Thursday, September 1, 2011

Christine Lagarde's Tough Message NYTimes, Monday's Labor Day Parade

From: jan27action-bounces@linuxbeach.net On Behalf Of Paul Krehbiel
Sent: Wednesday, August 31, 2011 4:07 PM
Subject: [Jan27action] Labor Day Parade Sept. 5

Friends,

US Labor Against the War/Los Angeles will have a contingent in the Labor Day Parade in the harbor area, Monday, September 5, and we invite you to join our contingent. The theme of this year's Labor Day Parade is, "Stop the War on Workers." Our US Labor Against the War contingent will be comprised of workers from many different unions, as well as workers without a union, and other supporters. We will have a flatbed truck decorated with signs and balloons; some people will be able to ride on the truck. We want to link the cost of the war with the attacks on workers and social programs, so we will have our own signs that read: "End Wars = End Deficits," a banner with the same slogan, and another banner that reads: "End the Wars and Save $19.3 Million per Hour." We will also have leaflets to distribute. Please join us, and wear your union T-shirts and hats if you have them.

Labor Day Parade

Monday, September 5, 2011

8:30 am

Broad and E Street

Wilmington, CA 90744

US Labor Against the War/Los Angeles

If you have questions, please contact me.

Paul Krehbiel

paulkrehbiel@earthlink.net

For US Labor Against the War/Los Angeles

* * *

From: Michael Hathaway [mailto:mykhalis@gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, August 31, 2011 2:34 PM
Subject: Hooray for Lagarde: Christine Lagarde’s Tough Message NYTimes

She's an extremely impressive woman, I think, articulate and with presence, from the two times I'd seen her on Zakaria's GPS. But I couldn't predict where she'd come down on these many important issues, and am so glad to know now. M

Editorial

Christine Lagarde’s Tough Message

Published: August 30, 2011

Less than two months after being chosen to lead the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde shook up last weekend’s conference of central bankers in Jackson Hole, Wyo., with an urgent, much needed plea for bolder economic policies in the United States and Europe to head off a looming double-dip recession.

· I.M.F. Chief Chastises Policymakers (August 28, 2011)

When Ms. Lagarde, then France’s finance minister, was campaigning to become the fund’s managing director, it was uncertain whether she could look beyond the politicians’ obsession with austerity that has repeatedly defeated efforts to contain Europe’s worsening debt crisis and continues to stymie effective policy making on both sides of the Atlantic.

Now free to speak her mind, her blunt remarks and prescriptions were just what the central bankers needed to hear. She rightly called for: rebalancing global trade by stimulating demand in developing countries with big export surpluses; more aggressive mortgage relief in the United States; and giving job creation priority over deficit reduction in the United States and Europe.

She also called for substantial injections of public and private capital into dangerously frail European banks. And while citing the necessity for long-term deficit reduction, she made clear that near-term policies must give priority to generating jobs, stimulating demand and renewing economic growth.

For Europe, specifically, Ms. Lagarde prescribed more financing for debt bailout plans, a concerted effort to strengthen vulnerable banks and, most importantly, a common political vision about the euro’s long-term future that has been grievously lacking.

For the United States, she called for new efforts to resuscitate consumer demand by attacking long-term unemployment and mortgage foreclosures. She suggested “aggressive principal reduction programs for homeowners,” in addition to the kind of refinancing programs the Obama administration is now considering.

American political leaders haven’t taken much notice of her speech. European financial officials have been sputtering ever since. Ms. Lagarde cannot make any of these things happen by herself. If she keeps pushing hard, the politicians may finally wake up.

A version of this editorial appeared in print on August 31, 2011, on page A26 of the New York edition with the headline: Christine Lagarde’s Tough Message: The I.M.F. leader tells the truth about the damage done by austerity policies.

No comments:

In a Benefit Concert for FolkWorks

July 17th at 2 PM

at the

Tropico de Nopal Gallery, in Los Angeles,
1665 Beverly Boulevard, East of Alvarado.

Swing Riots is an LA Jazz Gypsy Balkan Klezmer Folk ensemble with six versatile fully digitized members who recreate the brilliant music of two-finger Belgian Gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt— quite a feat, in that it takes them only sixty fingers to accomplish what Django did with two. Perhaps that’s why the word genius is so often found within two syllables of Reinhardt’s legendary name.

But if you close your eyes, it hardly matters; you can drift back in time to the sweltering erotic nights of Paris’s Left Bank in the 1930s, when Reinhardt was remaking the landscape of modern Jazz, and having to relearn the guitar after suffering major burns in a 1928 fire that changed his life and modern music forever. Without the use of the third and fourth fingers on his left hand he played everything with just the two he had—and that proved to be enough.

The Swing Riots perform an irreverent gumbo of Gypsy & Creole Jazz, Klezmer & Romanian Horas, Parisian Musette & the occasional wild card thrown in for good measure. The SwingRiots are comprised of 6 core members who have played for decades in everything from Balkan dance bands to traditionalSwing groups including: Bill Marks: Guitar & Voice; Pat Mac Swyney: Mando-Guitar, Tenor Banjo, Mandolin, Cornet, Ney, Harmonica & Voice; Linda Kodaira: Violin; Nick Casillas: Clarinet & Soprano Sax;Ben Getting: Upright Bass.

Ed Pearl has done a bit of his own reshaping of the musical landscape of Los Angeles, as the creator of the legendary folk music club The Ash Grove in 1958, and had Django Reinhardt not passed away in 1953, he would surely have graced the Ash Grove stage as well, along with Muddy Waters, Bill Monroe, the New Lost City Ramblers, The Greenbriar Boys, Phil Ochs, Mance Libscomb, Lightning Hopkins, Flatt and Scruggs, Mississippi John Hurt, Jackie DeShannon and Ry Cooder.

Now Ed has embarked on a new venture, catching up with lost time as it were, and will present Swing Riots in his new summer concert series sponsored by Ash Grove Music (www.ashgrovemusic.com).

It will be a doubly special event, since it is a benefit concert for FolkWorks, LA’s free and only folk music magazine, now in its tenth year of continuous publication, covering the waterfront of LA’s sometimes bewildering variety of folk related solo performers, dance and instrumental groups and festivals, as well as national touring artists that come through town.

FolkWorks (www.folkworks.org) was just honored this past May with the Topanga Banjo-Fiddle Contest Music Legend Award for 2011, and needs the influx of funds from this extraordinary concert to keep the presses rolling, as it tries valiantly to beat the odds that have made magazine publishing a quixotic and oft-times heroic endeavor.

So support the Ash Grove, support FolkWorks, and enjoy an unparalleled afternoon of world music from the Lost Generation that these wonderful Los Angeles musicians have rediscovered, mastered and made their own. For this musical experience of a lifetime Swing Riots will be joined by vocal duet Jess Basta & Christine Tavares, formerly of VOCO in a variety of Yiddish and early jazz standards. Don’t you dare miss it!
--Ross Altman

Ed Pearl

Thursday, September 1, 2011