From the folks at TED, here’s a powerful video:
Nick Hanauer is a rich guy, an unrepentant capitalist — and he has something to say to his fellow plutocrats: Wake up! Growing inequality is about to push our societies into conditions resembling pre-revolutionary France. Hear his argument about why a dramatic increase in minimum wage could grow the middle class, deliver economic prosperity … and prevent a revolution.
The spouse of HD48B representative, Jenifer Loon, has a new position per Adam Belz in the June 30, 2015, StarTribune. Please take the time to read the full article. See if your head spins, too.
We’ve included some numbers to link you to those “what the what” statements that jumped out at us.
“The Minnesota Chamber of Commerce announced Monday that its new president will be Douglas Loon, a longtime Midwest regional executive for the U.S. Chamber.
He will fill the vacancy left by the death last July of David Olson, who led the state’s largest business lobby for nearly a quarter century.
“A perfect choice. He’s smart. He has a good reputation with both sides of the aisle. He knows Minnesota well,” said Charlie Weaver, executive director of the Minnesota Business Partnership. “He’ll be well received at the Capitol.”
Loon, 50, grew up in South Dakota, worked in Washington for a Pennsylvania senator and has been based in Minnesota since 1998. His wife, Jenifer Loon, is a Republican state representative from Eden Prairie.
Douglas Loon will take the post in September and spend the fall months touring the state and preparing for next year’s legislative session.
The Chamber and its mostly Republican allies are coming off a strong year in which the GOP took the Minnesota House and logged a solid performance in the 2015 legislative session.
(1) Taxes and transportation were left unresolved and will be a battleground in 2016. The chamber also lists immigration reform and education as key issues, as the state struggles to deal with an aging workforce and the shifting demographics of its younger population.
Chamber members and leaders seethed over a 2013 tax hike on the wealthiest Minnesotans and a rise in the minimum wage. But the state’s economy has remained among the nation’s healthiest and unemployment has fallen to its lowest level since 2006.
“We know that Minnesota is a great place to start, build and grow a business,” Loon said. “It is not strictly the government that has built that. That is built by the private marketplace and their resiliency and ability to compete.”
Last week, the annual ranking by CNBC of the business environment in states — which named Minnesota the best state for business — provided a new moment for Democrats and Republicans to square off over what they believe is driving the state’s success.
(2) In an interview, Loon said CNBC’s accolade doesn’t mean the state can’t improve and pointed to the TV network’s finding of high taxes as a disadvantage for Minnesota businesses.
(3) The Minnesota Chamber, which represents more than 2,300 companies across the state, helped Republicans take control of the Minnesota House in 2014, and Loon said the next step is to win the Senate.
‘If you look at just the political landscape, that’s going to be a place where everybody’s going to put focus,’ he said. ‘I would describe it as protect and advance, protect the working pro-business majority that they enjoy and continue to expand it. We’re going to be looking for friends where we can find them, and on each issue you build coalitions of the willing.’
(5) But he also called the chamber a “nonpartisan organization” and said “pro-business” is not code for Republican. He rejected the notion that his appointment gives fuel to critics who say the chamber is just a fundraising and lobbying arm of the state GOP.
‘They may try to paint me with that broad brush, but the reality is I work for a nonpartisan organization now, and I expect to operate in a nonpartisan way at the chamber,” Loon said.
(4) After serving as legislative director for Sen. Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, early in his career, Loon has been at the U.S. Chamber since 1995 and based in – Minnesota since 1998.
He manages the national chamber’s seven regional offices that handle political and grass roots outreach. He also manages the U.S. Chamber’s Midwest region, which includes Minnesota.
One of Loon’s strengths is his experience working with local chambers and trade groups and the businesses that make up their backbone.
“I think he can relate well to small businesses that are the chamber’s bread-and-butter,” Weaver said.
Bill Blazar, who served as interim president and did not apply for the chamber’s president position, will guide Loon through the transition while returning to his previous role as senior vice president of public affairs and business development.”
You can read the full post here.
On June 29, 2015, Brendan Duke with the Center for American Progress wrote the following:
New statistics confirm what middle-class Americans have known for years: The economic recovery barely applies to them. University of California, Berkeley, economist Emmanuel Saez has updated his frequently cited income data and the picture they paint of the recovery is as predictable as it is discouraging. As of 2014, the top 1 percent of Americans have seen 58 percent of the gains in the economic recovery, while the average real income of the bottom 90 percent has grown just 1.6 percent since the recovery began in 2009.
It has not always been this way. These developments have been a natural experiment in trickle-down economics—the theory that tax cuts, deregulation, and the destruction of basic labor protections would unleash a wave of economic growth. The experiment has failed.
See data on the impact of the trickle-down experiment on income growth.
On June 29, 2015, Ben Miller with the Center for American Progress wrote the following:
While it is easy to bemoan high levels of student debt and big numbers—such as the more than $1 trillion that Americans currently owe—debt itself is not inherently bad if it allows students to earn high-quality degrees and credentials that they could not otherwise afford. The major issue is whether students who borrowed completed their education. In other words, it is far better to be a bachelor’s degree graduate with $28,400 in loans—the national average in 2013—than a dropout who owes $10,000.
To measure the relationship between debt and college completion, the Center for American Progress conducted an analysis that compared the total amount of student loan debt owed in each state with the number of adults ages 18 or older who earned at least an associate’s degree. The analysis indicates that the average debt of student borrowers can often be misleading. In some states, small debt burdens for borrowers look much worse given low levels of postsecondary attainment. In other states, a high average debt for borrowers may not be as concerning because so many residents are earning postsecondary degrees.
You can read the original post here.
Tax the rich: An animated fairy tale, is narrated by Ed Asner, with animation by Mike Konopacki. Written and directed by Fred Glass for the California Federation of Teachers. An 8 minute video about how we arrived at this moment of poorly funded public services and widening economic inequality. Things go downhill in a happy and prosperous land after the rich decide they don’t want to pay taxes anymore. They tell the people that there is no alternative, but the people aren’t so sure. This land bears a startling resemblance to our land. For more info, www.cft.org. © 2012 California Federation of Teachers
