Archive | October, 2011

At OccupyDC, Egypt’s revolutionaries chide U.S. – Occupy Wall Street – Salon.com

24 Oct

Three of Egypt’s so-called Facebook revolutionaries told a crowd of 100 people who gathered Sunday afternoon in Washington’s Freedom Plaza that the U.S. government has abandoned their peaceful revolution in favor of an alliance with the country’s still-powerful military. (Video here.)

“We hoped U.S. policy would change” said Esraa Abdel Fatah, known as the Facebook girl for creating a social media page that helped mobilize a general strike over workers rights in 2008. “We hope they would support the people, not the government. But U.S. policy supports the military now, the same way it was supporting Mubarak.”

via At OccupyDC, Egypt’s revolutionaries chide U.S. – Occupy Wall Street – Salon.com.

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Pete Seeger Leads Protesters in New York, on Foot and in Song – NYTimes.com

22 Oct

Shortly before 1 a.m. the crowd streamed into the center of Columbus Circle. There, surrounded by gushing fountains, musicians that included Arlo Guthrie, Tom Chapin and David Amram, joined Mr. Seeger on the base of the Christopher Columbus monument.

The crowd quieted. Guitars began strumming as Mr. Seeger began singing “We Shall Overcome,” a song that he introduced to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

via Pete Seeger Leads Protesters in New York, on Foot and in Song – NYTimes.com.

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Neoliberalism and OWS — Crooked Timber

22 Oct

… once upon a time, there were debates about trade ‘liberalization’ – globalization – that used to divide neoliberals and liberals and progressives. Basically, the neoliberals were gung-ho for trade on the grounds that the alternative was protectionism that amounted to shooting your own foot, and didn’t do any good for the poor in the Third World. And the progressives saw jobs being outsourced, labor unions weakening. Liberals were those caught in the squishy middle, per usual. We’ve had some debates on Crooked Timber of late about what ‘neoliberalism’ means. I’ve not participated because, honestly, term’s more trouble than it’s worth, worrying what it means. (I have other terms that are more trouble than they’re worth to worry about that I worry about. As a philosopher, I need to limit the number of such that infest my mental life.) The thing is: in the current situation, there is not – and should not be – anything analogous to the neoliberal side of the trade debate. No one sane thinks that this whole 99/1 business might be like NAFTA, i.e. something we have to go for, in an end-justifies-the-means spirit.

via Neoliberalism and OWS — Crooked Timber.

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Cornel West arrested as OWS spreads to Harlem – Occupy Wall Street – Salon.com

22 Oct

Occupy Wall Street headed to Harlem Friday afternoon in a solidarity march that ended with the arrests of a few dozen protesters including Princeton professor Cornel West — just days after his arrest in Washington, D.C., at another demonstration. . . .

The march, which was planned by existing left-wing groups but was also endorsed Thursday by the general assembly at Zuccotti Park, focused on the NYPD’s practice of “stop and frisk.” That refers to the controversial – and, critics argue, unconstitutional — practice of officers stopping city residents on the street and searching them.

via Cornel West arrested as OWS spreads to Harlem – Occupy Wall Street – Salon.com.

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How they get away with obstruction – Opening Shot – Salon.com

21 Oct

The most recent data shows that 75 percent of voters say they want the federal government to send money to the states so that they can hire teachers and first responders. … At the same time, 76 percent of voters — and 54 percent of Republicans — favor increasing tax rates on Americans with incomes over $1 million.

So you might think that all 47 Republicans in the U.S. Senate and the three Democrats who joined with them late last night are going to be in some seriously hot political water for killing a plan that would have sent $35 billion to state governments to create or preserve about 400,000 jobs for teachers and firefighters and that would have paid for it with a 0.5 percent tax on millionaires.

If only it were that easy.

The measure, which represents a slice of the $447 billion jobs bill that President Obama proposed last month and that was derailed in the Senate last week, died because Democrats didn’t have the 60 votes needed to end a GOP-initiated filibuster aimed at preventing it from being debated.

via How they get away with obstruction – Opening Shot – Salon.com.

Party of Pollution – NYTimes.com

21 Oct

A new study by researchers at Yale and Middlebury College brings together data from a variety of sources to put a dollar value on the environmental damage various industries inflict. The estimates are far from comprehensive, since they only consider air pollution, and they make no effort to address longer-term issues such as climate change. Even so, the results are stunning.

For it turns out that there are a number of industries inflicting environmental damage that’s worth more than the sum of the wages they pay and the profits they earn — which means, in effect, that they destroy value rather than create it. High on the list, by the way, is coal-fired electricity generation, which the Mitt Romney-that-was used to stand up to.

via Party of Pollution – NYTimes.com.

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Early Morning School Bus

20 Oct

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Nine Ideas Up for Grabs

20 Oct

Economist Robert Reich (Secretary of Labor under Clinton) has nine suggestions for specific reforms (from Salon magazine).

One, Anger (cf Occupy America and Change History):

What’s needed isn’t just big ideas. It’s people fulminating for them – making enough of a ruckus that the ideas can’t be ignored. They become part of the debate because the public demands it.

Two, jobs:

The nation needs a real jobs plan, one of sufficient size and scope to do the job – including a WPA and a Civilian Conservation Corps, to put the millions of long-term unemployed and young unemployed to work rebuilding America.

Three, to address long-term debt, raise money by:

What about halving the military budget …? It doubled after 9/11, and military contractors are intent on keeping it in the stratosphere. . . .

And what about really raising taxes on the rich to finance what the nation should be doing to create a world-class workforce with world-class wages? . . . Incomes of more than $5 million should be subject to a 70 percent rate. (The top marginal rate was never below 70 percent between 1940 and 1980.) And these rates should apply to all income regardless of source, including capital gains. . . .

And a tax on financial transactions. Even a tiny one of one-half of one percent would generate $200 billion a year. That’s enough to make a major contribution toward early childhood education for every American toddler. Continue reading →

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Occupy America and Change History

20 Oct

Let Occupy Wall Street become a permanent well of political discontent.

Occupy Wall Street HAS changed political discourse in America. It remains to be seen, however, what fruit will come from this change, if any.

That the OWSers have yet to come up with a set of concrete demands has often been noted. On this I side with those who do not see this as a problem. On the one hand, as many have noted, it’s not as though their central issue—massive income inequality—hasn’t been obvious for years, if not a decade or two, and it’s not as though it is difficult to come up with proposal after proposal that addresses the problem.

Everyone Must Eat

It is more important, at this point, simple to recognize the problem and to see it as deep and fundamental.

America, with all our problems, remains the world’s richest nation. That being the case, it is disgraceful that anyone should lack the basic necessities of life: food, shelter, education, and health care. Everyone, WITHOUT qualification, MUST have access to the means of living a decent life. Just how that is to be done, yes, that is a problem. But let us first state, and accept, the principle:

Everyone, WITHOUT qualification, MUST have access to the means of living a decent life.

It is not the OSW movement’s job to come up with proposals to achieve that end. That is a job for think tanks, Congressional staffers, lobbyists, and universities.

The Well of Our Discontent

Moreover, I rather like the existence of a somewhat amorphous well of ‘WE AREN’T GOING TO TAKE IT ANY MORE.’ Perhaps that should become a permanent feature of our political ecology. Continue reading →

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Occupy the Classroom – NYTimes.com

20 Oct

Most of the proposed remedies involve changes in taxes and regulations, and they would help. But the single step that would do the most to reduce inequality has nothing to do with finance at all. It’s an expansion of early childhood education.

Huh? That will seem naïve and bizarre to many who chafe at inequities and who think the first step is to throw a few bankers into prison. But although part of the problem is billionaires being taxed at lower rates than those with more modest incomes, a bigger source of structural inequity is that many young people never get the skills to compete. They’re just left behind.

via Occupy the Classroom – NYTimes.com.

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