EFTA00692779.pdf

From: Gregory Brown To: undisclosed-recipients:; Bce: jeevacation@gmail.com Subject: Greg Brown's Weekend Reading and Other Things.... 02/03/13 Date: Sun, 03 Feb 2013 19:32:47 +0000 Attachments: The_Rise_of_the_Permanent_Temp_Economy_Erin_Hatton_NYT_January_28„2013.pdf; Makers„Takers„Fakers_Paul_Krugman_NYT_January_27,_2013.pdf; The_urgency_of_growth_EJ_Dionne_TWP_January_27,2013.pdf; Barack_Obama_is_Not_Pleased_Franklin_Foer_&_Chris_Hughes_The_New_Republic_Jan uary_28,2013.pdf; Why_President_Obama_is_right_about_the_GOP_Chris_Cillizza_TWP_January_28„2013. pdf; Is_America_in_decline_Robert_Samuelson_TWP_January_27„2013.pdf; The_Non_Zero-Sum_Society_Robert_Reich_Huffington_Post_01_29-2013.pdf; A Second_G.O.P._David_Brooks_NYT_Januaty_28,2013.pdf; Obama_administration_learns_thatjeleading_from_behind&is_the_right_place_for_the_ U.S._Walter_Pincus_TWP_January_30„2013.pdf; A_Better_Immigration_Plan_NYT_Editorial_January_29,_2013.pdf; Leading_From_Behind_on_lmmigration_TWP_Editorial_January_29,_2013.pdf On Immigration,Obama_Assumes_Upper_Hand_Michael_Shear_&_Mark_Landler_NYT_ January_30„2013.pdf; Obama_pushes_Congress_on_immigration,split_emerges_Matt_Spetainick_January_29,2 013.pdf; The `Unbreakable'_Silvio_Berlusconi_Barbie_Lat_za_Nadeau_The_Daily_Beastianuary_ 31,_2013.pdf; France_triumphs_in_the_desert,butfaces_a_tougher_time_in_the_longer_run_Feb_2nd_2 013.pdf; CYBORG_FOUNDATION_-_Rafel_Duran_Torrent_- _Neil_Haribisson_January_2013.pdf; A_3- Term_Mayor_as_Brash„Shrewd_and_Colorful_as_the_City_He_Led_Robert_McFadden_N YT_February_1„2013.pdf; The_GOP's_bad_fixes_to_the_electoral_colle_=?WINDOWS- 1252?Q?ge=5FTWP_Editorial_Board=5FFebruary_1,2013.pdf?=; Neil_Young.pdf Dear Friends.... This week the GOP launched a new attack on the Obama administration when Senate Republicans promised to block Richard Cadre, President Obama's pick to head the Consumer FinancialProtection Bureau. The CFPB is the agency that Elizabeth Warren set up to make sure big banks don't prey on regular Americans. But on Friday, 43 Republicans sent a letter saying they're worried the agency has too much power over the banks, and that they won't allow the nomination to go ahead. This is outrageous. The right wing is doing everything it can to block this President on everything, even if it helps working-class people. They are even willing to hurt the economy itself, if this is what it takes to hurt the president. 'Any immediate economic setback or the perception of one could weaken Obama's clout. maybe a sour economy is worth it if it will distract Obama." Rush Limbaugh Searching for a way to come back politically, part of the leadership in the GOP feels that the quickest way is if the economy contracts, especially if it happened again in the next quarter driving the country back into a recession — shrinking the economy is a GOP plan for a quick comeback. The problem with this scenario is that EFTA00692779 the country has had 35 straight months of private sector job growth, with the economy adding more than 2 million jobs last year — the best year for the jobs since 2005. We have to ask why Republicans are playing politics with people's lives, as they are obsessed with cuts instead of job creation. And this week, Republicans are saying that the consumer bureau would/could hurt Wall Street, although on Friday the DOW closed over 14,000 for the first time in six year, and 111% higher than when it bottomed out in the summer of 2009. So what is this really about? If you look at it closely, it appears that the GOP are playing a game of redirection. The economic crash in 2008 was caused when the housing bubble burst, home values fell and more than 8 trillion dollars of wealth evaporated. And it was fraudulent practices by the Major Banks and on Wall Street that caused this bubble. So instead of regulating banking abuses, and the Wall Street executives who made millions and billions of dollars booking loans to people who couldn't afford them, the GOP, Wall Street and the Big Banks have turned the economic focus on government deficit. People forget that when President Obama came into office on 2009, the February 2009 jobs report was the worst in 34 years. And it was the Obama stimulus package that that reversed this downward trajectory. Since February 2010, there have been more than 600,000 government jobs loss. And the GOP would like you to believe that the Obama Administration, when it is not Commie Socialist, it is the Administration of Big Government, and the CFPB is just the latest example. But we know from empirical evidence that austerity measures makes things worse. So to torpedo the economy to make Obama a failed Presidency, should not be tolerated. And to gut the CFPB which could/would hurt every American should be view as domestic terrorism. l am sure that there ore many Republicans who feel the way that I feel and implore them to let their constituents know that this type of divisive will not be tolerate, because what binds us together makes our country stronger. Edward I. Koch, the master showman of City Hall, who parlayed shrewd political instincts and plenty of chutzpah into three tumultuous terms as New York's mayor with all the tenacity, zest and combativeness that personified his city of golden dreams, died Friday. He was 88. Mr. Koch's spokesman, George Arzt, said he died of congestive heart failure at 2 a.m. at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia hospital. After leaving politics he continued as a television judge, radio talk-show host, author, law partner, newspaper columnist, movie reviewer, professor, commercial pitchman and political gadfly. Ebullient, flitting from broadcast studios to luncheon meetings and speaking engagements, popping up at show openings and news conferences, wherever the microphones were live and the cameras rolling, Mr. Koch, in his life after politics, seemed for all the world like the old campaigner, running flat out. It is hard to imagine New York City without Edward Koch impressing himself on its every facet, demanding, in his trademark imperiousness, to be saluted by one and all. His death Friday at the age of 88 is a moment of unalloyed sadness in the city's history. For while Mr. Koch had a decidedly mixed record of City Hall management through some of the best and worst of times, he made an uber-career of distilling and billboarding the city's essence as he saw it, usually with himself at the center of things. As mayor from 1978 to 1989, Mr. Koch enthusiastically helped the state right the city's fiscal keel after the city's calamitous brush with bankruptcy. He used a growing budget to restore city services and jobs. He endorsed public campaign financing. While dismissing rivals' insinuations about his bachelor status ("nobody's business but mine," he said), he ordered an end to sexual discrimination in city jobs. Mr. Koch initiated a $5 billion housing renovation plan in 1986 that greatly enlarged the housing pool for the working poor and repaired the Bronx's image as a hopeless case of urban blight. At the same time he would make arbitrary decisions that often polarized the city. His political odyssey took him from independent-minded liberal to pragmatic conservative, from street-corner hustings with a little band of reform Democrats in Greenwich Village to the pinnacle of power as the city's 105th mayor from Jan. 1, 1978, to Dec. 31, 1989. Along the way, he put an end to the career of the Tammany boss Carmine G. De Sapio and served two years as a councilman and nine more in Congress representing, with distinction, the East Side of Manhattan. With his trademark — "How'm I doin?" — Mt Koch stood at subway entrances on countless mornings wringing the hands and votes of constituents, who elected him 21 times in 26 years, with only three defeats: a forgettable 1962 State Assembly race; a memorable 1982 primary in a race for EFTA00692780 governor won by Mario M. Cuomo; and a last Koch hurrah, a Democratic primary in 1989 won by David N. Dinkins, who would be his one-term successor as New York's first Black Mayor. As Brian Williams said on the NBC weekly news on Friday, "When you hear that voice orfor that matter when you close your eyes and tried to think of the typical New Yorker there is a good chance that Ed Kock might come to mind." And whether or not you liked or agreed with Ed Koch he was and will always be the quintessential New Yorker. In last week's offerings, I include Matt Taibbi's article — Secrets and Lies of the Bailout in Rolling Stone Magazine, where he took an in-depth look at the manipulation of the TARP bailout — whereby then Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, committed $700 billion of taxpayer money to rescue Wall Street from its own chicanery and greed — and the deception and cover-up. Taibbi: To listen to the bankers and their allies in Washington tell it, you'd think the bailout was the best thing to hit the American economy since the invention of the assembly line. Not only did it prevent another Great Depression, we've been told, but the money has all been paid back, and the government even made a profit. When the truth is that it most likely has created a permanent bailout state based on a Ponzi-like confidence scheme inviting more financial shenanigans Taibbi called it a lie — one of the biggest and most elaborate falsehoods ever sold to the American people. We were told that the taxpayer was stepping in — only temporarily, mind you — to prop up the economy and save the world from financial catastrophe. What we actually ended up doing was the exact opposite: committing American taxpayers to permanent, blind support of an ungovernable, unregulatable, hyper-concentrated new financial system that exacerbates the greed and inequality that caused the crash, and forces Wall Street banks like Goldman Sachs and Citigroup to increase risk rather than reduce it. The result is one of those deals where one wrong decision early on blossoms into a lush nightmare of unintended consequences. We thought we were just letting a friend crash at the house for a few days; we ended up with a family of hillbillies who moved in forever, sleeping nine to a bed and building a meth lab on the front lawn. And this week on Moyers ri Company, Matt Taibbi joins Bill to discuss the continuing lack of accountability for "too big to fail" banks which continue to break laws and act unethically because they know they can get away with it. Taibbi refers specifically to the government's recent settlement with HSBC — "a serial offender on the money laundering score" — who merely had to pay a big fine for shocking offenses, including, Taibbi says, laundering money for both drug cartels and banks connected to terrorists. http://billmoyers.corn/segment/matt-taibbi-on-big-banks-lack-of-accountability/ Taibbi also expresses his concern over recent Obama appointees — including Jack Lew and Mary Jo White — who go from working on behalf of major banks in the private sector to policing them in the public sector. "The rule of law isn't really the rule of law if it doesn't apply equally to everybody. Ifyou're going to put somebody in jailfor having a joint in his pocket, you can't let higher ranking HSBC officials offfor laundering $800 million for the worst drug dealers in the entire world" Taibbi tells Bill. "Eventually it eats away at the vet);fabric of society." If you didn't see the show, please take the 15 minutes and download the video link of the program, because if perpetrators are not forced to pay for their crimes the same behavior will happen again.... And again.. THIS WEEK'S READINGS EFTA00692781 In the New York Times this week sociologist Erin Hatton describes in The Rise of the Permanent Temp Economy -- how low-wage, temporary jobs have become so widespread that they threaten to become the norm — and how this happened. Many argue that it was the inevitable result of macroeconomic forces — globalization, deindustrialization and technological change — beyond our political control. While the truth is that American employers have generally taken the low road: lowering wages and cutting benefits, converting permanent employees into part-time and contingent workers, busting unions and subcontracting and outsourcing jobs. They have done so, in part, because of the extraordinary evangelizing of the temp industry, which rose from humble origins to become a global behemoth. The story begins in the years after World War II, when a handful of temp agencies were started, largely in the Midwest. In 1947, William Russell Kelly founded Russell Kelly Office Service (later known as Kelly Girl Services) in Detroit, with three employees, 12 customers and $848 in sales. A year later, two lawyers, Aaron Scheinfeld and Elmer Winter, founded a similarly small outfit, Manpower Inc., in Milwaukee. At the time, the future of these fledgling agencies was no foregone conclusion. Unions were at the peak of their power, and the protections that they had fought so hard to achieve — workers' compensation, pensions, health benefits and more — had been adopted by union and nonunion employers alike. These temp leaders create a new category of work (and workers) that are exempt from such protections. The temp agencies' Kelly Girl strategy was clever (and successful) as it exploited the era's cultural ambivalence about white, middle-class women working outside the home, by casting temp work as "women's work," and advertising thousands of images of young, white, middle-class women doing a variety of short-term office jobs. The Kelly Girls, Manpower's White Glove Girls, Western Girl's Cowgirls, the American Girls of American Girl Services and numerous other such "girls" appeared in the pages of Newsweek, Business Week, U.S. News & World Report, Good Housekeeping, Fortune, The New York Times and The Chicago Daily Tribune. In 1961 alone, Manpower spent $1 million to put its White Glove Girls in the Sunday issue of big city newspapers across the country. Instead of seeking to replace " bread-winning" union jobs with low-wage temp work, temp agencies went the culturally safer route: selling temp work for housewives who were (allegedly) only working for pin money. As a Kelly executive told The New York Times in 1958, "The typical Kelly Girl... doesn't want full-time work, but she bored with strictly keeping house. Or maybe she just wants to take a job until she paysfor a davenport or a new fur coat " The strategy was an extraordinary success. Not only did the Kelly Girls become cultural icons, but the temp agencies grew and grew. By 1957, Kelly reported nearly $7 million in sales; in 1962, with 148 branches and $24 million in sales, it went public. Meanwhile, by 1956 Manpower had 91 branches in 65 cities (and 10 abroad) and, with sales at $12 million annually, employed some 4,000 workers a day. In 1962, Manpower also went public, boasting 270 offices across four continents and over $40 million in sales. Protected by the era's gender biases, early temp leaders thus established a new sector of low-wage, unreliable work right under the noses of powerful labor unions. While greater numbers of employers in the postwar era offered family-supporting wages and health insurance, the rapidly expanding temp agencies established a different precedent by explicitly refusing to do so. That precedent held for more than half a century: even today "temp" jobs are beyond the reach of many workplace protections, not only health benefits but also unemployment insurance, anti-discrimination laws and union-organizing rights. By 1967 Manpower employed more workers than corporate giants like Standard Oil of New Jersey and the U.S. Steel Corporation. Manpower and the other temp agencies had gained a foothold, and temporary employment was widely considered a legitimate part of the economy. Now eyeing a bigger prize — expansion beyond pink- collar work — temp industry leaders dropped their "Kelly Girl" image and began to argue that all employees, not just secretaries, should be replaced by temps. And rather than simply selling temps, they sold a bigger EFTA00692782 product: a lean and mean approach to business that considered workers to be burdensome costs that should be minimized. In 1971 the recently renamed Kelly Services ran a series of ads in The Office, a human resources journal, promoting the "Never-Never Girl," who, the company claimed: "Never takes a vacation or holiday. Never asks for a raise. Never costs you a dime for slack time. (When the workload drops, you drop her) Never has a cold, slipped disc or loose tooth. (Not on your time anyway!) Never costs you for unemployment taxes and Social Security payments. (None ofthe paperwork, either!) Never costs youforfringe benefits. (They add up to 30% of everypayroll dollar) Neverfails to please. (Ifyour Kelly Girl employee doesn't work out, you don't pay)" Around the same time, the New York agency Olsten Temporary Help Services announced a new product: "The Semi-Permanent Employee." Comparing its innovation to the wireless, the phonograph and the telephone, company leaders presented the "Semi-Permanent" as "a new kind of temporary employee...not for days or even weeks, but for two- and three-month periods to help your business grow more profitably." This new "invention," Olsten told businesses, would boost profits by shrinking the payroll (to "a slim, trim personnel budget, not one which chokes profitability"); by smoothing over the ebb and flow of the business cycle ("you needn't carry 'dead wood' for months when business is slow"); and by cutting training costs (employers would get "trained personnel without having to engage in expensive and unprofitable retraining"). By peddling products like the "Semi-Permanent Employee," the "Never-Never Girl" and more, temp industry leaders promoted a model in which permanent employees were a "costly burden," a "headache" that needed relief. "Stop paying help you don't use," Western Services advised in 1969. It even urged employers to convert their own permanent employees to temps, as in a 1971 advertisement in The Personnel Journal: "Just say goodbye... then shift them to our payroll and say hello again!" Temp industry leaders continued to encourage companies to "rent" workers rather than "buy" them. And perhaps even more persuasive than their arguments were the practical tools they were able to offer: thousands of low-cost temps, without the hassle of having to hire, train, supervise and fire them. Becoming lean and mean had never been easier, and thousands of companies began to go the temping route, especially during the deep economic recessions of the 1970s. Temporary employment skyrocketed from 185,000 temps a day to over 400,000 in 1980 — the same number employed each year in 1963. Nor did the numbers slow when good times returned: even through the economic boom of the '90s, temporary employment grew rapidly, from less than 1 million workers a day to nearly 3 million by 2000. The temp industry's continued growth even in a boom economy was a testament to its success in helping to forge a new cultural consensus about work and workers. Its model of expendable labor became so entrenched, in fact, that it became "common sense," leaching into nearly every sector of the economy and allowing the newly renamed "staffing industry" to become sought-after experts on employment and work force development. Outsourcing, in-sourcing off-shoring and many other hallmarks of the global economy (including the use of "adjuncts" in academia, my own corner of the world) owe no small debt to the ideas developed by the temp industry in the last half-century. A growing number of people call for bringing outsourced jobs back to America. But if they return as shoddy, poverty-wage jobs — jobs designed for "Never-Never Girls" rather than valued employees — we won't be better off for having them. If we want good jobs rather than just any jobs, we need to figure out how to preserve what is useful and innovative about temporary employment while jettisoning the anti-worker ideology that has come to accompany it. And we have to drop the plaudits for "lean and mean" companies, when companies' weaknesses may be due to poor executive decisions and their dedication of meeting quarterly projections, EFTA00692783 instead of investing and concentrating on long-term growth. I remember when the greatest asset of any company was a well-trained loyal workforce. Therefore, in a long term how can can the country prosper if the corporate culture is to treat workers as chattel instead of assets to be valued. In last week's weekly readings, I included an article in The Washington Post - Bobby Jindal speaking truth to GOPpower, whereby Chris Cillizza described Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal's forceful denunciation of his party's Washington-centric focus in a speech at a Republican National Committee gathering in North Carolina, arguing that the GOP is fighting the wrong fight if it wants to rebuild from losses at the ballot box last November, suggesting that this and other comments made by Jindal is evidence that he is joining Chris Christie and others breaking rank with ultra-conservatives that have moved the GOP to the far, far right. In the article — Makers, Takers, Fakers — in the New York Times, Paul Krugman points out that while acknowledging that the many in the G.O.P. made stupid statements and pushed initiatives that are out of step with a majority of America, Jindal's own policies favor the rich over the poor and the middle class. Mr. Jindal posed the problem in a way that would have been unthinkable for a leading Republican a year ago. "We must not," he declared, "be the party that simply protects the well offso they can keep their toys. We have to be the party that shows all Americans how they can thrive." After supporting a campaign in which Mitt Romney denounced any attempt to talk about class divisions as an "attack on success," this represents a major rhetorical shift. But in practice, currently Jindal is pushing a plan to eliminate the state's income tax, which falls most heavily on the affluent, and make up for the lost revenue by raising sales taxes, which fall much more heavily on the poor and the middle-class. The result would be big gains for the top I percent, substantial losses for the bottom 60 percent. Similar plans are being pushed by a number of other Republican governors as well. Like the new acknowledgment that the perception of being the party of the rich is a problem, this represents a departure for the G.O.P. — but in the opposite direction. In the past, Republicans would justify tax cuts for the rich either by claiming that they would pay for themselves or by claiming that they could make up for lost revenue by cutting wasteful spending. But what we're seeing now is open, explicit reverse Robin Hoodism: taking from ordinary families and giving to the rich. That is, even as Republicans look for a way to sound more sympathetic and less extreme, their actual policies are taking another sharp right turn. Having been blindsided by November's election, national politicians learned that this kind of talk plays badly with the public, so they're trying to obscure their positions. Paul Ryan, for example, has lately made a transparently dishonest attempt to claim that when he spoke about "takers" living off the efforts of the "makers" — at one point he assigned 60 percent of Americans to the taker category — he now says that he wasn't talking about people receiving Social Security and Medicare. But in deep red states like Louisiana or Kansas, Republicans are much freer to act on their beliefs — which EFTA00692784 means they don't really have to change their policies as long as they change their rhetoric. This leaves me to me to agree with Klugman, that when Mr. Jindal, declared in his speech that "we are a populist party." NO, Mr. Jindalyour are not You're a party that holds a largeproportion ofAmericans in contempt And thepublic may havefigured this out In this current obsession by Conservatives over the deficit and austerity as the solution, E.J. Dionne writes — The Urgency ofGrowth - this week in The Washington Post, "that ifyou care about deficits, you should want our economy to growfaster Ifyou care about lifting up the poor and reducing unemployment, you should want our economy to growfaster And ifyou are a committed capitalist and hope to make more money, you should want our economy to growfaster" Dionne continues, "The moment's highest priority should be speeding economic growth and ending the waste, human and economic, left by the Great Recession. But you would never know this because the conversation in our nation's capital is being held hostage by a ludicrous cycle ofphonyfiscal deadlines driven by a misplaced belief that the only thing we have tofear is the budget deficit Let's call a halt to this madness. If we don't move the economy to a better place, none of thefiscal projections will matter. The economic downturn ballooned the deficit. Growth will move the numbers in the right direction." Maybe because of the November election, it appears that establishment thinking is moving toward a new consensus that puts growth first and looks for deficit reduction over time. in the last few months, middle-of-the- road and moderately conservative voices have warned that if we cut the deficit too quickly, too soon, we could throw ourselves back into the economic doldrums — and increase the very deficit we are trying to reduce. Example: economic columnist Martin Wolf, offered last week in the Financial Times: "Thefederal government is not on the verge of bankruptcy. If anything, the tightening has been too much and toofast The fiscal position is also not the most urgent economic challenge. It isfar more important to promote recovery. The challenges in the longer tern are to raise revenue while curbing the cost of health. Meanwhile, people, just calm down." Dionne — "We have been inundated with apocalyptic prophecies about our debt levels. While they comefrom the center as well as the right, Republicans are using them to turn the next two years into a carnival of contrived crises. These will (I) make normal governing impossible — no agency can plan when budgets are always up in the air; (2) distract us — we need to think about measures, such as an infrastructure bank, that would promote prosperity now and into thefuture; and (3) drive business people crazy — no enterprise would put itself through the contortions that are becoming part of Washington's routine." Only if you believe that deficits mean the end is near can any of this be justified. Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Republican minority leader, perfectly encapsulated the effort to diminish the importance of all else (including growth) when he declared recently that "deficit and debt" constitute the "transcendent issue of our era." No, it's not. As Bruce Bartlett, the bravely dissident conservative economics specialist wrote a few days ago: "In fact, our long-term deficit situation is not nearly as severe as even many budget experts believe. The problem is that they are looking at recent history and near-term projections that are overly impacted by one-timefactors related to the economic crisis and massive Republican tax cuts that lowered revenuesfar below normal." Former Treasury secretary Lawrence Summers warned in The Post that we can't "lose sight of the jobs and growth deficits that ultimately will have the greatest impact on how this generation of Americans lives and what they bequeath to the next generation." And economists at the international Monetary Fund have offered some EFTA00692785 honorable mea culpas about underestimating the damage that ill-timed austerity programs have done to growth — and to the fiscal positions of the nations affected by them. You have to hope that President Obama will use his State of the Union message to speak forcefully for growth and the public investments that will foster it. But sensible people also need to rise up and tell the congressional doom-mongers that they have to calm down and end their wholly destructive campaign to turn our great system of self-rule into a government by deadline and emergency. Yes deficits are a problem. But the best way to deal with this problem is by growing the economy with a jobs program. This week The New Republic published a revealing interview — Barack Obama is Not Pleased — by Franklin Foer and Chris Hughes with President Obama who described the strategic choice that he believes faces the Republican party heading into 2014 — and beyond. Critiquing the interview Chris Cillizza — Why President Obama is right about the GOP— in The Washington Post wrote the following. "Until Republicansfeel that there's a real price to payfor them just saying no and being obstructionist, you'll probably see at least a number of them arguing that we should keep on doing it," the president said. "It worked for them in the 2010 election cycle, and 1 think there are those who believe that it can work again." While GOP strategists might dismiss Obama's analysis of the way forward for their side as overly simplistic, there is considerable truth in what he says. And the direction the party decides to head on that very question will be a telling indicator of the nature of both the 2014 midterm elections and the 2016 Republican primary fight. Remember back to the immediate aftermath of the 2008 election? Some Republicans, stunned by the breadth and depth of their defeats, began to talk about the need to re-imagine the party to fit the modern American electorate. Then came Obama's economic stimulus plan and his health care law — not to mention the bank bailouts. The tea party was born and, with it, those within the GOP who regarded the 2008 election as a fluke won the day. The Republican Party united around its opposition to Obama and was rewarded (in spades) for doing so in the 2010 midterm elections. (Sidebar: Many people — read: Democrats — blame Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) for articulating the "opposition at all costs strategy" While McConnell did say the goal for the GOP and its voters was to make Obama a "one-term president," he did so mere days before the 2010 election and, therefore, was not the strategic father, for good or bad, of the oppose-at-all-costs approach. Besides that, what McConnell was saying was that to accomplish the goals Republicans believed in, Obama would have to be removed as president, which is a somewhat indisputable notion.) Riding high on that "oppose, oppose, oppose" strategy, Republicans galloped into the 2012 presidential election full of bravado and apparent momentum. Then the strategy started to fail. As much as Republican presidential candidates tried to shine a light on Obama and his policies, the debate kept coming back to Mitt Romney, his view of the world and what he would do as president. And Romney never came close to fully articulating that alternative vision. Now, four years after some Republicans were pushing for a reexamination of what the party believes and why they believe it, it appears as though that reckoning is underway. EFTA00692786 Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R), in a speech last week at the Republican National Committee's winter meeting, said that "if this election taught us anything, it is that we will not win elections by simply pointing out the failures of the other side." And already people including Florida Sen. Marco Rubio (like Jindal a potential 2016 candidate) are pushing to break the partisan logjam on overhauling the country's immigration laws. The question for Republicans is whether that spirit — voiced by Jindal and Rubio among others — holds steady amid what will be an epic fight over debt and spending over these next few months. And it may not. Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, for example, said Sunday that he expect Congress to fail to reach a deal to avoid automatic across the board cuts known as the sequester. The easiest path for Republicans will be to define themselves wholly in opposition to the president and what he proposes. And, such a path — as demonstrated by the 2010 midterm elections — could well have short-term political benefits. But to sustain and to thrive as a party, Republicans almost certainly need to cut deals on matters of political necessity (immigration is the most obvious) while simultaneously staking out new ground with a rigorous — and positive — set of policy proposals. The top leaders of the party are well aware of that reality. But do they have enough control over the rank and file to put it into practice between now and 2014? As Chris Cillizza says..... Time will telL Like many others, this week in The Washington Post, Robert Samuelson asks - Is America in Decline? With an economy lacking dynamism; unemployment near 8 percent remains at recession levels. The president and his Republican critics barely talk to each other; stalemate seems unending. As such it is any easy assumption. But what if America isn't in decline? A powerful rebuttal comes from an unlikely place: Wall Street. The question seems self-evident. But when one looks at the facts it is easy to argue that the United States still has the world's strongest economy — and will have for years. There is a growing "awareness of the key economic, institutional, human capital and geopolitical advantages the U.S. enjoys over other economies," contend Goldman's analysts. As proof, let's look at the facts. For starters, the U.S. economy is still the world's largest by a long shot. Gross domestic product (GDP) is almost $16 trillion, "nearly double the second largest (China), 2.5 times the third largest (Japan)." Per capita GDP is about $50,000; although 10 other countries have higher figures, most of the countries are small — say, Luxembourg. The size of the U.S. market makes it an attractive investment location. Next, natural resources. In a world ravenous for food and energy, the United States has plenty of both. Its arable land is five times China's and nearly twice Brazil's. The advances in "frocking" and horizontal drilling have opened vast natural gas and oil reserves that, until recently, seemed too expensive to develop. The International Energy Agency predicts that the United States will become the world's largest oil producer — albeit temporarily — by 2020. It is estimated that the oil and gas boom has already created 1.7 million direct and indirect jobs and by 2020, there should be 1.3 million more. Moreover, secure and inexpensive natural gas will also encourage an expansion of U.S. manufacturing. Mother advantage is that American workers will remain younger and more energetic than their rapidly aging rivals. By 2050, workers' median age in China and Japan will be about 50, a decade higher than in America. Moreover, the United States attracts motivated immigrants, including "highly educated talent " A Gallup survey of 151 countries found the United States was the top choice for those wanting to move, at 23 percent. At 7 percent, the United Kingdom was second. Finally, the United States to remain the leader in innovation. America EFTA00692787 performs the largest amount of research and development (31 percent of the global total in 2012) and has more of the best universities (29 out of the top 50, according to one British ranking). With all of these advantages why do so many people view America in decline? Samuelson suggests: If your neighbor's house bums down and only half of yours does, you are relatively better off than your neighbor — but you're worse off than you used to be. It's in that sense that America's prospects exceed Europe's and Japan's. But this advantage doesn't erase the huge economic losses suffered by millions of Americans. Most will reasonably conclude that their country is in decline. Demoralized, they will be less supportive of U.S. economic, political and military leadership abroad. This is how domestic disappointment translates into global retreat. America's strengths have been underestimated. Compared with Europe and Japan — the world's other enclaves of affluence — our prospects are brighter. The last American Century is dead. Long live the next American Century. Like many other institutions unions have only themselves to blame. Having started out in my first job as union member, I quickly realized that the leadership were more interested in their own benefits than in the welfare of the workers that they represented. Outside of my own experiences I watch the dock workers union fight against container shipping and film & television unions pad production shoots with unnecessary workers. This week Robert Reich — The Non Zero-Sum Society — in The Huffington Post — that because the super-rich have done well in the economic recovery while almost everyone else has done badly and the top 1 percent of earners' real wages grew 8.2 percent from 2009 to 2011, yet the real annual wages of Americans in the bottom 90 percent have continued to decline in the recovery, eroding by 1.2 percent during this same period, there is no way for the economy to fully recover without broaden the base. That's because 70 percent of economic activity in America is consumer spending. If the bottom 90 percent of Americans are becoming poorer, they're less able to spend. Without their spending, the economy can't get out of first gear. Today almost a quarter of all jobs in America now pay wages below the poverty line for a family of four. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates 7 out of 10 growth occupations over the next decade will be low-wage -- like serving customers at big-box retailers and fast-food chains. At this rate, who's going to buy all the goods and services America is capable of producing? We can't return to the kind of debt-financed consumption that caused the bubble in the first place. As such Robert Reich says, economies are not a zero-sum games and wealthy Americans would do better with smaller shares ofa rapidly-growing economy than with the large shams they now possess ofan economy that's barely moving. And that if they were rational, the wealthy would support public investments in education and job-training, a world-class infrastructure (transportation, water and sewage, energy, intemet), and basic research -- all of which would make the American workforce more productive. Reich continues suggesting that if the rich were rational they'd even support labor unions -- which have proven the best means of giving working people a fair share in the nation's prosperity. From here he argues for unionization, which are almost extinct as the decline of labor union in America tracks exactly the decline in the bottom 90 percent's share of total earnings, and shrinkage of the middle class. In the 1950s, when the U.S. economy was growing faster than 3 percent a year, more than a third of all working people belonged to a union. That gave them enough bargaining clout to get wages that allowed them to buy what the economy was capable of producing. Today unions are almost extinct as only 6.6% of workers in the private sector unionized, down from 6.9% in 2011 and the lowest rate of unionization in almost a century. Since the late 1970s, unions have eroded -- as has the purchasing power of most Americans, and not coincidentally, the average annual growth of the economy. EFTA00692788 What's to blame? Partly globalization and technological change. Globalization sent many unionized manufacturing plants abroad. Manufacturing is starting to return to America but it's returning without many jobs. The old assembly line has been replaced by robotics and numerically-controlled machine tools. Technologies have also replaced many formerly unionized workers in telecommunications (remember telephone operators?) and clerical jobs. People don't realize that many other nations subject to the same forces have far higher levels of unionization than America. Example: 28 percent of Canada's workforce is unionized, as is more than 25 percent of Britain's, and almost 20 percent of Germany's. While unions are almost extinct in America because we've chosen to make them extinct. Unlike other rich nations, our labor laws allow employers to replace striking workers. We've also made it exceedingly difficult for workers to organize, and we barely penalized companies that violate labor laws. (A worker who's illegally fired for trying to organize a union may, if lucky, get the job back along with back pay -- after years of legal haggling.) Republicans, in particular, have set out to kill off unions. Union membership dropped 13 percent last year in Wisconsin, which in 2011 curbed the collective bargaining rights of many public employees. And it fell 18 percent last year in Indiana, which last February enacted a right-to-work law (allowing employees at unionized workplaces to get all the benefits of unionization without paying for them). Last month Michigan enacted a similar law. Don't blame globalization and technological change for why employees at Walmart , America's largest employer, still don't have a union. They're not in global competition and their jobs aren't directly threatened by technology. The average pay of a Walmart worker is $8.81 an hour. A third of Walmart's employees work less than 28 hours per week and don't qualify for benefits. Walmart is a microcosm of the American economy. It has brazenly fought off unions. But it could easily afford to pay its workers more. It earned $16 billion last year. Much of that sum went to Walmart's shareholders, including the family of its founder, Sam Walton its largest shareholders. The wealth of the Walton family now exceeds the wealth of the bottom 40 percent of American families combined, according to the Economic Policy Institute. And as Robert Reich asks, how can Walmart expect to continue to show fat profits when most of its customers are on a downward economic escalator? Reich solution is that Walmart should be unionized. So should McDonalds. So should every major big-box retailer andfast- food outlet in the nation. So should every hospital in America. All based on the theory that if more Americans made more money the economy would growfaster and everyone— even the very rich -- would benefit. And although unions have over played their cards, forgetting that not only they think about workers but they should realized that they also need to make sure that whatever they do strengthens the companies where their members work, they may not be able to rekindle public trust. Whatever happens with unions, we need to broaden the economic base for the bottom 90% if we ever expect to grow the economy in the way that the country was able to do in the 1950s and 1960s. This week joining the growing choir of Chris Cristie, Bobby Jindal, Bill Kristol and even Paul Ryan, David Brooks wrote an opt-ed in the New York Times — A Second G.O.P. - suggesting that the Republican Party needs to reinvent itself and reach beyond the bubble of those "who speak the same speak" And since 1981 when the Republican Party adopted the mantra that "Government is the problem" much has changed due to globalization and technology. With all that has changed in the past three decades the Republican narrative is still built around the conflict between Big Government and Personal Freedom, instead of concentrating on the 47% that Mitt Romney suggested were "takers and moochers.". EFTA00692789 As Bill Kristol pointed out at the National Review event, the G.O.P. fiercely opposed the Dodd-Frank financial regulation law but never offered an alternative. The party opposed Obamacare but never offered a replacement. John Podhoretz of Commentary added that as soon as Republicans start talking about what kind of regulations and programs government should promote, they get accused by colleagues of being Big Government conservatives. The problem with this mentality is that it makes it hard for Republicans to analyze social and economic problems that don't flow directly from big government. For example, we are now at the end of the era in which a rising tide lifts all boats. Republicans like Mitt Romney can talk about improving the overall business climate with lower taxes and lighter regulation, but regular voters sense that that won't help them because wages no longer keep pace with productivity gains. As David Brooks points out, Americans are still skeptical of Washington. Ifyou shove a big government program down their throats they will recoil. But many of their immediate problemsflowfrom globalization, the turmoil of technological change and social decay, and they're looking for help. Moreover; given all the anti government rhetoric, they will never trust these Republicans to reform cherished programs like Social Security and Medicare. You can't be for entitlement reform and today's G.O.P., because politically the two will never go together. And can current Republicans change their underlying mentality to adapt to these realities? Intellectual history says no. People almost never change their underlying narratives or unconscious frameworks. Moreover; in the South and rural West, where most Republicans are from, the Encroachment Story has deep historic and psychological roots. Anti-Washington, anti-urban sentiment has characterized those culturesfor decades. But, sofar, there have been more callsfor change than actual evidence of change. Brooks continues by saying — it's probablyfutile to try to change current Republicans. It's smarter to build a new wing of the Republican Party, one that can compete in the Northeast, the mid-Atlantic states, in the upper Midwest and along the West Coast It's smarter to build a new division that is different the way the Westin is different than the Sheraton. The second G.O.P. wouldn't be based on the Encroachment Story. It would be based on the idea that America is being hit simultaneously by two crises, which you might call the Mancur Olson crisis and the Charles Murray crisis. Olson argued that nations decline because their aging institutions get bloated and sclerotic and retard national dynamism. Murray argues that America is coming apart, dividing into two nations — one with high education levels, stable families and good opportunities and the other with low education levels, unstable families and bad opportunities. The second G.O.P. would tackle both problems at once. It would be filled with people who recoiled at President Obama's second inaugural Address because of its excessive faith in centralized power, but who don't share the absolute anti-government story of the current G.O.P. Brooks continues about building a new Republican collation — Would a coastal and Midwestern G.O.P. sit easily with the Southern and Western one? No, but majority parties are usually coalitions of the incompatible. This is really the only chance Republicans have. The question is: Who's going to build a second G.O.P.? But the truth is that until Republicans truly drop the belief that Government is bad and social programs make a welfare state, EFTA00692790 until they can come up with serious proposals that lift all Americans with a rising tide — they will further marginalize themselves or truly change. And as Eugene Robinson wrote this week in The Washington Post — Lost in their own wilderness.... The G.O.P. Using Mali as any example this week in The Washington Post — Obama administration learns that `leading from behind' is the right placefor the U.S. — Walter Pincus says that, "leadingfrom behind" is the right policy choice for the United States to follow in most of today's international confrontations with what is now termed "terrorism. " Having learned some hard lessons from the United States' 11 years fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq which cost the nation 6,300 U.S. lives, 50,300 casualties among American service personnel and about $1.3 trillion, the Obama Administration realizes that even the best-intentioned foreign intervention is bound to bog its armies down in endless war