Actblue is requesting you to Help air this TV ad & recall Scott Walker.

Perhaps it is because the Wisconsin Democratic Party just settled on their candidate to challenge Scott Walker, but I would have expected a bigger lead for the Democrat by now.

It is also hard to imagine that Wisconsin voters need a reminder of why they signed on for a recall, but every little bit helps.

It would also help the whole country if Wisconsin would reconsider sending Paul Ryan back to the House of Representatives. I think their politicians have caused enough mischief to last a generation.

I knew I would read about this eventually.  The Boston Globe has the story Fenway voice Beane dies while driving.

Golfers from nearby Hemlock Ridge Golf Course called police at 12:39 p.m. to alert them to the crash, according to Worcester District Attorney Joseph D. Early.

When we first drove by the scene yesterday, the ambulance was just pulling away.  As I travelled back and forth by the golf course on various errands throughout the day, I noticed accident reconstruction police at the scene for hours.  When I saw the WHDH satellite news truck, I figured that it had to be something serious.  I mentioned to Sharon that it was probably a fatal accident that drew such attention.

I don’t usually pay much attention to the sports section of the newspaper, but for some reason this morning I took a look at it.  I don’t even know why I read the story with this headline.  Although maybe my subconscious picked up on the “dies while driving” part of the headline.

Truth Out has the article Austerity vs. Keynesian “Growth” vs. Economic Democracy.

Keynesianism (expansionary state economic intervention) never was capitalists’ preferred policy for capitalism’s recurring recessions and depressions. Their Plan A was government borrowing to bail out major financial and other corporations followed by “austerity policies.” Austerity repays the costs of bailouts by siphoning money away from (cutting) government jobs and services. Only when anti-capitalist movements threaten from below, as in the 1930s, do anxious capitalists abandon Plan A and shift to Plan B – eventually formalized as Keynesianism. Via government spending, Keynesian policies claim credit for jobs and income “growth” and aim to keep political control away from anti-capitalist forces. Keynesianism’s dependence on radicals’ pressure from below explains its strength in the 1930s versus its weakness today.

More such rhetoric like this is needed to scare the 1% into adopting plan B.

Capitalism has its internal contradictions as pointed out in this article.  Socialism or “Democratic Capitalism” also has internal contradictions.

Any ism that tries to boil down human nature into a simple explanation is bound to have internal contradictions.  However, if the best we can manage is to go from one extreme to another, we may have to accept that this is part of human nature, too.

I don’t know if the author of the above article, Richard D Wolff Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, meant it as I have taken it, but that does not matter.  The article is still useful no matter how he intended it.

I have been saying since it happened that the fall of Communism would let loose all restraints on Capitalism.  This would eventually lead to the rise of some system to counter the bad effects of unrestrained Capitalism.  Too bad the Capitalists cannot see the obvious and put some restraints on themselves.  Has there ever been an example in history where people saw looming disaster and took action to head it off?

The Rock Hill Herald has this Commentary: President Obama won’t be ‘swift-boated’ on Bin Laden’s death by James Werrell.

President Barack Obama is determined not to get swift-boated. He’s not going to let Republicans turn one of the crowning achievements of his first term into a negative.

That should be lesson number one for any Democratic candidate.  Lesson number two should be that you can take an opponent’s main selling point and turn it into a negative.  For instance, Mitt Romney’s “business experience” of buying up companies, draining them of all their assets, and then letting them stick it to their creditors and employees by going bankrupt, is not how we want this country’s President to operate.

Sure it would be great for some of the wealthy 1% to drain this country of all its assets – privatize all government operations by selling them off at fire sale prices to the lowest bidder, drain all the money promised to Social Security and Medicare payees, and then let the bones of our economic infrastructure bleach in the parched territory of underfunded infrastructure investment – but I don’t think this is what an aware voter really wants.