The pro-labor Progressives for Immigration Reform

by: fairleft

Wed Mar 10, 2010 at 16:22:16 PM EST

Massive immigration to this country was a great boon and added to the richness of our culture. That time is past however. We now have millions of Americans with no jobs and millions more with jobs holding no future. The outsourcing of jobs and the importing of more and more foreign workers has stripped the average American of supporting a family in a decent lifestyle without descending into debt. It has made a college education almost worthless for many.

Now is not the time to talk about what a boon to America millions of immigrants are. We are becoming a nation of peasants; we are becoming more and more like the countries that immigrants flee. What we need to do now is put a moratorium on all legal immigration, curb illegal immigration, stop the use of H1-B, and other work visas, and concentrate on putting Americans back to work in good jobs.

People like Mayor Bloomberg, who live up in the stratosphere, can wax poetic all they want about immigrants, but it will cut no ice with the average American who has been made to feel like an outcast in his/her own land. The upper classes have to learn that they must pay people a living wage, and stop trying to get something for nothing. The rich in this country run the government and enjoy the lowest tax rates in the world. If they want slave labor too, let them move to the third world.

Carole A Dunn
Ocean Springs, Mississippi

Some fiery populist and progressive anger, good stuff, but unfortunately leftists are politically incorrect if they ally with it. It's probably a fireable offense in many jobs to be against mass immigration in a time of mass unemployment, because that pro-labor position . . .

NO 2 IDF Chief, YES 2 Gaza & Corrie, Today 5pm NYC

by: fairleft

Tue Mar 09, 2010 at 15:26:21 PM EST

Hundreds set to turn out for anti-Israel Defense Forces demo in NY
Protesters plan to march outside Waldorf Astoria, where Friends of the IDF will host dinner for IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi
By E.B. Solomont
Jerusalem Post
March 9, 2010

. . . The protest is being sponsored by a broad coalition of about 25 left-wing groups, including American Jews for a Just Peace, Codepink, Gaza Freedom March and Jewish Voice for Peace. Organized by Jews Say No!, the protest was endorsed by the Israeli groups Coalition of Women for Peace and BOYCOTT! Supporting the Palestinian BDS From Within.

"We think it's inappropriate for an American organization to be feting the Israeli army, when the Israeli army is implicated in violations of international law," said Rebecca Vilkomerson, director of Jewish Voice for Peace. She said Operation Cast Lead opened up people's eyes to the role that the Israeli army plays. The Goldstone Report also made people consider the notion that the IDF is fallible, she added.

"Definitely, it has opened up a big conversation in the Jewish community," she said, observing that in the past year more Jews have begun "questioning the idea that Israel is always right."

Okay, I admit, the actual Jerusalem Post headline was "Hundreds set to turn out for anti-Israel demo in NY." I.e., equating support for Israel with support for its the criminal actions of its military, like labeling an anti-Iraq war protest an anti-U.S. protest. But, okay, par for the Jerusualem Post course, and we move on. . . . to more important positive news out of Israel/Palestine from a basic humanitarian perspective. Note btw the efforts by Israel to avoid a fair verdict:

Israeli Defense Ministry goes on trial for Corrie death
March 9, 2010
Ma'an News

Choosing not to fight the fight

by: fairleft

Wed Mar 03, 2010 at 19:00:46 PM EST

President Obama['s] agenda is not bold enough to address the severity of the problems facing the economy and the country's workers.

The unemployment rate is currently in double-digits. The newest projections from the Congressional Budget Office show the unemployment rate staying above 8.0 percent until well into 2012 and not falling back to normal levels until 2014. This is a crisis for tens of millions of workers who will face unemployment solely as a result of bad economic policy and Wall Street greed.

We know the mechanisms through which we can expand the economy and bring the unemployment rate down: a much larger stimulus, more expansionary monetary policy from the Fed, and a lower dollar to bring down the trade deficit. . . .

All of these policies face serious political obstacles, but it is the President's responsibility to tell the truth to the country and to press for the policies necessary to right the economy. President Obama has apparently chosen not to fight this fight. If it is not possible to get the policies needed to restore full employment back on the political agenda, then tens of millions of people will suffer needlessly for years to come.

Instead of leading the fight that needed to be fought, Obama attempts at least rhetorically to be the nation's number one deficit hawk. Baker comments (emphasis added):

Afghanistan bans coverage of Taliban attacks

by: fairleft

Mon Mar 01, 2010 at 16:06:53 PM EST

AP - Kabul, a couple days ago.

AP - Kandahar yesterday.

Afghanistan bans coverage of Taliban attacks
Sayed Salahuddin and Hamid Shalizi (Reuters)
Monday, March 1, 2010 2:08pm EST

Kabul - Afghanistan on Monday announced a ban on news coverage showing Taliban attacks, saying such images embolden the Islamist militants, who have launched strikes around the country as NATO forces seize their southern strongholds. . . .

Olympics species bias against half-Na'vi couple

by: fairleft

Tue Feb 23, 2010 at 00:01:12 AM EST

Meryl Davis, of the ice dancing pair Meryl Davis and Charlie White

Friedman & Samuelson: Time is now to kill welfare state

by: fairleft

Mon Feb 22, 2010 at 16:28:55 PM EST

The job of elite economic commentators such as Friedman and Samuelson is to "get the word out". This reflects the social, class world in which they operate.

As such, the views of these commentators are not useful for gaining any insight into rational, functional policy. Rather, they provide an important window into elite thinking du jour.

Posted by: some guy in a cube | February 22, 2010 9:48 AM

Dean Baker's Beat the Press is the place to learn about elite anti-populist ideology masquerading as unbiased economic thinking at those two bastions of 'pwoggie-ism', the New York Times and the Washington Post. And, man, are they coming after us. They want it all, and the deep deficits caused by the banker bailout has given them their rationale. Here's a comment on Robert Samuelson of the Post

Robert Samuelson: Financial Meltdown Exposes Flaw in Welfare State

One might think that the mass unemployment caused by the collapse of the housing bubble might lead people to be concerned about restructuring the financial sector: not at the Washington Post. Robert Samuelson tells us that the meltdown shows that the welfare state is no longer viable.

Actually, he has a pretty good case. With Goldman Sachs and the rest of the financial sector siphoning off an ever larger share of the country's output, we may not be able to afford much of anything in the future. If the financial sector's share grows at the same rate it has been growing over the last three decades, the rest of us will have to learn to get by on less.

Idol racism, weightism & sadism cut Thaddeus Johnson (& Open Thread)

by: fairleft

Thu Feb 18, 2010 at 15:34:10 PM EST

Guess which one made the final 24?

Thaddeus Johnson is probably wondering what he could possibly have done -- short of becoming a thin white boy who forgets his lyrics -- to have earned a spot in the Top 24.

Too much injustice in this world, but I have to say something about the cutting of Thaddeus Johnson from American Idol last night. I think I was one of many watching the show (intermittently) who thought his rendition of 'Man in the Middle' (which, admittedly, is an overplayed, tired warhorse) was the best performance of the show's first weeks:

Who's a thugocracy, Saudi Arabia or Iran? (POLL!)

by: fairleft

Tue Feb 16, 2010 at 16:32:42 PM EST

Iran is a theocracy/democracy mix and not a democracy (which 80% of Iranians desire (p. 3, pdf)). However, at least the nation is not an openly nepotistic thugocracy like, say, Egypt, and at least it doesn't ban the leaders of its second biggest ethnic group from its national elections, as Iraq has just done. Also, at least Iran is not a military dependency unable to be an sovereign 'ocracy' in any important way, like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Afghanistan. And, at least it managed last June to elect the president that most of its people voted for, which even the U.S. is unable to do on a consistent basis. . . .

"Marines push 'The Breacher' against Taliban lines!!!"

by: fairleft

Fri Feb 12, 2010 at 14:02:52 PM EST

Marines push 'The Breacher' against Taliban lines
By ALFRED de MONTESQUIOU
Associated Press Writer
Thu Feb 11, 9:44 am ET

Here's another dumb headline:

Iran just wants simultaneous exchange

by: fairleft

Wed Feb 10, 2010 at 15:12:07 PM EST

The crux of the U.S.-Iran conflict is that Iran doesn't trust Russia and in particular France, that when it sends its low-enriched uranium there it will come back as 20% enriched or at all. So, Iran wants simultaneous exchange of low-enriched uranium for 20% enriched uranium, but the West refuses that without explanation. And so, here we are, on the propaganda path to bombing Iran. From Reuters:

Salehi [Ali Akbar Salehi, head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization] said Iran would stop producing 20 percent enriched uranium if it received reactor fuel from abroad instead.

But he made clear Tehran was not backing down on its demand for a simultaneous exchange, a condition unlikely to be accepted by the major powers involved in efforts to find a diplomatic solution to the long-running dispute.

What was true about minimum wage increases is true about tax breaks for hiring workers

by: fairleft

Tue Feb 09, 2010 at 00:36:09 AM EST

Obama okays assassinations of U.S. citizens, so STFU!?

by: fairleft

Fri Feb 05, 2010 at 16:08:41 PM EST

Barack Obama, like George Bush before him, has claimed the authority to order American citizens murdered based solely on the unverified, uncharged, unchecked claim that they are associated with Terrorism and pose "a continuing and imminent threat to U.S. persons and interests." They're entitled to no charges, no trial, no ability to contest the accusations. Amazingly, the Bush administration's policy of merely imprisoning foreign nationals (along with a couple of American citizens) without charges -- based solely on the President's claim that they were Terrorists -- produced intense controversy for years.  That, one will recall, was a grave assault on the Constitution. Shouldn't Obama's policy of ordering American citizens assassinated without any due process or checks of any kind -- not imprisoned, but killed -- produce at least as much controversy?

NEW: Haiti 4 Haiti reconstruction watch blog

by: fairleft

Thu Feb 04, 2010 at 18:47:22 PM EST

123 civilians, 3 al Qaeda DRONED in January, 17 more dead today

by: fairleft

Wed Feb 03, 2010 at 15:45:55 PM EST

If the new administration is keenly interested in reversing the misfortunes of that region, it has to understand the uniqueness of every country and appreciate the untold harm inflicted on civilians by the US and other militaries. Only dialogue and truly respecting the sovereignty of Afghanistan and Pakistan can begin to stabilise the fractious situation.

-- Ramzy Baroud, May 14, 2009

U.S. drones killed 123 Pakistani civilians and three al Qaeda in January, the largest death toll ever for a single month. 17 more died today, some low-level militants, most civilians. Apparently the sharp increase in drone attacks is motivated by revenge, for the late December suicide attack that killed seven CIA drone-targeting experts in Afghanistan. All this in the context of the just-released Pentagon budget, which features a 75% increase in funding for drone production and operations.

What a moral low America has reached, to be doing what we are doing to Pakistan's innocent civilians. But the perp country's people and media ignore the crime because, after all, no Americans are dying. Admittedly, we seemingly have no control, so what is the point of protesting? So a quiet but ugly war guided by the lowest of motives, simple revenge, takes over, bullies against bullies, civilians be damned.

US drones killed 123 civilians, three al-Qaeda men in January
Monday, February 01, 2010
By Amir Mir

LAHORE: Afghanistan-based US predators carried out a record number of 12 deadly missile strikes in the tribal areas of Pakistan in January 2010, of which 10 went wrong and failed to hit their targets, killing 123 innocent Pakistanis. The remaining two successful drone strikes killed three al-Qaeda leaders, wanted by the Americans.

more . . .

Haiti relief: chaotic, massively inadequate

by: fairleft

Sun Jan 31, 2010 at 02:20:45 AM EST

((Update: Consider donating to the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund, the AFSC, Doctors Without Borders, the UN, Partners in Health, Tex-Mex Shelter Box, and/or, larger picture here, the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti and Canada Haiti Action.))

1. AP reports -- in U.S. halts airlifts of Haiti patients, citing space -- that all flights carrying earthquake victims out of Haiti have been suspended. An American doctor warns 100 critically ill patients may die if they are not transported to U.S. hospitals within 48 hours:

Inverted totalitarianism: what we're up against

by: fairleft

Fri Jan 29, 2010 at 01:38:59 AM EST

How to persuade the reader that the actual direction of contemporary politics is toward a political system the very opposite of what the political leadership, the mass media, and think tank oracles claim that it is, the world's foremost exemplar of democracy?

-- S.S. Wolin

I said: That [corporations are people] ruling was a nightmare in theory, but even if the SCt had ruled the other way, we'd just get more of what we have now, which is a completely corporation-dominated politics.

Donkeytale responded: That ruling was more than a nightmare in theory. It has huge practical implications. Watch and see.

And I elaborated: . . . corporations already more or less rule this country. The only thing they and theirs're afraid of at this point is riots and shit like that, so they will occasionally throw the rabble a bone. This is the way it's been for awhile; we've long been post-democracy in the U.S., the death knell was two or three decades ago.

BTW, I'm not saying we had anything more than a ragged, corrupt, semi-democracy from the 1930s to the 1970s, but it seems to me simply a fact that union members had more sway over the political system back then, and for awhile almost 50% of [working] U.S. adults were in unions. But it's a minor point . . . At this point popular control through the normal electoral channels is close enough to nothing to be meaningless. That's what matters and will matter going forward, and that all happened before the SCT's big decision.

Only later did I stumble on support for my point of view in Monday's Chris Hedges essay, Democracy in America Is a Useful Fiction, which is an extended rant/riff on Sheldon Wolin's Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism. Hedges' essay is a fiery, intellectually intense deja vu of that little exchange with donk. He begins:  

Dean Baker hits Bernanke Senate OK

by: fairleft

Thu Jan 28, 2010 at 19:38:51 PM EST

US Senate backs Bernanke for second term at Fed
Thu Jan 28, 2010 4:16pm EST
By Mark Felsenthal and Thomas Ferraro

WASHINGTON, Jan 28 (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate on Thursday approved Ben Bernanke's nomination to a second four-year term running the Federal Reserve, the world's most powerful central bank, despite deep misgivings over his perceived policy missteps.

The Senate voted 70-30 to confirm Bernanke, after clearing a procedural hurdle with the support of 77 senators. . . .

President Barack Obama and allies in the Senate Democratic leadership were forced to intervene over the past week to press senators to get the 60 vote super-majority needed to overcome efforts to block the nomination.

Center for Economic and Policy Research Co-Director Dean Baker, who since 2002 (along with other economists) had warned about the housing bubble, commented on the approval of Bernanke, the man who knowingly refused to do anything to contain the out-of-control housing bubble:  

Scientism doesn't exist

by: fairleft

Tue Jan 26, 2010 at 16:48:12 PM EST

Who are these "scientismists"? Names?  Quotes from an actual practitioner of scientism, saying these things you (and your blockquote) are accusing them of saying?

by:  @ Fri Jan 22, 2010 at 23:32:54 PM EST

Vox had found a definition from a perfectly reputable source, a PBS television series:

Scientism

Unlike the use of the scientific method as only one mode of reaching knowledge, scientism claims that science alone can render truth about the world and reality. Scientism's single-minded adherence to only the empirical, or testable, makes it a strictly scientifc worldview, in much the same way that a Protestant fundamentalism that rejects science can be seen as a strictly religious worldview. Scientism sees it necessary to do away with most, if not all, metaphysical, philosophical, and religious claims, as the truths they proclaim cannot be apprehended by the scientific method. In essence, scientism sees science as the absolute and only justifiable access to the truth.

And yet, no one during any of the eight long interviews found on that PBS Faith and Reason television series website ever uses the word 'scientism'. No scientismists were found, which backs up gzodik. So, where are these scientismians hiding?? Heck, it even has to be asked, by CFeagans (in 2006): Does Scientism Exist?

I think the answer's a big fat NOPE.  . . .

Haiti response: pathetic or powerless?

by: fairleft

Mon Jan 25, 2010 at 16:33:45 PM EST

The only way this ['relief in the short term or a better life in the long one'] will really happen is if the Haitians have a functioning and legitimate state capable of providing for the needs of its people. The US military, the UN bureaucracy or foreign NGOs are never going to do this in Haiti or anywhere else.

-- Alex Cockburn

Alex Cockburn and myself -- in Haiti's neoliberal catastrophe, pre and post quake -- predicted the real ineffectiveness of the international and internal response to the quake. The short-term ineffectiveness was confirmed yesterday by Italy's civil protection chief, Guido Bertolaso. He called the US-led 20,000 troop effort in Haiti a "pathetic" failure, saying it was too reliant on military personnel:

"I think it has truly been a pathetic situation. It could have been run a lot better, "The Americans are extraordinary but when you are facing a situation in chaos they tend to confuse military intervention with emergency aid, which cannot be entrusted to the armed forces.

"It's a truly powerful show of force but it's completely out of touch with reality." Mr Bertolaso, who holds the rank of a government minister, also accused individual countries and aid agencies of conducting a "vanity show".

He said: "Unfortunately there's this need to make a 'bella figura' before the TV cameras rather than focus on what's under the debris."

President George Costanza, sleeping under the desk

by: fairleft

Thu Jan 21, 2010 at 12:46:35 PM EST

Seinfeldian presidency

Nothing's happened so far except schlepping along with whatever was happening before. Maybe he's sleeping under that big Presidential desk, the way George did.

by: fairleft @ Thu Jan 21, 2010 at 10:57:00 AM EST

BARACK: Rahm, look at my eyes.

RAHM: A little less beady today.

BARACK: Because I'm REFRESHED. I finally found a way to sleep in my office. Under the desk. I lie on my back. I tuck in the chair. I'm invisible.

RAHM: Sounds like a really cool fort.

Heard Howard Dean on Air America radio this morning, Bill Press Show I think, all coffee-ed-up and raring to tell Congress what we need to do now: make two bills, one that lowers Medicaid age [correction: Medicare age] to 55 and have it come into effect before 2010 elections, the other just the good little stuff, like no pre-existing conditions, of the present elephantine bills. And then force the Repubs to vote against no pre-existing conditions and take that into the fall elections!

And and and then . . .