John Case has sent you a link to a blog:
Blog: Enlighten Radio Podcasts
Post: Podcast: The Moose Turd Cafe -- Diesel and Case: Vol 1. Show 1
Link: http://podcasts.enlightenradio.org/2017/09/podcast-moose-turd-cafe-diesel-and-case.html
--
Powered by Blogger
https://www.blogger.com/
Wednesday, September 27, 2017
Links: Be ready, Ds. What happened to OT? Do R’s care about deficits?
----
Links: Be ready, Ds. What happened to OT? Do R's care about deficits? // Jared Bernstein | On the Economy
http://jaredbernsteinblog.com/links-be-ready-ds-what-happened-to-ot-do-rs-care-about-deficits/
–First, from yesterday's WaPo, when the pendulum swings back, assuming the nation's still standing, D's need to "be ready to launch thoughtful, vetted, well-understood and well-articulated plans in key policy areas." I offer nudges in the areas of taxes, health care, poverty/inequality, and jobs.
–The salary threshold for overtime pay should have been raised long ago, but team Trump isn't going there. They've said they'll consider raising the salary threshold but to a lower level than Obama proposed. The DoL asked for comments on the threshold, and here's a link to mine. See also EPI's Heidi Shierholz's comment; she fought really hard for this as DoL's chief economist back in the day and she takes a really trenchant dive into the issue.
–Do Republicans really give even half-a-crap about budget deficits? Actually, they kinda do, but only as a tactic to argue for spending cuts. In today's NYT.
----
Read in my feedly.com
Monday, September 25, 2017
Sunday, September 24, 2017
Germany Votes
----
Germany Votes // The American Prospect
http://prospect.org/article/germany-votes
AP Photo/Michael Sohn
Supporters hold posters as German Chancellor Angela Merkel returns on the stage at the headquarters of the Christian Democratic Union CDU in Berlin.
This Sunday, September 24, Germans went to the polls to elect a new Bundestag. The preliminary results confirm predictions that Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU; and its Bavarian partner Christian Social Union) would come in first, with about one-third of the vote, but this is down about 8 percentage points compared with four years ago.
The center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), led by Martin Schulz, turned in its worst performance since World War II, with just over 20 percent of the vote. The SPD thus becomes the latest victim in the collapse of center-left establishment parties nearly everywhere. In the May presidential election in France, the French Socialists also turned in their worst performance since their founding and have been forced to put their party headquarters up for sale to pay the bills, and of course Democrats in the U.S. lost to Donald Trump.
Finishing in third place was the Alternative for Germany party (AfD), which rose to prominence on its virulent anti-immigrant, anti-EU rhetoric. In the long piece I wrote for the print edition of TAP, I predicted that AfD, as the party is known, had lost some of its steam and would finish with under 10 percent of the vote. I was wrong. Early results put AfD just over 13, which makes it the third strongest political force in Germany. Although discussion of the refugee crisis had taken a back seat in recent months to outrage over the conspiracy by German auto manufacturers to cover up their violation of Diesel exhaust emissions limits, AfD's candidates successfully exploited smoldering resentment of Merkel's open-door policy, especially in the states that used to be part of East Germany. While AfD's 13 percent is still well short of the Front National's 33 percent (in the second round of the French presidential elections), Germany will now have an openly racist party represented in the Bundestag for the first time since the end of the war.
Merkel has said that she will not include AfD in any coalition government. She has also excluded working with Die Linke, the far-left party, which garnered just under 9 percent. Her coalition options are therefore limited. She could try to renew the Grand Coalition with the SPD, with which she has ruled for the past four years. But SPD members are distinctly unenthusiastic about continuing to serve as Merkel's junior partners. Even before the election results were in, many in the party felt that their cooperation with the CDU over the 12 years of Merkel's rule has cost them dearly, not least because it made them party to the deepening "dualization" of the German labor market, which has been good for export businesses and for the skilled workers they employ but which has also resulted in a sharp increase in the Germany poverty rate.
If the SPD refuses to renew the Grand Coalition, or if Merkel herself decides that her best option is to jettison the weakened left, two possibilities remain. She can seek to form a so-called Jamaica coalition with the Free Democrats (FDP) and the Green Party—the name "Jamaica" refers to the colors of the three parties, black (CDU), yellow (FDP), and green (Greens), the same as the colors of the Jamaican flag. The FDP, which fell below the 5 percent threshold in the last election and was therefore excluded from the Bundestag, has come roaring back under leader Christian Lindner, more than doubling its score since 2013. The Greens have also improved their score compared with 2013 but still trail the FDP by about a percentage point.
The problem with a Jamaica coalition is that the staunchly free-market FDP and the passionately market-curbing Greens are deeply at odds on many issues. What's more, the FDP is deeply Euroskeptic, whereas Merkel remains committed to the European Union and has signaled to French President Emmanuel Macron that she is willing to entertain a number of his proposals for EU institutional reform.
If Jamaica proves too exotic a destination, Merkel could try for a Black-Yellow coalition with the FDP, but she would then also need to pick up some votes from members of other parties. It may be some time yet before we know the exact complexion of the new Bundestag membership. The German electoral system combines proportional and first-past-the-post tallies, so it will take some time before we even know precisely how many seats each party will hold.
Putting together a final coalition will then require extensive backroom dickering. One important unknown is the fate of Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble. Merkel and Schäuble have not always seen eye-to-eye, and she may avail herself of the opportunity to use his position as a bargaining chip to woo a potential coalition partner. Neither the SPD nor the FDP would be likely to join a coalition with Schäuble as finance minister.
In any case, Merkel will now begin her fourth term as chancellor, putting her in a position to rival Helmut Kohl's all-time longevity record. But the vote is hardly a ringing endorsement of her stewardship. One possible casualty of her lackluster triumph is the promise of cooperation with France on EU reform. The surge by both the FDP and AfD suggests that more than a few German voters think their government ought to put them first and foreigners second. EU reform is not high on their list of priorities.
----
Read in my feedly.com
Enlighten Radio:The Poetry Show -- 9/25/17 -- Odes, Vietnam and John Asbery.
John Case has sent you a link to a blog:
Blog: Enlighten Radio
Post: The Poetry Show -- 9/25/17 -- Odes, Vietnam and John Asbery.
Link: http://www.enlightenradio.org/2017/09/the-poetry-show-92517-odes-vietnam-and.html
--
Powered by Blogger
https://www.blogger.com/
Blog: Enlighten Radio
Post: The Poetry Show -- 9/25/17 -- Odes, Vietnam and John Asbery.
Link: http://www.enlightenradio.org/2017/09/the-poetry-show-92517-odes-vietnam-and.html
--
Powered by Blogger
https://www.blogger.com/
Experiencing the Holocaust [feedly]
Experiencing the Holocaust
http://understandingsociety.blogspot.com/2017/09/experiencing-holocaust.html
This drawing by a child depicts something the child must have seen -- the arrival of prisoners and their separation at the platform into those who would perform slave labor and those who would die immediately.
So an intensive visit to Auschwitz is very powerful at the level of emotion and empathy. It makes the horror of the Holocaust both personal and particular. The visitor is led to imaginatively place himself or his loved ones on the platform, in the barracks, in the changing room. The Holocaust is no longer just a set of numbers and facts, but am invitation to vicarious empathic understanding -- and then a mental multiplication of that experience by a factor of millions.
-- via my feedly newsfeed
http://understandingsociety.blogspot.com/2017/09/experiencing-holocaust.html
When we think we know about an historical event -- the French Revolution, the Spanish Civil War, the Jim Crow years in America -- generally what we know is a limited and miscellaneous set of facts, impressions, interpretations, and summaries we have gathered through many avenues -- monographs, novels, films, poetry, historical lectures in college. No one now living has had direct experience of the French Revolution. And even if we came across a time-traveling Parisian from the relevant dates, we would probably quickly learn that this person's perspective on the events he or she lived through is highly limited and perhaps even misleading.
What do most American adults know about the Holocaust? Here are some core beliefs that most people could probably recite. It was a horrible crime. It was a deliberate program of extermination. Over six million Jewish men, women, and children were murdered. Other groups were also targeted, including Roma people, homosexuals, and Communists. It was the result of racist Nazi ideology. There were particular agents of this evil -- Hitler, Himmler, Göring, Hess, ... There were countless ordinary people across the face of Europe, in Germany and many other countries, who facilitated this evil -- the "banality of evil". There were some heroes who fought against the killing -- Wallenberg, Schindler, Bonhoeffer, Marc Bloch, the villagers of Le Chambron. There are noted tragic victims -- Anne Frank, Maximilian Kolbe. And the Allies could have done much more to disrupt the killing and to facilitate escape for the Jews of Europe.
But notice how thin this body of beliefs is. It is barely thick enough to constitute "knowledge of the Holocaust". It is encapsulated in just a few sentences. If it has emotional content it is a hazy version of the emotions of pity and sorrow. Is this knowledge adequate to the realities it represents? When we repeat the words, "Never again!", do we know what we are saying? And how can a more full and satisfactory level of knowledge of this horrifying and defining event in the twentieth century be achieved?
Here is one possible answer. There is a different way of gaining a more personal and nuanced understanding of the Holocaust -- an extended visit to Auschwitz and Birkenau (link). It is a museum, an historical site, a killing ground, a place where one and a half million people were systematically murdered. A visit to the concentration camps is a very different avenue of knowledge -- knowledge through personal, empathic understanding of the vastness and horror of the crimes committed here.
So, for example, one can see the photographs of individual prisoners, their life stories encapsulated by the date and place of their arrest and the date of their death in the gas chambers. One can read a very personal family tragedy in these photographs.
What do most American adults know about the Holocaust? Here are some core beliefs that most people could probably recite. It was a horrible crime. It was a deliberate program of extermination. Over six million Jewish men, women, and children were murdered. Other groups were also targeted, including Roma people, homosexuals, and Communists. It was the result of racist Nazi ideology. There were particular agents of this evil -- Hitler, Himmler, Göring, Hess, ... There were countless ordinary people across the face of Europe, in Germany and many other countries, who facilitated this evil -- the "banality of evil". There were some heroes who fought against the killing -- Wallenberg, Schindler, Bonhoeffer, Marc Bloch, the villagers of Le Chambron. There are noted tragic victims -- Anne Frank, Maximilian Kolbe. And the Allies could have done much more to disrupt the killing and to facilitate escape for the Jews of Europe.
But notice how thin this body of beliefs is. It is barely thick enough to constitute "knowledge of the Holocaust". It is encapsulated in just a few sentences. If it has emotional content it is a hazy version of the emotions of pity and sorrow. Is this knowledge adequate to the realities it represents? When we repeat the words, "Never again!", do we know what we are saying? And how can a more full and satisfactory level of knowledge of this horrifying and defining event in the twentieth century be achieved?
Here is one possible answer. There is a different way of gaining a more personal and nuanced understanding of the Holocaust -- an extended visit to Auschwitz and Birkenau (link). It is a museum, an historical site, a killing ground, a place where one and a half million people were systematically murdered. A visit to the concentration camps is a very different avenue of knowledge -- knowledge through personal, empathic understanding of the vastness and horror of the crimes committed here.
So, for example, one can see the photographs of individual prisoners, their life stories encapsulated by the date and place of their arrest and the date of their death in the gas chambers. One can read a very personal family tragedy in these photographs.
There are mountains of human hair. There are piles of kitchen goods, shoe polish, clothing, combs, and other items of daily life, all carried through their final days of desperation and transit, all stolen from the dead. There are the drawings by child prisoners found on the walls of the barracks, depicting scenes of concentration camp life through the eyes of children. These children too mostly did not survive.
This drawing by a child depicts something the child must have seen -- the arrival of prisoners and their separation at the platform into those who would perform slave labor and those who would die immediately.
So an intensive visit to Auschwitz is very powerful at the level of emotion and empathy. It makes the horror of the Holocaust both personal and particular. The visitor is led to imaginatively place himself or his loved ones on the platform, in the barracks, in the changing room. The Holocaust is no longer just a set of numbers and facts, but am invitation to vicarious empathic understanding -- and then a mental multiplication of that experience by a factor of millions.
The museum and grounds of the death camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau receive over two million visitors a year, from dozens of countries. Some number of these visitors are perhaps unaffected by what they see. But surely large numbers of visitors are profoundly affected, and come to have a much more nuanced and personal understanding of what happened here. And surely this is a more important way of influencing our collective understanding of the Holocaust than any number of monographs.
There is a practical consequence of this kind of more personal experience of an historical horror. This experience strongly pushes the person to consider how the currents of hate that led to this historical crime are present in the world today. It leads one to care in a more particular way about the Rohingya people today, or about the resurgence of white supremacy and anti-Semitism in the United States at Charlottesville. And it brings one to see the danger implicit in anti-Muslim bigotry in the United States and other countries today.
In other words, we may speculate that the more particular experience of the Holocaust afforded by a meaningful visit to Auschwitz contributes to creating a different kind of twenty-first century citizen, one who has a deeper visceral appreciation of what these crimes of the Nazi period involved in human terms, and a better and deeper understanding of the enormity of this experience. Equally important, it helps to create a much more specific emotional experience of pity and sorrow that honors the humanity of these millions of human beings who were murdered during this period.
In other words, we may speculate that the more particular experience of the Holocaust afforded by a meaningful visit to Auschwitz contributes to creating a different kind of twenty-first century citizen, one who has a deeper visceral appreciation of what these crimes of the Nazi period involved in human terms, and a better and deeper understanding of the enormity of this experience. Equally important, it helps to create a much more specific emotional experience of pity and sorrow that honors the humanity of these millions of human beings who were murdered during this period.
(I offer special thanks to Teresa Wontor-Cichy, a senior researcher and educator at the museum, for the very intensive tour of Auschwitz and Birkenau that she provided.)
-- via my feedly newsfeed
Trump’s Comments on N.F.L. and Stephen Curry Draw Intense Reaction [feedly]
Trump's Comments on N.F.L. and Stephen Curry Draw Intense Reaction
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/23/sports/trump-nfl-nba.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/23/sports/trump-nfl-nba.html
After the president took aim at N.F.L. players and the N.B.A. star Stephen Curry, athletes and celebrities reacted on Twitter with strong words.
-- via my feedly newsfeed
-- via my feedly newsfeed
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)