June 20, 2016

Professor Richard Wolff: "Capitalism, with its inherent injustices, is speeding into a stone wall."

Richard Wolff on the Changing Tides of Capitalism and Socialism

Tuesday, 07 June 2016 00:00
By Creston Davis, Truthout | Interview


Nearly 30 years ago, many capitalists were celebrating what political scientist Francis Fukuyama called the "ultimate victory of the VCR": where consumerism sank communism. However, they failed to calculate the effects of this consumerism on the environment. They also failed to predict how the public would start to tire of a situation in which a very small percentage of capitalists are reaping all the benefits while the rest of us are sinking deeper and deeper into debt, poverty and powerlessness.

Public dissatisfaction with the status quo began to spread in new directions in 2008, feeding into the global Occupy movement in 2011, and mass support for Bernie Sanders today. People are enraged; we feel doped, scammed, cheated.

An increasing proportion of the population is becoming receptive to the messages of the professors, activists, clergy, artists and other community organizers who have long been dismissed as "too radical," while the capitalist machine roars on and on. Dr. Richard D. Wolff has long been warning the US public that the capitalist machine is one of the biggest scams in history, and now it's finally becoming clear to the general public.

.....(snip).....

You'll be teaching a seminar, "Capitalism and Socialism in the 20th Century," that focuses on your work in July at The Commons in Brooklyn, New York. What are your objectives in teaching this course?

The 20th century was one comprised of a cataclysmic struggle between two opposing ideologies: capitalism and socialism.... Toward the end of the century, around 1989-1990, one of these two ideologies, socialism collapses. The Soviet Union implodes, Eastern Europe follows in its wake, and in China some basic changes begin to manifest in terms of direction and orientation. China's shifts were made so that it could become popular and competitive in the new world order, which is globalized, unabated capitalism. Capitalism won, end of story.

.....(snip).....

Questions such as "What did we do wrong?" "What can we do differently?" "What was valuable in what socialism achieved despite its collapse?" "What was repugnant or didn't work in socialism?" And these sets of questions have produced, in the period between 1990 and 2016, a horizon of self-criticisms coupled with new directions for socialism in the 21st century.

.....(snip).....

Podemos is having gains and the traditional socialist parties no longer have the traction they once had. In France and in Germany, the democratic socialist parties are all falling apart. So you see classic socialism fading rapidly, and the same is true of capitalism. Capitalism, with its inherent injustices, is speeding into a stone wall, and everyone's staring at the wall but doesn't know what to do, like the proverbial deer caught in the headlights. ............(more)

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/36319-richard-wolff-on-the-changing-tides-of-capitalism-and-socialism

June 18, 2016

Toronto: A Ride on TTC's Spadina Subway Extension

From Downsview Park Station to Vaughan Metropolitan Station - track installation is now complete on the Toronto-York Spadina Subway Extension.

http://www.masstransitmag.com/video/12221975/a-ride-on-ttcs-spadina-subway-extension

June 18, 2016

Neoliberalism Will Soon Force Americans to Leave the United States

Neoliberal economic policy will eventually pressure U.S. citizens to emigrate just as it caused millions to leave Russia, the Baltic States and now Greece in search of a better life, economist Michael Hudson tells The Real News Network’s Sharmini Peries.

—Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.


http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/neoliberalism_will_soon_force_americans_to_leave_the_united_states_20160618

June 17, 2016

Facelift in the works for Toronto's busiest transit corridor

(CBC News) One of Toronto's most iconic streets is up for a remake, with the city launching a study Thursday about what King Street — Toronto's busiest surface transit route — should look like in the months and years ahead.

The study will look at King Street from the perspective of pedestrians, businesses and commuters.

"With job and housing growth continuing along the corridor, the time is now to rethink how King functions," The city's chief planner, Jennifer Keesmaat said in a statement Thursday. "This study will look at optimizing transit, better pedestrian and retail experiences and improving public spaces." ................(more)

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/facelift-in-the-works-for-toronto-s-busiest-transit-corridor-1.3638818

June 17, 2016

Next SafeTrack Surge Will Be Tough Ride In Northern Virginia, Prince George's Co.

(WAMU) The start of the first, two-week shutdown of Metro’s yearlong SafeTrack rebuilding program is days away, and Metrorail riders from Virginia to Maryland are bracing for a rough time.

The second of 15 scheduled “maintenance surges” under SafeTrack promises to be more disruptive than the first, which involved continuous single-tracking along the Orange and Silver Lines between East Falls Church and Ballston. That project will wrap up Thursday without having severely inconvenienced commuters in Northern Virginia.

Surge No. 2 is the first of five shutdowns in the transit authority’s ambitious reconstruction plan. Metro estimates more than 60,000 daily trips will be affected by the closures on the eastern side of the rail system with crowding and delays affecting 13 stations.

“It's an emergency,” says Prince George's County Executive Rushern Baker about preparations for the June 18 to July 3 shutdown of the Blue, Orange, and Silver Lines between Eastern Market and Minnesota Avenue/Benning Road stations. Buses will replace trains to provide a “bus bridge” around the closed stations. ...............(more)

http://wamu.org/news/16/06/16/tough_ride_on_the_way_for_northern_virginia_prince_georges_metro_riders_for_safetrack_surge_no_2

June 17, 2016

OK, I Get it, the US is a Service Economy, but this Looks Terrible

OK, I Get it, the US is a Service Economy, but this Looks Terrible
by Wolf Richter • June 15, 2016


[font color="blue"]Recession Watch: huge brake shoe to drop on the economy.[/font]

The yield on the 10-year Treasury note fell to 1.57%, the lowest since November 2012, after the Fed got through flip-flopping today, to keep the notion of rate hikes alive without actually hiking rates. Fed officials worried about lousy job gains, terrible exports, puny investment, and Brexit, but they see inflation picking up, and they like that, though a serious bout of inflation is going to kneecap consumers, and so, the statement said, “growth in economic activity appears to have picked up.”

Just how much has that “growth in economic activity” picked up?

Yesterday, it was total business sales, which have been dropping since July 2014 and are now back where they’d been in April 2013. Today it’s industrial production.

The Fed’s Board of Governors reported that industrial production contracted 0.4% in May, after having expanded 0.6% in April. This is like Chinese water torture: drip by drip, with periods of calm in between that are just long enough to think that it’s over. Year-over-year, industrial production was down 1.4%.

Manufacturing, which accounts for about 80% of industrial production, output fell 0.4%, “led by a large step-down in the production of motor vehicles and parts,” which plunged 4.2%. ...............(more)

http://wolfstreet.com/2016/06/15/industrial-production-auto-sector-output-declines/

June 6, 2016

The Changing Face of Whiteness

The Changing Face of Whiteness

Sunday, 05 June 2016 00:00
By William C. Anderson, Truthout | News Analysis


When Guido Menzio sat down on a regional jet for a short flight from Philadelphia to Syracuse, New York, he certainly couldn't have guessed what was going to happen. The 40-year-old economist was profiled as a terror suspect for being focused too intently on a math problem. The differential equation he was working on was possibly mistaken for terrorist scrawlings by the nervous passenger next to him, who was concerned that Menzio wasn't polite enough, looked suspicious and was too distracted by his foreign scribblings.

After delaying the flight and profiling Menzio, the media would soon report on the "Ivy League economist" who was "ethnically profiled" for doing math on a plane. Focal points of this story were Menzio's whiteness as an Italian and his stature as an Ivy League economist -- both of which should assure him no suspicion from authorities, unless he should be mistaken for a person of color. Amid the reverberating outcry around Menzio's treatment, the fact that no one should be treated that way may have gotten lost. After all, the passenger followed what is protocol for many; she saw something and she said something. But what is it she saw? She saw someone she was scared of and someone who was possibly not white.

What does it mean to be "possibly not white"? If we examine this incident in the context of this country's past, we will be reminded that the definition of "whiteness" is and has always been changing.

Thomas Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia is a landmark white supremacist text that serves as a canonical work for the establishment of US whiteness. As a "founding father" and a co-author of many of the nation's founding texts, Jefferson's thoughts were given extraordinary reverence as observations worthy of real consideration. In this book, Jefferson pontificates about his many bigoted and regressive ideas while explaining his thoughts on why Native and Black people are lesser than whites. Jefferson expresses a particular disdain for Blackness, presenting Black people as an antithesis to white humanity -- a subspecies, if you will.

.....(snip).....

By most standards of today's definitions of whiteness, Guido Menzio's being Italian would categorize him as white. However, his ethnic -- or non-WASP (white Anglo-Saxon Protestant) --brand of whiteness recalls an era in this country when not everyone who is now considered "white" would have been previously. Italian-Americans, Jewish-Americans and Irish-Americans, among others, have all had complicated histories in this country in regard to their identities. Each group has been alienated and shunned from whiteness at various points in US history. Keep in mind that white supremacist groups like the Ku Klux Klan and various neo-Nazi groups have often barred white people who are not of "pure" WASP descent. And even that is subject to change at times. ......................(more)

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/36292-the-changing-face-of-whiteness

June 4, 2016

Almost 75% Of D.C. Metro Riders Expecting Transitpocalypse, Survey Says

Almost 75% Of D.C. Metro Riders Expecting Transitpocalypse, Survey Says
June 3rd 2016


Leading local transit app Moovit recently surveyed its Washington, D.C. users about upcoming Metro closings and found significant anxiety among public transit riders – not surprising considering 45% of those surveyed use the Metro daily. With heavy-use lines experiencing closures throughout the summer and autumn months, the Washington Metro Area Transit Authority predicts hundreds of thousands of week-day trips will be affected. According to Moovit, 49% of users surveyed said they were “very concerned” about the shutdowns and 23% said they were “concerned.” The closure that is by far causing anxiety for the largest number of people is the red line shutdown with 49% saying that will most impact them.

Survey results also show that the closures won’t just be a headache for the 67% of riders who rely on the Metro to get to work. At least 40% of respondents report using the Metro in their leisure time – possibly accounting for the 69% who said they use the system at least once or twice a week – for activities such as going to concerts, sporting events, bars and clubs or just visiting with friends and family. If they are close enough, Moovit’s bike share option might be especially useful for the last activity.

The transit app, which combines real-time information from both public transit operators and live crowdsourced data from users, aims to ease those concerns and take away some of the pain the service disruptions will likely cause. ...............(more)

https://www.alexandrianews.org/2016/06/almost-75-of-d-c-metro-riders-expecting-transitpocalypse-survey-says/

June 1, 2016

Is there anyone with a more apropos name than Ken Ham?

Creationist Ken Ham goes bonkers over media coverage of ‘sin-cursed’ gorilla’s death




Has the news media been spending way too much time covering the dead gorilla in the Cincinnati Zoo? Probably it has. That said, creationist Ken Ham can’t make this very basic point without tipping over into loony toons territory.

On Twitter Wednesday morning, he first excoriates the media for focusing on the gorilla when abortions are taking place each and every day:

Next, he says that it’s wrong to feel too sorry for the gorilla since it wasn’t made in God’s image:

Over at his Answers in Genesis website, Ham makes a longer case against getting too upset over the gorilla’s fate by citing (what else?) biblical scripture. He then ties all these scriptural quotes up with a thrilling conclusion in which he refers to the gorilla as a “sin-cursed animal” that unfortunately had to be put down. ................(more)

http://www.rawstory.com/2016/06/creationist-ken-ham-goes-bonkers-over-media-coverage-of-sin-cursed-gorillas-death/

June 1, 2016

Tax push for $4.6 billion Detroit area transit plan begins

(The Detroit News) Regional Transit Authority officials on Tuesday are beginning the journey to sell a tax increase to Metro Detroit voters to fund bus rapid transit, a commuter rail line, an airport shuttle service and a universal fare card, among other upgrades to regional transportation options.

The initiatives are part of a $4.6 billion, 20-year master plan to be unveiled at a 10 a.m. news conference at Lawrence Technological University in Southfield. RTA officials say the proposed 20-year, 1.2-mill tax to help fund the plan would cost the owner of a $200,000 home about $120 annually.

The plan emphasizes better coordination, reliability and extension of service into unserved areas to supplement the Suburban Mobility Authority for Regional Transportation and the Detroit Department of Transportation. And it paves the way for the RTA to take over operations of the upcoming QLine streetcar system in 2024.

While acknowledging challenges with tax-fatigued voters who have already approved regional millages for SMART, the Detroit Institute of Arts and the Detroit Zoo, RTA officials say residents in Washtenaw, Oakland, Macomb and Wayne counties will have have better access to jobs and see an economic development boom in return for their investment.

.....(snip).....

■ Commuter rail between downtown Ann Arbor and downtown Detroit, with stops in Ypsilanti, Wayne and Dearborn and planned shuttle service to the airport. The 38-mile route would use existing Amtrak lines.

■ Express shuttle service to Detroit Metropolitan Airport from Ann Arbor, downtown Detroit and Macomb and Oakland counties.

■ Region-wide, door-to-door paratransit service for seniors and riders with disabilities.

■ A universal fare card system with state-of-the-art access to all Metro Detroit transit entities.

■ New cross-county connector and commuter express buses providing service across municipal and county lines.

■ New local services for communities with no other transit options, bringing them into the regional network. ..............(more)

http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/wayne-county/2016/05/31/tax-push-detroit-area-transit-plan-begins/85178220/