Category: Blog

Oola. 2005-2012

My sweetest (fussy, opinionated, bossy, adorable, pushy, cuddly, standoffish, more and more and more) cat had what turns out to be a small stroke Wednesday night, and another, larger stroke on Friday. After her vet visit Wednesday, the vet and I hoped she’d only had an ear infection that might clear up with an antibiotic shot. After the second stroke on Friday, which was clearly a stroke, she had a series of seizures on the way back to the vet, and I had her put to sleep at about midnight Friday, December 21. I miss her already. I will love her forever.

How is the proposed “Buffet Rule” wrong, No Agenda crowd?

Adam Curry was a guest on the latest TWIT and I thought I’d give No Agenda another try. I grabbed ep. 341 and about midway through, Curry and John C. Dvorak are doing their schtick, calling the proposed “Buffet Rule” a “bad idea” for the middle classes (the current capital gains tax allows the very, very wealthy to pay a much lower percentage of their actual income as taxes than the average middle class family of four, who pay a much higher percentage of their income as taxes, through income tax, sales tax, etc.; this will change, slightly, if a “Buffet Rule” can be implemented, legislating a higher minimum cap gains rate – don’t hold your breath).

A couple of problems with this:

1. This is a fact-free critique of the issue; it’s not enough to simply say something is bad, without any other context. Fine, I get that Curry and Dvorak are speaking to their audience, who agree with them by implication, but compare this to Rachel any night of the week; she lays out a factual case why she thinks a given piece of policy or legislation is a bad idea. You may disagree with her sources, you may disagree with the Rachel Maddow Show’s political bent, but context-free criticism of the Right isn’t what she’s doing.

I wish that were happening on No Agenda, because I want to believe that there can be right-of-center independent media and political critique that argues from facts. They’re missing the ball, here.

Is it that Buffet and other billionaires pay more in raw dollars than the (shrinking) middle class? Fine, but flaws in that argument have been dissected by Robert Reich (among others) already. Is it – as both Curry and Dvorak contend, eventually – that the middle class will get “screwed” if cap gains taxes are raised? How? I’m a new listener. Don’t assume everyone coming to the show already agrees with you. Tell me how.

2. They’re both essentially arguing that the subsequent critiques made in favor of changing cap gains are flawed arguments — yes, under capitalism, a theoretical ‘wealthy individual’ opens a factory that employs people, but the roads that they use to move goods from point A to point B are built and maintained on the public’s dime; those same factories get publicly funded fire and police protection; those same factories get the benefit of a literate workforce that can read, write and do basic arithmetic necessary to their work (we’re talking about the bare minimum functional education one needs to be a picker at an Amazon fulfillment, center, say, and not someone who’s paying their own way for an advanced degree at a private university), again all on the public’s dime. 

But the profit taken by the factory owner from that enterprise should be taxed at a lower rate than the wages paid to the workers? Apparently, in the minds of the No Agenda hosts and fanbase, any change to the status quo on cap gains is the most ridiculous idea they’ve ever heard.

Why?

SocialistWorker | Egyptian socialists answer the state’s attack

From SocialistWorker.org:

ACCUSATIONS ARE being leveled against the Revolutionary Socialists in certain quarters–chief among them the Ministry of the Interior’s website and a number of satellite television channels, which are showing a clip from a video of a meeting which the Center for Socialist Studies organized recently in the wake of the massacre on Mohammad Mahmoud Street, with the title “What is the road to revolution?”

WSWS | US Congress passes two-month extension of jobless benefits and payroll tax cut

From WSWS.org:

“Under pressure from senior Senate Republicans and sections of the corporate media, Republicans in the House of Representatives on Friday dropped their opposition to a two-month extension of federal jobless benefits and reduced Social Security payroll taxes for employees. After the Senate approved by unanimous consent a slightly altered version of the bipartisan bill on extended benefits and the payroll tax that it had passed on December 18, the House followed suit.”

WSWS | US admits partial blame in deaths of Pakistani soldiers, but defends airstrikes

From WSWS.org:

“In a yet to be released report, the US military has grudgingly conceded its mistakes played a role in the November 25-26 NATO attack that killed 26 Pakistani soldiers stationed in Pakistan’s Mohmand tribal agency. But the Pentagon and Obama administration continue to defend both the violation of Pakistani sovereignty and the deadly airstrikes themselves, claiming that the Pakistani soldiers had previously fired on a US-led special operations force.”

WSWS | PNG crisis eases as Australia hints at military intervention

There should be no doubt that America, and its allies, are indeed imperialist states. If a doctrine of “pre-emptive war” justifies the occupation of Iraq, why not “pre-emptive” military action to maintain “stability” (read: Australia’s conservative government interest) in the South Pacific.

From World Socialist Website:

One of Papua New Guinea’s contending prime ministers, Peter O’Neill, yesterday strengthened his control of the key state institutions—the army and the police—after the Australian government let it be known that it had plans to intervene militarily, if necessary, to resolve a week-long constitutional stand-off.

NPR | There’s No Going Home For Iraqi Squatters

This sounds like the same cycle of poverty that allowed the Taliban to rise to power in Afghanistan; will we have a new set of excuses to occupy Iraq if (when) the current regime falls apart? 

From NPR:

Nadia Karim Hassan says she stayed in her Baghdad neighborhood as long as she could, but by the height of the sectarian war in 2007, too many fellow Shiites were getting killed, and she had to leave the area and move into an abandoned building. 

As American troops prepare to pull out of Iraq, one of the most striking consequences of the war remains unresolved today: the issue of people who were forced out of their homes and still can’t go back. Relief organizations estimate there are some 2 million displaced people inside Iraq.

Socialist Worker | Tactics and the port shutdown

I wondered when Occupy’s actions would move out of public sqaures and into directly confronting the mechanisms of capitalism that working class people depend on — I’m supportive of Occupy, and this kind of push-pull tension in confronting capitalism with direct protest was inevitable. I don’t see easy answers, here; I don’t think there are any.

From Socialist Worker:

In the aftermath of the West Coast Port Shutdown on December 12, a debate over tactics has emerged in the Occupy movement. The discussion centers on the role of port workers and Occupy activists’ relationship to them. 

The December 12 actions were an important step for the Occupy movement, especially in connecting to the struggle of workers against some of the richest and most powerful corporations around. But the future of the movement depends on Occupy activists adopting strategies and tactics that treat workers on the docks–and everywhere else in the economy–as allies and potential supporters, not as opponents.