From the "Figure that out all by yourself, Einstein?" file

You don't have to be a genius to realize this:

The U.S. economy is limping along with the help of modest business investment in new equipment, some exports to parts of the world that are growing and the last few dollars from the government's 2009 stimulus spending program.

For the time being, it looks like American consumers are AWOL. And until they come back, don't expect to see any real recovery in economic growth and the job market. Consumer spending typically accounts for roughly 70 percent of the U.S. economy.

Fresh data from the government Friday confirmed that American consumers are tapped out. Consumer spending in dollar terms rose 0.2 percent in August. But those extra dollars went to cover higher prices for food and gasoline; when adjusted for inflation, spending was flat.

Wages, meanwhile, slipped 0.1 percent -- the first decline in nearly two years. To make up the difference, American households had to dip into savings: the savings rate in August fell to its lowest level since late 2009.

"What you're basically getting is a scene where consumers are losing momentum, they're losing momentum on income and as a result of that they're slowing down on spending," said Steven Ricchiuto, U.S. chief economist at Mizuho Securities in New York.
That spending slowdown has rippled through the economy, creating one of the biggest drags on an already weak recovery.

The part that the greedy didn't realize in their plans to take ALL of the wealth in this country, is that not even the most conspicuous consumers can keep an economy of this size going. They may be trying to push the middle class down into poverty and the poor into living on the streets, but if only 1% of the population has any money to spend, they're going to find that what they have isn't worth all that much.

Hell, I'm willing to destroy a once-great company for a THIRD of that.

A week ago I wrote about how the crony boardroom appointment of the loathsome Meg Whitman to the CEO chair at Hewlett-Packard demonstrates everything that's wrong with American corporations and their business practice of being of the Board of Directors, by the Board of Directors, and for the Board of Directors.

But that picture wasn't quite complete. Now it is (NYT link):

Just last week, Léo Apotheker was shown the door after a tumultuous 11-month run atop Hewlett-Packard. His reward? $13.2 million in cash and stock severance, in addition to a sign-on package worth about $10 million, according to a corporate filing on Thursday.

But Apotheker isn't the only one cashing out big-time after doing a shitty job:

At the end of August, Robert P. Kelly was handed severance worth $17.2 million in cash and stock when he was ousted as chief executive of Bank of New York Mellon after clashing with board members and senior managers. A few days later, Carol A. Bartz took home nearly $10 million from Yahoo after being fired from the troubled search giant.

A hallmark of the gilded era of just a few short years ago, the eye-popping severance package continues to thrive in spite of the measures put in place in the wake of the financial crisis to crack down on excessive pay.

Critics have long complained about outsize compensation packages that dwarf ordinary workers’ paychecks, but they voice particular ire over pay-for-failure. Much of Wall Street and corporate America has shifted a bigger portion of pay into longer-term stock awards and established policies to claw back bonuses. And while fuller disclosure of exit packages several years ago has helped ratchet down the size of the biggest severance deals, efforts by shareholders and regulators to further restrict payouts have had less success.

“We repeatedly see companies’ assets go out the door to reward failure,” said Scott Zdrazil, the director of corporate governance for Amalgamated Bank’s $11 billion Longview Fund, a labor-affiliated investment fund that sought to tighten the restrictions on severance plans at three oil companies last year. “Investors are frustrated that boards haven’t prevented such windfalls.”

Investors are chumps too, just like the rest of us. They think that because they own stock, that the meme about "maximizing shareholder value" applies to their holdings. The only shareholders that matter to these boards are themselves.

American Sweatshop

Yes, Amazon.com is really convenient and you can buy just about anything there and the Kindle is really cool. But can good progressives continue to buy from them after reading this:

Elmer Goris spent a year working in Amazon.com's Lehigh Valley warehouse, where books, CDs and various other products are packed and shipped to customers who order from the world's largest online retailer.

The 34-year-old Allentown resident, who has worked in warehouses for more than 10 years, said he quit in July because he was frustrated with the heat and demands that he work mandatory overtime. Working conditions at the warehouse got worse earlier this year, especially during summer heat waves when heat in the warehouse soared above 100 degrees, he said.

He got light-headed, he said, and his legs cramped, symptoms he never experienced in previous warehouse jobs. One hot day, Goris said, he saw a co-worker pass out at the water fountain. On other hot days, he saw paramedics bring people out of the warehouse in wheelchairs and on stretchers.

[snip]

Over the past two months, The Morning Call interviewed 20 current and former warehouse workers who showed pay stubs, tax forms or other proof of employment. They offered a behind-the-scenes glimpse of what it's like to work in the Amazon warehouse, where temperatures soar on hot summer days, production rates are difficult to achieve and the permanent jobs sought by many temporary workers hired by an outside agency are tough to get.

Only one of the employees interviewed described it as a good place to work.

Workers said they were forced to endure brutal heat inside the sprawling warehouse and were pushed to work at a pace many could not sustain. Employees were frequently reprimanded regarding their productivity and threatened with termination, workers said. The consequences of not meeting work expectations were regularly on display, as employees lost their jobs and got escorted out of the warehouse. Such sights encouraged some workers to conceal pain and push through injury lest they get fired as well, workers said.

During summer heat waves, Amazon arranged to have paramedics parked in ambulances outside, ready to treat any workers who dehydrated or suffered other forms of heat stress. Those who couldn't quickly cool off and return to work were sent home or taken out in stretchers and wheelchairs and transported to area hospitals. And new applicants were ready to begin work at any time.

Amazon.com's Lehigh Valley warehouse sounds like a Republican dream facility -- low-paid workers in unhealthy conditions. Just like the women who worked in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, before those pesky unions and "job-killing workplace safety regulations" were adopted. And yet this is what the American workplace is becoming once again -- a place where desperate people go to be mistreated day after day after day, with no hope of advancement, no hope of ever achieving the American Dream, living lives that are nasty, brutal, and short as they try desperately to survive....because if they don't, other equally desperate people will line up to do it.

You want to talk about class warfare? This is where it is -- in places like Amazon.com's Lehigh Valley warehouse, where the Thirty Years War against the middle class and the working poor is coming to fruition.

Where's why there's no money for anything else

Because we are shoveling cash into bankers' pockets as fast as we can:

For the American economy – and for many other developed economies – the elephant in the room is the amount of money paid to bankers over the last five years. In the United States, the sum stands at an astounding $2.2 trillion. Extrapolating over the coming decade, the numbers would approach $5 trillion, an amount vastly larger than what both President Barack Obama’s administration and his Republican opponents seem willing to cut from further government deficits.

That $5 trillion dollars is not money invested in building roads, schools and other long-term projects, but is directly transferred from the American economy to the personal accounts of bank executives and employees. Such transfers represent as cunning a tax on everyone else as one can imagine. It feels quite iniquitous that bankers, having helped cause today’s financial and economic troubles, are the only class that is not suffering from them – and in many cases are actually benefiting.
Mainstream megabanks are puzzling in many respects. It is (now) no secret that they have operated so far as large sophisticated compensation schemes, masking probabilities of low-risk, high-impact “Black Swan” events and benefiting from the free backstop of implicit public guarantees. Excessive leverage, rather than skills, can be seen as the source of their resulting profits, which then flow disproportionately to employees, and of their sometimes-massive losses, which are borne by shareholders and taxpayers.

In other words, banks take risks, get paid for the upside, and then transfer the downside to shareholders, taxpayers, and even retirees. In order to rescue the banking system, the Federal Reserve, for example, put interest rates at artificially low levels; as was disclosed recently, it also has provided secret loans of $1.2 trillion to banks. The main effect so far has been to help bankers generate bonuses (rather than attract borrowers) by hiding exposures.

More here.

(via)

E.J. Dionne is shrill

E.J. Dionne is getting in touch with his inner Krugman today:

Imagine a Republican saying this: “Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.”



These heretical thoughts would inspire horror among our friends at Fox News or in the Tea Party. They’d likely label them as Marxist, socialist or Big Labor propaganda. Too bad for Abraham Lincoln, our first Republican president, who offered those words in his annual message to Congress in 1861. Will President Obama dare say anything like this in his jobs speech this week?



As for the unions, they are often treated in the media as advocates of arcane work rules, protectors of inefficient public employees and obstacles to the economic growth our bold entrepreneurs would let loose if only they were free from labor regulations.



So it would take a brave man to point out that unions “grew up from the struggle of the workers — workers in general but especially the industrial workers — to protect their just rights vis-a-vis the entrepreneurs and the owners of the means of production,” or to insist that “the experience of history teaches that organizations of this type are an indispensable element of social life.”



These heretical thoughts would inspire horror among our friends at Fox News or in the Tea Party. They’d likely label them as Marxist, socialist or Big Labor propaganda. Too bad for Abraham Lincoln, our first Republican president, who offered those words in his annual message to Congress in 1861. Will President Obama dare say anything like this in his jobs speech this week?



As for the unions, they are often treated in the media as advocates of arcane work rules, protectors of inefficient public employees and obstacles to the economic growth our bold entrepreneurs would let loose if only they were free from labor regulations.



So it would take a brave man to point out that unions “grew up from the struggle of the workers — workers in general but especially the industrial workers — to protect their just rights vis-a-vis the entrepreneurs and the owners of the means of production,” or to insist that “the experience of history teaches that organizations of this type are an indispensable element of social life.”



That’s what Pope John Paul II said (the italics are his) in the 1981 encyclical “Laborem Exercens.” Like Lincoln, John Paul repeatedly asserted “the priority of labor over capital.”



That the language of Lincoln and John Paul is so distant from our experience today is a sign of an enormous cultural shift. In scores of different ways, we paint investors as the heroes and workers as the sideshow. We tax the fruits of labor more vigorously than we tax the gains from capital — resistance to continuing the payroll tax cut is a case in point — and we hide workers away while lavishing attention on those who make their livings by moving money around.

More more more more more....

What is the job of the CEO?

If you talk to people about executive pay, you'll find pretty universal outrage, particularly about CEOs of companies that are run badly or are bad corporate citizens. Sometimes in these conversations, someone will give lip service to entertainers and athletes who also earn ridiculous amounts of money every year, but that outrage is highly selective.



If, for example, Mets shortstop José Reyes manages to score a $100 million contract with another team as a free agent, there will be a certain hue and cry (particularly among Mets fans) that no one deserves that kind of money. There will be calls to WFAN screaming about Reyes' greed in New York, but if, for example, he signs with Philadelphia, no one in Philadelphia, not even the unemployed guys who are a step away from foreclosure and eating food pantry beans right out of a can, will utter a peep. Justin Bieber can score $300,000 for a single concert and nobody bats an eye. Not even the cast of Jersey Shore, a bunch of not-terribly-attractive, boorish young people with very little grey matter in their collective crania other than a knack for self-promotion, scoring $100,000 an episode generates a lot of griping. We're remarkably forgiving of big paydays for those who entertain us, because we know and can see what they actually do.



We're also forgiving of CEOs who do their jobs well and who contribute genuine value to their companies. I'm not talking about those who lay off 10,000 people so that the cost side of the balance sheet looks good enough to make the analysts at Goldman Sachs happy for the next three months. I'm talking about the relatively few guys like Steve Jobs, whose value to Apple is beyond dispute, even if, as seems true at least in the short run, he is NOT completely indispensable. Jobs is reported to be sitting on 5.5 million shared of stock in the company he founded, which at yesterday's closing price of $389.99, is over $2.1 billion. No one should take his much-ballyhooed $1 annual salary seriously, but by any business measure -- innovation, enriching the lives of many people, and yes, contributing shareholder value, Steve Jobs since his return to a dying company in 1997 is worth every penny.



But what of the rest? What of former Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg and current CEO Lowell McAdams? What of eBay CEO John Donahue, who comes out of Mitt Romney's company-destroying Bain Capital? What of General Electric CEO and Obama confidant Jeff Immelt? Are they delivering the same degree of value in the big picture as Steve Jobs did? Or are they mostly about ways to run the company to enrich themselves?



Today the New York Times talks about how the mission of today's CEO seems to be less about running companies for the long haul, fostering innovation, new products and services, and new ways of delivering them, and more about satisfying Wall Street's short-term emphasis analysts through avoidance of taxes to the point where they themselves earn more than the companies they run pay in taxes:

The companies — which include household names like eBay, Boeing, General Electric and Verizon — averaged $1.9 billion each in profits, according to the study by the Institute for Policy Studies, a liberal-leaning research group. But a variety of shelters, loopholes and tax reduction strategies allowed the companies to average more than $400 million each in tax benefits — which can be taken as a refund or used as write-off against earnings in future years.



The chief executives of those companies were paid an average of more than $16 million a year, the study found, a figure substantially higher than the $10.8 million average for all companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index.



The financial data in the report was taken from the companies’ regulatory filings, which can differ from what is actually filed on a corporate tax return. Even in a year when a company claims an overall tax benefit, it may pay some cash taxes while accumulating credits that can be redeemed in future years. For instance, General Electric reported a federal tax benefit of more than $3 billion in 2010, but company officials said they still expected to pay a small amount of cash taxes.



The authors of the study, which examined the regulatory filings of the 100 companies with the best-paid chief executives, said that their findings suggested that current United States policy was rewarding tax avoidance rather than innovation.

Steve Jobs has in many ways been a throwback to innovators and who actually did something -- guys like Henry Ford, who for all that he was a notorious anti-Semite at least recognized that when more people get paid enough to be able to buy your products you can sell more of them. Guys like our own Melina's grandfather, Himan Brown, who even though David Sarnoff got all the glory from being an early broadcasting pioneer, recognized the power of radio to deliver stories to the masses. Today's CEO is all about the books, not the products. And increasingly it's all about the taxes -- and meeting analysts' demands by trying to pay as few of them as possible, and preferably none.



And in this kind of environment, Barack Obama thinks corporations will hire people just because he gives them a $5000 tax credit?

So much for the "invisible hand"

The idea of the "invisible hand" is that self-interest drives actors (in this case, corporations) to behavior that ultimately benefits society. The quasi-beneficent view of this is a corporation taking advantage of cheap labor to build a factory in a third-world country, but even those low wages are better than what the people there have now. Another example is Steve Jobs sitting in an office at Apple developing the iPhone (though whether that will ultimately benefit society in the long run remains to be seen). It's the basis of Thomas Friedman's "world is flat" theory, in which a New York Times columnist whose seven-figure income isn't at risk tells us that after companies run out of "race to the bottom" countries to which to outsource, everything will flatten out, even though it means that we peons who are not getting paid by the New York Times to write this crap will have to settle for a dramatically lower standard of income.

In the turmoil of the Washington budget battles, we have the airline industry, whose executives' motto is more Gordon Gekko than Adam Smith: Greed is Good. When faced with the opportunity of not having to pay federal taxes on airline tickets, are the airlines using it to build traffic and sell more seats smack in the middle of vacatin season -- the "factory in the poor country" model of benefitting society? Hardly. Instead they're raising base prices to make up the difference and pocketing the cash:

Several federal taxes on airline tickets expired over the weekend after Congress failed to pass legislation to keep the Federal Aviation Administration running at full speed.

Raising the fares allows the airlines to charge the consumer the same amount as before, while pocketing money previously collected for the government.

It could turn into a windfall for airlines if the stalemate in Congress drags on. The government estimates that the expiring taxes total $200 million a week. And with jet fuel prices much higher than last year, airlines can use the cash.

As of midday Monday, nearly all large U.S. airlines had raised prices, but fare watchers said Alaska Airlines, Hawaiian Airlines and Spirit Airlines had not. The CEO of Spirit, a small, low-fare outfit that accounts for less than 1 percent of the market, said the industry looked bad.

"The taxes that Spirit and all the other airlines collect don't belong to us," Ben Baldanza said. "It's the taxpayers' money. It was never Spirit's money. It would be a grab to take that money."

Mr. Baldanza, you'll never be accepted into the rich guys' club with an attitude like that.

I wonder if Fox News viewers know they're helping to pay for News Corp's free ride?

Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., already in hot water for spying on people and conducting mass surveillance, is also one of those companies that not only pays no taxes, but is richly rewarded by you and me for spilling its filth over all of us:

July 12 (Reuters) - Rupert Murdoch may not garner as much
attention for his financial savvy as he does for his journalistic escapades, which last week led to the shuttering of Britain's oldest tabloid. But that doesn't make his money management any less impressive.

Indeed, when it comes to taxes, instead of rendering unto Caesar, Murdoch has Caesar rendering unto him. See graphic: r.reuters.com/haf62s

Over the past four years Murdoch's U.S.-based News Corp. has made money on income taxes. Having earned $10.4 billion in profits, News Corp. would have been expected to pay $3.6
billion at the 35 percent corporate tax rate. Instead, it actually collected $4.8 billion in income tax refunds, all or nearly all from the U.S. government.

The relevant figure is the cash paid tax rate. This is the net amount of corporate income taxes actually paid after refunds. For those four years, it was minus 46 percent, disclosure statements show.

Even on an accounting basis, which measures taxes incurred but often not actually paid for years, News Corp. had a tax rate of under 20 percent, little more than half the 35 percent statutory rate, company disclosures examined by Reuters show. News Corp. had no comment.

Much more by David Cay Johnston, author of Free Lunch, here.

This is working America under corporate and bankster greed

From David Frum, of all people:

Any questions?

Of course the Republican candidates would answer his questions with more tax cuts to "unleash freedom" for corporations. Yesterday I read a column by the hacktacular Dana Milbank which contained the following piece of idiocy:

The private sector has stabilized, profits have returned, productivity is high, American competitiveness has improved, and large sums of money have accumulated on corporate balance sheets.

The most efficient way to produce jobs, then, is to give the private sector incentives to spend its big pile of cash on new hires. That’s why Obama, last week, was at a community college in Northern Virginia touting little-known policies such as “Skills for America’s Future” and the “Workforce Investment Act.”

Corporations are profitable again. Banks are ridiculously profitable again. All are sitting on what Milbank calls "piles of cash." Milbank makes the mistake of thinking that our nation's employment problem is that we lack the skills corporatins are looking for.

Two anecdotes:

1) Mr. Brilliant recently beat out dozens of other candidates for a job. That's the good news. The bad news is that the company for which he interviewed subsequently laid off a good chunk of its workforce so no offer was made. Back to square one.

2) The husband of a colleague of mine was let go from his job six months before he was supposed to fully vest in the retirement plan. He is in his late forties.

Both of these men are highly skilled people. Mr. B has been out of work for nearly six months. There have been interviews, but no offers. Sometimes it's been that they love him over the phone and the minute they take a look at his over-50 self, his candidacy for the job is over.

Don't tell me that there aren't skilled people in this country. Don't tell me there aren't people who can learn on the job. I got my current job right before the economy went into the crapper. My department was being rebuilt from scratch, and I don't delude myself for one minute that it's because of my great skills in the area in which my department focuses. At that point, I had a pulse and could put two sentences together and I think at that point it was enough. Six months later I was thrown into a coordinating role for the most difficult projects in the division, and nearly three years later I know an awful lot about cancer. I learned everything on the job. Hire smart people, and give them a bit of breathing room to grow, and they will work their guts out for you (which is why you don't see me blog lately -- I am trying to figure out how I will be able to stay awake for 48 hours straight to get my project to testing on time this Monday).

It's not about "incentives" or tax cuts. It's about greed and the destruction of the middle class The people running businesses in the government and in the chattering classes simply do not understand, or understand full well and don't give a rat's ass, that it is not stockpiles of cash that create jobs, nor is it the goodness of company owners and executives. Demand creates jobs. When people can afford to buy your products, or products that contain what you make, or require your service to be created, demand increases and so does hiring. I don't know why this concept is such a difficult one for our political and chattering classes to understand.

OK, Republicans, so tell me: Where are the jobs?

We keep hearing, even admidst the debt hysteria, that we have to cut taxes even further so that business will "create jobs." But when the largest companies are paying an effective tax rate of NEGATIVE 1.5%, how much more do we have to shovel into their pockets before they hire?

Today, and not a moment too soon, the non-profit Citizens For Tax Justice (CTJ) has put out their findings revealing that twelve of the nations largest Fortune 500 companies, while making $170 billion in profits during the period of The Great Recession, paid an effective tax rate of negative 1.5%.

Yes, you read that correctly.

Not only have these twelve companies paid zero in taxes for the years 2008-2010, they actually received tax subsidies that added $62.4 billion to their bottom lines.

The companies were chosen by the CTJ to represent a range of industries, including manufacturing, energy, services, transportation and high tech and include – in alphabetical order – American Electric Power, Boeing, Dupont, Exxon Mobil, FedEx, General Electric, Honeywell International, IBM, United Technologies, Verizon Communications, Wells Fargo and Yahoo.

Here are the bullet points presented by the report:

• From 2008 through 2010, these 12 companies reported $171 billion in pretax U.S. profits. But as a group, their federal income taxes were negative: –$2.5 billion.

• All but two of the dozen companies enjoyed at least one no-tax year over the 2008-10 period, despite reporting substantial pretax U.S. profits in those no-tax years.

• Eight of the twelve companies reported net tax benefits over the full three-year period.

According to the study, not a single one of these companies paid an amount even close to the 35% statutory tax rate.

In fact, the tax rate paid by Exxon Mobile, when spread over the full three years, was only 14.2% – a full 60% below the 35% rate that corporations are supposed to be paying. And if we take a look at what Exxon paid over just the past two years, it totals a mere 0.4% on their pre-tax profits of $9.9 billion.

And get this – Exxon Mobile paid the most in taxes of any of the twelve companies on the list.

Here is my favorite part – had just these twelve companies paid at the actual 35% tax rate the GOP is telling us they are chaffing under, the sum would have added a full 12% to the totals the United States of America’s treasury received through corporate taxes.

We sure could use that money.

This morning, another in the parade of GOP idiots in Congress, Rep. Jeb Hensarling, was spouting the GOP talking point about "small businesses" being the engine of hiring. John McCain was spouting this nonsense in 2008, and was debunked by Factcheck.org, which noted that when the U.S. Small Business Administration refers to about 26.8 million small businesses, it includes about 20 million "non-employer" firms -- which includes people who sell their stuff on e-bay, the couple in the town next to me who have an errand-running service, the catsitter I use when we go away for a weekend, or Mr. Brilliant charging someone fifty bucks to de-virus their PC. These "small businesses" don't hire people, and the file at personal tax rates -- which means that corporate tax cuts do NOTHING to foster hiring.

So I repeat: The tax cuts originally advocated and signed by George W. Bush have been in place for a decade. The biggest companies not only pay no taxes, but got money back.

So...where are the jobs?

And I'll bet he doesn't tip, either

I have a thing about tips. I believe in them. Usually I leave at least 20% as a tip, more if the service is exceptional or if it's a holiday. I think it all goes back to the time in high school when I interviewed for a job at Friendly's, which was allowed to pay less than minimum wage because of the tips. Or a childhood memory of a diner waitress in her fifties balancing a half-dozen plates without spilling even a crumb. Jobs that relied on tips always seemed to me to be the crappiest jobs in the world, and as an adult, I've always felt a responsibility to do my part to make them not quite so crappy.

One area where I always tip generously is hotel housekeeping. It's not that cleaning up after me is such a chore. For some reason, I'm a better housekeeper on the road than I am at home. It's just that the monotony of changing beds and cleaning toilets and tubs after strangers, even on holidays, seems like a particularly depressing way to spend one's work life. For all that I'm working ridiculous hours again on a project with a timeline that I'll be lucky to meet, the work I do is interesting, varied, and I hope, meaningful. Hotel housekeepers don't have that luxury. So the only things I can do is to a) not make their jobs even more difficult, and b) tip well.

When I'm just crashing over someplace because of weather, or I'm too tired to drive any longer, a Comfort Inn or Holiday Inn Express is fine. If I have a clean bed, a clean bathroom, a TV, and an internet connection I'm happy. But when I travel for work, it's usually for a conference or a intra-company meeting, so the hotels are pretty nice. In 2009 I lived in a Hilton in Europe for two weeks. I've stayed at Westins, Hyatts, Doubletrees, and yes, even a Sofitel. The Sofitel in Philadelphia has the most awesome beds I've ever slept in. They have these down mattress toppers and duvets that make you feel like you've gone to heaven and are sleeping on a cloud.

There's an interesting thing, though, about what happens in these hotels. A generous room tip means that I come back to a room with a fistful of Andes mints instead of just one. Or a full extra complement of toiletries. Or extra pens. And on the day I leave for good, I leave an even larger tip. It's as if we are exchanging, through hotel swag, a bond of female solidarity. Acknowledging that the person who cleans up after you is a human being too can be a powerful force for good.

I thought of all this while reading this op-ed in the New York Times today by a hotel housekeeping manager, about the risks these women take every day when they go into a room. And then I thought of the news segment I watched last night, about an Assemblyman from Queens who has proposed a law requiring hotels to provide housekeepers with "panic buttons" -- small electronic devices that a housekeeper can press to alert hotel security. The segment asked for the opinions of random New Yorkers, and most seemed to think it was a good idea -- except for the obviously wealthy woman in the posh neighborhood who thought it was "too much government interference" in people's private lives; too much "nanny state."

Because ensuring worker safety is too much government interference into the "private affairs" of giant hotel companies. This woman's attitude so perfectly encapsulated the greedy scumbaggery, the utter lack of empathy, the doctrinaire illogic of today's right-wing conservative, that it got me thinking about Dominique Strauss-Kahn and men like him who believe that the peons who wait on them are somehow less than human. I'd be willing to bet that Strauss-Kahn never, ever, ever leaves a room tip.

Capitalism = Disaster capitalism

Mission accomplished:

Taking a look at trends show that in 2010, CEO pay:

•Climbed back toward prerecession levels. Median CEO pay in 2010 was $9.0 million, based on 158 Standard & Poor’s 500 index companies with the same CEO serving all of 2009 and 2010 that have reported CEO pay, according to the USA TODAY analysis of data from GovernanceMetrics based on proxies that have already been filed.

The median amount that CEOs actually took home — which includes salary and cash bonuses, as well as stock and options awarded in previous years that vested or were cashed in — was $8.6 million. That’s the most CEOs have pulled down since the median of $9.2 million in 2007, according to GovernanceMetrics’ analysis of S&P 500 companies.

•Bounced back in a big way. CEOs’ 2010 median pay jumped 27% from $7.1 million in 2009, one of the largest increases in recent history. The jump was a complete reversal from 2009 and 2008, when most CEOs took a pay haircut. The growth in CEOs’ median pay topped the median 21% total return that investors would have collected if they owned shares of the companies in the compensation analysis.

•Delivered big bonuses. CEOs received a median of $2.2 million from bonuses, up 47% from $1.5 million in 2009. And that comes on top of a healthy 7% boost to the median salary, which is now $1.1 million.

•Set up for an even bigger payday in the future. CEOs saw the estimated future value of stock and options awards take off in 2010, with the median value gaining 32% to $5.6 million. These stock and options, many of which were granted when stock prices were much lower than they are now, stand to create a shower of wealth when CEOs cash them in.

[snip]

While companies in the S&P 500 boosted profit 47% last year, much of that was due to cost-cutting and layoffs, not from the creation of businesses and growth, Lazonick says. Revenue, a gauge of the money flowing into businesses for selling goods and services, grew at a much slower pace than profit — and ended the year up just 7%.

Why buy the cow when you're getting the milk for free?

Those who know me are well aware that I have no great love for the Newspaper Guild. My own experience with the Guild was a right-wing dream.

In 1983, I took an administrative assistant job in the department at Standard & Poor's that publishes the Register of Corporations. S&P at that time (perhaps it still is) was a screwy amalgam of Guild and non-Guild jobs. Because the part of the company in which I worked was primarily a publisher of financial information, it was a Guild shop. By 1985, my boss wanted to promote me to a marketing manager position -- and the Guild rep blocked my promotion. Even though I would be replaced with a Guild employee, the rep refused to allow me to leave the union as long as I was working in that department. And there was no union title or level that was appropriate for me to move ahead. So no promotion. I ended up leaving the department in 1986 for the IT group, which was NOT covered by the Guild, and the rest of my career is history.

From 1998 to 2005, I wrote movie reviews online. I first wrote for a now-defunct site called Virtual Urth, that I saw was looking for reviewers. I wrote for free, because I was new to the web and wasn't ready to set up my own shop. About a year later, I went off on my own, was admitted into the Online Film Critics Society, started another site jointly with my friend Gabriel, and was a co-founder of the Cinemarati film discussion community (which has been revived, in a sense, on Facebook and as a Meetup group in London, where another co-founder, Mary Ann Johanson, is now living. Every now and then, I'd receive an e-mail from a larger site (sometimes only marginally larger), offering me a gig posting reviews there, for the "valuable exposure" I'd receive. These were all people looking to make money with advertising, and my work would presumably bring in eyeballs that would help them sell more ads. They would make the money, not me. So I invariably said, Thanks, but no thanks.

Even now, I receive e-mails like this from people trying to set up aggregation-type sites, and I always refuse. Established businesses that want to syndicate links to my posts and pay me a percentage of the click-throughs, fine. But you're not going to make a living off of my work. I don't even make a living off of my work, but then I haven't really tried to turn B@B into a significant revenue generator. I do take blog ads (that I screen for appropriateness when they come in; you won't see any of those "Like Donald Trump? Take the Poll" ads that you see on far too many progressive blogs. I make about ten bucks a year from being an Amazon affiliate. And I do take donations, which are few and far between and which these days I tend to send to jurassicpork, who does yeoman work of covering here when I'm just too busy and whose economic situation has made him the living embodiment of the casualties of the Greed Economy. But while I write for my readers, in the hope that you will either learn something, or find comfort that you're not alone, or that you'll find resources to pass on to your friends, I mostly do this because it's the one thing in my life that's MINE.

I provide all this background to give personal context to this post on the Newspaper Guild's call for Huffington Post writers to withhold their work in support of Visual Arts Source's decision to "strike" HuffPo until the site agrees to 1) initiate a compensation schedule for writers, and 2) stop posting paid promotional content alongside actual editorial content.

I'm sure that the Newspaper Guild sees the now-AOL-owned HuffPo as being ripe for the picking for members, but there's a larger issue here about Huffington Post. It was one thing when Arianna Huffington was using her fame and media access in service of progressive causes. HuffPo started out as a vanity project for Arianna's friends to blog about their pet causes. But over time, the site became less about news and more about gossip, fashion, and medical quackery -- and less valuable. But as long as Arianna's heart seemed to be in the right place, there was a sort of quid pro quo about the progressive community's relationship to the site -- we'll overlook that you don't pay anyone because you're providing a valuable service. But after pocketing $350 million of AOL money, Huffington has already become squishy in the progressive part, and having to build the business is no longer an excuse for not paying writers.

The promise of "increased exposure", as I knew back in my relative Web infancy, is as empty a promise as "I'll pull out in time." Finding an unpaid gem at HuffPo requires an investment of time that most of us don't have. But it's really about the principle: If I can throw a few bucks at JP when I can, do you mean to tell me that Arianna Huffington, with $350 million plus whatever she got in her divorce from Mike Huffington, can't afford to pay her writers even twenty-five bucks a pop?

And this is why, no matter how much I might want to link to something Sam Stein might have to say, not only do I no longer link to articles at HuffPo, I refuse to give the site my eyeballs. The Guild's support of Visual Arts Source's strike/boycott may be all about seeing potential union dues, but that doesn't in any way negate that boycotting HuffPo is the right thing to do.

And if I haven't convinced you, perhaps Huffington's own words will:

Huffington, speaking alongside AOL chief Tim Armstrong at PaidContent’s 2011 Conference in New York on Thursday, dismissed the notion that all bloggers should be paid, given the wide platform HuffPo gives them.

She argued that blogging on the Huffington Post is equivalent to going on Rachel Maddow, Jon Stewart or the “Today” show to promote their ideas.

And, she said, there are plenty of people willing to take their place if they do.

“The idea of going on strike when no one really notices,” Huffington said. “Go ahead, go on strike.”

Shorter Arianna Huffington: "Let them eat cake."

Saturday Big Blue Smurf Blogging: What They Said, special Greedy Rich Bastards edition

Who says you never hit the trifecta:

1) Paul Farrell, at of all places, Marketwatch, on the new Civil War.

Money quote:

Wake up America. You are under attack. Stop kidding yourself. We are at war. In fact, we have been fighting this Civil War for a generation, since Ronald Reagan was elected in 1981. Recently Buffett renewed the battle cry: The “rich class” is winning this war. Except most Americans still don’t realize they’re losing, don’t see the prize at stake.

2) Joseph Stiglitz at Vanity Fair, on a nation Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%.

Money quote (just one, because the entire article is worth your time):

America has long prided itself on being a fair society, where everyone has an equal chance of getting ahead, but the statistics suggest otherwise: the chances of a poor citizen, or even a middle-class citizen, making it to the top in America are smaller than in many countries of Europe. The cards are stacked against them. It is this sense of an unjust system without opportunity that has given rise to the conflagrations in the Middle East: rising food prices and growing and persistent youth unemployment simply served as kindling.

And last, but my no means least, Driftglass (who is fundraising, and you should throw him a few shekels if you can), who rips the curtain aside and exposes the Reagan legacy.

Money quote:

Reagan was the first mountain of coke the Right piled onto the national coffee table; the first, chilly bottles of champagne bought with stolen credit cards being popped. Reagan was the promise that the peak moment of frenzied, stomping, tribal, rage-drunk Wingnut Worldfuck -- the moment when everything was beautiful, and everyone was gonna get laid -- could be made to last forever and ever if they all just clap-clap-clapped loud enough, hated hard enough, and all agreed to never under any circumstances look back at the ruin they were leaving in their wake.

How much do they have to accumulate before it's enough?

While subbing on yesterday's Randi Rhodes show, Nicole Sandler asked, "What does this country look like when they get everything they want?" It's a valid question. Once they've eliminated unions, the various programs that consitute the social safety net, Social Security, Medicare, abortion, birth control, worker protections and environmental regulations, child labor laws and public education and college for all but the rich; when they get rid of ALL corporate taxes, what does this oligarch's paradise look like? She didn't offer an answer, because the reality is that when (and it's WHEN, not IF, because there is no one who has the clout or the willingness to stop it) the Republicans get everything they want, what it looks like is something we don't even want to contemplate.

I keep thinking it looks something like Jamaica during that country's worst economic times, where you have dire poverty living alongside massive fortress-like mansions, guarded with big burly guys and rottweilers imported from the states. If that sounds like paradise for the have-mores, they might consider the fate of reggae star Peter Tosh, who was murdered by a gang led by a man he'd befriended and attempted to find a job for after the man had spent time in prison. Peter Tosh sang of equal rights and justice:

Everyone is crying out for peace yes
None is crying out for justice
(2x)

(CHORUS)
I don't want no peace
I need equal rights and justice (3x)
Got to get it
Equal rights and justice

Everybody want to go to heaven
But nobody want to die
Everybody want to go to up to heaven
But none o them (2x) want to die

CHORUS
(Just give me my share)

What is due to Caesar
You better give it on to Caesar
And what belong to I and I
You better (2x) give it up to I

CHORUS
(I'm fighting for it)

Everyone heading for the top
But tell me how far is it from the bottom
Nobody knows but
Everybody fighting to reach the top
How far is it from the bottom

CHORUS

Everyone is talking about crime
Tell me who are the criminals
I said everybody's talking about crime, crime
Tell me who, who are the criminals
I really don't see them

CHORUS

There be no crime
Equal rights and justice (Precedes each line below)
There be no criminals
Everyone is fighting for
Palestine is fighting for
Down in Angola
Down in Botswana
Down in Zimbabwe
Down in Rhodesia
Right here in Jamaica

...and was murdered anyway.

There are still people in this country singing the "rich people create jobs" mantra, even though corporate profits are at an all-time high and job "growth" is miniscule at best. There are still people in this country who think that if they Just Work Hard Enough they'll get into the club of people who have houses in the Hamptons and in Cap d'Antibes -- as if amassing that kind of wealth is about work and not about connections. There are still people who think that the remaining Americans who haven't yet gotten utterly screwed are at fault for the plight of those who have.

So the question that comes before what this country will look like when the right wing gets its way is how much money do we have to stuff into the pockets of the wealthiest before they have enough? You'd think we were there already:

What you see above is from a new paper issued by the Economic Policy Institute, which shows that the top 5% in this country now control 65% of its wealth...and the bottom 80% -- that's eight out of ten -- only hold 12.8%.

Les Leopold points out the hard facts of what is going on in this country:

• The average real wage of the non-supervisory production workers (which comprise 82.4 percent of total private non-farm employees) actually declined by 9 percent between 1975 and 2010.
  
• Meanwhile the top 1 percent saw their share of national income rise from 8 percent in 1975 to 23.5 percent in 2005
  
• More amazing still, the wage gap between the top 100 CEOs and the average worker jumped from $45 to $1 in 1970 to an unbelievable $1,723 to $1 in 2006
  
• Today after the crash, financial incomes are so enormous that in 2010, John Paulson, the top hedge fund manager, earned $2.4 million an HOUR (not a misprint), and his tax rate is less than yours
  

I'm not sure anything can stop this relentless march -- or this buy-in of still far too many Americans into their own doom. We know what the Republicans want, but the Democrats are feeding from the same Wall Street trough. What do you think? Is there any way out of this, or is the best we can hope for a painless death before it all falla apart?

They had names.

If you want to know why unions, however flawed they may be, are important...if you still believe that corporations and the wealthy will, left to their own devices, act in the public good, I give you the names of one hundred and forty-six people who died one hundred years ago today at the Triangle Shirtwaist Co.:

Julia Aberstein, age 30
Lizzie Adler, age 24
Anna Altman, age 16
Anna Ardito, age 25
Becky Astrowsky, age 20
Rosie Bassino, age 31
Vincenza Belatta, age 16
Ignazia Bellotta, age unknown
Vincenza Benanti, age 22
Essie Bernstein, age 19
Jacob Bernstein, age 28
Morris Bernstein, age 19
Moses Bernstein, age unknown
Gussie Bierman, age 22
Abraham Binevitz, age 20
Rosie Brenman, age unknown
Surkah (Sarah) Brenman, age unknown
Ida Brodsky, age 16
Sarah Brodsky, age 21
Ida Brooks, age 18
Laura Brunette, age 17
Caputta, age 17
Josep Carlisi, age 31
Albina Caruso, age 20
Frances Carutto, age 17
Josie Castello, age 21
Rosie Ciritto, age unknown
Anna Cohen, age 25
Antonia Colletti, age 30
Della Costello, age unknown
Rose Crepo, age 19
Grances (Frances?) Denent, age 20
Yetta Fichtenhultz, age 18
Clara Dochman, age 19
K. Dorman, age unknown
Kalman Downic, age 24
Celia Eisenberg, age 17
Rose Feibush, age unknown
Rebecca Feibish, age 17
[?] Feltzer, age 40
Dosie Lopez Fitze, age 24
May Forrester, age 25
Jennie Franco, age 16
Tina Frank, age 17
Mary Gallo, age 23
Bertha Geib, age 25
Molly Gernstein, age 17
Celina Gittlin, age 17
Esther Goldfield, age unknown
Esther Goldstein, age unknown
Lena Goldstein, age 22
Mary Goldstein, age 11
Yetta Goldstein, age 20
Esther Gorfield, age 22
Irene Grameattassio, age 20
Esther Harris, age 21
Mary Herman, age 40
Ida Jakobowski, age unknown
[?] Kaplan, age 20
Ida Kenowitch, age 18
[?] Keober, age 30
Becky Kessler, age unknown
Jacob Klein, age 23
Sara Kupla, age unknown
Fannie Launswold, age 24
Nettie Lefkowitz, age 28
Max Lehrer, age 19
Sam Lehrer, age unknown
Kate Leone, age 14<
Rosie D. Lermack, age 19
Mary Leventhal, age 22
Jennie Levin, age 19
Abe Levine, age unknown
Max Levine, age unknown
Pauline Levine, age 19
Catherine Maltese, age unknown
Lucia Maltese, age 20
Rosalie Maltese, age 14
Maria Manara, age 27
Rose Manofsky, age 22
Michela Marciano, age 25
Minnie Mayer, age unknown
Yetta Meyers, age 19
Bettina Miale, age 21
Gaetana Midolo, age 16
Becky Nebrerer, age 19
Annie Nicholas, age 18
Michelina Nicolose, age unknown
Annie Novobritsky, age 20
Sadie Nussbaum, age 18
Julia Oberstein, age 19
Rose Oringer, age unknown
Carrie Ozzo, age 22
Annie Pack, age 18
Providenza Panno, age 48
Antonietta Pasqualicca, age 16
Ida Pearl, age 20
Jennie Pildescu, age 18
Vincenza Pinello, age 30
Jennie Poliny, age 20
Millie Prato, age 21
Becky Reivers, age unknown
Emma Rootstein, age unknown
Abraham Robinowitz, age unknown
Israel Rosen, age 17
Julia Rosen, age 35
Mrs. Leob Rosen, age 38
Yetta Rosenbaum, age 22
Jennie Rosenberg, age 21
Gussie Rosenfeld, age 22
Nettie Rosenthal, age 21
R. Rother, age 25
Theodore Rother, age 22
Sarah Sabasowitz, age 17
Sophie Salemi, age 24
Sara Saracino, age unknown
Serafina Saracino, age 25
Tessie Saracino, age 20
Gussie Schiffman, age 16
Theresa Schmidt, age 32
Ethel Schneider, age unknown
Violet Schochep, age 21
Margaret Schwartz, age unknown
Jacob Selzer, age 33
Annie Semmilio, age 30
Rosie Shapiro, age 17
Catherine Shena, age 30
Bennie Sklawer, age 25
Rosie Sorkin, age 18
[?] Spear, age unknown
[?] Sprunt, age unknown
Gussie Spunt, age 19
Annie Starr, age 30
Jennie Stein, age 18
Jennie Stellino, age 16
Jennie Stiglitz, age 33
Samuel Tabick, age 18
Clotilde Terranova, age 22
Isabella Tortorella, age 17
Mary Ullo, age 20
Meyer Utal, age 23
Freida Velakowsky, age 20
Bessie Vivlania, age 15
Annie Vovobritsky, age 20
Sally Weinduff, age 17
Rose Weiner, age 23
Sally Weintraub, age 17
Celia Weintraub, age unknown
Dora Welfowitz, age 21
Joseph Wilson, age 21
Tessie Wisner, age 27
Sonia Wisotsky, age 17
Bertha Wondross, age unknown
[?] Zeltner, age 30

Still think net neutrality doesn't matter?

If you bought into this idea that a "free and unfettered" internet meant that corporations should be able to own it and charge what they want, then you are a schmuck. Because this is what you are getting:

Telecommunications giant AT&T said this week that it will join Comcast and other providers in a controversial business model that limits the amount of information subscribers can access, and imposes penalties for overages.

The move will see AT&T broadband users forced into a tiered Internet that would limit accounts to a paltry 150 gigabytes a month. Users who download too much information on AT&T's broadband network will be subject to an additional $10 fee for every 50 gigabytes. Fees on the first three overages will be waived, according to DSLReports.com.

In layman's terms, if you're used to watching Netflix, playing online video games or using your computer to share files with your friends or engage in other bandwidth-intensive activity, get ready to be slammed with additional fees.

The move has some tech businesses and Internet freedom advocates up in arms, calling AT&T's plan a way to force other companies into a restrictive business model. Some are also concerned that with Internet users watching their bandwidth meters, usage may go down and innovation could suffer.

Some analysts are predicting the move could have a tremendous effect on Netflix, the most popular movie rental service online with a massive catalog of watch-anytime titles available for streaming. While it does not yet offer true 1080p video (high definition is at 720p), should Netflix finally upgrade to full fidelity video as planned, AT&T users would have to keep their viewing time to less than 90 minutes a day to avoid overage fees.

Pointing the finger of blame down the ladder while they're stealing your wallet out of your back pocket

That's the analogy I've been using for years to describe how the bankers and the rest of the über-rich have been able to get away with funnelling so much of the nation's wealth into their own pockets without the kind of revolution we've been seeing this month in the streets of Cairo and Tripoli.

The Tea Partiers initially had it right in that they sensed that something was very, very wrong economically. They even started sniffing in the right direction, with their outrage at bank bailouts and TARP. But then Dick Armey and the Koch Brothers got hold of them, and pointed their heads down the ladder, first at immigrants, and now at public workers, so that they wouldn't notice while they help themselves to whatever is left in the pockets of the middle and working classes. Give the Koch brothers credit: they knew how to harness that rage and redirect it while the Democrats were still listening to David Broder and Barack Obama was insisting on being the One To Unite Them All.

There are a bunch of graphs over at Mother Jones (I do seem to be linking there a lot lately, don't I?) that explain everything you need to know. They won't shrink well enough to reprint here, so you'll have to click over to take a look. But here's how Average income per family for each income group in this country breaks down:

Top 0.01% (that's one one-hundredth of one percent, not one percent)	$27,342,212
Top 0.1%	$3,238,386
Top 1%	$1,137,684
Top 10%	$164,647
Bottom 90%	$31,244

While you're there, take a look at the net worth of the 10 highest-income members of Congress. Then consider just who they're going to represent.

Hint: It ain't you.

Do the teabaggers honestly still think the rich will let them into the club

Nicholas Kristof outlines just what thirty years of Reaganism and so-called "third way" Democratic policies hath wrought:

The best data series I could find is for Argentina. In the 1940s, the top 1 percent there controlled more than 20 percent of incomes. That was roughly double the share at that time in the United States.

Since then, we’ve reversed places. The share controlled by the top 1 percent in Argentina has fallen to a bit more than 15 percent. Meanwhile, inequality in the United States has soared to levels comparable to those in Argentina six decades ago — with 1 percent controlling 24 percent of American income in 2007.

At a time of such stunning inequality, should Congress put priority on spending $700 billion on extending the Bush tax cuts to those with incomes above $250,000 a year? Or should it extend unemployment benefits for Americans who otherwise will lose them beginning next month?

One way to examine that decision is to put aside all ethical considerations and simply look at where tax dollars will do more to stimulate the economy. There the conclusion is clear: You get much more bang for the buck putting money in the hands of unemployed people because they will promptly spend it.

In contrast, tax cuts for the wealthy are partly saved — that’s both basic economic theory and recent history — so they are much less effective in creating jobs. For example, Republicans would give the richest 0.1 percent of Americans an average tax cut of $370,000. Does anybody really think that those taxpayers are going to rush out and buy Porsches and yachts, start new businesses, and hire more groundskeepers and chauffeurs?

In contrast, a study commissioned by the Labor Department during the Bush administration makes clear the job-creation power of unemployment benefits because that money is immediately spent. The study suggested that the current recession would have been 18 percent worse without unemployment insurance and that this spending preserved 1.6 million jobs in each quarter.

But there is also a larger question: What kind of a country do we aspire to be? Would we really want to be the kind of plutocracy where the richest 1 percent possesses more net worth than the bottom 90 percent?

Oops! That’s already us. The top 1 percent of Americans owns 34 percent of America’s private net worth, according to figures compiled by the Economic Policy Institute in Washington. The bottom 90 percent owns just 29 percent.

That also means that the top 10 percent controls more than 70 percent of Americans’ total net worth.

This hasn't happened because the pie is bigger, or because the benevolent wealthy created an economy that allowed them put put a sign up saying "Welcome, Truck Drivers!" It's because their greed required them to cost-cut in order to keep up profitability. It's because of outsourcing and union-busting and huge payoffs to politicians to demonize working people and the poor -- all the while convincing these same schmucks that If They Just Work Hard Enough™ they'll be allowed into the club.

So how do you feel now, suckers? Don't answer that -- you just voted to give power to the very same people who screwed you over.

NOW can we stop giving these criminals contracts?

Of all the government spending that teabaggers complain about, strangely missing is the billions of dollars of taxpayer money that goes into the coffers of Halliburton (and by extension, of Dick Cheney, who still receives about $150,000 a year in deferred compensation from his tenure there). Even when Halliburton receives industry contracts, it's because of taxpayer money squandered, as with its recently-announced contract to refurbish oil wells in Iraq for ExxonMobil-- wells that would not be available to them had George W. Bush and Dick Cneney not decided to invade Iraq. But Halliburton made plenty of money off of the BushCheney war adventure:


March 2003: Halliburton is awarded a contract by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to put out oil fires and make emergency repairs to Iraq's oil infrastructure.

May 2003: Halliburton's Iraq and Afghanistan contracts are valued at $600 million.

December 2003: An audit shows that Halliburton overcharged the U.S. government by as much as $64 million.

May 2004: Then still a subsidiary of Halliburton, Kellogg Brown & Root already has received $5 billion in LOGCAP (Logistics Civilian Augmentation Program) contract money. KBR has electrocuted American soldiers, given them tainted water to drink and spoiled food to eat.

February 2006: Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root is awarded a $385 million contract to build temporary immigration centers. You know, the ones that the teabaggers think Obama built to hold THEM.

June 2010: Halliburton is awarded a rebuilding contract for Haiti following the devastating earthquake. There is currently a cholera epidemic in Haiti -- six months after Halliburton's contract is awarded.

And it isn't just the U.S. government for whom Halliburton does shoddy work, for it was the company behind the cement used to attempt to seal the bottom of the Macondo Deepwater Horizon well. And the company knew damn well that the cement was unstable -- and used it anyway:

In the first official finding of responsibility for the blowout, which killed 11 workers and led to the largest offshore oil spill in American history, the commission staff determined that Halliburton had conducted three laboratory tests that indicated that the cement mixture did not meet industry standards.

The result of at least one of those tests was given on March 8 to BP, which failed to act upon it, the panel’s lead investigator, Fred H. Bartlit Jr., said in a letter delivered to the commissioners on Thursday.

Another Halliburton cement test, carried out about a week before the blowout of the well on April 20, also found the mixture to be unstable, yet those findings were never sent to BP, Mr. Bartlit found.

Although Mr. Bartlit does not specifically identify the cement failure as the sole or even primary cause of the blowout, he makes clear in his letter that if the cement had done its job and kept the highly pressured oil and gas out of the well bore, there would not have been an accident.

“We have known for some time that the cement used to secure the production casing and isolate the hydrocarbon zone at the bottom of the Macondo well must have failed in some manner,” he said in his letter to the seven members of the presidential commission. “The cement should have prevented hydrocarbons from entering the well.”

And we all know how THAT turned out.