• Diaz isn't a bigot @Markos! Didn't u know some of his best friends & relatives are gay? He <3's the gays just not enough 2 give 'em = rights 
   
• gay marriage fails In NY? I expect this in Alabama but NY? So much 4 our northeast gay liberal elitist secular culture war
   
• Monserrate IS all about family values. He was so concerned when his gfriend walked into piece of glass he was holding #nymarriageequality
   
• I'm not married but I feel like I just survived an attempted attack on my heterosexuality. #nymarriageequality
   
• Did Meredith Baxter coming out help or hurt vote? Maybe hurt it bc peops hold the sanctity of Keaton marriage as sacred http://bit.ly/696vst
   
• Maybe Meredith Baxter helped the cause. Maybe she emboldened a few dems by coming out. do not underestimate the influence of the keaton fam

   The president, having just announced that we would be wasting tens of billions of dollars more in a pointless, tragic, immoral war in Afghanistan, will hold a job summit tomorrow. It is a very small point but telling that we would first be told that vital resources will be spent in a conflict that is unwinnable (in whatever way you define "win") and, only then, do we turn to the human crisis at home--at which point I guarantee you that some political voices will tell the country that, sorry, the cupboard is bare, there is no money to spend to put people back to work.

   To move to the positive, here are four proposals from the Center for Economic and Policy Research about what can and should be done:

     1.    Flexible employment credits to allow employers to shorten work hours instead of laying off workers: Each month, employers are laying off close to 2 million workers. If the government gave employers tax credits to shorten work time while leaving pay unchanged, it could reduce these layoffs. If the number of layoffs fell by just 10 percent, this would have the same effect on employment as adding 200,000 jobs a month or 2.5 million a year. Germany has used this mechanism to keep its unemployment rate from rising, even though it has experienced a steeper recession than the United States.

     2.    Support for education, health care and other vital state and local government services: Under budget pressure, state and local governments across the country are cutting these services and laying off workers. Aid from the federal government can allow these workers to keep their jobs and services to continue to be provided.

     3.    Direct job creation: There are parts of the country where the unemployment rate now exceeds 25 percent, with youth unemployment well above 40 percent. To prevent a generation of young people from being locked out of the job market, it is important to have public service jobs that can employ people immediately.

     4.    Right to rent for homeowners facing foreclosure: If homeowners facing foreclosure had the right to remain in their homes as tenants paying the market rent for a substantial period (5-10 years), it would provide substantial housing security to millions of families while stemming the nation's rising number of foreclosures. This policy could also provide an economic boost since it would free up money for millions of homeowners who are now struggling with mortgage debts that they cannot pay. This would in turn lead to a boost in consumption that would increase demand in the economy."

This is the truth about the economy--not the truth embodied in the "green shoots" that various people are trying to look for. The truth of the real lives of real people: two jobs just doesn't make enough work to survive. Actually, it's plenty of work--way more work--than a single individual should have to do. But, the paychecks from the two jobs just are not enough. Tell me your story.

I think it is always useful to see the threads connecting what might seem to be things that happen independently. The big picture is this: we live in a dysfunctional economic system which has created the greatest divide between rich and poor in a hundred years--and that is a global point. Here, for your consideration, are three strands--which you can add to.

   The deficit hawks are on the march--and this is a bi-partisan din. And it is basically nonsense designed to open the door to some very draconian cuts in our basic social safety net. Here is Dean Baker:

Relative to the size of the economy, the deficits that we are running are large and the debt that we are projected to incur is substantial, but the deficit level is still not coming close to the levels hit in World War II. Nor is the debt level projected to reach post-war peaks or the levels sustained by countries like Italy and Japan. The idea that we are near some debt-driven crisis is absurd on its face.

   Neither Baker, nor yours truly, are saying we should just spend money without looking at the effects. The point is: we are nowhere near the calamity that the deficit Chicken Littles are yelling about. And the party of the Common Man (and Woman) should not be contributing to the misconceptions, as Dean argues:

But Republicans don't have a monopoly on demagoging the deficit. During the Bush years, many Democrats spoke of the Bush deficits in cataclysmic terms. This was absurd. The deficits were larger than was desirable during part of the Bush administration (large deficits in 2002 and 2003 were helpful in boosting the economy), but they were not hugely out of line. There is certainly no story that can pass the laugh test in which these deficits are responsible for the collapse of the housing bubble and subsequent recession.

There were plenty of grounds to attack President Bush for the economy's performance under his watch. Most importantly, he let an $8 trillion-dollar housing bubble grow unchecked, and giving big tax cuts to the wealthy is not the way to create an educated workforce and a modern infrastructure.

   The real question is not a accountant's eye-shade problem. It's a question of priorities. For example, do you spend $650 billion on a bloated defense budget--that includes unwise wars--or do you spend it on health care and long-term investments on road and bridges? And when the checks are cut for those investments, should the wealthiest people in society begin to again pay their fair share--which, by the way, would make the Chicken Littles voice a lot less shrill because we'd have a whole lot more income in the house.

   Whew...ten years sure goes by quickly. A decade ago, labor led, along with environmentalists and other civic-minded groups, a challenge to the framework of so-called "free trade" in the streets of Seattle. A few days ago, I wondered why a Democratic president would be on a path to push through a so-called "free trade" deal negotiated by a previous Republican Administration.

   On that theme, there is an effort to appeal to the president to shift course, on the anniversary of the Seattle challenge, with a letter to the president:

Ten years ago in Seattle, Americans protesting the devastating impact of the WTO's corporate globalization agenda on our jobs, wages and the environment stopped a WTO expansion plan. Now, big corporations are back at it again. Their “Doha Round” WTO expansion will hurt us economically, increase the flood of unsafe imports and undermine efforts to reregulate the banks and stabilize our economy.

The economic crisis has painfully demonstrated that the current rules of the global economy have failed us. Time is overdue to turnaround the WTO. We supported your campaign commitments to create a new trade policy that works for all of us, not just the special interests. That is why we are calling on you to replace Bush's more-of-the-same WTO expansion agenda.  We’re ready to fight for a WTO turnaround plan we hope you will lead.

   Here it is.

   I am not shocked in the least by this story:

Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers paid their executives largely in stock, and that stock lost most or all of its value when those companies collapsed.

Many people on Wall Street say these examples help make the case that pay incentives were not what caused executives at these fallen firms to take excessive risks.

But three professors at Harvard are disputing that logic in a new study, saying it is an urban myth that executives at Bear and Lehman were wiped out along with their companies.

Though the chiefs at both investment banks lost more than $900 million in their stock holdings, the professors argue that it is important to also consider all the riches the bankers took off the table in the years preceding the crisis.

   You can read all about this in The Audacity of Greed.

   This caught my eye this morning:

Some of the largest shareholders in Goldman Sachs Group Inc. have urged the Wall Street firm to reduce the size of its bonus pool, arguing that it should pass along more of its blockbuster earnings to investors, according to people familiar with the situation.

The investors hold tens of millions of shares in Goldman Sachs, which is on track to make the biggest employee payout in the firm's 140-year history.

Their complaints in private conversations with the company and at analyst meetings show how anger over its big-money culture is spilling into the ranks of investors who typically shy away from debates over Wall Street pay.

One frustration: Despite record net income and compensation at Goldman as markets rebound and the firm outmuscles weakened rivals for business, analysts expect its 2009 earnings per share to be 22% lower than in 2007 and roughly equal to its 2006 earnings, according to Thomson Financial.

   I suspect that the shareholders were unmoved by the sprinkling of a pittance of good will announced by the company's executives. Let's make clear what these folks are saying: greed is not a good business model.

    Let's go back in history briefly to the 1990s. In 1993, Bill Clinton pushed through NAFTA, over the objection of a large number of Democrats, with a large number of Republicans joining with the Democratic president to get NAFTA through the House (The Senate has always been far more receptive to so-called "free trade"). NAFTA was a piece of legislation negotiated by a Republican president. In 1994, the Democrats lost control of the House of Representatives. Most of the analysis of that election pointed to the failure of the Clinton Administration to pass its health care plan. I don't doubt that the health care debacle was a major factor, and perhaps, the most important factor, leading to the loss of dozens of Democratic House seats.

    But, I also believe that NAFTa played a significant role. For a very long time, the labor movement had been educating its members about the bad things that NAFTA would bring. And, at the very least, I would argue that the passage of NAFTA depressed Democratic turnout in a number of races--union members felt betrayed by the Clinton Administration on an issue that they had been told--rightly--would reshape the rules of the global economy. There simply wasn't the enthusiasm.

   Now it's 2009 and we have these two trends heading for a collision. Yesterday:

A group of progressive House Democrats plan Wednesday to call on the Obama administration to fundamentally rethink U.S. trade policy: Scrap the Doha round of trade talksand formally initiate a review of the major existing trade agreements the U.S. is a member of.

At a Capitol Hill rally, members of the House Trade Working Group will call on the administration to use next week's World Trade Organization ministerial meeting in Geneva to push for a complete overhaul of the body, according to a senior House Democratic aide.

   On the other hand, the president said this:

U.S. President Barack Obama pledged Thursday morning to ratify a free-trade agreement with South Korea that has been stuck for two years, challenging the U.S. Congress to separate South Korea from other Asian nations enjoying vast trade surpluses with the U.S.

   The progressives in the House have 127 co-sponsors for a bill that would effectively say, "stop, our current trade policy has to be reviewed because it makes no sense and is detrimental to our country's basic interest." That is more than half the House caucus. In the face of that concern, we have a president who is determined to push through a deal negotiated by a Republican Administration.

   Who is in charge of this political strategy at the White House? What exactly is gained by ginning up a fight with Democrats? If the thought is that, electorally, Democratic voters will stick with the president no matter what and the target is to appeal to independents by appearing to be pro-"free trade", then, someone is not looking at history. Independents are as worried about the economy as anyone and I do not think that they believe so-called "free trade" makes sense. And a likely difficult fight inside the party over the Korea deal is not going to make for a great talking point when the Administration calls for Democrats to rally to the polls. Explain to me why autoworkers in Michigan, or steelworkers in Pennsylvania, will think the Democratic Party is looking out for the economic interests of the average worker by carrying the water for a bankrupt trade strategy.

   This is a grave mistake.