(Note: George Zornick’s post was originally published by The Nation and is republished with permission.)
We’ve seen this movie before: Republicans force a showdown in Congress over funding the government, the debt ceiling or, in the present case, both. Then a “grand bargain” is proposed to solve the impasse—one that includes serious reductions to social insurance programs.
That’s just how the GOP would like the current drama to play out. Wednesday, National Review’s Robert Costa reported that House Speaker John Boehner and Representative Paul Ryan are rallying nervous Republicans by telling them that while Obamacare may not end up getting defunded, GOP leadership is cooking up another big budget deal that includes cuts to the safety net so cherished by many conservative members. “It’s the return of the grand bargain,” one member told Costa. “Ryan is selling this to everybody;
» Read more about: The Shutdown: Will Safety Net Programs Be Shredded? »
At a small gathering in Los Angeles last week, Miles Rapoport, president of the 13-year-old progressive think tank Demos, declared that although the U.S. economy is struggling at best, the gap between rich and poor is ever-widening and a host of other seemingly intractable problems are worsening, we’ve arrived at a key historical moment: Everything we need to address these crises is at hand.
Demos is a Manhattan-based nonpartisan research and advocacy organization dedicated to “a democracy where everyone has an equal say and an economy where everyone has an equal chance.” Demos has done pioneering work on such issues as reducing the role of money in politics, expanding voter access, ending predatory credit card practices and raising wages.
Demos is also an institutional platform for leading and emerging writers and thinkers. Its Fellows Program includes Bob Kuttner, Bob Herbert, Nomi Prins, Richard Benjamin and David Callahan. Its reports are often cited in the media,
Jam-Up on the Cat-Oh-Five
We live in LA, city of traffic jams on the 405 and other freeways.
One recent morning we had three cats bunched up on the patio outside our cat door.
Elise’s traffic report: “It’s a jam-up on the cat-oh-five!”
Rearview Mirror Tableau on Highway 5 South
She’s passenger. He’s driving.
Her face is angry and she speaks quickly.
She leans away from him. He leans toward her.
Rough Beauty
Hills driving north from L.A. on the 5 freeway display a rough beauty:
Mustard yellow, splotched with tufts of scraggly live oaks;
Hunched against drifty white clouds; skinned shoulders rust veined.
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Jeff Rogers has posted hundreds of poems in the “Three Line Lunch” series at www.fierceandnerdy.com,
Not long ago I was walking toward an airport departure gate when a man approached me.
“Are you Robert Reich?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“You’re a Commie dirtbag.” (He actually used a variant of that noun, one that can’t be printed here.)
“I’m sorry?” I thought I had misunderstood him.
“You’re a Commie dirtbag.”
My mind raced through several possibilities. Was I in danger? That seemed doubtful. He was well-dressed and had a briefcase in one hand. He couldn’t have gotten through the checkpoint with a knife or gun. Should I just walk away? Probably. But what if he followed me? Regardless, why should I let him get away with insulting me?
I decided to respond, as civilly as I could: “You’re wrong. Where did you get your information?”
“Fox News. Bill O’Reilly says you’re a Communist.”
A year or so ago Bill O’Reilly did say on his Fox News show that I was a Communist.
» Read more about: I Was a Communist in Bill O’Reilly’s Dreams »
For the third time in less than 20 years, congressional Republicans are bringing the nation’s government to a halt in an attempt to reverse the outcome of national elections. The first instance was Republicans’ shutdown of the government in 1995-96 (which, actually, was two shutdowns in rapid succession). The second was their impeachment of President Bill Clinton in 1998. Today, we’re slogging through the third — yet another shutdown.
Each instance had its proximate causes. In 1995, the GOP-controlled Congress, led by House Speaker Newt Gingrich, refused to fund the government after Clinton rejected its spending cuts to Medicare benefits and Republicans failed to muster the votes to override his vetoes. In 1998, the House, led by then-Majority Whip Tom DeLay, impeached Clinton for having sex with an intern but denying it to a special prosecutor (whose charge, uncovering Clinton’s alleged business scandals,
» Read more about: GOP Pulls Plug on Government — And the Party’s Future »
“Sometimes it seems that eliminating public education itself is the goal of this reform era,” Diane Ravitch told a cheering crowd of public school teachers and education activists who had packed Occidental College’s Thorne Hall Tuesday night.
The audience had come to hear the 75-year-old scholar, author and former Assistant Secretary of Education drive home her message that, contrary to the dire narrative now being sold to Americans by proponents of school privatization, the nation’s public education system is not broken.
Ravitch, who might have been mistaken for the latest college-radio rock sensation rather than the country’s preeminent critic of the education-reform movement, was here as part of a Los Angeles leg of a whirlwind tour to promote the publication of her latest book — and New York Times Best Seller— Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools (Knopf).
» Read more about: Diane Ravitch: Privatized Education Reform Is a Hoax »
All the usual suspects are giving us all the usual warnings about the disaster that would ensue if the government defaults on its debt. Much of what they say is undoubtedly true; it would create a huge amount of fear and uncertainty in financial markets.
Look for stock and bond prices to tumble and interest rates to soar. The viability of many banks and other financial institutions may be called into question if even government debt cannot be viewed as entirely safe and highly liquid asset. This is not the sort of thing that an economy still struggling to recover from the recession needs right now.
But there is one part of the horror story that should be discarded. We have been repeatedly warned that the dollar could lose its status as the world’s reserve currency in the event of default. While this is a dubious claim (will countries rush to the euro?),
The U.S. Census Bureau released figures [September 17] revealing 46.5 million people were living at or below the poverty line — a near-record in the last two decades.
Two days later, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 217-210 to cut food stamps, thinning the rolls by four million people next year and millions more after that. It was a dramatic juxtaposition, made all the more striking because of the heated rhetoric. No Democrat supported the cuts.
Why cut this program now?
Equal Voice News took a look at the arguments, dug up key food stamp facts and found plenty to chew on:
1. Supporters of the cuts say the program, which has been around since the Great Depression, has grown out of control.
True, the program has grown exponentially, from serving 28 million people in 2008 to 47 million last year.
» Read more about: Why Food Stamps Are a Safety Net, Not a “Hammock” »
Currently a Research Professor of Education at New York University, Diane Ravitch served as the Assistant Secretary of Education in the George H.W. Bush administration and later worked for Bill Clinton’s White House. A tireless critic of the public school testing standards she once endorsed, the 75-year-old Ravitch remains a clear voice against the stampede into publicly funded charter schools and other right-leaning education “reforms,” including No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top.
Her newest book is Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools. Tonight and tomorrow night she will speak at two Southland colleges as part of her book tour.
Tuesday, October 1, 7 p.m.
Thorne Hall. Occidental College
1600 Campus Road, Los Angeles
(323) 259-2991
Free.
Wednesday, October 2, 7 p.m.
Student Union,California State University
18111 Nordhoff St.,
» Read more about: Diane Ravitch Speaks at Two Southland Colleges »