Greece's financial woes and the future of the euro

Economists Paul Krugman (A Money Too Far New York Times 05/06/10) and Barry Eichengreen (The Greek crisis: It is not too late for Europe Berkeley Blog 05/07/10) discuss the latest on the Greek crisis.

Krugman thinks the euro could take a big hit as a currency over the Greek crisis:

So how does this end? Logically, I see three ways Greece could stay on the euro.

First, Greek workers could redeem themselves through suffering, accepting large wage cuts that make Greece competitive enough to add jobs again. Second, the European Central Bank could engage in much more expansionary policy, among other things buying lots of government debt, and accepting — indeed welcoming — the resulting inflation; this would make adjustment in Greece and other troubled euro-zone nations much easier. Or third, Berlin could become to Athens what Washington is to Sacramento — that is, fiscally stronger European governments could offer their weaker neighbors enough aid to make the crisis bearable.

The trouble, of course, is that none of these alternatives seem politically plausible.

What remains seems unthinkable: Greece leaving the euro. But when you’ve ruled out everything else, that’s what’s left.

This result wouldn't put an end to the euro or the European Union. But it would be a body blow to both.


The euro is currently structured to lock in neoliberal policy directions. Without the ability to devalue its currency, Greece is forced into severe austerity measures which will hurt the general population there in a serious way. That also means they are locked into the Herbert Hoover economics of slashing public spending severely in the middle of a recession, when a sensible anti-recession policy would be doing just the opposite.

While I'm not as much of an EU-skeptic as Krugman seems to be, he does have a good basic point. If Europe wants to avoid this kind of neoliberal death-trap for national economies like Greece right now, it will have to have much more of a common tax and economic policy and the political authority to enforce it.

Under both the Clinton and Cheney-Bush administrations, the United States encouraged expansion of the EU, with the Clinton administration seeing it as kind of a development program for eastern Europe after the collapse of the Eastern Communist governments and economies, and the Bush administration seeing it as a way to weaken Europe as a world political force. Neither policy was necessarily in the long-term best interests of the United States.

At the moment, the EU looks more in the latter situation. Their expansion before establishing more effective central governing structures sure looks like a mistake right now.

But neither Europeans nor Americans have reason to be indifferent to the weakening of Europe and the EU. The "European project" has been one of the most important advances for democracy and world peace that we've ever seen. Having it dissolve into national rivalries would be a tragedy not only for them but for the world.

Tags: european union, greece

Two weeks of the Howler and Arizona's SB1070

Arizona's Republican Gov. Jan Brewer signed the anti-immigrant SB1070 on April 23, and HB2062 that provided minor amendments to it, on April 30, both to take effect July 29. Latinos, civil rights groups and the public generally recognized that this law would produce increased racial profiling, despite Brewer's assurances to the contrary. This is a law in the Jim Crow mode like those of the segregated South that gave police various pretexts to hassle African-Americans citizens at a whim, or for more directed reasons to intimidate real or potential dissidents and activists.

I thought I would take a look at the daily posts by Bob "the Daily Howler" Somerby, who for a long time now has been scolding those bad, bad liberals for even suggesting that white racism might play a part in the Tea Party movement. Here's how he dealt with the issues of white racism and Arizona's Juan Crow law in the two weeks after Gov. Brewer signed SB1070.

April 26, IT’S THE STUPIDITY, STUPID! A lengthy profile of Mike Allen reveals the world’s greatest problem: criticizes Keith Olbermann for eulogizing coal miners killed in West Virginia as "band of 29 roughneck angels." Claims Olbermann had previously somehow derided those same people as "teabaggers. Attacks naughty liberals for being partisan on their own behalf: "We tend to enjoy The Dumb when it’s aimed at Them, abhor it when it’s aimed at Us. Beyond that, we liberals like to pretend that The Dumb is a mark of The Other Tribe." Whether "we liberals" is an appropriate phrase for Somerby to be using these days is not clear.


April 27, BROOKS & DUMB! In a clueless column, David Brooks rolls over and dies for The Dumb: It takes work to make a garbled criticism of one of Bobo's columns; that should be an easy target. But Somerby accomplishes it here. And managed to bring his point around to scolding liberals for talking about white racism: "Whether we’re talking about the Internet or cable “news” channels, when we scan the work of The Other Tribe, we often do so because it hurts so good—because we love to hate their (racist/elitist) work." Liberals "love to hate", he tells his readers over and over, including in this column.

April 28, THE USES OF PAPA CASS! On Glenn Beck’s show, Cass Sunstein loves Mao. Why won’t David Brooks say so?: Avoids race, but trashes Maureen Dowd for criticizing a cynical Goldman Sachs executive. Dowd does write some real howlers and sometimes seems downright disturbed, but Somerby's particular criticism of her on this point fall flat.

April 29, IT’S THE STUPIDIFICATION, STUPID! When S. E. Cupp sat down with the Lamb, The Dumb was all around: Bashes Paul Krugman for criticizing those nice white folks who support the Jim Crow-style SB1070 law. "Only a virally tribal person could compose such a ludicrous post," he says of Krugman. Bad, bigoted, libruls, bad libruls. Here he employs the standard Republican pitch that one should never make generalization about people on the basis of political party. The problem with that silly argument, of course, is that we have political parties because people do make distinctions between themselves and others on the basis of politics and policy.

April 30, THE REFUSAL TO SPEAK! David Brooks refuses to speak. E. J. Dionne gives him cover: complains that "the loonies and fools are on TV" and that liberal and conservative pundits aren't explaining it enough. Observes at the end that while we search in vain for examples of David Brooks or E.J. Dionne writing about that adequately, "Glenn Beck will tell his viewers ten times about [Cass] Sunstein’s vast love for Mao." But then in earlier columns, Somerby scolded Digby for complaining about his Tea Party crush Pam Stout, who declared that Beck provokes her to think. Somerby himself says that Beck, who raves John Birch Society conspiracy theories, is often "erudite." If it's wicked for us libruls to ever criticize Beck or the people who he suckers, does Somerby actually think it's a bad thing that Beck tells his audience "about Sunstein’s vast love for Mao"?

May 3, THE CULTURE OF FURY AND INSULT! When Tapper’s panel discussed that new law, an unhelpful pattern emerged: Somerby agrees with conservative New York Times' columnist Ross Douthat that liberals were mean in assuming that the motives of supporters of Arizona's Juan Crow law weren't pure as the driven snow. Bad liberal, bad, bad liberals! He also bitches about the This Week panel talking about an amendment to Arizona's SB1070 without describing what the amendment did; but the Howler doesn't both to explain it either. (See my post of 05/05/10 on that topic.)

May 4, RICH, LAZY AND DISHONEST! Does Rich ever know what he’s talking about? Liberals should be concerned: scolds naughty liberals for talking about racial considerations in the Arizona SB1070 controversy; says "white liberals love to accuse other people - specifically, white conservatives and centrists - of bigotry and racism", says this is an "especially noxious" trait of those bad white liberals. Suggests that liberals are "condescending dandies who can’t be trusted, elitists who sneer at valid concerns".

May 5, JUST ASK ROBERT BENNETT! The Tea Party movement hates white people too! Just ask Robert Bennett: how can we say Tea Partiers are racist when they hate some white people too? Plus, hey, look at all the black Republicans running for office! All that anti-immigrant and anti-Latino bile, the Tea Partiers in Washington chanting "nigger, nigger, nigger" at two African-American Congressman (an event on Somerby shares FOX News' skepticism that it even happened), why that's no sign that white racism is involved. It could just be the way these nice white folks are saying they don't like Big Business. Oh, and liberal leaders "simply aren’t very smart" and "tend a bit toward the morally bankrupt."

May 6, ENDLESS AMAZEMENT! We’re still amazed at the childish things our celebrity “journalists” do: Attacks some of his favorite liberal targets among the celebrity punditry - Keith Olbermann, Lawrence O’Donnell, Gail Collins, Frank Rich - over Sen. Lindsey Graham's complaints about the terrorism watch list interfering with the alleged right of people on it to buy guns and explosives. Somerby doesn't touch on race in this one. But he doesn't add much clarity to Graham's particular complaint, which on the surface strikes me as possibly one of those stopped-clock-is-right-twice-a-day moments where Graham may be making a valid point for a frivolous reason. Somerby makes it an example of liberal frivolity. He bridges Frank Rich into the complaint with this: "The 'watch list' story has special appeal [to liberal pundits] because it fits treasured New York Times themes about southerners, guns and religion." (New York City's Mayor Bloomberg thinks it's a real law-enforcement problem. Dibgy describes why she thinks Graham is being inconsistent in Tyranny For Dummies Hullabaloo 05/05/10.)

May 7, WHAT DIGBY SAID! In a remarkable pair of posts, Digby helps us recall the truth about someone’s favorite: after having blasted Digby in recent weeks for talking about white racism, he recommends a couple of her recent posts highlighted the dysfunctional nature of our national press corps and of Chris Matthews in particular. (Matthews is a mess, even when he's taking the Democrats' side; Somerby is right about that.) And Somerby blasts Salon's Joan Walsh for, apparently, giving some stock general praise to Chris Matthews when she appears on his show. He's also been blasting Walsh lately for the same sin as Digby, talking about white racism. He says here, "be prepared to get sick to your stomach the next time you see Walsh parade out onto Matthews’ show and tell him how great he is - how much his deeply seminal thinking resembles that of Joan herself."

Just how is Bob Somerby different from the standard white Republican rightwinger on the issues raised by SB1070?

One thing is very clear: he really, really, really doesn't like it when liberals or social scientists or anyone talks in public about white racism in a negative way.

To get an idea of the company in which that puts him, see Christine Schwen, Racial profiling? No problem, say conservative media Media Matters 04/30/10.

Standing alone, some of his columns, like the May 6 one, could read like a liberal contrarian take on our celebrity press corps, who really are generally painfully shallow. But taken in the context of his other columns cited here, even that one could also be read, perhaps more plausibly, as an echo of stock conservative complaints about the Liberal Media Conspiracy. He characterizes leading liberal pundits Keith Olbermann, Lawrence O’Donnell, Gail Collins as follows:

This are truly hideous people, the scum of modern, big-bucks corporate culture. But mainly, they’re amazingly childish. Collins’ column is stunningly clownish—and therefore, it’s pleasing for readers, and it was easy to type. In truth, these people will do and say anything to maintain the tribal game of the moment. And they seem to be sure that your low IQs won’t let you spot their game. [my emphasis in bold]

What rightwinger would disagree that Keith Olbermann and most other liberal pundits are "truly hideous people" and "scum"?

Tags: bob somerby, comprehensive immigration reform, white racism

How strong is the government's case against the Hutaree Militia?

I have no trouble seeing the Christian terrorist-wannabes of the Hutaree Militia as no-good-niks based on their own self-descriptions and group propaganda.

But we have trials and due process for good reasons. For the government to send someone to jail, they have to demonstrate their guilt in a courtroom in which the defendants get to actually defend themselves and in which both sides have to follow a definite set of rules.

The government didn't do such an impressive job in their initial round in court, from what the news reports are saying. The judge even ordered the defendants released pending trial with stringent restrictions, including electronic monitoring. Mark Reiter describes those conditions in some detail in, U.S. attorney successful in blocking release of Hutaree members from jail Toledo Blade 05/06/10.

In her decision to release them, which has been stayed by the Appeals Court, Judge Victoria Roberts wrote:

While the Government contends that the crimes charged against Defendants go well beyond speech, there is no doubt that controversial, offensive and hate-filled speech is implicated. In their defense, the Defendants disagree that this case implicates anything other than speech, and, that whatever they said, did not amount to a conspiracy to commit illegal acts. ...

The United States is correct that it need not wait until people are killed before it arrests conspirators. But, the Defendants are also correct: their right to engage in hatefilled, venomous speech, is a right that deserves First Amendment protection. ...

When a person crosses the threshold between protected speech and illegal advocacy and related activity, is not always clear. That lack of clarity, and the fact that so much of the Government’s proffer was based on words spoken by Defendants, caused the Court to look closely not only at the protection afforded by the First Amendment, but also at the clear principle that crime masquerading as speech deserves no First Amendment protection.

Her decision discusses the charges and particular aspects of the government's case, including some transcripts of that "hatefilled, venomous speech".

All Defendants are charged with: (1) Seditious Conspiracy...; (2) Attempt to Use Weapons of Mass Destruction ...; and (3) Carrying, Using, and Possessing a Firearm During and in Relation to a Crime of Violence...

Some defendants face additional charges.

Based on reading her opinion, from what the government has presented so far, their case against the Hutaree Militia may not be terribly strong. A lot can change between now and the verdict, of course. But it's a strong reminder that the government's initial announcement of arrest and charges may turn out to be overblown.

See also:

FBI agent short on details on militia inquiry AP/Toledo Blade 04/28/10

Feds pressed to show Hutaree group is threat AP/Toledo Blade 04/28/10

Ed White, Hutaree Militia Staying In Jail: Court Issues Emergency Order AP/Huffington Post 05/06/10

Tags: christian terrorism

Arizona's SB1070

Arizona's anti-immigrant SB1070 became law on Friday, April 23, with Republican Gov. Jan Brewer's signature; the provisions are scheduled to take effect July 29.

Arizona's anti-Constitutional SB1070 and police practices in some areas are a challenge that requires the federal government to step in and insure that that the rights of everyone, citizens and non-citizens, are protected from rogue police and even a rogue state legislature. This is not to say that Arizona is some kind of political monolith, even among whites. On the contrary, the protest against the law and against racial profiling has been more intense in Arizona than anywhere else. Including city mayors and city councils pursuing legal challenges to SB1070. Federalism in action, in a good way: local governments opposing the state government's bad, impractical and un-Constitutional law.

Michael Lacey in Sheriff Joe Arpaio's Reign of Terror Becomes State Policy, Thanks to State Senator Russell Pearce and Governor Phoenix New Times Jan Brewer 04/29/10 reports on the model for racial profiling and abuse of police power set by the infamous Joe Arpaio, Sheriff of Maricopa County:

Senate Bill 1070 instructs police officers to demand proof of citizenship from anyone they have a "reasonable suspicion" may be in the country illegally.

Critics point out that the new legislation allows individuals to be stopped absent criminal behavior. The demand to know whether a person's papers are in order smacks of an authoritarianism not seen in this country in recent memory. ...

Arpaio has explained clearly how he and his deputies determine which individuals are brown Mexicans and which are brown Americans.

"If you look like you came from Mexico," Arpaio told listeners of KPHO radio, that will get you searched.

On national television, Glenn Beck was informed by Arpaio of his standard: "If local law enforcement comes across some people that have erratic, or scared, or whatever, you know, they're worried . . . And if they have, their speech, whatever they look like, if they just look like they came from another country, we can take care of that situation."

Last year, Arpaio informed the GQ magazine that Mexicans are contagious.

"All these people that come over, they come with disease. There's no control. No health checks or anything. They check fruits and vegetables. How come they don't check people? No one talks about that!

"They're all dirty."

And Lacey reasonably points out how Barack Obama is again handling a serious problem by saying some nice-sounding things in public and then letting the official misconduct continue:

Initially, 1070 even caught the eye of President Barack Obama, who labeled it a misguided effort to address border issues that the federal government had ducked. But his promise to move immigration to the top of his agenda faded three days later. The president was soon telling journalists that with all of the political capital expended on healthcare, now was not the time to tackle such an incendiary issue.

Resorting to Orwellian syntax, the president abused decency in declaring that immigration could not be addressed before mid-term elections "just for the sake of politics."

America's first black president's dodging racial profiling goes well beyond irony.

On April 30, Brewer signed SB2162 into law, making some minor amendments that look to me to be aimed at helping the law to survive court challenges on racial profiling, rather than substantially modifying any of its features.

Louis Jacobson writes for the St. Petersburg Times PolitiFact.com in Barking dogs, racial profiling and the Ariz. law 05/04/10

On April 30, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) signed a bill that made several important changes. Because of these changes, we've produced two new fact-checking items based on the revised bill. (Our old items are now outdated, but they can still be found here and here.)

One of our new items addresses the role played by "racial profiling" -- that is, the use of racial or ethnic characteristics as a justification for police questioning. The changes included additional language that said, "A law enforcement official or agency of this state or a county, city, town or other political subdivision of this state may not consider race, color or national origin in implementing the requirements of this subsection except to the extent permitted by the United States or Arizona Constitution."

But experts we spoke to were skeptical of Brewer's claim that this language would "lay to rest questions over the possibility of racial profiling." We rated this statement Barely True.

Alia Beard Rau and Ginger Rough in The Arizona immigration law hit with its first 3 lawsuits Arizona Republic 04/30/10 characterized the changes in a similar way, in an article written before the amendments were signed.

For a law that so much discussed and is not that long, it's surprisingly challenging to get to an authoritative copy of the final version signed by Brewer. The Arizona legislature's page on SB1070 at this writing shows an introduced version, a senate version and a house version. The house version in Sec. 2(C) specifies which documents will be legally considered sufficient to establish legal residency, a feature missing from the senate version. It is listed as the chaptered (adopted) version. It seems to have been this amendment that added the document specification. (I had previously assumed that the senate version was the adopted one, excluding any specification of acceptable documents.) According to the law, a valid driver's license from any US state is acceptable. But what if one of Shurff Arpaio's cops thinks it "looks fake"?

The legislative page on SB2162 shows the conference version as the adopted one. Here More on the amendments: Alan Silverleib, Arizona governor signs changes into immigration law CNN 05/01/10; Amendment to Arizona’s SB1070 Immigration Law, Meaningful Change or Lip Service? Brave New Wave 04/30/10;

Other posts on how Jim Crow type laws and a racially discriminatory atmosphere work:

Gabriel Winant, E-mail reveals Arizona law was designed to maximize harassment Salon 05/03/10

Friday, April 30, 2010
Mike Sunnucks, Immigration law cutting into Hispanic hires Phoenix Business Journal 04/30/10:

Local labor and employment attorneys say they are increasingly seeing the trend of businesses opting to not to hire Latinos or laying Hispanic workers off, even if they are U.S. citizens or have legal status.

“We have heard of employers who have questioned whether Hispanic workers should be resubmitted through the current e-verify system in response to this legislation. This is exactly the type of response that is ill-advised and could land employers in hot water,” said Shayna Balch, a labor attorney with the Phoenix office of Fisher & Phillips LLP. Dave Seiden and Julie Pace, immigration and employment attorneys with the Cavanagh Law Firm, said they already see the trend with employers worried about raids from Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Seiden and Pace said they have clients calling them about the new immigration law expecting that measure to result in more raids and scrutiny.

“They don’t want to run the risk of being targeted by the sheriff or anyone else. They don’t want the hassle,” said Pace.

“Anyone who looks and sounds foreign is a concern to some employers. They want to avoid some of the things they see in the paper,” she said. [my emphasis]

Tags: comprehensive immigration reform, white racism

Kent State retrospectives

(If the video doesn't play, you can find it at National Geographic's Death At Kent State site.



The Cleveland Plain Dealer has plenty of them at its Kent State Shootings 40th Anniversary page.

The Kent State killings were a big event in the symbolic "culture war." Novelist James Michener did a non-fiction account of the killings, Kent State: What Happened and Why (1971). He gave this grim account of one woman in the area, a parent of Kent State students, who his researchers interviewed. To fully appreciate this, you have to keep in mind that the National Guard fired randomly at students on the campus; most of those shot were walking to class or otherwise going about their daily lives:

But no case of parental rejection equals that of a family living in a small town near the Kentucky border with three good-looking, well-behaved, moderate sons at the university. Without any record of participation in protest, the boys found themselves inadvertently involved at the vortex: the middle son ended up standing beside one of the students who was shot (at a great distance from the firing); the youngest was arrested for trespass and his picture appeared in the hometown paper, to the embarrassment of his family. When the family spoke to one of our researchers, the conversation was so startling that more than usual care was taken to get it exactly as delivered.

Mother: Anyone who appears on the streets of a city like Kent with long hair, dirty clothes or barefooted deserves to be shot.

Researcher: Have I your permission to quote that?

Mother: You sure do. It would have been better if the Guard had shot the whole lot of them that morning.

Researcher: But you had three sons there.

Mother: If they didn't do what the Guards told them, they should have been mowed down.

Professor of Psychology (listening in): Is long hair a justification for shooting someone?

Mother: Yes. We have got to clean up this nation. And we'll start with the long-hairs.

Professor: Would you permit one of your sons to be shot simply because he went barefooted? Mother: Yes.

Professor: Where do you get such ideas? Mother: I teach at the local high school.

Professor: You mean you are teaching your students such things?

Mother: Yes. I teach them the truth. That the lazy, the dirty, the ones you see walking the streets and doing nothing ought all to be shot.

I've often wondered what Thanksgiving dinners were like at their house. That's really pretty twisted.

Kent State May 4, 1970This report by Bob Jones for WEWS Newsnet5 (Akron) reports on how the University is officially commemorating this sad anniversary: Kent State dedicates May 4th walking tour 05/03/10:

A ribbon cutting ceremony was held on Monday to mark two major milestones related to the May 4, 1970 campus shootings that killed four Kent State University students and wounded nine others.

The university dedicated a walking tour. Visitors can read seven markers and use their cell phones to listen to a narration describing the the tragic events of that day.

The university also unveiled a plaque recognizing the site on the National Register of Historic Places.

That site also has a 40th Anniversary of May 4 page.

Kent State University itself has webpages on the shooting: Kent State’s WKSU-FM Launches May 4, 1970, Audio Archive 04/29/10; KentState1970.org; Reflections on May 4th: Carole Barbato and Laura Davis; Kent State Presents Events Marking 40th Commemoration of May 4, 1970, Shootings.

Tags: establishment+press

False equivalence

Digby points in Alien Rule 05/02/10 to a recent example of Obama making some decent points in articulating a larger Democratic vision of positive government. But then stepping on it by trying to talk about the extremes of the right and the left.

Obama is facing a hardline Republican opposition that is encouraging crackpot extremist ideology in the form of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and the Tea Party movement. On the fringes of their ideological argument is a terrorist militia movement that responds to many of the same issues that the Republicans emphasize but assume that if people like Glenn Beck and FOX News and members of Congress are talking about the feds coming to take their huntin' rifles and establish a Communist tyranny, that things must be way worse than even their paranoid fantasies supposed.

So on the fringe, we have an increasingly energized and openly violent terrorist element. We have a large segment of the public, inspired by Republican and Christian Right claims and responding to their leadership, who are increasingly hostile to science and are willing to swallow fact-free claims like Sarah Palin's "death panels" and can't distinguish Glenn Beck's absurd picture of the political world from the real thing. Nativism and white racism just manifested themselves in the Arizona SB1070 stop-and-search-the-brown-people law that is in practice a racially-targeted law like the Jim Crow laws in the segregated South.

And on the left we have: Keith Olbermann occasionally being stridently self-righteous. Health care advocates who think a public insurance option would be a good idea. Anonymous commenters on liberal blogs who compare Bush to Hitler.


There is just not a big problem with leftwing terrorism right now. If past history is a guide, someday we'll probably have a new version of the Black Liberation Army or Germany's Red Army Faction (RAF). There are some hardcore ecological and animal-rights groups now who may be inclined to commit violent acts or engage in cyber-sabotage of targeted corporations. But I haven't heard about anything lately along those lines actually occurring, except for Limbaugh's evidence-free speculation about the BP rig in the Gulf of Mexico that caused the current oil spill disaster being sabotaged by eco-terrorists.

In other words, in the United States right now there is a real, practical problem with anti-democratic, rightwing extremism with violent elements. There is no comparable level of problem on the left. Not even close.

So in this situation, to pretend that there are somehow equivalent problems with rightwing and leftwing extremism inevitably minimizes the real existing problem of rightwing extremism. Whether the false equivalence is coming from Obama or anyone else.

Paul Starr in Better Than Tea The American Prospect 05/03/10 recognizes that the Tea Party movement doesn't have a left-leaning equivalent. But, unfortunately, he seems completely clueless about what that means. He writes, astonishingly, "With millions unemployed and home foreclosures at record levels, the country is still suffering acutely from the recession's effects, yet the Tea Party is the only movement that can put thousands of people into the streets."

Except for, you know, people who do. Teresa Watanabe and Patrick McDonnell, L.A.'s May Day immigration rally is nation's largest Los Angeles Times 05/01/10:

Galvanized by Arizona's tough new law against illegal immigrants, tens of thousands of marchers took to the streets in Los Angeles on Saturday as the city led the nation in May Day turnout to press for federal immigration reform.

As many as 60,000 immigrants and their supporters joined a peaceful but boisterous march through downtown Los Angeles to City Hall, waving American flags, tooting horns and holding signs that blasted the Arizona law. The legislation, which is set to take effect in midsummer, makes it a crime to be in Arizona without legal status and requires police to check for immigration papers.

Though the crowd was roughly half as large as police had projected, it was the largest May Day turnout since 2006, when anger over federal legislation that would have criminalized illegal immigrants and those who aid them brought out more than 1 million protesters nationwide. Since then, most activists have deemphasized street actions in favor of change at the ballot box through promoting citizenship and voter registration.

But this year is different. Outrage over the Arizona law, continued deportations and frustration over congressional delay in passing federal immigration reform prompted activists nationwide to urge massive street protests on this traditional day of celebrating workers' rights.

Demonstrations are one manifestation of political movements, though not the only ones. It's a little anachronistic to measure the strength of a movement by how successful they are putting "thousands of people into the streets." Still, if you're comparing movements by that measure, as Starr is, you should at least pay attention to the movements that actually are doing that.

Starr here reflects the Establishment media blinkers that led our celebrity pundits and reporters to pay rapt attention to anti-health care Tea Party demonstrators in Washington but ignore the far more numerous demonstration there in favor of comprehensive immigration reform in March: Clement Tan and Don Lee, Big immigration march in Washington Los Angeles Times 03/22/10.

Tags: comprehensive immigration reform, radical right, white racism

This should be interesting...

Culture war: the shootin' kind

If this process produces new evidence, that will be an interesting situation: Analysis of 40-year-old tape may reveal whether Ohio Guardsmen were ordered to fire on Kent State protesters by John Mangels The Plain Dealer 04/29/10.

Tuesday, May 4, will be 40 years after the Kent State murders. There is no statute of limitations on murder. No was was prosecuted so far. But then, it took 40 years or more for some murders during the height of civil rights activism to be prosecuted, too.

I posted about the Kent State murders in the context of the "culture war" in The "culture war" in its infancy 05/07/08.

Tags: kent state killings, sixties

The Cost of Offshore Drilling

The first photo is a Greenpeace ad. Both photos come from a Huffington Post slide show.

Drill, Baby, Drill

Drill, baby, drill!  Worst case scenario:  we won't have shrimp...or oysters...or Gulf Coast marshlands...or...