermath of the war and thus fell behind in development (according to Barry Eichengreen in "The European Economy Since 1945").

Magic bullet on the “Great Wage Depression” (I hate that pallid word “inequality”): What prevents the race to the top just as effectively prevents the race to the bottom. Over 60 successful years all over the first, second (Argentina) and third (Indonesia) worlds prove so.

Magic bullets for today’s housing bust stalling recovery: shifting 15% of lost income share back to the bottom 90 percent of earners could add 30% more inflation over X number of years. David McWilliams' “Follow the Money” about Ireland’s housing bust and in Matthew Lynn’s “Bust: Greece, and the Euro” both tell that inflation is the “painless” cure for housing bubbles at all times and in all places – home owners who wont lower their price nominally will ignore an inflation discount.

Magic bullet on consumer spending stalling recovery: no need to explain

Magic bullet for the exploding federal deficit: Inflation is the classic “painless” cure a bulging federal deficit (think post WWII) – in the long run our grandchildren get to pay back less to the Republican’s grandchildren (Republicans preferring to lend the government money at interest over paying their share of taxes).

Best video by Robert Reich (a lawyer): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTzMqm2TwgE&feature=player_embedded
Best article by Harold Meyerson (a journalist): http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/using-german-ingenuity-to-fix-our-economy/2011/06/14/AGdRJVWH_story.html
Best book by Thomas Geoghegan (a lawyer): http://www.amazon.com/Were-You-Born-Wrong-Continent/dp/159558403X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1309099936&sr=8-1
Best book digest on You Tube -- "The Coming Collapse of the Middle Class" by Elizabeth Warren (a lawyer): http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2008/04/the-coming-coll.html
Loudest wake up call?: Median pay for top execs at 200 big companies jumps 23%, 2009-2010:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/03/business/03pay.html?_r=1&hp

The TSA's -- and law enforcement's -- spreading doctrine of indifference to sexual privacy

2011-06-23T13:13:00.026-05:00

Most mindless TSA practice of all: genitally frisking persons entering the country – via air transportation – without probable cause. Courts have made it perfectly clear that requires probable cause of contraband or reasonable cause of danger when entering the country -- by ground transportation. Personal recording wherein an aware citizen compels the TSA to give in: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkRPS0pSScQ

Most egregious all-day-every-day TSA practice: allowing openly gay male agents frisking men and boys all day. Is there an openly gay male athletic coach employed anywhere in the country who is free to wander through the school boys locker room at will? There is no way to differentiate between this practice at an airport or at a school or anywhere there is a security job. This is way more than a matter of Fourth Amendment protection of privacy; this is a matter of grave sexual intrusion.

When and where did America take leave of its senses? One place where is apparently the Castle Rock courthouse in Colorado – in the heart of the heartland. In this widely circulated story (about scanners, frisking not even commented on) a mother with two small boys receives a so-called "quick pat down" from a male court officer to discover that she has left the paper backing of a label in her left rear pocket. A story photo shows a male remote scan viewer who has what looks like a small black-and-white monitor in front of him. So much for the male x-ray strip searching the female never seeing her (how would dad feel about his wife or daughter)? http://www.ajc.com/news/nation-world/full-body-scanners-popping-752566.html

If a TSA remote viewer brought a male friend to work to look at naked images of underage girls he could be charged with some kind of indecency to a child. If anyone personally recorded a scanner image of an underage girl or boy, they could be charged with creating child pornography. I don't think I could legally email around an artist's conception of what such a scan would look like. Courts only allow female prison guards to view male prisoners naked if it happens only occasionally and accidentally. I cannot imagine any court permitting male guards to routinely view scanner images (now used exclusively for strip searches in Chicago's Cook County lockup) of female inmates, least of all a underage female inmates -- or even the other gender way around. http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/cook-county-jail-body-scans-85552562.html

They think nothing at all of it:
http://www.wikilaw3k.org/forum1/Law-Enforcement-Police/Can-a-male-police-officer-frisk-my-13-year-old-girl-594510.htm
If you touch my wife I should be able to get you arrested:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NI7JEA4iK4
Leg and breast frisk 1st minute -- released 10th minute:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RxH1CnYhd8.

While randomly clicking by a TV episode of "Cops" I accidentally caught sight of a male officer begin exactly the same back and forth sequence fingering of a female, beginning over exactly the same right shoulder of the woman that we see in the "touch my wife" video. Perhaps seeing the TV camera, and feeling a bit ridiculous – social reality, he stops as fast as he starts. Law enforcement all over America may have come to see a male frisking a woman as no different than popping open the glove compartment -- purely utilitarian outlook.

Suppose a cop pulls over a car that he knows is not really eligible for search – he's bored; come on, everybody does it – if that illegal search includes frisking a female anywhere below her belt other than ankles or includes lifting breasts with the heel of the hand – I hope we can all agree, though he is playing cop not copping a feel, that the same felony prohibition of sexual abuse has been violated as if a creep in an elevator did it. Ditto for frisking without what the courts call immediate danger.

Eighth-grade math: if 10% more LEOs died in assaults every year for not safety-groping all over the legs and under the breasts of arrested female's bodies (and they think there is no law prohibiting going much further -- just policy) before transporting them to the police station -- rear cuffed, strapped down behind a locked cage – that would be seven more to the yearly count of 70 – and seven more out of 700,000: 1 chance in 100,000 over a years time. 10% more assault deaths; one of the most dangerous aspects of police work -- transporting basically frisked, hermetically sealed females: joke.

More eighth grade math: let's perfectly accurately measure the the threat that tens of millions of underwear checks every year and hundreds of millions of x-ray strip searches (half the time opposite sex) a year supposedly protected us from. May we assume that any potential underwear bomber who has been deterred by TSA creepy peeping since 9/11 must have bombed or at least have tried to bomb something other target? Oh so simply, add up all the bombs that have gone off and all the attempts that have been caught in time since then -- and then ask the crazies involved if they were switched from the air to the ground.

Can anybody imagine any red-blooded fiend who would not derive more satisfaction from blowing a couple thousand pounds of explosive on the ground than sneaking a couple of ounces on an airplane? When they are on the ground they always -- always -- attack us on the ground.

We wouldn't force a breathalyzer into the mouths of 25 million road drivers every year (that represents about 3% of the 800 million annual airline passengers) to save 600 lives on the road every year (the passenger load of two 747s) -- we don't want to live that way. We will never know how many (hundreds?) will be killed every year -- driving instead of fully groped flying.

Offer to switch public employee pensions to inflation adjusted -- but with much smaller payout

2011-06-17T09:08:00.007-05:00

Just an idea off the top of my head:
State employee pensions unlike federal pensions are usually (never?) adjusted for inflation as the years run on -- meaning 20 years out they may not be worth very much; 40 years out forget it (NYC police and fire for instance retire after 20 years, often in early 40s). Suppose localities and states offered retirees the option to switch to inflation adjusted pensions but with a much lower pay outs now.

This could head off the looming public employee pension crisis. Then the push could be on -- plenty of time -- for all pensions, not just government employees, to become the responsibility of the federal government just like in Europe. Just an idea to play with.
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As far as SS future is concerned -- even if in this economically totally illiterate country nobody knows the eighth grade math of SS -- average income doubles at twice the rate of population, meaning that 80 years out when average income has quadrupled and population has doubled our GDP will be pushing $120,000 TRILLION a (as in each and every) YEAR. So much for that $63 trillion or $75 trillion or whatever latest scare figure Republicans bandy about.

The SS trust bonds get cashed with tax money -- income tax -- instead of payroll tax. It's something like the "death tax" the Republicans are always railing about: be you alive or be you dead the IRS has to take just so much bread -- either way.

The real problem is as with everything else is with our incredibly squeezing American labor market. I made $25,000 in 1968 adjusted for inflation. My SS payout is supposed to calculate that $25,000 as if it had grown along with average wages. Since average income (not wages, but per capita income) doubled over that time I expected my 1968 income to count as $50,000 when calculating my benefit. Instead it counted only as $33,000. The wages of the people who pay the FICA tax -- what the adjustment is geared to -- on their entire income (under $100,000) only creeped up even while per capita doubled. From what I can find out that horrible trend is assumed into all the future calculation you hear about.

If America had the kind of legally mandated unionization that exists anywhere in the world where the average person gets their share of the economic pie and political power -- both of which don't exist anywhere they don't have this system -- SS at this point in time would be flooded with money. The system is called S-E-C-T-O-R W-I-D-E labor agreements.

SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION RECOVERY?

2011-06-15T16:28:00.010-05:00

First, get stupid Republican pet tricks out of the way. Recessions here and in Europe's second-rank economies (Ireland, Spain, Portugal) were caused by giving bankers more money than they could responsibly lend (Greece does everything crazy, not just banking). On an individual level a banker knows he is not going to bust the economy all by himself so why miss out on the millions in fees until bubble is bursts? The Republican answer to the bust is of course more tax cuts for the rich to flood the bankers -- and as little regulation of banker behavior as possible.

And don't forget to cut spending and raise taxes to choke the sinking economy. In every time and place inflation is what ends housing gluts and affiliated recessions by cutting prices painlessly (subjectively), bringing demand back in balance with supply. Inflation caused by deficits this year even somewhat ameliorates the long hanging deficit over the years. Zero inflation or deflation can mean a housing glut forever -- ask Japan. So much for stupid economic tricks.

When if and to ever America's Great Recession ends, our Great Wage Depression will carry on like nothing ever happened. Average income should double again over the next 40 years -- will the median wage grow only 20% again while the top tier -- linebackers, TV anchors and CEOs -- become as rich as Saudi princes (presumably the minimum wage wont drop in half in real terms as between 1968 and early 2007 -- it is a dollar below 1956 now!).

There are two kinds of labor markets in the OECD world: the kind that produce adequate political and economic strength for most people and the kind that do not. Wherever legally mandated, sector wide labor agreements are the rule the average person gets what they need because they rule. Where they are not the rule the average person is ruined politically and economically.

Socialism (Republican pet trick)? Keep in mind that sector wide agreements were introduced in Europe after World War II -- actually requiring Europe's welfare state to compensate for sector-wide's original purpose -- which was to keep labor's prices down – so Europe's industrialists could rebuild after the war. Guess what? What avoids the race to the top also prevents the race to the bottom (politically and economically). Again, every modern economy in which the average person does well, sector-wide bargaining is the rule; in everyplace it is not the rule the average person is lost.

In Japan the super secure half of the labor force pays for it with 60 hour work weeks. I got the impression the other half lives more like our illegals from the book "Japan, the System that Soured." Australia which has an odd judicial labor pricing system has seen union membership drop from 40% to 20% over the past 25 years. http://www.amazon.com/Japan-System-That-Soured-Japanese/dp/0765603101

I read in David McWilliams' (Ireland’s amazing popularizer) fabulous book – and elsewhere* – that inflation is what cures all housing bubbles at all times and in all places. Shifting back 15% of income to the "lower" 90% (some mess!) could possibly by my cab driver pure guess cause 30% inflation over X number of years as labor prices bump each other up. http://www.amazon.com/Follow-Money-David-Mcwilliams/dp/0717148076/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1309103892&sr=1-1
* http://www.amazon.com/Bust-Greece-Sovereign-Crisis-Bloomberg/dp/047097611X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1309104028&sr=1-1

Doubling the minimum wage to $15/hr – giving half the American workforce a raise! – would add less than 3% inflation directly – easily computed. (Half the work force) 70 million X $3.25 average raise X 2000 hours + 7 million at or below the minimum (2009) X $3.25 X 2000 hours = $500.5 billion -- out of a $14 trillion (economy)/$500.5 billion = 2.8% direct inflation. * http://www.bls.gov/cps/minwage2009tbls.htm [This link timing out as I post this.]

50% of our workforce wants to unionize. Supermarket and airline workers would kill for sector-wide agreements. Sector-wide labor contracts seem to be the magic bullet that not only avoids the race to the top (as originally intended) but also ends the race to the bottom (politically and economically) = the perfect labor market -- there seems no other answer. When are our progressive economists going to start talking sector-wide bargaining up?

Best video by Robert Reich (a lawyer): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTzMqm2TwgE&feature=player_embedded
Best article by Harold Myerson (a journalist): http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/using-german-ingenuity-to-fix-our-economy/2011/06/14/AGdRJVWH_story.html
Best book by Thomas Geoghegan (a lawyer): http://www.amazon.com/Were-You-Born-Wrong-Continent/dp/159558403X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1309099936&sr=8-1
Check out video version of the book "Coming Collapse of the Middle Class" by Elizabeth Warren (a lawyer): http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2008/04/the-coming-coll.html

Income Share
Dean Baker (in 18th reply on his blog post -- most important info for America -- only accidentally ran into it years ago!) reproduced what he called "a slightly altered table from Gordon's paper *, showing income shares in 1972 and 2001" -- my percentage changes on the right.

0-20_______2.6%, _ 2.0%________- .6%__ -12.3%
20-50____ 16.0%, _ 11.7%_______ -4.3%__ -11.7%
50-80____ 33.7%, _ 27.2%_______-6.5%____ -7.4%
80-90____ 17.0%,_ 16.1%________ - .9%___ -
*********************************************
90-95____ 10.8%,_ 11.3%______ +_ .5% __+
95-99.0___12.2%,_ 14.8%______ +2.6% ___+ 3.1%
99.0-99.9__ 5.7%,__ 9.6%_______+3.9% ___+ 7.0%
99.9 -100__ 1.9%,__ 7.3%_______ +5.4%__ +12.4%
(see p. 84 of Gordon for similar breakdown of wage income)

4.9% loss of overall share meant 26.3% chop of 0-50 percentile share.
6.4% loss of overall share meant 14.5% chop of 50-90 percentile share.
Don't forget more family members working more hours for more years still ended in chops.
* http://faculty-web.at.northwestern.edu/economics/gordon/BPEA_Meetingdraft_Complete_051118.pdf

Law enforcement's growing "doctrine of indifference" to sexual privacy?

2011-06-14T18:52:00.007-05:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7wLEbjnG3Q&feature=related

Could this officer pictured in this short video legally grope his own son in this manner – were there some safe, effective alternative like a wand (so much for the innocuous sounding judicial words “over outer clothing”)? You can also find an object as big as a gun pressing an object instead of your hand.

Why may a TSA employee grope all over your son in the same manner without even any individual cause? Could we constitutionally force 24 million Americans drivers a year to insert a sobriety meter into their mouth (better than genitally groped!) even if that would save 600 lives on the highways, the passenger load of two 747s? And we may be losing 50 lives a month on the highways over people avoiding too much to take airport groping and naked scanning.

Underwear bombers (least dangerous by volume anyway) will certainly try something else. Terrorists already on American soil favor giant truck type bombs – much more satisfying to their mania than a few ounces of explosive maybe only blowing out a window.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLpOcEtsElI&feature=player_embedded

Could this remote viewer (at 45 seconds) legally watch his own pubescent daughter’s naked scan -- just to be playful at the repair office? Could we constitutionally put 800 million American drivers a year through naked scanning to save 600 lives on the highway (no practical example)?

And why does security grope every square inch of your body if the scanner spot something in one pocket (take it out; go back through)? Even in the widely reported Castle Rock courthouse (should be horror) story (is no one shocked?) – where the pictured remote viewer also has a TV monitor possibly to view folks to be scanned (is he watching old movies?) and where male officers apparently frisk female visitors intimately every day – the male court officer may have only fingered over the left rear pocket of the mother with two small boys to discover the paper backing of a sticker. http://www.ajc.com/news/nation-world/full-body-scanners-popping-752566.html

The official TSA rule is, once a woman enters the security zone she may not leave without being frisked even if only male agents are available (continuing occurrence at small airports): $11,000 fine. They won't actually do that (hopefully). They will actually force her to choose between being grossly violated or not getting on the plane. This is the equivalent of taking a violent beating or not getting on the plane – not a legitimate choice.

We never got flying cars. We did get flying buses. Genitally groping tens of millions of Americans every year and strip searching three quarters of a billion to protect two buses – which probably won't be attacked anyway; if so will now be attacked some other way – turns the Fourth Amendment into toilet paper.

If you touch my wife I should be able to get you arrested:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NI7JEA4iK4
Leg and breast frisk 1st minute -- released 10th minute:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RxH1CnYhd8

Could these police officers legally frisk their minor daughters --- whom they presumably have dominion over -- for the sake of literally millions-to-one danger (see eighth-grade math, next paragraph) – or to make a reasonable/probable cause search if a 5 minute ride (or much longer) could reach a female searcher?

If 10% more police officers got killed every year transporting rear cuffed, strapped down behind a locked cage females fingering for every last tiny taped on razor blade, etc, – that would be 7 more out of 700,000 male LEOs. Tell your daughter you may finger grope her legs and in between and the bottom of her breasts because this one chance 100,000 she might hurt you – or don't tell mine. Couldn’t hurt you hermetically sealed in into cage in any way. Still frightened; bring a wand to work.

Police "cadets" at play (presumably over 18), at 2:00 :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1-dcSUDPE8&NR=1

Somewhere along the line American law enforcement across the board – not just the TSA – has developed a "doctrine of indifference" to the worst from of personal intrusion, unwelcome groping of females by males – and now at the TSA all day unwanted groping of males by gay acting males*. The interests of the state are not being balanced against popping open a glove compartment here. If it's a sick crime on the bus it's a sicker crime on the job where law enforcement itself is compelling you without the most compelling immediate danger. Until untamed government groping is cleaned out at every level, state and federal, I for one will not feel like a free American again. * http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkRPS0pSScQ

LATE LEGAL EQUATION: EVERYBODY SHOULD AGREE THAT IF A POLICE OFFICER PULLED A CAR OVER TO SEARCH WITHOUT REAL JUSTIFICATION, JUST OUT OF BOREDOM (EVERYONE MAY HAVE DONE IT) THAT IF HE FRISKS A WOMAN LIKE A MAN HE IS BREAKING THE SAME FELONY LAW THAT ANYONE ELSE WOULD BE BREAKING FRISKING HER -- EVEN THOUGH IS PLAINLY JUST PLAYING COP, NOT COPPING A FEEL. DITTO FOR ANY MALE FRISKING A FEMALE WITHOUT A GENUINELY COMPELLING MOTIVE --- NOT JUST PIPE "OFFICER SAFETY" WHEN THERE ISN'T A CHANCE A MILLION (SEE ABOVE) THAT HE WILL BE HARMED BRINGING HER TO THE POLICE STATION FOR A FEMALE TO FINISH THE JOB FRISKING LEGS AND LIFTING BREASTS. DITTO FOR TERRY STOPS. GUNS CAN BE DISCOVERED WITHOUT EVEN USING HANDS -- PROBABLE TAPED ON RAZOR BLADES MAY BE CHECKED FOR AT THE STATION. I DON'T SEE HOW ANYONE CAN ARGUE WITH THIS.

WE ARE NOT TALKING ILLEGALLY POPPING OPEN A GLOVE COMPARTMENT, CONSTITUTIONAL PRIVACY -- WE ARE TALKING A MAN GROPING A WOMAN'S SEXUAL AREAS WITHOUT TRUE NEED, RAPE WITHOUT PENETRATION.

Remedy for American Crime: no-lead gas, abortion or rebalancing our labor market?

2011-05-29T12:52:00.006-05:00

My comment to Angry Bear post "Get the Lead Out II" at http://www.angrybearblog.com/2011/05/get-lead-out-ii.html#comments:

For those of you who have not spent enough time in New York's slums and other badlands (Times Square was the a**hole of the world in early '70s) here are the origins of crime -- which led paint or abortion may or or may not add to or subtract from -- where it begins.

Five esoteric things in a row on juvenile delinquent boys:
Boys until 18 1/2 are in the emotionally dependent stage -- for all practical purposes -- as much as if they were 12.
This turns off over a week's time in my personal observation -- pure social instinct thing.
THE CORE: If they perceive nobody cares about them (wrong about half the time) they literally wont care about themselves -- no penalty can deter them. Any street temptation at all, they are gone.
This is easy enough to accept with a badly neglected 12 year old -- just as crazily true for an 18 year old who has simply been out of control for a long time -- every bit as hysterically alienated as I call it.
Unlike the decades of positive socialization it takes to wind down the paranoia underlying heavy heroin or alcohol addiction -- only 5 to 6 weeks of normal adult attention (teaching to drive) -- slowly brings the kid into the normal supportive orbit (have to kiss his toes and tell him everything he wants to hear first 7=10 days) -- but the crime doesn't slow one bit until a new kid wakes up one day (invasion of the body snatchers day ???).

Gangs:
Very simply the Crips and the Bloods could not whip a decent paying Ronald McDonald.

While reading When Work Disappears by William Julius Wilson and American Project by Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh side by side I noticed that after Wilson's book ended the project only descended into a completely gang infested hell as the minimum wage dropped in half from LBJ's peak -- as average income doubled.

BOTH OF THE ABOVE -- certainly and totally the latter -- CAN BE BLAMED ON AMERICA'S AMAZING, INCREDIBLY SQUEEZING LABOR MARKET. A $15 minimum wage would add about 3% (earlier figuring here *) to the cost of living (not counting other wages pushed up -- good), give half the country a raise and send a lot more low end customers (me ;-]) to McDonalds. Needless to say with a labor market where the median wage grew 20% while average income doubled and left a quarter of the workforce below LBJ's minimum wage by early 2007 (under performing Malthus) many more fatherless homes(massively more in our inner cities) leads to many (massively) more neglected or thinks they are neglected, hysterically alienated kids (for those of you who have not spent enough time in the badlands). * http://ontodayspagelinks.blogspot.com/2008/08/3-cost-of-gdp-output-and-inflation.html

America's great wage depression also leads to schools that don't work because nobody can be bothered trying to excel when they know they are not going to get paid anything like adequately when they leave school to finally go to work -- according to a professor Martín Sánchez-Jankowski who spent 9 years on the street observing in 5 inner city neighborhoods (slums): read his book Cracks in the Pavement.

So to me crime in America all boils down to what to me almost every other problem in America all boils down to: the totally missing bargaining power (or even any awareness of the need to bargain) of down at the heels American labor. And to me the answer is the only answer that has worked all over the better paid world: SECTOR-WIDE LABOR AGREEMENTS. Never, ever hear this spoken anywhere in supposed progressive forums though this answer is the only one guaranteed to work and everything else put together is guaranteed not to work. When are you going to wake up and start discussing legally mandated sector wide agreements progressive so you can wake up everyone else?

Women in combat: my comment in Washington post

2011-05-29T09:15:00.005-05:00

My comment to: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/five-myths-about-women-in-combat/2011/05/25/AGAsavCH_story.html

Eighth grade math:
If 10% of the police force doesn't handle 5% of the time -- even if it comprises 50% of the job -- the public will have a difficult time observing this.
If the NYC fire department hires almost 30 women a year for 30 years and there are still only 30 left on the job (half indoors?; 12 of the first 38 ever opted for light duty, e.g., public relations, right out of the academy) the public cannot see them not perform.
If half the prison guards cannot perform the public will never see it. The part of Rikers Island I used to visit weekly -- the 16 to 20 years old -- is now totally out of control (see recent story in "New York Magazine"). http://nymag.com/news/features/70978/
If half the court officers cannot handle the job prisoners must enter the courtroom in chains. In my years of going to court in the Bronx in the '70s they were brought in for arraignments in street clothes. 4 NYC court officers recently injured when judge insisted on removing chains. http://www.worldbookandnews.com/news/crime/44573-Robbery-suspect-injures-four-in-court.html

Of course the rigor and aggression required of a Marine grunt pales compared to that needed to be a big city court officer.

(still in rewrite) MY VERSION OF: The Real Social Security and Medicare Problem (and a Doable Fix)

2011-05-18T10:15:00.003-05:00

CUT AND PASTED FROM THE BULK OF BRUCE BARTLETT'S ARTICLE -- "The Real Social Security and Medicare Problem (and a Doable Fix)". THE NUMBERS -- MOST ESPECIALLY IN VIEW OF EVER EXPANDING OUTLET (MALTHUS WAS WRONG BRUCE) -- DON'T LOOK CATASTROPHIC OR EVEN PARTICULARLY THREATENING:

"Looking at Social Security, we see spending rising from 4.8 percent of gross domestic product to 6.2 percent by 2035, an increase of 1.4 percentage points."

"Another way to think about it is that the long term Social Security deficit is 1.2 percent of G.D.P., or 3.6 percent of taxable payrolls."

"Thus we could raise the Social Security tax rate from 12.4 percent, which it has been for the last few years, to 16 percent immediately and forever, or we can assume general revenue financing for the unfunded liability and would have to increase federal income taxes from 6.2 percent of G.D.P. to 7.4 percent, about a 30 percent increase in the amount of income tax revenues the government needs to collect."
************
I've always said that if the so-called trust fund peters out (it wont; a 5-year fund needs to be maintained -- all ever needed -- see below) the same tax payer money that was cashing bonds with income tax to feed retirees will simply switch to a higher payroll tax (with accompanying drop in income tax). Instead of 75% payroll tax and 25% income tax, retirees will be paid through 100% payroll tax -- only difference, a bit less progressive.

The only practical effects of the trust fund as far as I can see is that it allowed politicians to set on payroll tax rate for 60 years so they would not have to face endless raises and tax payer wrath which payroll tax surpluses on the front (when average income was lowest) made overall taxes more regressive (capped, flat tax paying for on-budget outlays) and more progressive on the end.

Average income doubles twice as fast as population (over 40 years compared to 80 -- worker-to-population ratio stabilizes after 2050) so there never was any retiree revenue crisis. If there is any funding problem it is cause by the average worker's (median) income growth not keeping even close pace with overall income.

For instance, my Social Security payments are supposedly calculated factoring in income growth. But my 1968 income is not credited as double my $25,000 to $50,000. I get credited for only $33,000 because the formula uses average persons' wages instead of overall growth. In the unbalanced US labor market median income only grew 20% as average income doubled! The minimum wage actually halved by early 2007!! Get the American labor market back in balance and payroll taxes will overflow.

BTW, While we are throwing all those trillions of dollars around let's remember that doubled population and quadrupled per capita income 80 years out means GDP looks to be 8 X $15 trillion = $120 trillion EVERY year by then.
************
************
AGAIN -- ESPECIALLY IN VIEW OF NORMAL ECONOMIC GROWTH:

"Part A pays for hospital visits and is financed by the Medicare portion of the payroll tax, which is 2.9 percent. (That leaves the total payroll tax rate, at 15.3 percent, ignoring the temporary cut enacted last year as a stimulus program.)"

"The 2009 report, before passage of the new health care law, had estimated a long-run unfunded liability of $36.4 trillion, which is equivalent to 2.8 percent of G.D.P. forever and would have required a payroll tax increase of 6.5 percent. (Also Table III.B10.)"

"The long term general revenue contribution to Medicare Part B is estimated at $22.4 trillion or 1.5 percent of G.D.P. in perpetuity. (Table III.C15.)"

"The unfunded cost of this program is estimated at $16.1 trillion, or 1.1 percent of G.D.P. in perpetuity. (Table III.C23.)"

"To put these programs on a sound footing, federal income taxes would have to rise from 6.2 percent of G.D.P. to 10 percent, an increase of 61 percent."
************
Doctors' incomes have not DOUBLED in real terms since 1968 while average (per capita) income has. So doctor's incomes cannot be blamed for the doubling and re-doubling and re-redoubling of health care. As one doctor put it to me: in his other career as a Navy helo pilot everyone can see the three engines and the sixty miles of wiring in the "new beast" Black Hawk, but when they go to the hospital all they see is the bed.

Where the money is going to come from is another question. The average person's (median) wage only grew 20% while average income doubled. The minimum wage actually dropped in half by early 2007 (now $3/hr lower than under LBJ after the "big" Demo raise). Meantime, the linebackers and TV news anchors and CEOs who now get paid 25X what they made back when (instead of only 2X) don't have 25X as many livers and bones to mend.

Like most problems in this country it comes down the the totally out of balance -- as in thoroughly de-unionized -- US labor market. Decades old proven answer: legally mandated, sector wide labor agreements -- standard practice all over the better paid OECD world, not to mention the second-world (Argentina), even the third-world (even Indonesia). Supermarket workers and airline workers would kill for sector-wide agreements -- good political place to start.

Doctors fees are 20% of Medicare (not overall economy's). Private insurance costs (whole economy) quoted as high as 30%? Where to start cutting? :-)

The real American "misery indexes" -- my comment on "Angry Bear"

2011-05-15T08:32:00.003-05:00

This post on the "misery index" -- seemingly meant to be taken as a realistic comparison of, well, economic misery on this side of the Pond compared to the other side -- is almost enough to make me give up forever on ever getting the slightest bit of common sense out of our economic (supposed?) progressives.

I mean this with all of my heart -- ready to give up on you all.

Please do a graph which shows the doubling of average income as one line on the chart going up at a 45 degree angle contrasted to the 20 percent increase in the median (average person's wage) going up at a 9 degree (?) angle over the same 43 years. Not to mention the complete political disempowerment that goes with a unionless work force (ever hear of legislatively mandated SECTOR-WIDE LABOR AGREEMENTS -- airline and supermarket workers would kill to get them; good place to start, but somebody's got to tell them about the possibility).

Please do a Malthusian chart tracking wages dropping 33% as population increased 50% since 1968 contrasted to the drop in the US federal minimum wage of almost 50% by early 2007. Not to mention the Crips and the Bloods couldn't whip a decent paying Ronald McDonald ($15/hr minimum wage -- mere 50% increase as per capita income doubled -- would raise the price of what in the poorest part of the country?).

Call them the "Nakba" indexes (or the "Great Wage Depression" indexes).

We -- Americans below 90 percentile income are suffering alright. Do you guys know anybody below 90 percentile income? What the deuce is wrong with you?

REPLY TO MYSELF -- RELEVANT "PSYCHOLOGICAL" POINT:

Endless reports of violence and non-performance in Berkeley public schools? Does this concern the Berkeley economic faculty? Not really their world right? Why, then, could anyone expect them to be concerned about poor side of town high schools in Detroit -- though I am sure their interests would perk right up about the goings in any elite high in Detroit -- or France.

I worry about the tragedy of poor side of town schools in New York and Chicago (core problem: nobody will prepare hard for a labor market that offers them nothing now and less for more work later if things keep going on that way on this side of the Pond). You would accordingly expect me to worry about troubles in Berkeley schools -- from thousands of miles away.

Get the "psychological" point. All the learning does no good if you don't know what to care about -- midbrain motivates forebrain to get what midbrain desires; not the other way around.

The answer to the American labor "Disaster" is not a floor under inadequate incomes

2011-05-02T08:45:00.005-05:00

TODAY'S COMMENT ON THOMA'S ECONOMIST'S VIEW: http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2011/05/links-for-2011-05-01.html#tpe-action-posted-6a00d83451b33869e201543212b890970c

Re: Economics Principals

Here we go again. David Warsh -- a commentator whose breadth of understanding normally dazzles me -- quoting this as a good summary of what to do about so called "inequality": “The only things that can possibly address inequality of a magnitude that will soon be judged to be unacceptable in this country are much higher levels of taxation on the well-to-do and a negative income tax for the poor.”

If, first, our progressive elite understood that it is not about wan "inequality" but more like what the Palestinians call the "Disaster", they would understand that what American workers need is not a guaranteed floor under inadequate incomes but the median wage to double over time whenever average income doubles, not grow only 25%, for the minimum wage not to drop in half (by early 2007) over the same doubling per capita span.

We, American workers, would like to earn $25/hr on the average with a $15/hr minimum wage in the poorest parts of the country (the latter with all of 2% direct inflation*). We American (Chicago) cab drivers do not want the mile rate on our meters to get one (1!) 30 cent increase over the course of 16 years (81-97) period, at which mid point the city began adding 40% more cabs while cutting the business nearly in half with subways to both airports, unlimited limos and (the coup de grace) free trolleys between all the hot spots downtown (fine transportation progress, but what's with 40% more cabs?!).
* http://ontodayspagelinks.blogspot.com/2008/08/3-cost-of-gdp-output-and-inflation.html

What American workers need is the power to protect themselves in the market place -- and in the legislature. Of course nobody in America from cab drivers to dazzling progressives has any idea anything is so fundamentally out of whack.

I caught the answer to the Disaster (A.K.A., Great Wage Depression) -- assuming anybody in apparently brain isolated America knows there is a question -- the first time I saw it; wondered why I never thought of it myself, so obvious from the purely theoretical point: legally mandated, sector-wide labor agreements. The one and only answer to the race to the bottom. Canada has a lite version right next door: is Canada like the South Pole?

See these two books for how it works so well in Germany, undoubtedly the leading example of a successful capitalist economy:
"Were You Born on the Wrong Continent?: How the European Model Can Help You Get a Life" by Thomas Geoghegan. http://www.amazon.com/Were-You-Born-Wrong-Continen/dp/159558403X
Union of Parts: Labor Politics in Postwar Germany (Cornell Studies in Political Economy) by Kathleen Ann Thelen
http://www.amazon.com/Union-Parts-Politics-Postwar-Political/dp/0801425867/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1304343097&sr=1-3

*********************
Reply to myself -- just another insight of a sort, not yet sorted out itself:

The presumably (supposedly?) avant guarde Berkeley economics faculty feels no personal responsibility at all (as far as I know) for the violent goings on at their public schools. If they don't feel any personal responsibility for making Berkeley public schools safe (attended mostly by poor minorities?) -- especially safe -- good learning places we cannot in the least expect them to take serious responsibility for the poor side of town(s) across America.

OTW, if you are from the poor side of town where you live we can expect you to be seriously anxious about what is going bad in Berkeley public schools thousands of miles away.

It's not what you know -- that makes you useful -- it's apparently who you identify with -- that makes you useful -- think LBJ v. Obama. As I would say midbrain outflanks forebrain (no matter how dazzling) again and again.

My comments on Thoma's Economist's View blog today

2011-04-29T20:02:00.007-05:00

My comments on Thoma's Economist's View blog today: http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2011/04/paul-krugman-the-intimidated-fed.html#tpe-action-replied-6a00d83451b33869e201538e34ff2c970b

Last I heard inflation is the cheap way to pay down enormous debt -- and isn't inflation the way to "painlessly" reduce the real price of real estate; the classic way severe housing slumps (caused by burst bubbles) end?

What exactly is the big need for under 2% inflation anyway? Most of my long life until recently inflation has run between 3% and 5% a year -- except for the double digit inflation of the late 70s. What's the big harm?

******

First and foremost is inflation the cheaper and quicker way out of federal (Chinese) debt and out of our busted housing bubble (historical average time to get out I just read in one of David McWilliams' books: 5-7 years)? Which busted bubble is threatening us with a lost decade or two. Is it or is it not; let's get the giant positive(s, plural) established before we weigh the trade offs.

Is it or isn't it?

Second, if we had an adequate safety net we would only have to worry about some retired people living a little less enjoyably versus pulling out of two economic tailspins that threaten to crash us fatally. But since as a country we never worried about adequate safety nets before why start now?

We work people for less and less and less every year for the same work even as average outputs doubles (since 1968 -- back when the minimum wage was $10/hr adjusted and the median wage was but 20% lower than today's average person's wage) and then we set them out to pasture -- or should I say to sleep in the street. Minimum SS and maximum food stamps together come to about $900/mo -- eat or stay indoors, your choice.

Why start worrying about the elderly now? ???

******

What the great majority of workers in the American labor market -- not the European -- suffer is a total collapse of economic bargaining power along with the necessarily concomitant loss of political muscle -- Americans not Europeans.

Which has left in its wake a federal minimum wage that is now $1/hr below Eisenhower's (really senate majority leader LBJ's) 1956 minimum wage and $3/hr below LBJ's 1968 minimum wage -- following the "big" 2007 raise! !!! Meantime the median (average person's) wage has grown 25% since 1968. All the above while average income grew 100%! !!!

15% of income share shifted from the bottom 90% to the top largely 1% -- disproportionately to the top 1/10 of 1%. I think we can agree that the doubling of per capita output over two generations is brought about by (maturing not brand new) technologies (what tripped up Malthus) and not by 25X better paid linebackers, TV news readers or even CEOs. Just my amateur guess but shifting that 15% back could cause 30% inflation over whatever time period with the back and forth adjustments: a perfect place to start, killing every bad bird with one stone?

Across the better paid OECD world and even in the second (Argentina) and third (Indonesia) worlds there is a DECADES OLD answer to America's race-to-the-bottom: legally mandated sector-wide labor agreements -- an elegant theory that unarguably works.

Ask your favorite progressive economist about sector-wide as the answer to the race-to-the-bottom. You will have to ask I am afraid; they will not volunteer the knowledge. They have understood the benefits and hopefully the absolute necessity of sector-wide agreements all their professional lives (started in post-war Germany to moderate a potential labor race-to-the-top -- works just as well opposite polarity) but they will never tell anybody -- too lost in diagnosing today's symptoms, they never ponder or at least never mention out loud the easy cure.

You know, 10 MLKs would not have gotten the 1964 Federal Civil Rights Law past the murderous US Senate of the time with JFK or Obama president. LBJ (not known as a giant intellectual policy wonk) got it through because he had the fire in his belly -- he told Senate nothing else was ever going to happen until that bill passed and he meant it -- he out waited the filibuster 84 days (also passed Medicaid, Medicare, $10/hr minimum wage, etc., etc.).

Supermarket and airline employees would kill for sector-wide agreements: good place to start (try German heavy or Canadian lite).

Play money, real money, online poker and the First Amendment

2011-04-22T18:06:00.003-05:00

Play money poker should be covered by the First Amendment -- like passing jokes around -- like any board game -- recreational speech?

If so -- big if?; but could they outlaw Monopoly? -- then poker is covered by the First Amendment per se -- including real money poker. Once a constitutional right is involved the legislature may no long outlaw something just because they feel like it is reasonable. Once a constitutional right is involved the legislature must be able to present a "compelling" reason to outweigh the right.

The snuck-by Congress legislation bars online poker for moral reasons. They waited too long to enforce it. By the time tens of millions from every continent are playing the game online -- with no reports of massive (or any) moral collapse -- the idea of infringing freedom of speech to protect our morals is not merely arguable, it is universally laughable.

Internet poker US cashout problem solved with overseas cash payouts?

2011-04-19T14:26:00.002-05:00

Say Pokerstars had a cash window (like a racetrack) in England where you could travel to to pick up your payouts. Sounds perfectly legal for you to pick up your own payout outside the US. Matter of fact you could pick up a Pokerstars money order in England and cash it in in the English bank it was drawn or check cashing store (if they have such) -- and reconvert the cash into a money order to send to yourself in the US. No foreign bank account needed -- just you in person. No gambling enterprise would be sending a financial instrument to a US bank -- that is all the law prohibits AFAIK.

NEXT STEP: Say a player's personal rep goes and does the same thing for him: same legal payout process. Or, suppose, instead, some smart cookie opens a business in the US where they charge players (plural) a fee to travel to Pokerstars cash payougt window in England -- or just as legally open the same business in England to act as player pickup rep -- to pick up our winnings in cash for us -- not working for Pokerstars; working for us -- and then send checks or money orders to us in the US. No gambling enterprise would be sending a financial instrument to a US bank -- that is all the law prohibits AFAIK.

NEXT STEP: Say Pokerstars sends cash to US players. When I worked as a truckers helper for a Wall Street Bank in the early 1970s we took tons of mail to the Post Office some of which was registered mail containing cash going to South America. I was told that Registered mail must to be signed for by every person whose hands it passes through all the way to the recipient. Pokerstars could send small to medium payouts by registered mail right now. Really large deliveries could be done by armed insured messenger (you might want to make an appointment to meet the messenger in a bank). No gambling enterprise would be sending a financial instrument to a US bank -- that is all the law prohibits AFAIK.

Problem solved? I hope this looks as good in the morning as it does at 4AM. :-)

[PS. See the following legal essay on the unlikelihood of anyone ever standing trial -- not talking about copping out either: http://www.gamblingandthelaw.com/blog/299-federal-poker-indictments-revisiting-prohibition.html]

The Settler State -- Uri Avnery

2011-04-17T08:45:00.004-05:00

"Some weeks ago I wrote that the problem may not be the annexation of the West Bank by Israel, but the annexation of Israel by the West Bank settlers."

The Settler State
http://avnery-news.co.il/english/index.html
You-u-ul have to look for the Headline (after the first week out: 4/17).

Medical insurance double and redouble and re-redouble -- while doctors income's have not even kept up with average income gains

2011-04-12T19:41:00.002-05:00

AFAIK Doctors' income have not even kept up with average income gains -- the latgter doubled since 1968. AFAIK average income for doctors was $150,000 before Medicare and Medicaid, after which the average rose to $180,000. AFAIK, today, $360,000 is the average income for the highest paying specialty, radiology.

Medical insurance double and doubles and redoubles -- what is with focusing on doctor's incomes?

A doctor in my cab told me that in his other career as a Navy helo pilot the new beast (Blackhawk) has three engines and 60 miles of wiring -- everybody can see the difference between that and the Huey. When people go to the hospital all they see is the bed.

Ever think unions are unrealistic not wanting management to count the ever increasing cost of medical insurance in negotiations? Isn't the whole country like that? Do we really expect to pay the same for more and more and more medical advances?

How to get the cost down to European costs level -- half? Simple; govern ourselves like Europe. Govern ourselves -- instead of left and right elites taking turns governing us. RE-UNIONIZE THE ONLY WAY THAT ACTUALLY WORKS: SECTOR-WIDE LABOR AGREEMENTS. Cut the Gordian knot at the heart of almost every other poliltical issue -- re-balance the labor market -- and simultaneously the political forum -- so the labor market actually works to insure fair prices -- automatically -- just like Republicans say markets do. Then all the common sense reforms will be absorbed (automatically?).

Say the words: S-E-C-T-O-R W-I-D-E L-A-B-0-R A-G-R-E-E-M-E-N-T-S.

My comment on Open Salon to: Carry a big stick -- when I was ordered to paddle students

2011-04-01T08:05:00.003-05:00

My comment on Open Salon to: http://open.salon.com/blog/jlw1/2011/03/30/carry_a_big_stick--when_i_was_ordered_to_paddle_students

The same principal who smashes away on kids for being late (not usually an animal) might feel unable to beat an adult the same way for breaking into school, breaking into lockers and spray painting cars in the parking lot all at the same time. Something goes missing when we are not beating social equals or something (we are talking dumb social instinct here).

If the principal's boss paddled him for the above mentioned crimes the principal would not hate him. If the principal's boss paddled him for being late the principal would hate him -- a violent assault over efficiency, mere office management.

Let principals contemplate these contradictions (and why some kids hate them forever).

There is a hole in the law against violent assault. There is provably no justification for the hole -- provably by the common policy in the worst hitting states (where 90% of the beating of girls and 75% of the beating of boys is for tardies) : it is often optional for the student -- take detention or suspension or a beating. If the school lets the student decide how can the school tell the courts that it is so necessary the court should allow a hole in the law against violent assault with a weapon?

Unfathomable social instinct can be at work on students here: if everyone else chose a beating over an hour's detention so would I. Instinctively must accept the same danger as the rest of the hunting pack? ??? Sometimes like in the famous YouTube video the student will miss a days work as with the boy or as with the class president girl miss the prom if they do not take a tardy bend over for a behind beating by the (male) principal. Sometimes a student fears even a tardy suspension may affect college admission. None constitutionally justifies a hole in the prohibition against violent assault -- especially on children.

Left this comment on "Open Salon" this morning to "Geraldine Ferraro’s Campaign Stop from Hell"

2011-03-30T07:49:00.003-05:00

Left this comment on "Open Salon" this morning at http://open.salon.com/blog/wild_ginger/2011/03/29/geraldine_ferraros_campaign_stop_from_hell. Will be interesting to see if it stays up there -- which is sort of my point. :-)

The left does not need to shout down the other side of the abortion issue at the rowdy physical level. The left shouts down the other side -- by shutting it out -- at the more sophisticated media, legislative and above all judicial levels.

Media: never even hear the issue framed as the "abortion issue" -- it's the "woman's right to choose" -- never even hear the other side at all.

Legislative: a year and a half in jail (FACE) plus crushing law suits (RICO!) for passive, non-violent resistance demonstrations in front of abortion clinics (sorry Gandhi and MLK).

Above all judicial: the Roe majority threw out 46 seriously enforced state laws with what I choose to call a "consensus test": "... may not, just by adopting one theory of life, override the rights of the pregnant woman that are at stake."

Easy to dismiss the theories of life the decision consulted: three were theological plus viability and quickening. Roe's writer could was "not in a position to determine when life begins" at four weeks overdue -- but I am sure he would no trouble at twelve weeks early arrival.

Going by the real -- as in honest -- medical consensus -- not "viability is the medical focus" -- Roe's writer might have discerned life's very certain beginning somewhere between 14 to 20 weeks. One week under which "consensus" he could have discovered what Roe so busily talked around: possible human life as an undeniably compelling state interest.

The high court could hardly have picked a week at which the possible life was no longer compelling: too nakedly legislative.

Prenatal personhood? What will the high court say when fetuses may be removed overnight for medical procedures and returned to the womb? Will it continue to hold that inalienable rights begin at birth? Oh, all of a sudden the left is all strict constructionist.

New Hampshire's Don't Touch My Junk Bill

2011-03-05T14:17:00.036-06:00

When entering land borders from Canada and Mexico we are not asked to choose between naked scan or genital frisk – likely unconstitutional without at least reasonable cause. Why does the TSA put us through an underwear search getting off intercontinental flights? Are they afraid we are going to blow up American taxicabs?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkRPS0pSScQ

And (perhaps most unreasonable of all – with so much unreasonable it is difficult to know where to start) why must we be subjected to all over, private area gropes when a scanner spots one thing in one pocket? Why may we not merely remove one thing from one pocket and at most go back through the scanner?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLpOcEtsElI&feature=player_embedded (Note pubescent female at end of video posing for her naked rendition to be remotely viewed by male agent shown at beginning.)

Suppose scanners were in use in lockups only – and a story came out that males guards viewed females – maybe even a “backroom story” of males gathering around to make comparisons? Suppose the same stories came out about a juvenile (under 18) lockup?
http://www.dvorak.org/blog/2010/11/15/editorial-of-the-day-on-tsa-horndogs-heads-up-got-a-cutie-for-you/

Privacy? Our courts will release a serial killer – to kill again and again -- because of one illegal intrusion by police way back at the beginning of the investigation. I don’t agree with the exclusionary rule but our courts certainly don’t put whether we live (safety) way out front of how we live (privacy) … unless you mention airliners. (Larry Eyler lived one block north of my 1633 Chase, Chicago apartment.)
http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/serial_killers/predators/eyler/freedom_6.html

Danger? 90,000,000 to 0 – the odds of getting on a domestically originating flight with a suicide bomber since 9/11/01. If you are on the soil of the “Great Satan” why try to sneak a few ounces of explosive on a plane when you can get a couple of thousand pounds of fertilizer together on land? But, what about the guy who planned to take down a dozen foreign originating 747s in one day? When he was here he actually carried out the same scale attack -- on the ground: his bomb in the WTC garage was intended to make one tower fall against the other bringing both down.

What protects us from suicide bombers is living in the USA not in Iraq – and our security services stopping them before they start. Lots of experts tell us that any capable terrorist would circumvent what they call today’s “security theatre” (I’m not even going to get into that). The real and present danger? A Cornell study added 1,200 traffic fatalities to Bid Laden’s 9/11 score due Americans driving to avoid flying. How many hundreds or thousands of traffic deaths a year may airport security's new, enhanced sexual intrusiveness add to his score?
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2010/11/the_tsa_is_literally_killing_a.html?f=most-commented-intel-7d5l

What is most (there’s that word again) ironic about the enhanced TSA groping technique is that it undermines -- in practice -- what the court said justified irrevocable consent to be searched (once you enter the screening area) in the first place. The court permitted preventing passengers to leave mid-search because that could allow terrorists to sample screening areas to see which they could get past undetected. But, the new groping is so obnoxious that the TSA – in practice -- seems not to have the heart to insist we may not change our mind and leave unmolested.

Bottom line, if a federal agency imposes rules that are in clear (or arguable if you will) violation of constitutional guarantees of our free way of life – that means the newly imposed rules have no legal existence -- which means any state or locality may legitimately criminalize such offenses . Privacy versus danger: let the federal Constitution decide whether state laws protecting privacy strike the more legitimate balance.

(Odd – if not useful – legal puzzlement of mine: Should TSA administrative regulations -- composed with delegated Congressional legislative power – be able to overwrite the explicit will of Congress prohibiting naked child imaging: a legislative house divided against itself? Said Congressional prohibition of such image making or distribution passed First Amendment muster precisely due to the serious harm done the child. Making and viewing of (especially opposite-sex) naked child images by either TSA or any security personnel anywhere inflict precisely the same substantive damage. Doesn't overriding the explicit intent of the body that delegated the power to you in the first place seem as incongruous as allowing pre-1789 common law to take priority over new legislation -- just a quirky puzzlement. ???)

If you touch my WIFE, I SHOULD BE able to have you arrested

2011-03-03T16:53:00.007-06:00

If you touch my WIFE, I SHOULD BE able to have you arrested.
http://www.booads.com/videos-img-%5B3NI7JEA4iK4%5D.cfm

I would like to ask the police officer in this video -- frisking a woman's leg area (and who knows what else; the video cuts off after he goes down one side of one leg) reportedly over "expired registration" -- if he and other male officers (they all feel free to frisk women going by net searches) would be so fearful of having a less than fully frisked female (only the waist, upper side and ankles) REAR-CUFFED, STRAPPED DOWN, LOCKED IN THE BACK SEAT CAGE that he would ask a fellow officer if one were available to drive behind him to the police station so she would know she could not get away with hurting him.

I am sure he and any other male officers who heard this question would instantly laugh -- meaning there is no appreciable officer safety issue justifying what is undeniably experienced as a sexual assault by females. Everybody assumes such actions are prohibited by law -- everybody -- because only too reasonable.

If officer safety consumes them so much let them bring a wand to check for weapons before "hermetically sealing" females for the short trip to the police station. Good enough for protecting 747s from terrorists at 40,000 feet, good enough for them.

Our crazy courts have unleashed this "officer safety" nonsense on us -- without any differentiation over what constitutes what is called an immediate threat. The police have gotten so inured to the invasion that they feel free to teach male police cadets to grope the private areas of female police cadets as shown in this video -- neither video shows the the use of the back of the hand either.

http://www.booads.com/videos-stop-and-frisk-%5BW1-dcSUDPE8%5D.cfm

The probable California Highway Patrol officer in this video -- possibly incorrectly identified as LAPD -- cannot call for a female officer as easily as a street cop can. I presume it is nearly impossible. This video makes it look like every female who drives down the highway had better not leave her license home or lose her purse or she potentially faces a much more horrifying experience than she would have had she taken a plane from the airport.

The one good thing the TSA nonsense may have accomplished is alert one and all that much worse is experienced by American women and girls at the hands of police everyday. (BTW, no government or police hater here: heavy prolife and usually prowar.)

EIGHTH GRADE MATH LATE NOTE:
60-70 POLICE DIE FROM ASSAULTS ON THE JOB EVERY YEAR. IF ENDING THE "FUNNY FRISKING" OF REAR-CUFFED, STRAPPED DOWN, LOCKED IN A CAGE FEMALES FOR THE SHORT RIDE TO THE POLICE STATION ADDS 10% TO THAT RISK (UNIMAGINABLE) THAT WOULD ADD 1 EXTRA CHANCE IN 100,000 (THERE ARE 700,000 MALE LEOS) TO EVERY MALE OFFICER'S RISK: NO SAFETY JUSTIFICATION AT ALL FOR THE KIND OF FRISK SEEN IN THIS WHAT I WILL CALL "RHONDA KING" VIDEO.

DITTO FOR TERRY FRISKS: TERRY IS NOT ABOUT DISCOVERING SECRETED RAZOR BLADES -- TERRY IS ABOUT FINDING GUNS WHICH CAN BE ACCOMPLISHED WITHOUT MALE FINGERS (TRY A SIX-INCH RULER IF YOU MUST PROBE AN AREA) TOUCHING FEMALE FORMS.

FOR BOTH SITUATIONS: BRING A WAND TO WORK OFFICER! GOOD ENOUGH FOR 747S; GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU!

Why economies tank -- American labors only practical road back

2011-02-22T12:00:00.002-06:00

MY COMMENT AT http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/tapped_archive?month=02&year=2011&base_name=organizing_is_a_right_not_a_pr

Did someone say the word "insolvency"?

That is what happens to states when the economy tanks. Why do economies tank? 9 times out of 10 in history and around the world it is because TOO MUCH money gets into the hands of bankers (no left-winger here -- this is about free markets) who then lend it to people who cannot pay back (bankers go for a bubble like a moth to a flame for some reason ???).

This becomes double-jeopardy when the too much lending goes into real-estate. When house prices finally drop in half nobody will come down enough to sell -- until inflation painlessly makes real real estate prices come down over a very, very long time -- nobody sells, nobody buys -- ergo, a long, long recession.

This becomes triple jeopardy when banks are deregulated (crazier moths) at the same time.

The Republican Party managed to accomplish all three -- sent the bankers TOO MUCH money to lend via $4 trillion (!) dollars of tax-cuts for the rich -- which fueled the real estate bubble all the while deregulating (moth to a flame) banks. Ergo, an potential repeat of the Great Depression.
******
If labor were running the country for the average person -- instead of two elites trying to tear up different parts of the country for play -- the endless recession never would have happened.

The only way to unionize in the modern world (if unheard of in America) is called sector-wide labor agreements -- legally mandated -- all worker who perform the same type of job in the same geographic locale work under one common contract with all firms. This ends the race to the bottom. Wal-Mart closed 88 big boxes in Germany because it could not compete (when legally forced) to pay the same wages and benefits.

Sector-wide agreements were originally instituted in post-war Germany by very conservative, very anti-communist, very Roman Catholic (think Konrad Adenauer) politicians to keep labor costs DOWN so their just post fascist industrialist could rebuild -- by allowing labor to make concessions without worrying whether others would make the same concessions. This is not "socialism." (English labor did not do this at first and thus fell behind rebuilding.)

What avoids the race-to-the-top by labor just as beautifully avoids the race-to-the-bottom by ownership -- as each owner claims he must cut labor costs to match the competition. Sector-wide bargaining creates a fair and balanced labor market for both sides.

And can be instituted by one law -- easy.

Sector-wide is the practice throughout the better compensated OECD first-world and even used in the second-world (Argentina) and third-world (Indonesia) -- also Canada. It is about how free markets actually work -- nothing to do with "socialism."

My email to Wisconsin on government union busting

2011-02-17T17:06:00.001-06:00

My email to Wisconsin on government union busting:
One stat tracks the disappearance of America's -- collectively bargaining -- middle class:

US median wage (the average person's) wage, 1968: $12.50/hr
US median wage (the average person's) wage, 2008: $15.00/hr
http://www.stateofworkingamerica.org/charts/view/201

During the same span average income doubled from $14,000/hr to $28,000/yr!
http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/historical/people/P01AR_2009.xls
******
The federal minimum wage is now $3/hr below what it was in 1968:

Federal minimum wage 1968: ($1.60 nominally) $10.15/hr
Federal Minimum wage, 2001: $7.25/hr
http://www.minneapolisfed.org/

Doubling the federal minimum wage might add only 3% to the cost of living -- that is how little money goes to the bottom.
Doubling the federal minimum wage (to today's median wage) would add how much to the price of housing, health care, transportation, clothing, electronics? A Big Mac could go up 33% (fast food being by far the biggest labor user) -- but half the country would get a raise!
I worked out 2% inflation from $7.25 to $$12.50 here: http://ontodayspagelinks.blogspot.com/2008/08/3-cost-of-gdp-output-and-inflation.html
******
Today America is being fought over by two elites. The liberal elite wants to tear up the social fabric (TSA invasiveness) while the conservative elite wants to tear up the economy (tax cuts for the rich-to-deregulated banks-to-borrowers who can't pay back). When I was a kid (67 years old now) the liberals healed the social fabric while the conservatives guarded the economy.

When I was a kid the average person still counted because unions gave us economic and political leverage: as much organization as any special interest and the majority of votes.

This is not the time for Wisconsin to disband the last bastion of American labor, government unions.

MY SUPPORT FOR AMY SULLIVAN'S TIME MAG POST -- VERSUS -- UNKNOWING DOWN-PUTTERS

2011-02-12T08:52:00.005-06:00

MY SUPPORT FOR AMY SULLIVAN'S TIME MAG POST -- VERSUS -- UNKNOWING DOWN-PUTTERS -- http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2011/02/08/stay-classy-tsa/

male agent: heads up; we've go a cutie, to (presumably male) remote viewer
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/travel-safety-security/1147497-tso-saying-heads-up-got-cutie-you.html

small airport -- sorry; only male agents (see my post above quoting TSA MANDATORY male on female frisk you cannot walk away from)
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/15083260-post63.html

"Male screeners have certainly attempted to pressure women to allow them to touch them - this has happened to me. I assume they succeed sometimes.

"In BOS, a male screener told me there was a 'very long wait' for a female screener and it 'would be better' to let him do it. "
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/travel-safety-security/1142981-another-first-hand-account-new-patdowns-6.html

no law (supposedly) says male police officers may not frisk females
http://www.lawforkids.org/speakup/view_question.cfm?id=269&topic=OTHER

Most of these answers are false. A male officer can frisk a female. There is certqin training that covers how to do this.
http://www.answerdigger.com/19140/Can-a-male-police-officer-frisk-my-13-year-old-girl

When searching a female it may be helpful to:
* · Have a female officer present, if possible. Be certain that the written report of the incident contains details of the arrest, mention of any weapons or contraband that were being sought, what if anything was found in the search.
* The more immediate or important the arrest the better. If there is a legitimate belief that she is carrying weapons or contraband a search should not be delayed.
* Do not search a female alone unless it is absolutely necessary.
* Conduct the search of a female in the same manner that you would search a male.
* Before starting to search the front of a female, tell her that the search is not meant to embarrass her. Ask if any weapons or contraband are concealed in her clothing or body. She may deny having any weapons or contraband, search anyway. If she admits to having weapons or contraband locate it, seize it, safely secure it and resume your systematic search.
* Use good judgement and discretion. These basic steps may be employed similarly when a female officer searches a male.
http://www.correctionsone.com/products/apparel/articles/1334679-Optimum-Search-Frisk-Techniques-For-Law-Enforcement-Personnel/

TSA male agents target female travellers
http://www.dailykosbeta.com/story/2010/11/30/883319/-TSA-male-agents-target-female-travellers-%28w-poll%29

MY OWN ESSAY ON THE TOPIC: TSA extends sexual abuse from stop-and-frisk to fly-and-frisk
http://ontodayspage.blogspot.com/2010/12/tsa-extends-sexually-abusive-searches.html

Is it really fair to make San Francisco's homeless carry their "fair share" of the city budget cutting load?

2011-02-10T12:44:00.001-06:00

Is it really fair to make San Francisco's homeless carry their "fair share" of the city budget cutting load (at least 10%*)?

Let's not go Arnold. The former governor squeezed $1000/yr literally out of the mouths of the state's 1.3 million neediest -- saving $1.3 billion. If everyone else ponied up as much the state budget would go into surplus -- and the neediest wouldn't have to give up a dollar. Hint.

* http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/02/10/BAA11HL2Q4.DTL

Can recording an Illinois politician's speech violate the Eavesdropping Act?

2011-02-08T17:30:00.004-06:00

BACKTRACK:
A lawyer now informs me that Illinois Eavesdropping the law does not apply to a political speech because it is not a conversation -- setting me back -- but off the top of my head I wonder: suppose the speech maker answers question or curses or takes personal questions before a crowd while exiting. Suppose a teacher converses with the class.

A law could not constitutionally ban recording a political speech if it so intended. Wouldn't be putting too much of a burden on free speech to require students to constantly turn recorders on and off?

Got to kick it over. Sounds like it should all narrow down to whether a law may constitutionally bar recording a private conversation in a private place -- if everyone knows it is being recorded. Banning recording of a public official doing public work in a public place seems way back there somewhere on the bannable scale. Off the top of my cab driver head. :-)

From http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1349966/Chicago-artist-Chris-Drew-faces-15-years-jail-recorded-arrest.html :
"In Illinois police are currently prosecuting nine people for alleged breaches of the law [Eavesdropping Act -- A.K.A., Illinois Corrupt Politicians Protection Act]. The maximum penalty is only three years behind bars for the first time the law is broken and five years if it is done again. But anyone recording a judge, attorney general, state attorney or police officer can be sent to jail for up to 15 years."

May a politician making a speech before an Illinois audience of many thousands forbid one and all from sound recording -- in light of the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment? Can a citizen in Illinois recording such a speech without a politicians express permission be so charged under the Eavesdropping Act – in light of our First Amendment rights?

Assuming the Illinois eavesdropping act is constitutional, charging Street artist Chris Drew (no relation) recording police performance of public duty in the public way would seem a strange place to start. How about the tens of thousands of Illinois private college and high school students who record their teachers lectures without so much as informing them?

It should be easy to set up a sting for inarguably such criminal behavior by passing an investigating officer off as taking a survey taker, asking students if they record in class, as they exit their schools. Wait until they get around the corner to grab them and put them on buses – students wouldn't need too much guarding; you could utilize a minimum number of police. A couple busloads from 100 Illinois schools should be easy to fill: 10,000 students in one day. Drive the buses to someplace like United Center. Seat students in the stands. Judges can set up multiple courts on the stadium floor for arraignments.

Once that legal point goes out to the world it will be time for neighbor to watch neighbor – Janet Napolitano style.

I just watched a cell phone video on TV news of somebody driving the wrong way down a highway taken from a vehicle driving on a parallel road. If the picture taker forgot to inform his passenger that he was recording sound too as they conversed: you've got a prosecution. You just have to think through the angles.

Recording devices are becoming so ubiquitous – a recording studio in everyone's pocket; broadcast studios did not even have high definition until recently – that First Amendment jurisprudence may have to accept their unannounced -- and an asked -- use as legally indistinguishable from recordings we make with our brains – or something like that. ???

I'm not saying it should be okay to sneak into the back of a police car and secretly record officers private conversations about their preferences in doughnut shops – threatening to overload their favorite spots when word gets around: 15 years!

My comment on prenatal personhood on an "American Prospect" blog today

2011-02-05T13:24:00.000-06:00

My comment on prenatal personhood on an "American Prospect" blog today:

Four fun steps -- sci fi to present to sci fi to present -- to fetal personhood (at whatever point a medical consensus determines there is full-fledged human life):

One; when advances in medical technology allow fetuses to be removed overnight for medical attention, such will be legal persons and must retain that status upon return to the womb. Will the courts allow one class of fetuses "slave" and the other free?

Two; if today's physician, first, views a fetus on a clear view sonogram (I believe such are in at least limited use) and manipulates mom's stomach wall to tease diagnostic reactions from baby, wouldn't we all relate to the fetus as a full-fledged member of society -- from then on. (Hint: we are really talking mid-brain, not fore brain).

Three; in the future an unborn twin is removed for overnight care. No need to answer -- but: when does the stay behind twin become a legal person: from the moment its sibling sees the light of day or does it have to wait until it is rejoined face-to-face with a now legal person?

Four; of course, all fetuses are in the company of a legal person -- mom -- if not face-to-face, and in the unseen (at least our mid-brains even if the presence becomes ever more evident to our fore-brains ) company of millions.
******
Roe v. Wade worked around the issue of possible human life outweighing fundamental privacy (no argument on Roe's version of constitutional privacy -- at least arguable -- and certainly fundamental, even if only a legislative concern) with the words: "... may not, just by adopting one theory, of life override the rights of the pregnant woman that are at stake")

The theories of life Roe presented would not hold any real world water: three theological plus quickening and viability (the latter the purported medical "focus"). Birth, the purported Jewish Orthodox view wouldn't allow the judiciary to determine when life begins at four weeks overdue but would have no trouble pinpointing full-fledged life at twelve weeks early arrival.

One week under the medical consensus (even those who abort 20 week fetuses do not deny humanity) would exist 95% the same baby: a perfect candidate for Roe's "compelling state interest" -- required to override privacy.

Emailed to Traffic 911: Child prostitutes can sue Johns for child sexual abuse

2011-02-05T08:52:00.002-06:00

Emailed to Traffic 911: Child prostitutes can sue Johns for child sexual abuse.

I got this idea back in 1987 after watching the movie "Street Wise." (The movie came out in 1986 -- Life Magazine did the original cover story on the same homeless kids 4 years before that.) I saw these skinny strung-out kids being picked up by big luxury cars and -- I don't know if it was the faux lawyer in me or the cab driver -- I though: sue!

Touch a child/give them your house. You can possibly deter most Johns simply by giving the idea big play in the media even if you are not doing much with it yet.

In 1987, I suggested the idea to Louis Lee, director of Children of the Night and to Gerg Loken, legal counsel of Covenant House. Doctor Lee, last I heard back then, was exploring the idea with the president of Loyola law. Greg Loken, at first, said, "I wish I had thought of that." But the following month he gave me the run around saying: "The child would never stick around; we do this." Typical young lawyer nonsense: two conflicting thoughts separated by a semi-colon. Later it seems something funny may have been going on in Covenant House.

Thing about suing for child sexual abuse is that there may be no statute of limitations in most places on child abuse law suits.

My email to Paul Craig Roberts: Paul, how are we going to wake up? Newly noticed horror (thanks to TSA): male police think nothing of frisking females

2011-02-04T13:51:00.004-06:00

Paul,
Horrified by stories of TSA agents enhanced frisking females (not too infrequently at small airports?) I researched the legality of such on the net. Didn't need to look far as a widely distributed AP story about proliferating scanners included (without any special notice) how a "quick frisk" by a named male officer discovered a label backing in the rear pocket of a named female (must have been a pretty heavy "back of the hand" on her backside to discover something so thin).

Internet forums are replete with comments from male officers asserting they may frisk a female just as legally as a male pretty much if no female officer is handy -- even assert that if both gender officers are present it is not up to the female to choose who will do the frisk -- even tell of using the front of the hand (my department doesn't give me a bad time about it). Even found a video from a young future police recruit club (supervised by cops) in which what looks to be an 18 year old boy is practicing a palms down frisk all over what looks to be an 18 year old girl. (http://www.booads.com/videos-stop-and-frisk-%5BW1-dcSUDPE8%5D.cfm)

That is how casually they take violating the number two taboo -- after murder of our society.

Some of us agonize over 200,000 children being paddled in the South every year. If the average of 35,000 (at times) New York City male police officers frisk a woman only every two months that makes 200,000 women sexually groped by cops every year -- in one city! Somebody has to come up with a number for across the nation.

BTW, I am not that dark and down about government intrusion -- at least not as in irresistible force. The real problem is alluded to in your question: the American people as oh, so movable objects. I do motivations (you don't have to salute the flag; you shouldn't have to rise when a judge walks in :-]). These intrusions would never happen in continental Europe (maybe in Britain with it's hanging over class system -- but that is the point) simply because Europeans expect to be seen to properly. Americans will take anything.

At core is the question of "social democracy." In the "people's republic" of California -- sexually wild as we get -- DAs threaten inappropriate touching by airport security (not very meaningfully but they mean well). In laissez faire Chicago -- as straight laced as we get -- Cook County courthouse uses the same strip search scanners on free men, women and children that now do the prisoner stripping at our county jail.

Social democracy hardly equals socialism. Was instituted by very anti-communist, very Roman Catholic German politicians (are you old enough to remember Conrad Adenauer? :-]) post war to tamp down labor demands so barely post fascist industrialist could invest more in rebuilding (Britain did not follow and fell behind).

The core of social (and economic) democracy: legally mandated, sector wide labor agreements. Line up all similarly working owners on one side and all similarly employed workers on the other side and you keep either from having an unfair (and inefficient) advantage over the other. Free health and education on the side pose no moral hazard.

Raise the minimum wage in the US to $15/hr and you would give half the country a raise (median wage $15/hr -- up 20% as average income upped 100% since 1968) -- at a cost of living increase of an almost below visibility 3% (worked out [2]% from $7.25 to $12.50 here: http://ontodayspagelinks.blogspot.com/2008/08/3-cost-of-gdp-output-and-inflation.html). Repeat: half our workforce could be raised to today's median wage with 3% inflation: we are obviously doing something quite wrong.

MLK got his people on the up escalator just in time for it to start going down for everybody

2011-01-17T12:49:00.002-06:00

Today, after the "big" Democratic increase of a couple of years ago, the buying power of the federal minimum wage is $3/hr below what it was in 1968! -- double the average income later. The median wage has only grown 20% since 1968 while average income doubled -- from $12.50/hr (adjusted) to all of $15/hr for the middle wage American.

Didn't happen in Europe where they have something called "social democracy" -- A.K.A., "socialism" in this economically ignorant badland. The economic components of social democracy -- MANDATORY SECTOR-WIDE LABOR AGREEMENTS, free health and education -- were instituted by very anti-communist, very conservative, very Roman Catholic German politicians (think Conrad Adenauer) after WWII to MODERATE labor demands so Germany's just post fascist industrialists could invest more in rebuilding.

The same sector-wide agreements that prevent the race to the top for labor turn out to prevent the RACE TO THE BOTTOM (the American way) for labor -- why Wal-Mart recently closed 88 big boxes in Germany; because it could not compete paying the SAME wages and benefits as honest competitors.

Sector-wide labor agreements are the proven formula to restored economic AND political power for the majority -- practiced over most of the better paying first-world and even in the second and third-worlds (Argentina and Indonesia). Rebalancing America's labor market is the ticket to solving 90% of our other social problems. MLK would understand that today.

TSA sexting and groping may destroy employee ability to function

2011-01-09T09:19:00.000-06:00

TSA passenger x-raying and groping may be disheartening TSA employee morale so much that search effectiveness at luggage x-ray points -- the trickiest and potentially most dangerous porthole for terrorists -- is seriously degraded. It is just a security job and now you don't want to tell anyone you work for TSA anymore -- how much can you take?

Who would take their wife and children to a bowling alley if they had to be pictured naked by a guard (half the time of the opposite sex) at the other end of the building? Ditto for entering Disneyland. Why should your family have to be stripped in front of strangers to travel to Disney Land? If the pictures were moving instead of snap shots -- jiggling everything you've got -- at that point would people finally revolt and just refuse to go through the scanners?

If the opposite sex groping forced* upon females of all ages (whenever female TSOs are absent -- more often at small airports) were performed by a male impersonating a TSO (not sure how this could happen -- but just theoretically) what crime could he be charged with? The same crimes the TSA is committing under the aegis of so-called "administrative search." Unheard of in the annals of law enforcement -- including high security prison visits. * http://ontodayspagelinks.blogspot.com/2010/12/tsa-opposite-gender-screening-mandatory.html

And I'm not even getting to same sex scanning and groping -- just citing felony sex intrusions. Add it all up and who would want to work -- or work effectively -- for TSA anymore?

Never put a large brick into a spinning washing machine

2011-01-04T18:49:00.005-06:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwYW_RGWSmM

TSA opposite gender pat-down: must accept sexual assault to fly -- must complete process once begun!

2010-12-31T09:10:00.002-06:00

http://www.airsafe.com/issues/security/tsa-sop-not-redacted.pdf

****************************************
****************************************

2.2.3. HHMD OR PAT-DOWN SCREENING OF INDIVIDUALS
The HHMD TSO is responsible for HHMD screening and pat-down inspections in accordance with the Screening Checkpoint SOP. All HHMD and pat-down searches must be conducted by TSOs of the same gender as the individual presents him or herself to be. Extraordinary circumstances may occur where a TSO of the same gender is not available, including staffing shortage emergencies at any airport or limited staffing at category II, III, and IV airports. Under these circumstances, TSOs of the opposite gender may be allowed to screen individuals in accordance with the provisions of Chapter 4.3.14 of this SOP. During opposite gender screening an STSO or LTSO, if possible, should be present. This rule applies to all references of same gender screening in the Screening Checkpoint SOP.

*******************************************
*******************************************

Revision: 3
Date: May 28, 2008
Implementation Date: June 30, 2008 Screening Management SOP

4.3.14. OPPOSITE GENDER SCREENING
Extraordinary circumstances may occur where a TSO of the same gender as the individual being screened (the gender of an individual is determined by who he or she presents themselves to be) is not available to complete HHMD and/or pat-down screening procedures (for example, staffing shortage emergencies at any airport or limited staffing at Category II, III, and IV airports). Under these staffing shortage emergencies, screening procedures for individuals of the opposite gender, as provided for in this Section, are authorized and STSOs must apply the following procedures.

A. The following notifications must be made within 24 hours of each new staffing shortage event:
1) The STSO must notify the FSD, specifying the anticipated duration of the staffing shortage. The STSO must provide subsequent updates to the FSD if the reported duration is exceeded.
2) The STSO must maintain a count of the number of passengers affected during the staffing shortage and report these numbers to the FSD after the shortage is resolved. No personal or identifying information must be taken from the passenger for purposes of this report. For example, “three female passengers underwent opposite gender screening at Airport X” is an adequate count; however, including the names of the three female passengers in the count would be inappropriate. [my note: Do Touch; Don't Tell]
3) The FSD must in turn notify the Area Director, who must monitor such reports and consider how the patterns of staffing shortages, if any, can be addressed. The Area Director or his or her designee must notify the Office of Civil Rights of the staffing shortage and provide a copy of the report indicating the number of passengers subjected to opposite gender screening at each affected airport.

B. The STSO must ensure that the following notice is provided to an individual of the opposite gender before the individual enters the WTMD:
1) A TSO of the same gender as the individual presents him or herself to be is not available.
2) A TSO of the opposite gender will be required to complete the screening process, which may include physical contact between the TSO and the individual.
3) An LTSO or STSO, if possible, will be present.
4) Once the individual enters the WTMD, the individual must complete the screening process.

[I repeat: "4) Once the individual enters the WTMD, the individual must complete the screening process." Sorry high school girl!]

TSA extends sexual abuse for stop-and-frisk to fly-and-frisk

2010-12-29T20:33:00.036-06:00

New TSA regs extend sexually abusive searches from reasonable cause and supposed police safety to administrative (warrant-less) search and public safety (airport, school and skating rink are legally indistinguishable).

Most or all police departments train male officers to frisk females if no female officers are handy or pretty much whenever they feel like it. Any hope for a Fourth Amendment shield has evaporated under many decisions: http://www.rbs2.com/travel2.pdf. Small police departments with only a few male officers even feel free strip search female prisoners: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWokzdFBNLs -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BVgBip-cd8&feature=related.

All courts require to excuse what anyone living outside the legal cloud would take for criminal sexual intrusion is reasonable cause of crime or any unspecified claim of officer safety (e.g., afraid to transport a handcuffed 15 year old girl): http://www.lawforkids.org/speakup/view_question.cfm?id=269&topic=OTHER.

TSA rules now mandate traumatic male on female enhanced frisking anytime there is no female agent available (happens mostly at small airports with only a few agents) and may always have permitted sexual touching pretty much whenever convenient (for the toucher?) -- for administrative searches and supposed public safety. (2004!)-- TSA rules have begun to mandate women -- and children! -- be x-rated, x-rayed for remote viewers of the male sex (half the time?) for administrative searches and supposed public safety: http://ontodayspagelinks.blogspot.com/2010/12/tsa-opposite-gender-screening-mandatory.html -- http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/travel-safety-security/328417-bos-lets-men-wand-frisk-female-passengers.html.

If courts carry on in their current backbone-less Fourth Amendment ways about TSA intrusions -- there is the felony criminal aspect they should think of first if you ask me -- there will equally be no discernible constitutional or legal line between assembly line x-rated, x-rays and groping at any high school or skating rink: public safety is public safety.

Going by this widely reported AP story and pictures, two small Douglas County, Colorado courthouses do not even attempt to avoid same-sex frisking and may even neglect remote viewers not seeing you directly (looks like a TV monitor right by the x-ray viewer; for the front door? -- wonder if he detected the label backing in her back pocket with the back of his hand): http://www.ajc.com/news/nation-world/full-body-scanners-popping-752566.html. I wonder if giant Cook County, Illinois courthouse which has begun using whole body scanners will forget all about traumatic sexual intrusion too? The media might check.

[Hint: small police departments: you too can purchase whole body scanners to use with remote female viewers for your detainees. Safe enough for giant Cook County jailhouse -- safe enough for your jailhouse: http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local-beat/cook-county-jail-body-scans-85552562.html. Now that the technology is available you might think twice how much it might cost you if you don't: http://www.wbez.org/story/cook-county-pay-55-million-jail-inmates. Hint: all police departments: I drove a gypsy cab all night in the South Bronx and Harlem for years -- I am still alive. You need to be willing to take the "risk" (not the largest of your day) of transporting a handcuffed, strapped down, locked in female behind a shield for a five minute ride to the police station in order to protect her from traumatic sexual assault (policy protects you from criminal charges only because the gov made you do it); from what your wife and daughters would be terrified of at small airports.]

Single question whose variations cover all TSA sexual invasion situations

2010-12-25T20:41:00.012-06:00

Having previously worked out in a previous post on my blogspot that males frisking males (includes same-sex attracted males frisking males) is ipso facto a criminal action (already written laws — Fourth Amendment need not exist) then all other TSA sexually invasive security questions comes down to variations of the following: in a small airport where only 3 or 4 male TSA agents are on duty with as yet no scanner would it be (is it now — this situation exists across the country) legally permissible to simply prevent the woman from boarding without a frisk or is it legally permissible to perform on her what that state’s criminal law defines as a violent sexual crime as a condition of boarding (not just which is more harmful but what is legally permissible)?

Really-really effective Israeli security -- in the air and on the ground -- get Israeli settlers out of the Palestinian homeland

2010-12-25T10:55:00.002-06:00

A proposal for really-really effective Israeli security -- both in airport and even (especially?) on the ground: get our "51st state", Israel, the hell out of Islam's "51st state" what was left of the Palestinian homeland, the West Bank and Gaza, after Israel gouged out 80% of it in 1949 after the U.N. okayed only 55%): so we don't have to trade any more American skyscrapers for Israeli settlements.

Cheaper than spending the $150 billion a year to institute Israeli type security in American airports -- $500 a year for every man woman and child (they only bomb us on the ground if they are already here anyway). We already spent $200 billion in military aid to Israel over the past 40 years to make sure they have the "Indians" surrounded. In thanks for providing Israel security 400,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank -- more every day -- are creating a fury on the Arab street that grows every day as the numbers of "ethnic cleansers" in the occupied territories grow.

Click here for Uri Anvery's Christmas message about the daily depredations against Palestinians as told in a new book "The Occupation of the Territories" (not yet on Amazon) reporting the experiences of hundreds of young Israeli soldiers -- purposely no atrocities; only grinding, growing day in day out degradation of Islamic "natives."

Police/TSA opposite-sex groping and stripping (minus) the Fourth Amendment (plus) Tennessee v. Garner (equals) sexual felonies

2010-12-24T12:15:00.029-06:00

The TSA has introduced into administrative (warrant-less) searches a species of sexual permissiveness that 99.9% of Americans have no idea courts have already extended to police departments for making routine frisks with either probable cause of crime or for supposed safety of officers -- which invasiveness ladies discover too late when they fall literally into male police hands or under male police gaze stripped completely (at 2:00).

I am talking routine male on female frisking when no TSA officers are conveniently available (almost universal police policy) as well as the electronic stripping of women and children before whatever gender happens to be manning a remote screen. Male TSA officers, just like most local police officers, are actually trained in specific techniques and “limits” of touching all female private areas: for instance, using the blade (along the pinky) of the hand to lift breasts. Not all local police officers are trained in less invasive techniques.

Yes, Mary, any male police officer may, if no female officer is immediately available, conduct the most intimate frisk as a routine precaution, not because of an immediate threat, which need would not justify any other form of violent assault. Self-identified officers on online forums even assert that if a female officer is present, the police still get to decide who will search and who will back up and the citizen has no legal say.

Some male officers on online forums complain they hate to frisk females and other officers of how they always have always have a witness and/or do it in front of a camera to avoid charges. How often do they do it? Small departments with no female officers apparently feel perfectly free to strip search females in front of male officers every single arrest.

Enter the TSA at small airports where only three or four TSA male agents may be present and where there may not yet be a whole body scanner. Upshot: if no female agents present (coffee break?) TSA feels perfectly free to permit – even mandate! – its male agents intimately touch (in accordance with the same training female agents get) every sexually private part of every female passenger, 13 years and older (perhaps in practice only when females are traveling alone or with small children): policy.

The Fourth Amendment has evaporated in current jurisprudence anytime anybody cites officer safety – if not yet in TSA dragnet mode and not yet with public (instead of officer) safety for justification.

We know the Constitution is safe from dragnet mode and public safety justification at school houses: “Don’t worry young lady; the officer who will view your naked form is not even in this building; oppsey, something showed up and you cannot go back through; sorry, no female friskers showed today.”. The criminality of such a practice is too easily evident to everyone's sensibilities. But, mention officer or airplane safety to the courts and who knows what state constitutional privacy may land in.

The Fourth Amendment reasoning in Tennessee v. Garner (1985) 471 US 1 (wildly misused against border guards who were at life threatening hazard, -- not alone with a handcuffed female) can be used to rope in Rodney-King-day-every-day for females at police departments nationwide (the last civil rights movement?) and to pull an extra tight knot around TSA’s opposite-sex groping (what emergency?) and child and opposite-sex naked viewing with everyday criminal law – even if there had never been any constitutional Bill of Rights.

Tennessee v. Garner, 471 U.S. 1 (1985):
Concluding that "[i]t is not better that all felony suspects die than that they escape,"13 Justice White's majority ruling noted that it was constitutionally unreasonable to shoot a fleeing suspect "[ w]here the suspect poses no immediate threat to the officer and no threat to others, the harm resulting from failing to apprehend him does not justify the use of deadly force to do so.

Substitute: where the female detainee or interstate traveler poses no immediate threat to the officer or to other travelers, the harm resulting from failing to make a male on female frisk does not justify the use inherent violence of the legal definition of sexual assault to do so.

Did someone say "popping up at courthouses" (exactly what AP said)? What criminal law (don't bother with constitutional) difference is there between a courthouse and a high school or a skating rink? At courthouses these days officer safety is mixed together with public safety to justify dragnet (routine) male on female frisks along with naked view of all by any!

Extending the practice of male police routinely frisking and even stripping females into the area of warrant-less search and for public safety (airports, ball parks -- what difference?) the TSA has gone so far out on the legal (and constitutional) limb that it must fall of its own over obnoxious weight. Roll routine sexual assault all the way back to the police station and jail house or to let it roll over the whole country: courts today, colleges tomorrow?

[I have left out of this essay any Fourth Amendment questions about gruesome same-sex groin and personal female area frisking because they are not strictly criminal and not as easily dispatched applying criminal law comparisons alone.]

Stick figure scanner pics coming to three Montana airports next year -- Boston's Logan due for same

2010-12-23T08:50:00.011-06:00

Stick figure scanner pics coming to three Montana airports next year: Helena, Billings and Gallatin:
http://www.belgrade-news.com/news/article_962047ac-f718-11df-953e-001cc4c03286.html
******
FULL BOSTON HERALD STORY:
TSA: Scanners will show only ‘stick figure’
Privacy complaints spur change
Richard Weir By Richard Weir
Thursday, November 18, 2010 -

[Richard Weir is the Herald's new "T" beat reporter, covering a subway and bus system that moves 1.3 million people every day and is the lifeblood of the city. He has worked as the Herald's City Hall bureau chief and an investigative reporter, breaking stories on government waste and public corruption.]

The controversial naked body scanners at Logan International Airport will soon be G-rated, as Boston’s airport is set to be the nation’s first to get new X-ray technology showing a “stick figure” instead of the controversial outline of a passenger’s assets, the airport’s federal security director said yesterday.

“All you’ll have is stick figure and a little block around each anomaly on you,” George Naccara of the Transportation Security Administration said of the new scanners due to arrive by late winter.
http://bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1297227&position=0

Male police frisking females (gay males frisking males) -- males actually trained how to frisk bras! --

2010-12-21T08:54:00.005-06:00

Tennessee v. Garner, 471 U.S. 1 (1985):
Concluding that "[i]t is not better that all felony suspects die than that they escape,"13 Justice White's majority ruling noted that it was constitutionally unreasonable to shoot a fleeing suspect "[ w]here the suspect poses no immediate threat to the officer and no threat to others, the harm resulting from failing to apprehend him does not justify the use of deadly force to do so.

Substitute: where the female detainee poses no immediate threat to the officer and no threat to others, the harm resulting from failing to arrange for a female-on-female frisk does not justify the use of sexual assault to do so.

This is the principal under which the supposedly legal (though almost totally unknown to the public) practice of male police frisking females (and gay males frisking males) must be ruled out -- on an emergency basis (just like TSA naked scanning by opposite-sex remote viewers -- and of all children under 18).

I was surprised to say the least on Goggling the internet to find out police think it is okay for them to frisk the opposite sex -- even if a same sex cop is present; it's completely up to the two officers. I was shocked to discover that male police are actually trained in the technique of frisking breasts!

Both of these at: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071127121821AAjxGUL

"Officers are actually trained to frisk breasts. Basically lifting them with the back of their hand, then sliding their hand between them (over the shirt). You want find anything small doing this, but you will probably find a knife or a gun if one is hidden there. Some officers might just have a woman "shake" her bra to see if anything will fall out. ... We are taught to use the blade of our hand (the outside edge running along the pinky) when searching in the area of a bra."

"If the police have a reason to do a frisk, you will not have the option of picking one or the other, they will determine that. When two officers are present, one will be the "contact" officer and the other will be the "cover" officer. This would be determined before they approach you. The contact officer is responsible for any actions, and the cover officer acts as a backup."

Police say it is for the safety of the police -- like they used to say before "Tennessee" to excuse shooting fleeing teenage boys. Why not just clock her on the head with a club or zap her with a Taser -- exact same excuse? (Why not just shoot her?) Because it is better that all persons who might possibly pose danger to the police are not frisked than that all persons who might pose danger be groped by males who are sexually attracted to them.

If she reaches for her bra and you think she is hiding a .45 there, then shoot. Otherwise wait for a female officer or let her go on her way.

James Daubs' laughable denials that gay male TSA agents hunger to take advantage of male travelers. FIRST DRAFT

2010-12-18T09:07:00.008-06:00

FIRST DRAFT (Brand new -- see http://ontodayspage.blogspot.com/2010/12/male-police-frisking-females-gay-males.html for crucial legal overview)

James Daubs' laughable denials that gay male TSA agents hunger to take advantage of male travelers. http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/12/06/felt-up-at-the-pat-down-eugene-delgaudios-laughable-homophobia/

First, all of his excuses would not add up to a penny’s worth if we were talking male TSA agents frisking females – even though they should 100% equally apply. Maybe the real first of all should be reversing Daubs' example with a fat old gay TSA agent getting to frisk firm young men and boys -- think he wouldn't be ecstatic when time to go work everyday?

Second, when I first lived in San Francisco in the late ‘90s the sneaky feel scene was 100% out of 100% of the time. I used to literally stand with my hands hooked behind my back when perusing books at the main library branch. I remember one guy going crotch bump to crotch bump with me and jumping off the back of the bus – you couldn’t out maneuver them. I even remember making the mistake when I was new of defenselessly leaning over to fill out my driver’s license application where there was plenty of room behind – a giant public hall – and getting swiped from behind.

Sometime around when gay males were trying to get into Boy Scout leading (I’ve heard somewhere that lesbians had pretty much taken over the Campfire Girls – no problem with that; females don’t molest and are generally looking for older than younger) somebody wrote to whom he addressed as Pat Robertson’s homophobes at the ACLJ, describing the all sneaky feel all the time scene among San Francisco gay males – along with their decades long observation that gay males (not females) mostly light up too much (not molest) around pubescent (11-13 year old) girls.

I went back there in January – about a month after the letter was sent – the scene was still going 100%. One of them got me within 5 hours – paying for an electric heater at the 4th street hardware across from the Marriott – enough room for four people to pass behind me; so infuriating. All same for my three month stay.

I’m not sure if it was this trip but just to fill out: one day there was a service breakdown on the BART and the bus is much more crowded than usual for the time of day. I’m on the very back seat worrying how I’m going to off past a big one. He gets off to be replaced by a small one. I get up asking him for room; he typically moves his leg two inches and I have to roll up my newspaper to push his leg aside.

I went back the following January for seven months. Somebody must have put it too them – they had completely cleaned up their act. No more straining to get out of the way of your girlfriend as you move down the bus aisle and then squeeze right back against unsuspecting you.

Eighth-grade math; the next to last time I was there, every other gay male who got in my cab for four months had to pat me on the soft part of the shoulder two or three times at some point in the ride or else lean their hand against same while waiting for the change. Not sex but intimacy; still infuriating but I was afraid to say anything because they would have been so mortally shamed. Last time I drove a cab there for four months they had again completely cleaned up their act – maybe again somebody had put it to them.

Here is a KOS report of heterosexual TSA males taking advantage of females traveling along or with children -- infinitely more egregious because the women understand what is happening to them; that they are being groped by sexually attracted men. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/11/30/923752/-TSA-male-agents-target-female-travellers-%28w-poll%29

If anything this TSA thing may head off the next pseudo-liberal stage: openly gay male police officers frisking men on the street. Here is an AP report of a male Castle Rock, CO courthouse guard giving a female (both named) a “quick pad down” – not too quick to discover “paper backing of a "Junior Deputy Sheriff" sticker that one of the guards had given her two young boys” (woman traveling alone ow with small children?) in her “left rear pocket”! Not even commented on – widely distributed story. Male fitting Daub’s stereotype seen at remote view screen (with what looks like a small TV monitor right in front of him).
http://www.ajc.com/news/nation-world/full-body-scanners-popping-752566.html

I had a gay male teenager living with me for a year in the Bronx in the late ‘70s. That’s when I discovered the only difference between gay and straight: anybody who gets in my space with no suspicion even they are getting in my face is always gay. Gays see what we straights think of as the big male ego in females instead.

Where males are concerned that lightning bolt between out legs takes the path of least resistance. Put straight males in prison and the only path available may be tempting.

Assuming there was some practical way to do the crazy thing: anybody in favor of saving state money by having formerly exclusively heterosexual male prison inmates to take over pat-down duty at the airports; especially “enhanced” pat-downs? What could parents tell their teenage sons who will understand precisely how egregious that would be? Would the answer to this question have anything to do with homophobia at all?

Roxi Copeland -- I’ll be Groped for Christmas Parody Video -- LINK

2010-12-15T09:18:00.003-06:00

http://wewontfly.com/ill-be-groped-for-christmas/comment-page-1/#comment-2733

First we lose our pay; now we lose our privacy: TSA mess another sign of the SLUMMING of America

2010-12-12T12:20:00.005-06:00

This TSA mess is just another symptom of the SLUMMING of America for the average person. First we lost our pay; now we are losing our privacy. Core cause: creep-creep, A.K.A. Parkinson's Law, A.K.A.. any pressure just naturally expands if not met by counter-pressure. In laissez faire America unlike in social democracy Europe there is never any counter pressure for the average person.

This is why in straight laced Illinois the Cook County courthouse started using scanners (hopefully not for long) while in wild and woolly California, county prosecutors threaten airport security with jail if they inappropriately touch (whatever that might mean under TSA laissez faire). In the "people's republic" people EXPECT to be taken care of -- makes all the difference.

European social democracy -- contrary to the "socialist" label Newty and friends like to put on it -- was invented, if that is the word, by very anti-communist, very conservative, German Roman Catholics -- to TAMP DOWN wage demands so their post fascist industrialists could rebuild after the war.

The core of social democracy is sector-wide labor agreements. What works to tamp down the race-to-the-top (to keep one union from being afraid to moderate demands because they fear the others wont -- worked our for the worst in post war England where they did not adopt sector-wide right away -- now most everywhere in the better paying world) also prevents the (American style) race-to-the-bottom.

The free medical and education of the welfare state aspect of social democracy have no moral hazard component (saith Hayek) -- no reason we have to copy their automatic dole.

Sector-wide would be the easiest, most saleable way to introduce Americans to the idea of being taken care of right. Airline and super-market workers would kill for sector-wide.

Definition of opposite-sex scanner viewing and frisking includes same-sex attracted

2010-12-10T09:54:00.006-06:00

Women have a right to fear being taken advantage of by male TSA security -- straight men have the same right to fear being taken advantage by gay male security (gays are not girls) -- with no phony options-to-request. A gay male has every right to refuse his own partner access to his body -- ditto for gay TSA security.

Who will tell their teen age sons it is okay for a gay man to perform even an old fashioned (pre-enhanced) frisk on him -- not to say on his private and personal parts (same parts as a girls to a straight man) -- because we cannot discriminate in job assignments?! (Lesbians are not boys -- a trickier issue than I can handle.)
******
I want to make it absolutely clear that I am no homophobe. When I was an SF cab driver I used to joke that I made my living going down to the Castro after midnight to hustle (ditto for Halstead in Chicago and Christopher Street in New York when I rarely drove yellow there).

I had a gay teen living with me for a year in the Bronx in the 70s. That's when I figured out that gays are not girls. They programmed between the ages of 3 and 6 to see the big ego in women -- just as straights programmed to see the same in men -- that's all the difference between. That lightning bolt between our legs then takes the path of least resistance.

My first move away from home was to Chelsea in Manhattan which even in the 60s had a strong openly gay contingent.

Congress already voted against TSA naked child scanning -- ditto for state laws against opposite sex groping and scanning

2010-12-06T18:50:00.082-06:00

How can TSA administrative regs -- composed with delegated Congressional legislative power – overwrite an explicit Congressional prohibition of naked child imaging: a legislative house divided against itself? Said prohibition passed First Amendment muster due to the harm done the imaged child. Viewing of (especially opposite-sex*) naked child images by either TSA or non-airport security personnel constitute the same legal offense.

(An artist's rendering of what a child's naked scan image would look like could not be shown legally on TV -- yet real female children are being viewed by male TSA viewers all over our landscape, all day and all night, with incalculable damage to many. Stop it right now!)

Without TSA regs for legal cover (the government made me do it) male TSA agents (one viewer per scanner) viewing the kind of naked images of adult females which scanners transmit could be prosecuted under the same federal and/or state laws that would make such viewing illegal at any high school or skating rink entrance.

Ditto -- most especially! -- for TSA males physically "meeting the resistance" of female genitalia or brushing hands over their private (all!) areas, every bit as much as at any department store entrance. How can mere airport regs authorize -- nay, mandate! -- male stranger upon female stranger attractive part-touching just because, for example, TSA may short handed on female employees (many small airports?) -- instead of merely refusing boarding of same (crackpot but not criminal)?
******
Both same-sex naked viewing and same-sex private part touching conflict with the justification previously cited by courts for okaying so-called administrative (warrant-less) searches: relatively limited invasion of privacy (sobriety checkpoints as far as it's been stretched). 17 out of 17 TSA employees out of the 20 who answered a query from a travel site survey proclaimed their disgust with being forced to perform overly personal pat-downs (at last count drawing 819 mostly disgruntled comments).

Courts require a balancing justification for supposed-to-be not too intrusive administrative searches. If 1 in 10 million yearly US airline flights were going down to terrorism taking 300 souls with them, would saving them supply justification to subject the other 9,999,999 plane loads to (even same-sex, adult-only) naked imaging and/or random private groping (scanner saw a hanky in your pocket; you can't just take it out and go through again -- you're wearing a sanitary napkin; you may choose a private room for your ordeal) -- even assuming $5 per passenger security actually worked? Not until we begin breathalyzing every driver at every checkpoint -- which would be a lot less intrusive and save a lot more lives -- than nationwide X-rated security theater.

A Cornell University study claimed 242 more driving fatalities per month occurred post 9/11, attributing those to travelers driving instead of flying (commenter #770 says he will fly to Mexico and drive to the U.S. if necessary to avoid the TSA).

[*Same Child (p.3); Exact Same Scanner; Software Detection Only (p.2)]

[FLASH: Helena, Montana airport scanners will display stick-figures only -- apparently without TSA objection. http://montana.watchdog.org/2010/11/19/airport-scanners-may-turn-flyers-into-stick-figures/]

Most shocking of TSA revelation of all: small airports/2 or 3 agents/T-R-Y for opposite sex pat-downs!!!

2010-12-06T12:11:00.008-06:00

Most shocking of TSA revelation of all -- at very bottom of page:
http://forums.officer.com/forums/showthread.php?156579-See-what-the-TSA-Scanners-REALLY-See/page2&p=2564830

Originally Posted by Nikk

If I understand correctly, the TSA pat downs are always performed by someone of your same gender.

Answer at very bottom of page:
There's a TSA agent on another forum that stated they TRY to have someone of the same gender do the pat down, but there's no guarantee. That's especially true at small airports where only 2 or 3 TSOs might be on duty at any given time.

Automatic TSA poll results -- automatic TSA legal results?

2010-12-04T20:07:00.001-06:00

Automatic poll result should be: 95% oppose opposite sex remote viewing of nearly naked (pubic hair missing) airline passengers if separate lines for each gender is a practical alternative. 99.9% support separate sex scanners for their wives, daughters and son. A poll suggestion: how many Americans understand that opposite-sex viewing is the norm?

Should be automatic court test result: not separating genders for scanning when the alternative is easy (anybody sensible would say even if it isn't) is the equivalent of putting a camera in a stranger's shower room -- even if you never see the stranger in person: a serious felony under local law with adults, under federal law with children.

Should be automatic result of constitutional test: unneeded opposite sex naked imaging is the very definition of unreasonable search.
Should be automatic result of constitutional test: unneeded opposite sex intimate touching is the very definition of the very definition. Even if you say you can force her to miss the plane you may not make "the deal" to borrow a phrase from an old taxi driver's magazine article.

Criminal prosecution leading from the above results: once employees have been notified (policy need not wait): crossing the gender line, looking or touching, will result in full prosecution.

Has Janet Napolitano been intimately frisked by a male TSA worker yet? Would she want her teenage daughters to be ogled by male remote viewers when two lines work as easily as one? Has somebody asked her? Did anybody ask the American people?

DADT and unit cohesion: no problem EVEN if I know he is in the closet -- AS LONG as he stays there

2010-12-02T13:00:00.001-06:00

I used to take a more pop-psychology approach to DADT and simply say straight male camaraderie is based on one-dimensional "shared interest" and simply state that gay males represent the opposite of such, so automatically cancel it out.

But, if I were in the army and I knew a soldier was in the closet (in point of fact I would recognize many -- do everywhere else) I would not be one bit less friendly with him than others -- nor be significantly embarrassed to shower with him (maybe a little quicker). OTW, if he came out I could not act in the same friendly manner towards him ...

...let's take a moment out to specify I am talking in front-line type, fighting type units, not in the Pentagon -- not in an office in other words -- where the undefinable camaraderie (indefinable should be no surprise -- this all takes place in the midbrain which forebrains seem to have little access too -- goes for shrinks too) is necessary ...

because now I am deathly afraid he will see much more in my friendliness. Now normally embarrassed about sexual privacy, too. Sensitives like this are like salt: you can add but you really can't subtract. No amount of indoctrination is going to make them go away.

25 years ago I read a causal remark in Armed Forces Journal (getting myself current in the military over 5 years) that officers have to be good looking to get promoted. I guess you have to prepare carefully to get people to charge a machine gun nest against their own interest. All this care and preparation saves lives -- or if it takes lives gets the job done.
******
"Voit-comp test" for gay or straight: do you see the big ego exclusively in males and not in females (straight) -- or the other way around (gay). Nothing more to it (AC/DCs may be in between). Sexual lightning takes the path of least resistance, that's all. Not sure if most shrinks know this either.

TSA "sexting" and teenybopper girls

2010-12-01T21:06:00.005-06:00

From now on let's call TSA scanners "sexters."

If a male sexter viewer suggest his male remote viewer buddy (they seem only separated by a small screen in one video) take a look at a naked teenage girl, is he guilty of trying to pass child pornography? Is his buddy guilty of possessing that child pornography if he looks or of some big felony? If his buddy looking is not a big felony we have to make that law real fast. Is his male boss guilty of the same big felony if he lingers to look at the naked teen who caught his eye as he passed behind?

Did I mention that sexter machines have only one view screen and only one viewer per sexter machine even though both sexes pass through it in American airports -- the latter not allowed in India or Pakistan airports. For all we know they cannot get enough female applicants to look at naked bodies all day -- viewing is not a TSA employee job; goes to outside contractors; maybe TSA doesn't want to take responsibility when it hits the fan.

Wait; maybe buddy peeking would fit under one of those new state laws making it a big felony to plant a peek camera in a neighbor or tenant's apartment -- new law keeping up with new technology. What iron clad protections should (nothing anyone knows of now) be put in place to protect us from buddy peeks -- a much more likely crime than any terrorism (99 lashes if you try it in India or Pakistan :-])? Hard to make much of an argument for that level of protection, isn't it, as long as males are complacently allowed to view shower-stripped, naked females?

In a bad year we lose 43,000 lives to traffic accidents. We would not willing to strip search every man woman and child (even in front of same sex) 3 times a year on the average (billion airline passengers a year) and sexually touch 1/8th of the population (or more as the process expands) to do something about that. It wouldn't be America anymore.

The key thing about being American is individual freedom and personal rights. It is not worth taking away our sexual privacy if a plane goes down every month (out of 5 million flights a year) -- not that the current "security theater" could foil a determined terrorist.

Media DADT on opposite-sex airport scans?

2010-11-30T10:44:00.009-06:00

Media DADT on opposite-sex airport scanning -- the epitome of "unreasonable search -- the biggest unscooped scoop? Poll the public anyone?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLpOcEtsElI&feature=player_embedded
This company demo shows a male remote viewer examining both naked men and women and a 4 1/2 foot tall pubescent girl! Two other demos show young females examining naked males. All the better to promote sales in places without room or resources for two scanners -- or who wont go to the bother of separating the sexes? But an underage teen "sexting" another underage teen can get both arrested.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKnY8-G26Ww&feature=related
This video shows both female/male and male/female TSA viewing. The remote viewers seem only separated from each other (and who knows who else might be roaming past) by short eye shields. But if they cannot see us directly it's all right. Just don't sneak a strip searcher into a school or a womens' club or it's 10 years.

Don't like scanning/groping, don't fly?:
Constitutionally that is amounts to saying if you don't want your house searched don't buy a house. You may go about your daily business without being strip searched (by the opposite sex?) or private area touched (opposite sex frisk stories pop up -- in this AP story what looks like a TV monitor sits next to the scan monitor) -- even could prevent a 1 in 20 million chance that a terrorist may blow up your flight. Clearly does not fit "administrative search" first-principles which requires low invasiveness and high need. Listen to America's top young constitutional scholar Jeffery Rosen: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/24/AR2010112404510.html.

Eighth grade math debunks the need:
According to Dana Milbank in the Washington Post it would cost $50* more per ticket to achieve Israeli level security that could actually catch (and therefore deter) a terrorist. How many are ready to fork over? Must not be a very material threat, then.

Common sense says scanning/groping wont even work:
Current scanning and groping wont stop drug-trafficking: they'll go in to deeper cavities or us fatter mules. A homegrown terrorist who can't figure that out can always buy an overseas round-trip ticket. Meantime, millions of the billion who fly domestic every year are on the highway -- getting killed in highway accidents -- to avoid intimate privacy violation they (and their children) just cannot stomach.

Courthouse (unnamed) video clearly shows men and women strip-scanned by same machine

2010-11-27T10:25:00.010-06:00

www.gigisup.net

Courthouse (unnamed -- in Colorado) video surreptitiously taken by a lawyer clearly shows men and women (and presumably would include children) processed through the same full-body scanner. The lawyer also complains to guards that he was groin touched the last time.

Who could possibly trust perfect back and forth switch between male and female images? (Do they use separate male and female scanners at airports -- all of them?

Note: Cook County courthouse reportedly uses full body scanners (Daly control-freak city -- well that's why I came here, to get away from the chaos that was once New York City).
Does Cook use separate male and female scanners.
Does it opposite sex frisk (possible long running practice* at Castle Rock, Co courthouse where this lawyer likely took video).
Does Cook genital touch?
*Now widely distributed AP story: "Angela Hellenbrand received a quick pat down Tuesday by security guard Mike Couts ..." My widely distributed comment:

My first-draft explaining (should be so plain I wont use the word "arguing") that current administrative search precedents are not applicable to naked body scanning which seems to automatically bring with it a much touchier frisk on the same whatever rationale: http://ontodayspage.blogspot.com/2010/11/no-meaningful-precedent-for-tsas-so.html .

Any actual-genuine-real danger of airline bombers (that sexual invasion can do anything about): ask very real TSA "molestee" victims

2010-11-26T18:23:00.005-06:00

Any actual-genuine-real danger of airline bombers (that sexual invasion can do anything about): ask very real TSA "molestee" victims. Example: http://www.prisonplanet.com/sanitary-towel-prompts-tsa-to-grope-sexual-assault-victim.html

Will add to the above: ask women who feel like they are being molested by (female) agents "enhanced" frisking them if they are concerned about airliners blowing up. They are not. Terror is a purely theoretical fear concerning only those who are not repulsed by the sneaky-peak scanners or the terrorizing frisks. Some say there is only one terror incident per 20 million airline flights.

Sales approach-wise you can try to make your point with eighth-grade math (e.g., will kill more driving) but the simple image of planes blowing up makes people feel like paratroopers who must be brave about lowering risks when there is no real danger at all -- and the sexual violations wouldn't stop a home-grown with an IQ of 100 anyway. But, sales-wise, putting the trade off in the context of the real fears of women and children and women-children can trump the brave paratrooper willingness thing.

"Angela Hellenbrand received a quick pat down Tuesday by security guard Mike Couts ,,," AP

2010-11-26T09:08:00.004-06:00

Quotes from the following AP story on Castle Rock, Co courthouse: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101124/ap_on_re_us/us_courthouse_scanners#mwpphu-post-form

"Angela Hellenbrand received a quick pat down Tuesday by security guard Mike Couts ,,,"

Does anybody notice that Angela -- A FEMALE -- seems by this story to have been patted down closely enough to find the paper backing of a sticker in her pocket by Mike -- A MALE!

"A guard [presumably of the same sex -- though the story does not mention two guards; can they afford two?] in a separate room monitors the gray images with pixelated faces and genital areas ..." -- but a guard of the opposite sex may do the frisking?

No meaningful precedent for TSA's so-called "administrative searches

2010-11-25T15:42:00.012-06:00

Quick note on Thanksgiving -- still re-writing this:
A quick check of the net tells me there is no actual "administrative search" precedent for the level of intrusion on sexual privacy in the new TSA policy. Just about all you need can be found here: http://www.novelguide.com/a/discover/eamc_01/eamc_01_00050.html.

The so-called precedent for consent or not concerned a bulge in the pocket of person who wanted to leave the airport without any more search (he got 70 months for possession of a couple of ounces of cocaine!) under the old, non-sexual privacy invading methods.

When I was a kid reading comic books, they had a novelty advertisement page that always featured special glasses you could look through womens' clothes with (I don't know if they worked with men :-]). Today Hollywood war movies feature infrared scanners you can see watch figures through walls with. The reality now is a technology that can literally see through your clothing.

Virtual strip search and private part groping require thinking through from scratch how the doctrine of "administrative search" applies -- just as sobriety stops did. Seemingly for opponents examination from first principles puts them in pretty good shape.

The article linked to above quotes CAMARA V. MUNICIPAL COURT:
"First, [area inspections] have a long history of judicial and public acceptance."
"Second, the public interest demands that all dangerous conditions be prevented or abated, yet it is doubtful that any other canvassing technique would achieve acceptable results."
"Finally, because the inspections are neither personal in nature nor aimed at the discovery of evidence of crime, they involve a relatively limited invasion of the urban citizen's privacy."

First, I have been on 150 prison visits where if you had tiny brass rivets in your plastic eyeglass frames (late '70s) or brass lace eyelets in your shoes you had to take them off and go through the metal detector again. It has always been the norm that nobody but incarcerated prisoners are subject to private area touching -- least of all across the board females and (especially female) children.
Second, essentially no canvasing technique other than the Israelies use to protect their tiny handful of planes can stop a terrorist with any initiative at all. You check shoes they switch to underwear. You check underwear ... if a domestic flight goes down with all this screening the very first thing investigators will look for is the presence of an obese Islamic passenger who could hide a turkey drumstick between their cheeks, wires and switch up nearby orifice, battery in their LCD flashlight. A homegrown terrorist can go to the extra expense of a round trip to Ireland (Canada?, Mexico?).
Third, the inspections could not be more personal in nature nor a less limited intrusion of a person's privacy. Your female children would much rather an unlimited search of their bedroom or entire house than to be touched on what one little girl called (her grandmother's) "special girl parts." That goes for lots of grannies too.

What we are looking at is a potential sea change in our expectations personal privacy. If the TSA can do it, soon everybody else will by setting up scanners to -- and cops on the street (nightclub bouncers too?) may begin to touch special parts only because they want to be as good as TSA (human nature?).

Case closed: you cannot subject a billion Americans a year to what feels like to the most vulnerable like virtual strip search (if confined strictly to airports I could endure that) and 100,000 male and female adults and children to public groping for what amounts to no reason at all -- unless you want to kill many more than one plane load of people every year in traffic accidents involving folks who drove to avoid unbearable loss of privacy (Osama can add the 1,000 extra killed in the three months after 9/11 to his score -- maybe the shoe and underwear bombers can start adding up their score as the stats come in following 20,000,000 violations every week.)

(Am I wrong? Are the figures only 1% opt out but 3 1/2% are enhanced-patted down? If you are willing to do the scan but much fear the grope like me that permanently threatens my greatest need for that kind of privacy -- only a matter of time)
******
Will add to the above: ask women who feel like they are being molested by (female) agents "enhanced" frisking them if they are concerned about airliners blowing up. They are not. Terror is a purely theoretical fear concerning only those who are not repulsed by the sneaky-peak scanners or the terrorizing frisks. Some say there is only one terror incident per 20 million airline flights.

Sales approach-wise you can try to make your point with eighth-grade math (e.g., will kill more driving) but the simple image of planes blowing up makes people feel like paratroopers who must be brave about lowering risks when there is no real danger at all -- and the sexual violations wouldn't stop a home-grown with an IQ of 100 anyway. But, sales-wise, putting the trade off in the context of the real fears of women and children and women-children can trump the brave paratrooper willingness thing.

Stripping our most compelling 4th and 14th Amendment rights -- all for nothing

2010-11-24T18:48:00.003-06:00

The curtain between government and our most private privacy has been raised from ocean to ocean: 3 million men and women everyday exposed naked to the eye of an unseen stranger (maybe even sneaky peeks in those back rooms) and 100,000 more men and women have their most-privates groped by a stranger in view of strangers (family and friends could feel worse). All for nothing.

Well; not for absolutely nothing: it will make it a bit less likely any home-grown shoe or underwear bomber will take down a domestic flight -- and more likely they will destroy a flight originating in Europe or Africa or Asia or South America (the only attempts so far). Or a home-grown will need a "martyr" big or obese enough to tape plastique comfortably inside their butt-cheeks with whatever little wires and switch hidden from a metal detector in an adjacent cavity; batteries not included, can be carried in a little flashlight. Or buy a round-trip ticket. All for nothing.

If an eccentric millionaire offered $50,000 rewards to all who could cross screening with equivalent size devices he might go broke in a month. Anybody see how the New York Detective smuggled a pistol (what we Bronx kids would have called a "zip gun" in the '50s in Russia in the "Gorky Park" movie. All for nothing.

Personal privacy doesn't worry you personally? Being regularly frisked by police without probable cause might not irk many people. In our worst neighborhoods such frisking of young males could bring an end to gang violence and the worst crime; freeing residents to roam outside their homes again -- to me that would be something worth considering. In the three months after 9/11, 1,000 more Americans died in traffic accidents avoiding air travel. How many "hidden" airline crash equivalents (if we count 200 extra highway deaths as one domestic airliner load) will sacrificing our most fundamental 4th and 14th Amendment rights -- the latter would invoke Roe v. Wade's compelling interest test? -- cost every year. All our privacy gone (police would never think of going so far) -- all for nothing.

Suppose Osama blackmailed us with...

2010-11-24T10:10:00.002-06:00

I have a right to be in public anywhere (EVEN AT THE AIRPORT!) without being stripped or intimately groped without probable cause. What are airports some kind of normal-human-emotions-don't-exist zone?

... even if there were the the most compelling of practical reasons ...

There is an extremely practical reason to allow police to randomly frisk any young male (especially) they wish to. This would end all gang violence in the poorest neighborhoods and make Americans who live there feel much less like they are permanent prisoners in their own homes (I fully understand; I'm originally from the Bronx). But the Constitution has some very pointed things to say about it because we don't want to live in a police state.

Imagine if Osama threatened America with an airliner brought down if we did not electronically strip search 3 million men and women every day all over the country and have strangers aggressively grope all the private areas of 100,000 men and WOMEN in public. Would you give in to that threat? Imagine after we gave in to such mass ugliness an airliner went down anyway -- and Obama laughed and said I fooled you; I sent that bomber in from outside the country just like the last two -- foolish Americans! (Or maybe he really found a 300 "martyr" -- have to investigate if there were any obese Islamic passengers on the downed plane.)

My candidate for #1 TSA shock story on the internet: rape victim intimately groped by male agent

2010-11-23T08:32:00.010-06:00

Why all the fuss on the internet over a little boy whose father actually took his shirt off for him or over males who were intimately touched inside the clothing or females horrified to be enhance-frisked by female agents ...

... when the numero uno internet shocker should be http://pncminnesota.wordpress.com/2010/11/08/rape-survivor-devasted-by-tsa-enhanced-pat-down ...

This happened in Chicago -- second city -- where you would think personnel density would present no shortage of female agents. If this can in Chicago it can happen anywhere -- and from other reports it seems to be considered routine by TSA agents.

Are these stories left behind for lack of video? If so I plead with anti-groping activists to prepare their own videos ranging from at least a person talking about what they read or (probably the most effective) visual recreations of the worst media reports.

Related issue: if male TSA agents feel free to routinely grope females (which should be recognized as a violent felony by the Obama administration from now on -- immediately! -- some journalist ask Obama please) when there are supposedly too few females on hand (pun intended) how much more free do non-TSA, private contractor X-ray viewers -- who we cannot view in return -- feel to view naked images of the opposite sex??

http://wewontfly.com/judy-in-denver-several-agents-stood-in-a-group-laughing-at-us Third paragraph down: “The person viewing you is in another room. You won’t know if it’s a man or woman”?

If these stories don't move to number one concern why should anyone care about anything?

PS. wewontfly.com has 16,483 Facebook fans. Opps; make that 16,495 -- I just took another look. Opps; make that 16,499.

May TSA frisks you to deter others? -- female rape victim intimately frisked by MALE agent in Chicago -- what the Constitution says about it all

2010-11-22T11:59:00.010-06:00

May TSA force you -- via $11,000 fine -- to submit to an admittedly no probable cause frisk to deter others from shopping airport checkpoints? May the Chicago police randomly frisk you in the neighborhood to deter others from carrying guns? The latter at least would yield a gigantic benefit – but the Constitution has some pointed things to say about both.

Rape survivor devastated by enhanced pat down by a male TSA agent at a Chicago airport. 30 years ago Chicago women drivers feared being taken to police stations for strip searching (were men watching?) for minor traffic violations. $50,000 settlements put an end to those violations. Every male/female TSA grope victim should be entitled to more.

http://pncminnesota.wordpress.com/2010/11/08/rape-survivor-devasted-by-tsa-enhanced-pat-down/

This rape survivor deserves justice – civil or even criminal. While law enforcement across the country hasn’t gotten around to recognizing non-emergency male/female frisking (genital groping probably uniquely in the TSA case) as a violent sexual felony (same sex frisk “only” policy) -- the FBI should at least investigate if there was any (recognizable felony?) collusion at the Chicago airport and every other place this sickness has happened (there are several news reports).

TSA chief John Pistole must be loudly asked if there is an absolute rule against cross sex frisking – as the only way to make sure there is an absolute rule at this stage of general law enforcement misjudgment.

If non-genital groping isn’t allowed (if a tempting thought) to make the most dangerous neighborhoods how can video strip searching (male/female impossible?) and genital groping be justified across the board even if it saves 200 lives a year.

It is actually possible that some half-hearted home-grown terrorist might not try to bring down a plane he would have because not organized enough to stuff his or her bomb where the sun don’t shine – or to recruit a 300 pound accomplice to tape same between the cheeks – or just fly out of country to fly back in (wonder if Al-Qaeda is organized enough to do that). You can argue about the practicality of extreme searching a billion people a year preventing that, but I think the Constitution has some pointed things to say about it.

PS. Passengers who opt out of flying to drive are getting killed at 10X the rate by drunken drivers.

Give your ticket back -- so little probable cause it fails the rational test -- attack of the 300 pound woman

2010-11-21T07:39:00.003-06:00

Give your ticket back -- get your rights back. :-)

There is so little probable cause to hold a person for questioning because they refused to be electronically ogled or personally pawed at the airport (the $11,000 thing) that it probably violates the rational test. If you could not hold them without the rule -- because the Fourth Amendment says you could not. For the same reason you cannot make the rule to hold everybody for questioning to catch the one in a million bomber (who will never decide to leave because of privacy concerns -- who is leaving in any case; no imminent danger -- ergo, not even a rational relationship to a valid state objective: Fourteenth Amendment violation).

Which brings us to the partially depersonalized strip search or too private groping (most in public view! -- I've been on 150 prison visits with no aversion whatsoever to the most serious but normal, private parts free, frisking). You could not make such an invasive rule under the same one-in-a-million type risk situation anywhere else in life.

Don't like it, don't fly? Too easy; this is not 1950. Flying is as much a part of everyday 2010 American life (3 million passengers a day -- a billion passengers a year) as anything else. And what does it take to outflank the TSA's Fourth Amendment free 3,000 mile wide Maginot Line: one 300 pound women with enough room between her cheeks to hide a Thanksgiving dinner. :-)

Case closed: I think most people would take the risk level of driving (10X the danger of flying) if all other things could somehow be held equal (convenience, price) over living in the condition of perpetual prison convict humiliation.

Case closed: people who would rather drive than fly -- at 10X the risk -- than fly after TSA groping

2010-11-20T12:46:00.001-06:00

Case closed: people who would rather drive -- at 10X the risk -- than fly after TSA groping. Question: how many would rather risk driving -- if all other things (e.g., time and expense) could be equal -- to avoid intimate peeking or touching by strangers?

$11,000 fine for opting out of both and leaving the airport without waiting (who knows how long -- you are not missing a plane anymore) to be questioned (not that you have to answer questions :-]): way, way over the probable cause line (if they had probable cause they could hold you rule or no rule); imagine the same law in any other setting. Not like terrorists will not expect to be body searched.

Additionally the fine pressures (I believe the constitutional law phrase is "chills") Fourth Amendment rights to opt out of both experiences if you did not expect to be body searched -- or to be to repulsed by it.

Wonder how many cases -- more like what percentage -- of temporary sexual dysfunction are caused by too personal groping of women especially in public view, even because in view of family or friends?

The attraction of child molestation may be molestation itself

2010-11-20T12:43:00.001-06:00

FWIW, it has finally occurred to me (not trained in psychology -- I don't even know if they even know this) that the attraction of molestation is molestation itself; exactly as rape is about power not sex. Always wondered why all these priests were molesting boys when the gay priests and the gay alter boys (one out of ten, believe me -- and that doesn't even count AC/DCs for what ever the latter is worth; the latter mostly not interested, even fear, sex with adults in my observations) are always going to know who each other are.

Michael Jackson didn't need to force himself on anybody. If 3000 boys were going though "Neverland" every year, 150-300 were gay and heavily in the closet. The real problem with gay priests is probably that both they and the gay alter boys are going to be right back in irresistible temptation-land like the seminary,

Got this idea after reading (about half of) Scout's Honor by Patrick Boyle (http://www.amazon.com/Scouts-Honor-Americas-Trusted-Institution/dp/0761500243/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1290278076&sr=8-1). It appears that the majority of offenses are by failed heterosexuals many of whom have even been married. Why boys instead of girls? My guess, it may be just logistics. Easier to hang around with lots of boys without too many questions. Maybe if they were with girls they would do it to them.

"By buying your ticket you gave up a lot of rights," countered the TSA supervisor. NOT!

2010-11-15T09:45:00.009-06:00

I went on hundreds of prison visits in New York State in the late '70's (Rikers Island, Elmira, Fishkill, Coxsaki, Camp Monterey and Hudson) and the metal detectors were set so sensitively the brass rivets in your plastic eyeglass frames would make them go off (take them off and go through again) -- but the frisks never touched anyone's genitals, male or female.
******

"By buying your ticket you gave up a lot of rights," countered the TSA supervisor.
You cannot give up your First Amendment rights by buying a ticket -- nor your right to due process; going to jail without trial. You cannot give up your rights not to have the private areas of your body groped. The latter becomes especially egregious when the TSA, according to some stories, presents a male agent to intimately frisk a female flyer on the excuse of no female agent available (one of the first stories on Drudge I believe) for a RANDOM AIRPORT (as in on the ground) check -- not a bomb threat at 35,000 feet.
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I just finished reading about prosecution for leaving the pat-down area without permission: once you enter the pat down area you have to allow it (unless you get "permission" ???). NO RATIONAL RELATIONSHIP TO A VALID STATE INTEREST -- shamelessly violates 14th amendment RATIONAL TEST." You are forced to allow someone to grope your private parts because a terrorist might want to look at the no-tech, empty room (and leave unfrisked?). Even if it were high-tech, pat-down room what difference could being padded-down or not make? Someone at TSA has a serious skull full of mush.

The supposed letter of the law (check out the way law enforcement sees the strict legality of men frisking women as opposed to mere, if almost universal outside TSA stories, policy prohibitions) means that even if only a man is available a woman has to submit.
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Touching private parts could be considered a felony criminal law violation if used as part of random checks before entering a disco. You cannot agree to allow yourself to be assaulted.

When the government is the main -- only -- actor setting policy the Fourth Amendment may be invoked under the same kind of rationale that finds some so-called private contractors (e.g., leasing limo drivers) to be employees because all their job activities are governed by management.
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For the last word on pointless passenger over-focus check out: http://www.bnet.com/blog/travel-detective/why-not-pat-down-the-cargo-that-8217s-the-real-security-threat/101?promo=661&tag=nl.e661
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For the very last word (mine in this case) read: Case closed: people who would rather drive than fly -- at 10X the risk -- than fly after TSA groping at http://ontodayspage.blogspot.com/2010/11/case-closed-people-who-would-rather.html

"Socialism"? -- I call it "Roman Catholic social democracy"

2010-10-29T08:51:00.001-05:00

Rebups always screech about supposed crackpot results of "socialism" in Europe (hereinafter referred to by me as "Roman Catholic social democracy" -- having read Tom Geoghegan's latest book "Were You Born On The Wrong Continent?"):

English overwhelming welfare state for perpetual drunks and violent misbehavers while out of work folks are left to sleep in the street (see the book "Our Culture, What's Left Of It") -- nothing to do with us.
French "riots" from the folks who brought you the French Revolution -- their labor market practice is backwards; they strike first, then negotiate! -- nothing to do with us.
Belgian 20% of labor force on permanent disability -- nothing to do with us.
Italian organized assassination of Prime Minister's friend who merely suggested making it easier for employers to fire workers -- remnant of crazed communist history -- nothing to do with us.

German BEST LABOR RELATIONS IN EUROPE -- German most all pervasive Roman Catholic social democracy (originated by West German Catholics, think Adenauer, in the 1950s). Also German best disciplined -- along with Northern Italy and Japan -- production line workers in the world.

Repubs like to cherry pick the idiosyncrasies of each and every economy and package them together as the depredations of "socialism." Germany now says its biggest export to other European nations is (even more pervasive, Roman Catholic) social democracy -- think about it America (if you ever wake up and smell a better life).

http://www.amazon.com/Were-You-Born-Wrong-Continent/dp/159558403X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1288358513&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/Our-Culture-Whats-Left-Mandarins/dp/156663721X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1288358342&sr=8-1

"Domestication" and DADT

2010-10-19T22:14:00.010-05:00

When I was a young teenager my fellow geek best friend complained while I was sitting on a park swing that I “wanted a playmate not a companion.” Which young friend from reports 10 years after seems was gay. I don’t know if it made me feel “shallow” at the time but for a heterosexual male I was operating according to (innate) plan.

You can call the evolution of animal behavior by a fancy name, “sociobiology”, or you can just say human animals are “domesticated” to live with each other according to prescribed practical patterns – with simple interfaces that can be clunky (a million lawyers rise for the judge but never think: I don’t have to salute the flag :-]).

Straight male camaraderie with males is based on what gay males might think of as very one-dimensional: on mutual interest only. The chief gay male interest in males is the same as the chief straight male interest in females – getting into their pants. This very non-mutual interest may be easy to ignore -- or even have fun to kidding about -- in a civilian workplace but can automatically obstruct the kind of (innate-straight) all-for-one and one-for-all fellowship that combat arms operate optimally with (“saves lives”).

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The sexual harassment to be feared from gay males living openly in the non-privacy of armed forces life is as multi-dimensional as male sexual harassment itself.

Straight males pester women on sex and everything else because our social perceptions have evolved blind to anything like the “overweening male ego” in females. I know this from observing the exact behavior in reverse from gays of both sexes. I often have to cut them slack for “taking me much too lightly” – they are incapable of learning “what they are up against”: my extremely self-important self (they would laugh -- this key trait may have evolved to get human males into child raising: monogamy – read “Lucy”). Expect endless trouble once pestering (especially – sneaky? – sexual type) gets type casted with gay – for their part they will never learn.

One more odd concept: gays do not understand why straight males and females are afraid of men because they are not afraid of men – they are afraid of women.

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I sincerely hope that Obama’s accepting gay recruits just two weeks before elections doesn’t make a hole in the Democratic Party the way school busing harmed the Democratic Party of the 70s. For fence sitting (what I would call) moderates, it could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back for many.

Giving in to one federal judge’s ruling to overturn Congress seems to pave the way (it may have been paved thus already and I didn’t know about it) for a two-branch, executive/judicial-veto/government. The executive now seems to just need any lone federal judge to claim a law unconstitutional and it can claim the administration must follow the judge – no need to fight all the way to Supreme Court: as much as it thinks nobody notices.

Still think coming out in the armed services should not pose any fundamental social upset that cannot be overcome by a modest slice or two of practical indoctrination? If you had a 12 year old gay son or daughter would you advise them not to worry too much about coming out in grammar school?

Today's minimum wage SHOUT!

2010-10-13T15:27:00.002-05:00

If average output (income, same thing) grows why does the economics profession not understand that the minimum wage should grow along with it (as well as inflation) -- instead of being joined at the hip with the concern -- seemingly their only concern -- that a minimum wage raise may cause a rise in unemployment? Why should it cause a rise as long as the wage goes up in step with inflation AND OVERALL PRODUCTIVITY GAINS?!

Other nations -- sane nations -- the minimum wage is raised in step with inflation AND PRODUCTIVITY!!!

In the insane nation -- what 1968 Americans would call early 2007 US -- our federal minimum wage dropped almost in half (in constant dollars) while average income (output, whatever) doubled.

HOW TO PROVE HOW FAR OFF ALL THESE SEEMINGLY INFORMED (OVER INFORMED), INTELLIGENT (OVER INTELLIGENT) MINIMUM WAGE DISCUSSIONS TRULY ARE!

2010-10-12T14:33:00.001-05:00

EUREKA! EUREKA! ARCHIMEDES MOMENT! FINALLY FIGURED OUT HOW TO PROVE HOW FAR OFF ALL THESE SEEMINGLY INFORMED (OVER INFORMED), INTELLIGENT (OVER INTELLIGENT) MINIMUM WAGE DISCUSSIONS TRULY ARE!

HOLD BOTTOM 50 PERCENTILE WAGES WHERE THEY ARE -- MULTIPLY TOP 50 PERCENTILE WAGES 10X: ECONOMISTS WOULD STILL BE HOLDING EXACTLY THE SAME OVER INFORMED, OVER INTELLIGENT MINIMUM WAGE DISCUSSIONS; EXACTLY THE SAME -- WORD FOR WORD.

These discussions could be relevant for price movements at the margin. When the federal minimum wage drops in half from 1968 to early 2007 -- and the American median wage grows only 25% -- while average income doubles, then, the folks at the bottom are getting something like an order of magnitude (not precisely the right measure, but you get the idea) less than they could be getting out of the (amazing, incredibly squeezing) American labor market. (Which wage super-shrinking America's over informed, over intelligent progressives from Obama on down never seem to catch on to.)

America's amazing, incredibly squeezing labor market

2010-10-10T12:33:00.002-05:00

My reply on Economist's View today:
US per capita GDP is 150% of typical OECD GDPs. 17% of 150% equals 25% -- presumably leaving 125% of our uniquely bulging GDP to pay for everything else. What's the problem paying?

Same problem that causes every other social disaster in this country: our amazing, incredibly squeezing US labor market.

Rare labor lawyer Thomas Geoghegan on what rare pro-labor (do I use "pro-labor" just because he focuses on labor -- which is so rare?) economist Richard B. Freeman said in his book "America Works" (right at the top of p. 266 in Geoghegan's new book "WERE YOU BORN ON THE WRONG CONTINENT":
"... if real wages had risen with productivity in roughly the same way it did in Germany and other countries, then the American worker would have been making $25 an hour ($28.12 in 2010 dollars) on the average in 2005 instead of just $16."
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I have just figured out that the Gini coefficient may no longer be a valid measure of American so-called "inequality" (I prefer "Great Wage Depression" or at least "shanghaied") because 90 percentile income share did not balloon any behind the 15% shift in income share to the top -- that begins above 97 percentile -- AND the 10 percentile figure leaves the gutting of the 50 percentile unreported and probably unnoticed by most who read the Gini ratio (who mostly presume 50 percentile share to be more or less where it should be -- true enough in Europe and 40 years ago here).

Not an economist (I do labor -- not rare for a cab driver) but I suspect a new ratio should be added to current "inequality" measures which would compare 50 percentile income to average income in the different economies -- only way I can think of to squeeze that missing AMERICAN 15% in -- but maybe the rare pro-labor economist can come up with a better one (maybe not: markets are not rocket science; just buying and selling).

The term "inequality" is like pointing to the tip of the iceberg

2010-09-30T12:06:00.002-05:00

In 1991, Nicholas Scheele, the head of the Ford Motor Company in Mexico . . . said, "But is there any other country in the world where the working class . . . took a hit in their purchasing power of in excess of 50 percent over an eight-year period and you didn't have a social revolution?" [http://dieoff.org/page77.htm]

I don’t think anyone would call that kind of wage gouge by the weak, wan term “inequality.”

US average income doubled since 1968 while the median hourly wage grew 20%: from $12.50 to $15 – instead of a potential $25. Could that be a hidden gouge of 40%?

No need for “hidden loss” to describe the US federal minimum wage hit – as average income doubled. Between 1968 and early 2007 the minimum hourly dropped from $10 ($1.60 adjusted) to $5.50 – as average income doubled.

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From 1966 to 1968 I lived in an East Village Manhattan apartment which featured year ‘round rats, gas jets (inoperable) in wall that once provided light and windows overlooking a long park along which we could watch every free police car in the precinct line up for every call – show of force – before returning to their normal beats.

If you wanted your car burned for the insurance you just removed your plates within sight of my block and within the hour the neighborhood kids would have it burned to the ground – no gratuity. One 16 year old told my 17 year old brother he could not wait to be 17 years old so he could go to Vietnam like his brother (it wasn’t patriotism)!

These days, drug gangs would contest a neighborhood like this. Back then, heroin was obtainable by the sorry few addicts – but supporting a neighborhood requires drugs with broader, especially suburban, appeal. Back then, the minimum hourly was 80% of, for its time, a much healthier median wage.

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Yesterday something caused me to look up the 90th-to-10th percentile income ratio in The State of Working America 2008-2009 (table 8.15 on p. 380). US ratio was approaching 5 while the average of other OECD nations was a tad over 3.

Suddenly it hit me the US ratio is more like the tip of the iceberg. It is true that 15% of US income share shifted from the bottom 90% to the top 10% [http://ontodayspagelinks.blogspot.com/2008/08/income-share.html] BUT the 90-97 percentile did not get the extra share – the 90-97 percentile managed to keep pace with doubling income but that was all – they still enjoy the same percentage share they got 40 years ago (that their predecessors got anyway).

If today’s median hourly income dropped from $15 back to $12.50 over the next eight years would the media report it as mere “inequality”? Supposed it dropped to $10 or all the way back to $7.50 – at what point would everybody come up with a phrase that communicates the disaster as something much worse than a rise in “inequality”?

Best prescription for statemanship ever -- on Lincoln

2010-09-29T13:43:00.005-05:00

"In the President of the United States Providence has vouchsafed a leader whose moral perceptions are blinded neither by sophistry nor enthusiasm—who knows that permanent results must grow, and can not be prematurely seized—a man who, whatever he has not, has that inestimable common sense which is the last best gift of Heaven to all who are clothed with great authority."

[Finally dug this out of the internet -- after years. Saw it once in Sandburg's 1000 page, one book biography of Lincoln. Never could find the whole quote with the common sense ending anywhere again -- in the same book edition. ??? Best prescription for a statesman I have ever seen. Written by the editor of Harper's Weekly, May 3, 1862.]

GOOGLE search settings won't don't save -- 2 step fix

2010-09-11T07:37:00.005-05:00

Two steps to reset search setting (this problem started yesterday, 9/10, when GOOGLE introduced instant search, apparently as default):

One: go into PREFERENCES and deselect "instant search" in favor of the old search -- THEN GET OUT.

Two: go BACK into PREFERENCES and reset your old preferences (if you try to do both at once it wont work -- "nice" ambush for troubleshooters).

WINNING ECONOMICS ISSUES FOR DUMMIES (meaning Democrats)

2010-08-30T11:46:00.074-05:00

Economists – males most appropriately – suffer physics envy. Economic interactions are convoluted by government formulae. Distorting their look at those wheels within wheels are mostly unheard of male pack instincts along the well understood cultural biases (we have been "domesticated" to live with us for 100s of millennia).

Pack hunter midbrains channel groupthink – with a preference for on-the-spot doability: prey not tarrying while predators squabble. Wheels within wheels of groupthink: economic pros must in turn persuade mostly unknowing political and journalistic packs if they are actually going to cause any change. There seems walls within walls to innovation – to males.

Living too remotely from the day-to-day interactions – no pitfall in organic chemistry – can fuzz out crucial ifs, ands and buts. Economists of all stripes (most are progressive) start every minimum wage dialogue with ye ole first week supply and demand chart and mostly end there – skip selling fewer units (or hours) for more dollars – miss that a raise that increases teen unemployment may have attracted more trainable adults (labor price was too low) – forever blind to the missing American-born workers behind Chicago fast food counters where the state minimum wage recently reached Eisenhower's 1956 level, $8/hr – and even behind San Francisco counters where annual inflation adjustments will maintain the city minimum wage, at LBJ's 1968 level, $10/hr. $7.25/hr ($5.50/hr!): fuggedaboutit!

The first commandment of medical practitioners is making daily rounds to observe patients. Would it really take a "small army" of economists, as recently supposed, to plow enough data to explain income inequality (a wishy-washy phrase that sounds more like a shave than a haircut)? Or are everyday bad to worse American labor experiences enough to make the culprit perfectly plain: the almost total (but one-step undoable?) coast-to-coast blackout of labor bargaining power -- and political sway.

American unionized (!) labor hell: "Dr. Pepper Snapple Group made $555 million in profits last year. CEO Larry Young made $6.5 million but says Mott’s applesauce workers must take a $1.50 an hour pay cut" [see http://blog.aflcio.org/2010/09/07/motts-corporate-greed-rotten-to-the-core/]: specific fit to this specific occasion – where is the missing legally mandated, sector-wide labor agreement to neutralize management’s squawking about “above market pay”? Minimum wage hell: now $2.75/hr below LBJ's 1968 level, double the per capita income later: zero labor lobbying -- and going down.

The second commandment of medical practitioners is “studies show” -- even when they can’t pinpoint all contributory factors. Studies show that only legally mandated, sector-wide labor agreements (instituted originally along with welfare guarantees to contain labor costs to more quickly rebuild postwar Europe) have been proven effective in preventing the race to the wage and benefit bottom -- in decades of “trials” across first, second and third world labor markets.

Under sector-wide all employees in the same geographic locale doing the same work -- even for different employers – work under common collectively bargained contracts.

Card-check legislation would be to re-unionizing America what the $2.75/hr short-of-1968 hike was to restoring the minimum wage (in the poorest section of America, a $15/hr minimum would raise the price of: housing, medicine, transportation, food, clothing – what?). Today’s median wage is $15/hr – a teeny-tiny $2.50/hr more than the 1968 median. There appears no wholesome economic reason why the median could not have doubled to $25/hr as average income doubled. Is “shanghaied” be a better fit than “inequality”?

Will someone please shout out “sector-wide labor agreements” at their next crowded economic or political forum? They won’t cause a panicked stampede – except maybe from the outside-in. Supermarket workers and airline employees (for a start) are ready to kill (even vote) for mandatory sector-wide bargaining. 50 million voting age toilers out of 100 million say they want to be unionized – before any nationwide re-unionizing dialogue has even begun.