There are many things to admire about the achievements of the European social movements: the right to unionize, free education, and universal health insurance.
But all of these achievements are under threat.
The ideology of euroliberalism wants to sacrifice hundreds of millions of Europeans for the portfolios of a few plutocrats. (Euroliberalism is enshrined in the basic architecture of the eurozone, in the form of treaties which prohibit member states from running deficits, and hand over the
powers of the European Central Bank to an unelected coterie of neolib banksters.)
The eurolibs, eurobanksters and plutocrats claim the problem is excessive wages, which is pure Hayekian nuttery. The problem is that Europe has been pursuing the classic market fundamentalist agenda of public austerity combined with private profligacy.
It works like this: we 99% work harder and get less, while the wealthiest 1% get more and more of the surplus. When we 99% get in trouble, we're expected to die like dogs in a ditch. Market discipline demands no less! But when the 1% get in trouble, they get trillion-euro bailouts -- which we 99% subsequently pay for. After all, market discipline would mean the plutocrats having to hock one of their fourteen mansions, or sell off one of their hundreds of luxury cars -- oh, the humanity!
The greatest irony of all is that while the euroliberals constantly whine about the need for economic competitiveness, their own model is a miserable economic failure. Growth during the twenty years of euroliberalism has been paltry, and wages have gone nowhere even in the most industrially productive EU members (e.g. German wages have stagnated for a decade). In normal times, when demand drops, the economy craters. But what staved off economic collapse was a series of housing, financial and property bubbles -- first in the semi-peripheral nations, and now increasingly in the European core economies, too.
Instead of sharing the wealth, the plutocrats want to turn Europeans into permanent debt slaves, who devote all of their income to repaying debts which can't be repaid. Which then necessitates more bailouts, which requires more austerity from the 99%, which causes the debt to increase, etc.
It's a spiral to nowhere, and it's time for change.
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Saturday, February 18, 2012
Know the Enemy II: Battlefield Chicago
Our previous post described how a neoliberal NGO run by Hollywood moguls is trying to destroy public education in Los Angeles.
In Chicago, a neoliberal NGO run by another set of neoliberal moguls is pulling the same trick.
The non-profit in question is the AUSL, run by Martin Koldyke, a long-time venture capitalist. The board of directors include the usual gaggle of corporate executives, venture capitalists, high-flying financial consultants, and a VP from the Vampire Squid (Goldman Sachs), salted with a few community leaders.
This is the same bunch of swindlers, con artists, mortgage fraudsters and thieves who looted America for 30 years, and who crashed the economy with the most irresponsible debt bubble in history. This gang of chronic economic failures are claiming to know how to run a school district.
Oh, they'll run your school district, alright -- straight into the ground.
But the teachers, parents and students of Piccolo Elementary are resisting.
In Chicago, a neoliberal NGO run by another set of neoliberal moguls is pulling the same trick.
The non-profit in question is the AUSL, run by Martin Koldyke, a long-time venture capitalist. The board of directors include the usual gaggle of corporate executives, venture capitalists, high-flying financial consultants, and a VP from the Vampire Squid (Goldman Sachs), salted with a few community leaders.
This is the same bunch of swindlers, con artists, mortgage fraudsters and thieves who looted America for 30 years, and who crashed the economy with the most irresponsible debt bubble in history. This gang of chronic economic failures are claiming to know how to run a school district.
Oh, they'll run your school district, alright -- straight into the ground.
But the teachers, parents and students of Piccolo Elementary are resisting.
Friday, February 17, 2012
Know The Enemy: Battlefield LA
Unlike the monsters of yore, which pounced in the mist and gloom, the creatures of the 1% hunt us 99Percenters in broad daylight. They cloak their toxic neoliberal agenda of market rapine and plutocratic looting with Powerpoint presentations and honeyed abstractions. Be not afraid, brothers and sisters, for today we shall journey into the very maw of the neoliberal beast.
Neoliberalism has long lusted to destroy public education. Public schools create literate, educated citizens, and neoliberalism wants the unalloyed rule of the 1%, without those pesky restraints called democracy and justice for all.
Enter one of the creatures of neoliberalism: an NGO (non-governmental organization) which calls Itself LA's Promise. It claims that It magically transformed a bunch of failing public schools in Los Angeles into paragons of achievement.
Trusteth not Its heavily-juked and cherry-picked charts, for It lies.
Here's the real story. Public education in the US has suffered from 35 years of bait and switch. First, the public sector is starved of needed funds, because waging flagrantly illegal, trillion-dollar colonial wars and spending trillions more on an utterly useless and wasteful military-industry complex is so much more important than educating children... right?
Next, foundations created by billionaires show up promising magical solutions: the problem isn't lack of public funding, so they argue, the problem is those inefficient state bureaucrats and especially those darn teacher unions. Fire 'em all, institute some magical software gizmo run by some corporate jackal with an MBA who spouts nonsense about teacherwise goal-specific enhancementology, and test scores will magically go up.
It never works. Scores may go up, then down again, but there's never any sustained improvement. Why? Because, as experienced education experts like Diane Ravitch point out, (1) education is a long-term social good, requiring massive and sustained investment over time into schools and communities, and (2) test scores are a lousy way to measure achievement. If you don't spend the long-term resources on children, they won't learn.
LA Promise took over a bunch of schools in 2008 with much fanfare. Their magical programs didn't work, and by 2011 the Los Angeles school district had to retake control of the system.
What was LA Promise doing? Why, working people harder and paying them less. LA education board member Marguerite Poindexter Lamotte wrote this article, pointing to the dubious track record of the group. Reporter Howard Blume writes:
Students complained about lack of resources, classes were overcrowded, etc. So what was LA Promise's response to all this? A fund-raising letter to fellow oligarchs, which stated baldly: "As you know, the innovation Los Angeles' students need cannot start within a rule-bound bureaucracy". Translation: the beatings will continue until morale improves.
But then things get really nasty. LA Promise has been endorsing candidates in an attempt to gimmick the system and pack the LA education board with subservient hench-creatures. Can you imagine? This is a group claiming to be a neutral NGO, but they endorsed candidates who ran against Lamotte and another council member, Luis Sanchez (the head of LA Promise, Meg Chenin, hosted a fundraiser for Sanchez' opponent). Not even Yeltsin's neoliberal Russia was this structurally corrupt.
Fortunately, the voters of Los Angeles sent LA Promise's creatures down to flaming defeat, but you just know they're going to try again.
This begs an obvious question: who exactly is behind LA Promise, and what makes them qualified to run a school system, anyway? Here's the board of directors:
Not one person from the world of education, just financial executives and Hollywood moguls, whose primary business models consists of Federal Reserve-subsidized financial oligopolies and state-chartered media pipelines. Apparently, state subsidies are just fine when they benefit their own corporations, but are outrageous violations of all that is sacred when they go to children.
I seriously doubt that any of these folks has the slightest idea of how hard life has gotten for us 99Percenters, how many sacrifices we teachers make, how miserable our working conditions have become (even for those of us at universities -- I'm at a top-rank university but my own salary is just barely in five digits), or how committed we are to the success of our students.
That said, we've reached a point in this country's political history where we shouldn't worry what the 1% or its paid apologists think of us. We're nothing but a bunch of costs and liabilities to them, after all, as they wage their invisible financial war on anyone outside of their gilded club.
But instead of getting mad, we should be getting organized. Welcome to Battlefield LA, where the monsters of neoliberalism are going up against parents, teachers, students, staffers and ordinary citizens -- only in this movie, we have to write the happy end ourselves.
Neoliberalism has long lusted to destroy public education. Public schools create literate, educated citizens, and neoliberalism wants the unalloyed rule of the 1%, without those pesky restraints called democracy and justice for all.
Enter one of the creatures of neoliberalism: an NGO (non-governmental organization) which calls Itself LA's Promise. It claims that It magically transformed a bunch of failing public schools in Los Angeles into paragons of achievement.
Trusteth not Its heavily-juked and cherry-picked charts, for It lies.
Here's the real story. Public education in the US has suffered from 35 years of bait and switch. First, the public sector is starved of needed funds, because waging flagrantly illegal, trillion-dollar colonial wars and spending trillions more on an utterly useless and wasteful military-industry complex is so much more important than educating children... right?
Next, foundations created by billionaires show up promising magical solutions: the problem isn't lack of public funding, so they argue, the problem is those inefficient state bureaucrats and especially those darn teacher unions. Fire 'em all, institute some magical software gizmo run by some corporate jackal with an MBA who spouts nonsense about teacherwise goal-specific enhancementology, and test scores will magically go up.
It never works. Scores may go up, then down again, but there's never any sustained improvement. Why? Because, as experienced education experts like Diane Ravitch point out, (1) education is a long-term social good, requiring massive and sustained investment over time into schools and communities, and (2) test scores are a lousy way to measure achievement. If you don't spend the long-term resources on children, they won't learn.
LA Promise took over a bunch of schools in 2008 with much fanfare. Their magical programs didn't work, and by 2011 the Los Angeles school district had to retake control of the system.
What was LA Promise doing? Why, working people harder and paying them less. LA education board member Marguerite Poindexter Lamotte wrote this article, pointing to the dubious track record of the group. Reporter Howard Blume writes:
The nonprofit's once-solid relations with the teachers union reached a new low in recent months, when the group forced many teachers at Manual Arts and Muir Middle School — which L.A.'s Promise just took over — to seek jobs on other campuses. Administrators also put more pressure last year on Manual Arts teachers with stepped-up classroom observations and critiques.
Students complained about lack of resources, classes were overcrowded, etc. So what was LA Promise's response to all this? A fund-raising letter to fellow oligarchs, which stated baldly: "As you know, the innovation Los Angeles' students need cannot start within a rule-bound bureaucracy". Translation: the beatings will continue until morale improves.
But then things get really nasty. LA Promise has been endorsing candidates in an attempt to gimmick the system and pack the LA education board with subservient hench-creatures. Can you imagine? This is a group claiming to be a neutral NGO, but they endorsed candidates who ran against Lamotte and another council member, Luis Sanchez (the head of LA Promise, Meg Chenin, hosted a fundraiser for Sanchez' opponent). Not even Yeltsin's neoliberal Russia was this structurally corrupt.
Fortunately, the voters of Los Angeles sent LA Promise's creatures down to flaming defeat, but you just know they're going to try again.
This begs an obvious question: who exactly is behind LA Promise, and what makes them qualified to run a school system, anyway? Here's the board of directors:
- Meg Chanin (corporate lawyer, former head of LA Promise, also wife of Peter Chanin, big-time Hollywood producer).
- Stephanie Christie, executive at Wells Fargo's mortgage division (Wells Fargo is one of the too-big-to-fail banks currently plundering America)
- Erik Feig, head of Summit (part of Liongate, a major TV production company)
Rick Hess, executive at CAA (does film finance -- Hollywood films are financed by the equivalent of floating hedge funds) - John Kissick, founding partner at Ares Management (big hedge fund)
- Elizabeth Mann (works at Mayer Brown, one of the largest legal firms in the world)
- Frank Marshall (founded Kennedy/Marshall, producer who made a mint on the Indiana Jones franchise)
- Brian McNamee (VP human resources at Amgen)
- Veronica Melvin (current CEO of LA Promise, a fan of charter schools and other neoliberal shibboleths which simply do not improve educational outcomes)
- Vanessa Morrison (President of Fox Animation, owned by billionaire troglodyte Rupert Murdoch)
- Stephen Prough, founder of Salem Partners (specializes in 'wealth management', i.e. a hedge fund for the super-rich)
- Alison Temple, senior VP of Creative Content at Fox Animation (see above)
- Emma Watts, President of Production at Fox Animation (see above)
Not one person from the world of education, just financial executives and Hollywood moguls, whose primary business models consists of Federal Reserve-subsidized financial oligopolies and state-chartered media pipelines. Apparently, state subsidies are just fine when they benefit their own corporations, but are outrageous violations of all that is sacred when they go to children.
I seriously doubt that any of these folks has the slightest idea of how hard life has gotten for us 99Percenters, how many sacrifices we teachers make, how miserable our working conditions have become (even for those of us at universities -- I'm at a top-rank university but my own salary is just barely in five digits), or how committed we are to the success of our students.
That said, we've reached a point in this country's political history where we shouldn't worry what the 1% or its paid apologists think of us. We're nothing but a bunch of costs and liabilities to them, after all, as they wage their invisible financial war on anyone outside of their gilded club.
But instead of getting mad, we should be getting organized. Welcome to Battlefield LA, where the monsters of neoliberalism are going up against parents, teachers, students, staffers and ordinary citizens -- only in this movie, we have to write the happy end ourselves.
Saturday, February 11, 2012
Reading Occupy
I haven't said too much about the Occupy movements, but it's worth stressing something about the world of 2012.
For decades, the media-systems of the neoliberal era were built on a tiny oligopoly of First World media firms, who monopolized the means of cultural production (Hollywood studios), distribution (corporate-owned broadcasting networks) and consumption (the dominance of advertising expenditure, which reached $466 billion in 2011).
This oligopoly had a lockdown on most forms of journalism and political activity. No, Big Media couldn't tell people what to think, but they could -- and did -- tell people what to talk about. They controlled the discourse, and critics and dissidents had to operate on unfriendly terrain.
Not anymore. Developmental states are lighting up the global grid like a Kolkata Durga Puja procession -- the BRICs alone generated roughly $11 trillion in economic output last year, and own $4.3 trillion in hard currency reserves. Vast new digital audiences are plugged into digital media-systems which neither one-party states, comprador elites nor corporate-owned governments can effectively control. Most mainstream observers point to the boom in the commercial media of the BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India and China). But the real story is the unprecedented explosion of non-commercial culture -- hip hop from Brazil and Russia, indie media from China and India, open source software, fan-art and machinima in videogame culture, and comics, music and music videos from practically everywhere. The transnational audience now includes 2 billion gamers, 4 billion readers, 5 billion cellphone users, and 6 billion radio listeners.
No monopoly or political authority on Earth can tell We, the people of planet Earth, what to talk about. This is a decision We must make for ourselves.
That's why the cluster of struggles which found their expression (not their final form) with the "Occupy" movement is so riveting. This isn't some flash in the pan, disconnected from other struggles. Rather, it marks the point when *all* those struggles are converging. Six billion cellphones, one world of resistance!
For decades, the media-systems of the neoliberal era were built on a tiny oligopoly of First World media firms, who monopolized the means of cultural production (Hollywood studios), distribution (corporate-owned broadcasting networks) and consumption (the dominance of advertising expenditure, which reached $466 billion in 2011).
This oligopoly had a lockdown on most forms of journalism and political activity. No, Big Media couldn't tell people what to think, but they could -- and did -- tell people what to talk about. They controlled the discourse, and critics and dissidents had to operate on unfriendly terrain.
Not anymore. Developmental states are lighting up the global grid like a Kolkata Durga Puja procession -- the BRICs alone generated roughly $11 trillion in economic output last year, and own $4.3 trillion in hard currency reserves. Vast new digital audiences are plugged into digital media-systems which neither one-party states, comprador elites nor corporate-owned governments can effectively control. Most mainstream observers point to the boom in the commercial media of the BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India and China). But the real story is the unprecedented explosion of non-commercial culture -- hip hop from Brazil and Russia, indie media from China and India, open source software, fan-art and machinima in videogame culture, and comics, music and music videos from practically everywhere. The transnational audience now includes 2 billion gamers, 4 billion readers, 5 billion cellphone users, and 6 billion radio listeners.
No monopoly or political authority on Earth can tell We, the people of planet Earth, what to talk about. This is a decision We must make for ourselves.
That's why the cluster of struggles which found their expression (not their final form) with the "Occupy" movement is so riveting. This isn't some flash in the pan, disconnected from other struggles. Rather, it marks the point when *all* those struggles are converging. Six billion cellphones, one world of resistance!
Thursday, February 9, 2012
Banksters Steal Trillions, Pay Billions
The US continues its dizzying decline into Russia's post-Soviet hell.
Yves Smith has this devastating critique of the mortgage settlement which will enable Wall Street banksters to walk scot-free away from decades of criminal fraud.
Even by the most conservative estimates, the housing bubble destroyed $7 trillion of US wealth. Wall Street raked off massive profits when the bubble was inflating, engaged in criminal fraud and malfeasance, and then got huge government bailouts when markets nosedived (among other gifts, the ability to borrow at 0.025% rates of interest from the Federal Reserve, precisely where working stiffs like you and me have to pay 5% or more).
Not a single bankster goes to jail, and the banksters will hand over the grand total of $25 billion, very little of which will directly help homeowners.
This is beyond criminal, into some realm of decadence which needs its own neologism
The bitter irony of this is that none of this will solve the problem of the shadow inventory of dead mortgages, which will never be profitably sold. Nor does it solve the problem of negative equity -- twelve million American households owe more on their mortage than their house will ever be sold for.
Things don't have to be this way. It's high time to start jailing our banksters, slashing our bloated military, spending on healthcare and education, and investing in green jobs.
Yves Smith has this devastating critique of the mortgage settlement which will enable Wall Street banksters to walk scot-free away from decades of criminal fraud.
Even by the most conservative estimates, the housing bubble destroyed $7 trillion of US wealth. Wall Street raked off massive profits when the bubble was inflating, engaged in criminal fraud and malfeasance, and then got huge government bailouts when markets nosedived (among other gifts, the ability to borrow at 0.025% rates of interest from the Federal Reserve, precisely where working stiffs like you and me have to pay 5% or more).
Not a single bankster goes to jail, and the banksters will hand over the grand total of $25 billion, very little of which will directly help homeowners.
This is beyond criminal, into some realm of decadence which needs its own neologism
The bitter irony of this is that none of this will solve the problem of the shadow inventory of dead mortgages, which will never be profitably sold. Nor does it solve the problem of negative equity -- twelve million American households owe more on their mortage than their house will ever be sold for.
Things don't have to be this way. It's high time to start jailing our banksters, slashing our bloated military, spending on healthcare and education, and investing in green jobs.
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
The Iraqicide And the Thirty Year's War on Education
The crimes of the US Empire's Iraqicide are legion: hundreds of thousands killed, rampant ethnic slaughter, trillions of dollars wasted, the hatred and repugnance of the planet.
But there was also the crime of destroying Iraq's once-sterling universities, a tale told here (the full report can be downloaded here). Note the techniques: the hiring of abysmally incompetent political hacks and neocon stooges, who knew nothing (and didn't want to know) anything about Iraqi culture or history; foreign aid which flowed into no-bid Halliburton slush funds instead of public services; and crazed ideological ultimatums which eviscerated the professional and teaching staff.
Sound familiar? They should be. They're the same techniques which have been used to ravage the US public education system for thirty years -- insider deals to benefit edu-profiteers instead of students, demonizing and scapegoating children (especially in communities of color) through bogus test schemes which simply do not work, busting teacher's unions instead of investing in schools, slashing and burning curricula and programs, etc.
Neoliberalism is guilty not just of war crimes against the people of Iraq, but against the children of America.
But there was also the crime of destroying Iraq's once-sterling universities, a tale told here (the full report can be downloaded here). Note the techniques: the hiring of abysmally incompetent political hacks and neocon stooges, who knew nothing (and didn't want to know) anything about Iraqi culture or history; foreign aid which flowed into no-bid Halliburton slush funds instead of public services; and crazed ideological ultimatums which eviscerated the professional and teaching staff.
Sound familiar? They should be. They're the same techniques which have been used to ravage the US public education system for thirty years -- insider deals to benefit edu-profiteers instead of students, demonizing and scapegoating children (especially in communities of color) through bogus test schemes which simply do not work, busting teacher's unions instead of investing in schools, slashing and burning curricula and programs, etc.
Neoliberalism is guilty not just of war crimes against the people of Iraq, but against the children of America.
Saturday, February 4, 2012
From Russia With Crowbars
Freeman's Days spreads the anti-neoliberal crowbar love from a BRIC near you. (Watch the trailer here.)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)