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Published: Tuesday 11 September 2012
Published: Tuesday 11 September 2012 Contrary to Republican demands that the defence budget should be increased, two-thirds of respondents said it should be cut, and half of those said it should be cut the same or more than other government programmes. Disillusioned by wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. public is becoming increasingly comfortable with a more modest and less militarised global role for the nation, according to the latest in a biennial series of major surveys. That attitude is particularly pronounced in the so-called Millennial Generation, citizens between the ages of 18 and 29, according to the poll. They are generally much less worried about international terrorism, immigration, and the rise of China and are far less supportive of an activist U.S. approach to foreign affairs than older groups, it found. Political independents, who will likely play a decisive role in the outcome of November’s presidential election, also tend more than either Republicans or Democrats to oppose interventionist policies in world affairs, according to the survey, which was released at the Wilson Center for International Scholars here Monday by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs (CCGA).
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Published: Monday 10 September 2012 “This is not a strike I wanted,” Emanuel said Sunday night. “It was a strike of choice ... it’s unnecessary, it’s avoidable and it’s wrong.” Many teachers walked out on their students Monday in Chicago. The Chicago school district is the third largest school district in the US. The Mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel and the Secretary of Educationand Arne Duncan, are being challenged by public school teachers that have gone on strike recently. Mayor Emanuel says, "This is not a strike I wanted, it was a strike of choice… it's unnecessary, it's avoidable and it's wrong."
Published: Sunday 9 September 2012 The stage here was set by the militant opposition caucus that took control of the Chicago Teachers Union in 2010: the Caucus of Rank and File Educators, or CORE. Most unions these days celebrate Labor Day with a parade. But this year, nearly 20,000 Chicago teachers and allies rallied and marched to say “Enough is enough” — enough with educational privatization, enough with inadequate investment, enough with the blame of teachers instead of poverty, and enough with the blustering tactics of Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his unelected, 1-percenter school board. A key to both the revitalization of the labor movement and the rethinking of public education in places well beyond the city itself may be found in the chants ringing out in recent days that “Chicago is a union town.” And on September 10, it is highly likely that 26,000 Chicago teachers will be on strike, making it the largest teachers’ strike in the nation since the 1989 Los Angeles teachers’ strike. The stage here was set by the militant opposition caucus that took control of the Chicago Teachers Union in 2010: the Caucus of Rank and File Educators, or CORE. After taking control of the CTU, however, the neoliberal agenda for Chicago Public Schools continued apace. The Democratic governor and legislature passed a bill limiting the teachers’ collective bargaining rights in June 2011, and Mayor Emanuel proceeded to unilaterally extend the school day and take back the raises that they were legally obligated to receive in the contract. After this series of affronts, the membership, led by the charismatic Karen Lewis, decided that the threat of a strike was the only thing that could change the balance of power in public education. The impending strike of Chicago teachers will set the stage for much of the future conversation about the nature of public education in the United States — and possibly even globally. At a time when the right to public education, the right to strike (especially in the public sector) and the right to dissent are actively being suppressed on a scale ...
Published: Saturday 8 September 2012 “The Democratic governor and legislature passed a bill limiting the teachers’ collective bargaining rights in June 2011, and Mayor Emanuel proceeded to unilaterally extend the school day and take back the raises that they were legally obligated to receive in the contract.” Most unions these days celebrate Labor Day with a parade. But this year, nearly 20,000 Chicago teachers and allies rallied and marched to say “Enough is enough” — enough with educational privatization, enough with inadequate investment, enough with the blame of teachers instead of poverty, and enough with the blustering tactics of Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his unelected, 1-percenter school board. A key to both the revitalization of the labor movement and the rethinking of public education in places well beyond the city itself may be found in the chants ringing out in recent days that “Chicago is a union town.” And on September 10, it is highly likely that 26,000 Chicago teachers will be on strike, making it the largest teachers’ strike in the nation since the 1989 Los Angeles teachers’ strike. The stage here was set by the militant opposition caucus that took control of the Chicago Teachers Union in 2010: the Caucus of Rank and File Educators, or CORE. After taking control of the CTU, however, the neoliberal agenda for Chicago Public Schools continued apace. The Democratic governor and legislature passed a bill limiting the teachers’ collective bargaining rights in June 2011, and Mayor Emanuel proceeded to unilaterally extend the school day and take back the raises that they were legally obligated to receive in the contract. After this series of affronts, the membership, led by the charismatic Karen Lewis, decided that the threat of a strike was the only thing that could change the balance of power in public education. The impending strike of Chicago teachers will set the stage for much of the future conversation about the nature of public education in the United States — and possibly even globally. At a time when the right to public education, the right to strike (especially in the public sector) and the right to dissent are actively being ...
Published: Tuesday 28 August 2012 How about telling the poor you will make sure our government stands between them and the cliff? It’s just astonishing to us how long this campaign has gone on with no discussion of what’s happening to poor people. Official Washington continues to see poverty with tunnel vision – “out of sight, out of mind.” And we’re not speaking just of Paul Ryan and his Draconian budget plan or Mitt Romney and their fellow Republicans. Tipping their hats to America’s impoverished while themselves seeking handouts from billionaires and corporations is a bad habit that includes President Obama, who of all people should know better. Remember: for three years in the 1980’s he was a community organizer in Roseland, one of the worst, most poverty-stricken and despair-driven neighborhoods in Chicago. He called it “the best education I ever had.” And when Obama left to go to Harvard Law School, author Paul Tough
Published: Monday 27 August 2012 “When the policy officially took effect on August 15, thousands of young unauthorized immigrants gathered in different cities nationwide for a daylong orientation about eligibility requirements and free legal services supported by immigrant-rights groups and some public officials.” Thousands of young undocumented immigrants formed long lines at help-centers and churches across the United States last Wednesday to start their process of gaining temporary legal status, under President Obama’s new program to defer deportations for many brought to this country as children. But others are purposely delaying their applications for the deferred-deportation program — at least until after the upcoming U.S. presidential election. The program delays deportation for two years (potentially renewable) for young people brought to the United States before they were age 16. The new immigration policy only applies to those who were 30 or younger by June 15, 2012. But many undocumented immigrants postponing applications want to be sure first that President Obama gets reelected. That would provide them some assurance the deferred action program will not be discontinued were he to lose, thus placing them and their families in jeopardy of being deported. Romney Could Revoke Program “Look, if Mitt Romney wins, he may revoke this program,” said Andres Zamora, 20, an undocumented college student from the Bronx, N.Y. He asked to be identified only by his mother’s maiden surname. “If that’s the case, I will be scared to come out and apply [for a deferral]. It would just make me and my parents more vulnerable.” Andres, a native of Guatemala, came with his parents to the United States via Mexico when he was seven. While his younger sister was born in New York and therefore ...
Published: Friday 24 August 2012 “The shooting follows a killing spree last night in the south and west sides of Chicago, in which 19 people were shot in just 30 minutes, including seven men and one woman, 14 to 20 years old.” A shooting occurred Friday morning outside the Empire State Building on 34th Street in New York City, according to police. Two people are reportedly dead, including the gunman. Emergency personnel received a call about the shooting just after 9 am. The motive of the shooting is not yet clear. The shooting follows a killing spree last night in the south and west sides of Chicago, in which 19 people were shot in just 30 minutes, including seven men and one woman, 14 to 20 years old. Chicago homicides have skyrocketed in the past few months. Update: NYScanner’s Twitter is reporting the gunman was recently fired from his job. Update: WNBC: Empire State Building shooting was “a workplace dispute that spilled out onto the street” Update: Witnesses say the two coworkers fought on the ...
Published: Thursday 23 August 2012 So the Bank of England is right to issue a call to arms. Economists would be right to heed it. In an exasperated outburst, just before he left the presidency of the European Central Bank, Jean-Claude Trichet complained that, “as a policymaker during the crisis, I found the available [economic and financial] models of limited help. In fact, I would go further: in the face of the crisis, we felt abandoned by conventional tools.” Trichet went on to appeal for inspiration from other disciplines – physics, engineering, psychology, and biology – to help explain the phenomena he had experienced. It was a remarkable cry for help, and a serious indictment of the economics profession, not to mention all those extravagantly rewarded finance professors in business schools from Harvard to Hyderabad. So far, relatively little help has been forthcoming from the engineers and physicists in whom Trichet placed his faith, though there has been some response. Robert May, an eminent climate change expert, has argued that techniques from his discipline may help explain financial-market developments. Epidemiologists have suggested that the study of how infectious diseases are propagated may illuminate the unusual patterns of financial contagion that we have seen in the last five years. These are fertile fields for future study, but what of the core disciplines of ...
Published: Monday 13 August 2012 “With perverse irony, the corruption and incompetence of private industry has actually furthered the cause of privatization, as the collapse of the financial markets has deprived state and local governments of necessary public funding, leading to an even greater call for private development.” A grand delusion has been planted in the minds of Americans, that privately run systems are more efficient and less costly than those in the public sector. Most of the evidence points the other way. Private initiatives generally produce mediocre or substandard results while experiencing the usual travails of unregulated capitalism -- higher prices, limited services, and lower wages for all but a few 'entrepreneurs.' With perverse irony, the corruption and incompetence of private industry has actually furthered the cause of privatization, as the collapse of the financial markets has deprived state and local governments of necessary public funding, leading to an even greater call for private development. As aptly expressed by a finance company chairman in 2008, "Desperate government is our best customer." The following are a few consequences of this pro-privatization desperation: 1. We spend lifetimes developing community assets, then give them away to a corporation for lifetimes to come. The infrastructure in our cities has been built up over many years with the sweat and planning of farsighted citizens. Yet the drop off in tax revenues has prompted careless decisions to balance budgets with big giveaways of public assets that should belong to our children and grandchildren. In Chicago, the Skyway tollroad was leased to a private company for 99 years, and, in a deal growing in infamy, the management of parking meters was sold to a Morgan Stanley group for 75 years. The proceeds have largely been spent. The parking meter selloff led to a massive rate increase, while hurting small businesses whose ...
Published: Friday 10 August 2012 “Why was Heartland - a 'free-market' think tank most well-known for its role in peddling climate change denial - so invested in supporting Walker in the recall election?”
Published: Thursday 9 August 2012 “The friend’s small house where James was staying that day, during a record-breaking heat wave, had 10 adult occupants, a rotating cast of their children and no indoor plumbing.” “Where’s the house?” Trisha James asked, leaning forward eagerly. She couldn’t contain her urgency; living each day house-to-house in Chicago’s poorest neighborhoods had taken its toll. The shelters. The overcrowding. The uncertainty of whether anyone would even open the door. The friend’s small house where James was staying that day, during a record-breaking heat wave, had 10 adult occupants, a rotating cast of their children and no indoor plumbing. Martha Biggs smiled at her friend knowingly. Both women had been evicted from Cabrini Green, the city’s now-demolished housing complex, and spent years as homeless mothers. She knew that James would like the house, a modest Bank of NY Mellon-owned home on the South Side that had yet to be completely stripped for parts and trashed by gangs. The team had already secured it. Biggs and her right-hand man, John Newman, weren’t working for any social service agency. To get a house this way, you have to work for it — buy the locks, paint the walls, fix the broken steps, clean out the trash. Rally some teenagers to help you put up drywall, if necessary. You have to understand that this isn’t just about finding a place to live; it’s about fixing up the neighborhood, making jobs, changing the whole idea of housing. And then you have to pass the knowledge on: another house, another family.
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Published: Saturday 28 July 2012 Mayor Rahm Emmanuel campaigned on the promise of building 100 miles of these “green lanes” over the next four years to heighten the city’s appeal to new businesses. You can glimpse the future right now in forward-looking American cities—a few blocks here, a mile there, where people riding bicycles are protected from rushing cars and trucks. Chicago’s Kinzie Street, just north of downtown, offers a good picture of this transportation transformation. New bike lanes are marked with bright green paint and separated from motor traffic by a series of plastic posts. This means bicyclists glide through the busy area in the safety of their own space on the road. Pedestrians are thankful that bikes no longer seek refuge on the sidewalks, and many drivers appreciate the clear, orderly delineation about where bikes and cars belong. “Most of all this is a safety project,” notes Chicago’s Transportation Commissioner Gabe Klein. “We saw bikes go up from a 22 percent share of traffic to 52 percent of traffic on the street with only a negligible change in motorists’ time, but a drop in their speeds. That makes everyone safer.” Klein heralds this new style of bike lane as one way to improve urban mobility in an era of budget shortfalls. “They’re dirt cheap to build compared to road projects.” “The Kinzie project was discombobulating to the public when it first went in,” notes Alderman Margaret Laurino, chair of the city council’s Traffic and Pedestrian Safety Committee. “Business owners had questions. But now people understand it and we’re ready to do more.” “Protected bike lanes are not just for diehard bicyclists—they offer a level of safety and confidence for less experienced riders,” adds Rey Colón, a Chicago alderman who first saw how well these innovations work on a trip to Seville, Spain. Mayor Rahm Emmanuel campaigned on the ...
Published: Monday 16 July 2012 While Anheuser-Busch (now owned by a Belgian conglomerate) and MillerCoors (partially owned by Canadians) still dominate America’s beer market, sales of the nondescript national brands have soared in recent years. And now, for some happy talk — by which I mean a non-corporate, "little-d" democratic, and altogether pleasurable economic development that's spreading across our country. In a word: beer. More specifically, craft breweries are flourishing from Maine to Oregon, with happy hopheads in town after town now able to boast of their own local, unique, zesty, and fun batch of suds. While Anheuser-Busch (now owned by a Belgian conglomerate) and MillerCoors (partially owned by Canadians) still dominate America's beer market, sales of the nondescript national brands have soared in recent years. But innovative, small-batch, hometown yeast-wranglers have tapped a burgeoning market of brewski lovers reaching for the real gusto. Since 2004, craft beers have doubled their share of the U.S. market. Some 250 upstart breweries opened last year alone, bringing their total number to nearly 2,000. This is a true populist economic phenomenon. Consumers and artisans have found each other and spontaneously created an alternative, locally based economy that helps sustain themselves and their community, rather than having their money siphoned out by far-away profit-takers. Of course, the big boys are slyly trying to sink their own taps into the craft success of the small guys. Budweiser and Miller, for example, are now marketing pretend-craft beers, having bought such once-local brands as Chicago's Goose Island and Wisconsin's Leinenkugel. Unabashed by this consumer deception, however, a Miller spokesman sniffed, "We don't concern ourselves with what [someone else] defines as a craft brewer." Wow — sounds like Miller's man quaffed one too many mugs of a genuine local beer from San Diego. It's called "Arrogant Bastard."
Published: Thursday 12 July 2012 “James Makowski’s lawsuit ‘argues that the FBI and Department of Homeland Security violated the Privacy Act of 1974’ because the government agencies share fingerprints from people who are suspected of immigration violations.” A U.S. citizen is suing the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security after the fingerprint-sharing program Secure Communities incorrectly identified him as an undocumented immigrant. When Chicago resident James Makowski pleaded guilty in December 2010 to a felony charge and sentenced to four months at a drug treatment facility, the controversial program flagged Makowski as an undocumented immigrant, and he spent two months in a maximum-security prison before immigration officials stopped his erroneous deportation order. Makowski’s lawsuit — the first legal challenge to Secure Communities — “argues that the FBI and Department of Homeland Security violated the Privacy Act of 1974” because the government agencies share fingerprints from people who are suspected of immigration violations:
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Published: Thursday 5 July 2012 “The U.S. news media have a critical role to play in educating the public about climate change.” Evidence supporting the existence of climate change is pummeling the United States this summer, from the mountain wildfires of Colorado to the recent “derecho” storm that left at least 23 dead and 1.4 million people without power from Illinois to Virginia. The phrase “extreme weather” flashes across television screens from coast to coast, but its connection to climate change is consistently ignored, if not outright mocked. If our news media, including—or especially—the meteorologists, continue to ignore the essential link between extreme weather and climate change, then we as a nation, the greatest per capita polluters on the planet, may not act in time to avert even greater catastrophe. More than 2,000 heat records were broken last week around the U.S. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the government agency that tracks the data, reported that the spring of 2012 “marked the largest temperature departure from average of any season on record for the contiguous United States.” These record temperatures in May, NOAA says, “have been so dramatically different that they establish a new ‘neighborhood’ apart from the historical year-to-date temperatures.” In Colorado, at least seven major wildfires are burning at the time of this writing. The Waldo Canyon fire in Colorado Springs destroyed 347 homes and killed at least two people. The High Park fire farther north burned 259 homes and killed one. While officially “contained” now, that fire won’t go out, according to Colorado’s Office of Emergency ...
Published: Tuesday 3 July 2012 “Is there a safe way to frack? Probably: but not profitably.” On the 20th of April 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oilrig blew out in the Gulf of Mexico, killing eleven men instantly, then destroying 600 miles of coastline. On 9 September 2010, a natural gas pipeline exploded in San Bruno, California, burning eight to death, one of several recent pipeline explosions in the USA. In 1992, in Chicago, a gas pipe leaked and 18 houses exploded, incinerating three people. What do these deaths have to do with plans for “fracking” for natural gas in Ireland? Everything. It was my job to investigate these three explosions, the Deepwater Horizon and California explosions as a reporter for the UK Channel 4'sDispatches, the earliest as a US government investigator. In all three cases, the deaths were preceded by the same reassurances about the safety of drilling and piping that I read now in the debate about fracking in Ireland. First, the Deepwater Horizon. Eleven men died when the ‘mud’ - drilling cement meant to cap the wellhead - failed and methane gas blew out the top of the pipes and exploded. The Shannon Basin is not the Gulf of Mexico, but your safety will be just as dependent on Halliburton’s mud. Can we trust Halliburton’s reassurances? The owners of the Deepwater Horizon have told a US court that they’ve discovered that Halliburton hid critical information that the well cement could fail. Halliburton denies the cover-up. But cover-up or not, the cement failed as it has several times recently in the US in ...
Published: Tuesday 26 June 2012 “The euro is doing exactly what its progenitor – and the wealthy 1%-ers who adopted it – predicted and planned for it to do.” The idea that the euro has "failed" is dangerously naive. The euro is doing exactly what its progenitor – and the wealthy 1%-ers who adopted it – predicted and planned for it to do. That progenitor is former University of Chicago economist Robert Mundell. The architect of "supply-side economics" is now a professor at Columbia University, but I knew him through his connection to my Chicago professor, Milton Friedman, back before Mundell's research on currencies and exchange rates had produced the blueprint for European monetary union and a common European currency. Mundell, then, was more concerned with his bathroom arrangements. Professor Mundell, who has both a Nobel Prize and an ancient villa in Tuscany, told me, incensed: “They won't even let me have a toilet. They've got rules that tell me I can't have a toilet in this room! Can you imagine?”
As it happens, I can't. But I don't have an Italian villa, so I can't imagine the frustrations of bylaws governing commode placement. But Mundell, a can-do Canadian-American, intended to do something about it: come up with a weapon that would blow away government rules and labor regulations. (He really hated the union plumbers who charged a bundle to move his throne.)
“It's very hard to fire workers in Europe,” he complained. His answer: the euro. The euro would really do its work when crises hit, Mundell explained. Removing a government's control over currency would prevent nasty little ...
Published: Monday 18 June 2012 “A group of the workers who occupied the Republic Windows and Doors factory in 2008 have founded a worker-run cooperative.” As President Obama was addressing the nation regarding the economic outlook this week, some workers in one particular Chicago factory were making progress toward their own economic future. The group of individuals who occupied the Republic Windows and Doors factory in 2008 have founded a worker-run cooperative. Using the state of Illinois as their incorporated state; they have bid to buy the machinery from their former employer; now, they are just waiting for a response from Serious Energy, the company that took over the plant most recently. These workers are looking to save their jobs during a tough economy by way of co-operatives. Back in 2008, these group of workers occupied their plant for six days after Republic closed down the plant and tried to weasle their way out of the state by owing workers back-pay and benefits. Fortunately, the occupiers won a $1.75 million settlement from Bank of American and Chase Bank. Following its predecesor, Serious also failed to properly manage the plant and walked away. The workers do not plan on walking away from their jobs like their former employers have.
Published: Tuesday 12 June 2012 Six weeks of talks between Pakistan and the United States have been halted, a Defence Department official stated on Monday. “A decision was reached that it was time to bring the (negotiations) team home,” Pentagon spokesperson George Little said, noting that the move was based on a U.S. decision. Little suggested that the negotiators were simply in need of a rest, and added that they “are prepared to return to Islamabad at any moment to continue discussions in person”. The news comes just days after the U.S. assistant secretary of defence, Peter Lavoy, arrived in Islamabad in an attempt to shore up the flagging talks process, aimed at re-opening critical supply routes for international military forces in Afghanistan. According to reports, the head of the Pakistan Army, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, refused to meet Lavoy. The supply routes have been closed since November, when a U.S. missile killed 24 Pakistani soldiers at Salala, along the Pakistan- Afghanistan border. Since that time, the Islamabad government, backed by a unanimous Parliament resolution, has called for an unconditional apology for the attack as well as a cessation of U.S.-controlled drone strikes within Pakistani territory. While Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has expressed regret for the soldiers' deaths, the United States has refused apologise. Prior to November, some 5,000 NATO trucks used the Pakistan route every month. ...
Published: Tuesday 12 June 2012 “While radical feminism wants to get to the “root” of oppression, nonviolence is the seed we want to sow when we get there.” May 17 marked Women Occupying Wall Street’s (WOW) First Feminist General Assembly in New York, along with similar assemblies in Chicago and other Occupy sites nationwide. It also happened to be my 30th birthday. Everyone knows that when you pass to a new decade, there is a comfort in nostalgia — 30 is no exception — and while Petaluma, Ca., had no such meeting, I held a GA of one in which I examined the relationship between my commitment to nonviolence and my feminism. I was, after all, a self-identified feminist long before I was a nonviolent activist and educator, and I see the two identities as complementary and mutually reinforcing. It’s not surprising: Women’s rights have historically been won through nonviolent methods, although it’s also true that movements for women’s rights and feminism are not entirely the same. The various forms of feminism do not always share a common commitment to nonviolence or even an anti-militarist stance: The fact that women are now being trained to kill other women in the military is seen by some as a “victory” for women’s rights. Yet the separation between nonviolence and feminism feels inauthentic to me. This comes not from any essentialist belief about femininity in general, but because we are more aware today that violence is inequality, and, as the Second Wave feminists insisted, there is no such thing as equality for some. Peace educator Betty Reardon, who attended the feminist GA in New York, struck a cautious note in an email to me:
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