Dissing

I just returned from a trip to Washington, D.C. And as I was toting around little S.G. who just turned 7-months and so could not really converse with me (though she babbled a lot, some times very loudly) on the issue of government by corporations for corporate interests (or government by the rich for the rich), the current state of our economy, and things of that nature. But I gave a lot of thought to it all and especially the last eight years of economic and political decline. So when I came across Paul Krugman's editorial in the Seattle Times today on the subject -- Americans smell the rot in the nation's economy -- I read it with much interest. Here are a few of the things he wrote that really resonated.

"... a recent Pew report found that the percentage of Americans saying that they're better off than they were five years ago is at its lowest level in 44 years of polling."

Why?

"A major reason we're feeling so down is that for working Americans the boom never did come back. Job creation in the post-2001 recovery was pathetic by Clinton-era standards; wages barely kept up with inflation. Instead, corporate profits and the incomes of a tiny elite surged -- sucking up so much of the economy's growth that only crumbs were left for everyone else." AND "... my impression is that the subprime crisis -- with its revelation that titans of finance were dealing in funny money and its tales of failed executives receiving hundred-million-dollar going-away presents -- has resurrected the sense that something is rotten in the state of our economy."

I honestly laughed out loud when I read today's Wall Street Journal discussing how angry investors took umbrage with WaMu's executives' moves to protect their bonuses by making sure they weren't tied to losses even though the company lost something like $1.6 billion dollars in the subprime debacle last year, and at the same time are laying off thousands of employees. What the heh?

Bruce Ramsey, in Seattle Times said in his editorial today that when an employee and shareholder challenged the WaMu executives to give up their multimillion-dollar bonuses a "wave of cheers and applause swept the hall" at their recent shareholder's meeting.

And how about subprime central, Countrywide's CEO trying to justify his, what is it, almost half a billion dollar salary and bonus in Congressional hearings? How can he justify such greed?

Coincidentally, I just received an email from Fuse, www.fusewashington.org, on a recent Boston Globe article:

"Here's some tax day news that really made me mad: the biggest private contractor in Iraq isn't paying payroll taxes. Kellogg Brown Root, a spinoff of Halliburton and by far the largest private contractor in Iraq, set up two offshore companies in the Cayman Islands to avoid paying payroll taxes. The companies essentially consist of a computer file -- they don't even have an office or phone number. That's right. A company making $16 billion a year off of U.S. government contracts hires its employees through a sham "foreign" subsidiary, costing Social Security and Medicare more than $100 million a year."

Talk about tax breaks for the rich!

Hopefully, but not likely, a new administration will bring about sweeping changes. What is the saying -- power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely?

At least people are starting to pay attention. I guess that's a start.