Sen. Chris Murphy: ‘This Party Has Not Made a Firm Break From Neoliberalism’

Sen. Chris Murphy: ‘This Party Has Not Made a Firm Break From Neoliberalism’: Connecticut’s junior senator launches a new interview series focused on monopoly power, part of his quest to understand American unhappiness.

Chile Awakens

Chile Awakens

BY

ANDREW RICHNER 

ABIGAIL GUTMANN-GONZALEZ

Last week, in response to a four-cent rise in the price of the metro fare, mass protests fed by dissatisfaction with thirty-plus years of post-Pinochet neoliberal consensus erupted in Santiago and then across Chile. In response, students organized mass fare dodging, the government escalated with heavy police presence, and mass protests ensued. The right-wing government of President Sebastián Piñera reacted swiftly and severely, imposing a state of emergency and toque de queda (curfew), a legacy feature of the 1980 Chilean constitution deeply reminiscent of the most turbulent days of the military dictatorship.

The youth of Chile, and in particular students, have been at the forefront of popular resistance, not just in the present moment, but as far back as the mass mobilization of students in 2007 and 2011 against privatization and the for-profit education system. These earlier mobilizations led to the formation of the Frente Amplio (or “Broad Front”), a broad left electoral coalition composed of distinct left parties and social movements whose principal aim is to challenge the neoliberal consensus.

Collapse of the Neoliberal Consensus

Despite its reputation as a relatively wealthy Latin American country, Chilean society is deeply divided between the rich and poor. Income inequality is worse in Chile than in any other OECD nation. Meanwhile, public services ranging from the pension system to water remain privatized — as much a legacy of the Pinochet years as the 1980 constitution and the state of emergency.

“Economically, Chile continues to do the same thing it’s been doing for twenty years, namely following an extractivist model, which relies heavily on copper but also has to do with forestry, fisheries, etc.,” explains Emilia Ríos Saavedra, a Revolución Democrática (a member party of Frente Amplio) militant and city councilor in Ñuñoa, a suburb of Santiago. “This creates a tension and a feeling of helplessness where the political system cannot respond. There is no capacity on the one hand, and on the other hand, the political and economic elites, above all, are not capable of thinking about the larger needs of the country.”

As the center-left coalition that led Chile through the transition to democracy failed to address the growing crisis caused by the economic policies of the Chicago Boys who collaborated with Pinochet in the 1980s to dismantle Chile’s social democratic legacy, their popular support has collapsed. In the 2017 presidential election, the right-wing billionaire who introduced consumer debt to Chile, Sebastián Piñera, was elected.

See more: 

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/10/chile-protests-sebastian-pinera-frente-amplio

SCUSD Budget - Lets not be fooled-Again

The Sacramento Bee reported on Friday that SCUSD budget had again been disapproved by the County Office of Education.  

“County schools officials last month disapproved Sacramento City Unified’s adopted budget because the district — although making “considerable progress towards stabilizing the budget” — fell short of meeting its minimum reserve requirement by $27 million in 2021-22.” 

While accurate, this reporting fails to deal with several of the key issues in the  school budget.  First notice that last year we were consistently told that SCUSD was on the brink of bankruptcy. Over 100 teachers were laid  off. Several moved to other districts.  At the end of the year, the district had almost no deficit.  It has begun the year with at least 60 teacher positions not filled- most are filled by substitutes.  This increases school failure.   See here. https://www.sacbee.com/opinion/california-forum/article235971252.html

If you read the report, the district will meet its budget requirements and reserve requirements for this year and next.  – But- oh crisis !  They will not have enough in reserve in the third year. 

The action by the County Office of Education and Superintendent Gordon is a political attack.  Gordon has been singing this song since the Reagan Administration. SCOE reports criticize the teaches union but do not criticize the size and competence of the SCUSD administration. 

The policy positions urged by Gordon are classic claims of austerity.  An official claims to be objective and announces  a budget crisis and then  proposes cut back ( that is reduction in education opportunities) as the only solution. In reality, the economic crisis is half baked and the there are other solutions, such as having the giant corporations like Amazon pay their taxes.  Some, not all, of these solutions would require state legislation.  There will be an item on the ballot in 2020 to raise taxes to adequately fund the schools. https://schoolsandcommunitiesfirst.org

In the meantime, readers should be skeptical of pronouncements from SCOE and Gordon. They are engaged in a public campaign to blame teachers for the inadequate funding of our schools.  This is a persistent effort of promoting a viewpoint called neoliberalism. 

Here is a summary of the neoliberal viewpoint in finance.

How Obama ( and the Democrats) Failed Us

“He chose an economic recovery plan that benefited educated, well-off people much more than the middle class,” writes Reed Hundt, a Democrat who is a former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, in his recent history of Obama’s first two years, “A Crisis Wasted.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/18/opinion/obama-2008-financial-crisis.html?

A Global Left

Progressive International from MEANS OF PRODUCTION on Vimeo.

The Education Fight in the Democratic Party

Jeff Bryant, Education Opportunity Network.
The “big economic fight” in the Democratic Party that news outlets are reporting isn’t confined to economics.

The link above takes you to a story in the Washington Post explaining how a “populist wing” in the Democratic Party is rebelling against the conventional wisdom of “centrist” Democrats who have dominated the party since the 1990s.

“Right now the populist story is winning,” the article concludes.

My colleague Richard Eskow pounced on the article and writes for the Huffington Post, “The corporate-friendly policies of the party’s more conservative wing have fared poorly, both as policy and as politics, and as a result the party has moved to the left.”

Eskow points to “the insurgent candidacy of Bernie Sanders” and other recent events as signs of “a major setback for the so-called ‘New Democrats’ who have dominated the party since the election of Bill Clinton in 1992. Nearly 25 years after they rose to power, the ideas of the ‘New Democrats’ don’t seem so new.”

The Start of the Chinese Century

Without fanfare—indeed, with some misgivings about its new status—China has just overtaken the United States as the world’s largest economy. This is, and should be, a wake-up call—but not the kind most Americans might imagine.

By Joseph E. Stiglitz

SOFT POWER For America, the best response to China is to put our own house in order.

When the history of 2014 is written, it will take note of a large fact that has received little attention: 2014 was the last year in which the United States could claim to be the world’s largest economic power. China enters 2015 in the top position, where it will likely remain for a very long time, if not forever. In doing so, it returns to the position it held through most of human history...

The United States then made two critical mistakes. First, it inferred that its triumph meant a triumph for everything it stood for. But in much of the Third World, concerns about poverty—and the economic rights that had long been advocated by the left—remained paramount. The second mistake was to use the short period of its unilateral dominance, between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the fall of Lehman Brothers, to pursue its own narrow economic interests—or, more accurately, the economic interests of its multi-nationals, including its big banks—rather than to create a new, stable world order. The trade regime the U.S. pushed through in 1994, creating the World Trade Organization, was so unbalanced that, five years later, when another trade agreement was in the offing, the prospect led to riots in Seattle. Talking about free and fair trade, while insisting (for instance) on subsidies for its rich farmers, has cast the U.S. as hypocritical and self-serving.