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• Job Cut Reports
  • Comment 05/13/13: IBM Management, these coming RAs are entirely the result of your FAILURE and INCOMPETENCE. It's YOU pathetic cowards who should be resigning -Anonymous-
  • Comment 05/13/13: -jj fishkill- So returning from Memorial Day weekend will be the time. So I guess folks can enjoy a cookout and then go on the 30 day march and a 'memorial' to their IBM employment. Typical Big Blew/Blow. -fishfooled-
  • Comment 05/13/13: -Good riddance- I hear ya. I bet they will only layoff no more than 499 in the first wave at Essex Jct. VT. Otherwise, IBM has to report the RA under the WARN Act. IBM has made thousands upon thousands of RA and "drive by" firings to avoid WARN. At least VT has Bernie Sanders who will make any layoff IBM does national news. I wish I had a US Senator like him in my state! -da_facts-
  • Comment 05/13/13: jj fishkill, 6/1 is a Saturday. The RA will be this week or next week. In the meantime, I hope management realizes what a morale killer this is, waking up every day, waiting for the phone call. Every damn day, I wonder if I will have a job the next day. I can't even begin to describe how entirely sick of this I am. It's taking a toll on my health - both physical and mental. -Sick of it.-
  • Comment 05/13/13: Is it even legal in countries like Canada and the USA to have utilization targets that can only be met if we work significant overtime? -curious- Alliance reply: In the US, yes, if you are exempt. Will check on Canada. You have less rights than you think. More rights if you have a union contract.
  • Comment 05/14/13: Regarding flex time. I know of young employees who did the unofficial comp time for overtime to be the boss's pet. It worked well, for the boss that is. He had the lowest overtime in the office. Then when he moved on and the young fella tried to take some of his comp time the new boss said "What comp time? You're not exempt. You can't have comp time!" My reasons for never taking the flex time is as follows. 1. If the boss fails to properly document it you will never get it. 2. It takes away the additional money your family can use. 3. It lowers your 401k contribution by not claiming the overtime. 4. It reduces your Social Security because that's based on your top earnings. The family flexibility act is supposed to offer you the "opportunity" to get more time off with your family. Always opt for the overtime is my opinion. -Exodus2007-
  • Comment 05/14/13: 1st off I'm generally anti-union and I don't want to be under a collective bargaining agreement or have other union influence controlling my job, but I do want to point out that I don't agree with what IBM is doing.

    I am a first line manager in storage development.

    Large layoff going on called "Project Mercury" it affects 1/2 of my dept (8 out of 16) and 14 under my 2nd line. I have heard that the bogey for my VP was 100+. I have heard from other 1st lines that HW development, and support are being hit too.

    The standard 1 year retirement bridge is being offered along with the usual 2 weeks for every year of service up to 26 weeks, etc. Well that\'s what I am being told, the formal packets are not out yet.

    Supposedly managers will be impacted in this cut.

    All PBC 3 employees are automatically on the list to go, no negotiation.

    I have an open external req for an experienced hire and I was told that I had to keep that open and could not close it and keep another person, nor could I transfer a person on the list into my open req position.

    I don't yet have any info on when the announcement date is.

    Early on (4/30 is when my manager first talked to us about it) we were told July. But it wasn't clear if that meant notification in July or everyone would be gone by July.

    Formal lists were submitted on Friday 5/10 and are currently undergoing legal and HR review.

  • Comment 05/15/13: I was under contract with IBM for 2 years. I (along with more than a dozen others in my area) got a call at 5:00pm on Wed 5/8 letting us know that Thur 5/9 would be our last day. I know contractors do not expect long term employment but we all expected some kind of notice. 24 hours for people supporting families is insulting. IBM is scum, especially considering they just renewed my contract 4 weeks ago. -Anonymous-
  • Comment 05/15/13: SICK OF IT...layoff will not happen this week or next week. This is coming from 2 managers ,one a relative the other a friend...5-31-13...stay on payroll 3 months, then 2 weeks pay every year of service max 26 weeks. Appraisal rating determines who stays, who goes. If a 1 or 2 plus should be OK. 2 and you're in the layoff pool...flip a coin. - jj in fishkill-
  • Comment 05/15/13: @jj Three months paid from July to Sept, and then out the door really means that the 401K match is for nine months, but because the employee will not be on the books by Dec. 15th, you will not get it. Based on 7k average per person, and 7k RA's that's 49 million they keep from you. It's good to be king...or queen. Good luck all. -Ich Bin Muede-
  • Comment 05/15/13: Had a 2 hour F2F "mandatory" training session with our HR folks this week (Mon. 13 May); preceded by a short notice "Manager Briefing" by our ANZ GBS Managing Partner (Steve Bingham) on Fri. 10 May. Here's the script we had to give/read to our "Rebalanced Team" members who had been selected. Fri. 14 Jun 2013 is their last day.

    "[Name], the reason for this meeting is to tell you about some changes in our team that will affect you. For us to remain competitive, and continue to meet client needs, we need to continually align our workforce skills and resources to business requirements. We have recently reviewed what services we deliver locally and what we deliver through our Global Delivery model. As a result of this review process, we are moving a number of roles to international locations.

    I need to tell you today that your role is impacted by this and will no longer be performed from Australia. This means you are being given formal notice of redeployment and have been allocated four weeks to find another position within IBM. If you are unable to find another role by Fri. 14 June 2013 you will be given formal notice of the termination of employment on the grounds of redundancy.

    It is important that you understand that it is your position that has become redundant. This is not a reflection on the way you have done your job."

    What's crazy - while we have a semi high bench (240) on the East Coast (Melbourne/Sydney) - we are "screaming" for people on the West Coast (Perth). We have been told in town halls that we have over 200+ new openings in Perth - but no one wants to move to Perth (despite the "Go West" program being re-started (offering cash bonuses, promotions to those who move West).

    We are even offering 2 year FTH contracts to folks in Europe to come to Australia! And - in the same breath - letting go over 150+ experienced IBMer's in Wave 1B. There was a Wave 1A last week (but I don't have those numbers). AND -- we've been warned there WILL be more waves this year (until Q4 2013.) Frustrated - and working 45-50 hours a week! -Australia GBS Manager-

  • Comment 05/15/13: There was a big reorg announcement in server systems ops today. shuffling the tech teams around like pawns. i do not even know who my first line is or will be at this point. combined many teams from what i can glean from the PPT. i can only guess they are positioning for the impending resource action. -kill-9-
  • Comment 05/15/13: Let's make a big statement on Memorial Day weekend to IBM management: All IBMers on call that weekend REFUSE to take or work on a call! It is USA Memorial Day weekend and out of respect for our fallen war heroes it is a solemn weekend of rest, relaxation, and most importantly appreciation and reflection. Many IBMers will lose their jobs after Memorial Day. Will you do anything to mourn their career and job termination? -solidarity_n_respect-
  • Comment 05/15/13: Why doesn't the Board of Directors oust Ginny? Why are WE the one's to lose our jobs? We did nothing wrong. The greedy will continue to rape this company and the folks who actually do the "work" for the customers will be out of a precious job. Will Ginny enjoy her summer? I can guarantee she will. We will NOT. Either we will make it through this RA and be dumped on with tons of extra work, or we will NOT make it through...and spend the summer worried about how we are going to pay the mortgage and feed our children. -Not_Fair-

    Alliance Reply: There is an alternative to the continual firing and abuse of IBM US workers: Organize. Join together in an organization and gather your co-workers together and fight back, before the next "Resource Action". Nothing is "fair" until you bargain collectively for a Fair written agreement with IBM management. Join Alliance@IBM. Take actions that are legal and your right to take. Organize now.

  • Comment 05/15/13: I don't work any weekends. Never have never will. Weekend time is for my family period. IBM gets what they give. Prefer to keep it that way and hope you do the same. -to_solidarity_n_respect-
  • Comment 05/16/13: Remember 1993. STG to be whacked Memorial Day week. -Bored-
  • Comment 05/16/13: IBM will get to pay for the next RA with your 401(k)- holdback match since 1/1/2013 if you are RAed soon. Respect for the Individual? NOT! Respect for the EPS? SURE! Nice and ethical IBM, huh? -GoneB4Summer-
  • Comment 05/16/13: "Why doesn't the Board of Directors oust Ginny?" LOL! LOL! R U kidding me??? WHO do you think gets to pick who is on the IBM Board of Directors? The CEO or course! -anon2013-
  • Comment 05/17/13: Well after reading the posts of the last few days looks like Friday the 31st. One comment really made me angry because it is SO TRUE! IBM is holding our f'ing 401 matches to pay for the RA. They should be reported and investigated by the the SEC for accounting fraud and disclosure. -Sneaky_Not_Smarter_Planet-
  • Comment 05/17/13: Latest from Rochester...cuts to happen May 30th. That means the 30 days for people to find another job ends June 30th, perfect quarter ending news. -Macklemore-
  • Comment 05/17/13: To -huggie- : I was invited to participate in the Transition to Retirement program last year (I declined, and left IBM on my own terms recently), and one of the conditions was that if you are in the program, IBM would not include you in RAs before you retire. That was spelled out very clearly, in writing. If IBM reneged on that promise now, it would be a gross violation of IBM's BCGs (i.e. IBM executives lying to IBM employees) and also could trigger a class action suit. -Anonymous-
  • Comment 05/17/13: I'm probably going to survive this RA, though it is with mixed emotion as a six month buffer would make for an excellent sabbatical. What is wrong in all of this in my opinion is the persistent culture of fear and short term thinking which is damningly endemic in STG in particular and IBM in general. -staying alive-
  • Comment 05/17/13: I was a 'lucky' one selected for a RA in 2009 from the Hudson Valley. In NY, they have the WARN Act, whereas a company having more than a certain amount of layoffs, must give NY state a 90-day notice, so they can prepare for the release of a sizable amount of former employees of the company. By giving the people '90-days' to find a job, is actually a work around that IBM has found, that covers themselves, whereas they do not have to let anyone know a layoff is coming, or the amount of people being laid off. Not sure what the stipends are in other states but the 3-month rumor is likely, if not certainly due to that. As for looking for a job within that 3-month timeframe, forget it, any future internal prospects you might get know you were RA'd and you will not even be given a chance to stay in the company !!!! -RA'd in 2009-
  • Comment 05/17/13: I want to leave IBM with severance package. Will your manager help if you tell him? -Want to be RA'd-
  • Comment 05/18/13: To Want to be RA'd: i wouldn't say anything to your manager no matter how much you trusted him. It will only get you no raises, no promotions, more work and they wont RA you knowing you want to leave anyway. Trust me, i thought i could trust my manager, but learned a valuable lesson. -think twice-
  • Comment 05/18/13: Re. wanting to be RA'd. My approach is simply to work on my own terms: taking time for a proper lunch, leaving at a reasonable time, not working nights/weekends, using all vacation, and taking sick time when sick, etc. I work hard within these limits and don't worry about the work that doesn't get done because of an unreasonable workload. (only IBMers can relate to how radical such a reasonable approach seems). It makes the job more tolerable and has lowered my PBC from 2+ to 2. -OnTheWayOut-
  • Comment 05/18/13: No raise, no promotions, more work.... this sound like right now. There is no "fat" to be RA'd. Even if you get to stay, you would be working longer than ever trying to cover for those who lost their job w/o any incentives. My thinking is why stay - at some point, you have to jump out of sinking ship. Severance package would make things sweet - 6mo paid vacation w/ med paid. -Want to be RA'd-

News and Opinion Concerning Health Savings Accounts, Medical Costs and Health Care Reform

• The Henry J Kaiser Family Foundation: Subsidy Calculator. Premium Assistance for Coverage in Exchanges. About This Tool: This tool illustrates health insurance premiums and subsidies for people purchasing insurance on their own in new health insurance exchanges (or “Marketplaces”) created by the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Beginning in October 2013, middle-income people under age 65, who are not eligible for coverage through their employer, Medicaid, or Medicare, can apply for tax credit subsidies available through state-based exchanges.

  Additionally, states have the option to expand their Medicaid programs to cover all people making up to 138% of the federal poverty level (which is about $33,000 for a family of four). In states that opt out of expanding Medicaid, some people making below this amount will still be eligible for Medicaid, some will be eligible for subsidized coverage through Marketplaces, and others will not be eligible for subsidies.

  With this calculator, you can enter different income levels, ages, and family sizes to get an estimate of your eligibility for subsidies and how much you could spend on health insurance. As premiums and eligibility requirements may vary, contact your state’s Medicaid office or exchange with enrollment questions.

• Kaiser Health News: Competition Spurs 2 Oregon Insurers To Lower Proposed Rates. By Phil Galewitz. Excerpts: Maybe competition among health insurance plans can lead to lower rates. As soon as Oregon this week became the fourth state to publicly list health insurers’ proposed 2014 rates for individual and small group coverage, two plans moved to cut their suggested prices, the Oregonian reported Friday. Providence Health Plan and Family Care Health Plans sought to lower their rates when they noticed they were out of whack compared to competitors — five months before the health law’s new online marketplaces even open for enrollment.

  What is also clear from the filings is that there’s little sign in Oregon of the major premium hikes that the industry has been warning about for months. “I don’t see sticker shock in the rates,” said Jim Perucca, executive vice president of Independent Insurance Agents and Brokers of Oregon. ...

  In Oregon, the filings show that consumers will likely see a wide variation of prices for the same benefits. For example, the premium for a “bronze” style plan for a 40-year-old non-smoker living in Portland ranged from $195 a month at Pacificare Health Plans to $401 at Trillium Community Health Plan. The two most popular companies—Regence Blue Cross Blue Shield and Kaiser Permanente —proposed prices for a person in the same category of $268 and $222 respectively, according to the state’s website. Those premiums are not that much higher than those on policies the companies sell now, according to prices on http://www.healthcare.gov/. ...

  All plans, whether bronze, silver, gold or platinum, will cover certain essential health benefits such as doctors’ visits, emergency care, maternity care and prescription drugs. Some major insurers have warned those benefits — along with rules that prohibit charging people higher premiums due to their health status — will result in much higher premiums.

• Physicians for a National Health Program: Private insurers' Medicare Advantage plans cost Medicare an extra $34.1 billion in 2012. Instead of being more efficient, private insurers have cost Medicare almost $300 billion more over the life of the program. Excerpts: A study (PDF) published online today finds that the private insurance companies that participate in Medicare under the Medicare Advantage program and its predecessors have cost the publicly funded program for the elderly and disabled an extra $282.6 billion since 1985, most of it over the past eight years. In 2012 alone, private insurers were overpaid $34.1 billion.

  That's wasted money that should have been spent on improving patient care, shoring up Medicare's trust fund or reducing the federal deficit, the researchers say.

  The findings appear in an article published in the International Journal of Health Services by Drs. Ida Hellander, Steffie Woolhandler and David Himmelstein titled "Medicare overpayments to private plans, 1985-2012: Shifting seniors to private plans has already cost Medicare US$282.6 billion."

• Los Angeles Times: Patient is out of network, out of luck. After Kaiser advised him to enter hospice, Jalal Afshar sought out-of-network treatment that he says saved his life. Now he's suing for the $2-million cost of care. By Chad Terhune. Excerpts: A worrisome abdominal pain drove Jalal Afshar to seek treatment last year at healthcare giant Kaiser Permanente.

  The Pasadena resident and Kaiser member had lived for years with a rare condition known as Castleman's disease, which affects the lymph nodes and the body's immune system. But this was the first time he experienced such severe symptoms.

  Kaiser granted his request to see a specialist in Arkansas. But it ultimately declined to pay for his treatment there. By June, Afshar said, Kaiser was arranging for hospice care so that he could die at home.

  Afshar, 58, refused to accept that. Despite Kaiser's stance, he went back to Arkansas for six months of stem-cell transplants, chemotherapy and other treatments that he says saved his life. Now he owes $2 million for his care and is suing the company in state court for breach of contract and unfair business practices.

  "There are other people like me with expensive diseases," he said, "and Kaiser is just giving up on us." ...

  Afshar's fight with Kaiser highlights the growing tension in healthcare over how to eliminate wasteful spending without compromising the care of the sickest, most expensive patients. Under pressure to curb ballooning medical costs and hold down premiums in advance of a massive expansion of health coverage, insurers are increasingly forming smaller networks of physicians and hospitals.

  But some experts worry these cost-control measures could go too far. ...

  "The whole premise of managed care is that you're accepting a restricted network, but only on the condition the network is adequate," said Anthony Wright, executive director of Health Access, a consumer advocacy group. "At Kaiser, some feel restricted in getting the care they need."

• Health Care Cost Institute: New Study Tracks Impact of Aging on Health Costs. Society of Actuaries-Sponsored Study Using HCCI Data Estimates Early Retirees Need $226,000 More to Cover Health Care Costs. Excerpts: A new study evaluating the impact of aging on health care costs from birth until very old age determines that the average 55-year-old retiree will spend $226,000 more on health care than a person retiring at age 65, assuming they both live to age 85. The research, sponsored by the Society of Actuaries (SOA) using data from the Health Care Cost Institute (HCCI), estimates that retiree health care costs will be $146,400 for someone age 65 who lives 20 more years, while individuals retiring at age 55 will need $372,400 to cover their health care costs to age 85. ...

  In assessing retiree health care costs, the report evaluates the impact of increasing the eligibility age of Medicare. Raising eligibility from age 65 to 70 changes who is covered by Medicare and would exclude younger and possibly healthier people. Yamamoto found that raising the eligibility age would reduce overall Medicare costs by about 19 percent but will increase the per person costs by 12.5 percent for those over age 70.

• National Public Radio (NPR): Even After Overhaul, Gaps In Coverage For Young, Pregnant Women. By Michelle Andrews. Excerpt: But young women who get pregnant may encounter unexpected gaps in coverage. Although the law requires most individual and small group plans to provide maternity and newborn care, large group plans aren't subject to those rules.

  Now, that's not a problem for most women because the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 requires that companies with 15 or more workers that provide health insurance include maternity coverage for employees and their spouses. (Maternity coverage generally refers to prenatal care, labor and delivery, and some postpartum care.)

  However, the law doesn't require maternity coverage for dependent children and, according to Dan Priga, who heads the performance audit group at human resources consultant Mercer, roughly 70 percent of large self-funded employers that pay their workers' claims directly don't provide it.

• Huffington Post, courtesy of Physicians for a National Health Program: Can we talk about the ACA train wreck? GOP Candidates' Top Campaign Issue Will Be Obamacare 'Train Wreck'. By Wendell Potter. Excerpts: Will the implementation of some of the most important provisions of ObamaCare this fall and next year result in the "train wreck" Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) predicted a few days ago?

  No. But you can be certain that there will be no shortage of political candidates and high-powered political spin doctors who will be working relentlessly between now and the 2014 midterms to convince us that it will be. If the Democrats and consumer advocates who support ObamaCare are not at work developing their own strategies to counter the coming barrage of misleading spin, the GOP will have an excellent chance of controlling Capitol Hill after the next elections.

  Comment by Don McCanne, M.D. Of those who are serious about health care reform, some want to abandon the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and immediately enact single payer, and others want to abandon the single payer cause and move full steam ahead with implementation of the ACA. But should we really abandon either approach?

  It is clear that ACA alone will be grossly deficient. Thirty million people will remain uninsured, inadequate low actuarial value plans will become the new standard, and wasteful spending will continue because of the highly flawed, administratively complex model of ACA. So single payer should not be abandoned since it is an imperative if we want to have affordable health care for everyone.

  Why shouldn't we abandon ACA? Because, quite simply, it is all that we have right now, and it will provide some limited relief for millions of people. If we were to abandon ACA now, mobilizing a social movement and then enacting and implementing single payer would still take many years - too long for those who would receive some benefit from ACA now. ...

  So where is the train wreck? There isn't any. But Wendell Potter is right. The opponents of reform will latch onto every ACA implementation glitch, real or imagined, and onto the criticisms which will inevitably follow. They will attempt to frame the implementation as a debacle, and run with that in their effort to use election politics to advance their anti-government agenda.

• Health Affairs: Washington State Cancer Patients Found To Be At Greater Risk For Bankruptcy Than People Without A Cancer Diagnosis. By Scott Ramsey, David Blough, Anne Kirchhoff, Karma Kreizenbeck, Catherine Fedorenko, Kyle Snell, Polly Newcomb, William Hollingworth and Karen Overstreet. Abstract: Much has been written about the relationship between high medical expenses and the likelihood of filing for bankruptcy, but the relationship between receiving a cancer diagnosis and filing for bankruptcy is less well understood. We estimated the incidence and relative risk of bankruptcy for people age twenty-one or older diagnosed with cancer compared to people the same age without cancer by conducting a retrospective cohort analysis that used a variety of medical, personal, legal, and bankruptcy sources covering the Western District of Washington State in US Bankruptcy Court for the period 1995–2009. We found that cancer patients were 2.65 times more likely to go bankrupt than people without cancer. Younger cancer patients had 2–5 times higher rates of bankruptcy than cancer patients age sixty-five or older, which indicates that Medicare and Social Security may mitigate bankruptcy risk for the older group. The findings suggest that employers and governments may have a policy role to play in creating programs and incentives that could help people cover expenses in the first year following a cancer diagnosis.
• Employee Benefit News: Projected retirement health care costs drop. By Tristan Lejeune. Excerpts: For only the second time since it’s been estimating the totals, Fidelity Investments reported Wednesday that the average projected cost of health care expenses for retirees has gone down. A 65-year-old couple exiting the workforce in 2013 is estimated to need $220,000 to cover health care costs throughout their retirement, an 8% decrease from last year’s $240,000.

  Fidelity Benefits Consulting, which has calculated the estimates since 2002, does not include nursing home costs in its projections, which apply to retirees with traditional Medicare insurance coverage. For many, health care will be the largest expense during retirement and Sunit Patel, senior vice president at Fidelity, tells EBN that unlike food or shelter, “which you can dial up or down,” health expenses associated with aging are relatively fixed, regardless of income bracket or savings.

  “While this is great news for retirees in general, I think the expectations should be that trends … are going to go up,” Patel says. “I think if you asked a year or two ago, people would have been surprised.”

• BusinessWeek: How the Insurance Industry Funded Small Business's Anti-Obamacare Message. By John Tozzi. Excerpts: The National Federation of Independent Business, a small-business lobby that opposes the Affordable Care Act, quietly cashed an $850,000 check from a health insurance industry lobby two years ago, National Journal reported on Tuesday. Advocacy groups can legally move their money in secret, but reporter Chris Frates found an expense by the insurers’ group, America’s Health Insurance Plans, on 2011 tax records that neatly matched a donation to the NFIB the same year. The NFIB has been lobbying to repeal an Obamacare tax on health insurance plans that the Congressional Budget Office has said would largely be passed on to consumers and businesses. From National Journal:

  The back-channel spending shows how insurers were able to fund a key—and much more politically popular—ally in their fight against the premium tax. After all, helping small businesses is a political no-brainer while aiding big insurers is a political nonstarter.

  NFIB officials say they are fighting the tax because it will disproportionately affect small businesses whose owners and employees will end up footing the bill. They expect insurance companies will simply pass along the cost of the new taxes to their customers, which, according to one congressional estimate, could cost a family as much as $400 in 2016. Meanwhile, big corporations that self-fund their insurance plans are exempt from the tax.

  The look behind the curtain is sure to fuel the already-intense partisan warfare over the Affordable Care Act. Republicans have vowed to run against the law in 2014 and are almost sure to point to provisions like the premium tax as reasons why the law should be repealed and its supporters replaced. Democrats, meanwhile, are likely to point to the insurance industry’s shadowy spending as more proof of why reform is needed. ...

  The NFIB, which fought the failed Clinton-era health reform and led the Supreme Court challenge to the Affordable Care Act, has taken money from outside groups before, including $3.7 million from Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS. And the NFIB’s positions on other issues, such as tax rates for the wealthy, often echo the Republican Party line. There are also now small business groups on the political left, such as the Small Business Majority and Main Street Alliance, that generally reflect liberal positions.

  It’s legal for the money to flow anonymously from the insurance lobby to the NFIB. (Insurers sent tens of millions more to the U.S. Chamber to lobby on health reform as well.) But it’s something that the public—and Congress—should keep in mind when evaluating the NFIB’s claims.

News and Opinion Concerning the "War on the Middle Class"

"But dependency on government has never been bad for the rich. The pretense of the laissez-faire people is that only the poor are dependent on government, while the rich take care of themselves. This argument manages to ignore all of modern history, which shows a consistent record of laissez-faire for the poor, but enormous government intervention for the rich." From Economic Justice: The American Class System, from the book Declarations of Independence by Howard Zinn.

• New York Times: About That Debt Crisis? Never Mind. By Paul Krugman. Excerpts: OK, another toe dipped in reality. The new CBO numbers are out, and they scream “debt crisis? What debt crisis? ...

  Yes, debt rose substantially in the face of economic crisis — which is what is supposed to happen. But runaway deficits? Not a hint.

  Yes, there are longer-term issues of health costs and demographics. As always, however, these have no relevance to what we should be doing now — and it’s far from clear why they should even be a priority for discussion. As I’ve written before, the VSP consensus seems to be that to avoid the possibility of future benefit cuts, we must commit ourselves now now now to … future cuts in benefits.

  Why, it’s almost as if the real goal was to make sure that benefits get cut even if the fiscal outlook improves.

  Meanwhile, our policy discourse has been dominated for years by what turns out to be a false alarm. To the millions of Americans who are out of work and may never get another job thanks to premature fiscal austerity, the VSPs would like to say, “oopsies!”

• Smirking Chimp: Austerity Is Dead, So Drop the Chained CPI and Increase Social Security. By Richard Eskow. Excerpts: Deficit projections have already decreased by $200 billion for this year alone, so why do Republicans keep lunging for ever-more radical spending cuts like they were corn dogs at a barbecue? That's more in deficit reduction than President Obama's proposed cut to Social Security would "save" in 10. So why hasn't he withdrawn the proposal?

  It would make more sense to dial back on the sequester, which is the biggest driver of these revised deficit figures, and work on the fundamental weaknesses in our economy that are prolonging the recession. In the long run this approach would do more to reduce deficits, too.

  Instead of cutting Social Security, they should be strengthening the country's social safety net. A good start would be the passage of Sen. Tom Harkin's bill to increase Social Security's benefits. (If I were you I'd contact our senators and representative and demand that they support it. I already have, by signing this petition.)

  The Mother of All Crises. You wouldn't know it from listening to most politicians, but there's a crisis going on. In fact, there are a few of them going on -- including the crisis of un- and under-employment, the crisis of wage stagnation, and the crisis caused by lost social mobility.

  Each of these unaddressed problems feed into the Mother of All Economic Crises, the one that our mothers and fathers are facing and we'll all confront ourselves someday: the retirement crisis. Sen. Tom Harkin has a bill that starts to address that crisis, in a bill that should be passed immediately. ...

  And yet some politicians are still obsessing instead about the phony crisis over government deficits, which has been ginned up by the corporate interests and billionaires, especially deficit-increasing corporations like defense contractors and deficit-increasing individuals like undertaxed hedge fund billionaires. ...

  Economists have always spoken of retirement security as a "three-legged stool" made up of savings (including assets like a home), pensions, and Social Security. But Wall Street's greed and criminality shattered the balance sheet of middle-class America, causing Americans to lose trillions in real estate assets and much of their hard-earned savings.

  Corporations have also improved their bottom line at their employees' expense by shifting from defined-benefit pension plans to 401(k) programs and other plans that over very little security to retired Americans.

  In other words, corporate profits have kicked two legs off that three-legged stool. The third -- Social Security -- is splintered and cracked, thanks to Wall Street. Banks convinced Americans to sink their fortunes and their destinies into real estate in order to fuel a bubble that made bankers rich and left Americans bereft.

• Smirking Chimp: Deficit Fixed. Now Fix The Job Gap, Wage Gap And Trade Gap. By Dave Johnson. Excerpts: The deficit is now down 60 percent as a percent of gross domestic product. It is down more than the deficit hawks Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles asked for. This rapid reduction is seriously hurting the economy and jobs, but demands for cuts continue. It is time for Congress and the President to “pivot” to focusing on our real problems: the jobs gap, the wage gap and the trade gap.

  The “deficit problem” is man-made. When Bill Clinton was president we were paying off the debt. George W. Bush turned Clinton’s budget surpluses right around, calling deficits “extremely positive news” because they would later force cuts in government. Ronald Reagan’s “strategic deficits” began a strategy to make the borrowing appear so bad that the public would be panicked into allowing cuts in the things government does to make our lives better – so the wealthy few could have even more wealth and power. (Reagan tripled the national debt, Bush doubled it again.)

  So after Bush we had a problem. When ‘W’ left office the budget deficit was $1.4 trillion. Then after Obama took office Wall Street and the right started terrifying the public about deficits and outlining their “solutions”: Cut government, cut regulation of the giant corporations, cut entitlements, cut investment in infrastructure, privatize public assets, cut the safety net, etc… Cut the things that government does to make our lives better (government spending) and cut the things government does to protect us from the immense power of the insanely wealthy and their giant corporations.

  But something got in their way. The deficit started coming down before all of the “solutions” could be forced on us. The deficit is now down 60 percent as a percent of GDP from the level Bush left behind (see the chart in this post). ...

  The deficit is not a problem. The Simpson-Bowles target has been reached and passed. The austerity is harming the economy and hurting people. Congress and the President should pivot to jobs. They need to fix the jobs gap, the wage gap and the trade gap, and if they continue to ignore these real problems it is up to We, the People to apply the necessary pressure to make them do it.

• New York Times opinion: Who Can Take Republicans Seriously? Excerpts: It is time for President Obama to abandon his hopes of reaching a grand budget bargain with Republicans.

  At every opportunity since they took over the House in 2011, Republicans have made it clear that they have no interest in reaching a compromise with the White House. For two years, they held sham negotiations with Democrats that only dragged down the economy with cuts; this year, they are refusing even to sit down at the table.

  Mr. Obama hasn’t given up inviting the Republicans to join him in making the hard choices of governing, but he has been rebuffed each time. This year, in hopes of getting some support for modest tax increases on the rich, he even proposed a reduction in the cost-of-living increases for Social Security recipients. The events of the last few weeks should make it clear to him why that offer should be pulled from the table immediately. Consider...

  Republican lawmakers have become reflexive in rejecting every extended hand from the administration, even if the ideas were ones that they themselves once welcomed. Under the circumstances, Mr. Obama would be best advised to stop making peace offerings. Only when the Republican Party feels public pressure to become a serious partner can the real work of governing begin.

• New York Times opinion: Student Debt and the Crushing of the American Dream. By Joseph E. Stiglitz. Excerpts: A certain drama has become familiar in the United States (and some other advanced industrialized countries): Bankers encourage people to borrow beyond their means, preying especially on those who are financially unsophisticated. They use their political influence to get favorable treatment of one form or another. Debts mount. Journalists record the human toll. Then comes bewilderment: How could we let this happen again? Officials promise to fix things. Something is done about the most egregious abuses. People move on, reassured that the crisis has abated, but suspecting that it will recur soon.

  The crisis that is about to break out involves student debt and how we finance higher education. Like the housing crisis that preceded it, this crisis is intimately connected to America’s soaring inequality, and how, as Americans on the bottom rungs of the ladder strive to climb up, they are inevitably pulled down — some to a point even lower than where they began.

  This new crisis is emerging even before the last one has been resolved, and the two are becoming intertwined. In the decades after World War II, homeownership and higher education became signs of success in America. ...

  Everyone recognizes that education is the only way up, but as a college degree becomes increasingly essential to making one’s way in a 21st-century economy, education for those not to the manner born is increasingly unaffordable. Student debt for seniors graduating with loans now exceeds $26,000, about a 40 percent increase (not adjusted for inflation) in just seven years. But an “average” like this masks huge variations. ...

  America is distinctive among advanced industrialized countries in the burden it places on students and their parents for financing higher education. America is also exceptional among comparable countries for the high cost of a college degree, including at public universities. Average tuition, and room and board, at four-year colleges is just short of $22,000 a year, up from under $9,000 (adjusted for inflation) in 1980-81. ...

  America — home of the land-grant university, the G.I. Bill and world-class public universities from California to Michigan to Texas — has fallen from the top in terms of university education. With strangling student debt, we are likely to fall further. What economists call “human capital” — investing in people — is a key to long-term growth. To be competitive in the 21st century is to have a highly educated labor force, one with college and advanced degrees. Instead, we are foreclosing on our future as a nation. ...

  As bad as things are, they may get worse. With budgetary pressures mounting — along with demands for cutbacks in “discretionary domestic programs” (read: K-12 education subsidies, Pell Grants for poor kids to attend college, research money) — students and families are left to fend for themselves. College costs will continue to rise far faster than incomes. As has been repeatedly observed, all of the economic gains since the Great Recession have gone to the top 1 percent. ...

  The combination of predatory for-profit schools and predatory lenders is a leech on America’s poor. These schools have even gone after young veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. There are heart-rending stories of parents who co-signed student loans — only to see their child killed in an accident or die of cancer or another disease — and, like students, can’t easily discharge these debts.

• New York Times op-ed: How Austerity Kills. By David Stuckler and Sanjay Basu. Excerpts: Early last month, a triple suicide was reported in the seaside town of Civitanova Marche, Italy. A married couple, Anna Maria Sopranzi, 68, and Romeo Dionisi, 62, had been struggling to live on her monthly pension of around 500 euros (about $650), and had fallen behind on rent.

  Because the Italian government’s austerity budget had raised the retirement age, Mr. Dionisi, a former construction worker, became one of Italy’s esodati (exiled ones) — older workers plunged into poverty without a safety net. On April 5, he and his wife left a note on a neighbor’s car asking for forgiveness, then hanged themselves in a storage closet at home. When Ms. Sopranzi’s brother, Giuseppe Sopranzi, 73, heard the news, he drowned himself in the Adriatic.

  The correlation between unemployment and suicide has been observed since the 19th century. People looking for work are about twice as likely to end their lives as those who have jobs.

  In the United States, the suicide rate, which had slowly risen since 2000, jumped during and after the 2007-9 recession. In a new book, we estimate that 4,750 “excess” suicides — that is, deaths above what pre-existing trends would predict — occurred from 2007 to 2010. Rates of such suicides were significantly greater in the states that experienced the greatest job losses. Deaths from suicide overtook deaths from car crashes in 2009.

  If suicides were an unavoidable consequence of economic downturns, this would just be another story about the human toll of the Great Recession. But it isn’t so. Countries that slashed health and social protection budgets, like Greece, Italy and Spain, have seen starkly worse health outcomes than nations like Germany, Iceland and Sweden, which maintained their social safety nets and opted for stimulus over austerity. (Germany preaches the virtues of austerity — for others.) ...

  Somewhere between these extremes is the United States. Initially, the 2009 stimulus package shored up the safety net. But there are warning signs — beyond the higher suicide rate — that health trends are worsening. Prescriptions for antidepressants have soared. Three-quarters of a million people (particularly out-of-work young men) have turned to binge drinking. Over five million Americans lost access to health care in the recession because they lost their jobs (and either could not afford to extend their insurance under the Cobra law or exhausted their eligibility). Preventive medical visits dropped as people delayed medical care and ended up in emergency rooms. (President Obama’s health care law expands coverage, but only gradually.)

  The $85 billion “sequester” that began on March 1 will cut nutrition subsidies for approximately 600,000 pregnant women, newborns and infants by year’s end. Public housing budgets will be cut by nearly $2 billion this year, even while 1.4 million homes are in foreclosure. Even the budget of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the nation’s main defense against epidemics like last year’s fungal meningitis outbreak, is being cut, by at least $18 million. ...

  One need not be an economic ideologue — we certainly aren’t — to recognize that the price of austerity can be calculated in human lives. We are not exonerating poor policy decisions of the past or calling for universal debt forgiveness. It’s up to policy makers in America and Europe to figure out the right mix of fiscal and monetary policy. What we have found is that austerity — severe, immediate, indiscriminate cuts to social and health spending — is not only self-defeating, but fatal.

• AlterNet: The Rich Have Gained $5.6 Trillion in the 'Recovery,' While the Rest of Us Have Lost $669 Billion. It's no accident. By Les Leopold. Excerpts: Oh, are we getting ripped off. And now we've got the data to prove it. From 2009 to 2011, the richest 8 million families (the top 7%) on average saw their wealth rise from $1.7 million to $2.5 million each. Meanwhile the rest of us -- the bottom 93% (that's 111 million families) -- suffered on average a decline of $6,000 each.

  Do the math and you'll discover that the top 7% gained a whopping $5.6 trillion in net worth (assets minus liabilities) while the rest of lost $669 billion. Their wealth went up by 28% while ours went down by 4 percent.

  It's as if the entire economic recovery is going into the pockets of the rich. And that's no accident. Here's why...

• Huffington Post: Cutting Social Security and Not Taxing Wall Street. By Dean Baker. Excerpts: As we move toward the fifth anniversary of the great financial crisis of 2008, people should be outraged that cutting Social Security is now on the national agenda, while taxing Wall Street is not. After all, if we take at face value the claims made back in 2008 by Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and former Treasury Secretaries Henry Paulson and Timothy Geithner, Wall Street excesses brought the economy to the brink of collapse.

  But now the Wall Street behemoths are bigger than ever and President Obama is looking to cut the Social Security benefits of retirees. That will teach the Wall Street boys to be more responsible in the future. ...

  While President Obama is willing to make seniors pay a price for the economic crisis, his administration is unwilling to impose any burdens on Wall Street. Specifically, it has consistently opposed a Wall Street speculation tax: effectively a sales tax on trades of stock and derivatives. The Obama administration has even used its power to try to block efforts by European countries to impose their own taxes on financial speculation.

  If the idea of taxing stock trades sounds strange, it shouldn't. The United States used to impose a tax of 0.04 percent until Wall Street lobbied to eliminate it in the mid-1960s. Many countries, including the United Kingdom, Switzerland, China, and India already impose taxes on stock trades.

  The tax in the UK is 0.5 percent on stock trades (0.25 percent for both the buyer and the seller). It dates back more than three centuries. The country raises more than 0.2 percent of GDP ($32 billion in the United States) from the tax each year. The tax has not prevented the London stock exchange from being one of the largest in the world. ...

  There are currently two bills in Congress for a similar tax in the United States. A bill by Minnesota Representative Keith Ellison would impose the same tax as the UK on stock trades and would apply a scaled rate to options, futures, credit default swaps and other derivative instruments. It could raise more than $150 billion annually or more than $2 trillion over the ten year budget window. ...

  Unfortunately the administration has consistently opposed both bills. It claims that it is concerned about the incidence of these taxes -- that ordinary investors would see large burdens from the tax. It also claims to be worried that the taxes will disrupt financial markets by making trading more costly.

  Neither of these stories passes the laugh test. Ordinary investors don't trade much, and therefore are not going to feel much impact from the tax. If someone with $100,000 in a 401(k) (this is much larger than the typical 401(k)) turns it over at the rate of 50 percent annually, they would pay $15.00 each year as a result of the Harkin-DeFazio tax. ...

  So the Obama administration wants us to believe that it is willing to cut the Social Security benefits of retiree living on $15,000 a year in Social Security by $450 but it opposes a Wall Street speculation tax because it is concerned that investors with $100,000 in a 401(k) may pay a few dollars a year in additional trading costs. Only a reporter with the Washington Post would believe a story like that. ...

  The basic story is very simple. Wall Street bankers have a lot more political power than old and disabled people who depend on Social Security. That is why President Obama is working to protect the former and cut benefits for the latter.

• New York Times op-ed: The Real I.R.S. Scandal. By Sheila Krumholz and Robert Weinberger. Excerpts: News that employees at the Internal Revenue Service targeted groups with “Tea Party” or “patriot” in their name for special scrutiny has raised pious alarms among some lawmakers and editorial writers.

  Yes, the I.R.S. may have been worse than clumsy in considering an avalanche of applications for nonprofit status under the tax code, and that deserves scrutiny whether or not the agency’s employees were spurred by partisan motives. After all, some of these “tea party” groups are most likely not innocent nonprofit organizations devoted to the cultural significance of hot beverages — or to other, more civic, virtues. Rather, they and others are groups that may be illegally spending a majority of their resources on political activity while manipulating the tax code to hide their donors and evade taxes (the unwritten rule being that no more than 49 percent of a group’s resources can be used for political purposes).

  The near vertical ascent in political spending by these “dark money” groups was prompted by the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in the Citizens United case, among others, freeing them to be more active in this realm.

  And it’s a bipartisan scandal, though it’s hard to tell that judging by the names some groups have adopted — as the I.R.S. should know. Can you tell which of these lean left and which ones right? Patriot Majority USA, Crossroads GPS, American Future Fund and the Citizens for Strength and Security Fund. (Nos. 1 and 4 are liberal, 2 and 3 are conservative.) ...

  But even more regrettable is the long-term damage to the credibility of the I.R.S. as an impartial arbiter of whether organizations merit tax-exempt status. This will be difficult to undo, particularly because of the secrecy required for the agency to effectively examine organizations without generating doubts about them, as well as to prevent other organizations from coming up with strategies to evade scrutiny in the future. ...

  Indeed, the latest revelations are not the first to cause pushback by Congressional conservatives. In 2011, tax authorities considered applying the gift tax to large contributions to 501(c)(4) groups, and they sent letters to a handful of big donors informing them they may be taxed. The agency received a swift and forceful response from the Republican senators Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, John Kyl of Arizona and others demanding to know whether the I.R.S. was acting on the basis of partisanship.

  The agency folded like wet cardboard: the deputy commissioner took the extraordinary step of ending the audits in progress. (That official, who has been the acting head of the agency, was fired yesterday by the president.)

• Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT): What Can We Learn from Denmark? Excerpts: Today in the United States, unemployment is too high, wages and income are too low, people are struggling to find affordable health care and the wealth and income gap is growing wider. Millions of working families are finding it hard to make ends meet and maintain a dignified standard of living.

  In Denmark, social policy in areas like health care, child care, education and protecting the unemployed are part of a “solidarity system” that provides strong opportunity and security for all citizens. Danes pay high taxes, but in return enjoy a quality of life that many Americans would envy.

  Denmark is a small, homogenous nation of about 5.5 million people. The United States is a melting pot of more than 315 million people. No question about it, Denmark and the United States are very different countries.

  But are there lessons we can learn from the social model in Denmark? If you’re interested in the answer, please attend one of a series of town meetings that I am holding throughout Vermont this weekend with Danish Ambassador Peter Taksoe-Jensen. On Saturday, the ambassador will join me for town meetings at 1 p.m. at Burlington City Hall and at 7 p.m. at the Brattleboro Museum in Brattleboro. On Sunday, join us at 10:30 a.m. at Montpelier High School in Montpelier. Admission is free, questions and comments are encouraged.

  Health care in Denmark is universal, free of charge and high in quality. Everybody is covered as a right of citizenship. The Danish health care system is popular, with patient satisfaction much higher than in the United States. In Denmark, every citizen can choose a doctor in their area. Prescription drugs are inexpensive.

  They’re free for those under 18 years of age. Interestingly, despite their universal coverage, the Danish health care system is far more cost-effective than ours. They spend about 11 percent of their GDP on health care. We spend almost 18 percent.

  When it comes to raising families, Danes understand that the first few years of a person’s life are the most important in terms of intellectual and emotional development. In order to give strong support to expecting parents, mothers get four weeks of paid leave before giving birth.

  They get another 14 weeks afterward. Expecting fathers get two paid weeks off, and both parents have the right to 32 more weeks of leave during the first nine years of a child’s life. The state covers three-quarters of the cost of child care, more for low-income workers.

  At a time when college education in the United States is becoming increasingly unaffordable and the average Vermont college graduate leaves school more than $28,000 in debt, virtually all higher education in Denmark is free. That includes not just college but graduate schools as well, including medical school.

  In a volatile global economy, the Danish government recognizes that it must invest heavily in training programs so workers can learn new skills to meet changing workforce demands. It also understands that when people lose their jobs they must have adequate income while they search for new jobs. If a worker loses his or her job in Denmark, unemployment insurance covers up to 90 percent of earnings for as long as two years. Here benefits can be cut off after as few as 26 weeks.

  It is no secret that in our country many people are living under great stress.

• BusinessWeek: The IRS Scandal: Tempest and the Tea Party. By Paul M. Barrett. Excerpts: On May 14 the IRS released the inspector general’s report on the alleged targeting of Tea Party groups. It blamed ineffective management, not a political vendetta, and concluded that no one outside the IRS had ordered the improper actions. Obviously, that’s not going to be the last word. Having crudely overreached, the IRS deserves an unsparing investigation, followed by systemic changes. On May 15, Obama announced that Acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller had been asked to resign. On the Hill, the House Ways and Means Committee will hold the first round of hearings, commencing on May 17, and Attorney General Eric Holder has ordered a criminal probe by the FBI.

  Lost amid the inevitable leaks, innuendo, and grandstanding is the bigger scandal—one in which both parties are complicit. While it was politically profiling local antitax groups, the IRS seems to have been largely inert in response to complaints that organizations founded by former top aides of both Obama and George W. Bush have violated their tax-exempt status. In 2012 large tax-exempt groups, including Republican operative Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS and the Obama-affiliated Priorities USA Action, spent hundreds of millions of political-advertising dollars, much of it harvested from secret donors.

  “The irony here is that the IRS is going to get punished, justifiably, for its heavy-handed tactics with the Tea Party committees,” says Melanie Sloan, the executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). “But the larger problem is that the IRS does nothing to enforce the law against the groups that are abusing a broken system on a much bigger scale.” ...

  Sadly, in the radioactive environment in Washington, it’s difficult to envision a remedy even this elementary emerging from Congress. Instead, Republicans will scramble to link the scandal to someone—anyone!—with White House credentials. Democrats will try to protect the president by competing to devise the most draconian possible penalties for low-level, tin-eared IRS bureaucrats. The truth? Both parties exploit and profit from the farcical campaign-finance system as it now exists, and no one has the political will to change it.