tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-80020304824764696302024-03-13T14:36:12.376-07:00The Truth VigilanteJoshua Hollandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08739027104281984042noreply@blogger.comBlogger68125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8002030482476469630.post-29736318101657418962012-08-17T14:28:00.000-07:002012-08-17T14:28:03.210-07:00Don't You Kinda Wish You Were Brazen Enough to Spin Reality This Hard?Here is Doug Feith's equally noxious offspring <a href="http://professional.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444772404577587013388800428.html?mg=reno-wsj">arguing</a> that sanctions against Iran aren't having the desired effect:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">
Yes, the Iranian rial has lost half its value in 12 months. Oil exports are down by about half, too. And Tehran admits that inflation is above 20%, with unemployment above 13%. Yet this isn't an economy in freefall. The volume of oil exports is stabilizing, and the government has an estimated $60 billion to $100 billion in foreign currency reserves.</blockquote>
In case you were wondering what "Chutzpah" means, wonder no more.Joshua Hollandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08739027104281984042noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8002030482476469630.post-97189247861310642012-06-03T18:18:00.000-07:002012-06-03T18:21:01.762-07:00The Best Thing I've Ever Done With Brussel SproutsWow, this was good: brussel sprouts and carrots with chilis, hoisin and black bean sauce.<br />
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I took maybe two cups of brussel sprouts, cleaned 'em, split them in half and blanched them (a fancy way of saying I boiled them in salted water for about 3 minutes and then threw them into ice-water). Don't over-cook 'em -- you don't want them soft just yet.<br />
<br />
Then I cut up two carrots into bite-sized chunks (not huge ones). I sauteed the carrots and brussel sprouts in a frying pan over medium heat -- in a half-tablespoon of olive oil -- with maybe a third of an onion, chopped medium fine. I added black pepper, but no salt -- black bean sauce is super-salty stuff.<br />
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After about... 3-4 minutes, I added a half clove of garlic (this is huge, very fresh garlic, so you might want to use a whole clove of supermarket stuff), a third of a jalapeño -- both chopped fine -- and let that cook for about a minute.<br />
<br />
Then I added a tablespoon of chinese black bean sauce, an equal amount of hoisin sauce (you can get both at the supermarket) and a little bit of water to thin it out. After a few more minutes -- until carrots and brussel sprouts are soft ... Yum! Try it!<br />
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<br />Joshua Hollandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08739027104281984042noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8002030482476469630.post-58494165909106233792012-05-26T10:43:00.002-07:002012-05-26T10:47:22.501-07:00Thomas Friedman, Beautiful Artichokes and Weird DreamsI went to the Yankees-A's game last night, enjoyed a number of very expensive beverages and some wildly unhealthy food. Some hours later, I had quite a bizarre dream.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I was working for some sort of organization -- it was a publication, but we were putting on an event of some kind. As is often the case when I remember dreams, these details are lost to the mists of the early morning hours. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I had a mission: to secure a large quantity of artichokes. I had to go to a wholesaler, and there were many obstacles before me, although I don't quite remember what they were. Anyway, I had to navigate a labyrinthian route through back alleys in a deserted industrial neighborhood.</div>
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<br /></div>
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I came across a warehouse, and asked a guy with a forklift where I could find artichokes. "Right here," he said, and then he had a huge box full of the most beautiful artichokes I'd ever seen. They were big, and their leaves were tight, and they glowed purple and pink in the muted light streaming in from these small windows at the top of the structure.</div>
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I filled a smaller box, and -- I don't know why, but this is the detail I remember most vividly -- he shocked me by saying, "$2.50." 'Wow,' I thought. 'That's a bargain!' </div>
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<br /></div>
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Then he said: "But You can't give any of them to that guy who's obsessed with China." "Thomas Friedman?" I asked. "Yes," he said, "that guy's an idiot and he can't have any."</div>
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The End.</div>Joshua Hollandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08739027104281984042noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8002030482476469630.post-84371878424301361652012-05-12T17:52:00.004-07:002012-05-12T17:52:55.230-07:00The Note I Had to Slip Under My Tom Petty-Obsessed Neighbor's Door<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Dear Neighbor:</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Sure, Tom Petty's great.
But did you know that being forced to listen to Tom Petty's Greatest
Hits over and over and over for weeks on end is actually recognized
as a form of torture under international law? It's true!</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Of course, it's a free
country – you have every right to stand your ground, or seek out
good love (which, God only knows, is hard to find). But how about
indulging just once per day? As it stands, it's gotten so my friends
don't come around here no more, and I'm getting close to a breakdown.
Sometimes I just have to flee the building, and I shouldn't have to
live like a refugee. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Or how about using
headphones if one dose of the Pettster isn't enough? Am I chasing
down a dream, here? I don't think so -- there <i>is</i> an easy way
out!</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Thanks!</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">- YOUR NEIGHBORS </span>
</div>Joshua Hollandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08739027104281984042noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8002030482476469630.post-90017139604426953512012-04-04T11:24:00.000-07:002012-04-04T11:24:30.259-07:00Does @HeatherChilders Eat Babies?Rumors persist that Fox "News" anchor Heather Childers eats babies, perhaps with a refreshing roasted red pepper coulis.Joshua Hollandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08739027104281984042noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8002030482476469630.post-91394363281668033532011-12-02T12:36:00.001-08:002011-12-02T12:36:45.512-08:00Why Naomi Wolf's Response to my Critique Is Largely Unresponsive<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font: normal normal normal 13px/19px Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0.6em; padding-left: 0.6em; padding-right: 0.6em; padding-top: 0.6em;">Naomi Wolf responded to my criticism of her recent work on the Occupy crack-downs today, <a href="http://www.alternet.org/occupywallst/153296/naomi_wolf_versus_joshua_holland%3A_was_there_a_coordinated_federal_crackdown_on_occupy_wall_street/" mce_href="http://www.alternet.org/occupywallst/153296/naomi_wolf_versus_joshua_holland%3A_was_there_a_coordinated_federal_crackdown_on_occupy_wall_street/">here</a>.<br />
<br />
Hate to belabor this*, but I have a few comments about her response which you can read <a href="http://www.alternet.org/story/153300/why_naomi_wolf%27s_response_to_my_critique_is_largely_unresponsive/" mce_href="http://www.alternet.org/story/153300/why_naomi_wolf%27s_response_to_my_critique_is_largely_unresponsive/">here</a>.<br />
<br />
*No I don't. I suffer from <a href="http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/duty_calls.png" mce_href="http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/duty_calls.png">this sometimes debilitating illness</a>.</div>Joshua Hollandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08739027104281984042noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8002030482476469630.post-57088056297726481442011-11-26T15:00:00.001-08:002011-11-26T15:16:35.806-08:00Naomi Wolf’s ‘Shocking Truth’ About the ‘Occupy Crackdowns’ Is Anything But TrueThere has been a flurry of speculation surrounding various reports suggesting that a “coordinated,” nationwide crack-down on the Occupy Movement is underway. The problem with these stories lies in the fact that the word “coordinated” is too vague to offer any analytic value.<br />
<br />
The difference between local officials talking to each other — or federal law enforcement agencies advising them on what they see as “best practices” for evicting local occupations — and some unseen hand directing, incentivizing or coercing municipalities to do so when they would not otherwise be so inclined is not a minor one. It’s not a matter of semantics or a distinction without difference. As <a href="http://www.alternet.org/story/153104/are_federal_officials_pushing_a_nationwide_crackdown_on_the_occupy_wall_street_movement/">I wrote recently</a>, “if federal authorities were ordering cities to crack down on their local occupations in a concerted effort to wipe out a movement that has spread like wildfire across the country, that would indeed be a huge, and hugely troubling story. In the United States, policing protests is a local matter, and law enforcement agencies must remain accountable for their actions to local officials. Local government’s autonomy in this regard is an important principle.”<br />
<br />
But there has not been a single report offered by any media outlet suggesting that anyone – federal officials or police organizations – is directing or in any way exerting pressure on cities to crack down on their occupations. Instead, there have been a lot of dark ruminations that such an effort is underway – notably by Naomi Wolf in an <a href="http://naomiwolf.org/2011/11/how-to-get-the-cops-to-protect-you/">error-filled blog-post</a> and a somewhat <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/nov/25/shocking-truth-about-crackdown-occupy">bizarre column</a> for <i>The Guardian</i> in which Wolf takes an enormous leap away from any known facts to suggest that Congress is ordering cities to smash the Occupy Movement in order to preserve their own economic privilege.<br />
<br />
Before digging into Wolf’s claims, let’s review what has actually been reported.<br />
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1. Five major occupations were evicted in different cities in a span of less than a week. Although they didn’t follow the same pattern, there were similarities in the tactics employed by these different municipalities.<br />
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2. A police membership organization called the Police Executive Research Forum, PERF, organized two conference calls between local law enforcement officials to share information on OWS, including, presumably, how best to evict them.<br />
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3. The US Conference of Mayors organized two conference calls between various city officials to discuss the same issues.<br />
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4. The Examiner, quoting an anonymous source in the Justice Department, reported that DHS and the FBI were sharing information and advice with local law enforcement agencies. But the source stated quite clearly that “while local police agencies had received tactical and planning advice from national agencies, the ultimate decision on how each jurisdiction handles the Occupy protests ultimately rests with local law enforcement.”<br />
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5. Chris Hayes reported that a lobbying firm had offered a plan to the American Bankers Association to vilify and marginalize the Occupy Movement. The ABA insisted that it hadn’t acted on the proposal.<br />
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6. DHS vehicles were reportedly spotted near at least one eviction.<br />
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Among the “advice” reportedly disseminated by DHS was that cities should demonize their occupations by highlighting health and safety violations, and evict them without warning in the dead of night. As a supporter of the Occupy Movement and a civil libertarian, I find that offensive and inappropriate – DHS should be worried about terrorism, not political dissent.<br />
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But missing here is any suggestion that cities are being compelled to crack down on their Occupations in any way – mayors of all of the municipalities that evicted camps in recent weeks had made it very clear that they were going to do so. Oakland Mayor Jean Quan held three press conferences urging people to leave Frank Ogawa Plaza and promising that they would be removed by force if they didn’t comply. Local officials have an agenda, but it is not a hidden agenda, and thus not a particularly shocking story.<br />
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I don’t find it in the least bit surprising that law enforcement officials communicate with each other, and such communication is in no way an assault on local communities’ autonomy. Every day professionals dealing with similar issues get on conference calls, send messages to list-servs or otherwise talk shop – it’s just part of our “interconnected world.”<br />
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Having established a baseline of reality, let’s turn to Wolf’s claims.<br />
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Here’s how she opens her blog-post:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">Now is the time to get cops on board with the OWS movement — especially now that Alternet has broken the story that municipal police are being pushed around by a shadowy private policing consultancy affiliated with DHS. If you study any closing society decent people get handed monstrous orders and are forced to comply, and right now municipal police are being forced to comply with brutal orders from this corporate police consultancy, by economic pressure.</blockquote>AlterNet has “broken” no such story – nobody has. We have asked Wolf to retract this claim, but as of this writing, it still remains on her site several days later.<br />
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PERF is not “shadowy” – they are quite happy to talk to the media and recently sent a spokesperson to appear on Democracy, Now! PERF is a membership organization without any actual police powers. It can’t “order” anybody to do anything and has no means to apply “economic pressure.” Its only “affiliation” with DHS is that PERF’s Executive Director, Chuck Wexler, also sits on a DHS “advisory board” (along with a dozen police chiefs, Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley and former Indiana Congressman Lee Hamilton).<br />
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PERF organizes conference calls among police officials to discuss areas of common concern. Last year, it held a conference call among police chiefs who were worried that Arizona’s harsh immigration law, SB 1070, would drive a wedge between law enforcement agencies and the immigrant communities they are supposed to protect and serve. Fox “News” <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tu7hJMwsYYE">ran a story at the time</a> alleging that PERF was some sort of far-left police organization and therefore illegitimate. Now we’re getting a similar story from progressives, which is discouraging.<br />
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Having basically invented a tale of arm-twisting at the national level – of a “shadowy” police organization affiliated with DHS issuing “brutal orders” to hapless mayors – Wolf then leaps even further afield with her Guardian column, in which she adds the dark accusation that Congress is involved, and is ordering this national crackdown to preserve a grift from which law-makers are profiting. The headline of the piece is “The shocking truth about the crackdown on Occupy,” but there is nothing truthful about what follows.<br />
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Here, we should pause to add another credible report to our factual baseline. CBS recently ran <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57323221/congress-insiders-above-the-law/">a report</a> showing that members of Congress were using information that wasn’t available to the public to make tidy profits on the stock market. It’s insider-trading when ordinary citizens do it, but a loophole in the law makes it perfectly legal – if wholly corrupt on its face – for legislators to engage in the exact same practices.<br />
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This is extremely troubling, but wholly unrelated to Occupy Wall Street unless one engages in the kind of intellectual contortionism Wolf attempts. Indeed, the Guardianpiece borders on incoherence as it is, in the literal sense, a series of non-sequiturs – unrelated claims that simply do not follow one another.<br />
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She opens by recounting some of the more outrageous examples of police violence in recent weeks. Then she adds, “just when Americans thought we had the picture – was this crazy police and mayoral overkill, on a municipal level, in many different cities? – the picture darkened.” Did we have the picture or were we asking a lot of questions? Either way, what follows should address this in some way. But it doesn’t:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">The National Union of Journalists and the Committee to Protect Journalists issued a Freedom of Information Act request to investigate possible federal involvement with law enforcement practices that appeared to target journalists. The New York Times reported that “New York cops have arrested, punched, whacked, shoved to the ground and tossed a barrier at reporters and photographers” covering protests.</blockquote>This is a disturbing story pertaining specifically to New York. It's a non-sequitur here.<div><br />
</div><div>Wolf then offers some more tales of protesters facing police violence. She then cites Chris Hayes’ report as some sort of evidence that these crackdowns weren’t the result of local decisions.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">Journalist Chris Hayes reported on a leaked memo that revealed lobbyists vying for an $850,000 contract to smear Occupy. Message coordination of this kind is impossible without a full-court press at the top. This was clearly not simply a case of a freaked-out mayors’, city-by-city municipal overreaction against mess in the parks and cranky campers. As the puzzle pieces fit together, they began to show coordination against OWS at the highest national levels.</blockquote>This is just sad. The memo Hayes unearthed was drafted on November 24, more than a week after the evictions of camps in Zuccotti Park, Oakland, Denver, Salt Lake City and Portland. There was no “message coordination” of any kind – it was a proposal that was reportedly rejected. It wasn’t produced by or sent to any organ of government – it was a memo by scummy lobbyists looking for a pay-check from the banking lobby.<br />
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Wolf then continues to throw everything she can get her hands on at the wall in the hope that something sticks…<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">I was still deeply puzzled as to why OWS, this hapless, hopeful band, would call out a violent federal response. </blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">That is, until I found out what it was that OWS actually wanted. </blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">The mainstream media was declaring continually “OWS has no message”. Frustrated, I simply asked them. I began soliciting online “What is it you want?” answers from Occupy. In the first 15 minutes, I received 100 answers. These were truly eye-opening. </blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">The No 1 agenda item: get the money out of politics. Most often cited was legislation to blunt the effect of the Citizens United ruling, which lets boundless sums enter the campaign process. No 2: reform the banking system to prevent fraud and manipulation, with the most frequent item being to restore the Glass-Steagall Act…. </blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">No 3 was the most clarifying: draft laws against the little-known loophole that currently allows members of Congress to pass legislation affecting Delaware-based corporations in which they themselves are investors. </blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">When I saw this list – and especially the last agenda item – the scales fell from my eyes. Of course, these unarmed people would be having the shit kicked out of them.</blockquote>I have probably interviewed 50-75 participants in the Occupy Movement, at multiple camps in the Bay Area, and heard all sorts of proposals and “demands” for healing our economy. But I have never heard any Occupier call for “draft[ing] laws against the little-known loophole that currently allows members of Congress to pass legislation affecting Delaware-based corporations in which they themselves are investors.”<br />
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This seems to be the heart of her argument – Congress critters have a nice little rip-off going, they feel threatened by the Occupy Movement’s efforts to bring greater transparency to government, and as a result, they are “ordering” a nation-wide crack-down. But this central claim is based on emails she supposedly got from readers that seem pretty divergent from what the rest of us are hearing.<br />
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Wolf has that problem covered, however. Because even if the Occupiers don’t know that this is high on their list of demands, the police informants who have infiltrated the movement are able to discern their agenda even before the protesters have come up with it…<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">Since Occupy is heavily surveilled and infiltrated, it is likely that the DHS and police informers are aware, before Occupy itself is, what its emerging agenda is going to look like. If legislating away lobbyists’ privileges to earn boundless fees once they are close to the legislative process… [is] two beats away from the grasp of an electorally organised Occupy movement … well, you will call out the troops on stopping that advance.</blockquote>Convenient!<br />
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Wolf then offers a classic example of trying to shoe-horn reality into a theory with no factual basis. She set out to write a column indicting Congress for a nationwide crack-down that hasn’t actually been unearthed and, in order to do so, she needs to hopelessly muddle the chain of command…<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">For the terrible insight to take away from news that the Department of Homeland Security coordinated a violent crackdown is that the DHS does not freelance. The DHS cannot say, on its own initiative, “we are going after these scruffy hippies”. Rather, DHS is answerable up a chain of command: first, to New York Representative Peter King, head of the House homeland security subcommittee, who naturally is influenced by his fellow congressmen and women’s wishes and interests. And the DHS answers directly, above King, to the president (who was conveniently in Australia at the time).</blockquote>DHS is a cabinet-level executive branch agency. It does not “report” to Homeland Security Chair Peter King in some kind of chain-of-command – in fact, it doesn’t “report” to Congress at all except for a handful of official reports required by law. King can hold hearings and call DHS officials to testify before his committee, but he has nothing to do with the day-to-day operations of the agency.<br />
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The allegation is that DHS offered local cities advise on evicting their local camps. I don’t know what she means by “freelance” in this context, but that is the kind of action, like thousands of actions DHS initiates each and every day, that wouldn’t require any sort of high-level sign-off. DHS was created in part to facilitate greater communication and intelligence-sharing between federal and local law enforcement agencies – advising local authorities is one of its defining roles.<br />
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But it’s the next paragraph that actually makes one’s head hurt…<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">In other words, for the DHS to be on a call with mayors, the logic of its chain of command and accountability implies that congressional overseers, with the blessing of the White House, told the DHS to authorise mayors to order their police forces – pumped up with millions of dollars of hardware and training from the DHS – to make war on peaceful citizens.</blockquote>Got that? That DHS took part in those conference calls (a claim that confuses two separate stories, as it hasn’t been alleged that DHS had anything to do with the calls organized by the US Conference of Mayors) shows that “Congressional overseers with the blessing of the White House” told DHS to “authorize” mayors to order their police to crack-down.<br />
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This is little more than gibberish – policing protesters is a local matter and no mayor in the country requires federal “authorization” of any kind, by any agency, to order their cops to evict an occupation.<br />
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Wolf wraps up with a feverish flourish…<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">So, when you connect the dots, properly understood, what happened this week is the first battle in a civil war; a civil war in which, for now, only one side is choosing violence. It is a battle in which members of Congress, with the collusion of the American president, sent violent, organised suppression against the people they are supposed to represent. Occupy has touched the third rail: personal congressional profits streams. Even though they are, as yet, unaware of what the implications of their movement are, those threatened by the stirrings of their dreams of reform are not.</blockquote>When you don’t “connect” wholly disparate “dots,” what you get is far less dramatic. Mayors in a handful of cities, responding to local political pressures, decided to break up their local occupations — decisions that were announced to the press well in advance — and were advised as to how best to do so.<br />
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One doesn’t have to like that fact to recognize that it’s hardly shocking, and anything but a sinister assault on local communities’ autonomy.</div>Joshua Hollandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08739027104281984042noreply@blogger.com29tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8002030482476469630.post-31891105770346021352011-11-03T21:29:00.000-07:002011-11-03T21:29:43.899-07:00This is what the meeting's aboutIt's about a proposal by Councilmember Nadel:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">Recommendation: Conduct a Public Hearing, Discussion Regarding Activities Of "Occupy Oakland" At Frank H. Ogawa Plaza And Other Areas Of The City, Including Without Limitation, Demonstrations, Assembly, Overnight Stays, Encampment And City Protocols, And Policies And Possible Action Including The Following Proposed Resolution: 1) Resolution Supporting The Occupy Wall Street Protest Movement, Declaring That City Continues To Unequivocally Embrace The First Amendment To The United States Constitution And The City's Duty To Uphold The People's Right To Peaceful Assembly And Urging Mayor Jean Quan To Collaborate With Occupy Oakland To Develop Measures And Procedures To Ensure Safety Of The Protestors, Their Supporters, City Employees And The Greater Public </blockquote>Joshua Hollandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08739027104281984042noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8002030482476469630.post-53098119765740425592011-10-20T12:47:00.000-07:002011-10-20T12:47:34.299-07:00My Advice to an Inspiring WriterI get email:<br />
<br />
<i>I understand you're extremely busy person, but I wanted to know if you have any advice for an inspiring writer. How is the best way to have my writing published either in a magazine or journal? I am an admirer of the written word was told write well by people at my job and by professors while I was in graduate school. I have many ideas and want to share them on a larger forum.</i><div><br />
</div><div>Something tells me I don't have the next Taibbi here, but here's my advice:</div><div><br />
</div>Write, write, write, and then write some more. Also, rewrite. And read stuff aloud to make sure it's smooth.<br />
<br />
When you have something you like, and you think it's really polished, then submit, submit, submit -- send it everywhere. When you're not well known, most of your submissions will be ignored. <br />
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But don't give up. Submit to places that won't pay. The idea is to get some stuff published so that you can establish yourself. My first piece was published by Common Dreams.<br />
<br />
Also, when sending notes to editors, make sure there are no errors. You're an "aspiring" writer, not an "inspiring" writer (although you may be inspiring too).<div><br />
Hope that helps.</div>Joshua Hollandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08739027104281984042noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8002030482476469630.post-9346833697569589012011-09-15T15:49:00.000-07:002011-09-15T15:49:20.751-07:00Abusing the Laffer CurveIf you can get a lot of people to repeat the same specious claim often enough, it effectively becomes “true.” Here’s an example. The Right can’t admit that their tax cuts will bust the budget and still claim to be good fiscal stewards. So, instead, they try to dazzle us with magical thinking: cutting taxes, they say, actually brings more money into the government’s coffers! See, they don’t want to slash and burn popular government programs—their tax cuts will raise more cash to fund ’em!<br />
<br />
In 2007, <i>Time</i> magazine’s Justin Fox sampled some Republican opinions on this interesting dynamic and concluded, “If there’s one thing that Republican politicians agree on, it’s that slashing taxes brings the government more money.”<br />
<br />
<blockquote>“You cut taxes, and the tax revenues increase,” President Bush said in a speech last year. Keeping taxes low, Vice President Dick Cheney explained in a recent interview, “does produce more revenue for the Federal Government.” Presidential candidate John McCain declared in March that “tax cuts . . . as we all know, increase revenues.” His rival Rudy Giuliani couldn’t agree more. “I know that reducing taxes produces more revenues,” he intones in a new TV ad.</blockquote><br />
The spin is premised on an egregious distortion of “Laffer’s curve,” the conservative media’s favorite economic theorem. The idea, first scribbled on a cocktail napkin by economist George Laffer (at least, according to lore), is pretty simple. It holds that you can raise income taxes to a degree, but when the top tax rate exceeds a certain point, people will go to such extraordinary lengths to avoid paying the piper that the government will actually end up collecting less revenue.<br />
<br />
The thing about Laffer’s curve is that it makes perfect sense in theory, but it completely defies reason in practice, at least in the context of modern America. Most economists agree with Laffer’s argument that there is a point of revenue “maximization,” after which hiking rates will lead to fewer tax dollars coming in. If you were to tax income at a rate of 100 percent, it wouldn’t make much sense for anyone to go to work—at least not on the books.<br />
<br />
The hot air hisses out of the balloon when politicians and pundits use the theory to advocate tax cuts in the United States, which is among the more lightly taxed countries in the developed world. The fallacy is simple: top personal and business tax rates have decreased for years, and there’s no evidence whatsoever to suggest that we’re anywhere close to being above Laffer’s curve today. And if you’re below the curve when you cut taxes, you’re not going to generate that surge of new income.<br />
<br />
For his <i>Time</i> article, Justin Fox followed up with a survey of what people who understand basic math were saying about this bit of conservative spin:<br />
<blockquote>If there’s one thing that economists agree on, it’s that these claims are false. We’re not talking just ivory-tower lefties. Virtually every economics Ph.D. who has worked in a prominent role in the Bush Administration acknowledges that the tax cuts enacted during the past six years have not paid for themselves—and were never intended to. Harvard professor Greg Mankiw, chairman of Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers from 2003 to 2005, even devotes a section of his best-selling economics textbook to debunking the claim that tax cuts increase revenues.</blockquote>Andrew Samwick, now at Dartmouth, was the chief economist on Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers during that period. But in 2007, after Bush had claimed yet again that it’s “a fact that our tax cuts have fueled robust economic growth and record revenues,” Samwick responded with a plea to the Bush administration to stop making that claim. In an opinion column in the Wall Street Journal, he wrote, “You are smart people. . . . You know that the tax cuts have not fueled record revenues. You know what it takes to establish causality. You know that the first order effect of cutting taxes is to lower tax revenues."<br />
<br />
Yet pointing out that simple truth is anathema in conservative circles. In 2007, Megan McCardle, then an up-and-coming libertarian writer with the Atlantic Monthly, wrote about the editorial higher-ups of an unnamed “conservative publication” spiking a book review she’d written because she hadn’t toed the party line. “Even while otherwise expressing my vast displeasure with the (liberal) economic notions of the book I was reviewing,” she wrote, the editors killed the piece “because I said that the Laffer Curve didn’t apply at American levels of taxation.” She added, “This isn’t me looking for an alternative explanation for the spiking of a bad review: the literary editor accepted it, edited it, and then three hours later told me it couldn’t be published because it violated their editorial line on taxation.”Joshua Hollandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08739027104281984042noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8002030482476469630.post-22219859185632075412011-02-28T19:37:00.000-08:002011-02-28T19:37:21.243-08:00USA Today Lies with Statistics; Falsely Claims Public Employee Pay is Higher than in Private SectorForget about whether you're liberal or conservative, pro-union or anti. A simple question: in either the public or the private sector, would you not expect a college grad who has worked his or her job for 4 years to be paid significantly more than someone with a high school diploma who's had his or her gig for 2 years?<br />
<br />
And if the college grad were in fact paid more, would that be unfair somehow? Would it be cause for jealousy and resentment? Apparently, <span class="Apple-style-span" mce_name="em" mce_style="font-style: italic;" style="font-style: italic;">USA Today</span> thinks so.<br />
<br />
The tabloid lies with statistics through the first 7 paragraphs of this 8-paragraph "<a href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2011-03-01-1Apublicworkers01_ST_N.htm" mce_href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2011-03-01-1Apublicworkers01_ST_N.htm">analysis</a>." Here's the lede:<br />
<blockquote><a href="http://content.usatoday.com/topics/topic/Places,+Geography/States,+Territories,+Provinces,+Islands/U.S.+States/Wisconsin" mce_href="http://content.usatoday.com/topics/topic/Places,+Geography/States,+Territories,+Provinces,+Islands/U.S.+States/Wisconsin" title="More news, photos about Wisconsin">Wisconsin</a> is one of 41 states where public employees earn higher average pay and benefits than private workers in the same state, a USA TODAY analysis finds. Still, the compensation of Wisconsin's government workers ranks below the national average for public employees and has increased only slightly since 2000.</blockquote>Graphs 3 and 4:<br />
<blockquote>The analysis of government data found that public employee compensation has grown faster than the earnings of private workers since 2000. Primary cause: the rising value of benefits.</blockquote>They could have mentioned that 37 percent of public workers belong to a union, versus 7 percent in the private sector, but that's just a quibble.<br />
<blockquote>Wisconsin is typical. State, city and school district workers earned an average of $50,774 in wages and benefits in 2009, about $1,800 more than in the private sector. The state ranked 33rd in public employee compensation among the states and Washington, D.C. It had ranked 20th in 2000.</blockquote>And very careful readers only get a dose of reality -- a limited one -- in the final graph:<br />
<blockquote>Economist Jeffrey Keefe of the liberal <a href="http://content.usatoday.com/topics/topic/Organizations/Non-profits,+Activist+Groups/Economic+Policy+Institute" mce_href="http://content.usatoday.com/topics/topic/Organizations/Non-profits,+Activist+Groups/Economic+Policy+Institute" title="More news, photos about Economic Policy Institute">Economic Policy Institute</a> says the analysis is misleading because it doesn't reflect factors such as education that result in higher pay for public employees.</blockquote>That's right, their analysis just compared average wages, and didn't adjust for different job requirements, age, education or experience. It's not misleading, it's entirely <span class="Apple-style-span" mce_name="em" mce_style="font-style: italic;" style="font-style: italic;">meaningless</span>. Unless, of course, you think that high school grad with less experience should be paid the same.<br />
<br />
As I<a href="http://www.alternet.org/story/148633/right-wingers_using_public_employees_as_21st-century_welfare_queens_" mce_href="http://www.alternet.org/story/148633/right-wingers_using_public_employees_as_21st-century_welfare_queens_"> wrote last year</a>, Public sector workers have, on average, more experience and higher levels of education than their counterparts in the private sector (they are twice as likely to have a college degree). Economist John Schmitt found that when one controls for those factors -- comparing apples to apples --<a href="http://www.cepr.net/index.php/publications/reports/wage-penalty-state-local-gov-employees/" mce_href="http://www.cepr.net/index.php/publications/reports/wage-penalty-state-local-gov-employees/">state and local employees earn almost 4 percent less</a> than their brethren in corporate America. (Even accounting for their greater benefits, state and local employees <a href="http://www.nirsonline.org/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=395" mce_href="http://www.nirsonline.org/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=395">still make less in total compensation</a> than they would doing the same work in the private sector.)<br />
<br />
The thing that I find so egregious about this is that the reporter, Dennis Cauchon, spoke with an economist who told him this, but didn't include any of the numbers I cite above. This is how people are being mislead to believe that public workers are the new welfare queens.<br />
<br />
Here's an email for corrections and clarifications: <a href="mailto:accuracy@usatoday.com" mce_href="mailto:accuracy@usatoday.com">accuracy@usatoday.com</a>, and here's an editorial <a href="http://feedbackforms.usatoday.com/marketing/feedback/feedback-online.aspx?type=12" mce_href="http://feedbackforms.usatoday.com/marketing/feedback/feedback-online.aspx?type=12">feedback form</a>. If you're sick of this kind of distortion passing itself off as unbiased journalism, let 'em know.Joshua Hollandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08739027104281984042noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8002030482476469630.post-52523889451399949162011-02-25T15:12:00.000-08:002011-02-25T15:13:24.408-08:00Only the Wealthiest Favor Stripping Workers' Collective Bargaining RightsA poll conducted by Gallup earlier this week found that Americans opposed stripping public employees' of their right to negotiate with their employers by a margin of 2 to 1. It got a lot of play (as did Fox News <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/2011/02/23/fox-reverses-poll-union/">reversing the results</a> and reporting that 61 percent of the public favored the GOP's union-busting). <br />
<br />
Today, Greg Sargent <a href="http://voices.washingtonpost.com/plum-line/2011/02/public_employees_not_such_an_e.html">dug into the poll's internals</a>, and came up with something worth noting:<br />
<blockquote>It turns out that the only income group that favors Governor Scott Walker's proposal to roll back public employee bargaining rights are those who make over $90,000. </blockquote><blockquote>As you know, Gallup released a <a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/146276/Scaling-Back-State-Programs-Least-Three-Fiscal-Evils.aspx">poll earlier this week</a> finding that 61 percent of Americans oppose Walker's plan, versus only 33 percent who are in favor. It turns out Gallup has crosstabs which give us an income breakdown of that finding, which the <a href="http://voices.washingtonpost.com/plum-line/2011_02_25%20WI%20Collective%20Bargaining%20Crosstabs.pdf">firm sent my way</a>: </blockquote><blockquote>* Among those who make less than $24,000 annually, 74 percent oppose the proposal, versus only 14 percent who favor it. </blockquote><blockquote>* Among those who make $24,000 to $59,000, 63 percent oppose the proposal, versus only 33 percent who favor it. </blockquote><blockquote>* Among those who make $60,000 to $89,000, 53 percent oppose the proposal, versus only 41 percent who favor it. </blockquote><blockquote>* Among those who make $90,000 and up, 50 percent favor the proposal, versus 47 percent who oppose it.</blockquote>This makes perfect sense for several reasons. Higher income workers have greater job security, better retirement and health benefits and their wages have been rising while most Americans' have not. In other words, they already have what a union secures for working people beneath them on the food chain. <br />
<br />
Also, within that group are a good number of investors and, <a href="http://www.alternet.org/story/150029/union-busting_is_theft_--_a_weapon_of_class_warfare_from_above/">as I wrote yesterday</a>, only through collective bargaining can workers end up with a free market wage. Without it, they end up being paid below what the market would bear and the difference gets pocketed by investors. As such, union-busting is a weapon of class warfare from above.<br />
<br />
Having said that, the top income bracket in Gallup's cross-tabs only broke for the proposal 50-47.Joshua Hollandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08739027104281984042noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8002030482476469630.post-68724541147623451252011-02-24T15:34:00.000-08:002011-02-24T15:34:11.405-08:00Vatican: Priests Have Been Raping Nuns to Avoid Hookers with HIVLet us take a moment to recall Pope Benedict's <a href="http://blogcritics.org/culture/article/pope-benedicts-attack-on-atheism/#ixzz1EvBjxbMv">view</a> of what caused the Holocaust:<br />
<blockquote>As we reflect on the sobering lessons of the atheist extremism of the twentieth century, let us never forget how the exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society and thus to a reductive vision of the person and his destiny.</blockquote>It was a ballsy statement coming from a man who was once a member of the Hitler Youth and now leads the Catholic Church, but the argument is not uncommon. 'What is morality to a Godless atheist?' is <a href="http://carm.org/failure-of-atheism-to-account-for-morality">a common refrain</a> among 'radical clerics' of every faith.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/vatican-confirms-report-of-sexual-abuse-and-rape-of-nuns-by-priests-in-23-countries-688261.html">Anyhoo ...</a><br />
<blockquote>The Catholic Church in Rome made the extraordinary admission yesterday that it is aware priests from at least 23 countries have been sexually abusing nuns. </blockquote><blockquote>The Catholic Church in Rome made the extraordinary admission yesterday that it is aware priests from at least 23 countries have been sexually abusing nuns. </blockquote><blockquote>Most of the abuse has occurred in Africa, where priests vowed to celibacy, who previously sought out prostitutes, have preyed on nuns to avoid contracting the Aids virus. </blockquote><blockquote>Confidential Vatican reports obtained by the National Catholic Reporter, a weekly magazine in the US, have revealed that members of the Catholic clergy have been exploiting their financial and spiritual authority to gain sexual favours from nuns, particularly those from the Third World who are more likely to be culturally conditioned to be subservient to men. </blockquote><blockquote>The reports, some of which are recent and some of which have been in circulation for at least seven years, said that such priests had demanded sex in exchange for favours, such as certification to work in a given diocese. </blockquote><blockquote>In extreme instances, the priests had made nuns pregnant and then encouraged them to have abortions.</blockquote>I don't get how they could be so sleazily predatory without the moral relativism.Joshua Hollandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08739027104281984042noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8002030482476469630.post-23396952475746023212011-02-23T16:42:00.000-08:002011-02-23T17:40:21.499-08:00The Craziest Wingnut in America Wants to Criminalize Unauthorized Vaginal BleedingWith the rise of the Tea Partiers, there's intense competition for the title of Craziest Wingnut Holding Public Office. <br />
<br />
But Georgia state rep. Bobby Franklin, R-Marietta, has to be considered the top contender. He was the one who proposed a law that would require rape and sexual assault victims -- but not the victims of any other crimes -- to be called "accusers" unless there was a conviction in their cases.<br />
<br />
Then Franklin introduced a bill that would do away with drivers' licenses, arguing that they “are a throw back to oppressive times.” As CBS reported:<br />
<blockquote>In his bill, Franklin states, "free people have a common law and constitutional right to travel on the roads and highways that are provided by their government for that purpose. Licensing of drivers cannot be required of free people, because taking on the restrictions of a license requires the surrender of an inalienable right."</blockquote>(More details on both measures <a href="http://www.alternet.org/story/149848/11_of_the_tea_party_gop">here</a>.)<br />
<br />
Now Lindsay Beyerstein <a href="http://bigthink.com/ideas/31348">brings us word</a> of Franklin's latest:<br />
<blockquote>A Georgia Representative has introduced a bill to investigate all unsupervised miscarriages as <a href="http://joemygod.blogspot.com/2011/02/georgia-wingnut-gop-rep-wants-police-to.html">crime</a> <a href="http://www.care2.com/causes/womens-rights/blog/georgia-rep-investigate-miscarriage/?preview=1">scenes</a>. Don't believe me? Here's the relevant <a href="http://www.legis.ga.gov/Legislation/en-US/display.aspx?Legislation=31965">language</a> from HB 1, downloadable from legislature's website: </blockquote><blockquote><i>When a spontaneous fetal death required to be reported by this Code section occurs without medical attendance at or immediately after the delivery or when inquiry is required by Article 2 of Chapter 16 of Title 45, the ‘Georgia Death Investigation Act,’ the proper investigating official shall investigate the cause of fetal death and shall prepare and file the report within 30 days[...]</i></blockquote>Beyerstein adds that the bill "is radical even by the standards of people who think fertilized ova are people." That's an understatement -- according to <i><a href="http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2011/02/miscarriage-death-penalty-georgia">MoJo</a></i>, "Both miscarriages and abortions would be potentially punishable by death."<br />
<br />
One has to conclude that Bobby Franklin doesn't need a challenger so much as a decent shrink.<br />
<br />
<i>Cross-posted at <a href="http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/?id=484085&t=the_craziest_wingnut_in_america_wants_to_criminalize_unauthorized_vaginal_bleeding">AlterNet</a> and <a href="http://dirtyhippies.org/">Dirty Hippies</a>.</i>Joshua Hollandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08739027104281984042noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8002030482476469630.post-8758970451688391242011-02-22T16:39:00.000-08:002011-02-22T16:39:18.559-08:00Note to Tea-Baggers: Public Workers Aren't Demanding Anything from the "Taxpayers"A common refrain from people wishing to destroy public employees' unions is that their workers are 'demanding more from the tax-payers.' It's a testament to how confused the Right is about the role of government.<br />
<br />
Public employees are not demanding anything from "the taxpayer." They are workers demanding fair wages from their bosses.<br />
<br />
We live in a democracy, and tax-payers get to participate by voting. If, for example, one doesn't like our public education system, one can vote for a representative who shares his or her view on the subject.<br />
<br />
However, a sizable majority of Americans do want a decent public school system. It's a democracy, so we'll have public schools. That's the end of the role of the tax-payer in this story.<br />
<br />
Now, our schools need to hire teachers, and those teachers are workers, and our school system is their employer. They're not making any demands on the tax-payer -- the tax-payers role was deciding to have public education in the first place. And the same can be said of garbage collection, law enforcement or anything else the public sector does.Joshua Hollandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08739027104281984042noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8002030482476469630.post-70431551485582217782011-02-21T15:25:00.000-08:002011-02-21T15:25:01.075-08:00Blast from the Past: George Bush Bragged About Diplomatic Success With Blood-Stained Libyan Despot Muammar GaddafiI think you really have to give the right some credit for sheer Chutzpah. Just 7 short years after George W. Bush normalized relations with the Libyan regime, over the strong opposition of Barack Obama, some conservatives actually have the nerve to revise that very recent history and <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/white-house-backed-release-of-lockerbie-bomber-abdel-baset-al-megrahi/story-e6frg6so-1225896741041">claim the reverse to be true</a> (causing even Debbie Schussel, of all people, <a href="http://www.debbieschlussel.com/25157/bush-not-obama-made-deal-on-libya-megrahi-release-obama-strongly-opposed/">to cry 'foul'</a>).<br />
<br />
Anyway, I dug this bit out of Bush's 2004 State of the Union speech:<br />
<blockquote>Because of American leadership and resolve, the world is changing for the better. Last month, the leader of Libya voluntarily pledged to disclose and dismantle all of his regime's weapons of mass destruction programs, including a uranium enrichment project for nuclear weapons. Colonel Qadhafi correctly judged that his country would be better off, and far more secure, without weapons of mass murder. Nine months of intense negotiations involving the United States and Great Britain succeeded with Libya, while 12 years of diplomacy with Iraq did not. And one reason is clear: For diplomacy to be effective, words must be credible -- and no one can now doubt the word of America.</blockquote>Yup, diplomacy was great with the eminently-reasonable colonel Gaddafi, but didn't result in Saddam Hussein handing over the weapons that he had destroyed a decade earlier.<br />
<br />
And ever since that time, "no one can doubt the word of America."<br />
<br />
Details from the <a href="http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/5425.htm#relations">State Department's background notes</a> -- and you might note that all of this happened prior to January of 2009:<br />
<blockquote>The U.S. terminated the applicability of the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act to Libya and President Bush signed an Executive Order on September 20, 2004 terminating the national emergency with respect to Libya and ending IEEPA-based economic sanctions. This action had the effect of unblocking assets blocked under the Executive Order sanctions. Restrictions on cargo aviation and third-party code-sharing have been lifted, as have restrictions on passenger aviation. Certain export controls remain in place. </blockquote><blockquote>U.S. diplomatic personnel reopened the U.S. Interest Section in Tripoli on February 8, 2004. The mission was upgraded to a U.S. Liaison Office on June 28, 2004, and to a full embassy on May 31, 2006. The establishment in 2005 of an American School in Tripoli demonstrates the increased presence of Americans in Libya, and the continuing normalization of bilateral relations. Libya re-established its diplomatic presence in Washington with the opening of an Interest Section on July 8, 2004, which was subsequently upgraded to a Liaison Office in December 2004 and to a full embassy on May 31, 2006.</blockquote>Joshua Hollandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08739027104281984042noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8002030482476469630.post-16121355083359704172011-02-20T11:12:00.000-08:002011-02-20T11:12:43.684-08:00Correction: It's a Ginned-Up "Crisis," but Scott Walker Isn't Entirely to Blame for Wisconsin's Budget GapIt's been widely reported that Scott Walker inherited a $120 million budget surplus, and then promptly created a budget deficit in order to break the backs of Wisconsin's public employees' unions. On Friday, <a _fcksavedurl="http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/479560/12_things_you_need_to_know_about_the_uprising_in_wisconsin/" href="http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/479560/12_things_you_need_to_know_about_the_uprising_in_wisconsin/">I quoted Ezra Klein</a> of the <em>Washington Post</em>explaining that Walker had " signed two business tax breaks and a conservative health-care policy experiment that lowers overall tax revenues (among other things). The new legislation was not offset, and it turned a surplus into a deficit."<br />
<br />
Politifact <a _fcksavedurl="http://politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2011/feb/18/rachel-maddow/rachel-maddow-says-wisconsin-track-have-budget-sur/" href="http://politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2011/feb/18/rachel-maddow/rachel-maddow-says-wisconsin-track-have-budget-sur/">did an analysis of this issue</a> which shows that Walker in fact inherited a manageable, long-term budget gap and then spun it as an imminent crisis that must be addressed this year.<br />
<br />
The reports stem from a a Jan. 31, 2011 <a _fcksavedurl="http://legis.wisconsin.gov/lfb/Misc/2011_01_31Vos&Darling.pdf" href="http://legis.wisconsin.gov/lfb/Misc/2011_01_31Vos&Darling.pdf">memo prepared by Robert Lang</a>, the director of the nonpartisan <a _fcksavedurl="http://legis.wisconsin.gov/lfb/index.html" href="http://legis.wisconsin.gov/lfb/index.html">Legislative Fiscal Bureau</a>, that was picked up by the Associated Press and a number of other outlets. It does state that Wisconsin was on course for a surplus this year, which the media reported that in good faith. The issue is what Politifact refers to as the memo's "fine print."<br />
<blockquote>[It] outlines $258 million in unpaid bills or expected shortfalls in programs such as Medicaid services for the needy ($174 million alone), the public defender’s office and corrections. Additionally, the state owes Minnesota $58.7 million under a discontinued tax reciprocity deal.<br />
The result, by our math and Lang’s, is the $137 million shortfall.</blockquote>None of this changes the fact that Walker dishonestly portrayed his union-busting bill as a budget fix. The provision stripping state workers' right to negotiate for better benefits wouldn't take effect until their existing contracts expire, meaning that it would have zero impact on the state's bottom line in the immediate future. The savings from shifting more pension and health-care costs onto workers -- <a _fcksavedurl="http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/?id=480122&t=wisconsin_public_workers_agree_to_gop's_demands_on_wages_and_benefits;_republicans_reject_offer_outright" href="http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/?id=480122&t=wisconsin_public_workers_agree_to_gop's_demands_on_wages_and_benefits;_republicans_reject_offer_outright">which the unions have already agreed to</a> -- would amount to just $30 million. Finally, an uncontroversial provision in the bill would restructure the state's outstanding debt, saving $160 million -- more than enough to close the gap this year.<br />
Politifact adds:<br />
<blockquote>To be sure, the projected shortfall is a modest one by the standards of the last decade, which saw a $600 million repair bill one year as the economy and national tax collections slumped.</blockquote>Joshua Hollandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08739027104281984042noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8002030482476469630.post-77374851503397282382011-02-20T11:10:00.000-08:002011-02-20T11:10:38.429-08:00Walker's Own Statement Proves that His Assault on Public Employees Has Nothing to do with Wisconsin's Budget ShortfallWisconsin Governor Scott Walker <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/19/AR2011021904205.html">has a long history trying to break public sector unions</a>. But last week, as the Milwaukee Business Times <a href="http://www.reddit.com/tb/foyjh">reported</a>, he insisted that "his bill was strictly based on the need to cut the budget and was not based on any political agenda." Indeed, the bill was introduced by the governor as an "emergency measure... needed to balance the state budget and give government the tools to manage during economic crisis." <br />
<br />
But a close reading of <a href="http://www.wispolitics.com/index.iml?Article=226535">the governor's own press release announcing the measure</a> shows just how misleading that claim really is.<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
Here's the problem, according to Walker's release:<br />
<blockquote>The state of Wisconsin is facing an immediate deficit of $137 million for the current fiscal year which ends July 1. In addition, bill collectors are waiting to collect over $225 million for a prior raid of the Patients’ Compensation Fund.</blockquote>There is a $137 million shortfall for this year. Regarding the Patients' Compensation Fund, Politifact <a href="http://politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2011/feb/18/rachel-maddow/rachel-maddow-says-wisconsin-track-have-budget-sur/">reports</a> that "a court ruling is pending in that matter, so the money might not have to be transferred until next budget year."<br />
<br />
But here are three important points from the governor's release that show quite clearly that this bill has nothing at all to do with closing Wisconsin's budget gap in the near-term -- as an emergency measure that <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZsOKNfNkfQ">wasn't even subject to public debate</a>.<br />
<br />
1. "The budget repair will also restructure the state debt, lowering the state’s interest rate, saving the state $165 million." That's right, restructuring the state's outstanding debt yields more savings than the projected shortfall, and nobody is objecting to that provision. <br />
<br />
2. "It will require state employees to pay about 5.8% toward their pension (about the private sector national average) and about 12% of their healthcare benefits (about half the private sector national average). These changes will help the state save $30 million in the last three months of the current fiscal year." Yes, those give-backs would yield less than 20 percent of what the debt restructuring would bring in. And, as <a '="" href="http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/480122/wisconsin_public_workers_agree_to_gop" s_demands_on_wages_and_benefits;_republicans_reject_offer_outright="">I mentioned earlier</a>, the public employees' unions offered to make those concessions in exchange for losing the provision that would bar them from negotiating their benefits package in the future, and the GOP flatly refused the offer.<br />
<br />
3. The collective bargaining provision wouldn't kick in until after the current contracts expire, meaning that the measure would yield exactly zero savings in the current budget.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.randomlengthsnews.com/">Random Lengths News</a>' Paul Rosenberg caught this, and adds that Walker is also sitting on an "unused cache of $73 million" in the state's economic development fund -- "more than twice what’s being sought from public sector workers.” <br />
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<a href="http://www.scholarsandrogues.com/2011/02/20/journalism-accomplished-why-arent-news-organizations-telling-the-whole-truth-in-wisconsinand-why-arent-the-states-conservatives-demanding-secession/">Samuel Smith at Scholars and Rogues has much more detail</a>.Joshua Hollandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08739027104281984042noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8002030482476469630.post-69428153670279826532011-02-19T13:11:00.000-08:002011-02-19T13:13:44.941-08:00Joe Klein: Either Clueless About the Wisconsin Uprising or Simply Shilling for the Union-Busters<i>Time's</i> Joe Klein has written an <a href="http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2011/02/18/wisconsin-the-hemlock-revolution/">offensively dishonest column</a> attacking Wisconsin's public employees. Every paragraph is packed with the kind of knee-jerk contempt for working people that's become endemic in our mainstream discourse -- it's truly eye-opening. <br />
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Allow me to begin where Klein proves that he is either wildly ignorant of what's actually at stake in this fight, or is willfully misleading his readers. (I don't pretend to know which.)<br />
<blockquote>... it seems to me that Governor Scott Walker's basic requests are modest ones--asking public employees to contribute more to their pension and health care plans, though still far less than most private sector employees do. He is also trying to limit the unions' abilities to negotiate work rules--and this is crucial when it comes to the more efficient operation of government in a difficult time.</blockquote>If you have been led to believe that this is what the battle is about, please check out <a href="http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/479560/12_things_you_need_to_know_about_the_uprising_in_wisconsin/">my piece on AlterNet's front page</a>. Walker's "basic requests" include seizing control of the state's Medicaid funding, stripping state workers of the right to negotiate the details of their benefits package and capping the wages they can gain in negotiations. He offered this bill only after being informed that he didn't have the power to simply decertify the unions outright.<br />
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Klein, had he done his homework, would know not only that the state's public employees' unions had already made concessions, but that they're also willing to make more. As State senator Jon Erpenbach, D-Middleton -- one of the Dem law-makers who fled the state to block a vote on the bill -- <a href="http://www.channel3000.com/news/26911765/detail.html">put it</a>, "In the end, what's going to happen is the public employees are going to pay on their pension and pay on their health care. We all know that, they all know that. They're OK with that. The one thing the public employees do not understand is why (Walker) is going after unions." <br />
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And it's important to understand that whether or not it's his intent, Joe Klein is serving as a scribe for Scott Walker. When the Governor tried this same mendacious line, Josh Marshall <a href="http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2011/02/walker_talking.php">called him out like this</a>:<br />
<blockquote>Gov. Walker is on TV now discussing the situation in the state and everything he's talking about is givebacks from the state's public sector unions. But what he doesn't seem to be saying anything about is ending collective bargaining rights. Which is what the fight is actually about. He won't be candid about the entire battle is about. Just not honest.</blockquote>"Just not honest" is what one might expect from a far-right lawmaker trying to bust a union. But what, exactly, is "liberal" columnist Joe Klein's excuse?<br />
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That's the truly egregious bit, but also note how Klein leads:<br />
<blockquote>Revolutions everywhere--in the middle east, in the middle west. But there is a difference: in the middle east, the protesters are marching for democracy; <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/19/us/19wisconsin.html?ref=us">in the middle west, they're protesting against it</a>. I mean, Isn't it, well, a bit ironic that the protesters in Madison, blocking the state senate chamber, are chanting "Freedom, Democracy, Union" while trying to prevent a vote? Isn't it ironic that the Democratic Senators have fled the democratic process?</blockquote>A bedrock principle of our democracy is the right to assemble and petition government for redress -- precisely the liberties that Walker's bill would undermine. And, no, it's not "ironic" that a legislative minority uses the rules of procedure to block legislation -- it's SOP in any legislature in the world.<br />
<blockquote>Isn't it interesting that some of those who--rightly--protest the assorted Republican efforts to stymie majority rule in the U.S. Senate are celebrating the Democratic efforts to stymie the same in the Wisconsin Senate?</blockquote>It's only "interesting" if you're a dense, lazy columnist. In the real world, nobody objected to the idea that Senate Republicans might filibuster. We criticized the abuse of the filibuster -- the fact that 60 votes were suddenly needed to pass even uncontroversial legislation. Klein knows it was <a href="http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/03/unprecedented.html">unprecedented</a>, and that it virtually shut down the chamber at times.<br />
<blockquote>An election was held in Wisconsin last November. The Republicans won. In a democracy, there are consequences to elections and no one, not even the public employees unions, are exempt from that.</blockquote>Democracy rests on two principles: majority rule and the protection of minority rights. Also, only 25.9 percent of registered Wisconsin voters cast ballots for Scott Walker last year, compared with 23.1 percent who favored Tom Barrett. Yes, the right loves claiming that a low-turnout midterm election provided some obvious mandate, but only someone with weak critical thinking skills would simply buy that claim.<br />
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Finally, consider how Klein pictures the labor movement in general:<br />
<blockquote>Public employees unions are an interesting hybrid. Industrial unions are organized against the might and greed of ownership. Public employees unions are organized against the might and greed...of the public?</blockquote>Unions, whether public or private, are organized <i>for</i> the interests of their members. It's not about being a bulwark against anything -- collective bargaining simply <a href="http://www.alternet.org/economy/94004/corporate_america_prepares_for_battle_against_worker_campaign_to_roll_back_assault_on_the_middle_class_/">creates a level playing field between workers and capital</a>. Absent that relative parity, our labor markets are rife with failures.Joshua Hollandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08739027104281984042noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8002030482476469630.post-85541727852288928462011-02-19T12:05:00.000-08:002011-02-19T13:06:03.609-08:00Protesters in Cairo's Tahrir Square Show Solidarity with Wisconsin Workers' UprisingThey say a picture's worth a thousand words...<br />
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<img height="300" src="http://www.alternet.org//images/managed/storyimages_1298144726_egyptwi.jpg" width="400" /><br />
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Thanks to Zach Farley for the pic.<br />
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During the past 3 months, we've seen mass protests against varied injustices in Albania, Algeria, Bahrain, Bolivia, Britain, Djibouti, Egypt, Greece, Haiti, Iraq, Iran, Jordan, Libya, Syria, Thailand, Tunisia, Wisconsin and Yemen.<br />
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Did I forget any?Joshua Hollandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08739027104281984042noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8002030482476469630.post-37185280633756614062011-02-18T13:17:00.000-08:002011-02-18T13:42:42.258-08:009 Things You Need to Know About the Uprising in WisconsinWhat's happening in Wisconsin is not complicated. At the beginning of this year, the state was on course to <a href="http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2011_02/028071.php">end 2011 with a budget surplus of $120 million dollars.</a> As Ezra Klein <a href="http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2011/02/unions_arent_to_blame_for_wisc.html">explained</a>, newly elected GOP Governor Scott Walker then " signed two business tax breaks and a conservative health-care policy experiment that lowers overall tax revenues (among other things). The new legislation was not offset, and it turned a surplus into a deficit."<br />
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Walker then used the deficit he created as a premise to assault his state's public employees using <a href="http://news.firedoglake.com/2011/02/14/debate-over-wisconsin-collective-bargaining-gets-heated-as-republicans-waver/">a law cooked up by a right-wing advocacy group</a> called the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). ALEC likes to fly beneath the radar, but <a href="http://www.alternet.org/story/28259/">I described the organization in a 2005 article</a> as "the connective tissue that links state legislators with right-wing think tanks, leading anti-tax activists and corporate money." <br />
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This has nothing to do with the state's fiscal picture, and everything to do with destroying the last bastion of unionism in the American economy: public employees. <br />
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As Addie Stan <a '="" _plan_to_break_labor's_back="" href="http://www.alternet.org/news/149965/wisconsin_is_a_battleground_against_the_billionaire_kochs">writes</a> on AlterNet's front page today:<br />
<blockquote>Walker is carrying out the wishes of his corporate master, David Koch, who calls the tune these days for Wisconsin Republicans. Walker is just one among many Wisconsin Republicans supported by Koch Industries -- run by David Koch and his brother, Charles -- and Americans For Prosperity, the astroturf group founded and funded by David Koch. The Koch brothers are hell-bent on destroying the labor movement once and for all.</blockquote>Consider:<br />
<div><ul><li>Last year, more working people belonged to a union in the public sector (7.9 million) than in the private (7.4 million), despite the fact that corporate America employs five times the number of wage-earners. </li>
<li>37 percent of government workers belong to a union, compared with just 7 percent of private-sector employees.</li>
<li>Whether in the public or private sector, union workers earn, on average, <a href="http://www.epi.org/publications/entry/briefingpapers_bp143/">20 percent more than their non-unionized counterparts</a>. They also have richer retirement and health benefits -- the “union compensation premium” rises to almost 30 percent when you include those bennies.</li>
</ul></div><div>That workers can still negotiate from a position of strength somewhere in the US is simply unacceptable to the right, and that's what this is about.<br />
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As you might expect, the tool they're using is a pack full of lies and distortions about public employees. Here are some answers to those falsehoods:</div><div><ul><li>Public sector workers have, on average, more experience and higher levels of education than their counterparts in the private sector (they are twice as likely to have a college degree). </li>
<li>When you adjust for those factors, they make, on average, 4 percent less than their private-sector counterparts.</li>
<li>Like any group of workers with a high union density, they have better benefits, on average. But even including those benefits, state and local employees <a href="http://www.nirsonline.org/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=395">still make less in total compensation</a> than they would doing the same work in the private sector.</li>
<li>Public employees' pensions account for just 6 percent of state budgets.</li>
<li>In 2007, the average pension for a public sector worker was $22,000. Not exactly caviar dreams.</li>
<li>Many public employees are not eligible for Social Security -- those pensions, and whatever they can put away on their own, is all that they'll have in their golden years.</li>
</ul></div><div>(Unless otherwise indicated, you can find links to the data for all of the above, in my piece, "<a href="http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/148633">Right-Wingers Using Public Employees as 21st-Century Welfare Queens</a>.")<br />
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The Right has made great political progress getting Americans to ask the question: "How come that guy’s getting what I don’t have?" It’s the crux of the politics of grievance. Progressives need to get Americans to ask a different question: "What’s keeping me from getting what that guy has?" At least part of the answer is the Right’s decades-long assault on private sector workers’ ability to organize, and the latest battle is being waged in Wisconsin.<br />
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</div>Joshua Hollandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08739027104281984042noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8002030482476469630.post-70674978937843851952011-02-11T14:08:00.001-08:002011-02-11T14:08:24.637-08:00Woman Targeted in FBI Raid on "Anonymous" Hackers' Group Tells her TaleThe FBI is apparently quite serious about prosecuting the hackers' group known only as Anonymous for a string of attacks it launched on companies that severed ties with Wikileaks.<br />
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<i>Gawker</i> has an interview with a 19 year-old California woman who was the target of one of the FBI's raids.<br />
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In it, we learn that:<br />
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* The FBI thinks Anonymous is a traditional, hierarchical enterprise, and are trying, perhaps futilely, to "cut the head off the snake."<br />
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* They have the idea that the group's members all have Guy Fawkes masks in their closets.<br />
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* It's not a good idea to call your little sister a revolutionary, because you never know when the FBI will raid your house at 6 am and take it seriously.<br />
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* Her father's really pissed.<br />
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Well worth the read, which is <a href="http://gawker.com/#!5757995/an-interview-with-a-target-of-the-fbis-anonymous-probe">here</a>.Joshua Hollandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08739027104281984042noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8002030482476469630.post-60245868790790426112011-02-10T18:40:00.000-08:002011-02-10T18:40:06.732-08:00The Gipper Goes to CPACHere is a giant cake in the shape of a bust of Ronald Reagan. It's at CPAC!<br />
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And note the spelling of the word "Berlin" on the little Berlin Wall that accents this monstrosity.Joshua Hollandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08739027104281984042noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8002030482476469630.post-49072927882535647802011-02-09T14:51:00.000-08:002011-02-09T14:59:38.214-08:00Married GOPer Talked "Family Values" While Trying to Hook Up on Craig's ListIt's almost axiomatic that the more frequently a social conservative talks a about promoting "family values," the more likely he or she is to stray from those values, and the only question is whether they're just having a plain old vanilla affair with a member of the opposite sex or go for <a href="http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/56689/">diapers</a>, <a href="http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/crime/dead-reverends-rubber-fetish">auto-asphyxiation in wet-suits</a> or raw-dogging <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Haggard">male prostitutes while high on meth</a>.<br />
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Sadly, at least as far as our <i>Schadenfreude</i> needs go, the taste's of the latest (alleged) member of this club run pretty vanilla. <br />
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<a href="http://gawker.com/#!5755071/married-gop-congressman-sent-sexy-pictures-to-craigslist-babe">Gawker</a>:<br />
<blockquote>Rep. Christopher Lee is a married Republican congressman serving the 26th District of New York. But when he trolls Craigslist's "Women Seeking Men" forum, he's Christopher Lee, "divorced" "lobbyist" and "fit fun classy guy." One object of his flirtation told us her story. </blockquote><blockquote>On the morning of Friday, January 14, a single 34-year-old woman put an ad in the "Women for Men" section of Craigslist personals. "Will someone prove to me not all CL men look like toads?" she asked, inviting "financially & emotionally secure" men to reply.<br />
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By email, Lee identified himself as a 39-year-old divorced lobbyist and sent a PG picture to the woman from the ad. (In fact, Lee is married and has one son with his wife. He's also 46.)</blockquote>None of this would even be of interest, of course, except for the fact that, as Maureen O'Connor notes, the Rep's "support for 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' and vote to reject federal abortion funding suggests a certain comfort with publicly scrutinizing others' sex lives."<br />
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Anyway, the Congressman says his email account must have been hacked, to which <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam" s_razor'="">Occam</a> replied, 'maybe, but I'm guessing that you just got busted trawling for some strange on Craigslist.'<br />
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Update: Lee, via twitter: "I am announcing that I have resigned my seat in Congress effective immediately.” Surprising -- did nobody tell him that It's OK If You're a Republican?Joshua Hollandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08739027104281984042noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8002030482476469630.post-21261925658621767072011-02-09T13:20:00.000-08:002011-02-09T13:24:19.733-08:00Ron Paul Invites Neo-Confederate to Testify About Federal Reserve Before CongressRon Paul has long dodged allegations that he (or at least his staffers) has <a href="http://rising-hegemon.blogspot.com/2007/12/ron-paul-white-supremacist.html">connections to white supremacists</a>. (I have expressed <a href="http://www.alternet.org/blogs/politics/142319/%22ron_paul_saw_my_wife_naked!%22_(or:_is_the_texas_iconoclast_really_a_racist)/">some reason to be skeptical about this notion</a>, but at the very least he's extremely careless in terms of whom he chooses to associate with.)<br />
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Anyway, that makes this little exchange, <a href="http://www.oliverwillis.com/2011/02/09/republicans-invite-hate-group-scholar-to-tesify-on-the-federal-reserve/">flagged by Oliver Willis</a>, all the more interesting:<br />
<blockquote>The ranking Democrat on a House panel overseeing the Federal Reserve on Wednesday accused a witness invited by Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) of being affiliated with a “hate group.” </blockquote><blockquote>The first meeting of the House Financial Services Committee’s subcommittee on domestic monetary policy had a tense moment when Rep. William Lacy Clay (D-Mo.) questioned the background of Dr. Thomas DiLorenzo. </blockquote><blockquote>Clay went after DiLorenzo, an economic professor at Loyola University invited to testify by Paul, for his connections with the League of the South, which has been identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a “neo-Confederate” group. The league identifies DiLorenzo as an “affiliated scholar” of its League of the South Institute for the Study of Southern Culture and History. </blockquote><blockquote>“After reviewing your work and the so-called message you employ, I still do not understand you being invited to testify today on the unemployment situation,” Clay said. “But I do know that I have no questions for you.”</blockquote>Oliver adds some background:<br />
<blockquote>The League of the South is a neo-Confederate group that advocates for a second Southern secession and a society dominated by “European Americans.” The league believes the “godly” nation it wants to form should be run by an “Anglo-Celtic” (read: white) elite that would establish a Christian theocratic state and politically dominate blacks and other minorities. Originally founded by a group that included many Southern university professors, the group lost its Ph.D.s as it became more explicitly racist. The league denounces the federal government and northern and coastal states as part of “the Empire,” a materialist and anti-religious society.</blockquote>Maybe the GOP should re-brand itself as the <a href="http://www.balloon-juice.com/2010/08/28/the-confederate-party-has-always-been-about-honor/">Confederate Party</a>.Joshua Hollandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08739027104281984042noreply@blogger.com0