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It is now clear: our economy is shrinking, unemployment and underemployment are on the rise at nearly 20 percent, and a tsunami of foreclosures continues unabated--what we have on our hands is nothing less than a national emergency.
That's why it's so critical that good thinkers and progressive activists are on top of this, paying attention to the human costs of this Great Recession.
"I consider President Obama to be in the situation of having inherited a burning apartment building," said Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), testifying before Congress. "He proceeded to gather all the available fire trucks and douse the fires in half the floors."
Mishel went on to describe the need now for a strengthened safety net, more fiscal relief to state and local governments to avoid further layoffs, a public service jobs program to benefit local communities, a job creation tax credit for every new hire, and greater spending on infrastructure.
Quicker than the deficit hawks can say "What about the debt?"--consider these smart words from former Labor Secretary Robert Reich. "When one out of six Americans is unemployed or underemployed, this is no time to worry about the debt," he writes. Reich describes how critics once said future generations would be paying for FDR's debt due to Depression and World War II spending. But when the economy recovered and people were working and paying taxes again in the 1950s, "FDR debt had shrunk to almost nothing."
Reich proposes a WPA-style jobs program, with spending "on roads and bridges and schools and parks and everything else we need."
It's clear the jobs situation would be far worse without the administration's recovery package--EPI estimates it is saving or creating between $200,000 and $250,000 jobs per month. But as many of us at The Nation, and other progressive voices said at the time, it simply didn't go far enough.
By all accounts the Obama administration is now setting its sights on new measures aimed at job creation. Hopefully it will get Treasury Secretary Geithner and others to spend a little less time working their speed dials to talk to Big Finance CEOs, and more time speaking with hard-working people who can't find work.
As The Nation's lead editorial reads this week, "Except for a military threat, no issue confronting a president is more serious than widespread unemployment. Without movement toward job creation, many Congressional Democrats could find themselves on the unemployment line after the 2010 election."
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Katrina vanden Heuvel
Thoughts on politics, current affairs, riffs and reflections on what’s in the news and what’s not--but should be.
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Amen.
Posted by Citizen54 at 10/13/2009 @ 12:27pm
I like the Tea Party's solution better. Just stop spending except for programs that benefit the elderly, veterans and the infirmed. If my own personal financial house was on fire, that's how I'd get back in shape. I cut the credit cards in half, make sure that anyone in my family that couldn't survive on their own had a roof over their head and food in their stomach, I'd spend on nothing but absolute essentials and I wouldn't live above my means.
Posted by gunslinger1 at 10/13/2009 @ 12:51pm
Oh, and of course, we have to spend to provide for defense and to make sure the children are given food and health care.
Posted by gunslinger1 at 10/13/2009 @ 12:53pm
Anyone who has done any research at all knows that the Obama Administration from the get go has initiated a re-inflation of the Bubble. There is no real reform, the Taxpayers have been fleeced again. Wall Street is still making money in the same way that thrust the Banking System into chaos last fall.
No legislation has been passed to regulate anything. This is all a ruse to see how long they can maintain the Bubble for short term gains. It is worse than criminal. And mostly political in the hope that Obama can secure a seconf term.
The same criminals are looting what little treasure is left in this country. And the American Taxpayer and what's left of the middle class are being saddled with the enormous debt and the consequences of no employment, the destruction of the American working class and the total degradation of the people.
We have a new breed of criminal in the White House.
This country is economically doomed. Unless the time comes when things get so bad that we start killing one another and total anarchy prevails.
At that point we will no longer recognize this country and the thiefs that fleeced us will all be long gone, living comfortably with the stolen wealth of this country.
We will get what we deserve. And those of us who are wise enough to get out will be thanked by our children.
It's time to save your family and leave. Personally I am moving to Costa Rica. Get out while you can, time is short.
Posted by chaoszen at 10/13/2009 @ 1:26pm
It is now clear: our economy is shrinking, unemployment and underemployment are on the rise at nearly 20 percent, and a tsunami of foreclosures continues unabated--what we have on our hands is nothing less than a national emergency.
posted by Katrina vanden Heuvel on 10/13/2009 @ 12:11pm
So all the news I am hearing of a recovery is wrong? Or is the year stamp on this post wrong?
You don't have to go far to read about the economic recoevery, WSJ articles, even Ben Bernanke stating that the recession is likely over. So no, I don't think it is "clear" that the economy is shrinking.
Posted by Extraneous at 10/13/2009 @ 1:33pm
you can't leave soon enough chaoszen.
Posted by urmygyro at 10/13/2009 @ 1:33pm
Hola. I don't think that the solution is to use kerosine to stop the fire that is burning the apartment, which I believe is what the editor of The Nation [Katrina Vanden Heuvel] is endorsing here.
I believe a strong economy is based and built on production and savings.
I think that the idea of the Treasury Secretary Geithner and others spending more time speaking with hard-working people who can't find work is naive.
Posted by roberto8ag at 10/13/2009 @ 1:35pm
KVH: "It's clear the jobs situation would be far worse without the administration's recovery package--EPI estimates it is saving or creating between $200,000 and $250,000 jobs per month."
--your statement is unclear in more ways than one. Did you mean to include dollar signs? Or is it number of jobs? Also, are that many jobs being created, or not lost?
Posted by urmygyro at 10/13/2009 @ 1:35pm
Posted by gunslinger1 at 10/13/2009 @ 12:53pm
Gunny, bet you can't tell us what the total amount of the Federal Budget that your list of things you and the Tea Partyers DO approve of us spending is?
Posted by Mask at 10/13/2009 @ 1:49pm
So no, I don't think it is "clear" that the economy is shrinking.
Posted by Extraneous at 10/13/2009 @ 1:33pm
Do the research. Your future could depend on it.
Posted by chaoszen at 10/13/2009 @ 1:57pm
Surprised? With the same Bush team running Obama economic/financial policy?
A perfect set-up ... Obama in '12 the Failed Leader, international popularity notwithstanding, multibillionaire Bloomberg positioned as the Great Manager, buying the GOP nomination in '12 & flooding the airways with over a billion $$$ in TV ads, drowning the Failed Leader.
The decline & fall.
Posted by sloper at 10/13/2009 @ 2:00pm
you can't leave soon enough chaoszen.
Posted by urmygyro at 10/13/2009 @ 1:33pm
I will leave but I won't be gone. I will have dual citizenship and will be working to secure my family. I have traveled to Costa Rica and scoped out San Jose. I have just visited all my kids and informed them of the plan. They will follow when I get established.
It will take me 8 months to a year to accomplish the move. And I will still be blogging on a regular basis. So don't get too exicited.
Posted by chaoszen at 10/13/2009 @ 2:03pm
Robert Reich is absolutely correct. Those elements of the infrastructure that we've relied on for so many decades are now in need of replacement or repair. The life's blood employment provided is the correlate.
The same agencies of the New Deal that provided what we use everyday should be reinstated. This is, indeed, no time to worry about the debt.
Posted by Sorelish at 10/13/2009 @ 2:04pm
This is, indeed, no time to worry about the debt.----Posted by Sorelish at 10/13/2009 @ 2:04pm
What happens if OTHER countries start worrying about it?
Posted by Mask at 10/13/2009 @ 2:20pm
I much appreciate the pointing out of the fact that jobs creation may be the most urgent need of the moment, but much like the recent Nation cover piece, "An Open Letter to Obama", by William Polk calling for an Afghanistan drawdown, it should be fairly obvious that nothing substantive is likely to come from this White House.
Open eyed observers knew early on --at least as early as when Obama clinched the nom away from Hillary in June '08, and probably earlier based on who was funding him (big banks primarily)-- that Obama was likely to be a straw man for the kind of substantial reform that this country was crying out for after eight years of apocalyptic looting of the last vestiges of a functional government in Washington.
Katrina was correct to point out to George Will on This Week recently that Gen. McChrystal's speech in London was a breach of Constitutional etiquette if not a full blown besmirching of our Constitution. She was wrong to back down when Will said, "This is not a Constitutional crisis".
As the not so naive can attest, this Constitutional crisis has been underway for decades now and has accelerated terrifyingly over the last decade or so. Readers need only consult books by Tim Weiner or James Bamford on the CIA and NSA. Chris Hedges' body of work since 2002's, "War is a Force that Give Us Meaning", up to his current masterpiece, "Empire of Illusion", provides a devastating critique as well.
Posted by b_kool_66 at 10/13/2009 @ 2:20pm
Here's just one incisive excerpt from Chris Hedges "Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle":
"Obama is a product of this elitist system. So are his degree-laden cabinet members. They come out of Harvard, Yale, Wellesley, and Princeton. Their friends and classmates made huge fortunes on Wall Street and in powerful law firms. They go to the same class reunions. They belong to the same clubs. They speak the same easy language of privilege, comfort, and entitlement. The education they have obtained has served to rigidify and perpetuate social stratification. These elite schools prevent, to use Arnold's words, the "best selves" in the various strata in our culture from communicating across class lines. Our power elite has a blind belief in a decaying political and financial system that has nurtured, enriched, and empowered it. It has been trained only to find solutions, such as paying out trillions of dollars of taxpayer money to bail out banks and financial firms, to sustain a dead system. The elite, and those who work them, were never taught how to question the assumptions of their age. The socially important knowledge and cultural ideas embodied in history, literature, philosophy, and religion, which are at their core subversive and threatening to authority, have been banished from public discourse.
Ironically, the universities have trained hundreds of thousands of graduates for jobs that soon will not exist. They have trained people to maintain a structure that cannot be maintained. The elite as well as those equipped with narrow, specialized vocational skills, know only how to feed the beast until it dies.
Posted by b_kool_66 at 10/13/2009 @ 2:20pm
Once it is dead, they will be helpless. Don't expect them to save us. They don't know how. They do not even know how to ask the questions. And when it all collapses, when our rotten financial system with its trillions in worthless assets implodes and our imperial wars end in humiliation and defeat, the power elite will be exposed as being as helpless, and as self-deluded, as the rest of us."
End quote.
KvH is more right than she lets on while appearing on such bland TV fare as This Week.
The house is definitely on fire, and there isn't any water to be seen anywhere near useful proximity.
Posted by b_kool_66 at 10/13/2009 @ 2:20pm
If anyone wants to read an extraodinary book by an economist that really knows his stuff try "Greenspan's Fraud", by Ravi Batra. His predictions have been spot on and he explains the current crisis in this country so that anyone can understand.
Another good book is "The Looting of America" by Les Leopold.
Educate yourselves.
Posted by chaoszen at 10/13/2009 @ 2:24pm
Posted by b_kool_66 at 10/13/2009 @ 2:20pm
Hi ya! Have seen you around here for awhile. Good to see a little light in this dark room..
Posted by chaoszen at 10/13/2009 @ 2:28pm
That would be "have not", sorry speed typing.
Posted by chaoszen at 10/13/2009 @ 2:30pm
ONE MORE TIME, I reprint a recent cri de couer to anyone who might have the spotlight and clout to move the masses (and that is not a rightwing nutcase):
Excerpt:
"As much as I value The Nation as a resource and a refuge, it's been equally evident that the magazine is not pulling its weight in this epic battle of our era. Where is the rumbling editorial voice calling for a mass march on Washington DC for single-payer and/or a robust public option? Glenn Beck can assemble 70,000 misguided morons, and we don't have the voice or cojones to muster even a fraction of the millions of unemployed and uninsured who are about to be fed into Max Baucus's black-smoke-belching, Mega-Corporate Meat Grinder?"
THE CRISIS: On the Irony of Obama, the Abject Failure of the Left, and the Elephant in the Room
I ran into it again the other day --someone on a Nation blog claiming that "I, for one, am still going to give Obama a chance". The blogger goes on to imply that she was not one of those angry types who wanted to "hold Obama's feet to the fire" immediately out of the gate. How did this meme get started anyway?
It was The Nation magazine itself that stated –in its endorsement of Obama a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away--that (paraphrased) "We endorse Obama on the condition that a progressive movement must rise up around Obama, and provide the support he will absolutely require if any significant change is to occur." So there it is in the simplest terms.
Yet, from the very beginning it seems that getting progressives to rally around (and push) this president has been mostly an exercise in futility --no offense to those who are currently working their tails off to get an authentic fire started.
Posted by b_kool_66 at 10/13/2009 @ 2:35pm
From the very beginning, it shouldn't have mattered what our progressive opinions of Obama were –whether we believed he was a corporate sell-out , that he was a savior sent from God, or something in between--the meme that should have mattered was that the time to act was now. Instead it appears that "now" is now history.
This is, absolutely, the tragedy of our time. The great irony of Obama is that his "hope" is leaving us hopeless, and his "change" is emptying our pockets of political willpower. He has -- advertently or inadvertently-- disarmed us with his charm.
Allow me to splash some potent fuel on our anemic fire:
"Let's start with the obvious: America has not only the worst but the dumbest health care system in the developed world. It's become a black leprosy eating away at the American experiment -- a bureaucracy so insipid and mean and illogical that even our darkest criminal minds wouldn't be equal to dreaming it up on purpose.
The system doesn't work for anyone. It cheats patients and leaves them to die, denies insurance to 47 million Americans, forces hospitals to spend billions haggling over claims, and systematically bleeds and harasses doctors with the specter of catastrophic litigation. Even as a mechanism for delivering bonuses to insurance-company fat cats, it's a miserable failure: Greedy insurance bosses who spent a generation denying preventive care to patients now see their profits sapped by millions of customers who enter the system only when they're sick with incurably expensive illnesses.
Posted by b_kool_66 at 10/13/2009 @ 2:35pm
The cost of all of this to society, in illness and death and lost productivity and a soaring federal deficit and plain old anxiety and anger, is incalculable -- and that's the good news. The bad news is our failed health care system won't get fixed, because it exists entirely within the confines of yet another failed system: the political entity known as the United States of America.
Just as we have a medical system that is not really designed to care for the sick, we have a government that is not equipped to fix actual crises. What our government is good at is something else entirely: effecting the appearance of action, while leaving the actual reform behind in a diabolical labyrinth of ingenious legislative maneuvers.
Over the course of this summer, those two failed systems have collided in a spectacular crossroads moment in American history. We have an urgent national emergency on the one hand, and on the other, a comfortable majority of ostensibly simpatico Democrats who were elected by an angry population, in large part, specifically to reform health care. When they all sat down in Washington to tackle the problem, it amounted to a referendum on whether or not we actually have a functioning government.
It's a situation that one would have thought would be sobering enough to snap Congress into real action for once. Instead, they did the exact opposite, doubling down on the same-old, same-old and laboring day and night in the halls of the Capitol to deliver us a tour de force of old thinking and legislative trickery, as if that's what we really wanted. Almost every single one of the main players -- from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Blue Dog turncoat Max Baucus -- found some unforeseeable, unique-to-them way to fuck this thing up.
Posted by b_kool_66 at 10/13/2009 @ 2:35pm
Even Ted Kennedy, for whom successful health care reform was to be the great vindicating achievement of his career, and Barack Obama, whose entire presidency will likely be judged by this bill, managed to come up small when the lights came on.
We might look back on this summer someday and think of it as the moment when our government lost us for good. It was that bad."
~Matt Taibbi, "Sick and Wrong" –Rolling Stone, Sept. 3, 2009
As much as I value The Nation as a resource and a refuge, it's been equally evident that the magazine is not pulling its weight in this epic battle of our era. Where is the rumbling editorial voice calling for a mass march on Washington DC for single-payer and/or a robust public option? Glenn Beck can assemble 70,000 misguided morons, and we don't have the voice or cojones to muster even a fraction of the millions of unemployed and uninsured who are about to be fed into Max Baucus's black-smoke-belching, Mega-Corporate Meat Grinder?
The Nation has a presence in the national "mainstream" media, but its voice has yet to be heard by millions of Americans who desperately need to hear a lion's roar on their behalf. If you roar it, they will rise. Don't tell me, "We don't do that here", or "That's not our role". Balderdash. If progressives don't grab the bullhorn, the next one to do so won't be as inept (or nonviolent) as Glenn Beck. Bet on it.
Posted by b_kool_66 at 10/13/2009 @ 2:35pm
Enter the Elephant
Closing on a more profound (or perhaps confounding) note, what we are now going through --see Arundhati Roy's outstanding, "What Have We Done To Democracy?", The Nation, 9/28-- is a crisis in democracy ultimately due to a crisis in capitalism, in turn derived from a crisis in how we perceive what it means to be "human". This is the proverbial riddle, wrapped in an enigma, engulfed by a conundrum.
To catch a fleeting sense of what I mean, I direct readers to a sparkling gem by the splendid documentarian Adam Curtis, "The Century of the Self" (available online in streaming video). You see, we now inhabit the Great Age of Propaganda and the purveyors know the game intimately while the victims remain mostly unaware. Today, so much of importance at the higher levels of society revolves around marketing and public relations to the point where many (perhaps most) in our government have taken to the view that polished PR is primary, and effective action –i.e. policy-- is almost an afterthought. We've officially entered a grand Hall of Mirrors that renders the funhouse a welcome respite from distortion.
What needs to be shouted from the roof-tops is that we so easily fall victim to the treachery and trickery of propaganda. It's woven into the fabric of who we are, and the only potentially effective defense is for everyone to be aware of what is almost certainly our most profound weakness.
What needs to be "catapulted" is not the propaganda, but the very fact that we are for all intents and purposes, propaganda consuming machines. Only the intimate knowledge of that truth can begin to protect us from the lies.
Posted by b_kool_66 at 10/13/2009 @ 2:35pm
All the leftist wanted was "Anybody But Bush" never
realizing the they cast their votes for ALL NOBODIES
that haven't even got a clue!!!
The implosion was worth the waiting to watch!
Posted by BigPasture at 10/13/2009 @ 2:38pm
'Sup Cap'n Chaos!
Glad to hear that you're moving the fam to (much) greener pastures.
I've been absolutely jonesing to leave myself, but I am single without kids and I kinda feel like I should stick around with my relations here in the states.
It's tough to leave the country you've grown up in and love. I give you massive credit.
Posted by b_kool_66 at 10/13/2009 @ 2:39pm
Posted by b_kool_66 at 10/13/2009 @ 2:39pm
Thanks, It's a massive undertaking. Much more complex than it was in the old days when I could leave with a backpack. I'm working out the details and the financial arrangements. It will be my last big magic trick, so to speak. Anyway, good to see you here and thanks for the encouragement.
Posted by chaoszen at 10/13/2009 @ 2:50pm
Do the research. Your future could depend on it.
Posted by chaoszen at 10/13/2009 @ 1:57pm | ignore this person | warn this person
Chicken little, I don't believe the sky is falling.
Have fun in Costa Rica.
Posted by Extraneous at 10/13/2009 @ 2:54pm
chaoszen isn't going anywhere. The Nation is his home--even after he threatens to leave forever. Nothing will change with him.
Posted by urmygyro at 10/13/2009 @ 3:02pm
" I direct readers to a sparkling gem by the splendid documentarian Adam Curtis, "The Century of the Self" (available online in streaming video). You see, we now inhabit the Great Age of Propaganda and the purveyors know the game intimately while the victims remain mostly unaware. "
i saw that documentary, and i thought his premise was fundamentally flawed. but i really love his previous documentary 'the power of nightmares'.
Posted by darladoon at 10/13/2009 @ 3:04pm
Chicken little, I don't believe the sky is falling.
Have fun in Costa Rica.
Posted by Extraneous at 10/13/2009 @ 2:54pm
That's O.K. and I will. Good Luck. I was just trying to help.
Posted by chaoszen at 10/13/2009 @ 3:05pm
I got it. Took me a minute, but I have the solution: pass a little law allowing people to own their jobs and do with them what they wish.
Then it's capitalism redux, cap v.2... an entirely new job market where people can sell and buy jobs on the open market. Want to be a surgeon, have no training but just want to give it a go - buy the job from some millionaire who wants a break. Pay her half her salary, and keep the rest. Pick up her ID and stuff and jump in.
Pro golfer, derivatives trader, pilot, mid-level manager - - seriously what weekend training couldn't give most folks enough savvy to get started? Eventually we'll redistribute the wealth and talent as well. Push the blue collars up the ladder. The white collars'll jump once their whole world is inundated with inept 'skilled' workers. The economy'll recover with the forced trickle-nay-gush downward. The inefficiencies themselves will create a hiring boom, then more cycling of jobs. It's ingenious.
Posted by winyahn at 10/13/2009 @ 3:06pm
Perhaps, and I mean this sincerely, KvH and The Nation could help organize -- or at least promote -- a march on DC demanding jobs. (If you throw in public healthcare, that's what the stupid media and the stupid rightwingers and gunslingers will focus on.)
If all the unemployed over-50-year-olds would unite with all the unemployed 20-year-olds, we'd have quite a crowd.
I, and I'm sure many others, would volunteer to do the grunt work. But without some famous person or publication to push it, such a march wouldn't even get noticed.
Posted by Citizen54 at 10/13/2009 @ 3:13pm
Good stuff be_kool_66, that was me you were talking about, and I have to say I believe every thing you just wrote, again I say, and I bet I speak for a few, this is been one of the biggest let downs of my life and one of the biggest eye openers, I'm not sure I should say thank you, but I will, thanks. Chaoszen, g-dspeed.
Posted by Denise29 at 10/13/2009 @ 3:25pm
Posted by Citizen54 at 10/13/2009 @ 3:13pm | ignore this person | warn this person
how many anti war marches in Washington have you attended?
Posted by emile duBois at 10/13/2009 @ 3:27pm
This is what will happen with Healthcare.
The Insurance Companies will get an enormous windfall by a law that requires every citizen to have Healthcare. They won't be able to refuse people coverage due to pre-existing conditions, but they will be able to charge the sky's the limit for coverage of those people.
More people will be uninsured than ever before and will have to pay fines when they can't afford coverage. But the fines will be less than buying coverage, so they will be forced to pay the fines and have no health insurance. More people will die.
The legislation that passes will either have an anemic public option that gives inferior medical care to the poor and/or a trigger that will never materialize. People by droves who have coverage under their employer will be forced into the useless public option or have to pay enormous amounts of money in some sort of co-op.
It will be a cobbled up mess that will have people in a state of terror, should they get sick. Employers will hesitate to employ people who are not covered.
It will be a nightmare. And the Health Insurance Companies will get richer and richer. Neighborhood entrepreneurs will attemt to provide some form of Healthcare without a license.
And to think all this could have been avoided if we just let everyone buy into Medicare and have a true single payer system...
Posted by chaoszen at 10/13/2009 @ 3:29pm
I believe a strong economy is based and built on production and savings.
we haven't had this in some time. 70% of our economy is based on consumption, no not that one.
this being the case, saving is about the worst thing for recovery. people must resume spending to halt the loss of jobs. same with gov't. spend, spend
Posted by emile duBois at 10/13/2009 @ 3:31pm
Posted by Extraneous at 10/13/2009 @ 1:33pm | ignore this person | warn this person
jobs are part of the economy, and they are definitely shrinking. manufacturing is part of the economy and that too has been shrinking. tax receipts are part of the economy, and they have been shrinking big time, check you state and local gov't.
I would not put that much faith in the WSJ.
Posted by emile duBois at 10/13/2009 @ 3:37pm
I was watching Quest Means Business on CNNI this morning, and he is currently in India. While not as hot as China, India's economy is growing! He interviewed a Japanese Paint manufacturer who wanted to export to India, but the tariff was too high for him to compete. He was "forced" to build a plant in India producing paint and jobs for Indians. Simulating the Main Street economy is a wise course, but in the long term, no tariffs, no industries, and no Jobs. No jobs, no consumer spending, and no American Market
Posted by pjcasey at 10/13/2009 @ 3:40pm
I was watching Quest Means Business on CNNI this morning, and he is currently in India. While not as hot as China, India's economy is growing! He interviewed a Japanese Paint manufacturer who wanted to export to India, but the tariff was too high for him to compete. He was "forced" to build a plant in India producing paint and jobs for Indians. Simulating the Main Street economy is a wise course, but in the long term, no tariffs, no industries, and no Jobs. No jobs, no consumer spending, and no American Market
Posted by pjcasey at 10/13/2009 @ 3:40pm
I believe a strong economy is based and built on production and savings. Posted by emile duBois at 10/13/2009 @ 3:31pm
In a conventional economy you would be correct. But the economy of the United States is based on Debt, Exotic Trading Instruments and Military Arms. And perhaps Hamburgers.
An economy based on these things is doomed to fail. Oddly enough, almost everyone knows this. But a few people profit from it and to hell with the rest.
Posted by chaoszen at 10/13/2009 @ 3:47pm
Richard Quest is a hoot. he can talk without unclenching his teeth.
Posted by emile duBois at 10/13/2009 @ 3:51pm
By the way. The Hamburger Economy is designed to keep people fat, diabetic and unhealthy, so that the Heath Insurance companies can bleed them dry.
Posted by chaoszen at 10/13/2009 @ 3:52pm
Posted by pjcasey at 10/13/2009 @ 3:40pm | ignore this person | warn this person
tariffs are just what we need. a global race to protectionism will just do wonders for the recovery.
Posted by emile duBois at 10/13/2009 @ 4:04pm
Mask
I think the Chinese will wait until geologic forces detach California from the mainland before they come to repossess & tow.
Posted by Sorelish at 10/13/2009 @ 4:13pm
If my own personal financial house was on fire, that's how I'd get back in shape
Posted by gunslinger1 at 10/13/2009 @ 12:51pm | ignore this person | warn this person
yes well...your personal finances and the macroeconomics of the world's largest economy are a little different.
Posted by ibbleblibble at 10/13/2009 @ 5:24pm
A HOUSE AFIRE ALRIGHT...
Here's another pithy excerpt from Chris Hedges' "Empire of Illusion" --can't link it, so I typed it from the book for thoughtful readers to absorb:
I used to live in a country called America. It was not a perfect country, especially if you were an African American or Native American or of Japanese descent in the Second World War. It could be cruel and unjust if you were poor, gay, a woman, or an immigrant, but there was hope it could bet better. It was a country I loved and honored. It paid its workers wages envied around the world. It made sure these workers, thanks to labor unions and champions of the working class in the Democratic Party and the press, had health benefits and pensions. It offered good, public education. It honored basic democratic values and held in regard the rule of law, including international law, and respect for human rights. It had social programs, from Head Start to welfare to Social Security, to take care of the weakest among us, the mentally ill, the elderly, and the destitute. It had a system of government that, however flawed, worked to protect the interests of most of its citizens. It offered the possibility of democratic change. It had a press that was diverse and independent and gave voice to all segments of society, including those beyond our borders, to impart to us unpleasant truths, to challenge the powerful, to reveal ourselves to ourselves.
I am not blind to the imperfections of this old America, or the failures to meet these ideals consistently at home and abroad. I spent more than two years living in Roxbury, the inner city in Boston, across the street from a public housing project where I ran a small church as a seminarian at Harvard Divinity School. I saw institutional racism at work.
Posted by b_kool_66 at 10/13/2009 @ 5:40pm
I saw how banks, courts, dysfunctional schools, probation officers, broken homes, drug abuse, crime, and employers all conspired to make sure the poor remained poor. I spent two decades as a foreign correspondent in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and the Balkans. I saw there the crimes and injustices committed in our name and often with our support, whether during the contra war in Nicaragua or the brutalization of the Palestinians by Israeli occupation forces. We had much to atone for, but still there was also much that was good, decent, and honorable in our country.
The country I live in today uses the same civic, patriotic, and historical language to describe itself, the same symbols and iconography, the same national myths, but only the shell remains. The America we celebrate is an illusion. America, the country of my birth, the country that formed me and shaped me, the country of my father, my father's father, and his father's father, stretching back to the generations of my family that were here for the country's founding, is so diminished as to be unrecognizable. I do not know if this America will return, even as I pray and work and strive for its return.
The words, "consent of the governed", have become an empty phrase. Our textbooks on political science and economics are obsolete. Our nation had been hijacked by oligarchs, corporations, and a narrow, selfish, political, and economic elite, a small and privileged group that governs, and often steals, on behalf of moneyed interests. This elite, in the name of patriotism and democracy, in the name of all the values that were once part of the American system and defined the Protestant work ethic, has systematically destroyed our manufacturing sector, looted the treasury, corrupted our democracy,
Posted by b_kool_66 at 10/13/2009 @ 5:40pm
and trashed the financial system. During this plundering we remained passive, mesmerized by the enticing shadows on the wall, assured our tickets to success, prosperity, and happiness were waiting around the corner.
The government, stripped of any real sovereignty, provides little more than technical expertise for elites and corporations that lack moral restraints and a concept of the common good. America has become a façade. It has become the greatest illusion in a culture of illusions. It represents a power and a democratic ethic it does not possess. It seeks to perpetuate prosperity by borrowing trillions of dollars it can never repay. The absurd folly of trying to borrow our way out of the worst economic collapse since the 1930s is the cruelest of all the recent tricks played on American citizens. We continue to place our faith in a phantom economy, one characterized by fraud and lies, which sustains the wealthiest 10 percent, Wall Street, and insolvent banks. Debt leveraging is not wealth creation. We are vainly trying to return to a bubble economy, of the sort that once handed us the illusion of wealth, rather than confront the stark reality that lies ahead. We are told massive borrowing will create jobs and re-inflate real estate values and the stock market. We remain tempted by mirages, by the illusion that we can, still, all become rich.
The corporate power that holds the government hostage has appropriated for itself the potent symbols, language, and patriotic traditions of the state. It purports to defend freedom, which it defines as the free market, and liberty, which it defines as the liberty to exploit. It sold us the illusion that the free market was the natural outgrowth of democracy and a force of nature,
Posted by b_kool_66 at 10/13/2009 @ 5:40pm
at least until the house of cards collapsed and these corporations needed to fleece the taxpayers to survive. Making that process even more insidious, the real sources of power remain hidden. Those who run our largest corporations are largely anonymous to the mass of the citizens. The anonymity of corporate forces –an earthly Deus absconditus--makes them unaccountable. They have the means to hide and to divert us from examining the decaying structures they have created. As Karl Marx understood, capitalism when it is unleashed from government and regulatory control is a revolutionary force.
Cultures that cannot distinguish between illusion and reality die. The dying gasps of all empires, from the Aztecs to the ancient Romans to the French monarchy and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, have been characterized by a disconnect between the elites and reality. The elites were blinded by absurd fantasies of omnipotence and power that doomed their civilizations. We have been steadily impoverished by our own power elites –legally, economically, spiritually, and politically. And unless we radically reverse this tide, unless we wrest the state away from corporate hands, we will be dragged down by the dark and turbulent undertow of globalization. In this world there are only masters and serfs. We are entering an era in which workers may become serfs, no longer able to earn a living wage to sustain themselves or their families, whether in sweatshops in China or the industrial wasteland of Ohio.
The country's moral decay is manifested in its physical decay. It is no coincidence that our infrastructure –roads, bridges, sewers, airports, trains, mass transit--is overburdened, outdated, and in dismal repair. It is not so elsewhere. China opens a new subway system every year.
Posted by b_kool_66 at 10/13/2009 @ 5:40pm
Europeans travel from London to Paris on high-speed trains. Meanwhile, America's antiquated and inefficient rail system cannot maintain its lumbering cars and aging tracks. Cities are plagued by broken pipes and sinkholes. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that collapsing and overwhelmed sewage systems release more than 40,000 discharges of raw sewage each year. The Education Department found that one-third of our schools are in such a severe state of disrepair that it "interferes with the delivery of instruction". A report in the journal Health Affairs estimates that if the for-profit health-care system is left unchanged, one of every five dollars spent by Americans in 2017 will go to health coverage. Half of all bankruptcies in America occur because families are unable to pay their medical bills. And staggering unemployment, bankruptcies, declining real estate prices, and the shuttering of store and factories, are sweeping across the nation.
War and rampant militarism –we now have 761 military bases we maintain around the globe-- drains the lifeblood out of the body politic. The U.S. military spends more than all other militaries on earth combined. The official U.S. budget for fiscal year 2008 is $623 billion, and by 2010 the Pentagon is slated to receive more than $700 billion, once funding for items such as nuclear weapons is included in the budget. The next closest national military budget is China's at $65 billion, according to the Central Intelligence Agency. We embrace the dangerous delusion that we are on a providential mission to save the world from itself, to impose our virtues –which we see as superior to all other virtues--on others, and that we have a right to do this by force.
Posted by b_kool_66 at 10/13/2009 @ 5:40pm
This belief has corrupted both Republicans and Democrats. The wars of occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan are doomed to futility. We cannot afford them. The rash of home foreclosures, the mounting job losses, the collapse of banks and the financial services industry, the poverty ripping apart the working classes, our crumbling infrastructure, and the killing of Afghan and Iraqi civilians by our iron fragmentation bombs converge. The costly forms of death we dispense on one side of the globe are hollowing us out from the inside at home.
The daily bleeding of thousands of jobs will soon turn our economic crisis into a political crisis. The street protests, strikes, and riots that have rattled France, Turkey, Greece, Ukraine, Russia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, and Iceland will descend on us. It is only a matter of time. And not much time. When things start to go sour, when the Obama administration is exposed as a group of mortals waving a sword at a tidal wave, the United States could plunge into a long period of precarious social and political instability.
At no period in American history has our democracy been in such peril or the possibility of totalitarianism as real. Our way of life is over. Our profligate consumption is finished. Our children will never have the standard of living we had. This is the bleak future. This is reality. There is little President Obama can do to stop it. It has been decades in the making. It cannot be undone with $1 trillion or $2 trillion in bailout money. Nor will it be solved by clinging to the illusions of the past.
Posted by b_kool_66 at 10/13/2009 @ 5:40pm
How will we cope with our decline? Will we cling to the absurd dreams of a superpower and the fantasies of a glorious tomorrow, or will we responsibly face our stark, new limitations? Will we heed those who are sober and rational, or will we follow the demagogues and charlatans who rise up in moments of crisis and panic to offer fantastic visions of escape? Will we radically transform our system to one that protects the ordinary citizen and fosters the common good, that defies the corporate state, or will we employ the brutality and technology of our internal security and surveillance apparatus to crush all dissent?
End quote.
Posted by b_kool_66 at 10/13/2009 @ 5:40pm
And here's a link to a piece by Neil Gabler today:
www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23719.htm
Excerpt:
The point of all this isn't that America doesn't have a lot to be proud of. It does. The point is that just about every country has a lot to be proud of, and America has no more right to assume it is the greatest nation in the world than does France, Switzerland, China, or Russia.
None of this would make much difference if the self-congratulation was just harmless bragging. But there are consequences. A country that believes it is the greatest in the world is also less likely to be constrained by that world. One could argue that the Iraq war was a direct result of a sense of national infallibility. So was our willingness to torture, our reluctance to admit our mistakes in Afghanistan, our culpability in the global recession, and our foot-dragging on global warming. Such a nation is also less likely to introspect or to strive for true greatness because it believes its greatness has already arrived.
There is something bizarre about a country whose leaders have constantly to toady to their constituents and in which any criticism is tantamount to a lack of patriotism, but that describes America today....
A nation that brooks no criticism, a nation that feels it is always better than any other, a nation that has to be endlessly flattered and won't face the truth, a nation whose people think they possess some special moral exemption and wisdom, a nation without humility is a nation spoiling for calamity.
We've been living in a fool's paradise. The result may be a government that is as good as the American people, which is something that should concern everyone.
End quote.
Posted by b_kool_66 at 10/13/2009 @ 5:57pm
Posted by Citizen54 at 10/13/2009 @ 3:13pm | ignore this person | warn this person how many anti war marches in Washington have you attended? Posted by emile duBois at 10/13/2009 @ 3:27pm |
+++
I'm not sure why you are asking me that, since it's completely irrelevant, but the answer is: 4.
Three vs. Vietnam (yes, that old) and one against the Iraq debacle.
Did I see you there?
Oy vey.
Posted by Citizen54 at 10/13/2009 @ 6:20pm
Posted by chaoszen at 10/13/2009 @ 2:03pm
Good luck to you (in all honesty). It all seems a little "Mosquito Coast" to me, since the only was we can fix things in this country is if everyone who is smart enough (and I consider you part of that group) sticks around and comes up with the real solutions that we need. While I don't agree with everything you post, you are certainly consistent and thoughtful and that's what America needs.
Not the old retired and retreaded ideas of the "we only care about the economy when a Democrat is President" Republicans. We have 30 plus years of that kind of thinking, combined with 30 plus years of tearing down the protections after the Great Depressions, and that's how we got where we are today.
But if you're intent on leaving the country, good luck. I am thinking about New Zealand myself. :)
Posted by Stephen_Carver1 at 10/13/2009 @ 6:25pm
Posted by gunslinger1 at 10/13/2009 @ 12:53pm
Gunny, bet you can't tell us what the total amount of the Federal Budget that your list of things you and the Tea Partyers DO approve of us spending is?
Posted by Mask at 10/13/2009 @ 1:49pm
I'll tell you what's not going to happen in the current Obama/Dem budget
1.The projected 7.9% unemployment for FY2010 (which began Oct 1)
2.The projected 30% increase in corporate tax receipts
3.The projected 3.2% growth in GDP (CBO forecast is 1.5%)
Then let's cut 75% from the Education budget-that saves about 38 billion per year (phase to 80% after 5 years)
Cut 80% from the Housing and Urban Development-that saves about 33Billion per year
Cut 80% from Dept of Agriculture-savings of about 19 billion per year
Cut 80% from Dept of Labor- savings of about 10 billion per year
Eliminate EPA-savings of over 10 billion per year
Eliminate the new "climate policy" agency-savings of 15 billion per year
The FY2010 Military budget has been reduced by approx 10% from the FY2009 budget. That said, I would add to the BRAC effort currently underway by reopening the commission. The current BRAC effort will end up reducing the Defense budget by 36.5 billion when complete in 2011.
http://www.brac.gov/finalreport.html
I can see about another 10% possible. However 25% of our budget is for the military personnel payroll. Unless there is a dramactic reduction in the number of military personnel, the Defense budget cannot be reduced as much as some on the left imagine.
I am concerned that the Army, Navy, & Marines have a 20% reduction in ammunition procurment and the Air Force a 5% reduction. Keeping our forces who are in harms way fully equipped should never be an issue.
Posted by antisocialist at 10/13/2009 @ 6:30pm
"I am concerned that the Army, Navy, & Marines have a 20% reduction in ammunition procurment and the Air Force a 5% reduction...."
~Auntie Socialist at 6:30pm
As usual, a brilliantly penetrating analysis. Thanks, old lady.
No offense to school marms and other assorted brilliant old ladies to whom our local Miss Socialist can nary hold a candle.
;-)
Posted by b_kool_66 at 10/13/2009 @ 6:42pm
Posted by Citizen54 at 10/13/2009 @ 6:20pm | ignore this person | warn this person
I don't think it's irrelevant. folks urge this all the time, for others.
my numbers are like yours.
Posted by emile duBois at 10/13/2009 @ 6:49pm
Go Katrina, Go!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Listen folks, all you (R's) that try to populate this Blog.
This is the some one from the University of Illinois. Katrina vanden Heuvel is right on the mark. The others simply are failing to look at the global view of this issue.
China, India, Korea and many others are backed by state money for industrial, manufacturing and educational initiatives. In Bejing, the Chinese (the State) spend $9 Billion on creating a "city of industry" which Chinese and other companies are running to because the U.S. doesn't do these things.
See what happened during the Bush I and Bush II when the Gov't almost totally withdrew oversight and a "partnership" with private business and industry? We ended up with the intolerable mess we are currently in.
Who needs more help to compete with the Chinese and Indians, the Americans who work for a living or deliberate the intellectual issues about the deficit. We you can't feed the family or go to college, we are cutting our own throats while the Chinese just fly past us laughing. Korea is blitzing America also.
And, to think of it, we are considering spending trillions more on a wild good chase in Afghanistan. Keep those trillions of dollars and help OURSELVES.
WER University of Illinois Alumnus
Posted by roperw at 10/13/2009 @ 6:55pm
As usual, a brilliantly penetrating analysis. Thanks, old lady.
No offense to school marms and other assorted brilliant old ladies to whom our local Miss Socialist can nary hold a candle.
;-)
Posted by b_kool_66 at 10/13/2009 @ 6:42pm
So, you have no problem with soldiers being fired upon and not having enough ammo to defend themself?
Posted by antisocialist at 10/13/2009 @ 6:56pm
The NY Times, just the other day, warns us that Rahm Emmanuel gets very upset when progressives try to pressure the Obama admin & Blue Dog Dems on the Hill. Very upset.
Wonder why ...
Posted by sloper at 10/13/2009 @ 7:33pm
Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), testifying before Congress.: "I consider President Obama to be in the situation of having inherited a burning apartment building.......He proceeded to gather all the available fire trucks and douse the fires in half the floors."
Mishel was way too generous by giving Magic "half the floors" credit!
I'd say, BHO committed 787 fire trucks, lined up single-file taking turns to wet the roof the apartment clubhouse while the entire complex smolders & pops with folks dangling from 3rd floor windows and balconies.
Why the clubhouse? That's where the mgical `base' of unionized teachers, SEIU, AFSCME and ACORN are gathered for a big party!
Posted by Happy at 10/13/2009 @ 7:45pm
"I consider President Obama to be in the situation of having inherited a burning apartment building," said Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), testifying before Congress. "He proceeded to gather all the available fire trucks and douse the fires in half the floors."
••
damn, can't find the link.
anyhoo,
the dude said the fire analogy that mr. obama himself has used was wrong.
the neighbour's house wasn't on fire; the neighbour had lost his house because he had gambled away all his money in vegas and now the taxpayer was paying so he could keep his house AND go back to vegas to gamble some more.
Posted by frosty zoom at 10/13/2009 @ 7:49pm
KvH: "It's clear the jobs situation would be far worse without the administration's recovery package....But as many of us at The Nation, and other progressive voices said at the time, it simply didn't go far enough."
On the contrary, the "recovery package" went too far.....as in wayyyyyyyy too far into the future! Per Black House's website, less than $100 Billion has been spent so far!
Posted by Happy at 10/13/2009 @ 7:51pm
You don't have to go far to read about the economic recoevery, WSJ articles, even Ben Bernanke stating that the recession is likely over. So no, I don't think it is "clear" that the economy is shrinking.
Posted by Extraneous at 10/13/2009 @ 1:33pm
my lord, wrong on so many levels.
CRE is about to implode.
the banks are hoarded ALL the cash they're received from treasury because they know they have MANY more losses to come.
unemployment is going up and up.
the dollar is being abandoned.
where is the recovery coming from?
not from consumers, that's for sure.
Posted by frosty zoom at 10/13/2009 @ 7:53pm
Robt F. McNamara told us that the US killed 3.4 million Vietnamese, mainly through bombing & artillery. To no end other than slaughter. Our current Af/Pak proconsul Holbrooke -- dedicated to showing US might -- was a junior officer working to support that slaughter in Nam via "pacification," i.e. Do what you're told or else.
How many Pashtun is the US now prepared to kill? And at what cost? To accomplish what? Holbrooke the expert visits his territory, the NY Times boasts, once every 2 months.
And CNN now labels it "Obama's War," setting him up as the Failed Leader.
Posted by sloper at 10/13/2009 @ 7:54pm
What happens if OTHER countries start worrying about it?
Posted by Mask at 10/13/2009 @ 2:20pm
if?!?
Posted by frosty zoom at 10/13/2009 @ 7:54pm
this being the case, saving is about the worst thing for recovery. people must resume spending to halt the loss of jobs. same with gov't. spend, spend
Posted by emile duBois at 10/13/2009 @ 3:31pm
people are broke, jr.
Posted by frosty zoom at 10/13/2009 @ 7:58pm
I would not put that much faith in the WSJ. Posted by emile duBois at 10/13/2009 @ 3:37pm
http://newsfrom1930.blogspot.com/
Posted by frosty zoom at 10/13/2009 @ 7:59pm
Keeping our forces who are in harms way fully equipped should never be an issue.
Posted by antisocialist at 10/13/2009 @ 6:30pm
STOP PUTTING THEM IN HARMS WAY!!!!
Posted by frosty zoom at 10/13/2009 @ 8:02pm
Hello Ms. Vanden Heuvel,
Thanks for quoting from Robert who I happen to admire ever since I met him by chance at the 2004 DNC Convention in Boston while he was waiting to go on the Chris Matthews Show. The first thing he said to me was "What is your name & where are you from?" He seemed truly engaged & able to converse with the lowly.
I would also like to mention more employment quotes from the brilliant RR in an article named "Manufacturing Jobs are Never Coming Back" on his website http://www.robertreich.org/reich/20090528.asp... that explains why some jobs like manufacturing are never returning to the good young USA. Namely, knowledge: "Want to blame something? Blame new knowledge. Knowledge created the electronic gadgets and software that can now do almost any routine task. This goes well beyond the factory floor."
He goes on to give examples of technological advances that wipe out jobs & suggests that we build jobs around ""symbolic analytic" work because most of it has to do with analyzing, manipulating and communicating through numbers, shapes, words, ideas."
In this article Mr. Reich did not mention the fact that if we are truly successful at Health Care Reform, we will also lose "health services & wasteful private insurance bureaucracy " jobs to the successes of government run efficiencies & a healthier population. (Why was it patriotic for Bush's Republican Nation Building in IRAQ to build a socialized medical system, but not for Americans?)
Mr. Reich is correct that we should look around at our infrastructure & see all the crumbling roads, rusty bridges & polluted rivers & hire American "symbolic analysts" to design new solutions to the these & other deteriorations & industrial poisons that threaten our livelihood, caused by free market negligence.
Posted by thanksbutnothanks at 10/13/2009 @ 8:23pm
Posted by b_kool_66 at 10/13/2009 @ 5:40pm
Posted by b_kool_66 at 10/13/2009 @ 5:40pm
Posted by b_kool_66 at 10/13/2009 @ 5:40pm
Whoosh! Doom, gloom, negativity, let's just up and die, already.
This is very sad. I'm sorry that a fellow citizen could be crushed with such negativity. How about this? Our best days, America's best times, are ahead of us.
"Glenn Beck can assemble 70,000 misguided morons, and we don't have the voice or cojones to muster even a fraction of the millions of unemployed and uninsured who are about to be fed into Max Baucus's black-smoke-belching, Mega-Corporate Meat Grinder?"
Posted by b_kool_66 at 10/13/2009 @ 2:35pm
Why can't you muster even a fraction "of the millions"? Because not even a fraction agree with you. I doubt you could muster even "70,000 misguided morons" who would buy into your nightmare. Thank God.
Posted by twillie at 10/13/2009 @ 9:15pm
@chooszen: A smart move! Anyone young American with marketable skills or a transferable profession would be very wise to leave. This is no longer an approximation to a democratic republic. It is a corporate run plutocracy with a corrupted-by-campaign-finance government. It has a militaristic foreign policy that is spending borrowed money on wars, even after the Treasury's vaults have been unlocked to Wall Street by Bush's and Obama's appointees.
Obama is an articulate con-man. He knows just the right words to say, but he is leading the US to ruin. I wish I could join you in Costa Rica. Good luck!
Posted by goedel at 10/13/2009 @ 9:24pm
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2009/10/quelle- surprise-larry-summers-gives-his-economic-policies-an-a.html
Posted by frosty zoom at 10/13/2009 @ 9:53pm
Katrina,
Am I dreaming or are you actually advocating tax credits for job creation??? Isnt that a conservative principle?? WOW!!! There may be hope for you yet .
Posted by limoman at 10/13/2009 @ 10:02pm
Katrina,
Am I dreaming or are you actually advocating tax credits for job creation??? Isnt that a conservative principle?? WOW!!! There may be hope for you yet .
Posted by limoman at 10/13/2009 @ 10:02pm
Don't get carried away with Hope and Change!
She knows (or should know) tax credits don't work when there is no demand for their labor! Carter had tried it and Magic wants so much to Be Like Carter!
Posted by Happy at 10/13/2009 @ 10:09pm
Story time:
The last night in Vegas, we stayed at a small, boutique, 4/5-star hotel of 200+ rooms. The next morning, we dined at the hotel restaurant....we waited and waited to be seated but no one came. After a couple of minutes, we just seated ourselves.
Turns out, just one server was covering the whole scene, including cashiering. While she was pretty busy, I don't see how they can justify hiring another person up front for the 4~6 tables of customers.
Anyone think a tax credit of $3k will lead to a new morning-shift job in this restaurant (of 1 or 2 year duration) while Vegas continues to tank?
Posted by Happy at 10/13/2009 @ 10:16pm
Dean Baker has been advocating a national renters' plan and its a great idea. Basically, if a family is foreclosed, they can remain in the house as long as they can pay rent. This would at least encourage modification under Obama's housing plan, which, btw, has been a complete failure and underutilized (this is what happens when bankruptcy judges aren't allowed to modify mortgages).
Posted by nkurland at 10/13/2009 @ 10:33pm
Chaoszen, well do keep us posted by posting. I've been to CR. Damn you got me thinking.
Posted by winyahn at 10/13/2009 @ 11:03pm
Bob Reich has been a mensch all his life, professionally & personally.
Which goes a long way towards explaining why the Clintons resent him & the Obama admin stiff arms him. Very similar to the treatment Paul Krugman gets from these quarters.
Posted by sloper at 10/14/2009 @ 01:28am
The US hauled itself out of the depression by pumping cheap light crude. (to oversimplify)
But there's no more of that, and such oil as is left is expensive to refine (or import) and we have now discovered that each gram of carbon added to the atmosphere exacerbates the problem.
But there is a lot of other 'free' energy in the form of wind, solar, geothermal hydro, etc., which, if pumped into the economy, could help to lift it. The new economy will have to be different too - not suburb&mall-based. One benefit of a renewal energy society would be reduced ties to the Middle East and its oil.
Oh well... dream on....
Posted by mikecope at 10/14/2009 @ 01:34am
The neocons are applying the shock doctrine to the United States and it's working out rather well for them. We've transferred a huge amount of middle and lower middle class tax payer wealth to the wealthiest bankers. Perhaps between Afghanistan, Iraq and one more bailout should be the straw that breaks the camels back.
With that, the neocons have their wet dream come true. They can then carve up what government run functions they haven't outright destoryed and can profit from them and leave the tax payers here the bill to pay for the stuff that runs at a deficit such as defense spending. Go ahead and wave the flag, play the Star Spangled Banner while watching this country sink as fast as the Soviet Union did. We're pretty much on the same trajectory.
Posted by Wolfgang1 at 10/14/2009 @ 07:17am
Posted by Sorelish at 10/13/2009 @ 4:13pm
I just worry when Katrina vanden Heuvel starts mimicking Dick Cheney and saying...
"Deficits don't matter!"
Posted by Mask at 10/14/2009 @ 07:53am
Posted by antisocialist at 10/13/2009 @ 6:30pm
Larry, atleast be honest and consistant. Those are just "trimming at the edges" for what you REALLY want cut from the Federal Budget, aren't they?
Tell us how you feel about Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid?
Posted by Mask at 10/14/2009 @ 07:55am
Tell us how you feel about Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid?
Posted by Mask at 10/14/2009 @ 07:55am
Come on Mask. You know you're just wasting your time with Rev Larry. I know you enjoy spinning him, but the guy is more set in his way than a pit bull after a steak.
Posted by Wolfgang1 at 10/14/2009 @ 08:48am
Posted by Wolfgang1 at 10/14/2009 @ 08:48am
Not so much about that, Wolf. Larry has a strange image he likes to convey.
He at once wants to be the "rock-ribbed libertarian, who doesn't like any domestic policy since Teddy Roosevelt 'un-Constitutionally' started trust-busting and 'forcing us' to eat clean food and take safe drugs"...
but he also wants to sound more "mainstream conservative", i.e. his post I cited from before.
But "scrapping the Department of Education" is old "Reagan 1980 campaign" stuff....but what he REALLY wants, i.e. scrapping Social Security and Medicare is so radical even Republicans don't support it anymore.
Pointing that out merely shows that EVEN HE knows his positions are fringe and unworkable politically.
Posted by Mask at 10/14/2009 @ 09:35am
Pointing that out merely shows that EVEN HE knows his positions are fringe and unworkable politically.
Posted by Mask at 10/14/2009 @ 09:35am
Ya, but he'll never admit it.
Posted by Wolfgang1 at 10/14/2009 @ 10:15am
Ya, but he'll never admit it.----Posted by Wolfgang1 at 10/14/2009 @ 10:15am
Of course not, Larry can NOT ever admit he was wrong about anything political...because his politics is intertwined with his religion....and he is INFALLIBLE on religion because he's a "prophet of God" (per the Pakistani Businessman's Assembly or ...something!)
One admission of error and his temple of cards would collapse.
And naturally, being a hypocrite, he'll constanly rail against OTHER saying they "refuse to admit when they're wrong!"
Point is for others' consideration...plus I like playing Spencer Tracy as "Drummond" to his Fredric March as "Brady".
Posted by Mask at 10/14/2009 @ 11:32am
Point is for others' consideration...plus I like playing Spencer Tracy as "Drummond" to his Fredric March as "Brady".
Posted by Mask at 10/14/2009 @ 11:32am
He definitely fits the Colonel Drummond character to a T. Excellent flick I might add.
Posted by Wolfgang1 at 10/14/2009 @ 11:48am
So, you have no problem with soldiers being fired upon and not having enough ammo to defend themself?
Posted by antisocialist at 10/13/2009 @ 6:56pm
Evidently Rumsfeld didn't have a problem with it, either. Nor did he have a problem with them not having enough armor on their vehicles. Nor did he have a problem with "You use the army you have, not the army you want."
Posted by Stephen_Carver1 at 10/14/2009 @ 12:10pm
Larry, atleast be honest and consistant. Those are just "trimming at the edges" for what you REALLY want cut from the Federal Budget, aren't they?
Tell us how you feel about Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid?
Posted by Mask at 10/14/2009 @ 07:55am
Of course I want to eliminate SS and Medicare. I didn't think I had to even state that. I'm against them on the principle that they are unconstitutional. Other Conservatives are against them because they are a govt Ponzi scheme that is getting close to imploding.
As Robert Samuelson states:
<"how much should obligations to the old displace other national needs--for, say, defense, education, research, housing, transportation or adequate family incomes? In 1990, Medicare and Social Security represented 28 percent of federal spending; in 2019, their share will be almost 40 percent, projects the Obama administration. As this spending grows, pressures to raise taxes, increase budget deficits or cut other programs intensify.">
http://www.newsweek.com/id/199167
Unlike you Mask, I'm very open about my positions and willing to state them. You on the other hand refuse to answer most people, prefering as your handle indicates to be a shadow.
Posted by antisocialist at 10/14/2009 @ 12:15pm
o, you have no problem with soldiers being fired upon and not having enough ammo to defend themself?
Posted by antisocialist at 10/13/2009 @ 6:56pm
Stephen, Don't fall for the old noecon turn the tables trick. You question their motivations for war and then you are questioned on your patriotism for not supporting the soldiers that they wish to put in harms way.
Note that the folks who put them in harms way could really give a rip less about the soldiers, but it's an effective way to 1) Change the topic that the war shouldn't have taken place in the first place 2) Deflect the original question with an aggressive attack to put you on the defensive.
The problem with this typical Rovian ploy is that it's a lie. Saying you are against a war means you are for not having a war at all. Now which is better for the troops? Being home and not being in a war, or being in a war. Obviously, not being at war is the answer which is a hell of a lot safer than equipping them with everything on the planet in a hostile environment.
It's really a childish rebuttal and furthermore isn't an answer to the real question of the reason for going to war in the first place.
Posted by Wolfgang1 at 10/14/2009 @ 12:29pm
Posted by antisocialist at 10/14/2009 @ 12:15pm
The only problem is, the guy you just quoted would seem to favor large outlays for programs you proposed cutting well over 50%.
Posted by nkurland at 10/14/2009 @ 12:40pm
It's really a childish rebuttal and furthermore isn't an answer to the real question of the reason for going to war in the first place.
Posted by Wolfgang1 at 10/14/2009 @ 12:29pm
No, your entire post is out of context which is not surprising. I noted that the budget contained a reduction in the procurement of ammunition. Carver didn't find that to be a problem.
It is a problem. Back in the 90's, Marines were struggling to have enough ammo even for training because Clinton cut that part of the budget back so deeply.
If you can't even train in preparation for the possibility of war, you are placing those troops in greater danger of losing their lives.
Posted by antisocialist at 10/14/2009 @ 1:14pm
Can anyone here explain why we are still wasting our time responding to Auntie Socialist, or any other of the mind numbing number of non-conversant right wing nutjobs who show up here for attention and nothing else?
When the object you're in contact with refuses to honestly engage and show signs of acknowledgement, understanding and genuine human feelings of empathy or concern, you tell them they are not welcome and ignore them.
If only.
Posted by b_kool_66 at 10/14/2009 @ 1:48pm
Can anyone here explain why we are still wasting our time responding to Auntie Socialist, or any other of the mind numbing number of non-conversant right wing nutjobs who show up here for attention and nothing else?
When the object you're in contact with refuses to honestly engage and show signs of acknowledgement, understanding and genuine human feelings of empathy or concern, you tell them they are not welcome and ignore them.
If only.
Posted by b_kool_66 at 10/14/2009 @ 1:48pm
What you fail to understand or perhaps acknowledge is that my views ARE BASED UPON MY CARING FOR OTHERS.
It is simply that my solutions differ from yours. I want most of the same things that you want. I just see how we get there differently.
Posted by antisocialist at 10/14/2009 @ 2:10pm
I've spent my time in "conversation" with you Auntie. I find you simply intransigent and mostly ignorant.
I don't harbor any ill will toward you, I just understand that you are a hard case.
Posted by b_kool_66 at 10/14/2009 @ 2:17pm
"Unlike you Mask, I'm very open about my positions and willing to state them. You on the other hand refuse to answer most people, prefering as your handle indicates to be a shadow."---Posted by antisocialist at 10/14/2009 @ 12:15pm
Ask me a question, Larry...unlike you, I'll answer it without bobbing and weaving. You didn't mention Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid, because you like to disguise your views on occasions (unless pressed) so that you can seem more "appealing".
Point is, you're on the fringe even among Republicans, who might THINK about wiping out Social Security and Medicare, but know they're popular and nobody supports getting rid of them.
Oh...and addtionally, I'll even do something (again) that you would NEVER do...admit I was wrong. I voted for Bush in 2000. Biggest mistake of my political life.
Maybe if I had been a "prophet of God" I wouldn't have made it, huh?
Posted by Mask at 10/14/2009 @ 2:18pm
Reich is wrong when he says, "When one out of six Americans is unemployed or underemployed, this is no time to worry about the debt."
If you were a business owner, especially a small business owner, how likely would you be to hire new employees, knowing that new taxes to pay down the deficit are inevitable in coming years?
The debt overhang itself depresses job growth. The World War II experience is too unique to be a useful analogy.
Posted by GypsyBoots at 10/14/2009 @ 2:25pm
Posted by antisocialist at 10/14/2009 @ 1:14pm
How is it that you acknowledge that under Clinton (and now Obama) the military budget is inadequate (not enough bullets), but never seem to acknowledge that under Bush, who took us into two wars, STILL didn't manage to have adequate supplies for the military?
You're so obviously a neocon that you don't even see how hypocritical you're being.
Posted by Stephen_Carver1 at 10/14/2009 @ 2:29pm
Point is, you're on the fringe even among Republicans, who might THINK about wiping out Social Security and Medicare, but know they're popular and nobody supports getting rid of them.
Oh...and addtionally, I'll even do something (again) that you would NEVER do...admit I was wrong. I voted for Bush in 2000. Biggest mistake of my political life.
Maybe if I had been a "prophet of God" I wouldn't have made it, huh?
Posted by Mask at 10/14/2009 @ 2:18pm
I'll admit I left out SS and Medicare, but not by some devious intent. I said, everyone here knows I want to eliminate those programs. That was nothing new. The other items were new specifics.
You see devious intent where there is none with most of the bloggers here. This is a blog. We are writing on the spur of the moment and I don't know about you, but I OFTEN wish later upon re-reading a post wish I had included something or made the position better stated.
As to being on the fringe of the Republican party, I said so myself here for years. I'm a libertarian and most Republicans are not. That is obvious. I'm a libertarian who sometimes votes Republican and supports Republicans generally be default given there is no other party in power that comes closer to my views. Certainly I would never find my views articulated by a Democrat.
As to Bush, I've said numerous times that I was hesitant to vote for him in 2000 because I was unsure if he was a conservative or a liberal like his father. But he was lightyears better than Gore.
In 2004, Kerry ran on managing the war better than Bush. No one believed that. And I've said that I've never forgiven him for the anti-American views he stated in a VVAW meeting he attended back in '72. Nor will I ever vote for a pro-abortion candidate.
Posted by antisocialist at 10/14/2009 @ 2:48pm
Well now... SOMEBODY has all the money. It still exists. No, the Chinese don't have it all... where then? Under a pillow somewhere? A safe haven? Gold in the ground, buried in a backyard? Maybe HAPPY has it!
No, this sad, sad system of ours allowed people who live in this country to destroy it through their careless actions. They thought that they were Americans, when in actuality they were traitors. And they got support from the politicians because they are traitors as well. The complacency of our society is such that no one will do a damn thing about it either. The party is over.
People who make money off of money (HAPPY?) destroyed this country and they are HAPPY about it - and if history is any proof, it's not going to come back. We will diminish and go into the west. HAPPY now?
Posted by ficheye at 10/14/2009 @ 2:53pm
We will diminish and go into the west. HAPPY now?
Posted by ficheye at 10/14/2009 @ 2:53pm |
I'm ready to join Gandalf, Bilbo, Frodo, and the Elves in the Havens.
I'm in the midst of my annual reading of the Lord of the Rings. I've been reading it every year since 1969.
Posted by antisocialist at 10/14/2009 @ 3:19pm
Posted by antisocialist at 10/14/2009 @ 2:48pm
Just "odd", Larry....your little rundown of "where we can cut"...and you "forgot" or "assumed we'd ALL know" that you want to eliminate SocSec and Medicare?
Especially in this statement-
"I can see about another 10% possible. However 25% of our budget is for the military personnel payroll. "----Posted by antisocialist at 10/13/2009 @ 6:30pm |
"another 10% possible"!??!?!?!....SocSec and Medicare would be a LOT more than that, yet again, you didn't mention how you want them gone for good?
Posted by Mask at 10/14/2009 @ 3:36pm
Posted by antisocialist at 10/14/2009 @ 2:48pm
Just "odd", Larry....your little rundown of "where we can cut"...and you "forgot" or "assumed we'd ALL know" that you want to eliminate SocSec and Medicare?
Especially in this statement-
"I can see about another 10% possible. However 25% of our budget is for the military personnel payroll. "----Posted by antisocialist at 10/13/2009 @ 6:30pm |
"another 10% possible"!??!?!?!....SocSec and Medicare would be a LOT more than that, yet again, you didn't mention how you want them gone for good?
Posted by Mask at 10/14/2009 @ 3:36pm
The 10% I was referring to was a 10% cut in the military budget.
This is just Maskian word play.
When have I ever departed from my belief that we should eliminate SS and Medicare on these blogs?
Posted by antisocialist at 10/14/2009 @ 3:51pm
Looks like this week, the stock market, gold and oil are "on Fire"! Let's Roll!
Posted by Happy at 10/14/2009 @ 4:35pm
What the President is not doing is look at our trade imbalances. If we forgot this free trade crap and went to a fair trade. It would create millions of jobs. Start with china. If they wil not let 2 bilion (just a number) owrth of cars built in the US into their country, maybe we should not let 2 billion worth of crappy toys or clothes in the US. Yes this may start off a trade war but do you think the businesses of the US will not fill the void. This will crete jobs here yes a T-shirt may go up by a few bucks or a crappy toys with poisionous paint may doulde in cost to $10 bucks but so what. We will just have less stuff.
Posted by scott101 at 10/14/2009 @ 6:32pm
KVH has no right to shout the house is on fire.
In February when the Congress passed a $787 billion dollar fire extinguisher bill the CBO found that the canister held only 40% of extinguishing fluid and only 11% of that was scheduled to be emptied into the fire in the first year. In short, 95% of that stimulus package that should have been creating jobs was not designed to stimulate the economy the first fiscal year. It was designed with 8000 earmarks to support Democrats in their 2010 election campaigns instead.
Where was Katrina and Reich and their outrage, when that was happening?
Hell no Katrina. You are worth several hundred million dollars, and your mother much more. You hire some unemployed people out of that inherited wealth, but don't tax me to oblivion.
Posted by Pirovano at 10/14/2009 @ 7:21pm
Great article by Dean Baker, short and sweet:http://www.counterpunch.org/baker10142009.html
Posted by nkurland at 10/14/2009 @ 7:45pm
Looks like this week, the stock market, gold and oil are "on Fire"! Let's Roll! Posted by Happy at 10/14/2009 @ 4:35pm
The dwarves delved too greedily and too deep... you know what they have brought forth...
HAPPY!
Posted by ficheye at 10/14/2009 @ 7:50pm
Great article by Dean Baker, short and sweet:http://www.counterpunch.org/baker1014
Posted by nkurland at 10/14/2009 @ 7:45pm2009.html
Don't you quote anyone who isn't on the left?
Posted by antisocialist at 10/14/2009 @ 7:51pm
Posted by antisocialist at 10/14/2009 @ 7:51pm
Did you even read the article? Clearly not since you posted 1 minute after me.
Posted by nkurland at 10/14/2009 @ 7:57pm
No, this sad, sad system of ours allowed people who live in this country to destroy it through their careless actions. They thought that they were Americans, when in actuality they were traitors. And they got support from the politicians because they are traitors as well. The complacency of our society is such that no one will do a damn thing about it either.
Posted by ficheye at 10/14/2009 @ 2:53pm
Who are you referring to? Bush? Dodd and Frank? People who falsified loan applications so they could buy houses they couldn't afford? The legislators who passed the laws to make that possible? The people of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? The big banks? the small neighborhood banks?
Don't know if there are enough jail cells for all of 'em.
Posted by twillie at 10/14/2009 @ 8:41pm
So we figured Reaganomics was'nt quite right - too much deregulation, too much supply side, too much market fundamentalism. We needed some Govt intervention, we needed some Keynes, we needed some jobs, we had enough 'trickle down', we needed some 'bottom up'. And what happened? We got some Govt intervention for the Banks, for Wall St. OK, the stock market is doing allright, it seems. But then where are the jobs? Looks like we got some Govt. aided, supply side Reaganomics - you know, coporate welfare.
Posted by trueleftist at 10/14/2009 @ 9:35pm
I'm in the midst of my annual reading of the Lord of the Rings. I've been reading it every year since 1969.
Posted by antisocialist at 10/14/2009 @ 3:19pm
what, getting tired of mordor?
Posted by frosty zoom at 10/14/2009 @ 10:49pm
b_kool_66, I always enjoy your postings, and, in particular appreciate one who takes the time to cite actual books, and post extended quotes. However, may I simply point out that the situation we are currently in is not at all unprecedented. For example, national debt as a percentage of GDP is not as high as it was during the Truman administration:
http://zfacts.com/p/318.html
The relative level of corruption we currently suffer under was the norm during most of the 19th century and much of the 20th. Our current unemployment rate is nowhere near the 23.6% rate of 1932. We used to practice slavery in this country. At one point, we fought a Civil War. We survived all of these challenges.
There are a number of "memes" I take issue with. The American people didn't naively vote for Obama because he is a mesmorizing media creation - I believe they voted for him because he effectively represented their aspirations for unity, equality, opportunity, fairness and justice. Obama may fail in every one of these regards, but the American people will still share the same aspirations.
Our institutions may be corrupted, but they have been before. Its our aspirations that pulled us through then, and, I believe, will do so again.
Your thread assumes its our country's elites that define us. Our country is great not because of those elites, but in spite of them. I don't think that has changed all that much - the basic institutions are in place for "we the people" to create positive change. The fact that Obama may not be the agent of that change doesn't mean a totalitarian or dictator will be. We deserve more credit than that!
Posted by Dwight Wall at 10/15/2009 @ 01:03am
The "fire" was created by Obama when he put gasoline on the recession fire and just made it much much worse. Policies such as the "cap-n-tax" threat gives no confidence for companies to expand. The idea that government service jobs are the cure shows a complete ignorance of how the economy works. All government expenditures can only come from raising taxes or printing more money - both destructive. You must have a healthy and robust private sector in order to create real jobs. Also, a strong vibrant economy requires a cheap and plentiful source of energy - something those on the left cannot see. Lets see, unemployment near 10% and growing...a government incapable of creating a friendly business environment...uncontrolled spending...
Posted by pyeatte at 10/15/2009 @ 02:10am
The fact that Obama may not be the agent of that change doesn't mean a totalitarian or dictator will be. We deserve more credit than that! Posted by Dwight Wall at 10/15/2009 @ 01:03am
Hear, hear, Dwight. I've tried injecting a little philosophical optimism on occasion only to be chastised for being naive. We're all gonna die!
I think the 'sides' are being slowly, inexorably forced together, like it or not, because we all like this place.
But that's sissy talk!
Posted by ficheye at 10/15/2009 @ 04:10am
Posted by pyeatte at 10/15/2009 @ 02:10am
Under the current bill 85% of carbon credits are to be given away for free.
Posted by nkurland at 10/15/2009 @ 08:36am
Gypsyboots has it right. Borrowing money (from China and Saudi Arabia, probably) to create jobs leads to higher taxes for debt service. Then that debt service ends up right back in China and Saudi Arabia; countries that already get too many of our dollars.
What will it take to get neo-liberals off the dime and recognize that we need import taxes to get jobs back into the US; a depression?
What in hell do they think they're doing protecting the existing trade regime?
Posted by Buddy33 at 10/15/2009 @ 10:01am
Under the current bill 85% of carbon credits are to be given away for free.
Posted by nkurland at 10/15/2009 @ 08:36am
Uh......how much did it and does now, cost to emit carbon?
Posted by Happy at 10/15/2009 @ 10:19am
Posted by Happy at 10/15/2009 @ 10:19am
Whatever the cost of production is. The point is that the revenue raising portion of the plan is almost completely dead. The bill allows companies to invest in projects that would merely theoretically reduce carbon emissions. And the Obama administration has been pushing for major subsidies to clean coal, nuclear energy and natural gas. So that 15% to be auctioned off are easily offset by the rest of the bill.
Posted by nkurland at 10/15/2009 @ 10:45am
Lets see, unemployment near 10% and growing...a government incapable of creating a friendly business environment...uncontrolled spending...
Posted by pyeatte at 10/15/2009 @ 02:10am
ALL of which was brought about as a direct reaction to over 30 years of deregulation of the markets and capitalism gone wild. Capitalism only works when you have brakes against the greedy. Thanks to Phil Gramm, the Republicans in the House and Senate under Bush, and many Democrats who joined them, the house of cards which Alan Greenspan built our economy on came tumbling down.
Would you have preferred say, 40% unemployment to 10%? Would you have preferred a wrecked economy rather than a battered one that CAN recover? because that's EXACTLY what you would have gotten.
Was I entirely for the bank bailout? No, because those were the greedy SOBs who got us into this mess in the first place and instead of getting multimillions in bonuses (which they STILL area), they'd be out on the street.
Was I 100% for the Stimulus? Yes, because it will benefit the people alot over the course of time, help rebuild our crumbling infrastructure and eventually get the small business sector moving again so they CAN create more jobs. Much preferable to Bush's rather pathetic "stimulus" of just giving money away ($300 per taxpayer) which has ABSOLUTELY NO BENEFIT to the economy. BTW, is just "giving money to the people" a conservative trait now?
You are a person who obviously knows nothing about how economies run; you're just another Obama basher, because BUSH got us into this mess by going into two trillion dollar wars AND NOT PAYING FOR THEM!
Posted by Stephen_Carver1 at 10/15/2009 @ 11:48am
Jobs? How about drafting for Afghan duty?
Posted by balataf at 10/15/2009 @ 2:04pm
b_kool_66, I always enjoy your postings, and, in particular appreciate one who takes the time to cite actual books, and post extended quotes. However, may I simply point out that the situation we are currently in is not at all unprecedented. For example, national debt as a percentage of GDP is not as high as it was during the Truman administration....
There are a number of "memes" I take issue with. The American people didn't naively vote for Obama because he is a mesmerizing media creation - I believe they voted for him because he effectively represented their aspirations....
Your thread assumes it's our country's elites that define us. Our country is great not because of those elites, but in spite of them......The fact that Obama may not be the agent of that change doesn't mean a totalitarian or dictator will be. We deserve more credit than that!
~Posted by Dwight Wall at 01:03am (10/15)
Dwight,
I greatly appreciate the thoughtful response to my postings on this thread. If I may summarize your post into its essence you are simply claiming that the current situation in American politics is not particularly novel, and certainly not any more harrowing than many eras before. Perhaps, but I would suggest you are quite seriously mistaken.
As someone who is science educated, and has a lifelong habit of watching current events I've made it a sort of hobby to dip into the available information streams and make the best approximations of what those data points likely represent. This is supposed to be the job, primarily, of professional journalists, but we don't have many of those around today --certainly in the so-called MSM.
Posted by b_kool_66 at 10/15/2009 @ 2:18pm
It's difficult to develop a high definition picture for folks who haven't had the luxury of spending the same amount of time and effort reading much of the fascinating stuff that is available, but diligent readers of The Nation have access to a lot of the same stuff I encounter regularly --Tom Dispatch is one source I return to often. There are others online such as Alex Cockburn's superb Counterpunch, and Tom Feeley's wide ranging Information Clearing House to name just a couple of excellent entry points.
Bottom line, I attempt (to the best of my ability) to tread the difficult path between shutting down the brains of readers, and getting out the most concise depictions of what is actually occurring in reality –and no, I don't consider myself the oracle of Truth. Humans have a great capacity for shutting out information that doesn't jibe with their own conceptions of reality, we see it in the heated battles within the scientific sphere. Egos can be enormous and easily wounded.
Finally, I recently picked up a copy of Chris Hedges brilliant new book, "Empire of Illusion", and I believe he has summed up powerfully the reality we now face in America. Hedges' critique of the academic portion of the military industrial academic complex is particularly damning. History does not repeat itself exactly, but the patterns do recur often enough to get meaningful data from past events that can help us react appropriately to the present --the patterns one should look to are not simply the ones that assure us that America has always triumphed over our troubles.
Posted by b_kool_66 at 10/15/2009 @ 2:18pm
If one is to add such works as Tim Weiner's "Legacy of Ashes" and James Bamford's "The Shadow Factory" on the CIA and NSA respectively, and James Carrol's, "House of War", which outlines the history of the Pentagon, it should begin to become clear that today's age of technology, combined with the disparity between the powerful and the powerless has led to an unprecedentedly precarious situation for Americans in particular, and for the community of humankind more broadly.
This is not fear mongering or conspiracy bantering. Carl Sagan, another of my most revered American forebears, made a compelling case in such works as "Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors" and "The Demon Haunted World" that humankind is facing a critical moment in its evolution, and the most emphatic point he made was the absolute need for a critical mass of well educated citizens to counter the weight of powerful conglomerates who seek to control public opinion.
I think the work of Chris Hedges in books, articles, and speeches since 2002 continues the work that Sagan so ably helped to kick off.
Posted by b_kool_66 at 10/15/2009 @ 2:18pm
Here is a hopeful poetic quote from the Russian writer Vasily Grossman, cited in Hedges' "Empire of Illusion" to close on:
"I have seen that it is not man who is impotent in the struggle against evil, but the power of evil that is impotent in the struggle against man. The powerlessness of kindness, of senseless kindness, is the secret of its immortality. It can never be conquered. The more stupid, the more senseless, the more helpless it may seem, the vaster it is. Evil is impotent before it. The prophets, religious teachers, reformers, social and political leaders are impotent before it. This dumb, blind love is man's meaning.
Human history is not the battle of good struggling to overcome evil. It is a battle fought by a great evil struggling to crush a small kernel of human kindness. But if what is human in human beings has not been destroyed even now, then evil will never conquer."
Peace out, ~B
Posted by b_kool_66 at 10/15/2009 @ 2:18pm
osted by b_kool_66 at 10/15/2009 @ 2:18pm
Thanks B. That's some pretty "cool" stuff you posted. The arguments you see taking place here somewhat reflect what you said. There are those who believe that profit is the sum total of what life is about....those who end up with the most toys win. Then there are others who believe that all people should be allowed to live with some dignity. You can't have a bunch of toys and spread the wealth at the same time. It's one or the other.
Nobody would choose to starve or be homeless in the cold. Most people wouldn't want to see their brother or sister homeless or starving. Yet, there are many who seem to think that it's ok if someone else is homeless or starving. A good majority of those with that type of philosophy are republicans....not that all dems think that way, but the democratic philosophy tends to look out for the poor one hell of a lot more than it's counterpart.
I used to go to church and all that. But then I saw that the church itself would turn it's back on people because they don't follow it's doctrine. What's the term... conditional love? To hell with that.
If we as a society don't take care of each other, we don't show any merit over animals in the jungle fighting over a dead carcass. That's kind of how I view what goes on in D.C. A lot of yelling at each other over who gets the lobby money, not who gets to help the people of the United States.
Posted by Wolfgang1 at 10/15/2009 @ 4:01pm
Posted by Mask at 10/14/2009 @ 3:36pm
Posted by antisocialist at 10/14/2009 @ 3:51pm
Mask, I haven't seen a tennis volley where you've tried to pin Larry on another of his nineteenth century fixes...
He's squirrely as hell, slippery, doesn't come out with what he INFERS for the modern, real world.
Says he's for no federal regulation of something like anything besides banking and defense.
So medications, appliances, things like civil airlines... tons and tons of real world complexities - Larry gives NO DETAILED SOLUTION.
Like he'd have all 50 states setting their own rules for a HUGE range of products and services.
Each of 50 states would potentially have no or different standards for - you name it -- vehicles, farm equipment, for dryers and microwave ovens. Maintenance regs for personal aircraft could mean your Cesna can't cross the state line. Viagra can claim to help an Iowan with ED in Iowa but not a Mississippian. Hilarious.
Posted by winyahn at 10/15/2009 @ 5:12pm
So medications, appliances, things like civil airlines... tons and tons of real world complexities - Larry gives NO DETAILED SOLUTION.
Like he'd have all 50 states setting their own rules for a HUGE range of products and services.
Each of 50 states would potentially have no or different standards for - you name it -- vehicles, farm equipment, for dryers and microwave ovens. Maintenance regs for personal aircraft could mean your Cesna can't cross the state line. Viagra can claim to help an Iowan with ED in Iowa but not a Mississippian. Hilarious.
Posted by winyahn at 10/15/2009 @ 5:12pm
I don't have to give a solution. It's up to states to determine if they think they have an issue.
Secondly, you ignore the reality of mass production conformity. No company is going to make 50 different variations to satisfy 50 different states. It's not economically practical. So most conform their products to the states with the most rigid standards.
Your issue is that like most leftists you despise Jefferson's warnings about letting the Central govt have most of the power.
Posted by antisocialist at 10/15/2009 @ 5:30pm
2Sentence- What you have failed to state is that this trend to centralized power was not a Democratic party idea it was an ever expanding role with GWB. The warning had has much to do with money as anything else. It was northern economic power that he feared. He had seen up close the war profiteers,they were not his associates.
Posted by whatozz at 10/15/2009 @ 6:17pm
KVH must be quivering with joy!
Finland has become the first country in the world to declare broadband Internet access a legal right. And you thought our government was insane?
Starting in July, telecommunication companies in the northern European nation will be required to provide all 5.2 million citizens with Internet connection that runs at speeds of at least 1 megabit per second.
The one-megabit mandate, however, is simply an intermediary step, said Laura Vilkkonen, the legislative counselor for the Ministry of Transport and Communications.
The country is aiming for speeds that are 100 times faster -- 100 megabits per second -- for all by 2015.
"We think it's something you cannot live without in modern society. Like banking services or water or electricity, you need Internet connection," Vilkkonen said.
Finland is one of the most wired in the world; about 95 percent of the population have some sort of Internet access, she said. But the law is designed to bring the Web to rural areas, where geographic challenges have limited access until now.
"Universal service is every citizen's subjective right," Vilkkonen said.
Posted by sntauri at 10/15/2009 @ 7:42pm
2Sentence- What you have failed to state is that this trend to centralized power was not a Democratic party idea it was an ever expanding role with GWB. The warning had has much to do with money as anything else. It was northern economic power that he feared. He had seen up close the war profiteers,they were not his associates.
Posted by whatozz at 10/15/2009 @ 6:17pm
Nonsense. It began with Wilson and was expanded exponentially by FDR.
Posted by antisocialist at 10/15/2009 @ 7:49pm
I don't have to give a solution. It's up to states to determine if they think they have an issue... So most (companies under my Ayn Rand Fantasy plan will) conform their products to the states with the most rigid standards.
Your issue is that like most leftists you despise...
Posted by antisocialist at 10/15/2009 @ 5:30pm
Well just starting with a few of the many specs for electric water heaters -- Rhode Island might choose a more rigid Anode Rod standard than Georgia or Connecticut or Pennsylvania but less rigid Dielectric Connections standards than Pennsylvania's. Pennsylvania might have a less rigid Combustion Chamber standard than Connecticut, but one more rigid than Georgia or Iowa which itself might have a more rigid Energy Cutoff Switch standard than Connecticut or Georgia or Rhode Island but less rigid than Oregon which has a more more rigid Anode Rod standard than Tennessee, but they're reconsidering their standards in the next month. Word has it they'll be strengthening their Expansion Tank standards in line with Wyoming's soon while backing off on their Thermistor standard to keep it in line with Rhode Island's. What's a manufacturer to do? I know you and Ayn don't really go for detail. Details are for Jefferson haters.
Posted by winyahn at 10/15/2009 @ 8:32pm
In other words when we expanded our contacts with the world. When the U.S was actually a world power. I stand corrected it was world war that caused this expansion of central power. Roosevelt had to expand the role of government to counter act the disaster of Republican policies of the Twenties. Perhaps we need a great infrastructure rebuild to pull us out of the latest disaster. Maybe you think Wall Street could do something besides steal bonuses and live like pigs. Where are the toxic assets at? What does 10,000 mean? The Market means nothing,the economy goes one way and it goes the other. I guess it is healthy for a select few. It seems like a scam,.
Posted by whatozz at 10/15/2009 @ 8:43pm
b_kool_66, thank you again for your kind response. I look forward to reading Mr. Hedge's book. If I may just make a few more comments:
"The socially important knowledge and cultural ideas embodied in history, literature, philosophy, and religion, which are at their core subversive and threatening to authority, have been banished from public discourse." Mr. Hedges makes an important point here, not only about the forces both of you rightfully warn us about, but also about the framework in which we address those forces. The scientific method teaches us the importance of gathering data, and, in an experimental setting, proving our theories through the ability of others, given the same data, to replicate our results. Yet, in the case of human society, politics, power relations, etc..., we are faced with a decidedly un-scientific set of circumstances. Unless you believe in the "science" of historic determinism, history can inform us of the context of our present circumstances, but it can't be replicated in a lab, and it rarely if ever repeats itself. The comment Mr. Hedges regarding our elites education/privilege/etc... are spot on, and in fact reinforce the idea of our nation as being one of "economic apartheid". From that you move to citations involving our nation of "propaganda" consumers in which the majority of our citizens are as enthralled by the very hall of mirrors our elites continue to support.
Posted by Dwight Wall at 10/15/2009 @ 8:59pm
Indeed, a country that cannot distinguish between reality and propaganda is indeed in trouble. One of the hallmarks of a totalitarian state is its claim of "science" where in fact there is none (I've posted before about what I consider a totalitarian strain in the "science" of supply side economics). Added to the concerns cited is a technological infrastructure designed for surviellence and other semi-totalitarian methods of control.
In essence, if we agree with you characterizations of our current elites (I actually do to a large extent), it therefore follows that we face a serious threat to our nation, the world, and our liberties. If "A", then "B".
The purpose of my posting was not necessarily to state that, because we have survived greater challenges before, we will so again. It was rather to urge caution on this A/B formula - which ascribes an enormous amount of pacivity to a peoples generally not known for that. We may in fact be "propaganda consumers", but simply based on what I see on this web site, we are not consuming the same propaganda. And, if anything of the history of technology has been consistent, its the fact that the very technology intended for one purpose can be completely subverted to perform unanticipated counter purposes. Twitter can both liberate, and incarcerate, as we have seen in Iran recently.
Posted by Dwight Wall at 10/15/2009 @ 9:14pm
Just as there is a theory that the split that developed between the religious realm and the temporal realm in Western Europe ultimately evolved into democratic institutions, its the very cacaphony of our political discourse that should give us hope. We may have a disconnected elite, but they can be a disagreeable group. And I ascribe a lot more intelligence to the American people than most.
My only point is that I don't entirely buy the idea of "elite determinism" if you will - we are not necessarily passive victims, and the institutions still exist for us to create change. There may be totalitarian strains in our political discourse, but there is no totalitarian "movement", and I think we are simply too cantankerous a nation to let that occur.
Again, thank you for your thought provoking postings on this thread.
Posted by Dwight Wall at 10/15/2009 @ 9:27pm
Simply following up with another thought: I don't consider the current "inaction" of President Obama to be a bad thing. Given the cacaphony I noted above - IMHO a positive attribute of our political system - it takes patience and time to create real change. That doesn't mean that Obama will create change that I necessarily like, but I bet there will be parts that I do like. That's called democracy.
Newt Gingrich, the failed historian, said once, in proposing a Constitutional Convention: "We need a Constitution that operates at the speed of 21st Century business."
Is that really what we want?
Posted by Dwight Wall at 10/15/2009 @ 9:37pm
So can we PLEASE have someone other than an Israelite and/of their Christian apologists telling us that everything is just dandy? It ain't.
Posted by DejaVu at 10/16/2009 @ 12:58am
2Sentence-You would rather have an wanted child born than take care of the elderly. You are selfish in your rationed way of thinking.Kudos to you, you would feel no pain when an older person suffers.Is your way of thinking called individualist compassion ? You will go hand in hand with my older brother,the evangelical; stumbling in the wilderness,looking for the answer and everyone shaking their heads at him.
Posted by whatozz at 10/16/2009 @ 05:36am
It seems like a scam,.
Posted by whatozz at 10/15/2009 @ 8:43pm
It is a scam as is the banking industry.
Posted by Wolfgang1 at 10/16/2009 @ 06:37am
Posted by Dwight Wall at 10/15/2009 @ 9:37pm
Dwight, Excellent posts. The only problem I have with them is that the system itself has been taken over. The government itself is intertwined with big business. What it was and is supposed to regulate has no come to regulate it. K street and Wallstreet run Congress to be sure and it appears that the pentagon runs the executive branch. The institutions you mention have been breached by termites and are now on a very shaky foundation.
We don't have a democracy in the U.S. At best you could call it a republic....and our representatives don't represent us, they represent the above mentioned groups who yield all of the money and power.
Take a large publicly owned company. Say most of the stock 70 or 80% is owned by small individual investors and one extremely wealthy person owns the other 20%. Now that one wealthy person who owns 20% has more say than each individual and gets the ear of the company while the individual stock holders don't get any voice at all even though in reality, they are the majority stock holder. That is what is going on in the United States now. A handful of corrupt aholes are controlling the levers because they know that as long as they keep the individuals divided or feeling powerless, they win. They've been doing it for quite some time now.
Posted by Wolfgang1 at 10/16/2009 @ 06:49am
has no..sorry, should be has now
Posted by Wolfgang1 at 10/16/2009 @ 06:52am
found another mistake.....the above mentioned groups who yield should, should be wield not yield. They certainly don't yield their power.
Posted by Wolfgang1 at 10/16/2009 @ 07:59am
"My only point is......we are not necessarily passive victims, and the institutions still exist for us to create change."
~Dwight Wall at 9:27pm
Exactly. And the target of my "gloomy" posts is to wake us up to the fact that we better wake the hell up!
I find it stunning how lackadaisical the left in America is today. I can only ascribe its ultimate cause to the effectiveness of the propaganda state at keeping us divided and complacent.
The tone of Hedges' latest work is a direct result of him feeling much the same way I just expressed --and I have a great deal of respect for the point of view of Hedges, especially given the path that brought him to his current milieu.
Posted by b_kool_66 at 10/16/2009 @ 3:56pm
b_kool_66, give me three things you would do to get this ball rolling for people to bring about change? As in 1., 2., 3.And while I'm at it, what would Dwight Wall do with the same question.
Posted by Denise29 at 10/16/2009 @ 6:51pm
Denise,
Nice to address you directly, here.
Much like you, I'm frustrated and don't know exactly what I can do beyond what I've already done. I've protested, written letters to the newspaper, and to other assorted media, signed a multitude of petitions, and donated to progressive causes.
The primary reason, in my estimation, for the lack of significant movement to change the drastic direction of this once great nation is almost undoubtedly the machinery of the Democratic Party. Too many of us hold out hope for the Party to right itself enough and in time to enact effective change and yet, the football is yanked (ala Lucy with Charlie Brown) every time we get close by "a blue dog", or "Joe Lieberman", or you name it.
The leadership of the Dems is virtually completely captive to the same powers that animate the Repugnant Party.
At this point what is almost certainly needed is an electric surge of popular anger and protest. I've been suggesting as much in my recent posts here. That means someone in the media spotlight with a charismatic personality has got to speak out with furor and vigor spelling out the fact that our government is completely broken and only a mass movement of protests and strikes will force the necessary drastic reform required.
We can start by forcing the issue of publicly financed elections to shove corporate financing out of the picture.
More realistically, we'll probably all end up watching the whole political and economic ediface come crashing down in a Hindenburg style debacle. In the interim (or during this likely crash), expect an ~80 percent chance (or so) of some sort of right wing/fascist style take over of the government reins.
Bleak yes, but the evidence is overwhelming that this is the clear and danger we face.
Posted by b_kool_66 at 10/17/2009 @ 11:58am
In the meantime, we should brace ourselves, take care of the ones we love, and understand that this is how life can unfold even in a wealthy society.
It can always be worse and maybe it won't be too bad.
Peace out, ~B
Posted by b_kool_66 at 10/17/2009 @ 11:58am
"clear and present danger we face."
Posted by b_kool_66 at 10/17/2009 @ 12:00pm
We don't have a democracy in the U.S. At best you could call it a republic....and our representatives don't represent us, they represent the above mentioned groups who yield all of the money and power.
Posted by Wolfgang1 at 10/16/2009 @ 06:49am
All these years and Wolfgang still doesn't know that we are a constitutional republic.
Posted by antisocialist at 10/17/2009 @ 12:13pm
The American people didn't naively vote for Obama because he is a mesmorizing media creation ...
mesmerizing, from Franz Mesmer
Posted by emile duBois at 10/17/2009 @ 3:10pm
Posted by Extraneous at 10/13/2009 @ 1:33pm |
Wow. You are world-class not-smart.
September ISM manufacturing index: 52.6...> 50 represents growth...< 42 represents Argentina circa Y2K.
September new orders slip 4.1%.
The value of retail sales in America fell by 1.5% in September, reversing some of the 2.2% increase in August. The volatile monthly pattern owed a lot to car sales, which have been heavily influenced by government incentives.
A toddler could knock over this recovery. Get a clue.
Posted by snowball777 at 10/18/2009 @ 08:10am
Posted by Sorelish at 10/13/2009 @ 2:04pm |
Yup.
No point worrying about debt. If we let our economy collapse but don't change our spending habits on the things for which even wingnuts are gung-ho, we'll be in deep debt either way.
Our Pug friends are always thinking business, so let's drop the housing fire analogy (because burning excess housing stock would actually be GOOD for the RE market now) and put this in terms that might drill through the thickest of their skulls (well, maybe not Happy...he's all skull).
America can take on the debt and build something, like starting a business (or acquiring capital to sustain one) or she can fold like an old steel mill and rust in perpetuity while China and the bricks buy up her assets and her people go hungry.
It's all well and good to claim that the invisible hand will catch us, but banks are getting the best rates in American history and passing almost none of that good grace down the line to the real economy so that non-finance people can actually create jobs.
If "investing in America" isn't the right solution, then why is that what you Pugs are always telling the unemployed to do for themselves?
Posted by snowball777 at 10/18/2009 @ 08:30am
All these years and Wolfgang still doesn't know that we are a constitutional republic. Posted by antisocialist at 10/17/2009 @ 12:13pm |
Whatever...wanna-be monarchist.
Posted by snowball777 at 10/18/2009 @ 08:31am
Posted by b_kool_66 at 10/17/2009 @ 11:58am |
I agree with you that the kernel from which a solution can be built is campaign finance reform. Until we can rip the reins out of the hands of the lobbyists, we're due for more of the same.
Perhaps we should take aim at the crux of the problem and address the lobbies with protests?
Take over K St!
Posted by snowball777 at 10/18/2009 @ 08:38am
What you have failed to state is that this trend to centralized power was not a Democratic party idea it was an ever expanding role with GWB. The warning had has much to do with money as anything else. It was northern economic power that he feared. He had seen up close the war profiteers,they were not his associates. Posted by whatozz at 10/15/2009 @ 6:17pm Nonsense. It began with Wilson and was expanded exponentially by FDR. Posted by antisocialist at 10/15/2009 @ 7:49pm |
We started down the road to real "centralized power" when we started treating corporations as if they had equivalent rights to actual humans circa 1819.
Stop pretending that corporations don't wield heavier sticks than the government in your republic "of, by, and for" the wielders of financial power, Anti.
You make a sad apologist for them and your FDR rants merely further characterize you as a sore loser who can't grasp that his quixotic battles were lost decades ago.
Posted by snowball777 at 10/18/2009 @ 1:13pm