Archive for September, 2009
Life Insurance Securitization
Is Obama planning to kill grandma? Probably not, unless grandma is Afghani or Pakistani, and the murder weapon is an aerial drone. Or maybe you consider capitulation to private health insurance companies in health care reform an indirect way of killing grandma, given that the true death panels are the ones convened by those companies ...Read more.
Labor Day Ironies
From Logos: a journal of modern society & culture; hat-tip to Danny Postel of Interfaith Worker Justice. Labor Day Ironies By John G. Rodwan, Jr. Appreciation of Labor Day requires an active sense of irony. Local celebrations of workers’ collective strength in the United States predated the declaration of May Day, its international equivalent. While ...Read more.
T.D.C.o.t.E: An Ugly Scene
The Dull Compulsion of the Economic (xvi)A series of blog postings by D&S collective member Larry PetersonAn Ugly Scene This morning I was party to an unpleasant, and rather absurd encounter. I almost always take my morning caffeine injection at a local (Cambridge, MA) establishment, the Crema Cafe, which, unusually, has a relatively long common ...Read more.
Main Obama Advisor: Public Option Negotiable
From Boston.com; the resignation of Obama green industry adviser over upsetting right-wing sensitivities does not bode well, either, for the public option. White House: public health care plan is negotiable By Ricardo Alonso-ZaldivarAssociated Press Writer / September 6, 2009 WASHINGTON White House officials said Sunday a government health insurance option is negotiable, signaling a potential ...Read more.
Resistance to Tourism
This Observer piece documents how affected communities are resisting tourist encroachments. Tourism–using the term loosely, by collapsing several related industries together, used to be, according to some measures, the biggest industry in the world. It’s also one of the dirtiest, again if you include several related industries, like air travel, which is the fastest-growing contributor ...Read more.
Mike Davis on Elites and New Forms of Struggle
From his Znet page: Why We Need Rebels September 06, 2009 By Mike DavisSource: Socialist Worker Mike Davis’s ZSpace Page At the Socialism 2009 conference in San Francisco, two of California’s best-known radicals, Mike Davis and David Bacon, led a discussion about the causes of the crisis and the struggle ahead. Here, we publish the ...Read more.
Good Piece on Deficiencies of Public Option
From MRZine, by Andy Coates. Mentions precedents in Maine and Massachusetts, and what’s wrong with them, besides reminding us of other deficiencies of Obama-style healthcare reform with or without public option, like the ever-increasing healthcare bankruptcy problem. Notes on the Status of Health Reformby Andy CoatesMRZine 5.9.09 The election of Obama raised expectations for sweeping ...Read more.
Private Death Panels
Doug Henwood posted this on LBO Talk. Here’s a tidbit: “Kaiser Permanente, which denied 28 percent of all claims [in California] in the first half of 2009, was one of two systems to reject options for radiation and chemotherapy for 57-year-old Bob Scott of Sacramento after his diagnosis of a brain tumor in 2005. The ...Read more.
Extent to Which Employers Ignore Labor Law
The next time someone holds forth on the competitive advantage that accrues to US business because the US is a “society based on law,” the obvious corrective would be to mention the advantage that accrues to capital precisely because the law is simply ignored in regard to labor issues. Enforcement of labor complaints has been ...Read more.
Breadlines of the 21st Century
Two stories from today’s FT Weekend on the condition of the working (sic–most of these people work) class in America. The first documents new ways in which food is being distributed to people who are having problems paying for it (trying to pay off mortgages, etc.). Predictably, perhaps, it looks to be based–at least where ...Read more.
