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Editor: The Casadys of People’s Food Co-op are in the news. Derek and Nancy Casady are suing some of the world’s largest financial institutions alleging fraud and misrepresentation around the federal government bail-outs. They have hired former San Diego City Attorney Mike Aguirre. The Casadys filed their suit as taxpayers. Nancy is the executive director of People’s.
By John Lawrence / Will Blog for Food
While the nation is close to a catastrophe of global proportions, the mass media treats us to one spectacle after another. Instead of discussing the jobs crisis or the debt crisis or the worst recession since the Great Depression, we are treated first to the saga of Anthony Weiner’s weiner followed closely by a 24/7 immersion in the Casey Anthony case.
By Kit-Bacon Gressitt / Excuse Me, Im Writing / July 9, 2011
He arrives after morning service, having thanked God for another day in an upright position. He stops at the nurse’s station, not to check in, but rather to greet whomever is on duty by first name, applaud the glorious weather, ask about the family, chuckle over the latest joke and say something as sweet and charming as his tousled white hair and proper bow tie.
URGENT: The New York Times reports that President Obama is offering Republicans “substantial spending cuts, including in such social programs as Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security — programs that had been off the table.”
Will you join 100,000 others who have signed this urgent pledge, which we’ll deliver to the Obama campaign?
Come inside for links.
On its current course, the United States is four weeks away from defaulting on its debt for the first time in its history. If that happens, businesses will fail. Financial institutions will fail. Home values will decline. Mortgage rates will skyrocket. Spending and investment will all but disappear. Social Security checks will stop being mailed. Everything from military pay to food inspection will be compromised, if not fully cut off. The millions upon millions of Americans who are unemployed or underemployed will be joined by millions more.
UPDATE: WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is pushing back against a Wednesday night report that the president is prepared to offer cuts to Social Security as part of a deal to raise the debt ceiling.
Although specifics have yet to officially emerge, there is little doubt that among the Social Security benefit cuts the President is proposing will be a reduction in Social Security’s annual cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) through an obscure change in the COLA formula known as the chained CPI.
Update for those who haven’t seen it: The Washington Post reported last night that President Obama is “proposing significant reductions in Medicare spending and for the first time is offering to tackle the rising cost of Social Security,” in a meeting with top House and Senate leaders this morning.
By Frank Rich / The New Yorker – rsn / Originally published July 3, 2011
After 9/11, Rudy Giuliani went on Saturday Night Live to give New Yorkers permission to laugh again. But Mayor Bloomberg never did tell us when we could resume conspicuous consumption after the crash of 2008. And so, as we stumble through the second year of the official “recovery,” it’s been an improvisational return to high-end carousing in Manhattan.
By Lori Montgomery / The Washington Post / Wednesday, July 6, 6:38 PM EDT
President Obama is pressing congressional leaders to consider a far-reaching debt-reduction plan that would force Democrats to accept major changes to Social Security and Medicare in exchange for Republican support for fresh tax revenue.
At a meeting with top House and Senate leaders set for Thursday morning, Obama plans to argue that a rare consensus has emerged about the size and scope of the nation’s budget problems and that policymakers should seize the moment to take dramatic action.
In the year and a half since the Citizens United decision, Americans from all walks of life have become concerned about corporate dominance of our government and our society as a whole. In Citizens United v. FEC, the U.S. Supreme Court (in an act of outrageous “judicial activism) gutted existing campaign finance laws by ruling that corporations, wealthy individuals, and other entities can spend unlimited amounts of money on political campaigns.
Seven years ago today I was sitting on the tarmac in Los Angeles waiting for my plane to take off. I had booked a red eye flight to San Juan Puerto Rico, where I would spend the month studying bomba, a popular dance form, and immersing myself in all things Puerto Rican.
I was traveling post 9/11, meaning that the country was on alert this particular 4th of July for possible terrorist attacks. The thought gave me pause as I imagined my fellow countrymen and women gathered at cookouts, watching parades, and celebrating a national holiday. I also imagined myself, a tiny creature, strapped inside a relatively small metal object flying across the continent and then out to sea for the next seven hours of my life.
Progressives can love our country without loving the Empire built in our name; we can celebrate the day as a day of revolt against the rich and powerful.
Can progressives be patriotic? The short answer is: yes, but it really depends on how you define “patriotic” and “patriot”.
According to Merriam-Webster, “patriot” is “one who loves his or her country and supports its authority and interests.”
If that’s the definition we go by, then the answer is ‘no.’
So we need to redefine what “patriot” means in this new world of instant communications, of empire, tea parties, the Arab Spring, failing eco-systems, of US soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, of millions of unemployed, of ecological disasters that affect us all.
Every 4th of July, I make sure to fit in a few minutes to put on one of my favorite Dave Alvin songs, “4th of July” (which is better known as an X song). It’s a bittersweet tale of two lovers trying to make their way through life. After pulling a holiday shift, a man comes home from work to find his lover crying in the dark and he ponders their fate:
On the lost side of town
In a dark apartment
We gave up trying so long ago.
On the steps I smoke a
Cigarette alone.
The Mexican kids are shooting
Fireworks below.
Hey, baby—it’s the fourth of July.
Whatever happened
I apologize
So dry your tears
And baby—walk outside
It’s the 4th of July
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