Whenever I blog about the economy and the challenged middle class I feel like an old woman warning the tribe that the bison supply isn't what it used to be. Looking back on what "middle class" meant in the 1960s, and comparing that to what "middle class" is now, makes me want to throw up my arms and wail that soon, children, the bison will be no more, and we will be reduced to eating berries and tree bark.

 

Today Paul Krugman writes,

The middle-class society I grew up in no longer exists.

Working families have seen little if any progress over the past 30 years. Adjusted for inflation, the income of the median family doubled between 1947 and 1973. But it rose only 22 percent from 1973 to 2003, and much of that gain was the result of wives' entering the paid labor force or working longer hours, not rising wages.

Meanwhile, economic security is a thing of the past: year-to-year fluctuations in the incomes of working families are far larger than they were a generation ago. All it takes is a bit of bad luck in employment or health to plunge a family that seems solidly middle-class into poverty.

The professor says that the middle class America us old folks remember ...

... was created by what has been called the Great Compression of incomes that took place during World War II, and sustained for a generation by social norms that favored equality, strong labor unions and progressive taxation. Since the 1970's, all of those sustaining forces have lost their power.

Krugman takes on Bush economic apologists, whom we might also call economic disassemblers, as they are disassembling the middle class. The extraordinarily clever Brad de Long had already written a post that backs up what Krugman says with numbers and graphs. Be sure to read both Krugman and DeLong.

 

Botton line: The Bushies lie, and we're screwed.

 

Update: Jonathan Chait writes about the same stuff in the LA Times.

  

Just four months into his tenure as chairman of the Democratic Party, Howard Dean has found himself on unforgiving - if familiar - terrain. As he visited Capitol Hill on Thursday, he faced a growing number of critics and received a private scolding from leading members of his party for several derogatory remarks he has made about Republicans in recent weeks.

 

Republicans have attacked him with glee for those remarks, which they have described as "below the belt," while Democrats have struggled to defend him yet have quietly acknowledged that Dr. Dean was showing signs of being as polarizing as they once feared.

"I've always been very cautious and careful to deal with my Democratic friends, my independent friends, my enlightened Republican friends, so I'm very concerned about anything that is unnecessarily divisive," said Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska, a Democrat in a red state, after attending a closed-door lunch with Dr. Dean in a conference room near the Senate floor.

Party insiders in Washington and New York, including many who ran the last two losing Democratic presidential campaigns, say they have never before seen anything like the way Clinton has sewn up the nomination. In particular, they say, she has cornered Eastern money in a way nobody else ever has done at such an early date.

Eastern money. Eastern money talks louder than the rank and file. At the very time progressives all around America are longing for Dems to show some populist fire as in days of yore, we get a party that is being run by and for eastern money.

In the column linked above, the Reptile was shocked to find "resistance" to Clinton among party faithful in California. But we know it ain't just California. Here on the Left Blogosphere, sentiment for a Clinton candidacy ranges from I guess I'll vote for her if that's the only choice I have to ohmygawd no. 

And this isn't just because she couldn't win the election. Nor is it because if she did win, her very presence in the White House would fire up the VRWC to new heights of hysteria and obstructionism. I think it's because many of us are beyond weary of "smart" Democratic candidates who are packaged and focus-grouped to death to appeal to "swing" voters, taking progressives for granted. And we are tired of Democrats in Congress whose votes on issues are based on politics and not on what's right for America.

And yes, I realize there are polls saying that some whopping big majority of Democratic voters say they'd vote for her, but I believe this is because of the name recognition factor, not because some whopping big majority actually cares. In my long weary life, many times I've seen front runners with formidible leads fade and drop back once the real campaigning starts, and voters get a chance to see the other choices. Today's polls don't mean nothin'.   

(And remember back in 2003 when the "smart" candidate for president was either Lieberman or Gephardt?)

I'm not sure what outside-the-beltway Dems can do to get the inside-the-beltway and "eastern money" establishment to notice us. The 2x4 upside the head approach is tempting, but probably felonious. Maybe it's time for something big and splashy, like a Progressives' March on Washington. But money seems to be the only thing the insiders respond to. Hmm.

Update: See E.J. Dionne, "Kerried Away."

Democrats have to end their addiction to the Kerry alibi.

They may be publicly castigating their national chairman, Howard Dean. But wherever two or more Democrats are gathered privately, their instinct is to blame John Kerry first. I am fed up (to borrow Bill Safire's coinage) with the nattering nabobs of negativism who make themselves feel good by trashing Kerry.

This habit is dangerous because dissing Kerry is an easy way for Democrats to evade discussion of what the party needs to do to right itself. By focusing on the past, the Kerry alibi allows Democrats to avoid engaging the future. In 2008, the Democrats could nominate a candidate who combines Harry Truman's toughness, JFK's charm and FDR's gifts of leadership -- and still face many of the problems Kerry confronted. Blaming everything on Kerry as a supposedly elitist, stiff and indecisive Massachusetts liberal is the Democrats' version of cheap grace.

It may be that the party insiders and "eastern money" people are looking for the Magic Candidate who will make everything all better, instead of facing the systemic problems in the Democratic party, not to mention the pathologies of our political system. They must be telling themselves that Hillary is the Magic Candidate. Clearly, this is wishful thinking.

Update update: Robert Kuttner, "The Early Lead":  

This does not mean, however, that Hillary is a lefty. On the contrary, she is consciously positioned in the political center, deftly fine-tuning her rhetoric on abortion, casting some pro-business votes, and sounding tough on defense. Like Bill. ...

...But Senator Clinton's own complex political identity may be a problem. Many Democratic progressives, female and male, just don't trust her because she has trimmed on too many issues too many times. And they're not at all sure she can be elected.

Rather than a respectful tribute to our individual and collective loss, they will get a slanted history lesson, a didactic lecture on the meaning of liberty in a post-9/11 world. They will be served up a heaping foreign policy discussion over the greater meaning of Abu Ghraib and what it portends for the country and the rest of the world. ...

 

To the IFC's organizers, it is not only history's triumphs that illuminate, but also its failures. The public will have come to see 9/11 but will be given a high-tech, multimedia tutorial about man's inhumanity to man, from Native American genocide to the lynchings and cross-burnings of the Jim Crow South, from the Third Reich's Final Solution to the Soviet gulags and beyond. This is a history all should know and learn, but dispensing it over the ashes of Ground Zero is like creating a Museum of Tolerance over the sunken graves of the USS Arizona.

The driving force behind the IFC is Tom Bernstein, the dynamic co-founder of the Chelsea Piers Sports and Entertainment Complex who made a fortune financing Hollywood movies. But his capital ventures appear to have funded his true calling, the pro bono work he has done his entire adult life--as an activist lawyer in the human rights movement. He has been a proud member of Human Rights First since it was founded--as the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights--27 years ago, and has served as its president for the last 12.

The public has a right to know that it was Mr. Bernstein's organization, joined by the American Civil Liberties Union, that filed a lawsuit three months ago against Donald Rumsfeld on behalf of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was Human Rights First that filed an amicus brief on behalf of alleged "dirty bomber" Jose Padilla, an American citizen who the Justice Department believes is an al Qaeda recruit. It was Human Rights First that has called for a 9/11-style commission to investigate the alleged torture of detainees, complete with budget authority, subpoena power and the ability to demand that witnesses testify under oath.

What does it mean that the "story of humankind's quest for freedom" doesn't include the kind that is fought for with the blood and tears of patriots? It means, I fear, that this is a freedom center which will not use the word "patriot" the way our Founding Fathers did.  

Tofel doesn’t even mention the involvement of the ACLU and Human Rights First, or radical leftists like Columbia professor Eric Foner and ubermoonbat George Soros; let’s just ignore the America-haters behind the curtain, shall we?

Lance Mannion knocks it out of the Polo Grounds with this post about lily-livered, passive-aggressive, John-Lithgow-in-Raising Cain-obsessively-doting-dad James Lileks and the other warbloggers who keep clutching 9/11 as if it were their personal awakening and blogging Call to Arms. I'm amused, amazed, and annoyed that bloggers thousands of miles away from the actual death and destruction chide the rest of us for "not getting it" and wanting to bury our heads in the sandtrap when, as Sir Lancelot notes, New Yorkers themselves have a saner, wider, calmer perspective as the years pass. And unlike so many of the 101st Fighting Keyboarders, New Yorkers don't have the luxury of or inclination to demonize Arabs and Muslims and hat-tip Michelle Malkin or run sceered every time a couple of Them materialize in our visual field. Every time we step into a cab or enter a store, there's a good chance that the driver or manager may be Pakistani or Iranian or Iraqi or Palestinian and they don't represent the Other, they're fellow New Yorkers ...

President's George Bush's decision not to sign the United States up to the Kyoto global warming treaty was partly a result of pressure from ExxonMobil, the world's most powerful oil company, and other industries, according to US State Department papers seen by the Guardian.

When it comes to campaign contributions, the Republican Party’s ties to the oil and gas industry have been well documented to say the least. No longer is it a surprise to note that 78 cents out of every dollar the industry has contributed to federal parties and candidates over the last decade has gone to the GOP or that President Bush was the No. 1 recipient of the industry’s money during the last election. But here’s something you might not know: Bush, with more than $1.8 million in contributions, got more money from the industry during 1999-2000 than any other federal candidate over the last decade, barely eclipsing two fellow Texans in the process. Sen. Phil Gramm (R) is the No. 2 recipient of oil money since 1989, with $1.6 million from industry PACs and individuals, while his oil patch colleague Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R) ranks second with $1.3 million. Texas-based companies dominate the industry’s giving. The most generous: the Houston-based Enron, the industry’s No. 1 contributor during 1999-2000 with more than $2.3 million in contributions, about $1 million more than No. 2 ranked Exxon-Mobil.

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After eight months of courtroom argument, Justice Department lawyers abruptly upset a landmark civil racketeering case against the tobacco industry yesterday by asking for less than 8 percent of the expected penalty.

As he concluded closing arguments in the six-year-old lawsuit, Justice Department lawyer Stephen D. Brody shocked tobacco company representatives and anti-tobacco activists by announcing that the government will not seek the $130 billion that a government expert had testified was necessary to fund smoking-cessation programs. Instead, Brody said, the Justice Department will ask tobacco companies to pay $10 billion over five years to help millions of Americans quit smoking.

Well, all those campaign contributions taken by Bush/Cheney (nearly $260,000 in 2000 and 2004) and the GOP from the tobacco industry over the years finally bought a $120 billion payday for Big Tobacco when the Alberto Gonzales Justice Department shocked the industry and anti-smoking advocates alike today by scuttling the government’s own litigation.

Buried in the 700-plus page energy bill currently under debate in the U.S. Senate is a provision that provides hundreds of millions of dollars worth of federal loan guarantees for a power project apparently to be built by four former Enron executives. One of the former executives is Thomas White, former head of Enron’s retail and energy trading in California during the energy crisis who later served as President Bush’s Secretary of the Army.

Senators urged the Pentagon's inspector general yesterday to release more information about the involvement of White House officials and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in an aborted $30 billion air-tanker deal that exposed gaping holes in the government's controls on large purchases.

The inspector general, Joseph E. Schmitz, appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee to present a 257-page report that concluded that Pentagon officials broke laws and regulations as they worked with Boeing Co. to complete a lease deal for 100 refueling planes. The deal was later canceled by Congress.

The report, released with 45 deletions of references to White House officials, called the existing controls inadequate and said the Defense Department "must change the cultural environment" of its purchasing bureaucracy. It shows in unprecedented detail how Pentagon officials worked with Boeing to tailor an expensive lease for the aircraft, which outside experts had said were not urgently needed.

Former Air Force secretary James G. Roche said in a January letter to Schmitz, included in the report, that the tanker talks had included "senior White House staff" and President Bush's budget office.

Committee members said they may subpoena testimony from Edward C. "Pete" Aldridge Jr., who approved the deal when he was the Pentagon's top weapons buyer. Aldridge, who has since joined the board of directors of defense contractor Lockheed Martin Corp., did not respond to inquiries from the inspector general.

A White House official who once led the oil industry's fight against limits on greenhouse gases has repeatedly edited government climate reports in ways that play down links between such emissions and global warming, according to internal documents.

In handwritten notes on drafts of several reports issued in 2002 and 2003, the official, Philip A. Cooney, removed or adjusted descriptions of climate research that government scientists and their supervisors, including some senior Bush administration officials, had already approved. In many cases, the changes appeared in the final reports....

...Mr. Cooney is chief of staff for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, the office that helps devise and promote administration policies on environmental issues.

Before going to the White House in 2001, he was the "climate team leader" and a lobbyist at the American Petroleum Institute, the largest trade group representing the interests of the oil industry.

Corruption has always been present in Washington, but in recent years it has become more sophisticated, pervasive, and blatant than ever. A friend of mine who works closely with lobbyists says, "There are no restraints now; business groups and lobbyists are going crazy—they're in every room on Capitol Hill writing the legislation. You can't move on the Hill without giving money."

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For the first time since the war in Iraq began, more than half of the American public believes the fight there has not made the United States safer, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll....

 

Nearly three-quarters of Americans say the number of casualties in Iraq is unacceptable, while two-thirds say the U.S. military there is bogged down and nearly six in 10 say the war was not worth fighting -- in all three cases matching or exceeding the highest levels of pessimism yet recorded. More than four in 10 believe the U.S. presence in Iraq is becoming analogous to the experience in Vietnam.

Perhaps most ominous for President Bush, 52 percent said war in Iraq has not contributed to the long-term security of the United States, while 47 percent said it has. It was the first time a majority of Americans disagreed with the central notion Bush has offered to build support for war: that the fight there will make Americans safer from terrorists at home. In late 2003, 62 percent thought the Iraq war aided U.S. security, and three months ago 52 percent thought so.

Here is the graph I 'spect the righties will emphasize, if they take note of this story at all:

Overall, more than half -- 52 percent -- disapprove of how Bush is handling his job, the highest of his presidency. A somewhat larger majority -- 56 percent -- disapproved of Republicans in Congress, and an identical proportion disapproved of Democrats.

The same poll had a 51 percent disapproval for Bush in June 2004, from which he bounced back in September to 52 percent approve, 42 percent disapprove. Thus, the righties will say, Bush will bounce back again. This is just a temporary setback. And look, Dems in Congress are taking hits, too. But,

There were signs, however, that Bush and Republicans in Congress were receiving more of the blame for the recent standoffs over such issues as Bush's judicial nominees and Social Security. Six in 10 respondents said Bush and GOP leaders are not making good progress on the nation's problems; of those, 67 percent blamed the president and Republicans while 13 percent blamed congressional Democrats. For the first time, a majority, 55 percent, also said Bush has done more to divide the country than to unite it.

2006 could be sweet.

The one part of his job in which Bush still claims a slim majority approval--50 to 49, which in truth is a tie--is in his handling of the "war on terror." But check out the graphics. There has been steady erosion of Bush's support in this area as well.

Milbank and Deane write that support is dissipating fastest among independents. Three out of four Republicans still believe the war in Iraq has boosted national security. I'm sure you realize that most Republicans will continue to believe this no matter what, because they've got too much trust invested in Bush and too much faith invested in their ideologies, and if their cognitive dissonance ever fails them, their heads will explode. 

However, "six in 10 [of all persons polled] were confident that the United States was not violating the rights of detainees at the military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba," which means we bloggers still have some work to do to get the independents and DINOs to face reality.

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Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard law professor who took part in the medical bankruptcy study, says middle-income families are vulnerable because it’s nearly impossible for them to survive financially in our health care system. Insurance policies have so many gaps in coverage, she says, that patients’ out-of-pocket medical expenses often skyrocket.

"It doesn’t take a catastrophic illness to have a catastrophic financial effect," says Warren, co-author of The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke. "Today it’s possible to run up a $10,000 medical bill before you’re dismissed from the ER."

Joyce Johnson knows just how fast medical expenses add up. She chose to file under Chapter 13, which allowed her to keep her home and car. Some of her debt was forgiven, but she’s not out of the woods yet. She has given up her cell phone, her newspaper subscription and, now, her car.

"It’s hard enough fighting a life-threatening disease day to day," says Johnson, tired from an afternoon dialysis treatment. "Then you have to worry about it financially. The stress of the bills just gets to you."

My ex-husband was diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer. I took him in to care for him because he had no one. It took two years for it to kill him, but it did more than that.

 

There were the expenses for travel to cancer centers and specialists.The cost of medicine not covered by insurance rose. Our credit cards were maxed out. I borrowed against my house.

 

After he died, I had to sell our business, which we had not been able to supervise, at a loss. I had to sell my home to pay off the first and second mortages. I used most of my $75,000 in retirement savings to pay off my credit card debt.

A compassionate society must promote opportunity for all of us including the independence and dignity that come from ownership. This administration will constantly strive to promote an ownership society in America. See, we want more people owning their own home. We have a minority home ownership gap in America. I proposed a plan to the Congress, starting with helping with the poorest of poor make a downpayment for a home, to close that gap. It's in the national interest that more people own their own home.

We want people owning and managing their own healthcare accounts and their own retirement accounts. We want more people owning their own small business. This is an administration that understands when someone owns something, he or she has a vital stake in the future of our country.