Archive | November, 2011

Europe: rise of the calculating machine – FT.com

11 Nov

Send in the clowns, the expert clowns:

If ever modern Europe needed brave, charismatic leaders to carry their nation through turbulent times, it would seem to be now. Instead, it is as if the crew of the Starship Enterprise had concluded that Captain Jean-Luc Picard is no longer the man for the job and that it is time to send for the Borg. Efficient, calculating machines driving through unpopular measures across the eurozone with the battle cry “resistance is futile” are apparently the order of the day. Faced with a deep crisis, once-proud European nations are essentially preparing to hand over power to Ernst & Young.

via Europe: rise of the calculating machine – FT.com.

Tags: ,

Occupy the Home Front: Why Veterans Are Deploying With the 99 Percent | The Nation

11 Nov

Olsen is recovering. But his wounding inspired an outcry from veterans. IVAW and VFP members marched in New York earlier this month with banners that read: “I Am a Veteran, and I am the 99%” and “Still Serving My Country.”

According to a statement from IVAW: “Members of Iraq Veterans Against the War marched to draw attention to the ways veterans have been negatively affected by the economic and social issues raised by the growing movement. The veterans hope the march will help encourage more veterans’ and service members’ to take an active role in the Occupy Wall Street movement.”

Veterans for Peace declared that: “These ‘occupy movement’ participants are telling us something we need very desperately to hear. They should be listened to, not arrested and brutalized.”

via Occupy the Home Front: Why Veterans Are Deploying With the 99 Percent | The Nation.

Tags:

The Inequality Map – NYTimes.com

11 Nov

This is an amusing piece by David Brooks. As you can see, it takes the form of advice to a foreigner about what kinds of inequality are acceptably displayed in America and what kinds must be hidden. On a quick read the advice appears to be reasonable. And so Brooks opens:

Foreign tourists are coming up to me on the streets and asking, “David, you have so many different kinds of inequality in your country. How can I tell which are socially acceptable and which are not?”

After cruising through this that and the other, Brooks gets to the what surely is the heart of the piece:

Income inequality is acceptable. If you are a star baseball player, it is socially acceptable to sell your services for $25 million per year (after all, you have to do what’s best for your family). If you are a star C.E.O., it’s no longer quite polite to receive an $18 million compensation package, but everybody who can still does it

That, of course, is NOT what the Occupy Wallstreeters are saying. Notice how he defuses the issue. His first and primary example is that of a star athlete. Everyone knows the best of the best get paid outlandish sums of money, and everyone knows THAT’s not what’s being protested. It’s the corporate CEOs—thanks for mentioning one, David—and bankers. And what’s bothersome is not simply the huge sums of money, but the sense that it’s not earned. What’s bothersome is that these folks have distorted the system so they get piles and piles of loot without really earning it. But then, Brooks doesn’t want us to think about THAT, does he? No the whole purpose of this piece is to make us forget that.

Then more examples of this and that until Brooks reaches his acceptably bland conclusion:

Dear visitor, we are a democratic, egalitarian people who spend our days desperately trying to climb over each other. Have a nice stay.

That is, just business as usual. NOT. Business as usual is NO LONGER ACCEPTABLE. Deal with it, Mr. David “Flim Flam Man” Brooks. And have a nice day.

via The Inequality Map – NYTimes.com.

Tags:

Is Occupy Wall Street too white?

10 Nov

For one, even a rudimentary examination of Occupy Wall Street in New York City would reveal that numerous unions with significant black and Latino rank and file or leadership are heavily involved in the movement. This includes TWU Local 100, SEIU Local 1199, National Nurses United, the United Federation of Teachers and many more. Second, a slew of people of color community groups are heavily involved in the movement, and there are also Occupy movements led by people of color in New York City like Occupy the Bronx and Occupy Harlem. There is a people of color committee at OccupyDC in Washington.

On Oct. 5, the day of the big labor and student walkout, protest and rally that drew well over 30,000 people, large numbers of African-American and Latino New Yorkers joined in.

via Is Occupy Wall Street too white? – Occupy Wall Street – Salon.com.

U.S. to Delay Decision on Pipeline Until After Election – NYTimes.com

10 Nov

The proposed project by a Canadian pipeline company had put President Obama in a political vise, squeezed between demands for secure energy sources and the jobs the project will bring, and the loud opposition of environmental advocates who have threatened to withhold electoral support next year if he approves it.

via U.S. to Delay Decision on Pipeline Until After Election – NYTimes.com.

Tags: ,

The crisis in the Eurozone – Europe – Salon.com

10 Nov

These are the best ideas and none of them will happen. Europe’s political classes exist these days in a vise forged by desperate bankers and angry voters, no less in Germany and France than in Greece or Italy. Discourse is sealed off from fresh ideas and political survival depends on kicking cans dow roads so that the fact that this is a banking crisis does not have to be faced. The fate of the weak is at best incidental. Thus every meeting of finance ministers and prime ministers yields treacherous half-measures and legal evasions.

via The crisis in the Eurozone – Europe – Salon.com.

America’s Populist Turn – The Dish | By Andrew Sullivan – The Daily Beast

10 Nov

Basically Americans don’t trust the government to fix the problems caused by the banks they don’t trust either. Hence our impasse. But a strategy that insisted on some revenue increases from those who can most afford it, as a means of debt reduction, not redistribution, together with deep structural reforms of the tax code, strikes me as a winning option for the president.

So where is his tax reform plan? Where is his plan for drastically simplifying our insane tax code and redressing the appalling generational imbalance, as the boomers suck every last drop of money out of their kids and grandkids? Here’s one thing I firmly believe: unless Obama proposes a bold reform plan for taxes, he is facing something worse than a one-term presidency. He is resisting he change he once promised to bring. Generationally, as he allows the Justice Dept to hound medical marijuana dispensaries and prevaricates on marriage equality and does little to redress the real distress of the twentysomethings who elected him, he is drifting into a de facto attack on his own coalition.

And that’s politically fatal. Safety is not an option in populist times. Reform is. Yes, his record needs to be critical in assessing him; but so too must be his platform going forward. If all it is is a second stimulus, he won’t get very far.

via America’s Populist Turn – The Dish | By Andrew Sullivan – The Daily Beast.

Populism in the Twenty-first Century – Rodney Roe – Open Salon

10 Nov

A number of populist movements have arisen in the history of the U.S. The issues creating the movements have varied because the definition of “the people” and “the elite” have varied.

Populism is often spoken of in a derogatory manner by some members of the media, those holding political power, and the wealthy. There is no mystery about why this is true. Populist movements seek to change society in fundamental ways.

Followed by brief discussions of the Grangers, Huey Long, the Tea Party, and Occupy Wall Street.

via Populism in the Twenty-first Century – Rodney Roe – Open Salon.

Tags: , , ,

Bill Clinton’s alternate, unbelievable reality – Bill Clinton – Salon.com

10 Nov

Not even the Big Dog hisownself could hunt in this mess:

One could reasonably argue that Clinton would have done a much better job facing down McConnell, Boehner and Cantor on the debt ceiling and government shutdown showdowns. But his program for smart governmental intervention in the economy would have constituted exactly the same kind of anathema to a Republican Party determined to prevent him from accomplishing anything as everything hitherto proposed by Obama. Clinton would also have discovered that when you come into office on the heels of a fiscal quarter in which the economy contracted by almost 10 percent, while facing a Senate opposition determined to filibuster your every move at a historically unprecedented rate from Day One, recovery would be slow and painful and politically costly. Furthermore, any notion that Bill Clinton might have been tougher than Obama on the banks or Wall Street, while fighting for his beloved middle class, seems especially dubious.

via Bill Clinton’s alternate, unbelievable reality – Bill Clinton – Salon.com.

Tags: , ,

Activists Occupy California’s Imperial Valley

9 Nov

Agriculture is threatened and the environment is in peril:

Anita Nicklen, a migrant rights advocate and mother of two of the younger protesters, explains the links in a potentially fatal chain. “Farmers are under tremendous pressure to fallow land and sell their water entitlements to San Diego’s suburbs. Fewer crops means fewer farm workers and fewer dollars circulating in our local economy. There is also less runoff from irrigation into the rapidly shrinking Salton Sea. Fish die, migratory birds leave, tourists stay home. As the sea dries up, its toxic contents are exposed to the wind.” …

But the death of the Salton Sea, an extraordinary reservoir of sinister chemicals, would be like opening Pandora’s box, a creeping Chernobyl of respiratory illness and cancer. Partial depopulation of the Imperial and d valleys might follow.

To prevent such an apocalypse, Sacramento proposed a $9 billion restoration plan for the sea, but authority for the appropriation was blocked in court in 2009, and the plan now faces the triage of the state debt crisis. Meanwhile, climate change and a long drought in the Colorado Basin have reinforced political pressures to allow much larger water transfers from the Imperial Valley to the coast.

Organize:

What I discovered, in fact, was a desert flower brought to blossom by a combination of long cultivation (local activist tradition), lots of sunlight (dialogue via social media) and, equally important, the existence of a local greenhouse (a physical space for meeting and interaction). …

Occupy El Centro provides a framework both for concentrating forces, as against Wind Zero, and for nurturing new solidarities on both sides of the steel wall that now separates the two Californias.

“Because the Imperial Valley is on the border,” Camden, said, she looks forward to “opportunities to take part in not only local or national activism, but global activism as well.” Anita hopes in particular that they can link with similar groups in Mexicali and begin to build an “Occupy the Border” dimension.

Finally, there is the virtual community aspect of the Occupy movement that enables participation in spite of geographical distance. Thanks to Facebook, for example, the Valley’s college diaspora, including recent UC Santa Cruz graduate Jessica Yocupicio, was able to play an integral role in planning the protest.

Complete article in The Nation.

Tags:

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →