Now come on Wall Street don’t be slow, why man this war is a-go-go. There’s plenty good money to be made, supplying the army with the tools of the trade. Now come on generals let’s move fast, your big chance is here at last. Time you got out and get those Reds, because the only good commie is one that’s dead. You know that peace can only be won, when you blow ‘em all to kingdom come.
— Vietnam Song, Country Joe and the Fish, 1969
President Obama returns from East Asia empty-handed after Japan rejects bilateral agreement — but if the TPP moves forward, will it be in the interest of most Americans?
Note: adjunct faculty and full-time historian, Harvey Whitney, short interview below story!
This piece was first published online in Frontline on April 16, 2014.
Can it be true that capitalists prefer crisis over growth? On the face of it, the idea sounds silly. According to Economics 101, everyone loves growth, especially capitalists. Profit and growth go hand in hand. When capitalists profit, real investment rises and the economy thrives, and when the economy booms the profits of capitalists soar. Growth is the very lifeline of capitalists.
Or is it?
What motivates capitalists?
Act 1
Setting: Restaurant, where four middle-age friends, who have known each other since their university days in the early 1970’s, meet for lunch.
Professor: Should we share a bottle of wine?
Lawyer: Why not! There’s no time clock, clients or deadlines.
Social Worker: (smiles). We can afford it!
Doctor: No doubt … we’re drawing pensions, Social Security, and annuities. Medicare covers our medical bills. Mortgages are paid up.
The March payroll jobs report released April 4 claims 192,000 new private sector jobs.
Here is what John Williams has to say about the claim:
Puerto Rico, is usually thought of as a tourism destination or is usually invisible in the U.S. media. In recent times, its fiscal and economic crisis has led to show up in the business pages of the mainstream media with inaccurate comparisons with Detroit or Greece whose fiscal crisis had attracted much media attention. As usual, the mainstream press looks at the illness without looking at the root causes. And the comparisons are usually risky because they tend to ignore history and the nuances of each case.
The Zero Waste Solution: Untrashing the Planet One Community at a Time by Paul Connett (Chelsea Green 2013) is about 100% waste recovery and reuse, the new gold standard in recycling. Connett’s new book summarizes the state of play of the zero waste movement in local communities around the world. His detailed descriptions of existing programs and technologies provide powerful ammunition for local activists trying to pressure city and town governments to be more environmentally responsible.
I’ll flip the classroom on this post, putting down my response to another middling post from that middling thing called, Inside Higher Education, this on-line blog advertising sheet, DC-based (first problem) and one that is just a hotbed of behind-the-times (second knock against it) and failing to really know the on-the-ground (third, knock) reality of school, community, real faculty and, well, the non-dominant white male/female perspectives (4th knock), the ones bred and enabled on that east coast (another knock) where we have seen a galaxy of pain put upon us, the 80 percent, by
Author’s Note: I sincerely wish to live long enough to be regretful, ashamed to learn this essay was written out of self-delusion, unfounded fear.
In the late-1970s, while employed as a dockworker at Roadway Express, Inc., Tannersville, PA, I read a scary chapter in Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn’s book, The Gulag Archipelago. Chapter I is titled “Arrest”, and
