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You've been had. You've been took. You've been hoodwinked, bamboozled, led astray, run amok. - Malcolm X Fear not. - God

September 08, 2008

Close Call:A brush with a new storm revives fears from Katrina ... by Elizabeth WaltersWould you come back?This is the question that dogs me every morning as I drive through the streets of New Orleans. Past the rebuilt homes and ramshackle shells, past the fresh trim jobs and spray-painted search crosses, past the cleared concrete slabs and the piles of debris that still litter every block, I travel and interrogate my own strength.I had never visited this area before Hurricane Katrina devastated it three years ago, so I am spared the firsthand comparisons of before and after that can make life here untenable for longtime residents who try to return. While I love the lessened, wounded city I currently call home, I often doubt that I could live here with the memory of what it used to be. And so every morning on my way to work, I ask myself this question, to remind myself of the strength of the people I meet, and to remind myself of the strength of the students I teach�children who had no choice in their destiny.My morning ritual took on more urgency about 10 days ago, when it became apparent that another hurricane, Gustav, was taking aim at south Louisiana. Suddenly, everyone worried that we would get hit again. The grocery stores ran out of gallons of water. The gas pump lines were three cars deep.Nowhere was the stress more apparent than among my students.�Ms. Walters, where will we have class if the school floods again?� one of them asked me as I was taking roll.�I don�t want it to flood. If it floods again, we are not coming back,� another wrote in his class journal.A land destroyedThe kids had especial cause for worry. I teach ninth grade in St. Bernard Parish, which lies due east of New Orleans, between the Mississippi River and an inlet of the Gulf of Mexico; my school is about eight miles from the French Quarter. Although it attracted only a fraction of the news coverage given to the city, the parish�a suburban and rural parcel of land comparable to a county�bears the dubious distinction of being the only parish where Katrina�s waters covered 100 percent of the land. Every single structure was damaged or destroyed.I know that most of my students did not ride out Katrina at their homes, because if they had, they might be dead. The flood came as a wall of water, inundating structures within seconds. In some areas, it reached depths of more than 15 feet.�My house didn�t have a water line on it,� one administrator told me when I was hired. �The water went up over the top of the roof.�The floodwaters lay in some neighborhoods for weeks, shining sickly with the evidence of a secondary disaster, a spill of mixed crude at the Murphy Oil refinery that coated everything it touched. Every school building was rendered uninhabitable, including two that were used as shelters of last resort. After stranded residents were rescued from their attics and rooftops, many of the pets they had been forced to leave were left to languish, dying slowly and alone. In St. Rita�s Nursing Home in the rural, eastern end of the parish, the bodies of 34 patients who drowned in their beds awaited proper burial.Coming backSt. Bernard Parish has come a long way in the past three years. My school district�s administrators managed to reopen a school in trailers in November 2005; since then, the district has grown to eight schools. Because the local hospital and doctor�s offices closed after the storm, my school hosts a full medical clinic. It also offers a counseling program for children who were particularly affected by Katrina.Still, signs of the storm remain everywhere. Population estimates for the parish vary, but most set the current number at a third to half of the pre-storm population. Most of the stores are gone, as are the roller rink and the movie theater. The civic center has boards on the windows. Some families are still living in FEMA campers in the driveways of their ruined houses. At night, it is possible to drive through a subdivision and see blocks with only one or two houses lit up.Most of my students are glad to be back. St. Bernard Parish is a largely working-class oil and fishing community, the type of place where families can trace their roots back more than a century. In their journals, the kids have written of their love for their home, as well as what they learned from having to relocate�what it�s like to be the new kid in school, what it�s like to play in snow. But they have also recorded the upheaval of their lives after Katrina, and they have no desire to repeat those experiences.�I lost my dog and everything that I had,� one student wrote the day after Gustav set everyone on alert.�My parents will be sad because they will have to find new jobs,� another wrote.�I hope the hurricane doesn�t come this way,� another wrote. �It�s hard to leave your friends, and you might never see them again.�New worriesBy the time I was driving to work on the morning of Aug. 29, the business owners of St. Bernard Parish were outside hammering plywood over their windows. In her first period class, the teacher next door to me had 14 absentees. After the announcements and the Pledge of Allegiance, one of my students said, �Ms. Walters, where are you evacuating?�It was the exact third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.The worry built over the course of the day, as did the number of absentees as parents finished packing their cars picked up their children on the way out of town. In my classroom, my students helped me pull bookcases away from the windows, elevate materials on high tables and unplug computers.After lunch, we filed into the gym for the Day of Remembrance ceremony, a ceremony to memorialize Hurricane Katrina. Mercifully, the theme of the event looked forward and focused on values such as giving back to the community, rather than the storm�s devastation.I planned to leave as soon as school was over and drive with my housemate to stay with friends in Memphis. Just past dismissal, I was locking up when one of my students stopped by.�If the storm hits, will you come back?� he said. I told him I would come back no matter what. If the school was damaged, I would try to help fix it. If there was no building, I would teach in a trailer. If there were no homes, I would live in a camper. �Me too,� he said. �I hope I see you soon.�A constant threat To live now in St. Bernard Parish, or New Orleans, or any other Gulf Coast community that has been destroyed over the past few years requires the ability to simultaneously acknowledge the past and believe in your heart that history cannot repeat itself so cruelly. If someone truly thinks that another storm will bring destruction on the scale of Katrina, then south Louisiana is just not a place it is possible to live.The people here elevate their houses, urge the government to strengthen the levees and do everything they can to prepare themselves for the next time a storm comes. But ultimately, this place is at the mercy of wind and water, and its future is left to forces beyond our control�to fate, to luck, to God, to global warming, to probability. Although we dodged a bullet with Gustav, the storm succeeded in shaking that faith.On Monday morning, the yellow buses will arrive again in front of the school. I will be there to hug each student hello and ask them how they spent our weeklong hiatus. I will be happy to see them. But I also won�t forget the fears they laid bare in their writing.�I pray to God that this hurricane turns around and doesn�t hit New Orleans,� one of my students wrote the day before the evacuation. �I know everyone is wishing the same thing, because this is terrifying.�Would you come back? Elizabeth Walters, a former copy editor and reporter for the Concord Monitor in New Hampshire, teaches English at Chalmette High School in Chalmette, La. Posted by PV Guest at 12:01 AM | Guest Writings | Link | Comments (0) | Technorati links | Stumble It! | addthis_url = location.href; addthis_title = document.title; addthis_pub = 'natashachart';

September 07, 2008

Derailment Since the advent of Sarah Palin, the entire Democratic campaign has disappeared.Issues have been replaced by the usual Republican claptrap -- culture wars in the form of religion and reproduction. John McCain is claiming the the Democrats will tax and spend. A man who wants to make war for a hundred years is flatly lying about his opponent. Hasn't anyone called him on the spending issue? Loudly? Palin was a perfect choice to derail the collective media back into the culture swamp. She is a cliche and an opportunist on a large scale. Pistol packin', baby totin' mama, she has a nasty way of making herself bigger by denigrating others. Worse still, that may be the good news. "I don't even know exactly what the Vice President does", she admitted a few months ago. And look who she will get to learn from. Rove. Cheney. Oh that should make her just an American icon.Meanwhile, all discussion or coverage of issues has shut down in the national media. Hurricane shelters are calling for Human Rights observers in a too-large number of cities, but do we hear about it? Not if we don't spend our news time on the Web. Will Republicans be able to hide the fact that the economy is getting worse for the next eight weeks? Will the sweet, cooperative oil companies keep lowering prices in the runup to the election so Republicans can pretend they have energy issues under control? Stay tuned if you can stand it. Posted by Scorpio at 07:38 AM | | Link | Comments (0) | Technorati links | Stumble It! | addthis_url = location.href; addthis_title = document.title; addthis_pub = 'natashachart'; Politics of Resentment Marcy makes an important point about Sarah Palin and her ability to become the latest face of Conservative Christianity up against the disdain of the liberal elite. Can she stoke another round of resentment which has been such a powerful factor in our politics since Richard Nixon? (emphasis mine)Digby's absolutely right that the Republicans are trying to use Palin as another Nixon, someone who mobilizes large numbers to reject the rationally best choice in favor of someone like them who has suffered from the same sleights from the popular kids.But she's not Nixon. She is the cool kid, the Heather who gathers her popularity by tearing down those around her.And that might work. A lot of people don't necessarily grow out of that sixth grade mindset, the urge to feel better about yourself by cruelly mocking others. But I suspect that there are actually more people who have a Laura Paluska in their life--and they don't want one to be their Vice President. I suspect that if Joe Biden continues this line, he may remind all the people the Republicans are trying to attract with this ploy that Palin actually isn't the one being attacked unfairly. She's the archetypal attacker, the girl who, when we were all just forming our adult character, tried to rip that down. We don't know how this is going to play out. But the politics of resentment can go both ways, and Sarah Palin is definitely vulnerable to attack as a Heather, the popular girl who no one much likes anymore after they graduate from high school and realize there are more important issues in life than who wears the coolest jeans or who dates the hottest guy. And it seems that this aspect of Sarah Palin is not what Alaskans expected to see. Here's Laura McGann's report on how people in Palin's state reacted to Sarah Palin's speech at the RNC:The crowd � on TV and in the bar � was on her side. Then, 10 minutes in, Palin swung hard with her right. �I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer,� Palin said, �except that you have actual responsibilities.�Bar-goers seemed to gasp in unison.This Palin lunging at Sen. Barack Obama on national TV was not the irresistibly likable, maverick governor they had come to know.The meanness of the words put in her mouth were what you expect to see come out of the mouths of Ann Coulter or Rush Limbaugh. And although the politics of resentment has been effectively wielded by the demagogues for decades, she might just find herself on the wrong side of that ploy. Posted by Mary at 12:26 AM | Elections | Link | Comments (0) | Technorati links | Stumble It! | addthis_url = location.href; addthis_title = document.title; addthis_pub = 'natashachart';

September 06, 2008

No News is Bad News ... by Rosemary and Walter BraschDuring the time that Bill Clinton was rocking the Democratic convention, ABC, CBS, and Fox were showing re-runs, NBC was showing the second hour of "America's Got Talent," and the CW was showing the second season finale of "Pussycat Dolls Present: Girlicious."Less than two decades ago, the networks gave the conventions gavel-to-gavel coverage. This year, the networks are giving only four hours prime time coverage to each convention.The first televised conventions were in Philadelphia in 1948. At the time, only about 170,000 of the nation's 42.2 million households had televisions. The networks, desperate to fill their government-issued airwaves, begged the nation to believe that television was at the cutting edge of the future. TV needed politicians; politicians weren't so sure they needed TV. By 1960, more than 46 million of the nation's 58 million households had at least one TV set, and most stations were broadcasting at least 16 hours a day. If anyone doubted the potential and power of television, it was quashed that year during the televised Nixon�Kennedy debates which gave the Massachusetts senator a lead he never lost. Eight years later, the cameras recorded the Chicago riots, giving credibility to the antiwar movement and virtually destroying the Democrats' chance to defeat Richard Nixon, even though the liberal Hubert Humphrey deplored the police response and Mayor Richard Daley's iron fist tactics.Once, the parties' nominees for president were usually determined at the convention itself, not months earlier in the media-enhanced primary campaigns. On the floor of the convention, we at home, watching on 17-inch TV sets, looked forward to the roll call, as each state's chairman stood up, usually dressed in something red-white-and outrageous, and declared for all America to hear, something to the effect: "Mr. Chairman, the great and glorious state of Globule Gulch, home of more than 50 hotdog stands per square mile and the most beautiful women on earth, the place where George Washington once slept and where cows peacefully graze on our healthy grass, proudly casts it 85 votes for its favorite son, Governor Lushpuppy Billings."By the late 1980s, TV demanded more and more, and the party leaders began to stage prime time shows to play to TV's prime�time necessities.Gone are the spontaneous floor events where delegates march, laugh, maybe argue with each other, and actually participate in helping shape the direction of their party, even when the nominee was an incumbent president. Does anyone hear about the party's platform and its planks now? Does anyone even care? The signs on the convention floor are cookie-cutter conformity. The delegates are nothing more than props. Their role is to go to the myriad lobbyist-prepared parties, have fun, and act as extras for the show unfolding before them, and then go home and rally the grassroots support.Last week, Barack Obama and his campaign staff controlled every aspect of the convention, including who would be the speakers, what and how they would say it, when each would appear and for how long. Only President Clinton's speech wasn't vetted. It won't be any different this week with the Republicans, but the Republicans may have to check President Bush's speech ahead of time, 'lest it become more comedic than planned.It was the television media that created the atmosphere that demanded "interesting visuals" and the seven-second sound bite; and now the media are upset that politicians, in their infomercial packaged conventions that play to the camera, have nothing to say. The networks, which created the monster, are crying there isn't any news--and they cut away from what is interesting, such as the speech by President Clinton--and turn the cameras onto themselves. The pontificating pundits with their semi-erudite commentaries and all-knowing blather that bores viewers more than any politician's 20-minute speech, now dominate the prime time coverage and pretend what they're saying actually matters. It's hard to believe that 16,000 members of the media credentialed to cover each convention couldn't find any news.But, there is news. There are stories. The networks, sitting on their plush assets, have failed to dig out these stories to better help Americans understand the issues that affect them. And so the celebrity-driven media spent more time percolating the story of the division between the Hillary and Obama forces than trying to help Americans better understand the issues. If the mainstream media were to leave their color-coordinated broadcast booths and hospitality suites, as the alternative media have done, and dig beneath the puffery and pageantry, they may find the greater social and political issues that need to be reported, as well as the delightful "slice of life" stories that help us better understand our own lives.The first TV conventions were the best of the emerging Reality TV programming before the medium sunk into who would eat what disgusting insect. America needs both the conventions and the media to be more real.[Walter Brasch's latest book is the second edition of Sinking the Ship of State: The Presidency of George W. Bush (November 2007), available through amazon.com and other bookstores. You may contact Brasch at brasch@bloomu.edu or through his website at: www.walterbrasch.com] Posted by PV Guest at 12:25 AM | Guest Writings | Link | Comments (0) | Technorati links | Stumble It! | addthis_url = location.href; addthis_title = document.title; addthis_pub = 'natashachart';

September 05, 2008

September 02, 2008

Twitter Archive Because Twitter doesn't have server space for proper archives of my user feed, apparently ... Continue reading "Twitter Archive" Posted by natasha at 02:52 AM | Blogging | Link | Comments (0) | Technorati links | Stumble It! | addthis_url = location.href; addthis_title = document.title; addthis_pub = 'natashachart'; The Wrecking Crew

space="5" />Thomas Frank's latest book, The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule, provides a comprehensive review of the conservative movement from the heady days of Reagan's first term to the later years of conservative misrule under George W Bush. Frank uses the story of Jack Abramoff, corrupt lobbyist, to illustrate the philosophy of the conservative true believers and the trail of wreckage they have left during their time in power. And he makes a compelling argument that these results are to be expected because unlike liberals who believe government should address the problems of people, for conservatives, the role of government is to comfort the comfortable by appropriating the wealth and the power of the government to support business and those who rightfully rule. As in his earlier books, One Market Under God, and What's the Matter With Kansas, Frank finds and exposes the contradictions of conservative ideology which sees government as the root of all evil and markets as the arbiter of all good. And Frank sets out to show that the failure of conservative governance is not just the failure of individuals but is systemic.But the truth is almost exactly the opposite, whether we are discussing Abramoff of the wider tsunami of corruption. The truth is as obvious as a slab of sirloin and yet so obscured by decades of pettifoggery that we find it almost impossible to apprehend clearly. The truth slaps your face in every hotel lobby in [Washington DC], but we still don't get the message.It is just this: Fantastic misgovernment of the kind we have seen is not an accident, nor is it the work of a few bad individuals. It is the consequence of triumph by a particular philosophy of government, by a movement that understands the liberal state as a perversion and considers the market the ideal nexus of human society. The movement is friendly to industry not just by force of campaign contributions but by conviction; it believes in entrepreneurship not merely in commerce but in politics; and the inevitable results of its ascendance are, first, the capture of the state by business and, second, all that follows: incompetence, graft, and all the other wretched flotsam we've come to expect from Washington.Using Abramoff as the symbol of the conservative movement whose goal was to destroy the liberal concensus that marked the years since Roosevelt and to capture the reins of government is a very effective approach to explain why conservative rule has been so terrible for our country. Since the early 80s Jack Abramoff has been a player in many of the unsavory actions that have been part and parcel of the conservative movement. Abramoff was one of the original gang along with Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed who figured out how to use the College Republicans to tap into the wealth of the conservative businessmen to fund the conservative movement and their own lucrative careers. And during the Reagan years Abramoff in particular was keen to take the battle to Communists by backing the (ig)noble freedom fighters who were protecting the proper order in the world. Which he did by taking money from South Africa's apartheid government to promote the (in)famous Freedom Fighter, Jonas Savimbi, of Angola. But as Frank noted, for all the claims of holding fast to ideological truths, Abramoff showed how opportunistic the conservative movement can be and how willing it is to turn on the dime when required. Once the South African apartheid regime fell, those willing to pay for the services for funding African wars came from the other side and so Abramoff and his gang changed sides with nary a qualm.The lesson Savimbi learned was the same one that everyone in this story gets schooled in, sooner or later: That the market is a faithless sovereign, disloyal and deceitful. That there is no tradition or patriotism or ethics that it holds sacred. That it will even devour its own if the payoff is right. One day it defends the apartheid government against all comers; the next it undergoes an amazing metamorphosis and declares that apartheid's crimes are indeed hideous -- but that the guilt for them tarnishes social democracy as well.Yet, this was only the beginning. What Abramoff and his friends learned was that one could become very rich indeed taking up the cause of "freeing" the market from government control and regulation - the well-known evils of liberal government.One tremendous service Frank accomplished with his book was to effectively chronicle one of Abramoff's more shocking scandals he operated in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, a textbook case where conservative market rule was allowed to play out. A case where there were horrific consequences for the workers (mostly immigrants from poor Asian countries believing they were on their way to find opportunity in the USA) because the government was used to suppress those workers for the benefit of the sweatshop owners thus enriching the rulers of Saipan, Abramoff and his cronies. By the late 1990s no one should have been fooled by the propaganda that came from the right-wing about how the Marianas were a paradise, but nevertheless, Abramoff was able to use his connections to keep the Islands free for exploitation by bribing the Congress members he took over there to show them a good time. And one of his special friends, Tom DeLay bragged that the model of business practiced in the Mariana Islands made them the "perfect petri dish of capitalism. It's like my Galapagos Island." It wasn't until just this year that a law was finally passed placing the Commonwealth under US immigration laws outlawing the sweatshops and exploitation of the workers, more than a decade after the horrific conditions were exposed. Continue reading "The Wrecking Crew" Posted by Mary at 01:00 AM | Recommended Reading | Link | Comments (1) | Technorati links | Stumble It! | addthis_url = location.href; addthis_title = document.title; addthis_pub = 'natashachart';

September 01, 2008

Labor Pains: Unions, the Mass Media, Economy, and an Anti-Worker Administration ... by Walter Brasch Once a year, I and a few dozen other reporters and columnists write a Labor Day story. And, like most Americans we don't remember our history.We don't remember that the Knights of Labor created the first Labor Day in 1882 and that Congress made it a national holiday in 1894.Almost none of us will write about the personalities of the labor movement. About Mother Jones (1830-1930), the militant "angel of the coal fields" for more than six decades. About "Big Bill" Haywood (1869-1928) who organized the Industrial Workers of the World, a universal coalition to fight for the rights of all labor. About cigar-chomping Samuel Gompers (1850-1924), the first president of the American Federation of Labor, a job he held for 38 years.We won't be seeing any stories about Sidney Hillman (1887-1946) who led strikes in 1916 to reduce the work week to 48 hours, from the standard 54�60 hours, and then helped create the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) before becoming a major political force for workers during the labor-friendly Roosevelt administration. Missing will be remembrances of Saul Alinsky (1909-1972), known as the "father of grassroots political campaigns" who worked alongside Cesar Chavez (1927-1993) who used Alinsky's tactics to organize the United Farm Workers.Hardly any of us remember Heywood Broun (1888-1939), one of the nation's best-paid columnists who risked his own financial stability to create The Newspaper Guild in 1935 to help those reporters making one-hundredth of his salary. Most reporters never heard about him or the history of the Guild. After all, we may believe that unions are acceptable for factory line workers, but we're "professionals," and mistakenly believe we don't need unions; we'll just continue to get assigned unpaid overtime and split shifts, while working for low wages, minimal benefits, and without a minimally-acceptable recourse for our grievances. Besides, if workers mattered, our newspapers would have a Labor page in addition to the daily Business pages.Also missing from the news media will be stories about Eugene Debs (1855-1926), Joe Hill (1879-1915), and thousands of others who went to prison defending the rights of the workers not only to organize, but to demand better working conditions. We won't become involved in the struggle, risk our jobs and futures. That's someone else's responsibility. We'll just follow inane rules and complain privately.We will make the effort to find a couple of current labor leaders, both of whom will say organized labor is having a tough time but is still strong and vital, the only recourse against poor working conditions and unfair labor practices. We'll report that fewer than 13 percent of all workers are now in unions, down from a peak of 35 percent in 1954, but won't dig into myriad ways of intimidation by Management.We may interview the workers. An elderly man's remembrance of his life in the coal mines or breakers, and what Black Lung did not only to his own health but to his family and friends. We might chat with an elderly woman who worked 12-hour days six days a week for $3�$4 a day in the heat and humidity of a garment factory. We may talk with a few current workers who will tell us they don't have it great, but it could be worse and overall, on the record of course, they work hard and are pleased with their jobs. And we probably won't be too shocked to learn that most readers seem to think that Labor Day seems not to be a remembrance of the struggles for respect, dignity, and acceptable wages and working conditions, but of self-serving political speeches, hot dogs, burgers, and a pool party.Some of us may write about the statistics of labor that show a retreat from the robust economy of the Clinton era. It doesn't take much research to learn that the Consumer Price Index, a measure of inflation, is 5.5 percent higher than a year ago, the sharpest increase since the last year of the George H.W. Bush administration. Factoring in inflation and recession, even with minimal raises, the rank-and-file workers are making about 3.1 percent less than a year ago, according to the Department of Labor. We'll quote the most recent data of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) that "Employment continued to fall in construction, manufacturing, and several service-providing industries, while health care and mining continued to add jobs."We'll point out that unemployment in a depressed economy is now 8.8 million, an increase of 1.6 million over the past year. We'll note that "non-farm payroll employment continued to decline" and that payroll employment is down by 463,000 since the beginning of this year.Business euphemistically claims it is "downsizing" or "rightsizing." The "bottom line" is improved; corporate investors are being "optimally compensated." About 550,000 Americans were part of mass layoffs last year. Recent Department of Labor studies report that American workers are "the most productive" ever. That's because not only are they are doing so much more to compensate for their fellow workers having been laid off, but because they live with the fear if they don't work even harder they, too, may be laid off, or lose promotions, in an economy that is going as far south as our manufacturing plants.We'll report the cold statistics that among the unemployed are about 461,000 "discouraged" Americans, about 90,000 more than a year ago, who "wanted and were available for work and had looked for a job" but are not counted as unemployed because "they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey," according to the BLS. These Americans are not only discouraged by the labor economy, they have undoubtedly been absorbed by a long-term depression.Meanwhile, corporate executives are taking multi-million dollar bonuses for improving the "cash flow." Even if executive management makes a few mistakes along the way, and the "return on investment" isn't what the Board of Directors expects, almost all CEOs and their immediate underlings have the "golden parachute" that allows a soft drop from employment, yielding termination packages that amount to millions of dollars and considerable benefits that no working class person will ever receive.Of course, there are some industries that have gained in the past year's plunging economy. Retail sales, which the Department of Labor reports as having the lowest average wages, is gaining workers. But, that's because it's just "good business sense" to hire 100 low-paid part-timers and save the cost of benefits than to hire 50 full-time clerks. About 5.7 million Americans work part-time, up from 1.4 million the previous year. This category, according to the BLS, "includes persons who indicated that they would like to work full time but were working part time because their hours had been cut back or they were unable to find jobs."To the 50-year-old who worked hard for one company half of his life, showed up for work on time, left on time, and tolerated the company's banal preaching about everyone is "part of our happy family," and then is laid off as an "economy measure," the numbers don't matter. To the worker who put in 20 years in one job, and then is fired for reasons that would be questionable under any circumstance, the numbers don't matter. To the $20,000-a-year worker who is told that her raise can only be 2 percent this year because "we're having a bad year," but sees upper management not only get raises and more stock options, but also hire other managers, all of them making five times or more than her salary, the other numbers don't matter.This year, I'm writing a Labor Day column. With all the layoffs and unemployment, with the blatant anti-labor biases of the current administration and the decisions by the pro-corporate National Labor Relations Board that will linger long into the next administration, next year there may not be much American labor to write about.[Among Dr. Brasch's 17 books is With Just Cause, a look at the historical and social issues in American labor. His latest book is Sinking the Ship of State: The Presidency of George W. Bush (2nd ed.), available at amazon.com and other bookstores.] Posted by PV Guest at 05:29 PM | Guest Writings | Link | Comments (1) | Technorati links | Stumble It! | addthis_url = location.href; addthis_title = document.title; addthis_pub = 'natashachart';

August 30, 2008

Americans Need to Tear Down This Wall ... by Walter BraschThe "star" of the Olympics may not be multiple medalists but the Great Wall of China. Every TV network covering the Olympics took the world to see the Wall. It seemed as if almost every newspaper and magazine reporter also visited the Great Wall.But, the Great Wall, which was built and rebuilt many times over its 22 century history, eventually was a failure. Although formidable, and one of the world's greatest engineering feats, the wall by the 16th century could no longer protect China from neighboring armies.The Maginot Line, which France thought could protect it from Germany and Italy in the decade leading up to World War II, was largely a failure.The Berlin Wall, at first barbed wire and then concrete, was built not to keep others out but East Germans in. But, there were more than 5,000 escapes during its 28 year history before the wall finally came down in 1989.As we now know, poorly-constructed levees in New Orleans didn't keep the flood waters of Katrina from destroying the city.And now the U.S. is building its own wall. The Bush Administration is putting up about 700 miles of fencing and other barriers along the U.S./Mexico border by the end of the year. The cost just to build that barrier is about $2�$3 million per mile. But, in certain places, the cost far exceeds that. This week, the government began excavating an area near San Diego. When the three and one-half mile fence is finished, the cost will be about $57 million. That's about $16 million a mile.Most illegal immigrants pose no problems. They don't receive American benefits, contrary to a lot of Internet gossip. Most try to avoid getting into trouble, since their purpose of being in America isn't to get noticed by the police. And, for those who think putting up a wall will keep terrorists out of the country, reflect upon this: The 9/11 hijackers had American-issued visas to be in the U.S.Like the great Wall, the Maginot Line, the Berlin Wall, and the levees, this wall will also fail, as persons desperate to enter the U.S. will find many other ways to cross the border. But, Americans will have spent more than $2 billion for that lesson.[Walter Brasch is professor of journalism at Bloomsburg University, a syndicated columnist, and author of 17 books. His latest book is Sinking the Ship of State: The Presidency of George W. Bush, available through amazon.com and other stores. You may contact him at brasch@bloomu.edu, or through his website, www.walterbrasch.com] Posted by PV Guest at 10:23 PM | Guest Writings | Link | Comments (0) | Technorati links | Stumble It! | addthis_url = location.href; addthis_title = document.title; addthis_pub = 'natashachart'; Obama's Speech I finally had a chance to listen to the speeches from the Convention today and was truly impressed with the power of so many of them. I found Obama's speech strong and compelling and I heard him talk about what he sees the Democratic Party doing for the country. And it was in this line that I heard once more what defines the difference between the Republican "you are on your own" philosophy and the Democratic "we are in this together" philosophy.I've seen it in the workers who would rather cut their hours back a day even though they can't afford it than see their friends lose their jobs, in the soldiers who re-enlist after losing a limb, in the good neighbors who take a stranger in when a hurricane strikes and the floodwaters rise.Democrats believe that when we are together we are better. It's about more than just ourselves. Thank you, Senator Obama. That is something I can believe in and support.Update: Georgia10 noted another section in Obama's speech which also explained those Democratic values. Posted by Mary at 06:01 PM | Philosophy | Link | Comments (2) | Technorati links | Stumble It! | addthis_url = location.href; addthis_title = document.title; addthis_pub = 'natashachart';

August 29, 2008

A More Liberal Party and a More Liberal Country Avedon @ The Sideshow alerted me to this very interesting piece published last Friday by McClatchy which finds the center of the Democratic party (and the country) is moving left. After discussing the number of people believing that government has a role in creating a safety net (an increase that registered across all political persuasions including those who define themselves as Republicans), the piece reports that it is communities like dailykos.com and moveon.org that are helping push this move. Governor Bill Richardson certainly credits the bloggers for much of this change.Ever more vocal and influential heading into this year's election, that base fed the sense that the party should "return to its core values," Richardson said. "The rise of the Internet and bloggers have made the party more progressive."Boy, ain't that the truth. The internet and blogtopia(TM) have been critical in moving the party to the left. I remember when I first started to frequent the political blogs in late 2002, I was thrilled to find that I was not alone and I was not the only one who was appalled at where our country was heading. For much of my life I had always been the political junkie and I would talk the ears off my friends who were never as passionate as I. But on the blogs, I found many people who were just as passionate and just as obsessive as me. And back then, it felt like the country was heading off a cliff as the drums of war and the lies of the administration were being used to create a country too fearful and too irrational to understand what a terrible mistake we were were about to make. At dailykos.com I met many new friends who believed as I that we could do better than what we were being sold. And we found that even though the national mainstream media had taken stupid pills from the Rove-sters, they and the right-wing noise machine had not succeeded in isolating us so effectively that we would feel we were simply solitary, powerless voices without much hope of changing things. Obviously another reason people are repudiating the Republicans is because they now must run on their record. As the Big Dog said:And it is, to be fair to all the Americans who aren't as hard-core Democrats as we, it's a philosophy the American people never actually had a chance to see in action fully until 2001, when the Republicans finally gained control of both the White House and the Congress.Then we saw what would happen to America if the policies they had talked about for decades actually were implemented. And look what happened.Blogs have been important in exposing the bankruptcy of the conservative movement and what happens when you allow greed and selfishness to run our country. Today as we see the results of 8 years of George W Bush and his cronies, it is not hard to make the case to people that perhaps it's time to try something new. It's good to see that the American public are starting to listen and agree. Now our work will be in making sure the blighters can not steal the next election and thereby drag us into their Hobbesian future. After all, we can do better. Yes, we can! Posted by Mary at 08:17 PM | Philosophy | Link | Comments (6) | Technorati links | Stumble It! | addthis_url = location.href; addthis_title = document.title; addthis_pub = 'natashachart'; What Krugman Said Paul Krugman's column today does a brilliant job of defining the difference between Republicans and Democrats using John Goodman's comment about how no American is uninsured.Last week John Goodman, an influential figure in Republican health care circles, explained that we shouldn�t worry about the growing number of Americans without health insurance, because there�s no such thing as being uninsured. After all, you can always get treatment at an emergency room. And Mr. Goodman � he�s the president of the National Center for Policy Analysis, an important conservative think tank, and is often described as the �father of health savings accounts,� a central feature of the Bush administration�s health policy � wants the next president to issue an executive order prohibiting the Census Bureau from classifying anyone as uninsured. �Voil�!� he says. �Problem solved.�The truth, of course, is that visiting the emergency room in a medical crisis is no substitute for regular care. Furthermore, while a hospital will treat you whether or not you can pay, it will also bill you � and the bill won�t be waived unless you�re destitute. As a result, uninsured working Americans avoid visiting emergency rooms if at all possible, because they�re terrified by the potential cost: medical expenses are one of the prime causes of personal bankruptcy. As Krugman says, this is not surprising because this is what Republicans believe - Americans are a bunch of whiners and complaining when things look pretty good right now.Despite attempts to feign sympathy, the leaders of today�s G.O.P. fundamentally feel that Americans complaining about their economic and health care difficulties are, well, just a bunch of whiners.And that, ultimately, even more than their policy proposals, is what defines the difference between the parties....And what one sees on the other side is a total lack of empathy for and understanding of the problems working Americans face. Mr. Clinton, famously, felt our pain. Republicans, manifestly, don�t. And it�s hard to fix a problem if you don�t even think it exists. Indeed. Posted by Mary at 10:20 AM | Philosophy | Link | Comments (1) | Technorati links | Stumble It! | addthis_url = location.href; addthis_title = document.title; addthis_pub = 'natashachart'; var site="sm6gdmnpusherman" Site Meter

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Pacific Views 2008 September

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Liberal blog commentary on the environment, politics, technology, culture, and periodically, space colonization.

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