Ah... Dean...

Tax Increases Are Not Stimulus

The NYT tells us that President Obama's plans to increase taxes on the wealthy are not part of his stimulus package. It would be very surprising if they were since tax increases, even on wealthy people, are not stimulus. His plan to withdraw from Iraq is probably not part of his stimulus package either.

--Dean Baker

Thought for the day...

Something I was thinking in the car today: "I think this financial crisis may be the end of the Reagan Revolution"

Here's Naomi Klein, Robert Kuttner and Michael Hudson on Obama's economic team.

Brad Delong on
Talking Points on the Designation of Christina D. Romer as the Candidate to Be Nominated to the Senate for the Post of Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers

World-class expert on the Great Depression: if you want to avoid any of the mistakes made during the Great Depression, she is the one to hire.
World-class expert on monetary and fiscal policy: encyclopedic knowledge of their history--since we need a CEA chair who knows more about stabilization policy than about tax or labor or industrial organization policy.

Very good at explaining economics: great similarities between teaching Econ 1 and teaching the White House staff about economics.

Very good at making people believe that relatively complicated ideas about economics are simple facts of nature.

Bush moved the CEA staff out of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building:
A very bad thing because the CEA staff can no longer look over the shoulders of the White House staff and offer advice.

CDR should demand, as a condition of appointment, that at least her two deputies have offices in the White House complex.

A center-left moderate:
But these are not moderate times. To be moderate now is to be radical. To be radical is to be moderate.

A woman who taught her then-two year old that the answer to the question "Who should be president?" was "Bruce Babbitt."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Other appointees:

Geithner, Summers, Orszag--world-class appointments; at least as well qualified as anybody else in the world for these jobs.
Who is going to be the consensus-builder?
You need a person to build a happy consensus among economic policy advisers.
If you don't have a builder of the happy consensus, then you have a situation in which lobbyists, spin-doctors, and rogue vice presidents have points of entry in order to make bad policy.

Then a good post on the bailout failure...

The Citigroup Bailout

media...

Obama, Rush Limbaugh and Fox News: A Look at Media in 2009

The Washington Post ombudsman and others claim that the media was too kind to Obama and hard on John McCain. This superficial analysis is both wrong and misleading. Wrong because you had a candidate that was forcefully embracing the policies of George W. Bush while the nation spiraled into one of its darkest moments in its history. The idea that the press should not exert sharp criticism of such a candidate reflects the kind of tepid pandering that has become the hallmark of mainstream corporate media.

And misleading because the real problem is not the media favoring one candidate over another, but rather its utter failure to practice critical journalism. Turn on your television or radio, and it's 24/7 horserace political coverage, partisan shouting matches, and salacious crap. There is no effort to tell voters the difference between the candidates' rhetoric and reality, how their proclamations match their voting records, and what their policy proposals would actually do. While there were a few notable moments when news outlets actually did this during the campaign, they were few and far between.

Olbermann and Maddow's increased popularity is moving the range of debate on cable from center-right to left-right, but radio is still overwhelmingly right-wing, and the changes at MSNBC fall far short of a comprehensive, long-term solution to thecrisis of journalism. Newsroom layoffs mount across television, radio and newspapers, and omission has become the greatest threat. There is virtually no in-depth coverage and analysis on television of Iraq and Afghanistan, poverty, the environment and the other critical issues facing working Americans. And despite the explosion of the Internet, 45% of American homes still have no high speed Internet, while some 65% of Americans still cite TV as their primary news source.

Charges of liberal bias continue to strike such fear in the hearts of corporate news editors and producers, that they continue obsessive contortions to present both sides of every debate -- not from a factual perspective, but from a partisan one. Even if one side of an argument is clearly true, today's Wolf Blitzer, Charlie Gibson or Brian Williams - and even NPR and PBS - dare not say it (such as the economic bailout being a corrupt boondoggle for banking fatcats) and suffer the wrath of the right wing noise machine, and pressure from their corporate bosses. In today's media environment, the truth becomes irrelevant.

Take a walk through rural Ohio as I did this Election Day, and working-class voters are watching Fox, reading empty newspapers running on a bare-bones staff, and listening to radio's right-wing hate-fest. In today's media environment, we must face the fact that if not for the financial crisis and a disastrous GOP vice-presidential pick, this election might well have been McCain's.

So the incoming president is excellent on media policy, and his election allows media reform advocates to move from defense to offense. However, as Obama inherits a severe economic crisis, two wars, and myriad other problems, it will be too easy for media issues to get pushed down the to-do list. And the well-financed lobbyists from the phone, cable and broadcasting companies who supported Obama's candidacy are expecting a return on their investment. As well they should: if you look back at the history of Democratic presidents and media policy, there have been many disappointments, and cause for us to be as cautious as we are optimistic.

Here's a quick list of the top policy reforms to watch in 2009 for anyone who shares my disgust with news coverage, sky-high cable and phone bills, and the other maladies brought by a media system dominated by the likes of Comcast, Disney, AT&T, General Electric, Verizon, News Corporation and Time Warner:

Getting super-fast, open/neutral, affordable Internet to every home and business in America, urban and rural, rich and poor - Internet that will allow every website to be a television or radio network... a complete game changer.


Reversing consolidation of media ownership through tougher broadcast license requirements and incentives for more independent, diverse and local radio, television and print outlets.


Dramatically increasing funding for public media: for PBS and NPR, as well as community radio and television, and other noncommercial outlets. This includes policies that better protect public media from undue political pressures.
Now that the champagne has been put away, it's time to realize that while disastrous members of Bush & Co. are heading towards the exits, the disastrous members of mainstream media remain firmly in place. Ignore the problem at your - and the nation's - peril.

Go read...

The Ideology of No Ideology by Norman Solomon right now. Do not pass go... do not collect $200. Go read it right now...

dead on.

The ideology of no ideology is nifty. No matter how tilted in favor of powerful interests, it can be a deft way to keep touting policy agendas as common-sense pragmatism -- virtuous enough to draw opposition only from ideologues.

Meanwhile, the end of ideology among policymakers is about as imminent as the end of history.

But -- in sync with the ideology of no ideology -- deference to corporate power isn't ideological. And belief in the U.S. government's prerogative to use military force anywhere in the world is a matter of credibility, not ideology.

Ideological assumptions gain power as they seem to disappear into the prevailing political scenery. So, for instance, reliably non-ideological ideological journalists sit at the studio table every Friday night on the PBS "Washington Week" program, which is currently funded by similarly non-ideological outfits including Boeing, the National Mining Association and Constellation Energy ("the nation's largest supplier of competitive electricity to large commercial and industrial customers," with revenues of $21 billion last year).

Along the way, the ideology of no ideology can corral even normally incisive commentators. So, over the weekend, as news broke about the nominations of Timothy Geithner and Lawrence Summers to top economic posts, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich wrote an article praising "the members of Obama's new economic team." Reich declared: "All are pragmatists. Some media have dubbed them 'centrists' or 'center-right,' but in truth they're remarkably free of ideological preconception. ... They are not visionaries but we don't need visionaries when the economic perils are clear and immediate. We need competence. Obama could not appoint a more competent group."

Competence can be very good. But "free of ideological preconception"? I want to meet these guys. If they really don't have any ideological preconceptions, they belong in the book of Guinness World Records.

As for competence, it seems that claims of non-ideology often go hand-in-hand with overblown claims of economic mastery. "Geithner and Summers are credited with expertise in crisis management," economist Mark Weisbrot pointed out on Monday, "but we better hope they don't manage the current crisis like they did in East Asia, Russia, Argentina or any of the other countries that Treasury was involved in during the 1990s with their help. They helped bring on the East Asian crisis in 1997 by pressuring the governments in the region to de-regulate international financial flows, which was the main cause of the crisis. Then they insisted that all bailout money go through the IMF, and delayed aid until most of the damage was done. Then they attached damaging conditions" to the aid.

After all is said and done, the ideology of no ideology is just like any other ideology that's apt to be much better at promoting itself than living up to its pretenses. No amount of flowery rhetoric or claims of transcendent non-ideology should deter tough scrutiny. And Judge Judy's injunction should apply to the ideology of no ideology as much as to any ideology that owns up to being one: "Don't pee on me and tell me it's raining."

dead on.

critique of enlightenment thinking

The Limits of Individual Knowledge

As Barack Obama is putting together his team that will help "fix the economy", we need to keep in mind that in a world with nearly 7 billion people all acting in their own self-interest, no one person or one group of people can ever have the knowledge to successfully tinker with the economic system.

Case in point: Less than three months ago, Hurricane Ike hike the Gulf Coast and already sky-high gas prices shot even higher. After more than than seven years of increasing gas prices because of terrorism and two Middle Eastern wars, everyone just knew that the old ways of American life were over. From business to politics to media to the arts, everyone in the American elite called for a "rationalization" of American energy policy.

I commented:

I think the Kennedy administration proved that the technical class isn't all knowing.

Well, in reality... look at any elite group since the beginning of time. There will always be those who promise salvation or claim some group will bring it to us.

That's not how salvation works, and that's not how human knowledge works. Another failure of enlightenment thinking really...

Also moving from theory to real world. I don't think terrorism, and two middle eastern wars, were the only contributors to our transportation crisis. Bad Transportation policy and bad governance doesn't help... as Doug noted:

there is no way any group of people - no matter how smart - can have enough knowledge to successfully plan the economy. The world is just too complicated, and the only way to efficiently allocate resources is through the market economy.

Throwing up our hands and saying here is the only solution, be it certain market approaches or the hands off "the private sector is the best way to address these issues"--the way people too often do. Has reaped the mess we are in (mind you bad transportation policies are supported by Dem's too!). This situation and many we fcae right now are of the "hands off" descent. This fact would fall within the logic of the post as well.

Thinking we can determine the most successful plan without using our best understanding of markets and the tried and true test-- what happens and is happening in the real world when we implement it--would be a stunning failure of human thinking.

Not that such is anything outside of the norm (myself included).

Policy is not pretty, representative government and the compromises and deal making it entails is most definitely not pretty. Life isn't fair... we just roll up our sleeves and try to find policies that work.

Mental health group formed to provide assistance

By Valerie Baldowski

vbaldowski@henryherald.com

A new mental health advocacy group has been formed to address the needs of those afflicted with mental health issues.

The group, called Georgia Mental Health United, was founded with the help of a $40,000 grant from the Atlanta United Way. Three of those organizing the new initiative are Henry County Democratic Committee Chairman Jim Nichols, Dawn A. Randolph, and Ellyn Jeager.

Randolph is president of DIR Consulting Group LLC, a public-policy consulting firm in Stockbridge. Jeager is interim executive director of Mental Health American of Georgia.

Nichols, the point of contact in Henry County, said the group is still in the fledgling stages, but hopes to educate the public about mental health issues. "It's basically trying to grow a grassroots organization that allows people to find out more about this issue," he said. "It's a brand new program [and] we are just getting off the ground."

The group will provide an opportunity for those affected by mental illness to get help and find out more information. "One in five people have mental health issues," said Nichols, who said he, himself, is bipolar. "It's empowering people and families concerned about mental illness. This has a huge impact on people."

The problems patients face are serious, he continued, and they need extra assistance to live a normal life. "People who are bipolar, who go untreated or undertreated, have problems," Nichols said. He added that other challenges can include drug abuse, incarceration and dysfunctional relationships.

Randolph, who like Jeager, is a statewide coordinator for the group, explained that the grant should last until June 2009. The money will be used for educating and training 200 volunteers to become mental health issue advocates in five regions of the state. "It's a good start," Randolph said. "It's never enough money, but we're grateful for what we have."

The organization's first training session was Nov. 22 in Atlanta. Subsequent training sessions are scheduled for Dec. 12 in Savannah, Dec. 13 in Augusta, Dec. 19 in Tifton and Dec. 20 in Carrollton.

After the legislative session starts Jan. 3, there will be weekly conference calls to mental health advocates, aimed at making it easier to get information on mental health issues, she said.

One of the critical problems, she said, centers around the lack of bus service in some areas, including Henry. "A lot of folks live in rural areas," Randolph emphasized. "If they have a crisis, how will they get treatment? When it comes to these types of services, we might just as well be in Tifton."

She said if legislators do not realize the importance of mental health services, funds for them will be cut, once the legislative session begins. One of the basic resources, she said, a crisis hot line, could be eliminated.

For more information, call Nichols at (770) 312-6736.

Dean Baker on double taxation...

Greg Mankiw Promotes the Myth of Double Taxation

There is an old myth developed by rich people at some point in the distant past that paying taxes on dividends amounts to "double-taxation." The argument is that profits are already taxed at the corporate level, so taxing money when it is paid out as dividends to shareholders is taxing the same profit a second time. Gregory Mankiw, a Harvard University professor and former top economist in the Bush administration, pushes this line in a column in the NYT.

The trick in this argument is that it ignores the enormous benefits that the government is granting by allowing a corporation to exist as a free standing legal entity. The most important of these advantages is limited liability. If a corporation produces dangerous products or emits dangerous substances that result in thousands of deaths, shareholders in the corporation cannot be held personally responsible for the damage. The corporation can go bankrupt, but beyond that point, all the shareholders are off the hook, the victims of the damage are just out of luck.

By granting corporate status, the government has allowed investors to shift risk to society as a whole. In exchange for this and other privileges of corporate status, the corporation must pay income tax on its earnings. We know that investors consider the benefits of corporate status to be worth the price in the form of the corporate income tax, because they voluntarily choose to form corporations. If investors did not consider the benefits of corporate status to outweigh the cost of the income tax, then they are free to form partnerships which are not subject to corporate income tax. In this way, the corporate income tax is a completely voluntary tax. Anyone can avoid the tax by investing in a partnership, or alternatively, any corporation can be restructured as a partnership.

The complaint about double taxation is an effort to get the benefits of corporate status for free. It is understandable that rich people would want to get benefits from the government at no cost, just like most of us would prefer not to pay our mortgage or electric bill. But, there is no reason for government to be handing out something of great value (corporate status) for free. If rich people don't like the corporate income tax, they have a very simple way to avoid it -- don't invest in corporations. The problem is that the rich are just a bunch of whiners.

--Dean Baker

Zizek on Obama

Use Your Illusions
Slavoj Žižek
Noam Chomsky called for people to vote for Obama ‘without illusions’. I fully share Chomsky’s doubts about the real consequences of Obama’s victory: from a pragmatic perspective, it is quite possible that Obama will make only some minor improvements, turning out to be ‘Bush with a human face’. He will pursue the same basic policies in a more attractive way and thus effectively strengthen the US hegemony, damaged by the catastrophe of the Bush years.

There is nonetheless something deeply wrong with this reaction – a key dimension is missing from it. Obama’s victory is not just another shift in the eternal parliamentary struggle for a majority, with all the pragmatic calculations and manipulations that involves. It is a sign of something more. This is why an American friend of mine, a hardened leftist with no illusions, cried when the news came of Obama’s victory. Whatever our doubts, for that moment each of us was free and participating in the universal freedom of humanity.

In The Contest of Faculties, Kant asked a simple but difficult question: is there true progress in history? (He meant ethical progress, not just material development.) He concluded that progress cannot be proven, but we can discern signs which indicate that progress is possible. The French Revolution was such a sign, pointing towards the possibility of freedom: the previously unthinkable happened, a whole people fearlessly asserted their freedom and equality. For Kant, even more important than the – often bloody – reality of what went on on the streets of Paris was the enthusiasm that the events in France gave rise to in the eyes of sympathetic observers all around Europe and in places as far away as Haiti, where it triggered another world-historical event: the first revolt by black slaves. Arguably the most sublime moment of the French Revolution occurred when the delegation from Haiti, led by Toussaint l’Ouverture, visited Paris and were enthusiastically received at the Popular Assembly as equals among equals.

Obama’s victory is a sign of history in the triple Kantian sense of signum rememorativum, demonstrativum, prognosticum. A sign in which the memory of the long past of slavery and the struggle for its abolition reverberates; an event which now demonstrates a change; a hope for future achievements. The scepticism displayed behind closed doors even by many worried progressives – what if, in the privacy of the voting booth, the publicly disavowed racism will re-emerge? – was proved wrong. One of the interesting things about Henry Kissinger, the ultimate cynical Realpolitiker, is how utterly wrong most of his predictions were. When news reached the West of the 1991 anti-Gorbachev military coup, for example, Kissinger immediately accepted the new regime as a fact. It collapsed ignominiously three days later. The paradigmatic cynic tells you confidentially: ‘But don’t you see that it is all really about money/power/sex, that professions of principle or value are just empty phrases which count for nothing?’ What the cynics don’t see is their own naivety, the naivety of their cynical wisdom which ignores the power of illusions.

The reason Obama’s victory generated such enthusiasm is not only that, against all odds, it really happened: it demonstrated the possibility of such a thing happening. The same goes for all great historical ruptures – think of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Although we all knew about the rotten inefficiency of the Communist regimes, we didn’t really believe that they would disintegrate – like Kissinger, we were all victims of cynical pragmatism. Obama’s victory was clearly predictable for at least two weeks before the election, but it was still experienced as a surprise.

The true battle begins now, after the victory: the battle for what this victory will effectively mean, especially within the context of two other more ominous events: 9/11 and the current financial meltdown, an instance of history repeating itself, the first time as tragedy, the second as comedy. President Bush’s addresses to the American people after 9/11 and the financial meltdown sound like two versions of the same speech. Both times, he evoked the threat to the American way of life and the need for fast and decisive action. Both times, he called for the partial suspension of American values (guarantees to individual freedom, market capitalism) to save those very values. Where does this similarity come from?

The fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989 marked the beginning of the ‘happy 1990s’. According to Francis Fukuyama, liberal democracy had, in principle, won. The era is generally seen as having come to an end on 9/11. However, it seems that the utopia had to die twice: the collapse of the liberal-democratic political utopia on 9/11 did not affect the economic utopia of global market capitalism, which has now come to an end.

The financial meltdown has made it impossible to ignore the blatant irrationality of global capitalism. In the fight against Aids, hunger, lack of water or global warming, we may recognise the urgency of the problem, but there is always time to reflect, to postpone decisions. The main conclusion of the meeting of world leaders in Bali to talk about climate change, hailed as a success, was that they would meet again in two years to continue the talks. But with the financial meltdown, the urgency was unconditional; a sum beyond imagination was immediately found. Saving endangered species, saving the planet from global warming, finding a cure for Aids, saving the starving children . . . All that can wait a bit, but ‘Save the banks!’ is an unconditional imperative which demands and gets immediate action. The panic was absolute. A transnational and non-partisan unity was immediately established, all grudges among world leaders momentarily forgotten in order to avert the catastrophe. (Incidentally, what the much-praised ‘bi-partisanship’ effectively means is that democratic procedures were de facto suspended.) The sublimely enormous sum of money was spent not for some clear ‘real’ task, but in order to ‘restore confidence’ in the markets – i.e. for reasons of belief. Do we need any more proof that Capital is the Real of our lives, the Real whose demands are more absolute than even the most pressing demands of our social and natural reality?

Compare the $700 billion spent on stabilising the banking system by the US alone to the $22 billion pledged by richer nations to help poorer nations cope with the food crisis, of which only $2.2 billion has been made available. The blame for the food crisis cannot be put on the usual suspects of corruption, inefficiency or state interventionism. Even Bill Clinton has acknowledged that ‘we all blew it, including me,’ by treating food crops as commodities instead of a vital right of the world's poor. Clinton was very clear in blaming not individual states or governments, but the long-term Western policy imposed by the US and European Union and enacted by the World Bank, the IMF and other international institutions. African and Asian countries were pressured into dropping government subsidies for farmers, opening up the way for the best land to be used for more lucrative export crops. The result of such ‘structural adjustments’ was the integration of local agriculture into the global economy: crops were exported, farmers were thrown off their land and pushed into sweat-shops, and poorer countries had to rely more and more on imported food. In this way, they are kept in postcolonial dependence, vulnerable to market fluctuations – soaring grain prices (caused in part by the use of crops for biofuels) have meant starvation in countries from Haiti to Ethiopia.

Clinton is right to say that ‘food is not a commodity like others. We should go back to a policy of maximum food self-sufficiency. It is crazy for us to think we can develop countries around the world without increasing their ability to feed themselves.’ There are at least two things to add here. First, developed Western countries have taken great care to maintain their own food self-sufficiency through financial support for their farmers (farm subsidies account for almost half of the entire EU budget). Second, the list of things which are not ‘commodities like others’ is much longer: apart from food (and defence, as all patriots are aware), there are water, energy, the environment, culture, education, health – who will make decisions about these, if they cannot be left to the market? It is here that the question of Communism has to be raised again.

The cover story in Time magazine on 5 June 2006 was ‘The Deadliest War in the World’ – a detailed account of the political violence that has killed four million people in Congo over the last decade. None of the usual humanitarian uproar followed, just a couple of readers’ letters. Time picked the wrong victim: it should have stuck to Muslim women or Tibetan monks. The death of a Palestinian child, not to mention an Israeli or an American, is worth thousands more column inches than the death of a nameless Congolese. Why? On 30 October, Associated Press reported that Laurent Nkunda, the rebel general besieging Congo's eastern provincial capital Goma, has said he wants direct talks with the government about his objections to a billion-dollar deal giving China access to the country's vast mineral riches in exchange for a railway and highway. Neo-colonialist problems aside, this deal poses a vital threat to the interests of local warlords, since it would create the infrastructural base for the Democratic Republic of Congo as a functioning united state.

In 2001, a UN investigation into the illegal exploitation of natural resources in Congo found that the conflict in the country is mainly about access to, control of and trade in five key minerals: coltan, diamonds, copper, cobalt and gold. According to this investigation, the exploitation of Congo's natural resources by local warlords and foreign armies was ‘systematic and systemic’. Rwanda's army made at least $250 million in 18 months by selling coltan, which is used in cellphones and laptops. The report concluded that the permanent civil war and disintegration of Congo ‘has created a “win-win” situation for all belligerents. The only loser in this huge business venture is the Congolese people.’ Beneath the façade of ethnic warfare, we thus discern the contours of global capitalism.

Among the greatest exploiters are Rwandan Tutsis, the victims of the genocide 14 years ago. Earlier this year, the Rwandan government published documents that demonstrated the Mitterrand administration’s complicity in the genocide: France supported the Hutu plan for the takeover, even supplying them with arms, in order to regain influence at the expense of the anglophone Tutsis. France’s outright dismissal of the accusations as totally unfounded was, to say the least, itself unfounded. Bringing Mitterrand to the Hague tribunal, even posthumously, would cross a fateful line, for the first time bringing to trial a leading Western politician who pretended to act as a protector of freedom, democracy and human rights.

There has been in recent weeks an extraordinary mobilisation of the ruling ideology to combat the threats to the current order. The French neoliberal economist Guy Sorman, for example, recently said in an interview in Argentina that ‘this crisis will be short enough.’ By saying this, Sorman is fulfilling the basic ideological demand with regard to the financial meltdown: renormalise the situation. As he puts it elsewhere, ‘this ceaseless replacement of the old with the new – driven by technical innovation and entrepreneurialism, itself encouraged by good economic policies – brings prosperity, though those displaced by the process, who find their jobs made redundant, can understandably object to it.’ (This renormalisation coexists with its opposite: the panic raised by the authorities in order to make the public ready to accept the proposed – obviously unjust – solution as inevitable.) Sorman admits that the market is full of irrational behaviour, but is quick to add that ‘it would be preposterous to use behavioral economics to justify restoring excessive state regulations. After all, the state is no more rational than the individual, and its actions can have enormously destructive consequences.’ He goes on:

An essential task of democratic governments and opinion makers when confronting economic cycles and political pressure is to secure and protect the system that has served humanity so well, and not to change it for the worse on the pretext of its imperfection. Still, this lesson is doubtless one of the hardest to translate into language that public opinion will accept. The best of all possible economic systems is indeed imperfect. Whatever the truths uncovered by economic science, the free market is finally only the reflection of human nature, itself hardly perfectible.

Rarely was the function of ideology described in clearer terms: to defend the existing system against any serious critique, legitimising it as a direct expression of human nature.

It is unlikely that the financial meltdown of 2008 will function as a blessing in disguise, the awakening from a dream, the sobering reminder that we live in the reality of global capitalism. It all depends on how it will be symbolised, on what ideological interpretation or story will impose itself and determine the general perception of the crisis. When the normal run of things is traumatically interrupted, the field is open for a ‘discursive’ ideological competition. In Germany in the late 1920s, Hitler won the competition to determine which narrative would explain the reasons for the crisis of the Weimar Republic and the way out of it; in France in 1940 Maréchal Pétain’s narrative won in the contest to find the reasons for the French defeat. Consequently, to put it in old-fashioned Marxist terms, the main task of the ruling ideology in the present crisis is to impose a narrative that will not put the blame for the meltdown on the global capitalist system as such, but on its deviations – lax regulation, the corruption of big financial institutions etc.

Against this tendency, one should insist on the key question: which ‘flaw’ of the system as such opens up the possibility for such crises and collapses? The first thing to bear in mind here is that the origin of the crisis is a ‘benevolent’ one: after the dotcom bubble burst in 2001, the decision reached across party lines was to facilitate real estate investments in order to keep the economy going and prevent recession – today’s meltdown is the price for the US having avoided a recession seven years ago.

The danger is thus that the predominant narrative of the meltdown won’t be the one that awakes us from a dream, but the one that will enable us to continue to dream. And it is here that we should start to worry: not only about the economic consequences of the meltdown, but about the obvious temptation to reinvigorate the ‘war on terror’ and US interventionism in order to keep the economy running. Nothing was decided with Obama’s victory, but it widens our freedom and thereby the scope of our decisions. No matter what happens, it will remain a sign of hope in our otherwise dark times, a sign that the last word does not belong to realistic cynics, from the left or the right.

Jim Martin volunteer opportunities via Atlanta Young Dems

Young Jeezy Supports Jim Martin

Thought I'd get your attention with that. And it's true! There are only 12 More Days Until the Run-Off Election and everyone is getting in on the GOTV effort. Are you?
Jim and Saxby are separated by only a few points in the polls. This is a fight we can win with your effort! We are asking everyone to dedicate 2 hours and to find 5 friends who can also dedicate 2 hours in the next 12 days to getting young Democrats out one more time for the run-off election.

You can:
Canvass with the Jim Martin campaign. Contact Nia Phillips at nphillips@georgiaforchange.com to volunteer. Specific information is below.
Make calls to young Democratic voters to ensure they vote sometime between now and Dec. 2. We are joining forces with Stonewall Democrats to host phone banks. Calling with other people is much more fun than calling alone. Bring your cell phone. You can also make calls with Campaign for Change. The schedule is below.
Ask your friends who live in-state or beyond to help make calls. All they need is a cell phone. I can provide call lists of young voters to any one (in-state or out-of-state) who would like to make calls from the comfort of their own couch
Rally with Young Jeezy on Sunday. No, I'm not kidding. Details are below.
Donate to YDAtl or directly to the Jim Martin campaign. YDAtl has just purchased $4500 of airtime for a new commercial aimed at motivating young voters to get out one more. You can watch it here. http://blip.tv/file/1475994
YDAtl could use any small donation you may have to help us buy stamps for postcards that we are sending to young Democratic voters all over Georgia to encourage them to vote. You can contribute to us here: http://www.atlantayoungdems.org/contribute/index.cfm?Fuseaction=contribute
The Martin campaign is accepting donations through their website here: http://martinforsenate.com/

Vote - and BRING FRIENDS, NEIGHBORS AND FAMILY MEMBERS WITH YOU
If you have any questions at all, please do not hesitate to reply to this email.

Phone Bank Schedule (Sun. Nov. 23-Tues. Dec. 2 with Stonewall Dems):
Friday, Nov. 21 (today) -- 5pm - 9pm at Campaign for Change 1080 Spring St
Saturday, Nov. 22 -- 12pm - 3pm at DPG Headquarters, 1100 Spring St. #480 (parking will be validated)
Sunday Nov 23 -- 4-9 PM Midtown Prudential (1409 Peachtree Street)
Monday Nov 24 -- 6-9 PM Midtown Prudential (1409 Peachtree Street)
Tuesday Nov 25 -- 6-9 PM Midtown Prudential (1409 Peachtree Street)
Wednesday Nov 26 -- 6-9 PM Location TBD (most likely IBEW Building)
Friday Nov 28 -- 6-9 PM Location TBD (most likely IBEW Building)
Saturday Nov 29 -- 4-9 PM Location TBD (most likely IBEW Building)
Sunday Nov 30 -- 4-9 PM Location TBD (most likely IBEW Building)
Monday Dec 1 -- 6-9 PM Midtown Prudential (1409 Peachtree Street)
Tuesday Dec 2 -- ALL DAY Location TBD (most likely IBEW Building) also canvassing and phone banking available all day at 1080 Spring St.

Canvassing on Saturday, November 22, 2008 (tomorrow):
Beauty & Barber Shop Canvass
9am until 6pm
We will meet at First Corinth Missionary Baptist Church to pick up our itineraries and canvass material
2165 Donald Lee Hollowell Pkwy
Atlanta, GA 30318
1st shift: 9:30 until 1:30pm
2nd shift: 12:30 pm until 4:00pm
3rd shift: 3:30pm until 6:00pm

Rally
GET OUT THE VOTE RALLY FOR CHANGE with Young Jeezy
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Jim Powell endorsed by Carter...

For Immediate Release: November 21, 2008
Contact: George P. Birchby, Campaign Manager
678-644-8355 (Mobile)
gpbirchby@gmail.com


Jim Powell endorsed by former President Jimmy Carter

ATLANTA - Jim Powell, Democratic nominee and first-place candidate for Georgia Public Service Commission, District 4, has received the endorsement of former President Jimmy Carter for the Dec. 2 General Election runoff.

“I am impressed with Jim Powell’s knowledge of the issues that will be addressed by the Georgia Public Service Commission in the coming years,” President Carter said. “His vision of energy policy for our state reflects the forward-thinking approach we need, both in the near future and in the long term.

“With Jim Powell, the people of Georgia have a unique opportunity to elect a Public Service Commissioner with solid professional experience for this important position. I support Jim Powell in the December 2 runoff election.”

President Carter made the endorsement following a meeting with the candidate Thursday afternoon at the Carter Center.

“I am most honored to have the support of this great Georgian and American, President Jimmy Carter,” Powell said. “During his term in the White House, President Carter foresaw the importance of managing our energy resources and established the U.S. Department of Energy. He understands what is at stake in this election, and I am humbled that he would endorse my candidacy.”

Powell has also been endorsed by, among others, incumbent Public Service Commissioner Angela Speir, Libertarian Party nominee Brandon Givens, former Republican candidate Pam Davidson, and four of the state’s major daily newspapers: the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Savannah Morning News. the Rome News-Tribune and the Waycross Journal-Herald.

In the General Election on Nov. 4, Powell was the top vote-getter with 1,732,175 votes or 47.9 percent. On July 15, Powell received 85 percent of the statewide primary vote to earn the Democratic nomination.

Powell, a first-time candidate for office, retired in February 2007 after 35 years of public service. He served as a Senior Executive with the U. S. Department of Energy, managing a number of initiatives and a budget of over $300 million, and as the Southeast Regional Director, based in Georgia. Jim and Karen, his wife of 37 years, live in Hiawassee. They have two adult sons and two adorable granddaughters.

For more information, visit www.jimpowellforgapsc.com