One interesting upshot of the debt ceiling soap opera: Soon Republicans will argue that government spending promotes jobs and economic vitality. That's because the new "trigger mechanism" looming over the proposed November joint congressional budget committee includes an additional $600 billion in military cuts.
Sure the foreground tale of woe will feature wailing and gnashing of teeth over jeopardizing our "readiness" and "security" with abstract figures pulled out of "thin air". Lindsey Graham has already played this tune. But palpable absurdity will force a shift. The United States is not under attack. Eleven super carrier battle groups and a redundant nuclear triad are not holding the line in Iraq or Afghanistan. Ultimately both the the euphemism of "defense" and their real concerns will become more explicit: Pork and economic stimulus for congressional districts and whole states.
Perhaps it's already interesting that Graham inveighs against imposing mechanized, abstract trump cards as political solutions. But it's doubtful the conceptual significance of this tack will register with either Graham or the nihilistic tea baggers. Rapt in quasi-religious principle worship, they even threaten filibuster for the sake of the soulless mechanism of a balanced budget amendment. In their spiritual warfare with the abomination of worldly philosophers., the art of politics and an economic patient in need of treatment are ignored out of an infatuation with a certain Palin and a machine that goes "ping".
And yet, even with their "victory" in altering "politics as usual", something heretofore rather lacking in all the debt drama enters the dialogue: our bloated military machine.
“I believe we are slowly turning into a socialist government. The government is continually growing bigger and more powerful and the people need to prepare to defend themselves against government control.”
An astonishing juxtaposition clipped from the NY Times in '93. The photographer, Kevin Carter, later committed suicide some three months after taking the iconic shot in the Sudan. The enameled sterling silver figure at 2.5" high sold for $1050. Today the Republic of South Sudan raises its flag as the worlds newest nation.
"And the decor on the ceiling
Has planned out their future day"
"We tell the other side of the story", says Chris Wallace at least three times in his interview with Jon Stewart on Fox News Sunday. There is "no single marching order, not some kind of command", he says again later. But it's already shown itself - at least three times.
Stewart's got his game on enough to deflect Wallace's absurd suggestion that he's a partisan hack with an agenda, that there is no comedic/artistic impulse not already totally manipulated by the fingers of ideology, and that the New York Times is just as much of a "propaganda delivery system" as Fox News. But when it comes to the deeper problem, he seemed slightly off and stumbling for purchase. And it's so right in front of our faces we can't see it any more.
6/16/11 School's Out Forever A review of John Marsh’s Class Dismissed: Why We Cannot Teach or Learn Our Way Out of Inequality Malcom Harris
At the core of contemporary liberal ideology is the idea that education, done right, could solve all the nation’s major economic problems. Education is supposed to remedy the nation’s sundry inequalities and prepare a generation to become involved citizens. This is one of the few areas where the center-left has won over the wider public. In one of The West Wing’s more memorable monologues, Aaron Sorkin put this popular wisdom into Rob Lowe’s mouth:
Education is the silver bullet, education is everything. We don’t need little changes, we need gigantic, monumental changes. Schools should be palaces, the competition for the best teachers should be fierce, they should be making six-figure salaries. Schools should be incredibly expensive for government and absolutely free of charge to its citizens, just like national defense.
But if education really were the silver bullet, we would have hit something by now. Instead, as Penn State professor John Marsh argues in his forthcoming book Class Dismissed, we have an increasingly unequal country hiding behind the flimsy twin excuses of equal opportunity and personal responsibility. Marsh makes a convincing case that no amount of reformist tinkering can make higher education an engine of egalitarianism...Read More @ The New Inquiry >>
The bubble that burst was the East India Bubble. Between the founding of the EIC in 1600 and the post-subprime world of 2011, the idea of the corporation was born, matured, over-extended, reined-in, refined, patched, updated, over-extended again, propped-up and finally widely declared to be obsolete. Between 2011 and 2100, it will decline — hopefully gracefully — into a well-behaved retiree on the economic scene.
In its 400+ year history, the corporation has achieved extraordinary things, cutting around-the-world travel time from years to less than a day, putting a computer on every desk, a toilet in every home (nearly) and a cellphone within reach of every human. It even put a man on the Moon and kinda-sorta cured AIDS.
So it is a sort of grim privilege for the generations living today to watch the slow demise of such a spectacularly effective intellectual construct. The Age of Corporations is coming to an end. The traditional corporation won’t vanish, but it will cease to be the center of gravity of economic life in another generation or two. They will live on as religious institutions do today, as weakened ghosts of more vital institutions from centuries ago...Read More @ ribbonfarm >>
"According to post-Marxists, contemporary political conditions simply can no longer be explained within the theoretical categories and paradigms central to Marxist theory. Marxism was
conceptually limited by its class essentialism and economic determinism, which had the effect of reducing the political to a site that was strictly determined by the capitalist economy and the dialectical emergence of what was seen as the universal emancipative subject. That is to say, Marxism was unable to understand the political as a fully autonomous, specific and contingent field in its own right, seeing it always as a superstructural effect of class and economic structures. Thus, the analysis of politics was subordinated to the analysis of capitalism. Because of this, Marxism simply has no theoretical purchase on political struggles that are not based on class, and are no longer centered around economic issues. The catastrophic failure of the Marxist project—its culmination in the massive perpetuation and centralization of state power and authority—showed that it had neglected the importance and specificity of the political domain. By contrast, contemporary post-Marxists asserts the primacy of the political, seeing it as an autonomous field—one that, rather than being determined by class dynamics and the workings of the capitalist economy, is radically contingent and indeterminate."
"Insistence on the opposition between life and art is tied to the experience of an alienated world. And failure to recognize the universal scope and ontological dignity of play produces an abstraction that blinds us to the interdependence of both. Play is less the opposite of seriousness than the vital ground of spirit as nature, a form of restraint and freedom at one and the same time. It is precisely because what we encounter in the creative forms of art is not merely the freedom of caprice or of the blind superabundance of nature, that their play is capable of penetrating all the dimensions of our social life, through all classes, races, and levels of cultural attainment. For these our forms of play are forms of our freedom."
Watching Newt Gingrich flail about in terminal gyrations provokes as much sympathy as witnessing a velociraptor sinking in a tar pit. Strange that none of the wildlife experts on Meet the Press saw the misstep.
Newt's performance last week was that of a "compelling character" according to the darling dame of Reaganspeak, Peggy Noonan. Halperin, Cooper and Bai chimed in with "underrated", "more disciplined", and "very thoughtful". Our cognoscenti can only spew superficial goo upon witnessing a mediocre charlatan jumping the shark.
"One Marine Lieutenant Colonel had more courage than every Chief Executive officer of the Fortune 500 combined. People were tuning in for hours, more than they watched soaps, more than they watch situation comedies. Increased total ratings for day-time television by 10% … because they were fascinated by the drama.
And I’ve suggested strongly to the White House - The country will believe the drama in which we point a finger and say these people want to take us down the road of European socialism, these people are the intellectual parallel to the German socialist party…"
- Newt Gingrich, commenting in 1987 regarding Iran Contra hearings and Oliver North. Newt has leveraged drama and announced his candidacy in 2012 via Twitter.
"The idea that we could speak with authority about the practices of 1.4 billion people who speak dozens of languages and have inhabited the planet for the last 1400 years is absurd...
"But this story does not begin in Mecca; it begins in Washington. Middle Easterners, including Osama bin Laden, were not fantasizing when they saw the U.S. establish military bases in the Gulf region nor when it restored the Kuwaiti amirate to power in 1991, when it intervened on behalf of both the Iraqis and Iranians in the Iraq-Iran war, when it shelled Lebanon in the 1980s, and the list goes on. This is not primarily a story about religious fanaticism but a story about secular, imperial power."
Paul Krugman, an economist and New York Times columnist, made 17 predictions in his sampled columns from the sample period. He primarily discussed economics, predicting often about the impending economic crises. Housing and unemployment issues were frequent topics. He also talked about politics on occasion, especially as the election grew closer. Many of his predictions were fairly far into the future — a number of them discussed the crisis in a year or more from the date of the prediction. Krugman was also uncommonly accurate, only missing one prediction and hedging on one other. His powers of prognostication were impressive, but primarily confined to his field of expertise — he is, after all, a Nobel-winning economist.
discussed economics, predicting often about the impending economic crises. Housing and unemployment issues were frequent topics. He also talked about politics on occasion, especially as the election grew closer. Many of his predictions were fairly far into the future — a number of them discussed the crisis in a year or more from the date of the prediction. Krugman was also uncommonly accurate, only missing one prediction and hedging on one other. His powers of prognostication were impressive, but primarily confined to his field of expertise — he is, after all, a Nobel-winning economist.
