EFTA01135281.pdf

From: Gregory Brown To: undisclosed-recipients:; Bcc: [email protected] Subject: Greg Brown's Weekend Reading and Other Things.... 02/09/2014 Date: Sun, 09 Feb 2014 09:51:51 +0000 Attachments: The 1% as victims,That's_rich_Eugene_Robinson_TWP_01_30_2014.docx; Style_Reform_Loolcs_Like_NYT_Editorial_Board_Februaty_1„2014.docx; 10_Things_Y0u_Pt6bably_Didn't_Know_About_The_Long- Term_Unemployed„Your_Sunday_Moming_Conversationiason_Linkin_02_02_2014.doc x; Delusions_of_Failure_Paul_Kurgman_NYT_Feb._02„2014.docx; The_Middle_Class_Is_Steadily_Eroding.Just_Ask_the_Business_World„Nelson_Schwartz NYT 02 02 2014.docx; _03_2014.docx; World_Shares_Fall_To_4-Month_Low_Amid_U.S._Slowdown,Emerging- Market_Woes_Reuters_02.04.2014.docx; Evaporating_Unemployment_Binyamin_Appelbaum_NYT_02.04.2014.docx; Eric_Cantor's_False_Claims_Against_CBO_Report_Debunlced_Robert_Farley_FactChecker .org_02.04.2014.docx; Langston_Hughes_bio.docx; Led_Zeppelin_bio.docx Inline-Images: image.png; image(I).png; image(2).png; image(3).png; image(4).png; image(5).png; image(6).png; image(7).png; image(8).png; image(9).png; image(10).png; image(11).png; image(12).png; image(13).png; image(I4).png; image(I5).png; image(16).png DEAR FRIEND One of my literary heroes was American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist, Langston Hughes who was born on February 1, 1902, in Joplin, Missouri. He published his first poem in 1921. He attended Columbia University, but left after one year to travel. His poetry was later promoted by Vachel Lindsay, and Hughes published his first book in 1926. He went on to write countless works of poetry, prose and plays, as well as a popular column for the Chicago Defender. A central figure of the Harlem Renaissance, the flowering of African-American culture in 1920's and 3o's, Hughes champion his people and voice his concerns about race and social justice. He died on May 22, 1967. MY PEOPLE The night is beautiful, So the faces of my people, The stars are beautiful, EFTA01135281  So the eyes of my people, Beautiful also is the sun, Beautiful also are the souls of my people. Web site: James Mercer Langston Hughes was born on February 1, 1902, in Joplin, Missouri. His parents, James Hughes and Carrie Langston, separated soon after his birth, and his father moved to Mexico. While Hughes's mother moved around during his youth, Hughes was raised primarily by his maternal grandmother, Mary, until she died in his early teens. From that point, he went to live with his mother, and they moved to several cities before eventually settling in Cleveland, Ohio. It was during this time that Hughes first began to write poetry, and that one of his teachers first introduced him to the poetry of Carl Sandburg and Walt Whitman, both whom Hughes would later cite as primary influences. Hughes was also a regular contributor to his school's literary magazine, and frequently submitted to other poetry magazines, although they would ultimately reject him. Hughes graduated from high school in 1920 and spent the following year in Mexico with his father. Around this time, Hughes's poem "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" was published in The Crisis magazine and was highly praised. In 1921 Hughes returned to the United States and enrolled at Columbia University where he studied briefly, and during which time he quickly became a part of Harlem's burgeoning cultural movement, what is commonly known as the Harlem Renaissance. But Hughes dropped out of Columbia in 1922 and worked various odd jobs around New York for the following year, before signing on as a steward on a freighter that took him to Africa and Spain. He left the ship in 1924 and lived for a brief time in Paris, where he continued to develop and publish his poetry. In November 1924, Hughes returned to the United States and worked various jobs. In 1925, he was working as a busboy in a Washington, IM. hotel restaurant when he met American poet Vachel Lindsay. Hughes showed some of his poems to Lindsay, who was impressed enough to use his connections to promote Hughes's poetry and ultimately bring it to a wider audience. In 1925, Hughes's poem "The Weary Blues" won first prize in the Opportunity magazine literary competition, and Hughes also received a scholarship to attend Lincoln University, in Pennsylvania. While studying at Lincoln, Hughes poetry came to the attention of novelist and critic Carl Van Vechten, who used his connections to help get Hughes's first book of poetry, The Weary Blues, published by Knopf in 1926. The book had popular appeal and established both his poetic style and his commitment to black themes and heritage. Hughes was also among the first to use jazz rhythms and dialect to depict the life of urban blacks in his work. After his graduation from Lincoln in 1929, Hughes published his first novel, Not Without Laughter. The book was commercially successful enough to convince Hughes that he could make a living as a writer. During the 1930s, Hughes would frequently travel the United States on lecture tours, and also abroad to the Soviet Union, Japan, and Haiti. He continued to write and publish poetry and prose during this time, and in 1934 he published his first collection of short stories, The Ways of White Folks. In 1937 he served as a war correspondent for several American newspapers during the Spanish Civil War. EFTA01135282 In 1940, Hughes's autobiography up to age 28, The Big Sea, was published. Also around this time, Hughes began contributing a column to the Chicago Defender, for which he created a comic character named Jesse B. Semple, better known as "Simple," a black Everyman that Hughes used to further explore urban, working-class black themes, and to address racial issues. The columns were highly successful, and "Simple" would later be the focus of several of Hughes's books and plays. In the late 194os, Hughes contributed the lyrics for a Broadway musical titled Street Scene, which featured music by Kurt Weill. The success of the musical would earn Hughes enough money that he was finally a able to buy a house in Harlem. Around this time, he also taught creative writing at Atlanta University and was a guest lecturer at a university in Chicago for several months. Over the next two decades, Hughes would continue his prolific output. In 1949 he wrote a play that inspired the opera Troubled Island and published yet another anthology of work, The Poetry of the Negro. During the 1950s and 196os, he published countless other works, including several books in his "Simple" series, English translations of the poetry of Federico Garcia Lorca and Gabriela Mistral, another anthology of his own poetry, and the second installment of his autobiography, I Wonder as I Wander. On May 22, 1967, Langston Hughes died from complications of prostate cancer. A tribute to his poetry, his funeral contained little in the way of spoken eulogy, but was filled with jazz and blues music. Hughes's ashes were interred beneath the entrance of the Arthur Schomburg Center for Research in Black culture in Harlem. The inscription marking the spot features a line from Hughes's poem "The Negro Speaks of Rivers." It reads: "My soul has grown deep like the rivers." Hughes's Harlem home, on East 127th Street, received New York City Landmark status in 1981 and was added to the National Register of Places in 1982. Volumes of his work continue to be published and translated throughout the world. As someone who grew up reading about Jesse B. Semple, I would like to honor Mr. Langston Hughes this week and invite those of you don't know his work and those who do but may have not read him recently, to rekindle your interest and appreciate the spirit, soul and wisdom of the words of one our literary national treasures. One of my sayings is, "don't change the rules when I get there," so why are so willing to charge President Obama with lawlessness, when they were silent during the previous Bush/Cheney Administration. As the former Chief of Staff for President Obama, John Daly, pointed out on one of the morning news shows, the President has tried to do everything that he could to reach across the aisle to Republicans, only to be rebuffed at every turn. And when he did capitulate two years ago so that the debt limit could be raised, they took a victory lap delighted that he surrendered to their will. They then claimed that he was weak and ineffectual but they were wrong, because he plays the long- game and they go for media moments that are as hollow as the platitudes that they profess. Last week, in the State of the Union, the President finally called their bluff, saying that he would enact whatever programs to help Americans through "Executive Action" without Congressional support. Understanding that they have been out-flanked, they are now crying foul, claiming that what the President is proposing is un-Constitutional. The problem is that he is a Constitutional lawyer, and they overplayed their hand. 2,Paul Ryan EFTA01135283 Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) criticized President Barack Obama Sunday for issuing executive orders on major issues like health care rather than going through Congress, arguing that it was leading to an "increasingly lawless presidency." Speaking on ABC's "rids Week," Ryan said that Obama was subverting Congress by signing executive orders, which Ryan said is "creating a dangerous trend which is contrary to the Constitution." Obama said during his State of the Union address last Tuesday, "Wherever and whenever I can take steps without legislation to expand opportunityfor more Americanfamilies, that's what I'm going to do." Although 'This Week" host George Stephanopoulos pointed out that the number of executive orders Obama has issued is not higher than that of other recent presidents, Ryan rejected that argument. "It's not the number of executive orders," he said, "It's the scope of the executive orders." Still, despite accusing Obama of effectively violating the Constitution, Ryan said he had no intention to make any attempt to impeach the president. So we know who overplayed their hand, by who is crying the loudest. Bravo Mr. President, if your opponents in Congress don't want to work with them, let them wallow into the irrelevance that they deserve. Budget Deficit Falling To $514 Billion: CBO The U.S. government budget surplus:deficit, in billions 400.0 200.0 I 1 0.0 -200.0 - -400.0 -600.0 -800.0 -1.000.0 -1,200.0 -1,400.0 -1,600.0 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 We often hear from conservatives and their pundits that government spending is out of control and that the Obama Administration's economic policies has savaged the country's economy. Well this is hogwash. This week the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) announced that the Federal Budget Deficit fell to $514 billion, the lowest level since President Obama took office five years ago. The deficit is now 4.1% to the nation's GDP. It hasn't been this low than before the economic crash of 2008 and the ensuing economic recession. EFTA01135284  Web site: Federal Deficit Federal Deficit As Percent GDP US from FY 2008 to FY2018 US from FY 2008 to FY2018 1500 15 ei act. Di e4 •g 1000 0 0 10 930 I ee 0 I 2010 2012 3314 2016 2018 2008 2010 2012 2014 2016 2018 iniraPh usgmemmentspending corn jpgraph usgmemmentspending corn The two charts show above show recent and budgeted deficits for the US federal government. On the left is a chart of the deficit in current dollars. On the right is a chart of the deficit as a percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The Congressional Budget Office report credits higher tax revenues from the rebounding economy and sharp curbs on agency spending as the chief reason for the deficit's short-term decline. But CBO sees the long-term deficit picture worsening by about $1OO billion a year through the end of the decade because of slower growth in the economy over the coming decade than it had previously predicted. Last year's deficit registered $68o billion. Obama inherited an economy in crisis and first-ever deficits exceeding $1 trillion. Still all is not good as former Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, said that the deficit may be shrinking too quickly that what is needed now is more spending to stimulate economic growth and that the current fiscal policy is restraining growth. Another reason why the Administration should mount a new economic spending infrastructure program that would create hundreds of thousands of jobs that cannot be outsourced to China, India, Eastern Europe or Brazil. EFTA01135285 By now you have probably heard that the financial markets have fallen to a 4-month low as signs world shares fell to 4-month low amid signs of a slowdown in the U.S. economy aggravated the anxiety caused by a sell-off in emerging markets. A report showing U.S. factory activity was weaker than expected had caused both the dollar and global equities to fall on Monday. European investors remained anxious on Tuesday after another session of sustained selling in Asia. Futures prices pointed to a 0.3 percent rebound for Wall Street later, but a mid-morning attempt at a stabilization failed in Europe. The benchmark FTSEurofirst index fell 0.4 percent and headed for a third day of declines. And Europe looked almost rosy compared with Asia. On Tuesday, Tokyo's Nikkei plunged 4 percent in its worst day since June, cementing its position as the worst performer in developed markets in 2014. MSCI's emerging-market index dropped 1.4 percent, putting its losses since late October at almost 12 percent. "It does look as if developed-market equities are playing catchup with emerging markets," Societe Generale strategist Kit Juckes said. "The dollar has somewhat run out of steam, and I suspect thefocus today may well be on yen strength as well as how muchfurther the equity marketfalls can go." With a flight to safety going on, German government bonds, considered to be one of Europe's most secure investments, saw prices hit a 6-month high. Debt from elsewhere in the region lost ground. The Australian dollar jumped after its central bank appeared to shut the door on further rate cuts. But the main focus of the currency market remained the U.S. dollar's contest with the yen. Two factors were at play. U.S. bond yields fell after the weak data hit the dollar, and the Nikkei's plunge pushed up the yen. The Nikkei and yen often see-saw: as one goes up, the other goes down. The U.S. dollar appeared to be recovering, though. It was last up o.3 percent at 101.27 yen, after hitting its lowest level since November on Monday at 100.77. Another round of strong UK construction data also left sterling looking spritely at $1.6340. Talk of policy easing by the ECB at its monthly meeting on Thursday held the euro back at $1.3509. 10 PERCENT CORRECTION? The stock market sell-off left MSCI's 45-country, all-world index at its lowest since October and saw the AMC, the market's fear seismograph, jump to its highest since June. It also boosted the safe-haven appeal of gold. Spot gold was steady on at $1,258.84 an ounce, after gaining 1.1 percent on Monday. But three-month copper on the London Metal Exchange, a metal highly attuned to global growth, edged down to $7,020. That put it on track for its loth straight losing session and its longest run of falls in 37 years. The Nikkei's 4 percent dive cemented its position as 2014's worst-performing major market. It has shed 14 percent of last year's 5o percent boom. By comparison, the U.S. benchmark S&P 500 is down 5.8 percent. The FTSEurofirst 300 fell 3.3 percent. "With the main European indices down around 7percent (since peaks), chatter on trading desk is about whether we are infor a '.u) percent' correction," Jonathan Sudaria, a dealer at Capital Spreads in London, said in emailed comments. "The bears have a seemingly easy target within reach and the remaining bulls will want to get out of the way." Among other perceived safe assets, the yield on benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury notes stood at 2.602 as U.S. trading loomed. I t fell as low as 2.582 percent on Monday, its lowest since Nov. 1. The dollar's overnight weakness also provided some relief to emerging-market currencies. Turkey's lira, Russia's rouble, Hungary's forint and the South African rand all edged higher. "Experienced emerging market EFTA01135286 investors would be looking at this sell down with great interest, looking to pick up quality names on the dip, but they are still in the minorityfor now," said Erwin Sanft, Standard Chartered's Hong Kong-based China equity strategist. This week in the New York limes journalist Binyamin Appelbaum wrote an article that caught my interest — Evaporating Unemployment - in which he asserts that the fact that only 59% of adults in the United States have jobs down from 63% in 2007 (before the start of the Great Recession) may not be as bad as it looks due to the fact that the bubble of the Baby Boomers are aging into retirement and the labor force participation rate has been more than accounted for by a decline in participation of people in the prime working age of 25 to 54. The article goes into some mumbo jumbo suggesting that the Federal Reserve in recent decades has tolerated higher unemployment for long periods because it was focused primarily on controlling inflation. The methodology of the new study, in effect, is basically using the Fed's long history of allowing unnecessary unemployment as a justification for continuing the same policy. And if you accept this premise the economy is healthier then the numbers suggest.... Employment-Population (E/P) Ratio vs. Estimated E/P Ratio Percent 66 65 64 Estimated 63 62 Actual 61 60 1.7 percent 59 1 58 57 56 tt ssw l i l t I I I 1982 84 86 88 90 92 94 96 98 00 02 04 06 08 10 12 The blue line on the chart above is derived from this assumption. It shows the sustainable level of employment expressed as a share of working age adults. The implication is that, in effect, there were too many jobs before the recession - and, as a result, that some of the recent losses should be seen as a return to health. To me this is hogwash. First of all, although more than 8 million new jobs have been generated in the private sector, many of these jobs pay a lower wage or wages that have not kept up with inflation. Secondly, if you go to any job fair in any major metropolitan area, you will see thousands of people, many overqualified vying for the hundreds of jobs available — often twenty, thirty or more applicants for each position. While the national unemployment rate has declined to 6.7 percent, long-term unemployed individuals make up 37.7 percent of the jobless, according to the report. That's down from 46 percent in 2O1O, yet this number remains higher than the pre-recession peak of 26 percent in 1983. As of December 2013, there were 3.9 million long-term jobless Americans — those without work for more than 27 weeks. Also there were 2.6 million looking for jobs for a year or more, the report said. EFTA01135287 My objection with the article is that it is a hollow argument distracting from the central economic issue in the country — the ever growing economic inequality and rising scarcity of economic upward mobility. The top 20% in the country control more than 6o% of the wealth and one family, the five WalMart heirs have more wealth than the bottom 15o million Americans is a travesty, not because the Waltons have so much but because the children of the bottom 150 million have a less and less chance of moving up the economic ladder. More importantly, the numbers don't tell the human toll. The fact that 5o million Americans suffer from food insecurity with a large number of them working two or more jobs. The fact that Walmart's human resources department has policies in place to assist their workers in applying for food assistance (food stamps), while fighting against raising the minimum wage. I am sure that the end of the Baby Boomers' bubble account for part of the decrease in the workforce participation number, but let's not use these numbers to distract ourselves from the fact that the country needs to generate more jobs and that these jobs need to be higher paying jobs — because using metrics to justify unemployment is as ridiculous as employing feel good prison movies to quantify the effectiveness of the justice system in America. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor falsely claims that a new report confirms the long-held Republican belief that "millions of hardworking Americans will lose their jobs," because of the Affordable Care Act. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office report says more than 2 million people will decide not to work, or will decide to work less, due to the law — not that they will "lose their jobs." Shortly after the CBO released the report that updated, and nearly tripled, its initial estimate on the reduction in the supply of labor due to the Affordable Care Act, Cantor fired off two messages via Twitter. Cantor, Feb. 4: The CBO's latest report confirms what Republicans have been saying for years now. "Under Obamacare, millions of hardworking Americans will lose their jobs and those who keep them will see their hours and wages reduced." That's not what the CB0 report said. The report estimated a reduction in full-time-equivalent employment of about 2.3 million by 2021. But the drop is "almost entirely" due to a reduction in "the amount of labor that workers choose to supply" (see pages 117-127). EFTA01135288 CBO, Feb. 4: The estimated reduction stems almost entirely from a net decline in the amount of labor that workers choose to supply, rather than from a net drop in businesses' demand for labor, so it will appear almost entirely as a reduction in labor force participation and in hours worked relative to what would have occurred otherwise rather than as an increase in unemployment (that is, more workers seeking but not finding jobs) or underemployment (such as part-time workers who would prefer to work more hours per week). That last part — which notes that the drop is not due to an increase in unemployment or underemployment — makes clear that comments like Cantor's are misleading. Our political leaders should be made to pay a price for misleading the public, especially on important issues such as healthcare. Whether or not you agree or like the Affordable Healthcare Act why not let it live or die on its own merit, because partisan politics is doing more to destroy the country than al Qaeda could ever imagined. For more information please feel free to read the attached article by FaetCheck.org - Eric Cantor's False Claims Against C.130 Report Debunked. From the President's birth certificate/citizenship to the Affordable Heathcare Act (Obamacare) to Benghazi to the IRS scandal to the basic tenets of science Republicans are ignoring the facts as a way of delegitimizing the President and their Democratic opposition. As my rant of the week this has to change. For those of you who see President Obama as a socialist dictator hell-bent to create the largest government ever, then he's doing it wrong: The government sector has slashed jobs steadily since the recession, shrinking government payrolls to their lowest level in eight years. At this rate, there won't be enough people to run the FEMA camps. The January jobs report was a mix of disappointment and hope, with just 113,00o new payroll jobs added, but the unemployment rate falling to 6.6 percent from 6.7 percent. The report was made slightly lousier by the government sector, which cut 12,OOO workers from its payrolls last month. That's not a lot of jobs, but they add up over time. As you can see from the chart below, with the exception of a hiring spike during the 2O1O census, federal, state and local governments have been cutting payrolls every single month since the recession ended. (Story continues after chart.) FRED ,API — Total Nonfarm Private Payroll Employment All Employees: Government 3 2 0 1 0 0 -2 10 -3 1 t -4 • -5 -6 -7 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 EFTA01135289 In January, there were just 21.8 million people working for the government, the lowest number since June 2OO5. Here's how that looks (story continues after chart): FRED — All Employees: Government 23,200 22,800 (Thousands of Persons) 22,400 22,000 21,600 21,200 20,800 20,400 2002 2004 2006 2608 2010 2012 2014 During President George W. Bush's first term, the government sector grew by 4 percent. If it had grown at the same rate during Obama's first term -- which, we should note, included the same two wars Bush started, along with the worst recession since the Great Depression -- then the government sector would have been 2 million jobs bigger by the end of Obama's first term in January. That 2- million-job number just happens to gibe with academic studies suggesting pointless and destructive austerity measures have cost the U.S. about 2 million jobs since the recession. Yep, worst socialist dictatorship ever. But like with science, the Conservative Republican opposition is ignoring the facts, that not only has the Obama Administration slashed the Federal deficit in more than half it has also cut government employment. ****** Two things happened this week that we should all take notice of First of all, on Thursday, Democrats failed to win enough Republican votes to reauthorize long-term unemployment benefits for more than a million workers cut off in December. At least five Republicans needed to vote for the bill in order for it to advance, but only four did. The bill failed 58-to-40. "Because of the inaction of one person today there's a family, thousands offamilies who are goin to miss mortgage payments and send their lives into economic chaos," said Sen. Cory Booker (DM.). Even if the Senate eventually passes an extension of unemployment benefits, which seems unlikely, Republican leaders in the House of Representatives have been unenthusiastic about holding a vote. More than 1.7 million long-term jobless Americans have missed out on benefits since the federal Emergency Unemployment Compensation program lapsed on Dec. 28. Since 2008, the program had provided extra weeks of benefits to laid-off workers who use up the standard six months of state benefits. Democrats tried to sweeten the deal by banning millionaires from receiving benefits. Thursday's measure would have required unemployment claimants to certify they'd earned less than $1 million in the previous year; currently, there is no income restriction. The bill's cost would have been offset EFTA01135290 through "pension smoothing," or allowing companies to make smaller contributions to employee pensions, thus earning higher profits and giving the government more tax revenue. Congress routinely installs temporary federal benefit programs when the economy sours, then lets them expire when it improves. Democrats say that with an unprecedented 3.9 million Americans unemployed six months or longer, it's too soon to drop the benefits. But they haven't found a way to win Republican support. Before Thursday's vote, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) acknowledged the bill had little chance of advancing. "Sadly, we're going toface anotherfilibuster," he said. Then on Friday President Barack Obama signed into law an agriculture spending bill that will spread benefits to farmers in every region of the country, while trimming the food stamp program that inspired a two-year battle over the legislation. As he penned his name on the five year measure at Michigan State University, Obama said the wide-ranging bill "multitasks" by helping boost jobs, innovation, research and conservation. "It's like a Swiss Army knife," he joked. But not everyone is happy with the legislation and Obama acknowledged its passage was "a very challenging piece of business." The bill expands federal crop insurance and ends direct government payments that go to farmers whether they produce anything or not. But the bulk of it's nearly $100 billion per year cost is for the food stamp program that aids 1 in 7 Americans. The bill finally passed with support from Democratic and Republican lawmakers from farming states, but the bipartisan spirit didn't extend to the signing ceremony where Obama was flanked by farm equipment, hay bales and Democratic lawmakers. White House press secretary Jay Carney said several Republicans were invited, but all declined to attend. Conservatives remain unhappy with the bill and its generous new subsidies for interests ranging from Southern peanut growers and Midwest corn farmers to the Northeast maple syrup industry. They also wanted much larger cuts to food stamps than the $80o million Congress finally approved in a compromise. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack told reporters he did not expect the cut of about 1 percent of the food stamp budget to have a significant impact on recipients. Obama promised in his State of the Union address last week to make 2014 a year of action, using his presidential powers in addition to pushing a Congress that usually is reluctant to go along with his ideas. In that spirit, he's coupling the signing of the farm bill with a new administration initiative called "Made in Rural America" to connect rural businesses with federal resources that can help sell their products and services abroad. Obama's trip was a reward for Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., who as chairwoman of the Senate Agriculture Committee helped broker the hard-fought farm bill compromise after years of setbacks. Michigan State, a leading agricultural research school, is Stabenow's alma mater. I take issue to both, as the denial of the extension of the unemployment insurance for more than 1.7 million long-term unemployed Americans has a negative multiplier effect because not only does it hurt the unemployed themselves, it also harms their families and especially millions of children who go to bed each night hungry. While farmers were given a five year welfare extension with taxpayer dollars, at the cost of cutting food assistance (food stamp program), that helps 1 in 7 Americans. Something is wrong here, especially when Republican political leaders continue to claim that unemployment long- term benefits for because they believe unemployed people are lazy. Obviously, they haven't seen the thousands of thousands of Americans who flock to every job fair for the hundred or so available jobs. EFTA01135291  WEEK's READINGS A CLASS ACT Jay Leno tapped Billy Crystal, his very first guest 1992, to be his last. New York Times Johnny Carson's departure from the `Tonight"show in 1992 was an abdication. Jay Leno's last show, on Thursday, was closer to a retirement party — a bittersweet send-off for a loyal executive pushed out after 22 years. Mr. Leno let his feelings flow only at the very end, and this time, he didn't make any of the kinds of jokes about NBC that dotted his final shows at the network "I didn't know anybody over there,"he said, explaining why he never went to Fox or ABC. Choking up, he added, "These are the only people I've ever known." Ratings in the last week soared, but it wasn't that audiences were anticipating a train wreck or a cultural milestone. Many viewers weren't feeling loss so much as pinpricks of projected anxiety: Mr. Leno's emotional last bow was poignant not because he is a legendary figure who can never be replaced, but because he is the nice guy who worked really hard, did a great job and will barely be missed come Monday morning. Newer viewers were like the younger employees down the hall who barely know the retiree, but are still drawn to the drama of a forced exit — and the free champagne and cake. For his older, longtime fans — his audience's median age is 57.8 — there was a there-but-for-the-grace-of God frisson: Mr. Leno, 63, is such a familiar fixture of network television that his last hurrah became a dreaded rite of passage, an EFTA01135292 acting out of people's deepest fears about their own obsolescence. (That could be the reason David Letterman, 66, of CBS put aside his longstanding grudge against Mr. Leno and congratulated his rival on "a wonderful run.') It happens to almost everyone. Thursday night, it was Mr. Leno's turn. He tapped Billy Crystal, his very first guest in 1992, to be his last, and asked his favorite singer, the country star Garth Brooks, to perform. And he smiled through skits and cameos by the likes of Oprah Winfrey, Carol Burnett and Kim Kardashian about his departure. (President Obama paid his respects in a taped message.) Mr. Crystal led what he called the Shut Your Von Trapp Family Singers in a parody of the "Sound of Music" song "So Long, Farewell," reworded in his honor. There's a sad sort of clanging From the clock in the hall And the bells in the steeple too And all the executives that run NBC Are popping in to say you're through. "It's fun to kind of be the old guy and sit back here and see where the next generation takes this great institution," Mr. Leno said about his successor, Jimmy Fallon. More gamely than convincingly, he added, "But it really is time to go and hand it off to the next guy, it really is." Onstage, Mr. Leno was the most accessible talk-show host, the kind of comedian who will always do another set or pose for one more snapshot with fans. He started his show every night by wading into a crowd of audience members and shaking hands — or rather pulling hands like a Swiss bell ringer. His jokes weren't cutting edge, and his references were sometimes dated: In his last days he made cracks about O. J. Simpson and Kathie Lee Gifford in her Carnival Cruise Lines days. He was unfailingly gracious to Mr. Fallon, who was his guest on Monday night and made a cameo on Thursday, inviting Mr. Leno to come back to "Tonight" anytime. (Mr. Fallon takes over on Feb. 17.) But in the run-up to his last "Tonight" show, Mr. Leno didn't let up on NBC, which replaced him with Conan O'Brien in 2009 only to reinstate him a year later after Mr. O'Brien flopped. "I read today that NBC said they would like me to be just like Bob Hope: dead," Mr. Leno joked earlier this week. Some in the studio audience, taken aback, groaned. "I don't care, I like that joke,"he said in response. Throughout his tenure, Mr. Leno was both friendly and oddly impersonal: he was a skilled joke teller who didn't let down his guard or his hair. He wore dark suits and delivered his monologue framed by EFTA01135293 somber wood paneling and potted plants, a decor better suited to a personal-injury law firm. So when that veneer of blithe professional bonhomie finally dissolved, it was touching and disconcerting to see him shakily say, "This has been the greatest 22 years of my life."Mr. Crystal told him, "More than anyone I know, you love being a comedian." And certainly, few have pursued that career so single-mindedly. Mr. Crystal reminded his host than when Mr. Leno was an aspiring comedian in the 197os, the only decorative touch in his apartment was a poster of the comedian Robert Klein over Mr. Leno's bed. A farewell tribute on television has its advantages: The honoree gets to hear the eulogies and witness a preview of the funeral. But there is also a cost: Mr. Leno will be around the next day to see how quickly the mourners mop their tears and the cortege moves on. That's perhaps why he chose to echo the signoff of his predecessor Mr. Carson, saying "I bid you all a heartfelt good night." It's not as unnervingly final as goodbye. Like economist Paul Krugman who in an op-ed in the New York Times — Delusions ofFailure pointed out, the Republican response to the State of the Union by Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Republican representative from Washington — was remarkable for its lack of content — I came to the same conclusion. A bit of uplifting personal biography, a check list of good things her party wants to happen with no hint of how it plans to make them happen. As usual she employed the same old tactic of singling out a constituent, "Bette in Spokane," who supposedly faced a $700-a-month premium hike after her policy was canceled, that "This law is not working." And right there we see a perfect illustration of just how Republicans are trying to deceive voters — and are, in the process, deceiving themselves. Everyone knows about the disastrous rollout, but that was months ago. Since then, health reform has been steadily making up lost ground. At his point enrollments in the health exchanges are only about a million below Congressional Budget Office projections, and rising faster than projected. So a best guess is that by the time 2014 enrollment closes on March 31, there will be more than six million Americans signed up through the exchanges, versus seven million projected. Sign-ups might even meet the projection. More so, Obamacare isn't in a "death spiral,"that Conservatives predicted in which only the old and sick are signing up, causing premiums to soon soar. Not according to the people who should know — the insurance companies. True, one company, Humana, says that the risk pool is worse than it expected. But others, including WellPoint and Aetna, are optimistic (which isn't a contradiction: different companies could be having different experiences). And the Kaiser Family Foundation, which has run the numbers, finds that even a bad risk pool would have only a minor effect on premiums. Now, some, perhaps many, of those signing up on the exchanges aren't newly insured; they're replacing their existing policies, either voluntarily or because those policies didn't meet the law's standards. But those standards are there for a reason — the same reason health insurance is now mandatory. Health reform won't work if people go uninsured, then sign up when they get sick. It also can't work if currently healthy people only buy fig-leaf insurance, which offers hardly any coverage. And what this means, in turn, is that while we don't know yet how many people will be newly insured under reform, we do know that even those who already had insurance are, on average, getting much EFTA01135294 better insurance. Since the goal of health reform was to make Americans more secure — to reduce their risk of being unable to afford needed health care, or of facing financial ruin if they get sick — the law is doing its job. As Krugman pointed out the story of Bette was misleading because when a local newspaper, The Spokesman-Review, contacted Bette Grenier, it discovered that the real story was very different from the image Ms. McMorris Rodgers conveyed. First of all, she was comparing her previous policy with one of the pricier alternatives her insurance company was offering — and she refused to look for cheaper alternatives on the Washington insurance exchange, declaring, "I wouldn't go on that Obama website." Even more important, all Ms. Grenier and her husband had before was a minimalist insurance plan, with a $10,000 deductible, offering very little financial protection. So yes, the new law requires that they spend more, but they would get far better coverage in return. If this is the best story Ms. McMorris Rodgers could come up with, she is either delusional, disingenuous or dishonest which is par the course, since just about every tale of health reform horror the M. has tried to peddle has similarly fallen apart once the details were revealed. The truth is that the campaign against Obamacare relies on misleading stories at best, and often on outright deceit. And who pays the price for this deceit? In many cases, American families. Although health care enrollment is actually going pretty well at this point, thousands and maybe millions of Americans have failed to sign up for coverage because they believe the false horror stories they keep hearing. But conservative politicians aren't just deceiving their constituents; they're also deceiving themselves. Right now, Republican political strategy seems to be to stall on every issue, and reap the rewards from Obamacare's inevitable collapse. Well, Obamacare isn't collapsing — it's recovering pretty well from a terrible start. And by the time that reality sinks in on the right, health reform will be irreversible. If it wasn't true it would be funny but there is a concerted effort by a group of the very rich supported by a bunch of wantabees to characterize the Top 1% as victims, being unjustly persecuted by the 47% and their enablers. An ugly outbreak of whiny victimhood is ravaging some of America's most exclusive Zip codes. It's as if some 1 percenters suddenly fear that old warning: "When the people shall have nothing more to eat, they will eat the rich." Last week, in a now-infamous letter to the Wall Street Journal, legendary San Francisco venture capitalist Tom Perkins compared "the progressive war on the American one percent, namely the `rich'" to the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany. He went so far as to warn that an anti-rich "Kristallnacht" may be coming, referring to the night in 1938 when Jewish-owned stores, homes, hospitals, schools and synagogues were smashed throughout Germany and Austria. As evidence, Perkins cited the Occupy movement; the fact that some people resent how Silicon Valley tech workers have driven up real estate prices and how they ride to work in special buses; and the "demonization of the rich embedded in virtually every word of our local newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle." He cited the Chronicle's having called novelist Danielle Steel a "snob" despite her charity work. He neglected to mention that Steel is his former wife. Perkins later apologized for the Kristallnacht reference but stuck to the rest of his thesis. He told Bloomberg TV that EFTA01135295 the solution to inequality is lower taxes, said he understands his critics because "I have members of my own family in trailer parks, not immediate relatives but family," and added, "The fact that everyone now hates me is part of the game." The whole episode could be easily dismissed. If I had a dollar for every crank letter to the editor that gets published, be as rich as Perkins and maybe as delusional. But on Thursday, the Wall Street Journal weighed in with an editorial headlined "Perkinsnacht." The newspaper wholeheartedly endorsed Perkins's thesis — that there is what he called "a rising tide of hatred of the successful one percent" — while expressing reservations only about his "unfortunate, albeit provocative" language. As a result, this week in The Washington Post, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, Eugene Robinson wrote and op-ed — The 196 as victims? That's rich! — Retorting that, "I know several members of the Journal's editorial board personally, and while we often disagree, it's not as if they are raving lunatics. They are just believers in capitalism (which is great) and trickle-down economic policy (which by now should be thoroughly discredited). So I began to wonder: Why does the national conversation we're beginning to have about inequality make some conservatives take leave of their senses? Why does it make them spout nonsense about personal vilification and the abuse of government power?" You have to wonder what kind of gall that these defenders of the Top i% have when they claim victimization and oppression of this most privileged group whom have currently have 40% of the entire wealth of the country and have reaped 6o% of the income of the country since the recession of 2009 five years ago, while fighting every policy designed to lessen inequality. Tax cuts and deregulation have dominated federal policy since the 198os; during this time, inequality has spiraled out of control. If conservatives have nothing better to sell than more tax cuts and more deregulation, it's no wonder that people are tuning in to what the other side has to say. Income tax rates for the highest earners remain quite low, in historical terms, while earnings on capital gains — including some "gains" that look a lot like regular income — have been taxed at a measly 15 or 20 percent. Advocating that taxes be raised for the wealthy is not a personal attack on anyone; that includes you, Mr. Perkins, and Ms. Steel as well. It is a policy proposal. No, it wouldn't solve all the government's fiscal problems. But yes, it would provide significant revenue while making our tax scheme more progressive and, in the eyes of most people, more fair. And yes, fairness counts. Robinson: The fabulously wealthy need love, too. But they'll get more of it if they stop congratulating themselves for all their hard work and realize that poor people work hard, too, sometimes at two or three jobs, and struggle to put food on the table. Relax, Mr. Perkins, they're not coming for you. They're waiting for non-special buses to take them to the grocery store. Not to worry. The hoi polloi would much rather have a Big Mac — and also a job that pays a living wage, with sick leave, health insurance, vacation time and retirement. There was a time when even ri