I didn’t run. I just didn’t have the motivation to do it. But I did get to the gym and busted my hump during a workout that included upper-body weights, the elliptical trainer and the rowing maching. I am wiped. I guess sometimes you just need to change things up.
iPod: Arctic Monkeys, Favourite Worst Nightmare
I posted from my mobile phone yesterday as I waited with Rosie at the vet because her stitches had come apart. She had been spayed last week and developed some swelling of the abdominal area under the stitches.
We called the vet and he told us it was fairly normal in female dogs, but that we had to keep them quiet to allow the healing to complete itself. The swelling was a fluid pocket that would eventually go away as the fluid was reabsorbed.
That didn’t happen, however. Without going into the gory details, the fluid leaked from the incision, which apparently opened slightly. I called the vet and they told me to come in, which I did.
The upshot was that she’s OK — nothing to worry about — and the vet resealed the incision with some wound glue and Rosie is none the worse for wear. She’s still tumbling and wrestling with her sister, something we apparently are powerless to stop. So we have to keep an eye one her.
But all is well in the Kalet kennel.
The Republicans need to find themselves a calendar. After all, it is not the 1930s or the 1960s, Communism is dead and the deregulation mania of the last 30 years has proven not to be worth the cost of an espresso at Starbucks.
And yet, the GOP continues to run against historical boogeymen that most people have little memory of. From Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), in response to an alternative budget being crafted by the Democrats, we get this:
“With this budget, the president and the Democratic majority are attempting, very quickly and rather openly, nothing less than the third and great final wave of government expansion, building on the Great Society and the New Deal.” He referred to the programs of Democratic presidents Lyndon B. Johnson in the 1960s and Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s.
So, let me get this straight: Republicans are still runnRunning against the New Deal? I mean, FDR has been dead nearly 65 years. LBJ — the man who won a huge re-election victory on the strength of public support for the Great Society — is dead about 37 years.
The problem is not the New Deal or the Great Society. It is the legacy of the last eight years.
And yet, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindahl, touted as a future Republican presidential candidate, offers this:
“We believe that an endless series of government expansions, bailouts, stimulus packages and bloated budgets will take our country down the very path that European socialism has already stumbled. And we believe that is a dangerous path that would harm the very promise of America.”
And there are these comments, thoughtfully collected by Bill Moyers on his PBS show, Bill Moyers’ Journal on Friday. As Moyers said, “Newt Gingrich, reincarnated once again as himself, sounds as if Obama ate his Contract with America for lunch and coughed it up as ‘European Socialism.'” Gingrich, of course, is not talking about the return of “those great American radicals Eugene V. Debs or Norman Thomas.” It is “Stalin, Marx and Lenin (who) have risen from the grave, stalking our highest officials” — at least according to the GOP and conservative TV.
JIM CRAMER: We’re in real trouble. We’re in real trouble between what is happening in the world economy and our president, who seems to be taking his cues from. Guess who he is taking his cues from? No, not Mao! Not Pancho Villa, although I had lunch with him today. No he’s taking cues from Lenin! And I don’t mean the all we need is love Lenin. I talking about we will take every last dime you have Cramericans Lenin!
RUSH LIMBAUGH: Liberal democrats and the drive-by media are speeding down the highway, implementing Socialism as fast as they can.
FOX & FRIENDS: Some economists say the stimulus plan that President Obama just put into law moves us closer to Socialism.
FOX COMMENTATOR: One small step for fixing the economy or one giant leap towards Socialism in the United States?
PAT BUCHANAN: That is Socialism pure and simple.
Huh?
Moyers used these comments to lead into a segment with Mike Davis, the great socialist historian, who pretty much debunked the entire socialism meme as utter nonsense — Moyers called it “partisan poppycock,” and a word that “lost its meaning long ago.” Davis, in the interview, offers a rather compelling notion of what a vibrant socialism — or at least socialist movement — might create in the United States. He said that
the role of the Left or the Left that needs to exist in this country is not to be to come up with a utopian blueprints and how we’re going to run an entirely alternative society, much less to express nostalgia about authoritative bureaucratic societies, you know, like the Soviet Union or China. It’s really to try and articulate the common sense of the labor movement and social struggles on the ground. So, for instance, you know, where you have the complete collapse of the financial system and where the remedies proposed are above all privileged the creditors and the very people responsible for that, it’s a straightforward enough proposition to say, “Hey, you know, if we’re going to own the banking system, why not make the decisions and make them in alliance with social policy that ensures that housing’s affordable, that school loans are affordable, that small business gets credit?” You know, why not turn the banking system into a public utility? Now, that doesn’t have to be in any sense an anti-capitalist demand. But it’s a radical demand that asks fundamental question about the institution and who holds the economic power. You know, why isn’t the federal government taking a more direct role in decision making?
He cited the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s and the creation of the Resolution Trust Corporation — which was created to “buy up the abandoned apartments and homes and then (sell) them at fire sale to private interests.”
For a year or two it had the means of resolving much of the housing crisis, you know, in the United States. Why shouldn’t the federal government basically turn that housing stock, into a solution for people’s housing needs? Sell them directly to homeowners at discounts you know, rent them out? In other words, the role of the Left is to ask the deeper questions about who has power, how institutions work, and propose alternatives that seem more common sensical in terms of the direct interest of, you know, of satisfying human needs and equality in this society.
While the Obama administration is pushing what is for the most part a progressive agenda — investing in human needs, modernizing, reforming health care, dealing with climate change — he has not raised fundamental questions about power relations. In fact, on the financial crisis, his ultimate goal is to salvage the status quo, to maintain Wall Street power but to regulate it.
If he succeeds in everything he sets out to do, the lives of average Americans will be better and our politics will be more civil, but the basic power structure that has ruled America will remain unchanged.
That’s why I agree with Davis when he says that
We need more protests. We need more noise in the street. At the end of the day, political parties and political leaderships tend to legislate what social movements and social voices have already achieved in the factories or the streets or, you know, in the Civil Rights demonstration.
We need a “radical critique” and a political and economic “imagination that goes beyond selfishness and principles of competition.” And we need people who are willing to stand up and loudly offer it.
A state judge has ruled that Gov. Jon Corzine’s school funding reforms, which tie aid to students and not districts, are constitutional — a move that experts say could spell the end of special status for many of the state’s urban school districts.
The Record is reporting that Superior Court Judge Peter E. Doyne in Bergen County issued a 280-page opinion today that the state’s
new method of distributing state aid among New Jersey’s 600-plus school districts secures “the thorough and efficient education so desperately needed for the development of our youth.”
The new school funding formula “represents a thoughtful, progressive attempt to assist at-risk children throughout the State of New Jersey, and not only those who by happenstance reside in Abbott districts,” he wrote.
The decision appears sound, though I admit I have yet to read it (280 pages?!?), because it takes into account all students — giving smaller communities with large populations of poor students a leg up that they otherwise would not get.
That was what Gov. Jim Florio had attempted in 1990, when he pushed his massive income and sales tax increases. That plan included what seemed like a radical redistribution of school aid — not only into Trenton and Newark, but into Manville and other working-class districts, as well.
The decision is likely to create a showdown between advocates for urban districts and others with high concentrations of at-risk students, primarily because the state’s educational funding pie is too small, especially when you consider the non-school problems that urban educators face.
Consider: There is a higher concentration of homelessness and hunger in the state’s cities, a larger number of students who do not speak English, more pollution and crime. These may be outside the purview of the schools, but they have their impact in the classroom.
Rather than reducing aid to urban schools, a new formula should be targeted to address these issues and more general educational concerns. Plus, the pot of money available for school aid needs to grow significantly.
While the governor has increased aid to schools over the last two years, the reality is that the total amount the state spends — as opposed to what is raised locally — does not go far enough. If we are going to spread the money around to more districts, we need more money — money, of course, that does not exist at the moment.
The only way to do that is to shift the responsibility for school taxes from local property taxes to the state.
The housing crisis affects nearly all of us, driving down resale prices, drying up credit, creating employment instability and leaving everyone vulnerable to foreclosure.
Jamesburg officials, who have little authority to address the issue, are doing what they can. The borough will host a Mortgage Crisis Forum on Saturday that will bring together a panel of experts to address homeowner concerns.
Brenda Deans, borough councilwoman and chairwoman of the Homeowner Relations Committee, the chief organizer, views the forum as a chance to make sure borough residents know what kind of help is available should they run into problems.
”There are people at their end, where they don’t know what to do,” she said. “The object is to get people out there, to see what’s out there for help.”
Information, she said, is key.
”You’ve got folks that are filing for bankruptcy, and maybe they have to and maybe they don’t,” Ms. Deans said. “I just want people to be educated. At least if they know, this will get them in the right direction.”
Makes sense to me.
The forum will take place March 28, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., at Borough Hall, 131 Perrineville Road.
