Jobs bill not enough

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?

Texas secedes again

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, and slavery was abolished in the French Revolution - although Napoleon brought it back briefly - was outlawed in the British Empire in 1833, and so on.) Against this worldwide trend, early Texans seceded from Mexico in the so-called "Texas Revolution" (more accurately a Reaction) in 1835-6. Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie, and Sam Houston are still revered in the US as heroes of that war for slavery.

The American ex-pats of the Texan Republic soon joined the US - no shocker there - but a generation later left the US again in 1861. It was over slavery again (which wasn't strictly under threat in the US at the time, but slave states felt challenged by the election of Abe Lincoln, a moderate in that he opposed expansion of slavery - the slavers' bluff had been called, essentially).

After the war, black and Latino Texans faced regular atrocities from the Ku Klux Klan and the revered Texas Rangers (not much like the Lone Ranger), as well as Jim Crow laws and so on. In 1954 when Brown v. Board of Education banned racial segregation in public schools, the governor called out the Rangers to impede black students. Racist resistance continued through the 1970s - a kind of running secession from the trend toward civil rights and equality that was sweeping the world. "White flight" from cities in Texas - as elsewhere - represents one facet of this subtler, but no less racist neo-secession.

There's a connection here to anti-immigration movements, like the Minute Men (a kind of continuum between US Border Patrol and American Nazis - but that's for another time.

Now yesterday, with the recession growing and the threat of federal "expansion" of officially-defined unemployed (most people who aren't working don't count, rather conveniently) Texas governor Rick Perry turned down $555 million to bailout the state's sinking unemployment fund - which the state's own Workforce Commission chair says could be in the red in seven months.

"During these tough times," he says, "Texas employers are working harder than ever..." blah, blah, blah (my emphasis). What about Texas workers, being canned by the hundreds of thousands every week?

Perry's not alone, of course, which is what suggests there's a new wave of genuine neo-secessionism in the birthing here.

Recovery, who gets it

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.)

Zombie banks, zombie cars

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 need an expanded, social vision for them.

It's the original idea behind corporate charters, updated. The king/parliament, then Congress, used to grant charters to corporations in order to serve a particular function, assumed to be a good (for them). What we need is control over that purpose. Social Monetary Fund, folks, I'm tellin' ya!

Auto bailout: gas guzzlers guzzle more than gas

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/apps/news?pid=washingtonstory&sid=aBlCucXR33Jw

True, if even one of the Three go down the ripple effect could be deadly. Overall wages, benefits, and possibly working conditions could be dragged into the sinkhole. But what keeps getting lost in these rushes to bailout the big boys is what the taxpayer (or the folks who are too poor to pay taxes) get out of it.

In the bank bailout, the US decided to buy up stock, in the end, but non-voting stock (not like the UK). And no new regulations in the deal. Not good enough. For the kind of money we are shelling out, we need a say in how these companies decide to blow it all.

Same goes for the car industry. The bailout needs to have a price, a real price,a useful price. At a minimum, the deal needs to be linked to this policy both parties supposedly have called "reducing our dependence on foreign oil," or some such. The Big Three have played a very nasty game in this respect, aided by the Republicans - and "Who Killed the Electric Car" went way too easy on them. If we bail them out this time, we need some signatures on some dotted lines about affordable electric cars, hybrids, something.

But that won't help most people, who can't afford a new car no matter what it runs on. Poor folks in this country need to get to work, or at least to get in to look for work. And the history of car-making companies blocking public transportation could provide a clue to how the Big Three ought to be helping: put it in reverse.

As late as this summer the Three were focussed on luring people away from public transportation, instead of investing in it. This situation is untenable, and backasswards. What the government needs to do, if it has to bail out these big boys, is use it as leverage. Test the urgency. We need to get the Big Three working on our agenda if they are going to be working with our money.