Publictakeover's Weblog

British PM Seeks Gang Violence Solutions in US

When it comes to cracking down on gang violence, former First Lady Laura Bush was tougher than a third grade teacher wielding a new yard stick. At least that’s what I thought I read once in 2005.

In his State of the Union address, President Bush tapped his wife to oversee a new $150 million, three-year program to assist at-risk youths ages 8 to 17 and help reduce gang violence and membership.

I’m sure the British are going to consult with her right away!

New Priorities Network

The New Priorities Network is putting forward a plan and organizing a movement to change swords into plowshares.

What Happened to Obama’s Passion? – NYTimes.com

It’s the last paragraph that sums it up and delivers the knockout punch:

But the arc of history does not bend toward justice through capitulation cast as compromise. It does not bend when 400 people control more of the wealth than 150 million of their fellow Americans. It does not bend when the average middle-class family has seen its income stagnate over the last 30 years while the richest 1 percent has seen its income rise astronomically. It does not bend when we cut the fixed incomes of our parents and grandparents so hedge fund managers can keep their 15 percent tax rates. It does not bend when only one side in negotiations between workers and their bosses is allowed representation. And it does not bend when, as political scientists have shown, it is not public opinion but the opinions of the wealthy that predict the votes of the Senate. The arc of history can bend only so far before it breaks.

PATCO Strike 8/5/81

Michael Moore shares a little edifying history about the US, the labor movment, and the decline of the middle class:

On August 5, 1981, President Ronald Reagan fired every member of the air traffic controllers union (PATCO) who’d defied his order to return to work and declared their union illegal. They had been on strike for just two days.

It was a bold and brash move. No one had ever tried it. What made it even bolder was that PATCO was one of only two unions that had endorsed Reagan for president!

I was just out of college at the time. I was afraid that unions had become so powerful they were going the threaten the solvency of the government. I’d been brought up in a Republican home, went to a Republican school in a Republican community. This was the time when the first glimmer of light began to invade my cave-dark political consciousness.

Inequality in America

It’s not from ABC, CBS, CNN or even MNN … it’s

Feudalism 101: Kill Public Government

Robert Scheer interviews Congressman Kucinich about the debt deal.

And what this deal does—and there’s so many layers to it, but when you go deeper into this deal, it actually rejects the role of government. It is part of an effort to nullify the presence of government in our society. Which is really a collective expression of the practical aspirations of people being nullified here.

As badly used as this mechanism of government has been, as much as it has been a vehicle to assault the basic economic interests of the people to deny their practical aspirations, so too that structure still exists that enables a fulfillment of the dreams that appear to be out of reach. But that can only come through mass action. We’re really at that stage.

Unstewardlike Civilization

All you have to do is look at the famine in Somalia and Ethiopia, the droughts around the world, and the Cargill meat recall to see that we are way off the beam. Thirty-six million pounds of turkey is 18,000 tons (!)

More than 36 million pounds of fresh and frozen ground turkey are being voluntarily recalled by food giant Cargill Inc. because of the possibility of salmonella contamination.

	United Nations (CNN) — Three more regions of Somalia have now been struck by famine, including the capital, Mogadishu, the United Nations announced Wednesday. Mogadishu, the Afgooye corridor and the Shabelle regions west of the capital are the latest that “have slipped into famine,” U.N. spokesman Martin Nesirky told reporters Wednesday afternoon. The declaration “reflects the massive influx of people into the city in the last two months,” he said. “This latest information also confirms the seriousness of the problem facing internally displaced people in Mogadishu, who require our immediate and concerted response,” he said. The United Nations issued a famine declaration for two districts of southern Somalia in June. The entire Horn of Africa region is facing an extensive drought that has left more than 12 million in need of assistance. Relief efforts in Somalia have been hindered by the ongoing battle between Islamist rebels and Somalia’s transitional government, which holds little sway beyond Mogadishu. The rate of malnutrition in Somalia’s rebel-held south is the highest in the world, approaching half the population, U.N. officials report. About 100,000 people displaced by the fighting have flocked to Mogadishu in recent weeks, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. More than 3.7 million Somalis are in need of aid, including about 1.3 million children “in urgent need of life-saving interventions.” Of those, about 640,000 are acutely malnourished, the office reports.

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