November 7, 2013

NOW Toronto: If you love this town, you’ll leave, Mr. Mayor

If you love this town, you’ll leave, Mr. Mayor
By Michael Hollett


If punchline mayor Rob Ford loved this city half as much as he claims to, he would make the only choice available to him, one clear to the rest of the world as this sad soap opera unfolds: he must resign.

In this shameful saga, each day is more unbelievable than the last. Ford was elected to “clean up” City Hall; can he really claim to be fulfilling his promises as he turns this great city into an international laughing stock?

Remember the Mel Lastman “scandal” when the then mayor got his picture taken with a Hell’s Angel? At least he wasn’t behaving like one.

David Miller got his hand slapped for leaving his lights on during Earth Hour. And what about poor Adam Giambrone, who dropped out of the mayoralty race against Ford for having office sex? Seems almost quaint now: a little backroom banging – no crack, no crowds, no drunken roaming through City Hall screaming obscenities, clutching a half-empty bottle of booze and smacking staffers. ...................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.nowtoronto.com/news/story.cfm?content=195207

November 7, 2013

Socialist doesn't win, but captures nearly half the vote in Seattle city council election

By Eric Scigliano


Kshama Sawant’s election-night party seemed more like a rent party or a rally. The venue, Capitol Hill’s Melrose Studios, was a cement-floored basement, not a hotel ballroom. There was not a TV screen in sight, just many, many posters and vinyl banners. Two featured the iconic image of Che Guevara that once graced so many dorm rooms and head shops. One bore a classic inscription: “Trabajadores del mundo, únanse” — “Workers of the world, unite!”

Fresh-faced young greeters along the long table at the entrance insisted that arrivees sign both a sign-up sheet and a name tag, and implored them to contribute $15. “This party is costing us $1,200,” one explained — big money for a socialist running for city council.

Once I entered the party a pleasant woman in an enormous furry cap and fingerless gloves paused to check out my name tag, and I checked hers. “Meow,” it said. “Woof,” I naturally replied. She laughed and said, “It’s the anarchists versus the socialists,” and we both got it. Cats are anarchists, dogs are socialists, though not necessarily democratic ones.

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

With 46 percent of the early returns, Sawant came closer to winning than even her supporters expected, closer than not only all the other three city council challengers but than Mayor Mike McGinn himself. And that was running against an incumbent widely regarded as able, earnest and solidly mainstream-Seattle progressive. Richard Conlin had won by wider and wider margins since 1997, when he himself unseated a City Council incumbent. .................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://crosscut.com/2013/11/07/elections/117332/disenchantment-dismay-less-your-kshama-sawant/

November 7, 2013

Socialist doesn't win, but receives 46 percent of vote in Seattle city council election

By Eric Scigliano


Kshama Sawant’s election-night party seemed more like a rent party or a rally. The venue, Capitol Hill’s Melrose Studios, was a cement-floored basement, not a hotel ballroom. There was not a TV screen in sight, just many, many posters and vinyl banners. Two featured the iconic image of Che Guevara that once graced so many dorm rooms and head shops. One bore a classic inscription: “Trabajadores del mundo, únanse” — “Workers of the world, unite!”

Fresh-faced young greeters along the long table at the entrance insisted that arrivees sign both a sign-up sheet and a name tag, and implored them to contribute $15. “This party is costing us $1,200,” one explained — big money for a socialist running for city council.

Once I entered the party a pleasant woman in an enormous furry cap and fingerless gloves paused to check out my name tag, and I checked hers. “Meow,” it said. “Woof,” I naturally replied. She laughed and said, “It’s the anarchists versus the socialists,” and we both got it. Cats are anarchists, dogs are socialists, though not necessarily democratic ones.

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

With 46 percent of the early returns, Sawant came closer to winning than even her supporters expected, closer than not only all the other three city council challengers but than Mayor Mike McGinn himself. And that was running against an incumbent widely regarded as able, earnest and solidly mainstream-Seattle progressive. Richard Conlin had won by wider and wider margins since 1997, when he himself unseated a City Council incumbent. .................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://crosscut.com/2013/11/07/elections/117332/disenchantment-dismay-less-your-kshama-sawant/

November 7, 2013

Democracy Now! discussion w/John Nichols about Christie's moves to make his margin look bigger

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November 7, 2013

Chicago: Ventra boss 'can't guess' when new fare system will work

By Jon Hilkevitch
Tribune reporter
7:15 a.m. CST, November 6, 2013


The top corporate official representing the publicly maligned Ventra fare-collection system traveled to Chicago on Tuesday to apologize for “unacceptable’’ technical and customer service problems that have cost CTA riders time and money.

He also offered that his company was caught flat-footed because it failed to anticipate how quickly commuters would switch from old fare cards to Ventra.

But Richard Wunderle, who heads North American operations for California-based Cubic Transportation Systems, Inc., couldn’t answer the $454 million question (the price of the Ventra contract): When will Ventra function properly?

“I can’t give you really a best guess. We’re analyzing the data,’’ Wunderle told reporters after CTA President Forrest Claypool brought the Cubic boss to the City Club of Chicago to take some of the heat. ........................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-cta-chief-ventra-developer-must-correct-poor-customer-experiences-20131105,0,5581296.story

November 7, 2013

Robert Reich: What Tuesday's Election Results Really Mean

Robert Reich
Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy, University of California at Berkeley; Author, 'Beyond Outrage'

What Tuesday's Election Results Really Mean
Posted: 11/06/2013 11:24 am


Pundits who are already describing the victories of Terry McAuliffe in Virginia and Chris Christie in New Jersey as a "return to the center" of American politics are confusing the "center" with big business and Wall Street.

A few decades ago McAuliffe would be viewed as a right-wing Democrat and Christie as a right-wing Republican. Both garnered their major support from corporate America, and both will reliably govern as fiscal conservatives who won't raise taxes on the wealthy.

Both look moderate only by contrast with the Tea Partiers to their extreme right.

The biggest game-changer, though, is Bill de Blasio, the mayor-elect of New York City, who campaigned against the corporatist legacy of Michael Bloomberg -- promising to raise taxes on the wealthy and use the revenues for pre-school and after-school programs for the children of New York's burdened middle class and poor. ...................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/2013-election-results_b_4226267.html?utm_hp_ref=media&ir=Media

November 7, 2013

Bill de Blasio: harbinger of a new populist left in America

Bill de Blasio: harbinger of a new populist left in America
Strong stances on inequality and policing underpin the New York mayor's win. If he holds true, he can shift the national debate

Tom Hayden
theguardian.com, Wednesday 6 November 2013 04.30 EST


The overwhelming support of New York City voters for Bill de Blasio is the latest sign of the shift towards a new populist left in America. De Blasio owes his unexpected tailwind to campaigning on issues considered by insiders to be too polarizing for winning politics.

One is De Blasio's promise to redress the "tale of two cities" inequalities among New Yorkers, an issue forced into mainstream discourse by the 2011 Occupy Wall Street movement – not by New York Democrats aligned with Wall Street. The other is De Blasio's pledge to sharply curb police stop-and-frisk policies directed against young people of color – aggressive tactics favored by a majority of white voters and overwhelmingly criticized by African Americans, Latinos and Asian-American voters.

Despite its Democratic voter majority, New York in recent decades has been the political stronghold of the plutocratic Mayor Michael Bloomberg and, before him, the abrasive law-and-order Mayor Rudolph Giuliani – both Republicans with national, even global, reach. Democrats have lacked a progressive voice on the national stage of American politics often provided by the New York mayor's office – until now.

De Blasio will have a mandate for economic and social reform backed by a newly-elected 51-member city council, the most progressive in years. As Juan Gonzáles of Pacifica's DemocracyNow! put it:

"I can't think of a time like this when so many progressives have been elected at once."

With American politics polarized between the Obama center and the thriving Tea Party, the only opening for the left is through state and local federalism serving as "laboratories of reform", to paraphrase former Justice Louis Brandeis. After the Gilded Age and the Great Crash of the 1920s, New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia (1934-47) and legislators like Robert Wagner created the first pillars of the New Deal before it become the national platform of the Democrats. They successfully fought not only Wall Street bankers, but a virulent and racist American right. ....................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/06/bill-de-blasio-new-populist-left

November 7, 2013

Chris Hedges at Moravian College: The Myth of Human Progress and the Collapse of Complex Societies

Published on Oct 24, 2013

Christopher Lynn "Chris" Hedges, a Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist specializing in politics and society, spoke at Moravian College on Tuesday, October 22. Hedges is the seventh Peace and Justice Scholar in Residence at Moravian College. His talk was drawn from his most recent book, Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt.

November 7, 2013

Obamacare’s 787 Moment (Healthcare.gov and outsourcing)

from truthdig:



Obamacare’s 787 Moment

Posted on Nov 6, 2013
By Moshe Adler


Q: To which of the following debacles is the rollout of Obamacare most similar? (a) The several-year delay in the rollout of the Boeing 787? (b) The failure of Halliburton to deliver food and mail to our fighting soldiers in Iraq in spite of exorbitant payments? (c) The theft from New York City of $500 million by the contractor that was hired to create CityTime, a computerized payroll system? If your answer is (d) all the above, you got it right.

Each of these examples involves a large investment in a product for a single client. To use the economists’ terminology, each involves “specific capital.” The best way to produce specific capital, economists Benjamin Klein, Robert Crawford and Armen Alchian explain, is to produce it in-house. Why? Because when specific capital is involved, outsourcing means a total loss of control over the product under conditions that are hard to reverse.

In the case of the 787 Dreamliner, the delays were caused by Vought, a South Carolina firm that had been contracted by Boeing to produce the fuselage. Not only was the product that Vought was hired to produce specific to Boeing, it was also new—Boeing had never before produced a passenger fuselage made of composites—which meant that Boeing’s specifications for the product kept changing. And just as any management manual could have predicted, Vought failed repeatedly to produce a fuselage that met Boeing’s needs. But in spite of all the grief, Boeing could not simply replace its supplier, because starting from scratch would have delayed production even longer. So, for more than two years, Boeing tried to get Vought to deliver. In the end, Boeing had no choice but to buy the company and bring fuselage production in-house.

Of course, not all of the parts that go into a Boeing plane need to be produced by Boeing. The company has never produced engines, for example. But engines are not specific to Boeing and are produced by several manufacturers. If one had produced a faulty product, it could have been replaced relatively quickly. The key, then, is the level of specificity. The product that Boeing was buying from Vought was highly specific to Boeing, and Boeing therefore ultimately had to be directly in control of its production. .........................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/obamacares_787_moment_20131106

November 7, 2013

Richard Wolff: The great austerity shell game....Here's how the capitalist scam works:

The great austerity shell game
Here's how the capitalist scam works: let government borrow for crisis bailouts, then insist cuts pay for them. Guess who loses

Richard Wolff
theguardian.com, Monday 4 November 2013 08.00 EST


Center-right governments in Britain and Germany do it. So do the center-left governments in France and Italy. Obama and the Republicans do it, too. They all impose "austerity" programs on their economies as necessary to exit the crisis afflicting them all since 2007. Politicians and economists impose austerity now much as doctors once stuck mustard plasters on the skins of the sick.

Austerity policies presume that the chief economic problems today are government budget deficits that increase national debts. Austerity policies solve those problems mainly by cutting government spending, and secondarily, by limited tax increases. Reducing expenditures while raising revenues does cut governments' deficits and their needs to borrow.

National debts grow less or drop depending on how much each government's expenditures decrease and its taxes increase. Obama's austerity policies during 2013 started 1 January, when he raised payroll taxes on everyone's annual incomes up to $113,700. Then, on 1 March, the "sequester" lowered federal expenditures. Thus, 2013's US deficit will drop sharply from 2012's.

Obama will likely impose more austerity: cutting social security and Medicare benefits to compromise with Republicans. Similarly, European governments maintain their "austerity" programs. Even France's government, officially "anti-austerity" and "socialist", has a new budget with typical austerity cuts in social expenditures. .....................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/04/great-austerity-shell-game