Budget math and the poor arithmetic abilities of those in Washington — in the most recent Grassroots column at The Progressive Populist.
Fang Li-Zhi, a Chinese dissident, reminds us that China’s growing economy means little for its commitment — actually, lack of commitment — to democracy and human rights. Using the occasion of Liu Xiaobo’s winning of the Nobel Peace Prize, Li-Zhi commends the Nobel committee for
challeng(ing) the West to re-examine a dangerous notion that has become prevalent since the 1989 Tiananmen massacre: that economic development will inevitably lead to democracy in China.
Increasingly, throughout the late 1990s and into the new century, this argument gained sway. Some no doubt believed it; others perhaps found it convenient for their business interests. Many trusted the top Chinese policymakers who sought to persuade the outside world that if they continued pouring in their investments without an embarrassing “linkage” to human rights principles, all would get better at China’s own pace.
More than 20 years have passed since Tiananmen. China has officially become the world’s second-largest economy. Yet the hardly radical Liu Xiaobo and thousands of others rot in jail for merely demanding basic rights enshrined by the U.N. and taken for granted by all Western investors in their own countries. Apparently, human rights have not “inevitably” improved despite a soaring economy.
This seemed obvious to those of us critical of mindless globalization (a globalization that eschewed an imposition of international rules). Maybe Xiaobo’s peace prize will wake everyone else up to the idea.
Isn’t this what we’ve been saying — that slashing government payrolls at a time of high unemployment only worsens the employment picture? Today’s job numbers would have shown growth, except that local and state governments have been forced to eliminate jobs.
Companies added 64,000 jobs last month, after having added 93,000 jobs in August, the Labor Department reported Friday. But over all, the economy shed 95,000 nonfarm jobs in September, the result of a 159,000 decline in government jobs at all levels. Local governments in particular cut jobs at the fastest rate in almost 30 years.
“We need to wake up to the fact that the end of the stimulus has really hit hard on local governments,” said Andrew Stettner, deputy director of the National Employment Law Project. “There is much more of a slide in the job market than what we really need to clearly turn around.”
But the federal government, which can run a deficit, can’t pump money into local budgets to save jobs, which would stabilize other areas of the economy and so on.
Leave it to New Jersey to take a flawed project like the Trans-Hudson tunnel and turn it into the kind of fiasco that would make Sarah Palin proud.
I’ve written about the tunnel before, saying that a breather was warranted to give everyone a chance to answer some questions and figure out what the best way to move foward might be. Moving forward, in the end, made sense, though not given the current budget parameters or design.
Killing it, however, just seems too much, especially given the need to create jobs and move commuters into New York.
That’s why I like Mark Di Ionno’s column today in The Star-Ledger. It cuts through the rancor and blame to make the point that our dysfunctional political culture helped kill the tunnerl.
This saga is convoluted, to say the least, and everybody has their own version of why this won’t happen. Cost, cost overruns, empty transportation funds, politics as usual.
There is plenty of blame to go around — a series of compromises that left us with an inadequate plan, a massive recession and the state’s fiscal irresponsibility, a short-sighted and arrogant governor.
The basic problem remains in place. A better solution needs to be sought. And if it can’t be found, we may need to give in and build the tunnel as proposed. But we have to do that work.
This week’s Dispatches is on the suicide of Tyler Clementi.
