A$AP Rocky.
Get Lit.
Monday, October 31, 2011
The Tracks of My Tears.
A Moment of Clarity.
Words.
"We may be reaching an inflection point, the moment when the terms of the political argument change decisively. Three indicators: an important speech last week by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), the increasingly sharp tone of President Obama’s rhetoric and the success of Occupy Wall Street in resisting attempts to marginalize the movement.
...Usually, he carefully lays out the numbers and issues visionary promises of how cutting government (and taxes on the wealthy) will lead us down a blissful path to prosperity. He’s sunny when everyone else is grumpy.
So it was jarring to see Ryan used as the principal counterattacker against the president, who has been making the injuries of class inequality clear and pointing to the costs of the Republicans’ just-say-no strategy in Congress.
Ryan spoke of his “disappointment” that “the politics of division are making a big comeback.” He accused Obama of using “divisive rhetoric” and of “going from town to town, impugning the motives of Republicans, setting up straw men and scapegoats, and engaging in intellectually lazy arguments.”
“Instead of working with us on . . . common-sense reforms,” Ryan declared, “the president is barnstorming swing states, pushing a divisive message that pits one group of Americans against another on the basis of class.”
Now it takes some temerity for a Republican to charge Obama with divisiveness, given the GOP’s willingness to promote or countenance assaults on the president as “a socialist,” as someone not even born in the United States, as a supporter of “death panels,” and on and on. Republicans calling Obama divisive is the equivalent of those of us who are Red Sox fans criticizing another team for folding under pressure.
...But what’s most instructive is that Ryan would not have given this speech if the Republican Party were not so worried that it is losing control of the political narrative. In particular, growing inequalities of wealth and income — which should have been a central issue in American politics for at least a decade — are now finally at the heart of our discourse. We are, at last, discussing the social and economic costs of concentrating ever more resources in the hands of the top sliver of our society..."
...Obama’s aides have a habit of congratulating themselves too much when things start going well. The president has a long way to go, and he is pursuing a strategy now that he resisted for a long time. But it ought to encourage him that Paul Ryan is terribly upset. Telling the truth about inequality is politically wise, and morally necessary."
THE WASHINGTON POST: Paul Ryan’s frown should make Democrats smile
Words.
"We may be reaching an inflection point, the moment when the terms of the political argument change decisively. Three indicators: an important speech last week by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), the increasingly sharp tone of President Obama’s rhetoric and the success of Occupy Wall Street in resisting attempts to marginalize the movement.
...Usually, he carefully lays out the numbers and issues visionary promises of how cutting government (and taxes on the wealthy) will lead us down a blissful path to prosperity. He’s sunny when everyone else is grumpy.
So it was jarring to see Ryan used as the principal counterattacker against the president, who has been making the injuries of class inequality clear and pointing to the costs of the Republicans’ just-say-no strategy in Congress.
Ryan spoke of his “disappointment” that “the politics of division are making a big comeback.” He accused Obama of using “divisive rhetoric” and of “going from town to town, impugning the motives of Republicans, setting up straw men and scapegoats, and engaging in intellectually lazy arguments.”
“Instead of working with us on . . . common-sense reforms,” Ryan declared, “the president is barnstorming swing states, pushing a divisive message that pits one group of Americans against another on the basis of class.”
Now it takes some temerity for a Republican to charge Obama with divisiveness, given the GOP’s willingness to promote or countenance assaults on the president as “a socialist,” as someone not even born in the United States, as a supporter of “death panels,” and on and on. Republicans calling Obama divisive is the equivalent of those of us who are Red Sox fans criticizing another team for folding under pressure.
...But what’s most instructive is that Ryan would not have given this speech if the Republican Party were not so worried that it is losing control of the political narrative. In particular, growing inequalities of wealth and income — which should have been a central issue in American politics for at least a decade — are now finally at the heart of our discourse. We are, at last, discussing the social and economic costs of concentrating ever more resources in the hands of the top sliver of our society..."
...Obama’s aides have a habit of congratulating themselves too much when things start going well. The president has a long way to go, and he is pursuing a strategy now that he resisted for a long time. But it ought to encourage him that Paul Ryan is terribly upset. Telling the truth about inequality is politically wise, and morally necessary."
THE WASHINGTON POST: Paul Ryan’s frown should make Democrats smile
How the Other Half Lives.
Words.
"About once a month, a dozen or so of the country’s most influential Republicans meet in a bare-walled conference room in Washington to discuss how to make further gains in the Congressional elections next year and defeat President Obama.
They share polling and opposition research, preview their plans for advertising and contacting voters in swing states, and look for ways to coordinate spending hundreds of millions of dollars over the next 12 months, drawing on years of experience laboring for the party.
But almost none of them hold office or a job with the Republican Party itself. Instead, they represent conservative groups that channeled tens of millions of dollars into last year’s Congressional campaign. And as 2012 approaches, the groups — among them the Karl Rove-founded American Crossroads, the Republican Governors Association, the American Action Network and Americans for Prosperity, which is backed by the billionaire Koch brothers — have gathered into a loosely organized political machine poised to rival, and in many ways supplant, the official Republican Party apparatus.
...They have recruited some of the Republican Party’s best-known officials, like Speaker John A. Boehner and Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi, to help raise money. And in a shift from 2010, when the groups focused largely on television advertising, they plan to put far more money into voter contact, social media and grass-roots outreach, hoping to buttress the party’s own get-out-the-vote work.
Such heightened coordination is the latest development in the growing role of the outside groups, which operate free of many of the legal restrictions that govern the official parties.
...For the most part, the new groups are focused on the same broad goals: winning the White House and full control of Congress..."
THE NEW YORK TIMES: Outside Groups Eclipsing G.O.P. as Hub of Campaigns
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Friday, October 28, 2011
American Promise.
Words.
"We are slowly — and painfully — being forced to realize that we are no longer the America of our imaginations. Our greatness was not enshrined. Being a world leader is less about destiny than focused determination, and it is there that we have faltered.
We sold ourselves a pipe dream that everyone could get rich and no one would get hurt — a pipe dream that exploded like a pipe bomb when the already-rich grabbed for all the gold; when they used their fortunes to influence government and gain favors and protection; when everyone else was left to scrounge around their ankles in hopes that a few coins would fall.
We have not taken care of the least among us. We have allowed a revolting level of income inequality to develop. We have watched as millions of our fellow countrymen have fallen into poverty. And we have done a poor job of educating our children and now threaten to leave them a country that is a shell of its former self. We should be ashamed.
Poor policies and poor choices have led to exceedingly poor outcomes. Our societal chickens have come home to roost..."
THE NEW YORK TIMES: America’s Exploding Pipe Dream
The YOUTH.
A Moment of Clarity.
Words.
"What we talk about when we talk about tomorrow is the great fear that our kids will never find their way, now that opportunity is just another word for no. By we, I mean parents of a certain age.
... But I was struck by a failing of many fellow parents of recession-whacked Millennials. For all the efforts to raise hyper-achievers, we didn’t teach enough of a basic survival skill — to find joy in simple things not connected to a grade, a trophy or a job.
What was missing in the life message of child-raising was some of the counter-cultural swagger in that 2005 commencement speech by Steve Jobs, the one that made the viral video rounds after his death. If you listen to the whole speech, it is what he says at the end that seems so apt for these years of diminished expectations. “Stay hungry,” Jobs said, borrowing an admonition from the creators of The Whole Earth Catalogue, an early bible for him, and equally important, “Stay foolish.”
Hungry is the easy part. Employment rates and starting salaries have fallen off a cliff for new college graduates in the last two years. One study found that 55 percent of humanities majors newly released from school are either not working or hold jobs that require no college degree. I know a Stanford honors graduate in English literature who works as a nanny, and a University of Michigan political science graduate on the night shift at an Amazon warehouse. Their friends call them lucky.
There is all sorts of topical journalism on this issue. Last week brought a New York magazine piece by Noreen Malone, a self-snarky confessional with these words on the cover: “Sucks to Be Us: Coming of Age in Post-Hope America.”
“We grew up, all the way through college, with everything seeming so ripe and possible,” Malone writes. She defines the Millennials this way: “We are self-centered and convinced of our specialness and unaccustomed to being denied.”
...Malone makes some points that ring true.
She quotes a friend, Lael Goodman, with the kind of complaint that will sound familiar to many people just out of college. “The worst thing is that I’ve always gotten self-worth from performance, especially good grades. But now that I can’t get a job, I feel worthless.”
Goodman nails it — the self-worth from performance. And for that, we parents have to take the blame. Baby Boomers who rejected “Mad Men” conformity groomed their offspring to expect only the best, to climb a ladder that would end in startups cranking out stock-option millionaires.
...Maybe if I knew that our children would be coming of age in an economy that would crush even the best and brightest among them, I would have cared a little less about their score on an advanced placement history test, and a little more about helping them find happiness in moments at the margin. I hope many of them are doing just that — without our help."
THE NEW YORK TIMES: Boomer's Parent's Lament
Words.
"What we talk about when we talk about tomorrow is the great fear that our kids will never find their way, now that opportunity is just another word for no. By we, I mean parents of a certain age.
... But I was struck by a failing of many fellow parents of recession-whacked Millennials. For all the efforts to raise hyper-achievers, we didn’t teach enough of a basic survival skill — to find joy in simple things not connected to a grade, a trophy or a job.
What was missing in the life message of child-raising was some of the counter-cultural swagger in that 2005 commencement speech by Steve Jobs, the one that made the viral video rounds after his death. If you listen to the whole speech, it is what he says at the end that seems so apt for these years of diminished expectations. “Stay hungry,” Jobs said, borrowing an admonition from the creators of The Whole Earth Catalogue, an early bible for him, and equally important, “Stay foolish.”
Hungry is the easy part. Employment rates and starting salaries have fallen off a cliff for new college graduates in the last two years. One study found that 55 percent of humanities majors newly released from school are either not working or hold jobs that require no college degree. I know a Stanford honors graduate in English literature who works as a nanny, and a University of Michigan political science graduate on the night shift at an Amazon warehouse. Their friends call them lucky.
There is all sorts of topical journalism on this issue. Last week brought a New York magazine piece by Noreen Malone, a self-snarky confessional with these words on the cover: “Sucks to Be Us: Coming of Age in Post-Hope America.”
“We grew up, all the way through college, with everything seeming so ripe and possible,” Malone writes. She defines the Millennials this way: “We are self-centered and convinced of our specialness and unaccustomed to being denied.”
...Malone makes some points that ring true.
She quotes a friend, Lael Goodman, with the kind of complaint that will sound familiar to many people just out of college. “The worst thing is that I’ve always gotten self-worth from performance, especially good grades. But now that I can’t get a job, I feel worthless.”
Goodman nails it — the self-worth from performance. And for that, we parents have to take the blame. Baby Boomers who rejected “Mad Men” conformity groomed their offspring to expect only the best, to climb a ladder that would end in startups cranking out stock-option millionaires.
...Maybe if I knew that our children would be coming of age in an economy that would crush even the best and brightest among them, I would have cared a little less about their score on an advanced placement history test, and a little more about helping them find happiness in moments at the margin. I hope many of them are doing just that — without our help."
THE NEW YORK TIMES: Boomer's Parent's Lament
Occupational Hazards.
A Moment of Clarity.
Words.
"The hard-right conservatives who dominate the Republican Party claim to despise the redistribution of wealth, but secretly they love it — as long as the process involves depriving the poor and middle class to benefit the rich, not the other way around.
That is precisely what has been happening, as a jaw-dropping new report by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office demonstrates. Three decades of trickle-down economic theory, see-no-evil deregulation and tax-cutting fervor have led to massive redistribution. Another word for what’s been happening might be theft.
The gist of the CBO study, titled “Trends in the Distribution of Household Income Between 1979 and 2007,” is that while we’ve become wealthier overall, these new riches have largely bypassed many Americans and instead flowed mostly to the affluent. Perhaps my memory is faulty, but I don’t remember voting to turn the United States into a nation starkly divided between haves and have-nots. Yet that’s where we’ve been led.
Overall, in inflation-adjusted dollars, average after-tax household income grew by 62 percent during the period under study, according to the CBO. This sounds great — but only until you look a little closer.
For those at the bottom — the one-fifth of households with the lowest incomes — the increase was just 18 percent. For the middle three-fifths, the average increase was 40 percent. Spread over nearly 30 years, these gains are modest, not meteoric.
By contrast, look at the top 1 percent of earners. Their after-tax household income increased by an astonishing 275 percent. For those keeping track, this means it nearly quadrupled. Nice work, if you can get it..."
THE WASHINGTON POST: The study that shows why Occupy Wall Street struck a nerve
Words.
"The hard-right conservatives who dominate the Republican Party claim to despise the redistribution of wealth, but secretly they love it — as long as the process involves depriving the poor and middle class to benefit the rich, not the other way around.
That is precisely what has been happening, as a jaw-dropping new report by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office demonstrates. Three decades of trickle-down economic theory, see-no-evil deregulation and tax-cutting fervor have led to massive redistribution. Another word for what’s been happening might be theft.
The gist of the CBO study, titled “Trends in the Distribution of Household Income Between 1979 and 2007,” is that while we’ve become wealthier overall, these new riches have largely bypassed many Americans and instead flowed mostly to the affluent. Perhaps my memory is faulty, but I don’t remember voting to turn the United States into a nation starkly divided between haves and have-nots. Yet that’s where we’ve been led.
Overall, in inflation-adjusted dollars, average after-tax household income grew by 62 percent during the period under study, according to the CBO. This sounds great — but only until you look a little closer.
For those at the bottom — the one-fifth of households with the lowest incomes — the increase was just 18 percent. For the middle three-fifths, the average increase was 40 percent. Spread over nearly 30 years, these gains are modest, not meteoric.
By contrast, look at the top 1 percent of earners. Their after-tax household income increased by an astonishing 275 percent. For those keeping track, this means it nearly quadrupled. Nice work, if you can get it..."
THE WASHINGTON POST: The study that shows why Occupy Wall Street struck a nerve
"PURPLE SWAG!"
Words.
"The days of sexual preference are over-- if you're gay, that's your business. That doesn't stop you from being my brother. If you yellow, you're still my brother. Let's smoke some weed(!)."-A$AP Rocky
PITCHFORK: A$AP Rocky Talks $3 Million Record Deal, Mainstream Acceptance
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Food For Thought.
A Moment of Clarity.
Words.
"Whenever I write about Occupy Wall Street, some readers ask me if the protesters really are half-naked Communists aiming to bring down the American economic system when they’re not doing drugs or having sex in public.
The answer is no. That alarmist view of the movement is a credit to the (prurient) imagination of its critics, and voyeurs of Occupy Wall Street will be disappointed. More important, while alarmists seem to think that the movement is a “mob” trying to overthrow capitalism, one can make a case that, on the contrary, it highlights the need to restore basic capitalist principles like accountability.
To put it another way, this is a chance to save capitalism from crony capitalists.
...in recent years, some financiers have chosen to live in a government-backed featherbed. Their platform seems to be socialism for tycoons and capitalism for the rest of us. They’re not evil at all. But when the system allows you more than your fair share, it’s human to grab. That’s what explains featherbedding by both unions and tycoons, and both are impediments to a well-functioning market economy.
...Capitalism is so successful an economic system partly because of an internal discipline that allows for loss and even bankruptcy. It’s the possibility of failure that creates the opportunity for triumph. Yet many of America’s major banks are too big to fail, so they can privatize profits while socializing risk.
...we face a threat to our capitalist system. But it’s not coming from half-naked anarchists manning the barricades at Occupy Wall Street protests. Rather, it comes from pinstriped apologists for a financial system that glides along without enough of the discipline of failure and that produces soaring inequality, socialist bank bailouts and unaccountable executives.
It’s time to take the crony out of capitalism, right here at home."
THE NEW YORK TIMES: Crony Capitalism Comes Home
Words.
"Whenever I write about Occupy Wall Street, some readers ask me if the protesters really are half-naked Communists aiming to bring down the American economic system when they’re not doing drugs or having sex in public.
The answer is no. That alarmist view of the movement is a credit to the (prurient) imagination of its critics, and voyeurs of Occupy Wall Street will be disappointed. More important, while alarmists seem to think that the movement is a “mob” trying to overthrow capitalism, one can make a case that, on the contrary, it highlights the need to restore basic capitalist principles like accountability.
To put it another way, this is a chance to save capitalism from crony capitalists.
...in recent years, some financiers have chosen to live in a government-backed featherbed. Their platform seems to be socialism for tycoons and capitalism for the rest of us. They’re not evil at all. But when the system allows you more than your fair share, it’s human to grab. That’s what explains featherbedding by both unions and tycoons, and both are impediments to a well-functioning market economy.
...Capitalism is so successful an economic system partly because of an internal discipline that allows for loss and even bankruptcy. It’s the possibility of failure that creates the opportunity for triumph. Yet many of America’s major banks are too big to fail, so they can privatize profits while socializing risk.
...we face a threat to our capitalist system. But it’s not coming from half-naked anarchists manning the barricades at Occupy Wall Street protests. Rather, it comes from pinstriped apologists for a financial system that glides along without enough of the discipline of failure and that produces soaring inequality, socialist bank bailouts and unaccountable executives.
It’s time to take the crony out of capitalism, right here at home."
THE NEW YORK TIMES: Crony Capitalism Comes Home
Strange Times.
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
"STRONG LIKE BULL!"
A Moment of Clarity.
"PANAMA!"
Words.
"...there have always been rich and poor people in America, so if this is about jealousy, why the protests now? The idea that masses of people suddenly discovered a deep-seated animus/envy toward the rich – after keeping it strategically hidden for decades – is crazy.
Where was all that class hatred in the Reagan years, when openly dumping on the poor became fashionable? Where was it in the last two decades, when unions disappeared and CEO pay relative to median incomes started to triple and quadruple?
The answer is, it was never there. If anything, just the opposite has been true. Americans for the most part love the rich, even the obnoxious rich. And in recent years, the harder things got, the more we've obsessed over the wealth dream. As unemployment skyrocketed, people tuned in in droves to gawk at Evrémonde-heiresses like Paris Hilton, or watch bullies like Donald Trump fire people on TV.
Moreover, the worse the economy got, the more being a millionaire or a billionaire somehow became a qualification for high office, as people flocked to voting booths to support politicians with names like Bloomberg and Rockefeller and Corzine, names that to voters symbolized success and expertise at a time when few people seemed to have answers. At last count, there were 245 millionaires in congress, including 66 in the Senate.
And we hate the rich? Come on. Success is the national religion, and almost everyone is a believer. Americans love winners. But that's just the problem. These guys on Wall Street are not winning – they're cheating. And as much as we love the self-made success story, we hate the cheater that much more.
...That's why it's so obnoxious when people say the protesters are just sore losers who are jealous of these smart guys in suits who beat them at the game of life. This isn't disappointment at having lost. It's anger because those other guys didn't really win. And people now want the score overturned..."
ROLLING STONE: OWS's Beef: Wall Street Isn't Winning – It's Cheating
"PANAMA!"
Words.
"...there have always been rich and poor people in America, so if this is about jealousy, why the protests now? The idea that masses of people suddenly discovered a deep-seated animus/envy toward the rich – after keeping it strategically hidden for decades – is crazy.
Where was all that class hatred in the Reagan years, when openly dumping on the poor became fashionable? Where was it in the last two decades, when unions disappeared and CEO pay relative to median incomes started to triple and quadruple?
The answer is, it was never there. If anything, just the opposite has been true. Americans for the most part love the rich, even the obnoxious rich. And in recent years, the harder things got, the more we've obsessed over the wealth dream. As unemployment skyrocketed, people tuned in in droves to gawk at Evrémonde-heiresses like Paris Hilton, or watch bullies like Donald Trump fire people on TV.
Moreover, the worse the economy got, the more being a millionaire or a billionaire somehow became a qualification for high office, as people flocked to voting booths to support politicians with names like Bloomberg and Rockefeller and Corzine, names that to voters symbolized success and expertise at a time when few people seemed to have answers. At last count, there were 245 millionaires in congress, including 66 in the Senate.
And we hate the rich? Come on. Success is the national religion, and almost everyone is a believer. Americans love winners. But that's just the problem. These guys on Wall Street are not winning – they're cheating. And as much as we love the self-made success story, we hate the cheater that much more.
...That's why it's so obnoxious when people say the protesters are just sore losers who are jealous of these smart guys in suits who beat them at the game of life. This isn't disappointment at having lost. It's anger because those other guys didn't really win. And people now want the score overturned..."
ROLLING STONE: OWS's Beef: Wall Street Isn't Winning – It's Cheating
Monday, October 24, 2011
Friday, October 21, 2011
"To the left, to the left!"
Words.
"With 14 million Americans out of work, you would think somebody could answer the desperation call from farmers offering to pay $150 to anyone willing to pick fruit in the orchards of Washington State. But no, the apples hang at peak ripeness, a near-record crop, and the jobs go begging, despite radio ads and an appeal by Governor Christine Gregoire to the other Washington for help.
One thing the United States still does better than most countries is grow food. But one thing it now does worse than others is govern to solve problems. And so, the apples rot, businesses are crippled, and dreams of fresh life in a new country are dashed. This dystopian status quo exists because the simple-minded who control one of the major political parties have shut down all adult talk on the subject of immigration.
...This country has long been known for the words of the Emma Lazarus sonnet at the base of the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” That line should bring tears to any descendant of an immigrant, which is to say most Americans. But some Republicans apparently want to replace that motto with: Kill the Mexicans.
...More telling — and truly chilling — is the fact that the audience at the Tea-Party-sponsored Cain speech on Saturday cheered when he initially promised to electrocute Mexicans. “The fence is going to be electrified, and there is going to be a sign on the other side that says, ‘It will kill you.’”
Now, substitute Irish for Mexicans and imagine the reaction. You simply could never say such a thing. But Latinos — they can be routinely dehumanized to appease the black-hearted base of the Republican Party. It’s not hard to see how talk of killing Mexicans, for what is a misdemeanor offense, is such a dis to many of the 50 million Americans who are Latino — the largest ethnic group in the country.
...Meanwhile, jobs go begging: in Alabama, which passed the nation’s harshest anti-immigrant law; in Georgia, where the governor suggested using convicts to work in the fields after 11,000 jobs went unfilled; and in the orchards of Washington, where the flow to the far north has diminished mainly because of the recession.
...The problem, through good times and bad, is that there are millions of jobs that Americans will not do. The solution, some combination of path to citizenship with guest worker programs, should be within the grasp of the better political minds.
But tepid Democrats are afraid of doing anything. And some Republicans want a death fence, and will go after anyone who has an illegal on his lawn. It’s the great disconnect — yet another reason why so many Americans have a higher regard for a single-celled protozoan than a politician working the stump."
THE NEW YORK TIMES: Migrants from Sanity
Money for Nothing.
A Moment of Clarity.
Words.
"By the hoary conventions of American politics, Americans should fear and loathe Occupy Wall Street. The occupiers are vaguely countercultural, counterculturally vague. They are noisy. They are radical. They offer no solutions, though they are prey to the damnedest ideas. (Anti-consumerism! Anti-leaderism!) They are an extra-parliamentary menace, mocking the very possibility of liberal reform. They are anarchists or, worse, McGovernites. Some of them appear genuinely nuts. For all these reasons and a hundred more, real Americans should hate their guts.
And yet, they don’t.
...What gives, I suspect, is that most Americans don’t particularly care what the demonstrators in downtown New York and other cities look like or believe in. They’re not interested in the demonstrators’ attempt to build a movement prefigurative of a radically consensual society (which could end up just as gridlocked as the U.S. Senate). What they care about is that the demonstrators are confronting unmerited power and unearned wealth. They are taking on the banks.
...At its root is the simple fact that the Wall Street banks over the past quarter-century have done none of the things that a financial sector should do. They have not helped preserve the thriving economy that America once enjoyed. They have not funded our boldest new companies. (That’s fallen to venture capitalists.) They haven’t provided the financing to maintain our infrastructure, nor ponied up the capital for manufacturing to modernize and grow here (as opposed to in China). Instead, they’ve grown fat on the credit they extended when Americans’ incomes stopped rising. They’ve grown plump on proprietary trading and by selling bad deals to suckers.
...The country isn’t being built; no one’s been building it for the past 30 years. Wall Street’s interests are elsewhere, in realizing huge profits and bonuses for arbitrage and paper-swapping that has brought little but debt and ruin to the larger economy.
So Occupy Wall Street espouses a fuzzy radicalism? That’s fine. At its best, American radicalism kick-starts an era of liberal reform, to which, as in the ’30s and ’60s, its zeal is essential. At its worst, that radicalism can hinder those reforms by itself becoming an object of public ire. But Occupy Wall Street, all our assumptions about cultural polarization to the contrary, isn’t an object of ire. It’s channeling ire — our ire — where ire should go: toward the banks that have fostered and profited from America’s decline"
THE WASHINGTON POST: It’s hard to hate these occupiers
Words.
"By the hoary conventions of American politics, Americans should fear and loathe Occupy Wall Street. The occupiers are vaguely countercultural, counterculturally vague. They are noisy. They are radical. They offer no solutions, though they are prey to the damnedest ideas. (Anti-consumerism! Anti-leaderism!) They are an extra-parliamentary menace, mocking the very possibility of liberal reform. They are anarchists or, worse, McGovernites. Some of them appear genuinely nuts. For all these reasons and a hundred more, real Americans should hate their guts.
And yet, they don’t.
...What gives, I suspect, is that most Americans don’t particularly care what the demonstrators in downtown New York and other cities look like or believe in. They’re not interested in the demonstrators’ attempt to build a movement prefigurative of a radically consensual society (which could end up just as gridlocked as the U.S. Senate). What they care about is that the demonstrators are confronting unmerited power and unearned wealth. They are taking on the banks.
...At its root is the simple fact that the Wall Street banks over the past quarter-century have done none of the things that a financial sector should do. They have not helped preserve the thriving economy that America once enjoyed. They have not funded our boldest new companies. (That’s fallen to venture capitalists.) They haven’t provided the financing to maintain our infrastructure, nor ponied up the capital for manufacturing to modernize and grow here (as opposed to in China). Instead, they’ve grown fat on the credit they extended when Americans’ incomes stopped rising. They’ve grown plump on proprietary trading and by selling bad deals to suckers.
...The country isn’t being built; no one’s been building it for the past 30 years. Wall Street’s interests are elsewhere, in realizing huge profits and bonuses for arbitrage and paper-swapping that has brought little but debt and ruin to the larger economy.
So Occupy Wall Street espouses a fuzzy radicalism? That’s fine. At its best, American radicalism kick-starts an era of liberal reform, to which, as in the ’30s and ’60s, its zeal is essential. At its worst, that radicalism can hinder those reforms by itself becoming an object of public ire. But Occupy Wall Street, all our assumptions about cultural polarization to the contrary, isn’t an object of ire. It’s channeling ire — our ire — where ire should go: toward the banks that have fostered and profited from America’s decline"
THE WASHINGTON POST: It’s hard to hate these occupiers
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Charlie Brown.
Words.
"As Republican presidential aspirants assembled Tuesday night in Nevada for their umpteenth debate, it was clearer than ever that Republicans have gotten exactly what they had coming.
Their nominating process, controlled by the religious warriors and anti-government agitators who dominate straw polls, has reached its logical conclusion: The hottest candidate in the field is Herman Cain, a fast-food tycoon who never heard of neoconservatism, has never held office, has no foreign policy and a three-digit number for a domestic policy, and likes to joke about electrocuting illegal immigrants. By contrast, Jon Huntsman, governor, ambassador, the man who in a normal political environment would be the most qualified and formidable candidate in the race, wasn’t even on the stage.
A system that rejects a Jon Huntsman in favor of a Herman Cain isn’t a primary process. It is a primal scream.
...It says a great deal about the state of the Republican nominating process that Huntsman is floundering while Mr. Pizza soars. “It’s a new world,” Huntsman told me as we spoke Tuesday in the lobby of his Manchester hotel. “You throw out anyone with any connection to real-world experience in government.”
...It’s probably too late for Huntsman. His campaign is in debt and he’s getting 1 to 2 percent in national polls. But in New Hampshire, Huntsman has finally found a compelling message. He has shifted from his initial dubious theme — the need for civility — to the worthier goal of fighting for the political center. He said he would not join his rivals in going to pander to Donald Trump. He bravely proclaimed: “I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy.”
...Huntsman, already out of money, is running out of time. But at least he has a message. “The work of the nation isn’t getting done because we’ve got the extreme elements on both sides that are barking at each other, and the entire middle has been hollowed out,” he said. His task: “You put forward a message that addresses that, and you wonder if people are ready for that.”
I suspect he already knows the answer. But it’s still a stand worth taking."
THE WASHINGTON POST: Jon Huntsman, the reasonable Republican
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Fisticuffs.
An ongoing discussion/Moment of Clarity.
Words.
"“Defend Wall Street” is not likely to be a winning campaign slogan in 2012. For Republicans, this is an obvious problem. For President Obama and the Democrats, it’s a golden — if largely undeserved — opportunity.
The biggest impact of the Occupy Wall Street protests has been to provide a focal point for generalized economic and political discontent. Frustrated voters on the left and the right may disagree on, say, immigration policy or health care reform. But they can agree on a critique of the financial sector — and, potentially, on specific measures to bring about necessary change.
No, Wall Street shouldn’t be made the scapegoat for all the nation’s woes. But it was the financial Masters of the Universe whose shocking irresponsibility and unbounded greed triggered the 2008 crisis, which almost sent the global economy into the abyss. We’re still dealing with the resulting devastation: massive unemployment, an epidemic of foreclosures, severe fiscal strain on governments at every level.
Wall Street, however, received a huge bailout from George W. Bush. Three years later, things are looking up in Lower Manhattan. Salaries and bonuses are climbing back to levels that gladden the hearts of Ferrari dealers.
It’s true that in the years before the crash, many Americans made what turned out to be unwise decisions. We spent money we should have saved, we bought bigger houses than our families needed, we took out too many student loans. But now we’re having to deal with the consequences of those poor choices, while the wizards of Wall Street smugly rebalance their portfolios, having benefited from what amounts to a free pass.
Enter the Occupy Wall Street protesters with their simple demand for “economic justice” — the right cause at the right moment.
...If Democrats reap a political windfall from Occupy Wall Street, it will not be richly deserved. While it is true that they have been better than the Republicans on issues of economic fairness, that’s not saying much.
Although Obama is disliked by many on Wall Street for his rhetoric about how “millionaires and billionaires” need to pay “their fair share” in taxes, the fact is that he decided not to seek fundamental reforms.
It is also a fact that Wall Street is a major source of campaign financing for both parties.
...By calling attention to this unholy alliance of financial power and political power, the Occupy Wall Street protests struck a nerve. The Republican Party is trapped on the wrong side of this issue. Democrats should be moving boldly, not timidly, to claim the issue of economic justice as their own."
THE WASHINGTON POST: How Democrats can use Occupy protests to their advantage
Words.
"“Defend Wall Street” is not likely to be a winning campaign slogan in 2012. For Republicans, this is an obvious problem. For President Obama and the Democrats, it’s a golden — if largely undeserved — opportunity.
The biggest impact of the Occupy Wall Street protests has been to provide a focal point for generalized economic and political discontent. Frustrated voters on the left and the right may disagree on, say, immigration policy or health care reform. But they can agree on a critique of the financial sector — and, potentially, on specific measures to bring about necessary change.
No, Wall Street shouldn’t be made the scapegoat for all the nation’s woes. But it was the financial Masters of the Universe whose shocking irresponsibility and unbounded greed triggered the 2008 crisis, which almost sent the global economy into the abyss. We’re still dealing with the resulting devastation: massive unemployment, an epidemic of foreclosures, severe fiscal strain on governments at every level.
Wall Street, however, received a huge bailout from George W. Bush. Three years later, things are looking up in Lower Manhattan. Salaries and bonuses are climbing back to levels that gladden the hearts of Ferrari dealers.
It’s true that in the years before the crash, many Americans made what turned out to be unwise decisions. We spent money we should have saved, we bought bigger houses than our families needed, we took out too many student loans. But now we’re having to deal with the consequences of those poor choices, while the wizards of Wall Street smugly rebalance their portfolios, having benefited from what amounts to a free pass.
Enter the Occupy Wall Street protesters with their simple demand for “economic justice” — the right cause at the right moment.
...If Democrats reap a political windfall from Occupy Wall Street, it will not be richly deserved. While it is true that they have been better than the Republicans on issues of economic fairness, that’s not saying much.
Although Obama is disliked by many on Wall Street for his rhetoric about how “millionaires and billionaires” need to pay “their fair share” in taxes, the fact is that he decided not to seek fundamental reforms.
...By calling attention to this unholy alliance of financial power and political power, the Occupy Wall Street protests struck a nerve. The Republican Party is trapped on the wrong side of this issue. Democrats should be moving boldly, not timidly, to claim the issue of economic justice as their own."
THE WASHINGTON POST: How Democrats can use Occupy protests to their advantage
Halloweenhead.
Words.
"Yeah, I am doing what I want, but one of the interesting things about the Internet when you’re a musician is the sociology of the fans, the psychology of being a fan, and observing this negative and positively weird behavior. It’s kind of hard to explain this, but there’s this weird illness with people where it’s almost like they view their [favorite] artist as a football team or something, and all other artists are another team. [Laughs.] Or even sometimes, your records become sports teams. You put out a new record, and it’s like, “Tonight at Dodger Stadium, it’s the Easy Tigers vs. the Heartbreakers.” It’s super-competitive, and it’s a highly judgmental place for a place that should be free of judgment. My feeling about music is that it’s a place to go to get away from fucking negative creeps. And now, what’s really weird is that music is full of negative fucking creeps.
You remember: When we were growing up, if you bought Metal Hammer, or if you were reading Hit Parader, or Kerrang!, or something, it didn’t seem to me like there were a lot of articles saying, “Fuck Mötley Crüe, man. They suck.” Or, “Theatre Of Pain is a shitty record, and nothing is ever gonna be as good as Too Fast For Love.” It was like, “Okay, Theatre Of Pain,” and maybe there would be people that didn’t totally understand the record, or that snideness was there, but it didn’t seem to be, when I was growing up, that snarkiness equaled intelligence. There’s this weird trend in the music community where people have read snarky, highly intelligent reviewers to the point where they have taken the wrong idea. Instead of saying that intelligence equals wit, and being witty about things being fucking awesome or being shit, it’s only manifested itself in saying, “Oh, well, witty people are smart, and when I read witty people, they’re always saying negative things,” so there’s this negative trend. The trend is to find something wrong with everything."-Ryan Adams
THE A.V. CLUB: INTERVIEW: Ryan Adams
Monday, October 17, 2011
Make My.
A "New flava in ya ear!" production starring The Roots & Big K.R.I.T.
ONE THIRTY BPM: Listen: The Roots – “Make My” ft. Big K.R.I.T.
ONE THIRTY BPM: Listen: The Roots – “Make My” ft. Big K.R.I.T.
Princess of China.
A "New flava in ya ear!" production starring Coldplay & Rihanna.
PRETTY MUCH AMAZING: New: Coldplay & Rihanna – “Princess of China”
PRETTY MUCH AMAZING: New: Coldplay & Rihanna – “Princess of China”
Everybody Hurts.
A Moment of Clarity.
Words.
"As the Occupy Wall Street movement continues to grow, the response from the movement’s targets has gradually changed: contemptuous dismissal has been replaced by whining. (A reader of my blog suggests that we start calling our ruling class the “kvetchocracy.”) The modern lords of finance look at the protesters and ask, Don’t they understand what we’ve done for the U.S. economy?
The answer is: yes, many of the protesters do understand what Wall Street and more generally the nation’s economic elite have done for us. And that’s why they’re protesting.
...Money talks in American politics, and what the financial industry’s money has been saying lately is that it will punish any politician who dares to criticize that industry’s behavior, no matter how gently — as evidenced by the way Wall Street money has now abandoned President Obama in favor of Mitt Romney. And this explains the industry’s shock over recent events.
You see, until a few weeks ago it seemed as if Wall Street had effectively bribed and bullied our political system into forgetting about that whole drawing lavish paychecks while destroying the world economy thing. Then, all of a sudden, some people insisted on bringing the subject up again.
And their outrage has found resonance with millions of Americans. No wonder Wall Street is whining."
THE NEW YORK TIMES: Losing Their Immunity
SEE ALSO:
THE NEW YORK TIMES: America's 'Primal Scream'
Words.
"As the Occupy Wall Street movement continues to grow, the response from the movement’s targets has gradually changed: contemptuous dismissal has been replaced by whining. (A reader of my blog suggests that we start calling our ruling class the “kvetchocracy.”) The modern lords of finance look at the protesters and ask, Don’t they understand what we’ve done for the U.S. economy?
The answer is: yes, many of the protesters do understand what Wall Street and more generally the nation’s economic elite have done for us. And that’s why they’re protesting.
...Money talks in American politics, and what the financial industry’s money has been saying lately is that it will punish any politician who dares to criticize that industry’s behavior, no matter how gently — as evidenced by the way Wall Street money has now abandoned President Obama in favor of Mitt Romney. And this explains the industry’s shock over recent events.
You see, until a few weeks ago it seemed as if Wall Street had effectively bribed and bullied our political system into forgetting about that whole drawing lavish paychecks while destroying the world economy thing. Then, all of a sudden, some people insisted on bringing the subject up again.
And their outrage has found resonance with millions of Americans. No wonder Wall Street is whining."
THE NEW YORK TIMES: Losing Their Immunity
SEE ALSO:
THE NEW YORK TIMES: America's 'Primal Scream'
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Friday, October 14, 2011
"LET'S WORK!"
Words.
"Here in Washington, our leaders seem to be governing under the creed of the old Brooklyn Dodgers: Wait ’til next year.
...Under the wait-’til-next-year logic, Republicans believe that if they can gain control of the Senate, and maybe the White House, all their problems will be solved. Democrats, though less enthusiastic about their prospects, think that if they can make some gains in the House, and if Obama can win a second term, their agenda will have renewed momentum. And so both sides acquiesce in a standstill: a series of short-term funding bills and a supercommittee that postpones the most painful choices until after the election.
But the wait-’til-next-year approach ignores one crucial consideration: The 2012 elections, whatever the outcome, aren’t going to change the stalemate that has gripped this town.
...Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell seems to grasp this in his more candid moments. He has argued that a divided government provides “the best time, and some would argue the only time, to do really hard things, because really hard things done on a partisan basis cannot be accomplished” without creating “a wipeout in the next election.”
...But Americans have already made a clear choice, repeatedly: They want their representatives to compromise. In the new Washington Post-ABC News poll, 64 percent said lawmakers should attack the debt problem with a combination of spending cuts and tax increases. But only 25 percent thought lawmakers will agree on a plan.
The lack of faith that lawmakers will do the obvious, necessary things goes a long way toward explaining why Congress enjoys an approval rate of 14 percent. In this case, good things do not come to those who wait."
THE WASHINGTON POST: The waiting for nothing Congress
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)