Equal Pay for Women’s Soccer Team; ACA Makes People Healthier

The U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team has won three World Cup titles and four Olympic gold medals, but they are still get paid just 72 percent per game as the U.S. men’s team—that didn’t even qualify for the current Olympics. The women’s team generated almost $20 million more in revenue than the men’s team, and their World Cup final last year was the most watched soccer game in history. Liza Bayless wrote:

“The US women’s national team collectively earned $2 million for their 2015 World Cup win. The US men’s national team — who has not made it past the quarterfinals of a World Cup in more than eight decades, and has never won — earned $9 million for their loss in the round of 16 at the 2014 Men’s World Cup in Brazil. Germany, the winning team, collected $35 million….

“The women’s team brought in more revenue in the 2016 fiscal year (granted, a World Cup year) and is also projected to outperform the men in revenue and profit in 2017, when neither team is playing a World Cup. US Soccer expects they will bring in almost twice as much as the men–$17.6 million versus $9 million. And yet the federation pays its female players $1,350 for winning an exhibition match while the men receive up to $17,625 for doing the same. For a loss, men receive $5,000. Women receive nothing. For making the World Cup roster, a male player makes $68,750 while a woman makes $15,000.

“The women do receive a base salary of $72,000 for playing on the national team and some benefits that the men do not. However, if both teams were to win all 20 exhibition games–the matches they play outside of tournaments–in a year, a female player would be paid $99,000 total (including base salary) while a male player would be paid $263,320. Additionally, sponsors compensate men hundreds of dollars more per game appearance.”

If you think that the women deserve equal pay for their winning as the men do for their losing, please sign this petition.

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While Republican candidates march around claiming that they will do away with the Affordable Care Act, ACA has provided health insurance to about 20 million people and made people healthier.

• People are less likely to have medical debt or postpone care because of care.
• People are more likely to have a regular doctor and get preventative health services.
• Low-income people in Arkansas and Kentucky, which expanded Medicaid insurance to everyone below a certain income threshold, are healthier than peers in Texas, which did not expand.

These are the findings from a study during the last two years. A 2015 survey found that the people in Arkansas and Kentucky, states with Medicaid expansion, are almost five percent more likely than peers in Texas, a state without Medicaid expansion, to say they are in excellent health, a bigger difference than the 2014 survey. Another study in Oregon tracked people for two years who received Medicaid insurance and those who remained uninsured. People with insurance were much more likely to be in good or excellent health as well as more financially secure. The most recent state to expand its health care program, Louisiana, became the 31st in the nation.

Trump Watch: Two covers reflect Trump’s downward trajectory since the GOP convention only three weeks ago. The New Yorker shows rain falling on Trump to indicate the increasing disaster of his campaign. Time is considering Trump as “person of the year,” defined as a person, group, idea or object that “for better or for worse…has done the most to influence the events of the year.”

 

 

Message to Republicans and Bernie supporters who plan to vote for Trump: The risk of having Donald Trump for president is far worse than Hillary Clinton’s nominating liberals to the Supreme Court. That message comes from conservative legal scholars. They claim that Trump is totally unfit to deal with “foreign affairs and domestic crises”—much of a president’s job—and that it’s doubtful that he’ll keep his word about his justice nominees.

According to Ilya Somin, Trump’s picks could undermine the constitution and turn the country into “a big-government xenophobic party hostile to civil liberties and opposed to most constitutional constraints on government power–much like the far-right nationalist parties of Western Europe, whose platforms are very similar to his.”

Republicans who defiantly defended Donald Trump’s statement that President Obama is the “founder of ISIS” found themselves thrown under the bus after Trump said that he was just joking—two days after he repeated the statement over and over. It the same thing that he says after many of  his statements bringing negative publicity–yelling at a baby to leave his rally, calling violence on Hillary Clinton and her supporters, etc.

Trump may have listened to Clinton’s criticism that his entire economic team is male; he has added nine names to the group, eight of them female. Still no people of color, however. And still as conservative.

People who listen to Trump touting his program for child care need to realize that this is only for guests at his resorts. Although he said that he provides on-site child-care service for employees, called Trump Kids, no one can find evidence of such programs. Yet this service, also called Trumpeteers, caters to his hotel and gold club patrons.

For the people who believe that Trump will stop outsourcing, here’s a list of countries where Trump product are manufactured: furniture – Turkey; shirts – Bangladesh and other Asian countries; vodka – Netherlands; suits – Mexico; tie clips – china; barware – Slovenia; glass and building materials – China; elevator parts – Japan; shampoo – Hong Kong; beach furniture – China; artificial turf – United Kingdom; marble – Italy; pens – Norway; slippers and cutlery – China. Trump could make all these things in the U.S., as this website shows. Yet Trump swore he would never eat Oreo cookies again after Nabisco moved to Mexico and said, “Our people should have more pride in buying made in the USA.”

Repeating his accusation that he might lose Pennsylvania because the voting is rigged, Trump told his audience that the people need to “go down to certain areas … and make sure other people don’t come in and vote five times.” Donald Trump declared today that there’s only one way he could lose the state of Pennsylvania: if he’s cheated out of it. At this time, Clinton is ahead of Trump in Pennsylvania polls by ten points.

A team at the conservative Washington Post will publish Trump Revealed: An American Journey of Ambition, Ego, Money, and Power on August 23. Amazon is offering pre-orders, and it’s sure to instantly hit the best-seller list! An excerpt is available on-line for impatient readers.

What makes Trump the angriest? The media repeating his words. His description for journalists doing their job makes them “the lowest form of life.” He said, “I tell you, the lowest.”They are the lowest form of humanity.”

Romney’s Problems Grow

Mitt Romney’s campaign has two serious dilemmas: the call for his releasing tax returns and the outsourcing done by Bain Capital, Romney’s personal business. To solve the first one, he sent his wife, Ann, to convince the media that he is a truly good person. In an interview with Robin Roberts on ABC, Ms. Romney said:

“You know, you should really look at where Mitt has led his life, and where he’s been financially. He’s a very generous person. We give 10 percent of our income to our church every year. Do you think that is the kind of person that is trying to hide things, or do things? No. He is so good about it.”

When asked why they don’t release the tax forms if there is no problem with them, Ms. Romney continued:

“Because there are so many things that will be open again for more attack… and that’s really, that’s just the answer. And we’ve given all you people need to know and understand about our financial situation and about how we live our life. And so, the election, again, will not be decided on that. It will be decided on who is gonna turn the economy around and how are jobs gonna come back to America.”

My favorite phrase from her interview is “you people,” the term that smacks of an arrogance in the same way that Michelle Malkin’s comment on Fox and Friends Weekend did when she said,

“Romney types, of course, are the ones who sign the front of the paycheck, and the Obama types are the one who have spent their entire lives signing the back of them.”

Lots of people are betting that Romney’s tax returns would show some shady deals. The first question is how he got between $21 million and $101 million in an IRA that can’t collect more than $30,000 a year. Another questionable activity comes from when he was chairman of Marriott’s audit committee. At that time, a Marriott tax shelter, known as “Son of BOSS,” involved creating paper losses to offset taxes on real income. The Internal Revenue Service challenged the shelter, and Marriott lost in court. Judges called the shelter “fictitious” and a “scheme,” and the company was forced to pay $29 million.

The Republicans who are telling Romney to release the tax returns have found a solution for his second problem, outsourcing. Jonah Goldberg summarized their position: “Outsourcing isn’t evil. Building businesses overseas doesn’t necessarily cost American a thing, and it often creates wealth and value both here and abroad.”

The 170 workers losing their jobs in Freeport (IL) because Bain owns their jobs disagree with Goldberg. In 2006 Bain bought Sensata Technologies, based in Attleboro (MA), and plans to move production to China during the month of this year’s election despite the fact that the business has never lost money. The city council has drafted a resolution that “calls on Mitt Romney to come to Freeport to meet the people directly affected by Bain Capital’s outsourcing and to step in and stop the outsourcing of these jobs from Freeport to China.” Although Romney does not operate Bain, he does have a controlling financial interest.

Robert Reich wrote that the biggest problem with corporations is that they have no concern for the people of the United States. He quoted an Apple executive who told the New York Times, “we don’t have an obligation to solve America’s problems. Our only obligation is making the best product possible.” Reich might have added “and showing profits big enough to continually increase our share price.” Apple’s employment of 43,000 people in the United States is dwarfed by their contracts with over 700,000 workers overseas. U.S. workers get six percent of what people pay for an iPhone.

The Republicans who would solve the problem of outsourcing by  lowering salaries in this country and perhaps getting rid of the minimum wage overlook the fact that Chinese workers live in company dormitories where they can be called up to work any time day and night. Apple assembles iPhones in China both because wages are low there and because Apple’s Chinese contractors can quickly mobilize workers from company dorms at almost any hour of the day or night.

Reich also cited another reason for outsourcing as this country not educating young people to do the necessary high tech jobs farmed out to Japan and Germany, in large part because the government does not pay for education. While this country forces young people to ratchet up high student loans, China invests in world-class universities and research centers.

The United States also has substandard transportation and communication systems compared to other countries. Outmoded ports, congested roads, and faulty bridges damage the opportunities for people to have jobs in this nation.

Without support from corporations, this situation will only exacerbate. Without government requiring corporate support, these companies will continue to outsource. All they want are lower taxes and fewer regulations. To get what they want, they buy elections.

Goldberg needs to know the following results of outsourcing:

U.S. multinationals cut their U.S. workforces by 2.9 million in the 2000s while increasing employment overseas by 2.4 million, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce. The Bush tax cuts may have caused the 35 biggest U.S.-based companies to add jobs, but almost three-fourths of these jobs were offshore.

U.S. manufacturing has suffered the biggest blow from offshoring. Working America reported that manufacturing jobs dropped every month for 43 months—the longest stretch since the Great Depression—between August 2000 and February 2004. Between 1998 and 2008, the time that George W. Bush gave corporations big tax cuts to create jobs, the number of manufacturing plants shrank 12.5 percent. The country lost 51,000 plants during those ten years, plants that gave stable, middle-class jobs.

Revenue from the global electronics contract manufacturing industry reached $360 billion in 2011 and is expected to expand to $426 billion by 2015. These companies contract outside firms primarily in third-world countries. Other huge companies, Nike for example, subcontracts all its shoe production to foreign companies.

Private equity firms have upped the competition between corporations by creating the fear that if CEOs don’t run their businesses to maximize short-term profits and share prices that they will be taken over by a company like Bain Capital. Their answer is outsourcing. If they lose the company to a company like Bain, “the standard strategy has been to load up company executives with so much stock and stock options that they don’t hesitate to make difficult decisions such as shedding divisions, closing plants or outsourcing work overseas,” according to Steve Pearlstein, a professor of public and international affairs at George Mason University and a Pulitzer-prize winning columnist.

Three-fourths of the companies surveyed by Duke’s Fuqua School of Business gave labor costs as their reason to relocate offshore, but this is becoming a weaker excuse for taking jobs away from the United States.  The labor cost gap between the U.S. and China has shrunk by almost 50 percent within the last eight years; this gap is project to be just 16 percent by next year. Fuel prices are also rising, increasing the costs of transportation.

The same survey showed that “only 4 percent of large companies had future plans for relocating jobs back to the United States.” No reason was given, but Seth Hanlon thinks that their reluctance is the U.S. tax code that “rewards companies for making investments abroad—and leads to them shifting offices, factories, and jobs abroad even if similar investments in the United States would be more profitable absent tax considerations.”

Tax loopholes and porous rules allow multinational companies to avoid U.S. taxes by reporting much of their profits in tax havens such as Bermuda and the Cayman Islands. That may be why Romney is fond of these tax havens. Shifting profits into tax havens costs the U.S. Treasury tens of billions of dollars in revenue every year. While President Obama wants a law that benefits companies for keeping jobs in the United States, Romney wants to make U.S. corporations’ overseas profits exempt from U.S. taxes, understandable because this would financially benefit him.

Today, the Senate tried to vote on the Bring Jobs Home Act to end taxes that reward companies that ship jobs overseas and instead provide a tax cut for American businesses that move overseas jobs and business activity back to America. A filibuster killed the bill was killed with a 56-42 vote; it’s the standard Republican position that 60 out of 100 votes are required to pass any Senate bill. The three brave Republican senators voting against the filibuster were Susan Collins (ME), Olympia Snowe (ME), and Scott Brown (MA). Therefore the Senate Republican “majority” of 41 men and 3 women have determined that taxpayers must continue to pay for the offshoring of jobs.

According to The Hill, Republicans wouldn’t vote for a bill to bring jobs back to the United States because they wanted to include an amendment repealing the Affordable Care Act. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, (D-NV) said, “It’s no surprise Republicans are on the side of corporations making big bucks sending American jobs to China and India. After all, their presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, made a fortune outsourcing jobs, too.”

Republican Politicians Attack Obama

The Mitt Romney campaign is on the ropes and going crazy. The most recent issue is not just a gaffe; it’s a horrible mistake that won’t go away. No one who watches television can have missed the whole whooplaw about Romney’s refusal to release more than the past two years of income tax returns and his attempt to explain that he quit Bain Capital before the company sent jobs to China—except for those jobs in which they cut up aborted fetuses and burned them. I chuckle every time I hear Romney say, “I’ve put out as much as I’ve put out.”

George Will got it right when he said, “The cost of not releasing the returns are clear. Therefore, [Romney] must have calculated that there are higher costs in releasing them.”  He did give a typical conservative answer about making sure that he could hide everything: “I do not know why, given that Mitt Romney knew the day that [John] McCain lost in 2008 that he was going to run for president again that he didn’t get all of this out and tidy up some of his offshore accounts and all the rest.” Will, by the way, is the staunch Republican pundit who stole Jimmy Carter’s questions before the 1980 debate and gave them to his opponent, Ronald Reagan.

The feeding frenzy isn’t going away, despite all the attempts by Romney’s supporters to divert the discussion. Speculation has run rampant through the media. Did he not pay taxes? Or did he make even more money from Bain than we realize?  Or did he have to pay fines? Or did he have even more offshore tax dodges than the ones in Bermuda, the Caymans, and the Swiss bank account? Or would the tax returns  show deductions from “controversial charities” that would turn off his potential voters?

The issue of Bain’s offshoring by sending jobs from its purchased companies to China has paled by comparison, but it’s equally as perplexing. Romney spent three weeks saying that there was nothing wrong with doing this until he calculated the problems from admitting it and told everyone who would listen that he wasn’t at Bain at the time that this happened. On Sunday’s Meet the Press, Ed Gillespie said that Romney decided to “retroactively retire” for the previous years in 2002, not explaining why Romney took money for working while retired. And even now, Romney doesn’t criticize offshoring; he just says that he didn’t do it.

The Olympics situation may add to Romney’s problems. When he was asked how he felt about the clothing for United States’ participants being made in China, he said, “No comment.” Possibly he wanted the entire question to go away because the clothing for the 2002 Winter Olympics torchbearers, the Olympics administered by Romney, were made in Burma, until last year a brutally military regime.

The Republican forces are gathering to protect Romney by attacking President Obama. After the president’s speech talking about how the United States has accomplished important things by working together to build an infrastructure, John Sununu, the former governor of New Hampshire said Obama’s recent defense of public infrastructure shows he “doesn’t understand how America works.” Later Sununu said, “I wish this president would learn how to be an American.”

Another distortion of President Obama’s speech came from his statement that “U.S. policymakers are lazy in creating jobs.” True, but the Republicans are now running television ads that claim the president said, “Americans are lazy.”

Sununu may have gotten more talking points from Rush Limbaugh. “He [Obama] has no idea how the American system functions,” Sununu said on Fox News. “And we shouldn’t be surprised about that, because he spent his early years in Hawaii smoking something, spent … another set of years in Indonesia.”

Limbaugh said Romney should “get down and dirty with Obama” and say:

“Look, pal, when I was out creating jobs, investing in businesses, and growing this economy, you were at Columbia smoking weed and snorting coke. You write about it in your book. You talk about how you got into Columbia and the Harvard Law Review, and you didn’t have to do anything. That’s what was great about it to you! You loved getting into Columbia ’cause all you had to do was go to class, get your grades, and smoke a little weed! Well, I was out building the country when you were doing that.”

I can’t understand what influenced Sununu to accuse President Obama of outsourcing “a major portion of the U.S. space program to the Russians.” FactCheck declared this statement false and explained that George W. Bush set NASA on a path eight years ago to retire the Space Shuttle and rely on the Russians for space travel. It was under President Obama’s charge that the Space Shuttle program ended, but it was George W. Bush who retired the shuttle because the White House refused to give NASA the authority and funds to replace it.

Bush directed NASA to retire the shuttle in 2010 to coincide with the scheduled completion of the space station as part of his plan for NASA that also called for the agency “to conduct the first manned mission no later than 2014,” with the goal of reaching the moon in 2020 and using it as a base for future trips to Mars.

In a 2007 speech at Georgetown University, NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said the U.S. may have “no alternative other than to use Soyuz [Russian space craft] for crew transport and rescue.” Bush signed a bill on Sept. 30, 2008, so that Russians would provide transportation to the space station. U.S. astronauts also went to the space station aboard the Soyuz in 2003 after the Columbia disaster caused a suspension of the shuttle program for two years and Edward Lu used Russian transportation. If this is outsourcing, Sununu should have kept quiet because it’s the Republican president who offshored the NASA program.

Even sometimes-reasonable Mike Huckabee, former governor of Arkansas, has joined the irrational chorus. Because Republican governors in Utah and Nevada asked the Obama administration for flexibility in the welfare reform law that required adults to either work or participate in a work training program, the president granted flexibility to satisfy their needs. On a voluntary basis, states can now “experiment with ways to improve the number of people making the jump from government assistance to jobs.” On Fox and Friends, Huckabee said:

“It’s basically just a transfer of money from the taxpayer to the government, from the government to people who become beneficiaries of the government, because that way the government can own these people. It is a trap, and it is like the roach motel. Once you get in, but you never get out.”

It’s not the first time that conservatives have compared people needing the safety net to animals. Gabriela Saucedo Mercer, the GOP candidate for Arizona’s District 3, put the following on her website before she hastily removed it.

“The Food Stamp Program, administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, is actually proud of the fact it is distributing the greatest amount of free meals and food stamps ever. Meanwhile, the National Park Service, administered by the U.S. Department of the Interior, asks us to ‘Please Do Not Feed The Animals.’ Their stated reason for the policy is because the animals will grow dependent on handouts and will not learn to take care of themselves. This ends today’s lesson.”

Arizona is one of the top two states with food insecure (aka hungry) children; in Arizona 29 percent of the children go to bed hungry each night.

Another Republican disaster today is the release of the first book from the George W. Bush Institute, The 4 Percent Solution: Unleashing the Economic Growth America Needs.  James K. Glassman, executive director of the Bush Institute, said the book states the country can achieve a 4 percent Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by extending the Bush-era tax cuts, broadening the tax base by getting rid of special exemptions and loopholes, taxing consumption rather than income, and lowering corporate taxes. With GDP being the market value of all officially recognized final goods and services produced within a country in a given period, it is often considered an indicator of a country’s standard of living.

During the reign of George W. Bush, who wrote the forward for The 4 Percent Solution, the GDP averaged just over 2.3 percent using the ideas promoted in the Bush Institute’s book. Because of the over 30% increase in imports during that time, business investment actually declined relative to GDP despite all the Bush tax breaks. Residential investment, which was almost 35% higher in 2005 than it was in 2000, plummeted to less than 83% of its 2000 level by 2008.

Republicans repeatedly say that President Obama’s policies are ruining the nation. He hasn’t had a chance to put his policies into effect. It’s the conservative Republicans’ policies that keep the GDP from growing as Republicans refuse to provide revenue and send jobs out of the country.