“Government spends too much” is back We know how this goes. When Republicans lack the ability to control the fate of legislation, they are born-again, small-government fundamentalists. Government is too big. Government spends too much (on the Irresponsibles). Deficits must be brought under control! Then when they hold the White House, they backslide. Tax cuts : GOOD. Deficits : MEANINGLESS. But the push-pull budgeting conversation is too wonky for the general public to wrap its brain around. To default or not to default is an inside-the-Beltway drama. Or one for G7 leaders to fret over. Until it tanks your retirement fund or hammers the dollar. The remoteness makes it difficult for the left to effectively exploit the shameless flip-floppiness of conservative lawmakers on spending. The only people paying attention are the people already paying attention. Speaker Kevin McCarthy issued one of his “stubborn aphorisms” on the subject on Friday: “Washington has to spend less.” “And indeed, Washington could spend less,” responds Prem Thakker at The New Republic.
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How to stop private equity from using huge campaign contributions to get their way.
Economic theory, like anthropology, ‘works’ by studying societies which are in some relevant sense simpler or more primitive than our own, in the hope either that relations that are important but hidden in our society will be laid bare in simpler ones, or that concrete evidence can be discovered for possibilities which are open to […]
About 50 workers at hospital and health care supplier Onelink in western Sydney took four days of strike action this week for wage rises to keep pace with the cost of living and higher redundancy payments.
The post Onelink workers strike for a cost of living pay rise appeared first on Solidarity Online.
The 2023 Seattle International Film Festival is wrapping up this weekend (my eyes hurt-oy) and I have a few more reviews to share. Hopefully, some of these films will be coming soon to a theater (or a streaming service) near you! Adolfo (Mexico) ***½ – Strangers in the night, exchanging…cactus? Long story. Short story, actually, as writer-director Sofia Auza’s dramedy breezes by at 70 minutes. It’s a “night in the life of” tale concerning two twenty-somethings who meet at a bus stop. He: reserved and dressed for a funeral. She: effervescent and dressed for a party (the Something Wild scenario). With its tight screenplay, snappy repartee, and marvelous performances, it’s hard not to fall in love with this film. Being Mary Tyler Moore (USA) ***½ – Robert Redford recalls in this film, “I had a place in Malibu. I was sitting there, looking out at the ocean, and this woman walks by. What it looked like to me was that she was sad.
What kind of a country are we living in? The man stood in a red Make America Great Again baseball cap pointing his AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle toward the sidewalk. An elementary school student ran home crying. Parents were terrified. Neighbors called the police. While he had not explicitly threatened people in this suburban neighborhood, just the sight of him walking near school bus stops was enough for the nearby elementary school in Anne Arundel Countyto delay bus drop-off this week. “The presence of someone with a weapon at or near a bus stop raises fear and anxiety for students and parents, especially in a day and age where we’ve had a number of school shootings across our country,” said Bob Mosier, the spokesman for the school district of more than 83,000 students. The man, J’Den McAdory, said in an interview with The Washington Post that he is protesting recent state legislation regarding guns by open carrying his weapon around the neighborhood and that he was not singling out school bus stops.
Many of the theoretical assumptions which support the most admirable impulses of the woke come from the intellectual movement they most despise. The best tenets of woke, such as the insistence on viewing the world from more than one geographical perspective, come straight from the Enlightenment. Contemporary rejections of this period usually go hand in […]
Despite all the hoopla about that one outlier poll showing that Joe Biden is loathed by just about everybody, other polls aren’t showing that. That’s from one of the latest. His approval rating isn’t great but it’s about par for the course in our polarized electorate these days. Here are some other findings: It looks like status quo on the Biden vs Trump rematch: And then there’s Ron DiSaster: It’s not like a huge number say they don’t know, either. He just isn’t popular. Anyway, all these polls are basically just for entertainment. It’s way too early to take any of it seriously. But it’s important not to feed into the Democratic Party panic over Biden that rose up a couple of weeks ago from that one poll. They love to freak out and it’s not good for anyone.
Many transgender bills are authored by experts in hate It’s the usual suspects: At least 17 states have enacted laws restricting or banning gender-affirming care for transgender minors, though judges have temporarily blocked their enforcement in some, including Arkansas. An Associated Press analysis found that often those bills sprang not from grassroots or constituent demand, but from the pens of a handful of conservative interest groups. Many of the proposals, as introduced or passed, are identical or very similar to some model legislation, the AP found. Those ready-made bills have been used in statehouses for decades, often with criticisms of carpetbagging by out-of-state interests. In the case of restrictions on gender-affirming care for youths, they allow a handful of far-right groups to spread a false narrative based on distorted science, critics say. “These are solutions from outside our state looking to solve nonexistent problems inside our state,” said Aaron Jennen.
Jurisdictions are increasingly introducing Rights of Nature provisions into their legal systems. International shipping needs to steer a better course to zero emissions. Rewilding Britain one stream at a time. Our relationship with Nature Members of many Eurocentric cultures, encouraged in some cases by their religious teachings, have over the centuries developed a belief system Continue reading »
The spirit of the age seems to foster division more than it nurtures unity. The G7 Summit is meeting in Hiroshima where thousands were killed at breakfast time on a summer’s morning, August 6, 1945. The G7 leaders meet as a hostile imagination fuels a terrifying arms race. How can we yet pull out of Continue reading »
The decision to approve the Isaac coal mine is a betrayal of Australians and indeed people worldwide and as a medical doctor I am justifiably angry. The warning to end all fossil fuel developments recently published in Australian newspapers by 100 prominent Australian scientists and experts was related to the Beetaloo gas development in the Continue reading »
Grief is not something we ‘get over,’ or we must ‘move on’ from. The truth is we grow into grief; we do not get closure from it. The recent deaths at Loafers’ Lodge in Wellington, the ongoing tragic loss of life in Ukraine from the Russian invasion, frequent car accidents, and the continued deaths from Continue reading »
Time to leave for planet Zog. That’s what came to mind recently I as pondered an article about young Japanese men and female holograms. It seems that growing numbers of disaffected and alienated Japanese men prefer to engage with stereotypical holograms rather than entertain the idea of a real-life relationship. And it’s not only sexual Continue reading »
So, you want to go to war with the Americans, Aussie? What have the Chinese ever done to you? Have you forgotten? They were our willing ally during WW1 and 2 Not our enemy! Bravely supporting Australian prisoners of war on the Burma Railway Keeping many from starvation & death What have the Chinese ever Continue reading »
A song that goes out to the courageous Palestinian people and their supporters around the world. Balfour proclaimed in 1917 a settler state to be, A proxy base in the “middle east” – a colonial entity, With use of force they knocked down doors, a killing spree – the rest had to flee, Dispossessed refugees, Continue reading »
I can’t bring myself to write about the debt ceiling debacle again. I had foolishly thought the Democrats had a specific back-up plan for when the lunatics in the House decided to crash the economy for shits and giggles. Anyone could have seen they would try to do that. But apparently the White House and the Dem leadership didn’t see that coming? Really? But a huge part of the problem is, as usual, the way the media is covering the issue. Anyway this piece from TNR spells out the current dilemma: Having watched Capitol Hill fall into chaotic convulsions over the debt ceiling a million times before, I’ve come to the conclusion that the only way to properly negotiate your way through a debt ceiling crisis is to not negotiate at all. But it would seem, for the moment, that President Biden is going to dip a toe in those waters and fashion some sort of compromise. A deal may not be possible; it won’t take but a handful of House Republicans to scuttle any sort of bipartisan offering. So it may be too early to say that Biden is breaking his vow not to repeat the mistakes his former boss made in 2011.
Hyperbole much? Move over Jim Crow, we had to wear a mask and stay home during a pandemic for a few weeks. The humanity. That’s a Supreme Court Justice saying that. My God. I guess the next time we get hit with a new deadly virus for which humans have no immunity (and we will) we’ll just go about our business and pretend it isn’t happening. No need to try to save lives. Just let ‘er rip. We have lost 1.1 million people in the US in the last three years to this virus. We would have lost many times that without the mitigation efforts and the vaccines. And I guess that would be just fine — preferable, actually.
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Milton Friedman – one of the scholastic protagonists and machinists of Neoliberalism – wrote in the preface to the 1982 edition of Capitalism and Freedom, tutoring his disciples: “There is enormous inertia — a tyranny of the status quo — in private and especially governmental arrangements. Only a crisis — actual or perceived — produces […]