Author Archives: Josh Eidelson

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I guess “guns and butter” is less of a problem when you believe folks are better off eating their bread dry anyway:

Mr. Bush boasted that he would virtually freeze many domestic programs, with an increase of less than 1 percent for domestic discretionary spending outside of military and homeland security.
But he is proposing an increase of 7 percent for the military, including 13 percent more for missile defense systems; an increase of nearly 10 percent for heightened security against terrorist attacks; and an increase of 11 percent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Those increases and Mr. Bush’s determination to make his tax cuts permanent will limit his maneuvering room in other areas.

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Righteous:

In a tactic that labor and religion experts say is a growing phenomenon, two dozen Catholic, Episcopal, Methodist, Jewish, Presbyterian, and Lutheran clerics joined the country’s largest labor dispute and the longest supermarket strike in state history. ‘It is the poorest and the downtrodden who need our voice, so we are taking an active stand on their behalf,’ says Rabbi Steven Jacobs, one of the participants in the cross-California ‘justice pilgrimage.’

Along with 50 grocery-store workers, the clerics boarded a bus for an eight-hour, multistop journey to the East Bay home of Safeway CEO Steve Burd. Once there, they joined a contingent of 200 protesters and marched to Mr. Burd’s palatial estate, where they delivered 10,000 letters appealing to him to resume negotiations in the deadlocked strike.

‘After several decades of moving off the national radar, America’s religious leaders are taking their heads out of the sand and restoring some of the tactics that helped build the great unions in the first place,’ says Rick Fantasia, a professor of sociology at Smith College in Northampton, Mass.”

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Nathan Newman, who supported the Faustian Prescription Drug Deal, is right to argue that the increase in projected costs presents the Democrats an opportunity to call for the corporate sweetheart deals built into the legislation to be reversed – to make this an object lesson in which party it is that’s breaking the bank, and where the cash is going. Here’s hoping the Democrats indeed take the chance to take a stand. They still would have been better off taking a stand against the damn thing when it was time to vote in the first place.

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Another unfortunate YDN staff editorial:

As great an activist as he may be, we are beginning to tire of Jackson’s seemingly endless campaign against the so-called evils of Yale…Yale should be mindful of the power its successful investment office wields, and how its practices can and do affect the world around it. But for Jesse Jackson to dictate how Yale manages its own assets is entirely inappropriate.

In other words, it’s OK for Yale to do the right thing, just as long as it doesn’t have to appearance to being a response to demands from New Haveners, students, or any other uppity interlopers. Which is pretty much the message of the Yale Office of Public Affairs as well.

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From Reuters:

The U.S. economic rebound has so far comforted homeowners and stock investors, but has done little for working class paychecks, economists say.

A stalled job market is making any wage growth difficult for the average consumer, whose spending makes up two-thirds of overall economic activity in the United States.

Mid- to low-income workers who, unlike white collar workers, rarely get perks on top of their salaries like year- end bonuses and stock options, will likely be affected the most by the slow growth of wages.

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David Corn slams Howard Dean over Roy Neel:

There has always been a disconnect in the Dean campaign between the man and the movement. If two years ago someone cooked up the idea to create a progressive, reform-minded grassroots crusade that would focus on harnessing “people power” to confront Washington’s money-and-power culture and a leader for such an effort was needed, Dean’s name would not have jumped to mind. Senator Paul Wellstone maybe, not Dean. Yet thousands of Americans were yearning for such an endeavor, and Dean found a way to tap into their desires. It was not the most natural or conventional of couplings, but it happened. And he was propelled to the front of the presidential pack.

Is Dean filing for divorce?

Maybe what we’re seeing here is the Kerry, Edwards, and Clark campaigns becoming more like Dean’s just at the point at which his is becoming more like theirs…

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I’ve got to say – the more I read like this, the more sympathetic the guy becomes:

Kerry is like some character in a Balzac novel, an adventurer twirling the end of his mustache and preying on rich women. This low-born poseur with his threadbare pseudo-Brahmin family bought a political career with one rich woman’s money, dumped her, and made off with another heiress to enable him to run for president. If Democrats want to talk about middle-class tax cuts, couldn’t they nominate someone who hasn’t been a poodle to rich women for past 33 years?

Read: Manly men don’t need help from women. And rich women should know better than to marry beneath their class. At least Ann never claimed to be a “compassionate conservative.”

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Here, the Times gets it:

While still very much a work in progress, the Democratic Party emerging from Iowa and New Hampshire is different from the careful centrism of the Clinton era.

Howard Dean may not have won a primary or caucus yet, a circumstance that led to a major shake-up of his campaign on Wednesday, but his mark on the party is unmistakable. His defeats are less a victory for the Democratic establishment than a sign of the other leading candidates’ ability to adjust, and harness the energy originally tapped by Dr. Dean’s insurgent campaign: the anger at President Bush, the opposition to the war with Iraq, the demand for a different direction in domestic policy.

This is a Democratic Party spoiling for a fight.

Again, the hard part will be keeping it that way.

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Phoebe Rounds on the YDN article my girlfriend described as “When Yale Workers Attack!”:

in the fewest words, not-really-veiled-at-all classism. what am i being taught at (or, rather than at, i ought to say by) this university?

And Zach:

it’s wonderful that yale has “lax hiring policies” for everyone except the 13 latino workers they promised jobs to when they signed a contract with Locals 34 and 35 back in September and who have now been blacklisted by New Haven’s ruling class because of their refusal to cross Local 35’s lines.