Learning About Capitalism at Gunther's Garage

by Joe Bageant from Counterpunch. Joe has a very unique style for capturing the gritty realities of working people and does so with love, compassion, humor, and insight. In this article he draws inspiration from talking to a working grunt in his hometown in Virginia and goes on to provide some rather profound insights on the economy and prospects for change. There are so many gems in this article to highlight that it is hard to select just one, but this is my choice:

Defenders of capitalism claim that there can be no real economy, no real material value created by the real people on Main Street, without the financing of Wall Street’s virtual economy. Allegedly, they are so intertwined as to be the same thing, which they are, and that no other way of doings things is possible, which is patently untrue. The storyline goes that without virtual economy financing from Wall Street, without the ever-expanding debt that drives the quest for limitless growth, the world would end.

The High Price of Materialism

An interview with Tim Kasser from New Left Project. 

I...think that there are alternatives to capitalism that can promote better mental health, as well as greater social cohesion and ecological sustainability.  To me, such economic systems need to re-shift their values so that they do not create priorities for wealth and profit and economic growth, but instead recognize that the real purpose of an economy is to provide people with meaningful work so that they can have the material things they need to live, in a way that doesn’t compromise the ability of other people, other species, or future generations to meet their needs.

Neighbors and Online Networks

by Bill McKibben from Yankee website. What a great idea on how to build your immediate community using the internet!

Forget the World Wide Web--this one stretched barely four blocks. And no video, no rating systems, no celebrities, no hyperlinks. Just the daily rhythm of neighborhood life. "It grew steadily, from 10 or 20 percent of the neighborhood to the point where by 2006 we had 90 percent of the neighborhood signed up," says Wood-Lewis.

AFRICOM’s First War: U.S. Directs Large-Scale Offensive In Somalia

Rick Rozoff in Voltaire's website provides the latest update on The Empire's military operations in Africa, reports of which are completely absent from US mainstream media.

Time out (click on cartoon to enlarge)

Iceland Busts the Banksters

by John Nichols from Yes! magazine. 

...the people who pay the taxes have a right to be a part of the decision-making process. And, in a democracy, voters have a right to say "no" when they recognize that they are being forced to pay for the dirty deals of the big bankers and the failures of governments and international agencies that were supposed to regulate the bankers.

Life After Growth--Managing our Way to a Desirable Future

by Richard Heinberg, a condensed version posted on The Oil Drum.

It’s an uncomfortable idea, but one that cannot be ignored: The “normal” late-20th century economy of seemingly endless growth actually emerged from an aberrant set of conditions that cannot be perpetuated.

That “normal” is gone. One way or another, a “new normal” will emerge to replace it. Can we build a different, more sustainable economy to replace the one now in tatters?

Our Energy Supply: Some Basics

by Gail Tverberg from The Oil Drum. This site often generates thoughtful articles on energy resouces, forecasts, etc. The discussions following each article are often as interesting as the articles.

Our energy problems are close at hand, and solutions using what are optimistically called "renewables" are distant and may very well sink the country further into recession.

CAMP “OUT NOW” ON THE WASHINGTON MONUMENT LAWN

    "There comes a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious—makes you so sick at heart—that you can't take part. You can't even passively take part.

    "And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop.

    "And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all."

           Mario Savio, Sproul Hall steps, 1964

The New McCarthyism

by Joe Conason, from Creators. 

I am posting this piece because it represents a quintessential liberal view on recent neo-conservative attacks on key legal figures in the Obama administration. 

Liberal views, IMO, retard any effective action to change the economic system of capitalism that is currently destroying the communities and lives of working people. This liberal view falsifies both our history (the McCarthy period) and our current political circumstances. The end effect, of course, is to preserve the legitimacy of the capitalist system. 

Senator McCarthy didn't just happen, he was essentially produced by the right wing of the ruling class in the US during the early post war (WWII) period in order to roll back all the concessions to labor and public social services created by the Roosevelt administration to ward of threats to capitalism in the US during the volatile 1930s. McCarthy was a bit of a nut, and when his nuttiness went to far when he attacked the US Army, the ruling class got rid of him. He was disposable because the damage he and others caused to any thoughts of peaceful co-existence with the Soviet Union and to the gains made by the US labor movement had been accomplished.

There is now, as during that period, a right wing of the ruling class that intends to fight any concessions to working people that may arise in the liberal wing in order to stifle increasing domestic disturbances caused by the recent economic collapse. In contrast to the earlier period of rollbacks, the current and more aggressive right wing, the neo-conservatives, want to complete the work of G. W. Bush to turn this country into a complete fascist police state under their control.

The Wrong Kind of Green

by Johann Hari from The Nation. 

Why did America's leading environmental groups jet to Copenhagen and lobby for policies that will lead to the faster death of the rainforests--and runaway global warming? Why are their lobbyists on Capitol Hill dismissing the only real solutions to climate change as "unworkable" and "unrealistic," as though they were just another sooty tentacle of Big Coal?

Cud and Complicity: Burying the Alternatives to Empire's Dominion

by Chris Floyd from his blog, Empire Burlesque. I was a bit surprised to learn of this event from the internet--not from mainstream media.

Think about that for a moment: an unprecedented event, on the floor of the House, going on for hours, involving a question of supreme national importance. Regardless of one's position on the issue, is this not the very definition of "news"? But on Thursday morning, you could search high and low on the front pages (print and web) of both the New York Times and the Washington Post -- our national arbiters of serious newsworthiness -- yet find no mention whatsoever of this event. This, even though the web fronts -- unlike the paper versions -- contain headlines for dozens of stories, including sections devoted entirely to Washington politics.

Greece: Millions join general strike against government austerity package

from World Socialist Web Site. 

Workers throughout Greece staged their second one-day general strike within a month yesterday to protest the austerity measures being imposed by the PASOK social democratic government of Prime Minister George Papandreou.

Predatory lenders and consumer protection (5:27m vido)

from McClatchy News. An interview with the reporter who is following the events in Washington re a consumer protection agency.

It is completely obvious that a consumer protection agency would need to be independent. However the current ruling corporate class cannot tolerate any hint of an independent consumer agency to protect ordinary Americans from their predatory practices. Liberals (e.g. Sen. Dodd) only make a pretense of pushing for an independent agency. If you don't believe me, wait and see what actually happens. 

The Rogue Nation

by Philip Giraldi from Anti-War.

In spite of the fact that the United States faces no enemy anywhere in the world capable of opposing it on a battlefield, the Defense budget for 2011 will go up 7.1 percent from current levels.  A lot of the new spending will be on drones, America’s latest contribution to western civilization, capable of surveilling large areas on the ground and delivering death from the skies.

Meanwhile, the legislators in my state are trying to slash the state budget by making draconian cuts in public services, raising taxes, increasing college tuition, etc.

Yves Smith for Dummies [Humor]

from Outside the Box. Today's offering of humor. Read the "for dummies" version of an interview with Yves Smith who has had an extensive background in the financial services industry.

Food, water driving 21st-century African land grab

by John Vidal from Mail & Guardian (South Africa). 

The farm manager shows us millions of tomatoes, peppers and other vegetables being grown in 500m rows in computer controlled conditions. Spanish engineers are building the steel structure, Dutch technology minimises water use from two bore-holes and 1000 women pick and pack 50 tonnes of food a day. Within 24 hours, it has been driven 320km to Addis Ababa and flown 1 600km to the shops and restaurants of Dubai, Jeddah and elsewhere in the Middle East.

Lehman Fraudulently Cooked Its Books, Accounting Giant Ernst & Young Helped, Geithner and Bernanke Winked and Slapped Them on the Back

from Washington's Blog. 

All the dirt on the key players in the economic collapse (for working people) that you probably don't need to know, but might be curious about anyway. I think the key point that very astute observers like the author of this blog and Yves Smith miss is that, to paraphrase a famous statement of one of our great presidents, Bill Clinton, "It's the economic SYSTEM, stupid!" 

The economic collapse is, IMO, not about personalities even though the destruction is carried out by individuals of, or serving, the governing class of owners. It's the built-in incentives of capitalism that shapes the behavior of individuals who otherwise might have turned out to be decent folks.

ECONNED – The Movie, Um, Video! (1:54m video)

by Yves Smith from her blog, Naked Capitalism. Although this is a promotion of her recently released book entitled, "Econned", I am posting it because it is also a powerful visual statement about how ideas can have such devastating consequences for ordinary people--Wall Street's financial institutions and the governing class are doing fine. 

Is "More Jobs" Sustainable or Necessary in the Post-Peak Oil World?

by Jan Lundberg from Culture Change. Although he makes a number of good points, I think that he omits the fact that so many necessary jobs (as well as unnecessary jobs) have been outsourced to cheap labor countries. Thus there would be plenty of productive work for Americans if they were brought back home. However if we had an economic system built around the principle of meeting the real needs of people rather than profit, there would still be plenty of work to do and plenty of leisure time.

What was required for a growing economy, that was supposed to uplift all of modern humanity, is at root a false notion for the manipulated public: the overwhelming majority must work for others to enrich the few so that all of society benefits through unlimited expansion. This problematic profit-scheme is failing to hold up, what with general economic uncertainty on the rise (apart from “Hope”) and the advanced depletion of easily extracted, cheap oil.