yurbud
yurbud's JournalWas Roberts vote conservatism/neoliberalism blinking?
The last time I can remember the right suffering a defeat like this was when Bush wanted to privatize Social Security, but that effort failed because Democrats in the Senate took a rare stand against the right and didn't budge.
What was extraordinary in this case was a CONSERVATIVE stopped the conservative steamroller, does that mean the right has realized the limits of how far they can push for corporatocracy/plutocracy before the people will rise up or was it something else?
PIC: Obama survey leaves out traditional Democratic ally--teachers
Is this an oversight or because he doesn't want to hear from educators, especially since his education policy is more guided by trust fund babies and their corporate reformers?
Obama has done better on education spending than any Republican would have, but that's cold comfort to teachers if that money is going to eventually go to scammers in the testing, for profit charter school, and education management companies instead of into smaller class size and hiring more teachers.
DERFCITY TOON: update on healthcare battle
I'm already thinking of opening a new business with that tax deduction.
[font size=5]more at DERFCITY.COM
Chicago Democrats and Wall Street at War with CTU
I would like to see Obama beat Romney, but as a college instructor married to a K-12 teacher, I'm trying to figure out how to cast my vote without it being taken as an endorsement of this conservative, corrupt education policy that is breaking our K-12 schools and just starting to do the same to public colleges and universities.
Teachers are among the most reliable foot soldiers for Democrats in campaigns, but it's hard to walk a precinct after someone has just kicked you in the nuts.
Obama has done better on funding education than Romney ever would, but that would be cold comfort if my wages get cut in half and my job security destroyed, just so some hedge fund manager can skim taxpayer money meant for schools into his own pocket.
The first link in this post says David Axelrod's old firm is running the anti-union ads in Chicago.
What is it going to take to break the stranglehold this cancerous policy has on so many Democratic politicians? What do we have to do to get them to return the loyalty teachers show them at the polls?
If DLCers aren't careful, their dismissive "they don't have anywhere else to go" attitude is going to come back and bite them in the ass someday.
More evidence, this time in the Chicago Tribune, that Wall Street hedge fund managers and Obama Democrats are pouring money into the fight against the public school teachers of Chicago.
I know that Republicans get a hearty laugh when they see Democratic mayors like Rahm Emanuel and Cory Booker and Antonio Villaraigosa at war with the teachers' unions in their cities. I am on several conservative mailing lists and I can practically hear they snickering and cheering every time a Democratic mayor praises school choice, privatization, and charters while warring with the teachers.
I wonder if any of the people at the White House pause to wonder how these district-level battles will affect the election in 2012? Remember, the Presidential election?
Will teachers who have been pounded into submission by Rahm Emanuel and Obama operative and Wall Street titans vote for Obama? Maybe they will hold their noses and vote, but will they knock on doors, will they call their friends and relatives, will they volunteer on election day to help the same people that are now bullying them?
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PREDICTION: the "HAVE YOU NO SHAME" moment for capitalism
Our current form of capitalism is no longer based on real wealth of resources and manufacturing, but the investment and currency Ponzi schemes of the finance sector.
What it's probably going to take for people to realize this is some hedge fund to decide to goose their profits by cannibalizing a company we all like and even depend on.
It's not that far-fetched: they already do it to companies that are profitable--just not profitable enough to suit them.
It wasn't quite enough for most people that it was done to the dream of home ownership, or the ongoing assaults on a middle class standard of living, secure pensions and access to higher education.
Some icon of capitalism itself needs to be hobbled and torn to shreds by the jackals of Wall Street because a speadsheet showed it was far more profitable than merely investing in it and collecting dividends, or even running another pump and dump scam.
When we see what we idealize as capitalism killed by what it really is, maybe people will realize our biggest enemy isn't the last three hundred al Qaeda in Pakistan or the last three commies in North Korea, put the sociopathic trust fund babies on Wall Street who crush our dreams and make us work three minimum wage jobs to survive, so that their descendants won't have to get a job for the next ten generations.
STIGLITZ: The World's 99% Knows Capitalism Is Failing and Believes That Change Is Possible
This was the headline over at Buzzflash.
I think everyone ought to copy and paste it into an email to the White House and their congressman and senators.
They need to know that they have done far too little punish those who broke the World economy or to fix it so they can't break it again.
They probably won't do anything, but at least they won't be able to say we didn't ask them to.
Hell, send it to Mitt too. But I think his idea of change is having someone hold us by our ankles and shake it out of our pockets and into his off shore accounts.
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Americans, Europeans, and people in other democracies around the world take great pride in their democratic institutions. But the protesters have called into question whether there is a real democracy. Real democracy is more than the right to vote once every two or four years. The choices have to be meaningful. The politicians have to listen to the voices of the citizens. But increasingly, and especially in the United States, it seems that the political system is more akin to "one dollar one vote" than to "one person one vote." Rather than correcting the market's failures, the political system was reinforcing them.
Politicians give speeches about what is happening to our values and our society, but then they appoint to high office the CEOs and other corporate officials who were at the helm in the financial sector as the system was failing so badly. We shouldn't have expected the architects of the system that has not been working to rebuild the system to make it work, and especially work for most citizens - and they didn't.
The failures in politics and economics are related, and they reinforce each other. A political system that amplifies the voice of the wealthy provides ample opportunity for laws and regulations - and the administration of them - to be designed in ways that not only fail to protect the ordinary citizens against the wealthy but also further enrich the wealthy at the expense of the rest of society.
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GREENWALD: The imperatives of political pressure
One of the best ways we can help Obama in this election year is to demand that he be all that he can be, which would serve two positive purposes:
- draw a sharper contrast between Romney and Obama, probably getting more people excited about the election and helping him win.
- a precedent making it at least a little harder for Obama to say his win was a validation of the DLC, corporate compliance without the lynch mob and religious nuts, way.
If we demand nothing, the Democrats will continue to chase the GOP to the right, and say that's what we voted for.
Throughout the Obama presidency, one of the most vocal and demanding factions in the Democratic Party base has been activists for gay and lesbian equality. They repeatedly protested at Obama events and even at the White House, complained loudly about Obama’s broken promises, and even threatened to boycott Obama’s re-election campaign by withholding donations. In light of that ongoing confrontationalism, as well as the importance of gay voters (and especially gay donors) to the Democratic Party, it’s no surprise that their agenda has been repeatedly attended to by Obama, as he engineered the successful repeal of Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell, ordered his DOJ to stop defending the constitutionality of DOMA, and then finally “evolved” to an Election-Year endorsement of same-sex marriage.
Latino activists have been as confrontational and unwilling to fall into line as good, compliant partisan soldiers. They publicly protested Obama’s record number of deportation, complained about his immigration policies, loudly accused him of “betrayal,” and expressed subsstantial disapproval for him in polls. Thus, five months before the election, we have this today:
These qualifications resemble in some ways those of the so-called Dream Act, a measure blocked by Congress in 2010 that was geared to establish a path toward citizenship for certain young illegal immigrants. The administration’s action on Friday, which stops deportations but does not offer citizenship, is being undertaken by executive order and does not require legislation. It was announced by the Department of Homeland Security. . . .
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DSCC email on Florida voter purge has wrong solution.
The good: unlike prior years, Dems are giving the issue a high profile
The bad: a petition to tell the GOP to STOP DOING IT? Would that be an effective approach to dealing with terrorists, drug lords, and serial killers?
When someone is committing a crime, you don't ask them to stop, you ask the cops to do their job and stop them. If Florida ignores the Justice Department order, arrests should be made, and the courts should supervise whose on the voter rolls and the voting for duration. Republicans might actually stop using this tactic if a governor and/or Karl Rove level strategist did some prison or even just jail time.
Our right to vote should not be something we have to petition the GOP to grant us.
Has a privately owned business ever turned into a co-op?
Co-ops would eliminate some of the problems of our finance driven corporate business culture, but most businesses seem to start from one person's vision or obsession.
The turning point seems to be when they go public and become a corporation.
Suddenly the original vision to provide a product or service is subordinate to meeting profit goals set by the financial sector, and even if the company is profitable and the product is beloved by the public, if someone in finance thinks they can make a quick buck by killing the company, they can and will.
The same can happen to employees well before the company itself is killed. While an individual owner may have benevolent feelings and policies toward his employees, once it goes corporate, bookkeeping sleight of hand to goose profits take priority over treating them right and even getting the best efforts from them.
I wonder if some of the founders of companies wouldn't be happy with less money if they knew their company would survive with something like its original vision after their active leadership rather than being prostituted and cannibalized.
It would certainly be more likely to survive as a one person (including employees, investors, and even customers) one vote as opposed to one dollar one vote.
Has anyone ever done this and converted a family business or partnership into a co-op?
Is there any effort to convince small businesses this is the better way to expand?
If not, there should be.
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Member since: Sun Jul 11, 2004, 07:58 PMNumber of posts: 39,405
