‘The Union List’
by Downtowner, posted on Sunday, July 31st, 2011 at 11:57 pm
Well, this has been an interesting cap on an interesting few weeks. I’ve spent most of this evening trying not to have a hyperbolic reaction to the Deal of Debt Ceiling Global Economic Doom, but, well, guess you can tell from the term I’ve applied to it that I’ve largely failed.
I’d have to say the most prevalent reaction to the Deal of Debt Ceiling Global Economic Doom I am seeing on lefty blogs tonight seems so hyperbolic on the face of it (We’re DOOMED) that I tried and tried to resist the impulse to say the same. But there it is. I think we might well be doomed.
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Tags: Barack Obama, corporatocracy, Debt Ceiling Crisis, depression, economy, recession, War Games
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by Dean Baker, posted on Wednesday, July 20th, 2011 at 2:45 pm
Cross-posted from Truthout, where it was originally published on July 18, 2011.
The ability of Washington to turn everything on its head has no limits. We are in the midst of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Even though the recession officially ended two years ago, there are still more than 25 million people who are unemployed, can only find part-time work or who have given up looking for work altogether. This is an outrage and a tragedy. These people’s lives are being ruined due to the mismanagement of the economy.
And we know the cause of this mismanagement. The folks who get paid to manage and regulate the economy were unable to see an $8 trillion housing bubble. They weren’t bothered by the doubling of house prices in many areas, nor the dodgy mortgages that were sold to finance these purchases. Somehow, people like former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan and his sidekick and successor Ben Bernanke thought everything was fine as the Wall Street financers made billions selling junk mortgage and derivative instruments around the world.
When the bubble burst, one of the consequences was an increased budget deficit. This is kind of like two plus two equals four. The collapsing bubble tanked the economy. Tax revenue plummets and we spend more on programs like unemployment insurance and foods stamps. We did also have some tax cuts and stimulus spending to boost the economy. The result is a larger budget deficit.
All of this is about as clear as it can possibly be. The large deficit came about because the housing bubble, which was fueled by Wall Street excesses, crashed the economy. Yet, we are constantly being told by politicians from President Obama to Tea Party Republicans that we have a problem of out-of-control spending.
The claim of out-of-control spending is simply not true. It is an invention, a fabrication, a falsehood with no basis in reality that politicians are pushing to advance their agenda. And that agenda is not pretty.
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Tags: Barack Obama, deficit, economics, legislation, Medicare, Social security, Wall Street
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by n0madic, posted on Monday, July 18th, 2011 at 7:35 am
Like a lot of progressives, I’ve been troubled by the President’s response to the debt ceiling crisis which Republicans in Congress have been engineering lately. I’m not a deficit hawk. I believe we need more social investment, not less. So, as far as I’m concerned, both sides of this negotiation are on the wrong side of the debate.
And it’s not just that allowing the debate to narrow in this manner leads us to bad policy choices. It’s also bad politics.
Having the nominal leader of the Democratic Party himself opening the door to the possibility of Medicare cuts, even if it’s just some sort of negotiating ploy, undercuts the efficacy of a key campaign message that Democrats need to be able to run on in 2012: opposition to the desire of Paul Ryan and the Republicans to cut Medicare.
So, when the Progressive Change Campaign Committee began circulating a petition that it hoped would stiffen Obama’s spine in these negotiations, I signed on. And I posted a link to it on my Facebook wall as well, hoping that others of a like mind would sign the pledge, too.
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Tags: 2012 elections, Barack Obama, debt ceiling, deficit, Democrats, IL-03, IL-11, Illinois, John Atkinson, Lawrence O'Donnell, legislation, Medicare, Progressive Change Campaign Committee, Social security, strategy and tactics
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by Downtowner, posted on Monday, July 18th, 2011 at 7:30 am
I had a theory about why Bill Foster was running for Congress again, this time in the newly redistricted IL-11. It had to do with the fact that his terminal financial disclosure statement from his stint in IL-14 showed that he’s sold out of ETC (the company owned jointly with others, including his brother who ran the business) and his wealth at that time seemed to be locked up in a promissory note, in combination with the fact that his campaign essentially owed him a million dollars – i.e. he was a million in debt. To himself.
My theory was influenced as well by persistent rumors I heard at the time of Foster’s last campaign against Hultgren, that he was rather bored in Congress, would like to return to physics, etc, etc. Not rumors I had ever passed along as, so far as I could tell, they came from no one very close to him and seemed speculative at best. But I heard them frequently enough that I was surprised to hear he was interested enough in being in Congress to decide to run in IL-11. And then there is the lack of any staff as of his first new FEC filing of this campaign – not even a professional fundraiser.
So my theory was simple: Foster had decided to run to raise enough cash to pay himself back that million dollar loan to his campaign fund, and if he won, okay, but if he lost, well that would be okay too. Now I think that theory is simply wrong.
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Tags: 2012 elections, Bill Foster, Chris Van Hollen, IL-11, IL-14, Illinois, Nancy Pelosi, New Democrat Coalition, Randy Hultgren, Steny Hoyer, U. S. House
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by James Gustave Speth, posted on Wednesday, July 13th, 2011 at 1:45 pm
It’s business as usual that’s the utopian fantasy, while creating something very new and different is the pragmatic way forward.
Cross-posted from YES! Magazine, where it was originally posted on July 6, 2011.
Today, the reigning policy orientation holds that the path to greater well-being is to grow and expand the economy. Productivity, profits, the stock market, and consumption: all must go continually up. This growth imperative trumps all else. It is widely believed that growth is always worth the price that must be paid for it—even when it undermines families, jobs, communities, the environment, and our sense of place and continuity.
The Limits of Growth
But an expanding body of evidence is now telling us to think again. Economic growth may be the world’s secular religion, but for much of the world it is a god that is failing—underperforming for billions of the world’s people and, for those in affluent societies, now creating more problems than it is solving. The never-ending drive to grow the overall U.S. economy hollows out communities and the environment; it fuels a ruthless international search for energy and other resources; it fails at generating jobs; and it rests on a manufactured consumerism that is not meeting the deepest human needs. Americans are substituting growth and consumption for dealing with the real issues—for doing things that would truly make us and the country better off. Psychologists have pointed out, for example, that while economic output per person in the United States has risen sharply in recent decades, there has been no increase in life satisfaction and levels of distrust and depression have increased substantially.
We need to reinvent the economy, not merely restore it. The roots of our environmental and social problems are systemic and thus require transformational change. Sustaining people, communities, and nature must henceforth be seen as the core goals of economic activity, not hoped for byproducts of an economy based on market success, growth for its own sake, and modest regulation. That is the paradigm shift we seek.
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Tags: consumption, ecological economics, economic growth, economics, economy, environment, policy, post-growth, sustainability, sustainable development
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by John Laesch, posted on Tuesday, July 12th, 2011 at 6:16 pm
During a tough 2010 political campaign, Governor Quinn negotiated raises with members of the American Federation State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) union. On July 1, 2011, Governor Quinn cancelled those raises for more than 30,000 state workers.
This afternoon, fifty to seventy-five citizens rallied in Aurora, IL to call on Governor Pat Quinn to keep his word and honor long overdue wage increases for state
workers. The Aurora event was part of a statewide, 75-rally day of action and a majority of the participants were AFSCME members. Representatives from other unions and local businesses also participated in the action.
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Tags: AFSCME, Aurora IL, Chris Lauzen, collective bargaining, Linda Chapa LaVia, Linda Holmes, Mike Madigan, Pat Quinn, Ruby Robinson, unions
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by John Laesch, posted on Sunday, June 26th, 2011 at 9:30 pm
I attended the Northern Illinois Jobs With Justice monthly meeting this weekend to learn about another chapter in the ongoing war on the middle class. Buddy
Howard, a locked out worker from Roquette, a French-owned company in Keokuk, Iowa, attended the meeting to share his story. Buddy is one of the 240 BCTGM Local 48G members who have been locked out since Sept. 28, 2010.
After the meeting, Buddy shared his story with radio host Adam Klugman. You can listen by clicking the link.
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Tags: Buddy Howard, Illinois, Iowa, Jobs with Justice, Keokuk IA, labor, Last Best and Final Staffing, Quincy IL, Roquette, scabs, unions
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by Downtowner, posted on Tuesday, June 21st, 2011 at 8:25 pm
Okay, it’s a finished basement, nice cozy furniture, big screen TV, great place to ride out a bad storm. Tornado warning in effect until 9 p.m. National Weather Service says the storm should hit this town – Geneva – at around 8:20 p.m.
With all the truly destructive tornados lately, I think we’re all taking these warnings a little more seriously.
Okay, having just typed that I went to take a look at the south – this storm is blowing from south to north, somewhat unusual for this area, usually we get west to east. Watched a wall of clouds just roll over in a matter of minutes. Instant dark. Will be back with more if there is more.
Update: It’s 8:53 p.m., which puts us seven minutes short of the tornado warning ending, but the worst of this storm has blown past – still raining like crazy, lots of thunder and lighting, but the wall-o-wind is past…lots of small tree branches, and one bigger one, down in the yard.
Tags: National Weather Service, tornado warning, weather
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by Downtowner, posted on Monday, June 20th, 2011 at 12:11 pm
Although I can’t claim to study it, I usually at least read the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Annual Most Endangered Historic Places List. This year, I was struck by something that seems to me to be unusual; I can’t remember a list so replete with sites that are endangered not by residential or commercial development, but rather by negative environmental impacts, whether those are represented by erosion and storms, or by mining and oil-well placement.
On the list and endangered by environmental threats are:
Bear Butte, South Dakota
Fort Gaines, Alabama
Greater Chaco Landscape, New Mexico
Isaac Manchester Farm, Pennsylvania
Also of note on this 11 most endangered list is item 11: “Sites Imperiled by State Actions” although I think they could have called this “State Inaction” because it amounts to funding for preservation projects drying up in states that are all experiencing budget shortfalls. And since I think we can all agree that “Our Endangered Economy” is impacting all 50 states, that would amount to just about every corner of the U.S. that is poised to lose important landmarks.
Tags: 2011 11 Most Endangered Historic Places, history, National Trust for Historic Preservation
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by n0madic, posted on Saturday, May 14th, 2011 at 3:31 pm
Last week a clip from a work-in-progress by Aurora filmmaker Edgar Barens was featured on GRITtv with Laura Flanders as their documentary of the week.
More GRITtv
“The circle of life doesn’t end when people begin a life behind bars. Incarcerated women give birth; others become gravely ill. Do prisoners have the right to comfort as they approach death? If so, who will provide it? These are real questions that many working in the prison system have ignored–but not everyone. Our documentary of the week goes behind the walls of the maximum security Iowa State Penitentiary, where a prisoner-staffed hospice program has been touching the lives of patients and caregivers alike. Filmmaker Edgar Barens spent six months embedded with program participants, and the resulting film is the intimate Prison Terminal.”
To see more video from Prison Terminal, click here. For more information on the documentary, click here.
Tags: Aurora IL, culture, documentary, Edgar Barens, film, hospice, prison
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