Purchaing power, Sharia Constitution, Public schools, Wall Street, Unions, Obama spin, Pelosi, racism

What’s needed is purchasing power, not hiring power. Companies hold trillions or are investing them abroad while whining for the government to give them more--and Obama is doing it with investment credits and tax breaks and hiring incentives. A great Republican gift from the Republicratic president

Richard D. Wolff | 2011: Calling Time on Capitalism
Richard D. Wolff: "Recent decades have seen a massive redistribution of wealth, imposing the cost of successive crises on the poorest. Enough! The end of 2010 brought renewed Washington rhetoric, media hype and academic me–too declarations about the US economy 'recovering.' We've heard them before since the crisis hit in 2007. They always proved wrong."

FORTUNE -- With record cash on hand and a swell of profits at many large companies, it's hard not to wonder if corporate America has what it takes to help turn this sluggish economy around.
But hiring new employees isn't the only way that companies sitting on piles of cash can help stimulate things. Not enough companies are using this time to invest in their future growth without adding to headcount. Investment spending this year on new equipment, buildings, product development, research and other projects has picked up this year, but still falls short of levels seen before the recession.


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Thinking of the Constitution in Sharia terms may be appropriate these days according to a reader

I support the Constitution, don't you? But I don't support the fundamentalist, "literalist" Sharia version that the GOP touts.
I think that the Constitution is a remarkable document in the development of governments that empowered individuals against oppressive rule and institutions.
It overthrew the privileged reign of royal lineage and put the direction of America in the hands of the population at large. You could argue that the Constitution is the ultimate populist charter for a nation. But on Thursday, the GOP is putting on a political theater performance in the House by reading the Constitution out loud, even though the new red tide of right-wingers don't support large chunks of it, such as the 14th Amendment, the 17th Amendment, and much, much more.

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Why not empower teachers in public schools rather than transferring the tuition to private schools

Got Dough? Public School Reform in the Age of Venture Philanthropy
Joanne Barkan, Dissent Magazine: "The cost of K-12 public schooling in the United States comes to well over $500 billion per year. So, how much influence could anyone in the private sector exert by controlling just a few billion dollars of that immense sum? Decisive influence, it turns out. A few billion dollars in private foundation money, strategically invested every year for a decade, has sufficed to define the national debate on education; sustain a crusade for a set of mostly ill-conceived reforms; and determine public policy at the local, state, and national levels. In the domain of venture philanthropy - where donors decide what social transformation they want to engineer and then design and fund projects to implement their vision - investing in education yields great bang for the buck."

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Believe it or not--Robert Ripley

Huffington Post
During a little-noticed hearing this week in Sacramento, Calif., a firm hired by Wall Street to analyze mortgages given to borrowers with poor credit, which were then packaged and sold to investors during the boom years, revealed that as much as 28 percent of those loans failed to meet basic underwriting standards -- and Wall Street knew all along.
Worse, when the firm flagged those loans for potential issues, Wall Street banks ignored its recommendation nearly half the time and likely purchased those loans anyway -- selling them to unwitting investors who were never told that the biggest home loan due diligence firm in the country had found potential defects in these mortgages.

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Let the ones with the broomsticks get the shaft--cleaning up after us

Robert Reich | The Shameful Attack on Public Employees
Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog: "In 1968, 1,300 sanitation workers in Memphis went on strike. The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. came to support them. That was where he lost his life. Eventually Memphis heard the grievances of its sanitation workers. And in subsequent years millions of public employees across the nation have benefited from the job protections they've earned. But now the right is going after public employees. Public servants are convenient scapegoats."

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Democrats feel the same way about Obama but are more shy about saying it

Sen. Scott Brown rankles the right, again
By Rachel Rose Hartman
The latest scathing condemnation comes from Scott Wheeler of the National Republican Trust PAC, which helped elect Brown to the Senate in the Jan. 2010 special election.
Wheeler writes for the Daily Caller Friday that his group is turning on Brown because "there is no difference between him and a Democrat":
An organization I run, The National Republican Trust PAC, raised and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to help Scott Brown win the Massachusetts special election to fill the seat vacated upon the death of Ted Kennedy. That organization will now do everything possible to see that Brown is defeated by a primary opponent when he faces re-election in 2012.
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One smart cookie

Watch Out John - Nancy's Still on the Job
Linda Bustyn, Ms. Magazine: "As Nancy Pelosi hands off the Speaker's gavel to John Boehner today, she also hands him a tough act to follow. Despite insistent attempts to malign her during her four years as Speaker of the House, the California congresswoman turns out to have been arguably the most effective person in that post in US history. And it's not just rah-rah Democrats saying so."

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Racism is a way of interpreting the world

ATLANTA – In Atlanta, where Vick was cast away in 2007 amid a repulsive scandal over dogfighting, he is still many things that start on a football field and go well beyond its boundaries. Vick has the unbelievable ability to polarize people. One Falcons employee said recently that he expects more fans to show up wearing Vick jerseys than Matt Ryan(notes) jerseys if the teams play.
To some, socially, Vick was young, powerful and hip while also remaining loyal to the people he grew up with in Virginia. In fact, Vick went bankrupt, despite being paid millions, because he couldn’t say no to friends and family.
In a city where more than 50 percent of the population is black and there is a great history of black leaders, including Aaron, Andrew Young and Martin Luther King Jr., discussing Vick isn’t just about sports. It’s about culture.
“I’d really like to have a discussion with Carlson, sit down and talk about it and get down to what is really going on there,” said Gil Tyree, a former sportscaster in Atlanta who is black. “There is something more and so many of us are afraid to talk about it. [Ryan Stewart] is right, race is the elephant in the room, but maybe the thing about Michael is that he provides us a chance to talk about it.”
“There is so much more to this that you can’t imagine,” said Ryan Stewart, who is black and, along with brother Doug, hosts the syndicated radio show “2 Live Stews” out of Atlanta. “…the big elephant in the room is race. Don’t let anybody tell you otherwise.
“Talking about Michael Vick in this town is like what it was like when O.J. [Simpson] was on trial. Black people didn’t talk to white people and white people didn’t talk to black people about it. It was too uncomfortable and this is the same way. When I’m out with my white friends, I don’t bring it up because it’s just going to make things tense. When we’re doing the show, we bring it up and we’re not afraid to talk about it because it gets conversation going. But away from the show, no, I don’t bring it up. It’s not worth the aggravation.”