More Shopping Isn't The Answer

In our quest to better understand how our economy actually works, although frankly, corruption and greed seem to be the common denominators, The Nation has a series of videos on its website that truly are worth watching. If you have the stomach, that is. The series is called Meltdown 101 and it isn't anything we learned in college in the classroom. It sounds more like what we heard during the strikes, when classes were held outside on commons and the talk was far more radical.

Also included are a variety of articles that have appeared in The Nation, some of which are very informative. Ending Plutocracy is one of my favorites.

"In Eisenhower's America income over $400,000--the equivalent of less than $3 million today--faced a top marginal tax rate of 91 percent. Our current top rate: 35 percent."

Think about that for a moment!

Retire Bush or Jail Him?

The Nation is running a fascinating contest: in 25 words or less suggest what George W. Bush should do in his retirement. The contest is going on until December 31st, so there is still time to enter. Winners will be announced on January 12th. Click here to read the contest rules.

The contest entries will be judged by a prestigious panel: Victor Navasky, Katrina vanden Heuvel, Richard Lingeman.

And the prize is an original drawing by Edward Sorel, depicting the winning retirement idea.

My husband suggests that Bush should eat shit and die.

So far, these last weeks of the Bush-Cheney administration are leading to the inevitable: that Bush and Cheney should be tried for war crimes and other federal crimes. Cheney has admitted on television that he authorized torture, i.e. waterboarding of suspects. The Senate Armed Services Committee has pointed a bi-partisan finger at Donald Rumsfeld and other Bush administration officials for bringing the SERE program to Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, leading to the top-down policy of torture and prisoner abuse. Now, according to Marty Waas, a secret FBI report reveals the true role Dick Cheney played in the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame. Cheney admitted to federal investigators that he rewrote talking points for the press in July 2003 that made it much more likely that the role of then-covert CIA-officer Valerie Plame in sending her husband on a CIA-sponsored mission to Africa would come to light.

What role did Bush play? It appears that Cheney is daring the incoming administration to investigate and possibly prosecute him, unless he is counting on a preemptive pardon. Was Bush the decider, or merely a puppet of Cheney?

With the film Frost/Nixon playing, we are reminded of the arrogant statement made by Richard Nixon during the series of post-retirement interviews that if an act is committed by the president of the United States, it can't be illegal.

Maybe it's time to find out just how false that statement is.

Extreme Financials--What's Happening to the Very Poor?

This morning The New York Times posted a list of the biggest losers in the Madoff ponzi scheme. The list includes a lot of very rich people, their charitable trusts, and banks throughout the world. My sadness is that the charitable trusts and consequently funding to charitable organizations have been ransacked by poor management and greed.

One very big victim is the JEHT Foundation, one of the most progressive funders in the country--$26 million was given away last year to social justice causes, often to organizations whose missions are just too scary for most foundations.

This entire story is about greed and a sense of entitlement that some wealthy people have: I'm entitled to a 10% return on my money. For what?

Since funding will be so scarse at a time when government and corporations, as well as individuals, have been caught in the worst economic crisis of our lifetimes, many people will suffer.

The very poor are already suffering, and no one seems to be noticing.

According to the December 29, 2008 issue of The Nation, in 2007, more than 37 million Americans were living in poverty, that's 12.5% of the population. This figure doesn't include the impact of the unemployment rise that acccompanied the recent banking failures. 1.9 million Americans lost their jobs just this year. The consequence, is that between August 2007 and August 2008, the food stamp program caseload rose by 2.6 million people. One in five American children is living on food stamps.

This economic analysis was calculated by Robert Pollin from the University of Massachusetts in an article called "How to End the Recession."

He suggests, and it appears that Barack Obama was listening, that only massive spending by government can end the downward spiral.

35 days left of Bush. Will there be anything to govern by January 20th?

A New New Deal

On September 27th, Katrina Vander Heuval, publisher of The Nation, and Eric Schlosser criticized the bailout in progressive terms in the Wall Street Journal. Click here to read their insightful and bold article as it was republished in The Nation.

In recapping what FDR did when he came to office in the dark days after the Crash of 1929--no, Joe, he wasn't in office then and there was no television either--Vander Heuval and Schlosser list all of the federal projects that boosted the economy, got people back to work, and ushered in the American age.

During the New Deal, the Roosevelt administration spent about $250 billion (in today's dollars) on public-works projects, building about 8,000 parks, 40,000 public buildings, 72,000 schools and 80,000 bridges. The entire cost of all the New Deal programs (in today's dollars) was about $500 billion. The secretary of the Treasury now wants to spend perhaps twice that amount, simply to prevent a financial collapse.

We already know from Katrina to Iraq that we can't trust this administration to engage in any more spending, since everything it does is essentially profiteering for a few cronies with their infamous no-bid contracts and privitization.

But we must look beyond just saving the banks, and about that we need to talk.

Paul Newman--Actor, Activist, Philanthropist--And My First Love

Paul Newman will always be Ari Ben Canaan, the handsome independence fighter in Exodus who kisses the blonde American shiksa, Kitty, but whose heart always remained first with Israel. The film came out in 1960, and it was the first film that I had to see over and over again. Back then films opened in the big movie houses in Manhattan. My grandfather had a store on 34th Street and he bought the tickets for my father, mother, sister, and me to see the film. Then we went to Davy Jones’ Locker, a restaurant that served lobsters in a room that looked like it was under the sea. I probably wore gloves and my sister and I probably wore matching outfits: felt skirts with, yes, poodles, and a matching blouse made out of polished cotton.

When Exodus finally opened out in the suburbs where we lived I stood on line to see it again, and again.

The year my mother was dying, my nine year old daughter Lena and I both got the flu and were grounded with fevers together. Being a lover of movies, I had been introducing Lena to films since before she could talk. We went through the American Film Institute lists of best comedies and dramas. In the flush of our fevers that February 1998 when my heart was breaking, I went to Blockbuster and rented Exodus.

We watched it one time. Then we watched it again. That afternoon we both adored Paul Newman, his blue eyes, his determination, and his ruthless love for Israel.

Last winter when Lena went to Israel, she called me breathless from the valley where Paul Newman first kissed Eva Marie Saint.

This afternoon she called me from Prague to tell me that the love of our lives, Paul Newman, had died.

Paul Newman was our bad boy in the Young Philadelphians, Hustler, and Hud. He was our fallen hero in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. He was our rebel in Cool Hand Luke. We wanted him in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and we laughed with him in The Sting.

Twice I was in rooms with him and twice I was too shy to speak.

He was the first actor I loved, and he was the first actor my daughter loved, too.

Even in his later years, he exuded an American kind of sexuality in Nobody’s Fool.

And he had good politics. He helped save The Nation magazine. Victor Navasky went to Harvard Business School, which came up with a plan to sell limited partnerships to raise money for the oldest weekly magazine in the country. Victor enlisted Paul Newman to help solicit folks to buy these limited partnerships, the worst investment, a guaranteed loss. Our stock certificate hangs in my office. He started Newman’s Own and gave away millions to charity while employing folks and manufacturing good food.

We will always love his blue eyes and that sexy smile.