Well, Here Are Some Interesting Comparisons

Thanks to Angry Black Lady at Balloon Juice. It's hard to read here, but easier over there.

Original, with more explanation, is from the Center for American Progress.

Pitomba

Photo: F. Lima, Flickr

Bliss It Was...

In England, where the Tsar was seen as the tyrant wielding the knout, most Liberals and Laborites were exuberant. In the House of Commons, Andrew Bonar Law, Leader of the House, quoted Wordsworth: "Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven." From Paris, the French Socialist Minister of Munitions, Albert Thomas, telegraphed Kerensky his "congratualations and fraternal greetings."

In the United States, the news was greeted even more extravagantly. On March 22, only one week after the abdication, the United States became the first foreign government to recognize the Provisional Government. For America, on the verge of entering the war because of the German policy of unrestricted U-boat sinkings, the fall of tsarism removed the taint of fighting beside an autocratic Russia. On April 2, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson asked Congress to declare war and make the world "safe for democracy." In the same speech, he spoke glowingly of "the wonderful and heartening things that have been happening within the last few weeks in Russia...The autocracy...has been shaken off and the great, generous Russian people have been added in all their naive majesty and might to the forces that are fighting for freedom in the world, for justice and for peace. Here is a fit partner for a League of Honor."

The reaction to the Tsar's abdication, March, 1917.

Robert J. Massie, Nicholas and Alexandra, chapter 21

Yes, I'm working on another post on parallels to the Arab uprisings.

Bits and Pieces - March 6, 2011

Nice explanation from Mark Hibbs of why the IAEA won't be inspecting Syria's Dair Azour site, which the Israelis claimed held a reactor and bombed, any time soon.

Golly, I sure am glad that the gummint isn't restricting our access to medical help. I'm sure the insurance companies are doing this for our benefit.

Peter Gomes, who died this week, on the non-support of the Bible for homophobia.

The banksters have enough arrogance to use their usual tricks on Dana Milbank.

What your memory can do. There are a lot of screeds around about how the internet is ruining our minds. Nice to be reminded of the positive side of things. I'm inclined to believe we can have it both ways.

Michael Scheuer differs with the conventional wisdom about al Qaeda and the Arab uprisings. My own feeling is it's too early to tell; more about this in a later post.

The centennial of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire.

Fox!

In my yard, just now.

Bits and Pieces - March 4, 2011

More on women's issues:
Summary of South Dakota's attempts at socialization of wombs.

An Orgasmatron won't help female desire. Honesty will.

The Disposable Woman

More on no-fly zones:
President Obama's statement

The Russians don't like the idea.

Checklist for military intervention.

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Looks like the Russians are wary of Iran's ability to operate the Bushehr nuclear power plant. But, let me repeat once again, there will be no "Iranian Chornobyl."

The New York Times has been running a series on the lead-up to the Civil War, with accounts approximately corresponding to the date 150 years ago. Today's is a group of four essays on Lincoln's first Inaugural Address. One of the things that I find most mind-bending on reading the series is the contrast in what "Republican" meant then, and what it means now. The descriptions of the secessionists sound more like today's Republicans than their first president does. Lots of other good stuff too.

Added later: Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev is honored with Russia's highest medal. Gorbachev is criticized in Russia for having dissolved the Soviet Union. This might be seen as one more action by current president Dmitry Medvedev to distance himself from the old-line thinking of Vladimir Putin.

Bits and Pieces - March 3, 2011

Another parallel with Russia, this time between the United States and Russia in the nineteenth century: the freeing of the serfs/slaves.

Not much new here on Stuxnet, but a nice compilation of what is known.

The Air Force no longer is advocating making conventional missiles that look like nukes. Or maybe not. Good news, I guess, that they may be moving away from it; better news when they unambiguously do. Hard to see why anyone ever thought this was a good idea in the first place.

Journalism for dummies: just print press releases.

Speaking of bad ideas, it's been easy for talking heads and keyboard jockeys to toss out the words "no-fly zone." It sounds benign, a way to keep Muhammar Qadaffi from killing Libyan citizens, certainly a worthy goal. But it is an act of war. Do we need another war in the Middle East? Do the Libyan dissidents want to look like puppets of Uncle Sam? What is the plan? Are there other ways to help? Just a few things to think about.

Bits and Pieces - Happy Eightieth Birthday, Mikhail Gorbachev!

Two pieces honoring him, by Katrina van den Heuvel and Archie Brown. I have some disagreements with both, but the bottom line is that this man really made the world a better place and avoided some massive black holes.

What's wrong with performance reviews. This kind of thing has been said like forever. Could be that too many bosses like the kind of feedback that keeps the employees under their thumbs.

Teaching creative writing the methodical way.

Evaluating claims for energy innovations.

More David-Brooks bashing.

The Republican House pulls the nuclear-funding rug out from under Republican Senator Jon Kyl.

Dying in the Streets

I've added the link to the comment stream at "Killing Peter's Pig," but it's good enough for a post of its own.

Tom Scocca has a great post explicating in more depth the kind of frame change I'm looking for. He puts less emphasis on the destructive rivalries among the have-nots than I did with that story.

A sample from Scocca:

The debt—the runaway debt—has nothing to do with morality. Casting the debt as an object of moral concern is the work of minds that have come detached from human experience. The debt is an epiphenomenon. It is the side effect created by the specific moral decisions about what the country wishes to see funded, and how it is willing to fund those things.

Talking about the deficit is a way of cutting morality out of the discussion. Waste! Mismanagement! Incompetence! Unaccountable earmarks! These things are noise. The actual questions are: is money to be spent on people who do not have money? And where is that money going to come from?

There are people who do not have money. Some of them do not have money because they are children. Some of them do not have money because they are old or sick or otherwise unsuited for the labor market. Some of them do not have money because the labor market has stopped paying for the work that they know how to do in the places where they live. Robots and other machines can approximate the things these people used to do.

There are other reasons, too, which can seem less sympathetic. Some people prefer to spend their time obtaining and using mind-altering substances. (Other people may or may not classify that as being "sick.") Some people—some people—lack the personal initiative to get work. And so on. These people, nevertheless, also do not have money.

Read the whole thing.

Revolutions

I’ve been reading Alexander Kerensky’s memoirs most recently, and two Bruce Lincoln books before that. I’m impressed with some parallels between Russia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the Arab unrest today. I say “unrest” because, as is clear in that Russian history, revolutions take some time to make.

Kerensky was a member of the Russian Provisional Government between the Tsar’s abdication and the Bolshevik takeover. He was a member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, less radical than the Bolsheviks of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party. Obviously tries to make himself look as good as possible and others (like the Bolsheviks) look bad. The book was published in 1965 in the United States. As correctives, I’m also reading the first few chapters of How the Soviet Union is Governed, by Jerry F. Hough and Merle Fainsod, and parts of Nicholas and Alexandra, by Robert K. Massie.

I’ll probably do this in more than one post.

I’ll start with the obliviousness of autocrats and the mobilization of the people.

An autocrat rules by himself (and it’s usually himself) and possesses unlimited power. He may take on advisors, but he is the one and only ruler. The analogy to God is always tempting, and many autocrats are referred to parentally. The tsar was the “little father,” whose power was believed to come from God. That kind of power makes it likely that the people surrounding the autocrat, and nominally advising him, will bring only good news. The autocrat may reinforce this tendency by eliminating those who do otherwise. There is no constitution to serve as a contract between the autocrat and the people; laws may exist, but the autocrat’s power supersedes them.

The autocrat lives very comfortably and has no contact with the people. The Tsar had a number of palaces, including a very nice estate, Tsarskoye Selo, and palaces in St. Petersburg, then the capital of Russia.

Absolute rule by a single leader results in poor economic development. This, in turn, results in desperate living conditions for most people. At the end of the nineteenth century, Russia lagged behind Europe in development, as the Arab world lags much of the rest of the world today. Corruption is likely. The controls deemed necessary by the autocrat to maintaining his power, include limitations on free speech and assembly, harsh policing, and highly controlled or nonexistent elections, making life difficult and unpleasant. When and how the privations and indignities add up to movement by the people seems inherently unpredictable. The balance is different in every situation.

In Russia, discontent with the autocracy surfaced throughout the nineteenth century, from the Decembrists’ uprising in 1825 through the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881 to the continuing activities of the anarchists and others. In 1905, after the loss in the war with Japan, a group of about 120,000 people peacefully marched toward the Tsar’s palace (photo at the top; link has many more photos and a short history), intending to demand better working conditions, “a constituent assembly, universal suffrage, universal education, separation of church and state, amnesty for all political prisoners, an income tax, a minimum wage, and an eight-hour day.” [Nicholas and Alexandra] Troops were deployed, and they fired on the people, killing ninety-two and injuring several hundred.

The autocrat may respond by conceding to some of the demonstrators’ demands or with violence intended to end the demonstrations and restore his repressive order. The Tsar responded to the tragedy by making concessions: forming the Duma, an assembly with severely limited powers, and promising “freedom of conscience, speech, assembly, and association.” The Tsar dissolved Dumas and reformed them over the next several years. Limited reforms in 1906 gave peasants the opportunity to buy land. The promise of various freedoms was not completely fulfilled, leading to discontent, the Tsar’s forced abdication in 1917, and another revolution, about which more in later posts.

In Russia, there were eighty years of unhappiness with the autocracy between the Decembrists’ uprising and the 1905 march. Someone has recently pointed out (I think it may be Timur Kuran, but I can’t find the link) that the immediate process of mobilization of the people depends on multiple individual decisions, as people see others willing to risk themselves and decide that their balance favors action.

The grievances have piled up in the Arab world, over centuries. We can consider the slowly decaying Ottoman Empire or the military takeovers of the twentieth century. Turkey managed to mount a successful revolution in the 1920s and a transition to democracy, but it is an exception. Colonialism complicated matters in many Arab countries, as did the formation of Israel in 1948 and the Cold War rivalry for influence in the area between the United States and Russia. There have been abortive uprisings, but this year is the first time that uprisings have become so general.

In Tunisia and Egypt, the autocrats have been removed, but the revolutions are far from over. More about that in later posts. Both autocrats attempted to placate the people and failed. Hosni Mubarak’s three speeches, told the people how much they needed him and that chaos would follow. He made Omar Suleiman his vice-president and presumed successor, the first such. Mubarak’s short-lived use of thugs against the demonstrators and property was similar to the Tsar’s use of troops in 1905, as were the results: the people see their good-faith requests for change met with violence. This causes a reconsideration of their relationship with the autocrat; enough such encounters eventually convince the people that the autocrat must go.

In Libya, Muhammar Gadhafi refers to himself as the father of his people. Gadhafi feels that he is indispensable to maintaining peace among the tribes, and that the people love him.

Gadhafi has chosen to use violence to maintain his power. This can quash the current uprising, although an opposition will remain whose objective is to remove him from power, and they will use any means available.

Other Arab countries are responding to demonstrations with various concessions. King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia is offering his subjects money to pacify them, as the Tsar offered the Duma and reforms. This opinion piece lists what the monarch is missing in the people’s demands, the same denial the other autocrats have been guilty of. Algeria has lifted its 19-year state of emergency. President Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen has offered to form a national unity government with the demonstrators, but they have rejected his offer.

It appears that social media have done three things to give the people more power: 1) provide a way for people to organize with less scrutiny from those in power, encouragement that there are others who share goals, and 3) improve communications while the campaign to remove the autocrat is in progress, thereby speeding up the process. It was twelve years from the revolution of 1905 to the Tsar’s abdication in 1917, and only a few days from Mubarak’s appointment of Suleiman as vice-president to his departure for Sharm al-Shaikh.

Autocrats isolate themselves, which makes them unresponsive and oppresses the people, who then protest. The protest may be met with concessions or violence; the latter quickly leads to either repression of the protest or determination on the part of the people to remove the autocrat. More about concessions, the removal of the autocrat, and the transition later.

Filling an Ethical Gap in Computer Science

Computer scientists, A.I. people and technologists like to wax moralistic about the "Turing Test," according to which a machine deserves consideration as a person, if a regular person can't tell it isn't one.

As if it were only persons we have duties toward and relationships with!

As if the day won't come first when we can still tell full well that's no person, but we're stumped to tell whether or not we're exchanging messages with a chimpanzee. Is it the view of people in the field of artificial intelligence that chimpanzees have no rights?! Maybe I ought to be teaching that machine in the other room sign language.

If ordinary people can't distinguish a fuzzy-logical machine from a baby penguin, furthermore, how are we to stand by obliviously as programmers zap its PRAM or reboot it?

We need a new movement: "People for the Engineering of Turing Tests for Animals" or PETTA, let's say.

If it walks and talks like a duck, after all, who's to say I can't order it to go with extra plum sauce? Let their robot pry the chopsticks from my cold dead fingers.

Killing Peter's Pig

The question of public employees' pensions in Wisconsin, secondary to the goal of union-busting, keeps being framed as whether those pensions should be taken away so that public employees may share the insecurity inflicted on workers in the private sector. Here's one example, but there are plenty more.

There was a time, when our government was more humane and unions were stronger, that the question would have been why private workers should be exposed to such uncertainty and how that security might be extended to them. It was, in fact, in the days of defined-benefit pensions. But that was not capitalistically competitive enough, and the poor workers were not free to invest in the stock market and make billions with their money. Many of those workers bought this fantasy and encouraged their elected representatives to make it easier for companies to slip out from under their obligations to the workers. This was in the spirit of rich and poor alike being free to sleep under bridges, but the workers didn't seem to notice.

Back in the last days of the Soviet Union, when something like free elections was taking place there, a story circulated in the United States to show that the Russians weren't quite "getting it," and bolstering our national self-esteem. I suspect, however, that the story predates the Soviet Union.

One of the candidates is campaigning in a village. "If you elect me, I will help to improve your situation. We will build roads so that you can more easily take your produce to market." And all the other good things that politicians promise.

A villager comes up after the speech and takes the politician aside. "You know Peter, down the street? He has a pig."

"Oh yes. I will work to see that everyone has a pig."

"No, no, you don't understand." The villager is now whispering urgently. "I will vote for you if you promise to kill Peter's pig."

That seems to be where our national politics have taken us here in America.

Mill on Intervention

I certainly may have simply missed it, but I'm a little surprised I haven't seen John Stuart Mill quoted in discussions, statements, claims for one policy or another concerning the events in Egypt and particularly in Libya. Mill's brief essay, "A Few Words on Non-Intervention" of 1859 is one of the classics on the subject, however much it has required revision over a century and a half. It's not simply about quoting your Mill, however, but of understanding better the careful approach the Obama administration is taking towards Libya and Egypt thus far and of drawing on a deeper hope for the future of these countries. An important excerpt:

With respect to the question, whether one country is justified in helping the people of another in a struggle against their government for free institutions, the answer will be different, according as the yoke which the people are attempting to throw off is that of a purely native government, or of foreigners; considering as one of foreigners, every government which maintains itself by foreign support. When the contest is only with native rulers, and with such native strength as those rulers can enlist in their defence, the answer I should give to the question of the legitimacy of intervention is, as a general rule, No. The reason is, that there can seldom be anything approaching to assurance that intervention, even if successful, would be for the good of the people themselves. The only test possessing any real value, of a people’s having become fit for popular institutions, is that they, or a sufficient portion of them to prevail in the contest, are willing to brave labour and danger for their liberation. I know all that may be said, I know it may be urged that the virtues of freemen cannot be learnt in the school of slavery, and that if a people are not fit for freedom, to have any chance of becoming so they must first be free. And this would be conclusive, if the intervention recommended would really give them freedom. But the evil is, that if they have not sufficient love of liberty to be able to wrest it from merely domestic oppressors, the liberty which is bestowed on them by other hands than their own, will have nothing real, nothing permanent. No people ever was and remained free, but because it was determined to be so; because neither its rulers nor any other party in the nation could compel it to be otherwise. If a people—especially one whose freedom has not yet become prescriptive—does not value it sufficiently to fight for it, and maintain it against any force which can be mustered within the country, even by those who have the command of the public revenue, it is only a question in how few years or months that people will be enslaved. Either the government which it has given to itself, or some military leader or knot of conspirators who contrive to subvert the government, will speedily put an end to all popular institutions: unless indeed it suits their convenience better to leave them standing, and be content with reducing them to mere forms; for, unless the spirit of liberty is strong in a people, those who have the executive in their hands easily work any institutions to the purposes of despotism. There is no sure guarantee against this deplorable issue, even in a country which has achieved its own freedom; as may be seen in the present day by striking examples both in the Old and New Worlds: but when freedom has been achieved for them, they have little prospect indeed of escaping this fate. When a people has had the misfortune to be ruled by a government under which the feelings and the virtues needful for maintaining freedom could not develope themselves, it is during an arduous struggle to become free by their own efforts that these feelings and virtues have the best chance of springing up. Men become attached to that which they have long fought for and made sacrifices for, they learn to appreciate that on which their thoughts have been much engaged; and a contest in which many have been called on to devote themselves for their country, is a school in which they learn to value their country’s interest above their own.

Bits and Pieces - February 27, 2011

The Guardian continues the theme of the war against women:

A discussion of some of the issues I raised. Not as much depth as I'd like, but not bad.

Women on corporate boards. Not enough; we need more.

What men can do. I've been thinking about writing about this, but just haven't had time.

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Fallout from the war on vaccines.

Added later: The state pension shortfall happened after 2007. It was the banksters done it, not the unions.

Whaddya know, we’re being sold a bill of goods.

Who'da thunk it?

The War on Science

Or perhaps any sort of organized thought. And the attacker is, of course, the Republican Party.

I'm not going to go through the arguments about climate change. The overwhelming evidence is that it's human-caused, and it's starting to look like our recent extreme weather is part of it.

What I'd like to focus on is why a political party, whose objective is governing a democratic republic, wants its supporters to be dumb. Or ignorant, perhaps, is a better word, although the support for Glenn Beck's antics leans toward dumb. Ignorant people lack facts. Dumb people have problems with reasoning.

It seems to be very simple: dumb or ignorant people are much more easily led. And, as I write this, it becomes obvious that "dumb" is the operative word, because the Republican followers are unwilling to question their leaders or find sources of information outside the very narrow "acceptable" range.

The media bear some responsibility. In a forum at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the following exchange took place.

Near the forum’s conclusion, Massachusetts Institute of Technology climate scientist Kerry Emanuel asked a panel of journalists why the media continues to cover anthropogenic climate change as a controversy or debate, when in fact it is a consensus among such organizations as the American Geophysical Union, American Institute of Physics, American Chemical Society, American Meteorological Association and the National Research Council, along with the national academies of more than two dozen countries.

"You haven't persuaded the public," replied Elizabeth Shogren of National Public Radio. Emanuel immediately countered, smiling and pointing at Shogren, "No, you haven't." Scattered applause followed in the audience of mostly scientists, with one heckler saying, "That's right. Kerry said it."

It can be argued that it's not the place of journalists to persuade. And scientists can be clunky or counterproductive in their communications with the public. But when journalists shuck off responsibility for their "on the one hand, on the other" presentations, even when one hand is inaccurate, wrong, or dishonest, they are persuading the public that all views are equally acceptable.

Judith Warner points out that if America is going to win the future with technology, our citizens need to have an accurate picture of what science and technology are. So we're back to my question of the responsibility of a political party that chooses to fog up that picture. Her reference to postmodern fact-denial having spread from the left to the Republican Party is something I've said and chuckled over more than once. The dreaded relativism that is to be condemned in college professors is just fine in climate denial. And it's what those even-handed journalists are indulging in, too.

And one more manifestation: the attack on Michele Obama for her campaign against obesity and for healthier foods. If your base doesn't know how to do calorie counts or much about vitamins and minerals, it makes this sort of thing easier.

The African Revolutions Will Not Be Televised

The Arab and North African revolutions are having serious effect partly because they are televised. In Sub-Saharan Africa, they are ignored.

...particularly troubled by the failure of the international media to pay due attention to events in Ivory Coast, where the UN estimates that at least 300 people have died and the opposition puts the figure at 500.

"With due deference to the bravery of the Egyptian demonstrators, protesters who gathered this weekend in Abidjan [in Ivory Coast] aren't up against a military that safeguards them - it shoots at them.

"The country's economy has been coughing up blood since November, with banks shutting by the day, businesses closing by the hour and thousands of families fleeing their homes," he continues. "And in all of this where is Anderson Cooper? Where is Nicolas Kristof? Why is Bahrain a front page news story while Ivory Coast is something buried at the bottom of the news stack?"

The journalist is equally as disappointed in world leaders. "This Friday, Barack Obama publicly condemned the use of violence in Bahrain, Yemen and Libya. When was the last time you saw Obama come out and make a statement on Ivory Coast? Or Eastern Congo? Or Djibouti, where 20,000 people protested this weekend according to the opposition?

"The problem is that most American media compulsively ignore everything south of the Sahara and north of Johannesburg. A demonstration has to be filmed, photographed, streamed live into the offices of foreign leaders to achieve everything Egypt's achieved."

Nanjala, a political analyst at the University of Oxford, suggests this journalistic shortcoming stems from journalists' tendency "to favour explanations that fit the whole 'failing Africa' narrative".

And note this, which suggests a stronger and richer conception of democratic life than I think exists at all any more in the US, despite the heritage of Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and John Dewey.

"What people want is the democratisation of society, of production, of the economy, and indeed all aspects of life," says Manji. "What they are being offered instead is the ballot box."

Happy Independence Day, Estonia!

The first Estonian Independence Day, Tallinn, 24 Veebruar 1919.

Head Iseseisvuspäev!

[Tänan väga photost! Also from Wikipedia.]

Wampee

Photo: Mgtelu

Bits and Pieces - Everything Else Edition

There's been a discussion going 'round about the lack of women writers in the big magazines. I've been following it off and on. Here's the latest (h/t Nadezhda). What's disturbing about the responses from the editors is how 1960s they are. Even more disturbing is that the female commenters seem to think that Jon Chait's invocation of the "pipeline" and "socialization issues" is somehow positive. Girls, they were talking about improving the "pipeline" and socialization issues back in the 1960s. We see how that worked out.

It's good news that the administration is going to stop supporting the Defense of Marriage Act. More from bmaz. Another judge rules that the individual health insurance mandate is constitutional. I'm wondering how the Tea Party is going to handle all the issues out there.

Reagan raised taxes in California more than any other governor.

Two big articles having to do with Arab unrest:
Congressional Research Service: Egypt: The January 25 Revolution and Implications for U.S. Foreign Policy
The Oil Drum: North African gas supplies to the European gas market

Sig Hecker interviewed by Paul Guinnessy on his latest trip to North Korea.

Kicking ass in the dinosaur world.

I've been making stuff with oatmeal lately. So has McDonald's, but I think I'm probably using more oatmeal.

Interactive maps from the Centers for Disease Control on diabetes and related factors. I'm wondering why there seems to be a correlation with right-wing politics.

Bits and Pieces - Labor Rights Edition

The Wisconsin governor takes a friendly phone call from a person he thought was David Koch. Pretty clear who the puppetmaster is. If you can't reach that link (last I heard, it was down, probably from too much popularity), try this one, which says, yeah, it really was Governor Walker telling the big guy his strategy. Ezra Klein spells out the significance of the phone call.

And a deputy attorney general in Indiana wants to take Muhamar Ghaddafi's approach to the protestors. Update: Weinstein is now reporting via Twitter that the guy has been fired. The Indiana guy, not Ghaddafi. The link is being updated.

Well. After that, anything else is going to be an anticlimax. But let's forge ahead. There are a number of pieces out there today that can almost be woven into a theory on how parts of America got as greedy and mean as we're seeing. The left got pretty weird back in the seventies, but I'm not recalling this level of trying to restructure our country. And I was more conservative back then.

Adrienne Redd has unearthed a couple of historical facts: back in colonial America and perhaps again in Andrew Jackson's 1828 campaign, the wealthy campaigned persuasively for racial identity over class identity. Governor Scott Walker's participation in the "Koch" phone call is consistent with this. It's also consistent that the middle class, to which the state workers belong, is being made a scapegoat for today's economic problems. Um, it was Wall Street, home of the wealthy, remember?

It's quite clear by this time that union-busting is the purpose of the bill that is being protested in Wisconsin and similar bills in other states, but the Wisconsin bill (and the others?) go much further, allowing many state functions to be contracted out to the Kochs and their friends, presumably so they can suck their profit out of them while campaigning to damage those who are supposed to benefit from those programs.

It's important, in the gutting of middle-class America, for the uber-wealthy to destroy unions, because the collective power of unions is a counterbalance to the money, money, money that the Kochs and friends can shower on politicians.

Another action that will damage the entire economy is the pending government shutdown over Republican budget cuts that will also damage the economy, the middle class anyway. Frank Munger interviews the director of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory on how a shutdown would affect operations there. What he says applies pretty closely to any government-funded operation.

Kevin Drum on the more recent history of unions.

American-style capitalism has never been the free market of the Tea Partiers and their plutocrat overlords.

The plutocrats' department of dirty tricks.

Added later: Maybe the message is starting to get through. CBS Headline: Koch-backed group, Tea Party mobilize in Wisconsin. Maybe they'll eventually figure out that it should have been "Koch-backed groups mobilize in Wisconsin."

It appears that housing problems incurred by the financial industry have more to do with state deficits than does unionization. More support for the scapegoat theory.