Rethinking the Economy

There was a lot of great material in Van Jones’ speech at the Rebuilding the Dream kickoff — so much so that I decided I want to write up some of it to experiment with later. Here are some of my favorites:
On the myth that we are broke:
We’re not broke, we were robbed.
Saying “we [...]

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On Thursday, activist Van Jones kicked off a new movement called Rebuild the Dream. The speech he gave his one of the best he’s given in quite a while. It’s definitely worth checking out.
I may be wildly optimistic, but I think Rebuilding the Dream – which has backing from Moveon.org, SEIU, the AFL-CIO, [...]

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Now this is how to do a protest! Having Robin Hoods breach a marsh/”moat” using a portable bridge and demanding justice at JP Morgan Chase’s Shareholder Meeting — you gotta admire their style.
To understand what these protests are targeting, here’s the story of one of the protesters:
Virginia Holwell, a 59-year-old shareholder [...]

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On the Series-O-Tubes-o-Spheres and in conversations with some friends, I’ve been hearing the same theme – the Right has overplayed their hand. From Scott Walker’s Wisconsin crusade to wipe out public unions to the House Republicans jumping off the cliff by signing up to privitalize/gut Medicare ala Ryan, conservatives are pushing policies that go [...]

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Last week, Glenn Greenwald wrote that a lot of liberal bloggers were missing the point about Obama.
Jon Chait, Josh Marshall, and Matt Yglesias all insist that the President is “losing” on these battles because of bad negotiating strategy, and will continue to lose unless it improves. Ezra Klein says “it makes absolutely no sense” [...]

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Going after players like the Chamber of Commerce is a good idea for greens. But, says Grist’s Dave Roberts, how about also rattling some Dem’s cages?
It would be a terrible mistake for climate hawks to abandon the top-down/money field of battle and decamp entirely to People Politics…. The problem is that greens have [...]

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A little more than a year ago, I wrote a snarky post about Bill McKibben’s plans for 350.org; it didn’t seem like he had a real analysis of power or a real game plan. A year and a quarter later, it’s a different story. 350.org has merged with 1Sky and Naomi Klein [...]

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Via the Nation, I’ve just learned about an interesting group called the Southern Energy Network, a network of students in the South that currently boasts 65 campuses. Their three-year plan:
1) Establish and facilitate statewide networks in all 12 Southeastern states (KY, NC, SC, TN, GA, FL, AL, MS, LA, AR, VA, WV) and [...]

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Some great news from one of my fav groups, Kentuckians for the Commonwealth. After years of fighting, a victory:
We have some great news to announce: The coal-burning power plant proposed by the East Kentucky Power Cooperative (EKPC) has been canceled by the utility.
EKPC has entered into an agreement with Kentuckians For The Commonwealth, [...]

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Time for a little more “stumbling towards.”
(see blog subtitle)
As we saw last week, in Krugman’s world you start by assuming that the market basically works and then you deal with exceptions — “market failures” or “negative externalities.
What if we stopped bowing down to the Market Gods? What if we stopped saying the sun [...]

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