Economist Proves: Reagan’s Deregulation caused Today’s Income Inequality.

Finally, the root cause is revealed.  Plenty of talk has been talked on the topic, by experts, data wonks, and politicians. But nobody was able to say why the 1% started f***ing the rest of us to an even greater extent than hitherto, from the 80’s through the present day. Not until a few months ago, that is:

There are many gauges of the depth and breadth of economic inequality, and they often measure what middle-income working people have today against what they had prior to 1980 – that time when homes were affordable, along with doctor visits and college educations. Yet few of the astonishing charts and metrics that have captured this widening gulf explain how it all came about. So when economist William Lazonick pointed a finger at a very specific aspect of corporate behavior, people took note.

Lazonick’s 4,900-word piece, titled Profits Without Prosperity, focused on the 449 companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index that were publicly listed from 2003 to 2012. Lazonick found that from the end of World War II until the late 1970s, corporations generally took a “retain-and-reinvest” approach to profits. That is, they kept their earnings and reinvested them – first and foremost in pay raises and job benefits for the employees who helped make the firms more competitive, but also in business expansion, research and new technologies.

But starting in the early 1980s, after the Securities and Exchange Commission removed limits on companies’ power to buy back their stock, these large, publicly traded companies began spending a portion of their net income on stock buybacks. The trend was exacerbated in the 1990s, when the compensation packages of corporate chief executives were linked directly to the stock value, and has accelerated in recent years – even though it’s been little noticed and rarely discussed as a prime driver of economic inequality.

THIS IS HUGE, Gentle Reader. Huge. It proves what everyone except Teapubbies and all the other “small government” and supply-side eedjits have known for decades: the Reagan Revolution was a huge mistake, a f***-up for the ages, even worse than when the Senate handed Rome to Caligula. The nation’s woeful retreat from its former stability to the shambles of the present day is, once and for all: The. Fault. Of. Reagan. Era. Republicans.

And the longer America keep electing these criminally idiotic, venal, fact-challenged, big-mouthed-but-walnut-brained f***wits, the worse it’s gonna get. We need to vote each and every “Republican” who is currently IN office OUT of said office. And that soon.

Maybe someday, when Repubs go back to the pre-Reagan days of ideological and political sanity; then, and ONLY then, can we allow them back into power. But frankly, friends, we can’t AFFORD these Teapublican nitwits any longer. They have cost us dearly, far too dearly, and done far too much damage to be trusted now.

Now you know who to blame. Time to do something about it.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

Men’s Rights A**hole wants to legalize Rape. Seriously.

Yet another mamma-threw-away-the-child-and-raised-the-afterbirth chucklef*** demonstrates why the “Men’s Rights Activists” are all a bunch of criminally insane loserboys. One Roosh Vörek wants to make rape legal. Don’t believe it? Here are his very own “thoughts”:

I thought about this problem and am sure I have the solution: make rape legal if done on private property. I propose that we make the violent taking of a woman not punishable by law when done off public grounds.

The exception for public rape is aimed at those seedy and deranged men who randomly select their rape victims on alleys and jogging trails, but not as a mechanism to prevent those rapes, since the verdict is still out if punishment stops a committed criminal mind, but to have a way to keep them off the streets. For all other rapes, however, especially if done in a dwelling or on private property, any and all rape that happens should be completely legal.

If rape becomes legal under my proposal, a girl will protect her body in the same manner that she protects her purse and smartphone. If rape becomes legal, a girl will not enter an impaired state of mind where she can’t resist being dragged off to a bedroom with a man who she is unsure of—she’ll scream, yell, or kick at his attempt while bystanders are still around. If rape becomes legal, she will never be unchaperoned with a man she doesn’t want to sleep with. After several months of advertising this law throughout the land, rape would be virtually eliminated on the first day it is applied.

Here, Gentle Reader, is the paragon of masculinity from whom those “ideas” spurted:

Yeah, looks like a misogynistic a**hole, doesn’t he? No wonder he wants rape to be legal.

A counterproposal, then, for the “blogger” Roosh V: you want legal rape? How about we say women can legally cut off your wedding tackle whenever they want. Yours and that of any other rapist, sex criminal, MRA, or other mouthbreathing toilet stains who think they have a right to rape women.

Oh, you don’t like that idea, Mr. Vörek? Funny how that works.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

Stop all the f*** ing victim-blaming, OK? Just stop it.

(Your humble correspondent is feeling exceptionally cranky today, so prepare for even less tact than usual.)

Recently, a scumbucket pervert misogynistic motherf***ing hacker stole a lot of nude photos of famous women and posted them online. And a lot of people who really should know better have said really stupid s*** like “it’s her own fault, because she posted them online”. All together now, let us respond from the First Book of Crankitude: “BULL-F***ing-S***”.

This is victim-blaming crap, and it is usually done to women. It takes many forms. A few examples:
“She should have known better than to have nude pictures of herself”;
“She shouldn’t have been drinking”;
“She shouldn’t have gone to a party”;
Or, of course, this writer’s pet peeve; “She was asking for it, dressing that way”.

All of these statements are pretty much equivalent: they are designed to control and degrade women, and have been used towards that end with (sadly) great success. And uttering any of them makes the speaker the moral equivalent of a peeping tom, Fundagelical wingnut preacher, rapist, or all of the above.

We don’t often (if ever) say these things about men. We don’t apply these antediluvian judgements to men. No, it’s pretty much always women who get the shame & blame treatment.

Until men are treated the same way as women, let’s all just stop treating women as if we were living in the dark f***ing ages. That isn’t really all that much to ask.

Mister Blunt and Cranky