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.
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The crisis in the Eurozone – Europe – Salon.com
10 NovAmerica’s Populist Turn – The Dish | By Andrew Sullivan – The Daily Beast
10 NovBasically 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.
Bill Clinton’s alternate, unbelievable reality – Bill Clinton – Salon.com
10 NovNot 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.
Activists Occupy California’s Imperial Valley
9 NovAgriculture 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.
This is what GOP brand poisoning looks like – Opening Shot – Salon.com
9 NovHas 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.
Occupy Movement Inspires Unions to Embrace Bold Tactics – NYTimes.com
9 NovUnion 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.
Bloomberg Says Some Protesters’ Issues Are Unfounded – NYTimes.com
8 NovAsked 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.
The radicals have grey hair: 47 senior citizens arrested today in Chicago protest against cuts |
8 NovFrom 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 |.
Can OWS end America’s war against the poor? – Occupy Wall Street – Salon.com
7 NovNow, 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.
The myth of the progressive city – Media Criticism – Salon.com
7 NovThough 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.
Truth and Traditions 