By BOB HERBERT
 How do you put together a consumer economy that works when the consumers are out of work?
One of the great stories you'll be hearing over the next couple of years will be about the large number of Americans who were forced out of work in this recession and remained unable to find gainful employment after the recession ended. We're basically in denial about this.
There are now more than five unemployed workers for every job opening in the United States. The ranks of the poor are growing, welfare rolls are rising and young American men on a broad front are falling into an abyss of joblessness.
Some months ago, the Obama administration and various mainstream economists forecast a peak unemployment rate of roughly 8 percent this year. It has already reached 9.4 percent, and most analysts now expect it to hit 10 percent or higher. Economists are currently spreading the word that the recession may end sometime this year, but the unemployment rate will continue to climb. That's not a recovery. That's mumbo jumbo.
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| The American Empire Is Bankrupt
Jun 14, 2009
By Chris Hedges
This week marks the end of the dollar's reign as the world's reserve currency. It marks the start of a terrible period of economic and political decline in the United States. And it signals the last gasp of the American imperium. That's over. It is not coming back. And what is to come will be very, very painful.
Barack Obama, and the criminal class on Wall Street, aided by a corporate media that continues to peddle fatuous gossip and trash talk as news while we endure the greatest economic crisis in our history, may have fooled us, but the rest of the world knows we are bankrupt. And these nations are damned if they are going to continue to prop up an inflated dollar and sustain the massive federal budget deficits, swollen to over $2 trillion, which fund America's imperial expansion in Eurasia and our system of casino capitalism. They have us by the throat. They are about to squeeze.
There are meetings being held Monday and Tuesday in Yekaterinburg, Russia, (formerly Sverdlovsk) among Chinese President Hu Jintao, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and other top officials of the six-nation Shanghai Cooperation Organization. The United States, which asked to attend, was denied admittance. Watch what happens there carefully. The gathering is, in the words of economist Michael Hudson, "the most important meeting of the 21st century so far."
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The Truth Alone Will Not Set You Free
By Chris Hedges
CNN's Soledad O'Brien, left, and Miles O'Brien rehearse with the network's "news wall" in the background.
The ability of the corporate state to pacify the country by extending credit and providing cheap manufactured goods to the masses is gone. The pernicious idea that democracy lies in the choice between competing brands and the freedom to accumulate vast sums of personal wealth at the expense of others has collapsed. The conflation of freedom with the free market has been exposed as a sham. The travails of the poor are rapidly becoming the travails of the middle class, especially as unemployment insurance runs out and people get a taste of Bill Clinton's draconian welfare reform. And class warfare, once buried under the happy illusion that we were all going to enter an age of prosperity with unfettered capitalism, is returning with a vengeance.
Our economic crisis-despite the corporate media circus around the death of Michael Jackson or Gov. Mark Sanford's marital infidelity or the outfits of Sacha Baron Cohen's latest incarnation, Brüno-barrels forward. And this crisis will lead to a period of profound political turmoil and change. Those who care about the plight of the working class and the poor must begin to mobilize quickly or we will lose our last opportunity to save our embattled democracy. The most important struggle will be to wrest the organs of communication from corporations that use mass media to demonize movements of social change and empower proto-fascist movements such as the Christian right.
American culture-or cultures, for we once had distinct regional cultures-was systematically destroyed in the 20th century by corporations. These corporations used mass communication, as well as an understanding of the human subconscious, to turn consumption into an inner compulsion. Old values of thrift, regional identity that had its own iconography, aesthetic expression and history, diverse immigrant traditions, self-sufficiency, a press that was decentralized to provide citizens with a voice in their communities were all destroyed to create mass, corporate culture. New desires and habits were implanted by corporate advertisers to replace the old. Individual frustrations and discontents could be solved, corporate culture assured us, through the wonders of consumerism and cultural homogenization. American culture, or cultures, was replaced with junk culture and junk politics. And now, standing on the ash heap, we survey the ruins. The very slogans of advertising and mass culture have become the idiom of common expression, robbing us of the language to make sense of the destruction. We confuse the manufactured commodity culture with American culture. Read More | |
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Economy Yields Too Few Prophets
By Peter Laarman
June 29, 2009
Few mainstream journalists are truly capturing the reality of the economy in terms of the nation's worst off. As of last month, the actual number of workers in crisis is not the 14 million but more like 29 million, or 18 percent of the total workforce. Where are the religious coalitions willing to challenge the president's policies?
A number of colleagues have challenged my focus on the continued and seemingly bottomless taxpayer bailout of too-big-to-fail financial institutions as obsessive, even cranky. The criticisms fall into three categories: (1) they know what they're doing-you're not an expert; (2) why would you care how they revive the economy, as long as they get things moving again?; and (3) Shhhh-it's Obama: don't give ammunition to his enemies.
Here's my answer. There is no such thing as "the economy": there are multiple economies, multiple interests, in play. But to Washington, and to the pack journalists who feed us our daily economic news, the only economy that really matters is the Dow, the NASDQ, and the S&P 500. If you follow the business press, as I do, the only question is whether some "green shoots" in these markets are real or whether there's more bad news to come for investors in the form of credit card defaults or corporate bad debt that has been carefully hidden from view. In the case of credit cards, it's almost as though the fate of the card holders is a sideshow: it's the fate of the lenders we should care about. Read More |
Fellow Kinetics Faith & Justice Network member, Dr. Eric McDaniel, is researching the degree to which churches actively discuss various health issues ranging from heart disease to domestic violence. The survey will ask questions in regards to the actual activities of the church, such as programs or message sent to the congregation or community. It will also examine pastor's attitudes towards these issues and their perception of member attitudes.
We are looking for 800 pastors who would be willing to participate. The survey will be made available via the internet this coming Fall. If your church is interested in participating in this survey please email me at info@kineticnet.org . Please include name of church, pastor, and your contact information.
Please support this valuable research and our brother. In love & service,
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About Us
... You will raise up the age-old foundations; And you will be called the repairer of the breach, The restorer of the streets in which to dwell. (Isaiah. 58:12)
Kinetics Faith & Justice Network is designed to form strategic alliances and foster dialogue across various disciplines for community empowerment. Members include clergy, scholars, lawyers, social justice advocates, and nonprofit and business professionals.
Kinetics mission is to disseminate information and develop new ideas that work to strengthen social movements within the African-American community; providing them with the tools and skills to pursue justice and better address the needs of those whom they serve. Kinetics is a project of Fusion Partnerships, Inc.
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