Carl Bloice: I’m just intrigued these days by how much the people who have a lot have become the most insistent that those below them on the social ladder bear the brunt of paying for capitalism’s current crisis.
Davos and the Wretched of the Whole Earth
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Carl Bloice: While Davos wound down, most of the world’s attention was focused on events in Egypt, and to lesser extent on Tunisia and Yemen. However, it would be a big mistake to assume the moving and shaking that has commenced is somehow restricted to “the Arab world.”
Saving Social Security and the Poisonous Chalice
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Carl Bloice: Social Security is not, to any significant extent, a contributing factor in the burgeoning deficit. Defenders of the system, including some leading economists, have successfully advanced that argument. Yet, a growing number of conservatives have begun to advance other specious arguments for “entitlement reform” that may threaten Social Security.
An Historical View from the “Sanctimonious” Left
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Carl Bloice: Compromising is not an inherent virtue. It is, indeed, a necessity. We do it all the time in our personal and social lives, Society would be impossible without it. The question is: compromise over what and on what?
Alarmed & Angry at Christmas Time
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Carl Bloice: Reflect on the sudden, shocking awareness that that one third of the members of the U.S. House of Representatives are prepared to let 2 million people – victims of an economic crisis not of their making – face the holidays with no income.
Unless Congress Acts, A Bleak Holiday Season for Millions
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Carl Bloice: If Congress does not vote over the next week and a half to re-authorize federal unemployment benefits through next year, before they expire November 30, nearly 2 million women and men and their families will face a dismal holiday season.
African American Youth Joblessness and the “New Normal”
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Carl Bloice: If it remains almost impossible for a couple of generations of young women and men to earn a decent living, it is calamitous for black people and the country. They cannot become the personification of the “new normal.”
The Centrists Still Just Don’t Get It
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Carl Bloice: I guess the message is obvious. The cadre of the “real tea party,” the Tea Kettle party, the truly conservatives and the austerity brigades have one thing in common: if they come to power life will become a lot harder to pubic workers, students, the elderly and a whole lot of others. Class bias speaks loud.
Obama, Jobs, Poverty, Taxes, and the Enthusiasm Gap
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Carl Bloice: A call for actually retooling the economy for today’s challenges and granting preferential tax treatment to struggling working people could stir some enthusiasm among people now seeming inclined to sit out the election.
Middle East Peace Process – Reality or Charade?
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In the questionable likelihood that the Jerusalem settlement issue can be finessed, the “negotiations” could continue over the year President Obama has allotted for a settlement but without a firm commitment to end the occupation, no “peace process” is going anywhere.
A Hoop Dream, Politics & the Long Reach of High Tech Money
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Carl Bloice: Capitalism hasn’t gone away and internet technology hasn’t fundamentally changed its nature. The growing wealth inequality is as present in the lands just south of San Francisco as it is in the country as a whole.
No Jobs – The Theory of “Structural” Unemployment
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Carl Bloice: With high unemployment and no jobs, the actions of those in Congress who hold up the extension of benefits to the unemployed are morally repugnant. making it. The fellow who said the jobs are not coming back failed to say where they went.
Coveting Riches on the Great Rare Earth Highway
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Carl Bloice: The military propagandists needed to come up with something to distract attention from the reality that things are going badly in Afghanistan, very badly. Public opinion in the U.S. has soured toward the war. Every other country that has troops on the battlefields is under tremendous popular pressure to withdraw them.
Israel’s Talking Points, the Media, and the Cement Missile Threat
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Carl Bloice: The purpose in this case is to underscore the contention that the cruel blockade of Gaza is to prevent the smuggling of arms and weapons-making material into the enclave. It is not and never has been. The aim of the blockade is to make life miserable for the 1.4 million Palestinians there in the hope of undermining the Hamas government, which was duly elected four years ago. Gaza is being held for ransom. That’s collective punishment and it’s against international law.
The Otherworldly Attack on Public Education
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Carl Bloice: Why is it that the richest, most powerful nation on the planet, one that produces more and more billionaires each year and can spend one million dollars each on the soldiers it sends off to war, can’t afford to educate its kids? It remains a mystery to me that an administration that can spend millions of dollars to bribe states into facilitating its quite controversial school “reform” programs can’t come up with the resources to stave off the pending mass layoffs of teachers.
The People of Greece and the Rest of Us
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Carl Bloice: In most of the rest of the world the prescribed method for dealing with economic crisis is austerity. That’s what it is when, in order to deal with the economic malfunctioning, you cut education budgets and fire teachers, enact special taxes that hit working people hardest, reduce services for the indigent and threaten to reduce or eliminate retirement and medical programs for seniors. It comes down to who, in a pinch, is going to be required to lower their living standards, and which individuals and families are expected to lead more austere lives.
The Looming Educational Catastrophe is Scary. Indeed.
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Carl Bloice–September is four months away and one thing is certain: the public is not be adequately alerted to the seriousness of the situation and mobilized to do anything about it. We would know far less about how critical things are in the schools had not students in California – where thing are really rough – set off nationwide protests about the cutbacks. And, as soon as that happened, on cue, voices popped up to declare that the protesters were deficient because they had no real analysis of the cause of the crisis and offered no solutions. The obvious response was: so what? Isn’t it the job of professionals in politics and government to provide those things?
Economy Recovery Depends Upon Your Vantage Point
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Carl Bloice: Like the knee bone and the thigh bone, the foreclosure crisis is closely related to the jobs crisis. Last week the Obama administration cautioned the public not to expect any dramatic improvement in the jobless rate, largely because thousands of formerly “discouraged” jobless workers sense the situation is improving and have started back looking for work. As a result, some economists have suggested, the jobless rate may well go beyond the 9.7 percent where it stands now.
The Myth of the Sensible Center
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Carl Bloice: The “moderate Republican” has gone the way of the typewriter. As the tea party people and their ilk become more racist and reactionary – and their rhetoric more incendiary, each day – the GOP encourages them and endeavors to pull them into its embrace. Meanwhile the “bluedog Democrats” become increasingly irrelevant with each passing day, their bark more in evidence than their bite.
What’s Up with Rahm?
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Carl Bloice: For anti-war activists in the Democratic Party, Emanuel is probably best known for his role after 2004 as chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. In primary races around the country he raised cash and secured endorsements for opponents of anti-war candidates.
Student Protests and the Threat to Public Education
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Carl Bloice: Why can a naton and a government that can raise $1 million each to send young men and women to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan not find the resources to adequately educate young people here at home?
Us Greedy Geezers and the “Commission” Plot
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There are not two groups involved, the young and the old. It’s a continuum starting from entrance into the workforce until retirement. While he says he speaks in the interest of the young, if there is a severe curtailment of Medicare and Social Security those hurt most will be the youngsters when they reach the age where they need them both.
The Good and the Not So Good State of the Union
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Carl Bloice: President Obama told the country. “Meanwhile, China is not waiting to revamp its economy. Germany is not waiting. India is not waiting. These nations – they’re not standing still. These nations aren’t playing for second place. They’re putting more emphasis on math and science. They’re rebuilding their infrastructure. They’re making serious investments in clean energy because they want those jobs. Well, I do not accept second place for the United States of America.”
I about fell off my chair when I heard that. He was speaking the truth, telling us all something that we should wrap our collective brains around.
More Pain & Suffering – A Bad Way to Start the New Year
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Carl Bloice: Just as rising unemployment and economic insecurity means less retail spending and fewer trips to the malls and showrooms, it also means a fall in available jobs. Rising joblessness means the already catastrophe situation in the housing market gets even worse.
The Wars in Yemen: More Complex Than We’re Being Told
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Carl Bloice: With Al Qaeda now in the picture and linked to an attempted physical attack on the U.S., the Obama Administration, obsessively carrying on the “war against terrorism,” has suddenly become enmeshed in still another civil war.
Obama’s Nobel Speech Comes Up Short
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Pardon me if I can’t join in the fawning praise for President Obama’s Nobel address. “It was, as ever, a bravura performance,” one newspaper said editorially. That it was, but I can’t agree with those, including some people with whom I’m usually in agreement, that it was a “good” speech. It wasn’t good at all. [...]
Weekend Mysteries, Scandals, and Speculations
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The nation’s unemployment rate is at 10.2 percent, a 26-year high. These people will be waiting to hear Obama explain how adding to the $10 billion monthly price tag for Iraq and Afghanistan will help them find work. African American men, 17.1 percent of whom are unemployed, want a word from Obama on this,” wrote Columnist Colbert King in the Washington Post last week.
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