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Since April, North Carolina citizens have been gathering at the state capital in Raleigh for “Moral Monday” rallies and acts of civil disobedience to protest the the cruel things Republican legislators are doing to the people of the state. This week, despite tornado warnings, more than 1,400 protesters gathered for the sixth week’s protests, and more than 80 were arrested, including one reporter clearly wearing news credentials. A week ago Monday, 151 were arrested. Arrests for this and recent Moral Mondays now total 388.

This video is from the June 3 Moral Monday rally:

Cruel Policies

What’s going on? Republicans took over and started enacting severe, cruel policies against the poor and minorities, while giving tax cuts to the rich and businesses. As The Nation explains in “Protesters Shake Up North Carolina Legislature With Moral Monday Demonstrations,”

In 2010, Republicans took control of the state House and Senate for the first time since Reconstruction. With their firm majority, the GOP redrew district lines for state Senate and House seats, securing an even more solid majority in the 2012 election. Voters also elected a Republican governor, the former mayor of Charlotte, Pat McCrory. Many assumed that his big-city background would make him a moderate, but McCrory quickly appointed Art Pope, the money behind many of the state’s Tea Party candidates, as budget director, and the legislature went to work.

Some of the severe measures already passed include:

• Cutting the payroll tax credit for over 900,000 poor and working people
• Slashing state unemployment benefits and rejecting federally-funded Emergency Unemployment Compensation to 170,000 laid-off workers
• Rejecting federal funds to expand Medicaid to cover 500,000 North Carolinians without health insurance

They are preparing to pass more, including:

• Restarting the death penalty and repealing the Racial Justice Act which had exposed that the death penalty was applied in a racially discriminatory way
• Reducing preschool for poor children
• Privatizing public schools with “vouchers”
• Rolling back early voting; banning Sunday voting (so churches cannot organize voting drives); implementing voter ID to keep poor and minorities from voting; not allowing parents to get a $2,500 child tax credit if their children vote
• Codifying anti-labor language in the state constitution

And this is not because of budget problems. More proposals include:

• Reducing the business franchise tax
• Cutting the corporate income tax
• Lowering the personal income tax

Clergy, Citizen Groups Respond

In response, clergy, the NAACP and progressive organizations organized Moral Monday protests at the state capitol. Rev. William J. Barber is president of the North Carolina conference of more than 100 NAACP Branches, and leads the NAACP’s ‘Moral Mondays’ campaign in Raleigh. Writing at The Guardian in “Our message to North Carolina’s GOP: ‘Moral Mondays’ are here to stay,” explains,

When far-right extremists took over the Grand Old Party and turned it into a joyless, humorless, mean-spirited vehicle to line the pockets of the super-rich, we already had experience bringing people to Jones Street, where the state capitol is located, and advocating for the poor and vulnerable. It is not surprising, then, that a couple of months ago, when we called for moral witnesses based on Gandhi and Dr. King’s brilliant examples of nonviolent direct action, we had 17 ministers and other leaders answer the call and participate in the first inaugural “Moral Monday”.

“Moron Mondays”

Republican State Senator Thom Goolsby wrote an op-ed for the Chatham Journal, “Moron Monday shows radical Left just doesn’t get it,” saying, (please read the entire op-ed)

The circus came to the State Capitol this week, complete with clowns, a carnival barker and a sideshow. The “Reverend” Barber was decked out like a prelate of the Church of Rome (no insult is meant to Catholics), complete with stole and cassock. All he was missing was a miter and the ensemble would have been complete.

Several hundred people – mostly white, angry, aged former hippies – appeared and screeched into microphones, talked about solidarity and chanted diatribes. It was “liberal theater” at its best. Just like having a honey bun and double espresso for breakfast, the impact of it all left the participants jittery and empty in the end.

Moral Mondays will continue.

And now there are Witness Wednesdays, too.

More

bluenc: Fighting rhetoric and lies with information

ProgressNC

Politics North Caroline: Moral Monday protests: Why they matter

Click here to see photos of Monday’s arrests at the Raleigh News & Observer.

Click here to see Rev. Barber’s YouTube channel with Moral Monday videos.

Here are some of the stories about this week’s and previous Moral Monday protests.

Raleigh News & Observer, Clergy lead Monday protests at General Assembly

Durham Herald Sun‎: Clergy lead Moral Monday protest

MyFOX8: 1,400 protest in sixth ‘Moral Monday’ rally; 60 arrested

The Nation: Protesters Shake Up North Carolina Legislature With Moral Monday Demonstrations

WRAL: Most arrested in ‘Moral Monday’ protests from NC,

Police records indicate that 98 percent of those arrested during the “Moral Monday” protests at the General Assembly are from North Carolina, despite claims by leading Republicans that the rallies are packed with people from out of state.

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This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF. Sign up here for the CAF daily summary

And the other day I wrote about seeing the Grateful Dead in 1967.

Economists Had Learned How To Revive A Falling Economy

Before the financial collapse economists had nailed down the way to get out of an economic crisis: Government has to spend to pick up the drop in demand caused by businesses and consumers cutting back. This investment into the economy causes businesses to hire again, which helps people to be able to spend again, and after things recover the resulting growth pays off that investment.

The Great Depression in particular had taught us that a downward spiral could develop in which a drop in demand caused businesses to cut back, lay people off and/or cut wages, and of course this caused people to have to cut back, which meant demand dropped even more so businesses laid off more people, so demand dropped more, etc.

The FDR administration tried various things to stop this spiral and found that programs that injected money into the economy, such as unemployment benefits and other assistance, direct hiring, investments in infrastructure, etc., could turn things around. And then after things turned around we had all that new, modern infrastructure driving continuing economic growth!

We also learned the hard way. In 1937 the government cut back too soon, and the economy sank into recession again. Then World War II came along, the government spent massively, and the economy grew so much that the ratio of debt to the size of the economy shrank dramatically. We had it figured out.

The “Obama Stimulus”

At the end of the ‘W’ Bush administration the economy was again in free fall. (Thanks George!) The month President Obama took office the economy lost more than 800,000 jobs. The new Obama administration pushed through a “stimulus” program that included infrastructure investment, tax cuts, and money to help states avoid laying off teachers, police, etc. See if you can spot on this chart the point where the stimulus “kicked in.” (Click for larger and details.)

That’s right, the point where things suddenly turn around and that deep ‘V’ starts back up – that’s when the stimulus kicked in. It worked. It wasn’t enough, but it worked.

The “Serious People” Threw Out What Had Been Learned

Somehow, even with this obvious evidence that the stimulus worked the “serious people” in Europe and America threw out what economists had learned about how to get out of an economic crisis and demanded budget cuts instead. They actually claimed, in the face of the economy collapse, that the unemployment and slow economy was the result of “government spending.” They actually claimed that taking government money out of the economy would somehow help the economy.

Since 2010 Republicans have blocked further stimulus, claiming that we have a deficit emergency and “we’re broke.” In fact, they have forced deep cuts in spending, including the destructive “sequester” that is forcing down the level of recovery and looks like it will cost as many as 750,000 jobs just this year. And after this year it gets worse.

Republicans have even blocked efforts to just maintain the nation’s crumbling infrastructure, calling it “more government spending.” More on this in a minute.

Europe

The austerity was especially harsh in European countries like Greece. They imposed terrible budget cuts with the idea that these cuts would lead to a revival of their economy. They laid people off, cut people’s wages, took people’s pensions, took away people’s health care, sold off public assets, and imposed other restrictions.

This caused great suffering, even including suicides. Unemployment soared, rising in Greece to over 26 percent, in Spain to over 25 percent and currently over 12 percent measured Europe-wide.

And guess what. European government spending cuts made the economies worse, which made their deficit problems worse. Taking money out of the economies actually didn’t help the economies grow!

Austerity Is Dead

Austerity – the idea that shrinking government and taking government spending out of the economy will boost the economy – was partly based on the work of economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff. They claimed that the more debt a government has, the worse their economies do, and in particular there is a cutoff line if debt reaches 90 percent of GDP, where growth really falls off. Other economists could not duplicate these results in their models, and it recently turned out that these economist not only cherry-picked their results, but their work included a spreadsheet error that, when corrected, completely undid this conclusion. So no, there is no causation relationship where increased government debt slows economic growth.

Of course, this as already obvious from observation. The Obama stimulus reversed the economic death spiral. Europe’s austerity caused their economies and deficits to get worse, not to mention the terrible human suffering that resulted. It’s too much in our face now, even the “serious people” are starting to admit it.

Austerity is dead.

Infrastructure Crumbling

The American Society of Civil (ASCE) Engineers releases their Report Card for America’s Infrastructure every four years. This Report Card grades the condition of the country’s infrastructure with a school report card, assigning letter grades to each type of infrastructure. This year’s America’s 2013 Infrastructure Report Card gives us a grade of D+ and says we are $3.6 trillion behind in infrastructure maintenance.

This $3.6 trillion is needed just to catch up, not get ahead. (Reagan tax cuts in 1981, 32 years of deferred maintenance since… it adds up.)

Fixing Infrastructure Creates Jobs And Jobs Fix Deficits

That $3.6 trillion worth of infrastructure repair has to be done eventually – bridges are falling down now and things will just get worse. But there are two other factors right now that should be taken into account.

1) We have millions and millions of people who need jobs.

2) We can get the money at just about the lowest rates in history. Interest rates are very, very low for government borrowing right now.

Oh, one more thing:

3) After we bring our infrastructure up to date we will have a shiny new, efficient and energy-efficient national infrastructure to support American competitiveness. The economy will boom.

So we have this work that needs to be done anyway. We have millions of people who need work to do. We can get the money at very low cost. And the economy needs a kick.

What’s the holdup?

Austerity is dead. Can we fix the economy NOW?

A Few Good Reads And A Video

Along with the links in this post, here are a few good posts on the subject.

Richard Eskow, Austerity Is Dead; Stop Pushing It, Drop the Chained CPI and Increase Social Security

Me, Another Bridge Falls — Fixing Infrastructure Fixes Jobs And Deficits

Me, Deficit Fixed. Now Fix The Job Gap, Wage Gap And Trade Gap

John Cassidy at the New Yorker, THE REINHART AND ROGOFF CONTROVERSY: A SUMMING UP

Paul Krugman, The Big Shrug

Video: Mark Blyth: Austerity – The History of a Dangerous Idea

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This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF. Sign up here for the CAF daily summary

I hosted an FDL Book Salon yesterday, over at firedoglake (FDL), named FDL Book Salon Welcomes Lori Wallach, The Rise and Fall of Fast Track Trade Authority. In the setup for the conversation I wrote,

You think trade is complicated, technical, boring, so you tune out and don’t pay attention to the issue… And then BANG, you’re told they are moving the facility where you work out of the country and you are going to be laid off, but if you want your severance and the chance to collect unemployment you have to train your replacement. Not long after that, in other factories and offices everyone is told to accept wage and benefit cuts or they’ll move that facility out of the country, too.

… After a year you finally land a job! The job is you have to dress up like a duck and stand on a corner waving a sign. These are the things that all of this arguing about trade is about. Welcome to the new America.

Fast Track

Lori Wallach’s book talks about a process called “Fast Track” which means Congress agrees to drop that pesky “checks and balances” thing in our burdensome Constitution. They agree not to make any amendments to trade agreements, not to allow any filibusters, and agree to vote in a serious hurry once the agreement is ready. It also is the only time the executive branch writes laws instead of Congress, so we don’t have those pesky transparent hearings or those pesky citizens weighing in.

The short time before a vote enables giant corporations to do one of those multi-million-dollar “crisis” run-up campaigns they do to stampede Congress into something. While this is going on the lobbyists will argue that turning down the agreement will damage US credibility and foreign relations. They will argue that the agreement will “create jobs.” They will say and promise whatever they need to say and promise to get COngress to pass it.

Fast Track is part of how we ended up with our enormous trade deficit that is draining around $600 billion a year out of our economy. But here is the good news: Fast Track is not currently in place. It expired several years ago and Congress has not renewed it. But the new nominee for US Trade Representative said last week that he is going to push for Fast Track. (Please click through to see the charts.) So we have to keep this from happening.

If we can keep Congress from passing Fast Track then there is more time to build opposition to TPP as it look like now, and we can pressure Congress to either pass amendments that put protections for working people, consumers, the environment, smaller-than-giant businesses, human rights and other non-multinational-corporate interests into the agreement — or just block it if all else fails.

Trans-Pacific Partnership

The TPP is the big enchilada of trade agreements. It is an attempt by the billionaires and their giant multinationals to bypass the stirrings of democracy that have been taking place around the world. It is being negotiated of, by and for the giant multinationals with pver 600 corporate advisors involved — but not even our own Congress. In my CAF post, TPP: A Deregulation Treaty Not A Trade Treaty, I wrote about how the negotiating process itself is a setup,

“The upcoming Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement is using a process that is rigged from the start. It is not being negotiated by governments for the benefit of their people, it is being negotiated by executives (or future executives/lobbyists currently in government) largely for the benefit of the giant corporations they serve. The process has these giant corporations “in the loop” but groups citizens, working people, consumers, the environment, human rights groups and especially democracy are not part of the process. That can only go one way: if you don’t have a seat at the table you are on the table — the meal.”

Got that? ONLY corporate representatives are party to the negotiations. Not even our Congress is a party to the negotiations, and the terms negotiated so far are being kept secret even from them!

Only a small part of this agreement is about trade. The rest is about things that are absolutely supposed to be done by our Congress – and only our Congress. “investor “rights — the rights of people with tons of money to get what they want — limits on regulations, things like that. Senator Elizabeth Warren has warned that it looks like Wall Street is trying to use TPP to make an “end-run” around American efforts to reign in the big banks.

This will limit by law what our democracy is allowed to decide! One example of the things these trade agreements do for the giant corporations that Lori pointed out in the FDL discussion was how a European firm is suing Egypt for increasing their minimum wage after Egypt’s revolution, because that costs that company money.

And the worst part is that it is being set up so that new trade agreements don’t even have to be negotiated,

What You Can Do

Forst and foremost, be aware of this upcoming TPP, and start learning more. Learn about Fast Track. Write and call and visit the office of your member of Congress and let them know of your concerns. (One of the problems is that many members of Congress are not well-informed about TPP and about the dangers of Fast Track.)

Ending the conversation, Lori wrote:

If you want to help stop Fast Track, please sign up for action alters on Fast Track and TPP at tradewatch.org At the bottom of the page you can sign up with your email.

You can also get regular news updates at our eyesontrade blog – follow the RSS feed! http://citizen.typepad.com/eyesontrade/

Also, check out http://www.ExposetheTPP.org it is a great action oriented site

So if you don’t want to end up having to dress up like a duck and stand on a corner waving a “car wash” sign just to get enough food to survive (but still sleeping in an old car) you need to pay attention to this. We have to stop TPP or get it changed to serve the people of the country, instead of the billionaires.

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This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF. Sign up here for the CAF daily summary

So I got out my iPhone and found where I had hidden the Apple Maps app. (I use the Google maps app, because it has accurate data, while the Apple app is grossly inaccurate. So I hid that app where I have little chance of accidentally using it by mistake.) Right there in the middle of Redwood City it still says “Downton Belmont.” I reported this immediately after the terrible Maps app came out, so it had to be close to the top of their user-reported “fix it” queue, yet nothing has been done.

For those not in the Bay Area, Belmont is two towns up from Redwood City, after San Carlos.

It doesn’t go live until 5 so I can’t post a link to the conversation itself. Be at Firedoglake.com at 5:00pm Eastern to participate. If you want to ask a question, stop by a few minutes early and Register at the Log On and FDL will email you password to you.

http://firedoglake.com/
http://fdlbooksalon.com/

You can listen here

Oh hell, just click through to see it!

The sad fact is that the old economy is coming back. Austerity continues to starve public investments vital to our future. The banks emerged from the crisis bigger and more concentrated than ever. Despite the domestic natural gas explosion, the trade deficit is still more than $1 billion a day, with the deficit with China setting records.

Extreme inequality is getting worse. The wealthiest 1 percent of Americans captured a stunning 121 percent of the income growth in the first two years after the economic collapse. Everyone else, on average, lost ground. The jobs being created offer less pay and fewer benefits than those that were lost. More than 20 million people still need full-time work.

I wrote about this in Just Stop It: This Is NOT A Good Economy. We Can Fix It.

PS Borosage makes a key point: “No matter how repellant Republicans may look to these voters, they are unlikely to turn out in large numbers for a party whose policies have failed them.“