The Clay Eater

Occupy Everywhere!

2011-10-10T13:49:00.000-07:00

Well, it's happening on Wall Street, so why not Main Street?

Krugman: Obama gives away the store

2011-08-12T19:24:00.000-07:00

Um, what he said. Not that the Dems have given us much reason to care if they win lately ... like in the last, oh, 30 years. At least. (Even then, in the South, well ... ) [OK, maybe never. Sorry, Krugman.] But in a way in the last few years the Donkeys've seized almost every last parcel of previously Elephant territory now. (... the GOP having mostly vacated their old political home, not

Satan sandwiches over a barrel

2011-08-06T07:26:00.000-07:00

So, let me get this straight -- Obama gives away half the store, and still loses the AAA rating? IMF protesters used to get at least honorable mention in the small presses on the problem with "Third World debt". No matter what we learned in high school about democracy of the marketplace, and so on, Haitian slaves and others who overthrew their European overlords found themselves unable to buy

SEIU stands up at UI

2011-04-21T14:18:00.000-07:00

I may have mentioned before how proud I am to have worked for ACORN. I am also proud to work for SEIU once again, this time for ass-kicking Local 73 in Illinois and Indiana. Recently I had the honor of working with approximately 750 building service and food service workers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who were fighting back against an Administration that has been crying

BP lessons for Japanese horror

2011-03-18T07:14:00.000-07:00

A lot of disasters these days. Shouldn't be an excuse to forget that the consequences of earlier disasters are ongoing -- like BP. Just the opposite. There are lessons for our ongoing disasters from the past, though I know that is a potentially disturbing thought in our nation of goldfish.Rachel Maddow is right about what Obama should have done (on a long list of things he should have done!),

Wisconsin, Indiana union-busting

2011-02-25T08:34:00.000-08:00

Somebody said to me recently, "the Democrats are at their best when they are not there." Actually, I think that's a little harsh, but there is an important point there. Workers in this country have only rarely been able to count on politicians of any political stripe to back us up, much less pitch in with improvements.Most often we have to fight like hell just to not get robbed, for example in

Jobs AND Justice

2010-09-17T16:20:00.000-07:00

Hitting the nail on the head as usual, Jobs with Justice and allies are demanding -- whaaat? -- jobs?? publicly funded? in the middle of a recession? a "Great Recession"?!? But aren't we all lucky hold on to what we have without some Big Brother World Government Belgian Queen Elizabeth-Osama bin Laden Jr. Great Satan stepping in and taking away all our tea and freedoms, especially our filthy

More Uses for Poverty

2010-09-14T07:33:00.000-07:00

"The number of people in the US who are in poverty is on track for a record increase on President Barack Obama's watch, with ranks of working poor approaching 1960's levels that led to the national war on poverty," says an AP story on recent census figures. And considering all the low-income paranoids I know (and maybe you know) who dodge the census while their coworkers land stopgap gigs

Ending the Great Recession

2010-09-07T10:03:00.000-07:00

Robert Reich is usually on the right track, and he is again: wage or wealth inequality is clearly the festering sore at ground zero of the current Great Recession. And taking costs off the other end of the see-saw, through earned income tax credit or health insurance reform or free education, clearly help workers. (... when the health reform is fixed.) Splitting the difference when workers are

Every indicator

2010-07-17T06:42:00.000-07:00

More bad news: foreclosures, unemployment, you name it. It's starting to stack up on us. Earlier layers include the big news - recession since 2008 - and the barely made the news - real income spiral-down over the last few decades.Back to that recession thing, and Rasmus, he points out: this recession is impressively worse by every economic indicator than every preceding recession this century -

Epic Recession

2010-07-15T18:31:00.000-07:00

Reading Jack Rasmus is one of those 300 Club effects. Worse, reading him over time, it now appears that he was an optimist in 2008.Anybody who reads about the economy who also may happen to work for a living (or try to) ought to notice that Rasmus combines two types of observation that don't often coexist in the same paragraph, like matter and antimatter.El primero is a critical and intelligent

Pop Quiz!

2010-02-03T07:12:00.000-08:00

What's an 11 letter word that begins with "chicken" and ends with "it"? Obama Administration. OK, there's another one - Democrat.They're doing it again. Candidate Clinton promised to lift the ban on gays in the military in 1992. We elected him partly on this promise (and others he didn't keep, either). Even in the military, not known for its openness on same-sex issues - as my friends

Green pork?

2010-01-11T14:32:00.000-08:00

In the news Pres. Obama is spending zillions of subsidies to manufacturers - nothing new, except for the more "progressive" focus: he targets "green businesses" for aid. (Perhaps not surprisingly, as the young, better educated, middle-income supporters of these things were a major Obama constituency in the election -- chicken and egg, you know.) So far, so good.The stated hope is to create

Equity thing not happening

2010-01-03T18:10:00.000-08:00

Do I recall some racists whining about how, now that there's a black president, white people won't get a fair shake? Sure, that's why none of the $150 million-plus "stimulus" dough for those infamous "shovel-ready" roads-and-bridges projects has gone to black contractors, according to a new study by the Transportation Equity Network (TEN). Very little of the overall package has gone to any

Jobs bill not enough

2010-01-03T09:54:00.000-08:00

Is the jobs bill the Dems are so proud of (well, not the Blue Dogs) truly a good, albeit insufficient, start? Es posible. Certainly it makes more sense than the POP (Party of Palin) ever-twisting nonsense: so it's too hard for struggling small business owners/managers to figure out some "fancy" tax credit, eh? Really? But it's not too hard when conservative Republicrats propose tax credits to

Happy New Year

2010-01-01T13:20:00.000-08:00

Good bye, 2009, don't let the door knob hit you in the ass on your way out.Over 20 million of us Amerischmucks got unemployment in '09, which of course doesn't count millions more who didn't qualify for various reasons, were forced to work only part-time, or dropped off the U-3 rolls when their clocks ran out.We didn't get out of Iraq, dug in deeper in 'AfPak', didn't let those poor slobs go home

Farmworkers

2009-12-01T17:34:00.000-08:00

Congratulations to the Coalition of Immokalee Workers on their latest partnership with Verite. Monitoring is essential to improving the lives of farmworkers.

Thanksgiving

2009-11-26T18:05:00.000-08:00

I spent much of the 4th Thursday in November as I usually do, recalling the horrific histories of the Powhatan Confedederacy encounters with the English around Jamestown - where my own ancestor's people, the Wicocomico, were destroyed; then the disastrous series of betrayals that characterized the English encounters with the Wampanoag, events now recalled by saccharine tales of "Thanksgiving."But

More unemployed, more unemployed organizing

2009-11-06T11:41:00.000-08:00

What did I say? The pattern is pretty clear. Every month the papers announce unemployment is not as high as expected -- then two weeks later, oh, p.s., it's actually higher.The pundits can tell us how much better things are getting 'til they're blue in the chips -er- face. But the unemployed, and those of us close to it, are starting to figure out a few things: step one - organize!

Police policing police

2009-11-05T14:34:00.000-08:00

The community where I live is reeling from a fatal police shooting of an unarmed 15 year old black child on Oct. 9. The young man and his friend (who now faces charges of felony "resisting arrest") had often stayed at the house they were allegedly "burglarizing." The homeowner says they were both welcome any time. According to the police, the boys saw two cops appear with weapons drawn and

Break 'em up while we still can!

2009-10-23T08:06:00.000-07:00

So I'm in Northeast Mississippi just for a day or two and I happen to check out the Daily Journal, and I see that unemployment in the land of my birth has dropped (the same song we're hearing all around the country) - probably because more people have just given up. Even the official rate (we know how accurate that is) in Alcorn County is now 11.3 percent, and it's worse in nearby Tippah and

Organizing the Unemployed and Homeless

2009-10-09T12:46:00.000-07:00

So there's these crazy people in Fort Wayne, actually believe people don't want to be unemployed! Who'da thunk it? I talked to this barn-burner, Tom Lewandowski. They're leafletting Michael Moore's new movie - unemployment offices and such - and talking to people about the economy! What good is that gonna do? Isn't our current system inevitable, exactly as it is?They're negotiating with

Tomato pickers victory!

2009-09-11T08:55:00.000-07:00

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers show once again the power and the value of self-organization. Reports of their demise or imminent demise have been greatly exaggerated - repeatedly. But these mostly immigrant, low-paid, tough organizers extraordinaire keep coming back with more victories against all the odds. I admit that when I first began my own association with these folks, as a supporter

What would a real racist be like?

2009-08-14T08:09:00.000-07:00

You really just cannot make this stuff up, even remotely. First white cops arrest African American Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates for breaking into his own house (OK, for getting annoyed when they accused him breaking into his own house). Then reporters ask Obama, who is trying to have a press conference about a little thing like health care at the time, what he thinks. Well, duh. What

Black = criminal

2009-07-23T19:52:00.000-07:00

(or so it seems from the police response)Check it out!(OK, in case you haven't heard the actual story, here it is. [p.s. Read the comments, too - they're fracking nuts!])

Honduras and Obama: Change versus No-Change

2009-07-23T13:12:00.000-07:00

The latest crackpot take on Honduras is that Zelaya was "properly impeached" - after the army removed him in his pajamas at gunpoint and declared martial law, of course, suspending all that free speech stuff, etc. (They had learned, I guess, from previous outbreaks of anti-American riots over far lesser offenses.)But all the serious commentary agrees that the media-christened "interim government

GM, the new Conrail

2009-06-01T13:57:00.000-07:00

Here's a shock: the media are reporting this story all wrong. "GM files for bankruptcy protection," "...a low point in the carmaker's 100-year history...," "... a powerful reminder of how far GM has fallen ...," blah, blah, blah.The closest they come to the real story is generally on the jump page: "To achieve the lower break-even point, GM will have to shed thousands of employees, several car

The much-touted 'pace' of bleeding out

2009-05-08T08:52:00.000-07:00

Let's say I'm bleeding. Badly. I have about 15 pints of blood in me. I drop a half pint and I don't like that exactly, but it's really no sweat. Then I lose another pint. I feel a little dizzy, starting to get concerned. Then a pint and a half. Weak, feeling sick. Another pint. Really worried now... Then the 'pace slows'' to half a pint. Do I feel better? Not much. I'm in deep doo-doo

Capitalist swine manure lagoons

2009-04-30T07:09:00.000-07:00

So now the swine flu outbreak may have an interesting link to "manure lagoons" at gigantic pig farms in Mexico on land stolen from campesinos and run by US agribusiness. There's a shocker! A big international corporation like Smithfield Farms involved in a catastrophe of Bhopal proportion?Oh, yeah. Bhopal was a catastrophe caused by a big international corporation. So was this whole "

More on "tea parties"

2009-04-16T08:05:00.000-07:00

Yes, it's a pun.Sorry, my basic critique of this "tax day tea party" embarrassment is below, but I just couldn't resist these -er- insightful comments from the Illinois "tea party" site, which I think show their true colors:"I stand for preserving the American way. I am against this socialistic regime the uninformed have elected. I’ll be there with others!""[...] liberals are projecting a very

Big little banks

2009-04-15T12:47:00.000-07:00

Today's New York Times has a worried article about the government's assessments of the nation's biggest banks, and how lower assessments might send investors packing from the "smaller" ones. Es posible.But the scale is all wrong for this discussion, or at least it's not to our scale for most of us. The big little banks or the big big banks, any and all of them are ready, willing and able to

Missing the Boat

2009-04-13T15:33:00.000-07:00

Seems the Libertarian nutjobs are coming out of the woodwork, holding little "tea parties" here and there. But these so-called tea parties have just about one and a half things in common with the original in Boston, besides the name, that is.First, they are disguised. In 1773 the famous tea party-istas were disguised as Native Americans. In 2009 the cheap knock-offs are disguised as patriots

The People's Potluck

2009-04-06T12:26:00.000-07:00

Last summer a solid union friend of mine named Gene Vanderport got together some people he knew to talk about ways that communities could address the economic crisis. This was well before the financial sector locked up and job losses really spiked in October and November. Of course the economists-that-be now admit that the recession started last year (at least), but at that time they had not

Outrage is not enough!

2009-03-21T08:41:00.000-07:00

Maybe you've heard the phrase, "Outrage is all the rage," describing how ticked off the American people are about the toxic economy and our feckless government. Quite right, too. Of course, we aren't pissed off enough until we're pissed off enough to do something about it.It's not bad enough that the bastards who've been lowering wages and shipping jobs overseas for 30 years, all the time

Salvadoran people win!

2009-03-17T08:48:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to the poor people of El Salvador on their recent election defeat of the evil rightwing ARENA that held power for so long. Bizarrely enough the new US Administration is welcoming the FMLN government, quite a change from the millions of US dollars that that used to pour into the country to try to crush them. It remains to be seen what the FMLN will mean to the brave people of El

Same Song, Different Day

2009-03-15T10:11:00.000-07:00

Can you name the song?Here's another observation similar to mine about Texas below, this one from the University of Mississippi, where I went to school - and used to write about "Neo-Confederates" in the student paper once upon a time.Atkins is absolutely on the money that, "The recent spectacle of Corker, Shelby and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky leading the GOP attack on the proposed $14 billion

Texas secedes again

2009-03-14T07:40:00.000-07:00

Fifth time's a charm?In 1822 a bunch of white Americans from the Southeast, proto-Texans, left the US and crossed the Mississippi River and essentially re-introduced the institution of slavery into northern Mexico. In 1829 Mexico outlawed slavery, but gave the white slavers in the state of Coahuila y Tejas special dispensation until 1830. (The abolition movement was growing around the world,

Internationally networked injustice

2009-03-12T17:47:00.000-07:00

We've been hearing for a few years about the brutal massacres, rapes, and kidnappings associated with mining coltan and other metals for computers and cell phones in the Congo Wars, similar to the blood diamond horrors further north. A collection of recent work also exposes brutal labor conditions on down the production line in Chinese factories.Anybody want to tell me again how great the global

Executive assassination ring

2009-03-12T10:18:00.000-07:00

As usual Seymour Hersch reveals more than we really want to hear, but always credibly and non-trivially.

Butterflies caused the financial collapse

2009-03-11T06:36:00.000-07:00

They just can't bring themselves to say the word: deregulation. Zachary Roth finds the obnoxious tip of an obscene iceberg at McGraw-Hill. Or maybe the metaphor is upside down: propaganda like this aimed at kids must be the lowest dung in the proverbial hill.Of course deregulation is not the whole problem. A new book by William Cohan describes a "mix of arrogance, greed, recklessness, and

Keeping up with health care reform

2009-03-06T22:14:00.001-08:00

As the national pudding of health care reform begins to near the legislative eating there are some half-fulls and some half-empties, but incredibly neither faction says what we need is more hanging out, playing "Guitar Hero." Except the mainstream media and the corporate world it lives in, that is. Meanwhile back in the Beltway, there is actually reason to believe that the process could even

Recovery, who gets it

2009-03-05T10:36:00.000-08:00

Here's a useful piece of work.I like that it's balanced, rational. Points out opportunities for grassroots pressure as well as problems (e.g. the money is dispersed, not overseen by - say - a Social Monetary Fund.)

Buy American what?

2009-03-04T15:16:00.000-08:00

This month's issue of Labor Notes carries a letter to the editor from Detroit's UAW Local 235 member Diane Feeley criticizing a rally she recently attended with the theme "Buy America," presumably supposed to be a clever take on the old slogan, "Buy American," which Feeney says she also never supported. "...and I certainly don't consider GM, Ford, Chrysler, or American Axle as 'American'

Demographic war

2009-03-04T09:35:00.000-08:00

As 'genocide' was euphemized into 'ethnic cleansing' so now 'ethnic cleansing' has apparently become 'demographic war'! I suppose it could be a useful term, though. Is the aftermath of Katrina a "demographic war"? The collapse of Detroit?And if you haven't read Matt's recent blog post about NPR and Clinton's 'strong support' for the Palestinians, check it out.

Zombie banks, zombie cars

2009-03-04T07:21:00.000-08:00

When the AFL-CIO gets behind nationalizing banks, you know it's past due.Some crazy radicals have even suggested a similar strategy for the auto industry. I mean, where's that "value" for our public bucks otherwise?But critics of nationalization have a point that 'there are no guarantees.' And Fmr-Transport Sec. Barnum's off-base: we don't need "slimmed down" corporations, just the reverse. We

Diversify or die

2009-03-03T11:08:00.000-08:00

In today’s news http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081205/ap_on_bi_go_ec_fi/financial_meltdown “[…] employers slashed 533,000 jobs in November, the most in 34 years […]"By the way, that's around twice what the experts were predicting. And the most dire warnings had us around 300,000 job losses per

A few Obama DO's and DONT's

2008-12-04T22:13:00.000-08:00

http://www.ucimc.org/content/obama-should-make-clean-break-past-latin-americaSometimes it's good just to run down the list. It is hard to imagine Obama being as bad as the W. (And this is just Latin America.)Florida tomato pickers still want Obama to visit Immokalee, though. (See link below.) Slavery is still alive and well in America. So are a lot of things most people don't know about,

More good news from Immokalee!

2008-12-03T12:40:00.000-08:00

Subway agrees to farmworkers demands! Subway-bashing canceled nationwide!http://www.ciw-online.org/Once again the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, those impoverished, mostly immigrant and largely non-English-speaking farmworkers from the Southeastern US, are showing us all the way.Their patient, direct grassroots organizing, combined with smart, media-savvy coalition-building and corporate

Depression, by any other name ...

2008-12-03T12:35:00.000-08:00

“Private employers cut 250,000 jobs in November, the most in seven years, a report by a private employment service said on Wednesday, (Reuters 12-3-08).” The experts also keep “revising upward” their totals from months we thought were behind us, so things keep getting worse in the past as well as present and future. Previous reports this fall include: Aug. 2008 – 127,000 for the

context & thanksgiving

2008-11-26T06:47:00.001-08:00

Context, as they say, is all-important. That’s probably why the dominant culture generally tends to omit context. Take the Thanksgiving holiday for example. Criticism of the holiday often elicits a response from well-meaning liberals (the pro-Chief take on it isn’t worth discussing) that goes something like this: Yes, the apocalyptic genocide of the original Americans was a terrible thing.

Green but not Soylent Green

2008-11-25T08:48:00.000-08:00

"It's people. Soylent Green is made out of people. They're making our food out of people."- "Soylent Green" (Richard Fleischer, 1973)For as long as there have been bailouts, people have known that bailouts suck. The rich play, we pay. "Privatized profit, socialized risk," it's called. Now, with more bailout requests in the pipeline and the President-Elect promising the mother of all stimuli,

Piven: Obama needs a protest movement

2008-11-25T07:16:00.000-08:00

Sociologist and activist Frances Fox Piven is wonderful as always:http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/11/15-0Piven's Regulating the Poor is an absolute epiphany. But you can read Poor People's Movements for a broader vision of Piven's and political scientist Richard A Cloward's rare method. Why American's Don't Vote and Why Americans Still Don't Vote are now slightly dated in terms of some of

Say it ain't so, Barack!

2008-11-23T11:19:00.000-08:00

Obama's gang is telling us today (anonymously - how slick) that the new Prez might delay tax cuts to the rich ... because (incredibly) of the economic "downturn" (AP, 11-23-08).WRONG! The "downturn" - economists sometimes call it a "correction" (or a "major correction") - is the best reason that's come along in a long time to increase taxes on the rich. In the immortal words of the esteemed

State capitalism ascendant

2008-11-21T08:40:00.000-08:00

Apparently when a new president enters the Oval Office and eases his butt into the big chair for the first time, on his desk is a copy of something called a "Global Trend Report" prepared by the National Intelligence Council, a sort of crystal ball for the CIA et al. Now, the NIC is no ordinary think-tank with a bone to pick. They answer to the Director of National Intelligence, and their job

Structured by cows

2008-11-20T09:33:00.000-08:00

"It could be structured by cows and we would rate it": another fascinating peek into the parallel universe that, unfortunately in the end, did intersect with ours ...http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/11/it_could_be_structured_by_cows.phpMaybe it’s the whole economy that was structured by cows. The focus has been Wall Street, and there’s plenty of craziness there to focus on. People

Pirates and emperors

2008-11-19T20:46:00.000-08:00

NPR is repeating today that the Indian Navy has claimed victory in a reported “sea battle” with Somali pirates and even sank one of the pirates’ “mother ships.” A US Naval College professor interviewed this morning told Robert Siegel that piracy had now become a major threat to the world’s energy resources! Presumably the professor was referring specifically to sea piracy – he didn’t

How to Save Capitalism - in case we want to

2008-11-18T12:41:00.000-08:00

I’ve just been reading Harper’s Magazine –which I don’t usually do. But this month there are a number of articles on “How to Save Capitalism” – which I don’t normally advocate, either. But it seemed pertinent, and there are quite a few interesting ideas. Joseph Stiglitz (“The Three Trillion Dollar War”), who I think some of our friends were praying would be Obama’s Treasury Secretary, has

Better than Bush, but ...

2008-11-14T14:47:00.000-08:00

[...] The Democrats' bill would require companies to submit a plan for long-term viability, share a portion of future profits with the Government and reimburse taxpayers before any other shareholder. [- AP 11/14/08]Still need to hear more about what "viability" means - the looking out for Number One sense, or the we all exist as members of a society sense - and to get the damn thing passed -

Auto bailout: gas guzzlers guzzle more than gas

2008-11-13T07:31:00.000-08:00

So the "news" today is that incoming Pres. Obama wants Congress to fork over "as much as $50 billion to save cash-starved U.S. automakers" like GM, in the news recently for plummeting stock prices. But will it burn up on re-entry? Obama and a bunch of politicians from car-building states seem to think so, that the Big Three could fall into bankruptcy without this cash.http://www.bloomberg.com/

ACORN better than Obama

2008-11-12T14:37:00.000-08:00

The 2008 elections made me realize I've never been prouder that I worked for ACORN.National media coverage hit rock bottom with Sen. McCain’s attacks on ACORN, the community organization that has been doing such excellent work together with Project Vote registering over a million low-income Americans in 21 states, who might not otherwise have been able to vote next month. An estimated 60-70