The Robber Baron Economy and You

Posted on April 28th, 2007 in Politics by Robert Miller

Paul Krugman has provided some information about how far we have come in restoring the gilded age of the 19th century, when the disparity between the income of the rich and average income levels was first made available through an income tax law (which was later declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court).  In 1894 John D. Rockefeller, the richest man in America,  reported an income of $1.25 million or about 7,000 times the average per capita income. But last year James Simons, a hedge fund manager, took home $ 1.7 billion, about 38,000 times the average income.  The difference in wealth that separates Americans has become more obscene than at any time in our history. Indeed, the only way to look at the economic history of the 20th century and the early years of this one is that of a free market economy (i.e., runaway capitalism)  interrupted by a brief period of the depression and WW II recovery (FDR New Deal).  After the period of the FDR New Deal, when the income tax rate was more progressive and designed to reduce the disparity between the wealthy and middle class,  the free market economy began to surge again with the election of Ronald Reagan and a sharp cutback in our taxation policies on wealth. The economist Milton Friedman was instrumental in promoting this return and his disciples in the Republican party worked to stimulate the resurgence of this familiar mode of capitalism, emphasizing, as always, the rights of the individual. Since 1970, the tax on the upper .01% of  Americans has been cut in half, while those of the middle class have risen.  Under Reagan, capitalism came surging back to produce the huge income disparity that we see today, which far out rivals that of the so called gilded age for single income comparisons. 

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Riverbend leaving Iraq

Posted on April 27th, 2007 in General by Robert Miller

An unidentified Iraqi woman who refers to herself as Riverbend has been writing a blog from Baghdad for several years. She has written a couple of books about her experiences since the invasion in 2003 and is perhaps the best writer in Iraq who comments on the war and its impact on the country. Her blogs are often sad tales about horrific events and difficulties that happen to her friends and family, but within her descriptions she has a kind of optimism that keeps encouraging her to stick it out.  She seems to have appointed herself as  commissioner  of national buoyancy at a time when few others wanted to run for the office. She is well educated, very articulate and knowledgeable about her culture and has opinions and knowledge of events in America and our own political climate.  Understandably she is not a big fan of George Bush, about whom she expresses her opinions freely.  She strongly dislikes the puppet government we have set up in Iraq. Riverbend writes her blogs very sporadically, in fact there was a period last year when her friends in America wondered if she had been injured or killed because of a long absence of writing.  I have often drawn on Riverbend’s writing in an attempt to learn more about the impact of our war on Iraqis.

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Supreme Court and Abortion

Posted on April 19th, 2007 in General by Robert Miller

Yesterday the Supreme Court, in a landmark 5-4 decision, upheld a Partial Birth Abortion Ban that had been passed by congress and signed by George W. Bush. This ruling has clearly changed the nature of the Supreme Court on abortion, which voted 5-4 in the reverse on prior decisions of several similar laws. It clearly has re-established the paternalistic nature of the court that was evident a hundred years ago when it treated women as being in need of special protection created by their enfeebled nature. The original motivation behind Roe vs Wade was that women had a right to privacy. This new ruling has basically gutted that idea and does not bode well for the future of abortion decisions from the Roberts court, which seems to have defined itself with this ruling, at least on the issue of right to privacy vs protectionism for women. The law that was upheld in this decision was a Federal law and was passed twice during the Clinton years but was vetoed by him. The critical vote in this case was that of Samuel A. Alito, Jr who replaced Justice Sandra Day O’connor who had previously voted against these bans because they did not provide an exemption to protect the health of the mother (which effectively meant these laws could never work as intended because every case in which this was done was to protect the health of the mother). This law doesn’t protect the mother either, but the court ruled that if the mother’s health was the motivation for the procedure, she could get a court order and an exemption. How many women in need of such a procedure are going to go to court during a third trimester pregancy?

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