In a new CNN poll, Texas Governor Rick Perry, who decided to run for president after talking to his wife, George W. Bush, and Jesus, is polling very well, just two points behind blah blah fart yawn.
Slumlord Millionaires
So let me see if I have this straight: The Obama administration's proposed solution to the foreclosure crisis is basically to turn it into a massive, government-sanctioned land grab, in which corporations use federal subsidies to profitably rent houses back to the people who used to own them. Awesome.
I'm guessing it's safe to surmise that rich conservatives will not be caterwauling about this heinous "redistribution of wealth," since the wealth is being redistributed upwards.
I love trickle-up economics!
This, apparently, is the best idea an administration deliberately choosing not to focus on tax increases and job creation can come up with to address a faltering economy. And that is very, very worrisome, because getting out of any recession requires more than piddling ideas that stand to make the already-wealthy even wealthier, and getting out of this recession in particular requires creativity and innovation, for reasons succinctly outlined by Austan Goolsbee, the outgoing director of the White House's Council of Economic Advisers, last week on Meet the Press:
Now, the, the depth of the recession and the nature of it, that it's coming out of a bubble, that we can't just go back to what we were doing before the recession began makes this particularly hard to get out of. ... It can't be just going back to building residential houses and consuming more than we're earning, which were the drivers of growth before.In plain language, we can't hope to just get "back on track." The tracks are gone. We need to build new tracks. (Literally.)
Before the recession, our economy was built on a house of cards; now that the housing and credit bubbles have burst, we have to have something new to drive the economy. That might be sweeping infrastructure projects, green technology development, whatever—but it sure as shit ain't turning the foreclosure crisis into a national land grab.
On the UK Riots, Part Three
[Trigger warning for violence; dehumanization; eliminationism.]
For the latest, I will just point once again to the front page of The Guardian's comprehensive coverage. I'll also recommend this CNN piece on the three Asian men who were killed by a hit-and-run driver while trying to protect their families' shops.
In the Daily Mail (I know, but STILL), Max Hastings writes one of the most vicious screeds I've yet read, which is really saying something, because I've read a lot of nasty shit the past few days. His thesis serves as the blunt headline: "Years of liberal dogma have spawned a generation of amoral, uneducated, welfare dependent, brutalised youngsters."
He writes with seething vitriol, using the vilest dehumanizing and eliminationist language, of the underclass (or, more accurately, his impression of the underclass) that he asserts has been created by wanton liberalism:
The people who wrecked swathes of property, burned vehicles and terrorised communities have no moral compass to make them susceptible to guilt or shame.To exist, rather than live, is a profound tragedy; and yet Hastings feels no compassion for people so catastrophically failed by their country—a point on which Hastings and I both agree, despite our difference of opinion regarding the source of that failure (to which I'll return in a moment). Instead, he blithely implies they are fortunate to not have been shot for behaving in precisely the way they've been socialized to behave.
Most have no jobs to go to or exams they might pass. They know no family role models, for most live in homes in which the father is unemployed, or from which he has decamped.
They are illiterate and innumerate, beyond maybe some dexterity with computer games and BlackBerries.
They are essentially wild beasts. I use that phrase advisedly, because it seems appropriate to young people bereft of the discipline that might make them employable; of the conscience that distinguishes between right and wrong.
They respond only to instinctive animal impulses — to eat and drink, have sex, seize or destroy the accessible property of others.
Their behaviour on the streets resembled that of the polar bear which attacked a Norwegian tourist camp last week. They were doing what came naturally and, unlike the bear, no one even shot them for it.
A former London police chief spoke a few years ago about the 'feral children' on his patch — another way of describing the same reality.
The depressing truth is that at the bottom of our society is a layer of young people with no skills, education, values or aspirations. They do not have what most of us would call 'lives': they simply exist.
On the one hand, he argues, "Nobody has ever dared suggest to them that they need feel any allegiance to anything, least of all Britain or their community," and "These kids are what they are because nobody makes them be anything different or better," and cites at length the alleged failures of liberalism which has degraded the entire society, but, on the other, he sneers at those failed young people: "My dogs are better behaved and subscribe to a higher code of values than the young rioters of Tottenham, Hackney, Clapham and Birmingham."
Not only is he holding individuals responsible for systemic problems, the hallmark of garbage conservative thinking, but he is, without a trace of irony, taking to the pages of a national newspaper to debase in the most Othering, dehumanizing, cruel language the very people he says liberal ideology has failed.
Because demeaning people as less than human in national publications has nothing to do with creating a cavernous void of anything resembling a sense of belonging among marginalized populations.
Hastings explains that liberalism has failed by giving to people in need too much:
An underclass has existed throughout history, which once endured appalling privation. Its spasmodic outbreaks of violence, especially in the early 19th century, frightened the ruling classes.Suffice it to say, looking back at history and finding the same explosive bursts of insurrection, which can only be "kept at bay" by removing people entirety from society, leads me to a very different conclusion than "ostensibly having relieved people in need of hunger and real want is liberalism gone too far."
Its frustrations and passions were kept at bay by force and draconian legal sanctions, foremost among them capital punishment and transportation to the colonies.
Today, those at the bottom of society behave no better than their forebears, but the welfare state has relieved them from hunger and real want.
In fact, it leads me to the conclusion that liberalism has not gone far enough to create a pluralistic and inclusive society that is materially different for people in need than life in the 19th century.
Maybe people need more than food in their bellies to feel like their government and countrypersons give a fuck about them.
Just a thought.
Question of the Day
Nicked from fbomb: What was the first consciously feminist thing you ever did?
My earliest feminist memories are about asking questions: Why aren't women allowed to be ministers? Why are all my teachers women? Why do men get to go shirtless in hot weather, but women can't? Why isn't there a girls' football team?
Questioning gender divisions was the first feminist thing I ever did, but I didn't realize it. The first consciously feminist thing I ever did was encouraging other people to ask the same questions.
An Observation
It seems to me that about 99.9% of the shit labeled "pranks" is actually just straight-up bullying.
Photo of the Day
A Nepalese artist paints graffiti in Kathmandu as part of an artist movement organised through Facebook. Members of the Facebook groups "Artudio Nepal" and "The Image Park" have been painting wall murals on the city's walls in an effort to create clean and positive expression that promote beauty instead of the unwanted political slogans and pamphlets which often litter the city walls. [Reuters Pictures]
Number of the Day
75%: The property tax discount over the next 30 years granted by the city of Williamstown in Grant County, Kentucky, to Answers in Genesis for the construction of the Ark Encounter, a Noah's Ark-themed biblical amusement park, "which will feature a full-size replica of Noah's Ark." Sure.
The tax deal is in addition to almost $200,000 given to the company by Grant County's economic development arm as an enticement to keep the project located there, along with 100 acres of reduced-price land."Schools are for suckers."—Jesus.
And that's not counting the state's promise of $40 million worth of sales tax rebates and a possible $11 million in improvements to the interstate near the project that would be financed by the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet.
...The property tax agreement means the Ark Encounter would pay 25 percent of the taxes due on 800 acres of property that is eventually expected to be worth $150 million. Most local property taxes are used to finance Williamstown Independent Schools.
[Via Memeorandum.]
Daily Dose of Cute
"I have the cutest belly!"
"No, I have the cutest belly!"
"My belly puts your middling bellies to shame!"
"I do believe my belly is King Belly of All the Bellies."
"You cannot be serious."
Wednesday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by a Town Called Malice.
Recommended Reading:
Richard: Democrats Fall Short in Heated Wisconsin Recall Elections
Digby: Mushy Peas: Austerity Bites
Tommy: Mostly a Gold Star: Chris Christie
Andy: Rick Santorum Compares Same-Sex Marriage to a Non-Alcoholic Beverage
Microaggressions: "Where are you from?"
The Rotund: What Fat Acceptance Is and Isn't
Fannie: Ask a Feminist
Leave your links and recommendations in comments...
Thank You, Dr. Frist
I'm so glad Bill Frist is around to let me know I have economic reasons to care about starving people.
Quote of the Day
"It is peaceful here. There is no gunfire. But we are starving."—Ali Hulbale, 30, a Somalian refugee who, with his wife and two children, lives on the outskirts of the Dadaab refugee complex in northeastern Kenya, which "now holds 372,000 people, more than four times its original capacity. ... The onrush of refugees has created a backlog of 17,000 people and growing who can languish for months before they are registered, said Alexandra Lopoukhine, a spokeswoman for the aid agency CARE International."
If you are able to help, you can donate to CARE International's campaign for Somalia here. Doctors Without Borders is also active in the area; you can donate to DWB here.
CNN has some other ideas about how to help here.
Whoops Your Trojan T-shirt!
From Germany, Shaker The Bald Soprano e-mailed me a story about a hilarious stealth action for social justice.
Okay, so that link is in German. There's an English-language link (though with less info) here from the BBC, and from DW-World (the German 24-hour news network's online section) here, with a lovely picture of the shirts before and after.
In short, there was a right-wing music festival being held in Thuringia, in the eastern part of Germany, sponsored by the NDP (National Democratic Party, an extreme right-wing group, with a not-very-disguised reference in their acronym to the NSDAP, the official name of the Nazi Party). Many neo-Nazis were in attendance.
A group called Exit Deutschland, devoted to helping people leave the extreme right-wing groups, stealthily prepared a selection of t-shirts with a skull and crossbones and the words "Hardcore Rebels". These were given away free at the concert, through a clever bit of subterfuge, by the NDP itself.
Only when the attendees got their shirts home and washed them, the message changed. The shirts faded, to reveal a message:
Was dein T-Shirt kann, kannst du auch
(what your shirt can do, you can too)
...along with the URL, and a message saying that they were an NGO available to help people leave the neo-Nazi groups. The shirts were designed and paid for by a marketing firm which had come up with the idea.
I raise my teaspoon in salute, Exit Deutschland (link is only available in German, sorry). Bravissimo!
Ô,ÔP
SUPERCOMMITTEE!!!
Boehner, McConnell announce picks for deficit 'super committee':
House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) announced Wednesday that he has chosen Reps. Jeb Hensarling (R-Tex.), Dave Camp (R-Mich.) and Fred Upton (R-Mich.) to be part of the so-called "super committee" of congressional lawmakers tasked with finding another $1.5 trillion in deficit savings over the next 10 years.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) also announced his picks Wednesday, selecting Sens. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) and Rob Portman (R-Ohio) to fill the Senate Republicans' three slots.
Boehner said in a statement that he had tapped Hensarling, who serves as the House Republican Conference chairman, to serve as the committee's co-chair.
"Everything comes to he who waits—and I have waited so very long for this moment."
Sen. Harry Reid's picks are here. Rep. Nancy Pelosi has yet to announce hers.
Meanwhile...
...in the US, where we are determined to double-down on the social and economic injustices currently coming to rolling boil in the UK, Paul Krugman reports that the Obama administration has made "a deliberate decision to focus on the wrong issues, knowing that they're the wrong issues," because they want to "keep the public focused on the deficit drama—to convince them their current economic woes have something to do with it, decry Washington's paralysis over fixing it, and then claim victory over whatever outcome emerges from the process recently negotiated to fix it. They hope all this will distract the public's attention from the President's failure to do anything about continuing high unemployment and economic anemia."
Let them eat deficits, or whatever.
On the UK Riots, Part Two
Here's the latest...
The Guardian—Lockdown in London, while trouble flares in Nottingham and Manchester:
A police station in Nottingham was firebombed late on Tuesday by a group of up to 40 men, police said, while there was looting in Manchester and there were tense scenes in Salford.The front page of The Guardian's comprehensive coverage is here.
Canning Circus police station in Nottingham was attacked by the group but no injuries were reported, Nottinghamshire police said just after 10pm.
The force said a number of men were detained nearby.
There was also trouble in Birmingham and other parts of the West Midlands, but relative calm in London as Scotland Yard attempted to put the capital in lockdown with 16,000 police on the streets, in contrast to 6,000 on Monday.
Scotland Yard ordered its officers to use every available force including the possible deployment of plastic bullets to tackle widespread rioting and looting as the capital was flooded with the biggest police presence in British history.
For raw, naked ugliness of response, you won't find anything that beats this piece of contemptible shit, titled "Let Britain Burn," care of the loathsome John Derbyshire [tw for eliminationist language]: "Through British veins runs the poisonous fake idealism of 'human rights' and 'sensitivity,' of happy-clappy multicultural groveling and sick, weak, deracinated moral universalism—the rotten fruit of a debased, sentimentalized Christianity. ... I treasure my faint, fading recollections of Britain when she was still, for a few years longer, a nation. Today Britain is merely a place, a bazaar. Let it burn!" A thoughtful, measured response from an upstanding conservative.
There's an interesting bit in this AP piece, further underlining the class and generational disconnect between law enforcement and many of the rioters:
In the northwestern city of Manchester, hundreds of youths rampaged through the city center, hurling bottles and stones at police and vandalizing stores. A women's clothing store on the city's main shopping street was set ablaze, along with a disused library in nearby Salford.I feel like I'm stating the obvious here (although this idea appears to be anything but obvious virtually everywhere the riots are being discussed), but "hundreds of youths" don't go on a "rampage" without any reason, even if that reason is simply having no incentive not to. And, truly, feeling utterly devoid of any reason to not take to the streets of your community and destroy it is a profound injustice.
Manchester assistant chief constable Garry Shewan said it was simple lawlessness.
"We want to make it absolutely clear — they have nothing to protest against," he said. "There is nothing in a sense of injustice and there has been no spark that has led to this."
That sort of collective apathy, or antipathy, particularly when marked by a stark generational divide, is indicative of a cultural failure to provide something to young people worth personally investing in. Most observers claim to see no connection between black Londoners rioting against police oppression and white Mancunian teens "rampaging for no reason," but there is an overwhelming—and evident—plume of dispossession, neglect, marginalization, purposelessness, voicelessness, disconnection from the life that Britons are supposed to have, and supposed to want, emanating from every street upon which are running rioters dismissed as incomprehensible animals.
"People are all at home—they're scared," London convenience store owner Adnan Butt is quoted as saying by the AP. Sure. Except for the people who are rioting. Who, at best, are not considered to be People Who Matter, and, at worst, are not considered to be people at all.
I keep coming back to that "disused library* in nearby Salford," and it just seems to hang there like a symbol of the plague of neglect that creeps across any nation in the shadows of robber barons who hoard bootstraps and champion austerity measures.
And I am reminded of the video to which Kevin Gosztola linked, in which teenagers from Haringey in London are interviewed by The Guardian about the closing of 13 youth clubs by the local council and express their concern about how they won't have anywhere to go and no more creative outlet, and the idleness and boredom will fuel violence between gangs set adrift.
When parents neglect their children, we (rightly) call it criminal. When governments neglect their people, well, we might call it criminal if that government is a dark-skinned warlord who's stealing food intended for his country's starving citizens. But when a "civilized" government neglects to provide choices, resources, options for meaningful work, opportunities for participation in conversations about national needs and identity, cultural inclusion, some basic sense of being valued, to its citizens, we call that "democracy," and call criminal any display of frustration, despondency, rage at that grotesque injustice.
We pretend that "almost everyone has food and can scrape by, and anyone who can't is just a shiftless waster, anyway" is good enough, and we pretend that the government and upper classes in wealthy countries aren't constantly conspiring to wage a civil war of economics and access against people living lives of quiet desperation who are accused of being irrational and crazy and savage and uncivilized by their oppressors if they have the temerity to object to their oppression, and we pretend that a sustained campaign of marginalization and denial and subjugation doesn't amount to a lifetime of abuse committed against vulnerable people by their own government.
And we pretend that a government in service to an ideal that ostracizes many citizens by virtue of poverty and others by virtue of indifference to its ostensible rewards is a functional government and not simply a tool of privileged elites.
Those pretenses are going up in smoke across the UK.
-----------------
* In comments, Shaker virescence notes that the building in question is actually "the council housing office, which was converted from a former library," and details some of the "regeneration" (i.e. gentrification) measures being undertaken in Salford, making the burning of the council housing office an even more pointed symbol of neglect than if it had merely been a disused library.
Question of the Day
So, Dirty Dancing is being remade, to which I can only respond: NO!!! JUST NO!!!
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
But, TOO BAD, it's happening, so: Who would you cast as Baby and Johnny in a remake of Dirty Dancing?
SUPERCOMMITTEE!!!
Harry Reid super committee picks in place:
In the first of what will be a closely watched selection process for a powerful new deficit panel, Democratic sources say Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will appoint Democratic Sens. Patty Murray (Wash.), Max Baucus (Mont.) and John Kerry (Mass.) as his three choices for a super committee charged with finding more than $1 trillion in spending cuts by the end of this year.
Murray will serve as co-chair of the 12-member panel. Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) will select a co-chair and two other panelists, as required by the next debt limit agreement signed into law by President Barack Obama last week. Minority Leaders Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell will each select three additional members.
THEY HAVE THE POWER!!!
