And Now, the Dessert Course

By J. Goodrich

Time for me to punch in my time card and to leave this blog, time to extend my most sincere thanks to both the Nation for offering me this chance to finally play a waitress and also to all those who have sampled the political dishes I have concocted over the last month. If you liked my cuisine, you know where to find more.

The meal we have had has been long and varied in nutritional content. Linger just for a moment longer, for the dessert course is still to be served. I guarantee that it will be devoid of anything fattening, yet full of fascinating flavors. And there will be music!

I do have regrets, of course. I wanted to serve you more bread, or a discussion about the differences between appendectomies and bread, because to understand those differences is to understand why the markets for health care can never quite function in the manner John McCain has recently suggested: to put "individuals and families back in charge."

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April 29, 2008

Same Difference?

By J. Goodrich

"Bowling 1, Health Care 0." That's the title of Elizabeth Edwards' article on what has not gotten good media coverage in these presidential primary races: the actual policy proposals of various candidates. It's more fascinating (and much easier) to speculate on the characters of the candidates or to view them as entertainers, to be judged the same way we might judge a ballet or a movie performance.

Besides, policy proposals are bo-o-ring, like nutritious and sensible food, while reading about the candidates' bowling mishaps or whiskey shots is like snacking on some crunchy and fatty French fries. If you also believe that voters will ultimately vote on those fast-food grounds, well, there's not much point to writing about the issues.

I agree with Edwards' major points, obviously. But substantive articles on the differences between the three candidates can be found by the diligent. For example, Laura Meckler's Wall Street Journal article tells us what McCain, Obama and Clinton plan to do to control health care costs, and if you wade deep into the piece you can learn about the differences in the three plans. But you will not learn that from the title of the piece: "Candidates' Health-Care Ideas May Not Offer Immediate Cure."

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April 28, 2008

George Will Goes To School

By J. Goodrich

And he doesn't like what he sees there: Children who cannot learn because their mothers are not married, teachers who are union thugs, silly liberals who think that paying teachers better and having smaller class sizes might actually matter. Matter! They are shopworn panaceas, says Will. (Why shopworn? Because they were never bought and actually tried?)

Would that mean that he would support paying teachers even less than they are paid in this country or running schools in mega-classes? I'm not sure. But his message is one of hopelessness. Don't expect schools to make a difference. The only solution he offers us is that children should pick their parents more carefully.

Robin Chait points out some evidence which destroys George's glum determination to see education as a totally wasted exercise for poor children. Isn't it fascinating, by the way, that the p-word didn't appear even once in Will's original column? Poverty is not something that we should discuss when pondering educational differences, it seems.

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April 27, 2008

The New Capitalists

By J. Goodrich

Did you know that the women employed as seamstresses during the early Victorian era had to pay for the needle and the thread out of their pay packets? They were treated as independent contractors or as risk-taking capitalists. Later on seamstresses had to pay rent for the sewing machines their work required:

The East End seamstress could expect to take home a pitifully low wage. In the Report of the Select Committee of the House of Lords on the Sweating System 1888-1890, Miss Beatrice Potter (a most famous female Fabian socialist reformer) and others, gave evidence of the atrocious working conditions and meagre pay. Mrs. Lavinia Casey made shirts at 7 pence a dozen. She normally worked from seven in the morning to eleven pm at night. After deducting time devoted to her children she averaged twelve hours work a day.

In that time she normally made two dozen shirts. Her total daily wage amounted to one shilling and two pence. From her weekly earnings she had to deduct two shilling and sixpence for the hire of her Singer sewing machine plus one shilling, to one shilling and three pence for sewing machine oil and sewing thread. She could barely keep her family on this income. She was in arrears with her payments to the Singer Company, but her livelihood would be threatened if the sewing machine were taken away.

"I needed a job," said Jean. "They tell you, 'You'll make all this money working for yourself.' "

She soon discovered that her new employer had embraced a controversial strategy to squeeze down costs by millions of dollars each year: it insisted that Jean and the other drivers were independent contractors, not employees. The I.R.S., New York and many other states are investigating this strategy, convinced that many companies use it to cheat their workers and cheat on taxes.

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April 22, 2008

Who Would Joe Sixpack Vote For?

By J. Goodrich

As all other political wonks, I have followed the public discussion about Hillary Clinton's cleavage and voice and Barack Obama's bowling scores and bad orange juice habit. I have struggled through Maureen Dowd's columns on Hillary "the Queen Bee" and Barack "the Bambi," and I have often wondered why we are offered this soap-opera treatment of the Democratic presidential candidates (remember John Edwards and his haircuts?) while similar sit-coms on the Republican candidates don't seem to interest any of the pundits. Hence, I still don't know what John McCain drinks, what his bowling score might be, how much his haircuts cost or whether he can play basketball at all.

This is wrong. Imagine what juicy morsels we might be missing because nobody is digging through the menu and clothing choices of Senator McCain. Surely a reporter could be placed in at least one of his many properties to find if he is someone the average Joe Sixpack might want to have a beer with. You know, the way everyone was told that George Bush (a teetotaller) is just such a politician, albeit with roots deep in old money and elite schools.

Paul Waldman has written a fascinating piece on these issues and on the deeper reasons why certain pundits keep asking the question about the blue-collar roots of the Democratic presidential candidates. Waldman suggests that it might be because the pundits themselves belong to the elites that they so scorn. As an example, this is how he describes Chris Matthews, the host of Hardball:

Please, he [Matthews] seems to be saying, don't consider me part of the elite.

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April 21, 2008

A Fair Payday

By J. Goodrich

Wouldn't that be lovely? To have a fair pay packet? We might all have different ideas about what it should contain, but today is the day when all types of blogs are supposed to write and act on the topic of fair pay for women.

The impetus for this is the case of Lilly Ledbetter, and the legislation proposed as a consequence of that case:

The legislation would effectively remove the statute of limitations from Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin. It was crafted in response to the Supreme Court's 5-4 ruling in May that set a 180-day limit on an employee's right to sue for pay discrimination.

In Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., the court threw out the case of Lilly Ledbetter, a supervisor at Goodyear's plant in Gadsden, Ala., who claimed she ended 19 years of employment with an annual salary that was $6,500 below that of the lowest-paid male supervisor. Because the pay disparities occurred for years, the court said Ledbetter failed to sue within the statute of limitations.

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April 18, 2008

No More Corporate Welfare?

By J. Goodrich

I bet you don't want to hear about taxes right now, but that's the topic of this post. Or more precisely, I want to write about John McCain's plans to give extra help to corporations should he become the president of the United States:

In yesterday's speech, McCain played to his maverick image, taking corporate chieftains to task for their "extravagant salaries and severance deals." He even called out by name Angelo R. Mozilo, the chief executive of imploding mortgage giant Countrywide, and James E. Cayne, former chief executive of Bear Stearns, which was bailed out by an emergency line of credit from the Federal Reserve Board.

"In my administration, there will be no more subsidies for special pleaders, no more corporate welfare," McCain said.

But much of what he detailed was a corporate special pleader's dream: a cut in the corporate income tax rate, from 35 percent to 25 percent, a proposal to allow businesses to write off the cost of new equipment and technology from their taxes, a ban on Internet and new cellphone taxes, and a permanent tax credit for research and development.

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April 16, 2008

When Is A Goal Not A Goal?

By J. Goodrich

I'm not talking about hockey or soccer goals here, but the kind of goal President Bush has decided to set for reducing greenhouse gas emissions:

President Bush will endorse an "intermediate goal" today for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but he will not put forward any specific legislation or proposal on how the goal should be met, White House officials said.

Now that will do wonders for stopping greenhouse gas emissions, won't it? There's no actual plan, no legislation and no negative outcomes if you don't manage to make the goal. In short, there's no need at all to try to reach the goal by cutting back on emissions.

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April 15, 2008

More Time Off!

By J. Goodrich

That is something that middle class Americans really, really want, based on a recent Pew Research Center national public opinion survey.

Oh, to be able to read a book! To lie down on the beach and hear just the waves breaking instead of all that rush-hour traffic! To have time to just sit there, instead of always doing something!

Or that's how I imagine the internal conversations of the poll respondents. Ezra Klein points out that leisure time was rated more desirable in the poll than careers, marriages and having children:

Now, it's probably not that adults really value leisure time above their families and their god. So the impressive showing of leisure time suggests that that's where Americans feel particularly squeezed and out of control -- that's their top priority because it's the one they don't know how to achieve. And that's a shame. We're a rich society. We could afford to guarantee our workers paid vacation, we could afford to offer paid sick days, we could afford to make it easier to live a life in accordance with our preferences, rather than constantly fearing that actually taking necessary or desired time off will tarnish your reputation around the workplace.

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April 12, 2008

Supersize This

By J. Goodrich

Even John McCain is worried about the size of CEO compensations these days. The 1970's CEO earned 40 times the salary of the average worker, the CEO of the early 2000's made 170 times the paycheck of the average worker. Or much more, depending on the study one consults and the way a paycheck is defined.

Why would a conservative politician such as McCain express dislike of the pay of these new superstars of our global economy? Aren't those gigantic salaries well earned? Isn't the reason for the dizzying rewards of the top CEOs the same as the reason why Nomar Garciaparra gets paid so much? That the money is richly warranted because of the exceptional talents of a few corporate superstars?

That depends on whose take on the markets for CEOs you believe. For the traditional "free market" views nobody can beat the Cato Institute. This is what it said about executive compensation a year ago:

On a recent visit to the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, President Bush saw fit to decry the rising inequality in America, complaining that corporate salaries, bonuses and stock options were part of the problem. "We need to pay attention to the executive compensation packages that you approve," he told the audience.

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April 9, 2008