Runaway Greed Is Destroying America: Should There Be a Lid on How Much Someone Can Make?

 Today we take the idea of a minimum wage for granted. Who knows what tomorrow may bring?

February 9, 2012

Social decency, most Americans today would agree, demands a minimum wage, a floor that keeps working people out of dire privation. Does social decency also demand a “maximum wage,” an income ceiling that discourages wealth from dangerously concentrating?

Philosopher Felix Adler certainly thought so. We remember Adler today as the tireless reformer who led the national effort to end child labor in the early 1900s. Adler also founded the Ethical Culture movement and introduced the kindergarten concept into American education. Much less well known: Adler advanced America’s first serious maximum wage proposal.

The exploitation of workers young and old, Adler believed, generated grand private fortunes that exerted a “corrupting influence” on American politics. To curb that corruption, he proposed a steeply graduated income tax — with a 100 percent top rate at the point “when a certain high and abundant sum has been reached, amply sufficient for all the comforts and true refinements of life.”

This 100 percent top rate, Adler told a packed 1880 lecture hall in New York City, would leave with the wealthy individual “all that he can truly use for the humane purposes of life” and  tax away “only that which is to him merely a means of pomp and pride and power.”  READ MORE

Conservatism Thrives on Low Intelligence and Poor Information

There is plenty of research showing that low general intelligence in childhood predicts greater prejudice towards people of different ethnicity or sexuality in adulthood.

February 12, 2012

Self-deprecating, too liberal for their own good, today's progressives stand back and watch, hands over their mouths, as the social vivisectionists of the right slice up a living society to see if its component parts can survive in isolation. Tied up in knots of reticence and self-doubt, they will not shout stop. Doing so requires an act of interruption, of presumption, for which they no longer possess a vocabulary.

Perhaps it is in the same spirit of liberal constipation that, with the exception of Charlie Brooker, we have been too polite to mention the Canadian study published last month in the journal Psychological Science, which revealed that people with conservative beliefs are likely to be of low intelligence. Paradoxically it was the Daily Mail that brought it to the attention of British readers last week. It feels crude, illiberal to point out that the other side is, on average, more stupid than our own. But this, the study suggests, is not unfounded generalisation but empirical fact.

It is by no means the first such paper. There is plenty of research showing that low general intelligence in childhood predicts greater prejudice towards people of different ethnicity or sexuality in adulthood. Open-mindedness, flexibility, trust in other people: all these require certain cognitive abilities. Understanding and accepting others – particularly "different" others – requires an enhanced capacity for abstract thinking.  READ MORE

David Dayen: Mortgage Settlement Agreement Is Only An Agreement In Principle

 By Susie Madrak


David Dayen, who's done more than anyone to keep this mortgage settlement deal in the public eye and under the microscope, is horrified to discover that the deal announced this week doesn't actually exist in any tangible form. He calls it "a real failing on the part of the activists, who jumped at the opportunity to pontificate on the deal, without actually seeing the term sheet, which we know now in fact does not exist:"

Well, so much for my first “making chicken salad” option. We are more than 24 hours removed from the foreclosure fraud settlement and the terms have, shockingly, not been released. In fact, American Bankerreports that the terms will not be released before the filing of the settlement in federal court, because a document with actual terms does not yet exist.

More than a day after the announcement of a mammoth national mortgage servicing settlement, the actual terms of the deal still aren’t public. The website created for the national settlement lists the document as “coming soon.”

That’s because a fully authorized, legally binding deal has not been inked yet.
The implication of this is hard to say. Spokespersons for both the Iowa attorney general’s office and the Department of Justice both told American Banker that the actual settlement will not be made public until it is submitted to a court. A representative for the North Carolina attorney general downplayed the significance of the document’s non-final status, saying that the terms were already fixed.

“Once the documents are finalized, they’ll be posted to nationalmortgagesettlement.com,” the representative said in an email to American Banker.

Incidentally, why is nationalmortgagesettlement.com a dot-com, not a dot-gov? What’s going on here?This is incredible. The Administration, the AGs, everyone involved in this made a big show of an agreement reached on foreclosure fraud. But there is no piece of paper with the agreement on it. There’s no term sheet. There are just agreements in principle.There’s a HUGE difference between an agreement in principle and the actual terms.  READ MORE


Mortgage settlement agreement search

Bankruptcy Petition Reveals More Than 8000 Sexual Abuse Victims In Milwaukee Archdiocese

By Susie Madrak

I guess I don't have to point out the obvious: That the same Catholic Church leaders who want to set themselves up as the moral referees of everyone else's private lives have quite a few planks sticking out of their own eyes and maybe it's time we pointed that out every time we have one of these "moral" arguments break out in the media:

The bankruptcy hearings for the Archdiocese of Milwaukee have revealed more than 8,000 previously unreported instances of alleged sexual abuse of children, according to one attorney representing the victims. The charges cover a span of 60 years and implicate a group of 100 alleged offenders, including nuns, church workers and some 75 priests.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Annysa Johnson writes that 570 “victim-survivors” have filed claims in the case, which is currently before U.S. bankruptcy judge Susan V. Kelley.

At a press conference on the federal courthouse steps in Milwaukee, Peter Isley, director of the Survivors’ Network of Those Abused by Priests said, “This is a public safety crisis, a child safety crisis that needs to be investigated. We need to know who they are and where they are. How can there be 8,000 crimes committed by over 100 offenders and there be no accountability?” READ MORE

Archdiocese of Milwaukee bankruptcy search results

Fred Karger vs. CPAC

February 11, 2012 07:00 PM
By Andrew Metcalf



Fred Karger, the openly gay Republican presidential candidate, held his own party at CPAC last night. Despite being barred from exhibiting or speaking at the conference, he kept his suite door open, set up an open bar and attracted a crowd of young Republicans and reporters.

He’s been on a roll recently, after his home state of California put his name on the ballot on Monday. He’s now on ballots in six states. But, at CPAC, he has been ignored.

“I’ll represent about 30 percent of the population on the ballot and this group won’t even rent me a booth,” said Karger, when I spoke to him at his party, “It’s the second year in a row. Last year, I didn’t take any action, but this year… I said, OK, I’m going to apply in November and get the early bird discount.”
Despite his best efforts, organizers from CPAC ignored him. He said the group told a Buzzfeed reporter they were sold out.

“I knew you couldn’t be sold out if you still had an early bird discount,” said Karger.
READ MORE

UK Company Turns Electricity Bills into Windmills

This is an adorable short video from ecotricity, the world's first green electricity company, located in the UK, which I suppose explains how it begins - over morning tea.

Whitney Houston, Superstar of Records, Films, Dies

By NEKESA MUMBI MOODY AP Music Writer

LOS ANGELES February 12, 2012 (AP)

 

Whitney Houston, who ruled as pop music's queen until her majestic voice and regal image were ravaged by drug use, erratic behavior and a tumultuous marriage to singer Bobby Brown, has died. She was 48.
Houston's publicist, Kristen Foster, said Saturday that the singer had died, but the cause and the location of her death were unknown.

News of Houston's death came on the eve of music's biggest night — the Grammy Awards. It's a showcase where she once reigned, and her death was sure to case a heavy pall on Sunday's ceremony. Houston's longtime mentor Clive Davis was to hold his annual concert and dinner Saturday; it was unclear if it was going to go forward.

"I am absolutely heartbroken at the news of Whitney's passing," music producer Quincy Jones said in a written statement. "I always regretted not having had the opportunity to work with her. She was a true original and a talent beyond compare. I will miss her terribly."

At her peak, Houston the golden girl of the music industry. From the middle 1980s to the late 1990s, she was one of the world's best-selling artists. She wowed audiences with effortless, powerful, and peerless vocals that were rooted in the black church but made palatable to the masses with a pop sheen.
READ MORE