Eating Fruits And Vegetables Is Not A Job Killer
Major food manufacturers are readying their next attack on nutrition by calling proposed food marketing guidelines “job killers” that will devastate the American economy.
Earlier this year, the Federal Trade Commission, along with three other Federal agencies, proposed voluntary guidelines for marketing food to children to reduce sugars, fats and salts and increase fruits, whole grains and vegetables in the diets of American kids. In 2008, led by Senators Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) and Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), Congress asked for the recommendations to address the nations’ growing obesity crisis.
Studies show that one third of all children aged 10 to 17 are overweight or obese. In the past three decades rates have more than doubled among kids aged 2 to 5 and more than tripled among those ages 6 through 11.
A coalition of major manufacturers of processed foods, fast-food chains, and the media industry that depends on their advertising dollars are spending millions to derail the proposed guidelines. The FTC has already started to trim the proposal in response to the lobbying blitzkrieg but industry wants to go ever further. They want to use an industry-designed scheme that would declare Chocolate Lucky Charms, Marshmallow Pebbles and Cookie Crisp cereals as healthy.
Despite industry claims, these guidelines aren’t mandatory; they are voluntary guidelines developed by an independent committee of nutrition experts about how we can improve children’s health. They are sensible, science-based recommendations.
That hasn’t stopped industry predictions of economic disaster. According to comments filed by General Mills’ to the Interagency Working Group “the economic consequences [of the guidelines] for American consumers and American agriculture would be devastating.” They also predict “severe” economic consequences for the media industry and their employees.
They argue the voluntary guidelines would cause consumers to eat more fruits and vegetables produced in other countries and therefore fewer grains grown in America. According to research funded by the Grocery Manufacturers of America “demand for fruits and vegetables would increase by 1009% and 226% respectively” resulting in almost $500 billion more spent on imported food and $30 billion less on domestically grown grain.
Even if the voluntary guidelines were that effective and their study accurate, it’s audacious marketing spin to turn an overwhelmingly positive victory for public health into a big government, job killing attack on freedom.
Another industry-funded study claimed that the voluntary guidelines would result in the loss of 74,000 jobs. An analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, found the study riddled with “implausible” assumptions, historical inconsistencies and incomplete analyses of potential impacts to both the industry and economy as a whole. For example, the industry study assumes, without justification, a 20% decline in advertising and completely ignores the likely scenario in which companies shift advertising to other products or audiences. It also ignores the fact that there has been no negative economic impact since industry adopted its own guidelines in 2006. In fact, EPI concludes that the guidelines could have no impact on jobs or could even lead to job growth in other parts of the economy.
Finally, General Mills adds that the $1.6 billion in food advertising expenditures “would go up in smoke.” “$1.6 billion in economic activity cannot disappear without an impact on people’s jobs and livelihoods” they wrote.
While it’s likely food conglomerates would redirect their advertising dollars, media companies would also look for and find plenty of buyers. In fact, they’ve done it before. When Congress banned tobacco ads on TV and Radio in 1970 media companies stood to lose $220 million in annual cigarette advertising. Like their counterparts today, the networks, and broadcasters associations lobbied hard alongside big tobacco against the ban.
The media industry did fine. Total TV and Radio advertising sales has increased every year before the ban and after. According to media analysts, in 1969 ad expenditures on TV and radio were $4.85 billion. In 1972, they were $5.7 billion.
For decades, industries have opposed laws, rules and even basic consumer information that have made us all healthier. They always predict disaster but, in fact, they respond with new ideas and innovations and we all benefit. These voluntary guidelines merely suggest a path that industry should embrace.
By: David Cohen, Director, Cry Wolf Project, published in The Hill Congress Blog, November 23, 2011
The GOP “Wet Blanket” Fetish
The six Republicans from the failed super-committee, in an op-ed today:
The 2001 and 2003 changes to the tax code reduced marginal rates for all taxpayers as well as the rates for capital gains, dividends and the death tax. For technical reasons, all of these provisions expire at the end of next year — meaning that if Congress does not act, Americans will face the largest tax increase in our history. This prospect has put a wet blanket over job creation and economic recovery.
House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), three weeks ago:
“I think the budget deficit and our debt serves as a wet blanket over our economy.
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), in late September:
“Business owners are reluctant to create jobs today when they’re going to need to pay more tomorrow to comply with onerous new regulations. That’s what employers mean when they say that uncertainty generated by Washington is a big wet blanket on our economy.”
Former Sen. George Allen (R-Va.), seeking a comeback, in mid September:
” [T]ax hikes that President Obama has been pushing since he was elected and they will put a heavy, wet blanket on an economy.”
So, to review, Republicans believe the possibility of potential tax increases, regulations, the debt, the deficit, and uncertainty are all a “wet blanket.” I can only assume some focus group somewhere told pollsters they like this metaphor, which is why it’s being used so incessantly.
Let’s make this plain, shall we? The laws of supply and demand are not subject to a Republican filibuster. The economy is struggling because businesses don’t have enough customers. We have high unemployment and depressed wages, which lead to less demand, slower growth, and fewer new jobs. It’s really not that complicated.
Republicans, who should be able to understand these basics, are eager to make matters worse, undermining demand when we should be doing the opposite. And that’s the real wet blanket we should be talking about.
By: Steve Benen, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly, November 26, 2011
We Are Living In The Conservative Recovery, And It’s Pretty Terrible
In talking about the economy, the Republican presidential candidates are quick to blame government spending for our current woes. “On my first day in office, I will send five bills to Congress and issue five executive orders that will get government out of the way and restore America to the path of robust economic growth that we need to create jobs,” said former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney when he unveiled his jobs plan in September. Likewise, in his plan, Texas Governor Rick Perry touts spending cuts as part of the road toward renewed economic growth: “The cut, balance, and grow plan paves the way for the job creation, balanced budgets, and fiscal responsibility that we need to get America working again.”
The problem, as Neil Irwin reports for The Washington Post, is that sharp cuts to government have been terrible for the recovery. Thanks to lower revenue, limited federal aid, and budget-cutting state legislators, the public sector has cut 455,000 jobs since the beginning of 2010, sending the proportion of government jobs to 16.7 percent, the lowest level in three years. These cuts have been a huge drag on the recovery -– to wit, October saw private-sector job growth of 104,000, which was offset by the loss of 24,000 public-sector jobs, for a net increase of 80,000 jobs. This dynamic has been true of every month since the recovery officially began.
Far from unleashing the power of the private sector, cuts to government have prolonged the economic pain, as demand is removed from the economy without an adequate replacement. Despite this, conservatives continue to press for further and greater cuts to government spending –- the Pentagon notwithstanding. What conservatives refuse to acknowledge is that we are living through the recovery they say they want, and it’s been disastrous.
By: Jamelle Bouie, The American Prospect, November 7, 2011
The Intransigent “Do Nothing GOP Congress” And Election 2012
The Republicans in Congress have made a wager. They’ve bet the political ranch that they will destroy Barack Obama’s chances for re-election if they can block his proposals to produce jobs.
In fact, it’s the GOP that could lose big when the votes are counted a year from now.
Republicans completely control the House. In the Senate they can use the filibuster to prevent anything from passing.
Last week, for the third time this fall, Republicans successfully blocked Obama’s jobs program in the Senate. Of course this came as absolutely no surprise, since Senate Republican Leader told the world earlier this year — in no uncertain terms — that his top legislative priority was to prevent the re-election of the president.
McConnell, and his House counterpart, John Boehner, don’t lose a wink of sleep over concerns that their intransigence harms the economic prospects of everyday Americans. In their view, the worse the economy gets, the more likely the voters will be to boot President Obama out of the Oval Office.
But a good case can be made that these guys will end up being too clever by half — that in fact they are providing fuel for precisely the argument that could defeat them in 2012.
McConnell and Boehner are right that it is very hard for an incumbent president to win re-election in a bad economy. And unless something dramatically changes, most Americans won’t think much of their own economic circumstances when Election Day rolls around next year.
So next year’s election will turn largely on one question: who does the American people hold responsible for what will likely still be a lousy economy?
Republicans are relying on the simple proposition that the guy in charge — the president — is to blame. But every day of intransigence increases the odds that in fact, they themselves will get the rap.
In 1945 Vice President Harry Truman became president when Franklin Roosevelt died in office. After the War, Truman presided over a substantial post-war recession that helped make him “unelectable” in the eyes of most pundits and politicians. GDP dropped by a whopping 12%. His political viability was complicated further when the Democratic base split into three parts. A portion followed Progressive Henry Wallace and much of the Southern Democratic white vote (the south was a Democratic base at the time) supported Strom Thurmond’s segregationist Dixiecrat Party. In the April before the election, Truman’s overall approval rating in the Gallup poll was just 36%.
But, Truman barnstormed the country, traveling 21,000 miles on a “whistle stop” tour where he decried the “do-nothing Republican Congress.” Though the economy began a modest improvement in 1948, no one — but Truman himself — believed he had a chance to defeat Thomas Dewey — a former Governor cut out of the same elite cloth as Mitt Romney. Truman won.
Obama can do exactly the same thing. Even assuming that the economy continues to experience only modest improvements over the next year, the Obama campaign can lay the lack of progress where it belongs — at the feet of the “do-nothing Republican Congress” that is intent on stalling economic recovery for their own political gain.
And where Truman’s 1946 recession was largely the result of the post war demobilization, Obama can rightly claim that this economic disaster was the product of precisely the same Republican policies that his opponents intend to re-instate if they regain control of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Not only has the GOP refused to support Democratic measures to put Americans back to work, their alternative “jobs program” features no direct, measurable job creation whatsoever. Instead it relies on the same “trickle down” economic theory that didn’t create one net private sector job in the eight years before the Great Recession – and the same unwillingness to rein in the big Wall Street banks that led to the worst financial collapse in 65 years.
But that’s not all. Everyone agrees that the Republican House Majority was swept into office last November precisely because of the terrible economy. But instead of job creation, they’ve busied themselves focusing on trying to defund Planned Parenthood, protecting Americans from the imaginary threat of Sharia Law, and fending off non-existent attack on the use of “In God We Trust.” The Republican controlled House hasn’t voted on a single job creation measure since John Boehner and his colleagues took power last January.
In the deliberations of the “Super Committee,” Republicans have been completely unwilling to give on the fundamental question of whether millionaires should be asked to pay to put America’s economic house in order. The view of the Republican leadership is that — in addition to defeating President Obama — their principal mission is to act as guard dogs for the exploding incomes of the top 1%.
In the upcoming fight over the next fiscal year’s appropriation bills, there is every indication that the Republicans will demand that riders be attached limiting the power of the EPA and restricting funding for contraception — which surveys show is used by 98% of American women.
Battles like these will do nothing but strengthen the Democratic narrative that the GOP leadership is focusing on bread and circuses for its base, while it intentionally blocks measures that could provide jobs to construction workers, fire fighters, cops, teachers and millions other out-of-work Americans.
Then there is the House schedule. Last week the Boehner team published a House schedule for next year intended to guarantee that very little gets done. The House will be in session only 94 days in all of next year (including many days where votes are postponed until 6PM) and will continue its habit of going into recess virtually every third week. Yet another example of a “do-nothing Republican Congress.”
It’s no accident, that while the polls show that most officials in the American government have fallen into disrepute for their failure to get the economy moving again, Congressional Republicans win the prize for negative ratings. Gallup shows Obama’s approval ratings beginning to edge up — from a very low 38%, up to 43%. Some other polls show it rising to 47%. The average rating from Real Clear Politics currently stands at 45.4%.
Meanwhile, Congressional job approval ranges from 9% to 16%, with a Real Clear Politics average of 12.7%.
The recent Democracy Corps poll shows that favorability for Republicans in Congress trails the Republican Party as a whole, Democrats in Congress, the Democratic Party as a whole, and President Obama.
On the other hand, the president’s agenda itself is overwhelmingly popular. His jobs bill is supported by the vast majority of Americans — and becomes more popular the more voters hear about it. When its provisions were explained, 63% offered their support in the October Wall Street Journal/NBC poll. That’s why it’s so important for the White House to continue pressing Congress to pass the bill as a whole — and to focus on its individual parts.
Funding jobs for teachers, firefighters and cops is very popular. Repairing deteriorating schools is very popular. Building roads, ports and airports is very popular. Providing unemployment benefits for those who are out of work is very popular.
And paying for it all by taxing millionaires and billionaires has the support of two thirds to three fourths of Americans — including a majority of Republicans. An October National Journal poll found 68% of voters support the Democratic proposal for a surtax on millionaires to pay for the jobs bill.
In fact, the whole 99% versus 1% message frame that has dominated the airwaves since everyday people began Occupying Wall Street — is very popular — as are the president’s executive actions to improve the economy without Congressional approval.
And what is unpopular? The Republican plan to abolish Medicare and replace it with vouchers – that is really unpopular. In fact, most polls find that 70% of voters oppose cutting Social Security and Medicare to reduce the deficit.
Creating jobs, making the 1% pay their fair share, and protecting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid will be the defining symbolic issues next year — and on every one of them Democrats hold the high political ground and Republicans have to walk through the valley of political death.
Finally, of course, is the matter of whom the Republicans will nominate as an alternative to President Obama. Unfortunately for the GOP, Presidential elections are not always referenda on the incumbent — they are choices between two living, breathing people — and in this case two clearly distinguishable futures for our country.
The conventional wisdom holds that Romney is the Republican’s strongest contender. If he is — which I doubt — he is no Rocky Balboa.
There are two lines of attack on Romney that are toxic:
He clearly has no core values.
When voters accuse someone of being a typical “politician” they mean someone is a candidate who has no center — who decides what he believes depending entirely on the political winds. Romney could serve as the dictionary definition of “politician.” He has done “one eighties” on everything from abortion rights to health care. He is a political weathervane whose guiding principle is only one thing: what will advance the political career of Mitt Romney?
In 2004, immediately before the election, Gallup showed George W. Bush with an approval rating of 48% approval to 47% disapproval — not much different than President Obama enjoys today. But a not very popular Bush won re-election — largely by convincing large numbers of swing voters that John Kerry had no core values, that he was a flip flopper. They succeeded even though Kerry was a war hero and had a strong record of standing up for what he believed. How much easier will it be to convince everyday Americans that Romney has no core values – since he doesn’t.
Romney is the poster boy for the 1%.
He feels like the guy who fired your brother-in-law. He is in fact the guy who, some time back, gathered his crowd of young Wall Street hot shots around him after he completed a big deal at Bain Capital and posed for a picture with money dripping from their mouths and pockets and ears. He’s a guy who made his fortune dismantling companies and firing workers.
Of course, none of these facts are intended to make Progressives complacent — far from it. None of them guarantees we will win in 2012 — only that we can.
For the first two years of the Obama Administration, Progressives took a lot of ground.
There was:
Health Care for All Americans
Wall Street Reform
Avoiding another Great Depression
Saving a million jobs in the American auto industry
Expanding Medicaid
Eliminating Don’t Ask Don’t Tell
Expanding Children’s Health
Environmental Reform
Expanding Labor Rights
Expanding Civil Liberties
Equal Pay for Equal Work
Now Obama is ending the War in Iraq.
But last fall the Empire struck back. All of the corporate, special interest money fought back with a vengeance. It fought back because that’s the nature of change. The forces of the status quo don’t just roll over and play dead. They do everything they can to hang onto their money and power and privilege.
Now we have to hold our ground and prepare a winning counter offensive — and it won’t be easy, especially in light of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision that magnifies the power of corporate cash.
But if they win — if America has President Romney or Perry or Cain, Senate Majority Leader McConnell and Speaker Boehner — they have made it crystal clear what they will do. They will return America to the Gilded Age. They will roll back the twentieth century — they will rip apart the entire social contract.
They will privatize Social Security, destroy Medicare, emasculate the labor movement, cut taxes further for corporations and the wealthy. They will create new radical conservative facts on the ground that they hope will entrench conservative power for generations.
But they believe their real key to victory is lack of enthusiasm among Progressives. They believe that Progressives — and many in the Democratic base — will stay home next November.
They will be wrong.
That’s because over the next year, the progressive forces in America will rise to the battle. In their own way, the Occupy movement has already shown that Progressives will stand and fight.
They will rise to the battle because they realize that the 2012 election is not just about two people running for President. It is about a moral question. It’s about two competing sets of values. It’s all about how we see ourselves as a nation — as a society. It’s about whether we will be a society based on the precepts of radical conservative social Darwinism, or a society rooted in the progressive values that have always defined the promise of America.
We will not allow them to destroy Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
We will not allow them to destroy the American labor movement.
We will not allow them to destroy the middle class.
We will not allow them to destroy the American dream.
And we will remember a central lesson of history: that before change happens it seems impossible. And after change happens it seems inevitable.
American history — human history — is the story of ever-expanding human freedom. There may be ups and downs, but when you back up from the big chart of history, the trend is up.
I believe that our time is no exception — that next year — in this crossroads election — we will do what is necessary to assure that America once again recommits herself to create a brighter future for the next generation than those that went before.
That’s what the revolutionaries that created this nation did. That’s what the soldiers who fought and died to defend it did. That’s what the sit-down strikers who created the labor movement did. That’s what the freedom riders who fought for civil rights did. And that is precisely what we will do again in 2012.
By: Robert Creamer, Political Organizer, Strategist and Author, Published in The Huffington Post, November 7, 2011
Cutting Taxes For The Rich Never Ends Well
You can call it 9-9-9, the Perry two-step, or a national sales tax. But the various flat tax plans being proposed by Republican candidates, right-wing think tanks, and media commentators share some common characteristics that should worry most middle-class Americans.
The basic notion behind a flat tax is to eliminate the current system of six tax brackets—in which people with higher incomes pay higher tax rates—with a single uniform rate. Most flat tax proposals also eliminate most or all of the deductions and credits in the current code—such as the mortgage interest deduction, the deduction for charitable giving, and hundreds of lesser-used preferences.
The flat tax is certainly a good deal for high-income individuals. Although they might not get to deduct mortgage interest payments on their vacation homes, those with high incomes more than make up for it in the lower, “flatter” rate. For example, under a 20 percent flat tax (similar to the one proposed by Rick Perry), the top 1 percent would see an average tax cut of over $200,000.
If the rich are paying less, you can probably guess who would pay more: low- and moderate-income families. For example, under the Cain 9-9-9 plan, 90 percent of filers with incomes between $40,000 and $50,000 would see a tax increase averaging about $4,000. (The Perry plan gives taxpayers an option of staying in the current system—so it’s unlikely anyone would choose the flat tax option if it means higher taxes. Since low- and moderate-income taxpayers would see an increase under the 20 percent plan, the final result of the Perry plan would be the introduction of an exclusive tax code designed for the high-income individuals, while the rest of us get to keep the old clunker. See who would choose which plan.)
Because flat tax proposals lower rates at the top, and because the top is where an increasing share of income is being concentrated, they also tend to bring in significantly less revenue than the current tax code, resulting in higher deficits, fewer public investments, and pressure to cut programs like Social Security and Medicare.
Proponents of the flat tax argue that lower rates on the rich (or the “job-creators” as some are now calling them) and on income derived from stocks and bonds will boost economic growth and job creation. However, this trickle-down theory has been tried and failed: Bush-era policies moved the tax code in this direction, but the “boom” of the 2000s was the worst on record since at least the 1950s.
Tax cuts for the rich and a higher debt for everyone else? We’ve seen that movie before, and it doesn’t end well.
By: John Irons, Research and Policy Director, Economic Policy Institute; Published in U. S. News and World Report, November 1, 2011
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