Links Archive

Nostalgia

Adam Kotsko:

One nice thing about the auto makers asking for a bailout is that we’re getting a return to all the harrowing tales of how the evil labor unions raped and pillaged US industry. If they hadn’t gotten too big for their britches, Flint might still be a vibrant city rather than a ghost town with a criminal and former car dealer as mayor. Oh, those greedy workers! When will enough be enough?! When will they stop cutting into the bosses’ profit margins and forcing them to relocate?

Growing up in Flint, I of course heard stories like this constantly. The basic message: Unions did good things in their time, but they overreached, meaning that we were all screwed in the long term. The assumption seems to be that the owners’ short-sighted pursuit of profit was just a brute fact, but workers should’ve known better than to try to get the best contract they could get — i.e., workers should’ve been looking out for the owners’ best interests rather than their own. Psychologists have a name for this particular style of thought: Stockholm Syndrome.

After living in Michigan for about three or four years now and with all of the sturm und drang surrounding the auto industry over the past several decades (but especially now), I’ve heard these same ridiculous anti-union claims on more than one occasion. The problem that I have with the bailout is that it seems to be an extension of this absurd logic that bosses just naturally act out of greedy self-interest, which is a good thing, but workers must constantly sacrifice for the industry and never demand higher wages, because that would be unproductive and unpatriotic.

The bailout seems to reward the idiotic decisions made by the bosses, who’ve mismanaged these once successful companies into the ground in under four decades, by turning the auto industry into state capitalist zombie corporations. The auto industries should be allowed to fail and declare bankruptcy. Any of the potential bailout money that would be used to save the companies (in the billions) ought to instead go towards providing welfare for the workers who would be potentially laid off as a result. This seems to be far more equitable, which is also why it probably won’t happen because it would be like declaring “CLASS WARFARE”!

—Bryan Klausmeyer 3 Comments

What’s Left After Obama?

Simon Critchley has a new article on Obama in Adbusters that’s much better than his crappy reading of Dreams From My Father. Here’s an excerpt that I thought was really well put:

This is perhaps the tragedy concealed in the events of the late evening of November 4th: as I walked to the subway at about 10 p.m. a vast United States flag was being unfurled in Union Square; there were spontaneous parties in the streets of my part of Brooklyn, and many others can testify to much more exotic, collective experiences. This was a moment when people, no longer cowed by the power of the state and held in check by the police, suddenly become aware of their power and the power of their activity, which is nothing less than the activity of liberty. At such a moment, no force can stop them and a demonstration or street party erupts into being. This is collective joy. There is the potential for a political moment here, but it is a potential whose actualization is denied by the very representative process which is being celebrated. At the moment when people become aware of their power through the activity of the vote, they are simultaneously rendered powerless by the representative process. Liberty slips from the hands of those who have suddenly become aware of its power. In the face of such human fireworks, it is not surprising that Obama cancelled the firework display planned to accompany his victory speech. The message is clear: ‘The victory is yours. But when you’ve finished celebrating, dancing and crying, return to your homes and be quiet. Thanks to you, the business of government is ours and we will take it from here. We’ll let you know how it goes. P.S. Please don’t take popular sovereignty too literally’.

(Via I cite.)

—Bryan Klausmeyer

Auto Industry Bailout is Annoying on All Levels

Check out Jim Newell’s snarky and in-depth outline of the latest series of bailout foibles over at Wonkette. Be prepared for major ethical quandaries, as well as being overcome by intense hatred for the Treasury, Congress, and everybody else.

—Bryan Klausmeyer

Rise to the Moment

The New Republic:

The greatest risk for Democrats is not that Obama will try to do too much, but that their terror of failure will lead them to waste an historic opportunity. This is not a Clintonian moment. It is more like the moment Lyndon Johnson inherited in 1965, or the one Franklin Roosevelt faced in 1933—a chance to reshape American government. The Democrats have it in their grasp to master the great problems of public life if they can summon their collective nerve. The only thing they have to fear is fear itself.

As all of the other progressive bloggers are chanting ad nauseam: Obama ought to seize this historic opportunity not to reassert traditional Clintonian political commitments by “triangulating” policies and hence conceding enormous political capital to the discredited GOP, but to redefine the terms upon which the entire political debates are framed. As soon as Obama has succeeded in framing the debates on progressive grounds, redefining such terms as “center” and “bipartisan,” in a way he will have already won and whatever cabinet choices he picks will be peripheral in this regard. (Via TPM.)

—Bryan Klausmeyer

The End of Wall Street’s Boom

Michael Lewis, author of Liar’s Poker, has a great write-up on the recent financial crisis. Here’s the introduction from his latest article featured in Condé Nast Portfolio:

To this day, the willingness of a Wall Street investment bank to pay me hundreds of thousands of dollars to dispense investment advice to grownups remains a mystery to me. I was 24 years old, with no experience of, or particular interest in, guessing which stocks and bonds would rise and which would fall. The essential function of Wall Street is to allocate capital—to decide who should get it and who should not. Believe me when I tell you that I hadn’t the first clue.

In a way his story is both wildly unbelievable and about what you’d expect from Wall Street. (Via 3 Quarks Daily.)

—Bryan Klausmeyer

Keep On Screaming About Larry Summers

Jonathan Schwarz at a Tiny Revolution:

In 2000, when Summers was Treasury Secretary, he made a very specific claim: that from 1980-2000, developing countries had “moved to the market and seen rapid growth in income.”

The problem is this simply wasn’t true. The countries that had most “moved to the market” had had far worse income growth from 1980-2000 compared to 1960-1980. Soon afterward Summers was asked about this at a think tank event, and he used all his brilliance to tap dance around for five minutes without answering the question.

Make sure Larry Summers doesn’t play a role in a future Obama administration: sign this OpenLeft petition to oppose him!

—Bryan Klausmeyer

Corporate America Gears up for Labor Battle

Now that we’ve all finished celebrating Obama’s victory, it’s time to start concentrating on the real battles that lay ahead. The Financial Times of London reports:

Corporate America is preparing for a landmark political battle with the new Obama administration and a Democratic Congress over proposed labour union reforms, while expressing concerns about the direction of trade policy, healthcare and a range of other issues.

The business community has stepped up its oppositon to the union-backed Employee Free Choice Act, which Mr Obama has said he supports. It could revitalise the US labour movement by enhancing the ability of unions to organise.

(Via Lenin’s Tomb.)

—Bryan Klausmeyer 1 Comment

The Office: Customer Survey

It was dark, funny, subtle, and completely relatable. This was the best episode of the last few seasons. Definitely a return to the longing tone of Season 2 and the original British show. The Office can be disappointing at times, but this is the sort of episode that redeems it, proving that it has an amazing writing staff and great acting.

—Mark Elliot Cullen

The End of the GOP Ticket

I feel bad for John McCain. I think he’s a great person who’s done great things. On the trail he had to concede some of his McCain-ness (I’d like to avoid that other M-word which became meaningless as soon as the whole GOP started to embrace it) and I definitely don’t agree with him on most policy issues.

But, he was the best Republican candidate in my lifetime, and maybe the last Rockefeller Republican the GOP will run for a long time. Unfortunately he ran against the best Democratic candidate in a lifetime.

His running mate on the other hand… you know the drill.

And when McCain and Palin split up in Arizona Wednesday, the personal differences were stark.

McCain drove himself home in a Toyota sport utility vehicle. Palin’s departure was a grander event. She left with an entourage of 18 family members and friends and a Secret Service detail, heading to the airport in a motorcade stretching more than a dozen vehicles, flanked by a dozen more cops on motorcycles.

—Mark Elliot Cullen

Hope?

Maybe not so much. As Mike Davis put it:

Second, after the brief Woodstock of an Obama inauguration, millions of hearts will be broken by the administration’s inability to manage mass bankruptcy and unemployment, as well as end the wars in the Middle East.

—Bryan Klausmeyer

Trying to Bury Her

Pretty great to finally hear all of the dirty details from inside the McCain campaign about Palin. Check out this Fox News interview with Carl Cameron, where he reveals that Palin apparently thought Africa was a country and didn’t know which countries were involved in NAFTA:

On the odious subject of Sarah Palin:

The Obama campaign was provided with reports from the Secret Service showing a sharp and disturbing increase in threats to Obama in September and early October, at the same time that many crowds at Palin rallies became more frenzied. Michelle Obama was shaken by the vituperative crowds and the hot rhetoric from the GOP candidates. “Why would they try to make people hate us?” Michelle asked a top campaign aide.

—Bryan Klausmeyer

What Next for the Struggle in the Obama Era?

Thoughts from Howard Zinn, Mike Davis, Tariq Ali, and a bunch of other prominent socialist thinkers on Obama’s victory and its implications for the future of progressive politics, workers’ rights, etc. Definitely worth checking out.

—Bryan Klausmeyer

Bob Dylan on The Election

“I was born in 1941,” he said, a wavering sentimentality in his scratchy voice. “That was the year they bombed Pearl Harbor. I’ve been living in darkness ever since. It looks like things are going to change now.”

If Bob says so, it’s good enough for me.

—Mark Elliot Cullen

Chickens Coming Home to Roost

Matthew Yglesias:

Early word on the shape of the Obama administration:

1. Chief of Staff: Jeremiah Wright
2. Secretary of State: Rashid Khalidi
3. Secretary of Defense: Bill Ayers
4. Attorney-General: Bernardine Dohrn
5. Secretary of the Treasury: Tony Rezko

Obviously, that still leaves a lot of posts to be filled, but the feeling is that given the current state of crisis in the country the new administration needs to act swiftly to fill the major jobs and these are them.

—Bryan Klausmeyer 1 Comment

“America the Conservative”

So last night I tried really hard to write a post explaining how there needed to be two victories, one at the level of reality (being elected president) and one at the level of the symbolic. The latter ought to be understood in good-old Maoist terms as how we should “properly think” of this victory: what is its meaning? The forces of the Right, predicting a McCain defeat for some time, have already been mustering the resources to try and make it seem, as ridiculous as it sounds to those on the Left, that an Obama victory somehow “proves” the notion that America is a “conservative nation” at heart, whatever that means.

Anyhow, here is a great graphic David Sirota made over at Open Left, juxtaposing Newsweek’s most recent cover with the electoral map from last night:

Here’s a progressive take on the meaning of the victory.

(Via Matthew Yglesias.)

—Bryan Klausmeyer