EFTA01181957.pdf

From: Gregory Brown To: undisclosed-recipients:; Bee: [email protected] Subject: Greg Brown's Weekend Reading and Other Things.... 11/04/12 Date: Sun, 04 Nov 2012 20:05:21 +0000 Attachments: The_No Agenda Myth_Bill Keller_NYT October 28,2012.pdf; Who Gas_Cred for the Ifecovery_David Leoncardt_NYT October_26,2012.pdf; Medicaid on the —Balrotfaul_Krugman Nfr October_28,_1.012.pdf; A vote fi; tire Future orfor_the_past ilarokr Meyerson TWP_October 30,_2012.pdf; MTchaeT Bomterg_Endorsement of FresidenT Obamafiov 1,2012.pdi; Nonpartisan_Tax_Report WithdravTCAfter_G.5.P. Protest_N'T November 1,_2012.pdf; Data Show Weacening_in_Euro_Zone_Economy_bavidiolly,Sielissa_Edify_NYT_Octo ber_10,_2012.pdf; Romney_Versus_the_Automakers_NYT_Editorial_October 31,_2012.pdf; Winner-Take- All Politics_Moyers & Companyianuary_13-November:2,_2012.pdf; Can_Romney_Lie Ills_\vay_To The Presidency,_Dan Payne November_2,2012.pdf; China's_consumerled_growth_fhe ftconomist_Octobe; 20,2-012.pdf; Liberty_to Lie_Charles_Blow NY? November 1,_20apdf; Why_the5hill_on_climate_ch;nge_ffugene_Roi;nson_TWP_October_18,_2012.pdf Dear Friends First of all, I ask that everyone pray and do whatever you can to help the people and families who have lost love ones, their homes, businesses, jobs and possessions. As Chris Matthews said on Thursday in his summary on HARDBALL WITH CHRIS MATTHEWS — "in politics there is rain and then there is sunshine and this week super-storm Sandy sucked the oxygen out of the room/the Romney presidential campaign," as the devastation that Hurricane Sandy brought to much of the Northeast -- in lost lives, lost homes and lost business -- brought the stakes of Tuesday's presidential election into sharp contrast, especially when voters were reminded that during the Republican Primary, Mitt Romney suggested that FEMA be outsourced to the states and the private sector. When on Monday, at the height of the storm, the only federal government agency that was open was FEMA, while the rest of the government was closed. Being in New York on 9/11 and actually at a meeting in the World Trade Center the day before, as well as having a number of friends who lost love ones, I remember how the country pulled together and reminiscent of what makes America great. As such, I hope that Hurricane Sandy also brings out the best of America again. Whether you are religious or not, I urge everyone to pray for the victims of this latest weather tragedy and do whatever you can to help those in need. In an op-ed piece in the New York Times, David Books said that although House Republicans have been intransigent, President Obama could have isolated them, building a governing center-left majority with an unorthodox agenda. But this is as naive as believing that Boston Red Sox's fans will support the New York Yankees in a World Series, when Republican Minority Leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell said that Republicans should make it their number one priority the make Barrack Obama a one-term President. Take The Des Moines Register, Iowa's largest and most influential paper. They endorsed Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996, Al Gore in 2000, John Kerry in 2004, and Barack Obama in 2008. But this year, they endorsed Romney. Why? In the end, they said, it came down to a simple test. "Which candidate couldforge the compromises in Congress to achieve these goals? When the question isframed in those terms, Mitt Romney emerges the stronger candidate." Mitch McConnell and John Boehner's strategy worked. As they show, the Republican strategy to deny the president any cooperation and make his Washington a depressing and dysfunctional place has done Obama enormous political damage. EFTA01181957 The result is phrased in terms of "partisan gridlock," as if both parties were equally extreme. But they aren't. This is, in reality, all about appeasing the hard right of the Republican Party. If you want an example of what I'm talking about, consider the remarkable — in a bad way — editorial in which The Des Moines Register endorsed Mr. Romney. The paper acknowledged that Mr. Obama's signature economic policy, the 2009 stimulus, was the right thing to do. It also acknowledged that Mr. Obama tried hard to reach out across the partisan divide, but was rebuffed. Yet it endorsed his opponent anyway, offering some half-hearted support for Romneynomics, but mainly asserting that Mr. Romney would be able to work with Democrats in a way that Mr. Obama has not been able to work with Republicans. Why? Well, the paper claims — as many of those making this argument do — that, in office, Mr. Romney would be far more centrist than anything he has said in the campaign would indicate. (And the notion that he has been lying all along is supposed to be a point in hisfavor?) But mostly it just takes it for granted that Democrats would be more reasonable with the Democratics. While it's true that President Romney could expect more cooperation from congressional Republicans, in the long term, a vote against Obama on these grounds is a vote for more of this kind of gridlock. Politicians do what wins them elections. If this strategy wins Republicans the election, they'll employ it next time they face a Democratic president, too, and congressional Democrats will use it against the next Republicans. Rewarding the minority for doing everything in their power to make the majority fail sets up disastrous incentives for the political system. As David Brooks pointed out -- "No one isfair to President Obama. People grade him against tougher standards than any other politician. But his innate ability justifies that high standard. These are the standards he properly setfor himself. If re-elected, he'd befreefrom politics. It'd be interesting to see if he returns to his earlier largeness." Example: When people say they wish Obama had embraced the Simpson- Bowles deficit-reduction plan, they don't mean the specific details of that proposal. When he does things that they would normally applaud, such as making the decision that killed Bin Ladden, overthrowing Qaddifi without putting boots on the ground, instituting policies that reversed the free-fall of the country's economy or backing the bailout that saved the US auto industry, they often find reasons why it wasn't because of him or his policies with many Democrats and Independents saying that he didn't do enough or didn't push for harder terms. There is a true double standard in how his opponents, the media and even Democrates judge President Obama. Why? There may be reasons to vote for Mitt Romney for president. But if you want the political system to work more smoothly, endorsing McConnell and Boehner's strategy over the last four years should not be one of them. Especially when the Republican Party is actively exorcising moderates out of their party, as this is further evidence that its leaders (and supporters like Grover Norqust, Karl Rove, the Tea Party and many on Wall Street) have no intention of being bipartisan or tolerant of anyone else's views, in spite of facts, good governance or the needs of the people. Along with unlimited money used by special interest groups to target politicians that disagree with their issues and support candidates who further their agendas and the flagrant use of the race card against President Obama, the ugliest new normal in the 2012 election is the outright lies, reversals, contradictions, contortions and distortions that are so numerous, so cynical, so lacking in respect for voters, that we are now mirroring the totalitarian regimes and banana republics that we use to make fun of just twenty years ago. Whether you are a Republican, Democrat or Independent, the onslaught of lies in Politics should be repugnant, unacceptable and offensive to every American. What will be interpreted, should Mitt Romney defeat President Obama in Tuesday's election? Whether or not people agree, vote because of or feel racist, both people of color in America and many others around the world will believe that President Obama defeat was because he is black. And with good reason. Starting with the integration movement in the 1940s and 1950s, the promise of change by the election of a young President Kennedy and the delivery of those promises by President Lyndon Johnson, who in 1964 defeated Sen. Barry Goldwater, widely regarded as a founder of the modern conservative movement, Goldwater entered the presidential race as an outspoken defender of "states rights" and a fierce opponent of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. A Romney takeover of the White House might well rival Andrew Johnson's ascendancy to the presidency after Abraham Lincoln's assassination in 1865. EFTA01181958 Johnson stood by as Southern states enacted "black codes," which restricted rights of freed blacks and prevented blacks from voting. Romney stood by last year as Republican-controlled state legislatures passed voter- identification laws, making it harder for people of color, senior citizens and people with disabilities to exercise their fundamental right to vote. While Goldwater's anti-civil-rights stance earned him the support of Deep South states, making him the first Republican since Reconstruction to carry Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, Georgia and Louisiana. This same message was advanced by Richard Nixon in 1988 when he coined the phrase, "the silent majority" which everyone knew didn't include Blacks, Jews and Gays, and today Latinos. Abraham Lincoln was not a beloved president across the nation at the time of his death. To white Southerners he was often described as "a ruthless Attila bent upon the destruction of a superior civilization." In his April 1876 oration in memory of Lincoln, Frederick Douglass said, "Few great public men have ever been the victims of fiercer denunciation than Abraham Lincoln was during his administration. Reproaches came thick andfast upon him from within andfrom without, andfivm opposite quarters." In some quarters, the hatred of Lincoln bordered on fanaticism; similar sentiments are in evidence against Obama. A Romney win would be worrisome, however, because of his strong embrace of states rights and his deep mistrust of the federal government — sentiments Andrew Johnson shared. And we know what that Johnson did once in office. The next president will make appointments to the Justice Department, State Department, the Pentagon; the departments of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services; the Securities and Exchange Commission; the Treasury Department; and probably a Supreme Court justice or two. And there will be political jobs galore to fill. With a Romney administration, that means recruiting people who hate the federal government. So where will Romney turn for help? Why, from those who helped get him where he is today: John Sununu, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Karl Rove, the Koch Brothers, the neocons and the Fox news crew, to name a few. If Romney prevails, who will dictate what policies a Romney administration pursues? Certainly not Mitt Romney, a panderer and flip-flopper whose convictions don't extend far beyond getting elected. Mitt Romney could be the next Andrew Johnson.... So thank God with just two days left that odds-makers give President Obama a four-to-one (80%) chance of winning the election..... With this said, I still believe in Obama's exhortation in 2004, "There is not a liberal America and a conservative America — there is the United States ofAmerica. There is not a black America and a white America and Latino America and Asian America — there's the United States ofAmerica." One of the biggest problems in America is the growing economic inequality. In recent years, the rich have seen their wealth grow dramatically while the poor and middle class have basically flatlined. It's no accident. Our politicians — on both sides of the aisle — fell under the spell of corporate dollars and re-engineered our economic system to favor the wealthy. The dark green line shows the income trajectory for the top 1 percent since 1970, while the light green line shows the bottom 90 percent. Click the orange triangles to learn about critical turning points that helped create the skewed system we have today. hup://billmoyers.com/content/the- triggers-of-economic-inequality/ In 1970 to top 1% made 318,659 and 905,570 in 2008 down from 988,955 a year earlier while the incomes of the bottom 90% $30,073 in 1970 and $30,981in 2008. You have to ask why has this happened to truly understand what happen. The best policies money can buy. This is not republican or democratic ineptitude. This is the influence of corporate cash on politicians of both stripes. They call it lobbying....rather than bribery. It's plain and simple bribery. Members of Congress will screw the majority as long as the corporations and wealthy keep sending in those checks. In today's world having a Capital Gains tax half the rate of earned income is bad. In the 1970s we were in a period of sustained and substantial inflation previously unprecedented. Workers for the first time started to see Cost-of-Living raises become a standard expectation, as well as indexing things like Social Security. People -- not just the rich, but relatively ordinary investors and businessmen -- were being taxed on "phantom" capital gains that were largely attributed to sustained, higher then ordinary inflation. In the days before we had EFTA01181959 TurboTax to figure out such stuff easily we simply cut the Capital Gains rate in half to try and reduce the tax burden caused by inflation. The problem is we never eliminated it once we brought inflation back down to a sustained and predictable 2.5%-3%; or adopted a more accurate but complex calculation that assessed capital gains by including into the basis the annual inflation by a standard measure like the Consumer Price Index. The top Income tax rate was 70% in 1968 when Richard Nixon was President, and it was also 70% during the Johnson and Carter Presidencies, and the Capital Gains tax rate was 42% too. Isn't it odd how over 92% of all US Federal debt was incurred since the Reagan tax cuts for the wealthy? How many permanent jobs did those tax cuts create? 100 million jobs in China??? Here's a quote from The Washington Post Online (Ezra Klein, March 5,2012): "In the first year of the recovery [2010], 93 percent of all income gains went to the top 1 percent." and 37% of the income gains went to the top 1/100th of 1%. These percents and proportions blur the picture somewhat, so here are my calculations and my translations into everyday terms. The average household in the top 1/100th of 1% (the top 1% of the top I%) received 52,329 times as much in income gains as the average household in the bottom 99%. The average household in the bottom 99% is not poor, relatively speaking, but right in the middle — the middle of the middle class. Put another way, on a scale familiar to most of us (at least the first figure!): For every $1000 in income gains the average household in the bottom 99% received, the average household in the top 1% of the top 1% received more than $52,000,000 (yes, just to confirm, $52 million). The average household in the remainder of the top I% (the bottom 99% of the top 1%) received only about $800,000. Stripping away most of the words: - Avg. gain, the bottom 99W $1,000 - Avg. gain, bottom 99% of top 1W $800,000 - Avg. gain, top 1% of top 1W $52,000,000 Put yet another way, roughly translating households into number of people (based on an estimated U.S. population of 310 million in 2010, with minor rounding off of the larger number): If you take the total dollar amount of the income gains from 2010 — 31,000 people "earned" more than five times as much money (in terms of income gains) as the remaining 310,000,000 people. Any way you look at it, the numbers are beyond breathtaking. Here's a final look: The majority of the top 1% (the bottom 99% of the top 1%) certainly have a beef with the top 1% of the top 1% — the top I% of the top 1% received income gains 65 times greater than the gains the remainder of the top 1% received. But if they, the merely wealthy bottom 99% of the top 1%, have a legitimate beef against the ultra- wealthy, the rest of us should have a cow. Or a whole herd of cattle, given the magnitude of the inequality. In a consumer based economy, you need to have consumers to grow the economy, and tax breaks favoring the rich under Reganomics have not worked. Every billionaire equals 1000 millionaires, and Warren Buffet's wealth equals 50,000 millionaires. It is easy to believe that 50,000 millionaires will spend more money on new houses, cars, telephone services, restaurants, clothes than Warren Buffet and his family. Extrapolate this by 1/10 and you have to believe that 500,000 people with an extra $100,000 extra, will definitely buy more houses, cars, cellphones, clothes, food, etc than either Warren Buffet or the 50,000 millions. As the saying goes, a rising tide lifts all boats, when a few large boats only serve and help a few people. Weekend Reading As I wrote in the September 23, 2012 Weekend Reading more than a month before superstorm Sandy: In Peter Glieck's article in The Huffington Post, The Very Real Threat ofSea-levelRise to the United States he says, "Climate change is no laughing matter. Uncontrolled, human-caused climate change is a real threat to the United States economy, hundreds of millions of Americans, and their local communities. The increasingly extreme weather of the past few years is a sign of things to come: rising temperatures, changing rainfall patterns, increasing storm and drought frequency and intensity, changing vegetation, and rapidly disappearing Arctic ice. There are plenty of remaining uncertainties - such as the speed of the changes, their extent and severity, the costs of suffering impacts versus the costs of adapting to or preventing them -- and the scientific community continues to work hard to understand and reduce these uncertainties. But one of the most certain and devastating EFTA01181960 consequences for the United States is going to be the very climate impact that Romney chose to mock: rising seas." Sea levels are rising for two reasons: thermal expansion and an increase in the volume of the ocean. As the planet warms, so do the oceans, and warmer water takes up more space than colder water. As ice in glaciers and the ice caps on Antarctica and Greenland melt, the volume of the oceans grows. And sea levels have been increasing an average of over 3 mm per year -- more than 50 percent faster than over the past century. Indeed, sea levels are actually rising at the upper range of model projections, and there is growing concern that scientists have conservatively underestimated the speed at which some of the massive ice volumes in Greenland may deteriorate and melt. There is so much ice on Greenland alone, that were it to melt into the oceans, sea levels would rise nearly 24 feet. A global increase in sea level of a meter (more than three feet) by the year 2100 is now "widely accepted as a serious possibility" and even the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers recommends planning for as much as 1.5 meters (nearly five feet). The risks to our populations and economies posed by this threat are clear. The United States has a vast and vulnerable coastline. More than half the nation's population lives in coastal counties. Nearly four million people already live within three feet of today's high-tide level, with hundreds of billions of dollars of infrastructure at risk. Residential structures in today's 100-year floodplain of just New York City and Nassau, Suffolk, and Westchester counties already have a total estimated value of over $125 billion. New York's Sea Level Rise Task Force identified a wide range of growing threats associated with sea-level rise, including storm surges, inundation and flooding, rising water tables, salt water intrusion to groundwater, and coastal erosion. And adaptation won't be cheap. Many sea-level rise impacts will simply be unavoidable, and building coastal defenses for those things that can be protected will impose vast costs on society. Approximately 1,100 miles of new or modified coastal protection structures will be needed just along the Pacific Coast and San Francisco Bay to protect against expected increases in coastal flooding at a cost of tens of billions of dollars. Our only climate options are mitigate, adapt, or suffer, and the only real question is what the future mix will be. The most important thing to do is slow and eventually stop human-caused climate change, and thus slow and eventually stop additional sea-level rise. But even reducing greenhouse gas emissions will not prevent significant rises from occurring in the coming years, because of the gases we've already put in the atmosphere, with a concomitant increase in both severe coastal flooding and the need for costly adaptation measures. While reducing the risks of sea-level rise will not be easy or cheap, it will be far harder and more expensive if the people we elect mock the risks we face, or even worse, fail to act. As Paul Krugman points out in an op-ed in the New York Times, Medicaid on the Ballot, "there's a lot we don't know about what Mitt Romney would do if he won. He refuses to say which tax loopholes he would close to make up for $5 trillion in tax cuts; his economic "plan" is an empty shell. But one thing is clear: If he wins, Medicaid — which now covers more than 5o million Americans, and which President Obama would expand further as part of his health reform — will face savage cuts. Estimates suggest that a Romney victory would deny health insurance to about 45 million people who would have coverage if he lost, with two-thirds of that difference due to the assault on Medicaid." Although Medicaid is generally viewed as health care for the non-elderly poor, Medicaid has been more successful at controlling costs than any other major part of the nation's health care system. Also most Medicaid beneficiaries are relatively young (because older people are covered by Medicare) and relatively poor (because eligibility for Medicaid, unlike Medicare, is determined by need). And more than nine million Americans benefit from both Medicare and Medicaid, and elderly or disabled beneficiaries account for the majority of Medicaid's costs. As such, the great majority of Medicaid beneficiaries are in working families. For those who get coverage through the program, Medicaid is a much-needed form of financial aid. As Krugman points out, "it is also, quite literally, a lifesaver. Mr. Romney has said that a lack of health EFTA01181961 insurance doesn't kill people in America; oh yes, it does, and states that expand Medicaid coverage show striking drops in mortality. " While there's a widespread perception, gleefully fed by right-wing politicians and propagandists, that Medicaid has "runaway" costs, the truth is just the opposite. Yes, costs grew rapidly in 2009-10, as a depressed economy made more Americans eligible for the program, but the longer-term reality is that Medicaid is significantly better at controlling costs than the rest of our health care system. Partly by having much lower administrative costs than private insurers. It's always worth remembering that when it comes to health care, it's the private sector, not government programs, that suffers from stifling, costly bureaucracy. Also, Medicaid is much more effective at bargaining with the medical-industrial complex. Consider, for example, drug prices. Last year a government study compared the prices that Medicaid paid for brand-name drugs with those paid by Medicare Part D — also a government program, but one run through private insurance companies, and explicitly forbidden from using its power in the market to bargain for lower prices. The conclusion: Medicaid pays almost a third less on average. That's a lot of money. Is Medicaid perfect? Of course not Most notably, the hard bargain it drives with health providers means that quite a few doctors are reluctant to see Medicaid patients. Yet given the problems facing American health care — sharply rising costs and declining private-sector coverage — Medicaid has to be regarded as a highly successful program. It provides good if not great coverage to tens of millions of people who would otherwise be left out in the cold, and as I said, it does much right to keep costs down. By any reasonable standard, this is a program that should be expanded, not slashed — and a major expansion of Medicaid is part of the Affordable Care Act. Why, then, are Republicans so determined to do the reverse, and kill this success story? You know the answers. Partly it's their general hostility to anything that helps the 47 percent — those Americans whom they consider moochers who need to be taught self-reliance. Partly it's the fact that Medicaid's success is a reproach to their anti-government ideology. " We should ask why the Congressional Research Service has withdrawn an economic report that found no correlation between top tax rates and economic growth, a central tenet of conservative economy theory, after Senate Republicans raised concerns about the paper's findings and wording. The decision, made in late September against the advice of the agency's economic team leadership, drew almost no notice at the time. Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, cited the study a week and a half after it was withdrawn in a speech on tax policy at the National Press Club. But it could actually draw new attention to the report, which questions the premise that lowering the top marginal tax rate stimulates economic growth and job creation. Although Republicans have not said whether they had asked the research service, a nonpartisan arm of the Library of Congress, to take the report out of circulation, but they were clear that they protested its tone and findings. Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said Mr. McConnell and other senators "raised concerns about the methodology and other flaws." This pressure applied to the research service comes amid a broader Republican effort to raise questions about research and statistics that were once trusted as nonpartisan and apolitical. For more information please see the Jonathan Weisman article in the New York 'limes, Nonpartisan Tax Report Withdrawn Alter M. Protest. Further evidence that the economies of the Euro zone is worsening, unemployment set another record in September, official data showed, with 18.49 million people out of work in a weakening economy. The jobless rate in the 17-nation currency union ticked up to 11.6 percent from the 11.5 percent in August, as 146,000 more people were classified as unemployed, Eurostat, the statistical agency of the European Union, reported from Luxembourg. See the article in the New York Times by David Jolly and Melissa Eddy, Data Show Weakening in Euro Zone Economy. Also please feel free to see:Understanding the European Crisis Now in the New York Times as it explains that Countries with too much sovereign debt have increasingly is finding it difficult to raise the money needed at affordable rates in the financial markets. At the same time, banks in many of these countries have come under pressure as deposits have fled to countries with stronger economies. Because the banking systems are much larger than the economies of their home countries, the governments lack the ready resources to prop up banks in trouble. And until recently, Spain's sovereign debt was roughly the same as Germany's as a percentage of economic output, according to the International Monetary Fund. But Spain has Europe's highest unemployment rate and is once again in recession. With its banks deteriorating, Spain has been EFTA01181962 forced to seek assistance for them from elsewhere in Europe. See: http://www.nytimes.corrilinteractive/2012/06/14/business/global/understanding-the-european-crisis.html? emc=etal • France: Debt/G.D.P.: 86.0% — Unemployment, March 2012: 10.0% — S. & P. Rating: AA+ • Germany: Debt/G.D.P.: 81.2% — Unemployment, March 2012: 5.6% — S. & P. Rating: AAA • Greece: Debt/G.D.P.: 165.3% — Unemployment, March 2012: 21.7% — S. & P. Rating: CCC • Italy: Debt/G.D.P.: 120.1% — Unemployment, March 2012: 9.8% - S. & P. Rating: BBB+ • Portugal: Debt/G.D.P.: 107.8% — Unemployment, March 2012: 15.3% — S. & P. Rating: BB • Spain: Debt/G.D.P.: 68.5% — Unemployment, March 2012: 24.1% — S. & P. Rating: BBB- As many of you know, i am a big fan of Bill Moyers and as a result of Hurricane Sandy's impact on PBS's offices and studio this week's show on PBS was a repeat of a January 13, 2012 show with Jacob Hacker & Paul Pierson exploring how America's vast inequality didn't just happen, it's been politically engineered. This Election Day, issues of money, influence and "winner-take-all politics" are more important than ever. Moyers & Company dives into one of the most important and controversial issues of our time: How Washington and Big Business colluded to make the super-rich richer and turn their backs on the rest of us. Bill's guests — Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson, authors of Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer — And Turned Its Back on the Middle Class, argue that America's vast inequality is no accident, but in fact has been politically engineered. How, in a nation as wealthy as America, can the economy simply stop working for people at large, while super-serving those at the very top? Through exhaustive research and analysis, the political scientists Hacker and Pierson — whom Bill regards as the "Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson" of economics — detail important truths behind a 30-year economic assault against the middle class. Who's the culprit? "American politics did it— far more than we would have believed when we started this research," Hacker explains. "What government has done and not done, and the politics that produced it, is really at the heart of the rise of an economy that has showered huge riches on the very, very, very well off" Bill considers their book the best he's seen detailing "how politicians rewrote the rules to create a winner-take-all economy that favors the 1% over everyone else, putting our once and future middle class in peril." BILL MOYERS: "Waking up is right. Waking up to the reality that inequality matters. It matters because what we're talking about is what it takes to live a decent life. Ifyou get sick without health coverage, inequality matters. Ifyou're the only breadwinner and out of work, inequality matters. Ifyour local public library closes down and you can't afford to buy books on your own, inequality matters. If budget cuts mean your child has to pay to play on the school basketball team or to sing in the chorus or march in the band, inequality matters. Ifyou lose your job as you're about to retire, inequality matters. And if thefinancial system collapses and knocks the propsfrom beneath your pension, inequality matters. I grew up in a working classfamily. We were among the poorest in town, but I was rich in public goods. I went to a good public school, played sandlot ball in a good public park, had access to a good public library, drove down a good public highway to a good public college, all made possible by people I never met. There was an unwritten bargain among the generations -- we didn't all get the same deal, but we did get civilization." With America castigating China for currency manipulation, the country suffering a stagnant economy for the first time in more than two decades, (improving the lives of hundreds of millions and relying more and more on investment for growth,) the country has started to address these problems by moving from a reliance on export, to a consumption based economy. In the first three quarters, consumption accounted for 55 per cent of growth, while investment contributed 50.5 per cent. With external demand weak, net exports actually subtracted 5.5 per cent, according to data from the national statistics bureau. See the article in The Economist Magazine, China's consumer-led growth. EFTA01181963 Obviously this is too early to give China a clean bill of health. The economy's strong performance at the end of the third quarter was in fact fuelled by a jump in investment, illustrating that consumption is still far from strong enough to power growth on its own. Retail sales, the best indicator of overall consumption, have been resilient, rising 14.2 per cent year-on-year in September. However, that has not made up for a deep slump in housing construction. Fearing that growth was on the verge of slowing too much, the government did what it does best: it cranked up investment. The approach has been two-pronged, as the central government has approved a series of large infrastructure projects since May. Meanwhile, the central bank has loosened monetary policy by cutting interest rates twice and injecting liquidity in money markets to ensure that these projects could obtain financing. Investment in railways surged 78 per cent year-on-year and investment on roads climbed 38 per cent. But what will this mean for the US, as China's need for foreign markets will be less and less, as well as their need to fund the economies of their major buying countries. As Eugene Robinson asked in The Washington Post this week, Why the chill on climate change? Why has Climate Change been ignored by both candidates, when it is obvious to the blindest of the blind, the world's climates are rapidly and drastically changing. And whether or not you believe that man has added to this phenomenon shouldn't matter when both Presidential candidates suggest that they would go to war on the presumption that Iran may get a nuclear weapon. If there is a slight chance that manmade erosion of the ozone has contributed to the current climate changes that are increasingly producing more and more major storms, eroding the polar ice caps, causing the temperatures of Oceans to rise and raising the level of the oceans to the point that during Hurricane/Tropical Storm Sandy that sea levels in New York City reached about 14 feet above the average low-tide mark; more than 9 feet above the average high; almost 3 feet above the last record, set in 1821. A popular myth about sea level rise is that it happens slowly, giving people plenty of time to react. Or there's the blockbuster legend of a thousand-foot wave sweeping Manhattan and changing the world all at once. Both are unlikely. Hurricane Sandy showed us how sea-level rise actually works. It comes up in spikes that top historic highs and then fall back to normal. The Marshall Islands experienced such a high in 2011 when La Nifia swamped parts of the capital city of Majuro at high tide. Hurricane Katrina wreaked a similar catastrophe on the gulf coast. In every case, sea levels jump for a moment, setting records, and then fall back. The real danger here is not the surge itself, but the return to normal. We record a new high-water mark, but we call the crisis over because the waters have receded, our waterfronts are back, and we return to business convinced the worst is gone. In other words, we forget. We live in a time where people forget that there are serious consequences to our actions. We live in a country where voter ignore that policies of lax regulations allowed Wall Street and the Big Banks to create transactions tha cause the world economies to go into free-fall -- major recession, with the US on the verge of a great depression. We live at a time where science is ignored and castigated if it doesn't support a certain ideology. We live in a country that accepts cuts in education, healthcare, infrastructure and the safety net for the poor and elderly. We live in an country that ignores the fact that trickle-down economics has created the largest economic inequality, when everyone knows that a rising tide lifts all boats, which was the case in the 1950s and 1960s when America created the greatest Middle Class in history, that was the envy of the rest of the world. So unless we demand our politicians to address these serious systemic problems, like all other great societies in the past, the American Dream with wither away. Politics Like everyone who is seriously following the Presidential Election I am puzzled about who are these Undecided Voters, because if they don't know the differences between President Obama and Governor Romney's agendas by now they never will and probably should just flip a coin. As Bill Keller points out in an article in the New EFTA01181964 York Times, The No Agenda Myth, by now voters should know what both candidates "say that they" are going to do as their philosophical differences are great, even though neither will explain the details of their plans. If Romney is elected we can fairly expect a rollback of universal health care in favor of the rough marketplace, and at least a partial dismantling of regulations on banks, extractive industries and whatever other industries squeal about job-killing red tape. We can expect a lowering of the safety net, especially a retrenchment of Medicaid and a marketization of Medicare. His deficit plan will rely on draconian spending cuts and on the supply-side superstition that tax cuts automatically produce growth. Romney will be somewhat more enthusiastic about oil and coal, and will put less faith in renewables. The military will not want. You can expect another Scalia or two on the Supreme Court, the defunding of Planned Parenthood and a social agenda aimed at appeasing the evangelical base, mainly by letting the states decide. On foreign policy Romney has gravitated toward Obama's caution, and I tend to believe him, if only because whoever is president will have his hands too full at home to embark on a war in Iran or Syria as long as it is avoidable. Most of all, it is difficult to believe that a President Romney will be able to beat back its neocon supporter who believe in gunboat diplomacy or Grover Norquest's no-tax supply side proponents to generate additional and badly need new revenues. With Obama, we can anticipate that the unfinished business of universal health care and the re-regulation of the Wall Street casino will be finished. We can expect investments in education, infrastructure and innovation, followed by a gradual, balanced attack on deficits that includes higher taxes on the wealthiest. (And this time he will have a hefty stick to apply to a recalcitrant Congress: the fiscal cliff, which forces Congress to compromise or share the blame for the ensuing havoc.) We can expect the Pentagon, after winding down two wars, to bank a peace dividend. If Obama is re-elected, especially if he is elected with substantial Latino support, we can expect that he will try to deliver on his postponed promise of comprehensive immigration reform. Most of all, we can expect an Obama Administration to do whatever it can to bolster the country's safety net, and a more nuanced foreign policy. So after four debates, thousands of hours of pundit's analysis, and hundreds of millions of dollars in negative ads, especially in the nine swing states, if there are still undecided voters, it is only because they want to be interviewed on television. ****** Recently there has been good news concerning the economy. Unemployment has finally dropped below the dreaded 8% and the latest GDP figures are a okay 2%, which is twice that of the UK and larger than almost every European country with the exception of Germany, Poland and possibly Iceland, health care costs have slowed and consumer confidence has reached a post-recession high. So as David Leonhardt asked in his article this week in the New York Times, Who Gets Credit for the Recovery? Obviously the winner is likely to be able to claim the mantle of the president who brought the country out of a long economic slump, as Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan were previously able to do. Both sides know as much, too. And should President Obama lose the election, he and his aides will be extremely upset that President Romney will be able to take credit for a recovery. Every presidential election affects the country's future, and it's silly to claim that this election is more significant than any other. Yet the prospect that the president who takes office in January will have the economic winds at his back — that he can claim his party is the solution and the opposition was the problem. The second fiscal cliff, $600 billion in spending cuts and tax increases scheduled to take effect on Jan. 1 will enable whomever the president is to shape the future of American government without having to make a grand legislative push. Mr. Obama or Mr. Romney will help determine whether taxes on the affluent rise and what happens to spending on defense, education, scientific research and alternative energy. Often overlook is that the Obama Administration has produced a more significant set of policies than any Democratic presidency in a EFTA01181965 half-century. And an assertive Republican Party has promised to undo many of those policies if it wins. Mr. Romney could try to extend and expand the age of Reagan — rather than to start a new period in domestic policy, as Mr. Obama has done. For Mr. Obama, a second term with a recovering economy would lock in the policies of his first term. It would allow him to make the case that the Democrats' economic strategy was far superior to the Republicans', citing not only his own record but Mr. Clinton's strong economic record and the younger Mr. Bush's flawed one. In the broadest terms, Mr. Obama would try to fashion a response to the income slump of the last dozen years based around a more progressive tax code and government programs — investments, in his phrasing — meant to lift economic growth. Leonhardt: "Throughout much of the 2012 campaign, the debate and the stakes have seemed small, if not superficial. Mr. Obomo, in place of a clear second-term agenda, published a brochure in the last week that repackages previous proposals. Mr. Romney, in place of a clear first-term agenda, has released a budget plan that does not add up. They ore both exaggerating the near-term impact the election's outcome will have on the economy. The next president probably will not determine the fate of the economy in 2013. But the economy will help determine the next president's power to shape the country. Right now, there is good reason to be bullish about the extent of that power." As Harold Meyerson pointed out in a piece this week in The Washington Post, A vote for the future or for the post?, the 2012 presidential election is fundamentally a contest between our future and our past. Barack Obama's America is the America that will be; Mitt Romney's is the America that was. And the distance between the two is greater, perhaps, than in any election we've had since the Civil War. The demographic bases of the rival coalitions couldn't be more different. Monday's poll from the Pew Research Center is just the latest to show Obama with a decisive lead (in this case, 21 percentage points) among voters younger than 30. Obama's margin declines to six points among voters ages 30 through 44, and he breaks even with Romney among voters ages 45 through 64. Romney's home turf is voters 65 and older; among those, he leads Obama by 19 points. Nor is age the only metric through which we can differentiate our future from our past. The other is race, as the nation grows more racially diverse (or, more bluntly, less white) each year. While the 2000 Census put whites' share of the U.S. population at 69.1 percent, that share had declined to 63.7 percent in the 2010 Census, while the proportion of Hispanics rose from 12.5 percent to 16.3 percent. In raw numbers, total white population increased by just 1.2 percent during the decade, while the African American segment grew by 12.3 percent and the Hispanic share by 43 percent. Demographers predict that the white share of the U.S. population will fall beneath 50 percent in the 2050 Census. Rather than trying to establish a foothold among America's growing minorities, Romney and the Republicans have decided to forgo an appeal to Hispanic voters by opposing legislation that would grant legal status to undocumented immigrants brought here as children and by backing legislation that effectively requires Hispanics to carry documentation papers in certain states. Employing code words that paint blacks with the same brush, they have given up on the Black vote, suggesting that Blacks are only supporting the President because of race. Today's Republicans seek a majority through winning an ever-higher share of white voters. The Washington Post reported last week that its polling showed the greatest racial gap between the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates since the 1988 election, with Romney favored by 60 percent of white voters and Obama by 80 percent of minority voters (a figure that may prove low, if three-quarters of the Hispanic vote goes to Obama, as some other polls suggest it will). The problem for Republicans, of course, is that the minority vote is a far larger share of the total vote today than it was 24 years ago. By repeatedly estranging minorities and opposing social policies favored by the young, the Republicans have opted for a King Canute strategy: standing on the shore and commanding the tide to stop. Republicans with an eye toward the future, most notably George W. Bush and Karl Rove, have urged the party to embrace immigration reform, but EFTA01181966 the base is rabidly anti-immigrant and its antipathy is reinforced daily by talk radio hosts and Fox News chatterers who depict an America under siege by alien forces. Should Republicans prevail in this election and seek to build a more-than-one-term plurality, they will confront a stark choice: Either Romney must persuade his party to reverse its stance on immigration, or the party must seek to extend the scope of its voter-suppression efforts. Put another way, they must try to either accommodate the future or suppress it. Accommodation with diversity and modernity, however, is simply not part of the Republican DNA. Today's Republican Party has largely cornered the market on religious fundamentalists, even as the number of GOP scientists has dwindled (a 2009 Pew poll of scientists found that just 6 percent self-identified as Republicans, while 55 percent said they were Democrats). Many of the largest Republican funders come from economic sectors hardly distinguished by significant productivity increases or their contributions to mass prosperity (casino gambling, Wall Street), while Silicon Valley remains more Democratic turf. There are two Americas are facing off in next week's election. By their makeup, the Democrats are bound to move, if haltingly, into the future, while the Republicans parade proudly into the pre- New Deal past — some of it mythic, lots of it ugly. The differences could not be clearer. Echoing General Collin Powell, New York Mayor, Michael Bloomberg was the latest major Republican leader who crossed the line to endorse President Obama. Under the title, A Votefor a President to Lead on Climate Change. Citing that in the past 14 months two hurricanes have forced New York to evacuate neighborhoods -- something our city government had never done before. Evidence that our climate is changing. And while the increase in extreme weather in New York City and around the world -- should compel all elected leaders to take immediate action. Bloomberg — Leadership Is Needed to address the affects of climate change. This can't done alone. We need leadership from the White House -- and over the past four years, President Barack Obama has taken major steps to reduce our carbon consumption, including setting higher fuel-efficiency standards for cars and trucks. His administration also has adopted tighter controls on mercury emissions, which will help to close the dirtiest coal power plants (an effort I have supported through my philanthropy), which are estimated to kill 13,000 Americans a year. Bloomberg admonishes President Obama for not devoting time and effort to developed and sustain a coaliti