Democracy Now. I'll say without equivocation, you will not get this
information and range of vital opinion from any other source.
I urge you to check it out. Rebroadcast at 9 am on Pacifica.
Ed
From: Thomas F Barton
thomasfbarton@earthlink.net
Sent: Monday, December 07, 2009
Two-Thirds Of Military Age Americans Oppose Sending More To Die In Obama's
War
December 4, 2009 by Andrew Ryan, Boston Globe Staff [Excerpt]
Two-thirds of young adults oppose sending more US troops to Afghanistan,
according to a national poll released yesterday by the Harvard University
Institute of Politics that suggests fissures in a key demographic that
helped President Obama capture the White House.
The poll found that 55 percent of the young adults surveyed disapproved of
how he has handled Afghanistan.
- - -
Poll Finds U.S. Public Turning Against The Empire:
Dec. 4, 2009 McClatchy Newspapers [Excerpt]
WASHINGTON - At the very moment when President Barack Obama is looking to
thrust the U.S. ever more into global affairs, from Afghanistan to climate
change, the American public is turning more isolationist and unilateralist
than it has at any time in decades, according to a new poll released
Thursday.
The survey by the Pew Research Center indicated a plurality of Americans, 49
percent, think that the U.S. should "mind its own business internationally"
and leave it to other countries to fend for themselves.
- - -
DECEMBER 4, 2009 By GERALD F. SEIB, Wall St. Journal [Excerpts]
President Barack Obama faces a lot of problems in executing his new
Afghanistan strategy, but here is a basic one: He is trying to ramp up an
operation abroad at a time when an economically weary country is growing
more isolationist.
That picture -- of a recession-battered American public turning inward --
emerged Thursday in a broad new survey of American attitudes conducted by
the Pew Research Center and the Council on Foreign Relations. Pew and the
council found, as have other recent polls, that support for bulking up the
force in Afghanistan is low; only a third favored adding troops.
Broader and more striking is the discovery of a marked rise in isolationist
sentiment, which by some measures stands at a four-decade high. When
Americans were asked whether the U.S. should "mind its own business
internationally," 49% said they agreed with that sentiment.
And here is one detail that has to be of concern to the White House: More
than half of Mr. Obama's Democrats -- 53% -- share the "mind our own
business" sentiment, compared with 43% of Republicans.
- - -
12.7.09 New York Daily News Poll results as of 8:02 PM
Do you think Gates is being too optimistic about U.S. troops in Afghanistan?
Yes: 73%
No: 16%
I don't know: 11%
- - -
Britain's Most Senior Commander In Helmand Has Admitted Travelling By Road
"Now More Dangerous Than When The Taliban Were In Power"
[Thanks to Mark Shapiro, Military Resistance, who sent this in.]
04 Dec 2009 Telegraph Media Group Limited [Excerpts]
Travelling by road in Afghanistan is now more dangerous than it was when the
Taliban were in power, Britain's most senior commander in Helmand has
admitted.
Major General Nick Carter said that, before the 2001 invasion, young women
could travel alone between major cities without risk of harm.
The admission heaped further pressure on Gordon Brown's strategy in
Afghanistan, suggesting that little had changed despite the long and bloody
campaign.
"The difference, I think we need to be clear, is that when the Taliban were
here they did ensure security on the main highways and they did it very
effectively," Maj Gen Carter said.
"You could put your daughter on a bus in Kabul sure in the knowledge that
she would get in one piece to Kandahar.
"That is not the case at the moment, and we need to change that."
Roadside bombs planted by the Taliban are a major part of the problem,
accounting for around 70 per cent of casualties among coalition troops
alone.
But the criminal gangs that operate with seeming impunity are of equal
concern to locals, who complain that even the country's main ring road,
Highway One, is now plagued by bandits.
Karim, a 42-year-old coach driver on the route from Kabul to Herat via
Kandahar, said there were robbers "everywhere".
"Once they stopped my bus in Nimroz province and they robbed us all," he
said. "They went through all our pockets and took everything."
The banditry also provides the Taliban with influence since in rural areas,
people often turn to them rather than coalition forces for a form of
redress.
Under their harsh system, murderers were publicly executed by relatives of
their victim and thieves had hands cut off.
To improve the security offered, Maj Gen Carter said forces will use the
Afghan police and military "to the best of their capabilities".
Diplomats have warned of problems training up the local police from a pool
of frequently drug-addicted and often corrupt officers.
***
http://www.truthout.org/1207094
The Reason for 15 Million Unemployed: Poor Thinking at the Top
In Germany, they are experiencing the recession through short workweeks and
longer vacations, rather than mass unemployment. We should be doing the same
here.
by: Dean Baker,
t r u t h o u t: 07 December 2009
The United States has more than 15 million people unemployed. This is not
their fault. It is the fault of really bad policy decisions by people who
get paid more than almost all of the unemployed ever did or ever will. The
failure of economic policymakers to recognize and attack an $8 trillion
housing bubble led to the downturn. The continuing failure of economic
policymakers to think creatively is why 15 million people remain unemployed.
The basic problem of unemployment is in fact a very simple one; we don't
have enough demand in the economy. The collapse of bubbles in both
residential and nonresidential construction led to a falloff in annual
construction of close to $700 billion. The disappearance of more than $6
trillion in housing bubble wealth has forced consumers to pare consumption
by approximately $500 billion a year. This creates a total shortfall in
annual demand of $1.2 trillion.
In the face of inadequate demand, people lose their jobs. There is not
enough demand for houses, cars, restaurant meals and thousands of other
goods and services to keep everyone employed.
One way to fix the problem is to create more demand. That was the point of
the stimulus package passed last February. This helped, but it was nowhere
near big enough.
Subtracting out tax accounting measures (the alternative minimum tax fix)
and spending to come in 2011 and later, the stimulus was about $300 billion
for both 2009 and 2010. The federal stimulus is also being offset by
approximately $150 billion in annual budget cuts at the state and local
level. This leaves a net stimulus from the government sector of around $150
billion a year. This will not offset a loss in annual demand of $1.2
trillion; it's like trying to fill a swimming pool with five buckets of
water.
In principle, the federal government could spend much money on stimulus
until it has generated enough demand to get the unemployed back to work. For
political reasons, this doesn't seem possible. The deficit fixation in
Washington is preventing effective action, just as a balanced budget craze
in the '30s forced Roosevelt to cutback the deficit in 1937, throwing the
economy into another recession.
If politics makes it impossible to increase the demand for labor, an
alternative way to create jobs is through decreasing the supply of labor.
Specifically, employers can be given an incentive to cut the hours of their
current workforce, while keeping their pay constant. This should then cause
them to hire more workers. This is not an untested idea. Germany has used
work sharing tax credits to keep its unemployment rate from rising in this
downturn, even though its recession has been more severe than ours.
There are proposals for using this sort of work sharing being considered in
both houses of Congress at the moment. Sen. Jack Reed (D-Rhode Island) and
Rep. Rosa DeLauro have both introduced bills that would build upon
work-share programs that already exist in 17 states. These programs allow
employers to use unemployment insurance funds to keep workers employed at
shorter hours, rather than laying them off and collecting unemployment
benefits. These bills would provide additional funding to the existing
programs so that they would be more widely used and help the other states
establish work-share programs.
Rep. John Conyers has proposed a tax credit that would allow employers to
reduce work time, while still maintaining their pay, and thereby creating
the demand for more workers. This route has the benefit of allowing
employers to try to innovate at their workplace, even if they are not
currently planning layoffs, so it could have a much broader impact.
However, it is important to remember that nearly two million workers are
still losing their job each month. The jobs' figure that is reported each
month is a net figure. It shows how many jobs the economy has gained or loss
after adding up all the workers hired or fired. If we reduce the gross
monthly job loss figure by 10 percent, or 200,000 workers, it has the same
impact on employment as adding 2.4 million jobs. This means that even though
the Conyers bill would have a broader impact, even the Reed-DeLauro bills
could lead to many more jobs being created.
It is important to realize that work sharing can also have a lasting impact
on the structure of work. There have been major efforts by labor unions and
women's organizations to make the workplace more family friendly through
paid family leave, paid sick days and paid vacation. These work-share
programs offer an opportunity to both quickly reduce unemployment and lay a
basis for lasting change in this area. Companies can take advantage of these
programs to experiment with paid sick days or family leave. If they work,
they are likely to leave these policies in place even after the public
funding is no longer there.
It is absolutely unacceptable to have 15 million people unemployed just
because the people who call the shots are too dumb to figure out how to get
them back to work. We got into this mess because the people on top didn't
know what they were doing. We shouldn't have to stay here because they still
can't figure things out.
In Germany, they are experiencing the recession through short workweeks and
longer vacations, rather than mass unemployment. We should be doing the same
here.
Just 32 percent of the public favors increasing U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
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