February 15, 2012 by Mike.

For folks who have not been present at non-violent demonstrations it may be helpful to understand that the original black block is the riot police who come out and assault non-violent demonstrators in a wholesale fashion.

Some pretty peaceful and peace-loving folks have been assaulted by the police.

Some of you may know Dorli Rainey from Seattle who was pepper sprayed during Occupy events.

Dorli was 82 years old when she got pepper sprayed. She is spry and spunky, but I think it’s a hard sell to convince a reasonable person that Dorli could look dangerous to a heavily armored police officer.

So this is the backdrop for the tactic known as the black bloc.  There are a lot of reasonable critiques of the black bloc.  The most persuasive to me is the potential for police infiltration, for agent provocateurs to join the black bloc and to then commit an act of property destruction that will trigger a violent peace riot.  There is also the opportunity for a genuine black bloc participant to choose unnecessary violence and/or property destruction that will trigger a violent street riot.

I will be facilitating a round table discussion regarding the Occupy movement and the domestic armies at the Olympia Occupy Social Forum this coming weekend.   Maybe I will see you there?

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February 15, 2012 by Mike.

But could not be done in American.

I am not sure, but this sounds like French to me.

More propaganda from Old Europe?

maybe…

Thanks to friends at Public Banking for this info.

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February 6, 2012 by Mike.

The Thurston County Progressive Network are a great bunch of folks who work year-round to produce a more progressive community in the Olympia area.  In this week’s calendar they share a link to World Life Expectancy website and a cancer cluster map. 

It’s an interesting website from an epidemiology perspective.  The suggestion in the cancer cluster webpage is that environmental degradation can be tracked to a certain extent by cancer rates.  I think there are a lot of regional cultural issues, like diet, wealth/poverty that also contribute to the cancer clusters, but environmental degradation is probably part of the story.  If you live in one of the black (high cancer rate incidence) counties, you can weigh in with why you think your county might have high cancer rates.

I am in Lewis County, WA.  It’s a relatively low income per capita by WA standards, so we probably have a lower rate of preventive medical care, but we also have a couple of superfund cleanup sites, one for PCBs, and we have a coal mine (not operational today) and a coal-fired electricity plant, known locally as the Centralia Steam Plant.  We try not to mention coal here on either shore of Coal Creek, but the steam plant and the steam mine have been a large part of Lewis County economy over the decades.

This website also has an informative interactive world life expectancy map that includes gender life expectancy.  Pretty cool website.  Lots of information.

oh, friendship is good for longevity, according to these folks.  Sounds right to me.

Don’t miss this page if you are a budding epidemiologist.

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February 6, 2012 by Mike.

Good day yesterday in Cascadia as the Washington State leglislature moved gay marriage forward through Senate vote.  The gov put her weight behind this legislation, apparently trying to establish some kind of legacy public policy.  I am completely supportive of the gay marriage legislation, but I have to wonder why the dems will only push one small part of a progressive agenda at a time.  The public is crying out for significant change in public policy and the dem party is such a timid organization.

In another section of the Senate, I believe the Washington Investment Trust remains stuck under the thumb of roadkill Senators Steve Hobbs and Mary Haugen.  Lots of good information about public banks at Banking in the Public Interest.  This is an idea whose time has come.  Banks for the 99%.  Please.  Let’s do that.

Want to let Steve Hobbs know what you think about his roadkill status?

How about Mary Haugen?

Steve Hobbs
Steve.hobbs@leg.wa.gov

Mary Haugen
marymargaret.haugen@leg.wa.gov

Can we help these two get scooped out of the middle of the road where they are doing no discernible good?  Is there an election coming up?  Let’s help these folks join our neighbors who are out there looking for work, shall we?

Lean on the legislators folks.  They respond to two things, private money and public pressure.

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January 11, 2012 by mike.

We need transcendent, transformative politics in this country and the world, but the mainstream paradigm remains a struggle between established power bases - one, a social democrat model as epitomized in Scandinavian models and the other, a Thatcher/Reagan model of social darwinism wearing a mantle of trickle down, supply-side economics.  There is no question that I prefer the social democrat model, but I think neither model is particularly well-suited to the challenges that the planet is cranking up to deal with a species that is out of control. 

Greece’s experiment with austerity politics in a time of economic stagnation proves once again that pulling more money out of a economic system that has a crashing demand side will cause the economic system to slip to a lower state.  It doesn’t seem to matter if all of the most photogenic politicians that money can buy are spouting platitudes about “growing the economy” by reducing debt, austerity politics just don’t turn stagnating economies around.  You do austerity politics in good economic times, you do keynsian economics in economic downturns if you want somewhat stable economies.  You also need a stable and consistent tax policy that generates the revenue needed for public services.  You don’t flatten taxes in boom times because you will need the accumulated revenue when the boom times go…  well…  boom!

Boom and bust.  Bubble economies.  These cycles should not be a big surprise to anyone who has studied economic cycles.

Transformative politics?   Does that mean democrats?   uhh…   no…   I don’t think those folks misunderstand who is footing the bill for their elections.   Do you think Goldman Sachs money is showing up in the Obama re-election till because they think Obama’s ideas are great?   Well, maybe.    GS has done pretty well since Obama became president.

No, I am thinking about really transformative economics and politics.

Real utopias.  I like the sound of that .

Envisioning Real Utopias from West Coast Poverty Center on Vimeo.

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November 26, 2011 by mike.

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November 26, 2011 by mike.

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October 2, 2011 by mike.

It’s easy to beat up on Keynsian economics in good times, but in a serious economic downturns, keynsian economics are the way up and out.  The push and pull between keynsian economics and free market economics represent a scale and reasonable people will understand that both have their place in large-scale economic, real world applications.  <img src=”http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e2/US_annual_federal_deficits_1901_to_2006_redblue.svg/449px-US_annual_federal_deficits_1901_to_2006_redblue.svg.png” title=”Wiki Commons courtesy 84user” alt=”Wiki Commons courtesy 84user” vspace=”3″ width=”365″ align=”right” border=”2″ height=”271″ hspace=”3″ />

Unregulated free markets give you the mortgage crisis economic collapse.  The answer?  regulate the free market.  Regulation does cut into profits.  It also prevents rampant corruption in the free market that can create a long term economic downturn in exchange for short term bonus income.  Regulate the free economy.  It ain’t rocket science.  The second tool to create a relatively stable and honest “free” market is a steeply progressive tax schedule that makes short term profit-taking too difficult.  It changes the dynamics of corruption, greed, temptation for folks with weak ethical constitutions if they know that the government is going to get the lion’s share of their income if they throw out good sense and choose to enrich themselves at the expense of their businesses and the larger economy.

Well, that’s where we are these days and we are not getting out of the global economic slump without turning to Keynsian economic fixes.  They are counter intuitive and they work.  The deficits have to increase to get the economy growing again (this would be a good time to spur green economic growth - clean energy?  energy independence? move away from internal combustion personal transportation?).

But the free market fundamentalists cannot understand that their end of the economic scheme spectrum cannot bring an economy out of a slump.  It’s akin to “the beatings will continue until morale improves,” pulling more money out of the economy in a slump by cutting government spending simply deepens the downturn.

There are different problems that can develop with an economic model that is too tightly regulated, central state economic planning cannot harness the economic engine of fashion, desire, etc. that is like a force of nature.  Free market economics knows how to derive growth from the force of nature that is fashion, fad and desire.  But we don’t have to worry about too little free market freedom.  That is not our problem today.

<a href=”http://news.yahoo.com/doubts-grow-not-economy-under-uk-austerity-drive-071138072.html” target=”_blank”>David Stringer at AP has an article</a> out:
<blockquote><strong>Doubts grow, not economy, under UK austerity drive </strong>
<p id=”yui_3_3_0_1_1317568704325295″>MANCHESTER, England (AP) — Jobs have been lost, libraries shuttered, sailors sacked and street lights dimmed — <span class=”yshortcuts cs4-visible” id=”lw_1317559979_2″>Britain</span> is beginning to taste the bitter medicine <span class=”yshortcuts cs4-visible” id=”lw_1317559979_0″>David Cameron</span> warned was necessary to fix its wounded economy. It’s left some wondering: Is the remedy worse than the symptoms?</p>
</blockquote>
<p id=”yui_3_3_0_1_1317568704325295″>This is a badly flawed question.  The framing of the question suggests that an austerity program is the remedy to deficits that pile up in an economic downturn.  It is not a remedy, it is an expression of free market fundamentalism.</p>
<p id=”yui_3_3_0_1_1317568704325295″>The US free market fundamentalists have a hybrid model, they love government spending that feeds corporations, they have no qualms about government spending as long as the spending is not committed to health care, education, food security.  There is a low profit margin in that stuff compared to weapons systems and war profiteering.  The “austerity” program of US free market fundamentalists is not about austerity, it is about class warfare.  The shift of wealth from the many to the few that has occurred over the past thirty years is not about rewarding the most productive folks in our society, it is about class warfare. Top tax rates of 70% plus did not prevent the US economy from growing and adding jobs.  Obama was correct when he said, it’s not class warfare, it’s math.   And a little history.</p>
The website of G. William Domhoff (sociology professor, UC Santa Cruz) seems to have a lot  of good information.  <a href=”http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html”>Who rules America?</a> Is that a rhetorical question?
<p style=”text-align: center”><img src=”http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/01/Gini_since_WWII.svg/800px-Gini_since_WWII.svg.png” title=”Wiki Commons GNU license” alt=”Wiki Commons GNU license” vspace=”3″ width=”582″ border=”2″ height=”422″ hspace=”3″ /></p>
<p style=”text-align: center” align=”right”> </p>
<p style=”text-align: center” align=”left”>hmm..  we are up there is the top three or four countries of income disparity.  Brazil, US, and China, UK going for more disparity, Bulgaria, Norway, Mexico trending for less disparity.</p>
<p style=”text-align: center”> </p>

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September 27, 2011 by mike.

Thanks to Abby Zimet at Common Dreams for her thoughts about this and for running this video there.

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September 26, 2011 by mike.

There are reports of police assault on the occupation of Wall Street.   The first amendment grants us the right to assemble and speak out.  It’s a shame that this country has so little tolerance for first amendment rights.

I am reminded of the video I have seen from China when the military was streaming toward Tiananmen Square and the Chinese people flooded into the streets to slow the military, they pleaded with the soldiers to join the protest, to side with the people. The pleas were not heard.

It’s going to be hard for the protestors who occupy Wall Street to reach the police who are ordered to come in and disperse the crowds, but things change when the shock troops of the empire hear the message that peace, freedom, equality, justice are not always compatible with order.   We have to reach across the lines and ask the police to choose constitutional freedoms over order.

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