YouTube - folkstreamer's Channel

YouTube - folkstreamer's Channel

The Life of Me

DWx: Labor Poetry Reading (Oklahoma Laborfest), August 26

DWx: Labor Poetry Reading (Oklahoma Laborfest), August 26

This was the first pitch for a full weekend of music, speakers, poetry & art for Oklahoma Laborfest, a public festival to promote Oklahoma labor history and working-class culture. 3 Guys from Albany were invited to be part of the program & we read with fine bevy of Oklahoma Poets in Coffy's Cafe in the Plaza District of Oklahoma City. The host for the reading was Jeanetta Calhoun Mish, who served as our tour-guide & host throughout our visit. Jeanetta is the 2010 winner of the Oklahoma Book Award & the Western Heritage Association Award for her poetry, & who read at Caffe Lena in Saratoga Springs (NY) earlier in the year. read more

Is Neo-liberalism Dead? A Brief Neo-look at the New Economic Liberalism

 "Neoliberals wanted to limit government, but the upshot of their policies has been a huge expansion in the power of the state.": Raymond Plant. The New Statesman

Is this a Time of Morning for the Hope of a Casio Capitalism "New World Order" 


Don't start crying yet.  Why does liberalism keep coming back from extinction?  What does economic collapse mean for Liberalism?
Let's take a look at the Neo-liberal world and try to come up with at least some ideas.







First, is Neo-liberalism Dead or Dying?


One would think after 2008 that liberalism would just give up, but no-- unfortunately not. It keeps thriving for some reason. "The ideology of neoliberal globalization was not in fact a new idea in the history of the modern world-system, although it claimed to be one. It was rather the very old idea that the governments of the world should get out of the way of large, efficient enterprises in their efforts to prevail in the world market." writes Immanuel Wallerstein, YaleGlobal. 2008: The Demise of Neoliberal Globalization


With a look back to the first part of this century in the U.S, liberalism did seem to disappear with the Great Depression, however it returned from a short dormancy around the year 1980, thus giving us new or neo-liberalism that is indeed still the old liberalism only called new.









What the heck is it?





What is neo-liberalism?  More specifically, what is economic neo-liberalism?
In their article, What is "Neo-liberlism"? A Brief Definition, Elizabeth Martinez and Arnoldo Garcia give five characteristics:  1) The rule of the market 2) cutting expenditures for social services 3) deregulation 4) privatization, and 5) eliminating the concept of "the public good" or "community."
 from globalexchange.org









"Neo-liberalism is the the great economic paradigm of our lifetime--Noam Chomsky




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sJaQNnMlcI





Links for Further Reading:


Corpwatch:  "Neo-liberalism" is a set of economic policies that have become widespread during the last 25 years or so. Although the word is rarely heard in the United States, you can clearly see the effects of neo-liberalism here as the rich grow richer and the poor grow poorer."


Global Issues:  "Neoliberalism is promoted as the mechanism for global trade and investment supposedly for all nations to prosper and develop fairly and equitably. Margaret Thatcher’s TINAacronym suggested that There Is No Alternative to this. But what is neoliberalism, anyway?'


New Statesman:  "Neoliberals wanted to limit government, but the upshot of their policies has been a huge expansion in the power of the state."


Robert W. McChesney: "In sum, neoliberalism is the immediate and foremost enemy of genuine participatory democracy, not just in the United States but across the planet, and will be for the foreseeable future."


Death Throes of the Neo-liberal Delusion: "If the neo-liberal era had begun with Reagan's witticism about government being the problem rather than the solution, and if it had been entrenched when Bill Clinton observed that the era of big government was over, we might think of it as coming to an end when Barack Obama argued at his inauguration that the real issue was not whether government ought to be big or small but whether what it did actually worked."


The Failure of Neo-liberalism: "This in a nutshell is the problem: Both Left and Right seem incapable of challenging monopoly capitalism."

Friedman's Misplaced Monument :  "The Chicago School has moved beyond a movement of economic theory into an aggressive agent of intellectual imperialism - but the collapse of market fundamentalism in economies everywhere is putting its theology on trial," writes Henry C K Liu

Obama's Chicago Boys: "Barack Obama has openly declared himself as a pro-growth, pro-free trade guy who "loves" the open market. But before Obama can purge Washington of the scourge of Friedmanism, he has some ideological housecleaning of his own to do," says Naomi Klein." 

Neo-liberalism in Globalized Trouble "Wild stock market gyrations and a global financial meltdown open 2008.  Around the world, old and new critics of neo-liberalism smirk and repeat "I told you so."  Neo-liberal dogma -- that private enterprise is good and efficient whereas state economic interventions are bad and wasteful -- suffers deepening disrepute.  The private, deregulated capitalism of recent decades produced imprudent credit orgies that generated unsustainable bubbles bursting across scary headlines." 31st Jan 08 - Rick Wolff, MR Zine  

Consensus Against Neo-liberal Washington Consensus  "There is agreement among economic development experts, civil society representatives and government officials attending the Helsinki Process conference that the neoliberal Washington consensus is not a solution to the problems of developing countries, but rather one of the causes of these problems," says Julio Godoy.
  

Neo-liberalism and Economic Globalization:  "The goal of neoliberal economic globalization is the removal of all barriers to commerce, and the privatization of all available resources and services. In this scenario, public life will be at the mercy of market forces, as the extracted profits benefit the few," writes Rajesh Makwana.

Pierre Bourdieu from the Essence of Neo-liberalism: "The transition to “liberalism” takes place in an imperceptible manner, like continental drift, thus hiding its effects from view. Its most terrible consequences are those of the long term."  

Lonely Drifter Karen

Oklahoma Laborfest 2010 - www.oklahomarevelator.com/laborfest

Oklahoma Laborfest 2010 - www.oklahomarevelator.com/laborfest

Hola Auslander mi Paputchik: bon appetite

Fools and children tell the truth. Locos y ninos dicen
la verdad.  For the rest of us, it's the habanera dance.

Zum Beispiel, I know a woman with man-feet, you'll never
see those dogs in public. She's a sexy paputchik with man-feet.

This was said about thatbandito, Benjamin Franklin,
"Eripuit caelo fulmen sceptrumque tyrannis."He snatched
thunder from heaven and sceptor from tyrants.

And though chi ama assai parla poco, true love is without
words, there is many a slip between the cup and the lip.
Del plato a la boca se piede la sopa, you might say.

Aus den Augen, Aus den Sinn, out of sight out of mind,
by nightfall all the cats are gray, Bei Nacht sind alle Katzengrau. And besides,de noche todoslos gatos son pardos.

So,voyageur, repeat after me, "Chercher la la pitite bete."      Nice.
Now go now. Search for the little beast that is excessively finicky.
C'est le commencemet de la fin, this could be the beginning of the end.

And you must remember this: thoughaliguando bonus doritat Homersus,
akiss is still a kiss. And don't tell anyone I told you this,lo prometes?
but sometimes, shhhhhhh, even the great Homer sleeps.

Read more:http://www.myspace.com/tgresh/blog?page=10#ixzz0xD6fPFQW

Facebook | Ralph Nader in Oklahoma City - For Your Information Only

Facebook | Ralph Nader in Oklahoma City - For Your Information Only

YouTube - A People's History of American Empire by Howard Zinn

YouTube - A People's History of American Empire by Howard Zinn

Libertarians Say the Darnedest Things

"As we contemplate basic reform of the Social Security system, we would do well to draw a few lessons from the Leninist strategy." --  ACHIEVING A “LENINIST” STRATEGY. Stuart Butler and Peter Germanis.  The Cato Journal


As Americans look at the Libertarian movement it might be helpful to look at its past.  The Libertarian movement, its ideals, started with an attempt to overthrow the U.S. government (1934) for the purpose of bringing huge profits to big business. This lift for big business would have required a radical new form of government for the U.S.


The Birth Of American Libertarianism

BBC

The History Channel

And see Exposing the Legacy of American Corporatism 
             American Liberty League

             American Business in Support of European Fascists

             Libertarians the True Social Parasites

Back to the Drawing Board

Failure to overthrow the U.S. government around the time of the Great Depression called for another strategy. The Cato Institute, founded in 1977, has been working on just this problem:

Question: how can Cato successfully find a way to manufacture public support for the interests of corporations? In other words, how do we make despotism palatable to the American people?


What are people saying about the Cato?


The American Conservative -- "This is no surprise, as libertarianism is basically the Marxism of the Right."

Source Watch --  "Today, most of its financial support from entrepreneurs, securities and commodities traders, and corporations such as oil and gas companies, Federal Express, and Philip Morris that abhor government regulation."

Critiques of Cato -- "A "libertarian" quasi-academic think-tank which acts as a mouthpiece for the globalism, corporatism, and neoliberalism of its corporate and conservative funders. Cato is an astroturf organization: there is no significant participation by the tiny libertarian minority. They do not fund it or affect its goals. It is a creature of corporations and foundations."

Institute for Public Accuracy --  "Big donors include Bell Atlantic Network Services, BellSouth Corporation, Microsoft, NYNEX Corporation, Sun Microsystems and Viacom. News releases from the Cato Institute -- while often urging privatization of the Internet and other communications systems -- do not mention where Cato money is coming from. Unfortunately, with rare exceptions, the news media are no more informative about Cato's sources of funding."


This Modern World -- "If the founding Fathers had wanted auto emission standards --they'd have
put them  in the Constitution."


Scribemedia.com -- Freedom and liberty are cited in almost every speech President Bush gives. What does freedom mean? What is the promise of America in the coming decades?"


Show Me the Money



A People's History of Koch Industries: How Stalin Funded the Tea Party Movement --"What few realize is that the secretive oil billionaires of the Koch family, the main supporters of the right-wing groups that orchestrated the Tea Party movement, would not have the means to bankroll their favorite causes had it not been for the pile of money the family made working for the Bolsheviks in the late 1920s and early 1930s, building refineries, training Communist engineers and laying down the foundation of Soviet oil infrastructure."

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer

For a list of Corporations looking to profit from the efforts of the libertarians see Sourcewatch




And Watch out for Propaganda 









Libertarians and Fascism