Laura Flanders | The Nation
Corporate Profits Up. Taxes Not.
Is there a prize for denial in economics reporting? If so, the competion this week was tighter than an Iowa caucus…
Runner-up prize has got to go to the cheer-peddlers covering the December jobs report. The private sector added 212,000 jobs in December; the official unemployment rate is down to 8.5 percent. Take that, you preachers of double-dip recession doom, say the cheer-peddlers, the horizon’s looking bright.
Reliably, Dean Baker has a grasp on reality: “At this pace, we would not get back to pre-recession levels of unemployment until 2027.” Baker points out that a quarter of the (very similar) gains made this time last year came from one industry—couriers—and by this time last year, all of those couriers newly hired in December were once again out of work. Even on their face, the numbers aren’t that good. Government jobs took a beating—falling by 12,000 (280,000 over the year); 5.6 million workers continue to be unemployed for twenty-seven weeks or longer, with devastating impact on their job prospects.
'The Iron Lady': The Margaret Thatcher Movie We Don't Need
The Iron Lady just opened in London where, let’s hope, it generates some serious critique. The critical silence in the United States has been astounding, only made worse by the praise, not just for the film but for its subject, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, played in the movie by Meryl Streep.
Newsweek’s holiday double issue slapped Streep as Thatcher on its cover, hailing “The New Thatcher Era.” The feature story in summary reads: “Margaret Thatcher was the infamous Iron Lady the Brits love to hate. This month’s bio starring Meryl Streep proves she was right all along.”
Streep’s already winning awards and accolades, and Oscars are probably on the way. People are saying the film’s no whitewash because it shows the former Prime Minister in her dotage, fighting dementia—three decades after she came to power. Director Phyllida Lloyd has described the treatment as operatic. Streep’s called it revealing. The two collaborated before on the musical Mamma Mia! The truth is, in Lloyd’s hands Thatcher’s iron isn’t just rusty, it’s melted down and depoliticized, made feminist enough to root for and ultimately sad enough for some to sniffle at. The Iron Lady is Thatcher—The ABBA Version. It’s the last thing we need, ever, and especially at this point.
Occupy the Dream?
Occupy is planning to "occupy the dream" by occupying offices of the Federal Reserve across the United States on January 16. Over at Studio Occupy, they’re inviting people to record and share a dream for their community. Here’s a video from Studio Occupy. Honestly, I’m of two minds about all this. Tell me what you think in the comments and I’ll come back to it.
Winning Basic Care for Care Givers
Will Occupy Wall Street alter anything about the way money media cover movements?
Even among those who ignored the occupations at the start, it’s hard to find any media outlet that has not now dedicated significant time to Occupy. The notion that the protests might change the public discussion of poverty and wealth went from romantic conjecture to conventional wisdom in less time than it took the pundits to wipe the egg off their faces.
Whatever happens electorally next year, OWS will have played some part in it, but if OWS gets written into the media accounts it’ll be a victory in itself, because generally the money media cover change as if it’s a mysterious process in which pretty much only presidents deserve real credit, not movements. Its no wonder regular Americans have a rather skewed picture of history, politics and our potential part in any of it.
Singing the Recall Carol in Wisconsin
Solidarity singers faced down a new set of state policies intended to regulate and put a price on assembly and free speech at the Wisconsin state capitol, Monday.
Solidarity sing-alongs began at the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison on March 11, 2011, and they’ve continued at noon every weekday since. Last Friday, the Capitol supposedly set up new rules for access to state buildings, the new policy requires permits for gatherings of 100 or more outside the Capitol, while permits are needed for gatherings inside of four or more people. Both need to be applied for seventy-two hours in advance of the event and there's a $50 charge per hour, per police officer deployed. Solidarity Sing-Along participants say the policy is directed specifically at their singing, but at noon Monday the singers were there—in unusually large numbers and high spirits—encouraged by news that in just one month, more than half a million signatures have been gathered to recall Governor Scott Walker. Enjoy the live stream.
You can find the Solidarity Singers here. Want to sing along? Here's the holiday songbook. Definitely check back in at noon -central time (1 pm Eastern) tomorrow. Got a tree near you that needs a sing-in?
Depression and Autocracy From Merkel to Michigan
“Depression and Democracy”—Paul Krugman’s Monday column took on a key topic. Amazingly, having seized the critical question, he let it squirm away. Insurgent neo-Nazi extremists may pose a threat, but right now mainstream governments are doing the real damage to democracy. They are suspending accountability on both sides of the Atlantic, and they’re doing it before our eyes, even to applause, in the name of emergency financial management.
Starting in Europe, Krugman focuses on Hungary’s governing far-right Fidesz party, whose plans, he writes, “amount to the re-establishment of authoritarian rule under a paper-thin veneer of democracy.” The Fidesz sound like a nasty lot, but how authoritarian is last week’s Eurozone deal? Led by Germany, the agreement requires individual nations to shrink pensions, scale back health insurance, cut services, privatize public enterprises and de-unionize public jobs—no matter what their voters say. It’s all so as not to default to the large banks and financial institutions.
Over at Counterpunch, economist Michael Hudson is calling it the “deadly transition from social democracy to oligarchy.” Ulrich Beck, writing in the Guardian, describes it as a power shift that imposes on an entire continent a take-it-or-leave-it “German culture of stability.”
What a Difference an Occupation Makes
It was never a genuine question. Money media prattled on about Occupy Wall Street’s supposedly ineffable demands the same way they batted aside the end capitalism signs to wonder what the Seattle protesters had on their minds. That said, the Occupy movement has always been more about doing than demanding and this week, OWS stepped it up another notch.
On December 6, OccupyYourHomes joined with local community organizers to take on the housing crisis. In twenty-five cities, protesters interrupted house auctions, blocked evictions and occupied foreclosed homes. In East New York they moved Alfredo Carrasquillo, Tasha Glasgow and their two children into a foreclosed home that had stood empty for three years. I attended the action Tuesday and couldn’t drag myself away. Even as the rain drizzled and the temperature sank, I watched the numbers of protesters grow and thought of the many, many members of underfunded community groups I’ve spoken to over the years. Among those, Community Voices Heard, New York Communities for Change, Picture the Homeless, Organize for Occupation, VOCAL-NY and Reclaim the Land. They talked on GRITtv about toxic loans and targeted neighborhoods, forced foreclosures, fear and the general lack of national interest.
JP Morgan Mic Checked at Princeton
Occupy Princeton students mic-checked a JP Morgan-Chase Treasury Services info session on December 7, 2011. The first direct action taken up by Occupy Princeton—they promise “more to come.” Here's the video:
Heat From the Arts on Mayor Mike Bloomberg
It was Glass war, not class war, at Lincoln Center Thursday night, and Glass won, composer Philip Glass. It should come as no surprise that the maestro of mesmeric repetition has a knack for the “human mic.”
Occupy Museums, a group of roughly two hundred OWS-inspired protesters showed up outside the last performance of Glass’s Satyagraha Thursday. Satyagraha the opera tells the story of M.K. Gandhi’s early struggle against colonialism and segregation in South Africa. “Satyagraha” the word means “truth force.” Said the protesters to the opera-goers: “Mic Check. Mic Check: Let’s tell the truth… let’s tell the truth. Join US!”
It’s a pretty elite OWS spin-off for sure, but there was a precise policy target. In their call to action, organizers pointed up the irony of Satyagraha being performed at Lincoln Center, where in recent weeks people have been arrested and forcibly removed when they attempted to protest colonization of the arts by .001 percenter David Koch. (One of the theaters now bears his name.)
The Maldives Need Action at Durban Conference on Climate Change
As the seventeenth United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, popularly known as COP-17, takes place in Durban, South Africa, November 28–December 9, I think of this man: Dr. Mohammed Waheed Hassan, with whom I had a chance to speak this September in New York. Waheed, as he prefers to be called, is vice president of the Republic of the Maldives, the lowest country on the planet. An archipelago of coral atolls in the Indian Ocean, the Maldives have seen the sea waters around their low-level homeland rise almost eight inches in the last 100 years, and accelerating rates of warming threaten their nation’s existence.
“Climate change is making a huge difference for our lives right now,” said Hassan. “About a third of our islands are under severe erosion and many people are losing their homes.” We were both speakers at Moving Planet—an event organized by NYPIRG outside the United Nations General Assembly on a global day of action coordinated by the group 350.org.
The Maldives are already spending a good part of their annual budget on coastal erosion and water desalination, Hassan explained. Island water is increasingly brackish and if clean water supplies continue to diminish, fossil fuel imports (for desalination) will have to grow. “We’re spending 17 percent of our GDP on fossil fuel imports now” says Hassan. “For the Maldives, global climate change is a problem “environmentally, economically and security-wise.”
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