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In this RSA Animate, renowned academic David Harvey asks if it is time to look beyond capitalism towards a new social order that would allow us to live within a system that really could be responsible, just and humane?
It is a must see for policy makers, labor unions, journalists, occupy protesters and anyone who wants to gain a quick understanding of our financial crisis.
This is based on a lecture at the RSA.org.
The Bill Goes to the Senate, but Voters Will Have a Chance to Defeat it at the Polls in November
by Glynn Wilson
The Republican controlled House of Representatives in Alabama voted 65-22 this week to pass a bill dubbed “The Goodyear Bill” that is being billed by Republicans and the mainstream media as “Gov. Robert Bentley’s jobs plan,” another amendment to be tacked onto an already overburdened constitution that would authorize new and expanding corporations to keep the income taxes of their employees rather than paying them to the state.
No where in the Republican rhetoric or the news coverage does anybody address the fact that the state can’t afford to give away more tax money to corporations which already pay no corporate taxes, because the state is already too broke to continue funding many state agencies and programs. They state can’t afford to continue maintaining some roads. There is all kinds of hand-wringing going on over continued funding for the state retirement system.
While Governor Bentley pledged to raise no taxes yet continue fully funding law enforcement in his State of the State Address, it has become obvious that the state does not have the money to continue paying for an already over-crowded prison system.
The bill now moves over to the 35-member Senate. It will need 21 votes to pass. If approved there and signed by the governor, opponents would have a chance to raise a campaign to stop its approval at the polls. The voters would have a shot at defeating it in a referendum vote during the general election in November.
Greg Palast’s BBC crew of journalist-detectives chase down British Petroleum bag men, CIA operatives, nuclear power con men — and “The Vultures,” billionaire financial speculators who, through bribery, flim-flam and political muscle, take entire nations hostage for mega-profits.
The action begins when the Deepwater Horizon explodes in the Gulf of Mexico and a confidential cable arrives on Miss Badpenny’s desk from a terrified insider. He has the real, hushed-up facts of the disaster — which can only be found hidden in the files of a Central Asian dictatorship.
Palast sets off for Baku to investigate the sexiest Muslim woman on Earth and the whereabouts of millions of dollars in a brown valise. Then he jumps the globe to an Alaska Eskimo village after receiving an extraordinary note from the Chief of Intelligence of the Free Republic of the Arctic.
by Glynn Wilson
Consumer confidence in the United States continues to rise out of the doldrums of the Bush recession, according to the latest Gallup poll on the subject.
The confidence of Americans in an improving economy is up compared with December, according to Gallup’s Economic Confidence Index, and much improved over the highly negative readings of last fall and late summer, and over the levels found after the recession was announced in 2008 just before President George W. Bush left office.
“Weekly economic confidence remains at its highest level since last spring, showing steadier improvement from October through early January,” Gallup concludes in its analysis of public opinion in the U.S.
Most of the gains in the overall Economic Confidence Index since the summer have occurred in the outlook component, the percentage of Americans who believe the economy is improving minus those saying it is getting worse. Over the same period, consumer perceptions of current economic conditions (the percentage rating them “poor” subtracted from those rating them “excellent” or “good”) have improved by about half as much.
The American Federation of Government Employees Local 1945 in the Anniston-Jacksonville area of Alabama says about 1,000 U.S. government workers are about to be laid off and their work assigned to contractors in other locations. So they are planning a “Save Our Jobs” rally for Monday, Jan. 30, at the Anniston Meeting Center Monday beginning at 5:30 p.m.
“Union member or not, we are in this fight together,” the union says in a press release announcing the event. “When one employee is cut the entire community is affected. With everyone’s help we can stop this attack on federal employees. We need to fight back and this meeting is the first step.”
Occupy Birmingham held a candle light vigil on Saturday, Jan. 7 at the Ward’s home in Center Point and about 50 people turned out (see video above). The city of Center Point is now reeling from the devastating affects of an F3 tornado that hit on the morning of Monday, Jan. 23, but the Ward home, just a couple of hundred feet from where the storm hit, was spared. Shortly after the vigil, Bank of America agreed to change the foreclosure sale date from the Jan. 26 to the March 29 and to consider a proposal for the Ward’s to obtain a new mortgage, according to Occupy Birmingham. If you want to help, you can sign an online petition here.
ANALYSIS
by Glynn Wilson
Consumer confidence is on the rise in the United States, according to the latest Gallup poll on the subject, as President Barack Obama will deliver his State of the Union address to the nation on Tuesday night to deliver a strong economic message sympathetic to a middle class that feels squeezed by stagnant wages at a time of record corporate profits.
The President is expected to make the argument for higher taxes on the wealthy, to propose ways to make college more affordable, to offer new steps on tackling the housing crisis and outline ways to help bring back domestic manufacturing and expand hiring.
With unemployment on the way down and good news from the U.S. automobile industry and the retail sector after a successful holiday season, the general public perception is that the overall U.S. economy is getting better, according to Gallup.
“This seems like good news for the nation’s businesses as well as for U.S. economic confidence in the week ending Jan. 22, improved from the prior week and the best since the week ending May 22, 2011,” Gallup concludes in its analysis.
President Obama’s new consumer watchdog Richard Cordray made his first public
appearance — after his controversial recess appointment — at a public hearing on
the predatory practices of payday lenders in Birmingham, Alabama (see video and story below).
by Glynn Wilson
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – The Obama administration’s controversial new consumer watchdog Richard Cordray made his first appearance outside of Washington, D.C. here Thursday to take part in a public hearing on the predatory practices of payday lenders, which critics say rip off consumers and hurt the economy.
Cordray was appointed director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau by President Barack Obama during the holidays in December while Congress was adjourned. Some Republicans, including Senator Richard Shelby of Tuscaloosa and Rep. Spencer Bachus of Birmingham have opposed the nomination on procedural and philosophical grounds, so the case has landed in court.
While protesters outside the Birmingham-Jefferson Convention Complex carried signs opposing Shelby and Bachus, Cordray led a discussion to a standing-room-only crowd about loan shark-style collection practices and illegal access to the bank accounts of borrowers in some cases. The executive branch agency gets its authority from the Dodd-Frank Act to regulate financial institutions that are not banks, and due to the impact of the sometimes “outrageous” interests rates customers end up paying, Cordray said, the activity needs to be investigated and perhaps even outlawed.
“We know that some payday lenders are engaged in practices that present immediate risks to consumers and are clearly illegal,” Cordray said. “The illegal practices are outrageous. We want to root them out where we find them. We are here to make sure that fundamental fairness for all consumers is assured when they need to borrow money.”
Emergency NY Tech Meetup Advance Story
by Glynn Wilson
You’ve got to love it when the public gets involved in the Democratic process.
Thousands of Websites and who knows how many tens of thousands of people who get their news through the Internet took a day off Wednesday to protest two bills making their way through Congress without enough reasoned debate or time and effort to educate the public.
According to The Hill newspaper, a source for news we trust and use on a regular basis, it was “an unprecedented display of political muscle,” a day when thousands of Websites “went dark” to protest two Internet piracy bills, the House’s Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Senate’s Protect IP Act.
The protests got the attention of Web users, and could get a real debate going on in this country on how we use this new technology to educate the public.
Harper’s No Comment
