Bernie Has Some Good Ideas About Pot

Bernie did really well in Detroit Sunday afternoon. The audience was very enthusiastic as he explained the platform he was running on. And one of the planks he spoke about was marijuana legalization. His key points:

• Legalize marijuana in the first 100 days with executive action
• Vacate and expunge all past marijuana-related convictions
• Ensure that revenue from legal marijuana is reinvested in communities hit hardest by the War on Drugs
• Ensure legalized marijuana does not turn into big tobacco

That last two points got particularly huge applause. His platform emphasized that Big Tobacco is already targeting the marijuana industry for its profits. As Tom noted yesterday, Bernie's legalization plans are much more than just legalization. "He will start to repair the damage done to millions of people, mainly those of color, by conviction of marijuana 'crimes.' In addition, a third part of his plan will prevent the marijuana industry from becoming (or being dominated by) Big Tobacco." As president, Bernie will not allow marijuana to turn into Big Tobacco. He will:

• Incentivize marijuana businesses to be structured like nonprofits.
◦ We will provide resources for people to start cooperatives and collective nonprofits as marijuana businesses that will create jobs and economic growth in local communities.
• Prohibit products and labels that target young people.
• Ban companies that have created cancer-causing products or guilty of deceptive marketing.
• Ban tobacco/cigarette corporations from participating in the marijuana industry.
• Institute market share and franchise caps to prevent consolidation and profiteering.
• Regulate the safety of marijuana products by granting the federal government regulatory authority.
• Partner with USDA to establish safety inspection and quality control processes for growers and producers.

It's funny-- I was rubbing a cannabis-derived product onto my neuropathy-plagued feet that I had just gotten from a small local company-- Quanta-- while I was watching the Bernie rally live. It arrived in the mail yesterday and I rubbed some on one foot and left the other one without any as an experiment. And, sure enough, within 15 minutes the foot I rubbed it on was pain free and other other one was still throbbing and painful. So... anyway, here I am watching Bernie talk about legalizing marijuana and rubbing in this stuff and, well... I thought I'd share this video about the company from their website:





And here's another of their clips, this one about the stuff I rubbed on my feet. It's a hemp derived topical that can be used to alleviate many types of pain from arthritis and muscle/joint pain to chronic back pain, carpal tunnel, and my problem, the neuropathy. It treats pain locally by interrupting pain signaling and doesn't enter the bloodstream. "CBD," they explained, "is adding a new dimension to pain care as an effective alternative to OTC and prescription medication. These are the ingredients on the package: Beeswax, Sunflower Oil, Fractionated Coconut Oil, Menthol, Meadowfoam Seed Oil, Arnica Montana Oil, Peppermint Oil, White Camphor Oil, Vitamin E Oil, Turmeric Oil, Lavender Oil, Clove Oil, Polarized Hemp CBD, Ginger Root Oil.

A Corrupt Detroit Establishment Is Desperate To Stop Rashida Tlaib

I thought Rashida Tlaib was out choosing furniture for her new office in DC. After all, she won the 6-person August 7th primary and there is no Republican running next week. And why should one? The PVI is D+32 and Hillary eviscerated Trump 78.8% to 18.1%. Progressives-- in Detroit and across the country-- are very excited that an experienced and skilled state legislator and community activist with a powerful cutting edge working class agenda would soon be in Congress, serving with freshmen like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY) and Ilhan Omar (MN), and, hopefully, Randy Bryce (WI), Jared Golden (ME), Kara Eastman (NE), Katie Porter (CA), Lisa Brown (WA), etc. On Monday, writing for Jezebel Esther Wang reported that "Tlaib’s victory was hailed as part of a new wave of unabashedly leftist women of color who are challenging the establishment wing of the Democratic Party--from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in New York City to Ilhan Omar in Minnesota-- and winning."

Tlaib isn’t a newcomer to the political scene, nor is she new to the brand of progressive politics that is increasingly gaining traction, much to the dismay of centrist Democrats. As Medicare for All and a $15 minimum wage become banner policies for more Democrats, the prevailing political winds are finally catching up with her.

Tlaib is an activist-legislator whose defining, reputation-making moment was taking on the Koch brothers by trespassing onto private property to get a sample of petrocoke dust-- a byproduct of extracting oil from the tar sands-- to test for toxicity. Months before the 2016 presidential election, she and other women had disrupted Donald Trump while he was giving a speech in Detroit. She called out Immigration and Customs Enforcement years before #AbolishICE was part of the mainstream political debate; far from being inspired by Bernie Sanders’ presidential run in 2016, she has long clashed with local business elites while railing against the city- and state-level tax incentives being handed out to developers like so much candy; and years before the hashtag #MeToo drew widespread attention to workplace sexual harassment, she publicly alleged a prominent Arab American civil rights advocate had sexually harassed her on the job, leading him to resign.

In her race, Tlaib had received the endorsements of a slew of Bernie Sanders-affiliated groups, from Justice Democrats to Our Revolution, as well as the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, of which she is a dues-paying member. Glowing media coverage has praised her civil rights bonafides and her ambitious plan for a green economy. No profile of Tlaib fails to note that she will become the first Muslim American woman in Congress (along with Minnesota’s Ilhan Omar if she wins, as she is likely to do), and the first Palestinian American woman. There is an excitement surrounding her candidacy that is wholly warranted-- “Rashida Tlaib is the left’s way forward,” proclaimed Politico, days after her primary victory. (Some of this is not new: In 2016, she was included on a list of Democrats who, looking ahead to the 2024 presidential campaign, “just might be poised to break out eight years from now.”) It is clear that America’s progressives are ready to anoint Rashida Tlaib as one of the new national faces of the left flank of the Democratic Party.

...[W]hen she says that she wants to, in her words, “kick ass” and fight against corporate greed, you really believe her—a rarity for politicians. And while much has been made of her ethnicity and her religion, Tlaib credits her victory in large part to her message, pointing out that less than five percent of her district is Arab American. “It was people that were tired of the same old politics and tired of the same kind of people getting elected over and over again,” Tlaib said.

...The traditional black leadership... includes people like Bishop Edgar Vann II, the pastor of Detroit’s Second Ebenezer Church, a former member of the Detroit police department’s civilian oversight body and a member of the executive committee of the Downtown Detroit Partnership, a public-private partnership that has worked hand-in-hand with business leaders and local elected officials to reconfigure the downtown landscape.

When I asked Vann if he believed Tlaib’s win showed that residents in Detroit were on board with her brand of politics, Vann pointed to the crowded field. The four black candidates, he said, split the black vote, opening the door for Tlaib to eke out a victory. (Vann also expressed alarm over her unabashedly left politics, telling me, “My concern, personally, I would say, is that I am not a socialist. I have concerns about certain factions of the Democratic Party that are becoming ultra-left.”)

“Had one of those people not been in the race, then she wouldn’t have won the race,” Vann said. He noted that Jones had beat out Tlaib in the special election, held on the same day and with fewer candidates running, to fill Conyers’ vacated seat. “As historic as it was, when we look at the numbers, we recognize how it really happened,” he said.

It is impossible to discuss Tlaib’s historic victory without acknowledging the complicated role that race played during the primary. The district has had a black representative and a civil rights champion as its congressperson for more than half a century. Despite a growing perception that Conyers had stayed for too long, in Detroit, whose residents are more than 80 percent black, having a black representative still carries weight. Tlaib herself had grappled with the optics of running to replace Conyers. “I felt like, ‘Am I taking it away from my families?’” she recalled. Her decision to run was based on her sense that the district needed a candidate closer to the movements fighting for the city at the ground level.

The notion that the crowded field-- which included Jones as well as Ian Conyers, John Conyers’s grandnephew, and Coleman Young II, the son of Detroit’s first black mayor—would split the black electorate had alarmed Vann and other members of Detroit’s black political establishment. In March, he and other clergy, as well as union leaders and Democratic Party activists, met and decided to collectively endorse Jones. Jones, who was the president of the local chapter of the Communication Workers of America before being elected to city council in 2005, was widely viewed as a capable and reliably progressive candidate who preached about reaching across the aisle (in her campaign, she staked out support for some of the same policy positions as Tlaib). As Jonathan Kinloch, the chair of the 13th District Democratic Party put it to the Detroit Free Press, the prospect of a non-black candidate replacing Conyers was “a very, very, very big concern.” One long-time political commentator and consultant, Steve Hood, expressed it more bluntly: “I’m not a racist, but I’d rather see an African American.”

...During a time when identity politics has largely been emptied of its original, liberatory meaning, and women running for office are often celebrated for simply being women, without an interrogation of whether their policies support the real needs of other women, poor people, immigrants, and people of color, Tlaib’s expansive vision of an intersectional politics rooted in organized movements points to a way forward for the Democratic Party. “I know that if we don’t support the movement work, we’re never going to pass Medicare for All. We’re never going to pass the environmental justice protections that we need,” she said. “Going and pressing a button, great. But man, we need more than that.”

And, sure enough, on Monday, the centrist establishment candidate, runner-up (and City Council President), Brenda Jones, launched her last-minute write-in candidacy-- mostly race-based-- against Rashida. As an independent. Jones won the separate election to finish John Conyers term (which expires January 3rd) but "Jones' final decision to complete the rest of the Detroit Democrat's term would come down to a pending ruling from the House Committee on Ethics on whether she can legally serve in both roles (City Council president) at the same time."

"Many voters felt that the process-- there was some concern with the process. I received several-- many, many calls from voters who said to me, 'I'm writing your name in,' and that was before I even decided I was running a write-in campaign," Jones said.

In a confusing twist during the August primary, Jones won the race to finish Conyers' term, but Tlaib won the race to fill his seat for the following two-year term. Jones said that voters were worried about the primary's integrity after seeing fluctuations in online voting counts.

But voting equipment executives at the time said the display problem had nothing to do with accuracy.

It's not clear whether Jones will even serve the term she won, as she is waiting on a decision from the House Committee on Ethics as to whether she can remain council president at the same time.

Michigan Democratic Party chairman Brandon Dillon said that Jones’ write-in campaign is a both a distraction for Democrats and a bad idea.

“Rashida Tlaib is the Democratic nominee and won her race outright,” he said. “The chances of it being successful are zero and Rashida’s going to be a great congresswoman.”

Tlaib has also received a swell of attention as potentially the first Muslim woman to be elected to Congress, which would be upended if Jones' campaign proves successful.

On Tuesday, Jones pushed back against potential criticism.

"I'm not here to distract anyone, and I've never tried to distract anyone," she said. "I'm here to help everyone, and that's what I'm doing launching this write-in campaign."

Not only is a write-in campaign a herculean task, it becomes even harder when 34,410 absentee ballots have already been turned in to the Detroit City Clerk’s office, said city elections director Daniel Baxter.

And Tlaib, who appeared on stage with Jones before former President Barack Obama spoke to a crowd of several thousand people in Detroit last week, pivoted to fundraising off of Jones’ announcement.

“We learned late Friday that a challenger is mounting a write-in campaign in next week’s general election. The voters in Michigan-13 don’t deserve any distractions,” she told supporters in an e-mail on Tuesday. “At a time when voters around the country need to be coming together to elect Democrats up and down the ballot to check Donald Trump’s hateful, racist agenda, the last thing we need is someone coming in and sowing division."

“But this write-in opponent-- who we defeated in the August primary-- is a reminder that we need to work every day between now and Election Day to turn out our voters and win,” she added.

She that picture up top? That's a drawing of Rashida-- a very limited edition signed print by Nancy Ohanian. Nancy gave me 10 to help us elect Rashida. If you'd like one, please contribute to her campaign by tapping on the Act Blue thermometer on the right. Usually we ask people to contribute any amount and then pick the winners randomly. This time it's different. We need to raise her some serious money to take on the full weight of the corporate establishment that is terrified of having to deal with a tried and tested working class champion like Rashida. So... we're asking for contributions that are at least $50 for a chance to win a print. If there are more than 10 people who contribute over $50 to Rashida's campaign, then we'll pick randomly between them. This is a quick one. The 10 winners will be chosen Thursday at 3 pm (ET). obviously, smaller contributions are welcome too-- but just from people who want to help Rashida win, not for the Ohanian prints. Wait, wait... i don't like the way this sounds. I have a personal copy of the print as well, so I'll toss that in and that one will go to a random donor regardless of the amount they contribute. I hope that's OK.

Rashida Tlaib-- Not Another Garden Variety Democrat... A Leader

A couple of days ago, Michael Keegan, president of People for the American Way, invited me to meet a candidate for the open John Conyers seat in Michigan, Rashida Tlaib. The West Detroit district that goes all the way through Dearborn Heights, Inkster and Romulus to the airport, is one of the bluest in America-- with a PVI of D+33. Obama won it with 85% both times he ran and even Hillary managed to get 79% of the vote. A predominantly African-American district with a growing Hispanic population, it is less than 20% white. The Republicans aren't bothering to run a candidate and the most important election is the August 7 primary. Conyers' son was disqualified and two people withdrew, which leaves half a dozen Democrats, including a Conyers nephew, as well Detroit City Council president Brenda Jones, Westland Mayor Bill Wild and Rashida. If she wins she'll be one of the most forceful and significant voices in Congress, that I can guarantee you-- another Ted Lieu or Pramila Jayapal.

What I took away from watching her in action, reading her record in the state legislature and two chats, I could see that she's guided by the belief that everyone, not just the wealthy and privileged, deserves access to opportunity and a better quality of life. She's dedicated her life to amplifying and addressing the concerns of working families and average folks in Detroit and Wayne County, across Michigan, and around the country. Rashida has run some of the most aggressive and visionary campaigns Detroit has ever seen and made history as the first Muslim woman ever elected to the Michigan Legislature-- the second Muslim woman to serve in any state legislature. If she wins this race she'll also be the first Muslim woman to reelected to Congress.

She's well-known as a progressive warrior and has taken on billionaires and multinational corporations for Detroit residents... and won! In 2013, then-State Rep. Rashida Tlaib stopped Marathon Oil and the Koch brothers from storing massive, open piles of poisonous petroleum coke byproduct (“petcoke”) on the banks of the Detroit River. She even went so far as to collect her own samples and conduct her own independent lab testing to force the Republican-controlled Michigan Department of Environmental Quality to recognize the threat this posed to the health of her residents. Maybe you remember seeing Rashida’s interview with Rachel Maddow on the issue.

And when reclusive Detroit billionaire Manuel Moroun illegally seized a city park occupying land he coveted for a second toll-bridge to Canada, Rashida fought back. In liberating the park, she became a target of the notoriously vindictive Mouroun, who funded a recall campaign against her and continues to fund her political opponents. Rashida has defeated all of them, too.

Beyond her impressive list of victories for her residents, Rashida is lauded for the transformative constituent services that she provides.She knows that public service is about more than voting for legislation. When taking office as a State Representative in 2008, Rashida learned that all legislators were barred from using State resources to open a district office. Undeterred, she raised over $40,000 in private funding to open the very first Neighborhood Service Center-- an incredibly important tool for connecting her residents to the resources of State government. In Lansing she sponsored legislation to stop dishonest tax-prep companies from taking advantage of low-income consumers. At her Neighborhood Service Center, she could help those same residents get over $1 million in tax refunds by providing free tax preparation services. That’s life changing representation.

Rashida has carried on her work as a warrior for social justice after her time in the legislature, working as a public interest lawyer at the Sugar Law Center for Economic and Social Justice leading efforts to create meaningful community benefits requirements on taxpayer subsidized development deals, as well as leading a regional Take On Hate civil rights campaign. Rashida’s record prioritizes people over profits and firmly establishes her as a leader who will fight back in a political climate all too willing to pander to the elite and powerful. In fact, she was one of the first to stand up to Donald Trump’s racist rhetoric and policies-- infiltrating, protesting, and being forcibly removed from his appearance at the Detroit Economic Club in August 2016, months before the election.



It's become apparent to me that people in Metro Detroit have abs opportunity to elect someone work tirelessly to make their lives better in tangible ways, whether by policy or by action, and this commitment to rolling up her sleeves and going to work for her community. It's what sets Rashida apart. She offered a guest post, Why I'm Running.

I’ve served as a State Representative in Lansing and I’ve been a people’s lawyer at the Sugar Law.

I think it’s time for a Congresswoman who’ll fight for us in the streets, in the courts, and in Congress, and who people can count on to fight for them and never sell them out.

We need someone who will stand up to the billionaires and corporations taking advantage of our communities and hijacking our government. I took on the Koch brothers and won, forcing their toxic petcoke off our river. I fought back against Matty Moroun and won, moving his polluting trucks off our neighborhood streets. I protested the Trump rally at the Detroit Economic Club and got thrown out for asking him to “read the Constitution” before other Democrats were taking him seriously. I pushed back when Quicken Loans and Little Caesars asked for huge tax breaks that take money from our schools, even as local government celebrated the corporate handouts.

I’m running because I get results. I brought home $5.6 million in funding for before-and-after school programs and $7.8 million for bilingual education and literacy. I brought home $1 million for free health care clinics and $2 million to remove toxic lead paint from older homes. And I did it with Republicans in control of the Legislature, because I don’t make excuses, I get it done.

  In Washington I’ll fight back against the Trump agenda that puts corporate profits and serving the rich over the needs of the rest of us. I’ll fight alongside you for Medicare-for-All so everyone can receive the healthcare they need, and for a $15 minimum wage that helps workers provide for their families. Together we’ll hold polluters accountable and resist Trump’s attacks on our communities. On top of that, I’ll operate a local service center that changes your ideas of what a representative should be. I can’t wait to get to work for you.

She'll vote right, but that isn't the main reason to back her. I recognized a strong, effective progressive leader in her-- another person who can make a real difference in a largely dysfunctional Congress-- another Alan Grayson or Ro Khanna, Ted Lieu, Pramila Jayapal, Raul Grijalva or even a Nancy Pelosi of long, long ago. If you'd like to contribute to her very grassroots campaign you can do it by clicking on the 2018 congressional thermometer on the right.

Detroit: Water, Water, Everywhere, But Not A Drop To Drink

There's a horrible drought in California and I'm going to rip out my lawn and replace it with a rock and cactus garden, as several neighbors and friends already have. The city even offers a cash incentive for doing so. There are also serious drought conditions on northern Texas, western Nevada and southeastern Colorado. But not in Detroit-- nor anywhere in Michigan or Ohio (which is closer to Detroit than lots of Michigan itself is). Plenty of water there... except for people to use. Well, not all people. Poor people are the ones who have no water-- tens of thousands of them.

A few months ago the Detroit Water and Sewerage District sent out something like 46,000 shutoff notices-- after jacking up the price of water so that it's prohibitively expensive for many families. People in Detroit are charged an average of $75 a month for water, comapred to a national average of $40. By summer, the District was talking about 150,000 households they consider delinquent and plan to stop serving. John Conyers, the congressman who represents most of the poor people living in Detroit, flat-out declared the District management's policy "inhuman" and the UN reminded Detroit (and I hope Lansing) that "Disconnection of services for lack of means to pay may constitute a violation of the right to water. Disconnection due to non-payment is only permissible if it can be shown that the householder is able to pay but is not paying-- in other words, that the tariff is affordable."

Conyers is working on legislation to keep the District from being able to cut people off from water. what do you think Paul Ryan, John Boehner and Kevin McCarthy will have to say about that? How about predatory Michigan Republican leaders like Fred Upton, Dave Camp, Candice Miller, and Tim Walberg? They don't care-- especially because gold courses that don't pay still get to waste massive amounts of water while poor families have no water for drinking or sanitation. The GOP wants to see the system privatized and kicking poor families off their books, makes that look a lot more attractive for corporate buyers.

In a city where the median household income is less than half the national average, 38 percent of residents live below the poverty line and 23 percent are unemployed, it comes as no surprise that at least 40 percent of customers are delinquent on their bills.

The water shut-offs have taken no prisoners. Since this year's shut-offs started at the end of March, at least 15,000 Detroit households have had their water turned off. But the campaign, a tactic designed to pressure Detroiters into paying their water bills, began with little or no publicity last year, when 24,000 homes had their water shut off, says Darryl Latimer, the deputy director of the water department.

The frequency of shut-offs gained momentum in the fall, shortly after the city’s bankruptcy was filed, and just a few months after the city contracted shut-off services out to Homrich, a demolition company. The city agreed to pay Homrich at most $6 million for work over 730 calendar days. Delinquent customers were given a grace period in December for the winter months, with shut-offs resuming upon the arrival of spring.

With the city’s average of just under three people per household, these numbers mean that roughly 100,000 Detroiters out of a total population that hovers just under 700,000 have already been affected by the shut-offs, with tens of thousands more awaiting their turn.

Clampdowns can seem to arrive out of the blue, as residents don’t receive any formal notification that their services are to be shut off... Residents targeted by the shut-off campaign have been reluctant to speak up. Some have stayed quiet because they’ve resorted to illegally hiring plumbers, and others—who are without water and relying on neighbors and friends for drinking water and showers—are afraid child-protective services may intervene, as a lack of running water is grounds for social services to immediately take children out of parents’ care.

Even those without children remain reticent. Some feel tarred by a general notion of shame and culpability for not being able to meet such a bare necessity as water. Last week, a headline in one of the local newspapers, the Detroit News, described delinquent customers as “water scofflaws.”

This stigma is enhanced by the painting of blue lines in front of those houses that have just had their water turned off-- lines painted by Homrich’s employees after a job is completed... Monica Lewis-Patrick, a community organizer who has been going door to door with fellow activists in order to raise awareness and distribute water, says she has come across old-age pensioners who-- not knowing where to turn after their taps were closed off-- have gone without running water for almost a year.

...“This is a public-health emergency,” says Peter Hammer, a law professor at Wayne State University and director of the school's Center for Civil Rights. But Hammer takes it further. Beyond the likely prepping of the water department for privatization, the law professor states these measures are just one part of a larger process of moving people out of neighborhoods the city wants to see emptied out. “They are also shutting water off not wishing people will pay necessarily, but implicitly hoping people will move,” he says.

Geographical relocation is a controversial issue in a city like Detroit, which is 83 percent African-American and has a painful history of housing segregation. The Motor City’s financial woes are also often associated with decades of white flight, which left its population depleted by almost two-thirds and its tax base in tatters.

The city’s racial makeup plays a role in the way this is being dealt with too, Hammer says: “If this was not an impoverished African-American community that was getting the brunt of this, people would be up in arms.”

Ah... yes-- which is why we don't hear Fred Upton, Candice Miller, Dave Camp, Tim Walberg speaking up-- nor Bill Huizenga, Dan Benishek, Mike Rogers, Justin Amash and Kerry Bentivolio.

Christmas Was Yesterday-- But It's Never Too Late For These Words Of Warning From The AFL-CIO

The New York State AFL-CIO did the above video in regard to their own state. But there isn't a state in the Union that it doesn't apply to. Where is this not relevant: "We need to start looking at things from the perspective of the workers who call our state home, not the corporations who call Ne York their tax break layover." And they offer solutions that aren't in the forefront of politicians who cater to the 1%-- the entire Republican Party and the whole Republican wing of the Democratic Party-- Blue Dogs, New Dems, Third Wayers, et al. "We need to develop industries that create opportunities from one generation to the next [and insure] that there are basic standards when tax dollars are invested so that we create family-sustaining jobs. Remember, no one is forcing private companies to take public money. If businesses choose to do so, it is incumbent upon us to expect more than the bare minimum in return… We can't afford to subsidize businesses that fail to create-- or even promise to create-- jobs. If businesses don't live up to their end of the bargain, then we need a way to recoup our money."

The video goes on to attempt to de-demonize taxes-- something conservatives have invested a great deal into embedding into the conventional "wisdom"-- by showing what vital services they actually pay for to make a civilization livable for everyone. This week the Detroit Free Press reported that U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Steven Rhodes questioned whether a loan deal with the city was too generous for the banks and ordered both sides to renegotiate. This is great news for the residents of Detroit, who are likely to wind up with more services than what the plutocrats at the head of the line had in mind for them.

Rhodes questioned the amount the city will pay two banks as part of an agreement to refinance a debt deal gone sour. He indefinitely suspended the trial over whether to approve the deal and related bankruptcy financing between the city and UBS and Bank of America Merrill Lynch, adding that a deal paying the banks 75 cents on the dollar is too generous.

“I would encourage that as strongly as I can,” Rhodes said.

...The decision had the dual effect of dealing a setback to a settlement that Detroit’s bankruptcy attorneys described as crucial to the city’s recovery while giving the city ammunition to convince the banks to offer a better deal.

The judge was clear that 75 cents on the dollars for the banksters was too much and unfair. “Every transaction," he said, "that the city has entered into in connection with these swaps … has been with a gun to its head. That has to stop.” And now Detroit seems ready to sue the avaricious, predatory banks.

The City of Detroit threatened to sue Bank of America and UBS if the banks don’t agree to a better settlement over a disastrous 2005 debt deal that helped plunge the city into Chapter 9 bankruptcy.

Jones Day lawyer Thomas Cullen told Judge Steven Rhodes on Friday that the city already has notified the banks that it may sue them by questioning the legality of the deal if they don’t agree to settlement terms that are more favorable to the city.

“We are doing whatever is necessary to protect the city, its residents and its interests,” Cullen said.

The New York AFL-CIO wants to make sure Wall Street doesn't do to NYC what it has done to Detroit. God knows, the politicians won't. New York's congressional delegation, most of it heavily supported by Labor in general and the AFL-CIO in particular are far more sensitive to Wall Street than to working families. When examining the legalistic bribes the Securities and Investment Industry (i.e., Wall Street banksters) have paid out to Members of Congress-- both Houses-- since 1990, among the top 20 we find 5 New Yorkers, each one a notorious Wall Street whore:

• Hillary Clinton (D-$11,043,896)
• Chuck Schumer (D-$9,478,485)
• Kirsten Gillibrand (D-$3,449,280)
• Alfonse D'Amato (R-$2,524,748)
• Rick Lazio (R-$2,466,018)

Other powerful NY House Members who have been bought off, to one degree or another, by Wall Street include Nita Lowey (D-$1,847,456), Charlie Rangel (D-$1,351,948), Joe Crowley (D-$1,244,792), Carolyn Maloney (D-$1,241,188), and, of course, Steve Israel (D-$800,019). Note: we hear Lazio is talking about running against Israel for his old seat in 2016. That will be a tough one for the banksters!

The Detroit mess: "So now the deficit scolds have a new case to misinterpret" (Paul Krugman)

-- Tim Eagan (click to enlarge)

"Detroit does seem to have had especially bad governance, but for the most part the city was just an innocent victim of market forces. What? Market forces have victims? Of course they do."

-- Paul Krugman, in his NYT column yesterday,
"Detroit, the New Greece"

by Ken

I suppose it would be going too far to suggest that the deficit hawks are giddy about the Detroit bankruptcy situation because of the opportunity it presents to stick it to working people -- or, better, still, retired working people. Oh, I think they're pretty happy about this. After all, what's not to like about screwing working people? But it's not as if they've been looking forward to the city going down the tubes in order to have this opportunity. I think of it as more of a secondary benefit. Much prized, but still secondary to spreading their loopy anti-gospel. "Bad news!" they shout gleefully. "The sons of bitches be screwed!"

In his NYT column yesterday, "Detroit, the New Greece," Paul Krugman wrote:

When Detroit declared bankruptcy, or at least tried to -- the legal situation has gotten complicated -- I know that I wasn't the only economist to have a sinking feeling about the likely impact on our policy discourse. Was it going to be Greece all over again?

The Greek fiscal crisis of a few years back, Krugman wrote, "was a bad thing but should have had limited effects on the rest of the world," partly because Greece's economy is so small on the world scale ("actually, about 1½ times as big as the economy of metropolitan Detroit"), but also because Greece "was a very special case, holding few if any lessons for wider economic policy -- and even in Greece, budget deficits were only one piece of the problem."

Nonetheless, for a while policy discourse across the Western world was completely "Hellenized" -- everyone was Greece, or was about to turn into Greece. And this intellectual wrong turn did huge damage to prospects for economic recovery.

So now the deficit scolds have a new case to misinterpret.

Let's cheat and jump to the conclusion of the column. "The important thing is not to let the discussion get hijacked, Greek-style."

There are influential people out there who would like you to believe that Detroit's demise is fundamentally a tale of fiscal irresponsibility and/or greedy public employees. It isn't. For the most part, it's just one of those things that happens now and then in an ever-changing economy.

It doesn't matter, Krugman notes, that the deficit doomsters continue to be wrong about, well, everything.

Never mind the repeated failure of the predicted US fiscal crisis to materialize, the sharp fall in predicted US debt levels and the way much of the research the scolds used to justify their scolding has been discredited; let's obsess about municipal budgets and public pension obligations! Or, actually, let's not.

Is there a problem in state and local pension funding? Yes. Is there a crisis? No, PK insists, citing numbers that indicate the situation indeed is far from ideal, but arguing that if "overall pension contributions this year will be about $25 billion less than they should be," it's "just not a big deal"in a $16 trillion economy -- "and even if you make more pessimistic assumptions, as some but not all accountants say you should, it still isn't a big deal."

"So," he asks, "was Detroit just uniquely irresponsible?" And again he says no. "Detroit does seem to have had especially bad governance, but for the most part the city was just an innocent victim of market forces."

"WHAT? MARKET FORCES HAVE VICTIMS?"

"Of course they do," says Paul. And we run smack into a frequent problem with the right-wing economists. Even with their own sacred texts, they tend to cherry-pick.

[F]ree-market enthusiasts love to quote Joseph Schumpeter about the inevitability of "creative destruction" -- but they and their audiences invariably picture themselves as being the creative destroyers, not the creatively destroyed. Well, guess what: Someone always ends up being the modern equivalent of a buggy-whip producer, and it might be you.

Sometimes the losers from economic change are individuals whose skills have become redundant; sometimes they're companies, serving a market niche that no longer exists; and sometimes they're whole cities that lose their place in the economic ecosystem. Decline happens.

"Political and social dysfunction" may well have made the Detroit mess worse.

One consequence of this dysfunction has been a severe case of "job sprawl" within the metropolitan area, with jobs fleeing the urban core even when employment in greater Detroit was still rising, and even as other cities were seeing something of a city-center revival.

Fewer than a quarter of the jobs on offer in the Detroit metropolitan area lie within 10 miles of the traditional central business district; in greater Pittsburgh, another former industrial giant whose glory days have passed, the corresponding figure is more than 50 percent. And the relative vitality of Pittsburgh's core may explain why the former steel capital is showing signs of a renaissance, while Detroit just keeps sinking.

"So by all means," says Krugman, "let's have a serious discussion about how cities can best manage the transition when their traditional sources of competitive advantage go away."

But "let's also have a serious discussion about our obligations, as a nation, to those of our fellow citizens who have the bad luck of finding themselves living and working in the wrong place at the wrong time -- because, as I said, decline happens, and some regional economies will end up shrinking, perhaps drastically, no matter what we do."

Of course this isn't what the deficit scolds have in mind. They will be preening about this latest "proof" of the evils of deficits, increasing the likelihood that real economic recovery will remain a mirage for most Americans for the foreseeable future. "The important thing," says Krugman, "is not to let the discussion get hijacked."

Alas, he knows as well as we do that our political system and its media boosters are designed precisely to hijack all such discussions. I don't see why this one should be an exception. There are too many important people with too much to gain by misinterpreting the Lesson of Detroit.

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Do The Rich Want To Kill The Rest Of Us? No, Of Course Not! Who Would Be Their Servants, Slaves And Customers?

Don't mention Thomas Jefferson to Texas nutbag Ted Cruz

As soon as the Texas plutocrats won control over the state Board of Education, through their pathetic Tea Party puppets, one of the first orders of business was to eliminate Thomas Jefferson from the history books. Dangerous revolutionary, that Jefferson, with his subversive ideas. I wonder how long it will take for them to move against historical Jesus too. This account is from 2010:

After three days of turbulent meetings, the Texas Board of Education on Friday approved a social studies curriculum that will put a conservative stamp on history and economics textbooks, stressing the superiority of American capitalism, questioning the Founding Fathers’ commitment to a purely secular government and presenting Republican political philosophies in a more positive light.

The vote was 10 to 5 along party lines, with all the Republicans on the board voting for it.

The board, whose members are elected, has influence beyond Texas because the state is one of the largest buyers of textbooks. In the digital age, however, that influence has diminished as technological advances have made it possible for publishers to tailor books to individual states.

In recent years, board members have been locked in an ideological battle between a bloc of conservatives who question Darwin’s theory of evolution and believe the Founding Fathers were guided by Christian principles, and a handful of Democrats and moderate Republicans who have fought to preserve the teaching of Darwinism and the separation of church and state.

Since January, Republicans on the board have passed more than 100 amendments to the 120-page curriculum standards affecting history, sociology and economics courses from elementary to high school. The standards were proposed by a panel of teachers.

...Cynthia Dunbar, a lawyer from Richmond who is a strict constitutionalist and thinks the nation was founded on Christian beliefs, managed to cut Thomas Jefferson from a list of figures whose writings inspired revolutions in the late 18th century and 19th century, replacing him with St. Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin and William Blackstone. (Jefferson is not well liked among conservatives on the board because he coined the term “separation between church and state.”)

“The Enlightenment was not the only philosophy on which these revolutions were based,” Ms. Dunbar said.

No history books that anyone plans to sell in Texas are likely to have the Jefferson quote at the top of the page. The Tea Party hero William Blackstone, a Tory Member of Parliament and a much disliked sociopath and narcissist, who, of course, opposed independence for the American colonies, is a much more fitting figure for the anti-democracy forces than Thomas Jefferson. Former Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich, would probably opt for Jefferson. His essay Saturday is a stark warning that American democracy is in grave jeopardy from the very forces Jefferson saw as the biggest danger to our country's enterprise: the banksters and plutocrats who have been coddled and fluffed by the political elites they finance.

One way to view Detroit’s bankruptcy-- the largest bankruptcy of any American city-- is as a failure of political negotiations over how financial sacrifices should be divided among the city’s creditors, city workers, and municipal retirees-- requiring a court to decide instead. It could also be seen as the inevitable culmination of decades of union agreements offering unaffordable pension and health benefits to city workers.

But there’s a more basic story here, and it’s being replicated across America: Americans are segregating by income more than ever before. Forty years ago, most cities (including Detroit) had a mixture of wealthy, middle-class, and poor residents. Now, each income group tends to lives separately in its own city-- with its own tax bases and philanthropies that support, at one extreme, excellent schools, resplendent parks, rapid-response security, efficient transportation, and other first-rate services; or, at the opposite extreme, terrible schools, dilapidated parks, high crime, and third-rate services.

The geo-political divide has become so palpable that being wealthy in America today means not having to come across anyone who isn’t.

Detroit is a devastatingly poor, mostly black, increasingly abandoned island in the midst of a sea of comparative affluence that’s mostly white. Its suburbs are among the richest in the nation. Oakland County, for example, is the fourth wealthiest county in the United States, of counties with a million or more residents. Greater Detroit-- which includes the suburbs-- is among the nation’s top five financial centers, the top four centers of high-technology employment, and the second-biggest source of engineering and architectural talent. Not everyone is wealthy, to be sure, but the median household in the region earns close to $50,000 a year, and unemployment is no higher than the nation’s average.

The median household in the city of Detroit earns half that amount, and unemployment is staggeringly high. One out of 3 residents is in poverty; more than half of all children in the city are impoverished. Between 2000 and 2010, Detroit lost a quarter of its population as the middle-class and whites fled to the suburbs. That left it with depressed property values, abandoned neighborhoods, empty buildings, lousy schools, high crime, and a dramatically-shrinking tax base. More than half of its parks have closed in the last five years. Forty percent of its streetlights don’t work.

In other words, much in modern America depends on where you draw boundaries, and who’s inside and who’s outside. Who is included in the social contract? If “Detroit" is defined as the larger metropolitan area that includes its suburbs, “Detroit" has enough money to provide all its residents with adequate if not good public services, without falling into bankruptcy. Politically, it would come down to a question of whether the more affluent areas of “Detroit" were willing to subsidize the poor inner-city through their tax dollars, and help it rebound. That’s an awkward question that the more affluent areas would probably rather not have to face.

But in assuming that the relevant boundary includes just the poor inner-city, and requiring it to take care of its compounded problems by itself, the whiter and more affluent suburbs are off the hook. “Their" city isn’t in trouble. It’s that other one-- called “Detroit."

It’s roughly analogous to a Wall Street bank drawing a boundary around its bad assets, selling them off at a fire-sale price, and writing off the loss.  Only here we’re dealing with human beings rather than financial capital. And the upcoming fire sale will likely result in even worse municipal services, lousier schools, and more crime for those left behind in the city of Detroit. In an era of widening inequality, this is how America’s wealthy and middle-class are quietly writing off the poor.