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The Myth of Military Job Creation
Today, as the Super Committee meets, the House Armed Services Committee holds a hearing on “The Economic Effects of Defense Sequestration.” HEIDI GARRETT-PELTIER, hpeltier at econs.umass.edu Assistant research professor at the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and co-author of the report “The U.S. Employment Effects of Military and Domestic Spending Priorities: An Updated Analysis,” Garrett-Peltier said today: “My calculations show that the arms industry’s claims about increased unemployment are vastly exaggerated. A billion dollars spent on military production created about 11,000 jobs, compared to about 17,000 from clean energy, 19,000 from health care, and 29,000…
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Occupations and Public vs Congress and Super Committee?
Today, the “Super Committee” will hold its first open public hearing in more than a month. Congressional Budget Office head Doug Elmendorf will testify. The CBO just released a study finding that the top 1 percent of earners more than doubled their share of the nation’s income over the last three decades. THOMAS FERGUSON, thomas.ferguson at umb.edu, Ferguson is professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts, Boston and a senior fellow of the Roosevelt Institute.
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* Greenwald * Occupy Tour * Oakland Attack
GLENN GREENWALD, via Elizabeth Shreve, elizabeth at shrevewilliams.com Greenwald is author of the new book With Liberty and Justice for Some. He just wrote the piece “Immunity and Impunity in Elite America: How the Legal System Was Deep-Sixed and Occupy Wall Street Swept the Land.” ARUN GUPTA, ebrowniess at yahoo.com A founding editor of the New York City based Indypendent, Gupta also helped found the Occupied Wall Street Journal. He is touring occupations around the U.S. and is in New York today. He recently wrote the piece “Occupying the Rust Belt,” which states: “Davina DeLor, a 39-year-old freelance artist and…
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Occupation: The Challenges of Urban Camping
BARBARA EHRENREICH, barbara.ehrenreich at gmail.com Available for a limited number of interviews, Ehrenreich just wrote a piece on the “occupy” movement and homelessness that appeared in the Los Angeles Times and TomDispatch. She writes: “Political protesters are not alone in facing the challenges of urban camping. Homeless people confront the same issues every day: how to scrape together meals, keep warm at night by covering themselves with cardboard or tarps, and relieve themselves without committing a crime. Public restrooms are sparse in American cities ‘as if the need to go to the bathroom does not exist,’ travel expert Arthur Frommer…
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The Iraq War is Not Over
AP reports today: “On his flight to Indonesia on Friday, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told reporters that negotiations with Iraq on future training possibilities will begin later. “If such talks are held, they likely would start either when Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki visits Washington in December or after the end of the year, according to a senior U.S. defense official familiar with the discussions.
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Argentine Election Highlights Successful Economic Policies: Lessons for the Eurozone
Argentina’s election this weekend, in w…
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* Gadhafi’s Killing * Bush in Canada, a Challenge to Impunity
VIJAY PRASHAD, Vijay.Prashad at trincoll.edu Author of The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World, Prashad said today: “The death of Gadhafi closes a chapter in Libyan history, but it does not settle many open questions for the Libyan people. What, for instance, will be the character of the next Libyan epoch? Gadhafi’s 1969 revolution was an important break with the past, and for the next fifteen years, the experiments in Libya were important for the well-being of the Libyan people. By the 1980s, Gadhafi had come to terms with capitalism and imperialism, and had moved to privatize…
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New Book Chronicles “Oligarchy”
JEFFREY WINTERS, winters at northwestern.edu Author of the new book Oligarchy, Winters said today: “By choosing Wall Street as the origin of their action, and by focusing on the gap separating the 1% from 99%, the Occupy movement has hit upon the chronic problem of oligarchy and democracy in America. The power of concentrated wealth has overwhelmed and effectively disenfranchised the majority of American citizens. One person/one vote will be meaningless in U.S. politics unless the distorting power of wealth is addressed. Failing to do so could result in a deep crisis of legitimacy in American democracy.”
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Protests Build to Massive General Strike in Greece
COSTAS PANAYOTAKIS, cpanayotakis at gmail.com Panayotakis is associate professor of sociology at the New York City College of Technology at CUNY and author of the forthcoming book “Remaking Scarcity: From Capitalist Inefficiency to Economic Democracy.” He said today: “What happened in Greece today was the beginning of a two-day general strike in response to the latest austerity package presented by the government in the last year and a half. These successive packages have drastically reduced the salaries, pensions and labor rights of ordinary Greeks, while leading to a deepening of the crisis and skyrocketing levels of unemployment (16.5 percent for…
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Protests vs. Pay to Play and Petrified Politics
THOMAS FERGUSON, thomas.ferguson at umb.edu Ferguson is professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts, Boston and a senior fellow of the Roosevelt Institute. He said today: “A desperate population is plainly losing patience with the leaders of both major parties. At least a quarter of all the signs at Occupy Wall Street meetings highlight the nexus between money and politics. The centralized national political leadership that big money has created is choking the U.S. political process.”
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“With a tiny staff, it has managed to place on the air and in newspapers, points of view otherwise excluded from the national debate.”
Howard Zinn