Month: September 2015

Kate’s Law Sinking?

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When the obfuscation starts, the end is often near.

So, it appears to be with Kate’s Law, the paranoid piece of legislation that would have us spend 2 billion a year to lock up for 5 years all those who re-enter the country after being deported.

Yesterday, I posted The Mystifying Math of Kate’s Law, which really did little more than quote analysis from The Atlantic on the stupefying projected cost of implementing Kate’s Law.

That drew a sharp response from Paula Pennypacker, who contended that Kate’s Law only would apply to “aggravated felons.”

Well, not exactly, Paula.

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Rising wage inequality: the wedge between productivity and worker’s wages

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The New York Times’ Paul Krugman blog today cites the most recent report by Josh Bivens and Larry Mishel on the productivity-pay gap.  Understanding the Historic Divergence Between Productivity and a Typical Worker’s Pay: Why It Matters and Why It’s Real:

Income-InequalityWage stagnation experienced by the vast majority of American workers has emerged as a central issue in economic policy debates, with candidates and leaders of both parties noting its importance. This is a welcome development because it means that economic inequality has become a focus of attention and that policymakers are seeing the connection between wage stagnation and inequality. Put simply, wage stagnation is how the rise in inequality has damaged the vast majority of American workers.

The Economic Policy Institute’s earlier paper, Raising America’s Pay: Why It’s Our Central Economic Policy Challenge, presented a thorough analysis of income and wage trends, documented rising wage inequality, and provided strong evidence that wage stagnation is largely the result of policy choices that boosted the bargaining power of those with the most wealth and power (Bivens et al. 2014). As we argued, better policy choices, made with low- and moderate-wage earners in mind, can lead to more widespread wage growth and strengthen and expand the middle class.

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Exquisite Golden Images photo exhibit coming to Yume Japanese Gardens

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Golden Photographs Poster Resized

Gold Leaf Photos Put Shimmer and Shine in The Eye of The Beholder

 Updated Antique Photographic Technique Makes Pictures Glow In Local Exhibit

“A long-neglected process that utilizes gold to render highlights with startlingly more depth and luminosity than ordinary photographs appears in a modern incarnation in the exhibit Gold Leaf Photographs by Kate Breakey, opening September 11 at Yume Japanese Gardens of Tucson, 2130 N. Alvernon Way.

 A Tucson resident born in Australia, Breakey enjoys international acclaim for her images that achieve luminous effects through the exploration of antique photographic processes that have become part of art history.

 The images in her current show are modern versions of Orotones. In their heyday — the early 20th century — Orotones were created by printing a positive photographic image on a glass plate and then coating the plate with lacquer impregnated with bronze, silver, or gold metallic pigment.

In her resurrection of this process, Breakey uses contemporary media and technology to print her photographs digitally on glass and then flawlessly hand applies 23.5-karat gold leaf to the back of the plate. Light penetrates the glass plate, strikes the gold leaf underneath, and beams back, illuminating the image from behind and creating a picture that glows and shimmers from within.The effect is reminiscent of the luminosity of a gilded Japanese screen.

 The traditional Orotones most familiar to Americans are those of Edward S. Curtis, the ethnologist and photographer of the American West who documented Native American peoples in a massive collection of images made from 1906 to 1930.

Since 1980 Breakey has exhibited in nearly 150 solo and group shows in the U.S., France, Japan, Australia, China, and New Zealand. Her images are held in many public institutions, including the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the Australian National Gallery in Canberra and the Osaka Museum in Osaka, Japan. She is represented by Etherton Gallery in Tucson,  one of the Southwest’s premier galleries and the co-sponsor of the current exhibition.

 A free opening reception and exhibition preview will be held at Yume Japanese Gardens on September 11 from 6:00 to 8:00 pm. Golden Images: Gold Leaf Photographs runs until November 20, 9:30 to 4:30 daily.”

 For more information visit http://www.yumegardens.org, emailyume.gardens@gmail.com or call Allen Boraiko of Yume Japanese Gardens at 520-343-0926. ​Entry is free with regular admission to the Gardens.

Carolyn’s note: Yume Japanese gardens itself is closed for the summer till October 1st, but this exhibit will be open daily, till Nov. 20, 2015.

 

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David Cay Johnston: ‘No other modern country treats its workers this way’

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Pulitizer Prize winning economics journalist David Cay Johnston has an op-ed for Labor Day, American workers deserve — and must demand — better:

unionsMonday marks the 122nd federal “Labor’s Holiday,” which Congress enacted to celebrate working people. This Labor Day, though, working people have little to celebrate and much to fear.

The good news is that July marked a record 65 consecutive months of private-sector job growth. The country has added 13 million jobs since early 2010 and the job market is poised to continue growing.

The rest of the news for workers is mostly bad, as it has been for the last 35 years. Wages have fallen, once plentiful jobs have become hard to find, job security has vanished, bouts of joblessness average 28 weeks, up from less than 10 in 1970, and Congress lets Wall Street plunder traditional pensions, while the costs of health care consumed an ever larger share of the total compensation workers earn, reducing cash wages.

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The Mystifying Math of Kate’s Law

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After seeing yet another Paula Pennypacker rant on Facebook today, it struck me that the math of Kate’s law, which would place all those who re-enter the U.S. after deportation behind bars for 5 years. must be absurd. One minute into my research, I found this in The Atlantic: The Trouble with Kate’s Law. First, the prison population increase:

In July, a group of legislators introduced the Establishing Mandatory Minimums for Illegal Reentry Act of 2015, popularly known as Kate’s Law. On Wednesday, the U.S. Sentencing Commission estimated that Kate’s Law would expand the federal prison population by over 57,000 prisoners, according to Families Against Mandatory Minimums, a nonprofit organization that supporters sentencing reform.

The cost:

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