My email to "Wired" story about a "cute" female airline passenger scanned 3X

My email to "Wired" magazine story about a "cute" female airline passenger scanned 3X
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/02/female-body-scans/


LIGHTLY EDITED

OPPOSITE GENDER PAT DOWN MANDATORY once you enter the screening zone if no same gender TSO is on duty. That is the letter of the law anyway. In practice they will let you leave without the fine I presume -- but you are not getting on a plane without the 4X genital grope, etc.
http://www.airsafe.com/issues/security/tsa-sop-not-redacted.pdf
*********
4.3.14. OPPOSITE GENDER SCREENING
Extraordinary circumstances [not extraordinary at small airports I have read] may occur where a TSO of the same gender as the individual being screened (the gender of an idividual 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.
*********
MY WORST SHOCK UPON RESEARCHING FURTHER: Male police all over the country apparently have no qualms at all about frisking females, mostly heel of the hand risking breasts but otherwise heavily all over hips and legs -- convenience rules if you believe what police say on the net anyway -- I haven't seen it in real life; but I don't live on the poor side of town.
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=8RxH1CnYhd8Police "cadets" at play (presumably over 18), at 2:00 :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1-dcSUDPE8&NR=1
Angela Hellenbrand received a quick pat down Tuesday by security guard Mike Couts
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/news/ap/us_news/2010/Nov/24/full_body_scanners_popping_up_at_courthouses.html
My take on "officer safety":
No arrested female yet has done the Houdini and slipped her cuffs and then done the "Incredible Hulk" and torn aside the police car partition, then taken a sharp object from her bra and scratched the arresting officer. Police themselves say they can frisk for a gun without touching anything with their fingers.

Police think the following California law for instance leaves opposite sex frisking all up to convenience -- even for private security!"When ever possible have a security guard/proprietary private security officer of the same sex conduct the frisk, and always try to have witnesses to the frisk."
http://www.bsis.ca.gov/forms_pubs/poa.pdf (see page 57)

My take on the (felony) legal implications (this is about battering not popping open a glove compartment, i.e., constitutional privacy -- equal protection works though):
Police delusionally see it in terms of simply professionals doing a job -- even liken themselves to doctors (maybe if they anesthetize the female and don't tell here they did it)! Coming soon to high school security near you (no legal or substantive difference)?!

I see it in terms of subjecting the female to the experience of sexual battery -- there can be no doubt about that. It is up to the criminal justice system to explain why -- and how -- the experience of sexual battery is not sexual battery just because a government functionary is performing a government function.
******
THE SECTION BELOW IS IN FIRST DRAFT
[added on after original email and post]: I don't know but it may have come to a high school near you in Los Angeles. The stories below show possibly massive arrests, cuffing and searching (frisking?) of Los Angles high school students (47,000 tickets for sure) -- meaning massive search contacts with perfectly everyday kids who did nothing more than arrive a little late for school (allowing the bird brains who run Los Angeles to take that for violating the school hours curfew -- intended to prevent truancy -- and grabbing kids away from school for the trip to the police station).
http://www.calendow.org/Article.aspx?id=5643
http://thestir.cafemom.com/teen/133267/teens_should_not_be_handcuffed

"Early-morning police "sweeps" that netted kids as they approached schools inspired a movement to protest students being handcuffed and then forced to miss more school to go to juvenile court to deal with tickets."
"Juan and his cousin, who's also 15, were one block from school when school officers stopped them, handcuffed them and searched them. When Juan said, "You can't do this," an officer used profanity and told him to "shut ... up or else I'll slap you in the face," according to the complaint."
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/02/21/v-print/139530/los-angeles-weighs-impacts-of.html
"Nabil [a student whose story and received wide coverage], who's turning 18 this month and hopes to become a doctor, was a senior at Roybal Learning Center when he was twice handcuffed and prevented by school police from attending classes that he was late for but urgently trying to get to." Again, how many of the 47,000 were cuffed and searched and how searched -- and by whom?http://libertyhill.typepad.com/main/2011/11/speaking-out-for-students.html
Belatedly, Chief of Police Steven K. Zipperman says: “Nor is truancy, by itself, a justification for “frisks, the use of handcuffs or physical restraints, and searches.” Of course what I am worried about is what happens in the searches of females by males. Think our male "cadet" finger frisking our female above -- they seem to think nothing of it.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/10/la-school-police-fewer-truancy-tickets.html
So back to the question: Do you want the police attitude that a male can frisk a woman's hips, legs and bottom of her bra line (assuming he is trained to be that "careful" -- no real legal line in their view) as casually as wiping down a windshield -- because that is clearly the attitude of the officers pictured above (and who knows how many more -- most?!) -- coming to a school near you? In light of this massive cuff and search story the school kid question seems to have too real everyday relevance.
If not, reflect that there is no substantive, legal or constitutional difference between your daughter facing a Los Angeles school cop (who seem to have written 13,000 of the 47,000 summonses) on the stairway or in the hallway -- or a private security guard in a movie or book store and the poor women being victimized in the videos above. It's all or nothing at all.

Can celibacy make priests into INCURABLE pedophiles?

Can celibacy make priests into INCURABLE pedophiles? Obviously not. End of discussion.

Don't know why I -- and nobody else -- never made this obvious connection before.

Most pedophile Boy Scout leaders have been failed heterosexuals. This doesn't open the door for homosexual priests however unless somebody can explain how they will resist impossible sexual temptation in the seminary -- and when they graduate the seminary. The problem when they get to a parish is that they and the gay alter boys are going to know who each other are and the impossible temptation is liable to pick up where it left off.

Questioning the Idea of Israel (in the 22nd century?) -- the Misbegotten Diaspora (the true "lost tribe"?)

In a hundred years, when all the world uses one currency, speaks the same language and eats in the same restaurants (or whatever takes the place of restaurants) – what will be the importance of “returning” to (not that you or yours ever personally left) any historic native land? 

I’m glad there is an Ireland somewhere but “returning” never crosses my mind. Nor does "returning" to Israel seriously cross the mind of most Brooklyn Jews – who would not move to New Jersey. If there were 120 million Jews in the world today instead of 12 million, how many could “return”?

******

So, who “returns” to Israel?

Until the 1990s, when 1,000,000 Russians arrived (and commenced making babies), 70% of Israel’s Jewish population was so-called Oriental Jews, immigrated from Yemen, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Kurdish areas, the eastern Caucasus, Northern and Eastern Sudan, Ethiopia and India. Most of Israel’s now 50% European Jews descended from Eastern Europe and Russia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mizrahi_Jews

All of 1 1/2% of Israeli Jews have “returned” from the United States (not counting babies).

The “moral hazard” in this demographic is that most Jews arriving in Israel had little experience with or deep instruction in Western democratic ideals -- but with huge, if deserved, persecution complexes (Holocaust or no Holocaust) and more than anxious to stake their claims to the “land in the sand” with however desperate measures. Menachem Begin (early arriving Russian) began his career blowing up a hotel, killing 98 British soldiers, becoming inventor of the car bomb (as prime minister sent arms to Argentina to defend the Falklands).

When I was growing up in the Bronx we Irish got along so well with the Jews we likened ourselves to “the lost tribe of Israel" (in a neighborhood like the movie "The Chosen" except the Jewish boys were bigger than we were; nor did I know one bespectacled scholar :-]). In terms of liberal democratic dispositions, the majority of Israel’s "returning" Jews could have been styled the real “lost tribe” – separated by centuries of persecution and despotic rulers from the movements that democratized the West – they behaved the way human nature too often does in stark circumstances, especially when released from all checks and balances …

… they having received gifts of $200 billion dollars worth of the most potent Western conventional arms – and having armed themselves with nuclear armed ICBMs, second-strike subs, even artillery shells as well as gravity bombs.

 ******

Got to see these guys for what they do, not for what ethnic group they (mis)represent. In Israel “lunatic” is no longer a fringe.

Vanishingly few American or Western European Jews, even the most staunch supporters of Israel, would (could) personally order anything as terrifying as Israel’s, 26 day, bombing campaign on next door Lebanon, killing as many as 1000 men and women and 400 boys and girls, over three, on duty, uniformed soldiers KIA and two POW (Israel's cruel attack on Gaza over one POW suggests a single POW taken might have been enough to unleash all hell on Lebanon.) Why should progressive Jews in the West feel automatically obligated to support such defenselessly brutal regimes?

If immigrated American and European Jews happened to dominate today’s Israeli polity, would they personally be fool or just plain crass enough to attempt to crowd out an equal number of Palestinians from the remaining 22% of their unqualified personal homeland (pre-1948 Palestine)? From distant US shores, Americans in general have been known to equate the current, 1000 persons per square mile, industrial West Bank populace with 1850s, 1 per square mile, semi-nomadic American plains Indians. (I believe I read this blind, deaf and dumb take in Newsweek by Rabbi Marc Gellman of the "God Squad" of all people). Do the eighth-grade math, please, general Americans.

******

Now, the Western ways challenged Diaspora (all Western European figure heads but all warlike constituencies) ponders taking on a lately modernizing, oil producing nation of 43,000,000 with an out of the blue bombing attack – a nation tough enough to have fought off Saddam for eight years; a nation not passive enough to accept naked aggression supinely (imagine Syria blowing up Israeli diplomats, tit for tat?); a nation already threatening military retaliation over economic sanctions and making noises of hitting the homeland of their would-be assaulter’s chief armorer and enabler -- not that the trouble makers trouble themselves at all about the fate their chief dupe.

Neither do they fret much over inciting the Islamic streets, which could force their polities to mix in the fight. Think Pakistan, which has a population the sized of the US’s when I was in high school, 177,000,000, and possesses a panoply of nuclear munitions and modern delivery systems – plus a Jihad tilting cohort squeezing in on core government decision making (e.g., concealing Osama?).

Pakistan’s population has as much latent talent as the US’s. Israel’s population, 6,000,000 first-class citizens, has as much latent talent as New Jersey’s – and seems to use steadily less of it – as long as its luck holds and Uncle Dupe keeps holding its hand.

******

Israel’s two most intelligent home critics – ardent supporters of (their idea of) Israel – historian-journalist Gershom Gorenberg (“The Unmaking of Israel”) and writer-activist Uri Anvery, (see weekly column) report the toxic political climate there going from bad to worse to more anti-democratic and more conflict prone. (For more bad news see Israeli mag “+972” and American blog “Mondo Weiss”.)

Israel does not have to end this way. Israeli immigrants could have put early depredations against the native populace behind them and worked out some kind of sensible social contract. Uri's favorite critic, the late Yeshayahu Leibowitz, predicted that permanently occupying the territories taken in 1968 would turn Israel into a fascist state ("a nation of work gang supervisors and secret service agents" -- see Anvery's "Reluctant Prophet" column). In the early 1960s the French evacuated 1,400,000 "settlers" (and 500,000 soldiers) from Algeria to get peace. Today, 400,000 Israeli "expatriates" (and accompanying military) can practicably make aliyah again -- a shorter trip than the first time (shorter than the returning French too) -- anytime "Zionist 1984" wants to go "Israeli Spring" – if God wills. :-)

******

Israel’s train wreck bound tribe look too much like mostly European us, mostly talk the same English talk, walk the same middle class walk and for a long time have hung out cheek by jowl with us. Such wall-to-wall parallels clue Jihad prone fans of the besieged Palestinians – and next, of besieged the Iranians? -- to vent their rage against us by measures (e.g., trading skyscrapers for settlements) however desperate.

If Israeli cannot find in itself the sense or the courage to take up mainstream, Western ways, then, America in the interest of its national security -- and its public safety – will need to distance itself far enough from Israel for it to look a lot less like a 51st state – and our political leaders will need to face down Israel's, hopefully, not forever blinkered domestic partisans -- we are the 98%.

MY CONTRIBUTION ON THE ROOT TODAY

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

– Like – Reply – Delete

Liked by

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

– Flag – Like – Reply

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

– Like – Reply – Delete

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

– Flag – Like – Reply

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

– Like – Reply – Delete

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

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...

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

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"

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
******

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

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
******

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!

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
******
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?).

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

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

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 ???

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

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

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.