I think you misunderstand why the tenements were a bad idea: it wasn't that the poor had no ownership, but that, as Jane Jacobs stated in Life and Death of Great American Cities, the tenements did not allow people to flourish. The "rational" designers didn't fail because the reputed virtues (such as property rights) escaped them, but because they didn't value diversity, the life cycle of cities, the importance of aesthetics to the "soul," the limits of money, population instability, etc.
Certainly, subsidized housing was part of Jacobs' solution, but it only a part.
Perry looks and acts the part: rugged, virile, confident. Just as OBL was claimed by the US government to dye his hair to appear younger and masculine, it's clear that Perry hits the JFM too. I wouldn't be surprised if Josh Brolin is probably already in talks with Oliver Stone for a biography of Perry.
The continuing problems of unjust social policy, increasing income inequality, homelessness, decreased social capital, poor urban planning, etc., are not proof that Jack Kemp, or any lionized conservative figure for that matter, was correct, prescient or visionary.
No one to my knowledge has written the kind of psycho-biography of Perry that would give us insight into the man. It's very possible that even he doesn't believe the shit he sells, that he senses the public's resentment against Barack-the-Eunuch, the potential to ride the fundamentalist reactionary wave into the White House and do the bidding of the very wealthy, just as Dubya did, and Dubya's father before that. (Obama castrated himself by cultivating a reputation for being "professorial"--that in reality, he is not, and that in fact, he seeks the approval of rich white guys, as Frank Rich wrote, does not matter.) Where is Justin Frank??
Taking my tax dollars, and in return killing innocent people and endangering my family with the possible blowback is just not a service. I don't feel served by such action. I don't ask for it. I'm not mailing an extra check to Washington as a tip to express my gratitude. If you want to serve humanity, there are many wiser career moves than joining the death machine -- and as a bonus you get to stay alive and have your services appreciated. Therefore I will not call what the Department of War does "service" or the people who do it "service men and women" or the committees that purport to oversee what they actually rubberstamp "armed services" committees.
There's not a person in the room who actually believes the birther nonsense. It's a useful distracting issue for the lowest-common-denominators in our public.
The rich LOVE Obama and our one-party system. Sure, they would love MORE money with an-all republican congress and executive, but this is actually okay. Obama benefits because the more time he has to deal with the birther/Trump thing, the less time he'll have to deal with questions about the Guantanamo dossiers or our numerous wars or the jobless "recovery"-that-isn't.
CORNEL WEST: We have to make a distinction between being racist in motivation and intention versus racist in effect and consequence. And all you need do is look at the history of the Bush administration, and you’ll see policies that, in effect and consequence, generated levels of social misery among poor people, brown people, red people, but especially among working-class and poor people. So this is the important point. If Kanye West had said he doesn’t care about the black poor, the evidence is overwhelming. But I think what happened was that President Bush understood this in an individualistic way, which is the way most fellow Americans understand racism: "Do I actually hate black people individually?" No, I don’t think President Bush individually hates black people. His policies were racist in effect and consequence, and especially classist in terms of generating misery among poor and working people, disproportionately black and brown.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Well—
CORNEL WEST: And I would say that even about the Obama administration. The Obama administration seems to have very little concern about poor people and their social misery. Look at the policies vis-à-vis Wall Street downplaying Main Street. Look at the policies of black farmers, a settlement already in place, but they don’t want to execute it, because they don’t want to be associated with black folk too explicitly. Look at the policies of dilapidated housing. We can go right across the board. Look at the policies of the new Jim Crow system, the prison-industrial complex. So, we’re talking not just about individual presidents. We’re talking about a system that is tilted against poor people, against working people, disproportionately black and brown and red.
The American media It has long given up being adversarial to power. It is symbiotic with those in power.
Here, in the audience of the WHCD, indicated by the canned laughter, we see that unprofessionalism celebrated.
Does the press care to investigate the sources of income inequality. Or voter cynicism, impotence, invisibility? Or the source of endless wars? Or the corruption of our elected representatives in congress? Or war crimes? Torture? Due-process-free indefinite detention? The causes of the 2008 financial meltdown?
No, they're too busy promoting and enabling conmen like Donald Trump one week. The next week, the press falls over itself with fake hyperventilatory guffaws at our comedian-in-chief. What we have is a class of court-jester-plutocrats. It's the most powerful, mean, rich clique from high school that everyone hated.
I agree. What has struck me about this entire Wikileaks story is the unprofessionalism of our journalist/media class. They don't do shit. They don't ask questions, they don't dive deeper, they don't look up discrepancies, they're completely and utterly un-curious. I've seen paraplegic patients with more activity than our media class. As the RT interview above reveals, governments know very well about these whistleblowing organizations and may plant misinformation to be leaked and uncritically accepted as truth.
What about the reporting by the St. Petersburg Times about commercial Russian satellite photos of the region, photos that showed there was no military buildup and that Bush Sr. overexaggerated the actual threat from Saddam? http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0906/p01s02-wosc.html
Quoting from the Znet article:
"leven years ago, during the lead-up to the Gulf War, photos from a Soviet satellite indicated that the Bush-Quayle administration was lying when it claimed that at least 250,000 Iraqi troops and 1,500 tanks were in Kuwait by the second week of September 1990. Much of the initial public rationale for a U.S. military buildup in the Persian Gulf that fall was based on the claim that those troops represented an imminent threat to invade Saudi Arabia (at a time when more than 100,000 U.S. soldiers were already stationed in that country).
After purchasing photos of the region from a Soviet commercial satellite agency, the St. Petersburg Times published a front-page article on January 6, 1991—more than a week before the Gulf War began—reporting that “Soviet satellite photos of Kuwait taken five weeks after the Iraqi invasion suggest the Bush administration might have exaggerated the scope of Iraq's military threat to Saudi Arabia at the time.” Analysis of the photos indicated that the actual Iraqi troop strength in Kuwait was perhaps 25 percent of the figure that the White House had trumpeted while building its war agenda.
The St. Petersburg Times reporting on the satellite photos got little play in the national media. (Similar information had gotten only a few drops of ink in autumn 1990 without gaining any prominent media attention.)"
I think you misunderstand why the tenements were a bad idea: it wasn't that the poor had no ownership, but that, as Jane Jacobs stated in Life and Death of Great American Cities, the tenements did not allow people to flourish. The "rational" designers didn't fail because the reputed virtues (such as property rights) escaped them, but because they didn't value diversity, the life cycle of cities, the importance of aesthetics to the "soul," the limits of money, population instability, etc.
Certainly, subsidized housing was part of Jacobs' solution, but it only a part.
Perry looks and acts the part: rugged, virile, confident. Just as OBL was claimed by the US government to dye his hair to appear younger and masculine, it's clear that Perry hits the JFM too. I wouldn't be surprised if Josh Brolin is probably already in talks with Oliver Stone for a biography of Perry.
The continuing problems of unjust social policy, increasing income inequality, homelessness, decreased social capital, poor urban planning, etc., are not proof that Jack Kemp, or any lionized conservative figure for that matter, was correct, prescient or visionary.
No one to my knowledge has written the kind of psycho-biography of Perry that would give us insight into the man. It's very possible that even he doesn't believe the shit he sells, that he senses the public's resentment against Barack-the-Eunuch, the potential to ride the fundamentalist reactionary wave into the White House and do the bidding of the very wealthy, just as Dubya did, and Dubya's father before that. (Obama castrated himself by cultivating a reputation for being "professorial"--that in reality, he is not, and that in fact, he seeks the approval of rich white guys, as Frank Rich wrote, does not matter.) Where is Justin Frank??
By David Swanson (order his book here)
Not quite. the WHCD was this past weekend. Bin Laden's been dead for several days.
There's not a person in the room who actually believes the birther nonsense. It's a useful distracting issue for the lowest-common-denominators in our public.
The rich LOVE Obama and our one-party system. Sure, they would love MORE money with an-all republican congress and executive, but this is actually okay. Obama benefits because the more time he has to deal with the birther/Trump thing, the less time he'll have to deal with questions about the Guantanamo dossiers or our numerous wars or the jobless "recovery"-that-isn't.
the average net worth per individual in the audience of the WHCD was easily over 3 million dollars. maybe even 10 million dollars.
these are the beneficiaries of Obama's conservative-friendly economic policies.
when Cornel West calls Obama's policies racist (http://www.democracynow.org/2010/11/19/cornel_west_on_charles_rangel_bush) there's reason for it:
The American media It has long given up being adversarial to power. It is symbiotic with those in power.
Here, in the audience of the WHCD, indicated by the canned laughter, we see that unprofessionalism celebrated.
Does the press care to investigate the sources of income inequality. Or voter cynicism, impotence, invisibility? Or the source of endless wars? Or the corruption of our elected representatives in congress? Or war crimes? Torture? Due-process-free indefinite detention? The causes of the 2008 financial meltdown?
No, they're too busy promoting and enabling conmen like Donald Trump one week. The next week, the press falls over itself with fake hyperventilatory guffaws at our comedian-in-chief. What we have is a class of court-jester-plutocrats. It's the most powerful, mean, rich clique from high school that everyone hated.
I agree. What has struck me about this entire Wikileaks story is the unprofessionalism of our journalist/media class. They don't do shit. They don't ask questions, they don't dive deeper, they don't look up discrepancies, they're completely and utterly un-curious. I've seen paraplegic patients with more activity than our media class. As the RT interview above reveals, governments know very well about these whistleblowing organizations and may plant misinformation to be leaked and uncritically accepted as truth.
This was a pretty good interview by RT's Lauren Lyster of whistleblower John Young:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMRUiB_8tTc
What about the reporting by the St. Petersburg Times about commercial Russian satellite photos of the region, photos that showed there was no military buildup and that Bush Sr. overexaggerated the actual threat from Saddam?
http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0906/p01s02-wosc.html
http://zcommunications.org/media-war-without-end-by-norman-solomon
Quoting from the Znet article:
"leven years ago, during the lead-up to the Gulf War, photos from a Soviet satellite indicated that the Bush-Quayle administration was lying when it claimed that at least 250,000 Iraqi troops and 1,500 tanks were in Kuwait by the second week of September 1990. Much of the initial public rationale for a U.S. military buildup in the Persian Gulf that fall was based on the claim that those troops represented an imminent threat to invade Saudi Arabia (at a time when more than 100,000 U.S. soldiers were already stationed in that country).
After purchasing photos of the region from a Soviet commercial satellite agency, the St. Petersburg Times published a front-page article on January 6, 1991—more than a week before the Gulf War began—reporting that “Soviet satellite photos of Kuwait taken five weeks after the Iraqi invasion suggest the Bush administration might have exaggerated the scope of Iraq's military threat to Saudi Arabia at the time.” Analysis of the photos indicated that the actual Iraqi troop strength in Kuwait was perhaps 25 percent of the figure that the White House had trumpeted while building its war agenda.
The St. Petersburg Times reporting on the satellite photos got little play in the national media. (Similar information had gotten only a few drops of ink in autumn 1990 without gaining any prominent media attention.)"