| Progressive Calendar 03.12.11 | <– Date –> <– Thread –> |
From: David Shove (shove001 tc.umn.edu)
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| Date: Sat, 12 Mar 2011 07:32:34 -0800 (PST) | |
P R O G R E S S I V E C A L E N D A R 03.12.11 1. Cost of war 3.12 10am 2. Fascist US? 3.12 7pm 3. Academic freedom 3.12 9pm 4. God's women 3.13 9am 5. Ireland resists 3.13 10am 6. Music v Israel 3.13 2pm Lake City MN 7. Class war 3.14 9am 8. Bill McKibben - Koch brothers and US Chamber: our mortal enemies 9. John Hallinan - Our unwillingness to make rich pay their share 10. Jackie Smith - Revolutions: democratic abroad, authoritarian at home 11. Hudson/Sommers - Steal everything and sell the people into slavery 12. ed - bumpersticker 13. ed - bumpersticker 14. ed - bumpersticker --------1 of 14-------- From: Doris Marquit <marqu001 [at] umn.edu> Subject: Cost of War/WILPF 3.12 10am The Women's International League for Peace and Freedom presents a Coffee With Discussion The Cost of War: Financial and Spiritual Bankruptcy With Tom White of Veterans for Peace Saturday, Mar. 12, 10 am-noon, Van Cleve Community Center, 905 15th Ave. SE, Minneapolis Tom White will explore the disparity between spending for the military and spending for growing U.S. domestic needs. Tom, a St. John's University graduate in economics, sees his peace and justice work as an outgrowth of his spirituality. In 2000 and 2004, he was an International Election Observer in El Salvador. PUBLIC INVITED free, refreshments, time for questions & discussion FFI: <http://www.wilpfmn.org> www.wilpfmn.org OR 651-645-6992 --------2 of 14-------- From: jtmiller jtmiller <jtmiller [at] minn.net> Subject: Fascist US? 3.12 7pm Working Democracy Discussion Forum "What is Fascism? Is America becoming Fascist?" Saturday, March 12, 7:00 pm at Mayday Books - 301 Cedar, West Bank --------3 of 14-------- From: Eric Angell <eric-angell [at] riseup.net> Subject: Academic freedom 3.12 9pm "Scholars for Academic Justice" University of Minnesota sociologist Dr. David Pellow on academic freedom. From highly publicized tenure fights like Ward Churchill's and Norman Finkelstein's to the federal case of local graduate student/activist Scott DeMuth, currently in jail, we discuss the chilling effect on professors and students since 9/11/01 and why academic freedom is relevant to all of us. MTN 17 viewers: "Our World In Depth" cablecasts on Minneapolis Television Network (MTN) Channel 17 on Saturdays at 9pm and Tuesdays at 8am, after DemocracyNow! Households with basic cable may watch. TODAY, 3/12, 9pm and Tues, 3/15, 8am "Scholars for Academic Justice" --------4 of 14-------- From: Minnesota Atheists <web [at] mnatheists.org> Subject: God's women 3.13 9am Sunday, March 13, 9:00am-10:00am "Atheists Talk" Radio AM 950 KTNF in the Twin Cities or stream live at http://www.am950ktnf.com. "God's Woman Problem" with Jen McCreight. Mike Haubrich (http://quichemoraine.com/category/mikehaubrich) hosts. Contact us during the show with questions or comments at (952) 946-6205 or [17]radio [at] mnatheists.org. Links: mailto:radio [at] mnatheists.org --------5 of 14-------- From: greenpartymike <ollamhfaery [at] earthlink.net> Subject: Ireland resists 3.13 10am Sun. March 13th, 10 am on KFAI RADIO's WAVE Project Ireland- 800 Years of Resistance in Songs hosted by social justice activist MICHAEL CAVLAN KFAI 90.3fm Mpls 106.7 fm St.Paul ONLINE: Live-streaming & archived for 2 weeks after broadcast http://www.kfai.org on the WAVE PROJECT page [We are Irish-assured the program will seem somewhat less than 800 years long. How much less? Well, this might be a good time to knit that sweater for Uncle Charlie, polish your silver and brass, or build that 10-deck house of cards. -ed] --------6 of 14-------- From: Bill McGrath <billmcgrath52 [at] gmail.com> Subject: Music v Israel 3.13 2pm Lake City MN Sunday, March 13, 2 p.m. - 6 p.m.: "Put a Little Love In Your Heart," a presentation of live folk-rock-soul music from the 1960's. Location: Oak Center General Store, 67011 HWY 63, Lake City, MN 55041. This venue is roughly halfway between Red Wing and Rochester. Admission at the door is $5 to $15, whatever you feel you can donate. Proceeds go to MN Beak the Bonds, a campaign to get our state government to divest from Israel. There will be short talks by a Jew, a Muslim and a Christian, all of whom have spent time in the West Bank. In late afternoon, there will be a social dinner, primarily mid-eastern. Bring some food to share, if you choose. Event will finish with belly dancers. [Now we're getting somewhere. -ed] More information: (507) 645-7660. --------7 of 14-------- From: TruthToTell <andydriscoll [at] truthtotell.org> Subject: Class war 3.14 9am TTT THIS WEEK: MARCH14-9AM: THE WAR ON PUBLIC EMPLOYEES: MYTHS AND REALITIES - KFAI FM 90.3/106.7/KFAI.ORG CALL AND JOIN THE CONVERSATION Monday morning: 612-341-0980 The ultimate example of what can happen when wealthy owners and managers ignore the human condition and exploit their workers to the maximum happened in many venues, but one of the worst was the fire at Triangle Shirtwaist Factory http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/trianglefire in New York City 100 years ago this month, trapping garment workers, mostly young immigrant women, many of them Jewish, needing to escape and killing 146 of the 500 who worked there. Managers had locked the exits to prevent theft by employees, who worked six days a week, weekdays for nine hours a day. The foreman who held the key escaped another way. This week's show honors this anniversary even as public employees across the country are fighting to save their bargaining rights/ http://host.madison.com/wsj/ - even after agreeing to share in the pains of cuts to benefits and pensions Republicans claim are necessary to balance state budgets. So. Now it's done by a contrivance of excising the provisions requiring Democratic participation in the legislation, Wisconsin's senatorial Republicans have passed their long-held-up bill http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/govt-and-politics/article_8747fa04-4a74-11e0-8e6b-001cc4c03286.html* essentially dumping collective bargaining for public employees. The state's Democratic senators had skipped for weeks to prevent this very vote and it worked as long as it was tied to the budget bill. They've gone home now. http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/govt-and-politics/article_e026bccc-4b38-11e0-8e55-001cc4c03286.html* This week's guests: PETER RACHLEFF http://www.macalester.edu/history/faculty/rachleff.html - Labor Historian and Professor of History, Macalester College http://www.macalester.edu/ GLADYS MCKENZIE Business Representative, AFSCME Council 5 http://afscmemn.org/ and affiliates BARB KUCERA Editor Workday Minnesota http://www.workdayminnesota.org/; Director, Labor Information Office, UofM MARY CATHRYN RICKER President, St. Paul Federation of Teachers http://www.facebook.com/pages/Saint-Paul-Federation-of-Teachers/141258096681 The astounding thing about all this is the entrenched arrogance behind this nationwide rightwing effort to kill unions. Wisconsin is but one of the more volatile battlefields in this war on unions (and I hate military metaphor). Fifteen other states are out to do the same thing. This is what raw nerves in a declining economy hath wrought and the wealthy backers of this tsunami of cultural division between middle-class working groups pitting public workers - including teachers, police officer, firefighters and any number of those who serve us against each other in a scramble for equity know all to well how easy this has been. Setting one worker against another is a long-time practice by corporate managers and powerful politicians who know that dividing and conquering is the way to hold onto the levers of power and the money that goes with it. Contempt for public employees among unemployed and private sector workers' whose pensions and health care have disappeared in the phony shortages created by the same rightwing giving tax breaks to the wealthy is now running rampant through the culture. The wealthy right is surely rubbing its hands with glee as Fox News and other right wing talk shows serve as the megaphone for assertions that all public workers are leeches on society, unwilling to work or given benefits and perks no one else receives. Public educators have long been under assault from a public told to be suspicious that these union workers work just nine months of the year and earn amazing sums when their salaries are combined with their benefits. The facts bespeak the lies perpetrated by these forces whose divisive rhetoric successfully placed them in office by the frustrations of a public needing scapegoats for their economic hardship. Public employees, including teachers, even after figuring in benefits have total compensation levels falling far short of comparable private sector jobs. But, of course, not many comparable private sector jobs even exist anymore - not to mention the fallout of 50 years of corporations and politicians convincing the middle class that these workers, along with immigrants and people of color, are out to kill them and their kin, denying them the jobs that have actually been shipped overseas or replaced by technology. The uprisings http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/govt-and-politics/article_260247e0-4ac4-11e0-bfa9-001cc4c03286.html* in all of the states out to scuttle their public employee unions and to discredit public education even further are testament to the power of people who have finally had it with all of this. It may not unite them with their private sector brethren right away, but the underlying power of showing people that their neighbors are part of this may turn the political games to their advantage. TTT's ANDY DRISCOLL talks with a labor scholar, reporter/analyst and those on the front lines of public employment about why this has come to a head. Did we actually need the arrogance of a Scott Walker and a John Kasich (Ohio) to bring this seedy business out in the open? How might public sector advocates link with Tea Party activists and others who rail against them to come to a meeting of the minds? What role has mainstream media - and that includes the networks as well as Fox News - added to the plight unions and public workers face these days? Race and gender play a critical role in this, as well, women and people of color, not surprisingly, making up more a percentage of public employees than they do the private sector. --------8 of 14-------- Koch Brothers and US Chamber: Polluting Our Earth and Our Democracies Wisconsin Workers and Enviros Everywhere Face Same Enemy by Bill McKibben Published on Friday, March 11, 2011 by CommonDreams.org Among other truths made completely clear by the showdown in Wisconsin: the outsized role of the Koch brothers in American politics. Charles and David, the third and fourth richest men in America, first gained notoriety in the fall, when a remarkable expose by Jane Mayer in the New Yorker showed how they'd funded not only the Tea Party but also the hydra-headed campaign to undermine the science of global warming, all in the service of even more profit for their oil and gas business. But it was in Wisconsin that the down-and-dirty details of their operation began to emerge - they'd not only funded the election campaigns of the governor and the new GOP legislature, but also an advertising effort attacking the state's teachers. They'd helped pay for buses to ferry in counter-protesters. We were even treated to the sight of new Governor Scott Walker fawning over them in what turned out to be a hoax phone call. The Kochs are right up there now with the great plutocrats of American history, a 21st century version of the robber barons. The trouble is, they don't care. And they don't really have to care. Their business is privately held and answers to no one. Last week their spokesman said they would "not step back at all ... This is a big part of our life's work. We are not going to stop." So those of us who care about things like the climate will need to go on tracking them. But we'll also need to pay attention to their ideological twin, the Pepsi to their Koch. It's the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Unlike the Koch brothers, everyone's heard of them. That's because there's a chamber of commerce in almost every town in America - they're the local barbers and florists and insurance guys, the folks who arrange the annual chili cook-off or the downtown Christmas lights. You know why Lindbergh's plane was called the "Spirit of St. Louis"? Because it was paid for by the by St. Louis Chamber of Commerce. But that's not the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The U.S. Chamber is a hard-right ideological operation, which provides massive funding to conservative Republicans, including the new GOP majority in Wisconsin. If you want a sense of just how far right: Glenn Beck held a telethon on their behalf, and donated $10,000 of his money. "They are us," he said - and an executive of the chamber called in to thank him. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce spent more money lobbying in 2009 than the next five biggest players combined; they spent more money on politics than either the Republican or Democratic National Committees. They're the biggest elephant in the jungle. Despite their claim to represent three million American businesses, more than half their budget comes from just 16 companies. They don't have to identify them, but it's pretty easy to guess who they might be, since the chamber has devoted much of its time to thwarting any effort to control carbon emissions. For instance, they filed a brief with the EPA demanding they not fight global warming because "populations can acclimatize to warmer climates via a range of behavioral, physiological, and technological adaptations." And here's the thing: Unlike the Kochs, the Chamber has some real vulnerabilities. Though thanks to the Supreme Court they can keep their secret flow of money going, their credibility depends in part on the idea that they're representing all those millions of businesses. That's why we've launched a big nationwide campaign: "The U.S. Chamber Doesn't Speak for Me." Businesses big and small are already joining in - a thousand in the first week - making the case that in fact capitalism can adapt to new sources of energy. Capitalism's great virtue, after all, is supposed to be nimbleness and flexibility. Those of us who work on climate change have spent years trying to figure out why Congress pays no attention to what's clearly the most dangerous issues the earth faces. For years we thought we simply needed to explain the crisis more skillfully. But in the last year the truth is becoming clearer: Hidden in the shadows are the guys with money who pull the strings. We need to illuminate those shadows, with the Kochs and even more with the U.S. Chamber. Originally published at GreenBiz.com. Bill McKibben is Schumann Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury College, co-founder of 350.org, and a TomDispatch regular. His most recent book is Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet. --------9 of 14-------- Crisis is Our Unwillingness to Make Rich Pay Their Share by John Hallinan Published on Friday, March 11, 2011 by The Capital Times (Wisconsin) The U.S. corporations are sitting on $2 trillion in cash - trillion, not billion. The same people who shipped millions of jobs overseas, caused the financial crisis, and pay themselves multimillion-dollar bonuses every year are now sitting on a mountain of cash. Yet both state and local governments feel the need to give them more tax cuts. To what end? So they can create more profits and sit on bigger piles of cash, so they can play monopoly as they buy each other out, or so they can give themselves even bigger bonuses? There is no indication that they are interested in doing anything to spur the economy. In December we heard the Republicans tell us that people making over $250,000 per year couldn't afford a 4 percent tax increase, and it would be terrible for the economy to increase their taxes. Thirty years ago they were paying 70 percent in taxes. Now they pay half that, but a 4 percent increase is just too much to bear. Now we are told that state workers making $40,000 to $60,000 per year are stealing the state blind. The same workers who for the last two years have taken over a 3 percent pay cut in the form of furloughs are now told they haven't sacrificed enough. Now they must forfeit 7 percent or more of their pay, and give up their right to negotiate their future. What is appalling is the state workers were willing to give up the money to help out the state. All they asked was to keep their right to negotiate. Yet the wealthiest [useless parasites -ed] in our country aren't willing to give up anything to help our country out of the financial mess they created. In 1980 Ronald Reagan told the biggest lie ever perpetuated on the American public. He condemned Jimmy Carter for running a $40 billion deficit, and then told everyone he could cut taxes and balance the budget. Voodoo economics - that's what George H.W. Bush called Reagan's economic plan. He was right, and by the mid '80s the budget deficit had ballooned to over $200 billion. Of course it was the [undeserving -ed] rich who walked away with virtually all of the Reagan tax cuts. During the last 25 years the Republicans have doubled down over and over again, giving more and more tax cuts to the rich. While the rich have gotten incredibly wealthy, the poor have gotten poorer. It is a reverse Robin Hood economy where we take from the poor and give to the rich. It has been the greatest transfer of wealth in the history of our country - the 400 richest have more than the 155 million poorest. Ballooning government deficits weren't a problem when Republicans were in the White House, but with a Democratic president, it is suddenly a crisis. The recession we've been living through proves the fallacy of Milton Friedman, Reaganomics, Ayn Rand, Alan Greenspan and the rest who told us that markets are self-correcting and regulation is bad. Banking regulations kept this country out of serious recession for 70 years, but once the regulations were repealed it took only a decade to bring the world's economy to its knees. Yet Republicans refuse to acknowledge how wrong they were as they continue to try to gut government regulations. Every time a politician tells you he wants to make the government more business friendly, what he's really telling you is that he wants to increase taxes on your children and grandchildren. Every environmental law that is weakened will mean a cleanup to be paid for by future generations. Every bad business practice that is endured will be funded by taxpayers having to clean up the mess at some later date. Now we are told that everyone must sacrifice to bring state and federal government budgets in line. But somehow the sacrifices once again all fall on those at the bottom of the economic ladder. Once again businesses are given tax cuts, money is found to increase spending on roads, but education, health care and help for the poorest in our society are cut. There isn't a financial crisis at either the state or the federal government. The crisis is our unwillingness to ask those who have gained the most from our society pay a fair and equitable share from the wealth this society has allowed them to accumulate. It is the honest, Christian, and patriotic thing to do. 2011 The Capital Times John Hallinan is a Stoughton, Wisconsin resident. [Eat the rich. Or they will eat us. -ed] --------10 of 14-------- Published on Friday, March 11, 2011 by CommonDreams.org Amid Democratic Revolutions Abroad, Authoritarian Revolutions at Home by Jackie Smith As Egyptians and other democracy advocates around the Middle East celebrate their gains in winning concessions from authoritarian regimes, at home we are witnessing a revolution of authoritarianism. Republican governors across the country are seeking to simultaneously seize authority from state legislatures and undermine the ability of ordinary citizens to affect the decisions that shape their lives. In Wisconsin, Scott Walker's controversial legislation proposes not just to eliminate worker rights and benefits but also to undercut legislative oversight of key decisions. Similarly, in a highly under-reported development, the Michigan legislature just advanced a bill that would allow the state to take over struggling municipal agencies. Emergency financial managers trained in corporate management logic would be empowered to end existing contracts, take over pension plans, reorganize departments, restructure debt, and dissolve or consolidate fiscally troubled towns and schools. The justification for their decisions is based on economic efficiency, not community well being. But as a writer in the Michigan Messenger asks: "What values will guide these individuals or firms as they work to balance budgets? How will a manager decide whether to sell off an ice rink or a library?" Since the oil crisis and economic decline of the 1970s, capitalist elites in this country have been systematically working to undermine the voices of labor and popular groups and to advance an ideology that said that whatever is good for business is good for the country. Thus, we have seen unprecedented growth in corporate profits and executives' benefits at the same time as workers' wages have remained stagnant. Today we see levels of inequality that rival those at the time of the great depression. Corporate elites have used their political influence to systematically reduce the power of labor unions. What we're seeing in Wisconsin, Michigan, Idaho, Ohio, and elsewhere reflects a renewed offensive in this ongoing war to abolish people's rights to form and join trade unions. In the early 1970s roughly 30% of the workforce was represented by unions. In 2010 less than 7% of private sector workers and less than 12% of all workers are unionized. Unions remain essential to helping secure decent wages and working conditions for all workers - not just those represented by unions. What many don't know is that unions today are also defending some of the most vulnerable segments of our population. Although African American workers tend to have higher unemployment rates than other workers, they were more likely to be represented by unions when they are employed. Also, women disproportionately occupy the positions in the public sector - such as education and health care - that are more likely to be unionized. Our nation's persistent gender and racial gaps in wages reflect this weakened power of unions to help remedy the inequities of power and wealth in this country (see Economic Policy Institute analyses at www.epi.org). In addition, the arguments being made by Republican officials to justify restrictions on citizens basic human right to organize (see Article 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights) don't stand up to scrutiny. They claim that by denying workers' rights they will increase employment and raise wages. However, states that now have legislation that impedes unionization haven't seen increased growth, and their wages are lower than those in states without such legislation (see http://www.nd.edu/~hlsp). If Americans want to continue enjoying democracy, we need to resist the cost-benefit logic that guides these legislative challenges. This logic has been used for decades to justify a systematic shift in the organization of power in our society, allowing corporations and the wealthy to turn their financial might into disproportionate political influence. By reducing people's rights and undercutting legislative checks and balances, we set the stage for even greater segregation in our country between the haves and have-nots. At a time when our ailing economy is leaving growing numbers of people behind, politicians are leaving more people and communities to fend for themselves in the name of government "efficiency". Jackie Smith is a sociologist at the University of Notre Dame.s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies (South Bend, Indiana, USA). Her most recent books include Social Movements for Global Democracy and, with multiple co-authors, Global Democracy and the World Social Forums. --------11 of 14-------- The Plan to Steal Everything and Sell the People into Slavery Wisconsin Death Trip By MICHAEL HUDSON and JEFFREY SOMMERS CounterPunch March 11 - 13, 2011 On Wednesday evening, in a veritable Night of the Long Knives, Wisconsin's integrity was brutally murdered on the floor of the state Capitol in Madison. On 9 March, integrity and trust built up over a century was obliterated as Wisconsin state senators quickly reversed course and cleaved its budget "repair bill" in half. Financial items require a quorum, thus, collective bargaining was split off from the budget repair bill and voted on separately so as to permit its being voted on now. Even so, this still broke the state's open meeting law requiring 24 hours' notice to ensure transparency. Instead, the Wisconsin senate Republicans pulled out this new legislation without advance notice and began voting, leaving only a stunned Democratic legislator, Peter Barca, to read the open meeting law out loud to prevent the senators from voting. The senate voted over his objections anyway. The Wisconsin brand has always centered on integrity. This was really about the only distinctive comparative advantage the state could lay claim to. Now, it is gone. With collective bargaining abolished, huge issues remain beyond labor. The privatization of public assets is now on the agenda, with the yet-to-be-voted-on budget repair bill. Wisconsin is a state that invented Progressive Era Republican rule in the 19th and early 20th centuries under such progressive populists as Robert LaFollette. Under their tenure, rent-seeking from the public domain and similar insider corruption were checked by a strong public sector anchored in integrity. The state's long history of reforms nurtured a prosperous middle class and made it a model of clean government, solid infrastructure, trade unionism and high value-added industry managed by socialists and the LaFollette Progressives. Fast-forward to Scott Walker today. Representing a new breed apart from Wisconsin's earlier Republicans, he is seeking to re-birth the asset-grabbing Gilded Age. A plague of rent-seekers is seeking quick gains by privatizng the public sector and erecting tollbooths to charge access fees to roads, power plants and other basic infrastructure. Economics textbooks, along with Fox News and shout radio commentators, spread the myth that fortunes are gained productively by investing in capital equipment and employing labor to produce goods and services that people want to buy. This may be how economies prosper, but it is not how fortunes are most easily made. One need only to turn to the 19th-century novelists such as Balzac to be reminded that behind every family fortune lies a great theft, often long-forgotten or even undiscovered. But who is one to steal from? Most wealth in history has been acquired either by armed conquest of the land, or by political insider dealing, such as the great US railroad land giveaways of the mid 19th century. The great American fortunes have been founded by prying land, public enterprises and monopoly rights from the public domain, because that's where the assets are to take. Throughout history the world's most successful economies have been those that have kept this kind of primitive accumulation in check. The US economy today is faltering largely because its past barriers against rent-seeking are being breached. Nowhere is this more disturbingly on display than in Wisconsin. Today, Milwaukee - Wisconsin's largest city, and once the richest in America - is ranked among the four poorest large cities in the United States. Wisconsin is just the most recent case in this great heist. The US government itself and its regulatory agencies effectively are being privatized as the "final stage" of neoliberal economic doctrine. A peek into Governor Walker's so-called "budget repair bill" reveals a shop of horrors that is just the opposite of actually repairing the budget. Among the items listed in the bill until Wednesday night were selloffs of state power generation facilities - in no-bid contracts notoriously prone to insider dealing. The 37 facilities he wants to sell off that produce heating and cooling at low cost to the state's universities and prisons. Walker's budget repair bill would have unloaded them at a low price, presumably to campaign contributors such as Koch Industries - and then stick the bill for producing this power at higher rates to Wisconsin taxpayers in perpetuity. (And this is all being sold as a "taxpayer relief" plan!) Invariably, this will make its way into new legislation once attention is diverted from the current controversy. The budget bill also plans to tear down the Wisconsin Retirement System (WRS). This is not New Jersey, where a succession of corrupt governments have underfunded (read: stolen) the state pension system in order to shift resources to pay for budget shortfalls in general revenues caused by tax breaks for the rich. The WRS is one of the nation's most stable, well-funded and best-managed pension systems. Although Wisconsin is not a big state, the WRS has amassed $75bn in reserves, and pays out handsome pensions to its public retirees, without needing new public subsidy. The Walker bill has language providing for tearing down this system, raiding its assets to pay for further tax cuts for the rich (especially property owners), and then throwing Wall Street a meaty bone as public employees would be shifted to 401k plans handled by money managers on commission. In a separate proposal, Governor Walker would start privatizing the University of Wisconsin's two flagship doctorate-granting campuses. Ironically, the land grant universities - of which Wisconsin has long been among the best - were created by protectionist 19th-century Republicans as an alternative approach to British free-market doctrine, which dominated the prestigious and largely anglophile Ivy League universities. These universities, like their German counterparts, taught a new economic policy of state management and public enterprise that formed the basis for subsequent US and German development. Walker would kill off this tradition, and return intellectual production to the highest bidder. Other proposals suggest selling off Wisconsin's public northwoods lands with their cornucopia of mineral and timber wealth. And much more is said to be in the works. So Walker's war is not only against the Democrats and labour, it is against Wisconsin's Progressive Era institutions. His policy threatens to pauperize the state and deal a coup de grace to Progressive Era institutions and impoverish the state's middle class. Contra John Maynard Keynes's gentle suggestion of "euthanasia of the rentier", it is the middle class that is being euthanized - throughout North America and Europe. Michael Hudson is professor of Economics at the University of Missouri (Kansas City) and chief economic advisor to Rep. Dennis Kucinich. He has advised the U.S., Canadian, Mexican and Latvian governments, as well as the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR). He is the author of many books, including Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire (new ed., Pluto Press, 2002). He can be reached via his website, mh [at] michael-hudson.com. Jeffrey Sommers is a professor at Raritan Valley College, NJ, visiting professor at the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga, former Fulbrighter to Latvia, and fellow at Boris Kagarlitsky.s Institute for Global Studies in Moscow. He can be reached at jsommers [at] sseriga.edu.lv. --------12 of 14-------- Eat the rich. Or they will eat us. --------13 of 14-------- Life in the fascist lane Mussolini Hitler Koch --------14 of 14-------- Things don't go better with Koch ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- - David Shove shove001 [at] tc.umn.edu rhymes with clove Progressive Calendar over 2225 subscribers as of 12.19.02 please send all messages in plain text no attachments vote third party for president for congress for governor now and forever Socialism YES Capitalism NO To GO DIRECTLY to an item, eg --------8 of x-------- do a find on --8 Research almost any topic raised here at: CounterPunch http://counterpunch.org Dissident Voice http://dissidentvoice.org Common Dreams http://commondreams.org Once you're there, do a search on your topic, eg obama drones
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