economy

GASOLINE RISING is the newest video I've put together, on the prices of gas here in Oregon. Weighing in less than two minutes, it is short, sweet, and safe even for bike-riding vegans.

The latest video by Oregon's Official MTV Choose or Lose Street Team 08 Citizen Journalist, Nezua.

Clicking the picture above will take you to the video page.

Crossposted at The Unapologetic Mexican, Jesus' General, and OpEdNews.

John McCain can't seem to make up his mind what he thinks about the economy. Sometimes he seems to say the Bush economy is just splendorifous, don't worry, be happy. Other times he gets his serious face and tells us straight talk about things being tough. But you can't have it both ways, Mr. John McBush. You can't say times are tough without recognizing the dismal failures of the Bush economy.

The DNC is calling him on his economic confusion:

And Marc Ambinder discusses some details of the issue at the Atlantic.com.

John McCain seems to think America really is better off than it was 8 years ago. I don't know about you but no one I know is better off. In fact with unemployment, inflation, banks struggling, record level bankruptcy, decaying infrastructure, a second recession in 8 years, and a record deficit, it is hard to see how anyone who isn't CEO of Halliburton or Exxon could see these times as anywhere comparable to the low inflation, low unemployment boom times of the Clinton years.

Remember when the senior, elected Bush told America not to worry about the economy? He told us "Don't worry, be happy." That was the old Bush economic policy. Ignore the recession, ignore people's suffering, ignore the issue.

Well, his son is no better. He is also telling America not to worry about the economy.

Wheat, oil, milk, and corn prices all are reaching unheard of highs, making it harder than ever for working class and middle class Americans to make ends meet. Hedge funds are on the brink of failing. Bankruptcies are at new highs, leading to emergency bailouts of banks like Bear Stearns and fears that those banks could fail. The deficit is at an all time high. About the only things going down are wages, employment and the value of the dollar. We have those twin threats of inflation AND recession, a combination we used to call stagflation, though people seem scared to actually utter that word. Simply put, the economy sucks and Americans are hurting.

So today George W. Bush decided to reassure us about the economy. Don't worry about it, we are told. Everything's fine.

Good Jobs, Green Jobs: A National Green Jobs Conference
When: Mar 13 – 14 2008
Where: Pittsburg, PA

March 13-14, 2008, a conference unlike any other will take place at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Register today: www.greenjobsconference.org Good Jobs, Green Jobs: A National Green Jobs Conference will launch a nationwide dialogue about moving our country rapidly toward leadership in promoting the benefits of a new green economy. The conference has been designed for advocates representing the labor, environment and public health movements; local, state and federal policy makers; business leaders; economic and workforce development specialists; investors; and scientists and technology experts. More than 50 experts and leaders will speaking including: * Phil Angelides, Board Chair, Apollo Alliance * Joy Clarke-Holmes, Director of Public Sector Markets, Johnson Controls * Leo Gerard, International President, United Steelworkers * Gerry Hudson, Executive Vice-President, Service Employees International Union * Van Jones, Green for All & the Ella Baker Center * Katrina Landis, Vice President, British Petroleum * Ed Mazria, Architecture 2030 * John Podesta, President and Chief Executive Officer, Center for American Progress * Carl Pope, Executive Director, Sierra Club * Edward G.

Are you better off than you were 8 years ago?

Unless you are CEO of Exxon/Mobil, Shell Oil or Halliburton, the answer is almost certainly a resounding "no!"

America is worse off than 8 years ago. We have the worst deficit in American history. We are experiencing inflation and stagnation. Prices are through the roof. Oil is at an all time high. Wheat is at an all time high. Don't know about you, but where I live even things like tomato sauce and cheese are sharply more expensive than I have ever seen them. In my neighborhood stores and restaurants close every day, hit by a double whammy of high real estate prices and sagging business. Hate crimes are up. Incomes are down. Job growth has been flat. Bankruptcies and defaults are becoming epidemic. Our infrastructure is failing.

America is worse off than it was 8 years ago. It is dramatically worse off.

Meanwhile, oil companies are raking in record profits, even as every year poor and elderly Americans freeze during winter because they can't afford heating oil. CEOs are making record salaries, even as middle class Americans are laid off, seeing decreasing salaries and face defaulting on out of control mortgages. Taxes on the wealthiest 1% of Americans have been sharply reduced while our national deficit skyrockets and our government can't (or chooses not to?) afford to fix our levees and bridges.

We are worse off than we were 8 years ago. This is the Republican legacy. From 2000 to 2006 Republican policies dominated. Since then the brakes have been put on their excesses, but they have not been reversed. We have had nearly 8 years of Republican domination. And we are all worse off than we were by a lot.

I know some out there feel I am little more than a cheerleader for the Democratic Party. I think this just shows that they aren't paying close enough attention to what I write over all...but they are right that, fighting against a Republican Party that has become the worst threat to American democracy since the Civil War, I find myself very focused on supporting Democrats at almost every turn. The Democrats are currently all that stand between us and a one-party, right wing theocracy that would make the founding fathers furious.

Under Democratic leadership our basic democracy is not threatened and I don't feel that a budding theocracic dictatorship is at hand. Under Republicans today, that is exactly what I feel. So, given the choice, I cheer the party that best reflects my beliefs, my values and fights against theocratic dictatorship that Bush is foisting on us. And by and large, the vasy majority of Democratic politicians I have personally known are a pretty good bunch.

Doesn't mean I support all Democrats. My readers at Culture Kitchen don't see one side of my blogging that my NYC readers of Daily Gotham do see. I spend a great deal of time battling corrupt and anti-democracy Democrats right in my own community of Brooklyn and I get a lot of shit for it. I have my own infamy in Brooklyn as a rabble rouser AGAINST the mainstream Democrats and, in general, for a loose and inefficient group of "reform" and "progressive Democrats." I cut my blogging teeth on fighting WITHIN the Democratic Party and it is because of the response I got that Liza asked me to be managing editor at Culture Kitchen. But I keep it in perspective. Democratic politicians are, in my personal experience, generally (not always) good and Republican politicians are, in my personal experience, often (not always) a pretty sleazy, greedy bunch.

(That's a movie quote, read on to make it make sense.)

The idea of community colleges (and education generally) as the engine of economic progress and social mobility came up in comments here, and I think it's worth many separate blogposts and discussions. I mean only to start it off with this one, but I feel the need to set the table with a little common context first, because I've been struggling mightily to find it in a few other discussions lately, and maybe I'm not the only one. Even if I am, that counts for something, right?

I think reasonable folks understand that ideas, beliefs and practices ought to stand on their own, independent of our personal feelings about any idea's advocates and detractors. Yet I've drawn a couple of dismissive responses here because I am a "homeschooling" parent, as if that were a disqualifier to be taken seriously in mainstream education or progressive discussion of any kind. And even among context-sharing progressives, political thought about education so predictably veers off into the hypocrisy of personal affinity and animosity (for these guys, against those guys) rather than doing the tough work of separating our lizard brain instincts and impressions from our highest-order systems thinking and power of story.

So merely to balance that wrong assumption --but not to confer any special authority on myself, even though I'm pretty sure someone or other will accuse me of that -- I state for the record that I wrote my doctoral dissertation in education leadership and policy on community college effectiveness criteria; my major professor was considered the father of Florida's community colleges, James L.Wattenbarger, who was a longtime colleague of my management professor dad. (They also shared demography as white southern officers and gentlemen, along with generational history and education-economic-patriotic values as children of the Great Depression, both of whom joined the Air Force and later studied their way to doctorates and academic careers.)

In 2006 Americans gave a clear message: stop the war in Iraq and focus on America's security and economy.

The Democrats heard the message as within the first 100 hours of the new Congress, House Democrats passed a minimum wage increase, the first raise the poorest working Americans have gotten in nearly 10 years. Republicans have maximized CEO profits, now Democrats give working Americans a boost. Eighty House Republicans also heard America's message and joined Democrats, indicating that bipartisanship can work. I want to point out that this the minimum wage has not even kept up with inflation, meaning America's poorest have lost ground in the last 10 years. This change is long overdue.

Also within the frist 100 hours, House Democrats voted to implement the bipartisan recommendations of the 9/11 committee, something Bush and the previous Republican dominated Congress failed to do. This is also long overdue.

If Senate follows suit, we will already have gotten our money's worth from the Democratic Congress.

Meanwhile, Bush seems to have completely missed the message sent by voters. His big idea is to immerse us further in the Iraq quagmire he created by sending 21,500 more troops of our already over-extended military to Iraq. So Bush failed to implement the bipartisan 9/11 commission's recommendations to make America more secure, but he wants to continue to fight a war against people who had nothing to do with attacks on America on 9/11.

Schools bag purses in class - USATODAY.com or, why it's in the little things like banning a girl's purse that schools demonstrate how they are not about freedom of expression but about domination and control.

US economy chugs ahead despite auto and housing slumps - Yahoo! News or, how US business are succeeding in road-blocking economic independence among that pesky of servant classes, the middle class.

Dolls lose their innocence - Yahoo! News or, are we using sex to sell toys to kids or to adults?

Funk veteran Prince to play at Super Bowl show - Yahoo! News, or how to insult an aging pop star.

Iran hosts Holocaust doubters at conference - Yahoo! News or how Iranians get to do what most Republican wingnuts can't.

Would serial killer Dahmer have been an evangelist? - Yahoo! News or, how this article proves my theory that Christianity is all about sublimated cannibalism and necrophilia.

*** BTW, Hodgepodege is a wonderful dutch comfort food made of mashed potatoes, lettuce, bacon and cream that I had the pleasure to try out in Amsterdam earlier this year.

It's STILL the Economy, Stupid!

That was the T-shirt I wore last night to a meeting of my local Democratic club, the Independent Neighborhood Democrats (IND). It proved to be a very appropriate shirt.

Last night, IND had a guest speaker, Hank Sheinkopf, political consultant, formerly a member of President Clinton’s re-election media team, and panelist on a local TV station's roundtable discussion. Sheinkopf is the ultimate Democratic insider and he came to discuss the 2006 election victory with us.

Sheinkopf's initial message was that we did not win this year because of ourselves, but rather because the Republicans had crashed and burned. We won because the Republicans were so corrupt, had lied so much and had, in essence, lost the confidence of the voters. His warning was this: unless we return to the populist economic message that is the HEART of the Democratic Party, we will lose again.

Sheinkopf has his own agenda: he is pushing for Hillary Clinton for President. But, that and a few other disagreements aside, I agreed with him just about completely.

The core of his talk was that Democrats need to focus on just one message, and it was the message that ALWAYS works for Democrats since the 1920's: economic populism. Actually, I would use the term "progressivism" because that is how Theodore Roosevelt described it when it was Republicans who were the economic populists. But economic populism is a good term for it as well.