Reader's Responses for Jan. 17, 2011
1. Re: Whither One Nation?
2. Re: States Will Soon Have To Start Paying Interest on
their Massive Unemployment Borrowing
3. Re: States Will Soon Have To Start Paying Interest on
their Massive Unemployment Borrowing

===
1.
Date:  	Mon, 17 Jan 2011 
From:  	Christopher Lowe
Re: Whither One Nation?

Mark Solomon writes:

"There is a consensus among progressives that a
national social movement is needed; that the movement
must be independent of the two parties; that its
posture towards the present Administration must be to
galvanize grass roots pressure upon it to consistently
address the needs of the nation's majority; that the
movement must address all aspects of the many-sided
crisis - the economy, the wars, the environment. In
acknowledging the inseparability of issues, it must
build cooperation and mutual support among various
single issue-oriented groups; it should have a strong,
highly visible national center to give sharp focus to
the issues while encouraging affiliate grass roots
coalitions; its decisions should be transparent and
based upon democratic input from the local and national
participating organizations."

I suppose this is pretty much true.

However, I doubt that the major organizations behind
"One Nation Coming Together" share that consensus,
especially the part about being independent of the two
parties.  The criticisms Solomon notes of the event
being "too soft on Obama" etc. reflect that fact.  The
event was divided among those who wanted such political
independence and those who wanted it to be a defense of
the Obama administration against the Tea Party lies.

Another way to put this appears when Solomon
characterizes "One Nation Coming Together" as "a
movement that embraces the broadest and most
influential organizations of left and center."  Do
those organizations from "the center" share in the
"consensus among progressives"?   There is reason to
doubt this.  To achieve what Solomon wants,
progressives need to figure out how to engage the
center-left groups to persuade them to join that
consensus.  That wasn't achieved by October 2, 2010. 
That doesn't mean it can't be done, but the problem has
to be faced squarely and engaged actively.

Further, Solomon calls "One Nation Coming Together" a
movement.  It wasn't.  It was a mobilization.

Later, he refers to it as "a framework," as if there is
some persisting structure of alliance that emerged from
the October 2 event.  Is that true?  (This is meant as
an empirical question, not a rhetorical one, generally
in support of Solomon's idea.)

If it is true, then Solomon's call for progressives to
engage the organizations to use the framework to build
the movement we need makes sense.  If it isn't true,
then the steps would need to be:

1) Persuade them to create such a persisting framework;
2) Persuade them that the framework should be used to
organizing and mobilize a persisting social movement;
and 3) Persuade them that the social movement should
have the characteristics of the progressive consensus
Solomon outlines, including political independence.

Unfortunately that's apt to take time.  The key point
at this juncture would seem to be to preserve or create
the persisting framework while the alliance is still in
active memory.

Chris Lowe Portland, Oregon 

===
2.
Date:  	Mon, 17 Jan 2011
From:  	Melvin Rothenberg
Re: States Will Soon Have To Start Paying Interest on
their Massive Unemployment Borrowing

While the article of Olga Pierce "States Will Soon Have
To Start Paying Interest on  Their Massive Unemployment
Borrowing" points to a serious problem the analysis
behind it,  that the problem is due to " the high
jobless rate and past fiscal irresponsibility " is the
kind of right wing disinformation that one would expect
in The Wall Street Journal, not on the Portside list.

The "fiscal irresponsibility"  is not a cavalier
attitude toward debt on the part of politicians that
the article implies but a deliberate and systemic
attempt stretching over many decades to liquidate the
welfare state constructed largely due to working class
struggles during previous period. The "historical
compromise" referred to in the article was the result
of a successful campaign by business interests to
weaken unemployment benefits which subsequently became
part of a broader, very successful,  campaign that
forced states to continually constrict their capacity
to tax, especially to tax corporate profits, so as to
adequately maintain their social welfare programs.

By now I think this story is pretty well understood by
progressives.  For Portside to run an article which
seems oblivious to it is puzzling.

Mel Rothenberg

===

From:  	Christopher Lowe 
Date: 	Mon, 17 Jan 2011 
Re: States Will Soon Have To Start Paying Interest on 
Their Massive Unemployment Borrowing

Bad enough that, as the authors note, "cash-strapped
states will have to take that money from their general
budgets, so there will be less money for roads [and]
schools."  But this story is remiss in pointing out
that the "other priorities" it also mentions include
very extensively relatively small expenditures on
things like home care for elderly and disabled persons
who may end up in nursing homes instead, at eventual
higher cost, cuts Medicaid benefits or increases in
co-pays, specifically e.g. cuts in coverage of dental
and vision needs under Medicaid, and in general
services that go to the minority who are sick, elderly,
very young, disabled or poor (often in combination). 
The mention at the end of California taking money from
the state disability pension fund shows that such costs
imposed on the weakest politically may extend out in
time and cause further cuts down the road.

The $82 billion mentioned as the total deficit faced by
states ought to be covered by the Federal government,
and might have been used by the Democrats as an
argument & use for ending the Bush tax cuts on the very
wealthy, and for cuts in military spending and getting
out of Afghanistan and Iraq.  Such support for state
budgets would in part be a jobs maintenance program. 
Instead state jobs will be cut and unemployment
expenses thereby raised.

The abject failure of President Obama and the
Congressional Democrats (for the most part) to work
aggressively to create a larger, bottom-up economic
stimulus program focused on job creation, and to
regulate financial capital much more stringently
including requiring community investment, mortgage
modification in lieu of foreclosure, and reduction in
obscene levels of compensation for senior managers at
financial companies as conditions of the aid to
companies deemed "too big to fail" was both moral and
political in character.  It is a failure rooted in the
fact that the DP is extensively the creature of finance
capital at this time.

The Democrats paid the political price in November, and
now the Republicans will block any more progressive
efforts to halt the grinding downward spiral of the
quality of life for the majority of Americans, while
the mass media will continue to give us happy talk
about "the recovery" and its fluctuations at the
margins.

Frankly I despair of changing this situation.  The
power of capital is too great, the left is too weak,
fragmented, disorganized, wishful about the Democrats
(e.g. Progressives for Obama's "catch a wave" theory
that confused a temporarily mobilized population with a
social movement) or turning to infighting (e.g. recent
attack on Progressives for Obama, and many other
examples) and, ultimately, inept,.  This observation is
not made from any sense other than being part of the
problem.  I look forward to extended decline in the
civilized character and decency of life in the United
States, including in the quality of my personal life
and that of those closest to me.  I don't know what to
do.

Chris Lowe Portland, Oregon

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