Washington’s Blog strives to provide real-time, well-researched and actionable information.
We at Washington’s Blog have an insatiable curiosity for new discoveries, new information and new insights.
Despite our passion for what’s new, there are themes that we keep reporting on year after year, as they reflect a bigger picture which remains fairly constant, or the root causes of our problems which have still not been addressed, or potentially powerful solutions which have still never been tried.
For example, we note again and again that government leaders are doing all of the wrong things for the economy, and that the economy cannot fundamentally stabilize – and we cannot regain prosperity – unless:
- The widespread fraud as a business model by the biggest Wall Street players is prosecuted
- The giant but insolvent banks are broken up
- Government policies stop making the rich richer and everyone else poorer
- Government stops encouraging insane levels of leverage
- Governments stop trying to prop up unsustainable levels of debt to protect bondholders, and start forcing a debt “jubilee”
- The endless wars are stopped (contrary to widespread myth, war greatly weakens our economy)
Other recurrent themes at Washington’s Blog include (by way of random sample only):
- The Sun affects many more aspects of our lives than scientists had realized
- The “mainstream” corporate media serves the interests of the rich and powerful, not the little guy
- Neither the Republican nor Democratic parties represent the average American, and they engage in a false dog-and-pony show to distract us from the fact that they both serve the same masters
- Fear of terror disempowers people, and makes them unable to think clearly
- Governments from around the world admit that they murder their own people – and then blame it on the other guy – to promote their policy goals
- Covering up disasters only makes them worse
- No matter how bad things may seem, we can still have hope and courage … if we understand where those powerful emotions really come from.
send me the news plz
I am trying to find your article on how people dissemble and obfuscate during discussions online. It was perfect and consice but it seems the site update has broken my link to it. Is there a chance you know which article I am talking about? I think it had 25 points of obvious misdirection during a discussion that you illuminated quite well.
I’m writing a researched and sourced report on alternative energy and our current energy policy. I am attempting to find outlets to get the word out about how the home user can do their own research. this is for educational purposes only and is in no way an attempt to sale anything. If you would be so kind as to review my paper, I’m hoping you will find it acceptable to post here. If not, thanks for the 5 minutes it took to read this and my paper.
BTW, I love your site, I read it daily along with about 15 other sites.
I like Your spirit !
Keep it up .. regardless how futile it may seem ..in between .
It is the laung haul .. which will count ..in the end
Mr Ole C G Olesen
Consultant Orthopedic Surgeon
This is really great format. I agree with all the things to do about the economy.
I would ad one really important thing:
Democratize money. Monesy is system not a commodity.
The only true and the only way forward to maximaum freedom, justice and prosperity is throught demcoratized money. That is how we all become capitalists that offer helathy competitiveness, cooperation and equality. We can obtain a modicum of equality of condidtion not jsut opportunity for ALL people but it requires they particpate in the most powerful arbirot of justice that exists in our world. Debt evaporates fucntionally, debt cannot accumualte exponetilaly as it does now. This is an aboration I can’t believe more economists aren’t discussing. (Probably because most of them work for banks)
Thank you for this blog and for the hard work you’re doing to keep it on line. I’ve just added to my favourites and will make a point of being a regular reader. I really appreciate your orientation to provide non-biased and factual information and to let the READER decide–quite refreshing in this era of opinion-based “journalism” on the one hand and faithful corporate stenography on the other.
Well done!
ZNM
Please post or report on this:
Begin forwarded message:
From: Ellen Kurrelmeyer
Date: October 16, 2011 11:45:19 AM EDT
To: Carolyn Schmidt , cozyinnvt@gmail.com, Eric Zuesse , Carol Brigham , Cady White , jonathan heppell , OV Board Kurrelmeyer , Rebecca Bertrand , Kevin Behm , Spence Putnam , Will Stevens
Subject: Whiting Democrats’ forum on 11/15/11
Good Morning,
In an effort to create a more progressive path for our country, the Whiting Democrats are holding a forum – the first formal national discussion on the topic: SHOULD BARACK OBAMA BE THE NEXT DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES?
The forum will be on Tuesday, November 15, 2011 at 6:30 pm, in the Whiting VT town hall, located on South Main Street (Rte 30). Light refreshments will be served.
Please forward this email to your friends – and anyone you fell would be interested in coming and perhaps joining the discussion. Attached is the flyer we’re using for the event, please print and post. We are also among the “99%”.
Whiting Democrats
PO Box 37
Whiting VT 05778
Ellen Kurrelmeyer, Chair
Your desire to see cooperation between Tea Party and OWS is noble in intent, but — sorry to say — foolish. It will not happen, and should not happen. The Tea Party is a proto-fascist formation, with essentially ZERO relation and common ground with OWS people.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/10/28/the-rise-of-the-tea-party/
Weekend Edition October 28-30, 2011
An Interview With Anthony DiMaggio
The Rise of the Tea Party
by SCOTT BORCHERT
snip
The problem with the “movement” is that its members’ anger gets manipulated by a small group of partisan and media elites who are essentially Republican Party operatives. This is the dirty little secret of the Tea Party; it’s not really a social movement, but a cluster of elitist interest groups operating locally and nationally, which is quite lacking in participatory elements, and largely driven by a top-down approach, determined and dictated by Republican partisan officials and business elites of the Koch variety….
A close examination of the various national Tea Party groups finds that they are all lacking in participatory aspects, with active membership extremely sparse, and the leaders of these groups coming from the highest levels of local and national Republican Party chapters and the business system…. the alleged Tea Party “insurgents” who have led the Tea Party “revolution” in Congress are extremely elitist in their policy positions and in terms of their economic backgrounds. They don’t look any different than past political leaders in terms of their support from wealthy business interests, or in terms of their personal affluence, with regard to their past support for the very deregulatory legislation (of the banking industry) that helped destroy the American economy, or in terms of their voting records, which are identical to non-Tea Party Republican members of Congress.
snip
It’s the same group of Americans – the 20-25 percent of the public – who are essentially Bush dead-enders. Ideologically speaking, I describe the Tea Partiers as packaging old wine into new bottles. On one level, there is an extremely strong overlap between the Tea Party and the traditional religious right that emerged in the 1980s; on a second level, the Tea Party is representative of the same extreme economic right that has long supported deregulation and an assault on the social welfare state. There is nothing controversial about these claims, as public opinion polling (and analysis of these polls) demonstrates these points very clearly.
snip
A major problem with the Tea Party, in terms of “building a bridge” between its members and Occupy Wall Street, is that very few Tea Partiers (only 15%) even blame Wall Street for the current problems we are facing today. While their rage at the stagnation of American prosperity is very legitimate, their attribution of responsibility for this stagnation is so childishly naïve, staggeringly ignorant, and disturbingly proto-fascistic that it makes working with them difficult, if not impossible. How do you work with people that think Obama is a Nazi, socialist, Kenyan Muslim terrorist? Pick your pejorative adjective as applied to Obama, and Tea Partiers likely agree with it. The above descriptions are so often lumped together in Tea Party rhetoric to the point where political ideologies such as Islamic fundamentalism, socialism, and Nazism, etc. are absurdly lumped together, as if these philosophies have anything in common.
snip
Tea Party supporters increasingly cling to romantic and ignorant notions that if we could somehow return to the “good old days” of “free market,” deregulatory capitalism, we would put ourselves back on the path to prosperity. They seem totally unwilling or unable to recognize that it was this very deregulation, and the corresponding assault on the welfare state, that put us on the path to economic ruin. They want the Republican Party to move further to the right, failing to recognize that this right-ward drift is the primary cause of America’s problems, not the solution to them.
You’re delusional as is the article. I’m a TEA Party type and we’re working to overturn the Republican establishment as much as we are the Dems.
George, Your real name isn’t Chris Hedges is it? http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?desktop_uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DpGl4-j2KEBk%26feature%3Dshare&feature=share&v=pGl4-j2KEBk&gl=US
http://www.onthecommons.org/tea-party-vs-occupy-wall-street
The Tea Party vs. Occupy Wall Street
Finally, a truly populist uprising
By David Morris
Which stands up for the majority of Americans?
The Tea Party is the first mass movement against the masses
Host David Gregory complained about Occupy Wall Street protestors “demonizing banks” and wondered, “Is this not a reverse tea party tactic?” Gregory is right. In many respects Occupy Wall Street (OWS) is indeed a mirror image of the Tea Party.
snip
Faux Populism vs. True Populism
Both OWS and the Tea Party might be described as populist but their definitions of populism wildly diverge. That divergence has been clear from their founding. Occupy Wall Street began on September 7, 2011 with hundreds converging on Wall Street. The Tea Party began on February 19, 2009 with a rant from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. CNBC Business News editor Rick Santelli loudly condemned the government’s plan to help people stay in their homes. “(D)o we really want to subsidize the losers’ mortgages”? he asked. Santelli suggested holding a tea party for traders to dump derivatives into the Chicago River. Floor traders around him cheered his proposal. The video went viral after the Drudge Report publicized it. Within days, Fox News was discussing the appearance of a new “Tea Party”. A week later coordinated protests under the Tea Party banner took place in over 40 cities.
Santelli’s insistence that those who lose their homes are “losers” who have only themselves to blame is a sentiment widely shared among Tea Party Republicans and most recently expressed by Republican Presidential candidate front runner Herman Cain. When asked about Wall Street protestors Cain, former CEO of Godfather’s Pizza declared, “Don’t blame Wall Street. Don’t blame the big banks. If you don’t have a job and you’re not rich, blame yourself.”
snip
This lack of empathy for what OWS would call the 99% is palpable wherever Tea Party Republicans come to power…. OWS does demonize powerful banks. The Tea Party demonizes the poorest and weakest of us all.
For OWS unfairness means taxing billionaires at half the rate their secretaries pay and allowing the top 1% of the population to “earn” as much, collectively, as the bottom 60 percent. For Tea Party Republicans taxes themselves are unfair and inequality is desirable. Indeed, they want to give the 1% even a greater share of the nation’s wealth.
snip
Even when they agree that federal spending is profligate, OWS and the Tea Party violently disagree on what should be cut. Signs and speeches at #Occupy events often target the exorbitant military spending and foreign wars. But despite the fact that the Pentagon is the poster child for government waste and incompetence, not to mention corruption, it is also the only part of the government the Tea Party considers all but off limits.
As soon as Republicans took over the House of Representatives in November 2010, they changed the rules so that military spending does not have to be offset by reduced spending somewhere else, unlike any other kind of government spending. It is the only activity of government Republicans believe does not have to be paid for. The Tea Party’s ascendance has only strengthened the Republicans’ resolve that the Pentagon’s budget is untouchable. An analysis by the Heritage Foundation of Republican votes on defense spending found that Tea Party freshmen were even more likely than their Republican elders to vote against cutting any part of the military budget.
snip
OWS also knows that government is the only vehicle through which the majority can fashion rules that increase personal security and restrain unbridled greed and private power. If we give up on government we give up on our ability to collectively influence our future. Which is why high on the list of demands by OWS protestors is to minimize the impact of money on politics and increase the number of people voting. Tea Partiers again take the opposite position. They defend the right of global corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence elections and they advocate policies that suppress voter turnout.
snip
Today the Tea Party has the upper hand. With the backing of some of the world’s richest men and most powerful corporations, it has successfully converted the justifiable anger at Wall Street and government inaction into an unprecedented and ahistorical form of populism: a mass uprising against the masses. The Occupy Wall Street movement proposes a populism more compatible with other mass protests, one that doesn’t turn its back on neighbors, one that fights against massive inequality and concentrated private power, and that urges reforms that can once again allow us to have a government of the people, by the people and for the people.
OWS- a George Soros funded movement. An uber rich guy, as I recall.
Bloggers that don’t identify themselves lose a lot in credibility.
What? The author of the piece was identified, what’s the problem?
Thanks to Alan2102 for posting this! And thank you to David Harris for writing it! This is the best explanation of the delineation between the tea party and the occupy movement I’ve ever read. People who can’t seem to tell the difference between bought movements and grassroots movements need to read this.
You’re welcome, Nonya! Now, if we could get GW to pay attention and comment…
Great blog, thanks.
You seem to be doing a Great Job at agglomerating sources and raising awareness, Congrats and Thanks!
I searched “solutions” on this blog and about 6 posts came up, yet none with any real “solutions”.
Do you have any solutions to offer? Even any thoughts on possible solutions perhaps?
I am sure everyone would love to know about them.
I certainly would.
Regards
Dear WB –
Where’s your Twitter account and Facebook page? I spent some time looking here, and you don’t have any links or icons anywhere.
(You do have these accounts, right?)
– Daniel
Hello, I am desperately trying to get ahold of the management/webmaster of this website. I have some information/content for them I think will be very useful. I have sent emails to your paypal email for lack of seeing any contact info posted on the site. Please contact me ASAP. neil@uncorporatemedia.com
Thank you for your blog. It is very important. People like you, finding the truth, and sharing it, give us hope.
I love this website. I first came here during the BP fiasco which is when this blog really took off (from what I am guessing). I come back occasionally to visit. Keep up the good work.
John