Last night I got a call from a nice sounding girl about eighteen doing that UCB Alumni plead for money to save our school. I had already hung up on a similar call last week. I said then, you want money from me. I live on Social Security. If you want money, go on strike and shut it down until the Regents recind the tuition hikes.
On this call, I read the nice young girl's voice the riot act. Do you know your tuition was just doubled? Yes, she said. And you and your parents are going to pay that? Well, no I am on a scholarship. (I almost said, well, duh, it figures doesn't? But I didn't.) So what's your major? Actually I haven't declared yet. What are you thinking of? Political Science. OMG. Well, you have to get out and do some politics in the street, or Berkeley will never get out of the toilet. I am sorry you feel that way. What? This isn't a feeling. It's a fact. She repeats, I am sorry you feel that way. Well what did you expect? You called an alumn from the 60s. I finished, listen, get good grades and go to law school, and said goodbye.
I was feeling guilty for ranting at some nice young thing who had no idea what I was talking about or why. I abbrivated the above exchange just to give a flavor of how it went. She had totally bought into the corporate-state propaganda on every issue I raised. The conversation went on for something between and five and ten minutes. If you talk fast, you can get a lot in a few minutes. She wasn't going to listen because I had insulted her. My mistake. But I hope the words and their empirical meanings would stick. Some day sooner or later, hopefully she will see something that reminds her of the crank on the phone.
The political innocence of many of the students here is mind boggling. I have to remember I wasn't much different at eighteen. She was a lower division volunteer working to raise money for a public university, as if the institution was some kind of cash strapped charity. You want money? Raise taxes on the rich. Go threaten to burn down the state capital, if they don't tax the rich and pay for the public institutions of the state. I have my own innocence to struggle with. I've got to get a line before the next alumni association call, because they are in spring fund raising mode.
Below is a link to Kucinich questioning Scott Walker on the political intentions of his state budget. K said it was not a budget, but a political document. Walker stonewalled Kuchinich for the most part, and then admitted stripping union rights had no financial impact on the state budget. Kucinich had a letter from Wisconsin's budget analist's office that determined the anti-union provisions had no fiscal impact on the the state budget. He moved to enter the letter into the record. The chairman Darrel Issa moved to enter the letter into the record, pending chair consideration. This was a parlimentary move to postpone K's request, and then bury the letter later off camera. K knew that's what Issa intended and told Issa that kind conditional motion was never used with routine record entry requests. Issa answered, Waxman did it all the time. (Which meant that Waxman must have blocked a bunch of rightwing obfuscation submissions to cloud the hearing record). K retorts, well the letter is now in the public record anyway. During the exchange, Issa maintained the letter was not widely distributed, which implied it wasn't a valid or balanced analysis. Well, and then K is wrong, since all budgets are political documents and they are premier tools of class war. Nevermind.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqhtUTyqVOY
This morning on Democracy Now there was an interview with co-chair Raul Grijalva of the Progressive Caucus. They have what they call The People's Budget. Grijalva mentions the Sachs budget. This is Jeffery Sachs who I tried to figure out a few days ago. After a short search I found all kinds of news items about Jeffery Sachs and The People's Budget, but no actual document. If somebody can find this document, please post a link, so we can all see the details. First of all there is no deficit if the government just turns off corporate subsidies for energy and outsourcing and stops direct hand outs to the financial sector.
What I suspect is that Sachs is something of a backdoor neoliberal. He probably believes that freemarket economics can be made user friendly if tamed by moderate government regulation.
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/4/14/while_obama_touts_compromise_with_gop
I don't trust the Progressive Caucus any more after they caved in during the healthcare bullshit, and refused to denounce Obama as a double dealing SOB. When the Demos were a majority the PC had the votes to stop anything in the House they didn't like and they never used that power. Obama continuously play them with, `we' can't get what you want passed, so get behind what I am doing. They got behind Obama and sure enough, he shit on them.
That is what is going to happen again over the budget nonsense. Then as now, there is almost no media coverage of the PC or any of these activities. Just like then, it was difficult to get stories and coverage of more progressive ideas and solutions outside what the insurance industry realm of discourse. So it will be again with the financial industry calling the shots over the budget.
Another example of non-coverage were the mass protests in Iraq and at a guess buried in back pages of US newspapers. Nobody seems to discuss the ramifications of Fukushima and massive government cover-ups to protect the corporate energy giants (just like BP and Gulf) or the fact that Obama appointed GE's CEO Jeffery Immelt as an economic adviser on jobs. Jobs? This was the same Immelt who flew to China to help Chinese energy development plans, i.e. electic power generation plants, where not coindently GE is a major nuclear power producer and developer of the type of reactors that are in meltdown in Japan. The japanese `borrowed' GE's designs. So was Obama's jobs plan, a jobs plan for China the king of outsourcing?
Other items from DN interviews, were a lots of updates about Detroit. Evidently the governor claims the power to put Detroit and other cities in Michigan under his appointed fiscal managers who can dissolve the elected city governments. The state appointed manager can then sell off the city assets in no-bid contracts.
Amy Goodman asked, ``Grace, the latest news out of Detroit, Mayor Dave Bing warned that the state could appoint an emergency manager to oversee Detroit if his budget isn't approved.''
Grace is Grace Lee Boggs. I worried a little about her. I'd like some list feedback on Grace. She sounded good, but a little too hippy, as in we all need to come together and re-think our relationship to each other and to government. Yes of course, but where are we going with that? She said, let's see vacant lots as opportunities. I know what this means, since I was at People's Park and saw how threatening the re-appropriation of even a tiny plot of land causes police state reactions way out of proporition to the square foot. Reagan had a few people shot and one guy killed and had Berkeley under marshall law over a few square yards of dirt.
This gets me to thinking about David Harvey again and the geography of revolution. I'll try to think this through on another post. It is relevant to some of the vague things that Grace Boggs said this morning.
CG