Dec 05 2009
Original article, by Barry Grey, via World Socialist Web Site:
Thursday’s White House summit on jobs was an open display of the callousness and indifference of President Barack Obama and the American corporate elite to the plight of the working class.
Nov 30 2009
This is an oh-so-preliminary explanation of the problem of money-giving in light of the concept of the “Veal Pen” as elaborated most recently over at firedoglake. It examines, through a recent piece of Bill Domhoff’s, the role of nonprofits in the sustaining of hegemonic neoliberalism. This discussion will further sharpen what I advocated in my previous diary: stop giving your money to organizations which acquiesce before injustice, and start giving your money to organizations which push back. There will, then, be an exploration of how such giving can be consistently accomplished.
(Crossposted at Orange)
Sep 07 2009
This appears to be the delicate stage of negotiations for a health care bill. As War On Error has shown so thoroughly today, the House bill as stands is a pure giveaway, because the “public option” it offers is only available to the self-employed, and then only by 2013, by which time the insurers will have (maybe) a bit firmer control of the Federal government than they do today.
We should understand, then, that we will have to be in this for the sake of building a historic bloc, a larger social movement with a political aim. If we can do that, we can say that it’s not over when Congress decides to vote, and we will not have to wait another sixteen years to get what we want. Voting down all sellout bills will, in this light, be our first victory as a historic-bloc-in-formation. It is still early in the game — it is not “now or never.”
(Crossposted at Orange)
Aug 05 2009
This is to elaborate on a previous diary on Gramsci: as I argued there, we need a new historic bloc. I’m updating the argument to discuss the Congressional contest for a “robust public option”; the old historic bloc appears to have partially collapsed, with the deflation of Republican popularity, yet no new historic bloc has arisen. The attempt to create a “robust public option” may have encountered so much resistance, I argue, because it is trying to work with the old historic bloc. We, therefore, need a new one.
(crossposted at Big Orange)
Jun 26 2009
This is a book review of an ambitious text, Richard Peet’s 2007 book Geography of Power, which gets at the issue of social power by defining it as a physical thing and by locating it in time and space. As will be shown in this book review, this is really a thing worth doing, and so the critique of this book will be aimed at sharpening Peet’s discussion of “power” while helping him resist just being another David Harvey.
(Crossposted at Big Orange)
Jun 24 2009
The green shoots, the most wonderful propaganda onslaught since General Petraeus’s heroic, Reaganesque winning of the Iraq war through the ‘SURGE’ has failed. The stinking undead zombie that is the U.S. economy has not been resurrected through the massive infusions of taxpayer dollars, perhaps spent billions on public relations and lobbying and the changing of the mark to market rules only bought times for the financial predators. The wonderful government subsidized markets are tanking again, there are still no jobs, the housing market is not at all improving, the banks aren’t lending and by the way, there are truck bombs are going off in Baghdad again. While neocons and Repiglicans have their panties in a bunch over Barack Obama’s not getting behind their little Iranian PSYOP the real outcry should be from every taxpayer in Der Heimat beause they have just been bent over backwards and butt-fucked by Barack’s Wall Street Dream Team into funneling billions into the Ponzi schemes, getting nothing but pink slips and foreclosure notices in return and are about to have any hope of a national health care ripped away by the corrupt, on-the-take non-term limited cesspool dwellers in Congress.
And the myth of Ronald Reagan is just like the one about Santa Claus, only silliness for the credulous little children of lemming land. Horseshit, total horseshit.
Mar 15 2009
Dear readers, I would like to call your attention to the analysis of David Harvey in this weekend’s Counterpunch — “Is This Really the End of Neoliberalism?” Harvey’s analysis points to a further consolidation of class power in light of the failure of the financial system to expand asset bubbles and in light of the collapses in lending.
Harvey is important as one of the main thinkers of “neoliberalism,” the period of recent history in which the wealthiest interests have been separating the rest of us from our assets through what Harvey calls “accumulation through dispossession.”
(crossposted in Big Orange)
Jan 06 2009
Original article, by Jerry White, via World Socialist Web Site:
For weeks, spokesmen for the incoming Barack Obama administration have suggested that they would respond to the economic crisis by launching a massive program of public spending, with some supporters comparing the scope of the planned economic stimulus package to Roosevelt’s New Deal measures during the Great Depression.
Nov 24 2008
This diary will suggest a sort of “Earthly dream” in light of the inspiration felt by millions to pursue the “American dream” of the age of nationalism. I want to proceed from an assessment of where we are now, to a short discussion of how we fit into the systems of which we are a part, to a look at how our hopes and dreams may be transformed into a future of ecological dislocation and crisis.
(crossposted on Big Orange)
Nov 20 2008
Original article, a comment subtitled Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, explains why a preventive detention law being floated by some Obama advisers would be disastrous, via socialistworker.org:
WHEN I awoke this morning, I saw the New York Times headline: “Post-Guantánamo: A New Detention Law?” I was afraid to read the article for I knew what was coming: some on the Obama team, supported by a few liberals, were considering a preventive detention law.
Nov 06 2008
Original article, by John Peterson, via Socialist Appeal (US):
The U.S. has elected a new president. On January 20, 2009, Barack Hussein Obama will be sworn in as the 44th President of the United States. Along with the dramatic turn in the economic situation, this marks a definite turning point in the history of the country and of the world. On the streets across the U.S., you can feel a collective sigh of relief. Tens if not hundreds of thousands of people are on the streets of New York, Chicago, St. Louis and San Francisco, many of them dancing and even crying with joy. Young people drive by or ride their bikes through the streets yelling “Obama!” at passersby. Some have likened the celebration to New Year’s Eve, and people’s faces – especially young people and African-Americans – are glowing. These scenes have been repeated around the world, as frustration against Bush’s policies is unleashed. The world has not been a very pleasant place for the last 8 years.
Nov 03 2008
Original article, a perspective from Patrick Martin, via World Socialist Web Site:
In the run-up to Election Day, with polls pointing to a lopsided victory by the Democratic Party, both Barack Obama and leading congressional Democrats are making it clear in advance that a popular repudiation of the Bush administration will not determine the policies of an Obama White House or Democratic Congress.