Dakinkat cites a couple of polls with interesting results: Gallup polled a whole bunch of Texans and found that the folks out there don't really like their governor. (What's his name again? Mighty Joe Young? Kong? Something like that.)
The poll, released Tuesday, showed Perry with a negative approval in Texas: while 45 percent of the state’s voters approve of Perry’s job performance, 48 percent of Texas voters say they don’t approve.
Meanwhile, a Marist poll has similar, albeit slightly worse, figures for President O:
According to this McClatchy-Marist Poll, the president’s approval rating is at 39% among registered voters nationally, an all-time low for Mr. Obama. For the first time a majority — 52% — disapproves of the job he is doing in office, and 9% are unsure.
Behold, the magic of American democracy: Two politicians disliked by their constituents seem likely to head the tickets of their respective parties.
This is the most horrifying -- and perhaps the most important -- documentary imaginable. It was originally televised in Britain in 2006. I know that you are probably too busy to watch a full-length right now, but try to find the time to see this. You can go to YouTube, download all the parts as flv files, and then use this program to join them.
Bravo, Joseph. Thanks for the links. Here's a recent and important film on the psychology of trafficking:
http://vimeo.com/28372072
The pervasive idea that a woman or girl "chooses" to become a "sex worker" needs to change. We need to shame...and arrest...the johns to end this slave industry.
MSNBC did a documentary on this a few years ago...I saw it but could only find a couple of links to some text versions. In the first link, SF mayor Gavin Newsom has made it a personal crusade to shut down the illegal massage parlors in his town. In the second one is a snippet of a story of how one Florida teenager was duped by a new "friend" at school, and then kidnapped, drugged and repeatedly raped. Incredibly, the traffickers were transporting her while her family was out searching for her, and they both stopped at the same service station. Her little brother recognized her in the back seat and freed her, by gunpoint.
The biggest lie out there is prostitution is a "victimless" crime. Nothing could be further from the truth. Those who are in this "profession" are there because they feel they have no viable alternative to earn a living.
Nobody has any right to exploit others. This is NOT a "sexual freedom" issue but a human rights one.
Geraldo, Phil Donahue, and all the rest in the media did a horrible disservice when they glorified prostitution on their talk shows, bringing the likes of the fugitive Joe Conforte on to brag about his legal brothels. It desensitized the public of the realities of women who are in this situation. In fact, one could argue the situation for prostitutes is even worse in the legal brothels than those out in the street.
Being used as a human garbage can is not "freedom" by any stretch of the imagination.
I suspect what I have to say will be unpopular. But if you have only just seen these videos then you probably dont understand the full scale of the problem or issue. Perhaps you might like to take a look at some of Mark Ames (and Matt Taibbi's "Whores-R" stories in what used to be the www.exile.ru. I think they have the pieces in www.exiled.com now. You might get a better idea of what some of these girls are thinking. But it certainly isnt just a story about dumb teenage girls and evil pimps. Its about poverty and money. If you knew small town Ukraine or Moldova, then you would understand why some girls take the risk of prostitution (they usually think they will be stripping or waitressing). Since internal travel is difficult in itself, the big jump is getting to any City when you are from the country. It might well involve sleeping with 50 people since you have nothing else to trade. And the worst thing that can happen to them is being sent back home. Far worse than even being a prostitute in the UK or Spain or Germany, cos then you have nothing to show for the misery, suffering and degradation.
You wont end prostitution by outlawing it. What they are doing is already illegal. You will just make these girls afraid to run away.
In the worlds of a favorite song of mine, the essence of the problem is
"because goods are free to move but not people oil is free to move but not people jobs are free to move but not people money is free to move but not people "
These people have been freed to become impossibly poor, with the resources of their country sucked into their big cities. Are you surprised the girls try to escape, while the boys become alcoholics or pimps?
Harry
"Because goods are free to move, but not people
Harry
posted by Anonymous : 1:50 PM
No, jail the pimps and johns, those who are exploiting the women, and the incidence will decrease. Attack the problem from the DEMAND side, and the supply will dry up eventually.
Amen, Susan. Shame and jail the johns and watch the demand dry up. In fact, Norway, Iceland and Sweden have made procuring sex, but not selling sex illegal. Places that have made prostitution as a trade "legal" are not only aiding human trafficking but increasing other crime as well.
Vanity Fair had a lengthy article on this topic earlier this year: http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2011/05/sex-trafficking-201105
"No, jail the pimps and johns, those who are exploiting the women, and the incidence will decrease. Attack the problem from the DEMAND side, and the supply will dry up eventually."
Ok. So this should reduce prostitution in whichever juridiction you implement these rules down substantially. However I know that you are not suggesting doing this in the Ukraine or Moldova. So what happens to these girls? And wont the "johns" just fly off to the Dominican Republic with a bag full of viagra? All you have done is sweep the problem to neighboring countries.
The cure you suggest implies that you care about sweet American girls, but foreigners deserve to be used as prostitutes. Im sure you dont really think this.
The British eventually banned slavery throughout their dominions and on the high seas. In other words they would intercept any ship suspected of slavery and confiscate the ship if it had slaves aboard. It meant that foreign slaving ships (including American owned slaving ships) would chain the "cargo" together so that if they were intercepted by the Royal Navy, they could get rid of the evidence quickly, by just dropping them overboard.
Personally, if you want to ban it I would suggest an international ban, internationally enforced. But it would be silly to think it wont have perverse effects. The underlying problem is the life these poor kids have in the ex-CIS. Assuming they are naive is silly. Some of the girls who end up in being sex traffiked were naive. But a lot had some idea of what they were getting into. They just didnt know the extent of the mistreatment they would face.
What they wanted was out. And if you lived in the conditions they lived in, you would take big risks to get out too. Personally, I wouldnt take away their right to sell their bodies. I would improve the terms of the trade, and make it harder to make a living as a pimp - an activity which is and should be illegal, same as people trafficking. I dont have a problem with prostitution. I have a problem with organised crime and middle men exploiting women. Making it illegal for men to purchase their services will reduce the demand for their services. So the price will fall. Are you sure that reducing the price of sex will help them?
Forgive me if I offend. I lived in Moscow for a while and picked up strong views on this issue. But I am keen to debate. So if you think I am wrong, to not hestitate to set me straight.
Harry
posted by Anonymous : 4:43 AM
Thanks for posting this very important topic on Human Trafficking. I have seen this film twice and still trying to wrap my mind around the excuses as to why we as a global society condone HUMAN SLAVERY, simply because they are women and girls.
People, have been and are poor around the world, but Human Trafficking was not part of the equation and it is increasing daily. We must look at these women as our mothers, grandmothers, sisters, aunts, nieces and friend and say ENOUGH! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdYhmcVgaYI
No offense, but I believe the demand side has been under attack for quite some time, much like with illegal drugs. You see how well that has worked for society and stopping demand. I suspect, much like with the drug trade, that very wealthy, influential and powerful people are involved in keeping this stuff going (drugs and slavery and prostitution). If we don't out those people, and make them face justice, filling our jails with the johns and low level pimps will do nothing but increase the private sector incarceration business and create even more criminals.
As was pointed out, paying for sex is already illegal. Enforcement should probably be stepped up, but again, we see how well that has worked for the drug trade. A smarter option would be to use the johns and pimps to get to the real power behind all this. Though I suspect that would require a real paradigm change in our world that would be quite difficult to bring about, what with money being such a powerful force these days.
At the risk of pissing off lambert, I'm going to reprint a short piece he wrote today:
Anybody propagating the "jobs creator" meme is a fool or a liar. Businesses don't exist to create jobs. They exist to create profits. And that's not necessarily a bad thing, if properly regulated. [Pause for discussion of glibertarian, anarchist, and socialist perspectives on "regulation."] But if a business could make profits without creating a single job, it would -- and its fiduciaries would insist it should.
The real job creators are the people who do the work and demand the goods. No demand, no jobs, no business. As everybody but the top 1% are discovering as the country spirals down into Osterity, a controlled flight into terrain by the elites.
What irritates the hell out of me is that the "job creators" bullshit is heard only in propaganda pronouncements. When businessmen talk amongst themselves, they may freely admit that the real problem is lack of demand. See the Wall Street Journal piece here: "Dearth of Demand Seen Behind Weak Hiring."
Speaking of bullshit economics, I've been wondering: What is Larry Kudlow up to now?
Kudlow, as you may recall, is the arch-conservative supply-side economist who endorsed Obama. Previously, he may be best known for his pieces which firmly predicted that Dubya's tax cuts on the wealthy would -- stay seated, please -- increase the surplus. (He doesn't like all tax cuts, though. He wants to increase payroll taxes on working people.)
He also predicted that there would be no recession in 2007-2008. Savor his words from December, 2007:
"The recession debate is over. It's not gonna happen. Time to move on. At a bare minimum, we are looking at Goldilocks 2.0. (And that's a minimum). The Bush boom is alive and well. It's finishing up its sixth splendid year with many more years to come"
Last month, he said that he doesn't believe we are heading into a recession. That means we're doomed.
And now, here's Larry from just a couple of days ago:
New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg, in a radio interview on Friday, warned that high unemployment could lead to widespread rioting. That’s right. He actually said that.
Larry is shocked that someone would dare to say that high unemployment could lead to civil unrest. Perhaps Larry will also be shocked if I point out that women have breasts. That's right. I actually said that.
There’s a whole history here of liberals threatening riots if they don’t get their way.
This is hilarious. Of course, there's a difference between a forecast and a threat. You want to see actual threats? What about the militia maniacs of the 1990s, threatening revolution simply because a Democrat happened to be sitting in the oval office? What about the fact that the militias came back during the Obama presidency? What about Sharron Angle and her threats that if we don't get rid of "entitlements" -- by which she means Social Security and Medicare -- there would be "second amendment solutions"? What about the fact that you can find violent, incendiary rhetoric of that sort spewing out of right-wing radio pretty much every hour of every day?
Let's conduct the experiment. Let's compare any given hour of far-left radio -- Pacifica is still a going concern, isn't it? -- with any given hour of "the right stuff." Let's see who's talkin' 'bout revolution.
Now let's bring it all back to lambert's point.
Large dollops of government spending combined with temporary tax cuts do not promote investment or entrepreneurship, which are the true job-creators. Tax-rate incentives must be permanent in order to grow the economy. Digging holes for infrastructure may be necessary, but it’s no job-creator for the private sector.
There we go again: The "job creator" myth.
Experience has shown that top tax rates below 40 percent won't increase job creation. When Clinton raised top tax rates to cut the deficit, supply-side economists everywhere (I'm sure Kudlow was one of them) predicted doom. We didn't get doom; we got boom.
In fact, lowering taxes on the rich further would mean even fewer jobs.
Less revenue means increased dumping of government employees onto the unemployment rolls. (There's already been a lot of that, although guys like Kudlow never tell you that fact.) Moreover, there will be a massive impact on all firms that do any kind of business with the government. Result: Lay-offs everywhere. Decreased spending; decreased demand. Leading to yet more lay-offs. And so we spiral down, down, down.
I agree that the tax cuts in the previous stim package were a mistake. I agree that Obama's proposed new tax cuts would be a mistake. Tax cuts don't work. Tax cuts don't work. Tax cuts don't work.
I disagree with the presumption that a ton of money has gone or will go into infrastructure. Didn't happen. Isn't going to happen. Did you see Obama create anything like the TVA or the WPA? I didn't. So stop hallucinating, dammit.
Digging holes for infrastructure may be necessary, but it’s no job-creator for the private sector.
Yes it is, dummy. Get this through your head: Entrepreneurs don't create jobs -- workers do. Workers buy things. "Buying things" is what creates jobs. Entrepreneurs simply exploit the workers' desire and ability to buy crap they don't really need. The economy depends on a whole bunch of people spending money on crap they don't really need.
Right now, demand is low because too many people have no work, which depresses wages for everyone. People can't spend money they don't have, and they are afraid to spend the money they do have.
Giving people jobs, any jobs, means that they will buy things and thus get the economy rolling again. We have to take money from the vampiric rich -- at gunpoint (or stake-point) if necessary -- and use it to create jobs. (The vampiric rich are not entrepreneurs, by the way.)
Reagan did it though weapons manufacture -- military Keynesianism, the one form of Keynesianism Republicans seem to tolerate. (At least, they used to.) But frankly, I don't care if we pay people to throw rocks at walls. I don't care if we pay people to try to grab clouds. As long as there are paychecks for everyone, as long as there is upward pressure on wages, the economy will grow.
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Krudlow has been and is a totally discredited piece of sh*t pseudoconomist who didnt know anything when he was young, and is full time employed in propoganda now that he is old.
He is worth no more than the value of any organs you could harvest.
Harry
posted by Anonymous : 12:32 PM
" You want to see actual threats? What about the militia maniacs of the 1990s, threatening revolution simply because a Democrat happened to be sitting in the oval office? What about the fact that the militias came back during the Obama presidency? What about Sharron Angle and her threats that if we don't get rid of "entitlements" -- by which she means Social Security and Medicare -- there would be "second amendment solutions"? What about the fact that you can find violent, incendiary rhetoric of that sort spewing out of right-wing radio pretty much every hour of every day?"
Joseph....I don't know if you've seen this YouTube video of Andrew Breibart, but it's a perfect example of the incendiary rhetoric coming from the right.
Supply Side vs. Keynesian economic theory is too hard to prove one way or the other because there are too many factors to point at and too many ways to manipulate the numbers.
Each side claims they have the "facts" and they have charts and historical tales and stats to back them up.
All the cabbies and waitresses have all figured out. It is the economists who have a devil of a time knowing what is right. They are just looking in the wrong place. They need to hail a taxi and have some eggs at their local diner.
Dare ye scoff, ye scoffing scoffers? Well: Y'see that photo to your right? Proof! That's proof, right there! What's wrong with you? Are you blind? Of course I know that there's no air on the moon. What part of "they breathe rocks" don't you morons understand?
Bye bye Biden? Kremlinologists and tea leaf readers say that Joe's out. I disagree.
"Give me your tired, your poor, your sacrifices to Moloch..."As some of you know, Governor Rich Perry belongs to the NAR, the New Apostolic Reformation movement, composed of Christians who are convinced that they are prophets. Perry held a prayer rally on August 6, and he invited some of his NAR buds to speak.
Libertas is also called the Freedom Goddess, Lady Freedom, the Goddess of Liberty. You know there’s a statue in New York harbor called the Statue of Liberty. You know where we got it from? French Free Masons. Listen folks that is an idol, a demonic idol, right there in New York harbor. People say, ‘well no it’s patriotic.’ What makes it patriotic? Why is it? It’s a statue of a false goddess, the Queen of Heaven. We don’t get liberty from a false goddess folks, we get our liberty from Jesus Christ and that Statue of Liberty in no way glorifies Jesus Christ. There is no connection whatsoever. So I’m just telling you we practice idolatry in America in ways that we don’t even recognize.
It's hard to argue with logic like that. Benefiel also believes that homosexuals are part of an Illuminati plot and that the District of Columbia must be renamed the District of Christ.
Rick Perry's College Days. Yes, Governor Thongor actually went to college, for a bit. I don't care for Maureen Dowd, but this column is worth reading.
Studying to be a veterinarian, he stumbled on chemistry and made a D one semester and an F in another. “Four semesters of organic chemistry made a pilot out of me,” said Perry, who went on to join the Air Force.
“His other D’s,” Richard Oppel wrote in The Times, “included courses in the principles of economics, Shakespeare, ‘Feeds & Feeding,’ veterinary anatomy and what appears to be a course called ‘Meats.’ ”
He even got a C in gym.
It’s enough to make you long for W.’s Gentleman’s C’s. At least he was a mediocre student at Yale. Even Newt Gingrich’s pseudo-intellectualism is a relief at this point.
Can you imagine young Rick Perry trying to figure out what to do with a book? He must have looked exactly like the apes in 2001: A Space Odyssey when they first saw the monolith.
Ulsterman. Everyone's favorite fake insider is at it again. (He used to call himself a "Wall Street" insider, but now he's a "White House" insider.) This time he's saying that Obama hopes to unionize the military.
Believe it or not, a lot of people are taking this crap seriously, despite the obviousness of the hoax. And I'm not just talking about right-wing clowns like this bozo and these bozos and this bozo. Perhaps we should not be surprised that Larry Johnson is printing Ulsterman crap. Of course, Johnson is notorious for his "any stick to beat a dog" attitude.
I'm pretty firmly convinced, at this point, that "Ulsterman" is the creation of the same tricksters who gave us the "Voice of the White House" hoax during the Bush years.
"Britney, you ignorant slut..."Dan Aykroyd is a UFO buff, as some of you may know. So there he was, trying to have a nice, normal conversation on the phone with Britney Spears, when he noticed that the Men in Black were spying on him. This was during the filming of Crossroads. Having seen Crossroads -- well, some of it -- I suspect that the MIBs were trying to get Aykroyd to look for a new agent.
Most kidding aside, I have to admit -- Aykroyd's "Jane, you ignorant slut" shtick pretty much encapsulated the entire right-wing modus operandi for the next four decades. Rush Limbaugh based his entire act on that one line. Dan's a visionary.
Can wireless make you sick?A lot of people think so. So they are moving to a US Radio Quiet Zone in West Virginia, where wireless is forbidden. Now all they have to worry about are those pesky Mothmen.
The Big Grey Man. Forget the Louvre, forget the Sistine Chapel: The one place I want to see before I die is a Scottish mountain called Ben Macdhui.
Actually, what I really want is to visit a pub at the base of the mountain, where a rheumy-eyed Scot with a wild, scraggly beard and an accent thicker than a Texan skull will offer a fierce warning: "Dinna go up to the mountain, as ye value your life and reason! For that is the realm of Fear Liath Mor, the Big Grey Man, and death awaits you with nasty big pointy teeth!"
And I'll answer: "You manky Scots git. What's he do -- nibble your bum?"
And he'll say: "He's got huge, sharp...um... Well, he can leap about. Look at the bones!"
Grey Man or no Grey Man, I'll die happy after that exchange.
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Oh good, does this mean it's now fair game to investigate Obama's college grades?
posted by Anonymous : 3:46 PM
Can anybody join in on the "I'm an Eisenhower Republican" fun? Hey, it's easier to like Ike than Ron Paul!
And, yes, we're all arms dealers now, worse than Ike could've imagined. Great link...
Fun weird roundup. But I'm convinced those force fields around the grocery store that lock the wheels of our grocery carts are making me physically ill!!! West Virginia was already on my possible relocation list, now it moves up.
i don't understand what is wrong with saying "Liberty Enlightening the World" by Frederic Bartholdi is based on a goddess (like say, Libertas the roman goddess of Freedom). Similarly every photo of the cornerstone on the statue has mason text and trademarks right there next to the corner stone getting laid. So those two things, do they only sound crazy when put together (or when you add the third element that only Jesus brings you freedom not some old Roman Goddess)? That third part starts to sound crazy...
Seems to this ol' boy you prosteth too much about Larry Johnson, who was onto O's inadequacies well before the His Empty Suitness became POTUS. Surely a smart acre like yarself don' think e'd stop now, do yar? An' your darkenin' tread on the Scots be held to account by we who read your dribble and larf. Keepin' in mind of course that no one can be right all the time, and wishing to be lucky enough, as yarself, to be right even some of the time. So clutch 'yar clover boy and hope 'tis four petals you're holdin'.
mongrel: There it is again, the attitude that has ruined so much internet discourse. Forget the search for truth: Just give us shirts versus skins.
Your stance is: Larry Johnson doesn't like Obama, I don't like Obama, therefore Johnson is cool. Whatever he does.
Fuck THAT.
During 2008, he heavily pushed the Great Techdude hoax, which got the whole birth certificate nonsense started. I destroyed that hoax in a series of articles.
Johnson never admitted that Techdude had been proven wrong. In this, he acted EXACTLY like Moulitsas, who refused to admit that he was wrong when I demolished the "darkened video" hoax.
Johnsons's partner wrote to me and more or less admitted that the truth of the thing didn't matter. The only thing that mattered was that it made Obama look bad.
And if Johnson dares to deny that such a letter was written to me, I'll reprint it with or without permission of the author.
Despicable. Unforgivable. Creatures like Johnson gave the PUMA movement a bad name.
(That's why I don't join movements or groups. I'll take responsibility for my own failings, but I don't want to be in a position where I have to rationalize or defend the asshole behavior of others.)
Thanks for the moon/mars link! Wow, they make the trannies almost look sane.
syborg
posted by Anonymous : 2:41 PM
I put up with No Quarter for a long time because it was sorta a Puma place but then the frothers got firmly in control this year. Larry went nuts about the strike in WI and wrote a bunch of virulently anti-union,teacher,public employee bullshit vomit. I haven't been back in months and don't intend to go back.
Our anger at Obama must not blind us to one fact: Raising the tax rate on millionaires, as he has proposed, is a good thing. Of course, he has made the proposal at a time when there is no chance Congress would approve of such a scheme, and he has hinted at a quid pro quo in which Medicare would be on the table. Which would be a bad thing.
So we should see this move as politics. Nothing really wrong with that: Barack Obama is a politician, after all, and our national conversation could use a few words favoring sanity. Obama is striking a pose: He wants to be seen as the guy who would raise taxes on millionaires while lowering payroll taxes. This forces the Republicans to defend the reverse position. They are doing that, of course, by screaming "class warfare." Well, that's about as novel as opening a chess game by moving the king's pawn.
We are supposed to believe that it was not class warfare for Bush to lower taxes on the wealthy, and that it is not class warfare to raise taxes on the working class, a position advocated by virtually all Republicans.
Will the "Buffet bluff" help Obama? I don't think so. He no longer possesses the media infrastructure to shape the narrative.
Most working Americans still don't know that the Republicans want to raise their taxes -- in fact, most Americans stupidly have the opposite idea, even though the Republicans have made no secret of their position. Instead, the Republicans will blare the message: "Obama wants to raise taxes" -- and that's the message that will sink in, even though Obama isn't talking about raising your taxes; he's talking about raising their taxes.
From a political perspective, this would be a good play if the Dems had the media on their side. But they don't.
From a practical perspective, or a policy perspective -- nope. The vampires have recast themselves as "job creators," and a new tax on bloodsuckers simply won't happen. Should happen, but won't. Early on, back when he had the love, Obama might have pulled off a trick like this. Now, he's just posturing to please the base.
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In ancient Athens, if a politician became very unpopular, the assembly could vote to send the offender into exile for ten years. The process was called ostracism. An ostracized politician could not answer the charges, because there was no trial. He just had to go.
Ah, for the good old days. Now, you probably can guess where I'm going with this one: If we had ostracism today, whom would you choose?
Okay, I know the one name that all (well, most) of you want to shout out. No fair. Too easy. Pick someone else. I'm looking for some creative, thought-provoking and not-so-obvious answers.
You also have to keep in mind the likely replacement: Do you want to exchange bad for (potentially) worse?
I'll get you started. Nancy Pelosi. (Considering her home district, her replacement might well be better, and couldn't be worse.) Michele Bachmann. (Blechhh.) Tim Geithner. (Presuming cabinet folk are part of the deal.)
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Joseph Liebernan. Diane Feinstein. Peter King. Scott Walker.
posted by Lea : 8:51 PM
In ancient Athens, if a politician became very unpopular, the assembly could vote to send the offender into exile for ten years. The process was called ostracism. An ostracized politician could not answer the charges, because there was no trial. He just had to go.
Great democracy. Denies due process and respects the rights of everyone but the ostracized victim. It is not a mere vote of no confidence. It is a form of incarceration that allows for politicians to frame enemies who cannot face their accusers.
I would not choose Michelle, because Obama needs her campaign craziness. I definitely would not choose Palin, same reason. I would consider choosing Obama, though that would be risky, as a republican make get in.
Obviously I would choose Perry, but assuming I could not choose him…
Ron Paul! There is no political reason, per sé. I cannot stand that lying hypocrite. I would rather preserve backward, benighted Tea Party republicans, who may actually believe they are on the side of righteousness.
John: You're right, but this post isn't really meant to be so very serious in tone.
I don't know if Paul is such a hypocrite, but he IS a libertarian. And even if he weren't, he has tried to rationalize secession. He ought to be (even under our current system) tossed out of congress for that reason alone.
Anon: Barney Frank? Hm. You don't sound like one of our regulars.
Lea: Scott Walker isn't so bad, as Republicans go. Of course, I support Elizabeth Warren.
Hillary ...she's trying to make Obama look bad, she killed Vince Foster, and still hasn't apologized for splitting the party, being a racist or taking down wtc7. Oh, and i read a while ago on DailyKos that she's a cunt (sorry just trying to balance the crazy-- Boxer, Kerry, Kucinich... thought i would chime in before people start saying really insane things like; why not ostracize Jim Inhofe (the mother of all Climate deniers)? Or how about Boozman, Rubio (until he grows some pubes) and Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III? or creepy Addison Mitchell McConnell Jr? JOE LIEBERMAN!!! (Joseph, how much room you have in that catapult thing of yours?) Whatever you do I just hope you don't get rid of Saxby Chambliss, Mike Crapo Mark kike or Chris Coons, need those...
Joseph, perhaps your reader meant the Kucinich that sold out the last possibility of a real health care plan for a ride in Air Force 1. Perhaps that reader meant the Kerry who threw the race in 2004 and aligned himself with the Chicago machine in 2008.
posted by Sophie : 8:39 AM
J, I believe you're thinking of Scott Brown, senator of Massachusetts, and I agree--as Repugs go, he's not the worst. And I laud him for his openness about the sexual abuse he suffered as a child. That said, like you I'm Team Warren (although I'm cynical enough at this point to believe that Washington is universally corrupting, so I hesitate to get too hopeful).
I'm referring to Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a low-down snake if I ever saw one.
posted by Lea : 8:51 AM
Oh Lea -- I'm so sorry. Brain bubbles. I got my Scotts momentarily mixed.
That's it, exactly. I'm so irate about Kucinich's glee in his "opportunity" to overthrow the longest serving woman in Congress I think he's #1 on my list.
Joseph, please go watch a few youtubes of Marcy Kaptur's reaming the banksters who are plundering America and you may rethink whether we need the self-serving Kucinich. Of course, if Marcy were to run for president instead, he could have her old seat .... and, yes, it appears she's prolife, but given that her focus is on putting the likes of Tim Geithner in his place and holding the banks accountable we need her front and center alongside Elizabeth Warren.
I wasn't going to write anything about the air show crash in Reno. What can one say, beyond "That's terrible" and "I'm sorry"? But then I decided to use this event as a test, to see whether conspiracy theory truly has become the default mode of the American public.
I just googled this airplane, "The Galloping Ghost" and it's FAA registration number is... NX7911.
NX7911
I read somewhere (looking for link) that Ron Paul was there (gee, maybe in vip section too). But doubt we'll hear anything about that on MSM.
May also be why all the YT videos are being taken down.
He is in Reno tonight to speak. Sources say he was at the air races.
Re: Reno Air Race Crash - was Ron Paul the target?
That would be cool!
Shut up, Beavis. And now for some attempted haiku:
I have a feeling,
this will not be the last
accident.
Call it conspira-ku. (Improved version: "I have a feeling/that this will not be the last/so-called accident." Five/seven/five, that's the rule.) Finally, we have this:
Reno air crash alien sky hole!
Look above the crash scene in Reno, observe the blue parts of the sky, you will notice a very rectangular Blue area in the sky above, Another large area of Blue does appear to the north
But it does not have a cloaked UFO sitting smack in the middle of it like the rectangular sky hole.
Another artificial sky hole appears to be forming to the East or South East. WATCH.
The "alien sky hole" is visible in this video -- and if you claim you can't see it, then you must be part of the cover-up.
No matter how grim the tragedy, we can always depend on our nation's paranoids to provide relief. For that, they deserve our thanks. May I offer my own humble attempt at conspira-ku? (With apologies to the National Lampoon.)
December morning
The President's expecting
A nip in the air
New Mexican morn
If only some visitors
Would drop by today
For your last number
You could sing "Happy Birthday,
Mister President"
No need to worry.
The Secret Service has your
Back and to the left.
One more fucking word
on building fucking seven
And I'll implode YOU.
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Although I lived in Reno for 26 years, I never did attend the National Air Races, which until Hot August Nights was its biggest event. I feel terrible for the victims of this tragic accident, the first ever in this event involving spectators, and I hope I didn't know any of the people killed or injured. Credit has been given to the pilot for being able to steer the plane clear from the grandstand, thus saving hundreds of lives.
Here's a follow up to our previous post -- the one about claims that Tim Geithner refused to follow Obama's orders to do something about Citibank. A plain blog about politics (a good site previously unread by me) brings up this relevant tale from the days of FDR...
Half of a President's suggestions, which theoretically carry the weight of orders, can be safely forgotten by a Cabinet member. And if the President asks about a suggestion a second time, he can be told that it is being investigated. If he asks a third time, a wise Cabinet officer will give him at least part of what he suggests. But only occasionally, except about the most important matters, do Presidents ever get around to asking three times.
Yeah, well -- it is still the case that FDR got things done. If he wanted something like Citigroup dissolved, it would have been gone quicker than the Wicked Witch of the West.
Incidentally, for those of you enamored of the third party option, you may want to read this post and this post, from the same site. (I like this guy because he has a sense of history.) The lesson: The third party, if it comes, may not be funded by whom you think. And it likely won't be a party headed by someone to the left of Obama.
My guess: If Rick Perry sews up the R nomination, then someone like Steve Forbes may jump in -- especially if those wacky rumors of Perry's womanizing (or man-izing) turn out to be not so wacky after all. Yes, I admit it: I've kind of had Forbes in the back of mind ever since I woke up from that really, really bad dream about him. (I told you about that nightmare in an earlier post, didn't I? Seriously. It was horrible.)
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All the Perry talk is freaking me out! It's another media frenzy creating an alternate reality. I watch them spewing about his "obvious talent" and think....wth are they talking about? The man is stiff, hideous ----yes, hideous with his pinhead skull and his helmewt hair----and no more or less eloquent than anyone.
I do think that Forbes could sweep in on the strength of his name alone. That's the way the American electorate rolls.
And Joseph you nailed it on the showing of his ugly mug and the spouting of RW talking points by the likes of Newt as opposed to Edwards.
Welly welly well well well. Looks like the Democratic party (and no small number of Republicans) has come to regret the way it treated Hillary Clinton in 2008. Bloomberg:
Nearly two-thirds of Americans hold a favorable view of her and one-third are suffering a form of buyer’s remorse, saying the U.S. would be better off now if she had become president in 2008 instead of Barack Obama.
Hm. Shall I wave the bloody shirt once again? Yes. Yes, I believe I will. Here's what the progressive blogs (mainly HuffPo and Daily Kos) were saying about Hillary and the Clinton wing of the party back in 2008:
A Hillary supporter, for 5 mins, on CNN, whining and crying about about Obamas lack of experience, and how he STILL needs to earn her vote! I've come to the conclusion, these folks are plain unbalanced! They don't need to be convinced, they need meds!
Hillary is a liar and a cunt
They're all crazy cunts,taze them all!!!!!!
That last one was about the PUMA crowd. Jeez, if any movement has ever been justified by history...
if hillary is elected we're gonna be stuck with whomever she picks as a running mate for the remainder of the term after she gets assasinated.
Poll question: Did Hillary Clinton murder Benzir Bhutto as some rival campaigns suggest?
The poll was conducted on Democratic Underground. 95% of respondents said that Hillary killed Benazir Bhutto. Think about that, next time someone on D.U. says that it's the tea partiers who have gone nuts. (Granted, they are nuts, but the D.U. crowd went nuts first.)
Watch the 'The Clinton Chronicles', free on Google Video! A tale of cocaine Trafficing and murder in Arkansas!
That endorsement for a notorious concoction of lies and smears appeared on Alternet.
Cunt cunt cunt cunt cunt cunt cunt cunt CUNT cunt cunt cunt CUNT cunt cunt cunt CUNT CUNT CUNT CUNT . . .
Yo! Cunt!
it is really the Bush/Clinton crime family.
Of course, the anti-Hillary crowd was also stridently anti-Bill Clinton:
The Vince Foster Issue Should Be Investigated Again. Clintons just showed that their ambitions know no limit.
The Clinton death list
The following is a partial list of deaths of persons connected to President Clinton during his tenure as Governor of Arkansas and/or while President of the United States and thereafter. Read the list and judge for yourself...
The list began with Barbara Olson, who was killed during 9/11. Implication: Clinton did it!
Maybe if Huffington Post existed in 1992 and Americans, especially ALL Democrats were able to understand who and what you are and represent, you would never have become our President. You, sir, are unquestionably, A DOUCHEBAG and a criminal one at that.
Y'know what's really hilarious about this? In 1992, Arianna Huffington more or less was Michele Bachmann -- an ultra-libertarian religious freak lusting for power. The difference: Huffington, born in Greece, could not run for president directly. So she tried to "Lady MacBeth" her way into power via her easily manipulated gay husband. The audacity of her stratagem and the nudity of her ambition made Aaron Burr seem like a man of small vision. Then she (allegedly) switched sides and waltzed into the Democratic party as though she owned the joint. In 2008, she did everything imaginable to destroy her hated CLEEEN-ton wing of the party.
Now we have Obama.
How's that working out for ya, Huffpo fans?
I will not permit anyone to rewrite history on this score. False equivalences are odious; it is not the case that there were "problems on both sides." The Obama wing was 100 percent guilty; the Clinton wing was 100 percent innocent. Yes, it really is that simple: The Obots cannot escape the evidence of their own ink.
The quotes given above were not isolated; they are representative of the sheer horrifying shit that the Obots lobbed into the American conversation every minute of every hour of every day throughout that campaign. The vile, indefensible Obama campaign of 2008 (especially in its online manifestation) destroyed the Democratic party.
To paraphrase Richard Pryor: I ain't never gonna forget.
To paraphrase Winston Churchill: History will be unkind to the Obots, because I intend to write it.
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If only Hillary would dare to step into the void and challenge Obama, but listening to Hillary it seems highly unlikely that she would seek to run UNLESS Obama does an LBJ.
Can you imagine what would happen in obotland if Obama declined to run and Hillary jumped back into the ring?
And what would happen in Obotland if Obama's failing poll numbers and Hillary's popularity drove him to shed Biden and pick Hillary as his VP/Running mate?
What would the Daily KOSsacks and Americablo and all the others who chose hopey/changey/empty suit over the Talented, Experienced, Accomplished Hillary, do?
I've read numerous stories about worry within the party that Obama is going to fail in 2012 an in the process take every Dem who's up in 2012 down with him. If those stories are true can a whisper in Obama's ear be far behind?
posted by ANonOMouse : 1:37 PM
And of course....every time we complained, we were called racists.
Interesting thing is that the Obots went wild on anyone of color, especially in DC...and the press pretended no one went.
Hillary won't run, because they will say his loss was due to her, we have a choice of DINO Obama and the GOP nominee. ;-(
Will it be Flat Earth or the millionaire that claims to be unemployed like many Americans and lives in one state and claims to live in the cellar in another.
"Blame Timmy!" and other tales of the Great Depression
A new book by Ron Suskind, drawing from an inside White House source, claims that Barack Obama told Tim Geithner to dissolve Citigroup. Little Timmy simply put his hands over his ears and pretended not to hear, which made our president very, very cross when he found out.
This yarn (as Naked Capitalism says) does not pass the smell test.
The only problem with this effort at revisionist history is that it is completely out of synch with other actions the Administration took in February and March 2009 that had to have been approved by Obama. And his posture before this supposed Citigroup “decision” and after, has been consistently bank friendly. Obama knew from the example of the Roosevelt administration, which he claimed to have studied in preparing his inaugural address, that the time to undertake any aggressive action was at the very start of his term, in that critical speech. March was far too late to start studying the question of whether to nationalize Citigroup.
The obvious interpretation: Obama knows that he is losing, has lost, the Democratic wing of the Democratic party. So he's hoping we'll buy a new narrative in which he intended to do the right thing, only to be undone by his subordinates.
And those subordinates were chosen by...?
It's a depression, all right. An upcoming NYT story will argue that the president is depressed. Join the club, Barrikins.
But rest assured: There are people at the Times who, based on the paper's reporting, believe Obama is depressed—the kind of depression where, if he weren't the president of the United States, he wouldn't be getting out of bed in the morning.
Hmm. Perhaps I'm being over-optimistic, but...consider the possibility that this story, like the "blame Timmy" tale, is a trial balloon. Obama knows that he blew it. Perhaps he is preparing the way for a clean, decent, LBJ-style exit. (Some might say that LBJ stood a better chance of re-election than Obama does.) To save face, he needs something like a medical excuse. And depression is now seen as a medical malady...
I don't mean to make light of a serious issue -- and depression is, without doubt, a very dangerous condition. But I have to admit: The possibility that Obama might be laying the groundwork for a reasonably honorable exit sure has me cheered up.
Wait a minute. Why be cheerful? I'm writing an Obama book. If he steps aside and lets Hillary or Al run, he could destroy the audience for my work in a single stroke.
That...that bastard! I can't believe it. Obama might screw me over again!
If you're interested, here are a couple of paragraphs from the introductory chapter -- personal recollections of 2008 and the birth of the left-wing anti-Obama movement.
The progressive blogosphere was, in short, being run by latecomers to the left, by brie-and-chablis poseurs who decided that they would represent the working class. Their shock troops were affluent, arrogant college kids whose conception of all pre-Dubya history amounted to mere rumor, yet who had the gall to tell me what to do. Perhaps not surprisingly, these fetuses spent much of 2008 repeating many of the more outrageous right-wing fabrications about the Evil Clinton Conspiracy – or, to use the preferred Kossack terminology, the Bush-Clinton Crime Family. All of the reactionary right’s favorite boogeymen – Vince Foster’s “murder,” Whitewater, the Clinton body count, Bill the cocaine king – sprang back to life. These de-staked vampires invaded the left side of the graveyard, draining the blood out of every blog that didn’t adopt the garlic necklace of strict comment moderation.
Moulitsas and company knew full well that they were printing accusations every bit as nonsensical as the tea party absurdities which they would later deplore. The Obots concocted lies, defended lies, luxuriated in lies, traded brightly-wrapped packages of lies as if they were Christmas presents. Meanwhile, the defenders of Hillary Clinton were granted no mouth. In 1888, Pope Leo XIII proclaimed that error had no rights; 120 years later, Pope Moulitsas proclaimed that truth had no rights.
Lifelong Democrats who did not favor Obama were ordered to leave the party. “We can win without them” became something of a mantra on Daily Kos and Democratic Underground. The party’s new leadership convinced the young and the naïve that anyone who did not bear witness to the salvific radiance of Barack Obama must be the spiritual descendant of Nathan Bedford Forrest. Though my blog received little attention, the Obots felt compelled to assail me with accusations of racism – not just every day, but every hour of every day. Never mind the fact that I had voted for a black mayor in my first election, back in the 1970s. Never mind that I had cast a vote for a black presidential candidate (Jesse Jackson) in 1988, when most of the political geniuses who sought to educate me still wore diapers. Never mind the fact that I would have been, still would be, overjoyed to vote for Carol Moseley Braun. None of that mattered. No other black person in all of human history mattered: Only, only Obama – He, glorious He.
Am I telling you anything you don't already know? Perhaps not. But the purpose of this chapter is to record the story for this who did not live it. Memory fades; books last. What really happened in that period occurred in places where most historians rarely think to look. Sort of like 1788-89, y'know?
On second thought: Obama probably won't bow out, depression or no depression. (And feel free to insert a couple of capital Ds into that last sentence.) The Christian Science Monitor says that Obama still has a "fighting chance" at re-election.
Polls show that GOP voters believe Perry is electable, but polls of general election voters show Romney faring better than Perry against Obama. The Real Clear Politics average gives Obama a four-point lead over Perry but just a one-point lead over Romney.
People don't like Obama, but weirdo Republicans are scary. I suspect, though, that Mr. Average will reconcile himself to Mitt. He's really just a paler version of Obama. His entire campaign comes down to this: "I'm awful, but at least I'm not nuts."
I'd like to see Rick Perry, Rod Blagojevich and Dolly Parton have a Big Hair contest. I'm not sure Dolly would win.
Europe:Ian Welsh has a brilliantly simple solution to the Euro crisis.
It’s not complicated. It’s just unthinkable.
1) Let the banks go under if they’re bankrupt. Make their private owners take the losses.
2) Refloat the banks, this will cost a TON less than having governments pay of private losses.
This plan would have worked here. It was unthinkable here because it would have ruined the people who ruined the economy, and those people control the people who control much of the media. If the government had taken over the great Wall Street banks (as the FDIC has often taken over smaller insolvent banks), the propagandists would have screamed "Socialism!" And so trillions were tossed at the bankers. Apparently, that was not socialism.
Speaking of socialism:
Oh, and every economy can’t be Germany. Everyone can’t be in a trade surplus.
Yeah. About that.
The teabaggers incessantly tell us that our economy is strangled by government regulations and those mythical all-powerful unions. We're told that if we want to regain our place in the world, we must get rid of pesky regulatory agencies like the EPA, and we must destroy those few unions left -- because life is obviously just sooooooo much better in those southern "right to work" states like Alabama. Paradise on Earth, Alabama is.
Okay. So why does Germany, for all of its problems, have a trade surplus?
In Germany, the unions remain strong -- so strong that they actually help to run the corporations. Unions are so strong that companies give at least one full month of vacation to workers, who also get double pay in December. (They call that Weihnachtsgeld.) This means that the corporations pay 13 months of salary for 11 months of work. Long-time workers get even more -- 15, 16 months of salary for 11 months of work. As for regulations -- well, ask anyone who has ever lived in Germany: Everything there is regulated to an obscene degree. You can't install a goddamned door in a small office without having to meet the sort of specs one might expect to go into a space shuttle escape hatch.
According to libertarian theory, Germany simply should not work. Everyone there should be starving.
So again: Why do they have a trade surplus?
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Good catch on the "Blame Timmy" angle...I thought that was weird, too. Regarding the intro to your book...damn, I think you should tell us how you really feel! If I may quibble over one of your funny bits, I think "fetuses" could use a modifier, along the lines of "fresh out of the womb fetuses." And it would match your "destaked vampires" better that way! :)
"Never mind the fact that I would have been, still would be, overjoyed to vote for Carol Moseley Braun." - I'm in 100% agreement with you on that one Joseph. Everybody seems to forget that she ran for Pres. a few years ago. I remember her going on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and she basically said she was ending her campaign. All I could think when I saw that was "I didn't even know she had a campaign to start with."
Well I might as well ask you this one - How come the African American & Liberal communities did NOT support CMB in '04 the way it did Barack in '08? Was it only because she was a woman OR that both communities she couldn't take on Bush & win?
I'm so glad you mentioned CMB and I'm looking forward to your book whenever it comes out.
The nomenclature problem: Time to rehabilitate the word "progressive"?
In 2008, I declared myself a liberal as a way of distinguishing myself from the progressives who hailed Obama as they new Messiah. (I derisively called them "progs" when not slamming them as Obots.) My definition of "liberal" was and is pretty simple -- it encompasses everyone who thinks that FDR was a pretty cool guy. You're a liberal if you think that what we need today is a new New Deal.
Alas, "liberal" can be a confusing word, especially to young people trying to dope out what's what in the world of politics. "Liberal" sounds a lot like "libertarian," even though those two terms have very different meanings. "Liberal" is also very close to "neo-liberal," even though neo-liberalism and libertarianism are cognate ideologies which stand united in their distaste for FDR-style liberalism.
Adding to the confusion, some libertarians -- primarily Milton Friedman -- have embraced the term "liberal." Essentially, Friedman simply took the concept of neo-liberalism and chopped off the "neo" prefix. When Pinochet fell from power in Chile, Friedman declared it a dark day for liberalism.
Similarly, F.W. Hayek once told a Chilean interviewer that "My personal preference leans toward a liberal dictatorship rather than toward a democratic government devoid of liberalism." This definition of "liberalism" differs from mine.
(Hayek is best-known for writing The Road to Serfdom. There is great irony here. Serfdom, slavery and peonage appear only in countries which veer toward libertarianism, not in the mixed economies of western Europe, Canada and Australia.)
Young people consider Thomas Friedman -- yes, the guy who wrote The World is Flat, the guy who cheered the Iraq invasion -- a liberal. I'm not kidding.
This confusion serves no good purpose. Is it time to admit that "progressive" -- a term I really, really dislike -- might be preferable?
One reason I dislike that label may stem from my puckish self-identification as an "Eisenhower Republican." What I really mean by that phrase is a preference for the bipartisan economic consensus that held sway in America between FDR and Reagan. Since Reagan's inauguration, we've been lurching toward purer and purer forms of libertarianism -- and the result has been national ruin. We don't make anything anymore. People are talking about secession, sustained joblessness, and the end of the national experiment.
Can a person who advocates a "back to the future" policy call himself a "progressive"? Or do we need still another term?
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Sorry my comment is too long. Please edit it down or disregard it entirely.
I would suggest "conservative" if it wasnt already taken. I am only half joking. The enemies I see, are from theocrats who believe they can reduce the scope of democracy. Resisting this pernicious innovation would be conservation. Similarly I am against rent seeking and extension, economic looting, and the transfer of public property to private. This is all about conservation. Conserving the capital stock and the means of production. Conserving the natural resources of the land. Conserving social order and the social integrity of the country. Keeping the United States as one country.
So since conservative is not gonna fly, how about "One Nation Liberal"? Orthodox? Americanist?
Liberal implies freedom, but these assholes only want freedom to screw others.
Harry
posted by Anonymous : 2:01 PM
I'm confused...you're a Republican?? Old-school Republican, but....Republican?
I understand Puck was a sprite and I admire a sprite spirit....I myself would wear fur coats to protests...and then go in to the bar to share Manhattans (dry, with a twist) with those we were protesting and pester them some more...but...Republican?
If so, why Eisenhower? Why not go back to Teddy and the Bull Moose and the National Parks?
Back to the question at hand. I'm stubbornly sticking with the term Dem. I tell people I'm a Yellow Dog Dem, in the original sense. They don't know the full quote, which is: the coiner of the term said he'd vote for an old yeller dog if it ran as a Dem....but *LOWER than that he would not go.*
I keep waiting for someone to call me racist for that, but unless you connect the dots for them, the collitch-edjucatit Obots miss the opportunity.
While I understand your issues with the 'progressive' label, I think it's very useful in terms of messaging - one of the Democratic Party's biggest weaknesses. The historical confusion of the term 'liberal' and 'liberalism' is so pervasive that it seems poised to be re-appropriated in the same way that socialist/leftist political philosophy gets conflated with fascism.
You may not like (what you perceive as) it's connotations, but you should also ask yourself what the average voter thinks of when they hear the word. 'Liberal' can be twisted into, and associated with, many undesirable things or ideas - spending liberally, liberal arts, bleeding-heart liberals, etc. In contrast, 'conservative' works better as a value-loaded word: fiscally conservative, conserve energy... and as a political identifier it implies moderation ('conservative' policies by definition shouldn't be radical - and yes, I am surpressing laughter as I write these phrases in this context). It's similar to the right/left labels, which in an of themselves are value-weighted towards 'right'.
And in the long run, your opposition to the 'Progressive' label will amount to nothing. It's in wide usage and isn't going away - you fought a principled fight, the cause is lost, time to move on. What's more important is 'Progressives' refusing to distance themselves from the word 'Liberal' - if someone self-identifies as a Progressive but NOT a Liberal, I'd love to hear how they draw the distinction.
posted by Hoarseface : 2:18 PM
I like the term "populist" - it's what we need right now - someone to speakon behalf of "the people" rather than "the corporations", "the oligarchy", "the plutocrats", the theocrats, or any "Them".
Populist? No way. That is a term made evil by those who have worn it. See: Tom Watson. See: Bo Gritz. See: Every reactionary conspiracy-monger who couldn't reconcile himself to any sector of the GOP.
What I really want to see is simply someone who refuses to shy away from the implications of any label thrown at them. Socialist? Maybe a little, but so is the entire industrialized world. Liberal? Certainly! LBJ ushered in civil rights legislation and Great Society initiatives which greatly reduced poverty and inequality. Progressive? Per Wikipedia, a "broadly based reform movement that reached its height early in the 20th century and is generally considered to be middle class and reformist in nature." Who wouldn't want to be associated with that?
We, and our representatives, should own the labels rather than run from them. They're compliments disguised as insults.
posted by Hoarseface : 3:25 PM
I hate the term progressive. The label was coined because the REPUKES turned the word Liberal into a dirty word, via Rush during the reign of King Ronald the I.
I refuse to allow a bunch of thick-neck, union busting, middle-class loathing, poor hating. choice rejecting, homophobic, social compact enemies, money worshipping scrooges, define me. Hell, they can't even define themselves. Who are they anyway? ARE THEY Teapartiers, Religious Neo-Conservative Zealnuts, Neo-Conservatives, Fiscal Neo-Cons, GOP'ers or Republicans?
Let's stick with Liberal, if it was good enough for FDR, it's good enough for me.
ANon: That is my first instinct. But as I've said, I'm starting to look at this from the viewpoint of a young person just learning politics. Most young people aren't all that bright, and they usually are badly educated. How can we ask them to distinguish between "liberal" and "neoliberal" and "libertarian"?
I was PUMA within minutes of the term being coined over The Confluence. When people ask me what I am I say, "Puma." When they ask "What's that?" I say "A pissed off Liberal with multiple firearms," followed by "Look it up.
I strongly recommend you read "the curse of tina" on Adam Curtis' BBC blog.
Harry
posted by Anonymous : 6:06 PM
I agree Joseph, it's a problem. But don't you think young adults will work their way through the differences in much the same way you and I did? Of course that was simpler time, we didn't have all the distractions of cellphones, txt messaging, PC's, 750 Cable TV Channels, Twitter, Video gaming, mixed with the 24/7 bombardment of political messaging that comes from places like FOX News and MSNBC. Come to think of it, that's quite a swamp of information and misinformation, I'm not sure I could navigate through that swamp if I was a young adult.
While we're on the subject of political nomenclature, what political brand would you use to describe the Tea Party? And how about Ron Paul, what in the world is he? He calls himself a libertarian, but his positions on choice and gay rights don't exactly fit the mold. The only word I know that fits his strange mixture of political positions is Crackpot?
posted by ANonOMouse : 6:29 PM
New name for the democratic party.
People's Party. give fox news something different to zero in on.
Obama and his ilk are best described as Reagan-Democrats or as I call them Obama-crats. Enema-crats has a certain appeal.
Perhaps we should start calling ourselves Real Democrats.
posted by Mr. Mike : 8:01 PM
The problem with progressive is that it explicitly implies linear time. We are no longer in linear time,historical time. We are in real time a misnomer if there ever was one. War, Evil and the End of Hisotry by Bernard-Henri Levy explains it well. Baudrillard explains it better.
Why the Wall St Demo will lay into their hands. See my blog on it.
I use the terms "progressive," "prog," and "liberal" interchangeably.
But it does hurt that, thanks to the O-Holes, progressives are now thought of as the little pr*cks who call everyone and his brother a racist. More damage to the left by Obama and Company.
I rather liked Howard Dean's line, that he was from the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party. A clear statement of position, even though he was not particularly liberal.
I've never found progressive a bad label. It represented a time and a movement when REPUBLICAN presidents (several in a row) did a lot of reining in business interests, on behalf of the people.
I think that was why Glenn Beck spent so many hundreds of hours trying to turn the term into a curse word, and the fount of all current evils.
I take that as a sign of its feared power as a labeled movement, plus the next step after the right had demonized liberalism.
But apart from the dyed in the wool right who has been eating up the attack on progressives or progressivism, this attack has not yet turned the COUNTRY against it, as these attacks are too new and too specifically targeted to have reached the broader masses.
So, I'd advocate for picking up the term, dusting it off, refusing to back away from it because of specious attacks, and throw in the other Beck bete noir, social justice, as a kicker.
XI
posted by Anonymous : 9:47 AM
Seymour: I hope never to become so advanced a thinker that I give up on the concept of linear time.
Then again -- if you're saying that you've found a way for me to be thirty again -- and this time, unattached....
I'm a Liberal and proud of it. Always have been, always will be. The word only got demonized because we let it happen.
If I'd had enough coffee to wake me up, I'd try to find Wes Clark's brilliant definition and defense of the word from 2003 or 2004 on Bill Maher's show.
F**K Progs and their infernal arrogance and stupidity. You call me a Progressive, I'm gonna hit you.
posted by LandOLincoln : 10:36 AM
Liberals got women the right to vote. Liberals got African-Americans the right to vote. Liberals created Social Security and lifted millions of elderly people out of poverty. Liberals ended segregation. Liberals passed the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act. Liberals created Medicare. Liberals passed the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act. What did conservatives do? They opposed them on every one of those things every one. So when you try to hurl that label at my feet, 'Liberal,' as if it were something to be ashamed of, something dirty, something to run away from, it won't work, Senator. Because I will pick up that label and I will wear it as a badge of honor." matt santos, west wing
Until yesterday, I had only a mild interest in the growing scandal surrounding Kinde Durkee, the prime mover behind Durkee and Associates, a Burbank accounting firm which handles the campaign funds for many California Democrats. At first glance, this would seem to be a simple matter of embezzlement.
An affidavit from an FBI agent alleges that Durkee, who has served as treasurer on hundreds of political campaigns, took money from campaign funds that she controlled and used the money to pay her own personal and business expenses. She also allegedly used cash from some campaigns to cover shortfalls in the accounts of other campaigns.
Specifically, Durkee allegedly took nearly $700,000 out of the account of California Assemblyman Joe Solorio.
So: Looks like Solorio got robbed. That's what the FBI's complaint says. Some of that money went into the account of another Dem, Loretta Sanchez. Durkee has, over the years, taken money from various accounts for personal use; she would then cover her tracks with money taken from still other candidates. From the complaint:
...bank records reviewed by the FBI establish that Ms. DURKEE appears to have signature authority over more than 400 bank accounts, including those for political campaigns, and that substantial sums of money have been routinely moved out of client campaign committees into D&A accounts or into other client campaign committee accounts.
So far, this looks like standard-issue theft. But an excellent post by lambert at Corrente draws our attention to some complicating factors.
Senator Diane Feinstein is claiming that Durkee "wiped out" her campaign war chest, which held some five million bucks. "Durkee alone controlled access to the account."
What's odd here is that I've (so far) seen no indication that this kind of money went to Durkee personally. In fact, we've heard that she used stolen money to fund "shopping trips to Costco." If Feinstein is down five mill, where did it go?
A more important question: Why did the Democrats keep using her? There were plenty of indications that she was crooked. In recent times, Durkee has racked up large fines from Fair Political Practices Commission.
One longtime client, state Sen. Christine Kehoe (D-San Diego), fired Durkee in 2009 and notified the district attorney's office after an audit of her campaign fund by the state Franchise Tax Board turned up "irregular activities."
The strangest tale comes from 2007: See here and here. Durkee was listed as the treasurer for a group called "Californians for Obama," which existed -- allegedly -- to raise money for the Obama presidential campaign. This group was run by a classic con artist (and claimed movie mogul) who bears the delightfully appropriate name of Emmett Cash. Cash, who is black, asked predominantly African American contributors to pony up for a fundraising cruise featuring Ertha Kitt and Maya Angelou, even though Kitt was booked elsewhere and Angelou supported Hillary. Ultimately, he didn't raise much money -- and none of the money he did raise went to Obama.
Cash isn't important. What's worth noting is the fact that Durkee was not tainted by this story, even though it all came tumbling out in 2007. Lambert asks the right question:
So, with a track record like that, why would the Ds use her?
His speculation:
...one obvious answer would be that while Durkee was diverting money for her own personal use, that was just her commission for laundering money to her D candidate clients for their personal use.
I'm going to have to agree and disagree here. Money laundering seems very possible -- but so far, I've seen zero indication that the candidates used Durkee to dip into their own campaign bank accounts. All the evidence so far suggests that those candidates were robbed.
For me, the question is: Did Durkee establish a link to the Obama campaign in 2008?
She was in a key position, given her contacts with Hollywood.
Major donors whose money is presumed lost in the scam range from film studios, Sony, Universal, Warner Brothers and Disney, to Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Robert Iger, the head of Disney, and Ron Meyer, of Universal, were also named as the sources of private donations which may have been embezzled, according to the Reuters news agency.
Ms Feinstein's celebrity supporters include Hollywood liberals Tom Hanks, Jane Fonda and George Clooney.
Interesting to think of Murdoch contributing to Feinstein.
At any rate, while this piece establishes that Durkee had close links to Hollywood money, it does not really tie her in with the Obama campaign. So far, her only verified "Obama" link goes to the scam run by Emmett Cash, which really had nothing to do with the man sitting in the Oval Office.
And yet: Surely the revelation of that scam would have brought Durkee to the attention of some folks in the Obama camp...?
Would it be hideously irresponsible to suggest that the campaign may have found a use for someone with Hollywood connections and a certain, shall we say, moral flexibility?
I ask these questions because everyone seems to have forgotten the huge tales of financial irregularity that came out during the 2008 campaign. See my earlier posts here and here. Those stories cite, in turn, this CBS expose on fake Obama donors bearing names like Dahsudhu Hdusahfd and Uadhshgu Hduadh. Newsweek found donors named "Doodad Pro" and "Good Will".
Obviously, the money from "Doodad" came from somewhere, or someone. It is reasonable to ask if these fake names hid donors from, oh, say, Hollywood -- donors who wanted to give more than the law allowed.
In addition to the donations the campaign has disclosed, however, it has taken an unprecedented $218 million from donors whose names it is keeping secret, according to FEC spokesman Robert Biersack.
That money came from individuals who in theory never passed the threshold of $200, the limit the FEC set for public disclosure of a donor’s name and place of residence, so there is no way of knowing how much foreign money could be included in that amount.
$218 million? Now we are talking real money.
Let me stress: I know of no evidence -- none whatsoever -- linking Durkee with the Mystery Donors. On the other hand, she was certainly well-positioned to interact with donors from Hollywood. Obviously, someone was going around to big donors and telling them: "If you want to hide your donations to the Obama campaign, here's what you do..."
Any favors she did for the Obama campaign may have encouraged Obama to make sure that California's top Democrats kept using her services, despite all of the warning lights.
(The previous sentence is pure conspiracy theory, of course. It was very irresponsible of me to have written such a sentence. I really deserve a good talking to.)
Incidentally, Obama's finance chairperson in 2008 was Penny Pritzker, the billionaire heiress to the much contested Pritzker fortune. She is a real piece of work in her own right: See her Wikipedia page and this In These Times article. I've found nothing linking her in any way to Durkee and Associates.
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Maybe the FBI has stumbled on a Democratic scandal. DM
posted by Anonymous : 10:57 PM
Who handled Hillary's Calif campaign funds?
Look for the republican controlled House to open an investigation into this and his Chicago connections if Obama's numbers start to come back next summer.
posted by Mr. Mike : 7:12 AM
Nice links to posts past. Some of the comments regarding Obama Sr's first trip to Hawaii are even more interesting now, given that possible picture of Grandpa Stanley's meeting him at the airport.
Also amusing to revisit people's predictions, many of which sadly came to pass. Is "b" from England still a reader/poster?
POGO has a must-read report showing what actually happens when the Federal government outsources jobs: while the actual workers doing the jobs may make less than government (unionized) workers, the work costs more overall.
In other words, not only is the federal government spending a lot more by paying contractors, in the end it pays more even than the private sector for the same function.
And while limitations on the data prevented POGO from pinpointing where those costs came from, it did suggest two obvious sources: profit and executive compensation.
Let's not pretend to be shocked. We all saw what happened during the Katrina clean-up; there were even congressional hearings. The Bush administration decided not to hire clean-up crews directly: That would be socialism. Instead, if a block needed debris hauled away, a fat gummint contract went to a large corporation that had donated to the Republican party. That corporation took its (huge) cut and then subcontracted out the job to another firm. And so on. Somewhere down the food chain, someone might finally hire a truck and a dozen minimum-wage day laborers. What should have been a gig that cost a few thousand dollars would turn into a $50,000 bill (or higher) for the taxpayers.
All for fear of socialism.
Of course, crony capitalism isn't capitalism at all. Only competition keeps capitalism efficient (something we were all once taught in grade school, though perhaps no longer). In the Katrina clean-up situation, there was no competition involved -- unless you're talking about the competition to make the largest donations to the Republican party.
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Exactly! Rent seeking behaviours. Fundamentally anti-market. Fundamentally against the public interest, and the national interest. And yet massively pervasive today. Almost all of Americas corporate managers are just rent seekers.
Disgusting, and universally defended as "business" by big business media, and mainstream politicians.
Its a crony country, and I dispair of it. Its ironic that Ames and Taibbi came back from Moscow and have been such successes here. The Emperor has no clothes and it was obvious to them after living in FSB controlled Moscow. The parallels are striking. Its obvious and yet 99% of this country is so indoctrinated they cant see it. A country run by Nomenclatura without functioning democracy. And I aint talking about Russian.
Sorry about the rant. But fine observation. Its the only economics one needs these days.
Harry
posted by Anonymous : 4:59 PM
Joe Allbaugh, a W college crony, Repub enforcer and and Rovian operative, wrecked FEMA, left Brownie as heir to the throne and glommed on to beaucoup fed contracts for multiple Katrina clean-ups. His firm later scored some sweet Saudi contracts down the line, kind of like Jim Bath's deal w/the brothers Bin Laden. Crony capitalism gone global.
Thank Nancy Impeachment is off the Table Pelosi (R-Calif) for this.
The Three stooges, Nancy, Harry, and Barry managed to revive a party in it's twilight in only two short years.
Instead of the dog and pony health care show we should have gotten investigations into what went wrong the previous eight years and solutions (including jail time) so it would never happen again. Chris, Keith, the late Tim Russert and Maureen Dowd own some of this too.
posted by Mr. Mike : 8:21 PM
My biggest shock upon hearing of this study was that this was the first study of it's kind. Call it confirmation bias, but I am not surprised in the least.
Many bitch about government, inefficiencies, waste, etc.. but one argument that can often be won is that of "Should this instead be done by private enterprise?" Fire/EMS/Police, public schools, road construction, prisons - these are things only the most hopelessly indoctrinated think should be run by for-profit corporations. Once you win the intellectual battle of "Are there some things that government does better? Or, for the purpose of the public good, should do as a matter of principle and/or social responsibility?" - once they concede that such situations exist, it's simply a matter of saying "Then how about Medicare / Health Insurance?" and so on; an ideological war of attrition. Sometimes it's enough to just make people reconsider their biases.
We've been hearing a lot about the need to reduce taxes even further on the alleged "job creators" -- the wealthiest of the wealthy. The Republicans propose to pay for this tax reduction by increasing taxes on the working class, who do not (in their view) pay their fair share. This excerpt from Alan Maass' The Case for Scoialism offers some insight into the true nature of the "job creator" class.
Let’s consider one of them: Stephen Schwarzman, Corporate America’s best-paid chief executive in 2008 and number 50 on the Forbes 400 list of richest Americans the next year. In 2008, Schwarzman raked in $702 million as head of the Blackstone Group, a Wall Street investment firm—most in the form of stock awards from an arrangement struck before Blackstone became a publicly traded company the year before.
What does Blackstone do that it needs to reward its top executive so handsomely? Blackstone is one of the world’s leaders in private equity investments, having helped pioneer the corporate takeover strategy. The idea is that an investment group swoops in and buys control of a company, takes out huge loans to finance the purchase, restructures operations to slash costs and free up cash, then resells the company and pays off the debt, while pocketing a big profit. The basic principle is nothing more than buy low and sell high, but the key is in the borrowing, or what Wall Street calls leverage. If you can get control of a company by only putting down a fraction of its purchase price, then your rate of return on the original investment multiplies.
For those who think that entrepreneurs take risks: That's the way it used to work, that's the way it should work. But the whole capitalist game has been largely taken over by guys like Schwarzman, who take no risk at all. He uses other people's money.
Blackstone has diversified into other areas. It dabbles in real estate and manages some hedge funds. But these other operations share something in common with Blackstone’s main business: They contribute nothing of any use to the economy or society. Blackstone doesn’t launch new businesses or develop innovative products. Its chief activity is to be a traveling parasite.
Schwarzman lives, much of the time, in a $35 million Manhattan mansion previously owned by John D. Rockefeller. (Say what you will about John D., at least he provided a useful product.) That's not Schwarzman's only home, of course; he considers himself a collector of houses.
The tens of millions that Stephen Schwarzman spent on another mansion in the Hamptons is money that thousands of workers didn’t get paid because they were laid off after a corporate takeover engineered by Blackstone. The trillions that the U.S. government committed to the Wall Street banks is money that can’t be used to expand food aid programs or to rebuild crumbling schools. The hundreds of billions devoted to the Pentagon every year is money that won’t go to conquering AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa.
From the point of view of anyone who wants to do something to make the world a better place, this is money that has been stolen—pure and simple.
At one time, the virtues of capitalism were competition, creativity and efficiency. But that's not what's happening now. Small business owners are true job creators, yet they can't get business loans. They are dying for lack of credit. Schwarzman, on the other hand, will always be able to use the money of others to play his parasitic games.
The libertarians say that they favor small business owners, but their ideas always make life easier for guys like Schwazman, not for those lower down on the food chain. The libertarians say they favor capitalism, but what they really favor is an unsustainable anarchy we might call post-capitalism.
In our new system, the people who want to make things cannot. The vampires thrive.
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I know this is long past due and all that. But I was thinking about Steve Schwartzman, and whether I hated him more or less than the other rent seeking crony "capitalists". It occurs to me that actually Schwartzman, despite some of his dumb comments and obscene wealth, is actually less objectionable than a whole bunch of managers of american business. Cos whilst he paid himself a lot of money, for a long time he didnt have shareholders. So at least he wasnt stealing from them.
In addition, one of the few things most managerial capitalists fear, is the idea that some Steve Schwartzman type will turn up and take over their company. Its the one thing that makes them try and earn their 30mn a year or whatever it is they choose to pay themselves.
He is at the top of the food chain. Workers are at the bottom. But Schwartzman doesn't affect my life much. He is the only thing generally stopping his prey from stealing even more money from the charges.
At the recent debate, Tea Partiers cheered the idea of just letting the uninsured die in the streets.
“Last night we got a disturbing view into the tea party’s extreme right-wing position on healthcare when members of the audience clapped and cheered the idea of letting someone without health insurance die,” Eddie Vale, communications director for the group Protect Your Care said in an e-mail. “Even worse, none of the Republican candidates on stage expressed a word of disapproval as the tea party audience literally clapped for blood. This was a spectacle one would have expected back in the gladiatorial combat of ancient Rome, not at a presidential debate.”
Will historians pinpoint this as the moment when the Republicans blew an election that should have been as easy as tic-tac-toe? Obama's low ratings and the win in Weiner's district had me presuming, earlier this evening, that the GOP had 2012 wrapped up. But then they bared their fangs.
That's the trouble with conservatives: Being creatures of pure Id, they have no concept of when they are doing something tactically stupid.
I'm not a great believer in the concept of karma, but in my experience, the kind of people who would cheer a thing like that usually get their comeuppance.
On a completely unrelated note: Have you noticed the pattern? When Al Qaeda offers a communication, they usually recommend an English-language book to read. A while back, it was William Blum's Rogue State. More recently, it was Bob Woodward's Obama's Wars. I think Al Qaeda is basically a book club at this point.
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I wish that Blitzer had paused after the audience reaction, and had gone to each candidate in turn with the question, with "if you don't agree with the audience, what would be YOUR solution?" There's really no logical answer besides socialised medicine (as in Europe and UK), ie in US terms Medicare for all.
A good host could have tangled the candidates in a net of logic. In the end that hypothetical guy, formerly healthy, with no health insurance, by his own choice, would have no doubt been treated as an emergency at a hospital, incurred high costs the bulk of which would, after his own bankruptcy, rest with taxpayers.
Perry, interviewed after the debate, is reported to have said that he was "taken aback" by the audience reaction, and that we should be finding ways to save lives. Yet in last week's debate he stated that he doesn't "struggle" with the thought that his state might execute an innocent man. Logic doesn't exist for some of these people, does it?
The media will go to the Tea Party's defense by noting it was only a few of the audience that did this. Never mind that this Darwinian utopia of too low tax rates and no government regulations is their goal.
I've noticed that republicans are all for "personal responsibility" unless those persons are on the board of a large corporation or work on Wall Street.
But this gives me an idea for one of your videos. Splice scenes from the debate with that of the audience at the Coliseum watching a gladiatorial contest. When they get to the part about no health insurance, show the toga clad watchers giving the thumbs down.
posted by Mr. Mike : 6:11 AM
...according to Blum it's "almost as good as being an Oprah book."
Do you think you think the GOP will use the song Kill the Poor at their rallies? youtu.be/euqf_UKFtgY (while of course this youtu.be/c9hYAQQFsoc still goes on no matter who wins)
I was thinking the same thing after the GOP win of Weiner's seat...that people who think Obama's a shoo in for 2012 may find out otherwise. I doubt that the shouts for the uninsured to be left to die will have any impact for the reason that most won't even know about it. Only political junkies watched the debate...and, as Twillight points out, Blitzer is a mouth-breather who wouldn't know an opportunity to nail people on the issues if came up to him and kicked him in the shin. If it's not played up on tv, only the political junkies on the internet will know that it happened.
I think the Book Club observation is hilarious...write it up and send the skit to SNL, if they accept freelance work.
Seriously: This Program really will solve the jobs crisis
Honest. This will work. I've run it by an actual economist and everything.
So far, no-one has been able to poke holes in this idea from a macroeconomic point of view. The quibbles have all been about the nature of the compensation. Look, it may well be true that YOU can't live on ten bucks an hour (a figure I settled on mostly because it made the math easy). But lots of people can. Lots of people wish they made that much.
The Program is one of those "employer of last resort" dealies. "Last resort" employment is directed at people who are desperate. If you've been unemployed for more than a year, you ought to be feeling desperate indeed.
Remember: The best way to raise wages across the board is for the country to attain full employment. This plan will do that. For precisely that reason, the big corporations would probably try to squelch the idea. Mass unemployment depresses the cost of labor. That's why so many companies are doing well right now, even though we remain mired in a recession.
Once again, I present...The Program. This time pay attention, dammit.
* * *
We've devoted the last few posts to Obama's "jobs" plan, which is mostly a matter of tax cuts. Tax cuts don't work. Payroll tax cuts make life easier for people who already have jobs, but they won't create jobs, and they won't make funding Social Security any easier.
How many jobs would Obama's plan create? No-one can say for sure. The folks at Moody's tell us that the plan would generate 2.6 million new jobs. Of course, the Moody's crew helped get us into this mess when they handed out AAA ratings to crap securities backed by crap mortgages, so forgive me if I remain un-awed by their genius.
For the sake of argument, let's say they are right. How much will each job cost?
The calculation is simple. (Here's a calculator.) Obama's proposal will cost $447,000,000,000. Dividing that number by 2,600,000 gives us $171,923 per job. I'd find that result more encouraging if the amount of jobs we got for the money was sufficient. But 2.6 million jobs aren't enough.
Presumably, if more people have jobs, demand will increase, which will stimulate new business. Even so, I think Moody's pulled that 2.6 million number out of its collective rectum. Aside from the tax cuts, most of Obama's program will go toward maintaining unemployment insurance and giving aid to the states. Those moves will preserve the status quo. I guess it would be better to preserve the status quo than to let things become even worse. But let's face it -- the status quo sucks; we need more radical action.
Look at the problem another way. How many people need jobs? And how much money would it take to give a job to everyone who wants one?
right now the gap in the U.S. labor market is around 11 million jobs when you take into account both the number of jobs we are down since the start of the recession and the number we should have gained to keep up with normal growth in the working-age population.
I'm not sure if that is THE correct figure, but it sounds about right, so let's use it.
We're talking about 11 million folks desperate for work -- so desperate that even people with college degrees should be willing to work at crappy, low-paying jobs, at least until the economy rights itself and more opportunities for advancement open up.
Let's give these people the opportunity to join a jobs program which I, for want of a better term, will call The Program. The Program will offer a job to anyone who really, really needs one.
How much should people on the Program be paid? Well, one must consider variables. Parents with underaged children need a bigger paycheck than single people do. Rents are hideous in some cities. And of course, some workers are very skilled; many are not.
For present purposes, let's say ten bucks an hour. On average.
Why? Because that figure is higher than minimum wage. You can live on ten bucks an hour. You will not live well, but you won't be living on the street. Believe me: There are a lot of people out there who envy those who make ten bucks an hour.
Most of all (for the purposes of this post), the calculations are easy if we use that number. A person making ten bucks an hour makes $400 a week or $20,800 a year.
And now we know how much money is required to give those 11 million people jobs for one year: $228,800,000,000.
That's roughly half the amount of money Obama is asking for his plan. So we can stretch this out for two years. Two years of guaranteed full employment for everyone.
(Some people say that business cannot tolerate "uncertainty." Well, I just took care of the uncertainty thing right there, didn't I?)
I can hear you screaming: "But if the government is to be the employer of last resort, you need to shell out for a lot more than the cost of labor! You need plants, equipment, raw materials..." The old school term would be "the means of production." I hope that phrase is still permitted.
Guess what? All of that "means of production" stuff is already out there, provided by capitalists all across America.
No, I'm not talking about expropriating it. Nope nope nope. Don't put words into my mouth.
Here's the pitch: Tell employers all across this nation that if they hire workers enrolled in the Program, the Program will pay the cost of labor. The employers will get the added benefit of that labor -- and the cost to them will be zero.
Think about it. Just about every restaurant in America is understaffed, because the profit margin is so narrow. Every store could use a little more help. So could manufacturing, to the extent that American manufacturing still exists. Lots of places would be able to keep longer hours.
Would the Program be "socialism"?
In a previous post, I said that history is not Calvinball: You can't make up the rules as you go along. Well, the English language is not Calvinball either. Traditionally, the word "socialism" refers to government control of the means of production.
That is not what the Program would give us. Nope, nope, nope.
Businessmen would have total control of their businesses. They would make use of the Program only if they want to do so. It's voluntary.
I think they'll want to. What businessman would ignore a chance to get free labor?
Is this like unemployment insurance or welfare? Nope nope nope. People on the Program are required to work.
Would Program workers be given cozy sinecures? Would they be encouraged to be lazy? Nope nope nope. At any time, a bad Program worker could be fired and replaced by a more competent Program worker. These workers would have every motivation to excel, in order to keep their jobs after the two year mark.
What if a Program worker wants more than ten bucks an hour? Simple. That worker should polish his or her resume and scan the internet for high-paying employment -- same as now.
Would the Program depress wages? Hell no! By offering jobs that pay slightly more (though not a lot more) than minimum wage, there would be upward pressure on wages, at least at the lower end of the economic spectrum.
Besides, full employment raises wages across the board. We saw this during the Clinton years. As wages rise, large numbers of people head into higher tax brackets. That's how Clinton was able to get the government out of the red. That is the only way to pay back the national debt.
What about health care? A huge sticking point, admittedly. I've ignored it because (frankly) I wanted to keep the numbers simple in order to get the basic idea across. But I think this issue could be worked out. Personally, I would like to see the government provide health care to Program workers.
(I'd also like to see student loan payments temporarily postponed, or at least reduced, for people on the Program.)
I can see only one real problem. What about those employers (Wal-Mart comes to mind) who would fire current workers in order to hire Program workers? If that sort of thing happened on a massive scale, the Program would be defeated.
I fear that this aspect of the Program would require regulation and oversight. The Program must have rules. The rules would insure that, in any given place of business, the proportion of non-Program workers could not go down. If it did, then that firm could no longer make use of the Program.
For example: If a small museum had a staff of 20 in 2010, it could not reduce its staff to 19 and then hire a Program worker. It could, however, keep the staff at 20 and then bring in a 21st worker from the Program. The gift shop could always use an extra hand.
Arguably, the Program should be restricted to smaller businesses. Firms would be allowed to hire only a limited number of Program workers.
If you wanted to start up a company, wouldn't you like to have three or four workers (maybe more) with a labor cost of zero, or close to zero? I think there would be a lot more start-ups. A lot more entrepreneurship. A lot more risk-taking.
Write Obama. Write your representative. Write your senator. Tell them to get with the Program.
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Previously, several readers raised valid concerns about the Program. These have yet to be addressed. The concerns all boil down to this question: Why subsidize only businesses that create relatively low-wage jobs when the country needs to create well-paying jobs and reduce inequality?
The incentives in the Program are not aligned with the requirements of a viable long-term strategy. I see no reason why this must be so.
No, I'm glad he reposted it. I would totally start up a new business if I could get a few workers for free for two years. That would be enough time to get it up and running. In fact, I'm thinking of starting one anyway. I may as well sell my product/s or services as someone else's.
Jotman: I'd like to do lots of things to reduce inequality. For one thing, you could pay for the Program -- and extend it over more than two years, if needed -- by returning to Reagan-era tax rates on the affluent. That would help.
Beyond that, full employment raises wages across the board and thus reduces inequality. I seem to recall that a guy named Karl once said that, and he wasn't the only one. It's also the lesson of history. It's actually common sense.
Like it or not, it also seems to be the lesson of history that you fill up the lobs at the bottom before moving up.
Suppose The Program offered $40,000 a year jobs. You can easily see the problems. First, the money to pay for it all becomes harder to raise -- either that, or you get only halfway to the goal of full employment, which means that there would be no upward pressure on wages. Second, there would be massive incentive for people to quit their jobs at Wal-Mart and get with The Program. And that would defeat the purpose of The Program.
If you really need $40,000 a year, as I said -- polish up your resume and look for work on the internet, same as now. It'll be a lot easier to find that kind of job in a period of full employment.
Is this a panacea or a new economic system? No, I am not here offering my take on "How I"d run the zoo." I'm simply trying to come up with a politically do-able temp fix that will bring us closer to full employment.
Of course, politics are so nutso right now, it's a little hard to say what is and is not "do-able."
i think you are delusional - there's no cheap energy any more so these pie-in-the-sky plans aren't goin to work. We can't just pretend that we're not insolvent during continuing climate catastrophe "lead" by a completely corrupt government working solely for corporate America while the rest of us are hung out to dry.
posted by Anonymous : 3:46 AM
I saw a program on the local news this morning that helps people in poverty. $20k is poverty. And one of the experts interviewed mentioned that anyone in poverty these days is in serious straits because these levels were set decades ago. We can quibble over the ability to live on $10/hr and how that is more per hour than the seriously lagging minimum wage, but that got me thinking...no, Anonymous 3:46 who can't even make up a nym...Joseph isn't delusional. We all are. We've been focusing on miniscule tweaks to a seriously out of date minimum wage which isn't half of what someone needs to get by in this world. Where's the mass motivation to fight going to come from if it's only going to be over crumbs?
As per the reference to climate by Anonymous -- surely taxpayer incentives ought to favor companies that create jobs that are environmentally sustainable.
Will the program really reduce inequality?
It looks to me as if the business owner will be earning profit on those $10/hr jobs provided free to him from the state. So the government is subsidizing the profits of some business owners, but not others.
Why reward a subset of business owners (those who create low-paying jobs), while doing nothing for business owners who create well-paying (often high-tech or environmental) jobs? First, it's not fair. Second, it's not what an advanced developed country should be doing. It's the latter group that is more worthy of incentives.
Well-paying jobs create good jobs, because well paid employees have more money to spend on services -- eating out, etc. They don't shop mainly at WalMart. They don't eat at mainly at McDonalds. You create the most well-paying service jobs (even better than $10/hr) as a biproduct of providing incentives for the creation of high paying jobs.
In our previous post, we discussed a very strange Washington Post piece by David Ignatius -- a piece which comes that close to admitting (or positing) that Barack Obama has a background with the CIA. Does Ignatius have any inside info on that score? Does he, like, know people? People who would know things about our president that most people don't know?
Errrr....maybe. His Wikipedia entry offers some clues...
Ignatius's coverage of the CIA has been criticized as being defensive and overly positive. Melvin Goodman, a 42-year CIA veteran, Johns Hopkins professor, and senior fellow at the Center for International Policy has called Ignatius "the mainstream media’s apologist for the Central Intelligence Agency." Goodman cites[8][9] as examples of this alleged apologism Ignatius's criticism of the Obama administration for investigating the CIA's role in the use of torture in interrogations during the Iraq War,[10] and his charitable defense of the agency's motivations for outsourcing such activities to private contractors.[10] Columnist Glenn Greenwald has levied similar criticism against Ignatius[11] and has dubbed him "the CIA's spokesman at The Washington Post".
In addition to his career as a journalist, Ignatius is also a successful novelist. He has written six novels in the suspense/espionage fiction genre, which draw on his experience and interest in foreign affairs and his knowledge of intelligence operations. Reviewers have compared Ignatius to classic spy novelists such as Graham Greene. Ignatius’s novels have also been praised for their realism; his first novel, Agents of Innocence, was at one point described by the CIA on its website as "a novel but not fiction."...
Many spy novelists have links, direct or indirect, to their nation's intelligence services. I must confess that I've not yet read Agents of Innocence, which is about a CIA operative penetrating the Palestinians in Lebanon in the 1970s and '80s. But the Amazon description is noteworthy:
To an extent, the book is a fictionalization of life of real-world CIA man, Robert Ames. Purportedly, this novel is on the reading list at "The Farm" (the CIA's training ground at Camp Peary near Williamsburg, VA), and CIA Director George Tenet himself recommended this book in an interview on NPR several years ago.
Ames was killed in the 1983 embassy bombing in Lebanon.
At this point, perhaps I should mention Wayne Madsen's work on the Obama-as-CIA-operative angle. Frankly, I'm a little loathe to do so: Madsen has never seen fit to mention me, even though he is laying claim to territory I had staked out in pieces published earlier. More importantly, Madsen has, in the past, injured his reputation through shoddy work and an over-reliance on unnamed sources.
His major piece on Obama is particularly frustrating. Much of his research is of genuine interest -- and some of it is groundbreaking. Best of all, his sources are (on this one occasion) open to verification.
Alas, long sections of his article go off on bizarre tangents: Madsen talks ad nauseum about MKULTRA, Jonestown, ESP and other topics with no discernible relevance to Obama or his family. This sensationalistic "everything but the kitchen sink" approach is a hallmark of the worst sort of conspiracy-addled literature. I prefer a clean, linear narrative.
That said, Madsen has made one find which deserves far greater attention than it has heretofore received. It concerns Stanley Armour Dunham, father to Stanley Ann and grandfather to our current president. To make a long story short, Madsen suspects that Stanley Armour was the first "spooked up" personage in the family. This proposition will strike many as silly, since the guy was a furniture salesman for much of his life -- although he does appear to have served in an intelligence capacity during the war.
The official story is that Ann met Barack Obama Sr. (an exchange student from Africa) when they both attended the same Russian language class in Hawaii. The elder Obama was in the States pursuant to a cultural exchange program which was almost certainly sponsored by the CIA. Frankly, the Agency would have been seriously off its game if it hadn't tried to recruit a Kenyan up-and-comer like the elder Obama.
The official version of how the two met may not represent the full story. Madsen displays a photograph which (he alleges) shows Stanley Armour Dunham meeting Barack Obama Sr. at the airport on the night of the latter's arrival in Hawaii. I reproduce that photo here.
Is that really a picture of Obama's father and grandfather meeting at the airport? Meeting each other well before the president's father met the president's mother?
By way of comparison, here is a shot (taken from the book A Singular Woman) of the boy who would be President, romping on the beach with his grandfather...
Looks like the same guy.
So...what the hell is going on? If Barack Obama's grandpa was just a furniture salesman, then why did he go to the airport to greet an African student whom the CIA was obviously hoping to recruit?
The more one ponders this matter, the more difficult it becomes to ignore the implications.
Mr. Ignatius: Any time you want to jump in and offer an explanation, we are all attention...
(Side note: In one of his books, Barack Obama refers to his mother as a "soldier for the New Deal." Didn't run in the family, did it?)
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What was O's grandpa Stanley doing in Hawaii? iirc, the grandma went to work there, and grandpa stayed home and mocked her concerns about harassment at the bus stop.
