One size fits all! the free market and other lies.

One size fits all! In the fifties and sixties Madison Avenue would sell us any lie but any woman who ever tried to put on a pair of panty hose, quickly learned the truth. No piece of clothing fits every individual equally and no policy benefits every citizen equally.

In Federalist Paper # 10 James Madison elaborated on the conflict:

the most common and durable

source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property.

Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct

interests in society. Those who are creditors and those who are debtors fall

under a like discrimination. A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a

mercantile interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser interests, grow up of

necessity in civilized nations and divide them into different classes, actuated by

different sentiments and views. The regulation of these various and interfering

interests forms the principal task of modern legislation and involves the spirit

of party and faction in the necessary and ordinary operations of the

government. .

At one time there was one theory of economics. That was Mercantilism. It was a theory devised by the merchant class around 1620 and unsurprisingly it benefitted merchants. Mercantilism had several aspects. It called for infrastructure development, development of domestic industry and the largest portion of bullion reserves possible. The nation states of France and England and their middle class were created in the entirety from Mercantilism.

Mercantilism had an aspect about it of common sense. In 1549 it was written “We must always take heed that we buy no more from strangers then we sell them, for so should we impoverish ourselves and enrich them.”

The other theory is known to us as the Free Market. It actually began as Lassez faire et laissez passer le monde va de lui meme’ Which translates into Let do and let pass, the world goes on by itself.” It was developed by the leaders of the French Revolution and the goldsmiths who financed them in opposition to the merchants and royalty.

The defining work in Mercantilism was “Treatise of Taxes and Contributions “ written in 1662, by Sir William Petty. Petty’s collective works and his reliance on data become the basis for the science of economics. Relying on extensive statistical data Perry argued for a progressive tax system, that paid for defense, governance, the pastorage of men’s souls, education, the maintenance of impotents of all sorts and infrastructure, or things of universal good. Perry argued that the traditional reliance on the hoarding of gold was unnecessary and harmful as gold was only a small portion of a nation’s true wealth. However he felt that government must have the right to restrict the export of gold if the balance of trade became too imbalanced.



As you probably know the defining work of the Free market is The Wealth of Nations written by the moralist Adam Smith in 1776. The Wealth of Nations was based on three precepts 1)No economic player has power over another 2) Everyone has equal access to information 3) All decisions are purely rational with no preference given to other players on non-economic factors. None of these Utopian ideas have ever been realized. Bankers worldwide quickly saw the advantages of Smith’s work and so promoted it and have continued to promote it to this day.

After the Second World War capitalism itself was in disrepute. The bankers and the stock markets needed a scapegoat and their old enemies the mercantilist came to mind. By lobbying state legislatures and supporting academics they were able to rewrite the history books and convince the country that the Taft Hartley Act, passed nine months after the beginning of the Great Depression, was the cause of the Great Depression.

By 1960 John F Kennedy had to pledge in his campaign that he would not interfere with the free market .Ronald Reagan said that without the free market there could be no “growth, prosperity and ultimately human fulfillment. What happened to the differences between: “A landed interest a manufacturing interest, a Mercantile interest, a moneyed interest”,? Poof, gone –one size fits all.

In the thirty years since only Ross Perot has voiced real opposition to the free market. For the rest of the political establishment Free Trade has become a part of the American character. It should not be surprising. Our politicians rely on contributions and the capitalist have the money.

Some authors place the last rise in real wages at 1974. Many others at 1979.In 1985 the United States became a debtor nation for the first time in 70 years. There can be no doubt of the negative effect of our Free Market policies on the majority of Americans. Recently the middle class has become aware of it’s losses and though they have no idea as to the cause are marching in the streets demanding change.

It may seem I am advocating a return to pure mercantilism. As noted by Perry in 1662 pure mercantilism had its problems. It is often argued that both World Wars were the result of pure mercantilism. That is not what I am advocating. Rather I ask that we do our duty as citizens. That as James Madison said in Federalist 10 we engage in informed and Refined Public Opinion. That we acknowledge that one size never fits all.

Kick off for Felon's economic rights organization.

The first meeting of Full Citizen will be held on January 22 1 PM at t3026 Cherokee, St. Louis Mo. 63118
The purpose of Full Citizen will be to provide a path back to full citizenship for felons. I say path because it will not, cannot,and should not be and instant process. Regardless of the circumstances that caused one to break the law the public has a reasonable distrust of felons and felons must earn back the trust of the community.

Currently there are approximately nine million felons nationwide.

Under our current system a felon is prohibited from being licensed for 64 professions for life. The felon with a drug offense cannot get federally underwritten school loans for life. The felon cannot get federal school loans for life. The felon cannot get business loans from federally insured banks for life. The felon cannot get a mortgage for life.(Romona says I am wrong on this one but as a Realtor that was my understanding) Thus all of the paths to wealth in our society have been permanently denied to the felon.

Thus a felon has two choices. He or she can live in poverty or he/she can re-offend in the hopes of the big score. Felons younger than thirty frequently re-offend and older than thirty generally settle down into minimum wage part time poverty.

The children of these felons suffer from a variety of social ills. Single parent homes and sometimes no parent homes. Raised by Aunties who may be holding down two part time jobs they have little supervision and even less in the way of successful role models. The sentencing project says that two in three black boys age ten predict they will go to prison. The boys prediction is both logical and self fulfilling.

So the goal is to give parents a route to success and give children a positive role models and a rational expectation of their own success.

To do this voters must be educated to change the law for the interest of those effected and for the interest of society as a whole. Full citizen will utilize video journalism, blogging, and community activism to make a wholesale change to the laws of Missouri and eventually to the laws of all fifty states.

This is a tremendously worthwhile group. Nine million adults and untold numbers of children can be effected. The economic and social cost which can be alleviated are staggering. We desperately need your minds and your labor to correct the injustice which currently guarantees a permanent underclass.

If you have any interest please contact me at Mark.Magas@gmail.com or call 314-497-6475, and if you know how to create an event on Facebook that would be a great start.

Jerry Brown cuts Education so he can Incarcerate Marijuana Smokers.

''We will do everything we can to minimize cuts to public schools,'' Brown said. ''I can't promise you there won't be more cuts because there will be.''

Brown told the roughly 200 people at the briefing that the state's financial situation is worse than it was in the Great Depression.

Well times are bad so Jerry Brown, the liberal from California, has decided he has no choice but to take an axe to higher education. After all higher ed accounts for 5.9% of the states budget. And really what return is there on education spending? Well there is increased economic activity, higher future tax revenues and lower crime but lets not get our priorities mixed up.

Rachel Meyer has discovered another area which might be ripe for cuts. She begins her story of her promising client who was on the way to a better life when he failed his urinalysis for marijuana. Now her client will be just another lifer in the California system. California uses 9.7%, or 10.6 billion dollars annually to lock up 175,000 citizens. Jerry Brown is following a pattern for California by cutting education and preserving incarceration dollars.. Education spending as a percentage has fallen two thirds since 1967 while spending on prisons has tripled.

Strangely Rachel is not the first to notice. In 2007 the Urban Strategies Council documented per prisoner spending at $216,000 for youth and $43,000 per adult while per pupil expenditures were less then $10,000.

The long term trend does shows a general change in attitude. Certainly Nixon's war on Drugs is in part to blame but that pales in comparison to Three strikes and Your Out. Since 1993 in California the law has radically increased the number of inmates. The law has some peculiarities. While a juveniles convictions are generally sealed for purposes of three strikes and you out the records are unsealed. Thus a person with one felony years in the past can receive tow charges for his current offense and receive a minimum 25 year sentence. People have been sentenced to twenty five years in California for shoplifting gulf clubs, stealing a slice of pizza and in one case disputing a air conditioning repair bill. Since 1990 the California prison population has increased by 73%.

I do not know about you but this does not look like a liberal state to me.

Prop A Is An Attempt to Shift Tax Burden to the Poor

Rebecca Rivas at the St. Louis American wrote a great article about the consequences for the poor of Proposition A passing:

For Missourians who make $17,000 or less, about six percent of their income goes towards sales taxes – and less than one percent goes towards income taxes, according to a November 2009 study by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

For those who make $412,000 or more, it’s almost completely opposite.

Less than one percent of their income goes towards paying sales taxes, and 4.4 percent goes towards income taxes.

If Missouri’s poor pay proportionately more sales tax and the rich pay proportionately more income tax, an important question for voters this November is: Why would a billionaire propose a ballot initiative that would result in getting rid of local income tax and replacing it with more sales taxes?

Read the whole article here. And then vote No on Prop A.

St. Louis Blog Posts for Progressives - May 25

Some stories from local bloggers that I found interesting today. Please feel free to add your own in the comments.

The Economy:
Eric at Dangerous Intersections tells Obama to Finish the Job on financial reform.
There was an important Op-Ed in the Post-Dispatch about the consequences of passing billionaire Rex's earnings tax ban.
Madonna at Occasional Planet puts in a pitch for the U.S. Social Forum, a gathering of activists from around the country, in Detroit.
KWMU reports on a group of Democratic politicians proposing cuts for the Illinois budget.


St. Louis Built Environment/City Pride
Michael Allen at Ecology of Absence is looking for some stolen Interior Pediments.
Steve at Urban Review STL discusses how Annie Malone helped shape St. Louis.
Paul at Vanishing STL weighs in on the demolition of the St. Louis Centre Sky Bridge.
Adam at Searching for Sustainability discusses the revival of the American City.
Courtney at Next Stop STL reports that Metro's Tracy Beidleman "received the first-ever Award of Excellence for Outstanding Customer Service and Financial Oversight of FTA Projects in St. Louis presented by Region VII of the Federal Transit Administration (FTA)."
Tim Logan at Building Blocks reports the latest in the Kiel Opera House renovation.

LGBT:
Vital Voice announces an LGBT Benefit Concert at the MCC in October.

War/Peace:
Ryan at the Political Buzz Examiner looks at what a war with North Korea would entail.

Statewide stories:
FiredUp reports on Peter Kinder changing his "I hate healthcare" lawsuit...again.
Sean at FiredUp also reported on Chuck Purgason correctly describing Roy Blunt as a typical D.C. Republican insider. Someone should tell the St. Louis Tea Party. Oh wait, they already know that: that's why they like him so much!
Hotflash at Show Me Progress continues her series on the broken public defender system in Missouri.
Get a full daily dose of Missouri political headlines from FiredUp Missouri's new MO Headlines Project.

Miscellaneous:
Heather at Our Next Chapters talks about her computer addiction.
Craig Mayhem mentions his new site design.
The Post-Dispatch is shaking up their political reporting team a little.
Lois at the Curious Kitchen decides that she could live happily in Edwardsville after an especially good meal.
Shark Fu at Angry Black Bitch is pretty excited about hockey.
Justin Chick takes on the classic debate: Star Wars vs Lord of the Rings.
Cutbacks at the Metropolitan St. Louis Psychiatric Center.

CWIP: Ameren Greenwashes Radioactive Waste

Get out your Geiger Counter. There's a lot radioactive waste being spread around. Aim the counter at your TV. The next time Ameren UE's TV ads about CWIP airs, the counter should light up like a carnival. In case you live in a cave, and people do, CWIP stands for Construction Works in Progress. WAY back in the 1970s, Missouri voters banned CWIP. You know those crazy yuppies, hippies, baby boomers, and vets. They didn't like the idea of subsidizing large corporations' risky investments with no promise of return. Thought their money was better spent on stuff like station wagons, leisure suits, and Love Boat cruises. What were they thinking??

Better yet, what is Ameren thinking now? Ameren UE wants us, their customer, to PAY the interest on the loans they get to build a new nuke plant. We pay the interest as long as they are building/the plant isn't online. There is no promise that it will ever go online or produce electricity. Or what the total bill would be. Or that there won't be cost overruns. Plus, we don't even NEED a new nuke plant in the first place.

In fact, the only really sure thing is that if we subsidize a nuke plant, we won't have any money left to invest in clean energy. However, that didn't stop Ameren from giving the Bill before the Missouri legislature a cool green name: "The Clean and Renewable Energy Act" to give legislators and rate payers the IMPRESSION the bill funds clean energy. And the swanky TV ads mention solar and wind energy, even though not only are wind and solar NOT included in this bill, we don't need CWIP to build wind or solar. The Clean and Renewable Energy Act is radioactive waste greenwashed.

CWIP is the equivalent of uranium lipstick and yellow cake Vaseline for Ameren customers.
Here's why: Imagine your kid gets a "student loan credit card" that only requires that the interest be paid monthly, not the principle. And then imagine that you since you are the parent, you get stuck having to make those interest payments (not the principle, just interest) on WHATEVER debt Junior manages to rack up. Now, you have NO control over the interest rate, which is based on Junior's credit rating, so you could get slammed for say 25, 30, even 35% - or MORE. You also have NO control over the credit limit, so Junior can charge up as much as s/he wants (further destroying his/her credit rating). You also have NO control over how long it takes Junior to graduate or even IF s/he graduates. But as long as s/he is a student (or just doesn't graduate, i.e. drops out), YOU are stuck with payments. Now imagine that Junior DOESN'T need the degree in the first place because s/he's already got one! PLUS, as long as you are saddled with Junior's bill, you have no money to invest in your own life -mini van, velour sweats, Love Boat cruise, anyone?

The nuclear industry would not exist without massive subsidies and the risks being underwritten by the federal government, i.e. US taxpayers. When the investment market and insurance companies will not support an industry, there is a reason. We need to listen to that warning. Call your representation and tell them that the boomers, yuppies, hippies and vets were right. A station wagon has more ROI.

Tea Party Redux

First, I'd like to thank Adam for letting me post. I've never written for a group blog before, and on my personal blog I occasionally dabble in politics but really, just as often, I write about buying new shoes. So we'll see how this goes.

Do you know what's happening in downtown St. Louis on April 15? The St. Louis Tea Party. This is an anti-tax protest organized by two radio personalities from the local Fox News Radio affiliate, 97.1 FM. It's actually a repeat of the first tea party protest in St. Louis, which took place on February 27 and turned up gems like this protest sign: "Let's Keep the Tea, Dump the Politicions." The protest was largely in response to the passage of the stimulus bill- you can read the Post-Dispatch article here. The P-D also ran an editorial a few days later, suggesting that it might be counterproductive to dump tea into the Mississippi River when a lot of people in our community are struggling to buy food. According to the editorial, one in six Missourians is eligible for federal nutritional assistance. Of course, people on food stamps probably qualify as free loaders, right?

The tea party protests aren't confined to St. Louis, this is actually a nationwide movement. The national website, Tax Day Tea Party, explains that the protests are a response to CNBC's Rick Santelli and his attempts to "expose the bankrupt liberal agenda of the White House and Congress." I've read the "About" sections on both the national and local protest websites, and looked through photos from the February 27 protest in St. Louis in order to read the signs and placards of the protesters, and I'm still not 100% clear on what is being protested. Here are some possibilities:

1) "Big government," which seems to mean a government that spends money in any way with which you disagree.

2) As seen in the above-linked photo, free loaders. Unclear who qualifies. My student loans are subsidized through federal programs, am I a free loader? Probably.

3) People who don't have jobs. See here.

4) Income tax and payroll tax. No, really.

5) The Congressional habit of passing legislation without actually reading it. This is actually a really valid argument, and CBS has a nice article outlining the problem. Pushing through legislation without adequate time for review is how we ended up with the USA PATRIOT Act. But I don't think tossing some tea into the river will do much to implement what is, in the end, a massive reform of Congressional practice.

6) National health care.

7) I actually have no idea what this man is protesting, but he's definitely upset. About something.

8) Socialism. This is an oldie but a goodie. I know it's become a reflexive argument for a lot of people on the right, but it's also really lazy, and it makes it clear that they have zero understanding of differing economic theories. Socialism is not the same as communism, nor is it the same as Marxism, nor is it the same as liberalism. This article is a useful breakdown of liberalism v. socialism. I know it's not very fun, it doesn't make for snappy slogans to put on your protest signs, but it really is important to understand the evolution of economic thought and the ways in which different schools of economic thought continue to shape the policies of our country and others. Robert L. Heilbroner wrote an excellent primer on economic theories, The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times and Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers. The book ranges from Smith to Malthus and Ricardo, covering the utopian socialists and then on to Marx and Veblen and Keynes. Maybe that guy should read it.

In the end, I have to agree with Steve Benen at The Washington Monthly:

I suspect one of the problems with the Tea Parties is that it's not altogether clear what they're rallying for. They're conservatives who don't like the Democratic domestic policy agenda; this much is clear. But usually there's some kind of point to organized political events, and the Tea Parties are still a little vague.

I take it they don't like the economic stimulus package, but that's already passed. They don't like budget deficits, unless they're run by Republican presidents. They don't want their taxes to go up, but Obama has already passed a significant middle-class tax cut, which by most measures, is the largest tax cut ever signed by a U.S. president.

So, angry, right-wing activists are going to get together to demand ... what exactly? A 36% top rate instead of a 39.6% top rate? A $3.1 trillion federal budget instead of a $3.5 trillion budget? It's hardly the stuff of a credible and coherent political movement.

It will be interesting to see what happens at the April 15 protests, here and around the country. Keep an eye out for the protesters if you're downtown- the St. Louis protest site has details. Maybe there will be a more coherent articulation of their demands, maybe not. Either way I bet there'll be more fun stuff like this- yeah, it's juvenile. But c'mon, that's funny.