Austerity for Dummies: The 3-Minute Guide to a Bad Idea

By Richard (RJ) Eskow

January 9, 2012 - 9:35pm ET 

"I feel stupid," someone said the other day. "I consider myself well-informed, but I have no idea what the term 'austerity economics' really means."

Actually it's not that complicated, and most of the lesson plan can be found in today's headlines.

We'll explain austerity to you in six steps, and we promise it it won't take more than 900 words. Since adults read an average of 250-300 words per minute - and we know all of you are above average - our little course shouldn't take more than three minutes.

American Exceptionalism and Euro-Bashing, Adam Davidson Style

Adam Davidson has an article in the Sunday New York Times Magazine, “The Other Reason Europe is Going Broke,” that manages the impressive feat of making you stupider than before you read it. It misrepresents most of the few facts it contains in appealing to American prejudices about our cultural, or in this case, economics superiority, to sell worker bashing.


Davidson uses the spectacle of Europe going into an economic nosedive to claim that one of the big things wrong with Europe is its spoiled workers.

Why Are Conservatives Rooting for Job Losses?

By Steve Benen | Sourced from Washington Monthly
Posted at January 9, 2012, 7:25 am

Brenda Buttner, a senior business correspondent at Fox News, reflected yesterday on the latest jobs report, and made a curious comment when asked about which areas of the economy aren’t faring well.

“Well, government is a little bit losing jobs. That’s something we see as a positive because we want government to lose jobs to get more in line with the private sector.”

This is not an uncommon sentiment on the right. Two months ago, George Will argued it’s “good” that the “public sector happily shrank by 24,000 jobs” in October.

5 Founding Fathers Whose Skepticism About Christianity Would Make Them Unelectable Today

Thomas Jefferson believed that a coolly rational form of religion would take root in America. Was he ever wrong.

By Rob Boston, AlterNet

January 10, 2012  |  To hear the Religious Right tell it, men like George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison were 18th-century versions of Jerry Falwell in powdered wigs and stockings. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Unlike many of today’s candidates, the founders didn’t find it necessary to constantly wear religion on their sleeves. They considered faith a private affair. Contrast them to former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (who says he wouldn’t vote for an atheist for president because non-believers lack the proper moral grounding to guide the American ship of state), Texas Gov. Rick Perry (who hosted a prayer rally and issued an infamous ad accusing President Barack Obama of waging a “war on religion”) and former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum (whose uber-Catholicism leads him to oppose not just abortion but birth control).

Is there a dark side to moving in sync?

2 studies by USC Marshall School of Business professor find aligned action does not always lead to the common good

Moving in harmony can make people feel more connected to one another and, as a result, lead to positive collective action. Think of those feel-good vibes created in a yoga class as students move in unison through their downward-facing dogs. Yet given that synchronized physical activities are also a cornerstone of military training and are the highlights of military propaganda reels, could the interconnectedness created by coordinated action be mined to make people behave destructively instead? According to two studies conducted by Scott Wiltermuth, assistant professor of management and organization at the USC Marshall School of Business, the cohesiveness synchronized action fosters can, indeed, be manipulated for less than ideal ends.

Wiltermuth's first study, "Synchronous Activity Boosts Compliance with Requests to Aggress," which will be published in the January issue of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, examined whether aligned action primed participants to act aggressively to others outside their designated teams.

Obama Needs Bigger Ideas

If he’s going to beat Romney, the president must have grand plans. Here are two worth trying.

By Eliot Spitzer  |  Posted Friday, Jan. 6, 2012, at 6:32 PM ET

With Mitt Romney’s almost certain win in New Hampshire next week, the race for the White House has now resolved to what was predicted almost a year ago: Mitt vs. Barack. The more extreme and entirely irrational voices of the Republican Party have nearly burned out, and the Republicans will be offering up a rather bland and opportunistic middle-of-the-roader who nonetheless has a credible record in the big leagues of private equity and as a one-term governor of Massachusetts.* Romney has successfully navigated a minefield of debates and attacks from the right without marginalizing himself so that he lost his capacity to appeal to the undecided voters who will determine the election in November. So let’s be clear: Democrats cannot easily dismiss Mitt Romney. This will be a tight race, and the economic data of the late spring and summer will help determine the emotional state of the electorate.

So how will Obama approach the contest? His good news: We are out of Iraq; Bin Laden is dead; DADT is gone; we avoided an economic cataclysm (often by doing the wrong thing) and kept the auto industry alive; the economy is beginning to create jobs (note the 200,000 private-sector jobs reported today and an unemployment rate that has dropped to 8.5 percent); and health care reform was enacted.

Paul Krugman: America's Unlevel Playing Field

Last month President Obama gave a speech invoking the spirit of Teddy Roosevelt on behalf of progressive ideals — and Republicans were not happy. Mitt Romney, in particular, insisted that where Roosevelt believed that “government should level the playing field to create equal opportunities,” Mr. Obama believes that “government should create equal outcomes,” that we should have a society where “everyone receives the same or similar rewards, regardless of education, effort and willingness to take risk.”

As many people were quick to point out, this portrait of the president as radical redistributionist was pure fiction. What hasn’t been as widely noted, however, is that Mr. Romney’s picture of himself as a believer in a level playing field is just as fictional. Where is the evidence that he or his party cares at all about equality of opportunity?

Why Is Public Education Being Outsourced to Online Charter Schools?

Virtual charter schools are educating kids on computer screens, instead of in classrooms.

January 8, 2012  |  Virtual charter schools, which offer classes online instead of in a classroom, have become the fastest-growing segment of the charter school industry. And while data on their effectiveness is scarce, state legislators across the country are passing laws to expand cyber schools at the behest of privatization advocates and online education companies at an alarming rate, with little regulation.

The Associated Press reports that more than 200,000 kindergarten to 12th grade students are enrolled in full-time “virtual charter schools” in at least 40 states. That number soars to two million schoolchildren nationwide when one takes into account students who are enrolled in at least one course.

The Evil of Indefinite Detention and Those Wanting to De-Prioritize It

by Glenn Greenwald

This Wednesday will mark the ten-year anniversary of the opening of the Guantanamo prison camp. In The New York Times, one of the camp’s former prisoners, Lakhdar Boumediene, has an incredibly powerful Op-Ed recounting the gross injustice of his due-process-free detention, which lasted seven years. It was clear from the start that the accusations against this Bosnian citizen — who at the time of the 9/11 attack was the Red Cescent Society’s director of humanitarian aid for Bosnian children — were false; indeed, a high court in Bosnia investigated and cleared him of American charges of Terrorism. But U.S. forces nonetheless abducted him, tied him up, shipped him to Guantanamo, and kept him there for seven years with no trial.

In September, 2006, the U.S. Congress passed the Military Commissions Act (MCA) which, among other things, not only authorized the detention of accused Terrorist suspects without a trial, but even explicitly denied all Guantanamo detainees the right of habeas corpus: the Constitutionally mandated procedure to allow prisoners at least one opportunity to convince a court that they are being wrongfully held. Habeas hearings are a much lower form of protection than a full trial: the government need not convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that someone is guilty, but rather merely present some credible evidence to justify the imprisonment. But the MCA denied even habeas rights to detainees.

What Is “Austrian Economics”?

And why is Ron Paul obsessed with it?

By Matthew Yglesias | Posted Friday, Jan. 6, 2012, at 4:16 PM ET

As he declared quasi-victory in Iowa following a third-place finish, Ron Paul puzzled cable news watchers across the country by proudly proclaiming, “We are all Austrians now.” The average Republican presidential candidate would sooner officiate a gay marriage than praise Europe, yet here was Paul pledging allegiance to Vienna. What did he mean? Why would we all be Austrians?

Paul’s statement was crystal clear to those familiar with the internecine controversies of the libertarian movement. He was referring to so-called “Austrian economics,” an idiosyncratic passion of his and a set of beliefs that put him at odds with the vast majority of well-known economists of all ideological inclinations.

Fraud and folly: The untold story of General Electric’s subprime debacle

By Michael Hudson
6:00 am, January 6, 2012 Updated: 10:59 am, January 6, 2012

 

For General Electric Co., hawking subprime mortgages was a long way from making light bulbs and jet engines.

That didn't stop the industrial giant from jumping into the subprime business in 2004, lending blue-chip respectability to the market for risky home loans by paying roughly half a billion dollars to buy California-based WMC Mortgage Corp.

 

New Bill Known As Enemy Expatriation Act Would Allow Government To Strip Citizenship Without Conviction

January 6, 2012

By Stephen D. Foster Jr.

 

First, Congress considered the National Defense Authorization Act, sections of which gave the President the authority to use the military to arrest and indefinitely detain Americans without trial or charge. The language was revised because of strong condemnation from the American people. But now a new bill has emerged that poses yet another threat to the American citizenry.

 

Congress is considering HR 3166 and S. 1698 also known as the Enemy Expatriation Act, sponsored by Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Charles Dent (R-PA). This bill would give the US government the power to strip Americans of their citizenship without being convicted of being “hostile” against the United States. In other words, you can be stripped of your nationality for “engaging in, or purposefully and materially supporting, hostilities against the United States.” Legally, the term “hostilities” means any conflict subject to the laws of war but considering the fact that the War on Terror is a little ambiguous and encompassing, any action could be labeled as supporting terrorism. Since the Occupy movement began, conservatives have been trying to paint the protesters as terrorists.

America Beyond Capitalism: Is It Possible?

Thousands of co-ops, worker-owned businesses, land trusts, and municipal enterprises are quietly beginning to democratize the deep substructure of the American economic system.

“Black Monday,” September 19, 1977, was the day 34 years ago when the shuttering of the Youngstown Sheet and Tube steel mill threw 5,000 steelworkers onto the streets of their decaying Midwestern hometown. No local, state or federal programs offered significant help. Steelworkers called training programs “funeral insurance”: they led nowhere since there were no other jobs available. Inspired by a young steelworker, an ecumenical religious coalition put forward a plan for community-worker ownership of the giant mill. The plan captured widespread media attention, the support of numerous Democrats and Republicans (including the conservative governor of the state at the time), and an initial $200 million in loan guarantees from the Carter administration.

Earning Their Hatred

Robert Kuttner

January 5, 2012

Americans love a fighter more than a punching bag.

Thank God for elections and election years. An election gives our president, who must face the voters in November, permission to think and act like a partisan. It’s long overdue.

President Obama has boldly made key recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). The Republican strategy has been to destroy these agencies by failing to confirm appointees. In the case of the new CFPB, that meant nobody in charge to make key decisions to make the new bureau operational. In the case of the NLRB, it meant the lack of a quorum would paralyze the agency altogether.

Paul Krugman: Bain, Barack and Jobs

America’s recovery from recession has been so slow that it mostly doesn’t seem like a recovery at all, especially on the jobs front. So, in a better world, President Obama would face a challenger offering a serious critique of his job-creation policies, and proposing a serious alternative.

Instead, he’ll almost surely face Mitt Romney.

Mr. Romney claims that Mr. Obama has been a job destroyer, while he was a job-creating businessman. For example, he told Fox News: “This is a president who lost more jobs during his tenure than any president since Hoover. This is two million jobs that he lost as president.” He went on to declare, of his time at the private equity firm Bain Capital, “I’m very happy in my former life; we helped create over 100,000 new jobs.”

What's Happening in the Persian Gulf Explained


Why Iran is talking tough, the US is maneuvering warships, and gasoline is getting more expensive by the hour.

—By Adam Weinstein and Hamed Aleaziz  | Tue Jan. 3, 2012 3:58 PM PST

The basics: Iran and the United States appear to be heading for a showdown in the Persian Gulf. Amid already-high tensions over Iran's advancing nuclear program, the US has imposed harsh new economic sanctions on the regime in Tehran. The sanctions have throttled Iran's economy, and the country has responded by threatening to shut down the Gulf to all shipping traffic. Iranian officials have also threatened military action against the United States and its allies in the region if they don't back off. Two US aircraft carriers are en route to the region.

How has the situation escalated? Over New Year's weekend, the Iranians announced that they'd made their first-ever nuclear fuel rods, potentially a major step forward in building a nuclear bomb.* Then they test-fired three anti-ship missiles in the Strait of Hormuz, a 34-mile-wide choke point in the Persian Gulf through which approximately 20 percent of the world's crude oil is transported. An Iranian admiral told state TV that the shots were a warning to America: "The control of the Strait of Hormuz is completely under our authority [too]," he said, warning that Iran would attack "any enemy" that endangered Iranian interests. In response, the US has sent two aircraft carriers steaming toward the Gulf to replace the USS John C. Stennis, which just ended its own Mideast deployment. "Iran advises, recommends and warns them [the US] not to move its carrier back to the previous area in the Gulf because Iran is not used to repeating its warnings and warns just once," a general told state media.

Teachers Decide To Work For Free After Budget Cuts Leave Pennsylvania School District Without Funds For Salaries

By Tanya Somanader on Jan 6, 2012 at 3:55 pm

The Chester Upland School District in Delaware County, Pennsylvania suffered a serious setback when Gov. Tom Corbett (R) slashed $900 million in education funds from the state budget. The cuts landed hardest on poorer districts, and Chester Upland, which predominantly serves African-American children and relies on state aid for nearly 70 percent of its funding, expects to fall short this school year by $19 million.

Thomas Frank: Pity the Quarter-Billionaire: An Open Letter to the Tea Party

Take a Ride on the RINO in 2012
By Thomas Frank

Dear Tea Party Movement,

For the last few months, the world has been fascinated by your frenzied search for a presidential candidate who is not Mitt Romney. We know that you find the man inauthentic and that you have buoyed up a string of anti-Mitts in the Iowa polling -- Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich -- buffoons all, preposterous figures whom you have rightfully changed your minds about as soon as you got to know them.

It was quite a spectacle, your quest for the non-Romney -- and I think we all know why you undertook it. In ways that matter, Romney is clearly a problem for you. His views on abortion, for example, change with the winds. Ditto, gay rights. He designed the Massachusetts health insurance system that was the model for Obamacare. And he’s even said that he approved of the TARP bank bailout, the abomination that ignited the Tea Party uprising in the first place.

Forced Military Testing in America's Schools

by Pat Elder

 

The invasion of student privacy associated with military testing in U.S. high schools has been well documented by mainstream media sources, like USA Today  and NPR Radio. The practice of mandatory testing, however, continues largely unnoticed.

The Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, or ASVAB is the military's entrance exam that is given to fresh recruits to determine their aptitude for various military occupations. The test is also used as a recruiting tool in 12,000 high schools across the country. The 3 hour test is used by military recruiting services to gain sensitive, personal information on more than 660,000 high school students across the country every year, the vast majority of whom are under the age of 18. Students typically are given the test at school without parental knowledge or consent. The school-based ASVAB Career Exploration Program is among the military's most effective recruiting tools.

More Absurdity: Rick Santorum Proposes Abolishing the Ninth Circuit Court And Sending Liberal Judges to Guam

By Rania Khalek | Sourced from AlterNet
Posted at January 5, 2012, 1:11 pm

This morning at a town hall in New Hampshire, Republican Presidential Candidate Rick Santorum shared his disdain for the judicial branch while advancing some creative proposals for ways to rid the country of liberal judges who Santorum, along with many other Republicans, believes infest the Ninth Circuit.

According to the Huffington Post’s Amanda Terkel, Santorum said he knows “for a fact” that the judicial branch is the least important “Because it's Article III. Article I is Congress, Article II is the president and Article III is the courts. If it was the most important, they wouldn't have put it third."

Cynicism Is for Suckers: How We Can Fight the Greedy Elites That Run Our Lives

2011's successful protests show how hope can change the system. 

 

January 5, 2012

My resolution for 2012 is to be naïve -- dangerously naïve.

I’m aware that the usual recipe for political effectiveness is just the opposite: to be cynical, calculating, an insider. But if you think, as I do, that we need deep change in this country, then cynicism is a sucker’s bet. Try as hard as you can, you’re never going to be as cynical as the corporations and the harem of politicians they pay for.  It’s like trying to outchant a Buddhist monastery.

 

Six Issues That Should Make Progressives Care About Agriculture Policy
Thursday, 01/5/2012 - 10:39 am by Lauren Servin

At the heart of our food policy lie core issues such as national security, energy and the environment, and public health. We should pay attention.

Agriculture is possibly the most critical issue of our time. Our food system is increasingly vulnerable to complications created by risky farming practices, climate change, and instability in international markets. While the media covers sensational food stories such as Congress declaring pizza a vegetable or Michele Obama planting an ‘organic’ vegetable garden at the White House, the everyday American public does not typically scrutinize agriculture policy.  Rarely are issues of agriculture featured in political debates, nor do politicians use it as an issue to court voters. While politicians and the media may not find it as spicy an issue as abortion or gay marriage, progressives need to make this our issue. We need to push our representatives to ensure that our tax dollars are spent on the foods that keep our kids healthy, promote practices that do not harm the environment, and enact policies that contribute to our long-term food security. Because sound agriculture policy leads to a safer country, a better environment, less energy use, a diminished role for big money, improved foreign policy, and a healthier citizenry.