Archive | November, 2011

This is what GOP brand poisoning looks like – Opening Shot – Salon.com

9 Nov

Has the wacko fringe of the Republican Party reached too far? Will they get a smack-down in 2012? Stay tuned.

In other words, most voters went to the polls in 2010 feeling a strong desire to vote out Democrats and felt little reason to fear the GOP. But after a year of headlines about shutdown and default brinkmanship in Washington and laws like SB-5 at the state level, the GOP’s overall favorable rating has dropped by 12 points. Democrats now have a clear advantage in this area; the same Quinnipiac poll that gave Republicans a 28/57 percent favorable/unfavorable score gave Democrats a 36/39 mark. Which suggests at least the possibility that voters who might otherwise be ready to cast out Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats will think twice before doing so in next year’s election.

via This is what GOP brand poisoning looks like – Opening Shot – Salon.com.

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Teaching With the Enemy – NYTimes.com

9 Nov

The teacher’s union isn’t evil, and charter schools aren’t THE answer.

To put it another way, you simply cannot fix America’s schools by “scaling” charter schools. It won’t work. Charter schools offer proof of the concept that great teaching is a huge difference-maker, but charters can only absorb a tiny fraction of the nation’s 50 million public schoolchildren. Real reform has to go beyond charters — and it has to include the unions. That’s what Brill figured out.

He figured out something else, too. He saw that the whip-smart, politically savvy Weingarten was not the villain he had first imagined. He watched her cut deals with Gates to establish important pilot programs. And he saw her inch toward reform, including measuring teachers on the basis of performance.

The reform movement has long demonized Weingarten and her union — sometimes with good reason — and that is reflected in “Class Warfare.” But Brill himself is now where the reform movement needs to go, if it hopes to change how kids are taught.

Randi Weingarten can’t be the enemy anymore. She could be the reformers’ best friend, if only they’d let her.

via Teaching With the Enemy – NYTimes.com.

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End Bonuses for Bankers – NYTimes.com

9 Nov

Nassim Nicholas “Black Swan” Speaks:

Any person who works for a company that, regardless of its current financial health, would require a taxpayer-financed bailout if it failed should not get a bonus, ever. In fact, all pay at systemically important financial institutions — big banks, but also some insurance companies and even huge hedge funds — should be strictly regulated.

Critics like the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators decry the bonus system for its lack of fairness and its contribution to widening inequality. But the greater problem is that it provides an incentive to take risks. The asymmetric nature of the bonus (an incentive for success without a corresponding disincentive for failure) causes hidden risks to accumulate in the financial system and become a catalyst for disaster. This violates the fundamental rules of capitalism; Adam Smith himself was wary of the effect of limiting liability, a bedrock principle of the modern corporation.

via End Bonuses for Bankers – NYTimes.com.

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Occupy Movement Inspires Unions to Embrace Bold Tactics – NYTimes.com

9 Nov

Union leaders, who were initially cautious in embracing the Occupy movement, have in recent weeks showered the protesters with help — tents, air mattresses, propane heaters and tons of food. The protesters, for their part, have joined in union marches and picket lines across the nation. About 100 protesters from Occupy Wall Street are expected to join a Teamsters picket line at the Sotheby’s auction house in Manhattan on Wednesday night to back the union in a bitter contract fight.

Labor unions, marveling at how the protesters have fired up the public on traditional labor issues like income inequality, are also starting to embrace some of the bold tactics and social media skills of the Occupy movement.

via Occupy Movement Inspires Unions to Embrace Bold Tactics – NYTimes.com.

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Bloomberg Says Some Protesters’ Issues Are Unfounded – NYTimes.com

8 Nov

Asked about the passions that fire the Occupy Wall Street crowds, Mr. Bloomberg gave an oh-puhleeze purse of his lips. Some complaints, he said, are “totally unfounded.”

“It was not the banks that created the mortgage crisis,” he said. “It was, plain and simple, Congress, who forced everybody to go and give mortgages to people who were on the cusp.”

Few of us can easily transcend our class and cultural context. But as a city and a nation are riveted by the 99 percent, Mr. Bloomberg often sounds like a man trapped in his 1 percent golden roost.

Actually, with his billions, it’s more like 1% of 1% of 1%. Whereas those poor Cengressional suckers are only in the 1%, or, in some cases, the 1% of 1%. So I guess it’s class warfare between the 1% and the .01%

Maybe if these guys get into a good fight some spare change will fall from their pockets and we can use it to house the homeless.

via Bloomberg Says Some Protesters’ Issues Are Unfounded – NYTimes.com.

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The radicals have grey hair: 47 senior citizens arrested today in Chicago protest against cuts |

8 Nov

From today 11/7: Jane Addams Senior Caucus staged a sit-in to protest social security and medicare cuts in alliance with Occupy Chicago. 47 senior citizens were arrested – 3 of which were in wheelchairs, according to Occupy Chicago’s tweets. Their action was outside the offices of Senators Dick Durbin and Mark Kirk.

“Many older women, especially older women of color, would suffer the brunt of these cuts…Senator Durbin and Senator Kirk need to hear that seniors are the members of the 99% and have something to say about this issue and these programs.”-Mary Burns, leader of the Jane Addams Senior Caucus, in a statement, according to NBC Chicago

via The radicals have grey hair: 47 senior citizens arrested today in Chicago protest against cuts |.

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Can OWS end America’s war against the poor? – Occupy Wall Street – Salon.com

7 Nov

Now, in what seems like no time at all, the fog has lifted and the topic on the table everywhere seems to be the morality of contemporary financial capitalism. The protestors have accomplished this mainly through the symbolic power of their actions: by naming Wall Street, the heartland of financial capitalism, as the enemy, and by welcoming the homeless and the down-and-out to their occupation sites. And of course, the slogan “We are the 99 percent” reiterated the message that almost all of us are suffering from the reckless profiteering of a tiny handful. (In fact, they aren’t far off: the increase in income of the top 1 percent over the past three decades about equals the losses of the bottom 80 percent.)

via Can OWS end America’s war against the poor? – Occupy Wall Street – Salon.com.

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The myth of the progressive city – Media Criticism – Salon.com

7 Nov

Though Taibbi was writing about Bloomberg specifically, his words aptly sum up what the American cityscape has become — yet more scorched earth in the successful assault of Limousine Liberals and Crony Corporatists on Lunch-Pail Liberals and Progressive Populists. In political terms, it represents the broader success of the transpartisan moneyed class in fully redefining “liberal” exclusively as “social-issue liberal” — without regard for economic agenda.

via The myth of the progressive city – Media Criticism – Salon.com.

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Here Comes Solar Energy – Krugman

7 Nov

Fracking NO!

… special treatment for fracking makes a mockery of free-market principles. Pro-fracking politicians claim to be against subsidies, yet letting an industry impose costs without paying compensation is in effect a huge subsidy. They say they oppose having the government “pick winners,” yet they demand special treatment for this industry precisely because they claim it will be a winner.

Solar YES! The cost of panels is dropping through the floor.

… Solyndra’s failure was actually caused by technological success: the price of solar panels is dropping fast, and Solyndra couldn’t keep up with the competition. In fact, progress in solar panels has been so dramatic and sustained that, as a blog post at Scientific American put it, “there’s now frequent talk of a ‘Moore’s law’ in solar energy,” with prices adjusted for inflation falling around 7 percent a year.

This has already led to rapid growth in solar installations, but even more change may be just around the corner. If the downward trend continues — and if anything it seems to be accelerating — we’re just a few years from the point at which electricity from solar panels becomes cheaper than electricity generated by burning coal.

And if we priced coal-fired power right, taking into account the huge health and other costs it imposes, it’s likely that we would already have passed that tipping point.

via Here Comes Solar Energy – NYTimes.com.

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In Phoenix, the Dark Side of ‘Green’ – NYTimes.com

7 Nov

Whereas uptown populations are increasingly sequestered in green showpiece zones, residents in low-lying areas who cannot afford the low-carbon lifestyle are struggling to breathe fresh air or are even trapped in cancer clusters. You can find this pattern in many American cities. The problem is that the carbon savings to be gotten out of this upscale demographic — which represents one in five American adults and is known as Lohas, an acronym for “lifestyles of health and sustainability” — can’t outweigh the commercial neglect of the other 80 percent. If we are to moderate climate change, the green wave has to lift all vessels.

via In Phoenix, the Dark Side of ‘Green’ – NYTimes.com.

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