Lefty Prof's List: U.S. Domestic

• s. If the wars continue, they are on track to require at least another $450 billion in Pentagon spending by 2020.

• It’s no secret that the manufacturing sector in the United States has been in decline for the past three decades. But a strong rebound in durable goods, such as cars and electronics, has helped revive the manufacturing sector and has supported the post-recession recovery.
• Comparing across countries, the United States has performed more strongly than most of its G-7 counterparts, with the exception of Germany. Yet, the recovery in Germany has stagnated since mid-2011, while the U.S. recovery continues to gain steam.
• while the headline recovery numbers for U.S. manufacturing are impressive, they mask significant differences between the sectors producing durable goods and nondurable goods (such as food and clothing).
• The post-recession recovery has been driven almost entirely by a rebound in durable goods production. On the other hand, nondurable goods have fared poorly—their production is still 10 percent below its pre-recession levels and only 6 percent above its trough.
• Lower labor costs in the United States compared with those in emerging markets have been the most important factor in explaining the recent revival in U.S. manufacturing.
• a more competitive real exchange rate (a depreciation of the dollar relative to other currencies, corrected for differences in inflation) and lower energy prices, may have also played a significant role.

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• "comprehensive immigration reform" (CIR),
• To be sure, there are different opinions in the immigrant rights movement about whether it's possible to pass a bill this year. But Sharry's "optimism" notwithstanding, a number of activists had already concluded CIR was dead.
• Jorge Mújica, a prominent Chicago immigrant rights activist and author of the Mexico del Norte blog, called immigration reform a "zombie." According to Mújica: "The 'reform' is dead, and the attempts to 'revive it' sound like voodoo and zombies.
• many immigrants have already rejected the "Border Security, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Modernization Act."
• "That reform is no good," said Martín Unzueta, of Chicago Community and Workers Rights. "We would be wasting time marching for that. I'd rather go to shut down ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement]." Indeed, Unzueta is preparing to travel to Arizona to take part in a Shut Down ICE action in mid-October.
• Among other things, S. 744 promised a "legalization" that would consign immigrants to second-class status for more than a decade at least. Under this temporary status, there would still be multiple opportunities for deportation. The bill also stepped up "border security" and called for implementation of a universal "E-verify" system to snare the undocumented. And whole groups of immigrants were excluded from multiple government benefits (for a detailed analysis, see this article by Justin Akers Chacón).
• support for the so-called comprehensive approach to immigration reform--which essentially means pairing "border security" with a "path to citizenship"--is dominant within the immigrant rights movement.
• Supporters of CIR managed to out-mobilize the right during the August congressional recess. They won more than two dozen Republicans to support a "path to citizenship" as part of an immigration reform bill.
• S. 744 is the only thing to be voted on. CIR's advocates say there are enough votes in the House to pass the legislation. But this begs the question: If S. 744 is the "best we can get," is that good enough? Will CIR end up cementing in place restrictive and repressive laws that the mega-marches of 2006-07 defeated when the Republicans were pushing them?
• AT THE time S. 744 passed, many undocumented immigrants--those who didn't fit into big business' preferred categories--were disappointed, but not surprised. They turned to struggle again because they knew if a proposal like S. 744 was enacted, they would be the losers.

• nine undocumented youth--six of whom had been deported and three of whom had traveled to Mexico to return with the six--re-entered the United States at Nogales, Ariz., in an act of civil disobedience.

   

  The nine demanded that the Obama administration allow them to return to their homes. After weeks of tireless activism, they won their demand. The National Immigrant Youth Alliance organized a nationwide week of actions to highlight the issues of deportations and family reunification.
• During the first two weeks of August, 14 undocumented transplant patients and their families went on hunger strike in Chicago to demand from area hospitals the medical attention they had been denied for lack of a Social Security number or health insurance coverage. One of the strikers later died.
• PRESSURE FROM the struggle--as well as the evidence of just how bad many provisions of the bill are--have pushed many immigrant groups and individuals to curtail their support for S. 744.

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• Two surveys released this week suggest an intensifying sense of impatience with the agonizingly slow recovery and a profound and growing disillusionment with Corporate America.
• First, a New York Times/CBS News poll shows declining faith that America is on a path to economic recovery
• The poll reflects a high degree of political disorientation and confusion among voters. While 72% of the public—including a stunning 55% of Republcians—favor President Obama’s proposal to raise taxes on incomes over $250,000, a slight majority backs Republican Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) plan for wrecking Medicare, which also contains relatively little-known provisions for further lowering taxes on corporations and the rich.
• 70 percent convinced that the country is “seriously on the wrong track.” President Obama's economic policies have a 57 percent disapproval rate, while congressional Republicans are seen even more dubiously.
• propelling an increasing number of Americans to question whether the “free market” is the best economic system. Americans are growing increasingly suspicious of the giant corporations which largely shape the economy.
• Thus, the polling firm Globescan found a sharp drop in the level of support for “free enterprise”:
• in 2002, four in five Americans (80%) saw the free market as the best economic system for the future—the highest level of support among tracking countries.
• has plummeted since 2009, falling 15 points in a year [emphasis added] so that fewer than three in five (59%) now see free market capitalism as the best system for the future.
• Americans with incomes below $20,000 were particularly likely to have lost faith in the free market over the past year, with their support dropping from 76 percent to 44 percent between 2009 and 2010.
• GlobeScan Chairman Doug Miller commented: "America is the last place we would have expected to see such a sharp drop in trust in the free enterprise system. This is not good news for business."
• U.S. multinational corporations…cut their work forces in the U.S. by 2.9 million during the 2000s while increasing employment overseas by 2.4 million,

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• According to Bieber, abortion is killing a baby, and rape "happens for a reason." Sound familiar? That's because these are right-wing talking points their assault on a women's rights.
• Mike Huckabee called Bieber's comments "refreshing...For the first time since 1973, more people now identify as pro-life than not. And the reason those numbers have changed is because of younger people."
• Unfortunately, Huckabee's assertion that more young people identify as "pro-life" than ever before is correct. The most recent Gallup Poll shows that 47 percent of Americans support a "pro-life" view, while 45 percent consider themselves pro-choice. The sharpest decrease in pro-choice sentiment is among young people aged 18 to 29. This is in keeping with a trend over the last 10 years, where pro-choice sentiment has declined nationally.
• The Guttmacher Institute's 2011 study on sex education reports that in 2010 alone, the federal government spent $50 million on state-run abstinence-until-marriage programs. Thirty-two states require sex education programs to include abstinence, and only 13 states require that sex education programs be factual and accurate
• According to the Guttmacher Institute, 18 percent of U.S. women who obtain abortions are teenagers. Women in their 20s obtain more than half of all abortions in the U.S.
• An original clause of the "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act"--Republican legislation introduced in the U.S. House this year--sought to redefine rape as "forcible rape," as if some kinds of rape are consensual.
• Support for choice in 1973--the year that the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade made abortion legal throughout the U.S.--stood at around 75 percent, according to polls.
• In 1989, the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL, now known as NARAL Pro-Choice America) issued a "talking points" memo to staff members instructing them not to use phrases like "a woman's body is her own to control," and to instead portray abortion as a "privacy issue."
• Between 1992 and 2004, there were no major pro-choice rallies in the United States.
• The National Abortion Federation reported 16 death threats to abortion providers in the U.S. and Canada in 2009 alone, along with over 40 bombings and 175 cases of arson since 1977.
• In the meantime, perhaps we should remind Bieber what one of his idols, Tupac Shakur, rapped about abortion: "And since a man can't make one / He has no right to tell a woman when and where to create one."

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• "It's amazing that three weeks into this thing, tens of thousands of union members are still showing up at the Capitol," said Mike Imbrogno, a member of the executive board of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 171 in Madison. "The optimism and union spirit is inspiring. People are definitely ready to keep up the struggle."

• A convoy of yellow Union Cabs, Madison's only worker-owned taxi company, circled Capitol square honking "This is what democracy looks like!" The rally included performances by musicians Michelle Shocked and Ryan Bingham, and a fiery speech from documentary filmmaker Michael Moore.

   

  "Wisconsin is not broke," Moore told the crowd in response to Walker's frequent claim that the state has run out of money. "The only thing's that's broke is the moral compass of the rulers." He added: "You have awakened a sleeping giant known as the working people of the United States of America! Your message has inspired people in all 50 states, and that message is: 'We have had it!'"
• A survey by the conservative Rasmussen group found that six out of 10 Wisconsin voters disapprove of Walker's performance, with nearly five out of 10 disapproving strongly.
• On Sunday, March 6, a pro-Walker rally at Madison's Alliant Center sponsored by Americans for Prosperity, a group funded by the billionaire Koch brothers, drew only about 100 people, while close to a thousand union supporters held a counter-protest outside.

• But what happens next depends at least as much on what the labor movement does, as on the maneuvering by Wisconsin's politicians.

   

  It was the initial huge response by labor, including three and four days of sickouts by teachers across the state that created the climate for the Democratic state senators to leave Wisconsin. But with the teachers back at work and Walker refusing to back down, the unions need to figure out what to do next--and just what exactly they're fighting for.

• At the outset of the struggle, many longstanding union activists were angry over union leaders' declaration that they would except the economic concessions contained in Walker's bill in exchange for the preservation of collective bargaining in some form. This is reflected in the official AFSCME slogans for the protests: "It's not about the money!"

   

  In response, union members and supporters have initiated the Kill the Whole Bill coalition, a group that's dedicated to opposing not just the anti-labor provisions in Walker's bill, but also the cuts in health care and the privatization of the University of Wisconsin. The coalition argues that because a broad range nonunion working people have rallied to support labor, the unions must stand with them against budget cuts, too.
• The Wisconsin AFL-CIO, which had organized the previous two rallies, decided to focus on protests outside Madison and called nothing at the Capitol. Instead, the state labor federation is putting its energies into mobilizing people for recall campaigns against eight Republican state senators and--once it is legally possible to do so next year--against the governor himself.
• Top union leaders would like to channel the movement into gathering signatures for recall campaigns around the state. The trouble with that approach, says Mike Imbrogno, is that "it will take months, and may fall flat anyway if the Democrats agree to a lousy compromise deal."
• Despite the fact that the leadership of the AFL-CIO doesn't want to talk about a general strike, its local affiliate, the South Central Federation of Labor (SCFL), passed a resolution last month saying it would endorse a general strike if it were called.

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• the savage 7th century death cult called “Islam” and the threat that it presents to civilized Man
• The terrorists of Islam for whom any day is a great day for a massacre
• Consider it for what it is,  a 13 story tall middle finger being flipped at the victims of 911 and America as a whole by animals.

  • Referring to the proposed Muslim community center in NYC.
• The monument being built would consist of a Mosque for the worship of the terrorists’ god  and a “cultural center”  to propagandize for the extermination of all things not approved by their cult.
• the consequences of letting political correctness rule how we deal with Islam

  • Good example of how the term "political correctness" has been (mis)appropriated by the Right.

• “The US and the West must acknowledge the harm they have done to Muslims before terrorism can end.   New York-based Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf speaking from his New York mosque, Imam Feisal said the West had to understand the terrorists’ point of view.

   

  Imam Feisal said it was Christians who started mass attacks on civilians.”

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• SINCE WHEN is it a sign of "sensitivity" and "tolerance" to oppose the building of a house of worship?
• The crusade in Lower Manhattan is more than the ravings of racists. It represents the crudest face of the ideological offensive to justify U.S. wars and occupations in the Middle East and beyond, as well as stepped-up repression at home.

• "Survivors of the Holocaust are entitled to feelings that are irrational," ADL National Director Abraham Foxman told the New York Times. Referring to families who lost loved ones on 9/11, Foxman continued, "Their anguish entitles them to positions that others would categorize as irrational or bigoted."

   

  Never mind that many families of 9/11 victims expressed support for the mosque. And never mind that equating the September 11 attacks with the Holocaust might seem to diminish the murder of 6 million Jews during the Second World War in precisely the way that the ADL so frequently laments.

• In Murfreesboro, Tenn., Republican candidates have denounced plans for a large Muslim center proposed near a subdivision, and hundreds of protesters have turned out for a march and a county meeting.

   

  In late June, in Temecula, Calif., members of a local Tea Party group took dogs and picket signs to Friday prayers at a mosque that is seeking to build a new worship center on a vacant lot nearby.

   

  In Sheboygan, Wis., a few Christian ministers led a noisy fight against a Muslim group that sought permission to open a mosque in a former health food store bought by a Muslim doctor.
• Glenn Beck's call for a "Militia Day" to protest Muslim Family Day at the Six Flags amusement park in Chicago on September 12, and South Carolina state Sen. Jake Knotts' description of his opponent for the Republican nomination for governor, state Rep. Nikki Haley, as a "raghead" (Haley is actually a Methodist who was born in India and converted from Sikhism).
• Every imperial conflict generates bigotry aimed at "the enemy," whether the basis is racial, religious or cultural. Once mobilized, this hate takes on a life of its own, reflected and refracted in the mainstream media and stoked by racist politicians.
• The Vietnam War, for example, gave rise to vicious anti-Asian racism--so intense that Arizona Sen. John McCain, considered a moderate Republican, declared to reporters during his 2000 presidential campaign, "I hated the gooks. I will hate them as long as I live."
• FOR ITS part, the Obama administration has been all but silent while right-wingers have stepped up their crusade against Arabs and Muslims--except for the times when it added fuel to the fire.
• when have the media given the same front-page prominence to the serial massacres carried out by U.S. forces--whether the bombardment of wedding parties or shooting sprees by U.S. soldiers on patrol? Instead of acknowledging any of this, the media exploited the killings of the aid workers to highlight the brutality of the Taliban

• Nevertheless, the anti-Islam crusade is stirring opposition--sometimes from surprising sources.

   

  Newsweek magazine's thoroughly mainstream commentator Fareed Zakaria returned an award and $10,000 honorarium given to him five years ago by the ADL in protest against the organization's statement opposing the mosque in Lower Manhattan.
• In Murfreesboro, Tenn., when members of a local mega-church organized a march against the planned construction of a mosque, local activists formed Middle Tennesseans for Religious Freedom and--on one week's notice--organized a 500-strong counterprotest to assert the right of Muslims to exercise their right to religious freedom, free from persecution, harassment and threats.

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• How teachers and principals are evaluated is at the heart of Gov. Chris Christie’s education reform plans
• As laid out in the administration’s unsuccessful applications for federal Race to the Top funds, the governor has called for evaluations that include student achievement measures and standardized test scores. Christie also wants to use evaluations to both reward and penalize teachers, and has suggested hot-button topics like creating merit pay and ending seniority and other tenure protections.

• But the United States has ruled out a Golden Temple visit, according to an American official involved in planning. Temple officials said that American advance teams had gone to Amritsar, the holy city that is the site of the temple, to discuss a possible visit. But the plan appears to have foundered on the thorny question of how Mr. Obama would cover his head, as Sikh tradition requires, while visiting the temple.

• The commission is due to deliver its recommendations in early December, but its co-chairs gave a preview November 10 of proposals that aim to trim $200 billion in federal spending per year.
• In short, it's a roadmap for how the working class will be asked to bear all the pain through cuts, cuts and more cuts, while the wealthy continue to make out like bandits. The Bowles-Simpson proposals amount to a preview for the next phase of attacks on the working class, as "austerity" becomes the common buzzword of the international ruling class in its attempts to resolve the ongoing crisis gripping global capitalism.
• BOWLES AND Simpson tried to disguise their agenda by not calling only for cuts in social programs. Instead, the co-chairs recommend a reduction in the government's discretionary spending of about $100 billion a year--while another $100 billion, surprisingly, would come from reducing the Pentagon budget, something that's been sacrosanct in Washington politics for years.
• it will ultimately be up to the Obama administration and Congress to enact the commission's recommendations--and it's hard to imagine Congress in its current state willingly cutting defense spending.
• Amazingly, Bowles and Simpson's announcement came on the same day that the Obama administration gave its strongest signal yet that it plans to extend the Bush-era tax cuts, including those for the wealthiest section of the population. That led to some incredible doubletalk
• calls for capping cost-of-living increases in Social Security payouts and increasing the retirement age to 68 by 2050 and 69 by 2075.
• For example, the payroll tax that funds the Social Security program is only levied on income up to $106,800--
• It's an indictment of how much a pliant media allows politicians to say whatever they want without being challenged that members of Congress can talk about cutting taxes in one breath and reducing the deficit in the next--and not be called out for how incompatible these two notions are.
• It boils down to this: While a section of

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• INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC cooperation has given way to a currency war as the leaders of the Group of 20 (G20) leading economies meet in South Korea
• whatever the official outcome of the summit, economic rivalries will intensify, wrapped in nationalism, trade protectionism and, in the U.S., endless China-bashing.
• By undertaking what's known as competitive devaluations of their currencies, the world's major economic powers are trying to make their own exports cheaper relative to their rivals. The motivation: A huge overhang of excess capacity across the whole world economy.

  • "Excess capacity" is another way of talking about "overproduction." Because the market is glutted (a crisis of overproduction that Marxists see as endemic to capitalism), capitalists have to reduce production. In other words, they utilize only a portion of the productive capacity of their factories etc. Thus you end up with "excess [productive] capacity," or a low "capacity utilization" (see next paragraph).
• According to one estimate made earlier this year, "the global economic downturn has brought nations like the U.S., Canada, Germany and Japan back to pre-2003 industrial production levels. In other countries, the situation is worse. Industrial production in Britain, France and Italy is currently the lowest since the early 1990s."
• The currency war, therefore, is but a prelude to a wider trade war. "Not all economies can have a net export improvement," wrote economist Nouriel Roubini. "This zero-sum game in currencies and net exports means one country's gain is some other country's loss, and a competitive devaluation war has ensued."

• FOR THE U.S., the world's biggest importer, the aim is to devalue the dollar to make imports more expensive and U.S. exports cheaper, thereby driving down the trade deficit, which reached $695.9 billion in 2008 before dropping to $380.7 billion in 2009 because of the economic crisis.

   

  The trade deficit is growing again, which has sapped the strength of the economic recovery in the U.S. China, which accounts for the biggest share of that deficit, is of course the main target of U.S. complaints, and was the subject of campaign ads from both Republican and Democratic candidates in the recent elections.
• with the world economy at the precipice after the financial crash of October 2008 that followed the collapse of Lehman Brothers, state spending propped up the world economy by bailing out the banks amid a plunge in trade and industrial production. The total world stimulus was estimated at around $20 trillion.

  • Total world stimulus estimated at $20 TRILLION!!!!
• The economic expansion of 2002-2007 led to a buildup of excess capacity worldwide in everything from factories to office buildings to houses. That excess capacity contributed to the collapse of 2008--and it still exists. Now the question is which countries will have to absorb the cost of writing down the value of those assets.
• THE WAY out of this crisis, according to economists, is a "rebalancing" of the world economy.
• But what appears to be a tidy solution in economic textbooks is being ferociously resisted in the real world. While the U.S. and China are the central front in the currency war, battle lines are being drawn all over. According to one study, G20 members have imposed 111 protectionist measures just since their last meeting in June.
• For the U.S., the biggest pressure point is a familiar one: China. The U.S. had hoped to use the G20 summit to gang up on China for its policies that keep its currency, the renminbi, pegged to the dollar at levels the U.S. claims are "artificially" low.
• the decline in both the value of the dollar and the renminbi has hit other industrializing countries such as Brazil and South Africa, which find themselves contending with cheaper Chinese imports.

• So with Brazil and other countries suffering collateral damage in the U.S.-China battle, U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner apparently thought he could direct these tensions against China in the run-up to the G20 summit. Instead, however, the U.S.'s own currency manipulation became the subject of ire at the G20 summit--low interest rates plus a new injection of $600 billion into the economy by the Federal Reserve.

   

  The measure, known in economists' jargon as "quantitative easing," is the modern equivalent of printing more money. The more dollars in circulation, the less they are worth relative to other currencies. This is the latest in a series of efforts by the U.S. government to drive down the value of the dollar relative to the euro, the Japanese yen and other major currencies as part of President Barack Obama's plan to double U.S. exports in five years.
• What unites Germany and China is the fact that both are what economists call "surplus" countries--that is, they export far more than they import. To rebalance the world economy, they would have to stimulate their domestic economies by raising wages and increasing demand, and make their exports more expensive.
• Chinese policymakers worry--correctly--that the U.S. is out to repeat the Plaza Accord of 1985, in which the U.S. successfully pressured Japan to allow its currency, the yen, to appreciate sharply against the dollar.
• the side effect was a financial bubble in Japan, followed by a decade of economic stagnation when the bubble burst.

• CHINA'S RISE makes it far more difficult for the U.S. to strong-arm the country's leaders the way it did to Japanese politicians 25 years ago.

   

  That's partly because of China's control of an estimated $1 trillion in U.S. government and agency bonds, which makes China the major creditor of the U.S. government. But the real complication for U.S. policymakers is that the U.S. and Chinese economies are closely intertwined as the result of U.S. multinational corporations' successful efforts to use China as a low-cost export platform to compete with Japan since the 1990s.
• In effect, China has shifted from the bureaucratic state capitalism that characterized its economy during the rule of Chinese Communist Party leader Mao Zedong to an export-oriented state capitalism. As the Economist magazine observed, China's model is proving attractive to industrializing countries:

• As the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development noted:

   

   The last 20 years have seen China double its share of the world's manufacturing value-added, triple its share of steel production, and almost quadruple its share of gross domestic product. China now holds more than one-tenth of the world's currency reserves and receives nearly one-tenth of the remittances sent home from migrants working abroad. Chinese residents today hold nearly one in three of the world's trademarks and account for one in six of its patent applications.
• China's growth doesn't make it immune from the crisis, however. On the contrary, the country's return to the pre-crisis rates of growth of around 10 percent have only added to the problems of overcapacity in manufacturing. Investments in Chinese fixed assets--factories and infrastructure--increased a staggering 400 percent between 2005 and 2010. In response, the government ordered the closure of steel mills built before 2005 in a bid to eliminate excess capacity. More recently, the government ordered the closure of 2,000 inefficient factories.
• China's rulers are attempting to keep their economy competitive to withstand pressures from the U.S. and other advanced countries. China is also flexing its muscles over one of its key strategic exports--rare earth minerals

• For it's part, the U.S. is attempting to encircle China--economically, politically and militarily--in a bid to extract concessions.

   

  Thus, Barack Obama made a high-profile visit to India, where he acted as the deal-closer for a $5.8 billion sale of Boeing military transport planes and proposed closer U.S.-Indian economic cooperation that, he promised, would create jobs in the U.S.

   

  The real agenda, however, was for the U.S. to boost India as a strategic rival to China in Asia and tighten links between U.S. and Indian companies. The motivation was similar for Obama's effort to expand the U.S.-South Korean free trade agreement, though the deal fell through. The U.S. is trying to create an economic axis in Asia that can counter China's rise.
• All this adds up to a more dangerous and unstable world as the lingering effects of the crash of 2008 continue to shape world politics. The big question is how the working class, East and West, will respond.

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• A federal appeals court has ruled against an emeritus professor who had accused the University of California at Irvine of trampling his free-speech rights, but the court did not take up the tough First Amendment questions that attracted national attention to his case.

• the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said the various university leaders named as defendants in the lawsuit were shielded from its legal claims under the 11th Amendment, which has been interpreted as granting sovereign immunity to state officials.

   

  Having declared the defendants immune, the three-judge panel declined to weigh in on the merits of the First Amendment claims made by the plaintiff, Juan Hong, an emeritus professor of chemical engineering and materials science. "We leave the question of whether faculty speech such as Hong's is protected under the First Amendment for consideration in another case," the judges said.
• Mr. Hong alleged in his lawsuit that he had been denied a merit salary increase in 2004 because he had criticized the hiring and promotion decisions within his department at Irvine and had voiced concern about its reliance on part-time lecturers to teach lower-division classes. A U.S. District Court held in 2007 that Mr. Hong was not entitled to First Amendment protection for such speech because he had made the statements at issue in his capacity as a state employee.
• Garcetti v. Ceballos, which held that public agencies can discipline their employees for any speech made in connection with their jobs. That case involved a deputy district attorney, and the Supreme Court explicitly put aside the question of whether its logic would apply to speech made in an academic setting as well. Nevertheless, federal courts have applied the Garcetti ruling to several cases involving college faculty members, causing alarm among free-speech advocates who believe that letting colleges discipline faculty members over much work-related speech threatens academic freedom.
• the panel's decision said, "it is far from clearly established today, much less in 2004 when the university officers voted on Mr. Hong's merit increase, that university professors have a First Amendment right to comment on faculty administrative matters without retaliation."
• "The important thing for us is that the court does recognize that this is not a closed question," said Rachel Levinson, senior counsel for the American Association of University Professors, which had joined the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression in filing a friend-of-the-court brief urging the Ninth Circuit not to decide the case based on the Garcetti precedent.

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• Earlier this month, amidst the many thousands of people attending the One Nation rally, a few hundred people in the Socialist Contingent marched with signs demanding higher taxes for the rich and an end to the wars. (Full disclosure: I was part of this, and joined in chanting "We're gonna make Glen Beck cry!")
• Blaming the left and the right equally for the shabby state of American political discourse, its goal is, in the words of Stewart, to “take it down a notch for America.
• It is not so much a political protest as a parody of a political protest. Yet it will nonetheless serve partisan ends. The Democratic slogan for this election season might as well have been, “Don’t blame us, we’ve never actually done anything!” which has not exactly galvanized the youth vote. The Democrats are, of course, a predominantly centrist party (delirious fantasies about Obama as follower of Franz Fanon notwithstanding). So it’s not hard to tell which electoral base will be mobilized by the opportunity to consume well-produced comic infotainment in the nation’s capitol.
• Susan Herbst’s Rude Democracy: Civility and Incivility in American Politics (Temple University Press) avoids the familiar plaint that American political discussion was once ever so civilized, then began to decay sometime in the recent past.
• “Do we want more civil talk than uncivil talk?” she asks. “Of course. But what we need to focus on is how both civility and incivility are structured, contained, and used… Even some incivility can move a policy debate along. Creating a culture of argument, and the thick skin that goes along with it, are long-term projects that will serve democracy well.”
• She writes that “72 percent of students agreed that it was very important for them always to feel comfortable in class,” with “only 7 percent believing comfort not to be an issue.” She calls this “evidence for at least one factor underlying the student anxiety that we find: Feeling comfortable and unthreatened intellectually is a value many students share.”
• To think or believe something is a strictly personal matter. Hence pursuing an argument is taken as very nearly an act of aggression. Herbst cites interview data suggesting that some students regard it is almost impossible to persuade other people of anything.
• The Stewart-Colbert rally is bound to draw young people filled with unhappiness about how the world is going, and I'm not about to begrudge them the right to an interesting weekend. But the anti-ideological spirit of the event is a dead end. The attitude that it's better to stay cool and amused than to risk making arguments or expressing too much ardor -- this is not civility. It’s timidity.
• perhaps it would be worth quoting the old Wobbly humorist T-Bone Slim: “Wherever you find injustice, the proper form of politeness is attack."

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• There are 3.5 million housing units in NJ, 10 percent of which are vacant, according to the newly released American Community Survey conducted each year by the U.S. Census Bureau. We truly are a suburban state: 63 percent of housing structures were single-family homes; 36 percent, multi-unit structures; and 1 percent, mobile homes. Eighteen percent of all housing structures were built since 1990. The survey also showed that more than half of all households had at least two vehicles, 37 percent had two vehicles and 17 percent had three or more.