Naked Capitalism has the article What Thomas Piketty and Larry Summers Don’t Tell You About Income Inequality by Lynn Parramore, Senior Editor at INET. Originally published at INET.  I think the article is an interview of economist Lance Taylor by Lynn Parramore. The article introduction explains the following:

In a new paper for the Institute For New Economic Thinking’s Working Group on the Political Economy of Distribution, economist Lance Taylor and his colleagues examine income inequality using new tools and models that give us a more nuanced — and frightening —picture than we’ve had before.  Their simulation models show how so-called “reasonable” modifications like modest tax increases on the wealthy and boosting low wages are not going to be enough to stem the disproportionate tide of income rushing toward the rich. Taylor’s research challenges the approaches of American policy makers, the assumptions of traditional economists, and some of the conclusions drawn by Thomas Piketty and Larry Summers. Bottom line: We’re not yet talking about the kinds of major changes needed to keep us from becoming a Downton Abbey society.

I’ll let you read the article to see what Taylor says about the causes and what can be done about it.  One thing that struck me was the following question and brief answer:

LP: In your view, is there anybody in the U.S. offering meaningful approaches to income inequality?

LT: Not in the general political debate.

In my opinion, our best hope for a politician who might offer meaningful approaches to the problem is Bernie Sanders.  In this department, he is even way ahead of Elizabeth Warren.  Elizabeth Warren certainly has an excellent understanding of the causes of the problem.  However, I believe that she is way behind Bernie Sanders in understanding economics well enough to be able to propose solutions that will have much impact.

The main indication I have that Bernie Sanders gets this is his appointment of Stephanie Kelton as the head Economist for the minority on the Senate Budget Committee.  She was sitting beside Bernie Sanders when he made an important presentation to the committee.  I’d bet my bottom dollar that she is the one who suggested the chart around which his presentation focused.  I would also be willing to bet that she is the one who prepped him on the words to speak.

See my previous post Senator Bernie Sanders presents Tcherneva’s research to Show How Reagan Helped Destroy the Middle Class for the evidence.

If Bernie Sanders and Stephanie Kelton don’t manage to change the country’s thinking on a whole lot of economic mythology, then we are in for a very long and unhappy time in America that is not going to end nicely.  Think of how well the French nobility came out in the the French Revolution. (Did you get the sarcasm of that last sentence?) (If you think that Hillary Clinton has a chance of getting a clue about getting a clue, I have only one thing to say, “Oh, puhleeze!” She probably still bows down at the altar of Larry Summers. At least Elizabeth Warren has demonstrated that she doesn’t think very highly of Larry Summers.)

Sarah Clark started a conversation on this topic with a post on her Facebook page.

My response to the question she posed was:

Don’t mistake the anti-abortionists’ highjacking of a legitimate technique for illegitimate purposes as deligitimizing the technique for legitimate purposes.

If a woman decides to have an abortion, that does not endanger me, my relatives, or society as a whole. In this case, I have no right to tell the woman what she should or shouldn’t do.

If a parent decides not to vaccinate a child, then that does threaten me, my family, and society as a whole. If the author of the article has proof, as he suggests he does, that the technique he suggests does work, then I would support it. If the technique does not work well enough, then I would suggest going back to a policy that I think we used to have. If you want to send your child to a public school, then you have to provide evidence of the required immunizations.

If you do not want to have your child vaccinated, then find some other way to provide for the child’s education.

In continuation of the conversation, Sarah posted two very useful links. Massachusetts Department Of Public Health – Immunization Exemptions and Vaccine Preventable Disease Exclusion Guidelines in School Settings and State Vaccination Exemptions for Children Entering Public Schools.

Talking Points Memo has the article Jon Stewart Skewers Netanyahu Over Accepting GOP Invite To U.S. (VIDEO).  Originally, I wasn’t going to post this because I didn’t feel that it was a very significant or pointed segment.  However, after thinking about this one part, I changed my mind.

Jon Stewart broke out in laughter on Thursday’s edition of “The Daily Show” at news that President Obama would not be meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Obama told press that he was declining to meet with Netanyahu because “general policy” said U.S. leaders don’t meet with a foreign leader too close to that country’s election, lest it appear America is meddling in another country’s affairs.

I am very disappointed in President Obama’s reaction. We all can see that figuratively Netanyahu has slapped Obama in the face. Obama’s reaction is to try to pretend that it didn’t happen. When will the President show the outrage that Netanyahu deserves? As my previous post suggested, Obama should at least declare Israel’s ambassador as persona non grata and force him to be recalled by Israel. Why the ambassador? Because he has been reported as purposely negotiating with Speaker Boner to arrange this visit without prior knowledge of our President. This is an intentional attempt to embarrass our President.

President Obama needs to read my previous post Nixon’s Madman Theory. Unless the President learns to apply this theory liberally (pun intended), then people are going to continue to walk all over him.

Roots Action has sent me an email with a link to a petition to sign.

Instead of letting diplomacy work, Netanyahu wants the U.S. to impose harsher sanctions on Iran, all but ensuring that talks collapse and increasing the risk of war.

I am not about to let Netanyahu dictate to us when we should go to war.  His attempt to influence U.S. politics has gone way beyond the acceptable. Congress’s negotiation with a foreign power probably violates a number of U.S. laws – see the Logan Act.

Violation of the Logan Act is a felony, punishable under federal law with imprisonment of up to three years.

Perhaps the members of Congress want to prove that they know what an impeachable act is.  Maybe they want to try it on for size before seeing if they can accuse the President of other impeachable acts.

What will it take for the majority to recognize that the Republicans have just gone too far?

When will President Obama declare Israel’s Ambassador to the U.S. persona non grata and have him recalled to Israel?

New Economic Perspectives has the cross-post Senator Bernie Sanders presents Tcherneva’s research to Show How Reagan Helped Destroy the Middle Class.

But when Sanders took to the Senate floor Thursday evening to offer a broad vision for how to do something to help the declining middle class, he offered a stunning chart that showed just how poorly most Americans have fared during economic recoveries since the advent of Reaganomics.

Here is a good look at Pavlina R. Tcherneva’s chart.

Notice that the top 10% got more than 100% of the income growth in this latest recovery. If you are in the bottom 90%. not only did the top 10% take all of you share of the income growth from the economic recovery, but they also took a good chunk of the income you were getting before the recovery. And Obama wonders why the voters didn’t turn out in droves to elect his party to majority control of the Congress.

Here is the presentation by Senator Sanders.

The article mentions:

The socialist Democrat is certainly aware that other factors such as technology, the waning of the union movement and globalization all played their roles, but his data makes for an awfully stark portrait.

Well, I object to that.  It is not that the other factors aren’t part and parcel of the concerted effort by the oligarchs of this country to redistribute the wealth upward.  So, being aware of these other factors does not change in any way the story Sanders is presenting.

Comments on the New Economic Perspectives post identify the woman in the video as Stephanie Kelton. For the uninitiated, Stephanie Kelton is the chief economist for the minority on the Senate Budget Committee that Bernie Sanders recently appointed. She is in the vanguard of promoting and explaining the precepts of Modern Money Theory. With her being in this position and Bernie Sanders’ using her advice so prominently, I predict that the American (and world) conversation about government debts and deficits will be turned up-side-down. This may have been an historic moment that you just watched.

The Daily Kos has the article Obama Tells House Dems to “Get Informed” on the TPP, But He’s the One Restricting Access to the Text.  The Daily Kos is commenting on  The Hill article Obama to Dems: ‘Get informed, not by reading the Huffington Post’.

PHILADELPHIA – President Obama on Thursday asked wary House Democrats to hold their fire, while the administration negotiates several trade deals opposed by scores of liberal lawmakers.

“Keep your powder a little dry,” he told the Democrats assembled here for an annual retreat, according to a source in the closed-door session.
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Top House Democrats, including Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), have drawn an additional line in the sand, saying they won’t support any new trade deal before the administration can demonstrate that the result will be higher wages for American workers.

“The impact on the paychecks of America’s workers is the standard that we will use,” Pelosi told reporters Wednesday.

Fielding private questions from the Democrats after a fiery speech before the caucus Thursday, Obama tried to defuse those concerns, saying his administration will make a “substantive case” for the new pacts.

Congress Needs to get Obama to listen. They just need to tell Obama that they can’t both be right about TPP, and Congress is pretty darn sure that Obama is the one that is wrong.

If corporations are allowed to write the trade pact and Congress isn’t allowed to know what is in it even for years after it is passed, then it is entirely obvious that the President has something to hide.

Maybe the Democrats need to tell Obama that if he refuses to listen, then they will join the Republicans in the efforts to impeach him.  If this does not get his attention, then he does need to be impeached and convicted and run out of office.

Senator Elizabeth Warren has made a post on her Facebook page where you can read the comments, add your own comment, and vote in favor of her idea. She has the following video in her post.

Senator Elizabeth Warren introduced the Medical Innovation Act on the Senate floor on January 29, 2015. The legislation would require large pharmaceutical companies that break the law and settle with the federal government to reinvest a small percentage of their profits into the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

To be against this bill you have to be for illegal behavior on the part of drug companies. How many Senators want to come out publicly for more waste, fraud, and abuse?

Even if these bills of Warren’s haven’t got much chance in the Republican Congress, it is about time we learned how to frame issues so that the Republicans are at least embarrassed when they refuse to act on them. Even better, Facebook gives you a way to register your approval of the proposal. If you can’t even bother to vote on Facebook, let alone at election time, when are you ever going to face your civic responsibilities?

New Economic Perspectives has the article Bill Black appears on The Real News Network discussing Greece which features The Real News Network video. On YouTube, the video has the explanation:

Professor William Black says the people of Greece won in spite of mainstream medias’ efforts to bury their plight and force them into a Great Depression

From the YouTube post, it is not clear if The Real News Network wants to discourage me from making these posts.  I have been avoiding posting such items recently because of these admonitions.  However, I think this one is too important to pass up.

I feel that this video is important because it is a good antidote to the fiction that has been printed as news in so-called reliable media such as The New York Times. The so-called experts that The New York Times uses to write its stories are just not qualified to offer their opinions on the subject as if it were expert testimony.

The Daily Kos has the article Justice Stevens Pens Six Amendments to Tune-Up Constitution. The author presents and comments on the amendments that Justice Stevens wrote in his book.  All the amendments are good, but I’ll quote just one.

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms when serving in the Militia, shall not be infringed.

In modern parlance that may be called the “What part of well regulated militia did you dummies not get, or did the comma confuse you?” amendment.

I have created an image for use as a bumper sticker or as a Facebook cover photo. Click on the thumbnail to get to the full size image. I describe the restrictions on its usage below. (There are none as far as I am concerned.)

The headshot comes from Bernie Sanders’ About Page on his Senate web site. I presume he wouldn’t mind my using this picture for this purpose. All the rest, I created with various tools such as Inkscape, MS Paint, and Adobe Photoshop. In other words, I have placed no copyright, nor creative commons restrictions on this image. Feel free to use it, hopefully to promote Bernie Sanders’ run for President. He hasn’t decided yet whether or not he will attempt the run, but if he sees enough of these, perhaps it will help him make the decision.