Bits and pieces

DEATH THREATS IN THE NAME OF ‘LAW AND ORDER’
Albany (NY) County’s district attorney David Soares has admitted that he and his office has received death threats in response to his refusal to prosecute participants of the Occupy Albany movement for non-violent activities like violating curfew. From the infamous pepper spray police thug in Davis, CA to the violent crackdown against peaceful Occupy movements in places like Oakland and Denver to the above death threats, you’ve seen remarkably little violence from those protesting in the name of democracy with most of the violence being committed by people doing so in the name of ‘respect for law and order.’ Quite a different reality to the one intoned by the yapping heads.

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WHAT’S THE STRANGE COMBINATION OF LETTERS ON THAT STREET SIGN (B-I-K-E L-A-N-E) SIGNIFY?
Bravo to the Burlington, mayored by a Progressive Party mayor not coincidentally, for lowering the speed limiton the Vermont city’s streets. The Burlington Free Press reports that it was done to enhance the safety of bicyclists and pedestrians. Yet another reason Burlington is probably the coolest city in the northeastern US.

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YES, EVEN REFS ARE HUMAN TOO
Recent stories in the soccer world a very troubling, from the attempted suicide of two referees, to the apparent suicide of Wales national team manager Gary Speed to the suicide not that long ago of German goalkeeper Robert Enke. It should serve as a wake-up call reminding soccer fans that a little re-humanization is long past due. There is so much vitriol and nastiness in soccer fandom that it’s easy to forget that the targets are all human beings, with families and emotions. Passion should never be used as an excuse to act like barbarians.

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IN DISTRACTION WE TRUST
Economic inequality, unemployment, massive corporate welfare, institutionalized anti-democracy... the country is facing so many problems and what is the latest meaninglessness that Theocrats want us to freak out about? The president’s failure to mention God in his Thanksgiving address (only the spoken one; he did include it in the written one). You can just call it The Great Distraction.

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THE REVOLUTION WILL BE TELEVISED... JUST NOT HERE
I saw this great graphic on Facebook, which showed the covers of TIME magazines editions for other parts of the world compared to its US edition. Gives you an insight into the editorial judgment [sic] of their vaunted professional editors.

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THE PROBLEM WITH COLLEGE STUDENTS: THEY HAVE TOO *LITTLE* DEBT
I was gobsmacked to read a newspaper article with this headline: "The other student loan problem: too little debt." Only a bank-obsessed culture would look at this issue and wonder if the problem is students with too *little* debt rather than taking a hard look at whether a university education, whether the cost of a fancy piece of paper is massively overpriced. Investigative journalism at its finest.

Radical moderation is no virtue

A follow up to the previous entry...

I believe that consensus is the preferred route for society and government. In fact, I'm fairly uncomfortable with conflict, at least face to face. I think civility should be the default pathway for society. I simply don’t believe we should be a slave to it merely for its own sake. In fact, we mustn’t. Radical moderation can be just as dangerous as radical extremism. It seems counterintuitive but it’s true.

I believe that consensus is the preferred route for society and government. It should be the default route. I simply don’t believe we should be a slave to it. In fact, we mustn’t. Radical moderation can be just as dangerous as radical extremism. It seems counterintuitive but it’s true.

Without agitation and contestation, we would not have had great social advances like: women’s voting, the end of slavery, the end of segregation/apartheid, consumer protection laws, health and safety laws, worker protection laws, unemployment insurance, the 40 hour work week and many other things that make America a first world country.

Warm and fuzzy bipartisanship has led to many abominations including: the Patriot Act and the war on civil liberties, the deregulation of the financial industry that led to recent economic meltdown, the aggression against Iraq, the Vietnam War, the internment of American citizens of Japanese origin in the 1940s, the genocide against Native Americans, to name but a few.

Yes, the ultimate purpose of agitation is to form a newer, better consensus. But neither is of any value in and of itself. The objective is that which is better. Not only can you not make omelettes without breaking eggs, but even after you break the eggs, you still have to stir things up to get something useful.

Think of it this way. Pick any despotic regime in history. It was no doubt led by extremists. But the extremist regime could not have survived without the active cooperation and acquiescence of moderates. Of people who maybe didn’t agree with the regime but didn’t want to shake things up or were afraid to make waves. Sometimes extremism is actually principle. Sometimes moderation is complicity. Not always but at times. Neither is a virtue in and of itself. The key is know when which is appropriate.

Instead of radical moderation, how about moderation in moderation.

Maybe we need a little *more* incivility

Civility and consensus are my default preferences, but boy, they make it hard sometime. In mainstream political analysis, the description 'bipartisan' is designed to make us turn our brains off, clap our hands like robots, squeal in joy like school girls and sing Kumbayah about 'cooperation,' 'civility' and the like. So imagine my reaction I read about this Congressional effort to invalidate the 5th Amendment by allowing the head of state to detain his nation's citizens indefinitely and without charge. Initially, I was outraged. This isn't possible. After all, wasn't such an abomination one of the main grievances in America's Declaration of Independence? But then, I just numbed my mind and intoned warm-over nothings about this joyous effort at bipartisanship and that made it all better.

The class warfare against the Occupy movement

The UK Guardian has a great op-ed about the well-coordinated police crackdown on the Occupy movement. 

The violent police assaults across the US are no coincidence. Occupy has touched the third rail of our political class's venality, it notes.

Where liberals go to feel good

This wonderful column entitled Where Liberals Go to Feel Good by Chris Hedges (one of most astute observers of contemporary society and politics) should be required reading for anyone seeking to understand the complete impotence of the liberal class and the death of the Democratic Party as an instrument for progressive change.

The Occupy movement in one sentence

The best, most succinct sign I've seen about the current situation:

'More equal economies grow faster'

Even the very establishment journal Foreign Policy ran a piece conceding that international evidence suggests that more equal economies grow faster.

It notes that equality of opportunity and the famed pursuit of the American dream are not quite what they are advertised to be. According to an analysis by economists Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis at the Santa Fe Institute, of children born to the poorest 10 percent of parents in the United States, more than half remain in the bottom fifth of incomes as adults.

In other words, socialism (to employ the most grotesquely misused word in American politics) is good for everyone.

Want smaller government? You got it!

One of the easiest ways to get elected is to promise smaller government and lower taxes. It sounds great as rhetoric because it's removed from context. In first world countries, there is an equation, a link between taxes paid and services to citizens provided. Different countries define that equation in different ways but it's there in every developed country. One of the most brilliant things strategically the American far right has done is to break that link, to focus only on the undesirable part (taxes) without discussing their relationship to the desirable part (services).

I'd have less problem with the smaller government/lower taxes rhetoric if its espousers were honest about the consequences. Yeah, they sometimes use rhetoric like "We all have to make sacrifices" (all usually meaning the 99%) or "tough choices have to be made. But it's all passive tense stuff, vague, nebulous and deliberately evasive. Just once, I'd like someone to have the guts to run for office on the platform of "crappier roads" or "higher crime."

Here are a few examples I've heard in the media recently about people who got their desire for smaller government...

-School districts across Indiana are getting rid of busing;

-Some municipalities are dealing with budget shortfalls by turning off streetlights;

-Warren County (NY) tried to seriously scale back its meals for seniors program until town supervisors (all conservatives) in the municipalities affected revolted.

It's funny how everyone loves smaller government and lower taxes when it's a theory but a bit less so when it actually affects them (THEM!). No wonder conservatives typically avoid being completely honest about the *full* consequences of their rhetoric.