Unemployment Survival Tips by Big Fat Whale

The rhetorical state of play by the Right is so amusingly captured by the “Read the encyclopedia and discover new cultures to scapegoat” tip, but in truth, blaming the Mexicans or Samoans or whomever is not a new tradition in this country at all, even if they aren’t even within our borders. Remember why Vincent Chin was murdered?

[via:tonythebear]

The president’s pre-occupation with deficient reduction and other austerity measures will undercut economic recovery because it does absolutely nothing to help the millions of jobless Americans find decent employment. Meanwhile the war that he has inherited and then perpetuated continues to consume the national budget and makes the necessary domestic spending an extremely difficult endeavor with the obstructionist, party of “no” Republican’ts continually opposing, well, everything.

Despite the watered-down accomplishments of the toothless Democrats and Obama, it is clear that they have not learned the right lessons from history—from the Great Depression—that would lead us out of our poor economic times in a much less painful manner.

Our world is so very different than in FDR’s day, and the New Deal that our nation requires now also has to address long term goals. Indeed, what this country needs is a Green New Deal that marches us toward a green economy, a broader safety net and education for all, job creation, and structural reforms that can powerfully limit the influence of corporate money in our politics.

Below are the ten planks of the Green New Deal. They aren’t very radical, and if anything, they have an incredibly populist thrust. It isn’t just progressives who want to “improve labor, environmental, consumer, health and safety standards.” And prohibition policies like “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and denying same-sex marriages just do not stand on any rational legs. Instead, they just mock the American principles of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Green New Deal

• Cut military spending at least 70%
  
  
• Create millions of green union jobs through massive public investment in renewable energy, mass transit and conservation
  
  
• Set ambitious, science-based greenhouse gas emission reduction targets, and enact a revenue-neutral carbon tax to meet them
  
  
• Establish single-payer “Medicare for all” health care
  
  
• Provide tuition-free public higher education
  
  
• Change trade agreements to improve labor, environmental, consumer, health and safety standards
  
  
• End counterproductive prohibition policies and legalize marijuana


  
  
• Enact tough limits on credit interest and lending rates, progressive tax reform and strict financial regulation
  
  
• Amend the U.S. Constitution to abolish corporate personhood
  
  
• Pass sweeping electoral, campaign finance and anti-corruption reforms

[source: Green Change]

A list of the Green Party candidates who support these ten planks of the Green New Deal can be found here.

Remember, progressive politics aren’t just handled on the national level, but also locally and at the state-level. Support your local Green politicians who share a great vision for a cleaner and fairer world. Our nation is more than just blue and red. It’s time to turn more of it Green.

American voters just need more options. Down with the duopoly of political power by the Republicans and Democrats! Multi-party democracy revolution!

[via:brooklynmutt]

Consumer Confidence gets bashed by Jobless Recovery

But a second figure of the ridiculous deficit hawks needs to be next to Consumer Confidence too.

[via:fuckyeahpoliticalcartoons]

GOP Illogic: Kill the Deficit before the Recession

I don’t think this is exclusively a GOP thing. There are Democrat budget hawks and those who are far too concerned about deficit spending while unemployment is still high.

[via:azspot:Pat Bagley]

Robert Scheer, from “The Chinese Aren’t Coming” at The Nation

Scheer argues—based on the recent historic trade agreement between the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of China (aka Taiwan) that poses to powerfully integrate mainland China’s economy with Taiwan’s—that because war between the two is now next to impossible without serious economic detriment to both governments, the United States cannot justify its bloated military spending with the premise of protecting Taiwan from mainland attack. And rightfully, he criticizes the priorities of our government unwilling to appropriate monies for unemployment benefits when the livelihood of millions of Americans who still cannot find jobs are threatened.

Katha Pollitt, in the current (June 28, 2010) issue of The Nation, begins her column recounting how World War II was “the last time Americans accepted the challenge of sacrifice in pursuit of common goals.” War had necessitated rationing, conservation, war bond purchasing, and other efforts that showed an awareness for a bigger, collective “good.” Since then, and now, after (during?) The Great Recession, while millions are still unemployed or under-employed, while the budget hawks in the government nickels and dimes itself out of effective reform that could revitalize our economy and our nation, while consumers self-righteously fume at BP’s environmental destruction, but fail to acknowledge their own fuel thirst that has created the demand for off-shore oil drilling, have Americans become so accustomed to wanting more while contributing less that when a new “national sacrifice” is in order, it is not only seems to be a politically disastrous position, but the existing inequities of our society get replayed and reinforced? 

We must start by looking honestly in the mirror, revisit the ideas of fairness and equality, and refocus on that collective good, as Pollitt fantastically does here:

I would gladly pay higher taxes to prevent layoffs of teachers, cops and firemen; to improve our schools and universities; keep libraries open; expand public transportation; and put unemployed people to work repairing our tattered infrastructure, building public housing, maintaining our parks, staffing childcare centers. And what about that green technology Obama used to talk about—wind power, solar power, high-speed trains? There is no shortage of important work that needs to be done, and the costs of not doing it are very high. Unfortunately, the same leaders who fear asking us to sacrifice by paying higher taxes have no qualms about spending the money we already give them—and borrowing more—to pay for wars, war toys and prisons, while organizing the tax structure around the greed of corporations and the richest sliver of the population. The lavishing of treasure to pay for our militarized, increasingly unequal society is the sacrifice most of us are already making. Is it any wonder that people respond to calls for sacrifice with defensiveness and cynicism?

Adding to the difficulty of selling the public on sacrifice is that the salesman is usually a very rich and successful person who will barely feel the pinch of the policies he proposes. “Americans have become masters of ‘sacrifice avoidance,’ ” intones Eliot Spitzer in his Slate column. This immensely wealthy man, who spent more than $100,000 on prostitutes and thereby cost New York its best shot in a generation at a functioning state government, tells me to read the Gettysburg Address and be inspired to “a greater sense of national purpose”?

Multimillionaires who argue for raising taxes should start by proposing taxes on themselves that would actually lower their standard of living. Until then, they’re not really sharing the sacrifice they want to impose on the rest of us.

Is it a wonder that so many think Americans are the greediest people on earth?

In this heartbreaking, yet frustrating and angering piece, writer Seth Wessler of ColorLines follows the life of Eva Hernández, a single mother whose story highlights the failures of welfare to provide for those who need it most, particularly women of color. Lack of education, job discrimination, labor issues, poverty stigma, all come to head. An excerpt:

In March 2009, in the midst of the worst job crisis in at least a generation, Eva opened the last welfare check she will ever receive. She is one of a growing number of people in the United States who can’t find work in this recession but don’t qualify for government cash assistance, no matter how poor they are or how bad the economy gets.

Without the help of welfare, Eva doesn’t have enough money left at the end of each month to feed her daughters full meals. It is the first time in her life, she said, that she hasn’t had enough money for food. Now, with no other source of income, Eva breaks the law, selling her food stamps to pay for the rent, phone bill, detergent and tampons.

On the first day of each month, when her food stamps arrive, she walks to the convenience store up the street, buys food for her family with her food stamp card and uses it to pay off the debt she accumulated the previous month after she ran out of money. She then trades in the remaining balance for cash. Although the bodega is more expensive than larger chain grocery stores nearby, she’s locked into shopping here because places like Wal-Mart won’t let her keep a tab—or exchange her food stamps for desperately needed cash.