Mn-prog-events Mailing List: Progressive Calendar 07.15.11

[shove001 (shove001]

             P R O G R E S S I V E   C A L E N D A R   07.15.11

1. Palestine vigil  7.15 4:15pm
2. Moon/Coldwater   7.15 7pm
3. Ivey GP party    7.15 7pm

4. CUAPB            7.16 1:30pm
5. Northtown vigil  7.16 2pm
6. US worker future 7.16 7pm

7. Matt Taibbi - Greed, excess and America's gaping class divide

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From: Eric Angell <eric-angell [at] riseup.net>
Subject: Palestine vigil 7.15 4:15pm

The weekly vigil for the liberation of Palestine continues at the
intersection of Snelling and Summit Aves in St. Paul. The Friday demo
starts at 4:15 and ends around 5:30. There are usually extra signs
available


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From: Seasnun <seasnun [at] gmail.com>  + 
Subject:  Moon/Coldwater 7.15 7pm

Full Moon Walk at Coldwater Spring*
Friday, July 15, 2011, at 7 PM *
Mid-Summer Moon: The Green Man Stalks the Prairie** *

July is the hottest month. We have 16 fewer minutes of daylight today than
last full moon, the tomatoes are growing, this is the ripening time between
planting and harvest. We welcome the Green Man, the vegetable king lapping
rainwater and swelling with the sun.

Traditional group howl!

Directions*: Coldwater is south of Minnehaha Park, in Minneapolis. From Hwy
55/Hiawatha, turn East (toward the Mississippi) at 54th Street, take an
immediate right, & drive South on the frontage road for Â-mile past the
parking meters, through the cul-de-sac & the gates, & past the abandoned
buildings. Follow the curvy road left & then right down to the pond, next to
the great willow tree.

Free. Open to all. Info: www.friendsofcoldwater.org


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From: Jim Ivey for St Paul City Council Ward 2. Green Party
Subject: Ivey GP party 7.15 7pm

Join us at Golden's Deli, by the downtown Farmers' Market in Lowertown, to 
officially kick off our campaign to put people first in Ward 2!

If you drive: we have a number of parking spots reserved in the Farmers' 
Market parking lot. 4th St and Wall St will most likely be closed right 
next to Golden's due to central corridor construction. If you don't park in 
the Farmers' Market lot, another option is to look for spots on Kellogg 
just a block away. Of course, downtown is quite convenient to get to via 
many Metro Transit bus routes.

RSVP now!
Event info: http://iveyforsaintpaul.org/kickoff
RSVP: http://iveyforsaintpaul.org/civicrm/event/register?id=1&reset=1
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=139739559436639

Enjoy free food and drink, and the company of neighbors excited about 
putting people first in Ward 2 and making real change in Saint Paul.

Golden's Deli is a local shop that's committed to zero waste events. 
They've been challenged by the light rail construction over the past couple 
of years, but they've managed to make it through so far, and it'll be great 
to help them out with some business! We'll also have some light music as a 
background, provided of course by a local artist. And for those of you that 
aren't able to bike, walk or take the bus, there will be free parking 
provided in a reserved area of the Farmer's Market parking lot next door.

I really hope you'll join us for this event. I've met so many amazing 
people over the past few months, and I'd really like to have an evening 
like this where you can all meet each other and form new relationships that 
will benefit Saint Paul for years to come.


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From: Michelle Gross <mgresist [at] visi.com>
Subject: CUAPB 7.16 1:30pm

Meetings: Every Saturday at 1:30 p.m. at Walker Church, 3104 16th Avenue
South http://www.CUAPB.org

Communities United Against Police Brutality
3100 16th Avenue S
Minneapolis, MN 55407
Hotline 612-874-STOP (7867)


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From: Vanka485 [at] aol.com
Subject: Northtown vigil 7.16 2pm

Peace vigil at Northtown (Old Hwy 10 & University Av), every Saturday
2-3pm


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From: jtmiller jtmiller <jtmiller [at] minn.net>  + 
Subject:  US worker future 7.16 7pm

Working Democracy Discussion Forum
The Future of the American Worker
Saturday, July 16, 2011, 7:00 PM
Mayday Books 301 Cedar Ave S Minneapolis

What do current economic trends indicate that the future holds in
store for the American worker? Presenting: David Shove [MA philosophy UofM, 
ABD philosophy UofM] andDr. Norman Ehrentreich, a Twin Cities-based
pension consultant, who has his own consulting company, Ehrentreich
LDI Consulting & Research, LLC. George Kane will lead the discussion.


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Greed, Excess and America's Gaping Class Divide
by Matt Taibbi 
Published on Thursday, July 14, 2011 by Rolling Stone 

Courtesy of good friend and Supreme Court of Assholedom justice David 
Sirota comes this revolting list of Marie Antoinettoid moments from recent 
years, in an article called "The New 'Let Them Eat Cake!'"

Some of the moments on the list are easily recalled â Berkshire Hathaway 
gazillionaire Charlie Munger's famous "suck it up and cope" quote, coming 
from a guy whose company was heavily invested in bailed-out banks, was an 
obvious inclusion â but others are quite shocking.

For instance, I was completely floored by the New York Times' pseudo-ironic 
take on the government's response to the financial crisis, a piece entitled 
"You Try to Live on $500K in This Town."

This came at a time when President Obama was considering curtailing 
compensation for bailed-out bankers at $500,000. The piece was sort of 
meant to be taken half as a joke, but it is not hard to detect an element 
of demented earnestness in the fashion section article, an honest argument 
that with mortgages and private school tuition and co-op fees and taxes, it 
really was very hard for a certain kind of New Yorker to get by on half a 
million a year.

The proposed salary cap -- remember, this cap was only going to be for 
banks that had fucked up badly enough to need a federal bailout -- became 
the cassus belli for a propaganda war launched from the general direction 
of Wall Street, where the notion that the government should restrict the 
salaries of exactly the irresponsible greedheads who caused a global 
financial crisis was met with blunt outrage.

Sirota's list highlights another bizarre aspect of the $500k story. During 
the debate over the proposed cap, one of the things we started to hear from 
the Antoinette class was a general sense of wonder at the notion that 
anyone considered them rich. It turns out that a great many of the people 
who make big six-figure incomes consider themselves middle class. A 
University of Chicago professor arguing against the repeal of the Bush tax 
cuts made waves by saying he was "just getting by" with his $250,000 
income, while ABC's Charlie Gibson and CNN reporter Kiran Chetry in recent 
years suggested that $200-$250,000 is middle class (Chetry's exact quote 
was that "in some parts of the country," $250K "is middle class").

All of this is a testament to the amazing (and rapidly expanding) cultural 
divide that exists in this country, where the poor and the rich seldom 
cross paths at all, and the rich, in particular, simply have no concept 
what being broke and poor really means. It is true that if you make 
$300,000 in America, you won't feel like you're so very rich once you get 
finished paying your taxes, your mortgage, your medical bills and so on.

For this reason, a lot of people who make that kind of money believe they 
are the modern middle class: house in the burbs, a car, a kid in college, a 
trip to Europe once a year, what's the big deal? They'd be right, were it 
not for the relative comparison -- for the fact that out there, in that 
thin little ithsmus between the Upper East Side and Beverly Hills, things 
are so fucked that public school teachers and garbagemen making $60k with 
benefits are being targeted with pitchfork-bearing mobs as paragons of 
greed and excess. Wealth, in places outside Manhattan, southern California, 
northern Virginia and a few other locales, is rapidly becoming defined as 
belonging to anyone who has any form of job security at all. Any kind of 
retirement plan, or better-than-minimum health coverage, is also 
increasingly looked at as an upper-class affectation.

That the Tea Party and their Republican allies in congress have so 
successfully made government workers with their New Deal benefits out to be 
the kulak class of modern America says a lot about the unique brand of 
two-way class blindness we have in this country. It's not just that the 
rich don't know the poor exist, and genuinely think a half a million a year 
is "not a lot of money," as one "compensation consultant" told the New York 
Times after the crash.

It also works the other way -- the poor have no idea what real rich people 
are like. They apparently never see them, which is why the political 
champions of middle America are at this very minute campaigning in congress 
to extract more revenue from elderly retirees and broke-ass students while 
simultaneously fighting to preserve a slew of tax loopholes for the rich, 
including the carried-interest tax break that allows hedge fund 
billionaires to pay about half the tax rate of most Americans.

This is also going on because both parties are betraying the desires of the 
actual voters, who by and large actually do favor taxing the wealthy (they 
favor it intellectually anyway, when asked by pollsters). But we don't see 
mobs on the street demanding Stevie Cohen and John Paulson and George Soros 
give up their special 15 percent tax rate, because no actual people have 
ever seen Stevie Cohen, John Paulson or George Soros in the wild.

To most people, the undeserving rich guy is the ex-police lieutenant down 
the street who's been collecting a six-figure pension for years after 
spending two decades writing traffic tickets before retiring at 43. Seeing 
that guy lounging in the dugout pool you paid for with your constantly 
rising property taxes is enough to piss anyone off, which is why it's not 
hard to understand where a lot of that Tea Party anger is coming from.

But if you want to see a real asshole, you have to somehow get invited to 
things like the $5 million birthday party of another guy on Sirota's list, 
private equity creep Steven Schwarzman. After throwing his elaborate fete 
for himself, Schwarzman -- who is said to make $400 million a year, and 
made $600 million when his company went public -- compared Barack Obama to 
Hitler for even considering rolling back his carried-interest exemption, 
which, again, allows him to pay 15% taxes while some of the rest of us pay 
twice that or more. "It's a war," he said. "It's like when Hitler invaded 
Poland."

If you think your local Andy Griffith is a greedy pig because he retired in 
his forties and built an addition to his garage with your tax money, try 
hanging out with a guy who eats $400 crabs, throws himself $5 million 
parties where he is serenaded by Rod Stewart and Patti Labelle (who sang 
"Happy Birthday"), and then compares the president to Hitler when word 
leaks out that he might have to pay taxes at the same rate as a firefighter 
or a kindergarten teacher.

But America never gets to meet that guy, because all of those parties are 
invite-only, and the only reporters that go tend to do so with kneepads on 
-- like the extraordinary Andrew Ross Sorkin, who as Sirota notes, 
predictably wrote a slurpilicious "In Defense of Schwarzman" piece after 
the event (his thesis, to the extent that I could make it out, seemed to be 
that there are even bigger assholes than Schwarzman). As a result, the 
popular outrage gets steered toward state employees greedily living off 
their own pensions, not toward the truly deserving targets hiding in the 
Hamptons and Gstaad and St. Tropez.

Anyway, definitely advise checking out David's piece. You'll be grinding 
your teeth by the time you finish.

 2011 Rolling Stone
As Rolling Stoneâs chief political reporter, Matt Taibbi's predecessors 
include the likes of journalistic giants Hunter S. Thompson and P.J. 
O'Rourke. Taibbi's 2004 campaign journal Spanking the Donkey cemented his 
status as an incisive, irreverent, zero-bullshit reporter. His latest 
collection is Smells Like Dead Elephants: Dispatches from a Rotting Empire

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