Good wages, good jobs, require power....

First, if you haven't read Justin Fox's article The Case for Paying People More over at the Harvard Business Review you need to go do that.

Second, Demos' Vice President of Policy and Outreach Heather McGhee nailed the crux of the issue of low wage workers on a  Melissa Harris Perry panel the other day:

It's a question of power at the workplace. We think about the middle class jobs that helped build this country. They weren't born good jobs. They were actually terrible jobs. They were jobs that didn't require a lot of education, that were dangerous, that were hard, that were back-breaking. But they weremade into good jobs because workers had bargaining power.

How much people get paid has a whole lot to do with not their productivity, not their value added to the economy, but the power they hold.

If we as a nation choose to make McDonalds jobs middle class jobs we can do so.  This isn't rocket science.

Fox News Freaks out--academics can be Muslim too...

This is a hoot---Fox News Anchor Dumbfounded That A Scholar, Who Is Muslim, Had The Audacity To Write A Book About Jesus 

This is what a real interview with Reza Aslan looks like--Jesus the Revolutionary: A Q&A With Reza Aslan | The Nation 

Here is the new book in question which I'm buying as we speak...Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth.  So scare a Fox News viewer you know and buy it too!

We in America love Big Government...

We in America love Big Government.

But only to help rich people, not poor people.  We are clever and do it via the submerged state so we can lecture poor people about not leeching off the state.

Suzanne Mettler has more The Submerged State: How Invisible Government Policies Undermine American Democracy:

Obama, given his policy agenda, had steered directly into the looming precipice of the submerged state: existing policies that lay beneath the surface of U.S. market institutions and within the federal tax system. Contrary to opponents’ charges that his agenda involved the encroachment of the federal government into private matters, Obama was actually attempting to restructure a dense thicket of long-established public policies, but ones that are largely invisible to most Americans—and that are extremely resistant to change. Efforts to transform these policies, which have become entrenched fixtures of modern governance, generate a deeply conflictual politics that routinely alienates the public, hindering chances of success or sustainability of the reforms. 

The “submerged state” includes a conglomeration of federal policies that function by providing incentives, subsidies, or payments to private organizations or households to encourage or reimburse them for conducting activities deemed to serve a public purpose. Over the past thirty years, American political discourse has been dominated by a conservative public philosophy, one that espouses the virtues of small government. Its values have been pursued in part through efforts to scale back traditional forms of social provision, meaning visible benefits administered fairly directly by government. In the case of some programs geared to the young or working-age people, the value of average benefits has withered and coverage has grown more restrictive.14 Ironically, however, the more dramatic change over this period has been the flourishing of the policies of the submerged state, which operate through indirect means such as tax breaks to households or payments to private actors who provide services. Since 1980 these policies have proliferated in number, and the average size of their benefits has expanded dramatically. 

Most of these ascendant policies function in a way that directly contradicts Americans’expectations of social welfare policies: they shower their largest benefits on the most affluent Americans. Take the Home Mortgage Interest Deduction (HMID), for example, which is currently the nation’s most expensive social tax break aside from the tax-free status of employer-provided health coverage. Let us assume that a family buys a median-value home and to finance it borrows $230,000 at an interest rate of 6.25 percent for thirty years. The richer the household, the larger the benefit: in the first year, the average family, with an income between $16,751 and $68,000, would owe around $3,619 less in taxes; those in the next income group, with earnings up to $137,300, would reap an extra $5,146; and so forth, on up to the wealthiest 2 percent of families, with incomes over $373,650, who would enjoy a savings of $6,673. Of course, in reality, these differences are likely to be much greater. Low- to moderate-income Americans usually do not have enough deductions to itemize, so they would forgo this benefit and receive instead only the standard deduction. Meanwhile, the most affluent are likely to purchase far more expensive homes; if a family in the top income category opts for a more upscale home and borrows $500,000 for a mortgage, it will reap a benefit of $14,506 from the HMID; if this family purchases a truly exclusive property and borrows $1 million for a mortgage, it will qualify to keep a whopping $29,012!15 This pattern of upward redistribution is repeated in numerous other policies of the submerged state: federal largesse is allocated disproportionately to the nation’s most well-off households. Such policies consume a sizable portion of revenues and leave scarce resources available for programs that genuinely aid low- and middle-income Americans. 

Yet despite their growing size, scope, and tendency to channel government benefits toward the wealthy, the policies of the submerged state remain largely invisible to ordinary Americans: indeed, their hallmark is the way they obscure government’s role from the view of the general public, including those who number among their beneficiaries. Even when people stare directly at these policies, many perceive only a freely functioning market system at work. They understand neither what is at stake in reform efforts nor the significance of their success. As a result, the charge leveled by opponents of reforms—that they amount to “government takeovers”—though blatantly inaccurate, makes many Americans at least uncomfortable with policy changes, if not openly hostile toward them. 

Exacerbating these challenges, at the same time as the submerged state renders the electorate oblivious and passive, it actually promotes vested interests, and it has done so especially over the past two decades. The finance, real estate, and insurance industries all thrived until the recent recession, and in turn they invested heavily in strengthening their political capacity, making them better poised to protect the policies that have favored them. As a result, reform has required public officials to engage in outright combat or deal making with powerful organizations. Such politics disgust most Americans and hardly epitomize the kind of change Obama’s supporters expected when he won office.

Mettler, Suzanne (2011-08-31).The Submerged State: How Invisible Government Policies Undermine American Democracy (Chicago Studies in American Politics) (Kindle Locations 114-152). University of Chicago Press. Kindle Edition. 

Marketplace interview with Dexter Holland of The Offspring.

So the Marketplace interview with Dexter Holland made my day yesterday: AIDS research, punk rock and hot sauce on the side



I always forget that while Rancid's Out Come the Wolves is probably the more appropriate album to label Jim's first I'm a punk rocker album, it was the summer of '94 when Offspring's Smash and Green Day's Dookie were the only things I listening on constant rotation to as I hung out at my Grandmother's house all summer by the pool.

The punk rock scowls you are giving me now speak to the fact that you forget I was 14.  It was a quintessential moment of puberty and pop culture merging which has been happening all across suburban America for decades now--just check out Tumblr.

Smash still holds up to me in the "Teenage Angst"--suburban American decline kinda way--because it is embedded in so much of a very pivotal transition in my own life as I started to see the bigger picture.

The Bankruptcy of America’s Social Contract

Robert Reich:

The geo-political divide has become so palpable that being wealthy in America today means not having to come across anyone who isn’t. 

Remember when America had a middle class
And an upper class, that was way before the exodus
That was the America that we thought was number one,
Thought would overcome, thought would never die
That was just our pride and faith, two shitty deadly sins
I know faith isn't one of 'em but it should have been
Cuz when things were crumbling, we had no camaraderie
Just a faith someone would save us from despondence

We called it America

If you need some music to party to the decline....

If you need some reading material to know what we might do to fight it....

We have a jobs crisis...

Employment levels are far below what they should be in a healthy economy.

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has more:

The Share of the Population with a Job Fell to Levels Not Seen Since the Mid-1980s

The sharp rise in the unemployment rate and the increasingly discouraging prospect of finding a job caused a decline in the percentage of the population in the labor force (those either working or looking for work).  As a result of rising unemployment and declining labor force participation, the percentage of the population with a job fell sharply in the recession and has remained depressed in the recovery.  The labor force participation rate in June 2013 remained near the lowest level it has been at any time since 1978 and the percentage of the population with a job has been stuck near levels last seen in the early 1980s.

The middle class may very well be a thing of the past...

Across industrialized nations, income inequality is growing.  Economic mobility in America is dead.

Climate change... the fun is just starting.

Climate change is going to disrupt energy and food supplies--not to mention say goodbye to Miami.

Frederick Douglass, Lucretius, and the import of death.

What you can't tell very well from this photo is the majesty of the mountains in the background. You only see the foreground. But the real view outside my door is complex and fabulous. --Nick Nichols 

My Dad died a year ago last Saturday.  The day has kind of lingered in my mind in the day's preceding and I hesitated to look back to see which day it was exactly.

It was only this morning after reading a wonderful new Paris Dispatch from Ta-Nehisi Coates that I dared to troll through my gmail archives to recover the specific day he died.

It was Friday July 20th at 11:45 that my step-mom had emailed from the Philippines that Dad was gone.  She had emailed me when he went into cardiac arrest, then emailed to ask what she should do--in terms of keeping him on life support or not.  To which I told her to let his body be at peace. The day before when we was coming in and out of consciousness on the ventilator I'm told he kept writing, "let me go", "let me go"; my stepmom was interpreting that as in go home from the hospital.  I've always taken his word to mean from the realm of the living.  That this too shall pass.

Technically that final email she sent that night read simply: Dad id gone.

I really have no clue why Ta-Nehisi's post got me thinking of Dad and gave me the nerve to reach back to figure out exactly when he died.  Maybe it was just the fact that Ta-Nehisi's post reminded me of how my Dad was one of those people "who burned to know" as Coates calls it.  Dad passed much of that along to me and Ta-Nehisi's post was one of those gems I would send via tweet or email to Dad--which was what most of our dialogue the last few years of his life was built off of--an engagement with ideas, and appreciation at others who grasped the wonderment of it all.

A wonderment which Coates describes to a T here as he describes his own struggles to learn French in Paris:

I can't call it. But I think about Frederick Douglass a lot these days. And I think that as much as he understood the import of justice, he must have also understood the import of death. Once you get the great effort it takes to go from "knowing" to "understanding" you get how little you will ever truly apprehend. Whole lives surround you. Whole ways are distant from you. Entire streets, ancient cultures , beautiful people are all shooting by. And there is sadness in this because truly we know that there is life in outer space, that there is life in the Parisian streets, that there is life in those West Baltimore streets, that there is life in these worlds around me, life in these blue worlds so close, though light years away.

In many ways this paragraph captured the essence of my Dad.  Dad was a technocrat by trade, an Electrical Engineer, yet he still had at his core the passion and wonderment for the life of knowledge--a life spent in great effort to go from "knowing" to "understanding".  Dad grasped how little we truly do apprehend, and I was always getting tweets and emails (and before social networking... actual letters) with "Dad's little gems" as he once coined them.  Dad embedded that passion in me; both in my genetic code I'm sure, but also environmentally in the cultural surroundings he sought to nurture and surround me in--the books, art, poetry, and life experiences.

Whole lives do surround us.  Beautiful people are shooting by you all the time.  And Ta-Nehisi is right, there truly is a sadness that encroaches on you when you take the time to appreciate the experience of recognizing this.  Dad recognized this imperfect state--of dare I call it gratitude?--which surrounds a person when they struggle to go from "knowing" to "understanding".

A few weeks before Dad died, sitting in his hospital bed unable to walk but working away on his computer on some of his projects for work my stepmom snapped a photo of him and his Facebook post read:

My new Quezon City office. 279 E. Rodriguez Sr. Boulevard.   This also home of the GMA-style back brace. If I could run, I would. But I can't seem to walk at the moment.

To which I commented: "Life is one long struggle in the dark." --Lucretius
And Dad responded:  That Lucretius. Such a comedian.

Dad's last message to me a week or so later was short and simple. It was a Happy Birthday wish on July 12th (the 13th Philippine time).  Within a day or so after that the Fungal infection in his lung, which appeared after his spinal surgery, had taken him from working away to on a breathing machine.

And like a flash, Dad was gone.

I'm 33 now, if Dad's lifespan is a metric for distance I'm over halfway--which scares me and saddens me a bit.  The void where my Dad once was is still present, as I hope it always will be.  It inspires me onwards, to run, because I can.

Not just figuratively, I mean that quite literally.  I run more often now a days; in fact I finally signed up for my first marathon.  For me, to run gives me space to think, but also to embrace a physical body that my Dad reminded me will at some point let me down, crumble, and finally stop.

I run because I can, I run because it strangely brings me closer to my Dad. It gives me space and time to think through and struggle with many of my own challenges of seeking to move from knowing to understanding.  It also gives me space to simply be.  If you made it this far in the post, I thank you.  I'm not quite sure how or what inspired me to write it, or how or what inspired you to read to the end.  But thank you.  And with that I'm headed out the door to go run...

That Lucretius, such a comedian indeed.

“Freedom is a road seldom traveled by the multitude.” 
― Frederick Douglass

He didn't see the crash coming. He shouldn't get rewarded.

Sign the petition over at Daily Kos to say no to Larry Summers who is the frontrunner for chair of the Federal Reserve.

Larry Summer's career is a life lesson on the fact that being smart and cultivating people with real power can take you places.  Making Obama feel warm and fuzzy should not be a job requirement of Fed Chair.