Archive | June, 2012

Quebec Students Spark Mass Protests Against Austerity | The Nation

14 Jun

What started in the bitter winter as walkout against a $1,625 tuition hike in Quebec has turned into a spring of mass social unrest, sparking Canada’s first major uprising against the austerity measures that have slashed social spending and public services around the world. Now entering its fourth month and with over 160,000 college and university student supporters, the protest is North America’s largest and longest-running student strike to date. But it has become much more than that too. The government’s refusal to negotiate with students over tuition and its new law curbing the right to protest has angered millions and transformed the struggle. Now it is about stopping premier Jean Charest’s Liberal government, who students—heavily backed by labor, civil society and community groups—accuse with tearing up Quebec’s social contract.

via Quebec Students Spark Mass Protests Against Austerity | The Nation.

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Two Worlds Cracking Up – NYTimes.com

14 Jun

Ah, but you forget, Mr. Friedman, that we’ve got this too-big-to-fail banking system, a monster of a military-industrial complex, and a federal government that’s held hostage to ideologues. Against those rigidities our “flexible federal system” is of little avail.

In Europe, hyperconnectedness both exposed just how uncompetitive some of their economies were, but also how interdependent they had become. It was a deadly combination. When countries with such different cultures become this interconnected and interdependent — when they share the same currency but not the same work ethics, retirement ages or budget discipline — you end up with German savers seething at Greek workers, and vice versa.

And us? America’s flexible federal system makes it, theoretically, well-suited to thrive in a hyperconnected world, but only if we get our macroeconomic house in order and our education up to par (or better). We should be the world’s island of stability today. But we’re not. As Mohamed el-Erian, the chief executive of the bond giant Pimco, puts it, “We’re just the cleanest dirty shirt around.”

via Two Worlds Cracking Up – NYTimes.com.

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Economic stagnation: Obama’s white flight problem | The Economist

14 Jun

Hmmm. . . I sure is hard to have faith in a political system that keeps throwing up lousy choices.

The “framed choice” strategy is basically this: Everyone knows that pensions (Social Security) and health care (Medicare, Medicaid, child health programmes) are going to bankrupt the nation unless they are “right-sized” to revenue and existing debt. Whoever is elected president in 2012 will have to “right-size” these programmes over the course of the next four years. The framed choice for the white voters who will decide this election is this: Who do you think will better protect the interests of working-class and middle-class families when the inevitable cuts are packaged? Who do you want negotiating for you when it comes down to who gets hurt and who doesn’t? Do you really want Mitt Romney and a bunch of right-wing congressmen making these decisions?

Andrew Sullivan agrees that the framed-choice (and not the negative, scorched-earth) strategy is Mr Obama’s best bet, and that it may be. But how good a bet is it, really? We all know that incumbents don’t often survive poor economic conditions, and that Mr Obama, who inherited a financial crisis and a deep recession, was dealt a crap hand. But if recession raises the stakes of zero-sum distributive politics, and if that, in turn, heightens the extent to which distributive politics is simply identity politics, Mr Obama’s crap hand may be worse than we thought. If, as Mr Friedman argues, economic stagnation brings out the worst in us, that suggests a bad economy will penalise a black incumbent more than it will penalise a white incumbent.

via Economic stagnation: Obama’s white flight problem | The Economist.

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Occupy Our Homes Saves Another Family From Foreclosure | The Nation

13 Jun

Occupy Our Homes, a movement to protect families from foreclosures and evictions, has enjoyed a recent string of successes. In February, the group helped Helen Bailey, the 78-year-old former civil rights activist who was threatened with foreclosure by J.P. Morgan Chase while the company trumpeted its efforts to uphold Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy, to stay in her home following a successful campaign by Occupy Nashville.

The group also aided a Detroit husband and wife who spent months worrying they could be evicted from their home of twenty-two years. The couple received news they would be permitted to stay after an aggressive campaign that was led by members of Moratorium Now, Occupy Detroit and Homes Before Banks and included the family’s supporters blocking the contractor from placing a dumpster.

Additionally, Occupy Atlanta prevented the eviction of a family when two dozen protesters encamped on the family’s lawn, and Occupy Our Homes delayed another foreclosure in Rochester, as did Occupy Cleveland in November.

And more.

via Occupy Our Homes Saves Another Family From Foreclosure | The Nation.

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America’s stalled economy – Salon.com

13 Jun

The major reason this recovery has been so anemic is not Europe’s debt crisis. It’s not Japan’s tsumami. It’s not Wall Street’s continuing excesses. It’s not, as right-wing economists tell us, because taxes are too high on corporations and the rich, and safety nets are too generous to the needy. It’s not even, as some liberals contend, because the Obama administration hasn’t spent enough on a temporary Keynesian stimulus.

The answer is in front of our faces. It’s because American consumers, whose spending is 70 percent of economic activity, don’t have the dough to buy enough to boost the economy – and they can no longer borrow like they could before the crash of 2008.

via America’s stalled economy – Salon.com.

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Human Microbiome Project Decodes Our 100 Trillion Good Bacteria – NYTimes.com

13 Jun

Microbes ‘R Us, the world within:

For years, bacteria have had a bad name. They are the cause of infections, of diseases. They are something to be scrubbed away, things to be avoided.

But now researchers have taken a detailed look at another set of bacteria that may play even bigger roles in health and disease — the 100 trillion good bacteria that live in or on the human body.

No one really knew much about them. They are essential for human life, needed to digest food, to synthesize certain vitamins, to form a barricade against disease-causing bacteria. But what do they look like in healthy people, and how much do they vary from person to person?

In a new five-year federal endeavor, the Human Microbiome Project, which has been compared to the Human Genome Project, 200 scientists at 80 institutions sequenced the genetic material of bacteria taken from nearly 250 healthy people.

via Human Microbiome Project Decodes Our 100 Trillion Good Bacteria – NYTimes.com.

Bernie Sanders on the ‘Aggressiveness Among the Ruling Class’ | The Nation

12 Jun

“There is,” the senator says, “an aggressiveness out there among the ruling class of this country, among the billionaires who are saying: ‘You know what? Ya, we got a whole lot now, but we want even more. And we don’t give a damn about the middle class. We don’t care about working families. We want it all. And now we can buy it.’ ”

Referring to Wisconsin as a “testing ground” for the no-limits campaign spending that has been ushered in by the US Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, Sanders said, “I have a deep concern that what we saw in Wisconsin can happen in any state throughout this country and in the presidential election.”

“I think that people do not fully understand the disaster that Citizens United was,” Sanders said of the 5–4 US Supreme Court decision in radio conversation with Ed Schultz. “What that did is open the floodgates so that billionaires like the Koch brothers and others are now prepared to spend unbelievable sums of money to elect extreme right-wing candidates.”

via Bernie Sanders on the ‘Aggressiveness Among the Ruling Class’ | The Nation.

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Middle-class catastrophe – U.S. Economy – Salon.com

12 Jun

Bottom line — Americans got hammered by the crash. The median net worth of the American family fell by 38 percent between 2007 and 2010, from an average of $126,400 to $77,3000. Median income fell by 7.7 percent. It was the worst decline in both categories since the survey started in 1989.

The distribution of the losses tells us that the middle class took the brunt of the damage, in terms of both net worth and income. But there are some interesting statistical oddities. For the lowest-income quintile of the American public, income actually rose by about 4 percent. Meanwhile, the top 10 percent of Americans saw their net worth tick up slightly.

The housing bust explains the divergence. Middle-class Americans tend to have most of their wealth invested in their homes. The nationwide collapse in housing prices clobbered home equity, but the poor and the rich were mostly insulated from the damage. The fact that income rose, slightly, for the poorest Americans is still a bit of a mystery.

via Middle-class catastrophe – U.S. Economy – Salon.com.

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How to stop world catastrophe – Since You Asked – Salon.com

12 Jun

There’s always TRANSITION.

What if you could join an army to fight global environmental catastrophe? If you could simply enlist and say, give me whatever I will need to fight this thing, give me a cot, teach me how to fight, and I will fight it?

I’ll bet lots of people would join such an army.

But there is no such army to join.

Perhaps some philanthropist will fund the formation of such an army and equip it to do the kind of fighting that must be done. Until then, millions are faced with the same questions and the same concerns and must individually seek out ways to do their part. You can work for environmental organizations and political organizations and take direct action and send money and sign petitions and talk to your neighbors and many other things, all of which are good things to do, but I am sure many people feel as you do: paralyzed, incredulous.

I wish I had answers. I am, unfortunately, just a writer.

via How to stop world catastrophe – Since You Asked – Salon.com.

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On Not Reaching Carbon Goals – NYTimes.com

11 Jun

Reducing carbon dioxide emissions by enough to prevent global temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) is “still within reach,’’ the International Energy Agency reported on Monday, but at the moment, trends in energy use are running in the wrong direction.

In the latest version of Energy Technology Perspectives, a report issued biennially by the agency, it said the technology to achieve that goal is available. But as Maria van der Hoeven, executive director of the agency, put it, “we’re not using it.’’ Since the agency published its first Energy Technology Perspectives in 2006, the evidence of climate change has only grown stronger, she said, but “if anything, it has fallen further down the political agenda.’’

via On Not Reaching Carbon Goals – NYTimes.com.

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