Motley Moose – Archive

It’s been five years since I graduated from law school (June 2008) and eight years since I graduated from college (June 2005).  Now, after five years out of the classroom, and holding some temp jobs here and there a few years back, I’m finally heading back to school to do something that I considered back when I was still in undergrad.

Way back in 2005 I considered staying in college an extra year so that I could graduate with double major of History and Accounting.  The idea was that I would become both an attorney and a CPA.  Instead, I ultimately decided to head to straight to law school and graduated pretty much right in the heart of the Great Recession.

After that I found some temp jobs once I was admitted to the bar, but a little more than a year after that my mom’s health declined to the point that it was best for me to stay home and take care of her.  Since she’s been a single parent since I was three, I’m an only child and the rest of our family doesn’t live nearby everything fell on me.  I’m not sorry or resentful about that happening.  Family is family.  That’s my view.

Thankfully, now, her health is good enough that she can pretty much care for herself at home.  In fact, she’s now healthy enough that I can go away to visit family for a few days.  That said, it’ll be even better once she finally gets her kidney transplant.

Anyway, back to the main subject below the squiggly.

From the White House – Weekly Address

In this week’s address, President Obama tells the American people that his plan for creating a better bargain for the middle class builds on the progress we’ve made, fighting our way back from the worst economic recession of our lifetimes.

If, like me, you are of the 96 million Americans who rely on a not-for-profit credit union for fairly priced financial services, it’s not too late to make your voice heard.  Finance Committee leaders are working on a proposal for a new U.S. tax code and Big Banks are asking them to pick the pockets of Credit Union members.

Banks pushing for repeal of credit unions’ federal tax exemption

The Big Banks have armies of lobbyists loaded with cash and they are pressuring Congress to revoke the income tax exemption for not-for-profit Credit Unions. The Big Banks don’t like the competition and they especially don’t like the market pressure that forces them to rein in fees.

Credit Unions have their members, their voices, and their stories. It’s time to use them.

From the White House – Weekly Address

President Obama tells the American people about his speech at Knox College on Wednesday, where he discussed the cornerstones of what it means to be middle class, including having a good job, a home that is your own, quality education, a secure retirement, and affordable health care.

From the White House – Weekly Address

President Obama discusses how a large, bipartisan majority in the Senate voted to pass comprehensive immigration reform, which would add a big boost to our economy, strengthen Social Security, and modernize our legal immigration system to make it more consistent with our value. He calls on Congress to pass this commonsense bill quickly so that we can fix our broken immigration system and keep America strong for years to come.

From America’s High School Newspaper:

Federal budget cuts in the U.S are coming too fast and slowing the pace of the U.S. recovery, the International Monetary Fund says in a new assessment of the U.S. economy.

When even the original Austerians think we’re too austere… well… I reckon there’s a problem.

Even more interesting is the advice from Director Lagarde:

In a press briefing Friday on the IMF’s forecast, IMF managing director Christine Lagarde said the U.S. should slow down budget cuts now but move faster in shaping a longer-term deficit reduction plan that would take hold when the economy is stronger.

In “TheresMoreVille,” we’ll see who else has been espousing such a strategy…

From the White House – Weekly Address

In this week’s address, President Obama says that the economy is moving in the right direction, but there is still more work to do. He calls on Congress to act to give every responsible homeowner the chance to save money on their mortgage by refinancing at historically low interest rates, put more Americans to work rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure, and fix our broken immigration system, so that we can continue to grow our economy and create good middle class jobs.  

(Note: BRIC refers to Brazil, Russia, India, and China. Created by a Goldman Sachs economist, the BRIC countries supposedly are rapidly growing developing countries.)

China is a place with massive regional inequality. A recent feature by The Economist magazine, titled Comparing Chinese Provinces With Countries, found a stark divide between the rich coast and the poor hinderland. Some of my previous obervations about that feature can be found here. In Shanghai and Beijing GDP per person is over $20,000 (as of 2010) – roughly equivalent to a high middle-income country.

In rural Guizhou GDP per person is almost seven times lower. Guizhou is the poorest province in China. It is the part of China the media does not visit and that China tries its best to hide. There are no skyscrapers in the rural parts of Guizhou, just decrepit stone houses dating back to the Maoist era (or earlier).

But there is something else very interesting about Guizhou: as of 2010 its GDP per person was almost exactly equal to GDP per person in India. That is, a person living in the poorest part of China is about as well off as the typical Indian.

More below.

By: inoljt, http://mypolitikal.com/

Enron was one of the biggest scandals to ever hit the business world. The failure of Lehman Brothers directly caused the financial crisis from which the United States is still feeling the effects. One would think that the directors of these failed firms – the worst failures in this decade – would have been punished by the market for their poor oversight.

Apparently not.

More below.

Today headlines blared that the Boston bombers had been funding their terrorist lifestyles with welfare. How could we, the cash-strapped people, have been allowed to provide for these shady characters? The American-born wife and baby were obviously part of a long con on the generosity of the American people. That the wife chose to work 80 hours a week (possibly for less than minimum wage) as a quasi-servant rather than continue with those benefits does not mitigate the fact that someone who later became a terrorist got to mooch! Who would have the insolence to even wonder whether the indignities of the broken welfare system factored into how much these “losers” came to hate the United States…?

Well, I’m going to dare to bring it up.

The welfare approach in the United States are ridiculously fragmented, inadequate, poorly implemented, and outright broken. Political rhetoric from all sides raises the taxpayer’s awareness that their money pays for an enormous welfare system. Yet when the taxpayer turns to this system during their own time of desperation, they discover unanswered phone calls, months (if not years) of applications and appeals, bureaucratistans that don’t bother to deliver the measly few “services” they meticulously document on your “plan” (the California Department of Rehabilitation, which is supposed to be putting people back to work, is a major offender here), and have abundant means to retaliate (for example, by consigning your case to limbo) if anyone complains.

There is a deliberate rightwing campaign to make stymied taxpayers believe that “someone else” (of a different race, religion, or political affiliation) is getting paid “regular checks from the government”, while anyone who has ever tried to deal with this system knows for sure it’s not them. “Disability checks” are the latest spearhead in the rightwing’s egregiously misinformed attack on welfare.

But while Republicans regular twist and ignore facts to shore up their 47 percent Entitlement Society propaganda, Democrats are failing in the other direction by blindly defending the system without acknowledging the problems or making any attempts to fix them. President Obama’s idea of a bipartisan bridge is cutting Social Security benefits, when many seniors are already struggling to get by on a few hundred dollars a month. There is no way around the fact that the only way to get everyone off welfare is to guarantee full employment.

Last year I wrote a series of posts about my own experience of the welfare fiasco for Daily Kos, but I found this was the wrong venue since too many comments trivialized or even flamed a subject that is a matter of life-and-death to a significant segment of the U.S. population. I looked for another place to repost my series, but I could not find another place where I could convey what I knew about welfare to a broad audience of voters. Finally I just boiled down what I had to say in 10 Ways to Fix Welfare on a free WordPress blog and left my message to float on the ether. As far as I know, no one is reading it or referencing it. It’s vitally important to dispel the fog of ignorance that surrounds welfare. So it’s time to make another attempt to shed light on the real problems with welfare and how to fix them.

I am copying my “10 ways to Fix Welfare” here in the hope that this post will be passed around and spark a larger conversation, with testimony from the people who have actually interacted with the welfare system. My complete article is pasted below, and there is a little more information about me on the WordPress site.