Category: Class War

`We`re in a pre-revolutionary society’

~ susie ~ 3 Comments

AmericaBlog’s Gaius Publius dissects this Chris Hedges interview:

I don’t think that living in revolutionary times is any fun; and I think that revolutions very often go disastrously wrong. So I’m not cheering this one, and I’m angry indeed that the greed-mad (I mean that clinically) barons are determined to force us to rise up. Even without the climate chaos they may force on us, the next few decades will not be peaceful.

But decide for yourself. Here’s Hedges on why he thinks we’re ripe for revolution, in the start of one already, and what we should do (source here):

Some notes:

▪ At 7:15: “What happens in moments of breakdown, is that people not only turn against an ineffectual liberal elite, that in essence has presided over political or economic paralysis, but they also jettison the values that elite purports to defend. And that’s what’s dangerous. And we’re certainly barreling towards that kind of a crisis. I worry that we’re not only weakened, but unprepared.”

▪ At 8:45, Hedges talks about what vision replaces the current one, since people need to be fighting for something, not just against something. And he makes a nice connection between the current prison population and anti-revolutionary forces and critiques in our society.

▪ At 11:00 he talks about the recipe for revolution in current society as a fusion between “declassé intellectuals” — students whose lives are burdened and broken by debt and joblessness — and service workers, “who are in essence the working poor.” Think a student debt strike would light a fire? I do.

▪ He ends by articulating a vision (in my view, viable) of where and how change will come from.

“It’s going to come off the ground, it’s going to come by stepping outside of the mainstream, it’s going to come by articulating a very different vision about how we relate to each other, how we relate to the economic system, and ultimately how we relate to the ecosystem.”

The essay they reference, “Our Invisible Revolution,” is here. A related piece, “The Revolutionaries in our Midst,”is here. I think Hedges would offer these as further evidence that, well, it’s started.

Thanks, April Cockerham.

Equal opportunity?

~ susie

Jasan Lazarus Live Archive
Not exactly. Kevin Drum:

Via James Pethokoukis, here’s an interesting tidbit of income mobility data from a new Brookings report. The chart below is a little tricky to read, but basically it shows how likely you are to make more money than your parents. You’d naturally expect smart kids to do better than dimmer kids, so it tracks that too.

Take a look at the green column on the far left. It’s for kids who grow up in the very poorest families. If you have high cognitive ability, you have a 24 percent chance of becoming a high earner as an adult. That’s not too bad.

But if you come from a high-income family, you have a 45 percent chance of becoming a high earner as an adult. Same smarts, different outcome.

No society will ever get this perfect. Still, there’s a huge difference between 24 percent and 45 percent. Better schools, more extracurricular opportunities, different skin color, bigger networks of connected friends, higher odds of going to college, and the simple ability to get in the door all give richer kids a huge leg up that poor kids don’t have. We obviously have a ways to go before everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed in America.

Affluenza

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

From the state with the best justice money can buy! I wonder how understanding the judge would be if this kid was poor, and the defense argued his parents never taught him right from wrong. At least the families of his four victims will be able to sue the pants off this spoiled brat’s family:

A spoiled Texas teen who killed four in a drunken driving accident dodged prison and was sentenced to probation instead after defense lawyers argued his wealthy parents never taught him right from wrong.

Ethan Couch, 16, was facing 20 years behind bars for the horrific June wreck, but instead walked out of a Fort Worth courtroom Tuesday with 10 years’ probation.

The rich brat’s legal team said he needed counseling, not hard time, and proposed sending him to a posh Southern California treatment facility that would cost his family $500,000 a year.

You guessed it: He got ten years probation and will enter a rehab center for the wealthy. Bet he learns his lesson now, huh?

Another charter school raid

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

This one, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Some more of that great for-profit education!

BATON ROUGE – FBI agents raided a charter school today in East Baton Rouge Parish.

An FBI spokesperson could only confirm that agents were at the Kenilworth Science and Technology School on Boone Avenue for a matter not related to public safety. News 2 crews saw FBI agents taking boxes of items out of the school on dollies and loading them into vans.

The charter school is operated by the Pelican Educational Foundation, which in 2011 lost its charter to operate the Abramson Science and Technology Center in New Orleans after allegations of rape and sexual incidents between students.

The school would not comment on today’s raid.

The 1% is offended by the very sight of the bottom tier

~ susie ~ 3 Comments

So, Greg. You “have no clue” why all those homeless people and junkies are disturbing your pristine view of downtown San Fran? You’re not too smart, are you? You make no connection at all between economic, social, and political influences and their results? What a moron.

Silicon Valley rising star Greg Gopman took to Facebook on Tuesday to rail against poor and homeless residents of San Francisco, inflaming already simmering tensions between the city’s tech industry and low-wage workers.

Gopman, the CEO of the hackathon-organizing startup AngelHack, went on a rant wishing the “crazy, homeless, drug dealers, dropouts, and trash” would segregate themselves and stop marring his experience of San Francisco.

gopman

In the comments, Gopman bemoaned how the “degenerates” of San Francisco “gather like hyenas, spit, urinate, taunt you, sell drugs, [and] get rowdy” in an area of town he considers to be off-limits to them. In comparison, he offered a rosy view of more class-segregated cities, where, he says, “the lower part of society keep to themselves. They sell small trinkets, beg coyly, stay quiet, and generally stay out of your way. They realize it’s a privilege to be in the civilized part of town and view themselves as guests.”

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Gopman deleted the post and apologized for his diatribe the next morning. “I trivialized the plight of those struggling to get by and I shouldn’t have,” he wrote. “I hope this thread can help start an open discussion on what changes we can make to fix these serious problems.”

The CEO’s comments came just a day after protesters blocked a Google commuter shuttle, decrying tech-driven gentrification and San Francisco’s increasingly unaffordable housing costs. As the uber-rich tech industry migrates north from Silicon Valley the city’s real estate costs have soared, income inequality has worsened, and many long-time San Francisco residents are suddenly being priced out of their neighborhoods.

While Gopman’s post was especially incendiary, he’s not the only one who has expressed the idea that homeless and poor residents are an unsightly burden on the city. Another startup founder, Peter Shih, sparked outrage over the summer by complaining that homeless people were ruining San Francisco for him. This disgust may soon spread past a few insensitive individuals and start influencing actual policy. San Francisco is currently considering criminalizing homelessness by making it illegal to sleep in city parks at night.

Let’s not leave L.A. out of this. Here’s some yuppie scum, making fun of a passed-out homeless man.

Federal pension grab in new budget

~ susie ~ 5 Comments

humansacrifice

Leave it to David Dayen to dig out the nasty details of the Ryan-Murray budget deal and how federal workers will be sacrificed to the deficit gods:

2013 has not been a pleasant year if you work for the federal government. You’ve been subject to pay freezes, furloughs and shutdowns. One of you got yelled at by a Tea Party Republican at the World War II memorial. And if Congress passes the budget deal announced Tuesday night by Rep. Paul Ryan and Sen. Patty Murray – a big if – you will get a final Christmas present: You’ll have to pay more into your pension, an effective wage cut that just adds to the $114 billion, with a “B,” federal employees have already given back to the government in the name of deficit reduction.

The deal between House and Senate negotiators Ryan and Murray would reverse part of sequestration for 2014 and 2015, itself a major source of pain for federal workers. But negotiators want to pay for that relief in future years, with the overall package cutting the deficit by an additional $23 billion. And one of the major “pay-fors” is an increase in federal employee pension contributions. President Obama’s 2014 budget included such a proposal, which would have raised the employee contribution in three stages, from 0.8 percent of salary to 2 percent. Congress had already made this shift for new hires; the Obama proposal would affect all workers hired before 2012.

That proposed increased contribution translated to a 1.2 percent pay cut, and a total of around $20 billion in givebacks over 10 years. Negotiators were pressured by the powerful Maryland Democratic delegation, including Minority Leader Steny Hoyer, House Budget Committee ranking member Chris Van Hollen and Senate Appropriations Committee chairwoman Barbara Mikulski, into softening the blow on federal employees, many of whom live in their districts. According to Sen. Murray, the increase in contributions now equals about $6 billion over 10 years. But negotiators traded some of the cuts to federal employee pensions with different cuts to military pensions, also totaling $6 billion. So whatever the occupation, people who work for the government will bear the brunt of the pain.

Read it and weep. Once again, the deficit madness gets pushed to a different segment of the population so the rich may rest in luxury.

Undermining the peace deal with Iran

~ susie ~ 3 Comments

Tabriz Bazaar

You’re shocked, right? I’m not:

In the normal course of affairs, Democrats would be ecstatic about what Secretary of State John Kerry brought home from Geneva..

[M]ost Democrats are too worried about offending donors to even discuss Iran, let alone take credit for the agreement. The ones who are talking about it are condemning it in terms that sound Ted Cruzesque. (See top Democrats Chuck Schumer and Bob Menendez for two, of many, examples). And it’s not just Democrats from the northeast who are hammering on Obama. Congressional campaigns now fundraise nationally, meaning that senators from South Dakota and Oregon respond to events in the Middle East as if they represented the New York metropolitan area. Pretty much all Congressional Democrats are running scared…of a Democratic president’s historic success.

Writing in The Forward, former George W. Bush administration official and life-long neocon, Noam Neusner… [writes] They can’t support Obama’s Iran achievement because these Democrats are “the men and the women, after all, who are on a first-name basis with most of the board of AIPAC” and “they want to be in Washington long after Obama leaves the White House.”

Anyone who has any doubt about what Neusner is talking about should note his reference to the Democrats’ “first name” relationship with the AIPAC board. He doesn’t just refer to the lobby or to AIPAC in general. He certainly does not refer to Jewish American voters who tend to be part of the Democratic party’s progressive wing and are no fans of Netanyahu’s or his paranoid visions. No, he refers to the AIPAC board which is composed of AIPAC’s wealthiest members, the ones who decide who the lobby will support (or try to defeat) in November 2014.

This applies to the 2016 election as well. Secretary of State John Kerry’s predecessor, Hillary Clinton, has also been conspicuously silent. Because she is the lobby’s favorite for president, she no doubt also feels the need to tread softly. (Fearing donor backlash, Clinton has, to put it mildly, never been a profile in courage when it comes to any Israel-related issue).

No doubt, she will ultimately endorse the deal but envelop her endorsement with enough saber rattling at Iran to please her lobby-affiliated donors. As for progressives like Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Tim Kaine (D-VA) and Sherrod Brown (D-OH), they have not yet demonstrated if they will put America’s interests – number one of which is preventing U.S. involvement in another neocon generated Middle Eastern war – above filling their campaign coffers.

The fact is that there is no reason other than the desire to placate donors that would lead any Democratic Member of Congress to oppose the agreement. (Republicans sincerely despise the idea of negotiations so they don’t have to be bought)….

There really is no choice but to support the agreement, unless you believe, despite all evidence, that another Middle East war would be the cake walk the neocons promised that invading Iraq would be. Why would anyone believe anything that crowd tells us? Even for campaign dough.

It’s all about judgment

~ susie ~ 3 Comments

Roger Williams

God, what a nation of Calvinists we are! I don’t know what obstacles someone has had, I wouldn’t dream of assuming I understood just by looking at someone. Why are Americans so susceptible to this?

Aarøe and Petersen conducted survey experiments in the United States and Denmark to investigate whether stereotypes shaped Danish and European attitudes. They randomly exposed some participants in both countries to canned information suggesting that a welfare recipient was lazy, others to information suggesting that a welfare recipient was motivated to find work, and others to no substantial information about the recipient. They then asked people to evaluate social welfare benefits.
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