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September 20, 2013
Public Education in the Crosshairs - ALEC's Private Scholarship Tax Credits
Thursday, 19 September 2013 00:00
By Ellen Dannin, Truthout | Report
A commitment to high-quality, free public education for all children has long been the foundation of our democracy and prosperity. Although never fully honored, our commitment to an educated citizenry has created a society that is generally literate and able to participate in democratic governance. That commitment is now under multiple attacks by ALEC (the American Legislative Exchange Council), and many ALEC-created bills target public schools, teachers and teacher unions. One ALEC bill in particular, the "Resolution Supporting Private Scholarship Tax Credits," has mostly flown under the radar - but could have grave, far-reaching consequences.
An Overview of ALEC's Scholarship Tax Credit Campaign
Tuition scholarship tax credit laws, which allow a person or corporation that makes a donation to pay primary or secondary school tuition to take a tax credit - or under some laws, to take a tax deduction - and use state tax codes to subsidize private or parochial education, affect far more than money for private school tuition.
"These laws optimize the warped view of the world that many corporations through ALEC are building toward," said Nick Surgey, director of research at the Center for Media and Democracy, which launched the ALEC Exposed project in 2011. "Their rhetoric might be all about the free market, and they might dress it up by talking about helping kids from poor families, but there is no denying that the real beneficiaries from these laws are those whose intention is to take a wrecking ball to our public education system."
A handful of states have enacted versions of private scholarship tax credit laws: Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Virginia and Wisconsin. Other states are likely to join that list. In 2013, the Idaho House approved a tuition tax credit scholarship 35-33, but it failed to get out of the Senate Taxation Committee by a 7-2 vote. According to state Sen. Bob Nonini (R-Couer d'Alene), if enacted, this bill would shift approximately 2,600 children from public to private schools. It seems likely that this bill will come up for consideration again. .....................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://truth-out.org/news/item/18904-public-education-in-the-crosshairs-alecs-private-scholarship-tax-credits
Public Education in the Crosshairs - ALEC's Private Scholarship Tax Credits
Public Education in the Crosshairs - ALEC's Private Scholarship Tax Credits
Thursday, 19 September 2013 00:00
By Ellen Dannin, Truthout | Report
A commitment to high-quality, free public education for all children has long been the foundation of our democracy and prosperity. Although never fully honored, our commitment to an educated citizenry has created a society that is generally literate and able to participate in democratic governance. That commitment is now under multiple attacks by ALEC (the American Legislative Exchange Council), and many ALEC-created bills target public schools, teachers and teacher unions. One ALEC bill in particular, the "Resolution Supporting Private Scholarship Tax Credits," has mostly flown under the radar - but could have grave, far-reaching consequences.
An Overview of ALEC's Scholarship Tax Credit Campaign
Tuition scholarship tax credit laws, which allow a person or corporation that makes a donation to pay primary or secondary school tuition to take a tax credit - or under some laws, to take a tax deduction - and use state tax codes to subsidize private or parochial education, affect far more than money for private school tuition.
"These laws optimize the warped view of the world that many corporations through ALEC are building toward," said Nick Surgey, director of research at the Center for Media and Democracy, which launched the ALEC Exposed project in 2011. "Their rhetoric might be all about the free market, and they might dress it up by talking about helping kids from poor families, but there is no denying that the real beneficiaries from these laws are those whose intention is to take a wrecking ball to our public education system."
A handful of states have enacted versions of private scholarship tax credit laws: Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Virginia and Wisconsin. Other states are likely to join that list. In 2013, the Idaho House approved a tuition tax credit scholarship 35-33, but it failed to get out of the Senate Taxation Committee by a 7-2 vote. According to state Sen. Bob Nonini (R-Couer d'Alene), if enacted, this bill would shift approximately 2,600 children from public to private schools. It seems likely that this bill will come up for consideration again. .....................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://truth-out.org/news/item/18904-public-education-in-the-crosshairs-alecs-private-scholarship-tax-credits
September 20, 2013
from truthdig:
Searching for Sustainable Models of Activism, Two Years After the Occupy Movement
Posted on Sep 19, 2013
By Sonali Kolhatkar
While economists are celebrating a tenuous recovery five years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, this week’s U.S. Census Bureau report on poverty provided a sobering statistic: 15 percent of Americans are poor, a number that has remained the same since last year. It seems recovery is for the rich; the well-being of poor Americans does not enter into the equation of how we measure national wealth.
Meanwhile, Lehman executives who were responsible for triggering the Great Recession are back at work, most of them in Wall Street firms, comfortably ensconced in the income brackets of the 1 percent.
Despite public outrage over the crimes of Wall Street executives, a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation was quietly swept under the rug and not a single Lehman employee was prosecuted. Huffington Post senior financial writer Ben Hallman told me in an interview that “we’ve seen again and again throughout the financial crisis that [government] authorities have been ... extremely, overly cautious when it comes to bringing charges. ... There’s been a real risk aversion among federal prosecutors to bring up these types of cases.”
After Lehman’s collapse, it took three years for people to get mad enough about the injustices of American capitalism and lack of government accountability to take to the streets. Two days after the fifth anniversary of Lehman Brothers’ collapse on Sept. 15 was the second anniversary of the start of the Occupy Wall Street movement. .......................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/searching_for_sustainable_models_of_activism_two_years_after_the_occupy_mov/?ln
Searching for Sustainable Models of Activism, Two Years After the Occupy Movement
from truthdig:
Searching for Sustainable Models of Activism, Two Years After the Occupy Movement
Posted on Sep 19, 2013
By Sonali Kolhatkar
Editor’s note: Truthdig is pleased to announce a new weekly column by Sonali Kolhatkar, host of KPFK’s “Uprising.” Be sure to stay posted as this talented interviewer digs deeper into the important stories of the week.
While economists are celebrating a tenuous recovery five years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, this week’s U.S. Census Bureau report on poverty provided a sobering statistic: 15 percent of Americans are poor, a number that has remained the same since last year. It seems recovery is for the rich; the well-being of poor Americans does not enter into the equation of how we measure national wealth.
Meanwhile, Lehman executives who were responsible for triggering the Great Recession are back at work, most of them in Wall Street firms, comfortably ensconced in the income brackets of the 1 percent.
Despite public outrage over the crimes of Wall Street executives, a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation was quietly swept under the rug and not a single Lehman employee was prosecuted. Huffington Post senior financial writer Ben Hallman told me in an interview that “we’ve seen again and again throughout the financial crisis that [government] authorities have been ... extremely, overly cautious when it comes to bringing charges. ... There’s been a real risk aversion among federal prosecutors to bring up these types of cases.”
After Lehman’s collapse, it took three years for people to get mad enough about the injustices of American capitalism and lack of government accountability to take to the streets. Two days after the fifth anniversary of Lehman Brothers’ collapse on Sept. 15 was the second anniversary of the start of the Occupy Wall Street movement. .......................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/searching_for_sustainable_models_of_activism_two_years_after_the_occupy_mov/?ln
September 20, 2013
from truthdig:
Learning From a Thousand-Year Flood
Posted on Sep 19, 2013
By David Sirota
Two months before my Colorado community was overwhelmed this week by epic rains, our state’s chief oil and gas regulator, Matt Lepore, berated citizens concerned about the ecological impact of hydraulic fracturing and unbridled drilling. During his speech, Lepore insinuated that those advocating a first-do-no-harm posture toward fossil fuel development are mostly affluent and are therefore unconcerned with the economic impact of their environmental advocacy. Coming from an industry lawyer-turned-regulator, it was a deceptive attempt to pretend environmental stewardship is merely a rich person’s luxury.
After this week’s flood, of course, “thousands of oil and gas wells and associated condensate tanks and ponds” are underwater in Colorado, according to the Boulder Daily Camera. Already, there is at least one confirmed oil pipeline leak. At the same time, the Denver Post reports that “oil drums, tanks and other industrial debris mixed into the swollen (South Platte) river.”
In short, there’s a serious possibility of an environmental disaster that should concern both rich and poor.
In retrospect, the deluge illustrates the problem with officials pretending that environmental stewardship and the precautionary principle are just aristocratic priorities. They are quite the opposite—they are priorities for everyone. .....................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/learning_from_a_thousand-year_flood_20130919/
David Sirota: Learning From a Thousand-Year Flood
from truthdig:
Learning From a Thousand-Year Flood
Posted on Sep 19, 2013
By David Sirota
Two months before my Colorado community was overwhelmed this week by epic rains, our state’s chief oil and gas regulator, Matt Lepore, berated citizens concerned about the ecological impact of hydraulic fracturing and unbridled drilling. During his speech, Lepore insinuated that those advocating a first-do-no-harm posture toward fossil fuel development are mostly affluent and are therefore unconcerned with the economic impact of their environmental advocacy. Coming from an industry lawyer-turned-regulator, it was a deceptive attempt to pretend environmental stewardship is merely a rich person’s luxury.
After this week’s flood, of course, “thousands of oil and gas wells and associated condensate tanks and ponds” are underwater in Colorado, according to the Boulder Daily Camera. Already, there is at least one confirmed oil pipeline leak. At the same time, the Denver Post reports that “oil drums, tanks and other industrial debris mixed into the swollen (South Platte) river.”
In short, there’s a serious possibility of an environmental disaster that should concern both rich and poor.
In retrospect, the deluge illustrates the problem with officials pretending that environmental stewardship and the precautionary principle are just aristocratic priorities. They are quite the opposite—they are priorities for everyone. .....................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/learning_from_a_thousand-year_flood_20130919/
September 20, 2013
from Dissent magazine:
Cli-Fi: Birth of a Genre
By Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow - Summer 2013
Makepeace Hatfield, the heroine of Marcel Theroux’s 2009 novel Far North, is one of the last survivors of a Siberian settlement. Her father was an early settler: an American Quaker who fled a decadent world for a frontiersman’s life. In the Siberian summer, he discovered fertile terrain, purple and brown, and water that “heaved with salmon,” as Makepeace recalls. “Nothing I’ve known in the Far North resembles the land of ice that people expected him to find here.”
We are in the future, or, at any rate, a future. The settlement has collapsed under the pressure of an influx of starving refugees. Makepeace—a stoic, androgynous woman—forges her own bullets and hunts wild pigs. When she witnesses the crash of a small plane, she sets out on her horse to find the rump of civilization that must have produced it. She is welcomed into a small religious community, then imprisoned at a work camp, and eventually makes her way to a dead metropolis.
Far North, hailed by the Washington Post as the “first great cautionary fable of climate change,” is one of the strongest of a recent crop of similar books, most of which are also post-apocalyptic or dystopian. But the novel is no straightforward eco-parable. Indeed, at one point, Theroux seems to have a little fun with green pieties. In the book, knowledge about the origins of the crisis is fuzzy, but Makepeace’s learned confidant offers an explanation:
The novel also underscores the ironies of considering global warming an “environmentalist” cause. Today, conservationists rue human ubiquity and the loss of wilderness. Theroux reminds us that what’s finally at stake in our experiment with the climate is human achievement. In Makepeace’s time, wilderness is reclaiming cities; it’s the accumulated knowledge of millennia that verges on extinction. Aviation, for instance: “[T]o turn words and numbers into metal and make them fly—what bigger miracle can there be?” Makepeace marvels. “It’s a kind of heresy to say so, but I think our race has made forms more beautiful than what was here before us.” ..................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/cli-fi-birth-of-a-genre
Cli-Fi: Birth of a Genre
from Dissent magazine:
Cli-Fi: Birth of a Genre
By Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow - Summer 2013
Books discussed in this essay:
Far North
by Marcel Theroux
Picador, 2010, 320 pp.
I’m With the Bears: Short Stories from a Damaged Planet
edited by Mark Martin
Verso, 2011, 208 pp.
Back to the Garden
by Clara Hume
Moon Willow Press, 2012, 271 pp.
The Healer: A Novel
by Antti Tuomainen, Henry Holt and Co., 2013, 224 pp.
Odds Against Tomorrow: A Novel
by Nathaniel Rich, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013, 320 pp.
Solar
by Ian McEwan,
Nan A. Talese, 2010, 304 pp.
Wild Ones:
A Sometimes Dismaying, Weirdly Reassuring Story About Looking at People Looking at Animals in America
by Jon Mooallem
Penguin Press HC, 2013, 368 pp.
Makepeace Hatfield, the heroine of Marcel Theroux’s 2009 novel Far North, is one of the last survivors of a Siberian settlement. Her father was an early settler: an American Quaker who fled a decadent world for a frontiersman’s life. In the Siberian summer, he discovered fertile terrain, purple and brown, and water that “heaved with salmon,” as Makepeace recalls. “Nothing I’ve known in the Far North resembles the land of ice that people expected him to find here.”
We are in the future, or, at any rate, a future. The settlement has collapsed under the pressure of an influx of starving refugees. Makepeace—a stoic, androgynous woman—forges her own bullets and hunts wild pigs. When she witnesses the crash of a small plane, she sets out on her horse to find the rump of civilization that must have produced it. She is welcomed into a small religious community, then imprisoned at a work camp, and eventually makes her way to a dead metropolis.
Far North, hailed by the Washington Post as the “first great cautionary fable of climate change,” is one of the strongest of a recent crop of similar books, most of which are also post-apocalyptic or dystopian. But the novel is no straightforward eco-parable. Indeed, at one point, Theroux seems to have a little fun with green pieties. In the book, knowledge about the origins of the crisis is fuzzy, but Makepeace’s learned confidant offers an explanation:
Shamsudin said the planet had heated up. They turned off smokestacks and stopped flying….Factories were shut down….As it turned out, the smoke from all the furnaces had been working like a sunshade, keeping the world a few degrees cooler than it would have been otherwise. He said that in trying to do the right thing, we had sawed off the branch we were sitting on.
The novel also underscores the ironies of considering global warming an “environmentalist” cause. Today, conservationists rue human ubiquity and the loss of wilderness. Theroux reminds us that what’s finally at stake in our experiment with the climate is human achievement. In Makepeace’s time, wilderness is reclaiming cities; it’s the accumulated knowledge of millennia that verges on extinction. Aviation, for instance: “[T]o turn words and numbers into metal and make them fly—what bigger miracle can there be?” Makepeace marvels. “It’s a kind of heresy to say so, but I think our race has made forms more beautiful than what was here before us.” ..................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/cli-fi-birth-of-a-genre
September 19, 2013
from TomDispatch:
Letter to an Unknown Whistleblower
How the Security State’s Mania for Secrecy Will Create You
By Tom Engelhardt
Dear Whistleblower,
I don’t know who you are or what you do or how old you may be. I just know that you exist somewhere in our future as surely as does tomorrow or next year. You may be young and computer-savvy or a career federal employee well along in years. You might be someone who entered government service filled with idealism or who signed on to “the bureaucracy” just to make a living. You may be a libertarian, a closet left-winger, or as mainstream and down-the-center as it’s possible to be.
I don’t know much, but I know one thing that you may not yet know yourself. I know that you’re there. I know that, just as Edward Snowden and Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning did, you will, for reasons of your own, feel compelled to take radical action, to put yourself in danger. When the time comes, you will know that this is what you must do, that this is why you find yourself where you are, and then you’re going to tell us plenty that has been kept from us about how our government really operates. You are going to shock us to the core.
And how exactly do I know this? Because despite our striking inability to predict the future, it’s a no-brainer that the national security state is already building you into its labyrinthine systems. In the urge of its officials to control all of us and every situation, in their mania for all-encompassing secrecy, in their classification not just of the millions of documents they generate, but essentially all their operations as “secret” or “top secret,” in their all-encompassing urge to shut off the most essential workings of the government from the eyes of its citizenry, in their escalating urge to punish anyone who would bring their secret activities to light, in their urge to see or read or listen in on or peer into the lives of you (every “you” on the planet), in their urge to build a global surveillance state and a military that will dominate everything in or out of its path, in their urge to drop bombs on Pakistan and fire missiles at Syria, in their urge to be able to assassinate just about anyone just about anywhere robotically, they are birthing you.
In every action, a reaction. So they say, no? .........................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175748/tomgram%3A_engelhardt%2C_how_to_build_a_national_security_blowback_machine/#more
Letter to an Unknown Whistleblower: How the Security State’s Mania for Secrecy Will Create You
from TomDispatch:
Letter to an Unknown Whistleblower
How the Security State’s Mania for Secrecy Will Create You
By Tom Engelhardt
Dear Whistleblower,
I don’t know who you are or what you do or how old you may be. I just know that you exist somewhere in our future as surely as does tomorrow or next year. You may be young and computer-savvy or a career federal employee well along in years. You might be someone who entered government service filled with idealism or who signed on to “the bureaucracy” just to make a living. You may be a libertarian, a closet left-winger, or as mainstream and down-the-center as it’s possible to be.
I don’t know much, but I know one thing that you may not yet know yourself. I know that you’re there. I know that, just as Edward Snowden and Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning did, you will, for reasons of your own, feel compelled to take radical action, to put yourself in danger. When the time comes, you will know that this is what you must do, that this is why you find yourself where you are, and then you’re going to tell us plenty that has been kept from us about how our government really operates. You are going to shock us to the core.
And how exactly do I know this? Because despite our striking inability to predict the future, it’s a no-brainer that the national security state is already building you into its labyrinthine systems. In the urge of its officials to control all of us and every situation, in their mania for all-encompassing secrecy, in their classification not just of the millions of documents they generate, but essentially all their operations as “secret” or “top secret,” in their all-encompassing urge to shut off the most essential workings of the government from the eyes of its citizenry, in their escalating urge to punish anyone who would bring their secret activities to light, in their urge to see or read or listen in on or peer into the lives of you (every “you” on the planet), in their urge to build a global surveillance state and a military that will dominate everything in or out of its path, in their urge to drop bombs on Pakistan and fire missiles at Syria, in their urge to be able to assassinate just about anyone just about anywhere robotically, they are birthing you.
In every action, a reaction. So they say, no? .........................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175748/tomgram%3A_engelhardt%2C_how_to_build_a_national_security_blowback_machine/#more
September 19, 2013
The Armageddon Looting Machine: The Looming Mass Destruction From Derivatives
Wednesday, 18 September 2013 09:28
By Ellen Brown, Web of Debt Blog | News Analysis
Five years after the financial collapse precipitated by the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy on September 15, 2008, the risk of another full-blown financial panic is still looming large, despite the Dodd Frank legislation designed to contain it. As noted in a recent Reuters article, the risk has just moved into the shadows:
Increased regulation and low interest rates have made lending to homeowners and small businesses less attractive than before 2008. The easy subprime scams of yesteryear are no more. The void is being filled by the shadow banking system. Shadow banking comes in many forms, but the big money today is in repos and derivatives. The notional (or hypothetical) value of the derivatives market has been estimated to be as high as $1.2 quadrillion, or twenty times the GDP of all the countries of the world combined.
According to Hervé Hannoun, Deputy General Manager of the Bank for International Settlements, investment banks as well as commercial banks may conduct much of their business in the shadow banking system (SBS), although most are not generally classed as SBS institutions themselves. At least one financial regulatory expert has said that regulated banking organizations are the largest shadow banks.
The Hidden Government Guarantee that Props Up the Shadow Banking System
According to Dutch economist Enrico Perotti, banks are able to fund their loans much more cheaply than any other industry because they offer “liquidity on demand.” The promise that the depositor can get his money out at any time is made credible by government-backed deposit insurance and access to central bank funding. But what guarantee underwrites the shadow banks? Why would financial institutions feel confident lending cheaply in the shadow market, when it is not protected by deposit insurance or government bailouts? ........................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://truth-out.org/news/item/18907-the-armageddon-looting-machine-the-looming-mass-destruction-from-derivatives
The Armageddon Looting Machine: The Looming Mass Destruction From Derivatives
The Armageddon Looting Machine: The Looming Mass Destruction From Derivatives
Wednesday, 18 September 2013 09:28
By Ellen Brown, Web of Debt Blog | News Analysis
Five years after the financial collapse precipitated by the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy on September 15, 2008, the risk of another full-blown financial panic is still looming large, despite the Dodd Frank legislation designed to contain it. As noted in a recent Reuters article, the risk has just moved into the shadows:
Banks are pulling back their balance sheets from the fringes of the credit markets, with more and more risk being driven to unregulated lenders that comprise the $60 trillion “shadow-banking” sector.
Increased regulation and low interest rates have made lending to homeowners and small businesses less attractive than before 2008. The easy subprime scams of yesteryear are no more. The void is being filled by the shadow banking system. Shadow banking comes in many forms, but the big money today is in repos and derivatives. The notional (or hypothetical) value of the derivatives market has been estimated to be as high as $1.2 quadrillion, or twenty times the GDP of all the countries of the world combined.
According to Hervé Hannoun, Deputy General Manager of the Bank for International Settlements, investment banks as well as commercial banks may conduct much of their business in the shadow banking system (SBS), although most are not generally classed as SBS institutions themselves. At least one financial regulatory expert has said that regulated banking organizations are the largest shadow banks.
The Hidden Government Guarantee that Props Up the Shadow Banking System
According to Dutch economist Enrico Perotti, banks are able to fund their loans much more cheaply than any other industry because they offer “liquidity on demand.” The promise that the depositor can get his money out at any time is made credible by government-backed deposit insurance and access to central bank funding. But what guarantee underwrites the shadow banks? Why would financial institutions feel confident lending cheaply in the shadow market, when it is not protected by deposit insurance or government bailouts? ........................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://truth-out.org/news/item/18907-the-armageddon-looting-machine-the-looming-mass-destruction-from-derivatives
September 19, 2013
The Emerging Left in the “Emerging” World: Seven Common Threads
Jayati Ghosh
What I call “the emerging Left” shares seven common threads that appear in otherwise very distinct political formations and in very different socioeconomic contexts. These are not always “new ideas”—in fact they are more often than not old ideas that appear new because of the changing context and the collective failure of memory, even within the left itself. Still, these seven threads—new attitudes toward democracy, scale and centralization, private property, the discourse of rights, class and other identities, women and gender, and the environment—all represent breaks from 20th century socialist orthodoxy.
On Democracy
In contrast to some earlier socialist approaches, in which the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat was misinterpreted (often willfully) to suppress procedural democracy, there is much greater willingness of the emerging left to engage with and even rely upon formal democratic processes associated with “bourgeois democracy”: elections; referenda; legal rights, judicial proceedings, etc. Even as left movements and parties recognize the limitations of electoral democracy—especially the effective takeover of democratic institutions by money power and corporate media—they have come to rely more and more on formal democratic institutions. The radical governments in Latin America (Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, etc.) derive their legitimacy from the ballot box. In other countries, the emerging left is the greatest champion of democratic and pluralist institutions—as well as the most concerned about their corruption and manipulation by entrenched interests and corporate power.
This stands in sharp contrast from many 20th century socialist movements, which viewed all institutions of the bourgeois state as inherently tainted, incapable of reform, and impossible to use to bring about positive change. As a result, they often rejected formal democracy and pluralism even after attaining government power themselves.
.......(snip).......
So emerging left movements and the governments they lead do not insist on centralized ownership and control over all economic activities. They recognize small-scale producers as worthy of both direct state support and more general “enabling conditions” necessary for their continued existence and vitality. Where there are significant economies of scale, left movements are exploring organizational forms, like cooperatives, that avoid the rigidity and authoritarianism of past models. The aim is to find a proper balance between large and small, which will obviously vary depending on context. ...................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://triplecrisis.com/the-emerging-left-in-the-emerging-world-seven-common-threads/#sthash.d6Z4RlIa.dpuf
The Emerging Left in the “Emerging” World: Seven Common Threads
The Emerging Left in the “Emerging” World: Seven Common Threads
Jayati Ghosh
Editors’ note: This is the second part (of four) of “The Emerging Left in the ‘Emerging’ World,” by Triple Crisis founding contributor Jayati Ghosh, originally delivered in 2012 as part of the Ralph Miliband Lecture Series at the London School of Economics. We posted the introduction last week (here). In this second part of the lecture, Ghosh presents the first two of “seven common threads” shared by the emerging left: democracy and scale.
What I call “the emerging Left” shares seven common threads that appear in otherwise very distinct political formations and in very different socioeconomic contexts. These are not always “new ideas”—in fact they are more often than not old ideas that appear new because of the changing context and the collective failure of memory, even within the left itself. Still, these seven threads—new attitudes toward democracy, scale and centralization, private property, the discourse of rights, class and other identities, women and gender, and the environment—all represent breaks from 20th century socialist orthodoxy.
On Democracy
In contrast to some earlier socialist approaches, in which the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat was misinterpreted (often willfully) to suppress procedural democracy, there is much greater willingness of the emerging left to engage with and even rely upon formal democratic processes associated with “bourgeois democracy”: elections; referenda; legal rights, judicial proceedings, etc. Even as left movements and parties recognize the limitations of electoral democracy—especially the effective takeover of democratic institutions by money power and corporate media—they have come to rely more and more on formal democratic institutions. The radical governments in Latin America (Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, etc.) derive their legitimacy from the ballot box. In other countries, the emerging left is the greatest champion of democratic and pluralist institutions—as well as the most concerned about their corruption and manipulation by entrenched interests and corporate power.
This stands in sharp contrast from many 20th century socialist movements, which viewed all institutions of the bourgeois state as inherently tainted, incapable of reform, and impossible to use to bring about positive change. As a result, they often rejected formal democracy and pluralism even after attaining government power themselves.
.......(snip).......
So emerging left movements and the governments they lead do not insist on centralized ownership and control over all economic activities. They recognize small-scale producers as worthy of both direct state support and more general “enabling conditions” necessary for their continued existence and vitality. Where there are significant economies of scale, left movements are exploring organizational forms, like cooperatives, that avoid the rigidity and authoritarianism of past models. The aim is to find a proper balance between large and small, which will obviously vary depending on context. ...................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://triplecrisis.com/the-emerging-left-in-the-emerging-world-seven-common-threads/#sthash.d6Z4RlIa.dpuf
September 19, 2013
By every available indication, Corinthian Colleges Inc., one of the country's largest chains of for-profit colleges, stands out as an institution whose students face especially long odds of success.
At nearly half of Corinthian's schools, more than 30 percent of students default on their federal loans within three years of leaving campus, according to the most recent federal data. California last year cited excessively high default rates in denying access to state tuition grants at 23 of the company's campuses. Over the last three years, attorneys general in eight states and the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau have probed Corinthian's recruitment claims and financial aid practices, raising the prospect of lawsuits.
Yet by the reckoning of the accrediting bodies that are supposed to scrutinize Corinthian's 97 U.S. campuses, its schools are meeting standards on student debt and adequately preparing graduates for jobs. Over the past decade, Corinthian's schools have remained fully accredited, enabling the publicly traded company to tap federal student aid coffers for nearly $10 billion, or more than 80 percent of its total revenues, according to a Huffington Post review of securities filings and disciplinary records maintained by its accreditors.
Corinthian's success in maintaining accreditation even as its students sink into default typifies the state of play in the for-profit college industry and underscores both the incentives and the provenance of the people doing the accrediting work: Accrediting agencies receive their funding from fees paid by the very colleges they monitor. The review teams they dispatch to visit and rate schools are composed of volunteers from other schools accredited by the same agencies. ...................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/19/for-profit-college-accreditation_n_3937079.html
How For-Profit Colleges Stay In Business Despite Terrible Track Record
By every available indication, Corinthian Colleges Inc., one of the country's largest chains of for-profit colleges, stands out as an institution whose students face especially long odds of success.
At nearly half of Corinthian's schools, more than 30 percent of students default on their federal loans within three years of leaving campus, according to the most recent federal data. California last year cited excessively high default rates in denying access to state tuition grants at 23 of the company's campuses. Over the last three years, attorneys general in eight states and the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau have probed Corinthian's recruitment claims and financial aid practices, raising the prospect of lawsuits.
Yet by the reckoning of the accrediting bodies that are supposed to scrutinize Corinthian's 97 U.S. campuses, its schools are meeting standards on student debt and adequately preparing graduates for jobs. Over the past decade, Corinthian's schools have remained fully accredited, enabling the publicly traded company to tap federal student aid coffers for nearly $10 billion, or more than 80 percent of its total revenues, according to a Huffington Post review of securities filings and disciplinary records maintained by its accreditors.
Corinthian's success in maintaining accreditation even as its students sink into default typifies the state of play in the for-profit college industry and underscores both the incentives and the provenance of the people doing the accrediting work: Accrediting agencies receive their funding from fees paid by the very colleges they monitor. The review teams they dispatch to visit and rate schools are composed of volunteers from other schools accredited by the same agencies. ...................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/19/for-profit-college-accreditation_n_3937079.html
September 19, 2013
The Armageddon Looting Machine: The Looming Mass Destruction From Derivatives
Wednesday, 18 September 2013 09:28
By Ellen Brown, Web of Debt Blog | News Analysis
Five years after the financial collapse precipitated by the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy on September 15, 2008, the risk of another full-blown financial panic is still looming large, despite the Dodd Frank legislation designed to contain it. As noted in a recent Reuters article, the risk has just moved into the shadows:
Increased regulation and low interest rates have made lending to homeowners and small businesses less attractive than before 2008. The easy subprime scams of yesteryear are no more. The void is being filled by the shadow banking system. Shadow banking comes in many forms, but the big money today is in repos and derivatives. The notional (or hypothetical) value of the derivatives market has been estimated to be as high as $1.2 quadrillion, or twenty times the GDP of all the countries of the world combined.
According to Hervé Hannoun, Deputy General Manager of the Bank for International Settlements, investment banks as well as commercial banks may conduct much of their business in the shadow banking system (SBS), although most are not generally classed as SBS institutions themselves. At least one financial regulatory expert has said that regulated banking organizations are the largest shadow banks.
The Hidden Government Guarantee that Props Up the Shadow Banking System
According to Dutch economist Enrico Perotti, banks are able to fund their loans much more cheaply than any other industry because they offer “liquidity on demand.” The promise that the depositor can get his money out at any time is made credible by government-backed deposit insurance and access to central bank funding. But what guarantee underwrites the shadow banks? Why would financial institutions feel confident lending cheaply in the shadow market, when it is not protected by deposit insurance or government bailouts? ........................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://truth-out.org/news/item/18907-the-armageddon-looting-machine-the-looming-mass-destruction-from-derivatives
The Armageddon Looting Machine: The Looming Mass Destruction From Derivatives
The Armageddon Looting Machine: The Looming Mass Destruction From Derivatives
Wednesday, 18 September 2013 09:28
By Ellen Brown, Web of Debt Blog | News Analysis
Five years after the financial collapse precipitated by the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy on September 15, 2008, the risk of another full-blown financial panic is still looming large, despite the Dodd Frank legislation designed to contain it. As noted in a recent Reuters article, the risk has just moved into the shadows:
Banks are pulling back their balance sheets from the fringes of the credit markets, with more and more risk being driven to unregulated lenders that comprise the $60 trillion “shadow-banking” sector.
Increased regulation and low interest rates have made lending to homeowners and small businesses less attractive than before 2008. The easy subprime scams of yesteryear are no more. The void is being filled by the shadow banking system. Shadow banking comes in many forms, but the big money today is in repos and derivatives. The notional (or hypothetical) value of the derivatives market has been estimated to be as high as $1.2 quadrillion, or twenty times the GDP of all the countries of the world combined.
According to Hervé Hannoun, Deputy General Manager of the Bank for International Settlements, investment banks as well as commercial banks may conduct much of their business in the shadow banking system (SBS), although most are not generally classed as SBS institutions themselves. At least one financial regulatory expert has said that regulated banking organizations are the largest shadow banks.
The Hidden Government Guarantee that Props Up the Shadow Banking System
According to Dutch economist Enrico Perotti, banks are able to fund their loans much more cheaply than any other industry because they offer “liquidity on demand.” The promise that the depositor can get his money out at any time is made credible by government-backed deposit insurance and access to central bank funding. But what guarantee underwrites the shadow banks? Why would financial institutions feel confident lending cheaply in the shadow market, when it is not protected by deposit insurance or government bailouts? ........................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://truth-out.org/news/item/18907-the-armageddon-looting-machine-the-looming-mass-destruction-from-derivatives
September 19, 2013
Former Vice President Dick Cheney will be in his home state of Wyoming this weekend to take part in an annual hunting competition. Gov. Matt Mead (R) will be his partner, as they look to bag themselves some bucks in the One Shot Antelope Hunt, held in Lander.
The event will kick off on Saturday morning, when eight teams of three come together on the first day of the antelope season and try to rack up the most single-shot antelope kills.
Word to the wise to Mead and his other partner, be careful hunting with Cheney. While the former Wyoming senator has been known to be something of an outdoorsman, it's impossible to forget that Cheney once shot a man in the face while hunting quail. ...........(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/18/dick-cheney-hunting_n_3951006.html?ncid=txtlnkushpmg00000037
Dick Cheney Set To Go Hunting With Wyoming Governor, This Time For Antelope, allegedly
Former Vice President Dick Cheney will be in his home state of Wyoming this weekend to take part in an annual hunting competition. Gov. Matt Mead (R) will be his partner, as they look to bag themselves some bucks in the One Shot Antelope Hunt, held in Lander.
The event will kick off on Saturday morning, when eight teams of three come together on the first day of the antelope season and try to rack up the most single-shot antelope kills.
Word to the wise to Mead and his other partner, be careful hunting with Cheney. While the former Wyoming senator has been known to be something of an outdoorsman, it's impossible to forget that Cheney once shot a man in the face while hunting quail. ...........(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/18/dick-cheney-hunting_n_3951006.html?ncid=txtlnkushpmg00000037
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