Stop Me Before I Vote Again

http://www.epi.org/publication/bp336-us-china-auto-parts-industry/

tales of de industrialization chapter 113:
.
"..... The U.S. trade deficit in auto parts increased from $9.5 billion in 2000 to $31.2 billion in 2010"
...the domestic industry is threatened by Chinese practices. ..... In 2010, the U.S. auto-parts trade deficit with China reached $9.1 billion....The rapid growth of imports of subsidized and unfairly traded auto parts from China puts at risk jobs both directly and indirectly supported by the U.S. auto-parts industry.....Potential job losses in the states are significant..."

data:

"The 10 most vulnerable states (as measured by total auto-parts industry employment as of 2009) are Michigan (249,989 jobs), Ohio (189,039 jobs), Indiana (132,769 jobs), Illinois (98,748 jobs), Tennessee (79,225 jobs), Texas (74,942 jobs), California (70,883 jobs), Kentucky (58,745 jobs), New York (58,429 jobs), and North Carolina (54,540 jobs)....... "

"The 10 most vulnerable states as measured by auto-parts employment as a share of total state employment in 2009 are Michigan (6.5 percent of total state employment), Indiana (4.8 percent), Ohio (3.7 percent), Kentucky (3.3 percent), Tennessee (3.0 percent), Alabama (2.2 percent), South Carolina (1.9 percent), Illinois (1.7 percent), Wisconsin (1.6 percent), and North Carolina (1.4 percent)."

read the whole report
it will raise hair some where on your body i promise you

http://www.miller-mccune.com/politics/pirate-party-docks-at-berlins-parliament-39443/

note this coy narration

"Germany’s Pirate Party won an impressive 9 percent of the vote last September in the Berlin elections. Since then, 15 very unconventional “Pirate” politicians have taken seats in the regional parliament, donning hoodies, sneakers, and even a few ponytails on the men."

now note the platform

" ... greater public participation and increased transparency as their central political agenda...... “open source” government, where all bureaucratic paperwork and publicly financed initiatives are freely accessible online. In a Pirate paradise, citizens should be able to directly influence politics using the Internet..... improving the education system, offering free public transportation and implementing Grundeinkommen, a basic income guarantee for all citizens."

an internal process in place:

" a system called Liquid Democracy (which has a more practical application as online software called Liquid Feedback)."

" ...anyone (Pirate or not) can approach the Pirate Party board with a proposal concerning the city-state of Berlin. The proposal is then entered into the Liquid Feedback software and voted directly upon by the members of the party. The board is less a decision-making entity and more an administrative arm of the party."

Through Liquid Feedback, each Pirate can decide yes or no. If the Pirate is not interested or unfamiliar with the topic, he can delegate his vote to another Pirate, whose vote on the matter then counts as two, and so on."

a parallel local run
by new york occ outfits might look like fun eh ?

So I was in the car again today and... you know what's coming: Yes, I was listening to my local NPR 'outlet', a term carefully chosen. Brian Lehrer, a longtime fixture on the local scene -- he even interviewed me once -- was talking to Jonathan Zimmerman, a professor at NYU -- aieee! -- about the Arizona law against school courses that encourage 'resentment'. The immediate occasion was the ban on a course which appears to have taught that the Mexican war was nakedly a war of conquest.

Zimmerman strangely seemed to believe that this was somehow a one-sided view of the matter, though it sounds to me like a thoroughly accurate characterization. Lehrer, to his credit, seemed a little dismayed to hear him talking this way -- he mentioned that Thoreau and the young Lincoln took the same view -- but like a good host, he let his guest blether on to the top of his bent.

(There doesn't seem to be a transcript up yet, but if you want to listen to the whole thing, be my guest. Warning: Zimmerman has a very annoying grating voice.)

At one point Lehrer asked Zimmerman -- quoting from memory here, so don't hold me to it: "Is teaching supposed to make patriots? Or just convey the facts? Is it to form skills?" -- and a number of other alternatives which I don't now remember, all equally unappetizing. And Zimmerman replied "It's to form good citizens."

Now apart from the fact that this program is hard to distinguish from Lehrer's first alternative, what struck me most, at first, was the breathtaking arrogance of it. The auld dominies have appointed themselves soul engineers.

Upon reflection, though, the conceit seemed less remarkable than the abjection -- strange to think, is it not, that the two can cohabit so intimately? All this study and thinking and dialectic, this painful mastery of dead languages and complicated mathematics, this sweaty fieldwork among the ants and the Hottentots -- it's all about delivering a high-quality feedstock of cives to the civitas?

Poor Obie. He must have hated this so much. His usual easy fluency is gone gone gone; he stammers and stutters and misplaces his caesuras and emphases half a dozen times in every sentence. Mister Timing himself suddenly has no timing. Particularly cruel -- if you like cringe comedy -- is the bit that starts at 7:00 and culminates right around 8:00, when he can't even manage to read the Gospel words accurately off his script, which he consults far more obviously than I've ever seen him do.

He's quite shameless really. Or not, that's dead wrong. He does in fact have a capacity for shame. That's why he's so awkward here. He obviously doesn't believe a word of this stuff, and even his impermeable conscience, tempered in the hellfire of Chicago politics, manages to trip him up.

He might not be a bad ex-president. The role model is Jimmy Carter, who as president was a horrible prodromos to the unspeakable Ronald Reagan: I baptise you with water but there is one who comes...

Jimmy, in later years, tried to atone for his sins by building houses and using the forbidden A-word in connection with Israel. Obie, I suspect, may in fact have some similar well-hidden depths in his character, and his stumblebum performance at the National Prayer Breakfast -- God, what a phrase -- may be the best evidence I have to cite.

Let's all help save Obie's soul. Stay home on Election Day and allow the cares of Empire to descend upon the broad Mormon shoulders of Mitt Romney, who seems destined for the role. Send Obie off into the wilderness to fast and pray. It'll be good for him.

Of course he already prays, or so he says. Early on in the speech he confesses that when he gets up in the morning he says a 'brief' prayer and reads a 'little' scripture.

Wouldn't want to overdo it.

blaing head lines and ledes acclaim

"Defense Secretary Leon Panetta believes there is a growing possibility Israel will attack Iran as early as April to stop Tehran from building a nuclear bomb"

read on:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/03/us-nuclear-iran-usa-israel-idUSTRE81202Z20120203

----------------------------------------------
obvious conclusion
the gathering frenzy suggests so much smoke must portend fire somewhere ...

my conjecture:

all just part of the massive disinfo campaign
necessary to keep the aya-totalers guessing

surely two quite seperate proceses may be operative
in uncle's collective executive brain here

both
a firm decision
to avoid bombing attack by the zionics on iran

and
an equally fim decision
NOT to make this obvious to teheran

just read a scattered piece on "putin's russia " and its mass spontaneous
reflections on the " soviet days" of late socialism stagnation and its " heartfelt nostalgia"
for it's long denouement of "unhurried spirituality"

http://www.thenation.com/article/165315

despite the authors muddy vision i see hope
sounds to me like the russian people might well be awakening
from their 20 year dream within a nitemare

http://www.epi.org/blog/increase-index-minimum-wage/

the battle to boost the minimum wage is a state based affair and worth joining
if one is afoot in your state

now we have indexing to attach the min rate to ...but what index

cost of living some how defined seems the usual choice
but i note social security has a de facto superior ..however much it is obscured
the retirement system more or less sets your intial payment at a moving rate
based on hourly average value added
and that is indeed the equitably prefered choice

of course after the initial gearing of your payment you only get a cpi adjustment
and its rigged of course thanx to bill clinton's index reform
a soaring example of the new domocrats compasionate neo liberalism

alas all indxes can be rigged

master of the dance alan greenspan loved indexes and it was surely for that very reason

From Mike Flugennock, naturally:

This one’s a salute to all you surviving Kool-Aid-drinking Obamabots getting ready to soldier on into this year’s Presidential Freak Circus — all you Lefties and Progressives who were willingly, knowingly, happily bamboozled by all the hope’n'change talk four years ago.

"Democrats claim America is threatened by the financial elite, who hog society’s resources. But that’s a distraction. The real social gap is between the top 20 percent and the lower 30 percent. The liberal members of the upper tribe latch onto this top 1 percent narrative because it excuses them from the central role they themselves are playing in driving inequality and unfairness. "

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/31/opinion/brooks-the-great-divorce.html?_r=2&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

okay so this is a monstrous dodge by a point 1% apologist diversionary meat mouth

but there is indeed a coagulation of merit elements into a merit caste
hardening the moblity barriers

doesn't ohbummer's first 4
suggest what a threat to job dork amerika merit caste dictatorship amounts to ....

One of my favorite stories percolating lately is the Egyptian government's action against a group of pro-US NGO's -- or, as the Washington Post referred to them, "democracy-building organizations" -- a phrase which set my bullshit alarm to clanging before I even read its December 30 report.

This is where my experience at "reading Pravda" came in handy. Here's a gaggle of US NGO's, including an outfit called the National Democratic Institute -- Chaired by Madeleine Albright, co-chaired by Tom Daschle, along with the notorious Freedom House, among others -- being referred to as "democracy-building organizations" by the Post, along with the Post having a hissy fit about this all over their front page.

The initial raid was reported by the Post on December 30, and the Moonie... uh, Washington Times just today reported on the upcoming trials and travel bans for the busted members of these "U.S.-funded groups promoting democracy and human rights".

The Washington Post and Washington Times getting all huffy over this, along with their beating the word "democracy" to death, pegged my bullshit detector so hard it almost broke the needle.

Needless to say, I slogged all the way through the Post article on Dec. 30, their frothingly indignant headline causing me to smell a big ripe rat, desiring to find out just who these "democracy-building organizations" were who those mean old Egyptians were shutting down, putting on trial and trying to drive out of the country.

Sure enough, I found the rat, and man, did it ever smell. Here's the URLs of some of these "democracy-building organizations":

National Democratic Institute; here's their Board Of Directors page, a virtual rogues' gallery. Read it and weep: http://www.ndi.org/board_of_directors

Freedom House: they seem innocuous enough, but check out their Leadership page. William Howard Taft IV? Wendell Willkie II? http://www.freedomhouse.org/content/our-leadership

International Republican Institute; their motto: "Advancing Democracy Worldwide". Their Board of Directors is also quite a rogues' gallery. Their board chairman: John McCain. Also on their board: Lindsey Graham. http://www.iri.org/learn-more-about-iri/board-directors-and-officers

Needless to say, once I had the pertinent info in hand on the "democracy-building organizations", the Post's initial report had just the opposite of its desired effect on me... namely, I was doing the Happy Schadenfreude Dance.

"Egyptian Security Forces Raid Offices of US, Other Democracy Groups" Washington Post 12.30.11 http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/egyptian-security-forces-raid-offices-of-us-other-democracy-groups/2011/12/29/gIQA2jlbOP_story.html "Egypt To Try 43 NGO Workers, Including 19 Americans, Over Funds" Washington Times 02.05.12 http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/feb/5/egypt-sends-43-ngo-workers-including-19-americans-/

Of course I agreed strongly with Mike F's earlier post about the Egyptian authorities coming down hard on these supposedly democracy-promoting organizations that get their money from the Demolican or Republicrat parties or the CIA or all three. I loved it. Put 'em in the pokey and throw away the key, I say, and feed 'em bad Israeli felafel three times a day(*).

I would have though that any Lefty would feel the same way. But no. One of my mailing-list correspondents, a guy whom I think of as The Inveterate Wet Hen -- WH for short -- scribebat ut sequitur:

As anybody who has spent time reading MRZine, Counterpunch, Global Research and the Marcyite press will know, there is a tried-and-true formula for figuring out what side the angels are on. If, for example, a government is being opposed by Freedom House or the NED, then the government must be doing something right. So, in light of that we must of course rally around the Egyptian military that has the guts to stand up to these meddling fifth-columnists.

This seems like an odd inverted instance of the very fault the WH decries. People like me -- Ahmadinejad fans and dim-viewers of the Libya triumph -- are, so to speak, knee-jerk anti-imperialists. Whatever the imperialists want, we don't want.

Well, okay. Guilty as charged, m'Lud. No excuse, no apology. It's a fair cop. But the WH seems to have become a kind of anti-anti-imperialist. Hold on! he says. Not so fast! On the one hand, you got the Egyptian generals -- bad actors to a man. On the other, you got Madeleine Albright, also a bad actor. It's not so simple!

Just goes to show what a vulgar thinker I am, but I think it really is just that simple. I like to see imperialists in jail -- especially the psalm-singing po-faced righteous ones -- and I don't much care who puts them there.

------------------

(*) My local hole-in-the-wall felafel joint -- on the upper west side of Manhattan, forsooth -- is run by Palestinians. The family is originally from a village now overrun by the horrible Ma'ale Adumim 'settlement'. Suburbanites with machine guns.

My Palestinians' felafel is to die for. They've been there ever since I moved into the neighborhood. Clearly they had the mother-wit to get a long lease -- Palestinians have a lively business culture.

But one day -- perhaps in my lifetime -- the lease will run out, and I will never eat felafel again. No doubt the space -- which is rather small -- will be recycled into one of the already innumerable Korean waxing/threading/mani/pedi places. Well, maybe I'll go back, just for old times' sake, and get a Brazilian wax. Ouch!

--------------

(**) I confess my ignorance about Marcyites: who the hell are they? But clearly this is an old battle for the Wet Hen.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_cancer_of_occupy_20120206/

"The Black Bloc anarchists, who have been active on the streets in Oakland and other cities, are the cancer of the Occupy movement"

my son in law responds:

"... the deeper issue at stake is the spontaneism of which we are all - in varying degrees - guilty. This finds only one of it's extremes in the Black Bloc, and by focusing exclusively on the "misdeeds" of the BB Chris Hedges totally misses the larger question

This is an evolution of the tension, present from the start, between two values deeply embedded in OWS: consensus and autonomy. These values play the role of a political dialectic within the movement - neither one can, or should, win. On the contrary, the swing from one to another is part of the motor which is powering the movement. We require autonomy in order to experiment, and consensus to keep us on a path of seeking unity. The element within the BB which rejects the consensus process is only one deviation from the necessary fidelity to both principles."

Demonstrators in Athens burning the German flag -- and a Nazi one, too, just to drive the point home. They could use a little flag-burning practice, obviously, and I hope they get it.

just received this e mail

" Dear Joe,

Do you think the Democratic Party needs a backbone?

If so, today I'm asking you to join me in supporting Ilya Sheyman, running next month in an Illinois primary against a conservative opponent

Click here to donate $3 to Ilya's bold progressive campaign and help him win.

As National Mobilization Director at MoveOn, Ilya mobilized millions of people in support of the public option.

Before that, he was Field Director for Gov. Howard Dean’s Democracy for America, training progressive activists all over America.

Ilya Sheyman is a bold progressive -- we need him in Congress. And the election's next month.

Please click here to help elect Ilya to Congress -- donate just $3 today.

It’s a long road from where we are now to having 218 progressive Members of the House. But every journey begins with a single step. Let’s take that step today."

Solidarity,
Alan Grayson

"218 progressive members of the house "

when i read that line why do i see
the march of the penguins ?

Please click here to help elect 218 penguins to Congress
-- donate just $300,000,000,000 today.
or tomorrow if that's more convenient..we can wait another day

I was rather surprised to discover in my email this evening a curt robo-note from Auntie Lou's Temperance Marx Parlor informing me that I had been unsubscribed from the list. Of course I'm flattered, particularly since I haven't posted anything there for a month or more.

I can only assume this is a response to an earlier post here in which I quoted dear old Lou, flamen Trotskialis, somewhat mockingly. I did not mention his name -- though Owen, of course, gave the game away in the comments; I just referred to him as The Inveterate Wet Hen. Perhaps he found this Homeric epithet somewhat disrespectful.

Lou's list is not a very interesting one, and its chief charm, for me, was the opportunity to throw spitballs from the back of the classroom. But still, there was some good stuff every now and then, which I will miss.

It's a very unwelcome thought, but it comes to mind nonetheless: the Occupiers mostly haven't read much Marx or Lenin -- still less Trotsky -- and yet they are making things happen. The Marx/Lenin/Trotsky Talmudists -- like Auntie Lou and red-hot (*) Bolshevik Jodi Dean -- seem to be sitting on the sidelines offering dismal drizzling colorless color commentary.

I'm a big fan of Marx and Lenin, myself -- Trotsky, not so much. If an Occupier should ever ask me for a reading list Marx and Lenin would be on it. But events do seem to have left the Talmudists behind. I should say, 'us Talmudists', of course. We need to catch up. For me at least, being exiled from the domestic comforts of Lou's spiteful peevish quarrelsome hearth seems more likely to advance that project -- or proyect, as the case may be -- than retard it.

-----------------

(*) In every sense of the word.

I just found a link to this in my Wordpress blog. Otherwise I would have not had the slightest clue that there was a problem. Yesterday I was pruning some dead wood from my subscriber's file, as I do periodically, and apparently deleted Smith's address accidentally. (There are 19 Smiths.)

Frankly, I don't pay any attention to this blog since it is ranked 2,465,528 on Alexa. If Richard Seymour was attacking me, it would be a different story.

I am resubbing you now.

the lesson for the job classes of the EU

if an EU wide effective transfer system can not be constructed NOW

and doubtless
IT CAN'T BE CONSTRUCTED

then the inner zone members those nation states locked into
the one currency euro system
must break apart
restore their national currencies and with that their national economic sovereignty

-----------------------------------

the erasmus experiment built nothing better then a grotesque frankensteins monster

bright side:

it just may well be possible
to perform an orderly disjunction

simply
reverse the process of the 90's

go back to the snake

first fixed and heroicaly propt by a chastened and opularly controle ECB
and by stages loosen into trading bans
and in time let prepared national systems depart completely

systems that once floating alone without the ECB
won't see their national currency
plunge to hell
or rocket to heaven

chances of this ?

somewhere between
zero and negative infinity

http://nplusonemag.com/concerning-the-violent-peace-police

after a four square

i am that black block

this :

'" anarchists like myself were the real core of the group that came up with the idea of occupying Zuccotti Park, the “99%” slogan, the General Assembly process, and, in fact, who collectively decided that we would adopt a strategy of Gandhian non-violence and eschew acts of property damage. Many of us had taken part in Black Blocs. We just didn’t feel that was an appropriate tactic for the situation we were in."

we've known since prince K stopped studying ice bergs
there are anarchists and there are anarchists

now we know there are black blockers and black blockers

the saga continues .....

"...we're a bunch of self-admiring sheep whose primary task is to delude ourselves into believing that being active in some respect is morally superior to being inactive."

that of course is they not we

because the i behind that sweeper then sez

"Any fool can see, however, that the only way out of our present morass is to resolve to do nothing and let the system fall upon itself."

the pink to black anchorite's defying challenge :

why by jingo
i can out wait amerika

as a friend and poet now decapitated once wrote

or is it
wait out amerika.....god forgive me i i forget which...

"But the likelihood of that happening ( the place imploding ;ed )
is even less than the likelihood of change
as a result of standing around in a park waiting for the revolution "

hence and thus
can the SMBIVA couch tomato live with him her self

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/story/2012-02-09/maldives-mohamed-nasheed/53030608/1

"A court in the Maldives issued an arrest warrant Thursday for former president Mohamed Nasheed,....Nasheed's party insisted his ouster was engineered by rogue elements of the police
and supporters of the country's former autocratic leader, whom Nasheed defeated in 2008"

BACKGROUND :
http://www.democracynow.org/2012/2/9/ousted_maldives_pres_mohamed_nasheed_a

"For years, Mohamed Nasheed was the most vocal world leader on the threat climate change poses to residents of small island states. After becoming the first democratically elected president in Maldives, he pledged to make the nation the first carbon neutral country and once held a cabinet meeting underwater. "

Bill McKibben

", until Tuesday's coup , the Maldives was on target to become the first carbon neutral nation on earth....Clearly, in certain ways, Nasheed was a thorn in the state department's side, because he kept bringing up the topic of climate change "

PAUL ROBERTS(advisor to Nasheed0
" the new regime have got the judiciary in their pocket. They’ve now stormed the state TV, so they have.. most of the fourth estate in their pocket. They now have the executive in their pocket. And they’ll probably be able to get the legislature in their pocket, as well."

" The only thing they don’t have in their pocket is the fact that Nasheed is still extremely popular, then likely to win any new election. "

"But this is where I think there’s another insidious thing going on."

" I think they are trying to arrest him. They’ve said they’re going to have 14 cases for his arrest. And I think what they will do is they’ll try and charge him with anything..., so he’ll have a criminal record, and that will prevent him standing in any future election."

--------------------------

its not nice to pull uncles chin whiskers ..

http://www.salon.com/2012/02/02/occupys_challenge_to_big_labor/singleton/

"...last year, organized labor realized that its days were numbered unless it took a different approach. So it went back to basics.

"Across the country unions threw resources into community organizing, aiming to build a broad-based constituency outside of the workplace for progressive politics. In cities like Chicago, Philadelphia and Portland, Ore., newly formed community groups found ready support for organizing around issues of economic justice, but they were stymied by a national debate dominated by voices blaming government spending for an economic crisis caused by Wall Street."

"Occupy Wall Street changed that."

" It flipped the debate from austerity to inequality, uncorked a wellspring of creative energy and started taking creative risks that unions typically shun."

" Within weeks unions adopted the 99 percent versus the 1 percent and started organizing actions under the Occupy banner."

a homeric roll call of local union-occ co-labs follows

worth a speed read at least

http://ecologicalheadstand.blogspot.com/2012/02/oh-what-tangled-web.html

If you've been frustrated by references to the Lump of Labor canard and the Lump of Labor fallacy, Sandwichman has posted a brief history.

Of further interest,

[T]he Sandwichman just finished a first draft of "The 'Lump of Labor' Hoax: Evidence, Inference and the Blur of Bamboozlement," which probes far beyond the platitudes of The Economist into the plagiarism, forgery, incomprehension and evasion that has characterized the fallacy claim since its inception.

http://ecologicalheadstand.blogspot.com/2012/02/boilerplate-b-buttonwood-keep-on.html

http://blog.aflcio.org/2012/02/09/jobless-facing-ui-cut-off-ask-lawmakers-walk-a-mile-in-my-shoes/

the shady Hill gang is up to the old scuffle of course

the unemployment payout system is getting bounced back and forth:

" Congressional Republicans are holding hostage an extension of the UI program by insisting that any UI renewal cuts as many as 40 weeks of benefits, imposes onerous restrictions on jobless workers and even makes them pay for re-employment services"

oh those ogres !

what would corporate amerika do without the GOP rough housers.. eh ?

invent em
-----------------------------------------

forward citizens forward
to the 218 marching penguin pwog-house

http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2012020610/bank-settlement-25-billion-down-675-billion-go

recall one van jones ?
well he demands the big ass hole amerikan banks take a 700 billion dollar hair cut

but first he scoffs at the recent settlement

"This $25 billion settlement helps only a fraction of those homeowners and addresses only a very limited set of fraudulent behaviors. A number of homeowners will get some cash payments, but the amounts are negligible compared to the pain and injustice they have experienced. The actual total cash paid out by the banks is only $5 billion dollars, to be split among the nation's largest banks -- hardly a stiff penalty considering that the six largest banks in the U.S. paid $144 billion in bonuses last year. And enforcement mechanisms remain murky"

okay big fellah good start ...and here come the jeremiah riff :

"We must not forget
the more than 14 million homeowners (one in five) whose homes are underwater, beneath a crushing total $700 billion in negative equity.

We must not forget
the more than 4 million families who have lost their homes.

We must not forget
the millions of families who are in some form of foreclosure proceedings on this very day."

nope we indeed must not .... ...and ?

"These are the Americans who have suffered and continue to suffer. They are worried today, like yesterday, whether they will still have a home to live in tomorrow. They are the ones who must choose every month whether to pay bills or to feed their children"

ya i get that ...so ...??

------------------------------------

drum roll please:

" The U.S. Department of Justice and state attorneys general "

. "must investigate and prosecute banks more aggressively than ever"

"at a much larger scale than anything that has happened to date."

" more aggressively then ever ...at a much larger scale ..."

much much more agressively much much much lasrger scale

NEXT !!

-------------------------------------

"We must force banks to make massive principal reduction
of hundreds of billions of dollars,"

ya force em force the mother fuckers force em

and we gotta

"Immediately relieve the 14 million homeowners in the country
who have underwater mortgages "

i say immediately immediately as in right this very second !

"We must change laws and regulations to prevent this kind of crisis and fraud

from ever happening again "

WE must
we must
we must .... ever ever happening again

.gurgggggle gurggggggle...... squeak !

http://jacobinmag.com/blog/2012/02/black-bloc-idiots/

this is not just a tendency to posture here ...this is the iron gate closing ...

but first we must have our history lesson " .....Just " a brief history lesson "

" ... Ironically, this kind of elitism is not that different from the “vanguard party” posture which puts the needs of the sect above that of the mass movement.....black bloc “autonomy” literally means that they are not accountable to the rest of the left, particularly the traditional socialist parties and the trade unions that are viewed as the enemy in pretty much the same fashion as “third period” Stalinism...... Stalin characterized the period of the late 1920s as the “third period” of capitalism in which communism would be triumphant against both capitalism and a sell-out left that collaborated with it"

. --- hold on now there's a last touch here that... by god ! ..betrays the hand of a master --

"This led the German CP—infamously—to back a Nazi-initiated referendum to remove a Socialist Party elected official in Saxony.."

and the lesson inside the lesson?

".... trying to persuade a black bloc activist that they are harming the left would be as much of an exercise in futility as persuading a German Stalinist to unite with the SP in the 1920s."

got that ???

now having pranged uncle joe pretty damn finely
... time our lu lu is off to the races .... skirts flying ....bloomers showing
sooooo .....go read !

====================
oh well...maybe i'll tease you with a few tidbits:

" I am a Marxist and tend to believe in the power of the masses rather than adolescents in black levi jeans acting out."

"These holligans represent no one but themselves..and It is becoming increasingly obvious
that the left has grown terminally weary of these people... (sniff) ...whoever they are."

" Like a lot of the problems on the left, ultra-leftism has been around for a very long time.
Lenin’s brother was a Narodnik who chose the “propaganda of the deed” so Vlad
had a personal as well as a political stake in convincing idealistic young people
in Czarist Russia to choose mass action."

tnow that's one for the comrade Pecuchet time capsule .....eh ??

oh my dear dear lu lu
man can you brightened my day

.

http://www.truth-out.org/debt-toll-roads-and-patents/1328538574

at the link above
dean "the dream" baker attempts for the zillionth time
to shoot down the "yer letting uncle Sam debt shackle your grand children " canard

his sunday punch line:

"Our children and grandchildren might owe the debt, but they will also be receiving the interest paid on the debt. There can be an issue of distribution within future generations (e.g. Bill Gates' descendants own all the debt), but that is a question of inequality within generations, not between generations"

true enough but dino what about the price level ?? we can reduce the real reach of this nominal debt load simply by lifting the prices of wages and products in say 10 easy annual step ups

the nominal rate on existing debt can be turned into a negative real rate of debt in a flash
by accelerating the inflation rate

come on dean at least notice that option b4 you get balled up in lesser options

unfortunately inflationthe neutron bomb among class struggle tools
got left in the potting shed some time or other back there during the legendary
wagnerian ring cycle of the cartoon carter years

remember the volckerdammerung ?
what a show .... eh ?

a gigantic figure four credit hold on mr amerika hizzself

fiting climax to that endless season of prayer breakfasts and job class suffications

i for one will never stop calling for 7 %inflation solutions to 100% nominal con jobs

the debt bondage gig is pure nonsense
uncle's wearin nothin but paper cuffs here

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/13/nyregion/study-finds-new-york-hospitals-flout-charity-rules.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha2

it delights me to read about agressive debt collection by hospitals in particular leading non profit "teaching hospitals "

we pwogs often like to lead ourselves to believe naked profiteering is the root of bourgeois evil
knock that out and ....

well .... take a look at this anecdote:

NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell hospital
a paragon of elite health care utterly free of any notion of profiteering

now collecting " $50.2 million from the state’s so-called Indigent Care Pool
for people .. who have no insurance and cannot pay their bills." each year

despite this rather handsome bribe to be charitable
doesn't our grand humane institution here
proceed to squeeze one Hope Rubel a women without insurance for unpaid bills ..
that after already and illegaly forcing ms Rubel to deplete "her savings to pay $17,000
for surgery to remove a tumor"

in the upshot Hope R was hit with :
"... $88,000 in additional hospital bills ...."
Eventually the hospital sued her for the money. "

fyi:

"Hospitals are not legally barred from seeking judgments or liens, but must first offer an aid application, help the patient complete it, and wait while it is pending. Instead, many hospitals turn to collection agencies, and sue when that fails. The unpaid bills — typically reflecting much higher rates than what insurers pay — are then treated as the equivalent of charity care. "

read the rest ....at nyt link above

and a more general study here
http://www.cssny.org/userimages/downloads/IncentivizingPatientFinancialAssistanceFeb2012.pdf

i'll leave you to it with this only from the state investigation :

"hospitals that reported they had spent nothing on financial aid, or had filed hundreds of liens against patients’ homes, were allowed to collect without questions from the charity care pool, which distributes more than $1 billion a year. "

all these non profit helping institutions no doubt were grinding exceeding fine
simply to meet rock bottom merit based payments to their teams of professional healers ....

http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/597.php#continue

report on recent conference of member states of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) **

erconomic agenda
continue to build the BANK of ALBA as a regional alternative to the IMF
by pledges of a percent of member nation reserves
greater use of ALBA's synthetic currency "the sucre "

-----------------------
political declarations

"As well as condemning.... the “systemic policies of destabilisation and interventionism” currently being implemented in Syria
the bloc also signed a document in support of
Puerto Rico's right to self-determination and full independence."
and
support for Argentina in the struggle with imperial britain over the malvinas :

"the ALBA group will review what sanctions may be taken in response to
the “negative dialogue” and “ridiculous military threat”
from David Cameron's coalition government"

"The ALBA also struck out against the Organization of American States for its exclusionary stance with regards to Cuba"

------------------------

(**Formed in 2004 by Venezuela and Cuba, the ALBA is an alternative to U.S free trade agreements in the region . ALBA nations currently include; Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Bolivia, Dominica, St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Antigua and Barbuda.)

Democrat party workin stifs friend

take trucking :

i'll let a recent trot narrative enlightens us

http://socialistworker.org/2012/02/13/high-stakes-for-seattle-port-drivers

The U.S. Treasury Inspector General estimated that the misclassification of workers led to unpaid Social Security, Medicare and unemployment insurance taxes totaling $15 billion. Thus, the current employment arrangement in effect results in massive tax breaks for trucking companies.

In response to pressure from the port truckers' strike, the Washington state House of Representatives passed legislation February 11 that would classify owner-operators as employees. This bill now moves to the state Senate, where some think it will face a tougher time.

This strike is the most serious effort to date to win back rights that many truckers had over 30 years ago, before the deregulation of the industry.

"Deregulation began in 1977, under the Democratic Carter administration, when the Interstate Commerce Commission began loosening regulations for trucking operations that benefited "owner-operators" and small companies over larger trucking companies. The floodgates were opened when Carter signed the Motor Carrier Act of 1980."

after that ?

."unionization in the "for-hire sector" plummeted from 60 percent in 1973 to 20 percent by 2002."
... the Teamsters lost about 500,000 members. Wages for truckers fell by 30 percent from 1980 to 1995."

in parrticular there's the owner operator not employee scam

" the misclassification of workers led to unpaid Social Security, Medicare and unemployment insurance taxes totaling $15 billion. Thus, the current employment arrangement in effect results in massive tax breaks for trucking companies"

upshot for instance ?

"Now, in Seattle, the median net income for "owner-operators" is $28,783. At an average workweek of 59 hours, that works out to approximately $9.38 an hour, or barely above the state minimum wage of $9.04."...now add in
" insurance, tickets, repairs, etc"
yer prolly well below state minimum wage

this is the mess jimmy started

new Democrats are not the wage earners friend

more general instance

take payroll taxes...why it was god damn jimmy jimmy that.....never mind

i'll just toss this in

fuck u pat moynihan !!!

27 percent of American households now live
in "asset poverty"
if liquidated today their household assets wouldn't cover basic expenses
for more then three months
remove assets not quickly converted into cash
like a home, or car and the number is 43 percent.

http://assetsandopportunity.org/scorecard/about/main_findings/

now prune that safety net some more and you got some easy pickins
on the job market up ahead for corporate amerika

http://www.princeton.edu/~pkrugman/Class%202%20notes.pdf

that like is to some transfer system/welfare state related graphs
aimed at god damn college kids by nassau's own paul (xy) log normal krugman

useful ?
you decided

------------------------------

the transfer system is the prime target of domestic neoliberalism its bi partisan by now
and has posed the start billing existential threat to poverty pimps and class strugglers alike
for at least 36 years

transfer systems ae THE reality of modern state "activism "...always sharply in conflict with themselves and the resident master methods of exploitation

one great fear of the tower titans here and in middle europe :
a national transfer system robust enough to fund
a self organizing national counter culture
protractedly resistent to corporate exploitaion max (exmax)

I've been a bad, bad blogfather for a while now. Family troubles. Sorry. Hope to be back in harness soon. I'm glad Owen has been holding the fort.

chris hedges
sez all the right things ....for a CIA wall flower

no he's not code pink .....but who is...or mia farrow
but his recent flusterfuck over the phantom black blockers ?
to me that suggests Langley's talking thru him
like too much cologne suggests date rape

--------------------
okay so maybe he's just a twit ..what do i know ..i haven't a particle of evidence just an aroma

but don't count it out t ...look at that scare over henwood doug ....ya it seemed like the wildest of wild accusations
but ask yourself ....who knew for sure ..

thank god larry flynt eventually came forward and vindicated him

This just in, in an email blast from Nancy Pelosi:

We almost couldn't believe it. Today, at a House Oversight Committee hearing, House Republicans convened a panel on denying access to birth control converge with five men and no women. As my colleague Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney asked, where are the women?

Spokane to San Diego
the free speech fights
went off and down much like the OCC commons liberations ...

next step occupy your job site

act I
call for a job site assembly

its our constitutional right !

its our wagner act right !

-----------------------------------------------------

free speech fight change the local rules

tactics no violence

highly focused one location at a time
moblizing large numbers from all points north south east west

protracted action
repeat repeat repeat
absorb the mass arrests with glee

flood the jails
flood the courts
flood the system

-------------------------
can you draft up the parallels
for job site assemblies ?

targets
tactics
goals

In one of my regular trips down to the kitchen for a sandwich and a beer, I made my usual stop off at the bedroom to see what the DW had going on the idiot box just in time to catch a promo for Melissa Harris-Perry's new program on MSNBC.

Yeah, that's right, the blandly cute Melissa Harris-Lacewell-Perry-F'Tang-F'Tang-Bus-Stop-Olé-Biscuit-Barrel has got her own little show on MSNBC now. The Mayans were right. The End Times are here.

In the meantime, I'm actually finding myself in agreement with Sam Smith regarding the ejection of Pat Buchanan from the lineup of MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program, an island of rightist apologia in a sea of centrist-liberal crackpot realism:

http://prorevflotsam.blogspot.com/2012/02/noise-channels-at-play.html

On one point, though, I have to disagree with Sam: not all of the commentators on MSNBC are shouters. Granted, Scarborough is a massive windbag, Ed Schultz an old-school blowhard, and Chris "The Baby Eater" Matthews a world-class howler who adds the extra touch of leaning into the camera so he appears to be bellowing at you, personally, at home -- but then, you have Rachel Maddow, who isn't a shouter at all, but whose haughty, clipped, chirping delivery is no less annoying.

Being a bit of an antiquarian(*) myself, I was quite delighted with this image, passed along by a kind reader. I was particularly pleased to see the banker playing a rauschpfeife -- not, please note, a krummhorn. These terms are slung around with gay abandon in a very irresponsible way.

---------------

(*) Name the very obscure movie alluded to here. Owen, you are disqualified.

it is the State of the Union speech 1971:

"We must do better for workers in peacetime and we will do better.

To achieve this, I will submit an expansionary budget this year--one that will help stimulate the economy and thereby open up new job opportunities for millions of Americans.

It will be a full employment budget, a budget designed to be in balance if the economy were operating at its peak potential. By spending as if we were at full employment, we will help to bring about full employment.

I ask the Congress to accept these expansionary policies--to accept the concept of a full employment budget. ..."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
much is made of this typical kold war macro objective :

"It will be a full employment budget
a budget designed to be in balance
if the economy were operating at its peak potential."

clinch line :

By spending as if we were at full employment, we will help to bring about full employment"

indeed that passage contains a gallon sized jug of pragmatic non system threatening
" samuelsonian keynesianism "

the usual commentary on the quote goes on to lament the direction of" GOP think " since

where's the shrewd sanity of the old fox from san clemente ?

where's the deeper broader society wide moves
made by that lonely anti hero
after gazing drunkenly intoa blazing white house fire place ?

actually all now is in practice just as then

in a moment of decision
A Santorum or a Romney will be prepared
to follow the devil's hand book if necessary
to reach "the guardian class's " objectives

-----------------------

ya times have changed considerably for the worse if you're a job chaser

and why ?

for one
today there's no kold war competition for "woikah allegiance "

today the un employment rate is something you manage with a more cavalier hand
and with corporate global concerns not only upper most but almost exclusively
and
--add emphasis here ---
the "YOU" here in " you manage "
goes fully bipartisan
both mr dembo potus and mr gop unitary prez

that is
give or take maybe one point of official unemployment

1.5 million jobs ...tops
not insignifigant but not the promise of the post Roosevelt paradigm

------------------

today unlike 1971
system versus system metrics need not apply
'cause ..again unlike 1971

there is no up and running "other system"

we jobbling many
must rely on the one and only system's emergent contradictions
to drive any reactive - progressive reforms and programs

we of course can't be the sharpeners of those contractions
let alone creators

but we can
each in our way and place
attempt to be little swingers of a class blade
when like now
the opportunities arises all around us

--------------------

ps the purest nixon line lies outside the quote here of course:

"We should take no comfort from the fact
that the level of unemployment in this transition
from a wartime to a peacetime economy
is lower than in any peacetime year
of the sixties."

ever the thrusting at JFK

i'll leave that for u to savour

One John Coatsworth, hailed in some circles as a fellow-Lefty, has been appointed Provost of Columbia University by the vile unspeakable Field Marshal Lee Bollinger, the president of that Borg-like institution. Since Coatsworth is said to be one of us, this is greeted as good news by a couple of my fellow superannuated Left old ladies -- some of whom, it must be said, collect a Columbia paycheck in 'umble non-teaching capacities:

[Coatsworth] was very helpful procuring space for someone on a speaking tour for an EZLN spokesman....

---------

it is better to have him there than someone more like Glenn Hubbard.

There's a lot of very important struggles around academic freedom that have taken place at Columbia since I've been there. They have ramifications beyond the campus. For example, it would have been very bad if Joseph Massad had not gotten tenure. Lee Bollinger is pretty awful in many respects, but I do credit him as a principled free speech defender. He needs people like Coatsworth to have his back. The administration stood up for Edward Said and Nick DeGenova....

The other thing to keep in mind is that Columbia is a very fertile ground for Marxist scholarship. Granted, most of the professors who have such an orientation are like my Film Studies professor, people who have never been involved in struggles and write for small-circulation magazines to burnish their CV's.

But getting close to retirement, I can say that on balance the university deserves a lot of credit for providing a platform for unpopular opinions.

----------

When it comes to moving from the classroom to administration, I obviously cannot speak for John (it's been many years since we've spoken) --- I can only note that when I had a chance to become chairman of my department I took it -- It reduced my time in the classroom where I was most comfortable but it gave me the opportunity to have an important role in hiring decisions and in creating an atmosphere for new members of our faculty to thrive and achieve.

One must confess a personal interest here. I live a half-mile from Butler Library, or Barad-Dur as we call it here in the nabe -- or rather, as the half-dozen of us who still don't work for Columbia call it. So I really hate hate hate Columbia University and all its works. It's an octopus. I suggested as much of one of the Columbia employees quoted above -- a guy who, in his spare time, makes Leon Trotsky look like a pussy; let's call him Strelnikov -- and here's what I got back:

You should have immolated yourself to protest the wanton destruction of Tuck-It-Away. I would have gladly supplied the kerosene.

The Tuck-it-Away reference may require some elucidation. Columbia's latest grandiose expansion plans have made use of the state's power of eminent domain to condemn a lot of property in the nabe -- property on which, as it happens, a number of small businesses we depend upon eke out their existence. Tuck-It-Away, for example, operates storage lockers, a service much in requisition for West Siders who live in small cramped apartments like mine. And as a matter of fact, I have a storage locker there, myself.

Columbia wants Tuck-It-Away gone -- and they probably want me gone too. Tuck-It-Away's space might become dorms, or it might become yet another Student Center for Columbia's hand-picked overachieving suburban Philistine hatchlings; or perhaps Comrade John Coatsworth will end up in a nice penthouse apartment gazing down, from a safe distance, on the un-meritorious teeming masses of Broadway and 132d Street

Or what's left of them, anyway.

Strelnikov & co. seem to be right down with all this. Tuck Tuck-It-Away away. The important thing is to create a Free Speech Zone for Joseph Massad, and whatever careerist Larchmont hellspawn can afford the tuition and bother to go hear him.

the great energy combines are using the opportunities
provided by utterly unconnected political developments
to gouge away

a grotesque outrage

the non moved here include
ekon kon klowns like Paul "bottled water " krugman
that have proven conclusively to themselves
"this can't be gouging "

and
more near hearts here
you prim washed hands bike peddling wind mill green heads
gleeful
us of the goniff-schlub kommuter klass are once again
getting our job-eunuch neutricals banged

that aside

what an opportunity for some unitary prez mayhem

price roll backs

show hearings

indictments

raids and round ups

too bad the ohbummer gang can't say

fuck big energy
we got big wally

and gun down the houston oilers

don't work that way

the limited liability top draw free masonry
is interlocked like ten thousand fucking water snakes

tp://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/e409bf80-5733-11e1-be25-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1mUqJpHNf

greece now !!!

"... Greeks expected to register their anger at soaring unemployment and new taxes either by abstaining or by backing formerly marginal parties.

" Opinion polls show combined backing for the Democratic Left, the Greek Communist party (KKE) and Syriza at 42per cent - well ahead of any single establishment party. "

"But the three groups are too deeply divided by ideology and personal rivalries to consider teaming up in acoalition government, "

. well if the left can't form a broad rejectionist front
then the two big parties may just have to continue the de facto alliance
to defend "the system"
that all establishment parties obviously by definition
cherish like mother's milk

So Columbia University, as mentioned here earlier, is said to have appointed a fire-eating Red as Provost. The Red in question, John Coatsworth, has written some quite good stuff -- particularly about the coup in Guatemala -- but his Redness is far from obvious to this casual reader, trolling the interwebs. However an acquaintance of mine, a longtime toiler in the Columbia vineyard, who is himself Redder than Betelguese, and should know, admonishes:

It is very important for Columbia to include Marxists on its faculty. Students apply to Columbia because they want to study Marx.

I know a lot of Columbia faculty & students -- you can't help it here, it's a company town -- and I must say that in my experience, compared to other first- and second-tier credential retailers, Columbia has about the most conventional, cautious, don't-rock-the-boat cadre and customers of all. One gets the very strong impression that after 1968 management swore a mighty oath: Never Again! And took steps to implement it.

In the 80s they seemed to be recruiting a lot of jocks, but that led to a rash of date rapes and other unfortunate incidents -- alcohol poisoning, vomitus all over the McKim Mead & White beauxarteries, that sort of thing. Now the students mostly seem to be very focussed, serious, disciplined pre-professional types -- aspiring lawyers and MBAs.

The waitstaff -- erm, professioriate -- mostly seem to be perfectly nice liberal Upper West Side people(*), deeply disgusted with the Teabaggers and other bien-pensant betes noires, but that's about as far as it generally goes.

Ed Said was of course a horse of a different color, and I hear good things about Joseph Massad, though I haven't met him. And of course my correspondent is right that all the elite schools like to keep a few such people around; it helps keep up that factitious facade of free inquiry.

---------------------

(*) Unlike my own alma mater, the University of Chicago. There were people there who were so reactionary they drank Commie blood out of Commie skulls. Before the cocktail hour. But then there were some real Reds too -- I remember Richard Levins and Richard Lewontin in particular with great respect.

Go, tell Lord Beaverbrook, thou passer-by,
That here, obedient to his law -- we lie.

De mortuis nil nisi bonum. Nobody that I ever heard of ever accused Marie Colvin of lying. She seems to have been a ballsy, sharp-elbowed, determined person, and all the people who have praised her courage are undoubtedly telling the truth too. She sounds like a person it would have been fun to know.

Still, as always, the torrent of mawkish self-adulation from her colleagues in the Propaganda Sector -- excuse me, the news media -- has been exceptionally nauseating in this case. The quest for justice! Truth at all costs! And this is not just from the right-wing yellow press; the liberal media are if possible even more over the top.

I seldom saw much of Colvin's work, since she worked for one of the premier Murdoch sewer-outlets, the (London) Sunday Times. Clearly however she was very parti-pris and a strong advocate of intervention. A laudatory piece about her, from colleague Christiane Amanpour (of the unspeakable CNN) makes it quite clear that both of them regarded persuasion -- not mere reportage -- to be part of their remit:

... we and the BBC's Jeremy Bowen got an exclusive interview with Moammar Gadhafi, which was the last interview he did. It set the tone for future international involvement....

I believe the no-fly zone in Benghazi was put up because of the reporting there, and the urgent need to protect tens or hundreds of thousands of Libyan civilians.

And in Bosnia, it took a long time, but without the urgent reporting on the siege of towns and cities like Sarajevo and Srebrenica and Mostar, there would have been no intervention.

There is, it seems, a near-universal agreement to regard Colvin as a martyr, and use her memory to effect a sforzando in the baying of the war-hounds.

Perhaps it will seem cold-hearted of me to respond so unemotionally to a death -- any death. But long experience has taught me that orgies of public grief nearly always eventuate in some great crime.

Robert Naiman, a guy alternately pilloried and applauded here, has gotten himself into the SMBIVA penalty box again:

Largely missing from the recent political debate [about Iran], until now, has been a full-throated defense of diplomatic engagement with Iran towards negotiated agreements that would resolve or mitigate international concerns about its disputed nuclear program, thereby pushing back the prospect of military confrontation.

But that could change. Representatives Keith Ellison [D-MN] and Walter Jones [R-NC] are currently circulating a Congressional letter to President Obama urging the president to redouble U.S. efforts towards a diplomatic agreement.

But what really amazes me about Naiman's piece is that although he concedes the widely-reported and uncontroversial fact that the US government does not believe Iran is trying to build a bomb, he nevertheless persists in speaking of some phantasmal "concerns" the US has which might somehow be "addressed" by something short of exhuming the Shah and propping his putrid corpse back up on the Peacock Throne. Surely it is clear, is it not, that the "concern" the US has with Iran is that it escaped from clienthood 35 years ago; and the only way this "concern" could be "addressed" is by restoring it to clienthood.

More confusion:

A key part of the story is that we've had a one-sided political debate about Iran....If we could get 40 Members of the House to sign this letter, including 5 to 10 Republicans, that would be a good start. Insider D.C. press, at least, would report it; Ellison and Jones would have their profiles raised as voices for diplomatic engagement; and to some degree and at long last, the debate in the media would have two sides.

But here the two sides seem to be all about different means of achieving the same end, namely a compromise -- preferably a fatal one -- of Iran's sovereignty. Here's what the two Congressional soup-hounds say in their "full-throated" letter -- I leave visualization of the epithet up to the reader:

Now that the international community has enacted the strongest sanctions against Iran to date, we must redouble our diplomatic efforts to achieve the transparency measures that will ensure Iran’s nuclear program remains a civilian one.

Of course what gives the game away most clearly is the pairing of "sanctions" with diplomatic engagement. This makes the "diplomatic engagement" look a lot like those YouTube videos of cops beating an unarmed man, prostrate on the ground, while yelling over and over, "Stop resisting!"

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2012/manufacturing-overseas-competition-0224.html

fellow citizen suckers behold the wisdom of the rear view mirror :

as we exit the era of amerika's great de industrialization boom
and only as we exit do we get the findings

"A city at the 75th percentile of exposure to Chinese manufacturing, compared to one at the 25th percentile, will have roughly a 5 percent decrease in the number of manufacturing jobs and an increase of about $65 per capita in the amount of social insurance needed, such as unemployment insurance, health care insurance and disability payments. "

“ People like to think that workers flow freely across sectors, but in reality, they don’t "
--- study's lead author

" At a conservative estimate, that $65 per capita ....
(estimated increased in social insurance payouts )...
wipes out one-third
of the per-capita gains realized by trade with China, in the form of cheaper goods."

that's cash laid out ..all by itself !!!!
each time corporate amerika finds a cheaper off shore source

never mind the long run wage loses
the community down grades
the cluster of households perminently "disrupted " etc etc etc

“Those numbers are really startling,”
the lead Author adds.

-------------------------------------

This piece was inspired by a post of Owen's here. He quotes some interesting passages from Nixon’s 1971 State Of The Union Address in which he mentions the “expansionary” budget he was about to submit to Congress, a “full employment budget”. Here’s The Tricky One’s own words from back in ‘71:

“By spending as if we were at full employment, we will help to bring about full employment.”

Jeeeeeezus… full-employment budget.

This nutty Santorum cat is kinda fun; I was delighted to see him attacking the universities. To be sure, he's got a bee in his bonnet about other people having sex, but seems to have no problem with it in his personal capacity, judging by his brood of younkers; he's as progenitive as Mr Quiverful in Barchester Towers.

Take a look at this clip, then read on:

There's something wonderfully bizarre about it, isn't there? Not least, the occasional pans over the curdled doughfaced decrepitude of the audience. There was a nice little piece in the Times (yes, the Times; so sue me) the other day about just who the Republican primary voters are: maybe 11% of the public in the states with primaries so far, overwhelmingly white and significantly older than the population in general. I enjoyed reading it; it confirmed (if any confirmation were needed) my conviction that the Republican primaries, apart from the one anti-imperialist candidate(*), are a non-event.

Of course this doesn't prevent my liberal friends from lashing themselves into a frenzy of loathing and dismay over the self-stimulation of this pathetic group of kooky has-beens. There's really nothing to worry about, or nothing that we shouldn't already be worried about: the Republican primaries could end up nominating any one of these clowns, and if enough sensible people sensibly stay home on Election Day, then the same kooks that nominated him could elect him, and nothing would change.

Business as usual is guaranteed, at least until the public gets sick enough of it to indulge in some form of political activity more consequential than rooting for their favorite contrada in the quadrennial palio. Liberals' belief that people like Santorum are really determined to upset the applecart is the mirror image of Teabaggers' belief that Obama is a crypto-Muslim Manchurian Candidate.

Of course Santorum's comment, shown in the clip, that not everybody should go to college, was perhaps the only sensible thing he's ever said, but naturally it seemed the height of lunacy to liberal folk, for whom edumacation is the self-evident answer to everything. Any fool can see that the problem with poor people is that they don't have enough money; it takes a highly-educated liberal to conclude that their problem is that they don't have enough education.

Oh, don't get me wrong: I'm a great believer in college, just as I'm a great believer in national parks. I think anybody should be able to go to any college, if they want to, for free, and without any qualifications; if there's a queue, then queue up, or distribute tickets by lottery. But the notion that college -- especially universal college, and especially given the character of actually-existing colleges -- is an answer to any kind of social problem is the tribal superstition of the merit class.

Liberal commentators have tried to argue that Santorum is being inconsistent here, since in an earlier phase of his career he supported initiatives to make college more affordable. The illogic of this criticism should be manifest to the meanest intellect: enabling people to go to college (if they want to) is a very different matter from trying to get everybody to go to college. Simple, huh?

Santorum is mighty odd, though. Obie is a 'snob' because he wants everybody to go to college? That weird word just popped out of his mouth, like a demoniac expectorating a toad. What strange labyrinth of thought led him there? You'd think a snob would want to keep the rabble out. It's a schoolmaster who wants to herd 'em in.

------------------

(*) Ron Paul, of course.

So there's this private intelligence firm called Stratfor, and Wikileaks has gotten hold of a big cache of their internal emails and put them up on the Web:

http://wikileaks.org/the-gifiles.html

It makes fun reading. One doesn't really know whether to be more impressed by how sinister it is -- these creeps are apparently all over the place -- or how clownish it is: lots of swagger and tough talk, and at bottom a lot of inane thumbsucking, worthy of a Trotskyite email list, over material discovered in the newspaper or picked up as gossip from some guy in a bar. I've seen one so far that reads as if it actually rested on real conversations with Henry Kissinger, Paul Volcker, and Nicholas Brady:

http://wikileaks.org/gifiles/docs/5509401_re-insight-for-internal-use-only-on-pain-of-agony-.html

... but who knows? This could be fourth-hand gossip. (Stratfor is much given to the puerile habit of top-posting, so you have to start at the bottom of these chains and read up.)

There's definite personality type involved here. I bet a lot of 'em played Dungeons & Dragons at an impressionable age; the one guy I actually know who works for the CIA certainly did. He loves to strike the if-I-told-you-I'd have-to-kill you note, but has the giveaway kinked neck, Blackberry squint, and dyspeptic pallor of the cubicle rat. Email virility.

the post office and the public school house ???

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/dc-schools-insider/post/charters-quick-to-suspend-expel-council-told/2012/02/17/gIQAQRGlKR_blog.html

http://www.apwu.org/news/nsb/2012/nsb06-120223-consolidations.htm

--------------------------------------------------------
after the drowning what ??

if we are to march forward
then let us hope
profitization follows quickly if not immediately upon privatization

here profitization comes to sound like weaponization
to you humanist soft shellers

imagine this hobson's choice:

limited liability bottom lined charter schools versus faith based NPOs

a nation of ups stores

atm like postaling

...i can dig it

-----------------------------------------

this negation too shall pass

as will the negation of that negation

--------------------

are we at the verge of a chasm
or
simply the libertarian triumph over the merely liberal

the hide bound civic goo goos ..gonzo

the marketeering/profiteering mice
incentivized to the highest of high Cs
scurrrying about in fully licensed amok

----------------------

seems only pub sec unions stand between us
and this brave new void

rally you goo gos to the sordid banner of
the Al and Moe show

may the manatous
of
biller and shanker
be with you

"A one-day general strike, called by India's major trade unions to protest high inflation and other issues, disrupted daily routines Tuesday,"

: http://www.upi.com/Business_News/2012/02/28/24-hour-general-strike-starts-in-India/UPI-69641330411406/#ixzz1nmMezuKN

"Eleven central trade unions backed the strike call, posing a fresh challenge to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh ...had called on the unions to call off the show of force.....Among the unions’ demands are a national minimum wage, permanent jobs for 50 million contract labourers, more government efforts to rein in the rising cost of living, and an end to the sale of stakes in profitable public companies."

http://www.dawn.com/2012/02/28/all-india-strike-poses-fresh-challenge-to-govt.html

"The demands before the Striking workers and their trade unions were 1) concrete measures to contain price rise 2) concrete measures for linkage of employment protection with the concession/incentive package offered to the entrepreneurs, 3) Strict enforcement of all basic labour laws without any exception or exemption and stringent punitive measures for violations, 4) universal social security cover for the unorganized sector workers without any restriction and creation of a National Social Security Fund with adequate resources in line with the recommendation of NCEUS and Parliamentary Standing Committee on Labour and 5) Stoppage of disinvestment in central and state profit-making PSUs, 6) No Contractorisation of work of permanent/perennial nature and payment of wages and benefits to the contract workers at the same rate as available to the regular workers of the industry/establishment, 7) Amendment of Minimum Wages Act to ensure universal coverage irrespective of the schedules and fixation of statutory minimum wage at not less than Rs 10,000/-, 8) Remove all ceilings on payment and eligibility of Bonus, Provident Fund; Increase the quantum of gratuity, 9)Assured Pension for all, 10) Compulsory registration of trade unions within a period of 45 days and immediate ratification of the ILO Conventions nos 87 and 98. "

http://ganashakti.com/news/single-news/article/central-trade-unions-congratulate-working-peoplebr-for-successful-countrywide-general-strike.html

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:special report from bengal:

my pal dani bose at the "bengal lancet "..sordid pink that he is ...
was delighted by the ineffectiveness of chief minister of strike breaking Mamata Banerjee

an e mail:

"she ordered a thousand fresh buses into the center of the city
'to keep normality running'
surely she would prefer to rage at the strikers
"i'll shoot you all "
like a french general fighting not the huns at the front lines
but the poilu on R & R ...what a performance "

http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/bengal-worst-hit-in-general-strike/466132/

I love this gesture, so often seen when bigfoots of one kind or another speak in public. Is it the inner traffic cop? Or does it mean, Calm down, everything is under control, don't get your bowels in an uproar?

Left Forum this month will probably see it from the buffoon above, who has agreed to give a "standalone" speech to the assembled comrades, according to a giddy-happy email I just received.

This is the same Michael Moore who was recently generous enough to say that it was OK to be critical of Obama, as long as you vote for him anyway. Golly. Even Cornel West, last year's Left Forum buffoon-in-residence, seems to have gotten past that point.