I heard only part of the broadcast of Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory while in the car today. I am hoping the full MP3 will appear in the archive soon. (Jan 9, 2012 – I see that there is now a PLAY button that will play the full hour of the radio show. I have now heard all that I had previously missed.)
I have had conversations with friends from India and Viet Nam about the very question that comes up at the end of this broadcast. Melding in my original feelings and what I think I have learned from them is the following reaction as to what to do about the problem.
It is not up to us to tell the workers in these countries what conditions are good for them. I think the ultimate solution is to make sure the workers themselves have a voice about their own working conditions. We should promote the freedom of the workers to form unions. The United States and the US labor unions should do everything they can do to encourage the rights of workers to form unions (and this encouragement applies to our own country as well). We citizens should exercise whatever influence we have over the companies and our government to see that union rights and union organizers’ rights are protected.
Surely you can stand a little humor as you browse through the internet.
Since the people in this video have strong Irish brogues and use pronunciation a little different from what you normally hear in the U.S., you may be able to just avoid translating certain words that you might otherwise find offensive.
I am a little frustrated that she is not quite running the campaign the way she speaks in this video.
In her description of how she created the successful campaign to get the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau into the financial reform bill passed by Congress, she mentioned getting the AFL-CIO, SEIU, AARP, and Consumers Union to rally their members to the fight. (She also talked about a pyramiding conference call series.)
With regard to getting things done as a Senator, she tells the audience that they have to keep fighting for the action they want long after the election is over.
Then, seemingly forgetting how she described the fight for the CFPB, she tells the audience they have to talk to neighbors and people in the grocery line about what needs to be done. Yes, eventually it gets down to having individuals talk to other individuals, but if almost every individual in the country favors one particular policy, what good does that do if the people in Congress aren’t aware and moreover aren’t aware of how strongly people feel? We already know that in some cases a poll may show that 80% of the people favor a policy and the Congress still votes for the 20% side of the issue.
It is easy for the Congress to look at a poll and dismiss the import of what it says by simply telling themselves that people don’t feel strongly enough about the issue to do anything if Congress votes the way Congress wants and against the majority’s wishes. By and large, Congress’s dismissal has been correct.
It takes organizations like the AFL-CIO, SEIU, AARP, Consumers Union, (and the Occupy Movement) to get enough of a mass protest to shake the politicians’ attachment to the lobbyists working for the wealthy interests.
I’d like to see Elizabeth Warren demonstrate this organizing skill during the campaign. It has to be more than just Elizabeth Warren fighting for these things.
True, she has something like 85,000 people who have clicked on the “like” button on her Facebook page. That compares to something like 500 likes for some of her Democratic competitors. I am not sure Facebook “likes” would sway any other Senators.
What kind of movement changed the entire conversation in this country in a month or two and caused it to turn away from the 40 years of propaganda by the wealthy as embodied in the Republican Party, Faux Noise, almost all radio talk shows, etc.? The Occupy movement did that. As soon as Elizabeth Warren caught some flack for saying some encouraging words about the Occupy movement, she backed away.
In the election, you cannot back away from one of the major tools you are going to need after the election, and then expect to use that tool effectively later.
The reporter was discussing a conversation with Bill Clinton at a book signing.
I asked, “What do you think about the Occupy Wall Street movement, personally, and what do you think it says about America?”
“I think what they’re doing is great,” he said. “Occupy Wall Street has done more in the short time they’ve been out there than I’ve been able to do in more than the last eleven years trying to draw attention to some of the same problems we have to address,” he said.
Without once looking around, but completely engaging me, the statesman continued. “There are a lot of young people out there, I see a lot of unemployed students and they are upset, he said. They don’t know where the jobs and opportunities are for them, and they are worried about how they’re going to pay off their student loans without going broke.”
But I learned instantly that Bill Clinton doesn’t just acknowledge problems he has solutions at the ready. He went on to say that student loan reforms were absolutely necessary and that limiting annual loan payments to small percentages of income made sense to not impoverish students as they struggle up the ladder in pursuit of the American Dream.
I asked if the Occupy Wall Street movement should have a platform. I was getting into another area he is passionate about, delivering messages on point. “Yes,” he said, “But it doesn’t have to be a platform; it doesn’t have to be twenty pages. They should start with three or four points to generate a political movement to get heard more clearly.”
There was more, but as he touched quickly on two other points as to how we got here, he said, “That’s in the book.” I wasn’t being sold on the book; I just had my copy signed. I was being steered to the address of important issues in the book and Mr. Clinton’s suggestions for getting back on track to fixing them.
Compare those remarks with Elizabeth Warren’s backing away from the Occupy movement.
Speaking of Newt Gingrich’s relationship to the Citizens Untied Supreme Court decision that visited all these horrors upon Newt, the article said:
Earlier, he’d sent out a video plea, saying, “Please join Citizens United and me in our fight for the First Amendment rights of every American.”
Yes, because every lone citizen’s voice is roughly equal to, say, the $3 million or so in negative advertising spent in Iowa to crush Gingrich. Those citizens who worked at corporations, or founded super PACs, were somehow denied their First Amendment rights, in the reasoning of the court and Gingrich. Money is speech, one and the same, in their world.
If Gingrich had any guts, or lasting principles, he would now sound alarms about the absurdity of a court decision equating the Norman Rockwell citizen standing at town hall to the anonymous millions that can kill a candidate in less than month. In Gingrich’s case, he fell 20 points in 20 days.
As I have pointed out before:
The logic behind corporations being people is based on a syllogism. If the Supreme Court and other Courts knew anything about logic, (gee should justice have anything to do with logic), they would be very wary of reasoning from a syllogism. It is fraught with the ease of coming to faulty conclusions
Here are some definitions of syllogism from the Free Dictionary:
1. Logic, A form of deductive reasoning consisting of a major premise, a minor premise, and a conclusion; for example, All humans are mortal, the major premise, I am a human, the minor premise, therefore, I am mortal, the conclusion.
2. Reasoning from the general to the specific; deduction.
3. A subtle or specious piece of reasoning.
Perhaps the questioning of prospective judges, especially Supreme Court Justices, should always include the question, “Do you know what a syllogism is, and do you understand its pitfalls?”
By the way, definition 1 above uses an example syllogism that leads to a correct conclusion.
At the simplest level, the syllogism consists of a deductive process involving two declarative statements and a conclusion. Three simple terms are used and these are combined with each other in the form AB, BC, therefore BC (or negative terms might be used). For example: all apples are fruit; no apples are vegetables, therefore no fruit is a vegetable. The conclusion cannot be challenged without contradicting one or both of the premises. This is the basis of much logical deduction up to the present day.
How about the statement that not all fruits are apples? There may be a fruit that is also a vegetable. All we know from the statements presented is that it won’t be an apple.
The article about Socrates goes on to say:
Socrates, however, used the syllogistic process in a somewhat different way. Indeed, his approach was one that caused many of his enemies or at least indifferent observers to label him as ‘sly’
Calling Socrates sly in a freshman college paper got me a D on that paper. The professor did not understand the down side of syllogisms. This was in a Humanities course at MIT. I doubt I would have run into that problem if the course had been given in the Math department.
Racism? Strong words, yes, but let’s look the issue straight in its partially unseeing eye. In a colorblind society, White people, who are unlikely to experience disadvantages due to race, can effectively ignore racism in American life, justify the current social order, and feel more comfortable with their relatively privileged standing in society (Fryberg, 2010). Most minorities, however, who regularly encounter difficulties due to race, experience colorblind ideologies quite differently. Colorblindness creates a society that denies their negative racial experiences, rejects their cultural heritage, and invalidates their unique perspectives.
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The alternative to colorblindness is multiculturalism, an ideology that acknowledges, highlights, and celebrates ethnoracial differences. It recognizes that each tradition has something valuable to offer. It is not afraid to see how others have suffered as a result of racial conflict or differences.
We can see the same psychology today in a non-racial situation. The bankers who made a fortune pushing mortgage traps on the unsuspecting and then taking their houses from them when the trap sprung, have a similar feeling today.
I can just hear the banker explaining the situation to the victim or the lawyer that the victim brings.
So what, you are homeless, I am going to be blind to your situation and treat you like everyone else. I expect you to keep your promise to pay back the mortgage in full even though I did not keep my promise that when the phoney teaser rate ran out, you could just refinance your mortgage. Was I supposed to tell you about the danger of accepting the deal that I was telling you was so good for you? No hard feelings, but you did sign your name to this promise and I was smart enough to not put my promise to you in writing. Is it my fault I had 20 years experience in the banking business and this was the first house you ever bought? You should have done your 20 years of homework before you bought.
I bet that same banker would be irate if he found out that a shady mechanic bamboozled him to pay far more than he needed to to get his car fixed. This might be the mechanic’s answer.
It’s not my fault that the banker knew nothing about mechanics. Why didn’t the banker take a professional level course in auto mechanics before getting his car fixed?
Not only do I like the message that she has about what her campaign is all about, but I also like the fact that she is not afraid to deliver it. She manages to explain, in the short amount of time that she is given, what she believes needs to be done and why it will work.
With her you know where she stands. She also explains the factors you may not have known that explain why her plan will work. The opposition will of course try to convince you of something else, but at least you have something to hang your hat on when you try to think whether or not DeFranco or her opposition is more likely to be right.
On this blog, I tend to focus on economic theory and sometimes try to make everyday analogies to explain what all that means. Marisa DeFranco has a way of just cutting to the chase and giving you what you need to know. That is why she is running, and I am not. (Of course there are many other reasons, too.)
Somehow she fails to mention that only about 6% of the Republican voters in Iowa took to her message. Well, she is true to her Bush heritage, never, ever admit you made a mistake.
This result would be comforting were it not for the fact that there are a slew of Republican contenders remaining that are almost as far off their rocker as she is.
In this video Bachmann says:
Our country is in very serious trouble and that this might be the last election to turn the nation around before we go down the road to socialism… President Obama and his socialist policies must be stopped … and I sought the nomination of the party of Reagan the party of Lincoln
Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. Capital has its rights, which are as worthy of protection as any other rights. Nor is it denied that there is, and probably always will be, a relation between labor and capital producing mutual benefits.
Sounds almost Socialist to me. I wonder if Reagan knew about Lincoln’s feelings when he fired the air traffic controllers. Of course, back in those days, the Republican Party and its Southern Strategy rarely if ever mentioned Lincoln. Maybe that is Bachmann’s problem in Iowa. Maybe they are now convincing themselves that Lincoln believed in States’ Rights and was on the side of the Confederacy. Maybe that great historian, Newt Gingrich, can explain how Lincoln was Robert E. Lee’s commander in chief. Does this mean that true patriots secede from the Union and then fire their guns on a Union fort? The Occupy movement is pretty mild compared to that.
I keep saying that I want a politician who can not only produce the best results that are politically possible, but I want one who can also change what is politically possible.
Even Senator Obama quoted President Franklin Roosevelt’s idea about what was needed to change the politically possible. I mentioned it in my previous post A New Bush Era or a Push Era?
Back when Barack Obama was still just a U.S. senator running for president, he told a group of donors in a New Jersey suburb, “Make me do it.” He was borrowing from President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who used the same phrase (according to Harry Belafonte, who heard the story directly from Eleanor Roosevelt) when responding to legendary union organizer A. Philip Randolph’s demand for civil rights for African-Americans.
So, how could President Obama have changed the politically possible by making use of what he learned from President Roosevelt?
Let’s take the Health Care improvement debacle as a case study.
Previous Presidents would have put together a health care proposal and presented it to Congress. President Obama was afraid that any proposal that his administration wrote would be instantly attacked by the opposition. He decided not to make a proposal, but to let Congress cobble together something that he could decide to sign or not. This strategy earned him a weak, inadequate proposal that will not reach his original lofty goals and is under attack by the Republicans with every means at their disposal even after it was passed into law.
So what could Obama have done differently?
Even before a proposal was written, he could have gone to the public with the outlines of the minimum that the public should be demanding. He should have warned the public that this proposal would be severely attacked by the vested interests who would stop at nothing to prevent such a bill from passing. He would then have advised the public that unless they made it crystal clear that they would not accept anything less, the opponents would have a good shot at preventing the bill from passing. He would have helped organize a grass roots campaign of protest rallies in cities across the country demanding health care reform as he had outlined.
When it was then crystal clear to the news media and every politician that was watching that the public was solidly behind health care reform and that the public was actively engaged in making sure it would happen, the President Obama could have rolled out his proposal.
At that point the opposition would have to play catch-up. They would have to debate on the turf that the President had set. Rather than the lobbyists being able to scare politicians to vote for what the lobbyists wanted and against what the silent public wanted, the lobbyists would have faced a completely different situation. What was politically possible at that point would have been changed dramatically from the actual situation that President Obama faced as the Congress was putting together the bill and as they tried to get it passed.
Instead of this kind of tactic, the President is constantly putting the cart before the horse. He waits for the political climate to be changed against him and then tries for the best he thinks he can get given that political climate. He then even goes so far as to convince himself that he should compromise before he gets started and only try for what he is absolutely sure he can get. All this tactic earns him is even less than what he thought was the minimum.
Sunday Business asked the six economists who write the Economic View column to do a little blue-sky thinking on issues as varied as the Fed, Europe and housing. You won’t find stock tips. But if 2011 was any guide, the best advice for 2012 may be this: Hold tight.
Even the economist who was an adviser to Mitt Romney did not say that tax cuts for the wealthy was a solution to our problems.
Perhaps Christina Roemer had the most balanced view.
But even better would be measures that increase employment today, while also leaving us with something of lasting value. Because many people worry about increasing the role of the federal government, why not give substantial federal funds to state and local governments for public investment? Tell them that the money has to be used for either physical infrastructure like roads, bridges and airports, or for human infrastructure like education, job training and scientific research. Then let the states, cities and towns figure out what would work best for their citizens.
Even this proposal bows to what she sees as the political reality. Let the states and towns do it, not because that is the best way economically, but because this is the best we can hope for politically.
I am still looking for the candidate who will both do what is politically possible now and change what is politically possible. Barack Obama said he would be that politician, but either he had no clue on how to change the politically possible, or he never intended to do that when he won the election.
I see no national politician, even one on the horizon, that can be the politician I seek. We will just have to take the best that is available and try to figure out how to grow the one we want. I think that growth process starts with movements like the Occupy movement. I am not sure there has ever been an example of the rise of that desired politician without being preceded by some lasting protests of the citizens.
By the way, the clue that Obama should have had is that he needed to promote citizen action as a way to strengthen his hand politically. President Roosevelt knew that. Obama even quoted Roosevelt’s remarks that showed it. So maybe I was wrong. President Obama had a clue at one time. He just did not follow up with the necessary action. He seemed to go out of his way to negotiate with the opposition in private and starting way too late making it impossible for the citizens to force the issue.
The article shows the original video clip which we were shown to give us the impression that Carl Levin claimed the administration was pushing for permission to allow indefinite detention provisions be allowed to apply to U.S. Citizens. Another video is shown of Carl Levin making his final pitch before the entire Senate in support of the bill. It seems pretty clear from this much longer video that if Carl Levin ever believed what we thought he said in the other video, he does not believe it now. It would have been more definitive to have showed us how that original video was manipulated to give us a false impression. However, I am convinced until somebody can show me that the original video did not give a false impression.
As one who was able to compare the distorted video clips of what Rev. Wright said to the entire video that contained his remarks, I have no doubt that it is easy to turn somedody’s ideas completely up-side-down by diabolical editing.
The web site above even quotes a Mother Jones article to the effect that:
It does not, contrary to what many media outlets have reported, authorize the president to indefinitely detain without trial an American citizen suspected of terrorism who is captured in the US. A last minute compromise amendment adopted in the Senate, whose language was retained in the final bill, leaves it up to the courts to decide if the president has that power, should a future president try to exercise it. But if a future president does try to assert the authority to detain an American citizen without charge or trial, it won’t be based on the authority in this bill….
The language in the bill that relates to the detention authority as far as US citizens and permanent residents are concerned is, “Nothing in this section shall be construed to affect existing law or authorities relating to the detention of United States citizens, lawful resident aliens of the United States, or any other persons who are captured or arrested in the United States.”
To me, this all means that I can give President Obama a pass on not vetoing the NDAA as he suggested he would.
