Upward Spiral Instead of a Downward One
When I was young, the purpose of public policy was to raise our standard of living. Not so much, anymore. Now, public policy is designed to make business succeed, or be "competitive."
Our current policies are particularly well-crafted to the goal of making large multinational businesses succeed. Our policies benefit those businesses directly, while workers and small businesses make a leap of faith that boon will trickle our way. Corporate profits are at historic levels.
This has not raised our standard of living. Wages, adjusted for inflation, are stuck at 1975 levels, even though productivity has doubled in that time.
High Tech Workers Could Lose TAA Benefits in January
Unemployment insurance isn't the only thing that laid-off high tech workers could loose at the end of this year. High tech workers could also lose TAA (Trade Adjustment Assistance) benefits. The TAA Act provides benefits, including retraining, to workers who have lost their job due to trade agreements with other countries that facilitate the offshoring of American jobs.
A GROSS INSULT TO UNEMPLOYED AMERICANSAt last, Obama is getting serious about America's jobs crisis, proposing a $50-billion effort to put Americans to work repairing our national infrastructure. Of course, congressional Republicans have responded as they always do: petulantly shouting "no" and plopping their fat butts down in the middle of the legislative path to block progress. 
100 Years Ago, Teddy Roosevelt made a speech for us New Nationalism was Theodore Roosevelt's Progressive political philosophy during the 1912 election. He made the case for what he called the New Nationalism in a speech in Osawatomie, Kansas, in August 1910. The central issue he argued was human welfare versus property rights. He insisted that only a powerful federal government could regulate the economy and guarantee social justice. Roosevelt believed that the concentration in industry was not necessarily bad, if the industry behaved responsibly. He wanted executive agencies (not the courts) to regulate business. The federal government should be used to protect the laboring men, women and children from what he believed to be exploitation. In terms of policy, the New Nationalism supported child labor laws and minimum wage laws for women. Roosevelt supported graduated income and inheritance taxes, workers' compensation for industrial accidents, regulation of the labor of women and children, tariff revision, and firmer regulation of corporations.
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The Election Needs You, Broken Heart and Allby Paul Loeb "OK, so your heart's broken," as the old song goes. So's mine. But we have to get over it--now--and start taking action for the November election. Chamber, ACIP Say Foreign Workers Needed, Slam AFL-CIO Immigration Commission Plan by Stan Sorscher
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Council on International Personnel issued a report Aug. 11 highlighting the importance of highly skilled foreign workers and blasting arguments made by the AFL-CIO in favor of a commission to determine the future flow of guestworkers. 
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