maya's (l)inklings

“I can’t tell you how people dressed for this year’s party, but I can tell you about last year’s. That’s because a former employee of Steven J. Baum recently sent me snapshots of last year’s party. In an e-mail, she said that she wanted me to see them because they showed an appalling lack of compassion toward the homeowners — invariably poor and down on their luck — that the Baum firm had brought foreclosure proceedings against.”

—On the Halloween bash at the “foreclosure mill” law firm of Steven J. Baum

“

Five hundred strangers in a park will never themselves be the engines of any profound societal transformation. But if what I saw last night is real, if OWS is offering a critique that resonates in content — if not necessarily in form — with a broader and more eclectic swath of the country, then maybe those five hundred strangers are pounding on a door that’s a bit less well-armored than it looks.

Maybe what they have to offer isn’t a plan so much as an opportunity to have a bigger conversation, or even just an invitation to continue and expand a conversation that’s been going on in small ways in small places for a long tim

— Angus Johnston on the Occupy Wall Street protests.

Labor Day Links

E.J. Dionne Jr.:

Let’s get it over with and rename the holiday “Capital Day.” We may still celebrate Labor Day, but our culture has given up on honoring workers as the real creators of wealth and their honest toil — the phrase itself seems antique — as worthy of genuine respect.

Mother Jones shows how labor is getting screwed by corporate America:

GOOD compiles a list of 10 great things we can thank unions for.

Sarah Jaffe says it’s time to choose a side:

It’s time for America to remember what the labor movement gave it; time, while we’re barbecuing and kissing summer goodbye, to gear up for the fight of our lives. A fight for all of our lives—for decent jobs and living wages, for time to spend with our families that isn’t spent worrying about how we’re going to pay the bills. It’s a fight that started a long time ago, and we’ve grown so accustomed to what it won for us that we only realize those winnings when they’re being taken away from us.

“ The word “shameful” doesn’t even begin to describe it. Still, we steadfastly refuse to invest in anything that might help to keep this country’s workforce viable in a world economy, because it might also help the poor. Anything that helps give the working or middle class a fair chance at helping America succeed is branded the socialist machinations of a doomed welfare state. It is as if we would rather see our nation fail than risk letting our neighbor’s kid have it any easier than we did.

— Larry Womack on the “penny wise, dollar foolish, unconscionably cruel and supremely misguided age of austerity we’re living in.”

Plus some other powerful perspectives on the riots in the UK…

“Riots polarise opinion and instant analysis is a dangerous game.” - Matt Prodger

“Images of burning buildings, cars aflame and stripped-out shops may provide spectacular fodder for a restless media, ever hungry for new stories and fresh groups to demonise, but we will understand nothing of these events if we ignore the history and the context in which they occur.” - Nina Power

“Riots are about power, and they are about catharsis.” - Laurie Penny

“Savagery is a possibility within us all. Some of us have been lucky enough not to have to call upon it for survival; others, exhausted from failure, can justify resorting to it.” - Camila Batmanghelidjh

“ That isn’t “shared sacrifice,” it’s asking the poorest, oldest and sickest among us to give up a piece of their meager security in exchange for the wealthy giving up some tip money and the defense industry giving up a couple of points of profit. It’s stripping the nation of necessary educational, safety and environmental protections while the wealthy greedily absorb more and more of the nation’s wealth and the corporations and financial industry gamble with the rest.

— Digby on the last-minute debt ceiling “compromise” that’s coming together.

“ The plan is, thus, tantamount to a form of “class warfare.” If enacted, it could well produce the greatest increase in poverty and hardship produced by any law in modern U.S. history.

—

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities analyzes John Boehner’s debt ceiling plan.

Is this real life?

Fucking surreal.

[Via]

“

This is not a new idea by any stretch. But what is perhaps new, speaking in strictly modern terms, is the extent to which the elites of the nation have gone to convince themselves that such a thing is a damn fine and American idea, and that how could we possibly afford to give schoolchildren a few more apples when our top American corporations are suffering under an effective tax burden of zero percent, and when this terrible recession has rocked Wall Street, momentarily rendering their bonuses unclear before returning the besuited classes to businesses as usual, albeit with a few more homeless people on their sidewalks than usual.

I am not saying that the Republican position of lower taxes for the wealthy is inherently a bad or loathsome one. I am not saying that one political party is immoral, and the other party better.

But what I am saying is that if, in the end, your grandiosely presented and handsomely argued economic philosophy results in you constantly taking positions that, to repeat myself, make you look like a heartless son of a bitch, and which constantly come down in favor of the wealthy over the poor, or constantly choosing the connected over the unconnected, or the powerful over the powerless, or require you to demand we treat our children worse, or provide for our elders less, then you may, by process of deduction, simply be a heartless son of a bitch, and no amount of powerpoint slides, think-tank studies or prominent churchgoin’ will render it otherwise.

— According to the GOP’s Philosophy of Mean, we can’t afford $7 billion over 5 years to provide schoolchildren with fruits and vegetables.

The Cost of Being Poor