How the Democratic Party was Bamboozled

Third Way and The New Orleans Declaration from Al From

Al From Takes credit for the birth of the "Third Way", which was a movement of Democrats exemplified by Bill Clinton that aimed at stealing thunder from the Right Wing while preserving the Democrats and allowing them to make a comeback against the Reagan revolution. The Democratic party had been in a hole for years, losing elections, losing "market share", legislators and local government, and worst of all for the insiders - losing patronage from big business and wealthy donors. Third way allowed politicians to continue to claim to champion populist and new deal policies while getting access to all that money.

Neoliberalism versus Economic Policy that Really works

We are seeing that some really horrible ideas are having predictable effects on economies around the world. They are horrible, they are counter-productive and they hurt people. Yet they are Zombie economic ideas that won't die. Why?

The reason that this happens is that people who have an agenda invent narratives to support that agenda. If it is convenient enough and it's not challenged those narratives become myths, and myths can be very, very bad and very persistent. Especially when those myths justify hierarchy and bullying. See [http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2015/01/why-myths-are-bad.html]

In Bill Moyer's Article The Libertarian Delusion he talks about these horrible consequences of neoliberalism. But first let's define what "neo-liberalism" is. A Website called "Corporate Watch" lists some 6 main points about Neoliberalism and what their core tenets are:

1. The Rule of the Market
2. Attacking Public Expenditure for Social Services
3. Deregulation allowing all sorts of rent seeking and abuses
4. Privatization shifting public capital (wealth) to private hands (privateering)

And at the core of all this:

5. Eliminating the very concept of "the public good" or "community" and replacing it with "individual responsibility." Pressuring the poorest people in a society to find solutions to their lack of health care, education and social security all by themselves -- then blaming them, if they fail, as "lazy."

Or as I've observed, these pirates eliminate the notion of "public good" or "commonwealth" and replace it with a buccaneering spirit; Pirates

For more on this read: http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=376

Happy New Year!

I'm kinda happy to see 2015 go. I was actually fine with 2015 til just before Thanksgiving when I fell and broke my leg. Because of my broken leg I'll be glad when this year is over. Meanwhile I'm chilling on Herb Alpert music and hanging with my cat.

 

¡Feliz año nuevo!

And may the year be full of love and productive things.

You need to Eat Beans Boy

I don't remember the job market ever being easy. Once when I was still in college I found a job as a temporary. Went into a warehouse and was assigned to unload a train car. At first they'd have me moving boxes while everyone worked hard. Then the other guys handed me the one hand-truck, sat down and started shooting the breeze, while I continued removing boxes and stacking them inside. At about 5 minutes to 10 they took the hand-truck from me and told me to sit down and take a break. No sooner than I sat down the supervisor came through. He was as regular as clockwork, and this repeated itself all day. At the end of the day I asked if they needed anybody the next day and he said "heck no, you need to eat beans boy." That experience taught me to be careful with "friends" as well as enemies. I think that is as close as I ever came to a Union job.

Four Freedoms and Six Basic Rights -- The Second Bill of Rights

FDR's Four Freedoms

Late in his life, Roosevelt articulated 4 Basic Freedoms that everyone ought to have. These are:

1. Freedom of speech
2. Freedom of worship
3. Freedom from want
4. Freedom from fear

Daniel Schávelzon Buenos Aires Negros, Jews and Nazis

I got to meet Daniel Schávelzon a few years ago when my wife was bringing his archeology to Howard University through the Spanish Department. He is an urbane, intelligent and wise person. And he was a friend of my wife. She had even interviewed him on one of our trips to Argentina! I had put his works on the back burner when I moved out here to Brunswick as they'd gotten packed up into Boxes, and as I'm not as connected to Howard as I was while my wife was alive. So it was a shock this week when I was sitting in my living room half awake and recovering from a broken leg. And they did an episode of "Hunting Hitler" -- and who was one of the archeologists helping them?! Daniel Schávelzon!

Argentina is one of my favorite countries. That doesn't mean it doesn't have a sanguinary past. On the contrary Buenos Aires and Montevideo both have a history that is as dark as any Southern City in North America. When we toured some of the archeology sites featured in "Buenos Aires Negro" -- they were exactly like what is in the basements of old houses in Alexandria or Georgetown. Shackles, private prison rooms, torture tools, used to subjugate and control slaves; all in the basements of upscale walk up townhomes (row houses) in fancy neighborhoods. At least places like "La Boca" were painted really pretty. The tourist traps focus on tourism, industry, and Tango. Daniel Schávelzon dug into some of these houses and found evidence of Argentina's past as a majority black city. Argentina, unlike Maryland or Virginia, freed it's slaves 5 or six times before civil wars and new methods of slavery made black chattel slavery uneconomic. The two cities were transhipment points to mines in the West of the country and plantations all over. The origins of Tango were in mulatto communities combining half remembered African religion and dances with European music traditions. Jaz, Tango and most of the really good dance music of the world, were invented by people who would die without the outlet of music and singing.

And so it is that oppressed people who weren't allowed into the USA wound up in Argentina. Jews, Syrians (including what are now known as palestinians), Italians, Spaniards,... We should have sent a copy of the statue of Liberty to Argentina; except many of the immigrants never could "rise" out of poverty.

And Racism has been part of the equation since the beginning. The racist leaders of Argentina tried to deal with their "negro problem" by drafting black folks. The civil wars and regional wars between provinces or between countries like Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina etc... were fought with drafted immigrants and former slaves. The women were left behind and scrambled for a living.

Jews fleeing the Holocaust, some of them, arrived in Argentina. They were followed by Nazis. Maybe even Hitler! The children of those Nazis would run the Argentine Military in the 70s and 80s.

Further Reading

Daniel Schávelzon

https://www.vice.com/read/archaeologists-might-have-just-excavated-a-secret-nazi-hideout-in-argentina-901

Patagonia: http://www.patagonia-argentina.com/en/nazi-submarines-in-caleta-de-los-loros

http://www.danielschavelzon.com.ar/

Archaeology and architecture prehispanico Ecuador. National Autonomous University of Mexico; 1981. ISBN 968-5800-20-0

Conservation of Cultural Heritage in Latin America. Restoration of pre-Hispanic buildings in Mesoamerica: 1750-1980 Studies in Conservation, Vol 37, No. 4 (Nov. 1992), pp.. 285-286.

Archaeology of Buenos Aires. Editors Emecé. 1999. ISBN 950-04-2044-9

Stories of eating and drinking in Buenos Aires. Editorial Alfaguara Argentina. 2000. ISBN 950-511-659-4

I believe I have a copy of the following:

Black Buenos Aires - Historical Archaeology of a city silenced. Editors Emecé. 2003. ISBN 950-04-2459-2

Tunnels of Buenos Aires, stories, myths and truths of the American Buenos Aires underground. 2005. ISBN 950-07-2701-3 Tourist tenements of Buenos Aires; 2005. ISBN 987-9473-54-X

Privateering in Medicaid

The Right Wing in this country learned to rip out a page from the strategy of progressives. If they take their abusive agenda's, call them "reform" and throw in words like "reform", pay lip service to the programs "service needs", and use big words, they can fool most people reading their articles into thinking they are talking about the real thing and not simply privateering on a source of public revenue. It all sounds good until you dig into the reality of their proposals.