REWIND - A Week of Quotes and Cartoons
SUNDAY
Quote of the Day
August 4, 2013
'First, high unemployment keeps wages down.
Workers who are worried about losing their jobs
settle for whatever they can get - which is why
hourly earnings keep dropping. The median wage is
now 4 percent lower than it was at the start of the
recovery. Low wages help boost corporate profits,
thereby keeping the regressives' corporate sponsors
happy.
'Second, high unemployment fuels the bull market
on Wall Street. That's because the Fed is committed
to buying long-term bonds as long as
unemployment remains high. This keeps bond
yields low and pushes investors into equities -
which helps boosts executive pay and Wall Street
commissions, thereby keeping regressives' financial
sponsors happy.
'Third, high unemployment keeps most Americans
economically fearful and financially insecure. This
sets them up to believe regressive lies - that their
biggest worry should be that "big government" will
tax away the little they have and give it to
"undeserving" minorities; that they should support
low taxes on corporations and wealthy "job
creators;" and that new immigrants threaten their
jobs. '
Economist Robert Reich
'Why Republicans Want Jobs to Stay Anemic'
blog
August 3, 2013
Toon of the Day
Profits and Wages
Lalo Alcaraz
MONDAY
Quote of the Day
'You are making history by striking. You are making
history by demanding higher wages. We are not
going to let a big American company come here and
play Wild West. This is a clash of cultures.'
Frank Bsirske, chair of ver.di (amalgamated
service employees union) of Germany,
playing on the company's motto: "Work hard.
Have fun. Make history." at a strike rally in
June with hundreds of workers outside
the Amazon plant in Leipzig,
New York Times
August 5, 2013
Toon of the Day
My Word
Pat Oliphant
TUESDAY
Quote of the Day
'The campaign against Detroit is the latest battle in
a long war against the American social contract. For
that war to succeed, millions of Americans must be
convinced to see their fellow citizens - working
people, retired people, students, the poor - as the
Other. From Social Security to decent jobs, from a
life's education to a living wage, the implicit
agreements among us can only be broken if we
think of our neighbors as Other than ourselves.
'That's why Detroit's fate is so important. Breaking
Detroit's pension agreements would pave the way for
breaking our national agreement with all retired
Americans, and then with the rest of our national
community.
'The people of Detroit are not Other than us. They
are us. And if we sacrifice their neighborhoods, our
neighborhoods won't be far behind.'
Richard (RJ) Eskow
Campaign for America's Future
August 5, 2013
http://tinyurl.com/l2amc5w
Toon of the Day
Bargainer
Christopher Weyant
http://tinyurl.com/kr7ctlk
WEDNESDAY
Quote of the Day
'Prosecutors portrayed Bank of America's mortgage
operations as emblematic of Wall Street's reckless
practices in the heady days before the financial
crisis. Under pressure to generate profits, the
lawsuit said, Bank of America pressured employees
to churn through mortgage evaluations. The
instructions for slipshod standards stemmed from
the top of the bank, the lawsuit said. One employee,
according to the lawsuit, said that her job was to
"basically validate the loans," rather than to comb
through them to spot flaws.
'The goal, the employee said, was to get through
mortgage applications swiftly. She was told by her
superiors, prosecutors claimed to "keep her
opinions to herself".'
New York Times
August 6, 2013
Toon of the Day
Nose Cutting
Tom Toles - Washington Post
THURSDAY
Quote of the Day
'To this day, one often hears pundits and
establishment types in general talking as if we had a
clear distinction between the elite, who know How
Things Work, and the great unwashed who need to
be led to elite wisdom. The reality, however, is
nothing like this. It's true that there are crank
doctrines - goldbuggery, the Laffer curve,etc. -
that play a substantial role in popular opinion but
have no traction with the elite. But the elite itself
has spent much of the past five years committed to
economic doctrines - the prevalence of structural
unemployment, the urgency of deficit reduction and
entitlement reform, the destructive effects of
"uncertainty" - that may not be quite as contrary to
the evidence as fears of hyperinflation just around
the corner, but are pretty bad. And the influence of
these doctrines has remained almost unscathed
even though this past year should have driven them
completely out of respectable discussion.'
Economist Paul Krugman
New York Times
August 7, 2013
Toon of the Day
Unintended Consequences
Tom Toles - Washington Post
FRIDAY
Quote of the Day
'The attack on the working people of Chicago and
the country — school closings, high rates of
unemployment, evictions and foreclosures, mass
incarceration of our youth, lack of access to
affordable health care and clinics — highlights the
structural racism in our society. We are marching
for Trayvon, for jobs, for schools, for health care, for
justice and for dignity.'
Statement of Chicago Teachers Union
announcing it will send a bus to the
August 24 50th Anniversary March on
Washington
Daily Caller
August 9, 2013
Toon of the Day
Fracking
Clay Bennett - Chattanooga Times FreePress
SATURDAY
'President Obama, who seems to think the American
people simply need some reassurance that their
privacy rights are intact, proposed a series of
measures on Friday that only tinker around the
edges of the nation's abusive surveillance programs.
'He said he wants "greater oversight, greater
transparency, and constraints" on the mass
collection of every American's phone records by the
National Security Agency. He didn't specify what
those constraints and oversight measures would be,
only that he would work with Congress to develop
them. But, in the meantime, the collection of
records will continue as it has for years, gathering
far more information than is necessary to fight
terrorism.'
Editorial
New York Times
August 10, 2013
Toon of the Day
NSA Comes Clean
Tom Tomorrow
Spread the word