Marian's Blog

Understatement by Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the U.S. House of Reps

"... I don't think we've invested well... in the last few years..." - House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (daughter of late mayor of Baltimore, Maryland; multimillionaire; Democratic congresswoman, 8th Congressional district, California - San Francisco) on the current state of U.S. society, government and economy, in a Capitol Hill news conference, Thursday, 2 Oct 2008.

Coping with public fear: "Bailouts only add to sense of panic," O'Grady, The Independent (London)

We're reading Sean O'Grady's article in today's Independent: "... no amount of taxpayer money, no vote in Congress or the Commons and no speech by a president or prime minister can now fully restore the confidence that has been drained from the system during a year of brutal capitalist "creative destruction." Confidence is the magical ingredient that makes our system work, the thing that allows Keynes' "animal spirits" to take off, and create businesses and wealth. And, as we have seen from the billions wiped from the stock markets yesterday, it is simply beyond price. Without it, there is merely fear."

I'm not convinced about needing to emulate "animal spirits" but our next post recalls the words of U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Global crisis: Congress was warned in 2000 of predatory loans

Thanks to my sister for sharing news of veteran U.S. legal aid attorney William Brennan and his testimony in Congress on 24 May 2000. So Congress had first-hand knowledge of what was going on from an attorney helping elderly, often female and Black persons (who quite often already owned their homes) from becoming statistics in very elaborate, far-reaching and high-pressure credit scams. In May 2000 Carlo and I were in Skopje, Macedonia. On 9 Aug 2007 we published an entry here at Marian's Blog entitled "The colour of sub-prime, & trans-Atlantic cash."  Who knew that ever-larger financial chips would still be falling more than a year later? Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac... And that's only the U.S. list. In 2007 I blogged, "How about "trans-Atlanticism in the 'hood", as France's largest bank, BNP Paribas, temporarily shut down investor access to three BNP private-investor funds linked to U.S. so-called 'sub-prime' mortgage lending." Is anyone in the international human rights establishment paying the slightest attention?

Thanks to my sister for sharing news of veteran U.S. legal aid attorney William Brennan and his testimony in Congress on 24 May 2000. So Congress had first-hand knowledge of what was going on from an attorney helping elderly, often female and Black persons (who quite often already owned their homes) from becoming statistics in very elaborate, far-reaching and high-pressure credit scams. In May 2000 Carlo and I were in Skopje, Macedonia. On 9 Aug 2007 we published an entry here at Marian's Blog entitled "The colour of sub-prime, & trans-Atlantic cash."  Who knew that ever-larger financial chips would still be falling more than a year later? Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac... And that's only the U.S. list. In 2007 I blogged, "How about "trans-Atlanticism in the 'hood", as France's largest bank, BNP Paribas, temporarily shut down investor access to three BNP private-investor funds linked to U.S. so-called 'sub-prime' mortgage lending." Is anyone in the international human rights establishment paying the slightest attention?

Shop Green: Earth Day 365 days/year

If you're in the U.S. or nearby, when you need to shop start using this site - Co-op America's National Green Pages.

Food: from fuel to riots as Reuters covers agflation

The current global food crisis makes me remember being in Jamaica in the last quarter of 1977. Michael Manley was prime minister. For some reason, the U.S. government did not consider Mr. Manley a friend. Somehow I sensed that perhaps it was more than coincidence that the same tense political period between Washington and Kingston witnessed empty shelves in all of Kingston's local food shops. This is no exaggeration. There was no rice and no beans ("peas" in the Caribbean). It's painful to remember, particularly in contrast to my eventual return to the States and walking into a supermarket as though it were the first time. I experienced culture shock. In fact, I wept as I saw aisle after aisle of so many brands of the same products, and much of it junk. Literally nothing to buy on grocery shelves a few short miles away in Jamaica, and row after row of food and junk on U.S. shelves. More often than not the items on the American shelves consisted of something manufactured for human consumption; so much of it in a category we've been conditioned to call "snack" foods. Fast forward to now. I'm not sure if Reuters coined the term "agflation" but they use it in this article on the soaring costs around the globe for people to feed their families and communities. This week in Haiti it was food riots and looting that resulted in several deaths. At the beginning of this year it was tortilla riots in Mexico, and last fall, some of India's poorest protested middlemen's alleged stockpiling for profit of food designated to help feed the most hungry. Amid so many concerns around food and agriculture politics globally and in the U.S., the American public needs to pressure Congress and federal and state governments to re-consider the idea of further converting land and crops used for food to the expansion of biofuel. A related matter is the fact that it's far cheaper and more efficient for people themselves to eat grain rather than raise large animals (beef livestock, for example), feed them enormous quantities of grain, and then slaughter these animals in order for people to eventually eat them. In most U.S. households for 30 years or so, the idea of the practicality of vegetarianism caused little more than a casual or bemused stir (or maybe an argument) over lunch or dinner. Today, however, with heightening contradictions of food, fuel and other costs vs. survival, this discussion hopefully will take on new life and new meaning.

Genuine Progress Indicator? Measuring economies as if society mattered

As so many consumer and exchange economies teeter on the brink, here's a fascinating index that could prove more useful to more people. Many of us are in the same time familiar with, yet put off by, words and terms like "GNP", "GDP", and "economic indicator." For over a decade a group called Redefining Progress has been working on what they call the "GPI" - the genuine progress indicator.

"... The GPI starts with the same personal consumption data that the GDP is based on, but then makes some crucial distinctions. It adjusts for factors such as income distribution, adds factors such as the value of household and volunteer work, and subtracts factors such as the costs of crime and pollution. Because the GDP and the GPI are both measured in monetary terms, they can be compared on the same scale. ..." - Redefining Progress

Thank you to John and Elizabeth Edwards, 2008 Campaign

My thank-you to John Edwards and family, and everyone who worked so long and hard on this campaign. It will have been one for the history books.

As the Edwards campaign notified the press today, one news commentator noted that the U.S. "has never elected a populist."

As Americans that's nothing to brag about; in fact, it is our collective loss. How many Americans still would prefer that people tell us what some of us would like to hear? Things like we - the 'collective we' - can go right on self-centered and selfish, while simultaneously claiming to be king of the global hill. But our more and more frankenstein-like creation has little if any remaining sense of being one society. And that's just here in the US, let alone how we relate to the "outside world" which many of us can't find on a map let alone know.

It was late last year when a Southern scholar-friend of mine tried to school me about the USA. He said our country would not have any truck with a populist. I really didn't want to believe it.

Someone famous once said something like: There is no hell like the one we create for ourselves.

John Edwards knows it's the economy, not just Iraq

As the candidate said last night in New Hampshire, I too am on the John Edwards grassroots campaign bandwagon right through my ancestral South Carolina, called "the Black Primary", and the other 47, right up to the Democratic Party convention next August in Denver. John Edwards all along has been addressing what's touching, and crushing, the majority of Americans, middle- and working-class/working-poor and poor. I scoffed when I read a Washington Post headline quoting George Bush saying how 'good' the economy looked. I was wondering what planet he was visiting or what he'd been ingesting. That was only about ten days ago. Now Bush has backtracked, acknowledging there are issues with the economy, and today CNN (MSM - mainstream media) reports we're in a recession since the final quarter of 2007. I hear all the candidates. I'm supporting John Edwards.

It's Iraq, the economy AND the Constitution, "Stupid"

I'm certainly not calling anyone "stupid". That was part of a very accurate and effective Democratic campaign slogan a few elections back. But mid-term Election 2006 is about Iraq. It is about the U.S. and global economy - which also partly is about Iraq, especially for the U.S. economy already in the toilet - and it is about whether the U.S. Constitution is worth the paper it was written on. Even Alice in Wonderland never went to a tea party like the one all of us are at. In spite of assessments of many, many Americans, Mr. Donald Rumsfeld tells us again: he doesn't plan to go anywhere. Could someone, anyone, please show Mr. Rumsfeld to the District of Columbia line? Who is taking marching orders from whom? If, like me, you're an American, for God's sake vote - and vote progressive. Everyone else in the rest of the world, please pray, or just send some good energy our way.

WAR as "tax", only worse, & the U.S. 2006 elections

We're into the countdown to the 2006 U.S. mid-term elections. Tuesday, Nov 7, is election day, and if you're registered, I urge you to vote. On t.v. one of the usual political talking heads tries to "remind" us that "if Democrats win, they'll institute taxes."

What the heck?! Is that supposed to be an argument?

Isn't war a huge, bloody, tax???

No amount of taxes or other money that any of us pays will bring back one life lost in this war. Don't forget to add in billions going to some rather shadowy private corporations to "rebuild" the country where the war is. Then we hear not much really is being built. So we don't even know where the money has gone. "Your tax dollars at work." But in the Washington, DC metro area - mainly suburban Maryland and northern Virginia - you hear from reliable sources that so many of the people with money to buy big homes work (or do contracting) for Defense Department and "Homeland Security". So please don't talk to me about Democrats and "taxes". Let's vote.